Deceitful ass-covering by the American Physical Society exposed

Below is a letter from The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley recently sent to the President of the American Physical Society. Christopher Monckton's original paper together with the contentious APS disclaimer can be found here. The Announcement by the APS editor of Physics & Society opening a debate about the IPCC and its scientific critics is available online here.

From: The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley Carie, Rannoch, PH17 2QJ, UK monckton@mail.com. 19 July 2008

To: Arthur Bienenstock, Esq., Ph.D., President, American Physical Society, Wallenberg Hall, 450 Serra Mall, Bldg 160, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA 94305. By email to artieb@slac.stanford.edu

The editors of Physics and Society, a newsletter of the American Physical Society, invited me to submit a paper for their July 2008 edition explaining why I considered that the warming that might be expected from anthropogenic enrichment of the atmosphere with carbon dioxide might be significantly less than the IPCC imagines. I very much appreciated this courteous offer, and submitted a paper.

The commissioning editor referred it to his colleague, who subjected it to a thorough and competent scientific review. I was delighted to accede to all of the reviewer's requests for revision (see the attached reconciliation sheet). Most revisions were intended to clarify for physicists who were not climatologists the method by which the IPCC evaluates climate sensitivity - a method which the IPCC does not itself clearly or fully explain.

The paper was duly published, immediately after a paper by other authors setting out the IPCC's viewpoint. Some days later, however, without my knowledge or consent, the following appeared, in red, above the text of my paper as published on the website of Physics and Society:

"The following article has not undergone any scientific peer review. Its conclusions are in disagreement with the overwhelming opinion of the world scientific community. The Council of the American Physical Society disagrees with this article's conclusions."

This seems discourteous. I had been invited to submit the paper; I had submitted it; an eminent Professor of Physics had then scientifically reviewed it in meticulous detail; I had revised it at all points requested, and in the manner requested; the editors had accepted and published the reviewed and revised draft (some 3000 words longer than the original) and I had expended considerable labor, without having been offered or having requested any honorarium.

Please either remove the offending red-flag text at once or let me have the name and qualifications of the member of the Council or advisor to it who considered my paper before the Council ordered the offending text to be posted above my paper; a copy of this rapporteur's findings and ratio decidendi; the date of the Council meeting at which the findings were presented; a copy of the minutes of the discussion; and a copy of the text of the Council's decision, together with the names of those present at the meeting.

If the Council has not scientifically evaluated or formally considered my paper, may I ask with what credible scientific justification, and on whose authority, the offending text asserts:

primo, that the paper had not been scientifically reviewed when it had;

secundo, that its conclusions disagree with what is said (on no evidence) to be the "overwhelming opinion of the world scientific community"; and,

tertio, that "The Council of the American Physical Society disagrees with this article's conclusions"? Which of my conclusions does the Council disagree with, and on what scientific grounds (if any)?

Having regard to the circumstances, surely the Council owes me an apology?





"Consensus" on Man-Made Warming Shattering

By Dennis Avery

The "consensus" on man-made global warming may have received a mortal wound. Physics & Society, The journal of the 46,000-member American Physical Society, just published "Climate Sensitivity Revisited," by Viscount Christopher Monckton. Monckton is an avowed man-made warming skeptic, and former science advisor to the late British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. (If you want to see the science, click here )

Viscount Monckton contends that the climate alarmists have mistakenly pre-programmed their computer models with equations that overstate the earth's sensitivity to CO2 by 500 to 2,000 percent-thus creating a senseless First World panic that itself threatens the future of society. Physics & Society says: "There is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the IPCC conclusion that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are very probably likely to be primarily responsible for the global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution. Since the correctness or fallacy of that conclusion has immense implications for public policy and for the future of the biosphere, we thought it appropriate to present a debate within the pages of P&S."

The journal then offers both the Monckton paper and a response by David Hafemeister and Peter Schwartz, of the California Polytechnic Institute. P&S also issued an open invitation to "further contributions from the physics community." It had to happen. Too much evidence has mounted against CO2 as a cause of the modern warming.

Sea ice is expanding globally, not retreating (especially in the Antarctic).

The oceans have stopped rising, and actually started to fall; that might be because they "stopped warming 4-5 years ago" according to NASA, based on data from the 3,000 new Argo floats now scattered world-wide.

The number and intensity of hurricanes, cyclones, and tornadoes hasn't increased.

Rain has returned to Australia, reminding us again it is naturally the driest continent on earth.

The crowning blow: After nine years of non-warming, the planet actually began to cool in 2007 and 2008 for the first time in 30 years. The net warming from 1940 to 1998 had been a miniscule 0.2 degree C; the UK's Hadley Centre says earth's temperature has now dropped back down to about the levels of 100 years ago. There has thus been no net global warming within "living memory"!

The current cooling doesn't mean another Ice Age is looming. There is massive global evidence of a 1,500-year warming cycle, going back 1 million years. It may be driven by the slightly varying distance between the earth and the sun. The sunspot index has had a 79 percent correlation with the earth's thermometer record since 1860, during this time, the temperature correlation with CO2 is a dismissive 22 percent.

NASA's Jason satellite tells us the Pacific Ocean has entered a cool phase. Historically, these have lasted 25-30 years. After that, there may be some additional warming. However, the 1,500-year cycles typically shift abruptly; we should already have most of this one's warming. When we'll get the inevitable cooling? Probably centuries from now.

The warming debate is far from over, but an actual debate looks likely. Reputations and huge bundles of cash have been bet on man-made warming, including billions in government funding for climate research. The UN's reputation-and perhaps its future-are on the line. The American Physical Society itself has issued a statement: It stands by its belief that human-emitted CO2 is "changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the earth's climate" and notes that Physics & Society is not peer-reviewed.

Nonetheless, the debate is finally and openly joined, after 20 years of the Greens proclaiming humanity's guilt for wrecking the planet as beyond sane discussion. Now, we look forward to a full-scale exploration of the science. We have heard quite enough from the computers.

Source






Ofcom was wrong and Fred Singer was right about Sir David King

The Kingly one succeeded in convincing the British regulator that he would never say something as insane about the Artic as Fred Singer said he did. But, under the heading "Why Antarctica will soon be the only place to live", Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor of "The Independent" (Britain's "Greenest" major newspaper) wrote as follows:

Antarctica is likely to be the world's only habitable continent by the end of this century if global warming remains unchecked, the Government's chief scientist, Professor Sir David King, said last week.

He said that the Earth was entering the "first hot period" since 60 million years ago, when there was no ice on the planet and "the rest of the globe could not sustain human life". The shock warning - one of the starkest yet delivered by a top scientist or senior government figure - comes as ministers are deciding whether to weaken measures next week to cut the pollution that causes climate change, even though Tony Blair last week described the situation as "very, very critical indeed".

The Prime Minister - who was launching a new alliance of governments, businesses and pressure groups to tackle global warming - added that he could not think of "any bigger long-term question facing the world community". Yet the Government is considering relaxing limits on emissions by industry under an EU scheme on Tuesday.

Sir David says that there is "plenty of evidence" to back up his warning. Levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere - the main "green-house gas" causing climate change - were already 50 per cent higher than at any time in the last 420,000 years. The last time they were at this level - 379 parts per million and rising - was 60 million years ago during a rapid period of global warming in the Palaeocene epoch, he said. Levels soared to 1,000 parts per million, causing a massive reduction of life on earth.

"No ice was left on earth. Antarctica was the best place for mammals to live, and the rest of the world would not sustain human life," he said. And Sir David warned that if the world did not curb its burning of fossil fuels "we will reach that level by the end of the century".

Source







COMMENTS ON THE RECENT STATEMENT BY THE CLIMATE COMMITTEE OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF NEW ZEALAND

Dr Vincent Gray delivers a mega-fisking to another "orchestrated litany of lies" from New Zealand

INTRODUCTION

As an Expert Reviewer for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for eighteen years, that is to say, from the very beginning. I have submitted thousands of comments to all of the Reports. My comments on the Fourth IPCC Report, all 1,898 of them, are to be found at IPCC (2007) and my opinions of the IPCC are in Gray (2008b). I am therefore very familiar with the arguments presented by the IPCC, many of which have now been copied by the Royal Society of New Zealand, and the responses to them.

I will first comment on the Introduction

to make absolutely clear what the evidence is for climate change and anthropogenic (human-induced) causes.

The climate has always changed and always will. No evidence whatsoever for a human contribution to the climate is given in their following statement. Their Summary is as follows:

The globe is warming

This statement is a lie. The globe is currently cooling. According to the CSSP Report (Karl et al 2007), there are currently nine authorities currently involved in providing a dataset of monthly global temperature anomalies. They are

NOAA's National Climate Data Center (NCDC, GHCN-COADS)
NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS)
Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia (HadCRUT2v)
NOAA radiosonde network , (RATPAC)
Hadley Centre Radiosonde Network (HadAT2)
University of Alabama Lower Troposphere TLT MSU (UAH )
Remote Sensing Systems Lower Troposphere TLT MSU (RSS)
National Center for Environmental Protection Reanalysis (NCEP50)
European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts Reanalysis (ERA40)

Eight of these authorities agree that the globe is currently cooling. Only GISS disagrees.

because of increasing greenhouse gas emissions

No evidence is presented to justify this conclusion. There are "projections" of computer models but these are not predictions, they are merely the results of assumptions made in the model. No "projected" result has ever been successfully related to an actual change in the climate.

Measurements show that greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere are well above levels seen for many thousands of years.

This statement is a lie. 90,000 measurements published in peer-reviewed journals since 1850, some by Nobel Prize-winners, have been suppressed by the IPCC because they do not agree with this statement. (Beck 2007). Stability of carbon dioxide in ice cores thousands of years old is questionable. (Jaworowski 2007). Recent measurements of carbon dioxide are confined only to exceptional circumstances over the ocean, and do not include measurements over land. (Manning et al 1994).

Further global climate changes are predicted,

This is another lie. Computer models of the climate have never been shown to be capable of prediction, and the IPCC recognises this by using the term "projections" for the output from the models. This statement refers only to greenhouse gas concentrations anyway, not to any other "global climate change"

with impacts expected to become more costly as time progresses.

"Expected" by whom?. By "experts" whose finance depends on favourable "expectations". On what basis?. Purely on the opinions of these "experts".

Reducing future impacts of climate change will require substantial reductions of greenhouse gas emissions.

Again, mere opinion, without any evidence that this "requirement" will work.

fostering evidence-based scientific debate

There is no "debate". This is a one-sided statement which does not permit discussion or disagreement in public. At least I can debate it on the Internet.

We hope this statement makes a useful contribution to public understanding of climate change.

I hope that my comments will make a similar useful contribution.

THE STATEMENT

There has been an overall upward trend in global surface temperature since the beginning of the 20th Century.

Typically, from the nine global temperature records, you choose the least reliable, the surface temperature record, which suffers from numerous problems and biases, such as poor and unrepresentative sampling, poor quality control, and urban and land-change influences. The least reliable section was at the beginning of the 20th century, when presumed influences of greenhouse gases were negligible..

The surface record has been highly irregular and it has included several upwards and downward "trends", none of which could be called "overall". A downward "trend" was shown from 1940 to 1976, apparently uninfluenced by increased greenhouse gas emissions, It is difficult to explain why the greenhouse gases had a sudden reversal of influence for the upwards "trend" from 1976 to 1998. After 1998 the temperature has fallen, and there was a "trend" downwards from 2002 to the present day, unnoticed by this statement.

Most of the observed global warming over the past 50 years is very likely to be due to increases in greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere.

"the past 50 years" has been dishonestly chosen to eliminate the most reliable observed global temperature records, the radiosondes, (from 1958) and the MSU satellites (from 1978) for exclusive consideration. This record actually shows "global cooling" from 1958 to 1976, so it is only the bit in the middle of the record, 1976 to 1998, which showed "global warming"; considered "very likely" to have been "due to increases of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere". It is strange, that the greenhouse gases suddenly stopped operating from 1958 to 1976 and from 1998 to 2008.

As before, the opinion that this strange behaviour was "very likely" comes entirely from "experts" with a conflict of interest.

Greenhouse gases warm the lower atmosphere by allowing sunlight to reach the Earth?s surface but trapping some of the infrared radiation emitted by the Earth. Human activities have increased the concentrations of carbon dioxide, methaneand nitrous oxide since the mid-1700s. More than half of the carbon dioxide concentration increase has occurred since 1970.

This may be true, but there is no evidence that there have been any harmful effects as a result.

Human activities have also increased concentrations of aerosols (small air pollution particles) in the atmosphere. These may have partially offset the heating effect of the greenhouse gases by scattering some sunlight back to space.

This may also be true, but it merely shows that net effects can be very complicated. Since more aerosols are emitted in the Northern Hemisphere than in the Southern Hemisphere, and over land rather than sea, one might expect greater cooling in the North and over the sea. In reality, it is the South and the oceans where temperature rises have been less.

Natural factors also cause climate variations. Climate has always varied, over timescales of decades, centuries and millennia. Until recently these variations have had only natural causes -- including changes in the tilt of the Earth's axis, the shape of theEarth's orbit, the energy output from the sun, dust from volcanic emissions, and heat exchanges between the atmosphere and the ocean (such as El Nino). This natural variability still occurs in addition to the human influences. Thus while the overall decade-to-century temperature trend is upwards, individual years can still be warmer or cooler than previous years.

Here you display your prejudices. When the temperature goes up it is "very likely" due to human greenhouse emissions, It is only due to natural causes when it goes down, and great efforts must be made to eliminate these by averaging over the year, the decade, the century, in the hope that they can be covered up.

Further global changes are predicted. Many impacts are expected to be more costly as time progresses. Even if the concentrations of all greenhouse gases and aerosols were held constant at year 2000 levels, a further warming trend would be expected for at least several decades, due mainly to the slow response of the oceans.

Here we go again. Climate models cannot make "predictions", but the IPCC soothsayers have no limit to what can be "expected" without any evidence.

Additional increases in greenhouse gas concentrations, and resulting changes in climate, will occur over coming decades unless concerted international action is taken to substantially reduce emissions. Impacts will vary regionally but, aggregated and discounted to the present, they are very likely to impose net annual economic costs which will increase over time as global temperatures increase.

The end is nigh! Prepare to meet thy doom!!! Unsubstantiated nonsense......

CONCLUSION

This Climate Change Statement is veritably an orchestrated litany of lies, to borrow a phrase. As a longstanding member of the Royal Society of New Zealand I am unable to tolerate such a departure as this from the supposed objectives of fair or responsible comment on scientific matters, so I have resigned in protest.

Much more here






Religion of the Sick-Souled Socialist

Speaking of environmentalism as a secular religion, check out the Wall Street Journal's Letters section today, which piles up the replies to Bret Stephens's "Global Warming as Mass Neurosis," an article Planet Gore excerpted last week. Here are the global warming movement's cultic parallels, many of whose characteristics can be found in Walter Martin and Ravi Zacharias's famous 2003 book, "The Kingdom of the Cults":

(1) Leadership by a New Age prophet - in this case, former Vice President Al Gore.

(2) Assertion of an apocalyptic threat to all mankind.

(3) An absolutist definition of both the threat and the proposed solution(s).

(4) Promise of a salvation from this pending apocalypse.

(5) Devotion to an inspired text which embodies all the answers - in this case Mr. Gore's pseudo-scientific book "Earth in the Balance" and his new "An Inconvenient Truth" documentary.

(6) A specific list of "truths" which must be embraced and proselytized by all cult members.

(7) An absolute intolerance of any deviation from any of these truths by any cult member.

(8) A strident intolerance of any outside criticism of the cult's definition of the problem or of its proposed solutions.

(9) A "heaven-on-earth" vision of the results of the mission's success or a "hell-on-earth" result if the cultic mission should fail.

(10) An inordinate fear (and an outright rejection of the possibility) of being proven wrong in either the apocalyptic vision or the proposed salvation.

Finally, since this cultic juggernaut has persuaded (brainwashed?) a majority of Americans into at least a temporary mindset of support for its pseudo-religious scam, Mr. Stephens's label of "mass neurosis" seems frighteningly accurate.

Amusing stuff. Still, I think I prefer Tom Nelson's allegorical rundown that appeared back in April. Amusing word, that: allegorical - in this context.

Source





Jerry Brown's War on California Suburbs

In the 1960s, California Gov. Edmund Gerald "Pat" Brown laid the foundation for building modern, suburban California with massive new highway projects and one of the most significant public water projects in history. The resulting infrastructure gave us broad, low-density developments with room for millions of Californians to have a home with a backyard and two cars in the driveway. Those were the good old days. Today, Pat Brown's son Jerry is waging war on the very communities his father helped make possible. Why? Global warming.

Jerry Brown has been a fixture of the state's politics for more than three decades. He was elected governor in 1974 and four years later earned the moniker "Governor Moonbeam" for his interest in creating a space program in California. In 1998, he was elected mayor of Oakland, a working-class city across the bay from San Francisco. And in 2006, he was elected attorney general. Today he is mulling a run for governor in 2010, when he will be 72.

In the meantime, Mr. Brown is taking aim at the suburbs, concerned about the alleged environmental damage they cause. He sees suburban houses as inefficient users of energy. He sees suburban commuters clogging the roads as wasting precious fossil fuel. And, mostly, he sees wisdom in an intricately thought-out plan to compel residents to move to city centers or, at least, to high-density developments clustered near mass transit lines.

Mr. Brown is not above using coercion to create the demographic patterns he wants. In recent months, he has threatened to file suit against municipalities that shun high-density housing in favor of building new suburban singe-family homes, on the grounds that they will pollute the environment. He is also backing controversial legislation -- Senate bill 375 -- moving through the state legislature that would restrict state highway funds to communities that refuse to adopt "smart growth" development plans. "We have to get the people from the suburbs to start coming back" to the cities, Mr. Brown told planning experts in March.

The problem is, that's not what Californians want. For two generations, residents have been moving to the suburbs. They are attracted to the prospect, although not always the reality, of good schools, low crime rates and the chance to buy a home. A 2002 Public Policy Institute of California poll found that 80% of Californians prefer single-family homes over apartment living. And, even as the state's traffic jams are legendary, it is not always true that residents clog roads to commute to jobs in downtown Los Angeles or other cities.

Ali Modarres, associate director of the Edmund G. "Pat" Brown Institute of Public Affairs at California State University Los Angeles, believes the density-first approach is ill-suited for areas like L.A. County, where most residents and jobs are dispersed among subregional "nodes." Research by Mr. Modarres, co-author of the powerful book "City and Environment," demonstrates that people living in nodes -- Pasadena, Torrance, Burbank and Irvine -- often enjoy considerably shorter average commutes than do a lot of inner-city residents. Many of these people commute through tangled traffic to get to jobs on the periphery.

"I have no problem trying to find solutions on global warming," Mr. Modarres told me, "but I doubt these kinds of solutions are going to do anything. The whole notion that through physical planning you can get a lot of people to abandon their cars is pretty iffy."

Mr. Modarres also points out that forcing developers to build near transit lines, a strategy favored by "smart-growth advocates," does not mean residents will actually take the train or bus. A survey conducted last year by the Los Angeles Times of "transit oriented development" found that "only a small fraction of residents shunned their cars during rush hour."

There is also little punch behind the science used to justify the drive to resettling the cities -- and plenty of power behind the argument that suburbs are better for Mother Earth. Several prominent scholars -- including University of Maryland atmospheric scientist Konstanin Vinnikov, University of Georgia meterologist J. Marshall Shepard and Brookings Institution research analyst Andrea Sarzynski -- have found there is little evidence linking suburbanization to global warming, pointing out that density itself can produce increased auto congestion and pollution.

The antisuburbanites also ignore evidence that packing people together in cities produces "heat islands." Temperatures in downtown Los Angeles sometimes reach as much as three degrees centigrade higher than outlying areas. Recent studies in Australia have shown that multistoried housing generates higher carbon emissions than either townhomes or single-family residences because of the energy consumed by common areas, elevators and parking structures, as well as the lack of tree cover.

In the short run, while being "tough" on climate change appears popular, an assault on the preferred lifestyle of suburban voters may not. These voters aren't likely to appreciate being castigated as ecological evildoers, especially by people who generally house themselves in spacious splendor.

A report by the Los Angeles Weekly's Dave Zahniser -- entitled "Do as We Say, Not as We Do" -- found that a lot of prominent "smart growth" advocates in Los Angeles live in large single-family homes, some of them long hikes from mass transit. Mr. Brown himself, not long ago, moved from a loft in crime-ridden downtown Oakland to a bucolic setting in the Oakland Hills.

At a time when political trends favor Democrats, a hypocritical jihad against basic middle-class aspirations may not be the best strategy. Mr. Brown would be better off embracing telecommuting and other ideas to cut suburban commutes that accommodate the majority's dreams and preferences. He might have learned that from his father. Instead he's gone from wanting to launch people into space to opposing people who move to the suburbs.

Source

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