Source:   Crosstalk     

The media coverage of Superstorm Sandy was 24/7. However, there was little mention of climate change. Why is this? And why didn’t Obama or Romney mention climate change at all in the three TV debates despite a summer of record temperatures, historic drought and wildfires in the US? Why are so many people in the US in denial of this dire situation? And is the thermometer going up or down? CrossTalking with Patrick Michaels, Denis Rancourt and Richard Milne.

See video here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mf1a94SyNmg&feature=youtu.be

Source:  CATO

by Dr. Pat Michaels

Boston University’s Robert Kaufmann and colleagues recently published a paper in theProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences examining the causes of the recent dearth of “global warming.” They concluded that it’s simply natural variability, augmented by increasing sulfate emissions from dramatically growing coal consumption by China.

Of course, it is the latter conclusion that has drawn all the attention, for it allows the possibility that greenhouse gases are continuing to impart an as-expected warming influence on the global climate. And then once China gets its air pollution under control (and we are talking about true air pollution here, i.e., not carbon dioxide), global temperatures will rise rapidly. Thus the dream of alarming climate change lives. (more…)

Source:  Forbes

by Patrick Michaels

There is no statistically significant warming trend since November of 1996 in monthly surface temperature records compiled at the University of East Anglia. Do we now understand why there’s been no change in fourteen and a half years?

If you read the news stories surrounding a recent paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Boston University’s Robert Kaufmann and three colleagues, you’d say yes, indeed. It’s China’s fault. By dramatically increasing their combustion of coal, they have increased the concentration of fine particles in the atmosphere called sulphate aerosols, which reflect away solar radiation, countering the warming that should be occurring from increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide. (more…)

Source:  Climate Science: Roger Pielke Sr.

By Roger Pielke, Sr.

There is an informative article by Ross McKittrick

McKitrick, Ross R. (2011) “Bias in the Peer Review Process: A Cautionary and Personal Account” in Climate Coup, Patrick J. Michaels ed., Cato Inst. Washington DC.

This article appears in the book

Michaels, Patrick J., 2011: Climate Coup: Global Warming’s Invasion of Our Government and Our Lives. Cato Institute. ISBN: 978-1-935308447

with the summary of its content

“A first-rate team of experts offers compelling documentation on the pervasive influence global warming alarmism now has on almost every aspect of our society-from national defense, law, trade, and politics to health, education, and international development.” (more…)

Source:  http://www.c-ville.com/index.php?cat=141404064432695&ShowArticle_ID=12681701113900458

Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, no doubt still aglow from his latest victory in his war on health care reform, got some help this month from an outside nonprofit in his quest to pry loose a bevy of documents related to former UVA climate scientist Michael Mann.

On January 6, the American Tradition Institute (ATI), along with state Delegate Bob Marshall (R-Prince William), presented UVA with a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking essentially the same information Cuccinelli demanded last year in a civil subpoena: e-mails Mann sent to and received from 39 scientists and all of his assistants; all documents generated by five specified grants; and Mann’s computer algorithms, programs and source code. (more…)

Soure:  National Review Online

By Patrick J. Michaels

Climate science has painted itself into a corner, seriously damaging the public’s faith in the field — as precious a commodity as there is in civil society. Like lab rats that will do anything to keep the cocaine flowing, climate scientists, universities, and federal laboratories are addicted to the public’s money.

The latest illustration of this sad new reality is the letter of resignation from the American Physical Society (APS) of one of the lions of science, Harold Lewis, emeritus professor at University of California–Santa Barbara.

In his letter, Lewis rightly states that it is the global-warming-research industry, “with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS with it like a rogue wave.” Specifically, Lewis objects to the heavy-handed way in which APS quashed and impeded any attempt to modify its outrageous 2007 “national policy” statement on climate change. (more…)

Source:  Popular Technology

Six Prominent Climatologists; John Christy, Patrick Michaels, Richard Lindzen, Roy Spencer, Fred Singer and Sherwood Idso, all skeptical of “man-made” global warming (AGW) alarm.

“I’m sure the majority (but not all) of my IPCC colleagues cringe when I say this, but I see neither the developing catastrophe nor the smoking gun proving that human activity is to blame for most of the warming we see.” – John R. Christy

John R. Christy, B.A. Mathematics, California State University (1973), M.S. Atmospheric Science, University of Illinois (1984), Ph.D. Atmospheric Science, University of Illinois (1987), NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal (1991), American Meteorological Society’s Special Award (1996), Member, Committee on Earth Studies, Space Studies Board (1998-2001), Alabama State Climatologist (2000-Present), Fellow, American Meteorological Society (2002), Panel Member, Official Statement on Climate Change, American Geophysical Union (2003), Member, Committee on Environmental Satellite Data Utilization, Space Studies Board (2003-2004), Member, Committee on Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the last 2,000 years, National Research Council (2006), Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science, University of Alabama in Huntsville (1991-Present), Director of the Earth System Science Center, University of Alabama in Huntsville (2000-Present), Contributor, IPCC (1992, 1994, 1996, 2007), Lead Author, IPCC (2001) (more…)

Source:  Opinion

We cannot make sane decisions on global warming if the ‘experts’ present us with evidence that is biased

This month, after a three-year investigation, Harvard University suspended a prominent professor of psychology for scandalously overinterpreting videos of monkey behaviour. The incident has sent shock waves through science because it suggests that a body of data is unreliable. The professor, Marc Hauser, is now a pariah in his own field and his papers have been withdrawn. But the implications for society are not great — no policy had been based on his research.

Yesterday, after a four-month review, a committee of scientists concluded that the Nobel prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has “assigned high confidence to statements for which there is very little evidence”, has failed to enforce its own guidelines, has been guilty of too little transparency, has ignored critical review comments and has had no policies on conflict of interest”. (more…)

Source:  Wall St. Journal

By PATRICK J. MICHAELS

Global warming alarmists claim vindication after last year’s data manipulation scandal. Don’t believe the ‘independent’ reviews.

Last November there was a world-wide outcry when a trove of emails were released suggesting some of the world’s leading climate scientists engaged in professional misconduct, data manipulation and jiggering of both the scientific literature and climatic data to paint what scientist Keith Briffa called “a nice, tidy story” of climate history. The scandal became known as Climategate.

Now a supposedly independent review of the evidence says, in effect, “nothing to see here.” Last week “The Independent Climate Change E-mails Review,” commissioned and paid for by the University of East Anglia, exonerated the University of East Anglia. The review committee was chaired by Sir Muir Russell, former vice chancellor at the University of Glasgow.

Mr. Russell took pains to present his committee, which consisted of four other academics, as independent. He told the Times of London that “Given the nature of the allegations it is right that someone who has no links to either the university or the climate science community looks at the evidence and makes recommendations based on what they find.”

No links? One of the panel’s four members, Prof. Geoffrey Boulton, was on the faculty of East Anglia’s School of Environmental Sciences for 18 years. At the beginning of his tenure, the Climatic Research Unit (CRU)—the source of the Climategate emails—was established in Mr. Boulton’s school at East Anglia. Last December, Mr. Boulton signed a petition declaring that the scientists who established the global climate records at East Anglia “adhere to the highest levels of professional integrity.” (more…)

Dick Lindzen

http://www.pjtv.com/video/International_Climate_Change_Conference_2010/Richard_Lindzen%3A_Stop_Abusing_Climate_Science/3589/

Christopher Monckton

http://www.pjtv.com/video/International_Climate_Change_Conference_2010/Lord_Monckton%3A_Hockey_Sticks%2C_Shabby_Science_%26_The_Great_Climate_Scare/3607/ (more…)

Source:  UK Guardian

by Fred Pearce

A close reading of the hacked emails exposes the real process of science, its jealousies and tribalism

Scientists sometimes like to portray what they do as divorced from the everyday jealousies, rivalries and tribalism of human relationships. What makes science special is that data and results that can be replicated are what matters and the scientific truth will out in the end.

But a close reading of the emails hacked from the University of East Anglia in November exposes the real process of everyday science in lurid detail.

Many of the emails reveal strenuous efforts by the mainstream climate scientists to do what outside observers would regard as censoring their critics. And the correspondence raises awkward questions about the effectiveness of peer review – the supposed gold standard of scientific merit – and the operation of the UN’s top climate body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). (more…)

by -Paul C. Knappenberger

December 29, 2009

Back of December 18, 2009, the Washington Post ran an editorial (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/17/AR2009121703682.html) by Penn State’s Dr. Michael Mann, who attempted to explain why the recent release of the Climategate emails “doesn’t alter evidence for climate change.” But Dr. Mann—a central figure in the released emails—is speaking only from one side of the issue—his side.  While the contents of the Climategate emails may not alter the evidence of climate change published in the scientific “peer-reviewed” literature, it is an entirely different matter when it comes to evidence of climate change that may have been kept out of the peer-reviewed literature.  And the Climategate emails illuminate continual efforts from Dr. Mann and colleagues to limit the contents of the peer-reviewed scientific literature to only those types of results and conclusions that they liked.  As such, the extant scientific literature of the past 5 to 10 years cannot be considered to be a fair representation of what it would have been had it not been manipulated. Thus, it is impossible to judge whether or not the evidence for climate change has been altered by the Climategate emails, contrary to Dr. Mann’s claims.

Below is a letter-to-the editor of the Washington Post that I submitted is response to Dr. Mann’s December 18^th op-ed. Since it has been more than 10 days since I submitted it, I’ll assume that the Post has decided not to run it (they did not run any letter-to-the-editor on this topic, despite having received 651 comments on-line, the majority of them quite negative).  My letter is reproduced here:

In his December 18, 2009 op-ed, Dr. Michael Mann largely misses to point about the most important aspect of the contents of the climate emails. It is not so much what has appeared in the scientific literature after “decades of work by thousands of scientists around the world” regarding human-caused climate change, but what has not appeared in the literature. The emails reveal signs of manipulation of the peer-review process, and what’s worse, intimidation of individual researchers, from a group of prominent scientists who seek to closely guard their view of the evidence and who are largely intolerant of countervailing hypothesis or interpretations. The degree to which the extant scientific literature can be judged a fair representation of what our scientific understanding may have been like absent these tactics is impossible to ascertain. The unfortunate, but undeniable side effect, is that the foundation of state, national, and international assessments of the potential impacts of climate change and considerations of what actions may be necessary to mitigate them has been shaken—not by what our knowledge is, but by what it should be. The latter of which, through the actions revealed in the emails, has been rendered largely unknowable.

Dr. Patrick Michaels, a close colleague of mine, expresses a similar sentiment (including some specific details) his recent op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal titled, “How to Manufacture a Climate Consensus (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704398304574598230426037244.html)

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…)