Climategate The Crutape Letters

The Climategate scandal covered from beginning to end--from 'Hide the Decline' to the current day. Written by two authors who were on the scene--Steven Mosher and Tom Fuller--Climategate takes you behind that scene and shows what happened and why.

For those who have heard that the emails were taken out of context--we provide that context and show it is worse when context is provided.

For those who have heard that this is a tempest in a teacup--we show why it will swamp the conventional wisdom on climate change.

And for those who have heard that this scandal is just 'boys being boys'--well, boy. It's as seamy as what happened on Wall Street.

Steven M Mosher, born in Grand Rapids Michigan, graduated Northwestern University and attended UCLA for graduate studies in literature. He later joined Northrop Aircraft where he worked as an threat analyst and director of analysis until transitioning to the commercial world in 1995 when he joined Creative Labs as a director of marketing and product development. Since 1995 he has specialized in the development of new consumer technologies such as 3D graphics, web cameras, Mp3 players and a variety of wireless devices. Since 2007 he has worked in the open source community and has been active leader in the effort to get open access to the data and code underlying climate science.

Thomas Fuller was born in Denver Colorado and currently lives in San Francisco. Trained by the U.S. Navy in electronics and cryptography, he has been writing about technology ever since, usually market research reports with exciting titles like 'Project Global Market for Infusion Pumps 2009-2014.' This is a lot of fun by comparison.

Publication Date: Jan 14 2010
ISBN/EAN13: 1450512437 / 9781450512435
Page Count: 186
Binding Type: US Trade Paper
Trim Size: 7" x 10"
Language: English Color: Black and White
Related Categories: Science / Environmental Science

Here’s more:

Now climate-change scientists say ozone hole stops global warming
Published Date: 26 January 2010 By Jenny Fyall
http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/news/Now-climatechange-scientists-say-ozone.6012558.jp

IT WAS once regarded as one of the biggest environmental threats to the planet.

Now there is mounting evidence that the ozone hole above the Antarctic has been protecting the southern hemisphere against global warming.

The bizarre side-effect of ozone depletion has been studied by scientists at the University of Leeds.

The ozone hole, caused by chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) released into the atmosphere, is now steadily closing, but the research has suggested this could actually increase warming.

Scientists discovered brighter summertime clouds had formed over the area below the hole, which reflect more of the sun’s powerful rays.

“These clouds have acted like a mirror to the sun’s rays, reflecting the sun’s heat away from the surface to the extent that warming from rising carbon emissions has effectively been cancelled out in this region during the summertime,” said Professor Ken Carslaw, who co-authored the research.

Furore over other global -warming ‘truths’ that have turned out to be less than scientific
http://news.scotsman.com/climatechange/Furore-over-other-global-warming.6012546.jp

When the ozone hole seals, he expects an acceleration in warming in that region, he added.

During the 1980s, there were widespread warnings that UV exposure caused by the depleting ozone layer would have devastating impacts ranging from a rise in skin cancer, to damage to plants, to reduction of plankton.

The Leeds team found that beneath the Antarctic ozone hole, high-speed winds whip up large amounts of sea spray, which contains millions of salt particles.

This spray then forms clouds, and the increased spray over the last two decades has made these clouds brighter and more reflective – helping to keep global warming in check.

Prof Carslaw described the phenomenon as an “unexpected and complex climate feedback”.

He highlighted that atmospheric impacts on the climate were “inordinately complicated” and it was not unusual for unexpected consequences to be revealed.

“It’s a bit like the El Nino affecting weather in the UK even though it’s in the Pacific,” he said.

He said the findings of the research did not mean the ozone hole should be kept open.

“You can’t correct two wrongs in that way,” he said. “The ozone hole was potentially a major catastrophe for the planet that was only stopped by the Montreal Protocol, so we can’t go back on that.”

Instead, he said it was essential for carbon emissions to be slashed in the same way that CFCs – the ozone-depleting substances in aerosols – were cut under the 1987 Montreal Protocol.

The Leeds team made its prediction using a global model of aerosols and two decades of meteorological data.

The research, which will be published in Geophysical Research Letters online, was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council and the Academy of Finland.

bttt

Americans are figuring out this scandal.

Monday, January 25, 2010
Pew Poll: Global Warming Ranks “bottom of the public’s list of priorities”

A new poll released today from the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press shows that global warming ranks dead last on a list of priorities of Americans. From the report:

“Dealing with global warming ranks at the bottom of the public’s list of priorities; just 28% consider this a top priority, the lowest measure for any issue tested in the survey. Since 2007, when the item was first included on the priorities list, dealing with global warming has consistently ranked at or near the bottom. Even so, the percentage that now says addressing global warming should be a top priority has fallen 10 points from 2007, when 38% considered it a top priority. Such a low ranking is driven in part by indifference among Republicans: just 11% consider global warming a top priority, compared with 43% of Democrats and 25% of independents.”

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs

Here’s more:

The dam is cracking
Andrew Neil | 09:42 UK time, Tuesday, 26 January 2010
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/dailypolitics/andrewneil/2010/01/the_dam_is_cracking.html#comments

The bloggers are all over the UN IPCC 2007 report, the bible of global warming, which predicted all manner of dire outcomes for our planet unless we got a grip on rising temperatures — and it seems to be crumbling in some pretty significant areas.

The dam began to crack towards the end of last year when leaked e-mails from one of the temples of global warming, the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, suggested that a few sleights of hand were being deployed to hide facts inconvenient to the global warming case. An official investigation into these e-mails is on-going.

But the flood gates really opened after the IPCC had to withdraw its claim that the Himalayan glaciers would likely all have melted by 2035, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8468358.stm maybe even sooner.

This turned out to have no basis in scientific fact, even though everything the IPCC produces is meant to be rigorously peer-reviewed, but simply an error recycled by the WWF, which the IPCC swallowed whole.

The truth, as seen by India’s leading expert in glaciers, is that “Himalayan glaciers have not in anyway exhibited, especially in recent years, an abnormal annual retreat.”

So the 40% of the world’s population that relies on the seven major river systems supplied by these glaciers can sleep a little more soundly in the knowledge that their water won’t run out in 25 years after all.

Then at the weekend another howler was exposed. The IPCC 2007 report claimed that global warming was leading to an increase in extreme weather, such as hurricanes and floods. Like its claims about the glaciers, this was also based on an unpublished report which had not been subject to scientific scrutiny — indeed several experts warned the IPCC not to rely on it.

The author, who didn’t actually finish his work until a year after the IPCC had used his research, has now repudiated what he sees has its misuse of his work.
His conclusion: “There is insufficient evidence to claim a statistical link between global warming and catastrophe loss.”

Yet it was because of this — now unproved — link that the British government signed up to a $100 billion transfer from rich to poor countries to help them cope with a supposed increase in floods and hurricanes.

It was also central to many of the calculations in Britain’s Stern Report, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6098362.stm which might now need to be substantially revised.

Now after Climate-gate, Glacier-gate and Hurricane-gate — how many “gates” can one report contain? — comes Amazon-gate. The IPCC claimed that up to 40% of the Amazonian forests were risk from global warming and would likely be replaced by “tropical savannas” if temperatures continued to rise.

This claim is backed up by a scientific-looking reference but on closer investigation turns out to be yet another non-peer reviewed piece of work from the WWF. Indeed the two authors are not even scientists or specialists on the Amazon: one is an Australian policy analyst, the other a freelance journalist for the Guardian and a green activist.

The WWF has yet to provide any scientific evidence that 40% of the Amazon is threatened by climate change — as opposed to the relentless work of loggers and expansion of farms.

Every time I have questioned our politicians about global warming they have fallen back on the mantra that “2,500 scientists can’t be wrong”, referring to the vast numbers supposedly behind the IPCC consensus.

But it is now clear that the majority of those involved in the IPCC process are not scientists at all but politicians, bureaucrats, NGOs and green activists.

They may — or may not — still be right or wrong but what has become clear in the past couple of months is that, contrary to what many leaders have claimed, the science as promulgated by the IPCC is very far from “settled” and that there are important questions still to ask. The mainstream media has been slow to do this.

The bloggers, too easily dismissed in the past, have set the pace with some real scoops — and some of the mainstream media is now rushing to catch up.

Rajendra Pachauri says he will not resign - BBC News (26 January) VIDEO: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/dailypolitics/andrewneil/2010/01/the_dam_is_cracking.html#comments

The sceptics may be about to get their first scalp. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8479795.stm Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chairman often wrongly described in the media as the world’s leading climate scientist (he’s actually a railway engineer), at first attacked those who questioned the IPCC’s alarming glacier prediction as “arrogant” and believers in “voodoo science”.

He’s since had to retract the prediction but can’t quite manage an apology — and is now under mounting pressure in his Indian homeland to resign.

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