Global Warming: Data Not Required

Patrick J. Michaels is a senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute and author of Climate of Extremes: Global Warming Science They Don’t Want You to Know. He now has written an article for National Review Online describing the closed and missing data which is the foundation for the AGW scare.

As I understand it,

1. Two persons, Jones and Wigley, at the UK’s Climate Research Unit (CRU) located at the University of East Anglia, control all the historical data. This data was the basis for the U.N.’s I.P.C.C. to claim “discernible human influence on global climate.”

2. Those persons won’t release the data for a replicative analysis. They claim “confidentiality” agreements with countries supplying the data. Confidentiality?? On critical scientific data?? How absurd can this get?

3. Those persons also claim that the original data no longer exists; only the “adjusted”, "homogenized" data remains.

4. Those persons have released portions of the original raw data to an apparently AGW-friendly colleague, Peter Webster at Georgia Tech, just this year, who won’t release the data either.

Michaels:

“In the early 1980s, with funding from the U.S. Department of Energy, scientists at the United Kingdom’s University of East Anglia established the Climate Research Unit (CRU) to produce the world’s first comprehensive history of surface temperature. It’s known in the trade as the “Jones and Wigley” record for its authors, Phil Jones and Tom Wigley, and it served as the primary reference standard for the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) until 2007. It was this record that prompted the IPCC to claim a “discernible human influence on global climate.”

”Putting together such a record isn’t at all easy. Weather stations weren’t really designed to monitor global climate. Long-standing ones were usually established at points of commerce, which tend to grow into cities that induce spurious warming trends in their records. Trees grow up around thermometers and lower the afternoon temperature. Further, as documented by the University of Colorado’s Roger Pielke Sr., many of the stations themselves are placed in locations, such as in parking lots or near heat vents, where artificially high temperatures are bound to be recorded.

”So the weather data that go into the historical climate records that are required to verify models of global warming aren’t the original records at all. Jones and Wigley, however, weren’t specific about what was done to which station in order to produce their record, which, according to the IPCC, showed a warming of 0.6° +/– 0.2°C in the 20th century.

”Now begins the fun. Warwick Hughes, an Australian scientist, wondered where that “+/–” came from, so he politely wrote Phil Jones in early 2005, asking for the original data. Jones’s response to a fellow scientist attempting to replicate his work was, “We have 25 years or so invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?”

”Reread that statement, for it is breathtaking in its anti-scientific thrust. In fact, the entire purpose of replication is to “try and find something wrong.” The ultimate objective of science is to do things so well that, indeed, nothing is wrong.”

AGW is not science; it is an agenda of the Left. It’s intent goes beyond lifestyle control of every citizen of the developed world. It goes to global taxation and punishment authority, controlled by the elites intent on humanist equalizing of all peoples – at the lowest common economic denominator if necessary.

The Left loves the aura of science and hates any data that deviates from their expectations. The result is totally anti-intellectual-integrity, which doesn’t bother the Left a bit. The Left needs crises, and data be damned – it is the moral authority imbued by the “crisis” that gives them the authority, the power that they crave. And the "crisis" must be preserved at all costs, even the sacrifice of any appearance of scientific integrity.

I have written before that following the money helps one understand the "scientific" support for this and any other crisis science. Vast sums of money go into the crisis, and parasites are there to suck it up. Al Gore, for example, is all set to profit from "green" legislation: he owns stock in many green corporations that will feed at the taxpayer's trough.

It's an ill crisis that fattens no parasite.

Quote of the Day

We'd be content and happy if Obama can stay president forever. …
– Moammar Gadhafi, Sept. 23, 2009

Stanford Economics Professor John B. Taylor charts the CBO long-term debt data for the US government. Says Prof. Taylor,

"Simple charts vividly demonstrate the immensity of the exploding debt problem now faced by the United States. The large expansion of debt in World War II looks like a small blip compared to what's coming if we do not change policy. Click here to see the charts I used to compare U.S. debt history with CBO projections in my Economics lectures at Stanford today. The source is the spreadsheet for CBO's alternative fiscal scenario in its June Long-Term Budget Outlook."

Of course the senarios are not sustainable in real life, so some sort of economic "adjustment" will have to occur. At the levels predicted, the adjustment will undoubtedly be painful, unless the adjustments take place now to prevent the ultimate collapse. That is not what we are seeing from the Leftist government now in place.

National Geographic Stumbles Again

When National Geographic gets away from photoessays and tries to do science, it usually takes the form of an agenda-laden slice to the far Left. Thanks to Ed Morrissey at hotair.com for this comparison:

National Geographic in summer 2008:

"Arctic warming has become so dramatic that the North Pole may melt this summer, report scientists studying the effects of climate change in the field.

“We’re actually projecting this year that the North Pole may be free of ice for the first time [in history],” David Barber, of the University of Manitoba, told National Geographic News aboard the C.C.G.S. Amundsen, a Canadian research icebreaker. …

But this summer’s forecast—and unusual early melting events all around the Arctic—serve as a dire warning of how quickly the polar regions are being affected by
climate change.

National Geographic this week:

"This year’s cooler-than-expected summer means the Arctic probably won’t experience ice-free summers until 2030 or 2040, scientists say.

Some models had previously predicted that the Arctic could be ice free in summer by as soon as 2013, due to rising temperatures from global warming."

Cooler than expected?? The models obviously have gaping flaws, having predicted the opposite from what actually happened. And National Geographic should go back to photos of frogs and leave the politically tinged science alone.

Chu Sheds Some Light

Steven Chu is the Secretary of Energy under Obama. He recently revealed the prevailing zeitgeist of the Left in his comments about the American people. According to Chu, the American people are like children needing parenting from the likes of himself. The Wall Street Journal quotes Chu:

"When it comes to greenhouse-gas emissions, Energy Secretary Steven Chu sees Americans as unruly teenagers and the Administration as the parent that will have to teach them a few lessons.

"Speaking on the sidelines of a smart grid conference in Washington, Dr. Chu said he didn’t think average folks had the know-how or will to to change their behavior enough to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.

“The American public…just like your teenage kids, aren’t acting in a way that they should act,” Dr. Chu said. “The American public has to really understand in their core how important this issue is.” (In that case, the Energy Department has a few renegade teens of its own.)"

Yet both the White House and the Energy Department have failed their own rules. Here are some comments by Ed Morrissey:

"With that humbling experience in mind, one might think that Chu and the Obama administration would approach energy policy with a little more humility. Nope! Instead, Chu talks about American citizens as if they cannot be trusted to make their own choices and the need to parent us rather than govern us with our consent. Most of us have already had parents and don’t see the need to have our elected officials take their place.

"And if this is the attitude of the Obama administration on energy policy, just imagine what the attitude will be when they take charge of our health-care system.

"This is nothing more than a slightly more honest look at the attitude of the Left when it comes to governance. It’s all about paternalism and condescension, and the belief that a group of elites should be appointed to rule over the unwashed and unschooled masses for their own good. That has never been consonant with the American experience, which allows the individual to make his own choices and live with the consequences. Chu gives us a good look at the liberal soul, and most Americans will not like what they see.
[emphasis added]

Of course Americans will have to go to the alternative sources of news in order to even hear such news.

PostRadical America

There are many speculations as to what it was that got the most radical Leftist candidate elected to the presidency in ’08. I personally think that two demographics did the job: blacks and independents. Independents are jumping ship on Obama. Blacks are still in lockstep.

Obama has not taken any pains to coddle his constituents, except for those who are devoted Leftists, such as the unions. Independents, having finally found the real Obama to be as onerous as conservatives had claimed, will not likely support more Leftist antics in ’10. Especially since they have been labeled racists along with everyone else not in agreement with the Left’s gargantuan spending, massive governmentism, persistent rewarding of graft and incompetence while demonizing all dissent and dissenters.

Independents are that naïve group that persistently thinks that they can determine the best candidate by judging his performance in a debate. They do no research on the candidate’s background, and they probably do not use the internet for much more than email to friends and facebook. They are a large enough group that they must be courted as a swing group. But they are easily manipulated, and convinced by meaningless phrases such as “hope and change”; they do not ask about the details or the historical context. They are the target auience for the ridiculous sound-bite political ads on TV prior to elections.

But now the independents have seen first hand what “under the bus” means in political parlance. The beautiful centrist Obama has openly betrayed them. And the support they gave his election has pretty much evaporated today.

So when the Leftward march toward government-control-of-everything is halted in ’10, how long will a post-radical America last?

Just a couple of small observations. Conservatives have learned the Alinsky lesson, and they will apply it within conscionable bounds against the morality-free Left. All it takes is outing the truth into the daylight. Activism is no longer the sole property of the political Left, it is now in the hands of the people. And information is still freely available on the internet, for the time-being at least.

And how long will it be before another black, smooth talking, promiser of bubbles of frothy joy will be elected? Have all future black candidates been damaged by the radical, racist, eugenic, half-black now in charge? Will the public trust another false centrist after being duped by this one? Just how Leftist are blacks [1], anyway? Why do they, along with a high percentage of Jews, consistently vote against their own best interests?

One thing that has surfaced most visibly under the Obama brand of “change” is the disconnection of “integrity” with “Leftist”. The frequency of lies, distortions, threats and charges of racism and fascism designed to stop dissent in its tracks must certainly be apparent to even the most starry-eyed of the Obamistas. And surely the rest of the country, hoping for integrity in the most powerful leader in the world, cannot much longer abide the disdain for integrity shown by Obama and his crew.

It is entirely possible that the backlash in ’10 will swamp out the Left for a significant post-radical period. And possibly the chances of another black, no matter how qualified and honest, might have been stricken by the performance of the first black president of the USA. My vote is for Walter E. Williams.

[1] The Left has totally ignored the blacks on the conservative side of the spectrum, as if they don’t exist; to the Left, all blacks are Leftist, and the voting demographics prove it, as do the polls. To the Left, blacks are a class, and racism is the slogan of class warfare.