Guessing At CO2 Emissions | The Resilient Earth

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Guessing At CO2 Emissions
http://theresilientearth.com/
Submitted by Doug L. Hoffman on Fri, 06/04/2010 - 14:51
Supposedly, human activity is responsible for the detected rise in atmospheric CO2 levels over the past century. But do we really know were gas emissions come from and how great they are? As it turns out, greenhouse gas emissions are measured using statistical data without testing the results against the actual increases of these gases in the atmosphere. Regardless, climate change alarmists insist that human emissions must be reduced. A revealing perspective article in the June 4, 2010, issue of Science states “this is like dieting without weighing oneself.” Currently, science is only guessing at where CO2 emissions come from.

Scientists are coming to the realization that claims about greenhouse gas emissions can have integrity only if verified by direct atmospheric measurements. Emissions data are produced by greenhouse gas emitters of all sizes—farms, factories and entire nations. These emissions are often quoted with high precision but, as Euan Nisbet and Ray Weiss state in their article, “misreporting still occurs, whether by simple error, ignorance, or intention.” Read More...

Guessing At CO2 Emissions The Resilient Earth

The Sham of ‘Settled Science’ — Insider Says There Was No IPCC Consensus

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The Sham of ‘Settled Science’ — Insider Says There Was No IPCC Consensus

Remember that “settled science” that Laurie David’s alleged married boyfriend was forever prattling on about? Well, surprise, surprise… according to the National Post’s Lawrence Solomon, it turns out that it’s not so settled after all.

The IPCC consensus on climate change was phoney, says IPCC insider

The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change misled the press and public into believing that thousands of scientists backed its claims on manmade global warming, according to Mike Hulme, a prominent climate scientist and IPCC insider. The actual number of scientists who backed that claim was “only a few dozen experts,” he states in a paper for Progress in Physical Geography, co-authored with student Martin Mahony.
“Claims such as ‘2,500 of the world’s leading scientists have reached a consensus that human activities are having a significant influence on the climate’ are disingenuous,” the paper states unambiguously, adding that they rendered “the IPCC vulnerable to outside criticism.”

Read More...

The Sham of 'Settled Science'; Insider Says There Was No IPCC Consensus
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Interview With A Global Warming Skeptic: Dr. Roy Spencer

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Interview With A Global Warming Skeptic: Dr. Roy Spencer
By CJE
www.science20.com  Created May 13 2010 - 11:28am

It is no secret that a majority of the peer-reviewed climate change literature lays blame for global warming on human greenhouse gas emissions.

But despite the abundance of research supporting anthropogenic global warming, there is a sizable community of qualified scientists who believe the so-called consensus view on global warming is completely wrong. I wanted to find out why, so I contacted one skeptical researcher to ask.

Dr. Roy Spencer is a climatologist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. For many years he served as a Senior Scientist for Climate Studies at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, and his research has been published in peer-reviewed journals such as Geophysical Research Letters and The Journal Of Climate. Dr. Spencer was kind enough to explain to me what convinced him that the consensus view on global warming is incorrect and what he believes is responsible for the rising temperatures we have observed.

Can you summarize your views on climate change?

I believe that most climate change is natural in origin, the result of long-term changes in the Earth’s albedo (sunlight reflectivity). This alternative explanation for recent warming has seen almost no research, which is a curious situation if science is to progress. Now, I will also say that anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions must cause some warming, but that its warming influence is small compared to natural, internal, chaotic fluctuations in global average cloud cover.

You say the IPCC has the relationship between temperature and cloud cover completely backwards, and this greatly affects our understanding of how sensitive the climate system is. Can you elaborate?

As we have addressed in a previously published paper in The Journal Of Climate, and elaborate further on in another paper accepted for publication in The Journal of Geophysical Research, natural cloud variations in the climate system give the illusion of a sensitive climate system. This is a relatively new finding, and it is taking time for other researchers to understand its significance to the global warming debate.

By way of background, most climate researchers today believe that global average temperatures are moderately to strongly sensitive to our addition of greenhouse gas emissions, and a large part of that sensitivity argument depends upon cloud cover dissipating somewhat with warming. This is a relationship they see during natural climate variations: warmer years tend to have less cloud cover. If that anomalous warming is indeed causing a decrease in cloudiness, then more sunlight would be let in, magnifying the relatively small amount of direct warming that increasing carbon dioxide produces. This is called positive cloud feedback.

But what they have neglected to consider is the fact that a large part of that observed warmth was caused BY the decrease in clouds, not the other way around. We have demonstrated with a simple climate model that warming can cause an increase in clouds, thus producing a strong brake on warming (negative feedback), but the signal of that process is lost in the noise of natural cloud variations causing temperature variations. It all comes down to mixing up cause and effect. Negative cloud feedback is obscured by natural cloud variations causing temperature variations.

Some climate change skeptics say solar activity is primarily to blame for rising temperatures. What's your opinion on that?

I consider it a highly speculative theory….but possible. There is so much we don’t yet understand about natural climate change. Most researchers today have virtually convinced themselves that there is no such thing. In a way, the sunspot theory is the closest alternative match to my theory because it involves natural variations in cloud cover as the main forcing mechanism for climate change.

You have a new book out aimed at people who are not climate scientists. Tell us about it.

My new book, The Great Global Warming Blunder, lays out the case for clouds as the main cause of global warming. The climate research community has become so inbred and financially dependent upon the continuing threat of manmade global warming that they have trouble even entertaining any alternative hypotheses. So, since the issue is so easily explained, I am getting others out there involved in the physical sciences to look at the evidence.

How significant is the recent climategate scandal to the global warming debate?

I think it is very significant for public perception, but less significant to the climate research community. Climategate has revealed that scientists at the core of the U.N.’s case for humanity as the cause of warming are quite biased and intolerant in their dealings with scientists having alternative views. Those of us who are skeptical that humanity has caused most of the warming have always known this bias exists, but now the public gets to see it on display.

Is CO2 a pollutant?

No, since atmospheric carbon dioxide is necessary for life on Earth, I do not consider it a “pollutant”. Considering this fact, it is amazing that there is so little of it: only 40 out of every 100,000 molecules of air are CO2, and it takes 5 years to increase than number by 1 through the burning of fossil fuels. It might well turn out that more CO2 is, on the whole, good for life on Earth. Hundreds of scientific papers have demonstrated this for various types of plants, and we are beginning to see research that the same might be true for the oceans as well.

What do you think of the various efforts to reduce CO2 emissions?

Command-and-control mechanisms for reducing CO2 emissions are doomed to failure because there are, as yet, no large scale replacements for fossil fuels. Now, since fossil fuels are a finite resource, we do need to be working toward replacements. But they can not be simply legislated into existence. And if we punish the use of energy by making it more expensive, it is the world’s poor that will be the first to suffer.

Since I do not receive any money from Big Oil, I can say that I will maintain this view even if the oil company executives change their minds and support cap-and-trade. Such corporate decisions can be expected as oil companies position themselves for special favors from government if they think cap and trade is inevitable anyway.

For more information, visit Dr. Spencer's website.
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Sinking ‘climate change’

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Written by Cal Thomas
World Mag.com

June 3, 10:03 AM

Three modern myths have been sold to the American people: the promise of a transparent administration (President Obama); the promise of a more ethical Congress (Speaker Pelosi); and the myth of “global warming,” or “climate change.”

The first two are daily proving suspect and now the third is sinking with greater force than melting icebergs, if they were melting, which many believe they are not.

After spending years promoting “global warming,” the media are beginning to turn in the face of growing evidence that they have been wrong. The Times of London recently reported: “Britain’s premier scientific institution is being forced to review its statements on climate change after a rebellion by members who question mankind’s contribution to rising temperatures.”

It gets worse, or better, depending on your perspective. Read More...
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Trees of Medieval Warming Period - MWP Warmer Than Present

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Piancabella Rock Glacier, Sceru Valley, Southern Swiss Alps
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Reference
Scapozza, C., Lambiel, C., Reynard, E., Fallot, J.-M., Antognini, M. and Schoeneich, P. 2010. Radiocarbon dating of fossil wood remains buried by the Piancabella rock glacier, Blenio Valley (Ticino, Southern Swiss Alps): Implications for rock glacier, treeline and climate history. Permaforst and Periglacial Processes 21: 90-96.

Description
Based on radiocarbon dating of the fossil wood remains of eight larch (Larix decidua) stem fragments found one meter beneath the surface of the ground at the base of the front of the Piancabella rock glacier (46�27'02" N, 9�00'07" E) in the Southern Swiss Alps in September 2005, the authors determined that the wood was formed somewhere between AD 1040 and 1280 with a statistical probability of 95.4%. Then, based on this information and "geomorphological, climatological and geophysical observations," they inferred that "the treeline in the Medieval Warm Period was about 200 meters higher than in the middle of the 20th century, which corresponds to a mean summer temperature as much as 1.2�C warmer than in AD 1950." Thus, we assign the MWP (at a minimum) to the period AD 1040-1280; and adjusting for warming between 1950 and the present, we calculate that the MWP was about 0.5�C warmer than the peak warmth of the CWP.

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'Green' Climate Group Thinks Blowing Kids up is Funny -

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Environmentalist Campaign's Horror 'Comedy' Promo: Go Green or Get Blown Up
By Kathleen Gilbert

LONDON, October 4, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A UK-based campaign against global warming has apologized after releasing an extremely graphic promotional short film depicting individuals being blown up for failing to adhere to the campaign.

The film promotes "10:10," a campaign involving a pledge to reduce an individual's carbon emissions by 10% on October 10. Entitled "No Pressure," the short depicts several short segments, evidently intended to be humorous, in which people, including children in a schoolroom, are detonated in a gory mess after they decline to volunteer to help with the new initiative. In each individual segment, shocked onlookers wipe the spattered blood off themselves.

"10:10: hundreds of thousands of people ... all tackling climate change in more than 40 countires. Care to join us? No pressure," states the final voiceover. The voice actress is then revealed to be X-Files actress Gillian Anderson, who is also detonated. The final shot silently displays the campaign's website address against a blood-soaked wall.

After countless viewers of the 10:10 flick reacted in horror, including several groups sponsoring the 10:10 campaign, producers officially pulled the film from the internet, although copies continue to circulate. The original plan to show the flick in UK theaters was also abandoned.

10:10 officials reportedly originally responded to the furor by stating: "We 'killed' five people to make No Pressure - a mere blip compared to the 300,000 real people who now die each year from climate change."

Later, the group issued a longer apology pointing out that the film, created by English comedy screenwriter Richard Curtis, was intended to have a humorous effect.

"Many people found the resulting film extremely funny, but unfortunately some didn't and we sincerely apologise to anybody we have offended," wrote the group on its website. "At 10:10 we're all about trying new and creative ways of getting people to take action on climate change. Unfortunately in this instance we missed the mark. Oh well, we live and learn."

Read More: http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/oct/10100410.html

Watch the video -


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Climate Audit: Oxburgh and the Jones Admission

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Climate Audit: Oxburgh and the Jones Admission
Steve McIntyre, posted on Jul 1, 2010 at 10:42 AM
A bombshell from the Oxburgh “inquiry”.

Obviously, the most contentious issue in the Hockey Stick controversy has been, uh, the hockey sticks – an area where CRU scientists Jones, Briffa and Osborn have been intimately involved as authors of key proxies, authors of multiproxy studies in the IPCC spaghetti graph, peer reviewers of journal articles and IPCC assessment authors. The core position of Climate Audit in respect to these studies is that the data and methods used in these studies do not permit assertions about the medieval-modern relationship to be made with any confidence. This gets played out in numerous disputes over individual proxies and individual statistical methods, but these do not deflect from the overall issue.

I heard from a reliable source that, during the Oxburgh interviews, Phil Jones admitted that it was probably impossible to do the 1000-year temperature reconstructions with any accuracy. Obviously, this would be a hugely important admission relative to this debate, but the Oxburgh Science Appraisal Panel “inquiry” did not report this admission even though UEA had announced that the Science Appraisal Panel would “re-appraise CRU’s science”.

I accordingly sent the following letter last week to Oxburgh (both to his House of Lords email and the UEA email address used for the “inquiry”), copying the letter to two members of the Parliamentary Committee and two journalists and forwarded it to the Muir Russell inquiry.

Dear Dr Oxburgh,
I am writing to you in your capacity as Chairman of the Science Appraisal Panel, which reported on April 14, 2010 on the independent external reappraisal of CRU’s science that had been announced by the University of East Anglia in February 2010.

It has come to my attention from a reliable source that, during one of his interviews with the Science Appraisal Panel, Phil Jones (of CRU) admitted that it was probably impossible to do these [1000-year temperature] reconstructions with any accuracy.

Given that this has been one of the most contentious, if not the most contentious issue, in the disputes about CRU’s science, the failure of the Science Appraisal Panel to record this important information appears to me to be a material omission that, in this case, distorts the research record.

Under the circumstances, I request that you forthwith issue an addendum that clearly reports Jones’ evidence on the probable impossibility of doing the 1000-year reconstructions with any accuracy.

Yours truly,
Stephen McIntyre

This morning, I received the following remarkable response:

Dear Dr Mcintyre,
Thank you for your message. What you report may or may not be the case. But as I have pointed out to you previously the science was not the subject of our study.
Yours sincerly,
Ron Oxburgh

Read it again. The “science was not the subject of our study”. Why would anyone have expected that science would be the subject of study of the Science Appraisal Panel? Well, there’s a good reason why they would. The University of East Anglia and Muir Russell said over and over again that the Science Appraisal Panel would, uh, “re-appraise” CRU’s “science”.

Consider first the original announcement by the University of East Anglia on Feb 11 here entitled “New scientific assessment of climatic research publications announced”, stating:

An independent external reappraisal of the science in the Climatic Research Unit’s (CRU) key publications has been announced by the University of East Anglia. The Royal Society will assist the University in identifying assessors with the requisite expertise, standing and independence.

“Published papers from CRU have gone through the rigorous and intensive peer review process which is the keystone for maintaining the integrity of scientific research,” said Professor Trevor Davies, the University’s Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research, Enterprise and Engagement. “That process and the findings of our researchers have been the subject of significant debate in recent months. Colleagues in CRU have strenuously defended their conduct and the published work and we believe it is in the interests of all concerned that there should be an additional assessment considering the science itself.”
Or Muir Russell’s comments at their Feb 11 press conference:

Our job is to investigate scientific rigor, the honesty, the openness and the due process of CRU’s approach as well as the other things in the remit.. and compliance with rules. It’s not our job to audit CRU’s scientific conclusions. That would require a different set of skills and resources. The University recognizes the need for such an audit. It has asked the Royal Society how this should be done. They have decided they would commission a re-appraisal of the main scientific conclusions of CRU with assistance from the Royal Society to identify the person or persons with the standing and expertise and skill to carry this out.

Or the Royal Society press statement on Feb 11 in which Martin Rees stated:

It is important that people have the utmost confidence in the science of climate change. Where legitimate doubts are raised about any piece of science they must be fully investigated – that is how science works. The Royal Society will provide advice to the University of East Anglia in identifying independent assessors to conduct this reappraisal.

Or the BBC report of the same day:

However, the panel will not review the past scientific work of the CRU, as this will be re-appraised by a UEA-commissioned study that will involve the Royal Society in an advisory role.

“Colleagues in CRU have strenuously defended their conduct and the published work and we believe it is in the interest of all concerned that there should be an additional assessment considering the science itself,” Professor Trevor Davies, UEA’s pro-vice-chancellor for research, enterprise and engagement, said in a statement.

Royal Society President Lord Rees said that it was important that the public had the utmost confidence in the science of climate change. “Where legitimate doubts are raised about any piece of science they must be fully investigated – that is how science works,” he explained. “The Royal Society will provide advice to the University of East Anglia in identifying independent assessors to conduct this reappraisal.”

Or the UEA written submission to the Parliamentary Committee on Feb 25:

2.3 Alongside Sir Muir Russell’s Review, we have decided on an additional scientific assessment of CRU’s key scientific publications; an external reappraisal of the science itself. The Royal Society has agreed to assist the University in identifying assessors with the requisite experience, standing and independence.

Or Muir Russell’s written submission to the Parliamentary Committee:

4. The[Muir Russell] Review’s remit does not invite it to re-appraise the scientific work of CRU. That re-appraisal is being separately commissioned by UEA, with the assistance of the Royal Society.

Or Acton’s oral testimony to the Parliamentary Committee:

As for the science itself, I have not actually seen any evidence of any flaw in the science but I am hoping, later this week, to announce the chair of a panel to reassess the science and make sure there is nothing wrong.

Oxburgh neither confirmed nor denied the Jones admission. Unfortunately, there are no documents of the Jones interview since Oxburgh flouted the Parliamentary Committee recommendation that the inquiries conduct their business in the open, in which they stressed the importance of opennness in achieving acceptance of the inquiry results. Lord Oxburgh in effect spit in the eye of the Commons Committee recommendation by not taking submissions, not transcribing interviews and not even reporting interview notes. Worse, at least one panelist has already destroyed his interview notes.

Despite all the statements by the university to the public and to Parliament through press releases and evidence to the Commons Committee that Oxburgh’s panel was to “reappraise” CRU’s “science”, Oxburgh says that “science was not the subject” of his “inquiry”.

Given all the statements to the public and to Parliament saying the exact opposite, one would expect Oxburgh, as chair of the inquiry, to have clear and written terms of reference, changing the terms of reference from those presented to the public and Parliament. And here, of course, mystery and inconsistency abound, with Oxburgh saying that his terms of reference were “verbal”. (Who ever heard of “verbal” terms of reference?)

But back to Jones admission that it was “probably impossible to do the 1000-year temperature reconstructions with any accuracy.” I have this information on excellent authority. If so, this would be an important admission given statements by IPCC and others that confidence can be attached to the spaghetti squiggles. The validity of this information needs to be determined – perhaps some of the members of the Oxburgh Panel can confirm this to reporters. Perhaps Jones himself will admit the point.

Maybe the Commons Science and Technology Committee can re-convene and find out what the hell was going on with the Oxburgh “inquiry”.

Read More -
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Liberals Gone Wild: 4th International Conference on Climate Change

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American Spectator: Special Report
Liberals Gone Wild
By Peter Ferrara on 5.19.10 @ 6:08AM

Even though the Constitution does not include the words "separation of church and state," liberals have long treated that concept as a hallowed fundamental doctrine of constitutional law. But no more. With the recent introduction of new Senate cap and trade legislation, ultraliberal supporters Barbara Boxer, John Kerry, Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama and others have now completely abandoned that doctrine in their quest to establish global warming dogma as the official, established religion of the United States.

Under that legislation, everyone in America will be forced to tithe to the new religion through higher prices for electricity, gasoline, natural gas, coal, home heating oil, jet fuel, food (especially meat), and every product produced or transported with such energy sources. Indeed, prices will soar high enough to reduce fossil fuel use and the resulting carbon dioxide emissions back to the per capita levels of 1870!

The legislation will further force Americans to engage in ritual sacrifices to the established religion, slashing back on powerful, roomy cars and SUVS, air conditioning, heat, PCs, laptops, big screen TVs, cell phones, iPods, backyard barbecues, manufacturing jobs, and traditional American prosperity. They will be forced to worship the modern, hip, pagan dogma with smaller "carbon footprints." If they do not profess their true belief, they will be shouted out of public life as troglodyte "deniers," just as those who did not faithfully maintain membership in the established Church of England were disqualified from holding public office.

But if they do faithfully follow the global warming catechism of cap and trade, they will be rewarded with the eternal salvation of a reduction in the projected rise of global temperatures of 0.2 degrees Fahrenheit by 2050, based on the UN's own climate models. Hallelujah! Praise the AlGore!

Given Climategate, all the other recent revelations discrediting the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and the emerging modern science falsifying the notion of man-caused global warming, the continued fevered embrace of costly cap and trade legislation by Washington's ultraliberals can only be considered faith-based wilding out. The lack of scientific grounding for such policies was made clear by the just completed Fourth International Conference on Climate Change sponsored by the Heartland Institute in Chicago.

Reconsidering the Science and Economics

The conference was attended by over 800 participants from 20 countries worldwide. In sharp contrast to the ritual denunciations of those who will not believe by the High Priests of Global Warming, the conference included careful scientific presentations by such speakers as Richard Lindzen, Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Sciences in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at MIT; S. Fred Singer, Professor Emeritus of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia and the founder of the National Weather Satellite Service; Habibullo Abdussamatov, head of the Space Research Laboratory at the Pulkovo Observatory in Russia; J. Scott Armstrong, Professor at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania; Nils-Axel Morner, head of the Department of Paleogeophysics & Geodynamics at Stockholm University; Roy Spencer, U.S. Science Team Leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for EOS (AMSR-E) flying on NASA's Aqua satellite, and formerly a senior scientist for climate studies at NASA; Patrick Michaels, Research Professor of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia for 30 years and past President of the American Association of State Climatologists; Willie Soon, astrophysicist and geoscientist at the Solar, Stellar and Planetary Sciences Division of the Center for Astrophysics; David Douglass, Professor of Physics at the University of Rochester; Don Easterbrook, Professor of Geology at Western Washington University; Gabriel Calzada Alvarez, Associate Professor of Economics in the Environmental Science Faculty at King Juan Carlos University in Spain, and many others.

Heartland invited as well dozens of the most ardent advocates of the theory of man-caused global warming, but all but two refused to attend, not because they don't think they can defend their views in scientific debate, but because High Priests don't entertain doubt about their theological teachings.

The Collapsing Science of Global Warming

These world-class scientists are at least as good as any of the staunch advocates of the theory of man-caused global warming. Those who foolishly succumb to the political propaganda to just ignore them are now woefully behind the curve of the actual global warming debate. These scientists are not challenging the principle that greenhouse gases can cause a greenhouse warming effect, and so those who pontificate on how well established such an effect is in theory are not getting the argument.

The real argument is over how big the greenhouse effect is, most importantly from the carbon dioxide resulting from the burning of fossil fuels. As the intellectually dominating Lindzen indicates, there doesn't seem to be much real dispute that CO2 by itself doesn't have much effect, with even the UN models indicating a doubling of CO2 on its own would produce only an increase in global temperatures of a mere 1 degree centigrade. That should be expected, given that greenhouse gases produced by humans account for only 0.12% of the atmosphere. But the UN modelers reach potentially catastrophic warming by presuming "positive feedbacks" due to atmospheric water vapor and clouds that greatly increase the warming ultimately resulting from increasing CO2.

But what the work of Lindzen and the other top scientists at the Heartland conference has been increasingly demonstrating is that instead of positive feedback effects increasing warming, the impact of water vapor and clouds is more likely to produce "negative feedbacks" offsetting the small original increase caused by CO2. They argue that the greenhouse warming causes an increase in cloud cover and water vapor at altitudes that would reflect solar radiation back out to space before it gets trapped within the earth's atmosphere, leaving little or no effect on global temperatures.

The rest of the body of scientific evidence is increasingly consistent with this Lindzen/Singer led view rather than the man-caused global warming view. The temperature record even as we have it (revealed as faulty by Climategate) does not show temperatures rising with rising CO2, but rather a pattern of periodically rising and falling temperatures consistent with the natural causes emphasized by the prevailing refuseniks at the Heartland Conference. That record shows an increase in temperatures from the 1920s to the 1940s, with a roughly reversing decline from the 1940s to the late 1970s. Temperatures then rose from the late 1970s to the late 1990s, giving rise to the global warming scare, but since then they have been declining with perhaps accelerating force.

Rather than following consistently rising CO2 emissions and accumulations, this temperature pattern follows the variations of natural causes such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), El Niño effects, and sunspot patterns. The PDO reflects the circulation of colder water currents from the deeper ocean to the surface, which changes surface water temperatures from warm to cold, only to be warmed by the sun again, every 20 to 30 years. Such changes in Pacific surface temperatures, along with changing sunspot activity which may correlate with PDO changes, can explain the rising global temperatures of a couple of tenths of a degree or so from the 1920s to the 1940s, as well as the reversing decline from the 1940s to the 1970s, the again reversing increase from the 1970s to the 1990s, with an assist from the spiking El Niño of 1998, and then the reversing and accelerating decline since then.

This natural causes explanation debunks the fundamental argument methodology of the UN IPCC reports, which is surprisingly weak on its face once you dig it out from deep within the voluminous reports. That basic argument is that the warming trend that was supposedly documented by the reports can't be explained by anything other than man-caused global warming. QED (not). The upshot of the Lindzen/Singer counterrevolution is that the warming trend, such as it is, is adequately explained by the natural causes.

Still another developing problem for the global warming theory is that the accumulating temperature data in recent years is not consistent with the predictions of the UN climate models, and the difference is growing larger and larger. The global warming advocates tried to explain this away by speculating about possible temporary negative feedbacks, perhaps from man-caused emissions of atmospheric aerosols, blocking out the greenhouse warming for a time. But the implausibility of never proved, "temporary," negative feedbacks giving way then to positive feedbacks powerful enough to cause catastrophic warming made the global warming alarmists sound like pre-Copernican astronomers still trying to explain that the planets revolve around the Earth in their temporarily reverse elliptical orbits. The actual data is again far better explained by the natural causes.

The natural causes counterargument also explains another major developing anomaly. The UN's own climate models all predict that man-caused global warming would be revealed by a "fingerprint" in atmospheric temperature patterns, involving a "hotspot" in the troposphere portion of the atmosphere above the tropics. A few years ago, new data from satellites and weather balloons in closer study of the issue revealed that the predicted hotspot was not there. No hotspot, no fingerprint, no man-caused global warming. Game over. The lack of the hotspot is again consistent with the natural causes theory of global warming.

One of the chief medicine men of global warming, Ben Santer, tried to counter this with another, increasingly typical, global warming fudge, recalculating and sharply expanding the error margins of the UN models, and then concluding that the results of those models were "not inconsistent" with the actual observed atmospheric results. But the natural causes advocates at the Heartland Conference came back with the answer that models with possible error variations wide enough to include no hotspot at all were not producing statistically meaningful results. Notice, moreover, that Santer's answer did not involve showing there was a hotspot. It involved the argument that no hotspot was needed for this theology after all. But that leaves us at this point with far more evidence for the Resurrection than for man caused global warming.

Lindzen's latest work further refutes the man caused global warming hypothesis. Solar radiation increasingly trapped inside the Earth's atmospheric greenhouse to cause global warming should mean a decline in solar radiation reflected from Earth back out to space. But the recently published results of a long-term Lindzen project involving satellite measurements shows no decline in such reflected solar radiation. Lindzen argues that this shows some negative feedbacks are offsetting any significant global warming greenhouse effect. This, again, would be consistent with varying global warming due to natural causes.

Several of the scientific presentations at the Heartland Conference went on to warn that the natural causes portend a continuing period of colder, declining temperatures rather than global warming. These include the PDO, which reversed to a cold trend in the last decade that can be expected to go on for 20 to 30 years. This would take us back to the declining temperatures of the 1940s to the 1970s, if not the more severe decline of 1880 to 1915. Then there is the extended period of little or no sunspot activity, which presages a return to the even colder period of the Daulton Minimum from 1790 to 1820, or even to the Maunder Minimum of the Little Ice Age itself in the 17th century. Abdussamatov representing Russian research at the conference argued, in fact, that another Little Ice Age would start as soon as 2014. Easterbrook pointed out that during the past million years of geologic history, the Earth has suffered 8 full blown, 100,000-year ice ages, punctuated by warmer interglacial periods like the current one, lasting 12,000 to 13,000 years. Except that the time since the last Ice Age is now 16,000 years.

Scientists Who Want To Be Politicians

While this long-term scientific debate was raging, Climategate exploded last November. That affair involved the public exposure of more than 1,000 hacked emails from the computer of Dr. Phil Jones, head of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in Britain, a central repository for the global temperature record used by the UN's IPCC. Those emails involved private conversations among the top scientists in the U.N.'s global warming crusade.

Those conversations reveal these supposedly scientific knights in shining armor behaving not as objective scientists, but as activists or missionaries for their environmentalist views, hiding, manipulating, and even destroying data, intimidating scientific journals not to publish scientific papers with contrary arguments, breaking laws requiring data disclosure, personally disparaging those with alternative views, and, in one celebrated remark, even threatening to "beat the crap" out of one particularly effective critic. As Reinhold Huttl, President of the German Academy of Science and Engineering, explained to the European magazine Der Spiegel last month, what Climategate shows is "more and more scientists who want to be politicians."

The Climategate revelations then led the European media to examine more closely the latest IPCC report claiming to demonstrate the scientific foundation for man caused global warming. That led to further cascading revelations of wild exaggerations, phony claims, and bogus citations, particularly regarding melting glaciers and polar ice caps, rising sea levels, droughts, hurricanes, and other supposedly harmful effects of global warming.

Unfortunately, little of this was covered by the Democrat party controlled, so-called, mainstream media in the U.S. When it was mentioned, it was whitewashed with unjustified comments that the basic science of global warming has not changed. The reality of the debate discussed above shows how misleading such supposed "reporting" is. Try to warn your friends and family. You will have no idea of what is going on in the real world if you just read and watch the "mainstream media." It regularly exhibits the same problem as revealed by Climategate, supposed news reporters who want to be politicians.

The scientific upshot of Climategate is that the UN scientists had collaborated to exaggerate the land-based record of temperature increases since the late 1970s, dropping out weather station reports from colder climates around the world, failing to account for urban heat island effects correctly, splicing in mismatched data from proxies and real world observations, and producing historical temperature records (the so-called "hockey stick") that left out the Medieval Warm Period and subsequent Little Ice Age so thoroughly documented in geological records. This explains another data anomaly, the increasing disparity between the satellite record of global temperatures showing much smaller temperature increases since the late '70s, and the land-based record that Jones and company manipulated.

Most shocking, in their zeal to prevent disclosure of their data, so contrary to the true scientific method, Jones and his colleagues have apparently now "lost" the raw temperature data underlying their land-based temperature record, so it cannot be replicated by anyone else, as in the true scientific method. Indeed, Jones now claims he cannot reproduce the "homogenization" methodology he used to massage that raw data into a global temperature record. As Peter Webster, meteorologist at the Georgia Institute of Technology, told Der Spiegel, "It's as if a chef was no longer able to cook his dishes because he lost his recipe." With similar problems in the records of the other two official sources of land-based temperature records, those records are now scientifically worthless unless they can be reconstructed from scratch. The satellite record is now the only scientifically reliable source for global temperature trends.

Getting to the Bottom of Global Warming

Too many people are naïve about the UN and its underlying motives. They recognize that commercial interests seeking private profits are self-interested and untrustworthy regarding possible global warming. But they fail to see that the UN has its own vested interest in the cause of global warming, which can be used to justify massively increased powers and resources for the UN, maybe even global taxes and global government. That is why the UN mandate of the IPCC is not to investigate the possibility of manmade global warming, but to validate it.

The UN has repeatedly demonstrated that it is a corrupt, untrustworthy institution that cannot be trusted with the responsibility of global warming. What is needed is for the American government, not under the current power grasping Administration but under the new Administration in 2013, to appoint a Team B of global warming investigators to document and report to the American people and the whole world alternative views on manmade global warming. That Team B can be led by a leading top scientist like Richard Lindzen, and should include pathbreaking, independent, climate scientists from around the world, as found at the Heartland Conference.

Peter Ferrara is director of entitlement and budget policy at the Institute for Policy Innovation, a policy advisor to the Heartland Institute, a senior fellow at the Social Security Institute, and general counsel of the American Civil Rights Union. He served in the White House Office of Policy Development under President Reagan, and as Associate Deputy Attorney General of the United States under the first President Bush. He is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School.
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