posted February 11, 2014 07:47 PM            

The list below is just the tip of the iceberg. A more detailed and comprehensive sampling of scientists who have only recently spoken out against climate hysteria will be forthcoming in a soon to be released U.S. Senate report. Please stay tuned to this website, as this new government report is set to redefine the current climate debate.

In the meantime, please review the list of scientists below and ask yourself why the media is missing one of the biggest stories in climate of 2007. Feel free to distribute the partial list of scientists who recently converted to skeptics to your local schools and universities. The voices of rank and file scientists opposing climate doomsayers can serve as a counter to the alarmism that children are being exposed to on a daily basis. (See Washington Post April 16, 2007 article about kids fearing of a “climactic Armageddon” )

The media's climate fear factor seemingly grows louder even as the latest science grows less and less alarming by the day. (See Der Spiegel May 7, 2007 article: Not the End of the World as We Know It ) It is also worth noting that the proponents of climate fears are increasingly attempting to suppress dissent by skeptics. (See UPI May 10, 2007 article: U.N. official says it's 'completely immoral' to doubt global warming fears )

Once Believers, Now Skeptics ( Link to pdf version )

Geophysicist Dr. Claude Allegre, a top geophysicist and French Socialist who has authored more than 100 scientific articles and written 11 books and received numerous scientific awards including the Goldschmidt Medal from the Geochemical Society of the United States, converted from climate alarmist to skeptic in 2006. Allegre, who was one of the first scientists to sound global warming fears 20 years ago, now says the cause of climate change is "unknown" and accused the “prophets of doom of global warming” of being motivated by money, noting that "the ecology of helpless protesting has become a very lucrative business for some people!" “Glaciers’ chronicles or historical archives point to the fact that climate is a capricious phenomena. This fact is confirmed by mathematical meteorological theories. So, let us be cautious,” Allegre explained in a September 21, 2006 article in the French newspaper L'EXPRESS. The National Post in Canada also profiled Allegre on March 2, 2007, noting “Allegre has the highest environmental credentials. The author of early environmental books, he fought successful battles to protect the ozone layer from CFCs and public health from lead pollution.” Allegre now calls fears of a climate disaster "simplistic and obscuring the true dangers” mocks "the greenhouse-gas fanatics whose proclamations consist in denouncing man's role on the climate without doing anything about it except organizing conferences and preparing protocols that become dead letters." Allegre, a member of both the French and U.S. Academy of Sciences, had previously expressed concern about manmade global warming. "By burning fossil fuels, man enhanced the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere which has raised the global mean temperature by half a degree in the last century," Allegre wrote 20 years ago. In addition, Allegre was one of 1500 scientists who signed a November 18, 1992 letter titled “World Scientists' Warning to Humanity” in which the scientists warned that global warming’s “potential risks are very great.”

Geologist Bruno Wiskel of the University of Alberta recently reversed his view of man-made climate change and instead became a global warming skeptic. Wiskel was once such a big believer in man-made global warming that he set out to build a “Kyoto house” in honor of the UN sanctioned Kyoto Protocol which was signed in 1997. Wiskel wanted to prove that the Kyoto Protocol’s goals were achievable by people making small changes in their lives. But after further examining the science behind Kyoto, Wiskel reversed his scientific views completely and became such a strong skeptic, that he recently wrote a book titled “The Emperor's New Climate: Debunking the Myth of Global Warming.” A November 15, 2006 Edmonton Sun article explains Wiskel’s conversion while building his “Kyoto house”: “Instead, he said he realized global warming theory was full of holes and ‘red flags,’ and became convinced that humans are not responsible for rising temperatures.” Wiskel now says “the truth has to start somewhere.” Noting that the Earth has been warming for 18,000 years, Wiskel told the Canadian newspaper, “If this happened once and we were the cause of it, that would be cause for concern. But glaciers have been coming and going for billions of years." Wiskel also said that global warming has gone "from a science to a religion” and noted that research money is being funneled into promoting climate alarmism instead of funding areas he considers more worthy. "If you funnel money into things that can't be changed, the money is not going into the places that it is needed,” he said.

Astrophysicist Dr. Nir Shaviv, one of Israel's top young award winning scientists, recanted his belief that manmade emissions were driving climate change. ""Like many others, I was personally sure that CO2 is the bad culprit in the story of global warming. But after carefully digging into the evidence, I realized that things are far more complicated than the story sold to us by many climate scientists or the stories regurgitated by the media. In fact, there is much more than meets the eye,” Shaviv said in February 2, 2007 Canadian National Post article. According to Shaviv, the C02 temperature link is only “incriminating circumstantial evidence.” "Solar activity can explain a large part of the 20th-century global warming" and "it is unlikely that [the solar climate link] does not exist,” Shaviv noted pointing to the impact cosmic- rays have on the atmosphere. According to the National Post, Shaviv believes that even a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere by 2100 "will not dramatically increase the global temperature." “Even if we halved the CO2 output, and the CO2 increase by 2100 would be, say, a 50% increase relative to today instead of a doubled amount, the expected reduction in the rise of global temperature would be less than 0.5C. This is not significant,” Shaviv explained. Shaviv also wrote on August 18, 2006 that a colleague of his believed that “CO2 should have a large effect on climate” so “he set out to reconstruct the phanerozoic temperature. He wanted to find the CO2 signature in the data, but since there was none, he slowly had to change his views.” Shaviv believes there will be more scientists converting to man-made global warming skepticism as they discover the dearth of evidence. “I think this is common to many of the scientists who think like us (that is, that CO2 is a secondary climate driver). Each one of us was working in his or her own niche. While working there, each one of us realized that things just don't add up to support the AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming) picture. So many had to change their views,” he wrote.

Mathematician & engineer Dr. David Evans, who did carbon accounting for the Australian Government, recently detailed his conversion to a skeptic. “I devoted six years to carbon accounting, building models for the Australian government to estimate carbon emissions from land use change and forestry. When I started that job in 1999 the evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming seemed pretty conclusive, but since then new evidence has weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause. I am now skeptical,” Evans wrote in an April 30, 2007 blog. “But after 2000 the evidence for carbon emissions gradually got weaker -- better temperature data for the last century, more detailed ice core data, then laboratory evidence that cosmic rays precipitate low clouds,” Evans wrote. “As Lord Keynes famously said, ‘When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?’” he added. Evans noted how he benefited from climate fears as a scientist. “And the political realm in turn fed money back into the scientific community. By the late 1990's, lots of jobs depended on the idea that carbon emissions caused global warming. Many of them were bureaucratic, but there were a lot of science jobs created too. I was on that gravy train, making a high wage in a science job that would not have existed if we didn't believe carbon emissions caused global warming. And so were lots of people around me; and there were international conferences full of such people. And we had political support, the ear of government, big budgets, and we felt fairly important and useful (well, I did anyway). It was great. We were working to save the planet! But starting in about 2000, the last three of the four pieces of evidence outlined above fell away or reversed,” Evans wrote. “The pre-2000 ice core data was the central evidence for believing that atmospheric carbon caused temperature increases. The new ice core data shows that past warmings were *not* initially caused by rises in atmospheric carbon, and says nothing about the strength of any amplification. This piece of evidence casts reasonable doubt that atmospheric carbon had any role in past warmings, while still allowing the possibility that it had a supporting role,” he added. “Unfortunately politics and science have become even more entangled. The science of global warming has become a partisan political issue, so positions become more entrenched. Politicians and the public prefer simple and less-nuanced messages. At the moment the political climate strongly supports carbon emissions as the cause of global warming, to the point of sometimes rubbishing or silencing critics,” he concluded. (Evans bio link )

Climate researcher Dr. Tad Murty, former Senior Research Scientist for Fisheries and Oceans in Canada, also reversed himself from believer in man-made climate change to a skeptic. “I stated with a firm belief about global warming, until I started working on it myself,” Murty explained on August 17, 2006. “I switched to the other side in the early 1990's when Fisheries and Oceans Canada asked me to prepare a position paper and I started to look into the problem seriously,” Murty explained. Murty was one of the 60 scientists who wrote an April 6, 2006 letter urging withdrawal of Kyoto to Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper which stated in part, "If, back in the mid-1990s, we knew what we know today about climate, Kyoto would almost certainly not exist, because we would have concluded it was not necessary.”

Botanist Dr. David Bellamy, a famed UK environmental campaigner, former lecturer at Durham University and host of a popular UK TV series on wildlife, recently converted into a skeptic after reviewing the science and now calls global warming fears "poppycock." According to a May 15, 2005 article in the UK Sunday Times, Bellamy said “global warming is largely a natural phenomenon. The world is wasting stupendous amounts of money on trying to fix something that can’t be fixed.” “The climate-change people have no proof for their claims. They have computer models which do not prove anything,” Bellamy added. Bellamy’s conversion on global warming did not come without a sacrifice as several environmental groups have ended their association with him because of his views on climate change. The severing of relations came despite Bellamy’s long activism for green campaigns. The UK Times reported Bellamy “won respect from hardline environmentalists with his campaigns to save Britain’s peat bogs and other endangered habitats. In Tasmania he was arrested when he tried to prevent loggers cutting down a rainforest.”

Climate scientist Dr. Chris de Freitas of The University of Auckland, N.Z., also converted from a believer in man-made global warming to a skeptic. “At first I accepted that increases in human caused additions of carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere would trigger changes in water vapor etc. and lead to dangerous ‘global warming,’ But with time and with the results of research, I formed the view that, although it makes for a good story, it is unlikely that the man-made changes are drivers of significant climate variation.” de Freitas wrote on August 17, 2006. “I accept there may be small changes. But I see the risk of anything serious to be minute,” he added. “One could reasonably argue that lack of evidence is not a good reason for complacency. But I believe the billions of dollars committed to GW research and lobbying for GW and for Kyoto treaties etc could be better spent on uncontroversial and very real environmental problems (such as air pollution, poor sanitation, provision of clean water and improved health services) that we know affect tens of millions of people,” de Freitas concluded. de Freitas was one of the 60 scientists who wrote an April 6, 2006 letter urging withdrawal of Kyoto to Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper which stated in part, “Significant [scientific] advances have been made since the [Kyoto] protocol was created, many of which are taking us away from a concern about increasing greenhouse gases.”

Meteorologist Dr. Reid Bryson, the founding chairman of the Department of Meteorology at University of Wisconsin (now the Department of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences, was pivotal in promoting the coming ice age scare of the 1970’s ( See Time Magazine’s 1974 article “Another Ice Age” citing Bryson: & see Newsweek’s 1975 article “The Cooling World” citing Bryson) has now converted into a leading global warming skeptic. In February 8, 2007 Bryson dismissed what he terms "sky is falling" man-made global warming fears. Bryson, was on the United Nations Global 500 Roll of Honor and was identified by the British Institute of Geographers as the most frequently cited climatologist in the world. “Before there were enough people to make any difference at all, two million years ago, nobody was changing the climate, yet the climate was changing, okay?” Bryson told the May 2007 issue of Energy Cooperative News. “All this argument is the temperature going up or not, it’s absurd. Of course it’s going up. It has gone up since the early 1800s, before the Industrial Revolution, because we’re coming out of the Little Ice Age, not because we’re putting more carbon dioxide into the air,” Bryson said. “You can go outside and spit and have the same effect as doubling carbon dioxide,” he added. “We cannot say what part of that warming was due to mankind's addition of ‘greenhouse gases’ until we consider the other possible factors, such as aerosols. The aerosol content of the atmosphere was measured during the past century, but to my knowledge this data was never used. We can say that the question of anthropogenic modification of the climate is an important question -- too important to ignore. However, it has now become a media free-for-all and a political issue more than a scientific problem,” Bryson explained in 2005.

Global warming author and economist Hans H.J. Labohm started out as a man-made global warming believer but he later switched his view after conducting climate research. Labohm wrote on August 19, 2006, “I started as a anthropogenic global warming believer, then I read the [UN’s IPCC] Summary for Policymakers and the research of prominent skeptics.” “After that, I changed my mind,” Labohn explained. Labohn co-authored the 2004 book “Man-Made Global Warming: Unraveling a Dogma,” with chemical engineer Dick Thoenes who was the former chairman of the Royal Netherlands Chemical Society. Labohm was one of the 60 scientists who wrote an April 6, 2006 letter urging withdrawal of Kyoto to Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper which stated in part, “’Climate change is real’ is a meaningless phrase used repeatedly by activists to convince the public that a climate catastrophe is looming and humanity is the cause. Neither of these fears is justified. Global climate changes all the time due to natural causes and the human impact still remains impossible to distinguish from this natural ‘noise.’”

Paleoclimatologist Tim Patterson, of Carlton University in Ottawa converted from believer in C02 driving the climate change to a skeptic. “I taught my students that CO2 was the prime driver of climate change,” Patterson wrote on April 30, 2007. Patterson said his “conversion” happened following his research on “the nature of paleo-commercial fish populations in the NE Pacific.” “[My conversion from believer to climate skeptic] came about approximately 5-6 years ago when results began to come in from a major NSERC (Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada) Strategic Project Grant where I was PI (principle investigator),” Patterson explained. “Over the course of about a year, I switched allegiances,” he wrote. “As the proxy results began to come in, we were astounded to find that paleoclimatic and paleoproductivity records were full of cycles that corresponded to various sun-spot cycles. About that time, [geochemist] Jan Veizer and others began to publish reasonable hypotheses as to how solar signals could be amplified and control climate,” Patterson noted. Patterson says his conversion “probably cost me a lot of grant money. However, as a scientist I go where the science takes me and not were activists want me to go.” Patterson now asserts that more and more scientists are converting to climate skeptics. "When I go to a scientific meeting, there's lots of opinion out there, there's lots of discussion (about climate change). I was at the Geological Society of America meeting in Philadelphia in the fall and I would say that people with my opinion were probably in the majority,” Patterson told the Winnipeg Sun on February 13, 2007. Patterson, who believes the sun is responsible for the recent warm up of the Earth, ridiculed the environmentalists and the media for not reporting the truth. "But if you listen to [Canadian environmental activist David] Suzuki and the media, it's like a tiger chasing its tail. They try to outdo each other and all the while proclaiming that the debate is over but it isn't -- come out to a scientific meeting sometime,” Patterson said. In a separate interview on April 26, 2007 with a Canadian newspaper, Patterson explained that the scientific proof favors skeptics. “I think the proof in the pudding, based on what (media and governments) are saying, (is) we're about three quarters of the way (to disaster) with the doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere," he said. “The world should be heating up like crazy by now, and it's not. The temperatures match very closely with the solar cycles."

Physicist Dr. Zbigniew Jaworowski, chairman of the Central Laboratory for the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Radiological Protection in Warsaw, took a scientific journey from a believer of man-made climate change in the form of global cooling in the 1970’s all the way to converting to a skeptic of current predictions of catastrophic man-made global warming. “At the beginning of the 1970s I believed in man-made climate cooling, and therefore I started a study on the effects of industrial pollution on the global atmosphere, using glaciers as a history book on this pollution,” Dr. Jaworowski, wrote on August 17, 2006. “With the advent of man-made warming political correctness in the beginning of 1980s, I already had a lot of experience with polar and high altitude ice, and I have serious problems in accepting the reliability of ice core CO2 studies,” Jaworowski added. Jaworowski, who has published many papers on climate with a focus on CO2 measurements in ice cores, also dismissed the UN IPCC summary and questioned what the actual level of C02 was in the atmosphere in a March 16, 2007 report in EIR science entitled “CO2: The Greatest Scientific Scandal of Our Time.” “We thus find ourselves in the situation that the entire theory of man-made global warming—with its repercussions in science, and its important consequences for politics and the global economy—is based on ice core studies that provided a false picture of the atmospheric CO2 levels,” Jaworowski wrote. “For the past three decades, these well-known direct CO2 measurements, recently compiled and analyzed by Ernst-Georg Beck (Beck 2006a, Beck 2006b, Beck 2007), were completely ignored by climatologists—and not because they were wrong. Indeed, these measurements were made by several Nobel Prize winners, using the techniques that are standard textbook procedures in chemistry, biochemistry, botany, hygiene, medicine, nutrition, and ecology. The only reason for rejection was that these measurements did not fit the hypothesis of anthropogenic climatic warming. I regard this as perhaps the greatest scientific scandal of our time,” Jaworowski wrote. “The hypothesis, in vogue in the 1970s, stating that emissions of industrial dust will soon induce the new Ice Age, seem now to be a conceited anthropocentric exaggeration, bringing into discredit the science of that time. The same fate awaits the present,” he added. Jaworowski believes that cosmic rays and solar activity are major drivers of the Earth’s climate. Jaworowski was one of the 60 scientists who wrote an April 6, 2006 letter urging withdrawal of Kyoto to Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper which stated in part: "It may be many years yet before we properly understand the Earth's climate system. Nevertheless, significant advances have been made since the protocol was created, many of which are taking us away from a concern about increasing greenhouse gases."

Paleoclimatologist Dr. Ian D. Clark, professor of the Department of Earth Sciences at University of Ottawa, reversed his views on man-made climate change after further examining the evidence. “I used to agree with these dramatic warnings of climate disaster. I taught my students that most of the increase in temperature of the past century was due to human contribution of C02. The association seemed so clear and simple. Increases of greenhouse gases were driving us towards a climate catastrophe,” Clark said in a 2005 documentary "Climate Catastrophe Cancelled: What You're Not Being Told About the Science of Climate Change.” “However, a few years ago, I decided to look more closely at the science and it astonished me. In fact there is no evidence of humans being the cause. There is, however, overwhelming evidence of natural causes such as changes in the output of the sun. This has completely reversed my views on the Kyoto protocol,” Clark explained. “Actually, many other leading climate researchers also have serious concerns about the science underlying the [Kyoto] Protocol,” he added.

posted February 11, 2014 09:03 PM            

Like other climatologists, such as Patrick J. Michaels in Virginia, Taylor lost his title as a “State Climatologist” in 2007 after refusing to jump onto the man-made climate change wagon. Taylor was also actively involved with the American Association of State Climatologists, which ran afoul of the U.S. Congress and lost funding for not going along with climate alarmists.

When asked once by a reporter whether the Earth's temperatures would be warmer or colder in 5,000 years, Taylor pointed out that by that time we'd be headed back toward the next ice age.

“It will almost certainly be colder,” he explained.

That was the sort of politically incorrect answer that has gotten Taylor in trouble with the man-made climate change crowd for years. About three years ago Taylor, now 63, left his post as Oregon State University professor and is now a private-sector climatology consultant.

Capitol Confidential interviewed Taylor via telephone on Aug. 1. The following are excerpts from that interview.

CC. There are those who describe climatologists who don't believe in man-made climate change as being on the fringe. Is that true?

“Absolutely not. It's very much in the mainstream now. There are many, many climatologists who are skeptical about it (man-made climate change). I don't know if it's more than 50 percent or not. But in science that really doesn't matter. Science has nothing to do with who has a consensus or a majority.

CC. That's true about science but not politics and this has all become very political hasn't it?

Yes, it has. By the way, I'm a minimalist. I do believe that human activity might affect the climate a small amount, but whatever that is it's vastly overshadowed by natural forces. There are many, many people who feel like I do.

I'd be willing to change my mind if the science indicated that I should. But the science doesn't suggest that.

CC. Is it frustrating to deal with the way climatologists like you are characterized by some segments of the news media?

“Yes; very frustrating. As a scientist my job is to give an accurate assessment. In return I was getting back a lot of personal attacks – even ones that tried to impugn my integrity. They've claimed that I'm working for the oil companies and all sorts of things. OK, if you don't happen to agree with me then say so but to resort to these personal attacks . . . Then Ellen Goodman said (in 2007) that global warming deniers were on par with Holocaust deniers. It was unbelievable.”

“I guess it's like an attorney friend of mine says: 'if the law is on your side pound on the law - if the facts are on your side, pound on the facts – if the facts aren't on your side, pound on the table.' So the other side pounds the table. But I have to say that now, as more and more people have been willing to say they agree with my point of view, I feel a lot more comfortable about it.”

CC. The various charts that show the history of climate change over the past 2,000 to 3,000 years; is there much dispute about them? Don't they all show basically the same history of changes – the spike of the Medieval Warm period and the Little Ice Age we've been climbing out of?

“They'd show that about a thousand years ago it was a lot warmer than it is now. That was the Medieval Warming period. Then around the 1300s it started to cool as the Little Ice Age began.

“But I guess we'd have to say this was all still in dispute. Michael Mann came along and drew the Hockey Stick graph for Al Gore, which completely changed modern climate history. It didn't have the Medieval Warming period or the Little Ice Age on it.

“He used tree rings and proxies to support this. Of course this goes against almost every other piece of historical evidence.”

(Note: Taylor is referring to Dr. Michael Mann of the Department of Geosciences at the University of Massachusetts and his contentious chart. Click here for more information.)

CC. Aside from the scientific evidence, wasn't there also direct historical evidence of the Medieval Warming period, such as the Viking expansions, written evidence from that time and art from that period?

“Yes, there are those examples, such as the Vikings settling in Greenland, which shows how much warmer it was back then. And there were no internal combustion engines to blame the warmer temperatures on.”

CC. Do you think most people in your audience are even aware of this historical context?

“What do you mean by my audience?”

CC. The people you talk with or to whom you make presentations.

“For the most part my audience is made up of intelligent lay people. My experience has been that usually they see it from my perspective. But as Richard Lindzen has pointed out, a lot of very smart people believe in man-made global warming. My experience has been that a lot of very smart people buy into it but most normal people don't.”

(Note: Dr. Richard Lindzen is the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. For more click here.)

CC. To what do you attribute that?

“When I say real smart people, I'm referring to people like university professors and so on. I think they tend to buy into it because generally they're liberals who look to government action to address problems. Meanwhile the average, normal person is likely to be a little more conservative. Ultimately, I think that's what makes the difference.”

CC. When climatologists write about man-made climate change, they often pay lip service to it - saying how important continued studies are and so on. However, looking closely, often they don't come out and say whether or not they actually subscribe to the theory. Are there really that many who believe in it, or has there been an effort to make it appear that more believe in it than actually do?

“I absolutely believe that is one of the things the other side has done. They trot out agencies like the American Meteorological Society. I'm a member of that society, but a small group within that society came up with a statement supporting the other side. None of this is science. It's all aimed at the court of public opinion, which has nothing to do with science.

“So it all ends up being very political. Now I believe in conservation. Real conservation is always good. I ride a bicycle and I believe there are many things we can do in terms of conservation that make sense. But what I see more and more is these climate claims being used to justify insidious changes in energy policy. Some of these changes could have huge negative effects.”

CC. Another observation about stories claiming “70 percent of climatologists believe in man-made climate change” etc., is that the headlines might say “climatologists” but in the stories often only refer to “environmental scientists.” What's an environmental scientist?

“Basically, I'd say they are people who have gone through environmental or ecological programs. I would consider it very soft science, as opposed to studies like meteorology, which is a hard science where you need to have to learn applied calculus and so on.”

CC. Do environmental scientists conduct experiments?

“I really doubt that they do.”

CC. Would you consider sedimentology to be a hard science?

“I'm not sure. I presume they'd need to have a degree in geology, so I'd say yes.”

CC. In Michigan about a decade ago environmental groups were claiming lake levels were falling in a manner that wasn't normal. This actually resulted in legislation. At the time the leading Great Lakes lake level expert, Todd Thompson, senior scientist and sedimentologist at the University of Indiana-Bloomington, claimed the levels were exactly where they should have been, based on an overall 38-41 year cycle that could be traced back to beginning of the Great Lakes system. He even predicted that high (not low) water levels would be the problem by 2016. As the water levels have been rising, the issue has quieted down.

“I did something similar. In the 1990s there were claims that we'd seen the last of the snowpack in the mountains out here. I said it was about a 45-year cycle and things would change. Now the snowpack has been piling up and I'm glad I said what I did in the 1990s. It feels awfully good to be vindicated.”

CC. Are you upbeat about eventually being proven right about doubting man-made climate change?

“In the end I believe the evidence will show that I was right.”

CC. But will that be enough. Even if the evidence supports you, that doesn't mean the politics of the issue would automatically change.

“I think the truth is coming out. Whether or not people choose to believe the truth is something I can't do anything about.”

CC. To what extent did you feel like you were standing alone in resisting the man-made climate change theory back in the 1990s?

“It was difficult. I knew that many of my colleagues at the Association of State Climatologists agreed with me. But many of them wouldn't say anything because they were worried about losing their jobs or just plain having their professional lives made difficult. Frankly there's a lot more money supporting the other side. Things would be easier if you just go along with them.”

CC. “You'd say that now there's a lot more money supporting the man-made climate change side of the issue than there is on the side of the skeptics?

“Oh yes, it's been that way for a long time.”

posted February 11, 2014 09:19 PM            

Date: 30/01/13 Michael Bastasch, The Daily Caller
“You should be very skeptical — it has no good basis,” James Hansen, climatologist and head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, told TheDC News Foundation in an email.

Researchers in Norway recently found that global warming is less severe than previously predicted by the United Nations climate authority, causing skeptics to argue that a growing body of data is on their side while experts cast doubt on the results.

“It’s one in a substantial number of papers appearing in scientific literature within the last year or two, reducing the forecast global warming for the 21st century,” Patrick Michaels, director of the Center for the Study of Science at the Cato Institute, told The Daily Caller News Foundation in an interview.

“This is just more evidence that the sensitivity was overestimated,” he added.

However, some have urged caution in interpreting the results in the study, as it has not yet been peer-reviewed.

“But this episode underlines the problems of so-called science by press release,” writes Dr. Roz Pidcock for the Carbon Brief. ”With such a complex and sometimes controversial topic, research findings need to be carefully treated. As with all scientific research, if results are not yet published or peer reviewed, they are worth treating as preliminary.”

“You should be very skeptical — it has no good basis,” James Hansen, climatologist and head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, told TheDC News Foundation in an email.

Bloomberg reports that the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that global temperatures may rise 3 degrees — with a range of 2 degrees Celsius to 4.5 degrees Celsius — by 2050 Celsius if carbon dioxide levels doubled. However, after applying post-2000 temperatures, Norwegian researchers found that may rise only 1.9 degrees Celsius.

“The Earth’s mean temperature rose sharply during the 1990s,” said Terje Berntsen, a University of Oslo professor who worked on the study. “This may have caused us to overestimate climate sensitivity.” Climate sensitivity refers to the total amount of global warming projected if atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are doubled.

Eystein Jansen, research director at the Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research, told New York Times blogger Andrew Revkin that, ”it is way to early to say that this study has any more weight than other studies with low or higher sensitivity. My bet still goes along the 3 degree line as the most plausible, all things considered.”

However, Michaels argues that since the 2007 IPCC estimate, studies lowered their warming forecast because the sensitivity of temperature to CO2 emissions has been overestimated. In a Washington Times op-ed, Michaels provides a partial list:

“Richard Lindzen gives a range of 0.6 to 1.0 C (Asia-Pacific Journal of Atmospheric Sciences, 2011); Andreas Schmittner, 1.4 to 2.8 C (Science, 2011); James Annan, using two techniques, 1.2 to 3.6 C and 1.3 to 4.2 C (Climatic Change, 2011); J.H. van Hateren, 1.5 to 2.5 C (Climate Dynamics, 2012); Michael Ring, 1.5 to 2.0 C (Atmospheric and Climate Sciences, 2012); and Julia Hargreaves, including cooling from dust, 0.2 to 4.0 C and 0.8 to 3.6 C (Geophysical Research Letters, 2012).”

posted February 11, 2014 09:23 PM            

One of the fathers of Germany’s modern green movement, Professor Dr. Fritz Vahrenholt, a social democrat and green activist, decided to author a climate science skeptical book together with geologist/paleontologist Dr. Sebastian Lüning. Vahrenholt’s skepticism started when he was asked to review an IPCC report on renewable energy. He found hundreds of errors. When he pointed them out, IPCC officials simply brushed them aside. Stunned, he asked himself, “Is this the way they approached the climate assessment reports?”

Vahrenholt decided to do some digging. His colleague Dr. Lüning also gave him a copy of Andrew Montford’s The Hockey Stick Illusion. He was horrified by the sloppiness and deception he found. Persuaded by Hoffmann & Campe, he and Lüning decided to write the book. Die kalte Sonne [The Cold Sun] cites 800 sources and has over 80 charts and figures. It examines and summarizes the latest science.

posted February 11, 2014 09:31 PM            

Michael D. Lemonick

Judith Curry has traded harsh words with many of her colleagues in climate science.Gregory Miller
In trying to understand the Judith Curry phenomenon, it is tempting to default to one of two comfortable and familiar story lines.

For most of her career, Curry, who heads the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, has been known for her work on hurricanes, Arctic ice dynamics and other climate-related topics. But over the past year or so she has become better known for something that annoys, even infuriates, many of her scientific colleagues. Curry has been engaging actively with the climate change skeptic community, largely by participating on outsider blogs such as Climate Audit, the Air Vent and the Black¬board. Along the way, she has come to question how climatologists react to those who question the science, no matter how well established it is. Although many of the skeptics recycle critiques that have long since been disproved, others, she believes, bring up valid points—and by lumping the good with the bad, climate researchers not only miss out on a chance to improve their science, they come across to the public as haughty. "Yes, there's a lot of crankology out there," Curry says. "But not all of it is. If only 1 percent of it or 10 percent of what the skeptics say is right, that is time well spent because we have just been too encumbered by groupthink."

More from Scientific American.
She reserves her harshest criticism for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). For most climate scientists the major reports issued by the United Nations–sponsored body every five years or so constitute the consensus on climate science. Few scientists would claim the IPCC is perfect, but Curry thinks it needs thoroughgoing reform. She accuses it of "corruption." "I'm not going to just spout off and endorse the IPCC," she says, "because I think I don't have confidence in the process."

Whispered discreetly at conferences or in meeting rooms, these claims might be accepted as part of the frequently contentious process of a still evolving area of science. Stated publicly on some of the same Web sites that broke the so-called Climategate e-mails last fall, they are considered by many to be a betrayal, earning Curry epithets from her colleagues ranging from "naive" to "bizarre" to "nasty" to worse.

All of which sets up the two competing story lines, which are, on the surface at least, equally plausible. The first paints Curry as a peacemaker—someone who might be able to restore some civility to the debate and edge the public toward meaningful action. By frankly acknowledging mistakes and encouraging her colleagues to treat skeptics with respect, she hopes to bring about a meeting of the minds.

The alternative version paints her as a dupe—someone whose well-meaning efforts have only poured fuel on the fire. By this account, engaging with the skeptics is pointless because they cannot be won over. They have gone beyond the pale, taking their arguments to the public and distributing e-mails hacked from personal computer accounts rather than trying to work things out at conferences and in journal papers.

“I'm not going to just spout off and endorse the IPCC because I think I don't have confidence in the process.”
Which of these stories is more accurate would not matter much if the field of science in question was cosmology, say, or paleontology, or some other area without any actual impact on people's lives. Climate science obviously is not like that. The experts broadly agree that it will take massive changes in agriculture, energy production, and more to avert a potential disaster.

In this context, figuring out how to shape the public debate is a matter of survival. If people and governments are going to take serious action, it pretty much has to be now, because any delay will make efforts to stave off major climate change much more expensive and difficult to achieve. But the COP15 climate negotiations in Copenhagen last December ended in a watered-down policy document, with no legally binding commitments for countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Following Copenhagen, the U.S. Senate was unable to pass even a modest "cap and trade" bill that would have mandated reductions. And in the wake of Climategate a year ago and widespread attacks on the IPCC and on climate science in general, the public may be more confused than ever about what to think. Is Curry making things worse or better?

Over to the dark side

Curry's saga began with a Science paper she co-authored in 2005, which linked an increase in powerful tropical cyclones to global warming. It earned her scathing attacks on skeptical climate blogs. They claimed there were serious problems with the hurricane statistics the paper relied on, particularly from before the 1970s, and that she and her co-authors had failed to take natural variability sufficiently into account. "We were generally aware of these problems when we wrote the paper," Curry says, "but the critics argued that these issues were much more significant than we had acknowledged."

She did not necessarily agree with the criticisms, but rather than dismissing them, as many scientists might have done, she began to engage with the critics. "The lead author on the paper, Peter J. Webster, supports me in speaking with skeptics," Curry says, "and we now have very cordial interactions with Chris Landsea (whom we were at loggerheads with in 2005/2006), and we have had discussions with Pat Michaels on this subject." In the course of engaging with the skeptics, Curry ventured onto a blog run by Roger Pielke, Jr., a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado who is often critical of the climate science establishment, and onto Climate Audit, run by statistician Steve McIntyre. The latter, Curry adds, "became my blog of choice, because I found the discussions very interesting and I thought, 'Well, these are the people I want to reach rather than preaching to the converted over at [the mainstream climate science blog] RealClimate.'"

It was here that Curry began to develop respect for climate outsiders—or at least, some of them. And it made her reconsider her uncritical defense of the IPCC over the years. Curry says, "I realize I engaged in groupthink myself"—not on the hurricane paper per se but more broadly in her unquestioning acceptance of the idea that IPCC reports represent the best available thinking about climate change.

“So it's not so much as finding things that were wrong, but rather ignorance that was unrecognized and confidence that was overstated.”
She says she always trusted the IPCC to gather and synthesize all the disparate threads in this complex and multifaceted area of science. "I had 90 to 95 percent confidence in the IPCC Working Group 1 report," she states, referring to the basic-science section of the three-part report. But even then, she harbored some doubts. In areas where she had some expertise—clouds and sea ice, for example—she felt that the report's authors were not appropriately careful. "I was actually a reviewer for the IPCC Third Assessment Report," Curry says, "on the subject of atmospheric aerosols [that is, particles such as dust and soot that affect cloud formation]. I told them that their perspective was far too simplistic and that they didn't even mention the issue of aerosol impacts on the nucleation of ice clouds. So it's not so much as finding things that were wrong, but rather ignorance that was unrecognized and confidence that was overstated." In retrospect, she laughs, "if people expert in other areas were in the same boat, then that makes me wonder."

Apparently few others felt the same way; of the many hundreds of scientists involved in that report, which came out in 2001, only a handful have claimed their views were ignored—although the Third Assessment Report could not possibly reflect any one scientist's perspective perfectly.

Still, once Curry ventured out onto the skeptic blogs, the questions she saw coming from the most technically savvy of the outsiders—including statisticians, mechanical engineers and computer modelers from industry—helped to solidify her own uneasiness. "Not to say that the IPCC science was wrong, but I no longer felt obligated in substituting the IPCC for my own personal judgment," she said in a recent interview posted on the Collide-a-Scape climate blog.

Curry began to find other examples where she thought the IPCC was "torquing the science" in various ways. For example, she says, "a senior leader at one of the big climate-modeling institutions told me that climate modelers seem to be spending 80 percent of their time on the IPCC production runs and 20 percent of their time developing better climate models." She also asserts that the IPCC has violated its own rules by accepting nonpeer-reviewed papers and assigning high-status positions to relatively untested scientists who happen to feed into the organization's "narrative" of impending doom. Climate skeptics have seized on Curry's statements to cast doubt on the basic science of climate change. So it is important to emphasize that nothing she encountered led her to question the science; she still has no doubt that the planet is warming, that human-generated greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, are in large part to blame, or that the plausible worst-case scenario could be catastrophic. She does not believe that the Climategate e-mails are evidence of fraud or that the IPCC is some kind of grand international conspiracy. What she does believe is that the mainstream climate science community has moved beyond the ivory tower into a type of fortress mentality, in which insiders can do no wrong and outsiders are forbidden entry.

Uncertainty and science

Curry is not alone in criticizing the IPCC and individual climate scientists; in the wake of Climategate, an error about glacial melting in an IPCC report, and accusations of conflicts of interest involving IPCC chair Rajendra K. Pachauri, bodies ranging from the U.N. to the British government to individual universities on both sides of the Atlantic launched investigations. None found evidence of fraudulent science—including, most important, a probe by the InterAcademy Council (IAC)—a network of the U.S. National Academies of Science and its counterparts around the world. Although it found no major errors or distortions, it reported that the IPCC's procedures have failed to change adequately with the times and that in some cases the body has not enforced its own standards rigorously. Stripped of incendiary words, the central issue that concerns Curry also happens to be the key problem in translating climate science into climate policy. The public at large wants to know whether or not climate is warming, by how much and when, and they want to know how bad the effects are going to be. But the answers scientists give in papers and at conferences come couched in a seemingly vague language of confidence intervals and probabilities. The politically charged nature of the issue seems to have made some scientists reluctant to even mention anything to the public about "uncertainty" for fear that the likes of Oklahoma's Senator James "greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people" Inhofe and other politically motivated skeptics will continue to use the word as a blunt instrument against the whole enterprise of climate science—that because the scientists do not know everything, they know nothing.

The uncertainty lies in both the data about past climate and the models that project future climate. Curry asserts that scientists haven't adequately dealt with the uncertainty in their calculations and don't even know with precision what's arguably the most basic number in the field: the climate forcing from CO2—that is, the amount of warming a doubling of CO2 alone would cause without any amplifying or mitigating effects from melting ice, increased water vapor or any of a dozen other factors.

Things get worse, she argues, when you try to add in those feedbacks to project likely temperature increases over the next century, because the feedbacks are rife with uncertainty as well: "There's a whole host of unknown unknowns that we don't even know how to quantify but that should be factored into our confidence level." One example she cites is the "hockey stick" chart showing that current temperatures are the warmest in hundreds of years. If you are going to say that this year or that decade is the hottest, you had better have a good idea of what temperatures have actually been over those hundreds of years—and Curry, along with many skeptics, does not think we have as good a handle on that as the scientific community believes.

“We've seen a lot of strawmen from Judy lately.”
Many climate scientists find these complaints unfair. They say the IPCC has been upfront about uncertainties all along—that the reports explicitly cite areas where knowledge is lacking. It would be scientifically irresponsible to give flat answers to questions such as "How much will it warm?" or "How much will sea level rise?" Instead the experts give ranges and confidence intervals and the like. More important, other scientists part ways with Curry over how significant those uncertainties are to the final calculation. Yes, the most basic number in climate science is not known with absolute precision, agreed Stanford University's Stephen H. Schneider in a conversation shortly before he died in July. But it is only uncertain by a few percent, which simply is not enough to skew the projections significantly. Other effects, such as whether clouds will accelerate or retard warming, are much less certain—but here people like Schneider point out that the lack of precision is laid out by the IPCC. (Schneider was the one who persuaded the IPCC to systematize its discussion of uncertainty a decade ago.) For that reason, Curry's charges are misleading, her critics say. "We've seen a lot of strawmen from Judy lately," Schneider said. "It is frankly shocking to see such a good scientist take that kind of a turn to sloppy thinking. I have no explanation for it."

The sloppiness is not one-sided, however. While the IAC panel came out of its investigation with respect for the IPCC overall, it had issues with how the organization deals with uncertainty. "We looked very carefully at the question of how they communicate the level of uncertainty to policy makers," says Harold Shapiro, a former president of Princeton University and head of the IAC panel. "We found it was a mix. Sometimes they do it well, sometimes not so well. There were statements made where they expressed high confidence in a conclusion where there was very little evidence, and sometimes there were statements made that could not be falsified." A statement that cannot be proven false is generally not considered to be scientific.

In at least one respect, however, Curry is in harmony with her colleagues. The public needs to understand that in science uncertainty is not the same thing as ignorance; rather it is a discipline for quantifying what is unknown. Curry has sought to begin a conversation on one of the most important and difficult issues in climate policy: the extent to which science can say something valid despite gaps in knowledge. "If we can't talk the language of probability theory and probability distributions," says Chris E. Forest, a statistician at Pennsylvania State University, "we have to resort to concepts like odds, rolls of the dice, roulette wheels." And because climate is complex, he adds, the terms "likely" and "very likely" in the IPCC reports represent lots of wheels or lots of dice rolling at once, all interacting with one another. When scientists translate statistical jargon into comprehensible language, they necessarily oversimplify it, giving the impression of glossing over nuance. The public gets cartoon versions of climate theories, which are easily refuted.

A crucial lesson for the public is that uncertainty cuts both ways. When science is uncertain, it means that things could turn out to be much rosier than projections would indicate. It also means things could turn out to be much worse. Sea-level-rise projections are a case in point. Glaciologists can easily estimate how quickly the thick blankets of ice covering Greenland and Antarctica should melt as temperatures rise and how much that extra water should raise sea level. Warming, though, could also affect the rate at which glaciers flow from the ice sheets down to the sea to dump icebergs, which raises sea level independently. Predicting the latter effect is tougher. In fact, Curry says, "we don't know how to quantify it, so we don't even include it in our models. But it's out there, and we know it probably has an impact."

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Rather than sweeping that uncertainty about ice sheets under the rug, as Curry's overall critique might lead one to assume, the IPCC's 2007 Fourth Assessment Report flags this uncertainty. Specifically, the report projects 0.18 to 0.59 meter of sea-level rise by the end of the century but explicitly excludes possible increases in ice flow. The reason, as the report explains, is that while such increases are likely, there was insufficient information at the time to estimate what they might be. Since the report came out, new research has given a better sense of what might happen with ice dynamics (although the authors caution that considerable uncertainty remains about the projections). It turns out that the original projections may have been too benign.

The same could be true for other aspects of climate. "The plausible worst-case scenario could be worse than anything we're looking at right now," Curry says. The rise in temperature from a doubling of CO2 "could be one degree. It could be 10 degrees. Let's just put it out there and develop policy options for all the scenarios and do a cost-benefit analysis for all of them, and then you start to get the things that make sense."

Doing damage

There is no question Curry has caused a stir; she is frequently cited by some of the harshest skeptics around, including Marc Morano, the former aide to Senator Inhofe and founder of the Climate Depot skeptic blog. It is not just the skeptics: Andrew C. Revkin, the New York Times's longtime environment reporter has treated her with great respect on his Dot Earth blog more than once. So has Keith Kloor, who runs the militantly evenhanded Collide-a-Scape blog.

“She's been hugely criticized by the climate science community for not maintaining the fatwa.”
What scientists worry is that such exposure means Curry has the power to do damage to a consensus on climate change that has been building for the past 20 years. They see little point in trying to win over skeptics, even if they could be won over. Says Gavin A. Schmidt, a climate scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City and proprietor of the RealClimate blog: "Science is not a political campaign. We're not trying to be everyone's best friend, kiss everyone's baby."

To Curry, the damage comes not from the skeptics' critiques themselves, most of which are questionable, but from the scientific community's responses to them—much as deaths from virulent flu come not from the virus but from the immune system's violent overreaction. Curry remarks that she has been a victim of this herself, spurned by her colleagues for her outreach efforts (although she adds that she has not been damaged professionally and continues to publish). "She's been hugely criticized by the climate science community," McIntyre says, "for not maintaining the fatwa [against talking to outsiders]."

Some disinterested commentators agree. One is S. Alexander Haslam, an expert in organizational psychology at the University of Exeter in England. The climate community, he says, is engaging in classic black sheep syndrome: members of a group may be annoyed by public criticism from outsiders, but they reserve their greatest anger for insiders who side with outsiders. By treating Curry as a pariah, Haslam says, scientists are only enhancing her reputation as some kind of renegade who speaks truth to power. Even if she is substantially wrong, it is not in the interests of climate scientists to treat Curry as merely an annoyance or a distraction. "I think her criticisms are damaging," Haslam says. "But in a way, that's a consequence of failing to acknowledge that all science has these political dynamics."

posted February 11, 2014 09:47 PM            

Dr. David Bromwich--president of the International Commission on Polar Meteorology--says "it's hard to see a global warming signal from the mainland of Antarctica right now."

Prof. Paul Reiter--Chief of Insects and Infectious Diseases at the famed Pasteur Institute--says "no major scientist with any long record in this field" accepts Al Gore's claim that global warming spreads mosquito-borne diseases.

Prof. Hendrik Tennekes--director of research, Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute--states "there exists no sound theoretical framework for climate predictability studies" used for global warming forecasts.

Dr. Christopher Landsea--past chairman of the American Meteorological Society's Committee on Tropical Meteorology and Tropical Cyclones--says "there are no known scientific studies that show a conclusive physical link between global warming and observed hurricane frequency and intensity."

Dr. Antonino Zichichi--one of the world's foremost physicists, former president of the European Physical Society, who discovered nuclear antimatter--calls global warming models "incoherent and invalid."

Dr. Zbigniew Jaworowski--world-renowned expert on the ancient ice cores used in climate research--says the U.N. "based its global-warming hypothesis on arbitrary assumptions and these assumptions, it is now clear, are false."

Prof. Tom V. Segalstad--head of the Geological Museum, University of Oslo--says "most leading geologists" know the U.N.'s views "of Earth processes are implausible."

Dr. Syun-Ichi Akasofu--founding director of the International Arctic Research Center, twice named one of the "1,000 Most Cited Scientists," says much "Arctic warming during the last half of the last century is due to natural change."

Dr. Claude Allegre--member, U.S. National Academy of Sciences and French Academy of Science, he was among the first to sound the alarm on the dangers of global warming. His view now: "The cause of this climate change is unknown."

Dr. Richard Lindzen--Professor of Meteorology at M.I.T., member, the National Research Council Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate, says global warming alarmists "are trumpeting catastrophes that couldn't happen even if the models were right."

Dr. Habibullo Abdussamatov--head of the space research laboratory of the Russian Academy of Science's Pulkovo Observatory and of the International Space Station's Astrometria project says "the common view that man's industrial activity is a deciding factor in global warming has emerged from a misinterpretation of cause and effect relations."

Dr. Richard Tol--Principal researcher at the Institute for Environmental Studies at Vrije Universiteit, and Adjunct Professor at the Center for Integrated Study of the Human Dimensions of Global Change, at Carnegie Mellon University, calls the most influential global warming report of all time "preposterous . . . alarmist and incompetent."

Dr. Sami Solanki--director and scientific member at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany, who argues that changes in the Sun's state, not human activity, may be the principal cause of global warming: "The sun has been at its strongest over the past 60 years and may now be affecting global temperatures."

Prof. Freeman Dyson--one of the world's most eminent physicists says the models used to justify global warming alarmism are "full of fudge factors" and "do not begin to describe the real world."

Dr. Eigils Friis-Christensen--director of the Danish National Space Centre, vice-president of the International Association of Geomagnetism and Aeronomy, who argues that changes in the Sun's behavior could account for most of the warming attributed by the UN to man-made CO2.

posted February 11, 2014 09:59 PM            

In the not so humble opinion of your humble correspondent it began last Sunday when I took the American MSM to task here in NewsBusters for failing to report on the observation by a noted climatologist, Professor Mojib Latif, of Germany's Leibniz Institute, that the planet is in for a cooling period that could last from 10 to 20 years. The very next day, by an amazing "coincidence," the findings of Professor Latif were reported by Andrew Revkin of the New York Times. Although Revkin couldn't quite bring himself to renounce the global warming faith in which he invested a couple of decades of his life, the mere mention of Latif's findings caused him to be charged with heresy from the usual leftwing suspects including the Daily Kos. Here are a couple of examples of Kossack invective hurled at Revkin for daring to question in even a small way the sacred global warming dogma:

The lede of Revkin's article is shocking. It's wrong. And, given the UN meeting this week on climate change such nonsense should not have been published by the Times for the policy makers to read.
another inexcusable blunder from the NYT.
Unfortunately for the Kossacks and the rest of the left, the cat is now out of the bag about Professor Latif's findings. Kyle Wingfield of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution noted yesterday that the Facts are cooling off global alarmism:

Global temperatures have held steady for several years, contrary to the expectations of statistical models. This month, a leading German user of these climate models predicted temperatures would fall for “one or two decades” to come.

Why the reprieve? The German, Mojib Latif, cited changing currents in the northern Atlantic Ocean. He even went a step further, saying the currents were also responsible for an unknown portion of the warming in the late 20th century.
...The German seriously undercut the idea that global warming will continue unabated as long as emissions of carbon dioxide rise, a cherished claim of climate alarmists. Nature, he acknowledged, can overwhelm or amplify whatever heating effect CO2 has. We’re still learning how.
Sean Hannity also weighed in this week on the impact of Professor Latif on the global warming debate:

posted February 11, 2014 10:01 PM            

With 11 days remaining, Germany this year is set for its 5th colder-than-normal winter (DJF) in a row (a record), this according to high-profile German meteorologist Dominik Jung at www.wetter.net here (photo left). Jung is an often-quoted meteorology expert of the German media.

I’m really quite (pleasantly) surprised because I recall sharply criticizing, even berating, Jung in a post about a year or two ago for believing all the warmist rubbish. I guess five cold, snowy winters in a row have been enough to get Jung to take closer look. His tone and music have changed completely.

Jung begins his post with:

Just a few years ago climate experts prophesied that Germany would no longer experience winters with ice and snow in the future. In the 1990s there had been an entire series of milder and stormier winters. [...] However, this trend has not been observed over the last years. To the contrary: winters have again gotten considerably colder and the huge storms like those in the 1990s have more or less disappeared. [...]. Climate experts prophesied in the year 2000 that winters with snow and ice in Germany would cease to exist.”

Jung then presents the data for Germany’s last 4 winters and that of the current winter, and compares them to the 1980-2010 mean winter temperature, which was 0.8°C above the 1960-1990 mean.

- 2008/2009: 1.0 °C cooler
- 2009/2010: 2.0 °C cooler
- 2010/2011: 1.3 °C cooler
- 2011/2012: 0.1 °C cooler
- 2012/2013 (so far): 0.4°C. cooler

We should recall that whatever applies for Germany, also applies for much of Central Europe. Moreover, Jung mentions that the results are the same if you compare the five winters to the 1970 -2000 period. Jung summarizes the results:

With the current winter, we now have 5 winters in a row that have been colder than the long-term average! Crafty scientists at first explained that climate warming was just taking a timeout. Strangely, this timeout has now been going on for 5 years without interruption. Accordingly things have gotten very quiet in the climate warming debate.”

Yes indeed it has. Germany’s prestigious research institutes and leading climatologists, such as “internationally recognized” Prof. Dr. Mojib Latif, Head of both the Research Division Ocean Circulation and Climate Dynamics and the Research Unit Marine Meteorology of the IFM-GEOMAR of Kiel, Germany, and “renowned” Prof. Dr. Stefan Rahmstorf of the influential Potsdam Institute of Climate Impact Research (PIK), or Prof. Dr. Jochem Marotzke of the Max-Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg are now stumped, baffled and confused by this unexpected development, which completely contradicts their earlier super-computer models. Indeed, most of the German warmist modellers have since gone back and revamped their models, and are now suddenly claiming that the colder winters are actually a sign of global warming! But for much of the remaining German science community, these once prestigious scientists are beginning to increasingly look like laughing stocks of the new century.

Jung did his homework, and also checked to see how the earlier models have been doing for the summers (JJA). Jung writes:

By the way, according to many climate projections, also summers in Germany were supposed to get increasingly drier and hotter. Over the last 10 summers, only one summer was too dry, and that was the summer of 2003. Otherwise all summers were either average or much too wet.”

The models got the summers wrong 9 consecutive years in a row! So expect the Latif and the other hapless scientists to roll out new models soon. Jung continues:

The earlier climate projections and prognoses of the 80s and 90s are more or less way off, at least for Germany and Europe. Because of the current situation with the facts, they simply no longer fit and must be urgently revamped, otherwise we will wind up with credibility problems here.”

Too late. As mentioned above, the scientists are already laughing stocks and many of us have been rolling on the floor with laughter for quite some time. Jung:

People aren’t stupid and they recognise what the facts are. So let’s look and see just how much longer this timeout is supposed to go.”

If he hasn’t done so already, Jung ought to pick up a copy of Die kalte Sonne. It’ll remove any remaining doubts he may have.

posted February 11, 2014 10:13 PM            

Michaels received his PhD in ecological climatology from UW-Madison in 1979 after he earned his A.B. and S.M. degrees in biological sciences and plant ecology from the University of Chicago. Since then he's served as a climatologist for the state of Virginia, a professor of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia, and was a contributing author and reviewer of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He's currently a senior fellow at the CATO Institute and is a Distinguished Senior Fellow in the School of Public Policy at George Mason University.

According to his official biography, Michaels' writing has been published in the major scientific journals, including Climate Research, Climatic Change, Geophysical Research Letters, Journal of Climate, Nature, and Science, as well as in newspapers such as The Washington Post, Washington Times, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Houston Chronicle, and Journal of Commerce. He was an author of the climate "paper of the year" awarded by the Association of American Geographers in 2004.

With all these bona fides, why would his peers contemplate waging a campaign to undermine his credibility?

Michaels is also a global warming skeptic.

Questioning Man Made Global Warming

In September, he wrote an article for National Review accusing Phil Jones, a climatologist at the United Kingdom's University of East Anglia, and his colleagues of losing or destroying surface temperature data they used to develop their theories. You can read the whole article by clicking here.

The Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia explained on their website "Since the 1980s, we have merged the data we have received into existing series or begun new ones, so it is impossible to say if all stations within a particular country or if all of an individual record should be freely available. Data storage availability in the 1980s meant that we were not able to keep the multiple sources for some sites, only the station series after adjustment for homogeneity issues. We, therefore, do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (i.e. quality controlled and homogenized) data."

That data was incorporated into a report by the IPCC in the 1990s, which in turn was used by the EPA in drafting its "Endangerment Findings." The endangerment findings determined that greenhouse gases are at unprecedented levels and are endangering the health and welfare of the public.

Now, Michaels and the Competitive Enterprise Institute are petitioning the EPA to reopen the public comment period, because the data supporting the findings are unreliable.

That allegation did not sit well with Phil Jones and his colleagues.

Ben Santer, a climatologist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, told Jones in an email on October 9, 2009 "I'm really sorry that you have to go through all this stuff, Phil. Next time I see Pat Michaels at a scientific meeting, I'll be tempted to beat the crap out of him. Very tempted."

Long-running feud

In an interview with the MacIver Institute on Tuesday, Michaels said that was not the first time Santer had threatened him with bodily harm. Michaels explained he and Santer have been critical of each other since the mid-1990s.

The feud dates back to at least 1996 when Santer, Jones and others published a paper in the academic journal Nature entitled "A Search For Human Influences On The Thermal Structure Of The Atmosphere." The authors believed it was supposed to settle the global warming debate once and for all.

Michaels said "It was a blatant attempt to manipulate public opinion." He went on to write an article for Nature about the questionable scientific practices behind Santer and Jones' work.

It is clear Jones, Santer and others continue to hold a grudge against Michaels. Examples of that grudge can be found in emails leaked from the University of East Anglia. On October 8, 2009, Santer emailed Rick Piltz, director of Climate Science Watch, questioning Michaels' own research methods.

Santer wrote "I'm sure that Pat Michaels does not have the primary source data used in his Ph.D. thesis. Perhaps one of us should request the datasets used in Michaels' Ph.D. work, and then ask the University of Wisconsin to withdraw Michaels' Ph.D. if he fails to produce every dataset and computer program used in the course of his thesis research."

Michaels told the MacIver Institute "The funny thing is I could reproduce every data set. It's not that complicated."

As the recently-revealed email conversations continued, Santer defended the reliability of the IPCC study.

"The integrity and reliability of this story does NOT rest on a single observational dataset, as Michaels and the CEI incorrectly claim," Santer emailed. "Michaels should and does know better. I can only conclude from his behavior - and from his participation in this legal action - that he is being intentionally dishonest."

Defending Jones, Santer wrote "The sad thing here is that Phil Jones is one of the true gentlemen of our field. I have known Phil for most of my scientific career. He is the antithesis of the secretive, 'data destroying' character the CEI and Michaels are trying to portray to the outside world."

The UW Connection

But the issue of Michaels' PhD from the University of Wisconsin continued to come up in subsequent emails. The next week, emails from other climatologists continued to speculate about the possibility of revoking Michaels' Doctorate.

One email asked "Perhaps the University of Wisconsin ought to open up a public comment period to decide whether Pat Michaels' PhD needs re-assessing?"

This week the MacIver Institute filed an open records request with the University of Wisconsin to see if any formal effort against Michaels was undertaken.

In response, John C. Dowling UW's Senior University Legal Counsel, wrote, "According to the current Chair of the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, there has been no correspondence concerning the Ph.D. granted to Patrick Michael in 1979."

The intrigue continues, however. Just today it was reported that Phil Jones has stepped down from his position at the University of East Anglia, pending the results of an investigation of allegations, stemming from the leaked emails, that he overstated case for man-made global warming.

posted February 11, 2014 10:18 PM            

The mean greenies in Germany are so hot at Vahrenholt that they probably ought to charge themselves a carbon tax, or buy on offsetting credit, or just kick back and relax with a cold drink on a furry polar bear rug in front of a big log fire.

“The left wing German online TAZ here has a weekend article called Climate Skeptics Are Like Viruses,” writes the website No Trick Zone, “which looks at the controversy swirling about Vahrenholt’s …new skeptic book Die kalte Sonne [The Cold Sun.]” The Taz site includes cute pictures of blood thirsty, meat eating, Coca Cola drinking polar bear cannibals, to emphasize the point: Vahrenholt, bad, polar bears, good. The left uses polar bears as their Little Orphan Annie of global warming. The sun’s out everyday.

The two hypotheses put forward in the book by Vahrenholt and his coauthor Sebastian Lüning are that 1) The UN has purposefully slanted the science to reach a pro-global warming position and; 2) solar activity plays a much more important part in geological warming and cooling than scientists are willing to admit.

Polar bears rock, but people are like viruses.

“Today, I want new scientific findings to be included in the climate debate,” Vahrenholt told an interviewer from the German Spiegel Online. “It would then become clear that the simple equation that CO2 and other man-made greenhouse gases are almost exclusively responsible for climate change is unsustainable. It hasn't gotten any warmer on this planet in almost 14 years, despite continued increases in CO2 emissions. Established climate science has to come up with an answer to that.”

Currently the book is Amazon Germany’s number one seller under Environment and Ecology and number 62 on its Top 100 List.

In part that’s because Vahrenholt is one of Germany’s best-known environmental activists says the Energy Tribune. “If Al Gore or David Suzuki or NASA's Jim Hansen were suddenly to renounce man-made global warming,” says the Tribune’s Jim Delingpole, “it could hardly be more surprising. Up until two years ago, Vahrenholt was Germany's Godfather of Green: a green activist and former environment minister for the State of Hamburg.”

He also is a graduate of the “student protest movement” according to Spiegel Online and “fought against the chemical industry's toxic manufacturing plants in the 1970s.” That’s why the Social Democratic Party chose him to be their environmental representative in the city of Hamburg, a city that relies on heavy industry like copper, steel, chemicals and shipbuilding.

Most recently, Vahrenholt was CEO of the renewable energy division of RWE, one of Europe’s largest utility companies. That seems to be the point of contention that Greenpeace and others on the intolerant left have fashioned on in order to undermine Vahrenholt’s credibility. Planetsave.com calls him an “electric utility executive” skipping over his environmental activism. And Greenepeace, in its Polygraph section, called him an “Ice cold denier” with a shadow rendering of Pinocchio with a very long nose. No polar bears apparently were hurt in the rendering of Pinocchio.

Planetsave calls the rest of us “the usual climate denial enablers,” which is totally unfounded and untrue. I’m an extremely unusual climate denier enabler. And, if you are reading this, 90 percent chance that so are you.

One global warming apostle enabler who got an advanced copy of Vahrenholt’s book disagrees with the book’s assessment, but agrees that Vahrenholt’s change of heart is newsworthy.

“While books by climate heretics usually receive little attention,” writes Spiegel Online, “it could be different in Vahrenholt's case. ‘His fame,’ says Marotzke, ‘will ensure that there will be a debate on the issue.’” Jochem Marotzke is the director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg and the only climatologist who Vahrenholt made sure read the book prior to publication.

Heretics? And they wonder why we call climate change a religion.

Already “three of Germany’s most widely read news publications, Bild, Der Spiegel, and Die Welt immediately took notice, releasing skeptical climate science articles in their print and on-line editions,” reports Forbes.com contributor Larry Bell, who is most avowedly a climate denial enabler and chief denialist. Like Vahrenholt, Bell is a scientist who wrote a book about the climate hoax. But he’s not a climatologist, so that should completely disqualify him from opining on matters related to science.

posted February 11, 2014 10:28 PM            

As I've said dozens of times in the past couple of decades in various columns including, of course, 'Gems,' I believe in CLIMATE CHANGES of the naturally occurring variety, but not anthropogenic global warming (AGW). It's a massive fraud in my opinion, a LIE, pure and simple.

There is no peer-confirmed scientific research that establishes a cause-and-effect relationship between increased atmospheric carbon dioxide and higher (or lower) global temperatures. This is a clever deception put forth by those attempting to impose a centralized, worldwide socialistic form of government headed by an empowered United Nations.

This far-reaching global warming industry, already making huge profits at taxpayer expense, has been given credence by most governments, the news media, political interests, fear-gripped citizens of the planet and much of the scientific community.

Some of the key scientists in the AGW movement have falsified historical data to make it conform to their agenda, which is decidedly anti-American (Western), anti-democracy and anti-capitalism.

Their methodology is to completely ignore the climatological facts that, since 1998, we've been in a pronounced cooling trend on a global scale that has completely wiped-out the warming that occurred from 1981 through 1997 that followed directly on the chilly heels of a prolonged colder period that began during World War II. Remember all the talk of a NEW ICE AGE at the doorsteps in the mid to late 1970s? Needless to say, it didn't happen either.

On the first Earth Day in 1970, a very prominent environmentalist, E.F. Watt, spoke out about the rising threat of global cooling. Watt declared, "If present trends continue, the world will be about 4 degrees colder by 1990 and nearly 11 degrees colder by the year 2000. This would be twice the cooling needed to put us in a new GREAT ICE AGE." Again, it didn't happen. This was climatological 'fear-mongering' that made millions of dollars for these so-called 'climate experts.' (I wrote articles against this "Ice Age Cometh" hysteria at the time. Now, I'm on the 'other' side of things.)

Again, as I've always claimed, CLIMATE CHANGE IS REAL! BUT NATURAL! However, we have made things worse with the 'urban heat island effect' which added a bit to the warmer cycles.

The Earth's climate, like the rest of the planets in our Solar System, changes constantly in a 'natural response' to both terrestrial and extraterrestrial influences. These include solar rays, the sun is the big weather-maker, cosmic rays, radiation from exploding stars in our galaxy (supernovas), the moon and numerous other factors.

There have been several rather epoch climate changes since before the time of Christ, which AGW alarmists conveniently seem to ignore in their falsified climate models, like the Roman Warm Period (250 B.C. to 450 A.D.), the Medieval Warm Period (900 A.D. to 1300 A.D.), the Little Ice Age (1350 A.D. to 1850 A.D.), and the recent slow-warming from the mid 1800s through 1997.

This warming of the planet during the 20th Century was a mere 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit and, as I stated previously, was completely wiped out during the brief period from 1997-2011, especially after our 'sun went silent' in 2007.

Virtually the entire mid-latitude regions of both northern and southern hemispheres have had a series of very cold winters since 2007, as sunspot activity decreased to levels not seen since the 'Maunder Minimum' between 1645 and 1715, when frost fairs were celebrated on the frozen Thames River in London almost on an annual basis.

The years 2008 and 2009 experienced extremely low levels of sunspots. There were an amazing 266 (73 percent) days that were 'sunspot-free' in 2008 and 260 such days in 2009. Only recently have sunspot numbers increased to more normal levels. This cycle of higher sunspots should peak in late 2012 and then 'drop off a cliff,' no pun intended.

Next week in 'Gems,' I'll answer the many questions that I've received concerning 'CLIMATEGATE.' Stay tuned.

NORTH IDAHO WEATHER REVIEW AND LONG-RANGE OUTLOOKS

Sharon and I had a great time in Phoenix celebrating our granddaughter Nicole's high school graduation and 18th birthday during the Memorial Day weekend. We thank Randy Mann for covering for me on my May 30 article in 'Gems.' This 'workaholic' needed to get away from the daily grind.

Believe it or not, it was too chilly in Scottsdale, where we stayed with my son Brent and his wife Pam, to even go swimming in the solar-heated pool. Sharon and I dipped our legs into the water on the last day as temperatures warmed into the 90s. She came home sick with the flu, but that's life. We had 'fun in the sun.' There wasn't a cloud in the Phoenix skies all week, but it was very windy and dusty causing my allergies to kick up due to ragweed pollen.

Phoenix hasn't seen even a mere two inches of total precipitation thus far in 2011, probably the result of 'La Nina.' There was a lot of freeze damage from record cold temperatures in the teens and 20s this past winter season in Arizona. Many tropical plants literally 'bit the dust.'

Locally, May of 2011 was another in a long series of cold and wet months in North Idaho and the rest of the Inland Empire.

Our average (mean) temperature during the 31-day span was just 51.5 degrees, some 3.5 degrees colder than normal. Our afternoon highs averaged 63 degrees, five degrees below the normal of 68 degrees. There were a dozen days in the 40s and 50s for highs, quite unusual indeed for May. Record low maximum readings were set on May 16, when the mercury failed to surpass 45 degrees all day. Another record low maximum was established on May 24 at just 50 degrees. The month's warmest day was 81 degrees on May 14. The coldest reading was a frosty 31 degrees on May 2. Some early gardens were nipped.

As far as May precipitation was concerned, we nearly doubled our normal rainfall at 3.92 inches, which pushed our annual precipitation total to an incredible 19.73 inches, a whopping 6.27 inches above normal by May 31. No wonder we have lowland flooding in our region. Remember, we still have a lot of snow in the nearby mountains that has yet to melt.

Longer-term, after a wet and chilly start, this month of June will gradually turn warmer and drier with the approach of the summer season.

It won't be 'rainless' but, it should 'rain less often.' In other words, we should see more sun and less clouds.

Remember, I'm still looking for a HOTTER SUMMER than last year with lots of warm 90-degree plus 'Sholeh Days.' Think WARM ... our economy needs it!

posted February 11, 2014 10:41 PM            

By Terrance Aym

28 Mar 11 - (Excerpts) - Geologic records show that Ice Ages are the norm, punctuated by brief periods of warming. Now one of the most highly respected paleoclimatologists - George Kukla, 77, retired professor of paleoclimatology at Columbia University and researcher at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory - has weighed in and is warning everyone to prepare for a new Ice Age.

The "Earth has experienced an ongoing cycle of ice ages dating back millions of years. Cold, glacial periods affecting the polar to mid-latitudes persist for about 100,000 years, punctuated by briefer, warmer periods called interglacials," says Kukla.

Kukla asserts all Ice Ages start with a period of global warming. They are the the harbingers of new Ice Ages. Actually, he explains, warming is good. Ice Ages are deadly and may even kill millions.

Can Mankind stop it? No. Just as humanity cannot affect the long term climate of the planet, neither can it stop an Ice Age from happening. The climate is primarily driven by the sun.

"I feel we're on pretty solid ground in interpreting orbit around the sun as the primary driving force behind Ice Age glaciation," he says. "The relationship is just too clear and consistent to allow reasonable doubt. It's either that, or climate drives orbit, and that just doesn't make sense."

During a lengthy interview with Gelf Magazine, Kukla explained: "What is happening is very similar to the time 115,000 years ago, when the last glaciation started.... Believe it or not, the last glacial started with 'global warming!'"

He knows that global warming always precedes an Ice Age. The history of that is in the ice core records repeating itself every 100,000 years or so over millions of years.

Generations ago, scientists believed Ice Ages advanced slowly taking tens of thousands of years. Now some researchers have revealed startling evidence that an Ice Age can be triggered in under 10 years.

Warming is much more preferable than cooling. Warming would actually help Mankind; cooling will do just the opposite.

Kukla and his colleagues warn that as the ice starts marching southward from the Arctic there will be "substantially lowered food production" and evidence will abound of "extreme weather anomalies" in both the northern and southern latitudes.

Global superstorms may break out. Some regions may experience anomalous cold spells while others roast from spiking temperatures never before seen by civilization.

Those things too are exactly what's happening now.

Not taken into Kulka's model of an encroaching Ice Age are the facts and possible impact of the magnetic pole shift, the shifting core of the Earth, or the revelation by NASA and the ESA that the sun is going to fall into a quiet period for the next 30 to 50 years.

That exceptional solar minimum cycle is expected to start in 2014, perhaps earlier.

posted February 12, 2014 12:37 PM            

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For nearly 20 years George Taylor, former Oregon State professor of climatology, has been one of the more vocal skeptics of man-made climate change.

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George Taylor, of course, is the meteorologist who believes global warming isn't happening. Reporting on the evening's most telling interaction, OLCV's Tresa reports:

1 question from the audience summed up the night:
To paraphrase: If we choose to follow one of these perspectives and we find out in 20 years we chose wrong, which incorrect choice is worse?

George Taylor quietly stated that we would probably be worse off if we chose to believe him and it turned out he was wrong. As this erroneous decision would have caused us to take passive action and make little investments to curb greenhouse gases.

Phil Mote's reponse? God, I hope I'm wrong. I really hope I'm wrong. I really, really hope I'm wrong.

- See more at: http://www.blueoregon.com/2007/02/george_taylor_a/

Oregon State University - the university that gave George Taylor the informal title of "state climatologist" - has now acknowledged that that there is no state-authorized state climatologist and he's merely called that because he does similar tasks as what the former, actual state climatologist used to do. - See more at: http://www.blueoregon.com/2007/02/oregon_state_co/

He does have a M.S. in Meteorology from the University of Utah (1975).

Mote, whose Ph.D. is from the University of Washington, surmises that Taylor is guilty of looking only at data that support his views, while discarding the rest. "You can only come to that conclusion if you handpick the climate records," Mote says.

"You can say whatever you want about a subject, but to defy expert opinion-it's just hard for me to understand approaching a complex subject like this and say, 'I know better than the experts,'" Mote says.

Accuracy about global warming matters, Mote says. By spreading misinformation about the world's most important environmental issue, Taylor can encourage people not only to have doubts about proven science, but to become complacent. "People will conclude it's still uncertain," Mote says, "so we don't have to do anything."
...
Taylor himself has supplemented his government salary with oil money. On Nov. 22, 2004, the ExxonMobil-funded website Tech Central Station (techcentralstation.com-"Where Free Markets Meet Technology") published the 2,300-word article by Taylor that Inhofe had read on the Senate floor. Taylor's article was a review of a report that had shown significant warming in the Arctic. Taylor, who has written seven articles on climate change for Tech Central Station, says he was paid $500 for the review. http://www.webcitation.org/65a9PPmii

You're saying that he knows better than us, but even his own colleagues point out that he obviously doesn't know what he's talking about. That whole article I just cited tears up his credibility on the issue.

He's a member of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change and Tech Central Science Foundation or Tech Central Station, both of which have received funding from Exxon Mobile. Follow the money, you say?

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Prominent climatologists skeptical of global warming: http://www.populartechnology.net/2010/09/prominent-climatologists-skeptical-of.html?m=1

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John Cristy has a lot of detractors. The list of articles refuting his opinions is extensive: http://www.skepticalscience.com/John_Christy_blog.htm
He even contradicts his own data:

In fact, Christy led off his written testimony with the following myth:

"As the global temperature failed to warm over the past 15 years..."

John Christy and Roy Spencer compile satellite measurements of the temperature of the Earth's atmosphere at the University of Alabama at Huntsville (UAH). Their data set estimates the warming of the lowest layer of the Earth's atmosphere at 0.21°C over the past 15 years, so Christy's opening statement is in direct contradiction with his own data. New estimates of average global surface temperatures also put the value at about 0.21°C global surface warming over the past 15 years.

Additionally, the warming of the atmosphere only accounts for about 2 percent of the warming of the global climate, which as a whole has accumulated heat at a rate equivalent to 4 Hiroshima atomic bomb detonations per second over the past 15 years. Perhaps the House Republicans keep inviting Christy to testify because he tells them what they want to hear regardless of its factual accuracy. http://www.skepticalscience.com/misleading-congressional-climate-testimony-christy-pielke.html

Patrick Michaels

Michaels has, over the past several years, been affiliated with at least ten organizations funded by ExxonMobile. The organizations include the Advancement of Sound Science Coalition, the American Council on Science and Health, the American Legislative exchange Council, the Cato Institute, the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, the
Competitive enterprise Institute, Consumer Alert, the Heritage Foundation, Tech Central Station, and the Weidenbaum Center on the economy, Government, and Public Policy. http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/global_warming/exxon_report.pdf

Tom Wigley is one of the world's most highly-cited and respected climate researchers. He trained as a meteorologist in Australia, and has a PhD in mathematical physics (plasma kinetic theory) from the University of Adelaide. He served as Director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (UEA) from 1979 to 1993, and was a Senior Scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) from 1993 to 2006. He currently has honorary academic positions at UEA and NCAR and a Professorship at the University of Adelaide. He developed and continues to update the widely-used climate model MAGICC.

Emails illegally hacked from a server at UEA showed how vulnerable scientists can be to misrepresentation of their private statements, and how frustrating it can be to cope with harassment from critics of global warming ideas. They also showed Wigley pushing for greater transparency and fair play. In 2008, Wigley joined Roger Pielke Jr. and Christopher Green, also Breakthrough Senior Fellows, in co-authoring an influential commentary in the journal Nature, which showed that the IPCC was making highly optimistic and "dangerous assumptions" about the role that energy efficiency and renewable energy sources could play in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Like NASA climate scientist James Hansen, Wigley has become an outspoken advocate of nuclear power. http://thebreakthrough.org/people/profile/tom-wigley

Richard Lindzen
Lindzen is a long time well-known insider skeptic. I recall just from looking at his statements in the past that he often engages in rhetoric that is flatly untrue. He is also a defender of ExxonMobile:

This attitude has strong backing from Richard Lindzen, Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who describes Exxon Mobil as "the only principled oil and gas company I know in the US."

"They have a CEO who is not going to be bamboozled by nonsense," he adds.

Professor Lindzen wants the debate on global warming kept alive. He also describes the Royal Society letter as a "disgrace," adding "they don't know what they're talking about." http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6595369.stm

I'm getting tired of doing this, so I'll depart this thread for now with this, which I actually started this part of the rebuttal with:

Dr. Fred Singer was NEVER a prominent climatologist. He's a scientist for hire who's worked at justifying big tobacco's claim that cigarette smoke isn't harmful, and been on Big Oil's payroll for climate change. Simple research can establish as much.

posted February 12, 2014 12:45 PM            

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One of the fathers of Germany’s modern green movement, Professor Dr. Fritz Vahrenholt, a social democrat and green activist, decided to author a climate science skeptical book together with geologist/paleontologist Dr. Sebastian Lüning. Vahrenholt’s skepticism started when he was asked to review an IPCC report on renewable energy. He found hundreds of errors. When he pointed them out, IPCC officials simply brushed them aside. Stunned, he asked himself, “Is this the way they approached the climate assessment reports?”

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Wrong.

German electric utility executive Fritz Vahrenholt is co-author (along with geologist Sebastian Lüning) of a book expressing "skepticism" regarding the human contribution to global warming, which predictably has been trumpeted by the usual climate denial enablers. Why should we particularly care what Vahrenholt thinks about climate science? That is something of a mystery - he has a PhD in chemistry and has worked in the energy sector for Shell Oil and wind turbine maker RePower. Vahrenholt and Lüning both currently work for RWE Innogy, Germany's second-largest energy company (Vahrenholt as a manager, Lüning as a scientist in its oil and gas division).

Vahrenholt admits he has no expertise in climate science, but apparently his status as "Germany’s Top Environmentalist" (a title which Vahrenholt appears to have been awarded just recently by anti-climate think tanks and denialists) and his climate "skepticism" are sufficient for some people to take his climate claims seriously.

In an interview with Der Spiegel, Vahrenholt discusses why he chose to write a book rather than attempting to conduct and publish scientific research.

SPIEGEL: You make concrete statements on how much human activity contributes to climatic events and how much of a role natural factors play. Why don't you publish your prognoses in a professional journal?

Vahrenholt: Because I don't engage in my own climate research. Besides, I don't have a supercomputer in my basement. For the most part, my co-author, geologist Sebastian Lüning, and I merely summarize what scientists have published in professional journals -- just as the IPCC does.

However, as we will soon see, the difference between Vahrenholt and the IPCC is that the latter accurately summarizes the body scientific literature, while the former misrepresents his sources and only listens to a few select "skeptic" scientists. http://www.skepticalscience.com/fritz-vahrenholt-duped-on-climate-change.html

posted February 12, 2014 12:56 PM            

You could spend your time investigating your own posts for validity, instead of just blindly believing that there's something of intellectual merit there. It would be a better use of your time. What's the point of posting stuff that I'm just going to cast reasonable doubt upon? You that if I had the time I could do a thorough dissection of most of these people pointing out associations, and questionable assertions. I don't really even care for guilt by association stuff normally, but since you seem to think this issue is a conspiracy, and that people should follow the money, I point these things out to you. There's not a conspiracy on your side. There's a well-know, well-documented campaign to create skepticism.

posted February 12, 2014 05:22 PM            

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Of course, they are going to have detractors. The alarmists don't take well to heretics.

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But beyond that, they do actually refute the them scientifically.

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My point being that people with science backgrounds are skeptical.

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For what reason, though. Is it something scientifically defensible, or are they just wrong and stubborn?

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So, now you are using the conspiracy card? Money is a motivator for the skeptics but not for the proponents? Billions in grants! DUH!

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I don't go for conspiracies. They're usually too big to exist. Money is a motivator for the skeptics who work specifically for that money, yes. They don't need to take money from Oil companies. They could seek out venues where their politics won't be questioned as much as the scientists on my side do. Don't you see the difference between people seeking a paycheck for a particular result versus people who get paid regardless of the result they come up with?

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And when your alarmists' data is called into question (such as climate gate), you conveniently scoff.

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I don't "conveniently" scoff. I scoff with good, researched reason, which I've already spoken about at length. Read the factcheck. Read the Wikipedia article. You can see for yourself whether there's any meat there. Where is your smoking gun in climategate? There is none. It's a cheap, but ultimately failed attempt at discrediting the science.

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Another scientist was recently caught lying about polar bears in his reasearch.

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What was said specifically?

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I am shocked at how two-faced you are. No conspiracy exists with the alarmists who live off grant funding, but you believe some hokey article about Exxon.

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Not some "hokey" article about Exxon. A true, and verifiable article about Exxon. Who are you trying to fool here?
And I said, "There's not a conspiracy on your side. There's a well-know, well-documented campaign to create skepticism." I'm not citing a conspiracy. I'm citing something out in the open.

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Exactly! Follow the money, you hypocrite.

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How am I a hypocrite? You keep telling me to follow the money, but you've never pointed to where there's evidence of a monetary return for agreeing with the consensus position. I think you're confused. It's you whose the hypocrite. I post that your scientists are associating with entities funded by oil, and instead of following your own advice (follow the money) you don't show any interest in who is lining their pockets by coming up with a desired result.

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So, we should spend trillions at the whim of scientists whose prefictions have failed?

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I think we've already discussed that it may be futile to do anything now, but if mitigation is still possible, then, yes, obviously we should preserve Earth.
We already discussed "predictions" and "projections," too. Are you just not reading anything I post, because it disagrees with how you want to see things?

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Even though man's CO2 contributions are minimal and a reduction of those emissions would be a negligible percentage of that miniscule amount? But let's just destroy entire industries and throw away trillions at a problem that doesn't exist.

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What industries are we going to destroy? Would it matter? Isn't the death of one industry the birth of another?
Also, if we mess up the Earth, then it's pretty assured that whatever industry it is you're trying to protect will no longer be in existence anyway. What's the point of saving an industry if it means the world dies?

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I don't know who is more ridiculous--the grant-hungry scientists who say that man is stronger than the Sun...or the people who believe them.

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I do know what's more ridiculous, and if I'm lovingly mocking you I'd have to say it's your love of the status quo (isn't that what you accused me of when I thought your rhetoric was overblown?), but that's not really it at all, is it? You want to believe a conspiracy for which you hold no proof.

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Judith Curry is about as credible and respected among her peers as they get. Noticed you didn't post about her.

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and again: http://www.linda-goodman.com/ubb/Forum26/HTML/002395.html