Source of climate change alarmism confirmed once again

Back in the wider world, regular readers will have noticed this blog rarely ventures onto the climate change topic these days.  The reason for this is simple, it is not about science.

While a number of other blogs continue to expend energy on arguing with climate activists and scientists who push the alarmist narrative, pulling apart findings and assertions and countering with studies and findings from scientists who reject the alarmist creed, this blog long ago explained that such debate is a waste of time.  Climate change long ago ceased to be a scientific issue, it has for a number of years been a political issue.

Several days ago this argument was bolstered by a couple of stories in the Telegraph concerning the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which is due to be published on Friday.  Scientists are struggling to explain why global warming has slowed to a statistically meaningless level for the last 15 years, despite rising greenhouse gas emissions.

If climate change was a scientific issue the discussion about how to handle this fact, which contradicts all of the claims and projections made by climate alarmists reliant on computer models, would be exclusively between scientists.  But as the Telegraph explained, other parties are actively influencing the report:

In a leaked June draft of the report’s summary from policymakers, the IPCC said the rate of warming in 1998-2012 was about half the average rate since 1951.

Several governments who fund the body have since complained about how the issue is tackled in the report.

Germany called for the reference to the slowdown to be deleted, saying a time span of 10-15 years was misleading in the context of climate change, which is measured over decades and centuries.

The US also urged the authors to include the “leading hypothesis” that the reduction in warming is linked to more heat being transferred to the deep ocean.

Belgium objected to using 1998 as a starting year for any statistics. That year was exceptionally warm, so any graph showing global temperatures starting with 1998 looks flat, because most years since have been cooler.

While Hungary worried the report would provide ammunition for sceptics.

This isn’t science, this is politics.

As such, rather than waste time countering scientific claims and trying to get one over the Michael Manns of this world, the focus should be on challenging the core of the alarmist cause – the governments and politicians who are clearly directing matter for their own ends.

In a follow up story on Saturday, the Telegraph reported that:

Jonathan Lynn, a spokesman for the IPCC, declined to comment on the content of the report because it is still to be finalised but insisted it would provide “a comprehensive picture of all the science relevant to climate change”.

More accurately, what it will provide is a picture of the ‘science’ relevant to climate change that has been shaped to fit the desired narrative of politicians, who then use the report as an excuse for more political actions to ‘fight’ climate change – which translate into more taxes, less conventional power generation, higher energy prices and more restrictions on supply.  That is what needs to be challenged.  Arguing statistics and method with scientists won’t make one iota of difference.

Credibility of Rajendra Pachauri continues to retreat

In 2009, the Indian environment ministry was accused of ‘arrogance’ by Rajendra Pachauri, Chairman of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), after the release of a government report claiming that there is no evidence climate change has caused ‘abnormal’ shrinking of Himalayan glaciers.

Dr Vijay Kumar Raina, the geologist who authored the report, admitted that some: ‘Himalayan glaciers are retreating. But it is nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing to suggest as some have said that they will disappear.’  The response of Pachauri, a railway engineer often described as a leading climate scientist, was this:

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 went on to say that such statements were reminiscent of ‘climate change deniers and school boy science’, adding this money quote:

I cannot see what the minister’s motives are. We do need more extensive measurement of the Himalayan range but it is clear from satellite pictures what is happening.

He also went on record describing the Indian government report as ‘voodoo science’.  In light of this, one wonders how Pachy is feeling right now given the publication of scientific research using satellite data that shows there hasn’t been any melt of those glaciers at all in the last 10 years.  One also wonders, considering this new evidence, just what satellite pictures Pachauri and friends had been looking at.  He certainly seems to be the school boy after this.

It would appear that what is retreating at record speed is not the glaciers in the Himalayan range, but the last shreds of Rajendra Pachauri’s shattered credibility.  The excellent cartoonist, Josh, captures the moment in his own inimitable style over at Bishop Hill…

Now let’s see if any of the British MPs who are jumping up and down about wind power subsidies have the gumption to challenge the government to distance itself from the IPCC and Rajendra Pachauri for being completely unreliable and discredited.

Well yes, but…

One can imagine how painful it must have been for Little Lou at the Barclay Brother Beano to write these words…

‘Glaciers have grown in western Norway, New Zealand’s South Island, parts of Asia and the Tierra del Fuego in South America.’

That is a very global and hemispheric spread there and in those 21 words we see a flat contradiction, through observation rather than computer modelling, of the ‘global warming’ narrative. The warming is clearly not global at all. If glaciers are growing then the obvious conclusion is that those areas are cooling. Unless of course you are Al Gore or the Met Office, in which case cooling is evidence of warming. No, really.

But being a committed true believer and having an agenda to advance, it was quickly on to the ‘Yes, but…’ for fearless Telegraph press release cut and paster, Louise Gray, as she devoted the remaining 329 words of her article to spreading the official warmist line in the worst tradition of the most repugnant propagandists. In fairness readers of the Barclay Bro. Beano are permitted to wave at the reference to Glaciergate as it passes by at startling velocity thus:

‘The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a separate science body attached to the UN, was forced to admit that a previous report was wrong to claim the Himalayan glaciers will melt by 2035.’

But that’s it. For La Gray the mission is to do the bare minimum by including a factoid that allows her to deny lack of balance, then swifty divert attention from the embarrassing shoddy science, non existant peer review and the IPCC’s desire to accept any half baked claim as long as it adds to the propaganda effort. The counter evidence has to be rebutted, downplayed, given short shrift, airbrushed from the record. And that is exactly what Gray does by immediately adding:

However the new report made clear that glaciers are being lost in the region, albeit on a slower scale.

So that’s that then. The message from warmist central is move along. Nothing to see here. We screwed up our propaganda effort with a report that was so obviously riddled with fiction and hysteria it was torn to shreds, so we have substituted it with another report drafted at breakneck speed saying the same thing – only without the time sensitive prediction that showed us up as the delusional idiots with vested interests we are. No matter what the observation or the evidence says we will continue to force our unjustified and laughable claims down your throat.

Meanwhile the farce of Cancun continues unabated – despite the irony of the resort experiencing a record low temperature for this time of the year of 54F yesterday morning – as the great and the good from every special interest group with hands in the climate change money jar talk about the environment but focus on how to get more of our cash into their accounts. Laughing at them is not enough. We have to stop them before they destroy our economies and our way of life.

As for the increasingly desperate propagandists at the Beano, bring on that paywall!

Is this NASA’s climategate?

On the Big Government website is a report that the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) is suing NASA for not turning over certain records withheld since CEI sought them in freedom of information requests submitted in August 2007 and January 2008.

The question being asked is what is NASA trying to conceal in records and documentation pertaining to climate change and global warming? Already some information that has emerged is contradicting commonly held beliefs about NASA’s work on climate. As Big Government explains:

Despite NASA stonewalling CEI has already learned, for example, that NASA does not, contrary to widespread media and pressure group claims, have an independent temperature data set. Instead, as NASA told USA Today in an email, despite its serial, breathless press releases trumpeting some new temperature high, it actually is just a modeling office, which also (for unknown reasons, possibly extra attention and importance, or mere advocacy)  cobbles together some US data from the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) with that of the Climatic Research Unit’s temperature history. You may recall how CRU withdrew its claim to a temperature history data set after ClimateGate led to an admission it actually lost its data.

Handled correctly this has the potential to become a big story. And with a Republican majority in the House of Representatives pledging an array of investigations into US government policy on the environment and climate, some are already scenting blood in the water.

All people want is the truth and the facts. But the politicisation of the environment and the furtive behaviour of those who provide the only information governments will pay attention to – because it conveniently fits with the aim of being seen to be taking action on something – has eroded trust and is thankfully leading more people to question what they are being told.

The Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia – home to Phil Jones of Climategate fame – was exposed as utterly useless and untrustworthy, and subsequent ‘inquiries’ proved to be nothing more than whitewashes by interested parties, could this be NASA’s turn to come under a sustained spotlight?

Amazongate: IPCC nailed over lies about peer reviewed material

(Original story: EU Referendum)  Christopher Booker of the Telegraph has persisted where other journalists could not be bothered to tread, and ensured a wider audience learns that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is an untrustworthy and dishonest organisation.

The story by Booker tonight cements in the mainstream media the information presented by Dr Richard North, which exploded the denials, spin and manoeuvring of the IPCC.  At the time of Booker going to press the IPCC has still failed to respond to the charge that it broke it own rules and should retract a false claim and apologise.  Indeed, Booker’s piece will also result in red faces not only at the IPCC, but also at the politicised World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the BBC, the Guardian and the editorial board of the Sunday Times.

For as Booker tells Telegraph readers in his column this weekend:

It turns out that one of the most widely publicised statements in the 2007 report of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – a claim on which tens of billions of dollars could hang – was not based on peer-reviewed science, as repeatedly claimed, but originated solely from anonymous propaganda published on the website of a small Brazilian environmental advocacy group.

That statement concerned the claim that “up to 40 per cent of the Amazonian forests could react drastically to even a slight reduction in precipitation”.  The IPCC’s own rules state that such non-peer-reviewed material should only be cited when it has been subjected to rigorous critical appraisal and that:

“each chapter team should review the quality and validity of each source before including results from the source into an IPCC report”.

It is self evident that this did not happen as North demonstrated last week.  Not only that, but the original anonymous claim, for which there was no scientific basis, on the website of the Instituto de Pesquisa Ambiental da Amazônia (IPAM) was embellished so it referred to the wider Amazon rainforest and not just the area within the territorial borders of Brazil.  Why would such a thing happen?  Well, as readers will be reminded, there is big, big money at stake with organisations such as the WWF anticipating a share of a vast carbon credit windfall, paid for by consumers and taxpayers.

This is a common theme in the realm of climate change.  The science is only a means to achieving very profitable financial ends.  But these vested interests benefit from the unwitting assistance of useful idiots such as George Monbiot and fellow travellers who was to see capitalism undermined and wealth redistributed.

We should be grateful for the likes of Christopher Booker.  Having originally carried the news that the reference to the Amazon was not peer reviewed, the Sunday Times came under pressure to retract from those like Monbiot, for whom the story was inconvenient and unhelpful to their activism.  The Sunday Times editorial board caved in and issued a retraction when what they should have done was redoubled their efforts to make the story water-tight by getting their journalists to research and dig for more details. It resulted in the mainstream media again being cowed into silence by those with something to hide.  The days of fearless journalism seem all but over.  It is a terrible indictment on the state of journalism today and the paucity of strong editorial management.

Now the Sunday Times retraction, as Booker points out, requires its own retraction to reflect reality.  The efforts of North and Booker should be applauded.  The outcome is delicious.

Update: EU Referendum has created a comprehensive ‘index’ posting with full details of the story, containing relevant links and background.

ASA rejects complaints about alarmist CO2 advert

If you live in the UK you will probably be familiar with the Act on CO2 ‘Bedtime Story’ advertising campaign that featured a father reading his daughter a story in which bunnies were tearful about global warming and mass floods caused puppies and kittens to drown.

Nearly 1000 complaints were received by the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) and its final adjudication on the matter has been written.  The adjudication can be viewed at The Guardian although it has been hidden on scribd by the person who uploaded it to the internet (hat tip: An Englishman’s Castle).

Only one of the ten different groups of complaints has been upheld, a trivial matter that does nothing to prevent this propaganda continuing to be broadcast.  The ASA has refused to uphold the other complaints because it has accepted as fact everything the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) said in the response it submitted.

But the real issue here is that DECC – and by definition the government – has relied squarely on information from the discredited Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to justify the alarmist, exaggerated and plain misleading claims made in the advert.  The most important part of the DECC response that is likely to have swung the ASA is this (click to enlarge):

So what we have is an IPCC organisation whose competence has been called into question and that peddles claims unsupported by evidence or peer review, being used as a crutch by the UK government to justify an advert littered with visual deceptions and verbal falsehoods.  The public is ill served by such a mendacious approach and the credibility of the ASA will now be damaged as a result too.  Everything this government touches results in the destruction of something.  This is just the latest example.

Al Gore hurricane propaganda debunked

The cover of Al Gore’s latest literary climate alarmist effort, ‘Our Choice’, is designed to give readers the impression that huge super-hurricanes would be a consequence of a continuing rise in carbon emissions.  Unfortunately for Gore the latest research on hurricanes published in Nature Geoscience, debunks his unscientific assertions.

The published report concludes that the rise in hurricane frequency since 1995 was merely part of a natural cycle, and that several similar increases have been recorded previously, each followed by a decline.  As the Sunday Times reports:

“We have come to substantially different conclusions from the IPCC,” said Chris Landsea, a lead scientist at the American government’s National Hurricane Center, who co-authored the report.

He added: ”There are a lot of legitimate concerns about climate change but, in my opinion, hurricanes are not among them. We are looking at a decrease in frequency and a small increase in severity.” Landsea said he regarded the use of hurricane icons on the cover of Gore’s book as “misleading”.

Al Gore never lets the facts get in the way of a bit of lucrative climate alarmism.  So it will be interesting to see whether this research will be ignored as Gore continues to scare people into ‘fighting’ climate change using methods that increase the number of dollars in his bank account.  This is what happens when science is corrupted to suit the agenda of politicians and get rich quick scam artists.  The science is not settled, the science is not robust.  We only have opinions and theories advanced as fact.

What will also be interesting is the response, if any, from Kerry Emanuel, whose 2005 report in Nature magazine (basis of so many unsupported claims in the 2007 IPCC Fourth Assessment Report) is continually cited by Gore to support his claim that CO2 increase results in an increased number of more powerful storms.  Will Emanuel take this like a scientist or try to defend his 2005 position as a given truth?

Global warming: A tissue of assertions impervious to evidence

So says George F. Will in the Washington Post.  It is one of the best descriptions I’ve yet seen, and when you consider the dogged determination of fanatics like Dr Vicky Pope (head of climate change advice at the Met Office) to convince us that black is white, probably one of the most accurate too.  In his entertaining op-ed Will points out among other things that:

Last week, Todd Stern, America’s special envoy for climate change – yes, there is one; and people wonder where to begin cutting government – warned that those interested in “undermining action on climate change” will seize on “whatever tidbit they can find.”  Tidbits like specious science, and the absence of warming?

Touché!  It’s worth reading the whole piece.

Climate science consensus in words

About Chapter 9 of the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) the following was written:

‘There is no scientific merit to be found in the Executive Summary. The presentation sounds like something put together by Greenpeace activists and their legal department. The points being made are made arbitrarily with legal sounding caveats without having established any foundation or basis in fact. The Executive Summary seems to be a political statement that is only designed to annoy greenhouse skeptics. Wasn’t the IPCC Assessment Report intended to be a scientific document that would merit solid backing from the climate science community – instead of forcing many climate scientists into having to agree with greenhouse skeptic criticisms that this is indeed a report with a clear and obvious political agenda. Attribution can not happen until understanding has been clearly demonstrated. Once the facts of climate change have been established and understood, attribution will become self-evident to all. The Executive Summary as it stands is beyond redemption and should simply be deleted.’

Find out who wrote this comment and discover what the IPCC’s response to it was on the Bishop Hill blog.

Africagate

Do you remember this from January…?

Rajendra Pachauri, who heads the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), on Friday said the chances of the U.N. panel having made more errors in its benchmark 2007 report were “minimal if not non-existent”[…]

If Pachauri thought he would throw people off the scent of other bogus claims nestling in the report, he was very much mistaken.  Today sees the revelation and examination of yet another known distortion that was included in the IPCC’s 2007 AR4:

Following an investigation by [EU Referendum] (and now featured in The Sunday Times), another major “mistake” in the IPCC’s benchmark Fourth Assessment Report has emerged.

Similar in effect to the erroneous “2035” claim – the year the IPCC claimed that Himalayan glaciers were going to melt – in this instance we find that the IPCC has wrongly claimed that in some African countries, yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by up to 50 percent by 2020.

At best, this is a wild exaggeration, unsupported by any scientific research, referenced only to a report produced by a Canadian advocacy group, written by an obscure Moroccan academic who specialises in carbon trading, citing references which do not support his claims.

The argument has moved from the mountains of Nepal to the plains of Africa.  Africagate is a detailed and referenced investigation, something the IPCC is unfamiliar with.  For Rajendra K Pachauri, time is up.  The Africa claims were his personal responsibility as they were included in the Synthesis Report.  The lies have caught up with him and his IPCC team.

No doubt we will be treated to the sight and sound of more scientists and activists, from various climate change centres and government funded agencies, such as the Met Office, telling us that this further revelation does not mean the science is not sound.  If that is the case, why does the IPCC report rely so heavily on such bogus claims?  Why doesn’t the science stand on its own merits?  Perhaps because it has been so badly corrupted to achieve a pre-determined conclusion.

Pachauri says he cannot be held responsible for errors contained in the 2007 IPCC report, yet he was happy enough to accept the plaudits for it when he received a Nobel Prize for it.  He has been happy enough to use the Africa references in speeches.  Such selective responsibility does not wash.  A fraud is knowingly being perpetrated against the public.  It is time to say no to the self serving politicians who are committing this fraud.

Sir David King circles the climate change wagons for vested interests

The bogus claims and subsequent actions of Rajendra Pachauri and the IPCC have caused so much embarrassment for vested interests, the big businesses that are looking to cash in on the back of claims that mankind’s emissions of CO2 are causing significant global warming, they are prepared to cut Pachauri and the IPCC adrift in order to continue the money train.  For evidence, see today’s Telegraph and an op-ed by the Director of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at Oxford University, and UK’s former chief scientific adviser, Professor Sir David King.

The piece really has to be seen to be believed.  Here are some of the key highlights of his piece:

• The IPCC 2007 report has ‘sloppy referencing’
• The IPPC’s objective ‘runs against the normal spirit of science’
• ‘In science, people are supposed to rock the boat. If someone challenges your findings, you make measurements, check the arguments, and see if they might be right.’
• UEA emails suggest ‘certain members of the IPCC felt that the consensus was so precious that some external challenges had to be kept outside the discussion’
• ‘That is clearly not acceptable.’

But for sheer chutzpah this comment by Sir David King really takes the biscuit:

‘Moreover, this leads to the danger that people will go beyond the science that is truly reliable, and pick up almost anything that seems to support the argument. The dodgy dossier saying that all ice would vanish from the Himalayas within the next 30 years is an example of that. When I heard Dr Pachauri, the head of the IPCC, declare this at Copenhagen last December I could hardly believe my ears. This issue is far too important for scientists to risk crossing the line into advocacy.’

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I can find no example of Professor Sir David King coming away from Copenhagen and saying the claims about the Himalayan glaciers was dodgy, much less that he couldn’t believe his ears when Pachauri said it.  For some reason Sir David King seemed perfectly comfortable with people accepting what Pachauri had said.  In fact, King wrote an op-ed in the Independent on 20th December 2009 titled ‘There is a way ahead after Copenhagen: The climate change talks show, at least, that the world takes the issue seriously. Now we need a truly global carbon-trading scheme.‘

Of Pachauri’s unbelievable claim, which would underline the need for the kind of action Sir David is advocating, there is not a single word.  How very convenient.  Indeed, there’s certainly no evidence of Sir David King ‘rocking the boat’ as he says scientists are supposed to.  But King continues:

‘However, it’s not all the IPCC’s fault. Climate scientists have been forced into this corner by a disastrous combination of cynical lobbying and a misguided desire for certainty. The American lobby system, driven by political and economic vested interests in fossil fuels, seeks to use any challenge to undermine the entire body of science. The drive for consensus has come to some extent because the scientific community (me included) has become frustrated with this willful misuse of the scientific process.’

The message here is clear.  Political and economic vested interests in fossil fuels are to blame for scientists seeking ‘certainty’.  This is bad.  But what of the political and economic vested interests Sir David King advocates for big business when he argues for carbon trading based on the ‘certainty’ than man is warming the planet through CO2 emissions?  Following that, his attempt to equate the certainty of theory about the effects of cigarette smoking on human lungs with the theories about the effects of CO2 emissions on the planet is priceless.

King wilfully disregards the fact that we know infinitely more about the human body than we do about the way this planet’s climate regulates itself and varies over time.  This is the same kind of scientific distortion he claims to be railing against, but he distorts because it suits his agenda. Evidence and data that he claims is robust has been shown by unadjusted version to be questionable.  He is denying the evidence in an attempt to distance the vested interests he supports from the exposure of scientific failings that would destroy their agenda.  The IPCC and Rajendra Pachauri are being set up to take the fall.  Trust the scientists and blame the mouthpieces, is he mantra.  And you can see why he is arguing for this in the rousing climax to this rant:

‘Enough already. Instead of vainly trying to pretend that the waters are not rising, let’s get on with the opportunities for innovation and wealth creation that this climate challenge brings. We in the UK have a fantastically strong science base, but in the past few decades manufacturing has fled our shores and we have been steadily losing our ability to capitalize on science. Now is the time to turn that around. We know that we need to decarbonise our economy, so let’s do it. Let’s work to create a new, smart manufacturing sector in this county that is fit to tackle the carbon challenge while stimulating our economy back into growth.’

Innovation – big business.  Wealth creation – big business.  Strong science base – keep the grants coming, from our tax pounds.  Decarbonise – lucrative carbon trading for big business.  Smart manufacturing – big business, funded by our tax pounds.  Find for me, if you will, one word in Professor David King’s objectives where the key driver is about protecting the planet, reducing harmful pollution, or managing our natural resources better.  It’s not there because the motivation is, as it always was, making money.  Just how is that in the spirit of science?

BBC’s Roger Harrabin struggles with fire and water

The BBC Trust should, as a matter of urgency, investigate not just the BBC’s editorial line on environmental and climate change matters, but the reporting by its environment analyst Roger Harrabin.  His output over recent weeks has exposed more clearly than ever before that he is incapable of reporting impartially.  This was most clearly evidenced in 2008 when Harrabin altered accurate information in a news report to play down news that was considered to do a disservice to the aims of climate change campaigners.

If the clear absence of balance in his reporting was not bad enough, his biased content consistently avoids the inclusion of information that puts into context any arguments that run contrary to those of environmental activists and advocates of dangerous anthropogenic global warming.  Harrabin’s latest online column is yet another classic example of this.

Harrabin postulates on the inclusion of a passage in the IPCC 2007 AR4 about the effect on the Amazon rain forest of just a small reduction in rainfall.  The passage in the IPCC report solely referenced a paper written by a WWF group that was not peer reviewed.  As such it should not have been included at all.  But Harrabin plays that down dramatically and suggests the issue is really about the IPCC choosing to reference the WWF in its report rather than the basic science itself.

But what of the basic science?  Harrabin goes on to quote Dr Simon Lewis from Leeds University in this important passage:

Dr Simon Lewis from Leeds University, who co-authored a paper on the Amazon in the journal Science, says the forest is surprisingly sensitive to drought.

He told me: “The IPCC statement is basically correct but poorly written, and bizarrely referenced.

“It is very well known that in Amazonia, tropical forests exist when there is more than about 1.5 metres of rain a year, below that the system tends to ‘flip’ to savannah.

“Indeed, some leading models of future climate change impacts show a die-off of more than 40% Amazon forests, due to projected decreases in rainfall.

“The most extreme die-back model predicted that a new type of drought should begin to impact Amazonia, and in 2005 it happened for the first time: a drought associated with Atlantic, not Pacific sea surface temperatures.

“The effect on the forest was massive tree mortality, and the remaining Amazon forests changed from absorbing nearly two billion tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere a year, to being a massive source of over three billion tonnes.”

So, it appears that, unlike in the case of “Glaciergate”, the IPCC’s science may be right but its referencing wrong.

But Harrabin’s problem here is at the heart of his column’s convenient failing.  The fact is the paper in the IPCC report actually came from a study published in Nature magazine that wasn’t looking at rainfall at all, rather its focus was the impact on the Amazon rainforest of human activity such as logging and burning.  When you read an article in today’s Sunday Times by Jonathan Leake, one wonders if Harrabin was speaking to the same Simon Lewis.  This passage demonstrates why:

Simon Lewis, a Royal Society research fellow at Leeds University who specialises in tropical forest ecology, described the section of Rowell and Moore’s report predicting the potential destruction of large swathes of rainforest as “a mess”.

“The Nature paper is about the interactions of logging damage, fire and periodic droughts, all extremely important in understanding the vulnerability of Amazon forest to drought, but is not related to the vulnerability of these forests to reductions in rainfall,” he said.

“In my opinion the Rowell and Moore report should not have been cited; it contains no primary research data.”

This is very different from Harrabin’s line and certainly does not suggest that the IPCC statement is basically correct but poorly written.  In fact Harrabin’s column is noteworthy for the absence of the word ‘logging’ and ‘fire’ only appears as part of a direct quotation from the IPCC report.  It’s raining spin from the desk of our Roger.

How could this be?  Just how could a BBC environment analyst come up with an article so completely different in tone and thrust to the Sunday Times, and which just so happens to play down the failings, inaccuracies and misrepresentations of the WWF and IPCC?  It is telling that Harrabin fails to name the WWF’s controversial 2000 report from which all this speculation about reduced rainfall appears to come.  Perhaps this is because it was titled ‘A Global Review of Forest Fires’.

There is an oft used expression these days which suits Harrabin and his biased, agenda driven form of journalism quite nicely…  Not fit for purpose.  It is time the BBC put an impartial journalist in the role who is not working to a personal agenda and who will report fairly and objectively.  The BBC Trust needs to act now.

Glaciergate moves on to Amazongate

Readers will be no doubt familiar with Tony Blair and Alistair Campbell’s dodgy dossier, used to justify the invasion of Iraq, which included information lifted from a college student’s thesis.  Now we have reports that the IPCC took a leaf out of Labour’s manual of deception and distortion and did the same thing in constructing baseless claims that Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035 because of human activity affecting the climate.  As the Sunday Telegraph explains:

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.

You have to read it to appreciate it fully.  The problem is it completely misses the very essence of the misrepresentation of data and findings by groups such as the WWF.  It would be a funny piece if the implications for lax journalism were not so serious.  But at least the Telegraph is redeemed by the column of Christopher Booker, who moves us on from Glaciergate to Amazongate and yet more distortions in the IPCC’s AR4 in 2007.

The authority of the IPCC has been blown to pieces. Nevertheless its friends have been rushing to various media outlets to argue that this was one, quickly rectified, mistake and that the scientific basis for man made global warming is sound.  Witness the damage limitation editorial of Jennifer Morgan, director of the Climate and Energy Program at the World Resources Institute, in the Times of India.  One wonders if she will be back on those pages in a few weeks’ time, telling readers how the IPCC references to 40% of the Amazon being at risk of climate change were lifted from Nature magazine ‘by mistake’.  And that although the information was not peer reviewed and actually related to the possible effects of logging, this latest ‘one slip’ doesn’t change the big picture either.

The problem is, it isn’t just one mistake.  Michael Mann’s infamous hockey stick was used as evidence that mankind was causing runaway global warming, until the source code was unpicked and found to deliver the same result regardless of the data fed into the system.  NASA’s GISS Surface Temperature Analysis (GISTEMP) had to be corrected because it over stated the recorded temperatures.  Reported warming suddenly disappeared.  There was Keith Briffa’s selective use of 12 tree cores from the Yamal peninsula to suggest a dramatic rise in temperature in the 20th century, which suddenly disappeared when a more representative 34 other tree cores collected nearby were examined

There are other stories which reveal a mix of shoddy science and outright distortions, each of which gets played down and the same comment comes back time and again, ‘it doesn’t change the underlying science’.  Well, actually it does because it is these findings that underpin the ‘science’ of derivative researchers.  It is all guesswork, correlation, theory and hypothesis; algorithms, models and adjustments.  In the final analysis, there is no factual evidence, only belief.  That is not a good enough basis for the ‘solutions’ governments and advocacy groups are trying to force upon us that are rooted in social ideology and redistributive economics rather than science and environmental preservation.

The Hottest Hoax in the World

Not all Indian media outlets are shilling for Rajendra Pachauri like his vested self interest cheerleaders at NDTV…

“It was presented as fact. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, led by India’s very own RK Pachauri, even announced a consensus on it. The world was heating up and humans were to blame. A pack of lies, it turns out.”  (click on the image below to read the full story)

Climate change deceit close to making the Pachauri extinct

This is the kind of huge headline story you would expect to see splashed across the pages of the WWF website, Nature magazine and a Louise Gray article in the Telegraph.  We keep reading how various species are clinging precariously to existence and that any further small change in their environment caused by gaseous emissions will finally do for them and tip them over the edge into extinction.  I doubt that many climate campaigners ever thought they would see the Bearded Pachauri added to the endangered list, but that is what has happened.  As we are learning:

…The Pachauri habitat deep in the IPCC is quickly being transformed and climate change is at the root of it.  Observers are discovering that the IPCC is unable to support the survival of  this bearded curiosity much longer.  Despite regular well funded migrations to a variety of luxurious board rooms and conference halls around the world, and the donation of huge sums in grants and award of directorships, the delicate balance between error and fraud in the IPCC habitat of the Bearded Pachauri has been disturbed by a huge increase in emissions of deceitful hot air.  The sheer concentration of this man made gas is considered responsible for dramatically changing the conditions in the Pachauri’s environment and doing so with far greater speed that any scientist had previously projected.  A spokesman for the WWF told us that the loss of the Pachauri is almost certainly unavoidable:  ‘Man is responsible for this.  We should have dramatically reduced our emissions of deceitful hot air.  Producers of lie gas, such as Gore Inc and GISS Corp should have curbed their emissions but they failed to do so and now the IPCC is incapable of supporting the Bearded Pachauri.  It will be a defining loss…’

The problem for Rajendra Pachauri is that he compounds his lies because he is so caught up in a web of deceit.  As The Times explains today, when Pachauri was asked whether he had deliberately kept silent about the Himalayan glacier error to avoid embarrassment at the Copenhagen conferfence, he said:

“That’s ridiculous. It never came to my attention before the Copenhagen summit. It wasn’t in the public sphere.”

However The Times has identified a journalist who said that he had asked Dr Pachauri about the 2035 error last November.  Pallava Bagla, who writes for Science journal – and as EU Referendum points out ironically works for Pachauri’s chief media cheerleader NDTV – , 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.”  This is probably because 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’.  There is more of the exchange between Pachauri and Bagla reported in the Mail today.

The chickens are coming home to roost.  Pachauri’s position is untenable.  The IPCC is a discredited shambles.  But even when Pachauri is finally shoved aside by the IPCC in a desperate attempt to regain some degree of authority on climate change matters, nothing will change.  The problem is not a wayward IPCC Chairman freelancing a personal political agenda, using climate change as a vehicle to realise a huge transfer of wealth from the developed world to the rapidly developing world, and a dramatic reduction in our standard of living.  The whole entity is made up of politicised activists doing the exact same thing.

Changing the figurehead will not change the structure or integrity of the ship.  The SS IPCC might look a little different, but its crew and destination will remain the same.  Even when Pachauri has finally been pushed, or discovers enough humility to jump, the battle against political agendas masquerading as environmentalism will need to continue.  The battle against Pachauri is one to expose the reality of the situation for a worldwide public that has been deceived for so long.  But in reality it is a battle against the whole IPCC and the small corrupt cabal of core scientists who produce ‘reports’ generated using cherry picked data, that are then used by thousands of others as the baseline in climate science.  We have a long way to go to drain the IPCC swamp and see the truth that is well hidden below the surface.

Is the Great Climate Climbdown starting?

Could it be possible?  Could it be that we witnessing the start of a great climate climbdown concerning the true impact of CO2 as a ‘greenhouse’ gas, and therefore the supposed influence of mankind on the climate?  Something must be shifting in the climate change establishment if the Telegraph’s environment correspondant Louise Gray is prepared to go to press with an article such as this.

Sceptics of man made global warming have long argued that water vapour, which exists in hugely greater concentration in the atmosphere than trace gas CO2, has a much larger influence on climate.  But until now the media has ignored the fact and perpetuated the CO2 myth peddled by scientists who stand to earn more research grants to study it and big business which is finding ways of making CO2 into a valuable commodity to be traded for huge profits.

Regular watchers of climate change reporting in the British media will better know Louise Gray for the way she retails unsubstantiated global warming predictions without any semblance of balance or effort to challenge the claims.  Even now La Gray still turns to the warmists whenever she wants a quote, in this case Vicky Pope whose role at the Met Office is to perpetuate the agenda of the warmists rather than look objectively at what is happening to our climate.  But despite that, this piece feels different.  The climate consensus puppets in the media now realise their reputations will suffer for unquestioningly repeating claims that were made by agenda-driven scientists and organisations that are rapidly being discredited.

When even the most supportive of journalists, such as Gray, swiftly moderate their line when reporting on climate change matters, the signs are clear that the game is up.  The length of time the consensus activists will continue to fight their rearguard action remains to be seen.  They are still trying to work out if dumping Rajendra Pachauri as Chairman of the IPCC enables them to clear the slate and rebuild their agenda in a different way.  But it very much looks like a fighting retreat is underway.  The climbdown is starting.

Pachauri’s ‘regrettable error’ is a blatant lie

On Saturday, the Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Rajendra K Pachauri, stated the bogus and long standing claim that Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035 as a result of man made global warming was a ‘regrettable error’.  Pachauri said that no action would be taken against any scientist in respect of the bogus claim and explained that:

“There is a full process that is followed and attributing responsibility on specific experts may not be desirable, particularly since the error was more of one of judgement,”

However, Pachauri has been caught out lying in his statement of regret.  A report from the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) sets out in detail the concerted attempts that were made by scientists to modify the Himalaya glacier section of the IPCC’s 2007 4th Assessment Report due to the bogus claim (hat tip: EU Referendum).  It reports on the blank refusal of Dr Murari Lal, one of the four Coordinating Lead Authors for the Chapter on Himalayan glacier melt, to accept any changes despite the lobbying and evidence presented.  It also details Lal’s subsequent lies on the matter this very weekend when declaring that:

“This is more about a systematic failure of the (IPCC) review process. The… conclusions were sent to hundreds of scientists and governments… and no one raised any doubts… then.”

The GWPF documents prove that is false and that far from an error of judgement as Pachauri put is, what we had was a deliberate plan to deceive people by publishing a claim that was known to be completely false.  What we are seeing is nothing less than an international conspiracy to perpetrate a gigantic fraud against ordinary people around the world.  It is a deception of immense proportions.  It is being carried out by political appointees who are not interested in science or truth, but in carrying out a series of political objectives using the theory of man made global warming as justification for their actions and impositions.

Despite the growing body of evidence supporting this accusation of fraud, Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg still accept the climate change theory as fact.  Are they ignorant, stupid or are they part of the cabal of vested interests and opportunity seekers who are driving this scam?

Indians fed Pachauri propaganda by business ally

Picture the scene.  Jeremy Paxman is conducting an television interview with Gordon Brown.  The interview is happening because Brown has under increasing international scrutiny for making worrying claims many months earlier that the UK economy will collapse in 25 years time due to the new banking crisis.

Brown claimed in a major report, signed up to by government funded international economists and financial experts, but disputed by a number of experts and other opponents whose evidence has been ignored by the mainstream media and refused air time on the BBC, that unless everyone agrees to an immediate 25% increase in income tax and six day week, the UK will go bust and wreck the entire international economy.  The claims have been widely reported and accepted at face value for a long time.  Stick with me here because this gets good.

However, Brown’s claim has been exposed as completely bogus and nothing more than the result of a single comment by a lowly official unsupported by any evidence.  As confidence in Brown plummets to even greater depths the clamour for Brown to admit to the mistake to the public grows by the day.  So Brown is in the BBC studio with Paxman, describing what happened as a regrettable error and saying that the possibility of there being more errors in his report ‘is minimal if not non-existent’.  Paxman then ends the interview by saying to Brown:

“Your credibility is impeccable… Let’s hope you fight back and win and clear your name in all these… in this widespread attack from one side against you.”

Can you imagine the uproar at such blatant bias and lack of objectivity by Paxman?  Would you have confidence in his impartiality if you learned that Paxman had a huge business interest in supporting Brown’s position and had therefore spoken at a seminar, arranged by Brown’s colleagues, where he argued in favour of the punishing higher taxes and longer working hours, saying:

“From the smallest individual to the highest level of government, each one of us has to take action to minimise future harm to the economy.  The BBC through the Work More Pay More Campaign has taken the responsibility to initiate a nationwide movement for people to take the financial pledge and do every bit to stop further harm to our economy.  The staggering response we received in the first year from our viewers and people from all walks of life only makes our belief, to effect a change, much stronger.  This year too, we strive to continue our efforts to reduce our financial impact on the world through actions that will make a difference.”

Well, you don’t need to imagine it.  All you need to do is change the names, the issue and the country and what you have read actually happened this weekend.  Not in the UK but in India.  For Gordon Brown read Rajendra K Pachauri, Chairman of the IPCC.  For Jeremy Paxman read Dr Prannoy Roy, a journalist and Chairman of NDTV.  For BBC read NDTV.  For this great economic collapse read the 2035 Himalayan glacier story.  For the seminar read NDTV and Toyota’s green campaign in New Delhi.  If you think Silvio Berlusconi’s abuse of his position as head of a media organisation is bad, it is nothing compared to the bias and vested self interest of Dr Prannoy Roy.

We see yet again Pachauri and his IPCC nesting with big business.  It’s like looking into a box of hamsters.  Writhing like entwined lovers in the heights of passion, they are inseparable because of their mutual reliance on each other to bring about the ecstasy of fulfilment.  In their case that fulfilment is not brought about by orgasms, but regular injections of massive sums of money.  Money secured by governments who extracted it from ordinary people in taxation; and money from companies with a vested interest in making bigger profits, who have increased the cost ordinary people must pay for their goods and services.  We are being conned.