John Holdren’s Epic Fail

Written by Roger Pielke, Jr.

Last week in a Congressional hearing, John Holdren, the president’s science advisor, characterized me as being outside the “scientific mainstream” with respect to my views on extreme events and climate change. Specifically, Holdren was responding directly to views that I provided in Senate testimony that I gave last July (and here in PDF).John Holdren

To accuse an academic of holding views that lie outside the scientific mainstream is the sort of delegitimizing talk that is of course common on blogs in the climate wars. But it is rare for political appointee in any capacity — the president’s science advisor no less — to accuse an individual academic of holding views are are not simply wrong, but in fact scientifically illegitimate. Very strong stuff.
Given the seriousness of Holdren’s charges and the possibility of negative professional repercussions, via email I asked him to substantiate or correct his characterization, to which he replied quite quickly that he would do so in the form of a promised follow-up to the Senate subcommittee.

Here is what I sent him:

Dear John-

I hope this note finds you well. I am writing in response to your characterization of me before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight yesterday, in which you said that my views lie “outside the scientific mainstream.”

This is a very serious charge to make in Congressional testimony about a colleague’s work, even more so when it comes from the science advisor to the president.

The context of your comments about me was an exchange that you had with Senator Sessions over my recent testimony to the full EPW Committee on the subject of extreme events. You no doubt have seen my testimony (having characterized it yesterday) and which is available here:
http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/admin/publication_files/2013.20.pdf

Your characterization of my views as lying “outside the scientific mainstream” is odd because the views that I expressed in my testimony are entirely consonant with those of the IPCC (2012, 2013) and those of the US government’s USGCRP.  Indeed, much of my testimony involved reviewing the recent findings of IPCC SREX and AR5 WG1. My scientific views are also supported by dozens of peer reviewed papers which I have authored and which have been cited thousands of times, including by all three working groups of the IPCC. My views are thus nothing if not at the center of the “scientific mainstream.”

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Key Global Warming Court Case hit by Fatal Technicality

Written by PSI Staff

Climate scientist left with nowhere to hide in unwinnable multi-million dollar libel claim. Michael Mann’s lawyer, Roger McConchie, tries to put on a brave face as his client’s SLAPP suit against Tim Ball hits a fatal technicality that bodes ill for Penn. State University’s climate data fraudster.  Defeat and disgrace for Mann is inevitable due to his continued refusal to show in open court what Mann still laughingly terms his “proprietary data.”

Mann extract

Last week McConchie, who “literally wrote the book” on Canadian libel law, issued a standard facile press release dismissing as “preposterous…nonsense” a Principia Scientific International (PSI) article in which John O’Sullivan, an outspoken party to the proceedings, astonishingly declared Mann’s case against Ball effectively dead.  O’Sullivan immediately replied mocking McConchie. As we see detailed below, McConchie can’t flim-flam his way out of this one.

To readers unfamiliar with Canadian rules of civil procedure, Under Canadian law (Sedona Canada Principles), it is unlawful for an attorney to be complicit in his client’s intentional withholding of key evidence from the court.  Penalties and sanctions include fines, professional sanctions and disbarment for wilful offenders, not to mention potential summary judgment in favor of the opposing litigants (in this case, Dr Tim Ball).

The Sedona Canada Principles (see www.thesedonaconference.org) provide guidance with respect to the evidence preservation/disclosure obligation [1]. Canada demands that all litigants (and their attorneys) preserve documents or records from a wide-variety of data types, storage locations and the applicable applications to retrieve such information (if it relates to out-of-date or older archived records). For Michael Mann, this meant he had to prevail upon the Information Technology personnel at Penn. State University and his former employers at the University of Virginia to retrieve and surrender to him (and the British Columbia Supreme Court) all paperwork plus any “data and information stored in electronic form”

The Sedona Canada Principles are of great advantage to Dr Ball being that Mann cannot persist indefinitely in unlawfully keeping under wraps his “secret science.”  Already three years have passed since Mann first filed his claim against Ball after Ball published an article in Canada Free Press whereby he joked that Mann “belongs in the state penn, not Penn State.“

But all joking aside, the intentional concealing of key evidence is always fatal to any offending litigant’s claims, and any such act of concealment is known in the legal profession as spoliation.  Wilful spoliators (evidence destroyers/concealers) now face the most stringent penalties under Canadian law.

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Outstanding New Website: Global Warming Solved

Written by PSI Staff

Further expert independent research affirms the greenhouse gas ‘theory’ of man-made global warming is bogus. Dr. Ronan Connolly, Dr. Michael Connolly and Dr. Imelda Connolly have launched a new website detailing their five-year intensive study. We believe their research is a compelling addition to the body of work exposing the greatest scientific fraud of all time.global warming solved

Below we run an introductory extract from the Connolly Family’s website to both encourage wider reader participation in ongoing open peer review of such analyses, as well as to demonstrate the unstoppable rise of principled scientists against government-sponsored academic fraud.

 

Start Here

Contents

  • What we have found
  • The methods we used
  • Our motivation for this work
  • Where to learn more about our research
  • What we have found

    1. We are not warming the planet

    For several decades now, it has been widely believed that humans are causing unusual global warming by increasing the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

    Our research has convinced us that this man-made global warming theory is wrong. We will explain why we have come to this conclusion on this website.

    It is true that humans have been increasing the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, because of our use of fossil fuels. Before the Industrial Revolution, carbon dioxide seems to have been about 0.03{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of the atmosphere, while it is now about 0.04{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117}.

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    Greenpeace co-founder: No scientific evidence of man-made global warming

    Written by Michael Bastasch, Dailycaller.com

    There is no scientific evidence that human activity is causing the planet to warm, according to Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore, who testified in front of a Senate committee on Tuesday.emissions

    Moore argued that the current argument that the burning of fossil fuels is driving global warming over the past century lacks scientific evidence. He added that the Earth is in an unusually cold period and some warming would be a good thing.

    “There is no scientific proof that human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are the dominant cause of the minor warming of the Earth’s atmosphere over the past 100 years,” according to Moore’s prepared testimony. “Today, we live in an unusually cold period in the history of life on earth and there is no reason to believe that a warmer climate would be anything but beneficial for humans and the majority of other species.”

    “It is important to recognize, in the face of dire predictions about a [two degrees Celsius] rise in global average temperature, that humans are a tropical species,” Moore said. “We evolved at the equator in a climate where freezing weather did not exist. The only reasons we can survive these cold climates are fire, clothing, and housing.”

    “It could be said that frost and ice are the enemies of life, except for those relatively few species that have evolved to adapt to freezing temperatures during this Pleistocene Ice Age,” he added. “It is ‘extremely likely’ that a warmer temperature than today’s would be far better than a cooler one.”

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    Another climate change myth DEBUNKED by proper climate scientists

    Written by Lewis Page, The Register

    Proper climate scientists with PhDs in the subject and everything say they have “debunked” a climate change “myth” which is commonly repeated on the internet. The myth in question is the idea that global warming is causing an increase in the number of tropical cyclones/hurricanes. hurricaneCertainly there’s plenty of support among bloggers for that idea:

    Global warming and the future of storms … hurricanes will become more frequent” – The Guardian, “Climate Consensus”

    The North Atlantic Ocean Basin has been in a more active period of tropical cyclones since 1995” – Climate Central

    Hurricane Sandy is an example of the extreme weather symptomatic of continued climate change, as storms continue to become more frequent” – Greenpeace

    The last decade has seen an average of 17 hurricanes and tropical storms in the Atlantic – earlier in the century, half that number were recorded” – BBC

    But it’s not true, according to Professor Stefan Grab and postdoc researcher Jennifer Fitchett of Witwatersrand university in South Africa. The two scientists write:

    By analysing three storm track records spanning periods of 66–161 years, we establish that much of the perceived change in storm numbers can be attributed to improvements in storm detection methods over the past century.

    The new study is published in the International Journal of Climatology. The “debunk” and “myth” quotes are from a Witwatersrand uni announcement highlighting that research and another paper by Fitchett, which suggests that winter frosts in South Africa are set to become more damaging. ®

    Read more from The Register here.

     

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    Fuddle-Duddle Cold

    Written by Dr Klaus L.E. Kaiser

    Several decades ago, a then-Prime Minister of Canada used the F-expletive to describe his displeasure with a political opponent. The official transcript used the term “Fuddle-Duddle” instead. It seems that much of the continent is currently stuck in deep freeze with no end in sight. So, is it permissible to use that term for the weather?snow plow

    Polar Vortex and Beer Gardens

    The weather people blame it on the Polar Vortex. It keeps all that Arctic air nicely on top of the North American land mass. In contrast to us, the Germans are missing out on winter this year. In Munich, Bavaria, the people are enjoying cool steins in the city’s beer gardens. What a hardship!

    Climate Depot

    The Climate Depot website reported on Feb. 25, 2014 on the testimony before the U.S. Senate Environment & Public Works Committee by Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore. Inter alia Moore stated “The fact that we had both higher temperatures and an ice age at a time when CO2 emissions were 10 times higher than they are today fundamentally contradicts the certainty that human-caused CO2 emissions are the main cause of global warming.”

    Mother Nature did her best to drive home his point by providing a frigid “climate” for the day. What a nice gesture! But it must also be said that what is happening outside on any given day is the “weather” whereas climate is measured in decades and centuries.

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    Climate Clown Michael Mann and his SLAPP suit Lawyer’s Hot Air

    Written by

    Empty claim by lawyer of climate data fraudster, Michael Mann paints a picture of desperation as SLAPP suit against Dr Tim Ball flunks. Junk scientist left with nowhere to hide secret faked ‘hockey stick’ graph computer code after hard-hitting recent article. Cry baby MannOn his Facebook page Mann yesterday posted his lawyer, Roger McConchie’s, tame rebuttal to my recent article:

              “The Mann lawsuit is currently in the discovery phase, with further examinations for discovery (depositions) of the defendants to be scheduled shortly, following which I will either set the action for trial by jury in the usual manner, or bring a summary trial application on behalf of Dr. Mann for damages and injunctive relief.”

    Here’s why that’s pure attorney flim-flam. Mann will not dare go to trial because to do so would require he surrender as evidence his hidden metadata (more on that below). To let a jury see that statistical chicanery would prove Dr Ball correctly adduced that Mann “belongs in the state pen, not Penn State!” As such, egotistical Mann’s trumped up case is unwinnable.

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    Climate Consensus Con Game

    Written by S. Fred Singer

    At the outset, let’s be quite clear: There is no consensus about dangerous anthropogenic global warming (DAGW)—and there never was. There is not even a consensus on whether human activities, such as burning fossil fuels to produce useful energy, affect global climate significantly. So what’s all this fuss about?Fred Singer

    Let’s also be quite clear that science does not work by way of consensus. Science does not progress by appeal to authority; in fact, major scientific advances usually come from outside the consensus; one can cite many classic examples, from Galileo to Einstein. [Another way to phrase this issue: Scientific veracity does not depend on fashionable thinking.] In other words, the very notion of a scientific consensus is unscientific.

    The degree of consensus also depends on the way the questions are phrased. For example, we can get 100{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} consensus if the question is “Do you believe in climate change?” We can get a near-100{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} consensus if the question is “Do you believe that humans have some effect on the climate?” This latter question also would include also local effects, like urbanization, clearing of forests, agriculture, etc.

    So one has to be rather careful and always ask: What is the exact question for which a consensus has been claimed?

    Subverting Peer Review

    Finally, we should point out that a consensus can be manufactured—even where no consensus exists. For example, it has become very popular to claim that 97{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of all publications support AGW. Here the key question to ask is: Which publications and what exactly is the form of support?

    Thanks to the revelations of the Climategate e-mails, we now have a more skeptical view about the process which is used to vet publications. We know now that peer-review, once considered by many as the ‘gold-standard,’ can be manipulated—and in fact has been manipulated by a gang of UK and US climate scientists who have been very open about their aim to keep dissenting views from being published. We also know from the same e-mails that editors can be bullied by determined activists.

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    Michael Mann’s SLAPP suit: The Hockey Stick Controversy

    Written by

    As Penn. State’s junk climate scientist Michael Mann sees his SLAPP lawsuit against climatologist Dr Tim Ball expensively unravel in the Vancouver court, we provide readers with an authoritative non-technical summary of what a SLAPP suit actually is.disapproving judge Virginia P. Sherlock, Esq. of Littman, Sherlock & Heims explains below:

    What is a SLAPP suit?
    Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation. The term was coined by two University of Denver law professors, George Pring and Penelope Canan, who wrote SLAPPS: Getting Sued for Speaking Out, published in 1996.

    SLAPP suits typically involve the environment – for example, local residents who petition government to prevent a real estate development might be sued in a SLAPP suit for interference with the developer’s business interests.

    However, SLAPP suits aren’t limited to environmental or development activities. SLAPP suits have been filed in attempts to silence a critic of breast implant technologies, a critic of a major pharmaceuticals company, internet service providers who host public interest blogs.

    There is a whole new body of law developing in the CyberSLAPP context, in which developers seek to silence anonymous posters to internet blogs or chat rooms.

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    Should scientific fraud be treated as a crime?

    Written by Retraction Watch

    Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa — known for his tough questions for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) — wants to know why a former researcher at Iowa State University wasn’t prosecuted more vigorously after he was found to have deliberately spiked rabbit blood samples in a federally-funded HIV vaccine study.ORI

    As Tony Leys of the Des Moines Register reports:

    In a pointed letter Monday, the Iowa Republican asked why the culprit, Dong-Pyou Han, only received a three-year ban from participating in federally financed research.

    “This seems like a very light penalty for a doctor who purposely tampered with a research trial and directly caused millions of taxpayer dollars to be wasted on fraudulent studies,” Grassley wrote to a senior official of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

     

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    PSI Vice Chair to Address Thunderbolts Project Conference

    Written by PSI Staff

    Dr Pierre R Latour, PSI Vice-Chairman and Professional Chemical Process Control Systems Engineer, registered in California and Texas, is an invited speaker at Thunderbolts Project Electric Universe 2014 Conference: ‘All About Evidence,’ in Albuquerque, New Mexico, March 20 – 24, 2014. Thunderbolt ProjectHe will address the group on’ Engineering Earth’s Thermostat with CO2?’ Dr Latour will explain why Earth’s temperature is a chemical process system and will present a review of control system engineering of Earth’s thermostat with anthropogenic CO2. Previously, in 1997 Latour proved the concept would never work in practice because it is an unmeasurable, unobservable and uncontrollable system. In short, CO2 does not affect temperature; temperature affects CO2. There are no greenhouse gases in physics. CO2 is not a pollutant; it is green plant food. Global warming has also stabilized since 1998.

    Dr Latour will show his audience that Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics, Engineering, Economics, History and Ethics are deployed to identify the barriers to designing the thermostat to control Earth’s atmospheric temperature by adjusting its CO2 input.

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    CO2 is Not a Black Polluting Gas: Dr Judy Ryan’s Battle against Govt Bureaucracy

    Written by Dr Judy Ryan

    Australia’s obdurate pro-green governmental bureaucracy has too long portrayed CO2 as a pollutant in taxpayer-funded literature, contrary to scientific fact. Campaigner and retired epidemiologist, Dr Judy Ryan, has championed objective reality over green spin to demand that the blatant lie that carbon dioxide is a black and polluting gas be expunged. Below, for the edification of concerned readers, we have pleasure in publishing Judy’s entire correspondence in this matter.

    BACKGROUND TO THE FORMAL COMPLAINT (No 2013- 502790) TO THE OMBUDSMAN FOR THE INCORRECT PORTRAYAL OF CO2 AS A BLACK POLLUTING GAS BY THE DEPARTMENT FOR THE ENVIRONMENT

    The Original  Formal Complaint was lodged against the then Department  for Climate Change (DCC) on 29th August 2013. It had many political and media  entities openly copied in, Students newspapers from all the major universities were also copied in. DCC  had 28 days to respond before  we could exercise our right to take it to the Ombudsman. The elections intervened and  DCC became  the Department of the Environment (DOE). Nobody from DOE contacted us so we took the formal complaint to the Ombudsman  on the 10th October 2013.  Nothing happened for a while, but I was assured over the phone that it was waiting to be attended to.  Time passed, and passed, and passed, until on the  afternoon of the 26th November 2013 I left a message on the Ombudsman’s answering machine, stating that If the matter was not dealt with within the next 48 hours we would lodge it again by public email. The following morning 27th November an officer from the Ombudsman’s office contacted me, deeply apologetic because the original formal complaint to DCC had somehow got lost in the change over of Government.  It’s a bit like “Yes Minister”  We re-resubmitted  the complaint to DOE.

     It was not dealt with satisfactorily  by the DOE officer and we took the complaint to the Ombudsman on 15 January 2014. The Ombudsman rejected it  on 22nd January , but we intend to exercise our right to resubmit the complaint. 

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    Michael Mann Faces Bankruptcy as his Courtroom Climate Capers Collapse

    Written by

    Massive counterclaims, in excess of $10 million, have just been filed against climate scientist Michael Mann after lawyers affirmed that the former golden boy of global warming alarmism had sensationally failed in his exasperating three-year bid to sue skeptic Canadian climatologist, Tim Ball. Door now wide open for criminal investigation into Climategate conspiracy.Mann arrest photo

    Buoyed by Dr Ball’s successes, journalist and free-speech defender, Mark Steyn has promptly decided to likewise countersue Michael Mann for $10 million in response to a similar SLAPP suit filed by the litigious professor from Penn. State University against not just Steyn, but also the National Review, the Competitive Enterprise Institute and Rand Simberg. Ball’s countersuit against Mann seeks “exemplary and punitive damages. ” Bishop Hill blog is running extracts of Steyn’s counterclaim, plus link.

    Mann’s chief undoing in all such lawsuits is highlighted in a quote in Steyn’s latest counterclaim:

    “Plaintiff continues to evade the one action that might definitively establish its [his science’s] respectability – by objecting, in the courts of Virginia, British Columbia and elsewhere, to the release of his research in this field. See Cuccinelli vs Rectors and Visitors of the University of Virginia…”

    At last, after 3 years of legal wrangling, it is made clear why I was so bold as to formally undertake an indemnity to fully compensate Dr Ball for my own actions in the event Mann won the case.  Respected Aussie climate commentator, Jo Nova was one of the few to commend my unparalled commitment to Ball’s cause.

    Steyn’s legal team, aware of the latest developments from Vancouver, have correctly adduced that Ball has effectively defeated Mann after the Penn. State pretender’s preposterous and inactive lawsuit against Ball was rendered dormant for failure to prosecute. Under law, Mann’s prevarications, all his countless fudging and evasiveness in the matter, establishes compelling evidence that his motive was not to prove Ball had defamed him, but more likely a cynical attempt to silence fair and honest public criticism on a pressing and contentious government policy issue.

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    A Lesson from the Great Barrier Reef

    Written by Dr Klaus L.E. Kaiser

    The Great Barrier Reef (GBR) along Australia’ s northern coast has long been considered one of the world’ s natural wonders. It stretches for over 1,000 miles along Australia’ s northeastern coast and is home to many species of marine organisms.starfish

    As of late, the GBR is under attack. The crown-of-thorns starfish, a native species, is said to have exploded in numbers and is munching its way through the coral “forest” to the detriment of the corals. In the past, there was a balance, a kind of give and take that allowed all species to prosper in a steady ratio. That has suddenly changed and the starfish is grazing the coral to death.

    What changed?

    Climate, a Weapon of Mass Destruction?

    The starfish in question lives by eating the soft parts of corals in the GBR. It has become a major threat now that it has been multiplying greatly due to over-fertilization of the water with nutrients from (land) surface runoff. The latter, of course, is a consequence of the farmers’  desire to turn every square inch of arable land into production of “fuel” like bio-ethanol and bio-diesel. Don’ t blame the farmers though. Al Gore, former Vice-President of the U.S. and John Kerry, the current Secretary of State and, of course, President Obama describe “global warming” AKA “climate change” as the numero uno threat to mankind; in Kerry’ s words a ‘weapon of mass destruction.’ Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich calls this statement delusional.

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    Spain plans end to all pre-2004 wind subsidies

    Written by Michael McGovern, windpowermonthly.com

    SPAIN: The Spanish government said it plans to end all price subsidies for wind capacity online before end-2004, while slashing remuneration for younger capacity.

    The full 1,700-page regulation, a summary of its long-awaited renewables regulation, was sent to regulator CNMC for a 20-day consultation period. It has not yet been made public. wind turbine burnsThe summary alone, nonetheless, discloses an act of institutional “retroactive looting”, Spanish wind association AEE told Windpower Monthly. 

    Investors behind all of Spain’s 22.6GW of online wind capacity were drawn by the state’s promise of maintaining feed-in tariffs for 20 years. 

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