Big bucks riding on Junk Science data from CRU on Global Warming

Leaked e-mails cast doubt on global-warming strategy



By LORRIE GOLDSTEIN, TORONTO SUN


 While Al Gore was preaching to the faithful at $500 a pop in Toronto last night, the explosive news on climate change leading up to the huge UN meeting starting Dec. 7 in Copenhagen was happening elsewhere.
In what has been dubbed "Climategate," but more accurately resembles the surreptitious release of the Pentagon papers on the Vietnam war, computer hackers last week broke into the files of one of the world's leading climate monitoring agencies at the U.K.'s University of East Anglia.

They then aired over the Internet the self-described "dirty laundry" of many of the world's leading mainstream climate scientists.
The thousands of e-mails and other documents going back over a decade have prompted calls in the U.K. and U.S. for public inquiries into the controversial material and the security breach that led to its release.

The revelations have led to a tsunami of analysis and commentary in the climate blogosphere, which is far ahead of the mainstream media on the story. That isn't surprising given the documents call into question much of the current orthodoxy on global warming many media have inaccurately reported as undisputed fact for years.
One e-mail reveals leading British climatologist Phil Jones of UEA writing in November 1999 about using a "trick" to "hide the decline" in global temperatures.
Jones said in a statement he used the word "trick" in the sense of "a clever thing to do" and with no intent to deceive.
In another startling e-mail, U.S. climatologist Kevin Trenberth of the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research, commenting last month on the fact global temperatures haven't risen as they should have in recent years if the theory of man-made global warming is correct, wrote: "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't ... Our observing system is inadequate."
Trenberth has said he feels violated by the release of his correspondence and that his comments are being reported out of context and selectively.

Similar complaints by other climate scientists are unlikely to quell the controversy and not only because many previously argued the dip in global temperatures since 1998, while man-made carbon dioxide emissions have continued to rise, was insignificant.

The documents also show prominent British and American climate scientists discussing how to avoid disclosing their data to requests under their countries' freedom of information laws, including deleting information. This is concerning because sharing original data with fellow scientists is key to verifying research, since it allows others to independently replicate the results.
HIDE PAPERS

The documents reveal climate scientists plotting to keep scientific papers they disagree with from being published and how to discredit scientists and scientific journals of which they disapprove.

Others, critics charge, show climate scientists committing the cardinal scientific sin of manipulating the data to fit their theories, instead of the reverse.
Some e-mails simply show climate scientists can be jerks -- labelling opponents "idiots," pronouncing themselves happy over the death of an unpopular colleague and fantasizing about punching out a skeptic.

Supporters insist all this simply shows science is a messy business, doesn't prove any conspiracy to hide the truth and that too much other research has been done to discredit mainstream climate theory.
But that misses the point. Much of this research -- on which tens of billions of public dollars have been spent worldwide over decades -- is the foundation upon which governments are about to put a price on emitting carbon dioxide. The result will be a massive increase in the cost of living for virtually everyone in the developed world.

Copenhagen will be a negotiation about transferring billions of dollars of wealth from the developed world to the developing one, with no guarantees it will help the planet.
That's what this controversy is really all about.

Nuclear Power and Global Warming?

If no single factor can account for the climate system, why have the extremist Greens picked on CO2? The answer is that CO2 is the best culprit because it fits in with their anti-industry and anti-capitalism bias. Another interesting point of how strange all of this is by Lee Harding, Saskatchewan Director, Fraser Insitute

What do environmentalists and nuclear power have in common? More than you might think. Even though many with a deep concern for the environment are also opposed to nuclear power, worries about climate change are pushing the world inevitably in that direction. In fact, a sequel to Kyoto could soon become the final catalyst for a worldwide proliferation of nuclear power.

Nuclear advocates and climate change activists have been strange bedfellows for a long time. The British documentary, “The Great Global Warming Swindle,” claims the connection started in the 1980s. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher wanted to break the power of the coal-mining unions. And, in a two-pronged strategy, the “Iron Lady” pushed for nuclear power while funding research that suggested burning fossil fuels such as coal could warm the earth.

The Chernobyl disaster put nuclear development on hold in Britain and almost everywhere else. Only four new nuclear plants were built worldwide between 1990 and 2005. Yet, as many as 226 new nuclear plants could be built or underway by 2020, according to Saskatchewan’s own Uranium Development Partnership (UDP) report. This dramatic shift could only happen in an era when carbon, the substance that makes up every living thing, is considered a pollutant. Only then could nuclear emerge as the “clean” energy for a power-hungry world.The UDP report states with surprising candour that the only way a nuclear plant in Saskatchewan would make financial sense is with a carbon price of at least $30 per tonne and a natural gas price above $6 per mmBTU. Otherwise, gas or coal would be preferable. The report estimates that the current price on carbon of $18 per tonne could rise to $50 per tonne following a new “global deal” on carbon.

This means that both climate change activists and the nuclear industry are waiting with baited breath for a sequel to the Kyoto accord. This could happen as early as December as the nations gather in Copenhagen to hammer out a carbon reduction agreement. Carbon taxes or cap-and-trade schemes are just the beginning of potentially devastating consequences.

Just ask Lord Christopher Monckton, once a science adviser to former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Monckton says that carbon causes only one-sixth as much warming as the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change would suggest. This means it would take 2 trillion tonnes of CO2 emissions just to increase the temperature of the earth by one degree. Conversely, since human activity produces just 30 billion tonnes of C02 annually, it would take 430 years without any industry or even a man-made fire on earth just to lower the temperature a single degree.

Monckton warns that the early drafts of the Copenhagen Accord call for nations who sign on to surrender substantial national sovereignty. An unelected United Nations would have substantial sway over domestic fiscal and environmental policy all to reduce carbon. In other words, democracy will be compromised to save the world from a problem in which the science has yet to be proven and in all likelihood not be serious at all.

Rest assured, such an accord would make life more difficult. Food will become more expensive as crops are used for biofuels. Carbon levies would also make gas and electricity more expensive. Yet, should a Copenhagen Accord occur, two groups that will be crying the loudest at the higher costs for everything will be climate change alarmists and liberal socialist elites thinking they were saving the world, they always forget the law of unintended consequences or poorly thought out actions.

a new day

my first blog and first post - please be gentle!
back soon with articles of common sense, canadian liberatarism, beer, hockey
and the take on the real bulshit called global warming, climate change or whatever the eco doom prophets will call it next week when the weather doesn't match their commadore 64 computer model!