by George Monbiot, The Guardian, May 1, 2009

I'm really annoyed with Michigan columnist John Tomlinson. First, the Michigan Mauler has walked all over the competition for the prestigious Christopher Booker Prize, just a couple of months into the contest to find the world's most misguided comments on climate change. He set a high bar with his first article about global warming, which contained 18 magnificent errors. I feared that this would be impossible to beat.
How wrong I was! He has now seen off all possible contenders (except perhaps a repeat performance by his good self), with a cracking 38 howlers in one short column for the Flint Journal. Ironically he made these errors in response to my exposure of his previous claims.

Amazingly, this even beats his own provisional world record for density: the ratio of falsehoods to words. His first column averaged one misleading statement for every 26 words. This one delivers one per 21 words. I intend to submit his second column to the Guinness Book of Records as the most inaccurate article ever published in a newspaper.

Secondly, this astonishing wealth of disinformation means it has probably taken me 100 times longer to respond to his article than he took to write it. This is why there's been such a long delay in my response, and a general hold-up in all further entries for the Christopher Booker Prize. The amount of time I've wasted on his nonsense means I'm beginning to regret launching this prize. And beginning to lose the will to live. I warn you now: this is a very long blog post.

Like most climate change deniers, the Michigan Mauler makes no attempt to answer his critics. He does not seek to defend his previous claims; he simply abandons them and switches to another set of falsehoods. For example, in the first column he maintains that "The Earth's temperature peaked in 1998. It's been falling ever since". In the second column he claims that "Temperatures plunged until 1850, then rose, peaking in 1934." He makes no attempt to justify this switch. He really doesn't care, does he?

There is no attempt to argue here, just to machine-gun his readers with so much nonsense that only people daft enough to devote several days to investigating his claims - as I have just done - can answer them all. I was not entirely surprised to discover that the Mauler makes his living by practising hypnosis. Something of the hypnotic method appears to be at work in his articles: if you say it loudly and confidently enough, people will fall under your spell. As Tomlinson says in promoting his practice, "Hypnosis is easy … intelligence and will, aspects of the conscious mind, are irrelevant. Only imagination matters. Almost everyone can be hypnotized, if they so choose."

I have decided to accept no further entries from the Michigan Mauler. He's just too good at this stuff. He's almost certain to win the prize, though I'll be looking high and low for another contender. The problem is that in order to win they'll have to produce at least 39 howlers, and the thought of documenting them all is just too much to bear. Is it worth it, or should I just give up and award this prize to Tomlinson now?

Anyway, here, in all their glory, are his falsehoods:

Claim 1. For most of the last 10,000 years, Earth was much warmer than today.

Fact: This is bunkum. Tomlinson, as usual, gives no source for this claim, but it's probably a new variant on
the mid-Holocene canard, which he has somehow extrapolated to the entire period. NOAA has this to say about it:

In summary, the mid-Holocene, roughly 6,000 years ago, was generally warmer than today, but only in summer and only in the northern hemisphere. More over, we clearly know the cause of this natural warming, and know without doubt that this proven "astronomical" climate forcing mechanism cannot be responsible for the warming over the last 100 years

Claim 2. Even 1,000 years ago it was much warmer.

Fact: Rubbish again. As you can see from the graphs of past temperature reconstructions (page 467 in this chapter by the IPCC), none of the curves suggest that temperatures 1,000 years ago matched those of today, let alone were much warmer.

Claim 3. Temperatures plunged until 1850, then rose, peaking in 1934.

Fact: No - only in 48 states of the US, comprising 2% of the world's surface.

Claim 4. According to Nasa, the 1930s was our warmest decade in the 20th century.

Fact: This appears to be a double extrapolation. First Tomlinson extends the US 1934 data to the whole planet. Then he extends it to the whole decade. The 1930s weren't the warmest decade by any stretch of the imagination, even in the US.

Claim 5. We're still below that temperature.

Fact: Nonsense again, as you can see from the Met Office series.

Claim 6. Next, a sharp cooling trend began, bottoming in 1979. This produced the now infamous "ice age" scare. GW alarmists always start their numbers from this bottom because temperatures rose until 1998, before dropping once again.

Fact: Given that Tomlinson, in the same article, cites the recorded temperature series, beginning in 1850, and the palaeoclimate reconstructions of the past 2,000 years, he evidently knows that this too is bunkum. I have never seen any scientist or environmentalist use 1979 as the starting point for temperature records.

Claim 7. Because temperatures rose until 1998, before dropping once again. Now, 11 years later, that bounce is almost gone.

Fact: For the umpteenth time, 1998 was the warmest year ever recorded, but the trend shows a steady rise across the decades, with the result that eight of the 10 warmest years since 1850 have occurred since 2001.
In other words, Tomlinson is doing exactly what he wrongly accuses his critics of doing (see 6): starting his temperature series at a point convenient to his argument.

Claim 8. The whole GW argument hinges on which temperature source you quote.

Fact: No it doesn't. It hinges on the entire range of data, observations, reconstructions and models, spanning many thousands of scientific papers.

Claim 9. Many climatologists believe the University of Alabama-Huntsville is the world's foremost temperature monitoring source because it uses satellite scanning, as opposed to ground stations.

Fact: No, they see it as one among many useful sources, all of which contribute to the scientific understanding of climate trends and causes.

Claim 10. Its data absolutely do not support GW theory.

Fact: Oh yes they do.

Claims 11 and 12. It's the other global temperature monitoring source, the Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS) that started the scare.

Facts: "The other" suggests that Tomlinson believes this is the only alternative data source.
Attention was first drawn to the prospect of man-made global warming in 1896, by Svante Arrhenius.

Claim 13. In 1988, testifying before Congress, Dr James Hansen, head of GISS and an expert in computer modelling, said CO2 production was destroying Earth.

Fact: He said no such thing.

Claim 14. Enlisting Al Gore and his Hollywood minions, they brought fear to the hearts and minds of women and children everywhere.

Fact: Al Gore began raising concerns about climate change soon after becoming a congressman in 1977.

Claim 15. As head of GISS, Hansen personally determines the temperature numbers they publish.
Incredibly, he refuses to say how he got them.

Fact: Yes, it is incredible, and plain wrong. Here are some of the places in which Hansen and Nasa explain their methodology:
Hansen, JE, R Ruedy, Mki Sato, M Imhoff, W Lawrence, D
Easterling, T Peterson & T Karl, 2001: A closer look at United States and global surface temperature change. J. Geophys. Res., 106, 23947-23963, doi:10.1029/2001JD000354.
Hansen, J, R Ruedy, J Glascoe, & Mki Sato, 1999: GISS analysis of surface temperature change, J. Geophys Res, 104, 30997-31022, doi:10.1029/1999JD900835.
GISS Surface Temperature Analysis: Sources

Claim 16. Nevertheless, two Canadians, Stephen McIntyre, a mathematician, and environmental economist Ross McKitrick, decided to check.

Fact: Stephen McIntyre has written on this issue. Ross McKitrick has not.

Claim 17. They first achieved fame in 2004 by completely discrediting Michael E Mann, famous for creating the "hockey stick"-shaped temperature graph Gore used to scare the bejesus out of people.

Fact: Yaaawn. I suppose I'll have to say it again. The first hockey-stick paper, produced by Michael Mann et al has been vindicated by subsequent studies (see the IPCC).

As a result of the controversy whipped up by climate change deniers, the hockey-stick paper was investigated by the National Academies of Science in the US. Its Committee on Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years found the following:

The basic conclusion of Mann et al. (1998, 1999) was that the late 20th century warmth in the Northern Hemisphere was unprecedented during at least the last 1,000 years. This conclusion has subsequently been supported by an array of evidence that includes both additional large-scale surface temperature reconstructions and pronounced changes in a variety of local proxy indicators, such as melting on icecaps and the retreat of glaciers around the world, which in many cases appear to be unprecedented during at least the last 2,000 years.

Claim 18. Mann also refused to reveal his methodology.

Fact: Blimey, this ancient meme again. Mann et al's methods and data have been picked over more comprehensively than those of just about any other scientific paper over the past 20 years, as Tomlinson must surely know. They are available for anyone to see.

Claim 19. Did you know Gore's key global warming "fact" was completely destroyed five years ago?

Fact: Er, no. It has been repeatedly upheld during that period.

Claim 20. The mainstream media won't mention it.

Fact: Apart from the hundreds of articles on this topic published in newspapers including the Sunday Telegraph, Daily Express, Australian, Wall Street Journal, Washington Times, etc.

Claim 21. Fortunately, Canadians know their hockey sticks! Riding that success, McIntyre and McKitrick took on Hansen's data to see if maybe he made any mistakes. Sure enough, he did. On August 8, 2007, NASA announced these guys had found a gaping flaw in Hansen's numbers. The error was huge:  0.8 °C annually.

Fact: No, it was not 0.8 °C, it was 0.001 °C. How's that for a "gaping flaw"?

Claim 22. To put this error into context, the entire GW scare is over a net rise of 0.6 °C in the 20th century.

Fact: No it's not. The concern about global warming arises from the knowledge that increasing greenhouse gas concentrations will continue to raise global temperatures (the rise is already 0.8 °C since the beginning of the 20th century).

Claim 23. Once NASA re-did Hansen's numbers, 1934 became our hottest year and 1998 only a secondary peak.

Fact: As NASA points out:

Contrary to some statements flying around the internet, there is no effect on the rankings of global temperature. Also our prior analysis had 1934 as the warmest year in the US (see the 2001 paper above), and it continues to be the warmest year, both before and after the correction to post-2000 temperatures. However, as we note in that paper, the 1934 and 1998 temperature are practically the same, the difference being much smaller than the uncertainty. The effect on global temperature (the left side of the figure; see larger GIF) was of order one-thousandth of a degree, so the corrected and uncorrected curves are indistinguishable.

Claim 24. McKitrick, assistant professor at Guelph University, published a study on GISS data collection in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres in 2007.

Fact: He did not use GISS data.

Claim 25. He found GISS, which relies on surface measures, overstated warming by "about half" due to a laundry list of collection errors.

Fact: Bunkum, yet again. As Gavin Schmidt has shown, McKitrick's results emerge only if you don't take proper account of the fact that nearby locations have correlations in both temperature and economic activity.

Claims 26 and 27. Interestingly, GISS lost about 50% of its stations after the USSR fell in the early 1990s. As those stations were replaced with computer simulations, Hansen's "new" numbers began to show a huge acceleration in global warming.

Facts: Gavin Schmidt of NASA comments:

"Wow. This one is really out to lunch. Spatial coverage is pretty much the same as it was in the early 1990s, and no computer modelling is involved in the GISTEMP analysis."

Claim 28. Today, the vast majority of GISS sites are in the US. Computer guestimates cover outlying areas, particularly across continents such as Africa and South America, where data collection is almost nonexistent.

Fact: Gavin Schmidt tells me:

"Again simply not true. While there are areas that are less well covered by stations, the area covered remains at about 80% of the land area."

Claim 29. Because GISS relies on surface stations, its ocean coverage is abysmal.

Fact: Oh no it doesn't. Its land-ocean index uses satellite data over the oceans.

Claims 30 and 31. NASA oceanographer John Willis found that ocean temperatures have been falling since at least 2003.

Facts: It's JOSH Willis. And, as he has shown, his findings were the result of calibration mistakes. They have since been corrected.
 
Claim 32. GISS had no idea.

Fact: Of course it didn't, because it was a data-gathering error.

Claim 33. Now, it turns out, even GISS can't find any global warming whatsoever in the southern hemisphere.

Fact: Nonsense again, as the GISS figures show.

Claim 34. Imagine, 70% of Earth's surface temperature dropping sharply, and the global warming geniuses didn't have a clue.

Fact: Yes, you'll just have to imagine it.

Claim 35. Global warming is all about confiscating wealth and power.

Fact: No, it's about scientific observation and prediction.

Claim 36. Congress passed a law making it illegal (in five years) to use incandescent lightbulbs because they cause global warming.: 

Fact: No, the act merely ensures that they will no longer be sold by 2014. It does not ban their continued use.

Claim 37. That's how we're slowly losing our freedom: chancing prison for using politically incorrect light bulbs.

Fact: And he accuses other people of scaremongering!

Claim 38. Truly, the world isn't getting warmer

Fact: Yes, it is getting warmer.

For how much longer will the Flint Journal employ John Tomlinson to produce this rubbish?

www.monbiot.com

Link:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2009/apr/30/climate-change-scepticism-climate-change

by George Monbiot, The Guardian, December 16, 2009

So at last we've had our fight, and Ian Plimer has cause to regret his challenge to me. Back in July, Plimer, an Australian professor of geology and a climate change denier championed by the right wing media all over the world, challenged me to a debate in London, to be hosted by the Spectator magazine. I agreed, as long as he met a simple condition: to answer a list of questions about the claims in his book, Heaven and Earth. Plimer eventually accepted this condition. My questions were straightforward: I asked him only to explain or reference the claims he made. Any reputable scientist would have answered them without hesitation.

But Plimer used a series of excuses and evasions to put me off.

Eventually I gave him a deadline. Four days before it expired, the Spectator cancelled the debate, and gave Plimer a platform to himself. It was a shocking episode, which suggested to me that neither Plimer nor the Spectator wanted to face the facts.

Anyway, the Australian television network ABC renewed the invitation. Knowing that Plimer might use any conditions as an excuse for wriggling out again, this time I agreed without terms. The debate, which was hosted by Tony Jones, took place live on ABC's Lateline last night. You can watch it here.

It began with a general discussion about Copenhagen, climate denial and, of course, the hacked emails. Plimer described the contents of the Climatic Research Unit's emails as "the biggest scientific fraud in history".

I replied that, though I deplore some of the behaviour revealed by the emails, Plimer's own behaviour is highly questionable. He continues to restate facts after they have been shown to be wrong. For example, he maintains that volcanoes produce more carbon dioxide than human activity. The US Geological Survey (USGS) reports that human beings produce 130 times as much CO2 as volcanoes.

Jones took up my charge and asked Plimer whether he stood by his claim that volcanoes produce more CO2 than all the world's cars and industries.

Plimer replied "I'm very heartened that a journalist is correcting me on my geology", then launched into a disquisition on how I know nothing about science. Both of us pressed him to answer the question. So Plimer said that neither of us had read his book. We both replied that we had and pressed him again.

Plimer tried to argue that the US Geological Survey only measured emissions from terrestrial volcanoes – not from submarine volcanoes. Jones, who had plainly done his homework, pointed out that a UK journalist (I think he was referring to the Guardian's James Randerson) had gone back to the USGS and asked them whether or not submarine volcanoes were included in its calculations. They were.

Plimer went off at a tangent, starting to list the numbers and kinds of submarine volcanoes. This, I soon found, was a characteristic tactic: when faced with a tricky situation, he starts throwing out random facts. I pointed out that he had been told many times that the USGS figures include submarine volcanoes: he was making a claim on national television that he should know is wrong.

Jones raised another of the questions I had tried to put to Plimer: the professor has stated that the Met Office's Hadley Centre has shown that warming stopped in 1998. Where, Jones asked, does the Hadley Centre say that? Again the random facts came thick and fast.

Plimer said there are four major centres that measure temperature. Some of them use thermometers (would you believe it?); some use radiosondes; some use satellites. And if you look at page 481 of my book, you'll find that I nailed the University of East Anglia, which is actually just a few yards down the road from where Monbiot lives, and, and …

It was a weird form of free association, which might have contained answers to any number of questions – but not the one he was asked. I pointed out that he had cherry-picked his start date: his claim that temperatures had fallen this century was based on his selection of the hottest year ever – 1998 – as the starting point. Had he picked 1997 or 1999, or any other year in the 20th century, he would have seen that temperatures had risen.

Tony Jones asked Plimer to respond. His answer ranged from the correspondence we had had, to my absence of qualifications, to Roman warming, medieval warming, to the Met Office saying the UK would have a barbeque summer this year, to the temperature 4,000 years ago – in fact any temperature series except the one he was asked about.

Whenever I pressed him to answer the question, Plimer said it was "the height of bad manners" to interrupt him. When Jones pushed him again, he started talking about wheat farming in Greenland and grapes in Roman Britain. In my quarter century as a journalist I have never seen anyone go to such lengths to avoid answering a simple point.

Jones asked Plimer about another of his howlers: he had exactly reversed the findings of a paper he cited. In his book, he claims that "satellites and radiosondes show that there is no global warming", and gave as his reference a paper by Charles F Keller. Here's what the paper actually says:

"The big news [is] the collapse of the climate critics' last real bastion, namely that satellites and radiosondes show no significant warming in the past quarter century. Figuratively speaking, this was the centre pole that held up the critics' entire 'tent'. … But now both satellite and in-situ radiosonde observations have been shown to corroborate both the surface observations of warming and the model predictions."

Off Plimer went with another series of random facts, about corrections of satellite data, different datasets: anything but address his reversal of the findings of the paper he referenced. Yet again I pointed out that he was evading this question, and this time he veered off on to a completely different subject: the websites I read and who is funding them. He didn't explain what this had to do with his misrepresentation of the satellite paper.

I finished by pointing out that throughout the discussion Plimer had used evasion and distraction when faced with straight questions. As soon as the interview ended, the emails started pouring in. Scores of them. The overwhelming message was that Plimer had been soundly thrashed. You can judge for yourself. If you bought his book or read the articles about him and you believed what he said, watch the interview, then tell me you still stand by him.
monbiot.com

First they put the planet in square brackets, now they have deleted it from the text. At the end it was no longer about saving the biosphere: it was just a matter of saving face. As the talks melted down, everything that might have made a new treaty worthwhile was scratched out. Any deal would do, as long as the negotiators could pretend they have achieved something. A clearer and less destructive treaty than the text that emerged would be a sheaf of blank paper, which every negotiating party solemnly sits down to sign.

This was the chaotic, disastrous denouement of a chaotic and disastrous summit. The event has been attended by historic levels of incompetence. Delegates arriving from the tropics spent 10 hours queueing in sub-zero temperatures without shelter, food or drink, let alone any explanation or announcement, before being turned away. Some people fainted from exposure; it's surprising that no one died. The process of negotiation was just as obtuse: there was no evidence here of the innovative methods of dispute resolution developed recently by mediators and coaches, just the same old pig-headed wrestling.

Watching this stupid summit via webcam (I wasn't allowed in either), it struck me that the treaty-making system has scarcely changed in 130 years. There's a wider range of faces, fewer handlebar moustaches, frock coats or pickelhaubes, but otherwise, when the world's governments try to decide how to carve up the atmosphere, they might have been attending the conference of Berlin in 1884. It's as if democratisation and the flowering of civil society, advocacy and self-determination had never happened. Governments, whether elected or not, without reference to their own citizens let alone those of other nations, assert their right to draw lines across the global commons and decide who gets what. This is a scramble for the atmosphere comparable in style and intent to the scramble for Africa.

At no point has the injustice at the heart of multilateralism been addressed or even acknowledged: the interests of states and the interests of the world's people are not the same. Often they are diametrically opposed. In this case, most rich and rapidly developing states have sought through these talks to seize as great a chunk of the atmosphere for themselves as they can – to grab bigger rights to pollute than their competitors. The process couldn't have been better designed to produce the wrong results.

I spent most of my time at the Klimaforum, the alternative conference set up by just four paid staff, which 50,000 people attended without a hitch. (I know which team I would put in charge of saving the planet.) There the barrister Polly Higgins laid out a different approach. Her declaration of planetary rights invests ecosystems with similar legal safeguards to those won by humans after the second world war. It changes the legal relationship between humans, the atmosphere and the biosphere from ownership to stewardship. It creates a global framework for negotiation which gives nation states less discretion to dispose of ecosystems and the people who depend on them.

Even before the farce in Copenhagen began it was looking like it might be too late to prevent two or more degrees of global warming. The nation states, pursuing their own interests, have each been passing the parcel of responsibility since they decided to take action in 1992. We have now lost 17 precious years, possibly the only years in which climate breakdown could have been prevented. This has not happened by accident: it is the result of a systematic campaign of sabotage by certain states, driven and promoted by the energy industries. This idiocy has been aided and abetted by the nations characterised, until now, as the good guys: those that have made firm commitments, only to invalidate them with loopholes, false accounting and outsourcing. In all cases immediate self-interest has trumped the long-term welfare of humankind. Corporate profits and political expediency have proved more urgent considerations than either the natural world or human civilisation. Our political systems are incapable of discharging the main function of government: to protect us from each other.

Goodbye Africa, goodbye south Asia; goodbye glaciers and sea ice, coral reefs and rainforest. It was nice knowing you. Not that we really cared. The governments which moved so swiftly to save the banks have bickered and filibustered while the biosphere burns.

Link:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/18/copenhagen-negotiators-bicker-filibuster-biosphere

1 The public persuasion campaign

In 1991 the Western Fuels Association, National Coal Association and Edison Electric Institute set up a group called the Information Council for the Environment (Ice). Its founding documents were leaked. The text has been made available online by the scientist Naomi Oreskes. The strategy was spelt out in a document produced by the Western Fuels Association: to "reposition global warming as theory (not fact)".

Ice was given $510,000 to test its messages in key markets, all of which happened to be the homes of members of the energy and commerce or ways and means committees of the US House of Representatives. The purpose was to "demonstrate that a consumer-based media awareness program can positively change the opinions of a selected population regarding the validity of global warming." If it worked, Ice would "implement program nationwide."

It identified "two possible target audiences": "Target 1: Older, less educated males". These people, Ice said, would be receptive to "messages describing the motivations and vested interests of people currently making pronouncements on global warming – for example, the statement that some members of the media scare the public about global warming to increase their audience and their influence … "

"Target 2: younger, lower-income women" … "These women are more receptive ... to factual information concerning the evidence for global warming. They are likely to be "green" consumers, believe the earth is warming, and to think the problem is serious. However, they are also likely to soften their support for federal legislation after hearing new information …"

Ice discovered that "members of the public feel more confident expressing opinions on others' motivations and tactics than they do expressing opinions of scientific issues." Here are some of the messages it tested:

"Some say the earth is warming. Some also said the earth was flat."

"Who told you the earth was warming … Chicken Little?"

"How much are you willing to pay to solve a problem that may not exist?"*

These messages must have worked, because they were later used by Ice in a wider media campaign.

* James Hoggan and Richard Littlemore, 2009. Climate Cover-Up. Greystone Books, Vancouver.

2 Undisclosed interests

Dr Patrick Michaels is often used by the media on both sides of the Atlantic as one of the very few people who deny that manmade climate change is happening and who is also a practising climate scientist. Among many other outlets, he has written for the Guardian's website, which describes him as "a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and author of Climate of Extremes: Global Warming Science They Don't Want You to Know." But there's something Michaels doesn't want you to know: as far as I can tell, he has never voluntarily disclosed the following information.

In 2006 the Intermountain Rural Electric Association (Irea) circulated a memo to electricity generators, transmitters and distributors[2]. The memo explained that most of the electricity its members provided is generated by coal plants, and Irea was intending to engineer a "considerable shifting from gas-fired generation" to coal. But the profits from this enterprise were now under threat. "A carbon tax or a mandatory market-based greenhouse gas regulatory system would erode most, if not all, of the benefits of the coal-fired generation."

In the hope of averting this disaster, Irea had "decided to support Dr Patrick Michaels and his group (New Hope Environmental Services Inc). Dr Michaels has been supported by electric co-operatives in the past and also receives financial support from other sources ... In February of this year Irea alone contributed $100,000 to Dr Michaels. In addition we have contacted all of the G&Ts [generators and transmitters of electricity] in the United States and as of the writing of this letter, we have obtained additional contributions and pledges for Dr Michaels' group. We will be following up with the remaining G&Ts over the next several weeks."

3 Science by petition

The Heartland Institute is a lobbying group which has received $676,000 from ExxonMobil. In 2007 it published a list of "500 Scientists Whose Research Contradicts Man-Made Global Warming Scares" (pdf).

These people, it maintained, supported "the very important view that the Modern Warming is natural and no more dangerous than were the Medieval Warming, the Roman Warming and the Holocene Warming before it."

But they didn't. Kevin Grandia of DeSmogBlog.com started contacting the people the Heartland Institute had listed. He asked them whether they endorsed the views the Heartland Institute said they held. Within 48 hours, 45 people responded, all outraged that they had been traduced. Here are some samples of their replies to Kevin and their messages to the author of the list, Dennis Avery:

"I am horrified to find my name on such a list. I have spent the last 20 years arguing the opposite."
Dr David Sugden, professor of geography, University of Edinburgh

"I have NO doubts ... the recent changes in global climate ARE man-induced. I insist that you immediately remove my name from this list since I did not give you permission to put it there."
Dr Gregory Cutter, professor, department of ocean, earth and atmospheric sciences, Old Dominion University

"Please remove my name. What you have done is totally unethical!!"
Dr Svante Bjorck, Geo Biosphere Science Centre, Lund University

"Because none of my research publications has ever indicated that the global warming is not as a consequence of anthropogenic greenhouse gases, I view that the inclusion of my name in such list without my permission or consensus has damaged my professional reputation as an atmospheric scientist."
Dr Ming Cai, associate professor, department of meteorology, Florida State University

"They have taken our ice core research in Wyoming and twisted it to meet their own agenda. This is not science."
Dr Paul F Schuster, hydrologist, US Geological Survey

"Please remove my name IMMEDIATELY from the following article and from the list which misrepresents my research."
Dr Mary Alice Coffroth, department of geology, State University of New York at Buffalo

None of these names have yet been removed from the institute's list.

4 The Inside Track

When George W Bush was president, White House staffers collaborated with the oil industry to fix government policies on climate change.

In 2004, Harper's magazine published a leaked memo from Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute to Phil Cooney, the chief of staff of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. The Competitive Enterprise Institute has been given more than $2m by Exxon. Ebell's memo showed that the White House and the institute had been working together to discredit a report on climate change produced by the Environmental Protection Agency, whose head at the time was Christine Todd Whitman.

"Dear Phil,

Thanks for calling and asking for our help … As I said, we made the decision this morning to do as much as we could to deflect criticism by blaming EPA for freelancing. It seems to me that the folks at EPA are the obvious fall guys, and we would only hope that the fall guy (or gal) should be as high up as possible. I have done several interviews and have stressed that the President needs to get everyone rowing in the same direction. Perhaps tomorrow we will call for Whitman to be fired[1]."

The New York Times later discovered that Phil Cooney, who is a lawyer with no scientific training, had been imported into the White House from the American Petroleum Institute to control the presentation of climate science. He edited scientific reports, striking out evidence that glaciers were retreating and inserting phrases suggesting that there was serious scientific doubt about global warming. When the revelations were published he resigned and took up a post at Exxon.

The oil company also had direct access to the White House. On 6 February 2001, 17 days after George W Bush was sworn in, AG (Randy) Randol, ExxonMobil's senior environmental adviser, sent a fax to John Howard, an environmental official at the White House[3]. It began by discussing the role of Bob Watson, the head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It suggested he had a "personal agenda" and asked: "Can Watson be replaced now at the request of the US?"[4]

It went on to ask that the United States be represented at the panel's discussions by a Dr Harlan Watson[8]. Both requests were met. Once Watson was sacked, the other was appointed, and went on to wreak havoc at international climate meetings.

[1] Letter from Myron Ebell to Phil Cooney. Published in the May 2004 edition of Harper's magazine: White House Effect.
[2] AG (Randy) Randol III, Senior Environmental Adviser, ExxonMobil, 6 February 2001. Memo to John Howard. Bush Team for IPCC negotiations. Facsimile, sent from tel no. (202) 8620268.
[3] ibid, p2
[4] ibid, p5

Link:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2009/dec/07/george-monbiot-blog-climate-denial-industry

Global warming rigged? Here's the email I'd need to see

It's no use pretending this isn't a major blow. The emails extracted by a hacker from the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia could scarcely be more damaging. I am now convinced that they are genuine, and I'm dismayed and deeply shaken by them.

Yes, the messages were obtained illegally. Yes, all of us say things in emails that would be excruciating if made public. Yes, some of the comments have been taken out of context. But there are some messages that require no spin to make them look bad. There appears to be evidence here of attempts to prevent scientific data from being released, and even to destroy material that was subject to a freedom of information request.
Worse still, some of the emails suggest efforts to prevent the publication of work by climate sceptics, or to keep it out of a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. I believe that the head of the unit, Phil Jones, should now resign. Some of the data discussed in the emails should be re-analysed.

But do these revelations justify the sceptics' claims that this is "the final nail in the coffin" of global warming theory? Not at all. They damage the credibility of three or four scientists. They raise questions about the integrity of one or perhaps two out of several hundred lines of evidence. To bury man-made climate change, a far wider conspiracy would have to be revealed. Luckily for the sceptics, and to my intense disappointment, I have now been passed the damning email that confirms that the entire science of global warming is indeed a scam. Had I known that it was this easy to rig the evidence, I wouldn't have wasted years of my life promoting a bogus discipline. In the interests of open discourse, I feel obliged to reproduce it here.


This is the kind of conspiracy the deniers need to reveal to show that man-made climate change is a con. The hacked emails are a hard knock, but the science of global warming withstands much more than that.

Link:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2009/nov/23/global-warming-leaked-email-climate-scientists