Thread: Climategate U-turn admits: no global warming since 1995

Prof. Phil Jones

Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995

By Jonathan Petre
Last updated at 5:12 PM on 14th February 2010
Comments 688

* Data for vital 'hockey stick graph' has gone missing
* There has been no global warming since 1995
* Warming periods have happened before - but NOT due to man-made changes


Data: Professor Phil Jones admitted his record keeping is 'not as good as it should be'

The academic at the centre of the ‘Climategate’ affair, whose raw data is crucial to the theory of climate change, has admitted that he has trouble ‘keeping track’ of the information.

Colleagues say that the reason Professor Phil Jones has refused Freedom of Information requests is that he may have actually lost the relevant papers.

Professor Jones told the BBC yesterday there was truth in the observations of colleagues that he lacked organisational skills, that his office was swamped with piles of paper and that his record keeping is ‘not as good as it should be’.

The data is crucial to the famous ‘hockey stick graph’ used by climate change advocates to support the theory.

Professor Jones also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now – suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon.

And he said that for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically significant’ warming.

The admissions will be seized on by sceptics as fresh evidence that there are serious flaws at the heart of the science of climate change and the orthodoxy that recent rises in temperature are largely man-made.

Professor Jones has been in the spotlight since he stepped down as director of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit after the leaking of emails that sceptics claim show scientists were manipulating data.

The raw data, collected from hundreds of weather stations around the world and analysed by his unit, has been used for years to bolster efforts by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to press governments to cut carbon dioxide emissions.

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* MAIL ON SUNDAY COMMENT: The professor's amazing climate change retreat http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/artic ... treat.html

Following the leak of the emails, Professor Jones has been accused of ‘scientific fraud’ for allegedly deliberately suppressing information and refusing to share vital data with critics.

Discussing the interview, the BBC’s environmental analyst Roger Harrabin said he had spoken to colleagues of Professor Jones who had told him that his strengths included integrity and doggedness but not record-keeping and office tidying.

Mr Harrabin, who conducted the interview for the BBC’s website, said the professor had been collating tens of thousands of pieces of data from around the world to produce a coherent record of temperature change.

That material has been used to produce the ‘hockey stick graph’ which is relatively flat for centuries before rising steeply in recent decades.

According to Mr Harrabin, colleagues of Professor Jones said ‘his office is piled high with paper, fragments from over the years, tens of thousands of pieces of paper, and they suspect what happened was he took in the raw data to a central database and then let the pieces of paper go because he never realised that 20 years later he would be held to account over them’.

Asked by Mr Harrabin about these issues, Professor Jones admitted the lack of organisation in the system had contributed to his reluctance to share data with critics, which he regretted.



But he denied he had cheated over the data or unfairly influenced the scientific process, and said he still believed recent temperature rises were predominantly man-made.

Asked about whether he lost track of data, Professor Jones said: ‘There is some truth in that. We do have a trail of where the weather stations have come from but it’s probably not as good as it should be.

‘There’s a continual updating of the dataset. Keeping track of everything is difficult. Some countries will do lots of checking on their data then issue improved data, so it can be very difficult. We have improved but we have to improve more.’

He also agreed that there had been two periods which experienced similar warming, from 1910 to 1940 and from 1975 to 1998, but said these could be explained by natural phenomena whereas more recent warming could not.

He further admitted that in the last 15 years there had been no ‘statistically significant’ warming, although he argued this was a blip rather than the long-term trend.

And he said that the debate over whether the world could have been even warmer than now during the medieval period, when there is evidence of high temperatures in northern countries, was far from settled.

Sceptics believe there is strong evidence that the world was warmer between about 800 and 1300 AD than now because of evidence of high temperatures in northern countries.

But climate change advocates have dismissed this as false or only applying to the northern part of the world.

Professor Jones departed from this consensus when he said: ‘There is much debate over whether the Medieval Warm Period was global in extent or not. The MWP is most clearly expressed in parts of North America, the North Atlantic and Europe and parts of Asia.

‘For it to be global in extent, the MWP would need to be seen clearly in more records from the tropical regions and the Southern hemisphere. There are very few palaeoclimatic records for these latter two regions.

‘Of course, if the MWP was shown to be global in extent and as warm or warmer than today, then obviously the late 20th Century warmth would not be unprecedented. On the other hand, if the MWP was global, but was less warm than today, then the current warmth would be unprecedented.’

Sceptics said this was the first time a senior scientist working with the IPCC had admitted to the possibility that the Medieval Warming Period could have been global, and therefore the world could have been hotter then than now.

Professor Jones criticised those who complained he had not shared his data with them, saying they could always collate their own from publicly available material in the US. And he said the climate had not cooled ‘until recently – and then barely at all. The trend is a warming trend’.

Mr Harrabin told Radio 4’s Today programme that, despite the controversies, there still appeared to be no fundamental flaws in the majority scientific view that climate change was largely man-made.

But Dr Benny Pieser, director of the sceptical Global Warming Policy Foundation, said Professor Jones’s ‘excuses’ for his failure to share data were hollow as he had shared it with colleagues and ‘mates’.

He said that until all the data was released, sceptics could not test it to see if it supported the conclusions claimed by climate change advocates.

He added that the professor’s concessions over medieval warming were ‘significant’ because they were his first public admission that the science was not settled.

http://tinyurl.com/ygwbn7v

Published: February 10. 2010 1:15AM

Lake Erie could freeze over entirely for first time in years

Frozen water tames lake effect, shipping

By JOHN GUERRIERO
john.guerriero@timesnews.com

The power is running out on the Lake Erie snow machine.

And more cold weather could just about pull the plug on it.

The lake is about 90 to 95 percent ice-covered, and more cold temperatures forecast for the next week or so could freeze the entire lake, National Weather Service meteorologists in Cleveland said.

"We're thinking it probably will ice over the rest of the way,'' said weather service meteorologist Karen Oudeman.

Weather service meteorologist Robert LaPlante said Tuesday that the remaining open area extends from Long Point, Ontario, southeast to the New York state shoreline. Satellite images also indicate some waters just north and east of Erie, off Pennsylvania, are also ice-free.

An ice-covered lake could mean good news for winter-weary residents, or not-so-good news for people who can't get enough of the snow.

The ice-over also could mean a later start to the Lake Erie shipping season.

Complete or nearly complete ice cover lessens the chance of lake-effect snowstorms, which occur when cold air passes over warmer bodies of water, building up clouds and dumping snow downwind. Inland snowbelt areas are typically hit the hardest.

"The moisture source really isn't there when it's frozen. There's less moisture to work with,'' Oudeman said.

But here's three reasons why you shouldn't put away your snow shovels and snowblowers just yet:

- The Lake Erie snow machine can be turned on again by small, open areas of water, or high winds that break up the ice. "It's kind of a fragile ice setting out there,'' LaPlante said. "A county or two-sized area opens up and all of a sudden you have (the potential for) a snowstorm.''

Oudeman said even a completely iced-over lake typically has some open pockets of water. "It doesn't usually look like a perfect ice rink, because the wind is pushing ice and water in different directions. It's very dynamic,'' she said.

Even so, small, open areas of water would produce less lake-effect snow, she said.

- While most of our lake-effect snow comes from westerly winds over Lake Erie, some of it comes from Lake Huron, which is mostly still open, LaPlante said.

"If we get a northwest flow of cold, arctic air, it can flow off Lake Huron and affect northwest Pennsylvania,'' he said.

- And synoptic weather systems -- large-scale patterns that affect a larger part of the nation -- could bring snow to northwestern Pennsylvania, too, the meteorologists said. A storm system that started Tuesday, expected to move from Iowa to the East Coast, was such a system, LaPlante said.

The lake hasn't completely frozen over since the winter of 1995-96, though it virtually froze over a year later, at 99.6 percent, on Jan. 28, 1997, said George Leshkevich, a scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory in Ann Arbor, Mich.

But the ice cover reached 90.2 percent or higher five times from 2000-01 through 2008-09, he said. Leshkevich's data comes from the National Ice Center, an agency that comes under the umbrella of NOAA, the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Coast Guard.

But even at 90 percent, Leshkevich said much of the lake-effect snow potential is diminished.

This season, as of 5 p.m. Tuesday, Erie recorded 62.1 inches of snowfall at Erie International Airport, far below the pace of the seasonal total of 145.8 inches for 2008-09.

But recent ice cover is only one possible reason for the lower amount.

"There is a lot of variability from year to year,'' LaPlante said.

This season, November was mild, cold temperatures in early January gave way to moderate temperatures later in the month, and the region experienced few periods with below-normal temperatures that contribute to lake-effect storms, LaPlante said. Also, he said, the region has been spared large synoptic storms like the one that buried Pittsburgh and much of the East Coast over the weekend.

A complete ice cover of Lake Erie also could affect the multi-billion-dollar Great Lakes shipping trade, said Glen Nekvasil, spokesman for the Lake Carriers' Association, a Cleveland-based trade group representing U.S.-flagged vessels on the Great Lakes.

A later start to the shipping season is possible if "formidable'' ice forms on the lake, though U.S. Coast Guard ice breakers are available, he said. The ice thickness varies throughout the lake, the weather service's Oudeman said.

The U.S. Coast Guard has eight ice breakers stationed in the Great Lakes, and brought a ninth one from the East Coast for this winter, Nekvasil said.

But Nekvasil said only one is modern and capable of operating in all conditions, and he said Canada has scaled back its number of Great Lakes ice breakers.

The shipping season on Lake Erie typically starts about March 15, with coal shipments from Ohio ports to Canada and the United States, Nekvasil said.

The "starting gun'' for the rest of the Great Lakes is typically March 25, with the opening of the Soo Locks at Sault Ste. Marie, Mich., he said.

Winter-weary residents have their eyes on a different season, the start of spring on March 20.

But with a lake that could freeze over entirely for the first time in 14 years, that seems like a long way off.

JOHN GUERRIERO can be reached at 870-1690 or by e-mail.

http://www.goerie.com/apps/pbcs.dll/art ... /302099905

Cherry-picked data, African food yields, Himalayan glaciers

IPCC Science scandals aren’t new

By Dennis Avery
Sunday, February 14, 2010

The UN’s climate change panel is reeling from a series of scandals about unsupported claims in its 2007 report.

India has documented that the Intergovernmental Panel’s claim of Himalayan glaciers disappearing by 2035 was mere speculation—and has now been proven false.

The 2007 IPCC report claimed global warming could cut rain fed African food yields in half by 2020. New lead author Chris Field says this is highly unlikely, and he can find nothing in the report’s supporting chapters to document it.

The Dutch are complaining that the IPCC said half of its land area lies below sea level, when the figure is actually 20 percent.

All this criticism is valid and long overdue. But the biggest scandal in the IPCC’s closet remains its 1995 claim to finding a “discernible human influenceâ€

There is a kind of madness to walking through a blizzard, while wearing a thick coat and picking the moment to discuss Global Warming

The Temperature at Which Global Warming Freezes

By Daniel Greenfield
Sunday, February 14, 2010

Wednesday afternoon, the sky over New York City was a falling sheet of white. Temperatures had dropped sharply and the blizzard was underway.

But nowhere in the city was the blizzard more pronounced than in Central Park, which had been designed in the 19th century to create a miniature forest in the heart of one of the biggest cities in the world. The trees were layered with coats of snow and visibility had vanished into a cloud of whiteness. And walking along a path in the Ramble, I heard a woman lecturing her children on the dangers of what else, but Global Warming.

There is a kind of madness to walking through a blizzard, while wearing a thick coat and picking the moment to discuss Global Warming. A theory according to which we should be sliding toward the tropics, awash in fleeing polar bears and Florida style temperatures, instead of frantically shoveling our driveways. Such an attitude has very little to do with science, and a great deal to do with faith. Because while the scientist sees what is and evaluates it based on the available evidence, the believer has faith in what he cannot see. And to see Global Warming while walking through a blizzard, is itself an act of faith.

Prior to this season’s unfortunate weather, Global Warming advocates had staked their bets on a mild winter in order to show people the pernicious effects of people driving to work and using extra shopping bags. Which was a decent enough angle, considering that we had been experiencing milder winters over the last few years. But the problem with betting that the weather will help prove your point, is that the weather may have other plans. And now digging out of a snowstorm and their own lies, Global Warming advocates are arguing that colder winters and snowstorms are actually another effect of global warming. Which may now need to be renamed, Global Temperatures We Don’t Like.

Had environmentalists hedged their bets by calling Global Warming something vaguely neutral like Global Temperature Imbalance, they would have had a much easier time covering their asses. Because temperature imbalances are a more subjective thing and the graphs are easier to fake. But Global Temperature Imbalance is much less entertainingly alarmist than Global Warming, and the environmentalists knew that they needed a name with some heft to frighten the public. Armageddon. Apocalypse. We think of destruction as a fiery event. And Global Warming was an environmentalist apocalypse, supposedly backed by science. No wonder it got as much traction as it did.

But it isn’t just the weather that’s turning on Global Warming, from Anglia to the IPCC, the scientific case for Global Warming is being undermined by revelations of fraud and malfeasance. And the political case for Cap and Trade is being undermined by the refusal of politicians and nations to cut their own throats so that Al Gore and George Soros can make a few billion selling “Right to Emit Carbonâ€

'Conspiracy to divide developing world' will make future talks harder, says leaked government report

China’s fears of rich nation ‘climate conspiracy’ at Copenhagen revealed

Mark Lynas: How China wrecked chances of Copenhagen deal

Comments 116
Jonathan Watts, Damian Carrington and Suzanne Goldenberg
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 11 February 2010 15.30 GMT

Rich nations furthered their "conspiracy to divide the developing world" at December's UN climate summit in Copenhagen, while Canada "connived" and the EU acted "to please the United States", according to an internal document from a Chinese government thinktank obtained by the Guardian.

The document, which was written in the immediate aftermath of Copenhagen but has only now come to light, provides the most candid insight yet into Chinese thinking on the fraught summit.

"It was unprecedented for a conference negotiating process to be so complicated, for the arguments to be so intense, for the disputes to be so wide and for progress to be so slow," notes the special report. "There was criticism and praise from all sides, but future negotiations will be more difficult."

The authors - all members of a government environmental research institute - were not part of the Chinese negotiating team, but their paper was commissioned by the environment ministry and circulated internally to the minister, vice-ministers and department chiefs in the days after the conference. The ministry currently plays only a marginal role in climate policy making but many of the paper's observations were echoed by China's chief climate negotiator, Xie Zhenhua, in a recent speech given at Beijing University.

The authors were downbeat about the prospects for international talks and China's position within them. "China, which was in the conference spotlight, played an active and constructive role, but was also under huge international pressure. It is predictable that our country will face a tougher challenge in future climate talks," it says.

Analysing international reaction to Copenhagen, the paper lists a selection of responses from the UN secretary-general, the Chinese foreign minister, the European commissioner, prominent NGOs and major media organisations, including the Guardian. It was written before the publication of the most strident criticisms of China's tactics by Mark Lynas, climate change adviser to the Maldives, and the UK climate and energy secretary, Ed Miliband.

Contrary to those views, the paper argues that the primary goal of China's negotiators was not to spoil the summit, but to resist a deal from rich nations that would put an unacceptable burden on China and other developing countries.

In their evaluation of the outcome, the officials' top point is that "the overall interests of developing countries have been defended" by resisting a rich nation "conspiracy" to abandon the Kyoto protocol, and with it the legal distinction between rich nations that must cut carbon emissions and developing nations for whom action is not compulsory.

The internal report acknowledges that unity among China's traditional allies in the developing world became harder to maintain in Copenhagen. "A conspiracy by developed nations to divide the camp of developing nations [was] a success," it said, citing the Small Island States' demand that the Basic group of nations - Brazil, South Africa, India, China - impose mandatory emission reductions.

The paper is scathing about the US-led "umbrella group", which it says adopted a position of inaction. Canada, it says, "was devoted to conniving" to convince the world that its pledge of a 3% emissions reduction between 1990 and 2020 is significant, while having no intention of meeting its Kyoto protocol target of 6%.

There are no comforting words for the European Union, which used to pride itself on playing a leadership role in climate talks. "Copenhagen was a setback for the EU", the authors say, in part because Europe "suggested the abandonment of the Kyoto protocol in order to please the US." The ministry has not responded to the Guardian's request for a comment on the leaked paper.

The authors note that the Copenhagen accord which emerged from the summit was not legally binding and lacked a global target for emissions. But it says that overall the accord was a "step forward", noting progress on a consensus to limit global warming within 2C, progress on the funding by rich nations of climate change adaptation measures in poorer nations and a "last minute" compromise by developing nations on the verification of their carbon pledges.

Lynas, who was present at many of the key negotiating sessions, said: "It's astonishing that this document suggests the Chinese really believes the absurd conspiracy theory that small island states were being played like puppets by rich countries. The truth is that the small island states and most vulnerable countries want China and its allies to cut their emissions because without these cuts they will not survive. Bluntly put, China is the world's No1 emitter, and if China does not reduce its emissions by at least half by mid-century, then countries like the Maldives will go under."

He added: "I think these claims of conspiracy are just a bullying tactic, to force more progressive developing countries back into line in case they too start demanding more serious action by China."

Speaking last month, China's chief climate negotiator, Xie - who also serves as vice-minister of the National Development and Reform commission which controls China's climate policy - also referred to the pressure from small island nations. "The rich nations were completely trying to make conflict among developing countries," he said.

He also described the "international fight on climate change" as a contest for economic development space and stressed that the way forward for China was to put more effort into building a low-carbon economy. "Countries with low-carbon industries will have a developmental advantage," said Xie. "Some people believe this is a global competition as significant as the space race in the cold war. "

The concluding section of the leaked document proposes a series of constructive initiatives. In what appears to be a bid by the environment ministry to play a greater role in carrying out climate-related policy, the report suggests amending air pollution control laws to include greenhouse gas emissions.

The official US version about what happened at Copenhagen is also harsh. Todd Stern, the state department climate change envoy, said this week that the summit "a snarling, aggravated, chaotic event." But America attributes the difficulties to a central divide between those countries - led by China - insisting rich countries bear the entire burden of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and the position held by the US that rapidly emerging countries must also take action. Stern suggested the divide had not been bridged. China, along with India, South Africa and Brazil, had been "ambiguous" in its follow-up commitments to the accord.

Tom Burke, the influential environmentalist and a founder of E3G consultants, said: "There was indeed a lot of work done to get developing nations to put pressure on China. [But] it was not a conspiracy of any kind unfortunately as Britain was acting entirely alone on this front. Neither our EU allies nor the US mounted any kind of diplomatic effort. Pretty well everyone in Copenhagen, not just the developed countries, complained about China's blocking tactics."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2 ... n-document