Is the media awakening? GlacierGate gets traction.

The Sunday Times and The Australian both picked up the scandal of the IPCC claims that the Himalayan glaciers might melt by 2035.  The claim turned out to be based only on a WWF report, which in turn was based on a New Scientist article from 1999. The Australian story today was headline front page news: UN’s Blunder on Glaciers Exposed.

The rigorous IPCC methodology amounts to this:

Here’s the IPCC Quote from Chapter 10 of the Fourth Assessment Report:

Glaciers in the Himalaya are receding faster than in any other part of the world (see Table 10.9) and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate. Its total area will likely shrink from the present 500,000 to 100,000 km2 by the year 2035 (WWF, 2005).

The exposure of the poor reviewing standards doesn’t affect claims about the role of carbon dioxide either way, since melting glaciers don’t tell us anything about what caused the warming, but it does fly in the face of the IPCC’s carefully constructed PR image. After all, if thousands of expert reviewers went carefully through this document, why did it take two years for an error so eggregious to come to light? The Himalayan glaciers are hundreds of meters thick. It would take a major temperature rise to cause something so remarkable as their complete melt by 2035. Plus there are 9,500 glaciers in the Himalayas, and the claims apparently center on just 20 glaciers. Quite  a few of those glaciers have incidentally stopped shrinking as of 2007.

Photo: Gengotri Glacier 2007 2009

The Gangotri Glacier has not changed much in the last two years. It was retreating rapidly in the 1970’s.

The bluff and bluster of the IPCC was clear when Rajendra Pachauri (the Chairman) was asked about the 60 page detailed Indian Government report that started this all. Look at the force he applies (knowing that this is backed up by the WWF and a popular science magazine article from 10 years ago):

Pachauri told the Guardian: “We have a very clear idea of what is happening. I don’t know why the minister is supporting this unsubstantiated research. It is an extremely arrogant statement.”

Pachauri said that such statements were reminiscent of “climate change deniers and school boy science”.

The Indian Report is ...”voodoo science.”

This totally disproportionate response tells us all that this has nothing to do with science. What amazes me is that the IPCC report actually quotes “WWF”. It should have been obvious 2 years ago that their information was not backed by peer review. Does anyone actually read the full reports?

Curiously the Himalayan glaciers mistake may have started like Chinese-whispers from a report that talked about the glaciers disappearing by 2350, not 2035. That’s 340 years, not 25. The Deccan Herald describes the report. But since large climate models can’t get the next eight years right (as they haven’t since 2001), why would we believe large models of glaciers would get the next 300 years right? Glaciers depend on precipitation and on temperature, and most have been retreating since 1800, many decades before human emissions of carbon dioxide became significant.

The IPCC uses this image, below, in Chapter 10 of AR4. Click on it to look closely. It shows the Gangotri glacier has been retreating since 1780, long before coal fired electricity was even thought of. Note below, that ironically this glacier is one of the ones that has stopped shrinking since the IPCC report came out. In the “the warmest decade on record” the Gangotri has stopped melting.

Far bigger scandals have been ignored…

What’s interesting about this is that there are far bigger scandals that have not been reported, that are far more critical of the conclusions the IPCC has come too. More important than “glaciers” that are slow moving,  this story appears to represent a tipping point in the media.

In September 2009 the IPCC were caught promoting a Wikipedia graph. The Hanno graph was placed in the UN Climate Change Science Compendium, but in the cold light of day ended up being a Wikipedia graph done by an ecologist called Hanno Sandvik. It was based on data-sets already known to be deeply flawed, the Jones and Mann set (the Hockey Stick), and the Briffa set (the other Hockey stick). The Jones and Mann set used trees that grow faster when CO2 increases, Mann left out some data he said he included, and the statistical methods used were so erroneous and powerful they created a hockey stick even if they were used on random red noise data sets instead of real tree rings. The Briffa set turned out to be heavily influenced by just one tree in remote northern Russia.  I’ve covered the flaws in the Mann graph here, and the Briffa graph here.

The biggest scandals are that the IPCC covered graphs like these as long ago as 2001, and none of their expert reviewers noticed what was essentially scientific fraud. Or, if their reviewers did notice it, the IPCC ignored them. There is plenty of evidence that scientists have discussed problems before and their information gets overwritten by the political appointees in the final draft.

I’ve talked about New Scientist’s voluntary role as an unpaid PR arm of the IPCC before.

PWL picked up on New Scientist’s defense, which came out two days ago (see New Scientist backpedals). I don’t think it matters that New Scientist published speculation from a scientist (as long as they label it as such), but where was New Scientist canvassing for other view points to check the reality of this? Did they interview other experts before printing such an extraordinary claim: 9,500 glaciers gone, in just 35 years?

Glaciers  do their own thing

The report that triggered the analysis on Himalayan Glaciers came out in November 2009 from the Government of India. It documents how the glaciers don’t make very good thermometers for global warming, as glaciers in the Himalayas are growing, receding, and staying static according to their own local conditions, which apparently have a lot to do with snowfall, and with aerosol (dust) cover.

Glaciers in the Himalayas, over a period of the last 100 years, behave in contrasting ways. As an example,  Sonapani glacier has retreated by about 500m during the last one hundred years. On the other hand, Kangriz glacier has practically not retreated even an inch in the same period. Siachen glacier is believed to have shown an advance of about 700m between 1862 and 1909, followed by an equally rapid retreat of around 400m between 1929 and 1958, and hardly any retreat during the last 50 years. Gangotri glacier, which had hitherto been showing a rather rapid retreat, along its glacier front, at an average of around 20m per year till up to 2000 AD, has since slowed down considerably, and between September 2007 and June 2009 is practically at a standstill5. The same is true of the Bhagirathkharak and Zemu glaciers.

What’s really remarkable is that some of the big media seems to be doing what they ought to have been doing all along. Is it the ClimateGate effect delayed?

Thanks to Peter for pointing me at this story,  and Helen D for some of the links, and to several others for the emails.

10 out of 10 based on 2 ratings

93 comments to Is the media awakening? GlacierGate gets traction.

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    PhilJourdan

    remarkable about the media doing its job? It is almost unheard of! I guess some are adopting the mantra – better late than never?

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    harbinger

    http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/152422/The-new-climate-change-scandal

    Confucious he say, big snowballs from little acorns grow, (I think).

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    Treeman

    Jo, it’s been a long haul turning the tide on AGW but the sheer momentum of the policies already in place will be hard to turn around. Unfortunately government legislation has been built on discredited IPCC policies for over a decade. State governments and councils have lapped it up. Multi tiered constraints on land use mean that many developments rightfully end up in court. Some Councils have been awarded costs against them to the tune of millions of dollars and are technically broke. In my sector, work is being awarded to TAFE based and similar public sector organisations to save money. Apart from conflicts of interest with government employees competing with the private sector, the resulting second rate outcomes are there for all to see when they drive along our highways. The most frightening thing is the self perpetuating nature of it all. Those winning work for their government based enterprises are beholden to vote for more of the same and on it goes. That legislation and regulation are already in place to ensure mediocre outcomes is appalling. That even more of the same is proposed is quite frightening.

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    Rossa

    And now the “scientist” (Professor Syed Iqbal Hasnain) whose quote triggered this off is working for TERI India, Dr R K Pachauri’s institute as head of their glaciology team !

    http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2010/01/pachauri-theres-money-in-them-glaciers.html

    Dr North in the UK has the details.

    Follow the money, as Dr North has done with regard to Pachauri, and you find an ever increasing, inter-connecting web of corruption at the heart of the “science”.

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    P Gosselin

    IPCC method is as follows:
    1. Report and data do not support catastrophic scenario – REJECT
    2. Report claims impending catastrophic scenario – ACCEPT and paste on front page!
    This glacier affair is hardly a surprise.
    Just look at how they handled Michael Mann’s hockey stick in the TAR 2001. Did they bother to check the basis for that one either? No.
    It’s a crooked organisation and it’s time to dismantle it.

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  • #

    Jo,

    Glad you wrote “take money” rather than “make money”. Its theft by proxy deception. The legal theory of vicarious liability applies. They were in a position of responsibility and power. That means they were legally required to know the quality and validity of their sources but willfully evaded that responsibility. The pretended it was fact rather than the result of an elementary school game of telephone. It has nothing to do with creating wealth and exchange of value.

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    Jasper

    Don’t forget the ‘voodoo science’ remarks by Pachauri when the IPCC info was challenged in India. Methinks he did protest too much! How embarrassing now it is all coming out.

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    John Nicklin

    Why would we expect anything different from the IPCC? It’s part of the UN, an organization more corrupt than any third world dictatorship, oh wait, its composed of third world dictatorships. Pachauri is only doing what is expected of him, keep the public in a state of fear and line his pockets with ill gotten gains. Will they recant their crimes? Nope. Will the media really abandon their AGW agenda? Not until there is “proof” that we are all doomed by the coming Anthropogenic Global Cooling, at which time they will switch gears readily. The media is only interested in dishing out cataclismic stories, they rarely, if ever, run a story about how good things are.

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    Roy Hogue

    Am I reading that silly satellite photo correctly? The Gangtri Glacier appears to have retreated roughly a whole 1.75 kilometers. That’s just a mile for practical purposes and an easy walk. Now 2001 – 1780 = 221 years. This is something wasting away so fast that it’ll be gone by 2035, just another 34 years from the date of that photo?

    C’mon now!

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  • #

    more evidence that the media is waking up lies in the number of newspaper articles on global warming. please see: http://chaamjamal.blogspot.com/2010/01/rise-and-fall-of-global-warming-hype.html

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    the 2035 thing got started as a misprint of 2335 and thereafter took on a life of its own

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  • #

    Professor Lal admits he knows little about glaciers.
    He might have admitted that right at the start, of course. Or a halfway professional journalist might have uncovered the fact with some basic research. But then a headline like MAN WHO KNOWS LITTLE ABOUT GLACIERS SAYS THEY WILL DISAPPEAR would not sell too many papers.

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    CyberForester

    Thank you Dr Pachauri. Your resignation is gratefully accepted.

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    Albert

    Joanne,
    The person who draws the cartoons on this site is a genius!
    Here is a link to another funny cartoon that explains what happened to the dinosaurs,
    http://3.bp.blogspot.com/__ZRjDTujoEo/SuIiL3aTidI/AAAAAAAABWo/O7IiylTlB1I/s800/Dinosaurs-Noahs-Ark.jpg

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    Albert

    Can anyone explain “tipping point” and is there proven accepted working formula.
    I believed tipping point was a scare tactic from the first time that I heard it.

    Last night on Elders with Andrew Denton, Helen Thomas said “The dynamic of propaganda after the fear card has been played.”

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    Mark

    The only way we’ll know that this fad is passing is when the term “Climate Change” starts disappearing from the title of various Government departments.

    It will happen. Just a matter of when.

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    PJ

    The sad thing in all of this is that genuine research will be tainted by the general atmosphere of corruption (and the full CRU emails smack of corruption – Jones did not stand aside for no good reason). Genuine research will also find it harder to get media exposure because in the end no one will trust any of it. The spin-doctoring that has gone on is a travesty (Australia alone had about a dozen media advisers in its 100+ contingent at Copenhagen) and that is not likely to change. One of the maxims of propaganda is that “Every change that is made in the subject of a propagandist message must always emphasise the same conclusion.” They will use every weasel tactic available to claw something out of this mess. I predict “We can’t be sure just what these glaciers are doing, but can we afford to take the chance?” (For our children’s sake, of course.) Those who have invested heavily in selling global warming cannot easily back away now (read “lose face”) and Australia’s $120 billion debt cannot be repaid without much heavier taxes (which will be why we need a “carbon tax” to combat something that is not happening). We are going to pay a heavy price for our political leaders’ arrogance and stupidity.

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    Dave N

    Apparently there was a late night news item about the mid-summer snow. I haven’t yet determined which news service it was, though. A Google check turns up nothing for any of the major local print/online news services, however.

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    pat

    penny wrong is still wrong, i’m afraid….

    ABC: Wong defends UN over climate mistake
    Climate Change Minister Penny Wong says a mistake made by a United Nations body on the predicted rate of glacial melting does not mean all its findings are wrong..
    But Ms Wong says the main claims of climate change science remain unchallenged.
    “This is a report that has been peer reviewed extensively; very few errors have been found in it and none that challenge the central findings,” she said…
    Meanwhile, a leading Australian glaciologist says the UN’s scientific reporting process has been corrected since the mistake was made.
    ***IPCC author Ian Allison, from the Australian Antarctic Division, says the current science indicates the continued rate of warming could see glaciers disappear in 200 to 300 years.
    “When you take any report that is as large and involving as many authors as the IPCC, you’ll get a few errors,” he said.
    “That one error doesn’t detract from the fact that glaciers around the world are decreasing in size.
    http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/01/18/2794830.htm

    also, why has abc radio national been broadcasting atrocious american ‘new dimensions’ radio shows which seem to see the world through AGW? and why did ABC repeat a Compass program last Sunday on a religious cult figure, who didn’t deserve a program in the first place, with the ABC narrator (who was the narrator ABC?) making reference to “climate change” at every opportunity?

    Transcript: Compass: Apocalypse Now?
    From Summary: Climate change, acts of terrorism and natural disasters have fuelled the current epidemic of apocalyptic thinking…
    Narrator: Accelerating climate change, acts of terrorism and war are seen as signs that we’re hurtling toward doom…
    Narrator: The events of every era can support literal interpretations of the bible. Today it’s climate change that fuels many predictions of apocalypse..
    Narrator: Fundamentalist Christians are not the only ones prophesying the end times. Today the threat posed by climate change is forcing all of us to think about the possible end of the world…
    Narrator: Richard Eckersley is a futurist. He brings science to bear on problems like climate change…
    (finishes with this line by sociologist(?)Richard Eckersley)
    Eckersley: The big danger of a fundamentalist response to climate change and other global threats, however personally appealing it might be in allowing us to see a future, real or spiritual beyond the catastrophes, is that it actually stops us from biting the bullet and addressing these problems here and now.
    http://www.abc.net.au/compass/s2428806.htm

    australia’s weather channel repeated the david attenborough AGW hour last week, which attenborough (whom i admire greatly for his nature docos) might regret in time, if he doesn’t already. of course it was full of hadley centre, with peter cox of hadley standing over a graph projected onto the floor of the studio, which attenborough said was what won him over to the cause. the program was made in 2006 but the graph conveniently stopped at 2000. shame.
    however, if u read the transcript of attenborough’s 7.30 report interview with kerry o’brien, where o’brien tries to pin him down on AGW, attenborough somewhat deflects the questioning onto population. when attenborough talks about his new program on the Poles, o’brien asks:

    David Attenborough joins The 7.30 Report
    KERRY O’BRIEN: Will it have relevance to the global warming debate?
    SIR DAVID ATTENBOROUGH: Yes, it will do. And of course if you’re cynically inclined or not optimistically inclined you may think this is our last chance to make such a series.
    KERRY O’BRIEN: What did you think?
    SIR DAVID ATTENBOROUGH: I think without any doubt at all that the Arctic is going to change quite profoundly. How much it loses and how much it gains, who knows.
    It’s too early to predict and too complicated. Down in the south it’s different in as such as the Antarctic ice cap is so huge and so thick – miles of ice thick – it’s going to take a long time before that moves significantly or as great a significance as the north.
    KERRY O’BRIEN: You’ve tended not to get caught up in political issues in the past, but over 50 years you’ve probably seen more of the world close up than practically any other human being and you’ve revisited many of those places. Have you witnessed dramatic change in that time?
    SIR DAVID ATTENBOROUGH: Environmental change – not.
    Change certainly, change that has been brought about by the increasing human population on the earth, the number of people on this planet has tripled. There are three times as many people on the planet now as when I first made television programs…
    http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2009/s2740147.htm

    back to IPCC and the AGW cabal:

    19 Jan: Times of India: Ramesh turns heat on Pachauri over glacier melt scare
    The IPCC is only meant to include peer-reviewed information that has passed the litmus test of being published in reputed journals. But this is not the first time that data on India, often used by industrialised countries to put pressure on Delhi to take actions, has been found to be incorrect.
    “In 1990, US raised a scare that methane emissions (an intense greenhouse gas) from wet paddy fields in India were as high as 38 million tonnes. It was later found by Indian scientists and globally accepted that it was as low as 2-6 million tonnes,” Ramesh said.
    Again in 2000, just before crucial negotiations, US and other industrialised countries flogged an unverified report of UNEP that claimed soot from chullahs (earthen cookstoves) was adding greatly to climate change, calling it the Asian Brown Haze.
    http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Ramesh-turns-heat-on-Pachauri-over-glacier-melt-scare/articleshow/5474586.cms

    and who came up with the ‘soot’ story?

    Soot finger at India
    – Everest glacier being hit: US and China scientists
    Researchers from the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research in China and the Nasa Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York have shown that tiny particles of black soot called aerosols may be contributing to retreat of Tibetan glaciers…
    The findings of the study appear in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and coincide with the Copenhagen climate summit..
    “It is surely from both India and China — with proportions depending on where you look in the Himalayas,” said James Hansen, a senior scientist at the Nasa Goddard Institute.
    “Black soot is among the most damaging of all particulates to human health,” Hansen told The Telegraph. “This just provides additional reason for India and China to move as fast as possible to clean energies such as wind, sun and nuclear power.” ..
    http://www.telegraphindia.com/1091209/jsp/frontpage/story_11841082.jsp

    the absolute REFUSAL of the MSM – apart from delingpole’s BLOG in the UK Tele – to report the allegations against NASA GISS following the KUSI “Global Warming: The Other Side” tv program last week is shocking. here we have the greatest scientific scandal in recent times and the MSM is AWOL. how do they catch up without looking ridiculous? or do they think they can ride out the storm?

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    PhilJourdan

    PJ: – We are going to pay a heavy price for our political leaders’ arrogance and stupidity.

    We always do.

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    Ed Gallagher

    How wrong is Penny Wong? Let’s start at the beginning. C02 follows warming, not the other way around. Tree rings make for lousy climate data,the hockey stick is a joke. Ground based thermometers are placed in urban heat sinks yet their results when “adjusted” still show inordinary warming. Weather balloons and satelite data show a cooling trend, so the debate is sent to the bottom of the sea, which recent evidence shows no warming. Artic sea ice is supposed to be disappearing yet observational data from Cryosphere Today shows little long term change of any alarming nature. We don’t need to talk about the polar bears. Their is no atmospheric hot spot. Hansen can’t just change C02’s atomospheric lifespan by bureaucratic decree, nature doesn’t pay attention, so C02 does not have positive feedback, indeed it is negative. The coral atolls are all at about the same level as they were 20 years ago and there has been no increase in the rate of sea levels that would indicate anything other than natural variation. Hurricane numbers and intensity are actually down this decade rather than up. The Sahel in Africa is actually seeing a growth in rainfall and vegetation, the Sahara is getting smaller. The Antartic ice shelf lost a big chunk, but it was due to underground volcanic activity, not AGW. So I guess I have to ask again. How wrong is Penny Wong???? It would seem there is little she is right about,and all the central claims of AGW have not only been challenged but pretty much shown as alarmist nonsense being used to back up a social agenda. Btw, if any of our more scientific members want to use my line of “How wrong is Penny Wong” in a media piece, feel free. The line has a nice ring to it – lol!

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    Jerry

    NASA has the glacier thing even more wrong.

    They quote from the IPCC report but lop off 5 years for good luck.

    I wonder if this will get changed in the near future?

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    Jerry

    oops – link thingy didn’t work. This is the NASA link http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/

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    Ed Gallagher

    On an additional encouraging note. Massachussets State Senator Scott Brown, a cap and trade opponent, is on the verge of capturing a seat in the United States Senate formerly held by the now deceased Ted Kennedy. Martha Coakley has shown herself to be as lousy an upstream swimmer as Kennedy was and has lost a 30 point lead and now trails in every major poll. Browns victory will end the filibuster proof majority in the U.S. Senate and could well signal the death knell not only for Obamacare but also cap & trade legislation. If Brown wins, I would encourage all of you to obtain his office address and deluge him with information to insure he does not stray from the path.

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  • #

    I live at about a quarter of the way up in the atmosphere ( 2500m ) and have climbed as high as half way up ( 5600m ) at 19 degrees north . The claim that glaciers at even higher altitudes , even further north would melt with just a few degree warming at sea level was patently absurd the first time I heard it . Even stupider , if possible , than Gore’s 6m sea level rise . That IPCC and Pachauri did not instantly disavow the claim shows once more what mendacious dolts these eco-leninists are . Encouraging to watch their defeat by the web peerage .

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    Bernd Felsche

    Spelling peeve: (see New Scientist backpeddles)
    The term is backpedals

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    Tom G(ologist)

    Treeman

    “The most frightening thing is the self perpetuating nature of it all. Those winning work for their government based enterprises are beholden to vote for more of the same and on it goes. That legislation and regulation are already in place to ensure mediocre outcomes is appalling. That even more of the same is proposed is quite frightening.”

    That is government at its best (worst). They have simply found a new way to do what they have ALWAYS done (not done) – which is to conduc t work which should be done by the private sector, be mediocre at, hire the lowest bsdding contractor to implement the mediocrity, and when actually doing its job reviewing private sector work, criticize the work and change it as if they know better, and so it turns into what they perceive as a good job – i.e., a mediocre one.

    I know – I not only deal with it in the environmental industry daily and hourly, but I was, for a short time, employed in a regulatory agency. I made it (within a brief three years) to be bureau chief in charge of technical reviews for all superfund cases in one of the dirtiest of the united states – in THREE YEARS!!!! are they nuts? No, just nobody better working there. I lasted three months in the do-nothing role of chief bureaucrat and left to rejoin the private sector.

    The state and federal environmental agencies are the biggest money wasters and agglomerations of useless people I have ever dealt with (one state excepted) and the climate change crowd is simply a new manifestation of the old guard.

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    Jerry

    Technical Peeve.

    Glacier’s aren’t ‘melting’ as such. Glaciers obviously melt at the foot, but at the foot of a glacier the air temperature must always be above 0C and can be quite warm. It just depends how fast it is flowing.

    The real cause of glacier length change is rate of snow fall in the catchment mixed up with how fast the glacier is flowing. Paradoxically, you can get glacier length increase caused by climate change / global warming – but only because of changes in moisture content making more snow fall on the peaks. Paradoxically again, ice ages can make some temperate/tropical glaciers shrink because there is less precipitation.

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    KDK

    It’s the UN… EVERY part of the UN is filled with profiteers and corruption. How many times must we be FEAR_MONGERED? Swine Flu = billions made/control given to UN/Freedoms lost (in some cases, people were forced to take the ‘shot’), and their doctors didn’t listen to all the independents stating facts about mercury and the fact that vaccines, in large part, DO NOT WORK–we have a more intense protective system and injecting the foreigner bypasses all that protection… not to mention, vaccines are used to generate money and create disease, as history is NOW showing.

    Further, oil for food = billions made/food rotted, stolen, wasted… OIL FOR FOOD from THE agency sponsoring AGW… LOL.

    What about this AGW scam? It is NOT oil that would suffer at all from Cap/Trade… in fact, they would probably be subsidized while their ‘green’ investments make billions… what a sham.

    No transparency in any of our govs… they do work for us and we should unite, despite the superficial attempts via our gov to keep us at odds while they profit.

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    Baa Humbug

    Always back self interest….always.

    When this current momentum reaches a “tipping point” the MSM will discard AGW CC like an empty packet of crisps and run with the momentum.
    When will that happen? Here in Oz it’s an election year. IT WILL TAKE JUST ONE GOOD QUESTION IN PARLIAMENT to reach that tipping point.
    Once that happens, as we saw during Tony Abbotts rise to opposition leadership, it will make news all over the world. It will encourage others to start questioning.
    I can’t see the same thing happening in the UK where they are due for an election soon coz their opposition is in bed with the alarmists.

    Any suggestions as to what that one question might be?

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    Anne-Kit Littler

    pat (#23): It’s interesting that you have picked up on the ABC Radio National’s regular broadcasting of the “appalling” New Dimensions series (I couldn’t agree more with your choice of word there …)

    My own bullshitometer went off the scale when I first heard it announced and the few programs I have listened to have confirmed that reading.

    It’s all about the “interconnectedness of our common human consciousness”, they have spiritual mumbo-jumbo gurus from obscure sects as special guests, teaching us “green” living and Gaia worship.

    It’s disgraceful. I shall write a letter to the ABC and complain. I suggest other Australians here do the same.

    Example: Here’s a link to a New Dimensions story entitled “Towards a more conscious economy” (!!) which among other things extols the virtue of wealth redistribution (hmm… where did we hear a lot about that recently?)

    Quote: “The happier societies are those in which there is a more equitable distribution of wealth.”

    Name a few of those societies for me, please!

    http://www.abc.net.au/rn/newdimensions/stories/2010/2785161.htm

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  • #
    Mohib

    AGW = ClimateGate

    AGW climate nonsense, all of AGW — not CRU or any part of it, IS ClimateGate.

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    P WRONG and KRUDD have gone so far they won’t back down
    pity the poor folks now suffering the idiot Kyoto regs ie Peter S and now the EPA in WA are blocking a farmer from using his own water, cos a housing development in a RURAL area is more profitable..
    so? the EPA is willing to support housing in an area unsuited? and can get away with that?
    anyone seen the brigalow corp stuff? Illegal as can be!
    qld govt rewrote the rules.
    and its all linked into land control by govt using Green agendas to drive it.
    I would throw Gore Pachauri hansen and mann into a volcano quite happily.

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    Wyndham Dix

    Baa Humbug 34:

    Any suggestions as to what that one question might be?

    Mr Speaker, I ask the Prime Minister without notice a question in three parts: What is the known effect on anthropogenic global warming of 6.8 billion human beings respiring CO2 into the atmosphere 12 to 15 times a minute, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and how does this compare or contrast with industrial emissions of CO2 alone? Given that World Bank data for 2008 show world population growth to be approximately 100 million annually, will the Prime Minister also inform the House by how much this growth will increase the concentration of atmospheric CO2 above the current figure of less than four parts in 10,000 by volume, a ratio that has almost never been lower in the past 600 million years?

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    Gaz

    Anyone noticed WHICH media is taking the lead worldwide – looks like Rupert Murdoch smells blood!!

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    Peter of Sydney

    Treeman, yes a lot of policies are already in place based on the AGW hoax but once people are found guilty of fraud in a court of law, the politicians will peddle backwards at light speed else they face annihilation at election time.

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    Louis Hissink

    Anne-Kit Littler,

    I don’t look or listen to the ABC TV or radio at all. Given it’s political inclination, which Graham Richardson (Richo) called a colletive, why would any of us bother?

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    Peter of Sydney

    Baa Humbug, one good question is who can explain why the discrepancy between the observed temperature of today and IPCC’s predicted temperature of today that was made back just a few years is greater than the total rise in global temperature over the past 100 years? This makes the man-made global warming catastrophe predicted by IPCC, Al Gore and others an obvious untruth. In order for the IPCC models to be true, we will have to experience a meteoric rise in temperature very soon. However, given it looks like we are heading for a long period of cooling instead, thus increasing the discrepancy even more, it makes the IPCC look like prime fools of the century.

    Perhaps another good question is how does Rudd plan to reduce our CO2 emissions by the required amount to make a significant impact on the climate (at least 40%) while countries like India, China and the US will not? Does he propose we shut down half our industries thus destroying our economy resulting in 50%+ unemployment?

    10

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    amortiser

    A question to the Prime Minister,

    I ask the Prime Minister:

    Given that the Dept of PM & Cabinet has a section devoted to climate change, the Dept of Climate Change is fully staffed to pursue climate change policy, the CSIRO has scientists devoted to climate change research and the State Governments have climate change ministers and departments devoted to climate change, is the Prime Minister aware of any effort by any of those functionaries in those many areas to check the validity of the findings detailed in the IPCC’s 2007 Report on which the government has based its climate change mitigation policy in particular the validity and suitability of the temperature data on which the whole climate change hypothesis is based?

    10

  • #

    UPDATE: Jasper was right. I meant to add in that Voodoo science quote. It is important. Thanks for the reminder Jasper 🙂

    “The bluff and bluster of the IPCC was clear when Rajendra Pachauri (the Chairman) was asked about the 60 page detailed Indian Government report that started this all. Look at the force he applies (knowing that this is backed up by the WWF and a popular science magazine article from 10 years ago):

    “Pachauri told the Guardian: “We have a very clear idea of what is happening. I don’t know why the minister is supporting this unsubstantiated research. It is an extremely arrogant statement.”

    Pachauri said that such statements were reminiscent of “climate change deniers and school boy science”.

    The Indian Report is …”voodoo science.”

    This totally disproportionate response tells us all that this has nothing to do with science. What amazes me is that the IPCC report actually quotes “WWF”. It should have been obvious 2 years ago that their information was not backed by peer review. Does anyone actually read the full reports?”

    10

  • #

    The IPCC strikes out…. again.

    ROFLMAO!!!

    10

  • #

    “Is the media awakening?” Not really. The Australian newspaper has a weekday readership around 2% of the population. The only media that counts is electronic – radio and mostly television – which “informs” about 60-70% of the population.

    None of Australia’s electronic media (with a possible exception of ABC radio yesterday morning, although I didn’t listen) ran the IPCC glacier story yesterday or last night … i.e. the story about (non)melting Himalayan glaciers effectively isn’t known in this country.

    In WA, all electronic media led with Perth’s hot weather over the past two days.

    Our monopoly press, The West Australian (purchased and mostly headline-scanned by about 10% of WA’s population), this morning ran a page 1 pic and a double page spread re the hot weather but no mention of the IPCC glacier melt story, despite our national daily considering it a front page lead. At least The West also ran a picture story re yesterday’s unusual snow falls in the eastern states.

    Some of the content from The West Australian today is worth quoting:

    Perth is on course for its hottest summer, according to the Bureau of Meteorology. Since the start of summer on December 1, Perth’s average daily maximum has been 31.8C, well above the long-term average maximum of 30.2C.

    If the trend continues, this season will beat the summers of 1931-32 and 1977-78, which both had an average maximum of 31.6C from December to mid-January.

    The summer of 1977-78 went on to be the hottest on record, with an average maximum of 32.0C from December to February.

    Perth has just had the hottest two consecutive days since 1991, reaching 42.7C yesterday.

    Sunday, at 42.9C, was also the hottest January day for 19 years, and the hottest since December 2007.

    My tracking of BoM data also shows November and December temps across WA went through the roof (probably because of high water temperatures in the Indian Ocean) but with six weeks left it seems a bit early for claims of Perth’s hottest ever summer. WA will undoubtedly finish with one of its hottest summers but it’ll be interesting to compare with the eastern states (which I don’t monitor but which seem to have had cloud cover moderating temperatures).

    Meanwhile, the bureau’s “high quality” (corrected and homogenized) data was updated with December stats a couple of weeks ago so the full year 2009 can be added to historic comparisons. Based on this data, Western Australia’s min, mean and max temps from all 26 monitoring stations from 1979-2009 are charted at http://www.waclimate.net/1979-2009.html

    Comparing 1979-1989 with 1999-2009, the average mean temperature across WA increased by 0.197C over the 31 year period. Comparing 1990-1999 with 2000-2009, the average mean temperature rose by 0.013C – if the “high quality” data is considered accurate.

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    Well Kevin Rudd told us the science behind global warming was undeniable so maybe he can try and deny this latest global warming fraud?

    Or maybe Penny Wong can explain which parts of the IPCC report they now believe in and which parts they don’t?

    I reckon it is better to be a “denier” than one of the dimwits that relies on Rudd, Wong or Al Gore for their scientific advice.

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    Mohib

    Sorry posted this in the wrong thread before.

    news Stranger and Stranger
    http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2010/01/stranger-and-stranger.html

    The fallout from the IPCC Himalayan glacier situation gets stranger and stranger. Now an IPCC lead author has stepped forward claiming that the error has been known by the IPCC all along. From Agence France-Presse:

    A top scientist said Monday he had warned in 2006 that a prediction of catastrophic loss of Himalayan glaciers, published months later by the UN’s Nobel-winning climate panel, was badly wrong.

    “This number is not just a little bit wrong, but far out of any order of magnitude,” said Georg Kaser, an expert in tropical glaciology at the University of Innsbruck in Austria.

    “It is so wrong that it is not even worth discussing,” he told AFP in an interview.

    And the solution: Brush it off as to be fixed in 2013:

    The IPCC’s Fifth Assessment, scheduled for release in 2013, will probably be adjusted to avoid such problems, said Kaser.

    “All the responsible people are aware of this weakness in the Fourth Assessment. All are aware of the mistakes made,” he said.

    “If it had not been the focus of so much public opinion, we would have said ‘we will do better next time.’ It is clear now that Working Group II has to be restructured,” he said.

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    The cracks in the facade are becoming more apparent with each and every passing day. True, most of the information recently and often reluctantly reported by the MSM is old new to anyone with a brain stem that has actually taken a logical and objective look at the evidence and information but it was never about the truth, it was always about the money. The IPCC has been nothing more than a tool for politicians, environmentalists and certain captains of industry whose interests have been conjoined by the bottom line, the profit margin. The press is really now beginning to report the stories about the dark side of the Global Warming juggernaut because they cannot control the blogosphere. They are losing money by letting the bloggers take a larger and larger share of the market. I cannot remember the last time I watched “Network News.” The closest I get to it now is cable news. The internet news services report a story as soon as it happens. The nightly news lags the cable news and the newspapers are reporting ancient history in this, the Information Age. The nightly news and the newspapers will report more on the story because the stories are complex and cannot be reduced to a ten second sound bite. People will read a newspaper for its in depth analysis of a story, not because the story is “new.” Scandals and the analyses of them give the newspapers and nightly news a way to boost ratings and thereby make more money. As the scandal unfolds the same papers and television news shows that were so in the tank for the warmanistas and their apocalyptic doomsday prophecies woven about a non existent calamity will turn on their former heroes faster than a black widow turning on its lover after mating. Reporters like the prestige that goes with “breaking” a story but the real reason is the huge amount of financial gain that accompanies the recognition from winning awards. The old saying, “Politics makes strange bedfellows” is as true today as when it was first uttered by Charles Dudley Warner in the 1800’s. The liberal politicians in the U.S. were ecstatic with the election of Barak Obama a year ago. Then, the Democrats lost a few elections which gave the left cause for concern. Now, if Scott Brown defeats Martha Coakley in the Massachusetts senatorial election to fill the seat vacated by the death of Senator Ted Kennedy it will cause a transformation in the political landscape unlike anything seen in recent American History. Cap and Trade will die a quick death, “scientists” will be thrown under the bus, and hearings will be held to assign blame and mete out punishment. The environmentalists will change gears and find another bogeyman to use as another reason why we must surrender are liberties and freedoms in order to “save us.” The captains of industry are always looking for a way to make money and just as sure as the sun rises they will find another means to accomplish their purpose for existing, the creation and preservation of wealth. After any and all gains realized from this scam, whether by promoting it or extinguishing it have been realized, the Great Global Warming Scare will fade into history. Generations to come will ask, “How could something like this have ever happened?” Ironically, the generations to follow will be dealing with the lefts unending attempt to gain power and control the world’s destiny through some new and ingenious scam because there is nothing new under the sun, except the very old. The sad thing is, sometimes the left succeeds. I am just grateful it wasn’t this time.

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    Nick

    The one question to Wong would have to come from someone that doesn’t have their long term future in parliment as stake during the next election. Who? I don’t know, but if it backfired on a long standing member it would do too mmuch damage.

    That one question would be…

    Why did you not advise the government, with all the resources of your department at your disposal, of the fact that the IPCC has gaping holes in its hypothesis of AGW. Why have you concealed this from government?

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    But Al Gore promised the glaciers would melt! Now I have to get the heater fixed!

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    […] Jo Nova, Lubos Motl, and Anthony Watts have the brain-hurty details of this story. Categories: AGW Tags: Climategate, glaciers, IPCC, Pachuri Comments (0) Trackbacks (0) Leave a comment Trackback […]

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    Matty

    Climategate, Copenhagen, US data fraud, Glacier fraud, Pachauri fraud, the train wreck rolls on. People in high places in Pennsylvania now gunning for Michael Mann’s head too with that investigation due out in just over a week. If he survives it will be temporary, and what a prized scalp it will be with plenty of other horror stories around the corner too I’ll bet.

    They are definitely on the back foot, and worryingly for warmers everywhere, the whole AGW thing is losing it’s buzz, and that’s is when the media goes looking for some other cause. With the evaporation of political will at COPOUT 15, this crisis has become a little unfashionable. Writing sanctimonious columns has no reward if China has taken over the script writing. We can thank them for one of the biggest acts of castration ever seen.

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    Rereke Whaakaro

    I find this whole debate about glaciers to be very annoying.

    As Jerry pointed out in #32, glaciers melt at the foot when and where the air temperature rises above 0C.

    But it is not the length of a glacier that is important – it is the volume of the glacier. A glacier can and will be melting at the foot, and the foot may well be retreating, but an increase in snow higher up in the mountains will increase the volume, and that may more than offset any melting at the foot.

    Deity save us from two-dimensional thinkers.

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    Mark

    There was a time when I would have spoken against ABC privatisation. Now, I’d have to say that they have long exhausted my store of goodwill. I’m hard put to find a good reason against flogging it off and scattering its cabal of Trotskyites to the winds.

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    P Gosselin

    Jo,
    And let’s not forget how he compared Bjorn Lomborg to Hitler.
    Talk about creating an atmosphere where science can flourish!
    Every scientist doing honest work has to fear being labelled a criminal.
    This is pscho-terrorism. It’s a disgrace. It just possibly can’t get any more out of control than that.
    Pachauri and like-minded have got to go.

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    Eloi

    I don’t know that I’d get too excited by The Australian picking up this item (on pg. 11). Their editorial over the page is stock-standard AGW apologia – refers to this fraud as “sloppy science”. While The Australian provides occasional tokenistic coverage of the skeptical viewpoint, it is after all still part of News Limited – the people behind 1degree.com. Clearly Rupert likes to have a bob each way.

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    Jasper

    Bloomberg.com covers the story this morning, including this little nugget:

    WWF-India “accepts its mistake” of referring to sources it couldn’t verify and will issue a clarification, said Shirish Sinha, its head of climate change and energy program.

    “It gives a lot of fodder to the climate skeptics but this one problem with the data or the date shouldn’t have too much implication for the climate negotiations as they are now dominated by several factors such as trade and economy and science is only one of the factors,” Sinha said in a telephone interview.

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    jaytee

    “Spelling peeve: (see New Scientist backpeddles)
    The term is backpedals”
    Oh, I don’t know. All along they’ve been “peddling” this crap to us…..

    10

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    Brian G Valentine

    Can’t knock the IPCC – the group only conducts literature reviews;

    WWF reports are “literature,” aren’t they?

    I laugh when I think about how NGOs like WWF are working against their own interests. These groups hyperventilate over AGW, they lobby for things like Cap and Trade, and they raise funds. Some of them have Government grants also, but they rely on private donations.

    [“Please, please give generously before Mister Polar Bear dies”]

    But if their objectives were met, and Cap and Trade was instituted, then people would have no money to give to outfits like WWF, and they would go out of business

    I’d like to see them put out of business but not for that reason

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    Bernd Felsche

    Electronic media in Perth: Look! A unicorn!

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    Roy Hogue

    oops i meant 2350

    Cha-am Jamal @13,

    2350 instead of 2035 certainly makes the claim more reasonable. But that’s 349 years from 2001. So forgive me, but I’m still skeptical that anything can be predicted out that far.

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    John Nicklin

    Albert: “Can anyone explain “tipping point” and is there proven accepted working formula.
    I believed tipping point was a scare tactic from the first time that I heard it.”

    This may or may not help…

    A “tipping point” is a theoretical point where there is so much momentum in a system that it cannot be stopped. As far as I know, its a term from the mining industry where they used buckets on rails to move ore (or tailings) from the mine to the processing plant. The rail generally inclined uphill until it reached a tipple or tipping point where the rail took a sharp decline and the contents of the bucket were spilled out. Once the bucket got to the tipping point, it was bound to tip. Think of a roller coaster, the cars are hauled uphill until they reach the top of an arc. As the cars crest the top of the arc, there is a point where they could balance and stay put, that would be anticlimactic, so they are nudged over the tipping point and continue under their own momentum, riders scream and laugh and everyone has a good time.

    In AGW climate, the theory is that once the system reaches a certain point, all of the factors (temp, gases, vapour, aresols, etc) will be in such a condition where positive feedback will drive temperatures higher causing more positive feedback and more temperature increase, ad infinitum. This may or may not have happened on Venus. You could also have a negative tipping point, where the climate cools to a point where we get a snowball earth, deep freeze conditions.

    I’m sure that others here can help to clarify this concept. We have seen a tipping point when we saw the MSM go whole hog on the AGW bandwagon. As Baa Humbug points out, we may see another when the media heads the other direction. If you look at the media over the last century, you can see global cooling, then global warming, then global cooling, then warming again. We may be poised for another tipping point.

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    Brian G Valentine

    A “tipping point” is my limit of hearing “tipping point” used any more, such as “climate tipping point”.

    When I hear it, I get angry and start throwing things and hurl insults at innocent bystanders etc.

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    Mohib

    And they call us “deniers”??

    So the entire IPCC position on glaciers just melted away (pun intended 🙂 ) and it is now confirmed that there is no problem with glaciers but still the NY Times comes up with this dazzling example of doublethink:

    “The flawed estimate raises more questions about the panel’s vetting procedures than it does about the melting of Himalayan glaciers, which most scientists believe is a major problem…. There is mounting proof that accelerating glacial melt is occurring, although the specifics are poorly defined, in part because these glaciers are remote and poorly studied.”

    http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/19/science/earth/19climate.html?scp=1&sq=himalayan&st=cse

    George Orwell would be proud.

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    Albert

    Brian G Valentine
    Thank you for explaining Tipping Point. As the Scientists can’t produce a working formula that does’t require consultation with a psychic and you reaction is the same as mine then we have the problem solved.

    Voodoo Science has been mentioned a lot lately, does it work? where can I get a Voodoo doll of Al Gore? Can I use pay pal?

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    Anne-Kit Littler

    It had to come: Climategate – the first book about the scandal! Great title, with a nod to C.S. Lewis:

    “The CRUtape Letters”

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    Roy Hogue

    “The CRUtape Letters”

    What an insightful analogy! I can picture Lewis giving the author two thumbs-up from his grave.

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    Roy Hogue

    “The flawed estimate raises more questions about the panel’s vetting procedures than it does about the melting of Himalayan glaciers, which most scientists believe is a major problem…. There is mounting proof that accelerating glacial melt is occurring, although the specifics are poorly defined, in part because these glaciers are remote and poorly studied.”

    I keep remembering so many applicable examples. Just one: the citizens of Pompeii kept ignoring their looming problem right up until the cataclysm that overwhelmed them. The truth will either be recognized or it will sweep away those who fight against it.

    The beautiful or horrible thing, depending on the situation, is that it doesn’t matter whether they ignore the truth from ignorance or do it willfully.

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    Jo, the IPCC has now admitted the mistake.

    Check out their website and Roger Pielke’s blog

    This is good news. Now the media will be more prepared to criticise the IPCC and look for errors, and we can get more publicity for all the other errors in the IPCC reports

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    Roy Hogue: …it doesn’t matter whether they ignore the truth from ignorance or do it willfully.

    That is the strongest truth. They are at war with reality and reality doesn’t care. Reality IS. What we want, need, or command it to be is irrelevant.

    When you are at war with reality, you WILL lose with no, if’s, and’s, but’s, or however’s.

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    PhilJourdan

    Reality IS. What we want, need, or command it to be is irrelevant.

    Very true. Perception is reality to most. So whether something is true or not, as long as they perceive it to be true, nothing else matters.

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    The short answer to the question, “Is the media awakening”, is a definite YES! (I’m very proud to say that!) at least one (and IMHO the only one worth reading!) of Canada’s national dailies, the National Post, has been at the forefront – both BC and AC [Before Climategate and After Climategate]. Today’s issue of the NP had two excellent articles on this latest IPCC faux pas – tied in with Climategate, Pachauri’s interest conflicts (and lots of other good stuff!):

    IPCC Meltdown by Peter Foster

    Now the question is whether Rajendra Pachauri should resign

    […]

    With Climategate still simmering and the collapse of Copenhagen reverberating, a fresh storm has blown up over the discovery that the IPCC’s claim that Himalayan glaciers were about to disappear is entirely bogus.

    “If the present rate [of melting] continues,” said the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report in 2007, “the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high.”

    There was no significant questioning of this claim until late last year, when the Indian government published a discussion paper that pointed out that there was in fact no sign of any “abnormal” retreat in the Himalayan glaciers. India’s environment minister Jairam Ramesh accused the IPCC of being “alarmist.”

    Doing what he has traditionally done in such circumstances, Mr. Pachauri proceeded to smear the messengers and pontificate about the IPCC’s high “peer-reviewed” scientific standards. He denounced the research paper as “voodoo science.” He accused Minister Ramesh of “arrogance.” He said that such skeptical claims were reminiscent of “climate change deniers.”

    […]

    “When the source of the projection was revealed, including in a story in the most recent U.K. Sunday Times, Mr. Pachauri was forced to climb off his high horse. However, the lead author of the relevant IPCC chapter, Murari Lal, rejected the notion that the IPCC had screwed up. “The IPCC authors did exactly what was expected from them,” he said.

    “Never were truer words spoken. The IPCC’s task has always been not objectively to examine science but to make the case for man-made climate change by any means available.”

    The second is an OpEd by Lorne Gunter, who concludes:

    First Climategate, now Glaciergate

    […]Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, showed the graph was meaningless. Prof. Mann had manipulated over 80% of his data sets to ensure the climate numbers produced a hockey stick with ominous 20th-century temperature gains. Nearly any series of numbers plugged into Prof. Mann’s formula produced the same graph.

    That’s two IPCC reports in a row that have featured later-discredited “proofs” of manmade global warming.

    Add to that the fact that many of the emails released in Climategate reveal discussions by leading IPCC scientists about how to exclude dissidents and skeptics from the body’s report-writing processes and you begin to get a glimpse of how contrived and one-sided the UN’s climate investigations have been.

    You also get to see how the “settled” science behind climate change alarmism was arrived at — not by scientific consensus, but rather by manipulation, misrepresentation and strong-arming.

    Speaking of McIntyre and McKitrick, btw, I found a fascinating document in the Climategate files [AR4SOR_BatchAB_Ch06-KRB-1stAug.doc] which provides remarkable evidence of and insight into the ethically-challenged processes of the IPCC. I’ve done some quantitave and qualitative analysis, tracing a single paragraph. You might want to take a look at: The climate change game … Monopoly: the IPCC version

    What’s taken the rest of them so long – and why this issue rather than Climategate?

    Part of the answer may lie in the simplicity of “Glaciergate” – which makes it easier for journalists to do their homework, and get it right. Another part of the answer may well lie in the fact that many so-called “science journalists” are not “scientists” (and some don’t even deserve to call themselves journalists, but that’s another issue 🙂 ) who will readily accept as “gospel” any report that is “climatically correct”.

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    Jose Veragio

    Stong words indeed from a Government Minister, in this article from the mainstream Indian Press:-

    Pachauri claim alarmist, warnings aimed at creating panic reiterates Ramesh

    does sound rather angry.

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  • #
    Joe Parale

    pat: Wrote:-
    January 19th, 2010 at 10:22 am

    ABC: Wong defends UN over climate mistake
    Climate Change Minister Penny Wong says a mistake …

    It does have a certain ring to it:

    Minister Wong on Climate Change …

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    Tel

    Regarding the glaciers and the meltwater available downstream. Can anyone explain why the glacier being smaller would produce less meltwater?

    From the IPCC:

    Widespread mass losses from glaciers and reductions in snow cover over recent decades are projected to accelerate throughout the 21st century, reducing water availability, hydropower potential, and changing seasonality of flows in regions supplied by meltwater…

    I would expect that (long term) the amount of water out of the glacier must equal the amount of water in (the glacier neither creates nor destroys matter), so the relevant measurement is how much snow (and rain) are coming down above the glacier. In the short term, decreasing glacier size implies frozen water is coming out of storage thus more available water down the hill (I’m presuming that the glacier is melting because of global warming here).

    In general, if the surface of the ocean is warming (we can argue over that elsewhere) then evaporation must be higher, and ever single bit of evaporation can only come down as precipitation (sooner or later) so globally there must be more precipitation. It may not fall in exactly the same places, but then again precipitation never has been all that consistent in this regard.

    The reason precipitation falls in mountains is because water vapour is driven up to high altitudes where it cools. It’s going to be difficult for global warming to change situation this in any significant way. The mountains will still be there, and the top of the mountains will still be cold.

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    Baa Humbug

    Re: The one question in my post #34

    Does anybody have knowledge on the subject of DUE DILIGENCE.
    i.e. When govts spend/grant monies, they perform a due diligence (test?)

    A question regards due diligence will inevitably lead to the IPCC reports (where Wong gets her science from). Seen as the IPCC has been shown to be NOT infallible, it should not be too difficult to corner the minister.

    Any thoughts?

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    Mohib

    NEWS: Glacier scientist: I knew data hadn’t been verified

    The scientist behind the bogus claim in a Nobel Prize-winning UN report that Himalayan glaciers will have melted by 2035 last night admitted it was included purely to put political pressure on world leaders.

    Dr Murari Lal also said he was well aware the statement, in the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), did not rest on peer-reviewed scientific research.

    In an interview with The Mail on Sunday, Dr Lal, the co-ordinating lead author of the report’s chapter on Asia, said: ‘It related to several countries in this region and their water sources. We thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policy-makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action.

    Dr Lal said: ‘We knew the WWF report with the 2035 date was “grey literature” [material not published in a peer-reviewed journal]. But it was never picked up by any of the authors in our working group, nor by any of the more than 500 external reviewers, by the governments to which it was sent, or by the final IPCC review editors.’

    —————————————————————-

    Remember these classics:

    “[T]o capture the public’s imagination … we have to offer up some scary scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements and little mention of any doubts one might have…. Each of us has to decide the right balance between being effective, and being honest.” — STEPHEN SCHNEIDER (1989), contributor to all four IPCC reports.

    “Unless we announce disasters no one will listen.” — JOHN HOUGHTON (1994), first co-chair of the IPCC WG1.

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  • #
    Roy Hogue

    Glacier scientist: I knew data hadn’t been verified

    So once more, fraud is confirmed. Where is there any sense of shame?

    Let’s announce our own disaster. Hey global warmers, you are exposed and are on your way out. Go peacefully or be dragged off to oblivion by force. The world will soon quit tolerating you.

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    mervyn sullivan

    ANOTHER climate change blunder: First it’s melting glaciers, now natural disaster claim is debunked

    Read more

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1245695/UN-climate-change-panel-blunders-wrongly-linking-global-warming-rise-severe-floodings.html#ixzz0dd8xGloq

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    […] was chairman of boards of companies that profit handsomely as the scare-factor is ramped up… 3. GlacierGate, about the IPCC “accidentally” using a World Wildlife Fund report instead of peer reviewed […]

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    […] comes GlacierGate: about the IPCC “accidentally” using a WWF report instead of peer reviewed science papers.  […]

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    Nick M

    After listening to this…

    Mp3 Audio File of LehrmamMust Listen!

    We may have a long way to go before we reach balance.

    There is a whole generation of nutters to deal with.

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  • #

    Hi there, I came across your website using Yahoo and google while searching for Weather Balloons and your post caught my eye .

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    The ABC, of course, continues to spruik alarmism. In what passes for political analysis in The Drum (motto: a new home for the best ideas, news and analysis on the web) Radio National’s Fran Kelly, in the course of sledging the Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott, writes:

    The trouble is business as usual for industry means carbon emissions will continue to rise by 20 per cent by 2020. It’s hard to see how that’s going to help protect against a warming planet.
    And the small scale of his plan is really no help in the task of switching from a carbon intensive economy to a low carbon economy.

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    Bill

    SUBJECT: ONLINE POLL ON ETS

    There is a poll on yahoo at the moment which asks the question

    Q. Do you support Kevin Rudd’s ETS proposal?

    Here is the website:-
    http://au.news.yahoo.com/polls/popup/-/poll_id/51862

    78% of people so far are OPPOSED!

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    Bill

    SUBJECT: Emissions ‘could rise’ under ETS

    THE Federal Government cannot guarantee that its controversial climate plan will cut Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions at all.

    Labor and the Liberals are fiercely arguing over whose climate change plan is the best.

    Both plans aim to reduce emissions by 5 per cent by 2020.

    The government says the opposition’s plan won’t work and could see emissions rise.

    But the same argument could be levelled against the government’s proposed emissions trading scheme (ETS).

    Government data appears to show that under the ETS, Australia’s emissions would rise from 553 million tonnes in 2000 to 585 million tonnes by 2020.

    The target to cut emissions by 5 per cent is only reached by paying other countries to reduce their emissions.

    Modelling from the Treasury Department says Australia’s emissions don’t begin to fall under the ETS “until the mid-2030s”.

    Junior climate change minister Greg Combet was unable to guarantee the ETS would reduce Australia’s emissions by 2020.

    When asked how much of the emission reduction would come from domestic sources, he said: “That’s up to the market”.

    “The place where it is going to be the cheapest and most efficient to achieve those reductions is where it will take place first,” Mr Combet told reporters in Canberra.

    The government’s ETS aims to tackle climate change by forcing business to pay for its pollution.

    The opposition’s rival plan would pay farmers and others to suck emissions out of the sky and store them in plants and soil. It does not appear to rely on international permits.

    A key element of the opposition’s plan is not clear – what happens to businesses who hike up their emissions.

    The opposition’s plan says a company that increases its emissions above “business as usual” is fined, but it’s not clear what “business as usual” means, or how much they would have to pay.

    Opposition Leader Tony Abbott on Monday said only businesses who increased their “emissions intensity” would have to pay. This is a different concept to “business as usual”, which usually refers to total emissions.

    Mr Combet said there appeared to be a secret penalties regime and business – and investors – needed to know what they might end up paying.

    “The detailed work is not done on this policy,” he said of the opposition’s plan.

    Owen Pascoe, climate change campaigner with the Australian Conservation Foundation, said the government should change its ETS to reduce emissions at home.

    The ETS “allows too big a role for international permit trading, and should be refocused onto domestic action”, Mr Pascoe told AAP.

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    Intel

    Just Die. Please.

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    […] ” S & SYB-3Rich and John's Unexcellent Adventure | The Pakistan Policy BlogIs the media awakening? ” JoNovaMacJams Music Blog ” Blog Archive ” Drakonis (aka Eduard …finnisTSUNAMI MEDIA […]

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    […] these three distinct claims, the latter two are in serious dispute (see HERE, HERE and HERE). For all I know, so is the first one. Nevertheless, the IPCC endorsed all three statements because […]

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    Engchamp

    “Pachauri told the Guardian: “We have a very clear idea of what is happening. I don’t know why the minister is supporting this unsubstantiated research. It is an extremely arrogant statement.”
    Pachauri said that such statements were reminiscent of “climate change deniers and school boy science”.
    The Indian Report is …”voodoo science.”
    This totally disproportionate response tells us all that this has nothing to do with science. What amazes me is that the IPCC report actually quotes “WWF”. It should have been obvious 2 years ago that their information was not backed by peer review. Does anyone actually read the full reports?”

    The last sentence sums up the arrogance (using Pachauri’s idiom) of the primary fault with politicians (especially) who attempt to translate scientific data into politically correct lingo. They (the politicians) have little or no knowledge of any scientific subjects, and are thus unqualified to cast opinion. I would be delighted to hear from any President, Vice-president, Senator, Congressman, UK MP or, indeed, any politician who can refute this statement, apart from Lord Christopher Monckton, who I do not think regards himself as a politician, although others may.

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