On the Radio4 Today programme this morning, Simon Cox reported that Dr Rajendra Pachauri, Chairman of the IPCC, says that they will be investigating the CRU emails . See first item at 07:09, here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8394000/8394501.stm
The BBC website carries the same story but with a rather different slant here:
“We will certainly go into the whole lot and then we will take a position on it,” he said.
“We certainly don’t want to brush anything under the carpet. This is a serious issue and we will look into it in detail.”
For the first time, Climategate made the headlines on the BBC’s morning news coverage. Their flagship Today programme, the one that politicians and policy makers can’t afford to miss, ran no less than three items on the story.
In a post here, I suggested that Climategate, like Watergate, is a story that will grow and grow. With the involvement of the IPCC this seems bound to happen.
Up until now, the action and news coverage has centred on the University of East Anglia’s campus. After all it was Phil Jones’s mailbox at CRU that got raided. But from the very beginning it was clear that the scandal had international dimensions. As I have said before, the address headers on those emails reads like a list of the great and the good in climate research from around the world, and that means that they are the movers and shakers of the IPCC process too.
In particular Michael Mann, Keith Briffa, and Kevin Trenberth – to say nothing of Phil Jones himself – have played a major role in the last two IPCC Assessment Reports. All have said apparently compromising things in the leaked correspondence.
- There is little doubt now that confidence in Mann’s hockey stick, the iconic graph that Sir John Houghton used so successful as a brand image for the IPPC in its Third Assessment Report, was only maintained by collusion with colleagues to suppress criticism.
- Briffa admits, referring to his IPCC duties, that the needs of the IPCC and science are not always the same.
- Trenberth questions scientific understanding of the radiation budget, perhaps the most fundamental aspect of the greenhouse hypothesis, and admits that the present cooling cannot be explained. Yet he is a factotum of the organisation that has done more than any other to implant the idea in the minds of politicians, policy makers that the general public that the science is settled and a consensus exists.
- Jones talks openly of keeping inconvenient scientific research out of the Fourth Assessment Report.
The intervention of the IPCC chairman is a turning point in the development of the CRU affair for two reasons. If the IPCC need to investigate, then it is no longer possible for anyone to pretend that the problem only concerns a few people and a limited amount of research at CRU. Climategate will have gone global. Secondly, any intimation that the IPCC are going to investigate is likely to bring forth a chorus of demands that it is not the place of the IPCC to investigate this matter, but it is the IPCC that should be investigated.
As I have said before, the people whose behaviour has been brought to light by this scandal are not bit players in the world of climate science; they are senior functionaries at the heart of the IPCC process.
In a report on this morning’s Today programme (here at 08:56), Roger Harrabin had this to say:
Climate change has become the sort of great organising theme, a great grand narrative of our age. And what you’re seeing in Copenhagen now is the sort of businesses who previously rejected ideas that we had to cut emissions now buying into climate change science, and from that position making policies of their own for a transformational economy; a low carbon economy. So you had for instance five hundred businesses last night at Downing Street presenting a petition to Gordon Brown saying give us a strong deal. And I saw Richard Lambert there, Director Genera of the CBI, and said look! what about these stolen emails? Does this put you off? And this is what he said;
Business people aren’t scientists and they’re not climatologists, but they are paid to understand risk. And they see a risk in climate change and they also see an opportunity. The question is, is it going to be an orderly transition to a low carbon economy or a disorderly transition. And are investment plans going to be [served ?] by the way that [transition] creates business opportunities in the future. That’s is why business has an real interest, in a successful outcome to the Copenhagen discussions.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8394000/8394501.stm
Why Harrabin should choose to interpret this very cautious response to a question about Climategate as a refutation of the impact of the CRU debacle is not a subject for this post, but the real burden of what Lambert said certainly is.
Industry has billions invested in what they have been told are the new opportunities that the perceived risk of AGW are supposed to create. Businessmen are, as Lambert rightly says, paid to understand risk. But they are also paid to assess the information on which decisions on risk are based. In the case of global warming the main purveyor of this information is the IPCC, aided and abetted by government and the quangos it has created.
Businessmen, or the best of them at least, are also paid to know when the information they are relying on can no longer be trusted. In the case of the IPCC, trust is a very important word. As Lambert makes clear, businessmen are not climate scientists and the number of people who can make a critical appraisal of what the IPCC has been telling us are relatively few. The decisions on risk are based almost entirely on what the IPCC has been telling us all for the last decade.
If the new markets that the businessmen are relying on to help ride out the recession begin to collapse because the IPCC process is flawed, then the IPCC can expect no mercy form the business leaders who have become its cheerleaders.
Peter:
Surely you don’t still think that “global temperature records, the melting Arctic ice, receding glaciers, rising tree lines and melting tundras” are, in themselves, evidence that mankind is responsible? Are you so foolish that you cannot understand the simple point that the key question is not whether the world is warming but why it is warming?
Peter M
Robin and Peter Geany have already responded, but let me paraphrase your 23:
Both Robin and I have “previously asked for conclusive “empirical evidence”” that the current warming, unlike all the other previous warming and cooling cycles is caused by AGW, rather than simply the same natural factors, which caused earlier climate swings as well as the current cooling.
You have been unable to bring any such empirical evidence. Instead you have only asked us what that evidence might be. Since we have seen no such evidence from you (or anyone else) it is up to you to define and provide it, not us. Yet all you can bring is climate model simulations, which are only as good (or bad) as the assumptions fed into the computers, i.e. no empirical evidence at all.
Despite your claim that you are a scientist, your knowledge of the scientific process appears quite limited, Peter. You tend to rely more on “faith” and “belief” in a premise (or simply the word of a group of scientists, rather than on the scientific process of rational skepticism and insistence on empirical data to support this premise.
Got it?
Peter, I can only suggest that you GROW UP.
Max
Peter M
Please explain:
Mojib Latif of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences (at the UN World Climate Conference, Geneva, August 31-September 4, 2009), responded to the current global cooling:
[Sounds like a reasonable conclusion to me.]
Vicky Pope of the Met Office (BBC radio 4 at 12 September 2009):
[Sounds a bit more convoluted than Latif’s conclusion of the “people”.]
But just how important is natural variability (a.k.a. “natural forcing factors”, previously a “taboo” in climate orthodoxy)?
Vicky Pope of Met Office (Guardian Website, 11 February 2009):
It appears that the “natural variability” cat (as a major climate forcing factor) has been let out of the bag.
If natural forcing has been strong enough since the end of 2000 to more than offset all-time record increases in atmospheric CO2 (which the models told us should have resulted in warming of 0.2°C) and result in major cooling over the period instead (0.1°C average of four main temperature records), then how can we conclude that it had essentially no impact on climate from pre-industrial 1750 to 2005, as the IPCC AR4 report claims?
Answer: we can’t.
Obviously the logic is flawed here (as is the science supporting it).
Max
Brute
[Please refer to picture at top]
Would you buy a used train from this guy?
Max
Max,
I don’t trust anyone that wears a beard.
This is one of the most intelliegent analysis of the situation that I have seen in a long time.
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=409454
tonyb
Frigid temperatures follow heavy snow into Midwest
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20091210/D9CGEMEO0.html
Pete,
Year after year, (at least since Jimmie Hanson claimed that global warming would cook the world in 1988), we continue to get these icy cold winters and mild summers.
At what point would you say that this is no longer “anecdotal evidence” and simply indicates normal temperature variations?
How many years of “anecdotal evidence” do we need to string together?
Brute (30)
Don’t you make an exception for Santa Claus?
Anyone that breaks into my house better be prepared to deal with Mrs. Brute and her 12 gauge………..cookies or no cookies.
Brute 32
If it did not come out of a computerized climate model, it is meaningless.
Empirical data based on actual physical observations are simply “anecdotal” if they have not been run through a computer and massaged by the right “climatologist”, such as your man, Jimmy. (After all, that’s how “weather” is transformed into “climate”).
Those are the rules of the climate game, Brute.
Sorry ’bout that.
Max
Yes Max, I suppose you’re right.
The 2 feet of snow on the ground and the negative 20 degree temperatures are just a mirage………I’d better get my head right and join the cult of global warmists!
Of course, I could probably join the camp of those that state this is “regional anomoly’…..that global warming is raging everywhere except America.
You wearing shorts and short sleeve shirts in the Alps this month?
Forget Carbon, Copehagen Scientists Find New Target to Spend Our Money on – Nitrogen!
An international group of scientists say there is an immediate need for a global assessment of the nitrogen cycle and its impact on climate.
On a planetary scale, human activities, especially fertiliser application, have more than doubled the amount of reactive nitrogen in circulation on land. This massive alteration of the nitrogen cycle affects climate, food security, energy security, human health and ecosystem health. The long-term consequences of these changes are yet to be fully realised, but the human impact on the nitrogen cycle has so far been largely missed in international environmental assessments.
Nitrogen’s role in climate change will be highlighted at an event on 7 December at the COP-15 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. Event organisers will be calling for a new assessment of nitrogen and climate, which will identify innovative nitrogen management strategies for global climate change mitigation and associated co-benefits to society.
Dr Cheryl Palm, the chair of the International Nitrogen Initiative (INI), which is organising the event, said “Nitrogen and climate interactions are not yet adequately included in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment process. There is an urgent need to assess the possibilities of nitrogen management for climate abatement and at the same time increase food security, while minimising environmental and human health impacts.”
Dr Palm added, “We believe that in tackling nitrogen new opportunities for climate abatement will be created.”
Professor Jan Willem Erisman from the Energy Research Centre of the Netherlands, who will speak at the event said: “An internationally-coordinated global nitrogen assessment is urgently required. A special report on nitrogen and climate is the natural first step.”
Kilaparti Ramakrishna, Senior Advisor on Environmental Law and Conventions at UNEP who will give the opening address at the side event said, “The nitrogen cycle is changing faster than that of any other element. In addition, the effects of reactive nitrogen are not limited to a single medium. A single molecule of reactive nitrogen may transition through many forms—ammonia, nitrogen oxide, nitric acid, nitrate and organic nitrogen—and may successively lead to a number of environmental, health and social impacts, including contributing to higher levels of ozone in the lower atmosphere. Over the last decade a number of global, regional and national initiatives have identified and addressed the issue of nutrient enrichment to the coastal zone. However, programmes are dispersed and fragmented and there is no single place to go for an overview of available information tools and mechanisms.”
Professor Sybil Seitzinger, Executive Director of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme said, “We have changed the complexity of the nitrogen cycle profoundly and are unaware of all the implications. In the meantime, policies that affect the nitrogen cycle are often made in isolation of the range of their impacts. This is in part because policies are made in departments/ministries with responsibility for only certain sectors (e.g., air, agriculture, etc.). Furthermore, the scientific community does not yet have an integrated understanding of the multiple impacts and feedbacks of changes in the nitorgen cycle, or the interconnections with other cycles, like carbon. An integrated global nitrogen assessment is needed as soon as possible. This will support the development of tools for policy makers to understand the multiple implications of their decision.”
The INI team believes that it is essential to untangle the complexity of the nitrogen and carbon cycle, identify the advantages of nitrogen management for climate abatement and investigates the costs and barriers to be overcome. Such an assessment needs to distinguish between developed areas where there is already an excess of nitrogen and the developing parts of the world where nitrogen management can help increase food security. Improved Nitrogen management will help limit fertilizer use, increase its efficiency and increase carbon sequestration in soils, decrease N2O emissions, while limiting other environmental and human health impacts.
The side event “Options for Including Nitrogen Management in Climate Policy Development” will be held in the US centre (Hall C5) from 6pm local time. The event will be followed by a networking reception supported by the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (CEH), United Kingdom The organisers of the side event are the INI, CEH, the Ministry of Housing and Spatial Planning and Environment (VROM) of The Netherlands, the United Nations Environment Programme—Global Partnership on Nutrient Management (UNEP/GPNM), the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, SCOPE, the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme, COST and the European Science Foundation Nitrogen in Europe Research Networking Programme (NinE-ESF).
Having been forced into some recognition of the fact that CO2 is not the demon as originally proposed, the social set have now found a second drum to beat so that as the demonization of CO2 fades, there will still be a “Problem” to solve! And considering it comprises 78% of our atmosphere versus just 0.038% for CO2, they have a bigger target. However man’s percentage impact is even smaller than with CO2. H/t JN
Did I somehow miss this?
Copenhagen climate summit hopes fade as Obama backs postponement
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/15/obama-copenhagen-emissions-targets-climate-change
Brute
You asked
“You wearing shorts and short sleeve shirts in the Alps this month?”
No. As I saw the snow line moving down the mountains at an accelerating rate, I escaped the unbearable anthropogenic alpine heat and made a quick dash for California (Bay Area), where I now also see snow on the mountains.
Guess you just cannot escape global warming, despite snow storms and blizzards.
Read that 17 people have died so far because of the severe weather in the upper Midwest. Disastrous climate change predictions are coming true before our very eyes.
Max
Everyone:
If you want to rake over the same old arguments yet again, then the NS thread is the place to do it. How many times do I have to say this?
This thread is about Climategate with particular reference to the IPCC’s announcement of an inquiry and the possible impact this may have on the Copenhagen Summit.
Brute (38)
Good remark from one of the commenters:
“Global warming is little more than an endless conference industry”
It certainly looks that way…
[TonyN:See this comment on the Admin thread]
TonyN
You pointed out in the lead article:
Papers by Jones are cited 22 times in IPCC AR4; in addition he is coordinating lead author of Chapter 3: “Observations: Surface and Atmospheric Climate Change”
Papers by Briffa are cited 7 times, and he is lead author of Chapter 8: “Paleoclimate”
Papers by Mann are cited 13 times (but he did not make it to “lead author” again, after the “hockeystick” embarrassment).
Trenberth is a draft contributing author of the AR4 SPM report and contribution author of Chapter 1: “Historical Overview of Climate Change Science”, but I have not checked how many times his papers are cited.
These guys have definitely had a major impact on the IPCC AR4 report.
Max.
You have to feel a bit sorry for Phil Jones. How likely was it that his dept would get £13m in grants if it didn’t support AGW..?
This video clip (from a press briefing at the climate change conference in Copenhagen) is seriously worrying. (Note to TonyN: this is about Climategate.)
Perhaps I should explain why I found that video clip (see link at 44) “seriously worrying”.
What happened was that, in a press conference at Copenhagen, Professor Stephen Schneider was asked, very politely, a question on the science – a question that arose from Climategate. He could have answered politely. But, instead, a security officer was called who promptly resorted to strong arm tactics. This is a disgraceful way of dealing with a serious scientific issue.
Clive James is always good value. His most recent “Point of View” (on BBC iPlayer here) is especially so.
Robin. Authoritarian is what I call it. It is how I would describe our current government; it is how Obama is behaving pushing through “his” reforms, the EPA’s endangerment ruling on CO2 being one of many examples.
From the reading and research I have done for Leo it has become apparent to me that authoritarian behaviour is what I observe brings to and end what we have traditionally called left-wing governments. For centuries as civilisations have developed, democratic accountability has been sort buy the electorate to ensure our governments reflect the will of the people, and we have gone to war over retaining these hard won freedoms. Some may find this view controversial, but it is a sad fact of life that the way a left learning Government needs to work is by bringing in measures and Laws to control the life of the majority, and to achieve this they invariably become authoritarian as their plans fail due to non-compliance of the citizenry. A factor in how this behaviour comes about is an inability to comprehend that they could be wrong.
What has for a long time masked many of the measures put in place to control our lives this time around was the loosening of bank lending, garnering a feeling of unlimited wealth not only amongst the citizenry, but also with our political leaders. As this has spectacularly unravelled we have started to question our leaders who have sort to deflect everything off to anyone and anything that cannot defend itself.
That you find the video disturbing is no surprise. The UN is not an elected body; it does not believe it has to answer to any one individual, believing its mandate is inherited via its sponsoring governments and therefore any difficult questions need to be answered by government representatives. As you and many others know we have not been able to challenge our own representatives in the last 10 years or so and now it is finally coming to a head. As they hide behind UN authority we need to bring more and more pressure to bear to get climate debated at a local level. I could go on but I seriously believe climate change is so undemocratic that it is not just our industrial Power and leadership in innovation that’s at risk, but democracy itself.
Our own leaders need to keep in mind what has just happened in Australia. As a Kiwi with many Australia friends over here in the UK, I just know for the liberal Party to take the action they did the pressure must have been extreme. David Cameron beware is all I can say.
Harrabin’s remark “The question is, is it going to be an orderly transition to a low carbon economy or a disorderly transition” is a beautiful example of the mindset of central planners. Of course it begs the question of whether we need a low carbon future or not but that is deliberate lying. The underlying assumption that no economic process can work effectively unless it is organised in an “orderly” manner by government bureaucrats is more interesting because he it is clearly part of the BBC furniture.
The fact is evidence is overwhelming that free markets disorganise technological transition infinitely better than government ministers organise it.
What’s going on? CRU takes down Briffa Tree Ring Data and more
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/14/whats-going-on-cru-takes-down-briffa-tree-ring-data-and-more/
Robin
That beefy UN security goon should have been outside helping the local cops quiet down a bunch of pro AGW hoodlums rather than muzzling politely phrased questions from the press.
Shades of the brown shirts?
Max