Press release:
NEW KUSI-TV SPECIAL REPORT DOCUMENTS THE GLOBAL WARMING MELTDOWN
In a follow-up to the hit KUSI show “Global Warming: The Other Side”, iconic weatherman John Coleman documents the latest developments in Climategate. “Global Warming: Meltdown” airs Thursday at 9pm PT on KUSI-TV in San Diego and on KUSI.COM
New revelations have brought a chill to the hot rhetoric about Global Warming according to a new prime time television special report. And, the series of major snow storms in the eastern U.S., a series of freezes in Florida, and unrelenting cold over much of the Northern Hemisphere has given a major boost to global warming skepticism. Set for broadcast on Thursday, February 18th at 9pm PT on KUSI-TV in San Diego, this new program follows up on a mid-January Global Warming special on KUSI that was both a ratings and Internet hit.
KUSI Meteorologist John Coleman, founder of The Weather Channel and a leading global warming skeptic, will be seen in a point, counter-point segment that also features Richard Sommerville, Ph.D., an emeritus Research Scientist from Scripps Institution of Oceanography. (A brief video preview can be found at Thursday morning at www.kusi.com.)
Scripps, a major global warming research center, took exception with the first program’s segment that debunked the hypothesis of carbon dioxide as an important greenhouse gas.
The program will document many other new developments in the “Climategate” controversy including new questions about data manipulations at the US climate centers and problems with the weather observation stations where the critical temperature data is collected in this county and around the world. The program also covers the ever-growing list of revelations about the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and its troubled leader, Rajendra Pachauri.
Well-known Climatologist John Christy, Ph.D., will be interviewed on the program to report his findings from measuring Earth’s atmospheric temperature by satellite, a far more comprehensive measurement than is possible using land based thermometers.
Also appearing on the program will be Anthony Watts, the former TV Meteorologist and weather computer system entrepreneur who has documented the problems with weather stations and explains his view of the problems with global warming science.
“Global Warming: Meltdown”, the hour long, prime time special airs at 9 PM Pacific Time Thursday evening on KUSI-TV, 9/51 in San Diego.
The program will also be available after the broadcast on the station’s website, KUSI.COM. Over one million people have logged on to the website’s section on global warming since the first episode aired in January.
| Global Warming: Meltdown is a production of McKinnon Broadcasting. The Executive Producer is Joe Riddle.
For further information contact: Steve Cohen, KUSI-TV News Director 858-571-5151 |
Check it out….
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8521821.stm
OT, sort of…
De Boer quits!
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100218/ap_on_sc/climate_de_boer_quits
UN Climate Chief Yvo De Boer is stepping down in July.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/18/AR2010021801331_pf.html
Ivo ( Yvo) de Boer the UN climate bos resigns !
Meanwhile, back in the British House of Lords:-
“15 lords warn that ‘climategate’ could threaten action on climate change
The current and previous chairs of the Environment Agency, government climate change advisers Lords Stern and Turner, industrialist Lord Browne and CBI head Richard Lambert are worried that a “media furore is skewing the debate on climate change”.
Environment Agency Press Release http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/news/115756.aspx
___________________________________________________________________________________________________
(Letter to Daily telegraph)
Danger in climate doubt
SIR – The controversies around climate science (report, February 6) are disappointing, and threaten to undermine support for a global deal to reduce emissions, building on the Copenhagen accord.
There are important issues about scientific process and conduct that must and will be addressed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the University of East Anglia. Openness to scrutiny is important both for the integrity of science and public confidence in it. However, we are concerned that the media furore is skewing the debate on climate change.
Sceptics have seized the opportunity to claim that the whole edifice of climate change science is crumbling. This is far from the truth. The overwhelming body of peer-reviewed scientific evidence shows that climate change is happening and is very likely to be caused by human activity.
Yes, there is uncertainty in the science, and there probably always will be. But the uncertainties are not primarily about whether or not climate change is happening, but about how fast change will come and how bad it will be.
The challenge is in risk management, and none of the evidence implies that we can be confident that the risks are small. On the contrary, the evidence strongly suggests that the risks are major and delay in action is dangerous.
Lord Browne of Madingley
Lord Giddens
Lord Krebs
Lord Lewis of Newnham
Lord May of Oxford
Lord Oxburgh
Lord Puttnam
Lord Rees of Ludlow
Earl of Selborne
Lord Smith of Finsbury
Lord Stern of Brentford
Lord Stone of Blackheath
Lord Turner of Ecchinswell
Lord Whitty
Baroness Young of Old Scone
Richard Lambert,
Director-General, CBI
London SW1 ”
This is an absolutely outrageous statement. Notable for the presence in the list of several who have a direct pecuniary interest in keeping this scam going or, at least, are seeking to preserve what’s left of their reputation.
I wonder what their reaction would be to a statement saying:-
There are important issues about commercial probity and conduct that must and will be addressed by the Cosa Nostra and the Hong Kong Triads. Openness to scrutiny is important both for the integrity of commercial activity and public confidence in it. However, we are concerned that the media furore is skewing the debate on business and wealth creation.
There it is folks!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/18/AR2010021801331_pf.html
I’ll be watching. Nice to get a break from all this and watch as others take on the elephants in the room.
UN climate chief De Boer to quit
Yvo de Boer steps down!!! Is Pachauri the next one?
Ecotretas
I’m very interested in the claim that they dropped many of the colder stations in order to show a bias. I hope this gets investigated.
Peer review. How awesome. All the profss peer reviewed reports regarding the Duke Lacrosse team. They were not only wrong, but the little sista is trying to kill people.
http://www.wral.com/news/local/story/7068705/
The point is, closed minds only see information that supports their pre suppositions.
Pauchauri is vegetarian. It looks like he may also be eating crow very soon.
P Gosselin (04:45:32) :
“There it is folks!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/18/AR2010021801331_pf.html”
There.. it isn’t. Just get a “We are unable to locate the page you requested.
The page may have moved or may no longer be available ” message. Was it the de Boer story?
Well, if that wasn’t a thread hijack I don’t know what it was….lol
I thought the last program was good and would have gone down well with the general public.
I can’t wait to see this one!
Letter to 15 lords:
I write to you personally with regard to your letter in the Telegraph 10th Feb.
Pastor Richard Wurmbrandt spent many years in prison in Romania under the Communists for his faith. He tells* of how he once asked a fellow inmate how he came to be in prison. The man explained he had been arrested for a theft in his village. He was beaten up by the police to make him confess. Then the real culprit was caught. Instead of letting him go the police beat him up some more demanding that he confess to other (fictional) crimes.
You may wonder about the relevance of this story. It is this. First we humans were accused of causing global warming, and then, when the globe refused to warm, we were accused of causing climate change. Now that we know that humans are not guilty of causing climate change, it seems that those ‘in authority’, such as yourselves, are still determined that humanity must be guilty of something and continue to ‘hold us for questioning’.
It intrigues me that the ‘science’ that was declared, by people like yourselves, as ‘settled’ only a few weeks ago, is now to be a matter of ‘risk analysis’ – ie weighing up the probabilities that there might be a problem – it would seem so as to save the faces of those who have the power, but are losing their authority. Well let me assure you that the risk analysis is such that it is far more likely that the world will be struck by an asteroid than that humans could in any way cause disastrous climate change.
Would it not be more honourable to admit that you got it wrong and were misled? We could then draw a line under that and set about looking at genuine problems and issues that science could help solve.
Yours sincerely,
http://www.copenhagenclimatechallenge.org
* In God’s Underground, R.Wurmbrandt
3 answers received so far.
OT but I hope this thread will accommodate the following that is of particular relevance to the UK, where incoherent energy madness has prevailed for the past few years, and also may be of interest to those whose political masters display inclinations to adopt a similar course in their endeavours to save the world.
In the Daily Telegraph UK letters three days ago a Research Fellow from The Centre for Policy Studies wrote that the total energy contributed by our stock of 2,800 wind turbines this winter amounted to 0.7% of overall generation through that same period.
Fortunately the mathematically illiterate Gordon Brown (our PM and ex Chancellor of the Exchequer, don’t you know) and his parroting henchman Millliband are ahead of this curve and have commissioned a further 10,000 turbines to be deployed in order to provide up to 30% of our consumption.
Perhaps someone here knows how much that 0.7% cost per Kwh ?
My local representative writes that he is against further turbines in this area – a bit late for a Damascene conversion in my opinion, as I look out from my windows to all points of the compass, on sea and on land, and find myself surrounded by the excrescences, none of which are rotating as I write.
Must see TV!
Just watched the previous Coleman expose of perverted climate science on http://www.kusi.com and it is Great!
GLOBAL WARMING: THE OTHER SIDE
Well argued and presented.
I’ll be passing to my email list of “Doubters”.
My super computer weather programs and my slide rule are showing a marked increase in the Climategate wind.
Just filling in some details, with thanks to Wikipedia (!):
* Lord Browne of Madingley, was group Chief Executive of BP until his resignation on 1 May 2007
* Lord Giddens, a British sociologist who is renowned for his theory of structuration and his holistic view of modern societies
* Lord Krebs, a world leader in zoology and more specifically bird behaviour, was the first Chairman of the British Food Standards Agency (2000–05)
* Richard Lambert, is Director-General of the CBI, and the present Chancellor of the University of Warwick
* Lord Lewis of Newnham, an English chemist working mainly in the area of the transition elements
* Lord May of Oxford, has been Chief Scientific Adviser to HM Government, President of the Royal Society, and a Professor at Sydney, Princeton, Oxford, and Imperial College London. He is a Fellow of Merton College, Oxford. … When asked if religious leaders should be doing more to persuade people to combat climate change, he stated that it was absolutely necessary.
* Lord Oxburgh, a geologist, a past Rector of Imperial College, and was non-executive chairman of Royal Dutch Shell PLC from 2004–5
* Lord Puttnam, film producer and politician
* Lord Rees of Ludlow, an English cosmologist and astrophysicist. He has been Astronomer Royal since 1995, and Master of Trinity College, Cambridge since 2004. He became President of the Royal Society on 1 December 2005. He has taken to speaking about humanity’s future on Earth.
* Earl of Selborne, He is one of the ninety elected hereditary peers that remain in the House of Lords after the passing of the House of Lords Act 1999, and sits as a Conservative.
* Lord Smith of Finsbury, a British Labour politician, and a former Member of Parliament and Cabinet Minister
* Lord Stern of Brentford, a British economist and academic. He is IG Patel Professor of Economics and Government, Chair of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics (LSE), and 2010 Professor of Collège de France.
* Lord Stone of Blackheath, a Labour member of the House of Lords
* Lord Turner of Ecchinswell, a British businessman, academic and chair of the Financial Services Authority
* Lord Whitty, a British Labour Party politician
* Baroness Young of Old Scone, Chief Executive of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and of a number of local health authorities
Update:
* Lord Smith of Finsbury, a British Labour politician, and a former Member of Parliament and Cabinet Minister and Chairman of Environment Agency
* Baroness Young of Old Scone, recent chair of Chairman of the Care Quality Commission; has been Chief Executive of the Environment Agency (2000 – May 2008), chair of English Nature, vice chairman of the BBC, board member of AWG plc (originally Anglian Water), Chief Executive of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and of a number of local health authorities
Thank You Robert Christopher, you have devoted more time and energy to your research, than those that you list have done in there life.
Nuts!! Once again I won’t be able to watch it live. I hope a video will be posted here.
As regards the letter by the Lords to the Telegraph, given that it is now admitted that the science is not settled and that there has been no warming of statistical importance for the last 15 years and given that Jones acknoweldges that the warming between 1970 to 2000 is similar to the warming between 1910 and 1940 (which earlier warming cannot be explained by anthropogenic CO2), surely both risk managemnt and the precautionary principle call for money to be spent on adaption if global warming truly causes a problem, rather than spending money on CO2 control which will not reduce or prevent climate change if climate change is simply part of natural cycles. After all, it would be a travesty if we were to spend say 100 $trillion seeking to curb CO2 and notwithstanding the successful reduction in CO2 levels, the cliamte still changes (because change is simply due to natural variation and not due to CO2 levels) such that many $trillions have to be spent on adaption (on the assumption that increased temperature causes problems – which in any event is debatable).
Why risk spending money twice over, rather than to simply wait and see whether it needs spending at all! The wait and see approach risks little and yet may save 100s of $trillions, whereas the spend now very probably achieve nothing of substance and will simply be bankrupting western economies all for no avail.
@Robert Christopher (08:07:16)
Nice work!
Note also that Lord “Adair” Turner was also Chair of the House of Commons Climate Change Committee whilst also Chairing the Financial Services Authority.
And, of course, whilst he was ringing his hands at the dreadful Thermageddon which threatened us all, he totally failed to spot the Credit Crunch which has all but destroyed the UK economy. Perhaps he should have stuck to the ‘day job’?
He is also a past chair of the CBI.
Someone should build up a database on these clowns and conmen. At some stage they must be held to account.
Also appearing on the program will be Anthony Watts
You’re becoming more famous than Al Gore ;~P
Unlike the Gorecal, well-deserved. Congratulations.
roger,
“Fortunately the mathematically illiterate Gordon Brown (our PM and ex Chancellor of the Exchequer, don’t you know) and his parroting henchman Millliband are ahead of this curve and have commissioned a further 10,000 turbines to be deployed in order to provide up to 30% of our consumption.”
Indeed. After a futile battle against the planning application, another of these Gorean temples is to be built in Darley Dale, near me. I won’t be able to see them from my home, but maybe the County Councillors will, when they meet in the County capital of Matlock.
Lords from the land of Oz!!!!
P Gosselin (04:45:32) :
There it is folks!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/18/AR2010021801331_pf.html
They took it off already.
What was it about?
John Coleman is a likable guy, and he’s so easy to understand. So what that he gets a little angry sometimes. He’s human. So are we all. We all get our moments.
I’ll be looking forward to seeing the show linked here after it’s available!!
I’ve nevr seen what Anthony Watts looks like.
Should be a very good show!!
BTW, don’t know how much of the interview will make to the air, but one of the ‘probing’ questions asked of me was basically “You say the Bollvia (and similar) data are available, but aren’t those just daily weather values?” Meaning “It isn’t the CLIMAT report, so it’s not the monthly values needed”. I answered with a somewhat terse “The data are available if folks choose to use them” but did not give a pointer to an example.
Here’s an example of the Jan 2010 Bolivia CLIMAT reports. Some folks get them…
http://www.ogimet.com/cgi-bin/gclimat?lang=en&mode=1&state=Boli&ind=&ord=REV&verb=no&year=2010&mes=01&months=
I’m not sure who OGIMET are, but that have a bilingual Spanish / English site and have LOTS of the “missing” CLIMAT reports…
E.M.Smith (17:26:03) :
My understanding is that since Bolivia is indeed issuing CLIMATs now, you may see them in GHCN at some point in the future. For now, the records are too short to work with.
By the way, GISS is up for the month. So if you want, you can track how the GISS Jan number changes, as more stations stumble in. But this is exactly why GISS puts error bars on its trend graphs – for the problem of incomplete spatial coverage.
Strictly speaking O/T, but related (and mentioned on Bishop Hill). See David Henderson say some very sensible things about climate research policy change post-climategate.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00qzkrf/Newsnight_Scotland_18_02_2010/
It’s the first thing dealt with on the program.
Anthony & team, please snip this one, it implies racism:
Henry chance (06:11:55) :
Peer review. How awesome. All the profss peer reviewed reports regarding the Duke Lacrosse team. They were not only wrong, but the little sista is trying to kill people.
http://www.wral.com/news/local/story/7068705/
The point is, closed minds only see information that supports their pre suppositions.
Pauchauri is vegetarian. It looks like he may also be eating crow very soon.
John Coleman’s common sense and factual investigation are a national treasure. God bless you and your fellow employess at KUSI. The Limateologists, Maurice Strong, and Al Gore should be arrested for fraud, racketeering, and conspiracy. They, and their lapdog lientists have cost Americans trillions of dollars and irreplaceable rights. In California alone AB32 has cost the average California household 4,000$ a year. Every single American should sue the EPA for a million dollars for fraud, conspiracy, and racketeering. Every single employee for this hideous agency should have their assets siezed and given back to the American people. As well as the lientists, Liemateologists, Al Gore, and his minions. Thank you John and KUSI. Well done. Every single American owes you a dept of graditude
Very good program John and Anthony. Turned off the Olympics for most of the hour to watch.
So: Scripps Institute wouldn’t come on the program and debate because, “We don’t think we’ll be treated fairly” ? No, I think what they meant was (with fingers plugged into ears), “La-la-la-la-la-la-na-na-na-na, I can’t hear ANYTHING you’re saying, Ha Ha!” The computer scientist segment was not very helpful, he got caught up in too much technical jargon for a tv program. But “Frozen Wasteland” by Minnesotans For Global Warming was pretty funny.
carrot eater (18:01:36) : My understanding is that since Bolivia is indeed issuing CLIMATs now, you may see them in GHCN at some point in the future. For now, the records are too short to work with.
Oh? Really? You mean like this one that IS in?
Yup, 2 whole years (after a long Bolivia like gap). With a grand total of 11 temperatures between them.
Sucre Bolivia has data from at least 2007.
I think you need to revisit the “short” and “sparse” excuses.
What is “in” vs “out” is not adequately explained by them. Go Fish.
BTW, there are lots of short and crappy records kept in GHCN. This is an interesting example:
The astute observer will notice that the last two records are from after a 37 year gap… yet they kept the same modification flag. Oh, and we notice the most recent “too short to use” 2 years have a grand total of 12 data items in them. But this is a record you can “work with”…
This next one is around for a few years, then takes off from 1976-81, comes back for a cameo year in 1990 with TWO temperatures, then take a leave until 2008 (another two temperatures) and then in 2009 gets really rolling with 7 temperatures.
Yes, that’s right, 11 monthly temperature averages over about 27 years. Yeah, that’s far more “usable”…
Oh, and folks have asserted that any CLIMATs in the system will just be automatically incorporated, that there is no human selection process. It’s just an accidental thing that thermometers get dropped. Sooo…. if you are asserting that someone is saying a few years of Bolivia is just too short, then you get to explain who, where, how, and why they keep the Boliva CLIMATs out.
So nice apologetics. I’d give it a 5 for form. But unfortunately the substance is completely lacking. It would be advisable to actually check how short the “usable” data records are that are being ‘kept in’ GHCN before saying that Bolivia was too short…
E.M.Smith (01:48:01) :
I’ll admit it isn’t entirely consistent. I agree a 3 year fragment at Sucre after a long gap is just as useless as some of those other ones. If I were them, I’d put the data after the gap into duplicate #1, in case there was a station move or something in the long gap. But we’ll see what they do going forward.
In any case, in the trend map, Bolivia isn’t in any particular hot spot. Picking out individual months isn’t that meaningful; it’s the trend that matters. When it comes to spatial sampling, it’s the huge void over Africa that bugs me, much more than little Bolivia. This is why they calculate the error bars; I wonder how much wider the error bars are because of Africa.
As for combining stations and anomalies: let me put it simply: If there are say two stations being used at a grid point, and they show very different trends, and one has a different record length than the other, then you will see the effect of the station drop at that grid point.
17 February 2010
Dear Revd. Foster
Thank you for your letter of February 1 1. I refer you to the opening paragraph of the CBI’s report on this subject.
“This report has not been written by evangelists but by business people.”
Are we sure that climate changes exists? I am sorry, but that is not a question for us. The best question for the business community is whether we can be certain that climate change presents a substantial risk, a risk that will have a profound impact on society and the economy? To this, the answer is clearly ‘yes’. And so. as with all substantial risks, it is vital to mitigate the danger.”
That was our position when the report was published in 2007 and it remains our position today. Yours sincerely
Richard Lambert Director-General CBI
My reply:
Please help me out here. You are not even sure if man-made climate change exists, but you are willing to invest heavily to ‘mitigate’ a possibly non-existent problem?
Wouldn’t it be wiser to investigate first? If someone approaches you with a business proposition isn’t it wise to first investigate their credentials? Are they honest? Have they done proper research? Are their accounts above board, etc?
Now those who propose that there is a problem have been shown to be not exactly honest in their dealings, so surely a great deal more caution is required?
A quote from an interview with Pachauri in Science Magazine 29th Jan 2010 says it all:
Question: Has all that has happened this winter dented the credibility of the IPCC?
Rajendra Pachauri: “I don’t think the credibility of the IPCC can be dented. If the IPCC wasn’t there, why would anyone be worried about climate change?”
Why indeed?
Yours sincerely,
Thanks for the KUSI links, as ever a calm and sane view with backup.
Nice to see you Anthony:-)
Links been shared widely as always.
Just watched “Global Warming. Meltdown”. Learned a few new things. It’s worse than we thought.
In one of the “Quiz” segments of the show, Heather says that the current concentration of CO2 is 390 ppm and asks what the concentration was 250 years ago: (A) zero, (B) 270 ppm, (C) 1 ppm (D) No one really knows.
I kind of liked the answer (D). She chose (B) which is often claimed from ice cores. No matter.
But then she points out that it is a “trace gas” and claims that the change is from about 1/4 of 1% to about 1/3 of 1%. Does anyone (else) think that math is wrong! (It’s high by a factor of 10, I believe.)
I just finished watching all nine parts and am left with a feeling of relief about AGW and a mighty craving for a bowl of Honey Bunches of Oats.
Video links for the Coleman show are here:
http://www.kusi.com/weather/colemanscorner/84515637.html
Just watched the show here in the UK and thought it was brilliant. Anthony, you came across really well. I wish it could be shown everywhere on mainstream TV. I still can’t figure out how the AGW people have the brass nerve to keep on pushing their agenda. It’s one of the great mysteries of our time.
Bernie (10:53:54), good catch. 390 ppm is .039%
carrot eater (02:36:03) : I’ll admit it isn’t entirely consistent.
Yet still completely dodge the point that Bolivia IS left out while others that are worse are in. Ignoring the point that it can NOT be automatic inclusion / exclusion based on CLIMATs. Also dodged, the point that human intervention is probable (though it could be an automatic ‘drop Bolivia’ flag of some sort – but even then a person is responsible for the behaviour).
So lots of dodging and weaving, not much content, in your “reply”.
This is why they calculate the error bars;
Again with the “error bars” comment. Must be the latest talking point on the memo… I’m sure we’ll see that as a regular dodge point.
Look, I like dodge ball as much as the next guy, but please pick someone else with whom to play it. I prefer that questions actually be answered, not just deflected to the talking points script. (And yes, I’ve had the media training to do that too. I just don’t like to do it.)
John Coleman’s presentation Climate Meltdown can be viewed here:
http://www.kusi.com/weather/colemanscorner/84515637.html
E.M.Smith (02:56:17) :
Yes, they are not putting the new Bolivia reports in at the moment. I think Zeke Hausfather and I noticed that well before you did. You may see them come in, in the future.
As for error bars: How on earth is that a dodge? The whole point of the error bar is to deal with incomplete spatial sampling. That’s why they are there.
I’ve been digging through, and finally found what I’ve been looking for. Look at Figure 2 in Peterson et al, GRL 1998, on the First Difference Method. They show what happens to the GISS method when you drop a station. Is the discontinuity there what you’re all excited about?