IPCC bias exposed yet again

17 May, 2010 by

Anything goes if we say so

The UK Telegraph reports that Rajendra Pachauri has “defended the use of grey literature” in the IPCC’s reports. As long as it supports the IPCC’s pre-conceived conclusion of man-made warming, that is. Because whenever grey literature challenges the consensus, the knee-jerk response is “but it isn’t peer-reviewed!”. Hands up who can spot the hypocrisy there?

The head of the UN’s climate change panel has defended the use of unproven science to justify climate change by saying the “grey literature” cannot be ignored.

…

In a hearing at the InterAcademy Council, an organisation of the world’s science academies which is conducting an independent review of the processes and procedures of the IPCC, Dr Pachauri described the inclusion of the glacier claim as “human failure” which should not have happened. [No it wasn’t, it was deliberately put in to “pressure policymakers”, see here – Ed]

But the IPCC’s chairman said there was a need to use information which was not from peer-reviewed scientific journals, because in some places that was the only research that had been done.

He said the media and other sections of society had misunderstood the role of such information, labelling it grey literature, “as if it was some form of grey muddied water flowing down the drains”.

Dr Pachauri said academic work being done by bodies including the International Energy Agency, the World Bank, national governments and charities “cannot be ignored” [all backing the alarmist view, of course – Ed], but had to be closely examined [yeah, right – Ed] to make sure it was robust. (source)

And the IPCC was also very keen to use one particular journal that was unpublished at the time the report was finalised:

It was so impressed by one edition of the academic journal Climatic Change that it cited 16 of the 21 papers published that month. The journal editors should take a bow. When three-quarters of a single issue of your publication is relied on by a Nobel-winning report, you’re doing something right.

Except for one small problem. The issue in question – May 2007 – didn’t exist yet when the IPCC wrote its report. Moreover, none of the research papers eventually published in that issue had been finalized prior to the IPCC’s cutoff date. (source)

But hey, who cares? When an organisation and its chairman are so politically and financially motivated to come up with evidence to support a pre-conceived conclusion, anything goes. Yet it is on the advice of this organisation that governments around the world are basing their climate policies. Climate madness.

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William Kininmonth: open letter to Tony Abbott

16 May, 2010 by

The fate of a sceptic in Kruddistan

You may recall the outrage earlier this week when Tony Abbott dared to suggest that school students should be “sceptical”. That will never do. Indoctrination with alarmist climate dogma is the only thing that will please the headbangers (see earlier story here). William Kininmonth, meteorologist, writes an open letter to Tony Abbott in defence of his comments:

The IPCC alarmist claim that Earth’s temperature has been steady for the last 10,000 years but this view is at odds with historical and archaeological evidence.

  1. Hannibal took his army and elephants across the Alps about 200BC in winter!
  2. Julius Caesar, about 50BC conquered Gaul and, after building a bridge across the Rhine River, waged war on the Germanic tribes; he and his army withdrew across the Rhine and dismantled the bridge. The Rhine River acted as a natural barrier for nearly 500 years but as the Roman Empire in Gaul was disintegrating the Vandals crossed the Rhine in the 5th century AD. The vandals did not build bridges but walked across the frozen Rhine River in winter.
  3. Greenland was settled by Vikings and by the 1100s there were more than 3,000 settlements. As the Little Ice Age advanced so the Greenland settlements were disbanded and the last was known to have perished about 1550AD, a century before the coldest of the Little Ice Age.
  4. For 300 years Earth has been recovering from the Little Ice Age. Mountain glaciers have retreated and high mountain passes of the Alps have opened. Archaeologists have identified artefacts from various eras corresponding with warming and cooling, and retreat and advance of mountain glaciers.

The arguments of the IPCC alarmists rely on an unchanging temperature record prior to industrialisation (that is, no Greco Roman warm period, no cold of the Dark Ages, no Medieval Warm Period and no Little Ice Age) to support their storyline of anthropogenic global warming. They claim that the warming of the past 100 years is unprecedented and therefore must be due to increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide.

Read it here.

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Claims that New Zealand temperature record fudged

16 May, 2010 by

Warming exaggerated?

Surface temperature records are highly susceptible to adjustment. There are all kinds of valid reasons why the “raw” thermometer data may need adjustment, such as the relocation of a station, or urbanisation, but it’s curious, isn’t it, that in many of the data sets the corrections almost always increase any warming trend. This is highly suspect, given that urban warming, for example, is more likely to artificially increase temperatures, requiring a downward adjustment.

An article in Quadrant Online claims that whilst New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) has been plugging a 20th century temperature rise of 0.92˚C, the raw data shows nothing of the sort. ACM reported on this back in November of last year (see here) and here are the graphs of adjusted vs. raw data:

Raw temperature data

After adjustments

Barry Brill, chairman of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition, takes up the story:

The official temperature record is wrong. The instrumental raw data correctly show that New Zealand average temperatures have remained remarkably steady at 12.6°C +/- 0.5°C for a century and a half. NIWA’s doctoring of that data is indefensible.

The NSS [NIWA Seven Station series] is the outcome of a subjective data series produced by a single Government scientist, whose work has never been peer-reviewed or subjected to proper quality checking. It was smuggled into the official archive without any formal process. It is undocumented and sans metadata, and it could not be defended in any court of law. Yet the full line-up of NIWA climate scientists has gone to extraordinary lengths to support this falsified warming and to fiercely attack its critics.

For nearly 15 years, the 20th-century warming trend of 0.92°C derived from the NSS has been at the centre of NIWA official advice to all tiers of New Zealand Government – Central, Regional and Local. It informs the NIWA climate model. It is used in sworn expert testimony in Environment Court hearings. Its dramatic graph graces the front page of NIWA’s printed brochures and its website.

Internationally, the NSS 0.92°C trend is a foundation stone for the Australia-New Zealand Chapter in the IPCC’s Third and Fourth Assessment Reports. In 1994, it was submitted to HadleyCRUT, so as to influence the vast expanses of the South Pacific in the calculation of globally-averaged temperatures.

…

Over the entire series, a total of 515 years were adjusted. Of these, no less than 467 years contributed to an upward-sloping trend line. So, by year, 90% of the NIWA corrections leaned in the same direction.The ratio of 9 out of 10 adjustments being ‘helpful to the hypothesis’ could surely not have occurred in the absence of bias.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise. NIWA has already made up its mind on climate change, and clearly, the debate is over in their view:

Already decided the answer?

The link then takes you to a page which parrots the IPCC line. But whenever this kind of news breaks, one has to wonder why, if the evidence for “global warming” is so strong, and the science so settled, why the need to exaggerate?

Read it here.

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Idiotic Comment of the Day: Jessica Watson

15 May, 2010 by

Slips in global warming…

Celebrity not-quite-round-the-world-officially heroine Jessica Watson manages to slip in “global warming” [shurely “climate change”? – Ed] when speaking of her exploits on her blog last week (as reported by SBS):

“It’s a shame that my voyage won’t be recognised by a few organisations because I’m under 18, but it really doesn’t worry me,” Watson wrote on her blog last week.

“I mean there’s millions, properly [sic] billions of people who still don’t believe in global warming, so I’m more than happy to settle for a few people going against the tide and declaring that mine hasn’t been an official circumnavigation.” (source)

See the original blog post here.

UPDATE: She did smack down Kevin Rudd’s patronising flannel, so she’s not all bad!

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Academy dares question consensus – alarmists go ape

15 May, 2010 by

Stick to your guns

Another example of alarmists desperate to shut down debate on climate. The Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (home page here) has circulated a draft two-page policy statement on climate change, the Canberra Times reports.

A copy obtained by the Canberra Times reveals the academy “does not accept that the science is settled” and notes many scientists believe “climate changes are nothing unusual, based on past geological records.”

Shock horror. It’s barely a sceptical view at all. More like a neutral view on the climate debate, and one on which even many pro-AGW scientists would have to agree. But it’s not a hysterical endorsement of the alarmist consensus, and the warmist headbangers can’t let that happen, so rent-an-alarmist Will Steffen gets in on the act:

Australian National University climate change institute director Professor Will Steffen said the draft was “a very poor, confused and sloppy document that obviously still needs a lot of work to improve its credibility.”

Translation: it has no credibility unless it peddles the alarmist nonsense of the IPCC. And the best bit of all, said without any hint of irony:

“It’s obvious someone involved in drafting this is showing their hand. This is not an objective document, and would appear to be politically motivated.“

[Editor of ACM falls of chair in fit of hysterical laughing at the blatant hypocrisy of that statement.]

And because this is the Canberra Times and because it is written by Rosslyn Beeby, the article then wheels out a dozen alarmists to say the same thing in equally tedious fashion. Message to ATSE: do not be intimidated by this kind of playground bullying tactics. Stand your ground, and stand up for scientific integrity and impartiality, not the quasi-religious dogma of the warm-brigade.

(NB. This article is not available online [why not, I wonder? – Ed], and was sourced from Warwick Hughes, with thanks.)

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"Non-Scientist" magazine's special report on "denial"

15 May, 2010 by


How "denial" is portrayed in Non Scientist

Note that they don’t devote a special report to investigating dodgy scientific practices in climate research, such as deleting emails, fudging data and skewing the peer-review process by intimidating journals. Oh no. That’s all fine and dandy. Instead, their special report sets up a long line of straw men about “denial” and then proceeds to blow them over:

From climate change to vaccines, evolution to flu, denialists are on the march. Why are so many people refusing to accept what the evidence is telling them? Over the next 10 pages we look at the phenomenon in depth. What is denial? What attracts people to it? How does it start, and how does it spread? And finally, how should we respond to it? (source)

And we don’t even have to look very far to see that this will be the usual tedious rant against climate realists:

A climate denier has a position staked out in advance, and sorts through the data employing “confirmation bias” – the tendency to look for and find confirmatory evidence for pre-existing beliefs and ignore or dismiss the rest. (source)

As if the consensus scientists are completely impartial and free-thinking, when their next funding cheque depends on alarmist research that grabs media attention? Or what about the fact that the IPCC’s sole purpose is to find evidence for a pre-conceived conclusion, that of man-made warming, and they will therefore ignore huge chunks of research because they are inconvenient? That sentence above describes the IPCC precisely. And, inevitably, the comparisons with tobacco follow:

In 1972, Tobacco Institute vice-president Fred Panzer outlined his industry’s “brilliantly executed” defence strategy. A key tactic was “creating doubt about the health charge without actually denying it” while “encouraging objective scientific research.”

“Objective scientific research”: those words would almost make you believe that Panzer was talking about objective science. But when doubt is your goal, the misuse of language is just another way to confuse the public.

Where tobacco led the way, coal and chemicals followed. And, of course, the fossil fuel industry has been working overtime – and with shocking success – creating doubt about climate change. (source)

The fact that governments and environmental groups have thrown billions of dollars at shonky science to “prove” man-made warming appears to have escaped the author of that little rant, who happens to be Richard Littlemore of DeSmogBlog, the warmists’ nirvana. Need I say more?

There is one article (out of six) that correctly claims that denial is a cheap slur:

The concept of denialism is itself inflexible, ideological and intrinsically anti-scientific. It is used to close down legitimate debate by insinuating moral deficiency in those expressing dissident views, or by drawing a parallel between popular pseudoscience movements and the racist extremists who dispute the Nazi genocide of Jews. (source)

But to be honest it’s lost in the noise… (h/t WUWT)

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Garbage squared: Global warming to "kill a fifth of all lizards"

14 May, 2010 by

It is an ex-lizard, it has ceased to be

This is the kind of nonsense you get when you pile one computer model on top of another (hopeless) computer model. So our diligent researchers took the outputs from the IPCC’s models (which drastically overstate the climate sensitivity and hence response to CO2) which predict catastrophic warming, and plugged those numbers into an extinction model for lizards. So we have Garbage In, followed by Garbage Out, which becomes the next Garbage In and finally Garbage Out again. In other words, we have “garbage squared”.

Global warming could kill off as many as a fifth of the world’s lizards by 2080, with potentially devastating consequences for ecosystems around the world, according to a new study.

Researchers who conducted a major survey of lizard populations worldwide, which appears today in the journal Science, say lizards appear to be especially sensitive to the effects of climate change and are dying off at an alarming rate.

The loss of the lizard populations could wreak havoc with ecosystems in which they are a crucial part of the food chain, since they are important prey for many birds, snakes, and voracious predators of insects.

The biologists in the study ruled out factors other than global warming as being responsible for the rapid decrease in the lizard population.

“We did a lot of work on the ground to validate the model and show that the extinctions are the result of climate change,” says Dr Barry Sinervo, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California at Santa Cruz.

“None of these are due to habitat loss. These sites are not disturbed in any way, and most of them are in national parks or other protected areas,” he says.

The scientists worked up models based on predicted probabilities of local extinction showing the likelihood of species extinction was estimated to be 6% by 2050 and 20% by 2080.

Read it here.

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Become a fan of ACM on FaceBook!

14 May, 2010 by

Now on FaceBook!

Become a fan of ACM on FaceBook! Click the link below and click “Like”:

ACM Fan Page

Now you will receive ACM posts in your news feed every day.

There’s also a new button in the left hand column with a link to the Facebook page.

See you there!

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Chris Uhlmann on Rudd's ETS about-turn

14 May, 2010 by

Refreshing

Chris Uhlmann is a rarity in ABC circles – a journalist who isn’t a global warming ecotard with an axe to grind. So it is refreshing to read his critique of Kevin Rudd’s volte face on climate change:

The nude ball is well known in cricket circles.

It’s a derogatory term applied to deliveries that don’t spin, swing or seam. With the bowler doing nothing to defeat the batsman nude balls usually disappear over the boundary and the fielding captain is forced to change the attack.

The Government’s defence for its new position on climate change is the nude ball of politics. After campaigning for three years on the urgent need for an emissions trading scheme as the central weapon for reducing Australia’s carbon footprint it abruptly shelved the idea because it all got too hard.

The argument for delay is that it couldn’t get agreement in the Senate, and that international progress is too slow.

The Prime Minister summed up the case for delay in his recent exchange with The 7:30 Report’s Kerry O’Brien. [See ACM’s comment on this here – Ed]

“We believe that an emissions trading scheme is the most effective and cheapest way of getting there, [Tony Abbott] has rejected that position despite the Liberal Party having formally embraced it,” Kevin Rudd said.

“I now have to confront the reality of that is what he’s done… the progress on global action has been slower than any of us would like. That is why we’ve announced a decision that we would not seek to reintroduce this legislation until the end of the Kyoto commitment period and on the basis that global action has been adequate.”

Abandoning the idea because of Senate obstructionism ignores the fact that the Prime Minister could seek to have both houses of Parliament dissolved and then put the matter to the people at an election. If he won that election he could then put his Carbon Pollution Reduction bill to the vote at a joint sitting.

It’s not something anyone would do lightly but it is something you would do if you believed that climate change was the great moral and economic challenge of our age.

Read it here.

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Daily Bayonet – GW Hoax Weekly Roundup

14 May, 2010 by

Skewering the clueless

As always, a great read!

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