Al Gore, the former US Vice-President, has become embroiled in a climate change spin row after claiming that the Arctic could be completely ice-free within five years.
By Murray Wardrop
Telegraph | Speaking at the Copenhagen climate change summit, Mr Gore said new computer modelling suggests there is a 75 per cent chance of the entire polar ice cap melting during the summertime by 2014.
However, he faced embarrassment last night after Dr Wieslav Maslowski, the climatologist whose work the prediction was based on, refuted his claims.
Dr Maslowski, of the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, told The Times: “It’s unclear to me how this figure was arrived at.
“I would never try to estimate likelihood at anything as exact as this.”
The blunder follows the controversy over hacked emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit, which sceptics claim suggest scientists manipulated data to strengthen their argument that global warming is man-made.
Mr Gore, who narrated the Oscar-winning climate change documentary An Inconvenient Truth, told the conference that record melting of Polar and Himalayan ice could deprive more than a billion people of access to clean water.
Alluding to Dr Maslowski’s work, he said: “These figures are fresh, I just got them yesterday.
"Some of the models suggest to Dr Maslowski that there is a 75 per cent chance that the entire polar ice cap during some of summer months could be completely ice free within five to seven years.
"There are more than a billion people on the planet who get more than half of their drinking water – many of them all of their drinking water – from the seasonal melting of snow melt and glacier ice."
His projection strongly contradicted forecasts made eight months ago by the US government agency that the ice cap may nearly vanish in the summer by 2030.
Dr Maslowki said that his latest results give a six-year projection for the melting of 80 per cent of the ice, but he said he expects some ice to remain beyond 2020.
He added: “I was very explicit that we were talking about near-ice-free conditions and not completely ice-free conditions in the northern ocean.”
Following Dr Maslowski’s comments, Mr Gore’s office later said the 75 per cent figure was one used by Dr Maslowksi as a “ballpark figure” several years ago in a conversation with Mr Gore.
Mr Gore’s speech also provoked criticism from leading members of the climate science community, who described the projection as “aggressive”.
Professor Jim Overland, a leading oceanographer at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told The Times: “This is an exaggeration that opens the science up to criticism from sceptics.
“You really don’t need to exaggerate the changes in the Arctic.”
Mark Serreze, of the US National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, said: “It's possible but not likely. We're sticking with 2030."
Average global temperatures have increased by 1.3F (0.74C) in the past century, but the mercury has risen at least twice as quickly in the Arctic.
Scientists say the make up of the frozen north polar sea has shifted significantly in recent years as much of the thick year-round ice has given way to thin seasonal ice.
In the summer of 2007, the Arctic ice cap dwindled to a record low minimum extent of 1.7 million square miles in September. The melting in 2008 and 2009 was not as extensive, but still ranked as the second and third greatest decreases on record.
Shell Oil and British Petroleum express their vehement support for a global carbon tax in “Copenhagen Communiqué”
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet | The big irony behind top globalists descending on Copenhagen in luxury private jets and stretch limos is not just the fact that their own behavior completely contradicts their self-righteous hyperbole about CO2 emissions, but that their propaganda is vehemently supported by the very same big oil interests they accuse climate skeptics of pandering to.
Probably one of the most flagrant examples of climate cronyism to emerge from the climategate scandal were emails in which CRU scientists, the body that provides much of the foundational global warming data for the UN IPCC, discuss how they conducted meetings with Shell Oil in order to enlist them as a “strategic partner” while getting them to bankroll pro-man made global warming research.
“Now who is the shill for Big Oil again?” asks Anthony Watts. “Next time somebody brings up that ridiculous argument about skeptics, show them this.”
A “Copenhagen Communiqué” put out by leaders of over 500 global corporations in advance of this week’s summit calls for drastic measures on behalf of developed countries to “de-carbonise their economies” – a move that would completely devastate living standards and lead to gargantuan levels of unemployment.
The communiqué also demands that a global carbon tax be implemented via a carbon trading system. Bear in mind that the very people calling for such a system are the same people who will benefit from it to the tune of billions, as we shall explore later.
The statement calls for, “Measures to deliver a robust global greenhouse gas emissions market in order to provide the most effective, efficient and equitable emission reductions. It would be comprised of a growing series of national or regional “cap-and-trade” markets linked together, in which the “caps” are brought down in line with the
targets that have been adopted for emission reduction.”
The document also states that CO2 emissions need to be reduced by a staggering 50-85% by 2050, a process that would return humanity to a near stone age level of development.
And who are the radicals calling for such severe measures in the name of fighting the evil life giving gas that humans exhale and plants breathe? Greenpeace? Al Gore?
Namely – James Smith, chairman of UK Shell Oil, Tony Hayward, Group Chief Executive, British Petroleum, along with hundreds of other global corporate giants, many of whom are directly tied in with big oil, and central banks who, far from bankrolling climate change skeptics, are directly invested in the scam of human-induced global warming.
A common charge leveled against global warming skeptics is that they are on the payroll of transnational oil companies, when in fact the opposite is true, oil companies are amongst the biggest promoters of climate change propaganda, emphasized recently by Exxon Mobil’s call for a global carbon tax.
According to Exxon Mobil chief executive Rex Tillerson, the cap and trade nightmare being primed for passage in the Senate doesn’t go far enough – Tillerson wants a direct tax on carbon dioxide emissions, essentially a tax on breathing since we all exhale this life-giving gas.
In a speech earlier this year, Tillerson brazenly called out the cap and trade agenda for what it was, an effort to impose a carbon tax camouflaged only by a slick sales pitch and deceptive rhetoric.
“It is easier and more politically expedient to support a cap-and-trade approach, because the public will never figure out where it is hitting them,” said Tillerson. “They will just know they hurt somewhere in their pocketbook,” he added, pointing out that he disagreed with this convoluted method of introducing a carbon tax, arguing instead that it would be more successful to openly propose a straight carbon tax.
Tillerson firmly expressed Exxon’s support for climate change alarmists in stating, “I firmly believe it is not too late for Congress to consider a carbon tax as the better policy approach for addressing the risks of climate change.”
Exxon’s push for a carbon tax was subsequently restated by its vice president for public affairs Ken Cohen, who told a conference call that he wants a climate policy that creates “certainty and predictability, which is why we advocate a carbon tax.”
Exxon Mobil and their ilk are not concerned about a carbon tax eating into their profits because they know they won’t have to pay it – the tab will be picked up by the ignorant taxpayer at the fuel pump at an inflated cost which if anything will hand the transnational oil cartels an even bigger cut.
Ideologically, Al Gore and Exxon Mobil are on exactly the same page – the only difference between the oil companies and global warming alarmists is the squabble over who will get to sink their teeth into the taxpayer and reap the dividends of the climate change scam.
Whereas parasites like Al Gore and Maurice Strong, the people who own the very carbon trading systems they claim will save the earth from CO2 emissions, want to enrich themselves to the tune of billions under a cap and trade scheme where they take a percentage of each transaction, the oil companies want to bypass this completely by simply imposing a direct CO2 tax. The consequence for the taxpayer under either scenario will be exactly the same, and the profits under both schemes would go towards filling the coffers of the global government that will enforce the whole scam.
Emphasizing again that oil companies are firmly behind the idea of man-made climate change and the introduction of a CO2 tax, in 2007 the Trilateral Commission, one of the three pillars of the new world order in alliance with Bilderberg and the CFR, met in near secrecy to formulate policy on how best they could exploit global warming fearmongering to ratchet up taxes and control over how westerners live their lives.
At the confab, European Chairman of the Trilateral Commission, Bilderberger and chairman of British Petroleum Peter Sutherland, gave a speech to his elitist cohorts in which he issued a “Universal battle cry arose for the world to address “global warming” with a single voice.”
Echoing this sentiment was General Lord Guthrie, director of N.M. Rothschild & Sons, member of the House of Lords and former chief of the Defense Staff in London, who urged the Trilateral power-brokers to “Address the global climate crisis with a single voice, and impose rules that apply worldwide.” Rules that no doubt will benefit the Rothschild family empire due to their personal ownership of a huge chunk of the carbon trading market.
Allegations that skeptics of the man-made explanation behind global warming are somehow doing the bidding of the elite are laughable in the face of the fact that Rothschild operatives and the very chairman of British Petroleum are the ones orchestrating an elitist plan to exploit global warming fears in order to achieve political objectives.
During the 2007 meeting, elitists along with oil industry kingpins called for imposing a $1 dollar per gallon tax at the fuel pump under the justification of fighting pollution and climate change.
Globalists love global warming. Oil industry kingpins, Bilderbergers and Rothschild minions have all put their weight behind it. This is a fraud conceived, nurtured and promulgated by elite, and to castigate individuals for merely questioning the motives behind climate change fearmongering by accusing them of being mouthpieces for the establishment is a complete reversal of the truth.
Claims by climate change alarmists that “deniers” are all funded by oil companies is yet another crudely contrived hoax. In reality, oil companies are the most vocal proponents of man-made climate change and the most aggressive in pushing to tax CO2 emissions.
The clips below, taken from Alex Jones’ new documentary Fall Of The Republic, expose how Al Gore serves as the front man for the global carbon tax cap and trade scheme, which is designed to bankrupt the United States and drastically lower the living standards of the American people, while introducing nightmare levels of regulation and bureaucracy into their everyday lives. Get the full DVD here.
WeAreChange Chicago | On Tuesday, November 24th 2009, We Are Change Chicago attended a book signing with former vice president Al Gore, at the Borders Bookstore on 150 N. State Street.
The previous Thursday, news had begun to circulate that hacked documents and communications from the University of East Anglia’s Hadley Climate Research Unit (CRU) had been published to the internet. The information revealed how top scientists conspired to falsify data in the face of declining global temperatures in order to prop up the premise that man-made factors are driving climate change. Please reviewClimateGate for Dummies.
To ensure the public that the media and Al Gore are aware of the facts that prove global warming to be a hoax, patriots from WAC Chicago marched to the book signing. Scattered throughout a crowd of a few hundred were members of WAC Chicago ready to ask Al Gore what he thought about ‘ClimateGate.’
First up was Saad Ali. As he approached Gore, he peacefully and respectably asked, “Sir, can you comment on the emails and documents that were hacked [ClimateGate] that reveal… that the research was a fraud and that it was all manipulated?” Gore, with an evil smirk, claimed that “he never read them.” By the look on his face and his stutter, it became quite clear that Gore was extremely uncomfortable with the question, so he quickly glared towards his security. The agents grabbed and assaulted Saad, escorting him away from Gore for merely asking a simple question. The press took notice and started filming and snapping pictures of what was going on. One of which appeared the next day in the Chicago Sun Times.
Following Saad’s confrontation, Sati Word, a member of WAC Chicago, questioned Gore on why the IPCC hasn’t released any reports on sunspot activity. However, before he could get an answer from Gore, security grabbed Sati and escorted him out of the building.
A little while later, Anthony, an activist from We Are Change Ohio, approached Gore and handed him the petition of the 31,486 scientists who say that Global Warming is a complete hoax. Anthony asked, “What do you think about the science behind this sir?” Mr. Gore rolled his eyes, and security escorted him out of the building.
Steve (swizzlesteve), was the last activist to question Gore. Within seconds of asking, “Any comments on ClimateGate? The emails that prove it’s a scam, a farce, that global warming is a joke, any comment?” Mr. Gore is heard to utter a few “uhhhhhhhs” and security quickly steps in to remove him as well.
The press was waiting outside Borders. They wanted to find out who this group was, that dared question what the elite had forced us to consume as truth. WBBM news radio, 780, ran a sound bite of WAC Chicago, WGN news ran footage, Medill Reports wrote an article, and blog posts were popping up all over the internet about the Al Gore confrontation in Chicago. Many also asked about the footage of WAC Chicago chasing after Gore’s SUV after the event. You will find all of it in this video. Al Gore was confronted multiple times in line, outside the event as he rushed to his waiting Mercedes SUV, (were you expecting something electric?), and once again in the streets of Chicago. We Are Change had people outside with signs, banners, fliers, and DVDs. Activists were inside asking questions and demanding answers; the world is waking up, it’s a great time to be alive.
The Wall Street Journal | The scientific community is buzzing over thousands of emails and documents — posted on the Internet last week after being hacked from a prominent climate-change research center — that some say raise ethical questions about a group of scientists who contend humans are responsible for global warming.
The correspondence between dozens of climate-change researchers, including many in the U.S., illustrates bitter feelings among those who believe human activities cause global warming toward rivals who argue that the link between humans and climate change remains uncertain.
Some emails also refer to efforts by scientists who believe man is causing global warming to exclude contrary views from important scientific publications.
“This is horrible,” said Pat Michaels, a climate scientist at the Cato Institute in Washington who is mentioned negatively in the emails. “This is what everyone feared. Over the years, it has become increasingly difficult for anyone who does not view global warming as an end-of-the-world issue to publish papers. This isn’t questionable practice, this is unethical.”
For those of you who don’t know of the blog Bishop Hill, let me say that he is a succinct and careful writer who has earned praise from many (including myself and Steve McIntyre) in taking a difficult niche subject such as the Hockey Stick and paleoclimatology and condensed into into a readable form for the layman. He’s also writing a book about it called: The Hockey Stick Illusion
In his latest post, Climate Cuttings 33, he gives a list of interesting issues he’s identified. I’ve reproduced it below for WUWT readers to consider. Be sure to visit his blog and have a look and drop an encouraging word. – Anthony
General reaction seems to be that the CRUgate emails are genuine, but with the caveat that there could be some less reliable stuff slipped in.
In the circumstances, here are some summaries of the CRUgate files. I’ll update these as and when I can. The refs are the email number.
Phil Jones writes to University of Hull to try to stop sceptic Sonia Boehmer Christiansen using her Hull affiliation. Graham F Haughton of Hull University says its easier to push greenery there now SB-C has retired.(1256765544)
Michael Mann discusses how to destroy a journal that has published sceptic papers.(1047388489)
Tim Osborn discusses how data are truncated to stop an apparent cooling trend showing up in the results (0939154709). Analysis of impact here. Wow!
Phil Jones describes the death of sceptic, John Daly, as “cheering news”.(1075403821)
Phil Jones encourages colleagues to delete information subject to FoI request.(1212063122)
Phil Jones says he has use Mann’s “Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series”…to hide the decline”. Real Climate says “hiding” was an unfortunate turn of phrase.(0942777075)
Letter to The Times from climate scientists was drafted with the help of Greenpeace.(0872202064)
Mann thinks he will contact BBC’s Richard Black to find out why another BBC journalist was allowed to publish a vaguely sceptical article.(1255352257)
Kevin Trenberth says they can’t account for the lack of recent warming and that it is a travesty that they can’t.(1255352257)
Tom Wigley says that Lindzen and Choi’s paper is crap.(1257532857)
Tom Wigley says that von Storch is partly to blame for sceptic papers getting published at Climate Research. Says he encourages the publication of crap science. Says they should tell publisher that the journal is being used for misinformation. Says that whether this is true or not doesn’t matter. Says they need to get editorial board to resign. Says they need to get rid of von Storch too. (1051190249)
Ben Santer says (presumably jokingly!) he’s “tempted, very tempted, to beat the crap” out of sceptic Pat Michaels. (1255100876)
Mann tells Jones that it would be nice to ‘”contain” the putative Medieval Warm Period’. (1054736277)
Tom Wigley tells Jones that the land warming since 1980 has been twice the ocean warming and that this might be used by sceptics as evidence for urban heat islands.(1257546975)
Tom Wigley say that Keith Briffa has got himself into a mess over the Yamal chronology (although also says it’s insignificant. Wonders how Briffa explains McIntyre’s sensitivity test on Yamal and how he explains the use of a less-well replicated chronology over a better one. Wonders if he can. Says data withholding issue is hot potato, since many “good” scientists condemn it.(1254756944)
Briffa is funding Russian dendro Shiyatov, who asks him to send money to personal bank account so as to avoid tax, thereby retaining money for research.(0826209667)
Kevin Trenberth says climatologists are nowhere near knowing where the energy goes or what the effect of clouds is. Says nowhere balancing the energy budget. Geoengineering is not possible.(1255523796)
Mann discusses tactics for screening and delaying postings at Real Climate.(1139521913)
Tom Wigley discusses how to deal with the advent of FoI law in UK. Jones says use IPR argument to hold onto code. Says data is covered by agreements with outsiders and that CRU will be “hiding behind them”.(1106338806)
Overpeck has no recollection of saying that he wanted to “get rid of the Medieval Warm Period”. Thinks he may have been quoted out of context.(1206628118)
Mann launches RealClimate to the scientific community.(1102687002)
Santer complaining about FoI requests from McIntyre. Says he expects support of Lawrence Livermore Lab management. Jones says that once support staff at CRU realised the kind of people the scientists were dealing with they became very supportive. Says the VC [vice chancellor] knows what is going on (in one case).(1228330629)
Rob Wilson concerned about upsetting Mann in a manuscript. Says he needs to word things diplomatically.(1140554230)
Briffa says he is sick to death of Mann claiming his reconstruction is tropical because it has a few poorly temp sensitive tropical proxies. Says he should regress these against something else like the “increasing trend of self-opinionated verbiage” he produces. Ed Cook agrees with problems.(1024334440)
Overpeck tells Team to write emails as if they would be made public. Discussion of what to do with McIntyre finding an error in Kaufman paper. Kaufman’s admits error and wants to correct. Appears interested in Climate Audit findings.(1252164302)
Santer says he will no longer publish in Royal Met Soc journals if they enforce intermediate data being made available. Jones has complained to head of Royal Met Soc about new editor of Weather [why?data?] and has threatened to resign from RMS.(1237496573)
Reaction to McIntyre’s 2005 paper in GRL. Mann has challenged GRL editor-in-chief over the publication. Mann is concerned about the connections of the paper’s editor James Saiers with U Virginia [does he mean Pat Michaels?]. Tom Wigley says that if Saiers is a sceptic they should go through official GRL channels to get him ousted. (1106322460) [Note to readers - Saiers was subsequently ousted]
Later on Mann refers to the leak at GRL being plugged.(1132094873)
Jones says he’s found a way around releasing AR4 review comments to David Holland.(1210367056)
Wigley says Keenan’s fraud accusation against Wang is correct. (1188557698)
Jones calls for Wahl and Ammann to try to change the received date on their alleged refutation of McIntyre [presumably so it can get into AR4](1189722851)
Mann tells Jones that he is on board and that they are working towards a common goal.(0926010576)
Mann sends calibration residuals for MBH99 to Osborn. Says they are pretty red, and that they shouldn’t be passed on to others, this being the kind of dirty laundry they don’t want in the hands of those who might distort it.(1059664704)
Prior to AR3 Briffa talks of pressure to produce a tidy picture of “apparent unprecedented warming in a thousand years or more in the proxy data”. [This appears to be the politics leading the science] Briffa says it was just as warm a thousand years ago.(0938018124)
Jones says that UK climate organisations are coordinating themselves to resist FoI. They got advice from the Information Commissioner [!](1219239172)
Mann tells Revkin that McIntyre is not to be trusted.(1254259645)
Revkin quotes von Storch as saying it is time to toss the Hockey Stick . This back in 2004.(1096382684)
Funkhouser says he’s pulled every trick up his sleeve to milk his Kyrgistan series. Doesn’t think it’s productive to juggle the chronology statistics any more than he has.(0843161829)
Wigley discusses fixing an issue with sea surface temperatures in the context of making the results look both warmer but still plausible. (1254108338)
Jones says he and Kevin will keep some papers out of the next IPCC report.(1089318616)
Tom Wigley tells Mann that a figure Schmidt put together to refute Monckton is deceptive and that the match it shows of instrumental to model predictions is a fluke. Says there have been a number of dishonest presentations of model output by authors and IPCC.(1255553034)
Grant Foster putting together a critical comment on a sceptic paper. Asks for help for names of possible reviewers. Jones replies with a list of people, telling Foster they know what to say about the paper and the comment without any prompting.(1249503274)
David Parker discussing the possibility of changing the reference period for global temperature index. Thinks this shouldn’t be done because it confuses people and because it will make things look less warm.(1105019698)
Briffa discusses an sceptic article review with Ed Cook. Says that confidentially he needs to put together a case to reject it (1054756929)
Ben Santer, referring to McIntyre says he hopes Mr “I’m not entirely there in the head” will not be at the AGU.(1233249393)
Jones tells Mann that he is sending station data. Says that if McIntyre requests it under FoI he will delete it rather than hand it over. Says he will hide behind data protection laws. Says Rutherford screwed up big time by creating an FTP directory for Osborn. Says Wigley worried he will have to release his model code. Also discuss AR4 draft. Mann says paleoclimate chapter will be contentious but that the author team has the right personalities to deal with sceptics.(1107454306)
Climate change alarmists engaged in desperate whitewash, but scandal is not going away
By Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet | In response to the astounding revelations arising out of the hacked CRU emails, Senator Jim Inhofe has stated that unless something is done within the next seven days, he will lead the call for a rigorous investigation into mounting evidence that top climate scientists conspired to manipulate data to hide evidence of global cooling while engaging in academic witch hunts to eliminate scientists skeptical of man-made climate change.
Speaking on the Americas Morning Show earlier today, Inhofe, Ranking Member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said the new revelations proved what he has been warning about for over four years, that politicians and bias-driven climate scientists affiliated with the UN IPCC have been fraudulently “cooking the science” to conform to their agenda.
“If nothing happens in the next seven days when we go back into session a week from today that would change this situation, I will call for an investigation,” said Inhofe. “Cause this thing is serious, you think about the literally millions of dollars that have been thrown away on some of this stuff that they came out with.”
Asked what he would call for an investigation of, Inhofe responded, “On the IPCC and on the United Nations on the way that they cooked the science to make this thing look as if the science was settled, when all the time of course we knew it was not.”
Meanwhile, even some pro-man made global warming advocates have conceded that an investigation is necessary.
Bob Ward, director of policy and communications at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics, told the London Guardian that only a rigorous investigation could clear the names of those accused of manipulating the data, admitting that the emails “created the impression of impropriety,” which is a lot further than most have gone in accepting the damning nature of the hacked data.
Indeed, the British Met Office performed the equivalent of a child sticking his fingers in his ears by merely attempting to dismiss the emails altogether, without even explaining what was meant when scientists at CRU talked about pulling “tricks” to “hide the decline” in temperatures.
A spokesman at the Met Office, which jointly produces global temperature datasets with the Climate Research Unit, said there was no need for an inquiry. “If you look at the emails, there isn’t any evidence that the data was falsified and there’s no evidence that climate change is a hoax. It’s a shame that some of the sceptics have had to take this rather shallow attempt to discredit robust science undertaken by some of the world’s most respected scientists. The bottom line is that temperatures continue to rise and humans are responsible for it. We have every confidence in the science and the various datasets we use. The peer-review process is as robust as it could possibly be. It’s no surprise, with the Copenhagen talks just days away, that this has happened now.”
As James Delingpole of the Telegraph highlights, alarmists are not going to be effected by the scandal, because they will allow nothing whatsoever to corrupt their religious belief system. “They’ve made up their minds and no quantity of contrary evidence, however devastating, is going to shake their considered position of “Nyah nyah nyah. Got my fingers in my ears. Not listening. The world IS warming and it’s man’s fault. Must tax carbon now….”
Infowars | Globalist minion Al Gore and the United Nations climate change shysters led by Phil Jones are in trouble. Last week hackers uncovered a pile of email and documents revealing what many of us already knew — the climate change agenda is based not only on easily debunked junk science, but outright lies and deception.
In the wake of the damning revelations exposed by these anonymous hackers, the climate change snake oil salesmen Gore and his complaisant entourage of now discredited scientists are in full retreat. Even the corporate media — guilty of peddling the fabrication of man-made climate change for years with the best propaganda money can buy — are desperately scrambling to put the best spin possible on the emerging travesty.
In the above video, Alex Jones examines the startling revelations of the CRU files and spells out what it means for the global elite who have planned to use the ruse to impose crippling carbon taxes and put the finishing touches on their global totalitarian super-state and its accompanying control and slave grid.
Infowars and Prison Planet are now feverishly going through the documents and will post the result in the hours and days ahead. In the meantime, here are a few quotes from the perpetrators:
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. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.
Kevin Trenberth
I seem to be getting an email a week from skeptics saying where’s the warming gone. I know the warming is on the decadal scale, but it would be nice to wear their smug grins away.
Phil Jones
In any case, if the sulfate hypothesis is right, then your prediction of warming might end up being wrong. I think we have been too readily explaining the slow changes over past decade as a result of variability–that explanation is wearing thin. I would just suggest, as a backup to your prediction, that you also do some checking on the sulfate issue, just so you might have a quantified explanation in case the prediction is wrong. Otherwise, the Skeptics will be all over us–the world is really cooling, the models are no good, etc. And all this just as the US is about ready to get serious on the issue.
Mike MacCracken
Ironically, the E1-IMAGE scenario runs, although much cooler in the long term of course, are considerably warmer than A1B-AR4 for several decades! Also – relevant to your statement – A1B-AR4 runs show potential for a distinct lack of warming in the early 21st C, which I’m sure skeptics would love to see replicated in the real world… (See the attached plot for illustration but please don’t circulate this any further as these are results in progress, not yet shared with other ENSEMBLES partners let alone published).
Tim Johns
Your final sentence though about improvements in reviewing and traceability is a bit of a hostage to fortune. The skeptics will try to hang on to something, but I don’t want to give them something clearly tangible.
Phil Jones
Looks pretty good to me. Only one issue. In our discussion of possible participants in Bern, I think (someone correct me if I’m wrong) we concluded that the last two on the list (w/ question marks) would be unwise choices because they are likely to cause conflict than to contribute to concensus [sic] and progress.
Christoph Kull
Mike, I agree very much with the above sentiment. My concern was motivated by the possibility of expressing an impression of more concensus than might actually exist . I suppose the earlier talk implying that we should not ‘muddy the waters’ by including contradictory evidence worried me. IPCC is supposed to represent concensus but also areas of uncertainty in the evidence. Of course where there are good reasons for the differences in series (such as different seasonal responses or geographic bias) it is equally important not to overstress the discrepancies or suggest contradiction where it does not exist.
Keith Briffa
The key thing is making sure the series are vertically aligned in a reasonable way. I had been using the entire 20th century, but in the case of Keith’s, we need to align the first half of the 20th century w/ the corresponding mean values of the other series, due to the late 20th century decline. So, if we show Keith’s series in this plot, we have to comment that “something else” is responsible for the discrepancies in this case. Otherwise, the skeptics have an field day casting doubt on our ability to understand the factors that influence these estimates and, thus, can undermine faith in the paleoestimates.
Climate Depot | Former Vice President Al Gore declared that the Congressional climate bill will help bring about “global governance.”
“I bring you good news from the U.S., “Gore said on July 7, 2009 in Oxford at the Smith School World Forum on Enterprise and the Environment, sponsored by UK Times.
“Just two weeks ago, the House of Representatives passed the Waxman-Markey climate bill,” Gore said, noting it was “very much a step in the right direction.” President Obama has pushed for the passage of the bill in the Senate and attended a G8 summit this week where he agreed to attempt to keep the Earth’s temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees C.
Gore touted the Congressional climate bill, claiming it “will dramatically increase the prospects for success” in combating what he sees as the “crisis” of man-made global warming.
“But it is the awareness itself that will drive the change and one of the ways it will drive the change is through global governance and global agreements.” (Editor’s Note: Gore makes the “global governance” comment at the 1min. 10 sec. mark in this UK Times video.)
Gore’s call for “global governance” echoes former French President Jacques Chirac’s call in 2000.
“For the first time, humanity is instituting a genuine instrument of global governance,” Chirac explained. “From the very earliest age, we should make environmental awareness a major theme of education and a major theme of political debate, until respect for the environment comes to be as fundamental as safeguarding our rights and freedoms. By acting together, by building this unprecedented instrument, the first component of an authentic global governance, we are working for dialogue and peace,” Chirac added.
Former EU Environment Minister Margot Wallstrom said, “Kyoto is about the economy, about leveling the playing field for big businesses worldwide.” Canadian Prime Minster Stephen Harper once dismissed UN’s Kyoto Protocol as a “socialist scheme.”
‘Global Carbon Tax’ Urged at UN Meeting
In addition, calls for a global carbon tax have been urged at recent UN global warming conferences. In December 2007, the UN climate conference in Bali, urged the adoption of a global carbon tax that would represent “a global burden sharing system, fair, with solidarity, and legally binding to all nations.”
“Finally someone will pay for these [climate related] costs,” Othmar Schwank, a global tax advocate, said at the 2007 UN conference after a panel titled “A Global CO2 Tax.”
Schwank noted that wealthy nations like the U.S. would bear the biggest burden based on the “polluters pay principle.” The U.S. and other wealthy nations need to “contribute significantly more to this global fund,” Schwank explained. He also added, “It is very essential to tax coal.”
The 2007 UN conference was presented with a report from the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment titled “Global Solidarity in Financing Adaptation.” The report stated there was an “urgent need” for a global tax in order for “damages [from climate change] to be kept from growing to truly catastrophic levels, especially in vulnerable countries of the developing world.”
The tens of billions of dollars per year generated by a global tax would “flow into a global Multilateral Adaptation Fund” to help nations cope with global warming, according to the report.
Schwank said a global carbon dioxide tax is an idea long overdue that is urgently needed to establish “a funding scheme which generates the resources required to address the dimension of challenge with regard to climate change costs.”
‘Redistribution of wealth’
The environmental group Friends of the Earth advocated the transfer of money from rich to poor nations during the 2007 UN climate conference.
“A climate change response must have at its heart a redistribution of wealth and resources,” said Emma Brindal, a climate justice campaigner coordinator for Friends of the Earth.
[Editor's Note: Many critics have often charged that proposed climate tax and regulatory “solutions” were more important to the promoters of man-made climate fears than the accuracy of their science. Former Colorado Senator Tim Wirth reportedly said, "We've got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing — in terms of economic policy and environmental policy."]
YouTube | Glenn plays audio recorded from a speech Al Gore gave before Obama's inauguration to school children.
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Telegraph | Speaking at the Copenhagen climate change summit, Mr Gore said new computer modelling suggests there is a 75 per cent chance of the entire polar ice cap melting during the summertime by 2014.
Steve (swizzlesteve), was the last activist to question Gore. Within seconds of asking, “Any comments on ClimateGate? The emails that prove it’s a scam, a farce, that global warming is a joke, any comment?” Mr. Gore is heard to utter a few “uhhhhhhhs” and security quickly steps in to remove him as well.
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