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Summary 1. Reconstructions of temperature over the past 1000 years have been an highly visible part of IPCC presentations to the public. CRU has been extremely influential in IPCC reconstructions through: coauthorship, the use of CRU chronologies, peer review and IPCC participation. To my knowledge, there are no 1000-year reconstructions which are truly "independent" of CRU influence. In my opinion, CRU has manipulated and/or withheld data with an effect on the research record. The manipulation includes (but is not limited to) arbitrary adjustment ("bodging"), cherry picking and deletion of adverse data. The problem is deeply rooted in the sense that...

Spurious Warming in the Jones U.S. Temperatures Since 1973INTRODUCTION As I discussed in my last post, I’m exploring the International Surface Hourly (ISH) weather data archived by NOAA to see how a simple reanalysis of original weather station temperature data compares to the Jones CRUTem3 land-based temperature dataset.While the Jones temperature analysis relies upon the GHCN network of ‘climate-approved’ stations whose number has been rapidly dwindling in recent years, I’m using original data from stations whose number has been actually growing over time. I use only stations operating over the entire period of record so there are no spurious...

Just in case anyone out there has missed it, there is one of those landmark posts on Watts Up this weekend. Judith Curry tried to explain how Climate Scientists need to rebuild trust, and made the mistake of using the “Denier” insult (even though she thinks of it as just a label, rather than a perjorative term). She is still trying to blame poor communication or poor strategies to explain why Climate Science is looking so shonky at the moment. Then Willis Eschenbach diplomatically fries that idea, and points out that the only way to regain trust is not to...

The news from sunny Bali that there is to be an international investigation into the conduct of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and its chairman Dr Rajendra Pachauri would have made front-page headlines a few weeks back. But while Scotland and North America are still swept by blizzards, in their worst winter for decades, there has been something of a lull in the global warming storm – after three months when the IPCC and Dr Pachauri were themselves battered by almost daily blizzards of new scandals and revelations. And one reason for this lull is that the real...

News headlines vie for attention and it is easy for scientists to grab this attention by linking climate change to the latest extreme weather event or apocalyptic prediction. But in doing so, the public perception of climate change can be distorted. The reality is that extreme events arise when natural variations in the weather and climate combine with long-term climate change. This message is more difficult to get heard. Scientists and journalists need to find ways to help to make this clear without the wider audience switching off.Recent headlines have proclaimed that Arctic summer sea ice has decreased so much...

The 36,000 ember-strong Institute of Physics was asked by the British Parliament to take a look at Climategate and the University of East Anglia's CRU. They weren't asked to evaluate the findings themselves, but to look at whether or not the CRU had been adhering to the scientific method. The institute said unless the released emails and documents were fraudulent, the CRU did not comply with honourable scientific traditions and freedom of information law and the use proxy reconstructions for the basis for the conclusion that 20th century warming is unprecedented. And that's just for a start. The Institute was...

From World Climate Report: Another IPCC Error: Antarctic Sea Ice Increase Underestimated by 50% Figure 1. Trend in Antarctic ice extent, November 1978 through December 2006 (source: Comiso and Nishio, 2008). Several errors have been recently uncovered in the 4th Assessment Report (AR4) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). These include problems with Himalayan glaciers, African agriculture, Amazon rainforests, Dutch geography, and attribution of damages from extreme weather events. More seem to turn up daily. Most of these errors stem from the IPCC’s reliance on non-peer reviewed sources... --snip-- We humbly disagree. In fact, the WGI report is...

************************************Greenland Temperatures - last 10,000 years. Are we headed for an ice age? (See below for more detail.) David Lappi is a geologist from Alaska who has sent in a set of beautiful graphs–including an especially prosaic one of the last 10,000 years in Greenland–that he put together himself (and which I’ve copied here at the top).If you wonder where today’s temperature fits in with the grand scheme of time on Earth since the dinosaurs were wiped out, here’s the history. We start with the whole 65 million years, then zoom in, and zoom in again to the last 12,000...

Source: Reuters * Exact causes unknown for lack of warming from 1999-2008 * The underlying reason for cold winter not known * Climate science in focus after email scandal, errors By Gerard Wynn and Alister Doyle LONDON/OSLO, Feb 25 (Reuters) - Climate scientists must do more to work out how exceptionally cold winters or a dip in world temperatures fit their theories of global warming, if they are to persuade an increasingly sceptical public. At stake is public belief that greenhouse gas emissions are warming the planet, and political momentum to act as governments struggle to agree a climate treaty...

World warming unhindered by cold spells: scientists By David Fogarty, Climate Change Correspondent, Asia David Fogarty, Climate Change Correspondent, Asia Thu Feb 25, 1:26 am ET SINGAPORE (Reuters) – The pace of global warming continues unabated, scientists said on Thursday, despite images of Europe crippled by a deep freeze and parts of the United States blasted by blizzards. The bitter cold, with more intense winter weather forecast for March in parts of the United States, have led some to question if global warming has stalled. Understanding the overall trend is crucial for estimating consumption of energy supplies, such as demand...

People have known for 200 years that there’s some link between sunspots and our climate.  In 1800, the astronomer William Herschel didn’t need a climate model, he didn’t even have a calculator — yet he could see that wheat prices rose and fell in time with the sunspot cycle. Since then, people have noticed that rainfall patterns are also linked to sunspots.Sunspots themselves don’t make much difference to us, but they are a sign of how weak or strong the sun’s magnetic field is. This massive solar magnetic field reaches out around the Earth, and it shields us from...

PARIS (AFP) – An iceberg the size of Luxembourg knocked loose from the Antarctic continent earlier this month could disrupt the ocean currents driving weather patterns around the globe, researchers said Thursday. While the impact would not be felt for decades or longer, a slowdown in the production of colder, dense water could result in less temperate winters in the north Atlantic, they said. The 2550 square-kilometre (985 square-mile) block broke off on February 12 or 13 from the Mertz Glacier Tongue, a 160-kilometer spit of floating ice protruding into the Southern Ocean from East Antarctica due south of Melbourne,...

Private industry and governments around the world have spent trillions of dollars in the name of saving our planet from manmade global warming. Academic institutions, think tanks and schools have altered their curricula and agenda to accommodate what was seen as the global warming "consensus." Mounting evidence suggests that claims of manmade global warming might turn out to be the greatest hoax in mankind's history. Immune and hostile to the evidence, President Barack Obama's administration and most of the U.S. Congress sides with Climate Czar Carol Browner, who says, "I'm sticking with the 2,500 scientists. These people have been studying...

The long, hard winter looks like dragging on into March. And if the bitter winds carry on for the next two weeks, there is a very good chance that this winter will turn out to be the coldest across the UK since 1929. The National Trust reports that spring flowers have been set back by up to four weeks compared with recent years, although they expect that when some decent warmth arrives it could unleash a huge burst of flowering. In the latest outbreak of wintry weather, heavy snow swamped much of the South West, Wales, the Midlands and parts...

On the very same day that the EPW minority released a report [PDF] citing “unethical and potentially illegal behavior by some the world's leading climate scientists,” the ruling majority promised “to make policy based on [the same discredited] science.” It was like watching shopkeepers wading through knee-deep water to tape a handwritten “open for business” sign to their cracked and filthy front windows after days of devastating storms. Only the storms in this story carried unusual names. Like Climategate and Glaciergate and Amazongate. And the shopkeepers were named Boxer and Sanders and Whitehouse and Jackson. And what they were selling...

More trouble looms for the IPCC. The body may need to revise statements made in its Fourth Assessment Report on hurricanes and global warming. A statistical analysis of the raw data shows that the claims that global hurricane activity has increased cannot be supported.

It’s been called the “biggest scientific scandal in history.” It has everything to earn Pulitzer consideration: lies and misconduct in high places, political implications, even massive financial transactions that may or may not be legitimate or even legal. It’s big news … as long as you read the Telegraph, the Guardian, the London Times, or even major Indian papers. Read more: http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/climategate-the-worlds-biggest-story-everywhere-but-here/

A few weeks ago, I noted that a trio of House Democrats proposed legislation to curtail the EPA’s war on carbon.Now, Senate Democrats are jumping on the bandwagon. Amazing what an election year, double-digit unemployment, and the Climategate-induced collapse of the global warming cult can do to turn the eco-hysteria tide: Eight Democratic senators from industrial states are challenging the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate pollution blamed for global warming.In a letter written by Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, the lawmakers said the agency lacks the power to restrict greenhouse gases from stationary sources such as power plants,...

Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) today asked the Obama administration to investigate what he called “the greatest scientific scandal of our generation” — the actions of climate scientists revealed by the Climategate Files, and the subsequent admissions by the editors of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report (AR4). Senator Inhofe also called for former Vice President Al Gore to be called back to the Senate to testify. “In [Gore's] science fiction movie, every assertion has been rebutted,” Inhofe said. He believes Vice President Gore should defend himself and his movie before Congress. Just prior to a hearing...

From Fox News, word that the Met Office has circulated a proposal that intends to completely start over with raw surface temperature data in a transparent process. Here’s the proposal from the Met Office metoffice_proposal_022410 (PDF). Unfortunately it is not searchable, as they still seem to be living in the typewriter age, having photoscanned the printed document.I’d feel better about it though if they hadn’t used the word “robust”. Every time I see that word in the context of climate data it makes me laugh. It seems though they already have concluded the effort will find no new information. Given...