Forbes is running a superb article by Bill Frezza turning the spotlight on science fraud. Many of us share such concerns because misconduct in the sciences now seems endemic.

Bill writes of the “decaying credibility of Big Science” and rightly laments the sad case of whistleblower site Science Fraud that was shut down due to a barrage of legal threats for bravely exposing suspicious research results in over 300 peer-reviewed publications in six months since the site began.

 With billions of dollars in government funded science up for grabs the integrity of academic researchers is increasingly being strained. This isn’t just by external peer-pressure to get the ‘right’ results but also by the inexorable need to make ends meet in a struggling economy.

The banking profession hit rock bottom in 2008 and who is to say 2013 won’t be the year that signals the collapse of confidence in government funded scientists.Frezza tells us what many of us have long suspected, “Fraud, plagiarism, cherry-picked results, poor or non-existent controls, confirmation bias, opaque, missing, or unavailable data, and stonewalling when questioned have gone from being rare to being everyday occurrences.”

 Just look at the soaring retraction level across multiple scientific publications and the increasingly vocal hand wringing of science vigilantes, says Bill. Read more here.

Sweden’s leading math professor has uncovered what appears to be a major scientific deception perpetrated by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) concerning a device that supposedly “proves” the greenhouse gas effect of global warming is real. Professor Claes Johnson has discovered that infrared thermometer manufacturers have been calibrating their devices to a WMO measure known to have little reliability and may even be bogus. Johnson calls the device a “fabricated product.”

Professor Johnson, a skeptic of man-made global warming claims, says he has found a fatal flaw in key instrumentation that supposedly measures, and thus proves, the radiation emitted because of of the “greenhouse gas effect” (GHE) which is calibrated in Watts.These instruments are used for scientific measurements of outdoor downward atmospheric long-wave radiation- the supposed source of the GHE’s added heating mechanism. Johnson performed detailed research into the thermometers of one leading manufacturers of IRT’s  Kipp&Zonen pyrgeometers, with their model CGR 4. Kipp & Zonen describe their CGR4 thermometers as having “extremely high reliability and accuracy.” But as Johnson discovered, this is a bogus and perhaps intentionally fraudulent claim.

The stunned professor laments, “There is no reason to believe that the fabricated “radiance product” has anything to do with reality. There is good reason to believe that we the people are deceived by government scientists. But if science can be used to deceive, science can also be used to reveal deception.”

Sweden’s most cited math professor says, “We read that the pyrgeometer measures a voltage proportional to net absorbed radiation, from which “by calculation” a quantity named “downward long-wave radiation DLR” is derived.” But is it?

Johnson tells us that the basic idea for a GHE measurement is from “atmospheric re-emission” by in particular carbon dioxide (CO2), which is claimed to be a “greenhouse gas.” By using the CGR4 thermometer it is possible to see a warming effect from DLR of about 4 W/srm2 per micrometer at a wavelength of 15 micrometer where the trace gas CO2 is emitting/absorbing.

However, after carefully crunching the numbers Johnson has spotted a monumental error. The pyrometer has been calibrated using a bungled calculation of the Stefan-Boltzmann (S-B) Law. The Swedish math professor from RTH claims, “The consequences for climate alarmism, and Kipp&Zonen are far-reaching.”

Digging deeper Johnson found that the S-B numbers Kipp&Zonen (and other manufacturers) used were taken from Guide to Meteorological Instruments and Methods of Observation issued by the World Meteorological Organization  (section 7.4.3 formula (7.17).  However, the Swedish math genius uncovered that “No scientific reference to (7.17) is given by WMO. So Kipp&Zonen uses a formula issued by WMO without scientific support.”

But it gets worse! The WMO admit this whole area of science is not actually known. In section 7.4.3 of their aforementioned document the WMO claimed that: “Over the last decade, significant advances have been made in the measurement of terrestrial radiation by pyrgeometers, which block out solar radiation. Nevertheless, the measurement of terrestrial radiation is still more difficult and less understood than the measurement of solar irradiance.”

The big question Johnson now poses is who is responsible for this deception? “ I think this is an interesting case concerning the responsibility of scientists and scientific institutions, and commercial actors relying on the science. It is clear that in medicine or building technology there are those who are held responsible. It must be so also in atmospherics science. I will ask WMO for the scientific source and report the answer,” said the professor.

Even Professor Roy Spencer, a climatologist who believes in the GHE but is skeptical of man-made global warming, has been duped by relying on these junk devices. Spencer says he “proved” the GHE by driving  “around pointing this thing [IRT] straight up through my sunroof at a cloud-free sky.”

Spencer continues, “If the device was perfectly calibrated, and there was NO greenhouse effect, it would measure an effective sky temperature near absolute zero (-460 deg. F) rather than +34 deg. F.” Yes, Roy IF the device was perfectly calibrated, but it can’t be according to the WMO’s own admission. When I challenged Roy suggesting he has been fooled his reply was, “I suppose I’m just a sucker for quaint old wives tales.” Yes, Roy it seems you are!

If the WMO now decline to give Johnson a straight answer and admit to these serious flaws then once again we shall see how the man-made global warming fraud is sustained by a coterie of self-serving participants. With fellow Principia Scientific International (PSI) colleague, Dr. Tim Ball on the threshold of two astonishing courtroom victories against junk climatists Johnson asks the question: “Can the WMO be sued for distributing science which is admittedly not understood but which they say is valid simply by referring to measurements made by a pyrgeometer using the WMO formula?” if the WMO are allowed to get away with this con trick of circular reasoning then any formula can be validated this way.

Online project seeks crowd-sourced help to reproduce chemists’ published results. Katharine Sanderson writes in Nature (January 21, 2013 ):

 Scrounging chemicals and equipment in their spare time, a team of chemistry bloggers is trying to replicate published protocols for making molecules. The researchers want to check how easy it is to repeat the recipes that scientists report in papers — and are inviting fellow chemists to join them.

“We’re just a bunch of people who want to make the reactions work,” explains blogger See Arr Oh, who is based in the United States and prefers not to reveal his real name. The other team members include chemistry graduate student Matt Katcher from Princeton, New Jersey, and two bloggers called Organometallica and BRSM, who together have launched Blog Syn, in which they report their progress online.

Among the frustrations he and others have experienced with the chemical literature, says See Arr Oh, are claims that reactions yield products in greater amounts than seems reasonable, and scanty detail about specific conditions in which to run reactions. In some cases, reactions are reported which seem too good to be true – such as a 2009 paper which was corrected within 24 hours by web-savvy chemists live-blogging the experiment; an episode which partially inspired Blog Syn. ”I never forgot that reaction,”

See Arr Oh adds:

“Ask any synthetic chemist what they spend most of their time on, and they will admit that it is getting literature reactions to work,” says chemist Peter Scott of the University of Warwick in Coventry, UK. “That is the elephant in the room of synthetic chemistry.”

Read more here.

Astrophysicist and weather expert, Piers Corbyn who runs WeatherAction.com, has been uncannily accurate so far this winter. Londoner Corbyn produces long-range weather forecasts so good that they never cease beating and baffling Britain’s gigantic £200 million-a-year official weather forecaster, the Met Office.

What is truly remarkable is that the details for Corbyn’s daring January 2013 forecast were made 45 days ahead, a task beyond the competency of “traditional” methods. In the early part of this winter this mild-mannered and avuncular upstart had already made fools of the Met Office (MO) for their “Beast from the East” scare. The MO flunked badly while Corbyn’s bold prediction for a mild early winter proved totally accurate.

On January 10, 2013 The Daily Express front page quoted Piers Corbyn when some standard forecasters started to see WeatherAction’s very icy blasts and blizzards coming (see graphic). However although WeatherAction’s very cold weather soon came Met models still dithered about heavy snow / blizzards until they were almost upon us and, lo and behold, on January 15, 2013 there was a dramatic switch towards copycatting WeatherAction – again. Perhaps some bright spark at the MO has decided to sign up to Corbyn’s paid services, at a tiny fraction of the cost of the heavily taxpayer-subsidized misfits.

London’s colorful Mayor, Boris Johnson, is fully up to speed. Boris says “It is time to consult once again the learned astrophysicist, Piers Corbyn.

Now Piers has a very good record of forecasting the weather. He has been bang on about these cold winters. Like JMW Turner and the Aztecs he thinks we should be paying more attention to the Sun. According to Piers, global temperature depends not on concentrations of CO2 but on the mood of our celestial orb.”

So what is the latest from Corbyn? “The problem”, said Piers, “is the BBC-MO cannot predict or understand Sudden polar Stratospheric Warmings which drive these blizzardy cold blasts. Behind their thick veneer of arrogant ‘expertise’ they are clueless. Disgracefully they still refuse to acknowledge our skill saying ‘it can’t be done’, yet expect taxpayers to continue to reward their failure. Their credibility is near a tipping point!”

Piers and others put a big part of the blame of the Met Office’s obsession with global warming. Their computer models are set to factoring a dubious warming effect due the so-called “greenhouse gas” effect, a theory that mainstream science regarded as being debunked prior to the 1950’s. I’m one of those lucky to receive Corbyn’s forecasts and routinely keep tabs on just how pitiful both the BBC and MO are when it comes to weather forecasting. Meanwhile, the service I’m getting from Corbyn looks very much as good as the 85 percent accuracy this weather guru claims. So much so, I can’t help wondering why Downing Street isn’t calling for a meeting with Piers to find a better use for that £200 million a year. Corbyn has now issued his prediction for February and while it would be unfair to give out the details, if you think January was bad just wait till February, because next month is set to be “a month of wild contrasts.”

The next UN climate report will be released this year. Be prepared to refute it.

For too long, scientists who promote the hypothesis that man’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are causing dangerous global warming have been given a free ride by politicians and the press. Their pronouncements, no matter how fantastic, are accepted without question and repeated ad nauseam by compliant governments and reporters alike. When scientists do what all scientists are supposed to do — question and probe — they are treated as enemies of the people and condemned by opinion leaders.

With the upcoming release of the latest UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, 2013 can be the year governments and media grow up on climate change.

Treat catastrophists who push for climate and energy policies that would bankrupt us just as we do other end-of-the-world cultists: demand they prove their beliefs before providing them the time of day, let alone our tax dollars. Insist that climate catastrophists cease with their speculations and instead employ the scientific method.

This involves creating hypotheses based on predefined assumptions. Other scientists, in their proper roles as skeptics, challenge the hypothesis by testing the assumptions. They try to disprove — or as philosopher Karl Popper explained, falsify — the assumptions. Popper’s doctrine of falsifiability: “Our belief in any particular natural law cannot have a safer basis than our unsuccessful critical attempts to refute it.”

This part of the scientific method has not been applied to the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) hypothesis, and it is costing us plenty: literally hundreds of billions of dollars per year, the loss of thousands of jobs, and the rapid destruction of our most reliable and least expensive power source — coal-fired electricity.

The problems started when proponents of the AGW hypothesis, mainly the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), abandoned the scientific method and set out to prove the hypothesis because of a political agenda. They ignored or rejected contradictory evidence, no matter how convincing, and attacked those who tried to disprove the hypothesis. They produced false, imaginary, or concocted ideas and data instead of considering limitations and errors in their work.

This is well illustrated by their failure to properly consider the null hypothesis that global temperatures will not rise appreciably because of CO2 emissions from industrial activity.

Environmental fundamentalists knew that weakening the developed world by cutting off the fuel supply would be met with howls of protest, so politicians have not dared try this, at least not overtly. But an engine may also be stopped by choking off the exhaust, and so extremists worked hard to demonize CO2, the principle byproduct of civilization.

They ignored the benefits of the gas, such as its role in sustaining life. Instead, they labeled CO2 a pollutant and a harmful substance because of its supposed impact on climate.

Read more here.

        Here we go again.  Multiple news outlets have been asserting of late that manmade global warming is causing the current Australian drought and heatwave.  During the summer of 2012 it was the drought and heatwaves of the Central Plains of the United States that were said to be proof of manmade global warming; in 2011 it was the drought and heatwaves in Texas; in 2010 it was the drought and heatwaves in Russia. 

 Just two months ago the World Bank released a report entitled, “Why a 4°C Warmer World Must be Avoided, Turn Down the Heat,”[i] which has since been cited in dozens of news outlets bolstering the mass hysteria currently sweeping the globe over impending catastrophic manmade global warming.  Attributing droughts and heatwaves to manmade global warming they wrote, “an exceptional number of extreme heat waves occurred in the last decade; major food crop growing areas are increasingly affected by drought” and “Increasing vulnerability to heat and drought stress will likely lead to increased mortality and species extinction.”  Regardless of how alarming these reports may be and how frequently they are cited in the news they all betray an unfortunate reality; those who fret over impending catastrophic manmade global warming don’t even understand the scientific hypothesis upon which it is based—anthropogenic humidity. 

by Dr. Tim Ball (Climatologist)

A Washington Post article  titled “Hot enough for you?” ends with the comment that, 

“Future generations will curse our silence.”

They won’t! They will wonder how people could write such misinformed, hysterical, commentary. There are few subjects like weather or climate about which people have such definitive opinions with so little understanding. Indeed, most don’t know the difference between weather and climate.

Mark Twain said people talk about the weather, but do nothing about it. Thank goodness they don’t. What’s more frightening, dangerous and deluded are politicians who say they are going to do something and commentators who demand that they do.

The Post article is a classic example of what is wrong. It begins with incorrect information provided by the government. This claimed that 2012 was the warmest year on record and severe weather events have increased in number and intensity. It then uses the pejorative and false term “climate-change denialists” to blame those preventing government taking action. It targets,

“especially those who manipulate the data in transparently bogus ways to claim that warming has halted or even reversed course — have been silent, as one might expect.”

As a “denialist” and educator, I’ve done everything to educate people about the extent and cause of climate change. The real “denialists” are the government agencies that altered and manipulated records and produced misleading and incorrect information. 

The article says,

“The thing is, though, that climate change has already put itself on the agenda — not the cause, but the effects. We’re dealing with human-induced warming of the atmosphere.”

Who put it on the agenda? Answer, government, from the UN through the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to the national weather bureaucracies like the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) down to State and Municipal. Sensationalist, ill-informed, biased media provide amplification. Together they created and perpetuated as the cause the falsehood of “human-induced warming”. Then, they presented natural events as unnatural, abnormal, or never having occurred before. They labeled anyone who showed what was wrong with their science and claims first as global warming skeptics then climate change deniers.

They assume we can stop warming or climate change based on the claim that it is due to human addition of CO2 to the atmosphere. Since that is not the cause, then the talk is nonsense. The United Kingdom Met Office (UKMO) illustrated this when it recently acknowledged that lack of global temperature increase of the last 16 years is because natural factors overrode the CO2 effect. The reduction in the temperature increase forecast was a massive 20{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117}.

What happens if warming and climate change predictions are wrong and we took remedial action? This is the precautionary principle argument pushed by environmentalist and enshrined in Principle 15 of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Agenda 21.

Recent history provides an answer. From 1940 through 1980 the concern was global cooling as temperatures declined. The CIA pursued its role of preparing contingency plans and produced a few Reports. Prevailing wisdom said cooling would continue so alarmists demanded action. Some advocated stopping the cooling with a variety of schemes called geo-engineering. These included building a dam across the Bering Straits to prevent cold water outflow from the Arctic, and putting giant reflectors in space to direct more sunlight down, especially in to high latitude cities. CO2 was not a concern at the time, but if sufficient public concern pushed political action and funding was available, somebody would have proposed adding CO2 to the atmosphere. Based on the current official (IPCC) science this would have caused warming. The trouble is natural warming began after 1980. If we accept their theory that CO2 causes warming, it makes the situation worse.

If you don’t know what is happening or why, it is wiser to do nothing. All the evidence, but especially the failed short, medium and long term forecasts of the IPCC and the UKMO, indicate their science is wrong. Governments upbraided in the article for inaction created the false hypothesis that human CO2 caused global warming/climate change. They pushed stories about weather events as abnormal when they were perfectly normal. The public and media were mislead because they knew little about weather or climate. Their education incorrectly teaches them that change is gradual over long periods. In fact change is rapid and dramatic naturally.

Everybody is familiar with the experience of being introduced to a person after which they are there every time you turn around. They were always present; they were just not part of your awareness. This pattern applies to weather events. They became frequent stories for the sensationalist, ill-informed, politically biased media. It appeared to confirm government stories about new and extreme events. The Washington Post article proves the point. It begins:

“All right, now can we talk about climate change? After a year when the lower 48 states suffered the warmest temperatures, and the second-craziest weather, since record-keeping began?”

The answer is we can and must talk.

The conversation must include the following. Understanding that the official government record is at most 100 years for a world some 5 billion years old. Involve participants with a basic knowledge and understanding of climate science. An explanation for why CO2, which is only 0.03{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of the atmosphere and less than 4{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of the greenhouse gases, is the sole focus of attention and concern. Understanding how climate science became a political agenda. Knowledge that all official weather and climate predictions come from computer models and are consistently wrong. An explanation of why what started as global warming, changed to climate change.

 If we don’t have the talk future generations will curse the silence. They will curse why we allowed a few political bullies to undermine development and progress with the false claim that human CO2 is causing climate change.

Post removed due to author Douglas Cotton’s repeated unlawful harassment, spamming, defamation, fraud and other anti-social activities against multiple victims. 

As posted on WUWT:

In one of the biggest body blows to climate alarmism comes an astonishing new u-turn from NASA. In essence, the prestigious American space agency has admitted it has been shackled for decades into toeing a political line over man-made global warming so as to play down key solar factors.

The astonishing NASA announcement comes in the wake of a compelling new study just published titled, “The Effects of Solar Variability on Earth’s Climate.” One of the participants, Greg Kopp of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado, overturned mainstream climate science thinking by declaring even slight changes in solar output have a considerable impact on climate. Kopp conceded, “Even typical short term variations of 0.1{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} in incident irradiance exceed all other energy sources (such as natural radioactivity in Earth’s core) combined.”

The full report by Dr. Tony Phillips  is available from the National Academies Press. The news story reveals NASA’s upper management was barred from stopping climate activist, James Hansen, head of NASA’s research on climate, from promoting a political agenda. The NASA climate retreat signals that a paradigm shift is now in full swing and the discredited claims of man-made global warming alarmists are being tossed aside at the highest levels of government.

Popular skeptic climatologist, Dr. Tim Ball was overjoyed at the news, ”Finally, NASA seem to have broken free of the “settled science” that the IPCC imposed. Climate science was effectively frozen for thirty years and NASA are now getting back to where they were in the 1970s. The last valuable contribution they made was Herman and Goldberg’s, “Sun, Weather and Climate”, in 1978.”

Of great satisfaction to Dr. Ball was the opening third paragraph that conceded:

“Understanding the sun-climate connection requires a breadth of expertise in fields such as plasma physics, solar activity, atmospheric chemistry and fluid dynamics, energetic particle physics, and even terrestrial history. No single researcher has the full range of knowledge required to solve the problem. To make progress, the NRC had to assemble dozens of experts from many fields at a single workshop.”

For years Dr. Ball has championed the view that climatology is a generalist discipline that requires specialist feedback from numerous and otherwise disparate fields of science, something a secretive and controversial clique of researchers refused to accept. As chairman of Principia Scientific International (PSI) Ball has been instrumental in helping to build a team of almost 200 experts from relevant fields specifically to address facts that the climate science community was either ill-equipped or unwilling to examine. 

Privately, Ball has been kept in the know from influential quarters. He reveals, “The information about higher ups came to me directly from a very reliable and knowledgeable management source when I was at the Heartland Conference in Washington. We had a long discussion after I signed a copy of the ‘Slayers’ book for the person.“

Now widely accepted as a key player in these ‘climate wars’ Dr. Ball has defended high-profile libel suits filed by two big hitters from the UN’s global warming cadre, Dr. Michael Mann and Dr. Andrew Weaver. Ball recalls, “It was an article about this scientific block by IPCC that triggered the first of my current lawsuits.” (article link).

Ball believes this latest NASA publication marks the breaking of the control Hansen had over climate research at the U.S. space agency. “The comments of Hansen’s boss indicate the degree of political power Hansen had as a bureaucrat,” adds Ball. As he has written before, Ball has shown that the evidence is stacking up proving that Hansen was “out of control” and what he has been doing publicly and politically probably should have been censured, even prosecuted under the Hatch Act.

Ball notes, “I understand that upper management were advised by much higher authority not to touch Hansen. When you look at the manipulations used by Senator Wirth for his appearance before Al Gore’s committee it is not surprising.” This is a reference to Wirth’s own admission that theatricality was used to unduly influence a key U.S. committee investigating global warming in the 1980’s.

To Ball this article may be a small break through scientifically, but its political implications are profound. “Put this with the revisions at the UK Met Office, and it marks an even greater shift.” The question now is: can the mainstream media be far behind? They will all want to be on the winning side, especially if it affects funding and credibility.

Ironically, Ball believes some of the scientists will have more trouble adjusting. This will particularly apply to those scientists who also hold the political view of those who hijacked climate science for a political agenda. PSI’s most senior fellow adds:

“I think NASA and others who let themselves be bullied must be held accountable. I remember in Winnipeg three Environment Canada employees telling me after a presentation that they agreed with me but would lose their jobs if they spoke out. I used to have sympathy for this position – not any more. It is precisely this type of coercion that must be countered at all levels. Why is there need for a whistleblower law in a supposedly open and democratic society.”

Perhaps this incredible change of heart from NASA may even prompt the person(s) who leaked the emails from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) to finally reveal themselves.

Study confirms intentionally opaque notices distort the scientific record and that the majority of retractions are due to misconduct. A new study out in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) identifies that two-thirds of retractions are due to misconduct — a far higher figure than previously thought.

Specialist watchdog on science paper misconduct, Retraction Watch blog reports:

“A new study out in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) today finds that two-thirds of retractions are because of some form of misconduct — a figure that’s higher than previously thought, thanks to unhelpful retraction notices that cause us to beat our heads against the wall here at Retraction Watch.”

But not all retractions will be due to diligent journalism. Also in the courtrooms junk science is being put under a legal microscope and being found wanting. A major field of research falling foul of the law is climatology. Dr Tim Ball, a prominent skeptic of the man-made global warming narrative is proving to be an adept champion in this arena.

In 2011 Dr. Ball felt the wrath of two well-funded climate researchers prominent in the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC). Dr Michael Mann a paleoclimate analyst and Dr. Andrew Weaver a climate modeler separately sued Dr. Ball for libel in the British Columbia Supreme Court, Canada. However, because neither researcher would show the court the details of the calculations that led to their published findings the courts have had no choice but to dismiss the lawsuits. Dr Ball’s libel attorney is now filing expensive counter claims.

The final estimated financial losses to Mann and Weaver are set to run into millions mostly taken up by legal fees and awards of damages. Dr. Ball, as chairman of Principia Scientific International (PSI) has been urging governments to be more proactive in dealing with the worrying rise in this kind of white-collar crime. Dr. Ball has cited hundreds of leaked emails from the 2009 Climategate scandal that exposed how editors of climatology journals were coerced into publishing biased papers by gangs of researchers who conspired to ‘pal review’ each other’s submissions. Clearly, a far cheaper and more efficient way to expose science misconduct is the approach of good old-fashioned investigative journalism taken by Retraction Watch (RW).  Adam Marcus and Ivan Oransky who spearhead RW’s campaign conclude: 

“It’s now clear that the reason misconduct seemed to play a smaller role in retractions, according to previous studies, is that so many notices said nothing about why a paper was retracted. If scientific journals are as interested in correcting the literature as they’d like us to think they are, and want us to believe they’re transparent, the ones that fail to include that information need to take a lesson from those that do.”

Recently, another champion of higher science standards, Marc Morano reported that the Journal of Climate was compelled to withdraw the Gergis et al. paper that made the bogus claim that temperatures of the last 60 years were the warmest of the last 1,000 years. RW are adamant that the Journal of Climate (as with so many other journals) is failing to provide adequate details of why such papers are being retracted. RW insist, “It’s not clear to us.”

It is this refreshing demand for greater transparency that is encapsulated by the fast growing new science association, Principia Scientific International that publishes openly peer-reviewed science papers that are required to apply the strictures of the traditional scientific method.  As PSI senior fellow Hans Schreuder observed, “The closer we look, the more junk science we uncover.”

Study of violent crime statistics proves link between anti-depressants and violent gun crime. International body of psychiatrists and psychologists calls for an inquiry.

A growing number of mental health experts and researchers are concerned that an increasing body of evidence suggests there could be a distinct connection between acts of mass murder and the use of psychotropic drugs.

In a ‘Statement on the Connection Between Psychotropic Drugs and Mass Murder’ (January 4, 2013) the International Society For Ethical Psychology and Psychiatry (ISEPP) calls for an inquiry into the connection between acts of mass murder and the use of psychotropic drugs. The evidence of a link is found in the paper, ‘Prescription Drugs Associated with Reports of Violence Towards Others’ that also shows violence towards others is a seldom-studied adverse drug event and an atypical one because the risk of injury extends to others.

The plea by the Board of Directors and membership of the International Society For Ethical Psychology and Psychiatry reflects a growing body of evidence as detailed in an important 2011 study showing a link between prescription medication and violence. Among the drugs with warnings about aggressive behaviors are varenicline, zolpidem, montelukast, and all antidepressant drugs. The respected international body cited a sorry list of cases where anti-depressants may have played a part. They include:

• Eric Harris, one of the gunmen in the Columbine school shooting, was taking Luvox and Dylan Klebold, his partner, had taken Zoloft and Paxil.
• Doug Williams, who killed five and wounded nine of his fellow Lockheed Martin employees, was on Zoloft and Celexa.
• Michael McDermott was on three antidepressants when he fired off 37 rounds and killed seven of his fellow employees in the Massachusetts Wakefield massacre.
• Christopher Pittman was on antidepressants when he killed his grandparents.
• Kip Kinkel was on Prozac when he killed his parents and then killed 2 children and wounded 25 at a nearby school.
• In fourteen recent school shoots, the acts were committed by persons taking or withdrawing from psychiatric drugs, resulting in over 100 wounded and 58 killed.
• In other school shootings, information about the shooter’s prescription drug use and other medical history were kept from public records.

While the ISEPP sends condolences to the people of Newtown, Connecticut on their horrific losses it also echoed the worries of mental health professionals on this contentious issue among Americans. The ISEPP declared, “Although the media have cited family members and acquaintances saying Adam Lanza was taking prescription drugs to treat “a neurological-development disorder”, we do not know if he was on psychotropic drugs.”

The ISEPP announcement has triggered fresh interest in studies such as that featured by plosone.org (id.) that examined 200 serious cases in the U.S. over a five-year period. One key peer-reviewed study using evidence from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Adverse Event Reporting System (AERS) reveals this area is worryingly under-researched.

The paper’s authors collated data from cases indicating homicide, homicidal ideation, physical assault, physical abuse or violence related symptoms data from 2004 through September 2009. They admit that what little research has so far shown is “serious acts of violence towards others were regularly reported as an adverse drug event, and that marked differences were observed among drugs. Varenicline had the strongest association with violence by every measure used in this study. In addition, antidepressant drugs showed consistently elevated risk.”

Now the gun lobby won’t be the only interest group feeling the heat as such scientific evidence may shift more of the focus on how vigilant doctors are before prescribing certain drugs to patients who may be at risk of becoming stimulated to violence while medicated. ISEPP avoided making any rash judgments but declared, “we do know that James Holmes, the Colorado batman shooter, had taken 100 milligrams of Vicodin immediately before he shot up the movie theatre.”

With more studies still desperately needed the greatest concern right now must be about those drugs that increase the availability of serotonin or dopamine in the brain. In short, this means most prescription antidepressants. For those interested in helping someone who is dependent on Vicodin then there are organisations that can assist. One such resource is the Coalition against drug abuse, found online at drugabuse.com.

[1] Moore T.J., Glenmullen J, & C. D. Furberg, ’Prescription Drugs Associated with Reports of Violence Towards Others,’ plosone.org, (accessed online: January 7, 2013).

Veteran global warming skeptic who reviewed almost every UN major study on global warming summarizes how it’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) lost the confidence of the public and scientists in general. Dr. Vincent Gray, with a distinguished career in physical chemistry from Cambridge University and a 100+ scientific and technical articles, patents and publications reveals all in his January newsletter. Dr. Gray also points the finger of blame at the cult of environmentalism that rose in the 1980’s to captivate a generation of credulous minds. The unexpurgated version appears below.

NZCLIMATE TRUTH NEWSLETTER NO 303

JANUARY 6TH 2013

THE INTERGOVERNMENTAL PANEL ON CLIMATE CHANGE (IPCC)

By Dr. Vincent Gray

INTRODUCTION

During the 1980s a new anti-science pseudo religion called ENVIRONMENTALISM became very popular.  It replaced the conventional deity with THE ENVIRONMENT, which is a kind of mythical earthly Paradise, which is worshipped, and demanding of constant sacrifices. It has established Ministries in most countries and a host of activists who impose its dogma on most news outlets.

 Its dogma includes:

• A static medieval earth with constant species and ecosystems subject only to “natural variability” but threatened by change from the evil influence of humans.

• The biblical concept the humans have responsibility for all other organisms

• The replacement of evolution by “sustainability”

 THE IPCC

A new pseudo scientific theory of the climate was developed to bolster the beliefs of the “Environmentalists” which ignored the accumulated wisdom of several hundred years of scientific meteorology and replaced it with a static climate, exclusively controlled by radiation, whose only overall change was “warming” caused by human changes in atmospheric concentrations of trace gases in the atmosphere. After several Conferences on the subject the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was set up jointly by the World Meteorological Organisation and the United Nations Environmental programme in 1988 to provide “scientific“ justification for this theory which was launched at the United Nations “Earth Summit” Conference in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992.

Three Working Groups WGI, Science, WG2, Impacts Vulnerability and Adaptation, and WGIII Mitigation were set up to gather and process scientific information which might support the theory. In later reports these were summarized in a Synthesis Report.

My involvement with the IPCC began when I was working at Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China in 1998 and at The Teachers University in Kunming in 1989. I became interested in this new climate theory that was being promoted by the scientific journals in the college libraries. It seemed plausible and I gave several lectures on it.

I returned regularly to New Zealand where I visited my former employer, The Coal Research Association, where I had been Chief Chemist. I found that they had received the First Draft of the First IPCC Science Report, inviting comments. I supplied some which were sent, with others, to the New Zealand Ministry of the Environment who forwarded them to the IPCC with all the others from New Zealand. I commented on the Second Draft during my visit to the USA in 1989 which I read at the premises of the Marshall Institute in Washington DC.

These comments were not acknowledged in the Final Report, “Climate Change – The IPCC Scientific Assessment” (1990) which only listed four individual comments from New Zealand.

The Report was a propaganda exercise promoting the models. They put the actual climate observations right at the end, making it difficult to check their claim that “The size of the warming is broadly consistent with predictions of climate models.”

They also said “but it is also the same magnitude as natural variability.” This was the only Report that talked of “predictions”, but the text showed that this did not go beyond simulation of past results and personal opinions of authors. There was no evidence of successful future prediction in any of the Reports. With all the Reports, there was a “Summary for Policymaker” which was really a “Summary by Policymakers”, because it was dictated line by line to Drafting Authors by the anonymous Government representatives who control the IPCC.

After “Climate Change (1990)” a Supplementary Report, ”Climate Change 1992” followed. This time my comments were listed under the name of the Director of Coal Research, R.S. Whitney. This Report had the statement “Scenarios are not predictions of the future and should not be used as such” It also listed a new set of futures scenarios which replaced those in Climate Change 1990.

All the Reports were intended to influence particular meetings of the supporters of the IPCC. The first two played an important role in influencing the proceedings of the Earth Summit of the United Nations in Rio De Janeiro in June 1992. 41 nations pledged to control emissions of greenhouse gases and signed the Framework Convention on Climate Change that defined “Climate Change”, legally, as exclusively due to human emissions, whereas “Natural Changes” were merely “variable.”

On my return to New Zealand in 1991 the Coal Research Association held a two-day Conference in October where the keynote Speaker on the second day was Fred Singer, Professor of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia, the most prominent US critic of the IPCC. I offered him two articles, one on the 1990 IPCC Report and the second of the 1992 supplement, which he subsequently published in a volume entitles “The Greenhouse Debate Continues”.

The 1994 IPCC Report was devoted to “Radiative Forcing and an Evaluation of the 1992 Emissions Scenarios” which had replaced the ones in Climate Change (1990). My name was listed as a reviewer for the first time under “Non Government Organizations.”

The Chapter on “Scenarios” stated, “Since scenarios deal with the future they cannot be compared with observations.”  I published papers about these reports, two in “Chemistry in New Zealand (1994, 1996) and one in New Zealand Science Review (1996). The Second (1995) IPCC Report became notorious, as the Final Draft WGI Report did not meet the requirements of the anonymous Government members who dictated the “policymakers summary” and they engaged Ben Santer to alter a number of the statements in Chapter 8 of the Final Draft. These were very numerous. Amongst them was deletion of the statement:

“None of the studies cited above has shown clear evidence that we can attribute the observed changes to the specific cause of increases in greenhouse gases,” which remains true to this day.

The First Report had a Chapter 4 entitled “Validation of Climate Models.” The same Chapter was in the First Draft of the next Report. I commented that since no Climate Model has ever been validated the title was inappropriate. In the next draft they had changed the title to “Evaluation of Climate Models”, and changed the word “validation” to “evaluation” no less than fifty times throughout the Chapter.

It should be explained that the term “validation” is a process whereby computer models may be tested to find whether they are suitable for future prediction. It involves a range of evidence for successful forecasts over the range required, to a satisfactory level of accuracy. This process has still never been carried out, so no model so far is suitable for future prediction.

In the same Second Draft, and ever afterwards the claim for successful prediction has never been made. The results of all computer models are “projections” dependent on the validity of the assumptions made. They are “evaluated” and “attributed” entirely on the opinions of the evaluators. The US Think Tank, the Heartland Institute, published my comments on this Report.

I was probably the only scientist who commented on the IPCC 2000 Special Report on Emissions Scenarios since it was part of the activity of the Committee WGIII. It put forward a new set of scenarios that were imposed on the scientists of WGI. I wrote a paper for the Journal “Climate Research” entitled “The IPCC Scenarios, Are they Plausible” which essentially showed that they were not. According to the Climategate emails, this paper led to the sacking of not only the Editor involved, but also the entire editorial board.

The Third Report in 2001 led to an invitation by Fred Singer for an International team of climate sceptics to Washington DC where we lectured in the Capitol building to an audience of mainly U.S. Government officials. After this, the Kyoto Treaty was no longer accepted by the USA and we hope we played a part in this decision.

I wrote a book “The Greenhouse Delusion: A Critique of Climate Change 2001” which was published by Multi-Science Publishers UK. Ken Shirley MP launched it in Wellington in 2002 in the Parliament buildings. It is still in print and was recently offered on Amazon.com. The Authors of Chapter 1 of “Climate Change 2001” signed their professional death warrant when they wrote: “The fact that the global mean temperature has increased since the late 19th Century and that other trends have been observed, does not necessarily mean that an anthropogenic effect on the climate has been identified. Climate has always varied on all time-scales, so the observed changes may be natural.”

The Fourth Report (2007) took special precautions to ensure that no true statement about the climate like this one could ever appear again. Chapter 1 was now entitled “Historical Overview of Climate Change Science” which dealt exclusively with the FCCC definition of “Climate Science”. It omitted all mention of conventional meteorology and concealed all the many measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide carried out between 1850 and 1975.

By this time I was largely debarred from lecturing in New Zealand. I was therefore surprised that in March 2006 I was invited to the Beijing Climate Center, where I gave three lectures covering most of my criticisms of the 4th (2007) IPCC Report, on the First Draft of which I had already commented. The Chairman of the WGI Committee that produced the Report was the Senior Fellow at the Beijing Climate Center Professor Yihui Ding. When I was given a paper in which he was the second author, which essentially showed that there had been no significant temperature change in China for 100 years, I assumed that he may be sympathetic to some of my comments. So I made as many as 1,878 comments on the next draft, 16{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of the total received.

Up to that time, all my comments were secret. I spent some time going through the published Reports trying to find out whether they had taken any notice of my comments. With the Fourth Report a demand that the comments and their treatment be made public was made through the Official Information Act, so all of them have been published, with most of them rejected out of hand, with no attempt to provide a reply.

I summarised my comments in a paper on the “Summary for Policymakers” to “Energy in Environment” in 2007. When the Report was published I found that Professor Ding was no longer Chairman, although he is still in his post and has contributed to the current Fifth IPCC Report.

There were several attempts by independent scientists to publish an alternative Report to the IPCC 4TH Report. I joined one of them, assembled by Fred Singer, who met in Vienna in April 2007 to discuss their contributions. The Heartland Institute as “Climate Change Reconsidered” published the report in August 2009.

The 5th IPCC Report is now under way, and I have commented on both the drafts of the WGI Committee. The details of the Second Draft have now been “leaked” so there is currently much discussion of its contents on the Internet. Much of the material in this Newsletter has already been published in my “Spinning the Climate” (2009), my autobiography “Confessions of a Climate Sceptic” (2010), “The Triumph of Doublespeak (2010) and several Newsletters

 Dr. Vincent Gray Wellington, New Zealand

A fascinating piece by Gordon Gibson appeared in the globeandmail.com on New Year’s Eve that identifies why environmentalists are never open to debate.* They are adherents of a new green religion that is replacing liberalism with anti-mind defeatism and anti-life nihilism.

With ‘Absolutism in the Church of Green’ Gibson identifies the distinctly more common phenomenon with high priests who can speak ex cathedra and gain immediate belief. Gibson pinpoints that “David Suzuki, Al Gore and Amory Lovins, among others, have this otherworldly gravitas.”

Gibson puts the spotlight on former Quebec premier Lucien Bouchard who made some astonishing comments as if he were a devout supplicant of this new green divinity. The article addresses the common and unquestioning acceptance that ‘fracking’ to produce natural gas is bad. Gibson writes “Among true believers in both cases, absolutism reigns. The badness is self-evident; the projects must not proceed. You can’t trade a little evil for a little wealth – there must be zero chance of harm.”

The fallacies within green thinking are also exquisitely exposed in a triumvirate of posts by space scientists, Joseph E Postma at climateofsophistry.com. While Postma uses his literary microscope to dissect the archetypes and cognitive dissonance that typify the green mentality Gibson gives us a generalist’s overview in a bite size chunk.

Gibson concludes that Bouchard and too many politicians have taken up this absolute belief preached by the global warming advocates that resource development should be restricted in the interests of the environment. But such dogmatism comes at a severe cost. Absolute belief in anything is always dangerous.

In mainstream religion we may know of the Jesuits and Benedictines, where in the Church of Green there are Greenpeace and the Sierra Club. The power of the NGO’s to influence government is all too obvious to anyone who studies how these well-funded self-interest lobby groups work. They seem to be able to secure tithes (donations) from wealthy beneficiaries to fuel what they see are “good works” but which are “good” in the jaundiced eyes of those who have extreme views about limiting human expansion or technological development. Gibson recognizes that “Where the focus of a couple of generations ago was unambiguously on the prosperity of the human race, it has shifted with remarkable speed, at least in rich-world public posturing, to the health of the planet.”

 It is certainly given a veneer of justification by way of a Malthusian-style rationale that speaks to our fears about global population growth and finite planetary resources. And given the demise of mainstream religion this new Church of Green does appear to fill a void in our souls where western middle classes may want to blame themselves for consumerism, feel guilty for enjoying relative material wealth and thereupon feel the duty to pay a ‘price’ for absolution from Mother Gaia.

 But as Gibson warns, “Religion has an enormous usefulness to many individuals. But there’s more. Religion is, by its nature, absolutist. Because it embodies the Truth, one should not deviate. Of course we all sin, but deliberate tradeoffs are not permissible. It’s not allowed to do a little bit of evil to become a little bit rich, and especially not great evil for great wealth.”

The article tells us that there is increasing recognition that the eco cultists are more about restricting our freedoms rather than allowing individuals to find their own destiny in this life. In that sense they are part of an authoritarian trend opposed to personal liberty. I enjoyed reading both Postma’s and Gibson’s pieces and readers will certainly glean further insight by perusing the vast number of comments the Gibson article has already stirred up.

*Hat tip: PSI member John Moffat

Latest research shows that news coverage of the global warming scare fell again in 2012. Despite all the hype over ‘Superstorm Sandy’ the year 2012 continued the trend of falling mainstream news and public interest about climate. But while most news outlets cut back on global warming stories the core promoters of the man-made warming cult are unmoved in their coverage.

The latest numbers come from the media database maintained by the non-profit journalism site The Daily Climate as reported by Climate Central blog. They prove that the New York Times led the way in 2012 posting the most stories on this non issue. The inescapable truth is that public interest in global warming has long fallen off a cliff. In no small part because, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)  global temperatures have flat lined since 1997.  Nonetheless, the NYT still registered the biggest increase in climate coverage among the five largest U.S. daily papers, according to media data trackers from the University of Colorado.

According to The Daily Climate a total of 7,194 reporters and commentators filed 18,546 stories, compared to 7,166 reporters who filed 18,995 stories in 2011. Climate Central says, “The numbers remain far from 2009′s peak, when roughly 11,000 reporters and commentators published 32,400 items on climate change, based on the news site’s archive.”

Meanwhile in Britain UK television viewers were treated to a gloomy New Year prediction from media alarmists-in-chief, the BBC.  The BBC’s Roger Harrabin announced the nation’s first “climate disaster” story of the year delivered by the discredited Met Office. Hopefully, they will have better luck than their last pitiful prediction. The gaffe-prone Met Office issued a long range forecast in a  press release  last March warning that 2012 was going to bring a “very serious summer drought.”  In the same article they boasted they had “world-leading weather forecasting expertise.” But right on cue the clouds opened up and the weather played its usual trick with a slew of deluges to prove just how incompetent the Met Office really is.  Today the record books show 2012 was the second wettest in Britain for 100 years. No wonder these clowns are the butt of so many jokes.

So this week, in the wake of all that prolonged rain, out come the nation’s weather bunglers this time saying global warming models predicted 2012’s rain and more is on the way! Oh boy, nothing changes. Harrabin and the Met Office have a track record of being economical with the truth. Perhaps the root of the problem could be their choice of  Robert Napier as boss. This is the same Robert Napier who is Chairman of the Carbon Disclosure Project – as hard core green as it gets.

With both the Met Office and the BBC unashamedly with their grubby fingers in the climate change money pie it’s no wonder viewers have switched off.  As the latest media data proves, more savvy media outlets are reacting accordingly and dumping climate alarmism.  But no prizes for predicting that the Met Office, the BBC and the New York Times will go on spewing the same old nonsense regardless – especially as the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is set to publish a major new report later this year.

Scientists at the Max Planck Institute, Germany have discovered that the Horse Head Nebula galaxy in the Orion constellation contains a vast field of hydrocarbons (‘fossil fuel’ to you and me).The astonishing discovery signals the death of a theory that for decades told us the petroleum we use to power our motor cars comes from rotten prehistoric vegetation and dead dinosaurs.

A powerful 30-meter telescope positioned at the Institute for Radio Astronomy confirmed the incredible news. Astronomer Jerome Pety told The Daily Galaxy, “We observed the operation of a natural refinery of gigantic size”. Will this incredible story be appearing in the mainstream media? Probably not. So far only the Daily Galaxy and the oil industry publication Rigzone have put this amazing discovery ‘out there.’

This incredible revelation confirms what scientists and engineers at Principia Scientific International (PSI) had long claimed: abiogenic oil theory was far more credible, based on the actual evidence, than the fossil fuel theory. For some years now Texan engineer, Joseph A. Olson and this author have battled to get this issue more widely debated. Now, it seems, this new discovery offers fresh hope that we can finally dismantle another brick in the wall of mainstream junk science.

Olson and other researchers will claim this new discovery affirms their hypothesis that hydrocarbons are formed under considerable nuclear heat and pressure. Two years ago the Texan engineer wrote: “The newly ‘liberated’ atoms from the fission reactions are in an environment of extreme heat and pressure.  Some of these daughter atoms are stable, non-reactive inert gases, others quickly find a matching atom and form a stable diatomic molecule.  For the remaining atoms, the heat and pressure force new molecular bonding.

As Olson declared years ago, “Oil is a renewable resource and man’s harvesting of this resource, may be of actual benefit to the eco-system.” The Houston engineer believes that once we abandon the nonsense of the ‘fossil fuel’ theory we will better placed to utilize what he believes is one of Earth’s best naturally re-generated resources: petroleum. 

Whether or not the stars are also constantly creating a boundless supply of oil, astronomer Viviana Guzman is sure of one thing; that the nebula contains 200 times more hydrocarbons than the total amount of water on Earth. Now that a world-leading science body, the Max Planck Institute, joins us in letting the cat-out-the-bag it is time that  the discredited ‘one percent’ who govern us stop peddling their self-serving lies about ‘peak oil’ and all those other Malthusian junk science scare stories (global warmers, are you listening?).

For too long a scientifically illiterate mainstream media has misled us. The western world, has been living in an age of stupid where self-loathing, guilt-ridden middle classes were duped into believing government junk science.

Hydraulic fracturing, often vilified by sections of the media, is already confirming there may be vast untapped lakes of oil being continuously replenished under our feet. In the USA the oil and shale gas revolution promises much as indicated elsewhere.

But it isn’t just in the stars that our skyward gaze has revealed a wondrous bounty of hydrocarbons. As Olson reminds us it was four years ago Saturn’s orange moon Titan was found to have hundreds of times more liquid hydrocarbons than all the known oil and natural gas reserves on Earth. The finding was from data obtained by the Cassini space mission. It was made known by a study led by Ralph Lorenz, Cassini radar team member from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, USA.Titan is known to have dozens of Titan’s lakes each having the equivalent of all earth’s natural gas supplies.

PSI co-founder Joe Olson asks, “Will humanity harvest and use this resource or will over-funded pressure groups and expanding government forces overwhelm reason and force unneeded control of this resource?”

But while media misinformation rules and we allow it, then we should blame ourselves for such perfidy and our corrupt and collapsing world economy. As long as we fail to fully exploit the Internet as the medium of shared learning we will continue to see the stupid get stupider, the rich get richer and poor, poorer. But if we embrace knowledge and share the truth we can more speedily put behind us the absurdities of man-made global warming, ‘Too big to fail’ banking, ‘peak oil’, ‘fossil fuels’, ‘Big Bang’ theory, etc.

Please help PSI become a force for good in this fast-evolving Age of the Internet where self-directed research and learning can reap real benefits for wider society. The Max Planck Institute has provided an invaluable addition to our growing knowledge of our bountiful Universe. PSI will be addressing further the implications of this new discovery. We will assessing, for example, how we may now better understand the true significance and potential of ‘Frakking’ – the fracturing of rock to release all that earth-bound hydrocarbon treasure which is the key to a bountiful and cheap energy-driven future.

It is up to us to free ourselves from the straitjacket of ignorance.