Sunday, November 7, 2010

'Media Matters' type operation to blend celebrity climate 'scientists' with politics and demand for American taxpayer dollars. (Updated)

UPDATE, 11/8: AGU says original Tribune report was not accurate. It will provide what it deems scientific information to media, policy makers and others, but not necessarily as a broad outreach against climate/global warming skeptics. via Climate Depot

"Scientists" aim to "push back" newly elected US congressmen since their 'gravy train' to US taxpayer dollars is about to leave town. The matter has nothing to do with 'climate', but is about transferring money from the American middle class to billionaires and organized crime. When the BTU Tax was pitched in 1992-93, at least they admitted it was mainly about money. (ICECAP has seen this report and stands ready to chat with the politico/climate media celebrities).
"Faced with rising political attacks, hundreds of climate scientists are joining a broad campaign to push back against congressional conservatives who have threatened prominent researchers with investigations and vowed to kill regulations to rein in man-made greenhouse gas emissions."...

(What is a 'PROMINENT RESEARCHER'? A person with a computer? Financed perhaps by another set of politicians who gave American tax money to an institution seeking to justify the largest transfer of wealth in history. ed.)

Many now say they are willing to go toe-to-toe with their critics, some of whom gained new power after the Republicans won control of the House in Tuesday's election.

On Monday, the American Geophysical Union, the country's largest association of climate scientists, plans to announce that 700 climate scientists have agreed to speak out as experts on questions about global warming and the role of man-made air pollution.

John Abraham of St. Thomas University in Minnesota, who last May wrote a widely disseminated response to climate-change skeptics, is also pulling together

  • a "Climate Rapid Response Team," which includes scientists

prepared to go before what they consider potentially hostile audiences on conservative talk-radio and television shows.

  • "This group feels strongly that science and politics can't be divorced and that we need to take bold measures to not only communicate science but also to aggressively

engage the denialists and politicians who attack climate science and its scientists," said Scott Mandia, professor of physical sciences at Suffolk County Community College in New York.

"We are taking the fight to them because we are …

  • tired of taking the hits.

The notion that truth will prevail is not working. The truth has been out there for the past two decades, and nothing has changed.""...

  • (As politely as possible I must say this man can be taken apart in 5 seconds by ordinary Americans with statements like this. Notes at end of this post. ed).

(continuing, Chicago Tribune): "During the recent campaigns, skepticism about climate change became a rallying cry for many Republican candidates. Of the more than 100 new GOP members of Congress, 50% are climate-change skeptics,

  • according to an analysis of campaign statements by the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank.

Prominent Republican congressmen such as Darrell Issa of Vista, Joe L. Barton of Texas and F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. of Wisconsin have pledged to investigate the Environmental Protection Agency's regulation of greenhouse gas emissions. They say they also intend to probe the so-called Climategate scandal, in which thousands of e-mails of leading climate scientists were hacked and released to the public late last year.

Climate-change skeptics argued that the sniping in some e-mails showed that scientists suppressed research by skeptics and manipulated data. Five independent panels subsequently cleared the researchers involved and validated the science."...

  • (This is not accurate although has been widely reported. There were some so-called inquiries, but nothing was really examined or validated, and personnel involved in the reviews had stakes in allowing the status quo to remain. Further, the reporter choosing to characterize the emails merely as 'sniping' indicates he or she has not read them nor talked to anyone else who has. See notes at end of this post. ed.)

(continuing, Chicago Tribune): "People who ask for and accept taxpayer dollars shouldn't get bent out of shape when asked to account for the money," said James M. Taylor, a senior fellow and a specialist in global warming at the conservative Heartland Institute in Chicago. "The budget is spiraling out of control while government is handing out billions of dollars in grants to climate scientists, many of whom are unabashed activists."

  • Ongoing public interest in Climategate has prompted the scientists to act.

The American Geological Union plan has attracted a large number of scientists in a short time because they were eager to address what they see as climate misinformation, said

  • Jeffrey Taylor, research fellow at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado
  • and manager of the project.

Still, the scope of the group's work is limited, reflecting the ongoing reluctance among many scientists to venture into politics.

The rapid-response team, however, is willing to delve into politics. In the week that Abraham and others have been marshaling the team, 39 scientists agreed to participate, including

  • Kevin Trenberth,*** head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research; and

"People who've already dug their heels in, we're not going to change their opinions," Mandia said. "We're trying to reach people who may not have an opinion or opinion based on limited information."

"'Missing' heat may affect future climate change," 4/12/10, from Newswire, Source: National Center for Atmospheric Research.
  • From ClimateGate emails, items 1, 3, 5. Other items from press reports:
The lead UN Nobel winning scientist said publicly the planet has not warmed since 1995.

1. Even says climate has cooled 1998-2005, ClimateGate emails, July 5, 2005, from Nobel winner Phil Jones, head of CRU (whose data was used in UN Climate Report):

"The scientific community would come down on me in no uncertain terms if I said the world had cooled from 1998.
  • OK it has
but it is only 7 years of data and it isn't statistically significant."...####

2. 2/14/10, "ClimateGate U-Turn as scientist at centre of row admits: there has been no global warming since 1995," UK Daily Mail, J. Petre
  • although he argued this was a blip rather than the long-term trend."...
3. ClimateGate email, July 6, 2005, Phil Jones reveals chump US taxpayers (unknowingly) have been supporting him for 25 years.
  • "...I hope I don't get a call from congress ! I'm hoping that no-one there realizes I have a US DoE grant and have had this (with Tom W.) for the last
  • 25 years....
  • Cheers, Phil"
####
4. 11/19/09, "Climatologists baffled by global warming time-out," over 10 years, Der Spiegel, by G. Traufetter
  • "Global warming appears to have stalled. Climatologists are puzzled as to why average global temperatures have stopped rising over the last 10 years.

  • Some attribute the trend to a lack of sunspots, while others explain it through ocean currents."...
5. After admitting no global warming has happened since at least 1995, Crusading ClimateGate figure
  • receives congratulations from fellow 'scientist' for changing how the world sees "human effects on climate".
From ClimateGate East Anglia emails, 10/9/2009, "From: Ben Santer
To: P.Jones
Subject: Re: CEI formal petition to derail EPA GHG endangerment finding with charge that
destruction of CRU raw data undermines integrity of global temperature record. Dear Phil,
  • ...I'm really sorry that you have to go through all this stuff, Phil. Next time I see Pat Michaels at a scientific meeting, I'll be tempted
  • to beat the crap out of him. Very tempted. I'll help you to deal with Michaels and the CEI in any way that I can.
  • The only reason these guys are going after you is because your work is of crucial importance -
it changed the way the world thinks about human effects on climate."...

6. 11/29/09, "Climate change data dumped," TimesOnline UK, by Jonathan Leake

"Scientists at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.
forced to reveal the loss following requests for the data under Freedom of Information legislation.

The data were gathered from weather stations around the world and then adjusted to take account of variables in the way they were collected. The revised figures were kept, but the originals — stored on paper and magnetic tape —
The admission follows the leaking of a thousand private emails sent and received by Professor Phil Jones, the CRU’s director. In them he discusses thwarting climate sceptics seeking access to such data. In a statement on its website, the CRU said:
  • “We do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (quality controlled and homogenised) data.”
The CRU is the world’s leading centre for reconstructing past climate and temperatures.
  • Climate change sceptics have long been keen to examine exactly how its data were compiled.
That is now impossible.

Roger Pielke, professor of environmental studies at Colorado University, discovered data had been lost when he asked for original records.
  • So much for settling questions and resolving debates with science,” he said.
Jones was not in charge of the CRU when the data were thrown away in the 1980s, a time when climate change was seen as a less pressing issue.
  • The lost material was used to build the databases that have been his life’s work, showing how the world has warmed by 0.8C over the past 157 years. He and his colleagues say this temperature rise is “unequivocally” linked to greenhouse gas emissions generated by humans.
Their findings are one of the main pieces of evidence used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which says global warming is a threat to humanity."
  • ####
"Cost of the corruption of climate science by the Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change (IPCC) is likely a trillion dollars already and there is no measure of the
  • lives lost because of unnecessary reactions like biofuels affecting food supplies."...
via Lucianne.com

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