Early Signs of CRU/IPCC Corruption and Cover-up

by DR. TIM BALL on DECEMBER 6, 2011

in ATMOSPHERE,DATA,HISTORY,LEGAL,POLITICAL,POLITICS,THEORY

Popeye perceptively said, “I don’t know houz youz duz it, but youz duz it.” Now, over 5000 more leaked emails from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU), labeled Climategate 2, provide clarity. They add flesh to the skeleton of corrupted climate science identified in 1000 leaked emails of Climategate 1. They show why and how it was achieved and intelligent people became so blinded by what Michael Mann called “the cause.” Early signs of what was going on were quickly covered up with a masterful PR strategy.

Many, can’t believe a small group of scientists achieved such a massive deception. Edward Wegman in his report to the Chair of the Committee on Energy and Commerce Committee identified, through social network analysis,

“43 individuals all of whom have close ties to Dr. Mann.”

He also anticipates the problems with peer-review.

“One of the interesting questions associated with the ‘hockey stick controversy’ are the relationships among the authors and consequently how confident one can be in the peer review process.”(page 38.)

Wegman’s primary recommendation identified another way it was achieved.
It is especially the case that authors of policy-related documents like the IPCC report, Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis, should not be the same people as those that constructed the academic papers.

Maurice Strong chose the UN specifically the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) to control bureaucracies within every national government and away from legislative oversight. Those bureaucracies directed research funding to one side of the debate and appointed people to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Research was limited by defining climate change as only human caused changes, which predetermined the outcome. The political objective was enshrined through the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), particularly Agenda 21, introduced at the 1992 Rio Conference organized and chaired by Strong.

Basing Agenda 21 on climate and the environment gave them the moral high ground, which they used to control and centralize power. Vaclav Klaus identified this in his book “Blue planet in green shackles” when he wrote,

“Today’s debate about global warming is essentially a debate about freedom. The environmentalists would like to mastermind each and every possible (and impossible) aspect of our lives.”

It is likely that Agenda 21 is “the cause” discussed in the leaked emails.

“I can’t overstate the HUGE amount of political interest in the project as a message that the Government can give on climate change to help them tell their story. They want the story to be a very strong one and don’t want to be made to look foolish.”
Peter Thorne sensed what was happening and issued a warming.

“I also think the science is being manipulated to put a political spin on it which for all our sakes might not be too clever in the long run.”

Overall attitude given by the comments and actions suggest the end justifies the means. They were likely emboldened by the demonstrated ability to protect scientists who acted rashly for the cause.

The first action that exposed the modus operandi occurred with the 1995 second Report. Benjamin Santer is a CRU graduate. Tom Wigley supervised his PhD titled, “Regional Validation of General Circulation Models” that used three top computer models to recreate North Atlantic conditions where data was best. They created massive pressure systems that don’t exist in reality – so he knew the model limitations. Appointed lead-author of Chapter 8 of the 1995 IPCC Report titled “Detection of Climate Change and Attribution of Causes” Santer determined to prove humans were a factor by altering the meaning of what was agreed by the others at the draft meeting in Madrid.

Agreed comments
1.

“None of the studies cited above has shown clear evidence that we can attribute the observed [climate] changes to the specific cause of increases in greenhouse gases.” 

2.

“While some of the pattern-base discussed here have claimed detection of a significant climate change, no study to date has positively attributed all or part of climate change observed to man-made causes.”

3.

“Any claims of positive detection and attribution of significant climate change are likely to remain controversial until uncertainties in the total natural variability of the climate system are reduced.”

4.

“While none of these studies has specifically considered the attribution issue, they often draw some attribution conclusions, for which there is little justification.”

Santer’s replacements
1.

“There is evidence of an emerging pattern of climate response to forcing by greenhouse gases and sulfate aerosols … from the geographical, seasonal and vertical patterns of temperature change … These results point toward a human influence on global climate.”

2.

“The body of statistical evidence in chapter 8, when examined in the context of our physical understanding of the climate system, now points to a discernible human influence on the global climate.”

As Avery and Singer noted in 2006,

“Santer single-handedly reversed the ‘climate science’ of the whole IPCC report and with it the global warming political process! The ‘discernible human influence’ supposedly revealed by the IPCC has been cited thousands of times since in media around the world, and has been the ‘stopper’ in millions of debates among nonscientists.”

At the time a quick cover up was necessary. On July 4, 1996, the apparently compliant journal Nature published, “A Search for Human Influences On the Thermal Structure of the Atmosphere” with a familiar list of authors – Santer, Wigley, Jones, Mitchell, Oort and Stouffer. It provided observational evidence that proved the models were accurate. A graph is worth a thousand words as Mann’s “hockey stick’ showed and so it was with Santer’s “discernible human influence”. John Daly recreated Santer et al’s graph (Figure 1) of the upward temperature trend in the Upper Atmosphere.

Figure 1 Upper Atmosphere Temperature

Then Daly produced a graph of the wider data set in Figure 2 and explains,

“we see that the warming indicated in Santer’s version is just a product of the dates chosen” (Daly’s bold).

Figure 2 Upper Atmosphere Data – Radio Sonde Data

Errors were spotted quickly but Nature didn’t publish the rebuttals until 5 months later (12 Dec, 1996), one identified the cherry-picking, the other a natural explanation for the pattern. However, by that time the PR cover up was under way. On July 25, 1996 the American Meteorological Society (AMS) sent a letter of defense to Santer. The letter appears to be evidence of CRU influence and a PR masterpiece. It said there were two questions, the science, and what society must do about scientific findings and the debate they engendered. Science should only be debated in

“peer-reviewed scientific publications – not the media.”

This was the strategy confirmed in a leaked email from Michael Mann.

“This was the danger of always criticizing (sic) the skeptics for not publishing in the “peer-reviewed literature”.

Then AMS wrote,

“What is important scientific information and how it is interpreted in the policy debates is an important part of our jobs.”

“That is, after all, the very reasons for the mix of science and policy in the IPCC.”

Daly correctly called this “Scientism”.
Santer reportedly later admitted

“he deleted sections of the IPCC chapter which stated that humans were not responsible for climate change.”

He did not admit the changes at the time and achieved the objective of getting the discernible human influence message on the world stage. He was protected by the group that demonstrated its control over peer review, journals, professional societies, and the media, until the emails leaked in November 2009 and were reinforced in 2011.

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