Thursday night, Steve and Ross will be presented with the Julian Simon Memorial Award at CEI’s annual dinner. The dinner will be held on Thursday, June 17, 2010, at the Hyatt Regency Washington on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.
Let me offer my sincere congratulations to Steve and Ross for their hard work and well deserved award.
There is a by invitation only congressional briefing from noon to 1:30PM that same day. People with interest may be able to attend by contacting Myron Ebell at the email address given below.
Two important figures at the heart of the ClimateGate e-mails, Canadians Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, will provide key information on the remarkable revelations in thousands of e-mails and files that were leaked from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit in November last year.
They will show examples from the e-mails and related sources that reveal a core group of scientists manipulating the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) process in order to keep policymakers in the dark about major uncertainties and problems in climate science. They will also show how the inquiries set up in the aftermath of ClimateGate have been rigged and misdirected so as to whitewash the scandal and protect the climate establishment from genuine external scrutiny.
Much of ClimateGate involves research initially called into doubt by the analysis of Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick. The scientists involved in the scandal saw McIntyre and McKitrick as major threats to global warming orthodoxy and to their own credibility. Consequently, they are mentioned more than 150 times in the ClimateGate e-mails.
McIntyre and McKitrick are most famous for demolishing the infamous “hockey stick”—the graph promoted by the IPCC as proof that global temperatures had been stable for nine hundred years until increasing rapidly in the twentieth century. Their debunking of the hockey stick was confirmed in 2006 by a panel of professionals statisticians convened by the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Their exploits have been recounted in a new book by A. W. Montford, The Hockey Stick Illusion, which reads like a detective thriller.
Before laws regulating energy use are enacted that could well cost trillions of dollars, it is crucial to understand the extent to which the alleged scientific consensus supporting global warming alarmism has been discredited by ClimateGate and related scandals. Join us for a discussion featuring two of the people at the center of the storm.
Stephen McIntyre is the editor and founder of Climate Audit, one of the web’s most popular and compelling climate science blogs as well as one of the best sources for expert analysis of the continuing ClimateGate and related scandals. Before becoming interested in the scientific debate over global warming, Mr. McIntyre worked for thirty years in a variety of roles in the minerals exploration business in Canada, including as President of Northwest Exploration Co. Ltd. He holds a B. A. in mathematics from the University of Toronto and earned another degree in philosophy, politics, and economics from Oxford University. Since the hockey stick scandal, Mr. McIntyre has continued to use his statistical expertise to analyze temperature data and has uncovered a number of other significant mistakes in official claims, which have proved highly embarrassing to U. S. government agencies and several leading climate scientists.
Ross McKitrick is Professor of Economics at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada and a Senior Fellow of the Fraser Institute. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia. Professor McKitrick has published a wide range of internationally-recognized studies on the economic analysis of pollution policy, economic growth and air pollution trends, the health effects of air pollution, statistical methods in climatology, the measurement of global warming, and other topics. His 2003 co-authored book, Taken By Storm: The Troubled Science, Policy and Politics of Global Warming, won the Donner Prize for the best book on Canadian public policy. His newest book, Economic Analysis of Environmental Policy, will be published later this year. Professor McKitrick’s willingness to question conventional thinking on environmental issues and global warming dogma has had an impact around the world. He has made over 100 invited academic presentations in Canada, the U.S., and Europe, and has testified before the U. S. Congress and the Canadian Parliament.
Myron Ebell
Director, Energy and Global Warming Policy
Competitive Enterprise Institute
1899 L Street, N. W., Twelfth Floor
Washington, D. C., 20036, USA
E-mail: mebell@cei.org
Dave F says:
June 14, 2010 at 5:38 pm
http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/~wsoon/ArmstrongGreenSoon08-Anatomy-d/EssexMcKitrickAndresen07-globalT_JNET2007.pdf
This paper still valid?
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It never was or will be, it is a rather stupid argument about averages. Here’s a segment from the paper;
“In economics, for example, an exchange rate is meaningfulwhen comparing two currencies, but the ideas of a ‘‘global exchange rate’’ or a sum over exchange rates are both nonsensical. Regardless of the fact that enough data exist to compute something analogous to a ‘‘global temperature’’ for the money markets, neither the level nor the trend in such a statistics would provide any meaningful information about the global economy. Another example: Individual telephone numbers are both meaningful and useful, while the sum or average over telephone numbers in a directory have no meaning.”
To use the above analogies is plain dumb, has anyone ever heard of a “global exchange rate”? Tally up the phone numbers of an entire phone book and come up with an average telephone number? Just because one can think up non-sensical averages, doesn’t prove that there are no sensical ones. The above cited are pedantic arguments no respectable scientist would be part of. Averages may or may not be real. If the average wage is $500 per week, some people will actually earn that amount, some more and some less. If you ride a bicycle over a given distance one day at 20 kmh and another day at 10 kmh, your average speed is 7.5 kmh. Did you ride at 7.5 kmh on either day? No you didn’t but the average is still a valid statistical value for use in a different context.
The same argument goes for global temperatures and averages serve an important scientific purpose to establish trends. I know that the skeptic don’t like trends, an inconvenient truth if you like.
Correction; make that average bicycle speed 15 kmh.
Seth Cuttlefish says:
June 14, 2010 at 2:57 pm
CEI is hardly scientific on the subject of global warming. They were the ones that run the adds saying the CO2 was harmless: “it’s essential to life. We breathe it out. Plants breathe it in… They call it pollution. We call it life.”
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SO Seth, if yo believe CO2 is pollution how about not producing any CO2 pollution what so ever?
I am sure that many of us would love to see Al Gore, Maurice Strong, Obama, Mann and the rest cut their “carbon foot” print to zero. The sooner the better.
CO2 says: June 14, 2010 at 5:47 pm
“Sourced from Wikipedia;”
Bla, bla, bla….
’nuff said.
nono drv
This is from John Daly’s website:
“Originally from Britain, I came to live in Tasmania in 1980, …..”
Congratulations to two guys who aren’t recognized in their own country. You’d think that the demolishing of the hocky stick graph would rate some attention from the Canadian government, especially given the effect on the economy that following the junk science from the IPCC would cause. What’s also noteworthy is that these two guys had no government support and did the work on their own time. I’ve learned a lot of stats from the climateaudit site which, on a good day, I can just barely follow. I’m glad that WUWT is around to bring the same information in a less technical form to a much larger audience.
Canadian politicians seem to be the same as politicians everywhere else and view the prospect of carbon taxes as a means of massively increasing government revenues. I live in BC which has a carbon tax which goes up every year and, if global cooling becomes the norm, people will be penalized more and more for heating their homes in winter. The last thing politicians here want is more widespread recognition of how M&M have so completely debunked the “scientific” foundation for carbon taxes.
Good news. Pity it isn’t a Nobel prize, but it looks like you only get one of those if your proposer is selected by the Nobel committee.
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/nomination/
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/nomination/
Nonetheless. Sterling work, and also to you Anthony.
dearieme says:
June 14, 2010 at 4:40 pm
Just more evidence that Canadians are finer, nobler people. And too polite to say so (well, too polite to say so very often).
Canada also produced prominent CAGW’ers David Suzuki, Andrew Weaver, Gordon McBean, James Hoggan etc. Fortunately, M & M trump them all.
Gail Combs says:
June 14, 2010 at 6:35 pm
Seth Cuttlefish says:
June 14, 2010 at 2:57 pm
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SO Seth, if yo believe CO2 is pollution how about not producing any CO2 pollution what so ever?
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I’m sure that is a misrepresentation of what Seth really means.
Other than the obvious reason that CO2 and as part of the natural process is essential to Carbon based life is the fact that Climatologists clearly state that CO2 in its present amounts keeps the Earth from plunging into an ice age.
As I said in a previous post it is not the mere presence of CO2 that is the problem but the amounts.
Congratulations to both. A Herculean task well done , and hopefully more accolades will follow.
CO2 says:
June 14, 2010 at 6:24 pm
If you ride a bicycle over a given distance one day at 20 kmh and another day at 10 kmh, your average speed is 7.5 kmh. Did you ride at 7.5 kmh on either day? No you didn’t but the average is still a valid statistical value for use in a different context.
…I know CO2 later corrected that to 15Kmh, but I suspect CO2 belongs to teh hockey-stick statistical society
Isn’t the correct calculation 13.3 Kmh??? Or has my schoolboy math let me down?
AndiC says:
June 14, 2010 at 7:47 pm
CO2 says:
June 14, 2010 at 6:24 pm
If you ride a bicycle over a given distance one day at 20 kmh and another day at 10 kmh, your average speed is 7.5 kmh. Did you ride at 7.5 kmh on either day? No you didn’t but the average is still a valid statistical value for use in a different context.
…I know CO2 later corrected that to 15Kmh, but I suspect CO2 belongs to teh hockey-stick statistical society
Isn’t the correct calculation 13.3 Kmh??? Or has my schoolboy math let me down?
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Yes it has; 20+10=30 divide by 2 equals 15. Somewhere you lost 1.7 kmh
Hockey-stick tatistical Society? Quelle imagination. Have you read any of the subsequent debunking of the hockey-stick? Perhaps not, you don’t read opposite arguments, do you? Try for a change, it’s good to have knowledge from both sides.
Just wanted to add my congrats to the heroes. Bravo.
Bill Sticker says:
June 14, 2010 at 6:53 pm
Good news. Pity it isn’t a Nobel prize, but it looks like you only get one of those if your proposer is selected by the Nobel committee.
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As it should be, the committee receives nominations, the committee decides by vote. Nothing sinister just a democratic process.
Can you suggest a better way? I know you will come up with an alternative way, how about Christopher Monckton, he already (and falsely) claims to be a Nobel Prize Laureate.
Robert Austin says:
June 14, 2010 at 7:27 pm
dearieme says:
June 14, 2010 at 4:40 pm
Just more evidence that Canadians are finer, nobler people. And too polite to say so (well, too polite to say so very often).
Canada also produced prominent CAGW’ers David Suzuki, Andrew Weaver, Gordon McBean, James Hoggan etc. Fortunately, M & M trump them all.
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You left out one of Canada’s better products; John Ralston Saul. With M & M, were you referring to the nasty coloured sweets?
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Nothing says “Climate Science Watchdog” like an award honoring a professor of business administration:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Simon
The timing is perfect, too.
Months before the alarmist Arctic sea ice tries some attention-grabbing stunt this Summer:
http://www.iup.uni-bremen.de:8084/amsr/ice_ext_n.png
Hey, if Arctic sea ice was important, the Free Market would just produce more of it after the death spiral.
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13.3 kmh is correct. It takes 3 units of time to travel the given distance at each speed. 1unit at 20 kmh and 2 units at 10 kmh. Think of traveling 20 km down a road at 20 km then going back the 20 km at 10 km. Distance traveled – 40 km. Time taken – 3 hr. 40/3 = 1.33
Boris Gimbarzevsky says:
June 14, 2010 at 6:49 pm
“…especially given the effect on the economy that following the junk science from the IPCC would cause. …I’ve learned a lot of stats from the climateaudit site which, on a good day, I can just barely follow. I’m glad that WUWT is around to bring the same information in a less technical form to a much larger audience.”
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If you can barely follow the statistics on a good day, how did you conclude that the IPCC uses junk science? Was that your own conclusion or just repeating from a blog. Is there any junk science on your side of the argument? Of course not, anything that argues against global warming is A+ science, the rest is just junk. A global conspiracy. Get real. I’m all for less technical explanations, for as long as they do not distort the basic premise.
AndiC says:
June 14, 2010 at 7:47 pm
Yes, CO2 is obviously an expert in calculating averages and eminently qualified to trash http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/~wsoon/ArmstrongGreenSoon08-Anatomy-d/EssexMcKitrickAndresen07-globalT_JNET2007.pdf
nano drv says:
June 14, 2010 at 5:56 pm
A good time to recall again John Daly. He was on one of the first hacked mails and also a Canadian. RIP
John Daly, a Canadian? Which John Daly would that be?
From http://www.john-daly.com/dalybio.htm
John L. Daly
Profile of a Greenhouse `skeptic’
Originally from Britain, I came to live in Tasmania in 1980, settling near Launceston, and for the last 9 years have been one of the numerous `skeptics’ speaking out publicly against the Global Warming scare, which makes exaggerated claims that the earth will warm by +1.5 to +6 deg. C. due to an enhanced Greenhouse Effect.
Climate and climate change has been a lifelong study of mine since my early days as a ship’s officer in the British Merchant Navy. I have lived through and traced the progress of the `ice age’ scare of the 1970’s, the `nuclear winter’ scare of the 1980s, and now the `global warming’ scare of the present. All these scares have advanced the interests of what was a small academic discipline 30 years ago to become a mammoth global industry today. It is my view that this industry has, through the `politics of fear’ which it has promoted, acted against the interests of the public.
See also: Still Waitng for Greenhouse, http://www.john-daly.com
Congrats to 2 fine gentlemen on this award, may more reconigtion for your work come your way
M&M’s reasoned and detached inquirey is working… we all hope they have the energy to continue, this is going to be a protracted academic arguement. CO2 captures heat flow, which is why a mosquito can find you, CO2’s weight confines it to the proximity of the planet’s surface, where it’s needed, it is not that envolved with climate…however, I’m listening.
Gordon Ford says:
June 14, 2010 at 8:32 pm
13.3 kmh is correct. It takes 3 units of time to travel the given distance at each speed. 1unit at 20 kmh and 2 units at 10 kmh. Think of traveling 20 km down a road at 20 km then going back the 20 km at 10 km. Distance traveled – 40 km. Time taken – 3 hr. 40/3 = 1.33
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Typical denial obfuscation of something simple;
To keep it simple for simple readers I simply stated to travel a distance one day at 20 kmh and another day (it may well have been the same day or a week later or whatever) the same distance at 10 kmh. No going back involved and simply assuming constant speed on each occasion. The distances are equal, the speeds are constant and there are only two units. Distance irrelevant.
Do you want it simpler than that? One tin with 20 cookies, one tin with 10 cookies, average tin 15 cookies.
Excellent news! Congratulations on some overdue recognition.
Thank you two very much. I am deeply thankful there are people like you in this world. You have devoted so much time and effort on behalf of us all. Your love of science, real science, shows through and your devotion has not gone unnoticed. The world owes you a debt of gratitude that we can never fully repay.