Climategate - It Had to Happen

Global-warming theories have been suspect from the beginning; certain climate scientists have hidden their data and shown to falsify their results [1] and subsequently refused to cooperate with; scientific peer review to validate their findings, contrary to normal scientific procedures.

The negative effect of global-warming theories is enormous: producing panic, global-warming industries, huge government grants to support research into global warming, policies that will have disastrous effect on; western economies and shift production and economic benefit to China, India, Russia etc. Billions of dollars that could have been spent on projects that would benefit the global community have been diverted to a myth.

Therefore let us consider the magnitude of climategate, and the assertion that "it had to happen."

The Watergate scandal was big news in the 1970s. US President Nixon was implicated in a cover-up; hiding of the facts, of a break-in to the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex on June 17, 1972.

That was big news because it involved the President of the United States, now we have a very different cover-up but one that actually could be bigger and more far-reaching than Watergate.

Climategate - we are talking about the leaking of thousands of documents from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, Hadley in the UK. Some of the documents show that scientists had deliberately distorted their findings to show a warming trend that really didn't exist, and they had done this by manipulating data to make it show what they wanted.

Emails and documents from Hadley CRU show that poor scientific methods were used, poor management of data (which is key to this particular research), but far worse it is revealed that there was a deliberate attempt to falsify and distort. That is very bad in scientific circles, as in any endeavour, but in this case it had great significance because the work at Hadley CRU is used by the UN body the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change).

This warming trend is known as the notorious "hockey-stick graph" [2] which tries to show that; temperatures have been relatively stable for about a thousand years and then show a very rapid upward trend coinciding with the growth of the industrial revolution from about the mid 1800s. This graph is supposed to show that global temperatures are rising with recently rising levels of carbon-dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere.

The hockey stick graph [3] as shown in the 2001 IPCC report. This chart shows the data from Mann et al. 1999. The colored lines are the reconstructed temperatures, and the gray shaded region represents estimated error bars.

The proponents of global-warming theory say this data supports a "correlation" between CO2 and rising global temperature. A correlation is the scientific (or statistical) term to denote that there is a mutual relation between two phenomenon, and specifically there is a dependence: one thing changes dependent on changes in the other. So the claim is that global temperatures were relatively constant until humans started to produce increasing amounts of CO2, at which point there was a corresponding increase in global temperatures.

When you look at the graph, the global-warming / CO2 connection certainly looks very convincing indeed. In fact it looks to show overwhelming evidence - it's case over! .... CO2 guilty as charged! But the problem is the graph is completely bogus from a scientific point of view. It is not science it is deception.

Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age (Northern Hemisphere)

[AMMENDMENT: The medieval warm period is correctly and prominently shown
in the IPCC’s 1990 report but omitted from subsequent reports]

During the period known as the Medieval Warm Period (MWP), temperatures were up to 3 degrees Celsius warmer than today’s temperatures; we know Eric the Red and Icelanders settled in Greenland and were able to farm - that's why it was named green-land.

Equally well-know that temperatures were significantly colder during a period called the Little Ice Age; the Thames froze over, and all of Europe was in a deep freeze.

These things are beyond doubt, the knowledge of them does not depend on manipulating data of the size of tree-rings to infer temperatures. The hockey-stick graph fails to show temperature variations in the Northern hemisphere which are very well known;

If we compare the two graphs we can see that the MWP and the Little Ice Age are completely missing from the hockey-stick graph. Furthermore, common sense tells us that coming out of a very cold period the temperatures has to rise and that is where the northern hemisphere was in the mid 1800s. Thirdly we can see that the hockey-stick graph shows temperature variation of about 0.5 degrees Celsius compared to a warming period of about 3 degrees Celsius.

Common sense tells us that there is something wrong with the hockey-stick graph; it doesn't work; a fact noticed by Canadians Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick 2003 published a paper in 2003 [1] which refuted the science of the hockey-stick graph.

But the hockey-stick graph was very important to global warming theories. The UN body the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) published Mann's hockey-stick graph multiple times in their Third Assessment Report (2001). Lord Christopher Moncton in his excellent presentation "Hockey Stick, What Hockey Stick" [4]:

The IPCC’s politicized bureaucrats liked the graph so much that they reproduced it six times, in very large scale, and in full color. The “hockey-stick” graph was the only graph in the entire 2001 assessment report that was reproduced as often as this. 

As Lord Moncton points out the graph is based on data from varying widths of tree-rings, but the IPCC themselves (although the IPCC promoted the subsequent graph) "had previously given strong warnings against using tree-rings as proxies for pre-instrumental surface temperatures."

One of the problems of Mann's work is that it is based on the assumption that wider tree-rings always indicated warmer temperatures:

One reason for the IPCC’s warnings was that wider tree-rings do not always indicate warmer temperatures.

Trees grow faster not only when it is warmer but also when there is more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, because carbon dioxide is not a pollutant but a naturally-occurring substance that is plant food.

With sunlight, chlorophyll, and water, it is an essential ingredient in plant photosynthesis, without which there would be little or no life on Earth.

Note that despite the IPCC's own standard advising against the use of tree rings, the IPPC greatly promoted the hockey-stick graph as evidence of global-warming in the Third Assessment Report (2001), reproducing "it six times, in very large scale, and in full color."

Furthermore, the situation got worse after McIntyre and McKitrick (M&Ms) paper; Mann and colleagues, and scientists at the CRU embarked on a policy of disinformation and non-compliance. But even worse, they set-out to discredit and undermine any person or publication that criticised their work.

I remember those phrases that the global-warming zealots used to parrot: "the debate is over" but there never was a proper debate. It was a fait accomplis , it was a done-deal after the IPCC issued their Third Assessment Report in 2001. The press and the public jumped aboard the global-warming train.

If the case was so clear to support global warming there would not have been any reason to suppress all other scientific opposition. It was precisely because there was no clear scientific evidence that the global-warming zealots had to resort to tactics to shut people up. If good science existed it would have spoken for itself - the problem is there never was any.

If good science existed it would have spoken for itself - the problem is there never was any.

Following the Third Assessment Report in 2001 and the controversy over the invalidity of Mann's hockey-stick, the IPCC did not offer an explanation of  the errors in their report, nor bothered to clarify, nor did they alert the public and the media as to the question mark around the content of their report.

On the contrary they tried to gloss-over the issue. The zealots doctrine is "the issue is so serious that if some of the facts are distorted - so what! We need to stampede the people to raise awareness."

So why is this issue so serious, even more far-reaching than Watergate?

The US are in the process of implementing a disastrous cap and trade (Waxman-Markey Bill) to combat the myth of global-warming. They are doing this under the leadership of President Obama at a time when the the US economy is in a shambles

The US deficit has increased by three times since Obama took office, unemployment is at an almost  unprecedented 10.2% (highest in 26 years), and at such a time the President and the leftist Democrats want to implement policies which will make the situation even worse - I say a disaster.

Why a disaster? Because it will divert billions of dollars away from US business into other countries, firstly by direct payments or penalties, and far worse by making it much more expensive for US companies to operate and therefore forcing closures or moving the businesses overseas to places such as China or India. Those countries will have exemptions which will make them far more competitive in the US and in World markets; this will inevitably result in further erosion of business  and thus jobs in in the US.

Not only job losses, but the cost of living will rise steeply because fuel costs will rise. A further twist is the loss of business and jobs means a decrease in tax revenues to government, and an increase in burden because of entitlements. The leftist approach is to further increase taxes to maintain revenues and entitlements, which on exacerbates the problem, producing another twist of the vicious-circle. (Reganomics did the opposite decreased taxes resulting in an increase in business and overall increases in wealth and a large increase in tax revenues).  

A further twist of the knife, is Obama, Pelosi, and Reid are trying to nationalise health-care (in the guise of health-care reform), which will produce a further burden on the US economy and the US people.

Here are some past related posts at Lux et Veritas which are relevant to the issues around the US economy:

For Canadians the information has been somewhat distorted;

Does the US Want Obama Health-Care Reform?

Ronald Reagan sums up liberal approach to government perfectly.

The problem with socialism

The polices of this US Administration are vitally important not only to Canadians but to the whole world: 

When Pravda Says It - You Know It's Bad

Gurth Whitaker
Calgary, Alberta 

FOOTNOTES

[1] Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick published a paper in 2003 that show the methods used by Mann et al are faulty.

McIntyre, Stephen; McKitrick, Ross (2003), "Corrections To The Mann Et. Al. (1998) Proxy Data Base And Northern Hemispheric Average Temperature Series"

The data set of proxies of past climate used in Mann, Bradley and Hughes (1998, “MBH98” hereafter) for the estimation of temperatures from 1400 to 1980 contains collation errors, unjustifiable truncation or extrapolation of source data, obsolete data, geographical location errors, incorrect calculation of principal components and other quality control defects. We detail these errors and defects.

We then apply MBH98 methodology to the construction of a Northern Hemisphere average temperature index for the 1400-1980 period, using corrected and updated source data. The major finding is that the values in the early 15th century exceed any values in the 20th century. The particular “hockey stick” shape derived in the MBH98 proxy construction – a temperature index that decreases slightly between the early 15th century and early 20th century and then increases dramatically up to 1980 — is primarily an artefact of poor data handling, obsolete data and incorrect calculation of principal components.

[2] The scientific journal Nature published the hockey stick graph. In 1998 / 1999 three paleoclimatologists; Mann, Bradley and Hughes (1998), otherwise referred to as “MBH98”

[3] The term hockey stick was coined by the head of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, Jerry Mahlman, to describe the pattern.

[4] The excellent Lord Moncton Paper Hockey Stick, What Hockey Stick