Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Parent says Al Gore book inappropriate for 4th grader summer reading

7/26, "Parent concerned that Al Gore's book on summer reading list for 4th graders," WVEC.com, K. Hopkins, Norfolk, Virginia

The book, An Inconvenient Truth, is on the Norfolk Public Schools’ recommended summer reading list for fourth graders.

  • "It shows the different things in the planet erupting and visual disturbances in the book itself. I have skimmed through it, there are frightening things in there.
  • His whole point to that book is to shock people," says Laura Brown.

Also are the list are more standard fare – like Matilda or The American Girl.

  • School officials say the list of books is just a suggestion as recommended by the American Library System.

Board vice chair Karen Squires Jones says she has no problem with Gore’s book, but says it's likely better material for high school students.

  • She also believes some people are opposed to Gore and his viewpoints so they won't see his book as being factual.

In England, the High Court ruled the film, which won two Academy Awards, could be sent and used in schools - if accompanied by guidance

  • Parents can fill out a form challenging instructional materials." via Tom Nelson

Sunday, July 18, 2010

ClimateGater Michael Mann throws bouquet to pals in the 'prestige press' in email to NY Times

'Prestige press' is much more flattering than 'mainstream media' or 'legacy media.' Especially when addressing NY Times buddy Andrew Revkin as Mann was:
  • "September 29, 2009, at 5:08PM, Michael Mann wrote:
Hi Andy,

"All they have to do is put it up on their blog, and
the contrarian noise machine kicks into gear, pretty soon Druge, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn
Beck and their ilk (in this case, The Telegraph were already on it this morning) are
parroting the claims. And based on what? some guy w/ no credentials, dubious connections
with the energy industry, and who hasn't submitted his claims to the scrutiny of peer
review.
mike"
  • Mann's email to Revkin was in response to the following:
"On Sep 29, 2009, at 4:30 PM, Andrew Revkin wrote:

needless to say, seems the 2008 pnas paper showing that without tree rings still solid
picture of unusual recent warmth, but McIntyre is getting wide play for his statements
about Yamal data-set selectivity.
Has he communicated directly to you on this and/or is there any indication he's seeking journal publication for his deconstruct?
--
Andrew C. Revkin
The New York Times / Environment
620 Eighth Ave., NY, NY 10018
Tel: 212-556-7326 Mob: 914-441-5556
Fax: 509-357-0965
[2]http://www.nytimes.com/revkin"
"I'm sure you're aware that you will dozens of bogus, manufactured distortions of the
science in the weeks leading up to the
  • vote on cap & trade in the U.S. senate. This is no"...
NOTE to climate scientists: None of this is about you, but you probably already know that. You're just something thrown in to distract American citizens from the real issue. Which is carbon trading and the 'climate' industry, which existed long before anyone ever heard of you. ed.

Saturday, July 10, 2010

Amazongate media debacle with billions at stake goes down to defeat--again. IPAM sham.

for those who really care about the planet as opposed to media shills and insanely rich grand standers like the WWF and NY Mayor Bloomberg stomping their feet, throwing fits to get their one last bottle: THE US SENATE's passage of an "energy" bill and the enslavement of a distracted American citizenry in perpetuity. By people utterly without conscience:
"The (UN) IPCC's attempts to hide the truth about its exaggerated claims on the deforestation of the Amazon have ended in defeat...Fire in the Amazon, it turns out, was not a 'report' or a scientific paper but,
  • as the WWF now acknowledges, a text published by IPAM(?) on its website in 1999." (Taken down in 2003)

"Last week, after six months of evasions, obfuscation, denials and retractions, a story which has preoccupied this column on and off since January came to a startling conclusion. It turns out that one of the most

  • widely publicised statements in the 2007 report of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change –

was not based on peer-reviewed science, as repeatedly claimed, but originated

  • solely from anonymous propaganda
  • published on the website of a small Brazilian environmental advocacy group.

The ramifications of this discovery stretch in many directions. First, it seems to show that the IPCC – whose reports

  • has been in serious breach of its own rules.

Second, it raises hefty question marks over the credibility of

  • the world’s richest and most powerful environmental pressure group, the WWF,
  • credited by the IPCC as the source of its unsupported claim.

And third, it focuses attention once more on a bizarre scheme, backed by the UN and promoted by the World Bank, whereby the WWF has been hoping to share in profits estimated at $60 billion,

  • paid for by firms all over the developed world.

“Amazongate”, it may be recalled, was one of the rash of scandals which rocked the authority of the IPCC last winter, when it was revealed that many of the more alarmist statements in its 2007 report

  • originated not from peer-reviewed science but from papers written by environmental pressure groups. One which aroused particular controversy was a warning that

climate change was putting at risk up to 40 per cent of the Amazon rainforest.

  • Chapter 13 of the IPCC’s Working Group II report on “climate impacts” specifically claimed that “up to 40 per cent of the Amazonian forests could react drastically to even a slight reduction in precipitation”.

It went on to say that this would cause such chaos in local climate systems that the forest could rapidly revert to savannah.

  • the lead author of which was an environmental activist and freelance journalist.

This in turn appeared to cite a paper published in 1999 by a team led by Dr Daniel Nepstad, “senior scientist” with another advocacy group closely linked to the WWF, the Woods Hole Research Center.

  • However, Nepstad’s paper was primarily concerned not with climate change but with the impact of logging and fires.

When this created a storm last January, the WWF quickly issued a “clarification”, stating that its own paper “does not say that 40 per cent of the Amazon forest is at risk from climate change”. But it went on to say that the real source of the claim

  • quoted by the IPCC was a document, Fire in the Amazon, published
  • by the “respected Instituto de Pesquiza Ambiental da Amazonia (IPAM)”.

Headed by Nepstad, IPAM is a Brazilian advocacy group, also closely linked with the Woods Hole Research Center.

  • The document cited by the WWF, which it later described, after a full internal inquiry, as a “report”, proved remarkably difficult to track down.

Since then, both the WWF and Dr Nepstad have cited other papers in support of their claim – but

Only now, after I was able to confront them with evidence from an internet archive, has the WWF finally admitted the precise origin of the IPCC’s much-quoted claim. Fire in the Amazon, it turns out,

  • was not a “report” or a scientific paper but, as the WWF now acknowledges, a “text published by IPAM… on its website in 1999”.

It was merely a brief, anonymous and unreferenced note on the exposure of the forest to fire risks, posted in February 1999 and taken down four years later.

  • Here, at last, is the sole source for the statement later published by the IPCC.

The original read:

30-40 per cent of the forests of the Brazilian Amazon are sensitive to small reductions in the amount of rainfall.” This was hyped up in the final drafting of the IPCC report, to claim that “up to 40 per cent of the Amazonian forests could react drastically to even a slight reduction in precipitation”. “Brazilian Amazon” – only around half the total rainforest area – was changed to include the entire forest.

  • And the original IPAM note had made no mention at all of climate change.

To begin with, this would seem to justify a formal complaint to the IPCC that it was acting in breach of its own rules. Annex 2 of its rules of procedure lays down that

  • non-peer-reviewed material should only be cited when it has been subjected to rigorous critical appraisal
  • and that “each chapter team should review the quality and validity of each source before including results from the source into an IPCC report”.

Last week I put it to the IPCC that it should at least acknowledge this blatant breach of its rules and withdraw the passage, as it did last winter when it was revealed that it had no scientific basis for claiming that Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035.

  • To date I have had no reply.

Neither WWF nor Woods Hole come well out of this story.

  • In seeking to justify their part in the IPCC’s statement, they have cited other studies which they claim support it – but neither, until now, has been honest enough to admit that it was based on an unsubstantiated website claim.

This curious episode may also point to another reason why WWF and Woods Hole have been so active in recent years to promote concern over the danger of global warming for the Amazon rainforest.

  • As I revealed here on March 20, they have been closely allied in support of a scheme known as REDD (Reduction in Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation of Tropical Forests).

Its aim is to turn the CO2 in forest trees into “carbon credits”, saleable on the world market to allow firms to continue emitting CO2. Backed by $80 million from the World Bank, WWF, Woods Hole and IPAM are partners in a consortium, supported by the Brazilian government, to protect and manage a vast area of forest in the Tumucumaque region, in return for which they would have the right to sell its carbon credits.

  • In 2007 Dr Nepstad published a formula which would allow the carbon contained in the entire forest

Although the REDD scheme was approved in principle at December’s UN Copenhagen conference, two serious snags remain.

  • First, it has yet to be approved in detail (although they still hope to achieve this in Cancun later this year).
  • Second, the US Senate still hasn’t passed its cap and trade bill, which would open up a lucrative new market for anyone involved in carbon trading, such as
  • those with a stake in REDD.

Finally, we may recall, another newspaper recently published a prominent “correction” to its earlier report on Amazongate –

  • accepting that “the IPCC’s Amazon statement is supported by peer-reviewed scientific evidence” and that this was “based on research by the respected IPAM which did relate to the impact of climate change”. Since neither of these statements seems to be true,
  • perhaps we can look forward to a retraction of the retraction?

Equally unhappy may be all those global warming enthusiasts who took this climbdown as licence to crow shamelessly over those of us who, last January, helped to expose Amazongate as a major IPCC system failure.

  • The IPCC, they chorused, had been totally vindicated,

the climate change sceptics had been utterly routed. Today, I fear, it is they who have been put to rout and

via Climate Depot

  • P.S. This blog makes no money, never has and never will. I have never been to an 'international seminar' funded by an oil company. Climate scientists are bit players in this. The big player in 'climate' is the media, especially the US media. ed.


Monday, July 5, 2010

TIME to stop patronizing Time Magazine partners Shell Oil and Siemens

Time says it's making climate/energy related presentations in association with
Shell Oil and Siemens. It's time to stop patronizing Shell Oil, Siemens and all global warming related sponsors of Time.



Both from Time.com website, 7/5/10

Sunday, July 4, 2010

It's Time to stop patronizing Time Magazine's advertisers especially those advocating man-made global warming

My personal view is Time Magazine should not purchased nor its advertisers patronized. Using Time's logic, if Dick Cheney had been accused of a crime while at Halliburton, and Halliburton did an in depth investigation and found him innocent, Time would shout from its rooftops, "Score one for Dick Cheney! Halliburton has cleared him of all charges!"
  • It is obvious Time Magazine would never do that, nor should it or anyone for that matter. But it just screamed a big lie about so-called climate science, Penn State, and Michael Mann. The entire basis for its cheer leading of global warming rests on the assumption of climate crimes by evil Americans who are causing sinking islands in the Indian Ocean and must pay billions in "reparations" to UN racketeers and third world dictators. The last paragraph of NRDC's mission statement says its goal is social justice. The global warming scam is not about science.
7/2: "Time magazine, for example, writes, “Score a win for climate science: Penn State University announced today that climate scientist Michael Mann had been cleared of all scientific misconduct charges…”"..."Global warming funding is a gravy train for universities, with the government spending literally billions of dollars each year on global warming research. The universities that receive the most government funding are those that most prominently assert a global warming crisis.

Accordingly, objective observers have long predicted the university’s internal review of Mann’s conduct would amount to nothing more than snake oil salesmen circling the wagons to protect their vested interests. Penn State lived up (or down) to all expectations yesterday by clearing Mann of all alleged misconduct, despite the explicit and irrefutable evidence contained in the Climategate emails (some of which they acknowledged).

  • While Penn State’s conduct was sadly predictable, the mainstream media has been equally predictable – and equally devoid of all objectivity and credibility – in unquestioningly championing Penn State’s internal review as “proof” that Mann did nothing wrong, despite the irrefutably damning evidence of the Climategate emails.

Time magazine, for example, writes, “Score a win for climate science: Penn State University announced today that climate scientist Michael Mann had been cleared of all scientific misconduct charges…”

And “Score a win for shamefully biased leftist cheerleaders disguised as objective journalists…”"...