UN climate change panel based claims on student dissertation and magazine article

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7111525/UN-climate-change-panel-based-claims-on-student-dissertation-and-magazine-article.html
The United Nations' expert panel on climate change based claims about ice disappearing from the world's mountain tops on a student's dissertation and an article in a mountaineering magazine.

By Richard Gray, Science Correspondent and Rebecca Lefort
Published: 9:00PM GMT 30 Jan 2010

Officials were forced earlier this month to retract inaccurate claims in the IPCC's report about the melting of Himalayan glaciers Photo: GETTY

The revelation will cause fresh embarrassment for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which had to issue a humiliating apology earlier this month over inaccurate statements about global warming.

The IPCC's remit is to provide an authoritative assessment of scientific evidence on climate change.
In its most recent report, it stated that observed reductions in mountain ice in the Andes, Alps and Africa was being caused by global warming, citing two papers as the source of the information.

However, it can be revealed that one of the sources quoted was a feature article published in a popular magazine for climbers which was based on anecdotal evidence from mountaineers about the changes they were witnessing on the mountainsides around them.

The other was a dissertation written by a geography student, studying for the equivalent of a master's degree, at the University of Berne in Switzerland that quoted interviews with mountain guides in the Alps.

The revelations, uncovered by The Sunday Telegraph, have raised fresh questions about the quality of the information contained in the report, which was published in 2007.

It comes after officials for the panel were forced earlier this month to retract inaccurate claims in the IPCC's report about the melting of Himalayan glaciers.

Sceptics have seized upon the mistakes to cast doubt over the validity of the IPCC and have called for the panel to be disbanded.

This week scientists from around the world leapt to the defence of the IPCC, insisting that despite the errors, which they describe as minor, the majority of the science presented in the IPCC report is sound and its conclusions are unaffected.

But some researchers have expressed exasperation at the IPCC's use of unsubstantiated claims and sources outside of the scientific literature.

Professor Richard Tol, one of the report's authors who is based at the Economic and Social Research Institute in Dublin, Ireland, said: "These are essentially a collection of anecdotes.

"Why did they do this? It is quite astounding. Although there have probably been no policy decisions made on the basis of this, it is illustrative of how sloppy Working Group Two (the panel of experts within the IPCC responsible for drawing up this section of the report) has been.

"There is no way current climbers and mountain guides can give anecdotal evidence back to the 1900s, so what they claim is complete nonsense."

The IPCC report, which is published every six years, is used by government's worldwide to inform policy decisions that affect billions of people.

The claims about disappearing mountain ice were contained within a table entitled "Selected observed effects due to changes in the cryosphere produced by warming".

It states that reductions in mountain ice have been observed from the loss of ice climbs in the Andes, Alps and in Africa between 1900 and 2000.

The report also states that the section is intended to "assess studies that have been published since the TAR (Third Assessment Report) of observed changes and their effects".

But neither the dissertation or the magazine article cited as sources for this information were ever subject to the rigorous scientific review process that research published in scientific journals must undergo.

The magazine article, which was written by Mark Bowen, a climber and author of two books on climate change, appeared in Climbing magazine in 2002. It quoted anecdotal evidence from climbers of retreating glaciers and the loss of ice from climbs since the 1970s.

Mr Bowen said: "I am surprised that they have cited an article from a climbing magazine, but there is no reason why anecdotal evidence from climbers should be disregarded as they are spending a great deal of time in places that other people rarely go and so notice the changes."

The dissertation paper, written by professional mountain guide and climate change campaigner Dario-Andri Schworer while he was studying for a geography degree, quotes observations from interviews with around 80 mountain guides in the Bernina region of the Swiss Alps.

Experts claim that loss of ice climbs are a poor indicator of a reduction in mountain ice as climbers can knock ice down and damage ice falls with their axes and crampons...

The New Scare!

I predict that the "New Scare" will slowly over shadow the supposed "Anthropomorphic Global Warming".

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/space/article7009735.ece

Nasa mission to unravel sun’s threat to Earth
A new probe could help scientists predict the solar storms that cause chaos for us

Scientists have designed a space probe to peer deep beneath the solar surface and observe how sunlight is generated

NASA is to embark on one of its most ambitious missions in an attempt to unlock the secrets of the sun.

Following its launch in nine days’ time, the US space agency’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) will spend five years in orbit trying to discover the causes of extreme solar activity, such as sun spots and solar winds and flares.

Scientists have long been aware that disturbances on the sun can trigger dangerous x-rays, charged particles and magnetic fields that can disrupt power supplies, communication signals and aircraft navigation systems on Earth.

By understanding how such solar phenomena are created, they hope to be able to produce reliable forecasts of “space weather” and provide advance warnings of any threat.

Orbiting the Earth at a distance of 22,300 miles, the observatory will measure fluctuations in the sun’s ultraviolet output, map magnetic fields and photograph its surface and atmosphere.

Experts have likened the mission to a “giant microscope” that will capture for the first time every nuance of the sun’s exterior. The images relayed to Earth will be 10 times clearer than high-definition television.

Barbara Thompson, project scientist, said: “It is Nasa’s first weather mission and it aims to characterise everything on the sun that can impact on the Earth and near Earth.

“We know things happen on the sun which affect spacecraft, communications and radio signals. If we can understand the underlying causes of what is happening then we can turn this information into forecasts.

“The key thing about the mission is that it is not just pure science for its own sake. There is likely to be a direct and immediate benefit for people.”

Solar magnetic storms and space weather disturbances have had a number of dramatic consequences over the years.

On March 13, 1989, millions of people in Canada and the United States were left without electricity for more than nine hours after a magnetic storm sent shockwaves through the Hydro-Québec power grid.

Five years later, a geomagnetic storm temporarily knocked out two Canadian satellites and Intelsat-K, an international communications satellite.

The most powerful solar storm in history, known as a “superstorm”, occurred on September 1, 1859. It caused the failure of telegraph systems in Europe and North America.

The storm produced auroras — phenomena normally only seen near the poles — which were visible in Cuba, Mexico and Italy. The lights were so bright in California’s Rocky Mountains that gold prospectors mistook them for dawn and began preparing breakfast.

Transpolar aircraft are particularly sensitive to space weather because they rely on navigation systems for the entire duration of a flight.

Nasa estimates that the SDO will transmit as much as 50 times more scientific data than any other mission in the space agency’s history.

Each image will consist of more than 16m pixels and the amount of data sent back to Earth daily will be equivalent to downloading 500,000 songs a day from the internet.

In order to process the data, the organisation has set up a pair of dedicated radio antennae near Las Cruces, New Mexico.

The SDO’s orbit will match the speed of the rotation of the Earth, meaning that it will be in constant view of the two 59ft dishes throughout the mission.

The UK-based Science and Technology Facilities Council is supplying some of the equipment for the observatory.

Professor Richard Harrison, of the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire, said understanding the impact of the sun’s magnetic fields was key to the mission.

“The idea is to image different layers of the sun’s atmosphere all the way down to the surface and measure magnetic fields,” he said.

“The bottom line is that you are trying to understand how this atmosphere works. We can already see phenomena like the flares. The question is how does the magnetic field form to allow this sort of thing to happen.”

Climate chief was told of false glacier claims before Copenhagen

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7009081.ece


Most experts believe that the Himalayan glaciers will take centuries to melt.

Ben Webster, Environment Editor

The chairman of the leading climate change watchdog was informed that claims about melting Himalayan glaciers were false before the Copenhagen summit, The Times has learnt.

Rajendra Pachauri was told that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment that the glaciers would disappear by 2035 was wrong, but he waited two months to correct it. He failed to act despite learning that the claim had been refuted by several leading glaciologists.

The IPCC’s report underpinned the proposals at Copenhagen for drastic cuts in global emissions.

Dr Pachauri, who played a leading role at the summit, corrected the error last week after coming under media pressure. He told The Times on January 22 that he had only known about the error for a few days. He said: “I became aware of this when it was reported in the media about ten days ago. Before that, it was really not made known. Nobody brought it to my attention. There were statements, but we never looked at this 2035 number.”

Asked whether he had deliberately kept silent about the error to avoid embarrassment at Copenhagen, he said: “That’s ridiculous. It never came to my attention before the Copenhagen summit. It wasn’t in the public sphere.”

However, a prominent science journalist said that he had asked Dr Pachauri about the 2035 error last November. Pallava Bagla, who writes for Science journal, said he had asked Dr Pachauri about the error. He said that Dr Pachauri had replied: “I don’t have anything to add on glaciers.”

The Himalayan glaciers are so thick and at such high altitude that most glaciologists believe they would take several hundred years to melt at the present rate. Some are growing and many show little sign of change.

Dr Pachauri had previously dismissed a report by the Indian Government which said that glaciers might not be melting as much as had been feared. He described the report, which did not mention the 2035 error, as “voodoo science”.

Mr Bagla said he had informed Dr Pachauri that Graham Cogley, a professor at Ontario Trent University and a leading glaciologist, had dismissed the 2035 date as being wrong by at least 300 years. Professor Cogley believed the IPCC had misread the date in a 1996 report which said the glaciers could melt significantly by 2350.

Mr Pallava interviewed Dr Pachauri again this week for Science and asked him why he had decided to overlook the error before the Copenhagen summit. In the taped interview, Mr Pallava asked: “I pointed it out [the error] to you in several e-mails, several discussions, yet you decided to overlook it. Was that so that you did not want to destabilise what was happening in Copenhagen?”

Dr Pachauri replied: “Not at all, not at all. As it happens, we were all terribly preoccupied with a lot of events. We were working round the clock with several things that had to be done in Copenhagen. It was only when the story broke, I think in December, we decided to, well, early this month — as a matter of fact, I can give you the exact dates — early in January that we decided to go into it and we moved very fast.

“And within three or four days, we were able to come up with a clear and a very honest and objective assessment of what had happened. So I think this presumption on your part or on the part of any others is totally wrong. We are certainly never — and I can say this categorically — ever going to do anything other than what is truthful and what upholds the veracity of science.”

Dr Pacharui has also been accused of using the error to win grants worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Bin Laden blasts US for climate change

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20100129/D9DHDH582.html

Bin Laden blasts US for climate change

Jan 29, 7:46 AM (ET)

By SALAH NASRAWI

CAIRO (AP) - Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden has called for the world to boycott American goods and the U.S. dollar, blaming the United States and other industrialized countries for global warming, according to a new audiotape released Friday.

In the tape, broadcast in part on Al-Jazeera television, bin Laden warned of the dangers of climate change and says that the way to stop it is to bring "the wheels of the American economy" to a halt.

He blamed Western industrialized nations for hunger, desertification and floods across the globe, and called for "drastic solutions" to global warming, and "not solutions that partially reduce the effect of climate change."

Bin Laden has mentioned climate change and global warning in past messages, but the latest tape was his first dedicated to the topic. The speech, which included almost no religious rhetoric, could be an attempt by the terror leader to give his message an appeal beyond Islamic militants.

The al-Qaida leader also targeted the U.S. economy in the recording, calling for a boycott of American products and an end to the dollar's domination as a world currency.

"We should stop dealings with the dollar and get rid of it as soon as possible," he said. "I know that this has great consequences and grave ramifications, but it is the only means to liberate humanity from slavery and dependence on America."

He argued that such steps would also hamper Washington's war efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The new message, whose authenticity could not immediately be confirmed, comes after a bin Laden tape released last week in which he endorsed a failed attempt to blow up an American airliner on Christmas Day.

Scientists in stolen e-mail scandal hid climate data

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7004936.ece

January 28, 2010

Scientists in stolen e-mail scandal hid climate dataBen Webster, Environment Editor, and Jonathan Leake

(University of East Anglia)
Professor Phil Jones, the unit's director, stood down while the inquiry took place
The university at the centre of the climate change row over stolen e-mails broke the law by refusing to hand over its raw data for public scrutiny.

The University of East Anglia breached the Freedom of Information Act by refusing to comply with requests for data concerning claims by its scientists that man-made emissions were causing global warming.

The Information Commissioner’s Office decided that UEA failed in its duties under the Act but said that it could not prosecute those involved because the complaint was made too late, The Times has learnt. The ICO is now seeking to change the law to allow prosecutions if a complaint is made more than six months after a breach.

The stolen e-mails , revealed on the eve of the Copenhagen summit, showed how the university’s Climatic Research Unit attempted to thwart requests for scientific data and other information, and suggest that senior figures at the university were involved in decisions to refuse the requests. It is not known who stole the e-mails.

Professor Phil Jones, the unit’s director, stood down while an inquiry took place. The ICO’s decision could make it difficult for him to resume his post.

Details of the breach emerged the day after John Beddington, the Chief Scientific Adviser, warned that there was an urgent need for more honesty about the uncertainty of some predictions. His intervention followed admissions from scientists that the rate of glacial melt in the Himalayas had been grossly exaggerated.

In one e-mail, Professor Jones asked a colleague to delete e-mails relating to the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

He also told a colleague that he had persuaded the university authorities to ignore information requests under the act from people linked to a website run by climate sceptics.

A spokesman for the ICO said: “The legislation prevents us from taking any action but from looking at the emails it’s clear to us a breach has occurred.” Breaches of the act are punishable by an unlimited fine.

The complaint to the ICO was made by David Holland, a retired engineer from Northampton. He had been seeking information to support his theory that the unit broke the IPCC’s rules to discredit sceptic scientists.

In a statement, Graham Smith, Deputy Commissioner at the ICO, said: “The e-mails which are now public reveal that Mr Holland’s requests under the Freedom of Information Act were not dealt with as they should have been under the legislation. Section 77 of the Act makes it an offence for public authorities to act so as to prevent intentionally the disclosure of requested information.”

He added: “The ICO is gathering evidence from this and other time-barred cases to support the case for a change in the law. We will be advising the university about the importance of effective records management and their legal obligations in respect of future requests for information.”

Mr Holland said: “There is an apparent Catch-22 here. The prosecution has to be initiated within six months but you have to exhaust the university’s complaints procedure before the commission will look at your complaint. That process can take longer than six months.”

The university said: “The way freedom of information requests have been handled is one of the main areas being explored by Sir Muir Russell’s independent review. The findings will be made public and we will act as appropriate on its recommendations.”

A U.S. ClimateGate?

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=518890

A U.S. ClimateGate?
Posted 01/22/2010 07:33 PM ET


Hoaxes: Climate researchers and the Weather Channel's founder accuse NASA of the same data manipulation as Britain's Climate Research Unit. Were weather stations cherry-picked to hide the temperature drop?

We recently commented on how our space agency for two years refused Freedom of Information requests on why it has had to repeatedly correct its climate figures.

In a report on global warming on KUSI television by Weather Channel founder and iconic TV weatherman John Coleman, that reticence has been traced to the deliberate manipulation and distortion of climate data by NASA.

As Coleman noted in a KUSI press release, NASA's two primary climate centers, the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) in Asheville, N.C., and the Goddard Institute for Space Studies at Columbia University in New York City, are accused of "creating a strong bias toward warmer temperatures through a system that dramatically trimmed the number and cherry-picked the locations of weather observation stations they use to produce the data set on which temperature record reports are based."

Joseph D'Aleo, of Icecap.us, said the analysis found NASA "systematically eliminated 75% of the world's stations with a clear bias toward removing higher-latitude, high-altitude and rural locations." The number of actual weather stations used to calculate average global temperatures was reduced from about 6,000 in the 1970s to about 1,500 today. The number of reporting stations in Canada dropped from 600 to 35.

E. Michael Smith, a computer programming expert who worked with D'Aleo, said he found "patterns in the input data from NCDC that looked liked dramatic and selective deletions of thermometers from cold locations." The more he looked, the more he found "patterns of deletion that could not be accidental."

Stations in places such as the Andes and Bolivia have virtually vanished, meaning, according to D'Aleo, temperatures from these areas are now "determined by interpolation from stations hundreds of miles away on the coast or in the Amazon." He says it's as if Minneapolis stopped reporting and its average temperature was extrapolated from readings in St. Louis and Kansas City.

Smith argues that the decrease in stations used and the selectivity of locations make NASA's data and conclusions suspect. D'Aleo goes further, saying such cherry-picking and data manipulation are a "scientific travesty" committed by activist scientists to advance the global warming agenda.

To us, it looks like just another example of ideologically driven climate deceit following the Climate Research Unit scandal and the fraudulent claim by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that Himalayan glaciers would soon vanish.

UN climate chief admits mistake on Himalayan glaciers warning

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6994774.ece


(John Novis)
The Middle Rongbuk Glacier in the Himalayas
Jeremy Page, South Asia Correspondent

The UN’s top climate change body has issued an unprecedented apology over its flawed prediction that Himalayan glaciers were likely to disappear by 2035.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said yesterday that the prediction in its landmark 2007 report was “poorly substantiated” and resulted from a lapse in standards. “In drafting the paragraph in question the clear and well-established standards of evidence, required by the IPCC procedures, were not applied properly,” the panel said. “The chair, vice-chair and co-chairs of the IPCC regret the poor application of IPCC procedures in this instance.”

The stunning admission is certain to embolden critics of the panel, already under fire over a separate scandal involving hacked e-mails last year...

Global Warming: The Rest of the Story...

CLICK HERE

Antarctica and the Myth of Deadly Rising Seas

http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/01/antarctica_and_the_myth_of_dea_1.html

January 14, 2010
Antarctica and the Myth of Deadly Rising Seas
By Marc Sheppard

On Monday, scientists from the Norwegian Polar Institute reported that they'd measured sea temperatures beneath an East Antarctic ice shelf and found no signs of warming whatsoever. And while the discovery's corollaries remain mostly blurred by the few rogue mainstream media outlets actually reporting it, the findings are in fact yet another serious blow to the sky-is-falling-because-oceans-are-rising prophecies of the climate alarm crowd.

For years now, alarmists have insisted that Antarctica is thawing thanks to man-made global warming. They warn that such melting of a frozen continent containing 90 percent of all the ice on the planet would inevitably lead to a cataclysmic sea level rise (SLR). Scary stuff, indeed.

However, there are several problems with their assertions, not the least of which is that all evidence of melting selectively focuses on the only area of the continent satellite evidence confirms is warming -- the western region in general, and the Antarctic Peninsula in particular.

But as ICECAP's Joe D'Aleo observed in 2008 [PDF], the relatively small area of the peninsula offers an extremely poor representative sample, as it juts out well north of the mainland into an area of the South Atlantic well known for its "surface and subsurface active volcanic activity." And in the greater scheme, adds D'Aleo, "the vast continent has actually cooled since 1979."...

Figure 1. Antarctic Temperature Trend 1982-2004 from Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) sensors flown on National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) satellites. Red indicates areas where temperatures generally increased during that period, and blue shows where temperatures predominantly decreased.

The Hockey Stick is Falling!

http://spectator.org/blog/2010/01/12/group-demands-real-investigati

Group Demands REAL Investigation Into Mann
By Paul Chesser on 1.12.10 @ 2:40PM

The Commonwealth Foundation in Harrisburg, Pa. does not trust Pennsylvania State University to investigate Climategate hockey sticker Michael Mann, because of the millions of dollars that his research brings to the university. The foundation today released a 12-page policy brief which addresses Mann's Climategate emails, the significance of his role, and why the university has a conflict of interest in investigating him. Commonwealth held a press conference today at the state capitol about their report:

The hockey stick controversy and Climategate emails reveal that Michael Mann may have committed significant and intentional scientific misconduct, including improper data manipulation, inappropriately shielding research methods and results from others, and engaging in a number of forms of retaliation against those who publicly challenge his research results.

Were scientific misconduct a criminal matter, the aforementioned facts might be said to constitute “probable cause” for a search warrant. Analogously, these facts provide probable cause for an investigation into Mann’s conduct at PSU.

Although PSU has announced that it will investigate Climategate, given Mann’s financial and reputational value to the university, and the likely embarrassment resulting from an adverse finding concerning his conduct, there is good reason to believe that a PSU-managed investigation might amount to little more than a whitewash.

Commonwealth Foundation goes on to recommend that the state General Assembly commission an external, independent investigation. Pennsylvania State Senate Education Committee Chairman Jeffrey Piccola has already promised Penn State that if its investigation is a whitewash, he will do one that isn't.

Hide The Decline - Climategate

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1242011/DAVID-ROSE-The-mini-ice-age-starts-here.html

Jan 10, 2010
The mini ice age starts here By David Rose, UK Mail online

The bitter winter afflicting much of the Northern Hemisphere is only the start of a global trend towards cooler weather that is likely to last for 20 or 30 years, say some of the world’s most eminent climate scientists.

Their predictions – based on an analysis of natural cycles in water temperatures in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans – challenge some of the global warming orthodoxy’s most deeply cherished beliefs, such as the claim that the North Pole will be free of ice in
summer by 2013.

According to the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado, Arctic summer sea ice has increased by 409,000 square miles, or 26 per cent, since 2007 – and even the most committed global warming activists do not dispute this.


The scientists’ predictions also undermine the standard climate computer models, which assert that the warming of the Earth since 1900 has been driven solely by man-made greenhouse gas emissions and will continue as long as carbon dioxide levels rise...

Cold Is Weather; Heat Is the Wrath of the Climate Gods

http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OWEyNjgwYjVjYTg5MGM3OTZmYjFkOTc3ODkxM2YzOGQ=

Friday, January 08, 2010
Cold Is Weather; Heat Is the Wrath of the Climate Gods
[Brendan O’Neill]

Many people are commenting on the irony that, not two weeks after the Copenhagen summit to discuss the warming of the Earth, Britain and other parts of Europe are experiencing an extreme cold snap (see "Cold Is Weather; Heat Is Climate," below). Parts of the U.K. have come to a standstill as temperatures have plummeted to -17 degrees Celsius (about 1 degree Fahrenheit). Schools have been closed, there is gridlock on the roads, flights have been cancelled. During Copenhagen, U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown made grand statements about protecting future generations from the effects of global warming; now he is calling on British people “to support each other” in this “difficult” time of freezing weather...

Chilly debate: Al Gore ice sculpture back in Fairbanks

http://www.adn.com/3437/story/1080124.html
Published: January 5th, 2010 02:25 PM
Last Modified: January 5th, 2010 02:36 PM

Link: Fairbanks Daily News-Miner Two Fairbanks businessmen are still so annoyed by former Vice President Al Gore's stand on global warming that they have commissioned another "Frozen Gore" ice sculpture for display in front of a liquor store. This year's version features Gore blowing smoke -- but only when a truck exhaust is connected. Businessmen Craig Compeau and Rudy Gavora say they'll commission the sculpture annually until Gore comes to Fairbanks to debate climate change. "Before we start carbon taxing ... let's try and educate ourselves," Compeau said. The Frozen Gore Web site also has pictures of last year's creation.

Burt Rutan's 2009 Oshkosh Climate Change Presentation and Quote

http://rps3.com/Files/AGW/Rutan.AGWdataAnalysis%20v11.pdf

...“if someone is aggressively selling a technical product who’s merits are dependant on complex experimental data, he is likely lying”. That is true whether the product is an airplane or a Carbon Credit."...