By David H. Douglass, Professor of Physics, University of Rochester, New York, and John R. Christy, Distinguished Professor, Atmospheric Science, University of Alabama at Huntsville

• In this article, reprinted from www.americanthinker.org, two eminent Professors reveal just one of the many seamy stories that emerge from the Climategate emails. A prejudiced journal editor conspires with senior IPCC scientists to delay and discredit a paper by four distinguished scientists demonstrating that a central part of the IPCC’s scientific argument is erroneous.

The Climategate emails from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in England have revealed how the normal conventions of the peer-review process appear to have been compromised by a Team of “global warming” scientists, with the willing cooperation of the editor of the International Journal of Climatology, Glenn McGregor.

The Team spent nearly a year preparing and publishing a paper that attempted to rebut a previously published paper in that journal by Douglass, Christy, Pearson and Singer. Our paper, reviewed and accepted in the traditional manner, had shown that the IPCC models that predicted significant “global warming” in fact largely disagreed with the observational data.

We will let the reader judge whether this team effort, revealed in dozens of emails and taking nearly a year, involves inappropriate behavior including (a) unusual cooperation between authors and editor, (b) misstatement of known facts, (c) character assassination, (d) avoidance of traditional scientific give-and-take, (e) using confidential information, (f) misrepresentation (or misunderstanding) of the scientific question posed by us in our paper, (g) withholding data, and more. (more…)

From The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley

• Recently an enquirer wrote to a Doctor of Science who is a true-believer in the “global warming” theory, and drew his attention to some of my conclusions to the effect that the science is not as settled as we are being told. The Doctor replied with an ad-hominem attack on me, but also included some scientific argument. Here, I respond to that argument, giving an outline of the reasons why the official version of the science may be doubtful.

Dear enquirer, – A Doctor of Science has copied to me his email to you about climate change, in which he makes a number of ad-hominem points about me to which I propose not to respond. He also attaches a graph showing global temperature to have risen at a rate of 0.6 C/century since 1880, and an article drawing conclusions from a computer model and from a gravitational-anomaly satellite. To these I shall respond.

I have tried to keep abreast of – and remain skeptical of – scientific reports in the peer-reviewed literature on all sides of the climate argument. I neither believe nor disbelieve anything scientific unless it has been proven or disproven. The notion that an increase of 1 part in 2000 in the proportion of the atmosphere occupied by carbon dioxide will have a significant impact on the climate is coming close to being disproven. (more…)

From The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley in snowy Rannoch, Scotland

My good friends at the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, one of the few sane environmental organizations on the planet, held a well-mannered demonstration in central Copenhagen halfway through the two-week yackfest that has now ended in ignominious failure. They built a wall across a street, and called it the Climate Wall, dividing the rich nations self-indulgent enough to believe in the “global warming” lie from the poorer nations who will be forever imprisoned in poverty if they are not allowed to use as much fossil fuel as they need to combust their way to prosperity and hence to population stability.

But the most interesting thing about the demonstration was the counter-demonstration. Hundreds of chanting enviro-zombs turned out, carrying hammer-and-sickle flags and singing the Internationale. Yes, the hated and now-discarded symbol of Communist tyranny is back – and back in the hands of the Traffic-Light Tendency: the Greens too yellow to admit they’re really Reds.

Some months ago, during a dinner party here in Rannoch, I had been asked what I thought of the then new, fresh, exciting, vibrant, dynamic Obama administration. “Communist!” I had replied. And the assembled Great and Good had had a collective fit of the vapors. “You can’t go around calling people Communist,” they burbled angrily. “That just makes you sound extreme.”

And there, in that typical reply, lies the rub. The extremists have succeeded in labeling anyone who calls them extremists extremist.

(more…)

The head of the UN’s climate change panel – Dr Rajendra Pachauri – is accused of making a fortune from his links with ‘carbon trading’ companies, Christopher Booker and Richard North write.

Source: UK Telegraph

by Christopher Booker and Richard North

[Emphasis and notes added by SPPI]

No one in the world exercised more influence on the events leading up to the Copenhagen conference on global warming than Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and mastermind of its latest report in 2007.

Although Dr Pachauri is often presented as a scientist (he was even once described by the BBC as “the world’s top climate scientist”), as a former railway engineer with a PhD in economics he has no qualifications in climate science at all.

What has also almost entirely escaped attention, however, is how Dr Pachauri has established an astonishing worldwide portfolio of business interests with bodies which have been investing billions of dollars in organisations dependent on the IPCC’s policy recommendations. (more…)

From Dr. Cliff Mass

Scientists who try to publish material indicating that “global warming” owing to manmade causes is either weak or not evident, or who doubt the severity of the problem, are not treated well by some.

I have had some first-hand experience with this. I am known as somewhat of a skeptic regarding “global-warming” effects in the North-West – although I do believe that greenhouse gases are a serious problem in the long run.

A group of us noted that the snowpack in the Cascades was not rapidly melting away, in contrast to publications by some local climate scientists and publicized by Mayor Nickels.

The reaction was intense. One of my colleagues, Mark Albright, who was the first to notice the lack of snowpack loss, was fired as associate State Climatologist. The media went wild – we called it “Snowpackgate”, and it got national attention.

I was told in the hallways to keep quiet about it – the denier types would take advantage of it.

We then wrote a paper on the subject and submitted it to the Journal of Climate. The lead author was Mark Stoelinga. I have published roughly 100 papers in my life, and I have never had problems such as those that we had with this paper. The associate editor was very biased. So were some of the reviewers.

The paper went through four review cycles and it was about to be turned down until we appealed to the editor, who proved to be fair and reasonable.

The paper has now been accepted for publication, but it really revealed to me the bias in the system.

The paper is at -

Poor papers with significant technical problems, but reflecting the “official” line, get published easily, while papers like ours, indicating that “global warming” is weaker or delayed, go through hurdle after hurdle.

Source: Courtesy of Herald Sun

by Andrew Bolt

Al Gore’s claim last week that the Climategate emails were insignificant relied on two main defences. Both are so flagrantly wrong that it’s not enough to say Gore is simply mistaken.

No, Al Gore is a liar.

Last week we showed that the first of his Climategate defences was so preposterously wrong that it was doubtful he had even read the leaked emails he tried to dismiss. You see, five times in two interviews he dismissed the emails as dated documents that were at least 10 years old:

I haven’t read all the e-mails, but the most recent one is more than 10 years old.

In fact, most of the controversial emails, as I showed, were from just the past two years - and the most recent from just last month – November 12, to be precise. (more…)

http://www.alaskadispatch.com/dispatches/news/3334-valdez-socked-in

Valdez, Alaska got more than four inches per hour at the height of the snowstorm that began there Monday and ran through the week. By the time the citizens of Alaska’s only oil port finally caught a break, the snow was piled 5 feet, 8 inches deep.

Yes, you read right.

Five feet, 8 inches; over the head of your average American woman, up the nose of your average American man. The National Weather Service called it record.

History has been made in Washington, DC also.  The snow has already broken the 1 day record for DC.  The old record of 11.5″ on December 17,1932 is now in 2nd place since National Airport has over 15″ with snow still falling.  This storm is now in 6th place all-time and the February 1983 storm total of 16.6″ may yet be eclipsed.

http://www.nbcwashington.com/weather/stories/Todays_Forecast_DC.html

From The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley in Copenhagen

The mountains shall labor, and what will be born? A stupid little mouse. Thanks to hundreds of thousands of US citizens who contacted their elected representatives to protest about the unelected, communistic world government with near-infinite powers of taxation, regulation and intervention that was proposed in early drafts of the Copenhagen Treaty, there is no Copenhagen Treaty. There is not even a Copenhagen Agreement. There is a “Copenhagen Accord”.

The White House spinmeisters spun, and their official press release proclaimed, with more than usual fatuity, that President Obama had “salvaged” a deal at Copenhagen in bilateral talks with China, India, Brazil, and South Africa, which had established a negotiating bloc.

The plainly-declared common position of these four developing nations had been the one beacon of clarity and common sense at the foggy fortnight of posturing and gibbering in the ghastly Copenhagen conference center.

This is what the Forthright Four asked for: 

(more…)

via Americans for Prosperity Youtube Channel

Taken at Copenhagen, IPPC conference of parties, December 2009

by Terry Hurlbu

Source: Courtesy of the Essex County Conservative Examiner

After a day of raucous protest and often violent and apparently indiscriminate police reponse, the delegations of thirty of the 192 participants in the Fifteenth Conference of Parties produced a draft political agreement, with explicit plans to transform this into a treaty within six months. However, recent reports suggest that this agreement, when presented to most of the other delegates, did not pass muster.

The announcement of a draft agreement came in the early hours of Friday morning (Central European Time), as first reported by Agence France-Presse, as quoted in the Sydney Morning Herald (Sydney, Australia). The agreement specifically mentioned a plan for an annual climate-change mitigation fund, similar to that mentioned by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton yesterday. Further details were sketchy, but the AFP quoted an anonymous participant as saying that the agreement might “call for preventing global temperatures from going up more than 2.0 degrees Celsius [2.0 Kelvins] compared to pre-industrial times.”

However, within hours of the presentation of this agreement to the delegates, several G-77 delegations stated that the limitations proposed on their own emissions were too great. Furthermore, the Chinese delegation does not appear to have abandoned their stance on a pledge to reduce “emissions intensity,” a calculation that would still allow them to increase emissions overall.

Yesterday another anonymous source had suggested that the Chinese delegation had predicted that “a short political declaration of some sort” would be the ultimate result of the conference. This draft agreement would fit that description. The Chinese delegation did participate in the all-night session.

Christopher, Viscount Monckton of Brenchley had predicted, a month before, that some sort of eleventh-hour agreement would be reached. Yesterday he filed this report on the Science and Public Policy Institute blog, criticizing the often brutal and indiscriminately violent police response to the protests that took place outside the meeting. The viscount reported that the UN had abruptly decided to exclude all but a relative handful of the 20,000 accredited observers from the conference. Worse yet, when he showed up, not having been notified that he (and thousands of others) had been barred from the conference, a Danish police officer twice grabbed him, and then, as he turned away, the officer shoved him from behind and sent him sprawling. He was treated at the scene for minor cuts and bruises. (more…)

Source: Courtesy of the London Telegraph

By Gerald Warner

When your attempt at recreating the Congress of Vienna with a third-rate cast of extras turns into a shambles, when the data with which you have tried to terrify the world is daily exposed as ever more phoney, when the blatant greed and self-interest of the participants has become obvious to all beholders, when those pesky polar bears just keep increasing and multiplying – what do you do?

No contest: stop issuing three rainforests of press releases every day, change the heading to James Bond-style “Do not distribute” and “leak” a single copy, in the knowledge that human nature is programmed to interest itself in anything it imagines it is not supposed to see, whereas it would bin the same document unread if it were distributed openly.

After that, get some unbiased, neutral observer, such as the executive director of Greenpeace, to say: “This is the single most important piece of paper in the world today.” Unfortunately, the response of all intelligent people will be to fall about laughing; but it was worth a try – everybody loves a tryer – and the climate alarmists are no longer in a position to pick and choose their tactics. (more…)

The Russian IEA found a similar station situation with a station dropout from 476 to 121. The new subset had 0.64C more warming and were biased towards stations with partial data (opportunity for mischief) and urbanized.

Posted By William M. Briggs On December 17, 2009

Source: courtesy of Pajamas Media

From The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley to all of our valued readers

Follow the star to silent Bethlehem!

The Savior’s cry proclaims salvation’s dawn.

With “It is finished!” shall begin for us

The future born with Him on Christmas morn.

For us the Lord of Life will conquer death

And fling away the darkness of the tomb

And bring to us, that dare to love, the breath

Of life eternal from the mortal womb.

Creator creature, Father son, Life life,

Love love becomes, and wins a mother’s smile,

And wins our freedom from the age-long strife

Of light with dark, of truthfulness with guile, 

Of right with wrong, of joy with misery, 

Of life with death. This day the world is free!

http://www.jacquielawson.com/viewcard.asp?code=2007134554829&source=jl999