The Moscow Times – doing the job Canadian media won’t do!

“Several of these countries impose conditions saying ‘no, you can’t pass it on,’” Acton told the Parliament’s multiparty Science and Technology Committee in London. “Canada and Poland are among those countries saying ‘no you can’t.’ Also Sweden. And Russia is reluctant.”
[…]
“Canada releases its temperature data to anyone who requests it,” Brigitte Lemay, a spokeswoman with Environment Canada, said in an e-mailed response. “We have in the past and we will continue to make our data public. All Environment Canada official climatic data is made available without restriction to the public through our web site.”

For more comic relief – Opening Night Reviews in the UK Press

From today’s Phil Jones Show, this little nugget from the BBC….

“Professor Edward Acton, vice-chancellor of UEA, told the committee that it was not possible to make the entire international data set available because of a “commercial promise”.
He explained that a number of contributing nations – including Canada, Poland and Sweden – had refused to make their segments of data publicly available.”

Except that Canadian data appears to be available online for free.
It sure would be useful if some Canadian media type could get a response from the Environment Minister regarding Professor Acton’s testimony.
Of course, there’s always a chance that scores of concerned Canadians might circumvent the media to contact his office and ask them directly about this stunning allegation…
The Honourable Jim Prentice
Tel.: 819-997-1441
Fax: 819-953-0279
Email: Jim.Prentice@ec.gc.ca

WHAMO!

1. The Institute is concerned that, unless the disclosed e-mails are proved to be forgeries or adaptations, worrying implications arise for the integrity of scientific research in this field and for the credibility of the scientific method as practised in this context.
2. The CRU e-mails as published on the internet provide prima facie evidence of determined and co-ordinated refusals to comply with honourable scientific traditions and freedom of information law. The principle that scientists should be willing to expose their ideas and results to independent testing and replication by others, which requires the open exchange of data, procedures and materials, is vital. The lack of compliance has been confirmed by the findings of the Information Commissioner. This extends well beyond the CRU itself – most of the e-mails were exchanged with researchers in a number of other international institutions who are also involved in the formulation of the IPCC’s conclusions on climate change.

Finally, a scientific discipline enters the Climategate fray with a bang. (Others, whimper.)
Related: The university at the centre of the climate change row over stolen e-mails has been accused of making a misleading statement to Parliament.

Question: does mainstream climate science regard Internet ‘peer review’ of Jones et al. like the Enron faithful regarded the short sellers who first discovered the problems of Enron?

Your must read for today. Then, pass it on.
Related – Rajendra Pachauri, the controversial Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is to face an international inquiry into the performance of his organisation.

Fred’s featured comment;

Or nothing prevented Ms. O’Neil from using the interweb google thingy to look up the annual financial reports from the WWF and Greenpeace.
If she has she had, she would have realized that the WWF raised, from donations and government grants, over $3 BILLION dollars in five years.
Now that’s some Gravy Train that they will do anything to keep rolling. Anything doesn’t mean being honest and truthful.
It is always about the money, always follow the money.

Update:
… the not-so-funny part.

Another “gate” – and this one has Cancon!

The claims in the Synthesis Report go back to the IPCC’s report on the global impacts of climate change. It warns that all Africa faces a long-term threat from farmland turning to desert and then says of north Africa, “additional risks that could be exacerbated by climate change include greater erosion, deficiencies in yields from rain-fed agriculture of up to 50% during the 2000-20 period, and reductions in crop growth period (Agoumi, 2003)”.
“Agoumi” refers to a 2003 policy paper written for the International Institute for Sustainable Development, a Canadian think tank. The paper was not peer-reviewed.
Its author was Professor Ali Agoumi, a Moroccan climate expert who looked at the potential impacts of climate change on Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria. His report refers to the risk of “deficient yields from rain-based agriculture of up to 50% during the 2000–20 period”.
These claims refer to other reports prepared by civil servants in each of the three countries as submissions to the UN. These do not appear to have been peer-reviewed either.

EU Referendum;

Not least of the anomalies is that the author, Ali Agoumi, is not a climate scientist, as such. Although he seems to have worked for Morocco’s Ministry of Land-use Management, Water and the Environment, he currently seems to make his living from drawing up carbon credit applications under the UN’s clean development mechanism. He has worked as consultant for the firm Ecosecurities, a company which specialises in carbon trading.

Emphasis mine.
Via Climate Audit, where the issue was raised two weeks ago.

It’s the end of the beginning;

A catastrophic heat wave appears to be closing in on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. How hot is it getting in the scientific kitchen where they’ve been cooking the books and spicing up the stew pots? So hot, apparently, that Andrew Weaver, probably Canada’s leading climate scientist, is calling for replacement of IPCC leadership and institutional reform.
If Andrew Weaver is heading for the exits, it’s a pretty sure sign that the United Nations agency is under monumental stress. Mr. Weaver, after all, has been a major IPCC science insider for years. He is Canada Research Chair in Climate Modelling and Analysis at the University of Victoria, mastermind of one of the most sophisticated climate modelling systems on the planet, and lead author on two recent landmark IPCC reports.
For him to say, as he told Canwest News yesterday, that there has been some “dangerous crossing” of the line between climate advocacy and science at the IPCC is stunning in itself.
Not only is Mr. Weaver an IPCC insider. He has also, over the years, generated his own volume of climate advocacy that often seemed to have crossed that dangerous line between hype and science.

Climategate
Glaciergate
Pachaurigate
Hurricanegate
World Wildlifegate
and now, Amazongate
And those are just the least of their problems…
Good work, people!

Like a snowball…

The UN’s top climate change body has issued an unprecedented apology over its flawed prediction that Himalayan glaciers were likely to disappear by 2035.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said yesterday that the prediction in its landmark 2007 report was “poorly substantiated” and resulted from a lapse in standards. “In drafting the paragraph in question the clear and well-established standards of evidence, required by the IPCC procedures, were not applied properly,” the panel said. “The chair, vice-chair and co-chairs of the IPCC regret the poor application of IPCC procedures in this instance.”

rolling …

The scientist behind the bogus claim in a Nobel Prize-winning UN report that Himalayan glaciers will have melted by 2035 last night admitted it was included purely to put political pressure on world leaders.
Dr Murari Lal also said he was well aware the statement, in the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), did not rest on peer-reviewed scientific research.
In an interview with The Mail on Sunday, Dr Lal, the co-ordinating lead author of the report’s chapter on Asia, said: ‘It related to several countries in this region and their water sources. We thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policy-makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action.

…downhill.

Jonathan Leake’s story at the Time is Online, linking Pauchari’s TERI organization to government funding grants that were solicited using the bogus “Himalayan glaciers will disappear by 2035″ claim.
Christopher Booker of the Telegraph has a story that shows Pachauri’s own employee at TERI was the source of the bogus glacier claim. Now the corruption comes full circle.

Stay tuned….
Update: The Purge Begins at NASA

In much the same way that temperature changes recorded in Saskatoon are representative of changes in Seattle… (Or Florida).

…[Gavin Schmidt*] also said a smaller sampling of weather stations in the Canadian Arctic wouldn’t have a significant impact on the data. He said any long-term temperature changes recorded at the high Arctic station at Eureka, would likely be “representative” of changes elsewhere in the region, even in a sub-Arctic city like Yellowknife. “Temperature anomalies don’t vary that much from one (nearby) station to another,” he said. “You don’t need thousands of stations across Canada to know what the monthly anomalies are.”

If you aren’t by now alarmed that public policy makers are about to tax us to the tune of billions on the say-so of charlatans such as this, there’s something amiss with your cognitive abilities.

“Would you believe that at this very moment, this Climate Research Center is being surrounded by one hundred cops with Doberman pinschers. Would you believe it? A hundred cops with Doberman pinschers.”*
(Via)

Works her magic….

The auto industry’s green efforts to meet strict new mpg rules are the dominant theme inside this year’s Detroit Auto Show. But outside Cobo Convention Center, it’s not just the frigid winter temperatures that have cast doubt on the global warming science driving the biggest regulatory challenge to the industry in a generation. E-mails leaked from the world’s top climatology center have put the environmental community in turmoil with allegations that scientific data has been doctored and debate suppressed. The uproar has provoked calls for a congressional investigation and cast doubt on auto mpg rules. Scandal? Or sideshow?
The issue cries out for debate at the world’s largest auto gathering, and The Detroit News-WJR Radio have assembled a world-class panel representing the automotive, scientific, and political communities to argue the facts and discuss its impact on the auto market…

It’s open to the public. Details at the link.
Related – “Not entirely the “death of global warming” as many have claimed – what happened with Climategate is much more nuanced and exponentially more interesting than the headlines convey. What was triggered at this blog was the death of unconditional trust in the scientific peer review process, and the maturing of a new movement – that of peer-to-peer review.”
h/t James

The real story Michael, is that until this recent mass outpouring over the loss of a journalist, Canadian media interest in operational details in Afghanistan has been pretty much limited to counting bodies and answering the question “how can we use this to damage the Harper government?”
Another response at the Torch.

SDA gets results! Homeland Security Newswire;

New information reveals that the now-famous break-in of the computers at the University of East Anglia— which revealed that in a few instances leading climatologists seemingly massaged data to show more global warming and discussed excluding contradictory research— in fact, may not have been the act of an intruder. A detailed analysis of the East Anglia’s files by Canadian network engineer discloses that the emails and documents were likely leaked by an internal source, spotlighting a perennial but often neglected threat — old-fashioned espionage or whistle-blowing.

These files were compiled internally, not by “hackers” – that much is certain. (How they were released to the wild is different question.) That East Anglia has still to acknowledge the provenance of the documents is a compelling reminder that nothing they say about the contents should be taken at face value.

The Associated Press hides its decline.

“To better appreciate the past and what was exposed by the CRU emails, the time-line chart consolidates and chronologically organizes the information uncovered and published about the CRU emails by many researchers along with some related contextual events. That the chart exists at all is yet another example of how skilled experts are flocking in to the skeptics position and dedicating hours of time pro bono because they are passionately motivated to fight against those who try to deceive us.”

GIF version.

Steve McIntyre finds something under his tree;

The UK Met Office has released a large tranche of station data, together with code.
Only last summer, the Met Office had turned down my FOI request for station data, saying that the provision of station data to me would threaten the course of UK international relations. Apparently, these excuses have somehow ceased to apply.

Early reviews at Bishop Hill;

Meanwhile, even this extremely limited attempt at openness is not all it seems to be. John G-C has been looking at the code and running it against the data he has. What he has found is that prior to 1855 there was no southern hemisphere data and that when you run the Met Office’s newly released code, this shows up as a gap in the graph of the average. But there is no such gap in the actual CRUTEM index. John’s conclusion is that what we’re looking at is not the actual code used in CRUTEM, but something written especially for public consumption. In light of the scorn that many programmers have been pouring on the quality of the coding standards at CRU, this might suggest that the original code was just too awful to make available for public inspection.

Via Anthony Watts
Update: Reading the comments at the sites linked above, most are in agreement about the nature of the data released.

Michael Mann’s Climategate defense – featuring Sarah Palin.
h/t Duncan

Multiple sources are drawing attention to this English language version of a news item published by the Kommersant, in Russia;

Climategate has already affected Russia. On Tuesday, the Moscow-based Institute of Economic Analysis (IEA) issued a report claiming that the Hadley Center for Climate Change based at the headquarters of the British Meteorological Office in Exeter (Devon, England) had probably tampered with Russian-climate data.
The IEA believes that Russian meteorological-station data did not substantiate the anthropogenic global-warming theory. Analysts say Russian meteorological stations cover most of the country’s territory, and that the Hadley Center had used data submitted by only 25% of such stations in its reports. Over 40% of Russian territory was not included in global-temperature calculations for some other reasons, rather than the lack of meteorological stations and observations.
The data of stations located in areas not listed in the Hadley Climate Research Unit Temperature UK (HadCRUT) survey often does not show any substantial warming in the late 20th century and the early 21st century.

More context at WUWT – Russian IEA claims CRU tampered with climate data – cherrypicked warmest stations
Steve McIntyre – “Climategate emails show that Phil Jones of CRU, acting as a reviewer of the CRU data used in the HadCRU gridded temperature, “went to town” to block the publication of criticisms of his handling of Russian data.”
There’s also a request for help in translating this Russian language document. http://www.iea.ru/article/kioto_order/15.12.2009.pdf
So stay tuned, and remember that when dealing with foreign newspaper reports, it’s best to remain agnostic until there’s independent confirmation.

Now, say it again, in your best BBC accent.

h/t Biff’s Place