The IPCC’s Square Pegs and Round Holes

[Rule of Reason Blog]

By [email protected] (Edward Cline) from The Rule of Reason,cross-posted by MetaBlog

The mushrooming Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)-University of East Anglia-Climate Research Unit email scandal, dubbed “ClimateGate,” invites satire first, then serious examination. We begin with an excerpt from the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report: Climate Change 2007. Read it and weep. There have been three other assessments, in 1990, 1995, and 2001. A fifth assessment is being prepared for 2014. What sold the IPCC on the credibility of global warming was the “hockey stick” graph of Al Gore notoriety. The fifth assessment -- if it is ever collated and written -- doubtless will feature baseball bats, the better to knock some sense into a doubting and skeptical public.

“The

Fourth Working Group I Summary

for Policymakers (SPM) was published on February 2, 2007and revised on February 5, 2007

The key conclusions of the SPM were that:

Warming of the climate system is unequivocal.

Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic (human) greenhouse gas concentrations.

Anthropogenic warming and sea level rise would continue for centuries due to the timescales associated with climate processes and feedbacks, even if greenhouse gas concentrations were to be stabilized, although the likely amount of temperature and sea level rise varies greatly depending on the fossil intensity of human activity during the next century (pages 13 and 18).

The probability that this is caused by natural climatic processes alone is less than 5%.

World temperatures could rise by between 1.1 and 6.4 °C (2.0 and 11.5 °F) during the 21st century (table 3) and that:

Sea levels will probably rise by 18 to 59 cm (7.08 to 23.22 in) [table 3].

There is a confidence level >90% that there will be more frequent warm spells, heat waves and heavy rainfall.

There is a confidence level >66% that there will be an increase in droughts, tropical cyclones and extreme high tides.

Both past and future anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions will continue to contribute to warming and sea level rise for more than a millennium.

Global atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide have increased markedly as a result of human activities since 1750 and now far exceed pre-industrial values over the past 650,000 years.”

The IPCC was established in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), both U.N. organizations. The 2007 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the IPCC and former vice president Al Gore. Well, we all know what the Nobel Peace Prize is worth. Ask President Barack Obama, this year’s recipient.

The 2007 IPCC report contains and incorporates data cooked up by the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit (CRU), headed by Phil Jones. The CRU bills itself as “widely recognized as one of the world's leading institutions concerned with the study of natural and anthropogenic climate change.”

As one may see in the IPCC report above, not much global warming or climate change is attributed to natural causes. Less than five percent. The rest of it, according to the report, is all man’s doing. Our activities are warping those natural causes. The qualifier in the report, “natural climatic processes,” presumably exempts the sun from causing or contributing to those processes, provided one concedes that the processes are authentic and have happened or will happen.

The only value of any past and future IPCC report, to judge by the unearthed emails, is sensational material for doom-and-gloom science fiction movie producers, who would keep employed many special-effects graphic artists. However, the best source of news about ClimateGate is Climate Depot. Not the mainstream media, which, with Congress and the White House, is doing its best to ignore the scandal. After all, billions and billions of dollars are at stake if the cap-and-trade bill is not passed and if the Copenhagen climate change treaty implodes on its authors. Al Gore and his venal ilk stand to not profit if that happens.

Environmentalists, global warming advocates, and the government all have a vested interest in the “truth” of catastrophic climate change. Not to mention car manufacturers and other industries that have either retrofitted their plants or invested in “green” industries to comply with anticipated federal carbon legislation. Think of the billions spent on hybrid cars and florescent light bulbs and solar panels and wind turbines, all contrived to combat non-existent global warming. Poof! It will all have been for naught. So, the economic and political consequences of ClimateGate go far, far beyond the issue of the veracity of a handful of climate scientists.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a division of the National Weather Service, is stammering astonishment that CO2 levels are not only rising, but have nothing to do with global warming, which is not occurring. In fact, CO2 levels rise after temperature increases. The New York Times is “shocked, shocked” that fraud is taking place in climate science.

The New York Post ran an article on how school children are being indoctrinated (shall we say, “brainwashed”) about the “reality” of global warming. Asked about ClimateGate, White House “climate advisor” Carol Browner pretended that she had never heard the one about fifty million Frenchmen being as wrong as one.

"What am I going to do?" asked Browner. "Side with the couple of naysayers out there, or the 2,500 scientists?" -- who've drunk the Kool-Aid. "I'm sticking with the 2,500 scientists."

For a spot of sanity, listen to Lord Monckton, one of the original “skeptics” and “deniers.”

The chairman of the IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri, has more or less said that the lies, frauds, and cover-ups will not affect his or the IPCC’s conclusions about global warming.

Rajendra

Pachauri defended the IPCC

in the wake of apparent suggestions in emails between climate scientists at the University of East Anglia that they had prevented work they did not agree with from being included in the panel's fourth assessment report, which was published in 2007.…The emails were made public this month after a hacker illegally obtained them from servers at the university….Pachauri said the large number of contributors and rigorous peer review mechanism adopted by the IPCC meant that any bias would be rapidly uncovered.

What he did not mention is that the “peer review” process was as rigged as were the data. Papers, findings, and statements by global warming “skeptics” and “deniers” were excoriated and deep-sixed as a mater of covert policy, apparently encouraged by CRU director Phil Jones.

Pachauri is concerned with neither the truth nor the lies.

Some commentators, including the former chancellor Nigel Lawson and the environmental campaigner and Guardian writer George Monbiot, have called on Jones to resign but Pachauri said he did not agree. He said an independent inquiry into the emails would achieve little, but there should be a criminal investigation into how the emails came to light.

Pachauri’s first priority is to get the guy responsible for exposing the fraud and making him look like a fool. However, that “hacker” should be nominated for next year’s Nobel Peace Prize. He has done the world a service that cannot be matched by any Prize winner in the past. He has uncovered the near pathological obsession of the IPCC and its acolytes with establishing a “world governance” body that would ensure that the world’s population, and in particular that of the U.S., is reduced to the standard of living of men who lived in the Medieval Warm Period so neglected and blanked-out by the global warming harpies. That hacker properly invaded the “privacy” of men on government payrolls or who live off of looted taxes (e.g., Pachauri) who have advanced costly and elaborate junk science to attain a political agenda.

(One wishes that another hacker would raid the “private” emails of Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Henry Waxman, and their health-care bill allies to see what they think of the trillion-dollar scam they wish to foist on this country.)

What is fascinating in a morbid sense is the almost hilarious evasive behavior of Phil Jones and his colleagues at the CRU as they try to fit square pegs into round holes. A Portuguese website, EcoTretas, contains many of the email exchanges between Jones and his co-conspirators as they scramble to counter the invasion of reality and truth-tellers. Many of the damning statements are highlighted by the site host. However, there are two un-highlighted statements that merit special scrutiny.

Under the heading, “Fixing the data,” Jones, as long ago as 2000, complains:

From: Phil Jones, Date: Fri, 03 Mar 2000 13:04:24+0000

As all our (Mike, Tom and CRU) all show that the first few centuries of the millennium were cooler than the 20th century, we will come in for some flak from the skeptics saying we’re wrong because everyone knows it was warmer in the Medieval period. We can show why we believe we are correct with independent data from glacial advances and even slower responding proxies, however, what are the chances of putting together a group of a very few borhole [sic] series that are deep enough to get the last 1000 years. Basically trying to head off criticisms of the IPCC chapter, but good science in that we will be rewriting people’s perceived wisdom about the course of temperature change over the past millennium.

“Everyone knows it was warmer in the Medieval period.” So, let’s forget it. Omit it from the picture altogether. More important is Jones’s wish to “rewrite people’s perceived wisdom.” Which means: changing reality, or trying to. Which means: committing fraud and deceit.

Under the heading, “Wrongdoing,” Jones, five years later, wishes again:

From: Phil Jones, Date: Tue Jul 5 15:15:55 2005

If anything, I would like to see the climate change happen, so the science could be proved right, regardless of the consequences. This isn't being political, it is being selfish.

But that damned climate just wouldn’t change for the worse. The data just wouldn’t conform to his wishes. How frustrating! It’s more important to be proved right, than to adhere to and respect the truth that all indicators pointed to global cooling. So, let’s just say that global warming is occurring anyway, that CO2 is running amok, and that we’re the cause, and it’s getting hotter and hotter. Maybe nobody will notice. Repeat it often enough, and it will become true. Lots of friends in the MSM who will chant with us.

So the IPCC, Phil Jones, and his fellow Chicken Littles are all learning the hard way that square pegs have never gotten along with round holes. And that skies will not fall on command.

Cross-posted from Metablog