Australian climatologist: Humans have been warming the planet "at the rate of four Hiroshima bombs of heat every second"

Down under, the global warming alarmists must be quite desperate, if they think that this kind of arguments will convince anybody:

The planet has been building up temperatures at the rate of four Hiroshima bombs of heat every second, and it's all our fault, say climate scientists.

Hurricane Katrina and superstorm Sandy are just two examples of how extreme weather will intensify, Australia's Climate Action Summit has heard.

Humans are emitting more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than any other time in history, says John Cook, Climate Communication Fellow from the Global Change Institute at the University of Queensland.

"All these heat-trapping greenhouse gases in our atmosphere mean ... our planet has been building up heat at the rate of about four Hiroshima bombs every second - consider that going continuously for several decades.''

Read the entire article here

Leading German climatologist: "Climate research was hijacked by politicians"

"Climate research was hijacked by politicians, in order to make their decisions look scientifically given and without any alternative". That is the key message in German climatologist, IPCC lead writer Hans von Storch's new book "Die Klimafalle: Die gefährliche Nähe von Politik und Klimaforschung" (The Climate Trap: The dangerous closeness between politics and climate research), which he has written together with social scientist Werner Krauß. 

Von Storch is highly critical of the IPCC reports, which he describes as "co-productions between science and politics". By accepting the "one truth only" basis for political decisions, scientists have made themselves "clandestine advocates", says von Storch. A blend of apocalyptic rhetoric and politically exploited science has driven climate research into a dead end. "It was extravagant to claim, that such a complicated problem as climate change was 'solved', and that there was a consensus about it", von Storch and Krauß write. 

The authors also say that it was "scandalous" that Michael Mann and the rest of his "hockey team" broke the scientific free exchange of information rules. The trench warfare damaged science - "open debate, the engine of scientific progress, was abandoned". The loss of credibility has not only damaged climate research - but also the protection of the environment, the authors say. 

Although von Storch does not want to be called a climate skeptic, his argumentation is still an important  and most welcome step forward towards a meaningful discussion of climate change/global warming. One must hope that his criticism is read - and understood - by the hundreds of climatologists and other scientists who have allowed themselves to be used as tools in a political game. 

Read the two Der Spiegel articles here (in German). 

"Albert Einstein's famous 1905 paper on relativity was not peer reviewed"

Australian palaeoclimatologist and - climate realist - Bob Carter explains why the "gold standard" of peer reviewed climate science is not what people like R.K. Pachauri pretend it is: 

Peer review is a technique of quality control for scientific papers that emerged slowly through the 20th century, achieving a dominant influence in science after World War II. 

The process works like this: a potential scientific author conducts research, writes a paper on their results and submits the paper to a professional journal in the relevant specialist field of science.

The editor of the journal then scan-reads the paper. Based on their knowledge of the contents of the paper, and of the activities of other scientists in the same research field, the editor selects (usually) two people, termed referees, to whom he sends the draft manuscript of the paper for review.

Referees, who are unpaid, differ in the amount of time and effortthey devote to their task of review. At one extreme a referee will criticise and correct a paper in detail, including making comments on the scientific content. At the other extreme, a referee may merely skim-read a paper, ignoring obvious mistakes in writing style or grammar, and make some general comments to the editor about its scientific accuracy or otherwise.

Generally neither type of referee, nor those in between, check the original data, or the detailed statistical calculations (or, today, complex computer modelling) that often form the kernel of a piece of modern scientific research.

Each referee recommends whether the paper should be published (usually with corrections) or rejected, the editor making the final decision.

In essence, traditional peer review is a technique of editorial quality control, and that a scientific paper has been peer reviewed is absolutely no guarantee the science it portrays is correct.

Indeed, it is the nature of scientific research that nearly all scientific papers are followed by later emendation, or reinterpretation, in the light of new discoveries or understanding.

A case in point is the recent paper by University of Melbourne researcher Joelle Gergis and co-authors that claimed to establish the existence of a southern hemisphere temperature "hockey stick". Now, the authors have rapidly withdrawn the study after fundamental criticisms of it appeared on Steve McIntyre's Climate Audit blog and elsewhere.

The Gergis paper differs in kind from many other IPCC-related studies by establishment climate research groups only in that the tendentious science it contains has been rapidly exposed as flawed. This exemplifies how the role of nurturing strong and independent peer review has now passed from the editors of journals to experts in the blogosphere, and especially so for papers concerned with perceived environmental problems such as global warming.

Scientific knowledge, then, is always in a state of flux; there is simply no such thing as "settled science", peer reviewed or otherwise. During the latter part of the 20th century, Western governments started channelling large amounts of research money into favoured scientific fields, prime among which has been global warming research.

This money has a corrupting influence, not least on the peer-review process.

Many scientific journals, including prestigious ones, are captured by insider groups of leading researchers in particular fields. In such cases, editors deliberately select their referees from scientists who work in the same field and share similar views.

The "climategate" email leak in 2009 revealed this cancerous process is at an advanced stage of development in climate science. A worldwide network of leading climate researchers was revealed to be actively influencing editors and referees to approve for publication only research that supported the IPCC's alarmist view of global warming and to prevent the publication of alternative views.

Backed by this malfeasant system, leading researchers who support the IPCC's red-hot view of climate change endlessly promulgate their alarmist recommendations as "based only upon peer-reviewed research papers", as if this were some guarantee of quality or accuracy.

Peer review, of course, guarantees neither. What matters is not whether a scientific idea or article is peer reviewed, but whether the science described accords with empirical evidence.

Read the entire article here

Michael Mann - The proud winner of a Mutual Admiration Society Prize

Michael Mann, the proud winner of a Mutual Admiration Society  prize

The international global warming cult in many respects follows the traditions of other closed occult societies. One distinct feature the AGW cult shares with the rest, is the strong need to praise each other. Thus e.g. the European Geosciences Union, in the true spirit of a Mutual Admiration Society, has this week awarded its "Hans Oeschger Medal" to Dr. Michael Mann, of Climategate and "hockey stick" fame:


The medal "is reserved for scientists for their outstanding achievements in ice research and/or short term climatic changes (past, present, future)".


The EGU gives these reasons for awarding Mann: 


Michael Mann obtained his PhD from Yale University and is Professor of Meteorology at the Pennsylvania State University. Mann deserves the award on the basis of his important contributions to the understanding of climate change over the last two millennia but also for pioneering statistical techniques for isolating climate signals in noisy data. He has chosen to work primarily in paleoclimate, but he has a strong mathematical and statistical background. Together, these strengths have made him a leader in his field. Mann’s climate reconstruction of the last 1000 years is popularly known as the “Hockey Stick” and gave tremendous impetus to the study of historical climate change, even though some questions remains about the magnitude of these past changes. By doing so, he had to face escalating political and personal attacks.


(It is interesting to note that even Mann´s ardent admirers at the EGU admit that "some questions remain" in the prize winners research!)


A look at the list of previous winners of the "Hans Oeschger Medal" brings forth a familiar face:

The first winner of the "Hans Oeschger Medal" was - surprise, surprise -  Mann´s British Climategate "colleague"


Philip D. Jones


for his remarkable contribution and sustained effort in reconstructing the climate of the last 250 years at the global and regional scales


And the chairman of the committee which awarded Mann this year is a Frenchman - Dominique Raynaud - who himself received the medal in 2008: 


The 2008 Hans Oeschger Medal is awarded to Dominique Raynaud for his key contribution to the reconstruction of past atmospheric composition over the last 800000 years from Antarctic ice cores and to the understanding of the link between greenhouse gases and climate.


Mann will most likely soon be in a position to award a prize - and plenty of research funding - to some "distinguished" European member of the Mutual Admiration Society. 


This is the way the science of climatology works ....