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Newsletter (February 26, 2010)
In this issue
Featured- Senate Report: 'Consensus' Exposed: The CRU Controversy
- Standard Still a Production Quota
- EPA Must Reexamine Its Endangerment Finding
Debate- A Worldwide Fervor Over Climate Change Orthodoxy
- World Cools Toward Warmists
- Catholic Church and Climate Change
- Skeptics: The Global Warming Debate Isn't Over
Science- More Errors in Temperature Data
Economics- DOD Ignores Climate Policy Risks
- Another Failing Biofuel 'Miracle'
Briefly Noted
Featuredby Minority Staff, United States Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works
February, 2010
Executive Summary
In this report, Minority Staff of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works examine key documents and emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU). We have concluded:
- The emails were written by the world’s top climate scientists, who work at the most prestigious and influential climate research institutions in the world.
- Many of them were lead authors and coordinating lead authors of UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports, meaning that they had been intimately involved in writing and editing the IPCC’s science assessments. They also helped write reports by the United States Global Change Research Program (USGCRP).
- The CRU controversy and recent revelations about errors in the IPCC’s most recent science assessment cast serious doubt on the validity of EPA’s endangerment finding for greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. The IPCC serves as the primary basis for EPA’s endangerment finding for greenhouse gases.
- Instead of moving forward on greenhouse gas regulation, the Agency should fully address the CRU controversy and the IPCC’s flawed science.
The scientists involved in the CRU controversy violated fundamental ethical principles governing taxpayer-funded research and, in some cases, may have violated federal laws. In addition to these findings, we believe the emails and accompanying documents seriously compromise the IPCC-backed “consensus” and its central conclusion that anthropogenic emissions are inexorably leading to environmental catastrophes.
An independent inquiry conducted by the UK’s Information Commissioner has already concluded that the scientists employed by the University of East Anglia, and who were at the center of the controversy, violated the UK’s Freedom of Information Act. Another independent inquiry, headed by Sir Muir Russell, is investigating allegations that the scientists in the CRU scandal manipulated climate change data.
In our view, the CRU documents and emails reveal, among other things, unethical and potentially illegal behavior by some of the world’s preeminent climate scientists.
CRU emails show scientists
- Obstructing release of damaging data and information;
- Manipulating data to reach preconceived conclusions;
- Colluding to pressure journal editors who published work questioning the climate science “consensus”; and
- Assuming activist roles to influence the political process.
Read the rest (PDF).Back to top by Marlo Lewis
Senior Fellow, Competitive Enterprise Institute
National Journal, February 22, 2010
Sen. Lindsey Graham’s Clean Energy Act is, like cap-and-trade, calculated to raise energy prices and expand government control over the economy for the benefit of special interests.
The public – and therefore the Senate – isn’t buying cap-and-trade, and no informed adult really believes we can “repower” America with wind turbines and solar panels. So Sen. Graham has come up with a slick alternative to both cap-and-trade and a national renewable electricity standard (RES) – a national “clean energy” standard (CES).
RES advocates claim they want to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and dependence on Mideast oil, yet won’t allow nuclear power and coal with carbon capture and storage (CCS) to contribute to those goals. Graham’s CES avoids this rank inconsistency. (Or it does in principle – it’s anybody’s guess whether in practice any new nuclear facility would qualify as “qualified nuclear,” or if CCS ever becomes economical.)
Nonetheless, Graham’s proposal does not deserve even one cheer from free marketers. A CES is still a Soviet-style production quota – an attempt to decree what percentage of America’s energy comes from what kinds of sources. And Graham proposes to fix these percentages not for the duration of a mere five-year plan, but for the next 40 years! For sheer hubris, that clobbers the ethanol mandate, which establishes production quota for 15-years. . . .
Read the rest.Back to top Petition to EPA by Peabody Energy Company
Science & Public Policy Institute, February 11, 2010
EPA must reconsider its Endangerment Finding based on new material that was not available during the comment period and which is central to the outcome that EPA reached in promulgating its Endangerment Finding. EPA failed to properly exercise its judgment as required by the Clean Air Act (“CAA”) and acted in an arbitrary and capricious fashion by relying almost exclusively on flawed reports of the IPCC in attributing climate change to anthropogenic greenhouse gas (“GHG”) emissions. As evidenced by material that became available last fall from CRU, as well as additional information that has become available since the Endangerment Finding was issued, the IPCC reports were not the product of a rigorous, transparent and neutral scientific process.
Indeed, contrary to the CAA and the Information Quality Act (“IQA”),3 EPA largely ceded its obligation to make a “judgment” as to whether GHGs may endanger public health and welfare to the IPCC, an international body that is not subject to U.S. data quality and transparency standards and whose reports were prepared in direct disregard of those standards. As a result, EPA is set to begin regulating GHG emissions based on a scientific process that was conducted without the basic procedural safeguards set forth in U.S. law to ensure the reliability and accuracy of the scientific conclusions underlying the Agency’s Endangerment Finding. As an agency of the United States, however, whose regulatory actions will have far-reaching consequences for U.S. citizens, EPA must abide by U.S. standards and not the standards of international bodies whose actions are governed by different norms.
Accordingly, the EPA should reconsider its Endangerment Finding in light of the recently discovered defects in the IPCC’s procedures and convene full evidentiary hearings to provide an open and fair reconsideration process. . . .
Read the 240-page legal brief (PDF).Back to top Debateby Christopher Essex
Professor of Applied Mathematics, University of Western Ontario; Co-Author, Taken by Storm: The Troubled Science, Policy, and Politics of Global Warming
Toronto Sun, February 22, 2010
The entire world has been embroiled in a persistent, free-floating global fervor (and a really nasty one, too) allegedly based on fervor-less, dispassionate science.
Recently, there was a huge explosion in the climate change orthodoxy factory that was set off by objective evidence we have been deceived and manipulated.
The evidence was the leaked e-mails of the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (CRU), which are now subject to several official investigations, forcing the head of the CRU to step aside. The e-mails tell a lurid tale of unbecoming, unwarranted, organized and fierce hostility to skeptical climatic researchers, as well as data tampering, anti-scientific secrecy, manipulations of scientific journals, and distortions of peer review that make George Orwell look like a prophet.
This could be dismissed as an isolated case if the CRU were some marginal backwater. But what was produced there was central to the scientific case, such as it was, mounted by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The CRU was global warming central! That makes the recent admission by its deposed head to the BBC stunning. He said there was actually no statistically significant global warming for 15 years. That’s contrary to more than a decade of overheated, hysterical rhetoric and news stories, ultimately based in large part on the CRU’s now-discredited positions. . . .
Read the rest.Back to top by Paul Chesser
Director, Climate Strategies Watch; Scholar, John Locke Foundation; Correspondent, Heartland Institute
Washington Times, February 24, 2010
. . . Climategate data-fudger Michael Mann, the scientist at Penn State University known for the "hockey stick" temperature chart, which rewrote history by eliminating the Medieval Warm Period, last week bemoaned this new discourse on global warming. In an interview with the Web site the Benshi, he whined about "an organized, well-funded effort to discredit" the "scientific community," which he said was driven by the fossil-fuel industry. He accused climate realists of conducting "smear campaigns run against scientists for the sole purpose of discrediting them, so as to discredit the science."
Michael should Mann up. Whatever smudges appear on the reputations of warmism-promoting scientists have been applied by themselves. After all, the skeptics aren't the ones who made up, fudged or twisted data or who employed dubious and biased sources as the foundation for their predictions of calamity. And the alarmists had (and still do) a massive funding advantage, amplified by their colleagues at the major news organizations, which helped keep the messaging winds at their backs. Grammies, Oscars and Nobels were part of their rewards.
But now we have another climate bailout. Though the U.S. media is not hunting down the IPCC fallacies the way their British counterparts are, at the same time, they do not defend global-warming proponents the way they once did. They once championed the cause with vigor, but now a lot of big-city journalists have gone mute about the whole thing.
A suggestion to regain the attention: The scientists should undertake a Mark McGwire/Tiger Woods-like apology campaign. Only then can they start on the road to recovery and restore their lost reputations.
Read the rest.Back to top by Thomas P. Sheahen
President, Institute for Theological Encounter with Science and Technology
February 18, 2010
. . . The Catholic church has consistently taught for millenia that God gave mankind the responsibility for stewardship over the earth, and in recent times the application of that to the individual boils down mainly to "thou shalt not waste." The understanding that the waste products of animal life is healthy for plant life and vice versa goes way back to the Bible (cf. Luke 13:8). Today, there is universal agreement that conserving energy is both good stewardship and good economics. Technological advances that make life better are welcomed. But any exploitation of people is condemned.
Modern-day environmentalists consider humans just one more species among many, and disdain the notion that mankind can exercise responsible stewardship. Within their framework, people must be restrained so as to maximize the overall good of the planet. In fact, they consider people the main problem. Consequently, they oppose much of the Catholic Church's teaching, because it regards humans as superior to other life forms. Somehow, a collection of mainstream Protestant churches has adapted central tenets of the environmentalists' philosophy, and in order to "save the planet" have endorsed agenda that promote severe restrictions on human activities.
The Vatican has taken a cautious stance, and certainly never joined in with the calls by other churches for subordinating humankind. In speaking about the poor countries, the Vatican has repeatedly asked the developed countries to help, and not to attach conditions that limit economic growth or impose population control upon the receiving nations.
In America, the promotions, agenda, proclamations and documents of religiously-affiliated environmental groups has made some inroads upon American Catholic institutions, such as the USCCB. Some Catholic-flavored groups that strive to advance the environmental agenda assert that they have the blessing of the USCCB or other authorities, but it's not there. Official statements from the Catholic hierarchy have been very guarded, and certainly a disappointment to environmentalists. . . .
Sustaining our own comfort should not come at the price of holding back the self-improvement of others. That is morally wrong. The Catholic Church can be proud of its record of not slipping into alignment with the green agenda over the past 40 years. In the years ahead, hopefully it will encourage development of new energy resources worldwide, with the concomitant growth, development and better health that accompanies technological advances. . . .
Read the rest.Back to top Radio Smart Talk, February 12, 2010
For many, the debate over whether the earth's temperatures are rising was over. In their minds, science had enough evidence to prove beyond a doubt that the climate was changing and higher average temperatures in recent years were the result of man made practices. There always have been global warming skeptics though. In the last few months, those who believe rising temperatures are cyclical -- that temperatures rise and fall naturally over decades -- have their own evidence to cite.
The critics point to several inaccuracies in a 2007 United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, email messages from researchers that they see as a conspiracy to change data, and the record-setting harsh winter that much of the country is experincing this year. Several recent polls indicate fewer Americans are as certain of global warming as before. Tuesday's Radio Smart Talk will focus on recent events and the climate change debate.
Guests include Jan Jarrett, President/CEO, Penn Future and Andrew Langer, an adjunct scholar with Commonwealth Foundation. He is also president of the Institute for Liberty.
Listen to the program.
Related item:
Another Alarmist Gets Smoked in a Debate
by Paul Chesser
Director, Climate Strategies Watch; Scholar, John Locke Foundation; Correspondent, Heartland Institute
February 16, 2010Back to top Scienceby Washington Times Editorial Board
February 18, 2010
. . . Joseph D'Aleo, the first director of meteorology and co-founder of the Weather Channel, and Anthony Watts, a meteorologist and founder of SurfaceStations.org, are well-known and well-respected scientists. On Jan. 29, they released a startling study showing that starting in 1990, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) began systematically eliminating climate-measuring stations in cooler locations around the world. Eliminating stations that tended to record cooler temperatures drove up the average measured temperature. The stations eliminated were in higher latitudes and altitudes, inland areas away from the sea and more rural locations. The drop in the number of weather stations was dramatic, declining from more than 6,000 stations to fewer than 1,500.
Mr. D'Aleo and Mr. Watts provide some amazing graphs showing that the jumps in measured global temperature occurred just when the number of weather stations was cut. But there is another bias that this change to more urban stations also exacerbates. Recorded temperatures in more urban areas rise over time simply because more densely populated areas produce more heat. Combining the greater share of weather stations in more urban areas over time with this urban heat effect also tends to increase the rate that recorded temperatures tend to rise over time.
Unfortunately, all three terrestrial global-temperature data sets (by NOAA/National Climatic Data Center, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and the University of East Anglia) really rely on the same measures of surface temperatures. These three sources do not provide independent measures of how the world's temperatures have changed over time. The relatively small differences that do arise from these three institutions result from how they adjust the raw data.
The findings by Mr. D'Aleo and Mr. Watts also explain some puzzles that have bothered researchers. For example, land-based temperatures have been rising while satellite-based measures haven't shown the same increase since 1990. Their answer is that at that point in time, the elimination of weather stations produced a false measured increase in temperatures that didn't affect the satellite readings. There is no evidence (yet) that this effort was consciously designed to increase recorded temperatures, but that is beside the point. The crux of the matter is that fanatics about man-made global warming want to spend trillions of dollars based on conclusions from faulty data. . . .
Read the rest.
Read the study (PDF).
Related item:
A Pending American Temperaturegate
by Edward R. Long
Retired NASA scientist; Consultant on Radiation Physics for Space Flight and on Energy and Climate
American Thinker, February 24, 2010
Contiguous U.S. Temperature Trends Using NCDC Raw and Adjusted Data for One-Per-State Rural and Urban Station Sets
by Edward R. Long
Retired NASA scientist; Consultant on Radiation Physics for Space Flight and on Energy and Climate
Science & Public Policy Institute, February 25, 2010Back to top Economicsby Marlo Lewis
Senior Fellow, Competitive Enterprise Institute
National Journal, February 18, 2010
. . . It appears the activists are succeeding – even as Climategate and other scandals raise new and fundamental doubts about the scientific basis of their agenda. SEC’s Guidance Regarding Disclosure Related to Climate Change requires companies to disclose climate-related risks. DOD’s Quadrennial Defense Review Report (QDR) calls climate change a “key issue” that will play a “significant role in shaping the future security environment.” . . .
Maybe it’s because those pushing for SEC disclosure of climate risk want to drive capital investment out of fossil-intensive industries, but the SEC leaves no doubt that cap-and-trade legislation will harm some companies, forcing them to buy new equipment, purchase emission allowances, or charge less competitive prices for their goods and services.
The SEC guidance also notes that climate policy may benefit firms that gain the opportunity to sell carbon credits or new products and technologies. Fair enough. However, the SEC instructs firms to report “specific risks they face as a result of climate change legislation or regulation and avoid generic risk factor disclosure that could apply to any company.” This admonition precludes reporting on the economy-wide impacts of climate policy. Yet a policy-induced recession can harm or destroy firms even if they face no specific regulatory risks. . . .
Read the rest.Back to top by Dennis T. Avery
Director, Center for Global Food Issues; Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute and Heartland Institute; Scientific Advisor, American Council on Science and Health; Co-Author, Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1500 Years
February 22, 2010
. . . Thousands of farmers in the developing world were told that biofuel from an oily tree fruit, jatropha, could be grown on marginal land. Thus it could produce massive amounts of renewable fuels without competing with food crops.
Now it turns out the experts were wrong about jatropha growing well on marginal land. Jatropha will grow on marginal land, but it needs good land to produce economically viable yields. Indian farmers, for example, find the forecast yields of 2–5 tons per hectare are actually less than 2 tons.
Meanwhile, millions of jatropha trees are being grown instead of food on farms from Ghana and Guatemala to Mozambique and India. EU companies have reportedly leased 5 million hectares of land for biofuel production, much of it in Africa, where it will compete with already-inadequate food production and threaten unique wildlife. . . .
Read the rest.Back to top Briefly NotedSolomon: Climate Change: Is the Science Really Settled?
Will: Global Warming Advocates Ignore the Boulders
Pielke, Jr.: Mojib Latif on ZDF: 'A Fraud to the Public'
E. Calvin Beisner, Ph.D., National Spokesman
Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, http://www.cornwallalliance.org/
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