Chief "Climategate" Scientist Admits No Warming Since 1995 - Where Is The Oregonian?

Submitted by Steve on Wed, 02/17/2010 - 3:22pm

Back in November, servers at the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University in England, ground central for scientists intent on proving that catastrophic global warming is happening and is man-caused (as compared to going wherever the science leads), were hacked, and thousands of emails were made public.  A number of things were revealed by this data, primary among them that

  • The data does NOT show increased warming
  • The scientists did everything they could - including manipulating the data (like Penn State's Michael Mann's "hiding the decline") - to hide this fact

The chief "scientist" at CRU was Phil Jones.  Once this information was made public, he was forced to step down from his position at East Anglia pending an inquiry into the emails and the fraud it revealed.  Since that time, other major problems with the famed IPCC report - of which Jones was a major contributor - that claims that the world is warming and it's all man's fault have been exposed.  For example:

Even NOAA and NASA got in on the act, with NASA doing its best to hide inconvenient data.  Michael Mann of Penn State, one of Jones compatriots, is also under investigation by the university for his part (although of course, the "investigation" was a joke).

And that's just the tip of the iceberg.  Then, this past weekend, Phil Jones was interviewed by the BBC (something the American media wouldn't dare to do unless it was throwing Larry King type softball questions at him), and was asked some pretty specific questions. The answers revealed a lot about the truth behind the actual data:

A - Do you agree that according to the global temperature record used by the IPCC, the rates of global warming from 1860-1880, 1910-1940 and 1975-1998 were identical?

An initial point to make is that in the responses to these questions I've assumed that when you talk about the global temperature record, you mean the record that combines the estimates from land regions with those from the marine regions of the world. CRU produces the land component, with the Met Office Hadley Centre producing the marine component.

Temperature data for the period 1860-1880 are more uncertain, because of sparser coverage, than for later periods in the 20th Century. The 1860-1880 period is also only 21 years in length. As for the two periods 1910-40 and 1975-1998 the warming rates are not statistically significantly different (see numbers below).

I have also included the trend over the period 1975 to 2009, which has a very similar trend to the period 1975-1998.

So, in answer to the question, the warming rates for all 4 periods are similar and not statistically significantly different from each other. 

G - There is a debate over whether the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) was global or not. If it were to be conclusively shown that it was a global phenomenon, would you accept that this would undermine the premise that mean surface atmospheric temperatures during the latter part of the 20th Century were unprecedented?

There is much debate over whether the Medieval Warm Period was global in extent or not. The MWP is most clearly expressed in parts of North America, the North Atlantic and Europe and parts of Asia. For it to be global in extent the MWP would need to be seen clearly in more records from the tropical regions and the Southern Hemisphere. There are very few palaeoclimatic records for these latter two regions.

Of course, if the MWP was shown to be global in extent and as warm or warmer than today (based on an equivalent coverage over the NH and SH) then obviously the late-20th century warmth would not be unprecedented. On the other hand, if the MWP was global, but was less warm that today, then current warmth would be unprecedented.

We know from the instrumental temperature record that the two hemispheres do not always follow one another. We cannot, therefore, make the assumption that temperatures in the global average will be similar to those in the northern hemisphere. 

Let's go to Marc Sheppard for some color analysis:

Then there are the statements Jones made regarding relatively recent temperature trends which truly boggle the mind. 

Imagine a man who has spent the better part of the past 25 years toiling to convince the world of CO2-forced 20th-century warming now admitting that the difference in warming rates for the periods 1860-1880, 1910-40 and 1975-2009 is statistically insignificant. Jones even acceded that there has been no statistically-significant global warming since 1995; that in fact,global temperatures have been trending to the downside since January of 2002, although he denied the statistical significance of the -0.12C per decade decline.

Yet as incredible as those concessions truly are, they pale in comparison to this response to a question about the significance of the Medieval Warm Period:
There is much debate over whether the Medieval Warm Period was global in extent or not. The MWP is most clearly expressed in parts of North America, the North Atlantic and Europe and parts of Asia. For it to be global in extent the MWP would need to be seen clearly in more records from the tropical regions and the Southern Hemisphere. There are very few palaeoclimatic records for these latter two regions.
Stop the tape.

Much debate? So Jones now openly admits that the debate as to whether the MWP (900-1300 AD) was worldwide and warmer than any period since is not over.  He even went on to explain the implication of his admission:
Of course, if the MWP was shown to be global in extent and as warm or warmer than today (based on an equivalent coverage over the NH and SH) then obviously the late-20th century warmth would not be unprecedented. On the other hand, if the MWP was global, but was less warm that today, then current warmth would be unprecedented.

 Precisely, and yet, as director of CRU since 1998, rather than remedy the paucity of well-dated, high-resolution SH paleo-temperature records in order to establish the incredibly vital truth, Jones instead worked closely with those conspiring to remove the MWP from the climate history records altogether.

Read the whole thing.

Now, considering how hard the Fish Wrapper editors and reporters have worked over the years to convince us that the hype is real, don't you think this would be something worth reporting?  If you answered yes, you must not be one of the media elites, because that would assume that a newspaper would report both sides of the story.  

In fact, the Fish Wrapper did their best to hide this story.  On November 25th, they managed a short story by Scott Learn that attempted to bury the scandal under more gloom and doom hype that global warming is moving "faster than expected."  Then, on December 7th, they used the same tactic again in a story on another scientist, Phil Rasch, first chief climate scientist for the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, where they attempted to obscure the depth of the scandal while talking about how Rasch thinks we need to curb CO2 emissions.  Anything else has been added in blogs by non-reporters or comments on the web site.

But, the Fish Wrapper is not alone - the rest of the MSM has done it's best to avoid covering the scandal.  As reported by Noel Sheppard:
 

As NewsBusters reported Saturday, Phil Jones, the head of the British Climatic Research Unit at the heart of ClimateGate, told the BBC: the recent warming trend that began in 1975 is not at all different than two other planetary warming phases since 1850; there has been no statistically significant warming since 1995, and; it is possible the Medieval Warm Period was indeed a global phenomenon thereby making the temperatures seen in the latter part of the 20th century by no means unprecedented.

Jones also admitted that he and his fellow scientists manipulated figures to hide a decline in crucial tree-ring data thereby questioning the validity of the entire global warming theory.

Despite the seriousness of these revelations, much as what happened when the ClimateGate scandal first broke, with the exception of Fox News -- and a lone report by CNN -- America's media have almost totally boycotted this amazing story:

I couldn't have said it better myself.

User login

Syndicate

Syndicate content