Climate links
Noting that Britain meets its emission targets because Thatcher closed coal mines (over bitter opposition from the Left) and the UK has nuclear power.
About the hockey-stick and problems with the tree-ring data:
It turns out that many of the samples were taken from dead (partially fossilized) trees and they have no particular trend. The sharp uptrend in the late 20th century came from cores of 10 living trees alive as of 1990, and five living trees alive as of 1995. Based on scientific standards, this is too small a sample on which to produce a publication-grade proxy composite. The 18th and 19th century portion of the sample, for instance, contains at least 30 trees per year. But that portion doesn’t show a warming spike. The only segment that does is the late 20th century, where the sample size collapses. Once again a dramatic hockey stick shape turns out to depend on the least reliable portion of a dataset.
But an even more disquieting discovery soon came to light. Steve searched a paleoclimate data archive to see if there were other tree ring cores from at or near the Yamal site that could have been used to increase the sample size. He quickly found a large set of 34 up-to-date core samples, taken from living trees in Yamal by none other than Schweingruber himself! Had these been added to Briffa’s small group the 20th century would simply be flat. It would appear completely unexceptional compared to the rest of the millennium.
The Hadley Climate Reporting Unit has been comprehensively hacked with documents and emails posted online. More. Police are to investigate. Andrew Bolt has a few observations. Claming it will be the end of CAGW. A certain amount of damage control is being engaged in:
"It does look incriminating on the surface, but there are lots of single sentences that taken out of context can appear incriminating," said Bob Ward, director of policy and communications at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics. "You can't tell what they are talking about. Scientists say 'trick' not just to mean deception. They mean it as a clever way of doing something - a short cut can be a trick."
Post with lots of links where you can download the files:
… shows that since 1990, Phil Jones has collected staggering 13.7 million British pounds ($22.6 million) in grants.
Another post with lots of links. Initial analysis of the revealed emails:
The emails I've reviewed so far do not suggest that these scientists are perpetrating a knowing and deliberate hoax. On the contrary, they are true believers. I don't doubt that they are sincerely convinced--in fact, fanatically so--that human activity is warming the earth. But the emails are disturbing nonetheless. What they reveal, more than anything, is a bunker mentality. These pro-global warming scientists see themselves as under siege, and they view AGW skeptics as bitter enemies. They are often mean-spirited; the web site American Thinker is referred to as "American Stinker;" at one point an emailer exults in the death of a global warming skeptic; another one suggests that the Ph.D. of a prominent skeptic should be revoked because of an error he made decades ago in his dissertation; another says that he is tempted to "beat the crap out of" the same scientist. The emails show beyond any reasonable doubt that these individuals are engaged in politics, not science.
They also suggest that pro-global warming scientists fudge data to get the results they are looking for. Just over a month ago, on September 28, 2009, Tom Wigley wrote to Phil Jones of the Hadley Centre about his efforts to get the right-sized "blip" in temperatures of the 1940s:
Phil, Here are some speculations on correcting SSTs to partly explain the 1940s warming blip. If you look at the attached plot you will see that the land also shows the 1940s blip (as I'm sure you know). So, if we could reduce the ocean blip by, say, 0.15 degC, then this would be significant for the global mean -- but we'd still have to explain the land blip.
I've chosen 0.15 here deliberately. This still leaves an ocean blip, and i think one needs to have some form of ocean blip to explain the land blip (via either some common forcing, or ocean forcing land, or vice versa, or all of these). When you look at other blips, the land blips are 1.5 to 2 times (roughly) the ocean blips -- higher sensitivity plus thermal inertia effects. My 0.15 adjustment leaves things consistent with this, so you can see where I am coming from. Removing ENSO does not affect this.
It would be good to remove at least part of the 1940s blip, but we are still left with "why the blip".
This and many other emails convey the impression that these theorists are making the "science" up as they go along, with data being manipulated until it yields the results that have been predetermined by political conviction.
Another post with lots of links and juicy quotes. Obviously the hacking is illegal, a breach of confidentiality, of privacy, etc. Sort of like the Pentagon Papers. Suggesting the leaked emails say more about academia than climate. [And also (like the point about "Jacksonian discourse").] I haven't examined them myself [apart from the ones posted in various articles and blogs], but what I have mainly got out of them is rather too much "true belief", that the highly combative and intolerant outlook one so often sees among "warmists" comes from the main CAGW scientists.
The head of the UK Environmental Protection agency wants everyone to be issued with a carbon allowance.
President Sarkozy has proposed a carbon tax:
The government has been under suspicion of seeking ways to increase its revenues in a year when fiscal income has plunged because of the recession, causing the budget deficit to balloon. …
Mr Sarkozy faces an uphill battle to convince voters to accept the plan. An opinion poll by Ifop for the magazine Paris Match, published this week, found that 65 per cent of people were hostile to the tax.
The likely first EU President wants to fund social welfare with green taxes.
Al Gore is becoming very wealthy via selling carbon control. Lots of companies are looking to government incentives on environmental issues.
Sen. Inhofe is claiming sceptical victory. Lord Lawson thinks Copenhagen ought to fail and wants a more open debate.
About the hockey-stick and problems with the tree-ring data:
It turns out that many of the samples were taken from dead (partially fossilized) trees and they have no particular trend. The sharp uptrend in the late 20th century came from cores of 10 living trees alive as of 1990, and five living trees alive as of 1995. Based on scientific standards, this is too small a sample on which to produce a publication-grade proxy composite. The 18th and 19th century portion of the sample, for instance, contains at least 30 trees per year. But that portion doesn’t show a warming spike. The only segment that does is the late 20th century, where the sample size collapses. Once again a dramatic hockey stick shape turns out to depend on the least reliable portion of a dataset.
But an even more disquieting discovery soon came to light. Steve searched a paleoclimate data archive to see if there were other tree ring cores from at or near the Yamal site that could have been used to increase the sample size. He quickly found a large set of 34 up-to-date core samples, taken from living trees in Yamal by none other than Schweingruber himself! Had these been added to Briffa’s small group the 20th century would simply be flat. It would appear completely unexceptional compared to the rest of the millennium.
The Hadley Climate Reporting Unit has been comprehensively hacked with documents and emails posted online. More. Police are to investigate. Andrew Bolt has a few observations. Claming it will be the end of CAGW. A certain amount of damage control is being engaged in:
"It does look incriminating on the surface, but there are lots of single sentences that taken out of context can appear incriminating," said Bob Ward, director of policy and communications at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics. "You can't tell what they are talking about. Scientists say 'trick' not just to mean deception. They mean it as a clever way of doing something - a short cut can be a trick."
Post with lots of links where you can download the files:
… shows that since 1990, Phil Jones has collected staggering 13.7 million British pounds ($22.6 million) in grants.
Another post with lots of links. Initial analysis of the revealed emails:
The emails I've reviewed so far do not suggest that these scientists are perpetrating a knowing and deliberate hoax. On the contrary, they are true believers. I don't doubt that they are sincerely convinced--in fact, fanatically so--that human activity is warming the earth. But the emails are disturbing nonetheless. What they reveal, more than anything, is a bunker mentality. These pro-global warming scientists see themselves as under siege, and they view AGW skeptics as bitter enemies. They are often mean-spirited; the web site American Thinker is referred to as "American Stinker;" at one point an emailer exults in the death of a global warming skeptic; another one suggests that the Ph.D. of a prominent skeptic should be revoked because of an error he made decades ago in his dissertation; another says that he is tempted to "beat the crap out of" the same scientist. The emails show beyond any reasonable doubt that these individuals are engaged in politics, not science.
They also suggest that pro-global warming scientists fudge data to get the results they are looking for. Just over a month ago, on September 28, 2009, Tom Wigley wrote to Phil Jones of the Hadley Centre about his efforts to get the right-sized "blip" in temperatures of the 1940s:
Phil, Here are some speculations on correcting SSTs to partly explain the 1940s warming blip. If you look at the attached plot you will see that the land also shows the 1940s blip (as I'm sure you know). So, if we could reduce the ocean blip by, say, 0.15 degC, then this would be significant for the global mean -- but we'd still have to explain the land blip.
I've chosen 0.15 here deliberately. This still leaves an ocean blip, and i think one needs to have some form of ocean blip to explain the land blip (via either some common forcing, or ocean forcing land, or vice versa, or all of these). When you look at other blips, the land blips are 1.5 to 2 times (roughly) the ocean blips -- higher sensitivity plus thermal inertia effects. My 0.15 adjustment leaves things consistent with this, so you can see where I am coming from. Removing ENSO does not affect this.
It would be good to remove at least part of the 1940s blip, but we are still left with "why the blip".
This and many other emails convey the impression that these theorists are making the "science" up as they go along, with data being manipulated until it yields the results that have been predetermined by political conviction.
Another post with lots of links and juicy quotes. Obviously the hacking is illegal, a breach of confidentiality, of privacy, etc. Sort of like the Pentagon Papers. Suggesting the leaked emails say more about academia than climate. [And also (like the point about "Jacksonian discourse").] I haven't examined them myself [apart from the ones posted in various articles and blogs], but what I have mainly got out of them is rather too much "true belief", that the highly combative and intolerant outlook one so often sees among "warmists" comes from the main CAGW scientists.
The head of the UK Environmental Protection agency wants everyone to be issued with a carbon allowance.
President Sarkozy has proposed a carbon tax:
The government has been under suspicion of seeking ways to increase its revenues in a year when fiscal income has plunged because of the recession, causing the budget deficit to balloon. …
Mr Sarkozy faces an uphill battle to convince voters to accept the plan. An opinion poll by Ifop for the magazine Paris Match, published this week, found that 65 per cent of people were hostile to the tax.
The likely first EU President wants to fund social welfare with green taxes.
Al Gore is becoming very wealthy via selling carbon control. Lots of companies are looking to government incentives on environmental issues.
Sen. Inhofe is claiming sceptical victory. Lord Lawson thinks Copenhagen ought to fail and wants a more open debate.