The Real Climategate Scandal

The global warming scandal keeps getting worse. Revelations over the last few weeks show that many important assertions in the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were based on misquotes and false claims from environmental groups, not on published academic research as originally claimed. This is on top of the recent mess regarding data, where the three most relied-on data series used by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2007 assessment report still not been released. Other information indicates that data have been systematically biased to produce a rise in measured temperatures when actual temperatures were falling or flat.

Take some of the false claims in the 2007 IPCC report.

– The IPCC claims that the Himalayan glaciers could melt away as soon as 2035. The forecast was based on a media interview with a single Indian glaciologist in 1999, and the Indian glaciologist who was interviewed, Syed Hasnain, says that he was misquoted, indeed he had provide no date. Professor Hasnain discovered the mistake in 2008 when he read the IPCC’s published report, but he said: “There are many mistakes in it. It is a very poorly made report. . . . My job is not to point out mistakes. And you know the might of the IPCC. What about all the other glaciologists around the world who did not speak out?”

Even more disturbingly, Rajendra Pachauri, the U.N.’s climate chief, first denied that he knew about the error before the Copenhagen global warming conference. He only admitted that he knew about it before the conference when a writer for the journal Science, Pallava Bagla, pointed to email correspondence that he had with Pachauri last fall.

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Tags: Amazon Rainforest, climate change, Climate Research Unit, climategate, global warming
Posted Feb 11th 2010 at 8:39 am in Economics, Environment | 73394427 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/jlott/2010/02/11/the-real-climategate-scandal/The+Real+Climategate+Scandal2010-02-11+16%3A39%3A11John+Lott

An Honest IPCC Scientist Warns His Colleagues: Don’t Dismiss ‘ClimateGate’

The 13th Annual Energy & Environment Conference, held in Phoenix Feb. 1-3, isn’t the sort of place where global warming “deniers” are exactly welcome. In fact, by my observations, the skeptical caucus at the event consisted entirely of: James M. Taylor, a senior fellow for environment policy at The Heartland Institute; Keith Lockitch, a fellow of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights; and me. All the other attendees spent their time discussing how the U.S. government — or, even better, a “global government” — needs to compel us all to live “greener” lives through schemes like cap-and-trade. Environmentalists are a bossy and power-hungry lot.

Lockitch gave a presentation arguing free-market economies are better positioned than socialist societies to deal with any severe weather events caused by climate change — and was called a “denier” and compared to a shill for “Big Tobacco” for his trouble. Taylor got off a little easier, receiving only scoffs and curious-to-annoyed glances for asking inconvenient questions.

But that’s not to say we were the only people to question the assumptions of the attendees who believe the “science is settled” on global warming. Perhaps the greatest challenge came from one of their own — renowned climate scientist William Sprigg — who urged his colleagues to stop treating the ClimateGate scandal as irrelevant noise promoted by “deniers.” In an amazingly telling moment, green energy consultant Andy Van Horn, who introduced Sprigg, admitted he’d never heard of ClimateGate until Sprigg suggested it a few weeks ago as a topic worthy of discussion. (Who are the real “deniers” again?)

Sprigg, adjunct research professor in the Institute of Atmospheric Physics at the University of Arizona, believes the planet is on a potentially dangerous warming path and atmospheric carbon dioxide is to blame. He also led the technical review of the first global warming report issued by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 1990. Clealry, Sprigg is no “outlier” or “rebel,” but one of the most respected and “mainstream” scientists in the field of climatology. So it came to a bit of shock to the audience when Sprigg expressed concerns about how contrarian scientists are treated with contempt by many of his colleagues.

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Tags: Ayn Rand, cap-and-trade, climate change, climategate, EUEC
Posted Feb 5th 2010 at 10:57 am in Environment, News, Politics | 7044662 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/jlakely/2010/02/05/an-honest-ipcc-scientist-warns-his-colleagues-dont-dismiss-climategate/An+Honest+IPCC+Scientist+Warns+His+Colleagues%3A+Don%27t+Dismiss+%E2%80%98ClimateGate%E2%80%992010-02-05+18%3A57%3A31James+G.+Lakely

Tuesday Open Thread: Groundhog Edition

So, do you think Punxsutawney Phil reads IPCC Global Warming reports? Actually, Phil is probably verifiably more reliable.

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Tags: climate change, global warming, groundhog day, IPCC, punxsatawney phil
Posted Feb 2nd 2010 at 3:17 am in Open Threads | 6823465 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/publius/2010/02/02/tuesday-open-thread-groundhog-edition/Tuesday+Open+Thread%3A+Groundhog+Edition2010-02-02+11%3A17%3A58Publius

Climate Change: The Religion of Copenhagen

During the recent COP-15 Conference in Copenhagen, the United Nations claimed it wanted to maintain religious neutrality. It was a lie. Global Warming is the established religion at these international events.

This was made especially clear when, days before the event’s commencement, the Denmark Foreign Ministry rejected a donated delivery of Christmas fir trees. “We have to remember that this is a U.N. conference and, as the [Bella] center then becomes U.N. territory, there can be no Christmas trees in the decor, because the U.N. wishes to maintain neutrality,” explained Ministry official Svend Olling.

Religious objectivity, however, is impossible at a conference explicitly engaged in blind adherence to an unproven premise- a faith in the veracity of global warming. For though the science is not settled, participants convened to devise strategies for what they believe will be the world’s environmental salvation, the capping of carbon dioxide emissions.

Global Warming devotees’ religious fervor commands action, even if their deliverance comes at the expense of economic devastation. American disciples such as Al Gore and President Barack Obama are more than willing to sacrifice economic stability at the alter of Global Warming.

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Tags: Al Gore, anthropogenic global warming, Barack Obama, cap-and-trade, carbon emissions
Posted Dec 26th 2009 at 11:03 am in Culture, Environment | 52274100 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/cmay/2009/12/26/climate-change-the-religion-of-copenhagen/Climate+Change%3A+The+Religion+of+Copenhagen2009-12-26+19%3A03%3A24Caroline++May

ClimateGate Just Got Much, Much Bigger

Over at ICECAP.us Meteorologist Joe D’Aleo has posted an item on a “Russian Bombshell” highly relevant to the ClimateGate scandal. The Russian media first posted the story and now some Brits are loving it.

The long and the short of it is best summarized by the Telegraph’s James Dellingpole: “What the Russians are suggesting here, in other words, is that the entire global temperature record used by the IPCC to inform world government policy is a crock.”

That is, we have yet further evidence that the data is being cooked to make the long-running claim of an increase in global temperatures, and now to diminish the apparent cooling of said temps. As the gang at EU referendum tout, “it is in Soviet Union that the CRU, NOAA, NASA show the greatest warming.”

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Tags: cap-and-trade, carbon caps, carbon emissions, climate change, climate data
Posted Dec 16th 2009 at 1:29 pm in Environment | 47538122 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/chorner/2009/12/16/climategate-just-got-much-much-bigger/ClimateGate+Just+Got+Much%2C+Much+Bigger2009-12-16+21%3A29%3A50Christopher+C.+Horner

ClimateGate: This Can’t Help

ClimateGate is devastating to the global warming industry, as alarmists are admitting, if mostly off-the-record and to sympathetic journalists (but I repeat myself). On its heels, however, and particularly for those dealing with insistent alarmists whimpering how ClimateGate reveals nothing, this is a must read. In context, it might be just as damning in the eyes of those open to reason.

It comes from an IPCC coordinating lead author who details the IPCC process’s inherent corruption — affirming the details thereof that I also painted after speaking to former lead authors in The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism — and he joins the impressive ranks of actual “leading scientists” cutting their IPCC ties for the same reason. As you read it recall the specific defenses against ClimateGate’s meaning.

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Tags: climate change, climate emails, climate scientists, climategate, global warming
Posted Dec 14th 2009 at 8:59 am in Environment, News, Politics | 4564673 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/chorner/2009/12/14/climategate-this-cant-help/ClimateGate%3A+This+Can%27t+Help2009-12-14+16%3A59%3A05Christopher+C.+Horner

Global Warming Silence: Wellesley Walkout

There was a good turnout at Wellesley College last night for my talk “A Quick Tour of the Ultimate in Political Correctness: The ‘Global Warming’ Issue, Agenda and Industry”, hosted by the College Republican Club… once presided over here by Hillary Rodham on her way to a thesis about Saul Alinksy, whose ghost as we see still lingers.

The students were gracious particularly given the trying circumstances in recent days, including a faculty member (department-head level) expressing in a fairly open forum, with occasional lapses of civility, her sentiments about the club members and their decision to screen “Not Evil Just Wrong” Sunday, followed by hosting me on Wednesday. Oddly – read on – her peculiar take on campus tolerance and diversity included an  often salty angst over the students supposedly showing no interest in actually having debate or discussion.

That she had been originally approached to speak on a panel adds to the mystery. She said, in short, no professor would want to participate with someone “like that” (er, me). The school administrators have now agreed to address the issue of this instance and similar, fairly regular treatment of a political minority. But, having failed to interest any faculty in sharing a panel let alone debating the merits, the students finally asked a different faculty member to at least speak after the film. He declined and offered instead an informative lunch with his faculty colleagues. The ones who don’t want open discussion or debate (the real kind) except when they do (the purely aspirational type).

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Tags: Al Gore, Barack Obama, climate change, Dr. Richard Lindzen, global warming
Posted Oct 22nd 2009 at 6:12 pm in Environment | 1955440 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/chorner/2009/10/22/global-warming-silence-wellesley-walkout/Global+Warming+Silence%3A+Wellesley+Walkout2009-10-23+01%3A12%3A36Christopher+C.+Horner

Who Is and Isn’t Qualified to Speak on Global Warming

Mere days before Senators Barbara Boxer and John Kerry are scheduled to introduce their version of controversial global warming “cap-and-trade” legislation — if several months after EPA whistle-blower Dr. Alan Carlin drew attention to the fact that the recent published scientific literature presents a decided tilt against prevailing “global warming” scientific wisdom — the New York Times has run a piece diminishing Dr. Carlin’s stature and findings.

This meme is picked up by those running with the Times’ “news”. For example, today’s trade press outlet “E&E Daily” styles their #2 story this way: “Employee lacked credentials for endangerment views”.

That’s odd.

Carlin has been with EPA since its inception in the early 1970s, having earned a degree in physics from CalTech. His lack of the same qualifications implicitly possessed by our law-givers comes from his having gone on to attain a PhD in economics from MIT.

This is different than the Times’ (and others’) treatment of and lack of interest in the academic training of the individual regularly cited without such “just an economist” commentary as a leading and essentially unimpeachable authority, the economist and former railway engineer Rajendra Pachauri. The Times has even hailed Pachauri in the past as the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s chief “climatologist”. Climatology is a specialty field if ever there was one but a qualification which Pachauri, for all of his other virtues toiling for years in the UN vineyards, attained by virtue of being appointed to head the IPCC. This is unfairly disparate treatment.

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Tags: CalTech, Climatology, Dr. Alan Carlin, EPA, IPCC
Posted Sep 25th 2009 at 11:23 am in Environment, Media Criticism, Politics | 863064 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/chorner/2009/09/25/who-is-and-isnt-qualified-to-speak-on-global-warming/Who+Is+and+Isn%27t+Qualified+to+Speak+on+Global+Warming2009-09-25+18%3A23%3A55Christopher+C.+Horner