climaterealists's blog

Geoffrey Lean is Britain's longest-serving environmental correspondent, having pioneered reporting on the subject almost 40 years ago.

January 17th 2010

It’s the best news of the decade so far, but not for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the official ultimate authority on climate science, for it poses a much greater threat to its credibility than the much-hyped “Climategate”  emails and puts further questionmarks over its embattled chairman, Dr Rajendra Pachauri.

By F. William Engdahl
22 January 2010

Only days after the failed Copenhagen Global Warming Summit, yet a new scandal over the scientific accuracy of the UN IPCC 2007 climate report has emerged. Following the major data-manipulation scandals from the UN-tied research center at Britain’s East Anglia University late 2009, the picture emerges of one of the most massive scientific frauds of recent history.

Andrew Bolt

– Wednesday, January 27, 10 (12:04 am)

Andrew Bolt

– Tuesday, January 26, 10 (09:12 pm)

HeraldSun.com.au 

UK government report advocates blanketing country with average speed cameras to stop global warming.

The UK Sustainable Development Commission yesterday released a report recommending the use of average speed cameras for round-the-clock tracking of motorist journeys nationwide. The government advisory body said that widespread deployment of average speed cameras was required to reduce the emission of carbon dioxide by automobiles, a factor that some believe is linked to global changes in temperature. The report made a number of recommendations affecting the driving public.

"The business models associated with private motoring are not aligned with sustainability," the report explained.

The commission suggested that the government take immediate action to encourage the use of mass transit and discourage automobile use in general. Speed cameras were seen as an easy method of accomplishing this goal.

A selection of short articles from 'Climategate.com'

There is “no real evidence” Global Warming causes natural disasters

Gee whiz, it turns out Global Warming isn’t responsible for natural disasters. Who’d a thunk it?

The paper on which the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) based its Himalayan Glacier argument — by Robert Muir-Wood (a researcher whose career the IPCC has undoubtably damaged) — is now speaking out against the organization which made him so famous. The IPCC based their claims on Muir-Wood’s article before it was peer-reviewed, and it seems he is no doubt upset that his work would be cited before being verified. Since the controversy, Muir-Wood has made statements along with fellow researchers pointing out that there is no validity behind the IPCC’s claims of global warming causing natural disasters — such as in Bangledesh and Cumbria — which are the basis of arguments for speakers shouting impending doom, like Miliband and Barack Obama. Here an excerpt from the Times Online article:

He found from 1950 to 2005 there was no increase in the impact of disasters once growth was accounted for. For 1970-2005, however, he found a 2% annual increase which “corresponded with a period of rising global temperatures,”

Muir-Wood was, however, careful to point out that almost all this increase could be accounted for by the exceptionally strong hurricane seasons in 2004 and 2005. There were also other more technical factors that could cause bias, such as exchange rates which meant that disasters hitting the US would appear to cost proportionately more in insurance payouts.

 Dr Pachauri has rapidly distanced himself from the IPCC's baseless claim about vanishing glaciers. But the scientist who made the claim now works for Pachauri, writes Christopher Booker

I can report a further dramatic twist to what has inevitably been dubbed "Glaciergate" – the international row surrounding the revelation that the latest report on global warming by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) contained a wildly alarmist, unfounded claim about the melting of Himalayan glaciers. Last week, the IPCC, led by its increasingly controversial chairman, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, was forced to issue an unprecedented admission: the statement in its 2007 report that Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035 had no scientific basis, and its inclusion in the report reflected a "poor application" of IPCC procedures.

NZ Herald

by Brian Fallow

Wednesday 20th January

Prime Minister John Key says New Zealand will not be signing a commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the post-2012 period under the Copenhagen Accord's deadline of February 1.

How much it amounts to will not be clear until early next month, when the annexes of the document are due to be populated with quantified offers to cut emissions, in the case of developed countries, and to curb the growth in emissions, in the case of the major developing ones.

But Key said yesterday that New Zealand's 2013-2020 emissions reduction target, of 10 to 20 per cent less than 1990 levels, remains conditional.

While some progress was made on securing acceptance of some of new Zealand's conditions at Copenhagen, the comprehensive United Nations negotiating process collapsed, leaving a weak agreement among leading emitter nations, the Copenhagen Accord.

NewsDaily

OSLO, Jan. 20, 2010 (Reuters) — The U.N. panel of climate scientists expressed regret on Wednesday for exaggerating how quickly Himalayan glaciers are melting in a report that wrongly projected that they could all vanish by 2035.

Leaders of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) "regret the poor application of well-established IPCC procedures in this instance," they said in a statement on the flaw in a paragraph of a 938-page scientific report.

They noted that the projection of a thaw by 2035 did not make it to the final summary for policymakers in its latest report in 2007. The summary projected a faster thaw in the coming years for glaciers from the Andes to the Alps.

India and some climate researchers have criticized the IPCC in recent days for over-stating the shrinking of Himalayan glaciers, whose seasonal thaw helps to supply water to nations including China and India.