Consensus Busters: The pushback grows stronger

Over 400 prominent scientists from more than two dozen countries recently voiced significant objections to major aspects of the so-called “consensus” on man-made global warming. These scientists, many of whom are current and former participants in the UN IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), criticized the climate claims made by the UN IPCC and former Vice President Al Gore.
This blockbuster Senate report lists the scientists by name, country of residence, and academic/institutional affiliation. It also features their own words, biographies, and weblinks to their peer reviewed studies and original source materials as gathered from public statements, various news outlets, and websites in 2007. This new “consensus busters” report is poised to redefine the debate.
Many of the scientists featured in this report consistently stated that numerous colleagues shared their views, but they will not speak out publicly for fear of retribution. Atmospheric scientist Dr. Nathan Paldor, Professor of Dynamical Meteorology and Physical Oceanography at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, author of almost 70 peer-reviewed studies, explains how many of his fellow scientists have been intimidated.
“Many of my colleagues with whom I spoke share these views and report on their inability to publish their skepticism in the scientific or public media,”
[…]
The distinguished scientists featured in this new report are experts in diverse fields, including: climatology; oceanography; geology; biology; glaciology; biogeography; meteorology; oceanography; economics; chemistry; mathematics; environmental sciences; engineering; physics and paleoclimatology. Some of those profiled have won Nobel Prizes for their outstanding contribution to their field of expertise and many shared a portion of the UN IPCC Nobel Peace Prize with Vice President Gore.
Additionally, these scientists hail from prestigious institutions worldwide, including: Harvard University; NASA; National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR); Massachusetts Institute of Technology; the UN IPCC; the Danish National Space Center; U.S. Department of Energy; Princeton University; the Environmental Protection Agency; University of Pennsylvania; Hebrew University of Jerusalem; the International Arctic Research Centre; the Pasteur Institute in Paris; the Belgian Weather Institute; Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute; the University of Helsinki; the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S., France, and Russia; the University of Pretoria; University of Notre Dame; Stockholm University; University of Melbourne; University of Columbia; the World Federation of Scientists; and the University of London.
The voices of many of these hundreds of scientists serve as a direct challenge to the often media-hyped “consensus” that the debate is “settled.”

Update – Here’s a stinging counter-punch: “After a quick review of the report, Gore spokeswoman Kalee Kreider said 25 or 30 of the scientists may have received funding from Exxon Mobil Corp.”

(h/t Nightmare in the comments)

Planet Gore;

Just as Gore has refused requests to debate the warming threat, Bali organizers cancelled a scheduled press conference Thursday morning by the International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC) – a group of international scientists who protest the scientific basis of climate alarmism.
It’s the second such incident in a week.
The Heartland Institute reports that “earlier in the week. . . (UN official) Barbara Black interrupted the press conference and demanded the scientists immediately cease. She threatened to have the police physically remove them from the premises. (In addition) ICSC scientists have been prevented from participating in panel discussions, side events, and exhibits.”

An open letter to the Secretary General of the UN;

The IPCC Summaries for Policy Makers are the most widely read IPCC reports amongst politicians and non-scientists and are the basis for most climate change policy formulation. Yet these Summaries are prepared by a relatively small core writing team with the final drafts approved line-by-line by ­government ­representatives. The great ­majority of IPCC contributors and ­reviewers, and the tens of thousands of other scientists who are qualified to comment on these matters, are not involved in the preparation of these documents. The summaries therefore cannot properly be represented as a consensus view among experts.
[…]
In stark contrast to the often repeated assertion that the science of climate change is “settled,” significant new peer-reviewed research has cast even more doubt on the hypothesis of dangerous human-caused global warming. But because IPCC working groups were generally instructed (see http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/docs/wg1_timetable_2006-08-14.pdf) to consider work published only through May, 2005, these important findings are not included in their reports; i.e., the IPCC assessment reports are already materially outdated.

Signed by over 100 independent scientists, engineers and economists who work in the field of climate change. (link fixed)

Who to believe? The computer models or your own lyin’ satellite data?

It’s been many years since I watched the film Dances With Wolves, a wholly forgettable experience were it not for a scene in which Kevin Costner is filmed playing on the prairie with a wolf. The scene is unusual, because it continues for some minutes without a cut.
But that’s not why I remember it.
I remember it because it was the singular occasion in which I’ve witnessed one of my dogs stand before a television, transfixed.

Like us, our canine friends are able to form abstract concepts. Friederike Range and colleagues from the University of Vienna in Austria have shown for the first time that dogs can classify complex color photographs and place them into categories in the same way that humans do. And the dogs successfully demonstrate their learning through the use of computer automated touch-screens, eliminating potential human influence.
In order to test whether dogs can visually categorize pictures, and transfer their knowledge to new situations, four dogs were shown landscape and dog photographs, and expected to make a selection on a computer touch-screen.
In the training phase, the dogs were shown both the landscape and dog photographs simultaneously and were rewarded with a food pellet if they selected the dog picture (positive stimulus). The dogs then took part in two tests.
In the first test, the dogs were shown completely different dog and landscape pictures. They continued to reliably select the dog photographs, demonstrating that they could transfer their knowledge gained in the training phase to a new set of visual stimuli, even though they had never seen those particular pictures before.
In the second test, the dogs were shown new dog pictures pasted onto the landscape pictures used in the training phase, facing them with contradictory information: on the one hand, a new positive stimulus as the pictures contained dogs even though they were new dogs; on the other hand, a familiar negative stimulus in the form of the landscape.
When the dogs were faced with a choice between the new dog on the familiar landscape and a completely new landscape with no dog, they reliably selected the option with the dog. These results show that the dogs were able to form a concept i.e. ‘dog’, although the experiment cannot tell us whether they recognized the dog pictures as actual dogs.

I think I can assure them with some confidence that they recognized the dog pictures as dogs.

In this first map of it’s kind, one can clearly see the how the quality distribution of the 460 out of 1221 stations surveyed so far looks […] results clearly show that the majority of USHCN stations surveyed so far have compromised measurement environments. The question then is this; have these mircosite biases been adequately accounted for in the surface temperature record?

Via Andrew Bolt;

The United Nations has rejected all attempts by a group of dissenting scientists seeking to present information at the climate change conference taking place in Bali, Indonesia.
The International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC) has been denied the opportunity to present at panel discussions, side events, and exhibits; its members were denied press credentials. The group consists of distinguished scientists from Africa, Australia, India, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
The scientists, citing pivotal evidence on climate change published in peer-reviewed journals, have expressed their opposition to the UN’s alarmist theory of anthropogenic global warming.

Ross McKitrick served as an external reviewer for the IPCC report in 2005;

Scientists who attribute warming to greenhouse gases argue that their climate models cannot reproduce the surface trends from natural variability alone. They then attribute it to greenhouse gases, since (they assume) all other human influences have been removed from the data by the adjustment models. If that has not happened, however, they cannot claim to be able to identify the role of greenhouse gases. Despite the vast number of studies involved, and the large number of contributors to the IPCC reports, the core message of the IPCC hinges on the assumption that their main surface climate data set is uncontaminated. And by the time they began writing the recent Fourth Assessment Report, they had before them a set of papers proving the data are contaminated. […] Confronted with published evidence of an anthropogenic (but non-greenhouse) explanation for warming, they dismissed it with an unproven conjecture of natural causes. Who’s the “denialist” now?

Flashback – Exerpts: Memorandum by Professor Paul Reiter;

The scientific literature on mosquito-borne diseases is voluminous, yet the text references in the chapter were restricted to a handful of articles, many of them relatively obscure, and nearly all suggesting an increase in prevalence of disease in a warmer climate. The paucity of information was hardly surprising: not one of the lead authors had ever written a research paper on the subject! Moreover, two of the authors, both physicians, had spent their entire career as environmental activists. One of these activists has published “professional” articles as an “expert” on 32 different subjects, ranging from mercury poisoning to land mines, globalization to allergies and West Nile virus to AIDS.

And from the suppressed to the absurd;

China is being heralded as a leader on environmental initiatives at an international conference on climate change in Bali, Indonesia.

This isn’t science. This is Alice in Baliland.
And the guppies who bob in our media fishbowl will simply blink, gulp, and swim on.

Just one of the “10 things a UNFCCC delegate should do while in Bali”.

Nusa Lembongan is a ideal place for an overnight getaway. With companies such as Bounty and Bali Hai offering trips on luxury boats, with snorkeling and beach club included, a stressed out delegate could forget all his troubles across the Badung Strait. Nusa Lembongan can be a day trip or an overnight trip, arranged from any hotel travel desk.

SDA Flashback – Jack Layton’s bear drownin’ Evenrude e-tech 90 2-stroke….

Exerpts: Memorandum by Professor Paul Reiter, Institut Pasteur. “specialist in the natural history and biology of mosquitoes, the epidemiology of the diseases they transmit, and strategies for their control. “

I wonder how many of your Lordships are aware of the historical significance of the Palace of Westminster? I refer to the history of malaria, not the evolution of government. Are you aware that the entire area now occupied by the Houses of Parliament was once a notoriously malarious swamp? And that until the beginning of the 20th century, “ague” (the original English word for malaria) was a cause of high morbidity and mortality in parts of the British Isles, particularly in tidal marshes such as those at Westminster? And that George Washington followed British Parliamentary precedent by also siting his government buildings in a malarious swamp! I mention this to dispel any misconception you may have that malaria is a “tropical” disease. […] In fact, the most catastrophic epidemic on record anywhere in the world occurred in the Soviet Union in the 1920s, with a peak incidence of 13 million cases per year, and 600,000 deaths. Transmission was high in many parts of Siberia, and there were 30,000 cases and 10,000 deaths due to falciparum infection (the most deadly malaria parasite) in Archangel, close to the Arctic circle.

Re: IPCC Second Assessment Report, Chapter 18, Human population health;

12. The scientific literature on mosquito-borne diseases is voluminous, yet the text references in the chapter were restricted to a handful of articles, many of them relatively obscure, and nearly all suggesting an increase in prevalence of disease in a warmer climate. The paucity of information was hardly surprising: not one of the lead authors had ever written a research paper on the subject! Moreover, two of the authors, both physicians, had spent their entire career as environmental activists. One of these activists has published “professional” articles as an “expert” on 32 different subjects, ranging from mercury poisoning to land mines, globalization to allergies and West Nile virus to AIDS.
13. Among the contributing authors there was one professional entomologist, and a person who had written an obscure article on dengue and El Niño, but whose principal interest was the effectiveness of motor cycle crash helmets (plus one paper on the health effects of cell phones).

Re: The IPCC Third Assessment Report;

24. The third assessment report listed more than 65 lead authors, only one of which—a colleague of mine—was an established authority on vector-borne disease. I was invited to serve a contributory author on the health chapter
25. My colleague and I repeatedly found ourselves at loggerheads with persons who insisted on making authoritative pronouncements, although they had little or no knowledge of our speciality. At the time, we were experiencing similar frustration as Lead Authors of Health Section of the US National Assessment of the Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change (US Global Change Research Program). After much effort and many fruitless discussions, I decided to concentrate on the USGCCRP and resigned from the IPCC project. My resignation was accepted, but in a first draft I found that my name was still listed. I requested its removal, but was told it would remain because “I had contributed”. It was only after strong insistence that I succeeded in having it removed.

IPCC Fourth Assessment Report;

31. It will be interesting to see how the health chapter of the fourth report is written. Only one of the lead authors has ever been a lead author, and neither has ever published on mosquito-borne disease. Only one of the contributing authors has an extensive bibliography in the field of human health. He is a specialist in industrial health, and all his publications are in Russian. Several of the others have never published any articles at all.
[…]
33. When I contacted IPCC personnel (at the Meteorological Office in Exeter) to see whether my nomination had been accepted, I initially received the message: “The IPCC received over 2000 government nominations during this process and most, such as yours, were of a very high standard. Unfortunately the IPCC Working Group Two Bureau did not pick you to be an author, although all nominations were scrutinised and assessed”.
34. I replied with a question about the two Lead Authors that had been selected:“It is often stated that the IPCC represents the worlds top scientists. I copy to you the bibliographies of (the two lead authors), as downloaded from MEDLINE. You will observe that (the first) has never written a single article, and (the second) has only authored five articles. Can these two really be considered “Lead authors” with experience, representative of the world’s top scientists and specialists in human health?”
35. I also pointed out that one Lead Author is a “hygienist”, the other is a specialist in fossil faeces, and both have been co-authors on publications by environmental activists.

Written in 2005, this is a “read the whole thing” item.
Flashback: Hurricane expert Chris Landsea withdraws from IPCC, citing misrepresentation of the research.

Greenpeace is displeased;

Average annual deaths from weather-related events in the period 1990-2006 – considered by scientists to be when global warming has been most intense – were down by 87% on the 1900-89 average. The mortality rate from catastrophes, measured in deaths per million people, dropped by 93%.
The report by the Civil Society Coalition on Climate Change, a grouping of 41 mainly free-market bodies, comes on the eve of an international meeting on climate change in Bali.
Indur Goklany, a US-based expert on weather-related catastrophes, charted global deaths through the 20th century from “extreme” weather events.
Compared with the peak rate of deaths from weather-related events in the 1920s of nearly 500,000 a year, the death toll during the period 2000-06 averaged 19,900. “The United Nations has got the issues and their relative importance backward,” Goklany said.
The number of deaths had fallen sharply because of better warning systems, improved flood defences and other measures.

Based on the -29C windchill here tonight, I’d include central heating among them.

Looks like you’re moving to higher ground.

Concrete evidence: GISS temperature plot – climate monitoring station from Panguitch, UT.

25 miles down the road at Parawan, UT…

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 inscience, 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. Meanwhile, more than 90,000 direct measurements of CO2 in the atmosphere, carried out in America, Asia, and Europe between1812 and 1961, with excellent chemical methods (accuracy better than 3%), were arbitrarily rejected. These measurements had been published in 175 technical papers. 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 anthropo-genic climatic warming. I regard this as perhaps the greatest scientific scandal of our time.

You can start at Cjunk and follow the links to the quoted paper.

Efforts continue to rescue us from the end of civilization as we know it;

Calculations suggest flying the 15,000 politicians, civil servants, green campaigners and television crews into Indonesia will generate the equivalent of 100,000 tonnes of extra CO2. That is similar to the entire annual emissions of the African state of Chad.

Have you rid yourself of that gas-guzzling SUV yet?

Attendees are expected to include celebrities such as Leonardo DiCaprio, the actor, as well as Arnold Schwarzenegger, governor of California, and Al Gore, the former US vice-president.
Many are merely “observers” who have no formal role to play in the talks, which largely involve government ministers and officials. Among these observers are 20 MEPs and 18 assistants whose itinerary includes a daytrip to the idyllic fishing and surfing village of Serangan.

Got your CFL bulbs?

The UN has also recently received thousands of new registrations from groups campaigning for the environment or fighting against poverty. WWF, one of the largest, is sending more than 32 staff to the meeting.
Thousands more are coming from businesses, especially the burgeoning carbon trading sector, which already carries out global transactions worth £12 billion a year and has an acute interest in the outcome of Bali.

Turn down your thermostat?

Indonesian officials say the final tally could reach 20,000 — and fear it could stretch the resort’s infrastructure to the limit. About 90% of the emissions will be generated by delegates flying thousands of miles to Bali, with the rest coming from the facilities they will be using.

How’s that new clothesline working for you?

Britain has tried to ensure its delegation is one of the smallest among the leading developed nations. Three ministers — Hilary Benn, the environment secretary, Phil Woolas, junior environment minister, and Gareth Thomas, junior minister for international development — will attend accompanied by about 40 civil servants.

Recycling your waste?

One of the biggest delegations is being assembled by the European Union, which is expected to send Stavros Dimas, the environment commissioner, and 90 officials. In addition, all 27 EU countries are expected to send separate national delegations. Germany has one of the biggest, with around 70, and France follows close behind with 50. Even Latvia will be represented by four delegates, while Malta, an island populated by 400,000, will have two.

Did you plant your tree?
And don’t forget to visit David Suzuki’s Bali blog to learn how our right-wing government is failing in their duty to sufficiently repress your C02 emissions. Because climate change is a non-partisan issue…

We’re keeping our fingers crossed [for a Rudd victory]. It would be great to have Australia on board in Bali. Heck, I’ll even buy their negotiators the first round of drinks at the swim-up bar

The Suzuki Foundation blog’s top post is titled – without a hint of irony – “Reality Check”.

Running out of tarmac;

[T]he management of Bali’s Ngurah Rai International Airport are concerned that the large number of additional private charter flights expected in Bali during the UN Conference on Climate Change (UNFCCC) December 3-15, 2007, will exceed the carrying capacity of apron areas. To meet the added demand for aircraft storage officials are allocating “parking space” at other airports in Indonesia.

For more information on Saving The Earth Through Burning Jet Fuel, visit the David Suzuki Foundation. And don’t miss CBC Fruit Fly Guy’s Bali Blog!
h/t

Abstract: (pdf)

An online poll of scientists’ opinions shows that, while there is strong agreement on the important role of anthropogenically-caused radiative forcing of CO2 in climate change and with the largest group supporting the IPCC report, there is not a universal agreement among climate scientists about climate science as represented in the IPCC’s WG1.
Claims that the human input of CO2 is not an important climate forcing, or that ‘the science is more or less settled’, are found to be false in our survey. The IPCC WG1 perspective is the mean response, though there are interesting differences between mean responses in the USA and in the EU. There are, also, a significant number of climate scientists who disagree with the IPCC WG1 perspective.

More here (pdf) – Perspectives of Climate Scientists on Global Climate Chnge;

While there have been some statistically significant minor improvements over the years the data suggests that the scientific community do not perceive the models to be the truth machine as often portrayed in the media. On the contrary, climate scientists seem all too aware of the limitations of climate models, demonstrating a minimal amount of faith in the output when if comes to making either long term or short term predictions.
page 7:
The purpose of this report has been to point out some of the controversy surrounding the survey of climate scientists and to high light some of the findings that have added to the controversy (and some that have not). Figures 31 to 100 (Appendix B) allow for the exploration of some of these issues in greater detail, with figures 69 – 100 pertaining to questions asked only on the 2003 survey. As the data seems to suggest, the matter is far from being settled in the scientific arena.

Among the events related to global warming were “Hurricane Katrina,” “California wildfires,” and “Asian tsunamis.” Because it’s self-evident that SUVs and coal-powered plants cause undersea earthquakes — at least to the folks at CNN.