Climategate - East Anglia Climate Research Unit Hacked

[Guest Luke]

On November 20, 2009 from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia web mail server was hacked. Over 160 megabytes worth of emails and documents where made available from a FTP site on a Russian server and accompanied by the statement:

 

We feel that climate science is, in the current situation, too important to be kept under wraps. We hereby release a random selection of correspondence, code, and documents.

 

CRU is one of the world's leading research bodies on natural and human-induced climate change, played a key role in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report, which is considered to be the most authoritative report of its kind."

 

http://www.eastangli...s.com/index.php

 

http://www.cru.uea.a.../people/pjones/

[Guest Helen Sibley]

Statement from Professor Trevor Davies, Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Research

 

The publication of a selection of the emails and data stolen from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) has led to some questioning of the climate science research published by CRU and others. There is nothing in the stolen material which indicates that peer-reviewed publications by CRU, and others, on the nature of global warming and related climate change are not of the highest-quality of scientific investigation and interpretation. CRU’s peer-reviewed publications are consistent with, and have contributed to, the overwhelming scientific consensus that the climate is being strongly influenced by human activity. The interactions of the atmosphere, oceans, land, and ice mean that the strongly-increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere do not produce a uniform year-on-year increase in global temperature. On time-scales of 5-10 years, however, there is a broad scientific consensus that the Earth will continue to warm, with attendant changes in the climate, for the foreseeable future. It is important, for all countries, that this warming is slowed down, through substantial reductions in greenhouse gas emissions to reduce the most dangerous impacts of climate change. Respected international research groups, using other data sets, have come to the same conclusion.

 

The University of East Anglia and CRU are committed to scientific integrity, open debate and enhancing understanding. This includes a commitment to the international peer-review system upon which progress in science relies. It is this tried and tested system which has underpinned the assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It is through that process that we can engage in respectful and informed debate with scientists whose analysis appear not to be consistent with the current overwhelming consensus on climate change

 

The publication of a selection of stolen data is the latest example of a sustained and, in some instances, a vexatious campaign which may have been designed to distract from reasoned debate about the nature of the urgent action which world governments must consider to mitigate, and adapt to, climate change. We are committed to furthering this debate despite being faced with difficult circumstances related to a criminal breach of our security systems and our concern to protect colleagues from the more extreme behaviour of some who have responded in irrational and unpleasant ways to the publication of personal information.

 

There has been understandable interest in the progress and outcome of the numerous requests under information legislation for large numbers of the data series held by CRU. The University takes its responsibilities under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, Environmental Information Regulations 2004, and the Data Protection Act 1998 very seriously and has, in all cases, handled and responded to requests in accordance with its obligations under each particular piece of legislation. Where appropriate, we have consulted with the Information Commissioners Office and have followed their advice.

 

In relation to the specific requests at issue here, we have handled and responded to each request in a consistent manner in compliance with the appropriate legislation. No record has been deleted, altered, or otherwise dealt with in any fashion with the intent of preventing the disclosure of all, or any part, of the requested information. Where information has not been disclosed, we have done so in accordance with the provisions of the relevant legislation and have so informed the requester.

 

The Climatic Research Unit holds many data series, provided to the Unit over a period of several decades, from a number of nationally-funded institutions and other research organizations around the world, with specific agreements made over restrictions in the dissemination of those original data. All of these individual series have been used in CRU’s analysis. It is a time-consuming process to attempt to gain approval from these organizations to release the data. Since some of them were provided decades ago, it has sometimes been necessary to track down the successors of the original organizations. It is clearly in the public interest that these data are released once we have succeeded in gaining the approval of collaborators. Some who have requested the data will have been aware of the scale of the exercise we have had to undertake. Much of these data are already available from the websites of the Global Historical Climate Data Network and the Goddard Institute for Space Science.

 

Given the degree to which we collaborate with other organizations around the world, there is also an understandable interest in the computer security systems we have in place in CRU and UEA. Although we were confident that our systems were appropriate, experience has shown that determined and skilled people, who are prepared to engage in criminal activity, can sometimes hack into apparently secure systems. Highly-protected government organizations around the world have also learned this to their cost.

 

We have, therefore, decided to conduct an independent review, which will address the issue of data security, an assessment of how we responded to a deluge of Freedom of Information requests, and any other relevant issues which the independent reviewer advises should be addressed.

[Guest Helen Sibley]

Statement from Professor Phil Jones, Head of the Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia.

 

In the frenzy of the past few days, the most vital issue is being overshadowed: we face enormous challenges ahead if we are to continue to live on this planet.

 

One has to wonder if it is a coincidence that this email correspondence has been stolen and published at this time. This may be a concerted attempt to put a question mark over the science of climate change in the run-up to the Copenhagen talks.

 

That the world is warming is based on a range of sources: not only temperature records but other indicators such as sea level rise, glacier retreat and less Arctic sea ice.

 

Our global temperature series tallies with those of other, completely independent, groups of scientists working for NASA and the National Climate Data Center in the United States, among others. Even if you were to ignore our findings, theirs show the same results. The facts speak for themselves; there is no need for anyone to manipulate them.

 

We have been bombarded by Freedom of Information requests to release the temperature data that are provided to us by meteorological services around the world via a large network of weather stations. This information is not ours to give without the permission of the meteorological services involved. We have responded to these Freedom of Information requests appropriately and with the knowledge and guidance of the Information Commissioner.

 

We have stated that we hope to gain permission from each of these services to publish their data in the future and we are in the process of doing so.

 

My colleagues and I accept that some of the published emails do not read well. I regret any upset or confusion caused as a result. Some were clearly written in the heat of the moment, others use colloquialisms frequently used between close colleagues.

 

We are, and have always been, scrupulous in ensuring that our science publications are robust and honest.

[Guest Helen Sibley]

CRU statement

 

Recently thousands of files and emails illegally obtained from a research server at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have been posted on various sites on the web. The emails relate to messages received or sent by the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) over the period 1996-2009.

 

A selection of these emails have been taken out of context and misinterpreted as evidence that CRU has manipulated climate data to present an unrealistic picture of global warming.

 

This conclusion is entirely unfounded and the evidence from CRU research is entirely consistent with independent evidence assembled by various research groups around the world.

 

There is excellent agreement on the course of temperature change since 1881 between the data set that we contribute to (HadCRUT3) and two other, independent analyses of worldwide temperature measurements. There are no statistically significant differences between the warming trends in the three series since the start of the 20th century. The three independent global temperature data series have been assembled by:

 

• CRU and the Met Office Hadley Centre (HadCRUT3) in the UK.

• The National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Asheville, NC, USA.

• The Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS), part of the National Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA) in New York.

 

The warming shown by the HadCRUT3 series between the averages of the two periods (1850-99 and 2001-2005) was 0.76±0.19°C, and this is corroborated by the other two data sets.

 

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its 4th Assessment Report (AR4) published in 2007 concluded that the warming of the climate system was unequivocal. This conclusion was based not only on the observational temperature record, although this is the key piece of evidence, but on multiple strands of evidence. These factors include: long-term retreat of glaciers in most alpine regions of the world; reductions in the area of the Northern Hemisphere (NH) snow cover during the spring season; reductions in the length of the freeze season in many NH rivers and lakes; reduction in Arctic sea-ice extent in all seasons, but especially in the summer; increases in global average sea level since the 19th century; increases in the heat content of the ocean and warming of temperatures in the lower part of the atmosphere since the late 1950s.

 

CRU has also been involved in reconstructions of temperature (primarily for the Northern Hemisphere) from proxy data (non-instrumental sources such as tree rings, ice cores, corals and documentary records). Similar temperature reconstructions have been developed by numerous other groups around the world. The level of uncertainty in this indirect evidence for temperature change is much greater than for the picture of temperature change shown by the instrumental data. But different reconstructions of temperature change over a longer period, produced by different researchers using different methods, show essentially the same picture of highly unusual warmth across the NH during the 20th century. The principal conclusion from these studies (summarized in IPCC AR4) is that the second half of the 20th century was very likely (90% probable) warmer than any other 50-year period in the last 500 years and likely (66% probable) the warmest in the past 1300 years.

 

One particular, illegally obtained, email relates to the preparation of a figure for the WMO Statement on the Status of the Global Climate in 1999. This email referred to a “trick” of adding recent instrumental data to the end of temperature reconstructions that were based on proxy data. The requirement for the WMO Statement was for up-to-date evidence showing how temperatures may have changed over the last 1000 years. To produce temperature series that were completely up-to-date (i.e. through to 1999) it was necessary to combine the temperature reconstructions with the instrumental record, because the temperature reconstructions from proxy data ended many years earlier whereas the instrumental record is updated every month. The use of the word “trick” was not intended to imply any deception.

 

Phil Jones comments further: “One of the three temperature reconstructions was based entirely on a particular set of tree-ring data that shows a strong correlation with temperature from the 19th century through to the mid-20th century, but does not show a realistic trend of temperature after 1960. This is well known and is called the ‘decline’ or ‘divergence’. The use of the term ‘hiding the decline’ was in an email written in haste. CRU has not sought to hide the decline. Indeed, CRU has published a number of articles that both illustrate, and discuss the implications of, this recent tree-ring decline, including the article that is listed in the legend of the WMO Statement figure. It is because of this trend in these tree-ring data that we know does not represent temperature change that I only show this series up to 1960 in the WMO Statement.”

 

The ‘decline’ in this set of tree-ring data should not be taken to mean that there is any problem with the instrumental temperature data. As for the tree-ring decline, various manifestations of this phenomenon have been discussed by numerous authors, and its implications are clearly signposted in Chapter 6 of the IPCC AR4 report.

[Guest George]

These climate scientist to have no idea what they're up against or how to confront it. Their opponents might be scumbags, but their media strategy is exemplary.

[Guest Whittler]

U. S. climatologist Kevin Trenberth of the U. S. National Center for Atmospheric Research, commenting last month on the fact global temperatures haven't risen as they should have in recent years if the theory of man-made global warming is correct, wrote:

 

"The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't ... Our observing system is inadequate."

[Guest Adam]

CO2 is a greenhouse gas regardless of what are in the emails. CO2 production is increasing globally regardless of how data are fitted to trend lines. Nature imposes variability that is very difficult to pin down so models won’t be predictive for a while (except in the long term). All pretty simple.

[Guest Eisenburg]

This looks less of a hack and more like whistle blowing.

[Guest George]

The world of climate change research has changed forever. "Trust us we’re scientists" will no longer be acceptable. The general public will demand greater transparency.

[Guest K. Romanov]

It should be very transparent that human activity affects our environment and climate.

[Guest S Jones]

It seems pretty clear to me from my reading of the emails that trick is being used in the place of words like protocol, method, and technique.

[Guest S Jones]

I think in general the problem with these emails is that when two scientists have a personal discussion they are liable to drop into a scientific short hand that to an outsider could be easily misunderstood.

[Guest Sidney]

I find it interesting that NBC is not covering this story. Jeffrey Immelt is CEO of General Electric and NBC too. Immelt stands to make billions of dollars for his company on the cap and tax scam. He's drooling over this global warming garbage.

[Guest Wolfster]

Maybe Al Gore could telecommute to meetings on the internet he invented and stop flying in the big fuel hog jet of his so he can stop all the pollution and global warming he invented!

[Guest Dr. Joseph Romm]

As the journal Nature editorialized yesterday, nothing in the e-mails undermines the scientific case that global warming is real or that human activities are almost certainly the cause. As Nature noted, that case is supported by multiple robust lines of evidence, including several, that are completely independent of the climate reconstructions debated in the e-mails.

 

Let me add, scientists have been predicting for decades that pouring more and more heat trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere would change the climate, it's happening now. As NOAA's climate monitoring chief pointed out in October, the last ten years are the warmest ten-year period in the modern record, even if you analyze the trend during that ten years, the trend is actually positive, which means warming.

 

I would add several studies released this year show that most of the warming is going where scientists expected it to go, which is into heating the ocean, which continues to reach record levels both at the surface and down to two kilometers.

 

Global warming is about as fast as the scientists had predicted. Ice appears to be melting around the globe faster than scientists had predicted in the Arctic, in the Greenland and even Antarctica where recent study even suggests we maybe seeing ice melting in East Antarctica which is quite unexpected. And all of this is a key reason that sea level rise has accelerated in the past decade. These observations are unequivocal.

 

The question is what will happen in the future and that is still in our hands. On the eve of the Copenhagen conference, the latest science tells us one thing about the future with high confidence. If we stay on our current emissions path of more and more emission, then

greenhouse levels will achieve dangerously high levels. Serious impacts like ocean acidification are quite impervious to political rhetoric and can only be addressed by sharply and quickly reducing emissions.

[Guest Michael Mann]

There are a handful of people and organizations that have tried to clout the debate, and they've frankly - they've not contributed to an honest scientific discourse but have engaged in this 11th hour smear campaign where they've stolen personal e-mails from scientists, mined them for single words or phrases that can be taken out of context and misrepresent what scientists are actually saying.

[Guest Gavin Schmidt:]

I think it behooves us to know exactly where that science comes from and where we need to be focusing on when we are trying to workout what the uncertainties are and what's going to happen in the future.

 

So the first thing that you need to know is that there is a natural greenhouse effect that's what keeps the planet livable, without the greenhouse effect, it would be much, much colder by 33 degree Celsius colder than we are. This is something that's been known for hundreds of years.

 

We know that carbon dioxide and the other trace gases, including methane and ozone and water vapor all contribute to that greenhouse effect. We've been measuring that from space for a number of decades, we've been – we worked out the theory of that you know 50 years ago and we understand why those trace gases impacted the greenhouse effect.

 

We know that the carbon dioxide levels have increased by more than 30 percent in the industrial period. We know that methane has more than doubled; nitrous oxide has been up 15 percent, tropospheric ozone has also increased – other compounds that didn't even exist in nature CFCs and HFCs are all adding to the greenhouse effect.

 

We know that the amount that these are adding to the greenhouse effect is significant and we are getting up to the point where the total amount of forcing from these greenhouse gases is equivalent to if the Sun brightened by about a percent. Now that's a very, very big number indeed.

 

We know that the climate is sensitive to those kinds of changes. We can go back in past climate, we can go back to the last, Ice Age, we can go back to the early Holocene and lots of other periods in the past and we can workout why the climate changed and for what reasons and that gives us this range of sensitivity of around 2-1/2 to five degree Celsius for a doubling of CO2 that the IPPC has talked about for many years.

 

The best guess for that sensitivity is about three degrees for doubling of CO2 and we will likely get to a doubling of CO2 under business as usual scenario, some time in the middle of this century.

 

When you add up what we've done and what impact that is likely to have, we end up with scenarios for climate change in the future that put our planet in a position that it hasn't been in for maybe millions of years. The Pliocene three million years ago was maybe three degrees warmer than today and was associated with seal level rises of 20 meters higher than today.

 

Now that's a very long-term change but we're pushing the planet towards that kind of level of change and that's not something that policymakers, citizen's, or scientists ever want to see happen.

[Guest Helga Zepp-LaRouche]

The audacity with which a clique of climate-scientists, a majority of the media, and a range of governments are trying to uphold the fairy tale of anthropogenic climate change, even though the recently published e-mails from East Anglia University have totally confirmed the suspicion of innumerable serious scientists that there is no evidence for global warming, is unprecedented.

 

The reason for this is obvious: The monetarist system of globalization today is in most dimensions more bankrupt than the communist system was in 1989. The British Empire is especially desperate, the crisis in Dubai and other upcoming state bankruptcies make clear that a second wave of insolvencies threatens to pull the whole dilapidated thing into collapse—and this time the financial oligarchy does not assume that the taxpayers in all countries are ready to compensate for their gambling debts, which have been accumulated anew in grand style.

 

Attempt to Get World Dictatorship

 

So, what then is happening in Copenhagen? It is nothing less than an effort to establish a world dictatorship, in which the gambling casino will be funded in a new way, and, moreover, the goal of the long-desired population reduction can be covered up with an environmentalist cloak. Listen to what Lord Monckton had to say in Berlin on December 4:

 

"The Copenhagen Treaty says that it is going to establish a world government. This has been an ambition of certain bureaucrats, certain political groupings, fascists, freemasons, marxists, for hundreds of years. All these different groups all at once or one after another wanted to achieve world domination. Previously it was thought it might happen by force, by military force. Now they found a way of doing it by what one might call a bureaucratic coup d'etat in the name of saving the planet which doesn't need to be saved. There is no threat to the climate. They have decided that they can persuade even the free nations of the West to give up their democracy, give up their freedom, and transfer all ultimate economic as well as environmental power to an unelected world government.

 

"When Sir Maurice Strong first created the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in the UN, he created it not as a scientific body, but as a political entity. He said at the time that he hoped that this would become the nucleus of a world government. The whole idea of world government, according to people like Sir Maurice Strong, is not to trust the people. What they will talk of is that there has been market failure in that the policies and freedom and successes of the free market and of capitalism have led to the poisoning of the planet with CO2, and therefore we need to take democracy away, so that the institutions of democracy, which include the stock markets and companies which flourish best under freedom, all of those will in future be under the thumb of a tyranny. It won't seem brutal initially, but it will be extensive. It will stifle freedom in exactly the way that we have already begun to see with the European Union, where there is a European parliament, but it cannot propose legislation. If it decides something, it can be overruled by the commissars. If it wishes to amend legislation, only the commissars, who are unelected, can give it permission. So Europe already has a kind of regional model of what will become a world government with far greater powers even than the EU over the individual nations of the world. It will be a sad day for freedom and democracy if that treaty proceeds at Copenhagen in only a few days' time.

[Guest Stephen McIntyre]

In discussion of the 'trick,' let’s be quite frank about it: it was a trick. The tree ring records went down in the late part of the 20th century. Instead of disclosing that in the 2001 IPCC report, they didn’t show the decline. In another document, the 1999 World Meteorological Report- that is the subject of the e-mail in question- they simply substituted temperature information for the tree ring information to show the record going up when it went down. There’s nothing mathematically sophisticated about that.

 

There’s no question that it’s warmer now than it was in the 19th century. The battleground issue is whether it’s warmer now than in the 11th century, and whether the data that we have enables you to say that with any degree of certainty. One of the e-mails in the ‘ClimateGate’ letters is from Keith Briffa [of the Climate Research Unit], who says it was his opinion that it was as warm a thousand years ago as it is today. That’s something he doesn’t say in the IPCC reports, and it’s disquieting to read that in this correspondence....

[Guest Arrest Al Gore]

John Coleman, founder of The Weather Channel, had the right idea last year, when he suggested suing Al Gore for making fraudulent claims.

 

Does carbon dioxide cause a warming of the atmosphere? The proponents of global warming pin their whole piece on that," he said.

 

The compound carbon dioxide makes up only 38 out of every 100,000 particles in the atmosphere, he said.

 

"That's about twice as what there were in the atmosphere in the time we started burning fossil fuels, so it's gone up, but it's still a tiny compound," Coleman said. "So how can that tiny trace compound have such a significant effect on temperature?

 

"My position is it can't," he continued. "It doesn't, and the whole case for global warming is based on a fallacy.

 

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,337710,00.html

[Guest Greenzen]

'Climate Gate' believers should meet Mohamed Axam Maumoon, 15, who lives in the Maldives, a group of islands in the Indian Ocean and who is attending the Copenhagen conference.

 

Most of Maumoon's homeland is just above sea level, making it one of several countries that would be destroyed if the predicted rise in sea level caused by global warming isn't averted.

 

In an interview, Maumoon posed this question to the world: "Would you commit murder? On the basis that you know what you're doing is wrong and you can see that the victim is begging for mercy and for you to stop what you're doing, yeah, would you commit murder?"

[Guest ALWAYSRED]

U.S. Senator Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina) and five other members of the Senate Commerce Committee wrote to Commerce Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-West Virginia) demanding he keep his word to investigate "manipulation" of data members rely on to create laws by opening a full committee investigation into the news that scientists manipulated data relating to global warming research. Some of the scientists involved in the emerging scandal are recipients of U.S. taxpayer funding through the science agencies under the jurisdiction of the Commerce Committee. Senator DeMint was joined on the letter by U.S. Senators Sam Brownback (R-Kansas), John Ensign (R-Nevada), Johnny Isakson (R-Georgia), David Vitter (R-Louisiana), Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi).

 

"The Commerce Committee cannot ignore this Climategate scandal because taxpayers deserve answers," said Senator DeMint. "I hope the Chairman lives up to his promise to investigate manipulation which is precisely what appears to have happened with these scientists that we are supposed to depend on for unbiased information. We need a real and in depth investigation from the Commerce Committee before Congress proceeds on a jobs-killing massive energy tax hike based on fraudulent data. The stakes are too high to do anything less."

 

The letter reads in part: "A number of federal and independent scientists receiving federal funds are included in the emails and documents. There is clearly more information that federal researchers and researchers receiving federal funds could provide to the committee. The American people deserve to know that federal scientific funding is not being used to distort science to reach a political end. The public is only privy to the emails that whistle blowers have disclosed and this Committee needs to provide confirmation that American taxpayer dollars are not being misused. We urge you to open an official bipartisan investigation utilizing all the tools at the committee's disposal to get to the truth in this matter. Without it, Congress will be making serious policy decisions with misleading and faulty scientific data."

 

 

See full text of the letter below:

 

December 8, 2009

 

Senator John D. Rockefeller

Chairman

Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation

United States Senate

Washington, DC 20510

 

Dear Chairman Rockefeller:

 

When you assumed the chairmanship of this committee you announced an aggressive oversight agenda for the committee. When announcing the new rules for the committee you stated, "This Committee must and will bring in to Congressional and public view important information about how well the laws and programs under our jurisdiction work, and we stand ready to address manipulation or neglect by either the Executive Branch or outside parties as needed." The recent disclosure of the manipulation of scientific evidence by climate researchers is exactly the kind of important information that needs to be brought to light.

 

The emails and documents recently disclosed paint an alarming picture of the state of climate research. In the emails that have been disclosed we've seen evidence of manipulation, efforts to avoid freedom of information act requests, abuse of the peer review process and a research process that is driven more by a political agenda than a quest for the truth.

 

Some examples include:

 

This email from Mr. Kenneth Trenberth from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (which receives tens of millions in federal funding from the agencies under our jurisdiction):

 

"The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate."

 

Or this email from Dr. Phil Jones - who was recently suspended from his post at the University of East Anglia - to three academic researchers in the U.S. (all of whom were receiving federal funds):

 

"PS: I'm getting hassled by a couple of people to release the CRU station temperature data. Don't any of you three tell anybody that the UK has a Freedom of Information Act!"

 

Or this email from Dr. Andrew Manning to Dr. Phil Jones that highlights the climate research industry that has grown up around cap and trade:

 

"Hi Phil, is this another witch hunt (like Mann et al.)? How should I respond to the below? (I'm in the process of trying to persuade Siemens Corp. (a company with half a million employees in 190 countries!) to donate me a little cash to do some CO2 measurments here in the UK - looking promising, so the last thing I need is news articles calling into question (again) observed temperature increases"

 

Or this email from Phil Jones to Penn State Professor Michael Mann (who receives and oversees millions of dollars in federal climate research funding) regarding the inclusion of research critical of the influence of humans on climate:

 

"I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report, Kevin and I will keep them out somehow -- even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!"

 

Our concern is that these emails only show a small picture of possible scientific fraud. A number of federal and independent scientists receiving federal funds are included in the emails and documents. There is clearly more information that federal researchers and researchers receiving federal funds could provide to the committee.

 

The American people deserve to know that federal scientific funding is not being used to distort science to reach a political end. The public is only privy to the emails that whistle blowers have disclosed and this Committee needs to provide confirmation that American taxpayer dollars are not being misused.

 

We urge you to open an official bipartisan investigation utilizing all the tools at the committee's disposal to get to the truth in this matter. Without it, Congress will be making serious policy decisions with misleading and faulty scientific data.

 

Sincerely,

 

Sam Brownback

John Ensign

Johnny Isakson

Jim DeMint

David Vitter

Roger Wicker

[Guest ALWAYSRED]

Mr Gore, speaking at the Copenhagen climate change summit, stated the latest research showed that the Arctic could be completely ice-free in five years.

 

In his speech, Mr Gore told the conference: “These figures are fresh. Some of the models suggest to Dr [Wieslav] Maslowski that there is a 75 per cent chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during the summer months, could be completely ice-free within five to seven years."

 

However, the climatologist whose work Mr Gore was relying upon dropped the former Vice-President in the water with an icy blast.

 

"It's unclear to me how this figure was arrived at," Dr Maslowski said. "I would never try to estimate likelihood at anything as exact as this."

 

Mr Gore's office later admitted that the 75 per cent figure was one used by Dr Maslowksi as a "ballpark figure” several years ago in a conversation with Mr Gore.

 

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/copenhagen/article6956783.ece

[Guest Grrr]

Al Gore has has made nearly 100 million dollars since he started this scam. Meanwhile he continues to leave a carbon footprint the size of the Titanic. His waste disposal is over 1 1/2 tons per month...his utility bill is over $2000 per month. He has a fleet of bulletproof SUVs that get around 10 mpg. He uses thousands of gallons of jet fuel every month to fly around to tell "common people" to be environmentally friendly. This issue is being used to scare us into accepting the bogus cap, and trade legislation. That will make the U.S. slave to the European money market, and the World Bank.

[Guest Daniel]

I don't know if Global warming is a lie, but Al Gore it certainly has lied to us on a constant basis. Having him as the spokesperson for it is rather idiotic.