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IPCC's abuse of scientific process
A growing international scandal
By John Happs
Dr Happs is a former lecturer in the geosciences and author of numerous science texts amd book chapters. This is his open letter of 20 December 2009 to Australia's Chief Scientist Professor Penny Sackett. It surveys (with many quotes) the whistleblowing that uncovered abuse of science by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -- an abuse that promises to be the worst scandal in science's history. The letter has been circulated to Australian senators, making them aware that the IPCC is not what the government wants them to believe. This website version has been slightly abridged and headings have been added.
Dear Professor Sackett
In my email to you of 20 June 2009 I criticised politicians for so quickly embracing the unproven notion, put out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), of man-made global warming and catastrophic climate change. You did not respond to my email. Neither did you acknowledge receiving it.
In my email I reminded you of your position on global warming. ABC journalist Sabra Lane quotes you as saying "The evidence is clear the planet is warming due to human activity. ... It is also clear that the largest portion of that [warming] is due to human action. That is through deforestation and emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere". Similarly, when Peter Mares interviewed you on Radio National (3 April 2009), you said "The primary task of a Chief Scientist is to advise the government in an independent manner on all things scientific". Furthermore, "The government respects that the advice must be independent and the Chief Scientist respects that the government shouldn't be surprised by any advice. That is to say that we consult carefully before giving it".
Chief Scientist embraces political correctness, not science
But I also reminded you that tens of thousands of informed scientists
have strenuously criticised the IPCC's findings. So I urged you to look
up their conclusions on the internet. The main ones are: The Heidelberg
Appeal; The Oregon Petition; The Manhattan Declaration; The Petition to
the United Nations; The Petition to the Canadian Prime Minister; The
Leipzig Declaration; The Statement from Atmospheric Scientists. All are
critical of the IPCC, and all are easily accessible via Google.
I also provided you with numerous quotes from scientists who had been involved with the IPCC as reviewers and/or contributors. They were extremely critical of the IPCC process, and I would have expected you to take those statements seriously. Especially as your field of expertise is astronomy, not climate science. For instance Dr Vincent Gray, climate consultant, long-standing member of the New Zealand Royal Society and expert reviewer for the IPCC, described the IPCC's climate change statements as "An orchestrated litany of lies". To support the IPCC's statements is to embrace political correctness, not science.
IPCC charter is biased
Some politicians still see the IPCC as being the gold standard of
climate science. In fact the IPCC is a single-interest organisation that
was established tweny years ago. Right from the start it assumed a
widespread human influence on climate. Its charter was To assess the
scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant for the
understanding of the risk of human-induced climate change. Such a
charter makes it unlikely that the other factors influencing climate
change would be taken seriously. In short, the IPCC's agenda appears to
be political rather than scientific. As I show below, its integrity is
now being challenged by the scientific community.
Most IPCC members are not scientists
Dr John Christy, Professor of Atmospheric Science and Director of the
Earth System Science Centre at the University of Alabama, says "It is
well known that many, if not most, of [the IPCC's] members are not
scientists at all. Its president, for example, is an economist".
Interestingly, politicians and the media have never noticed that the IPCC's president Rajendra Pachauri has no qualifications in the geosciences, yet is able to speak with "certainty" about climate science. Additionally, Pachauri has established a substantial worldwide portfolio of business interests with bodies which have been investing billions of dollars in organisations dependent on the IPCC's policy recommendations. Which leads to my next point.
Who stands to gain from emissions trading?
Pachauri is not the only person who stands to gain from emissions
trading, which is essentially paying money for the privilege of
generating carbon dioxide. Fred Lucas works at the Capital Research
Centre which monitors non-profit organisations. He points out that Al
Gore "Has cast his net in green technology. Potentially the most
lucrative source of cash flow for Gore is his partnership in the venture
capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, which this year formed
two funds that will invest $1.2 billion in environmentally friendly
companies". Furthermore, "Gore is also co-founder and chairman of
London-based Generation Investment Management that collaborates with
Kleiner Perkins on seeking out investments in "sustainability". He's
also invested $35 million in a hedge fund, Capricorn Investment Group
LLC, of Palo Alto, California. Founded by former eBay president Jeff
Skoll (who helped bankroll Gore's book An Inconvenient Truth), Capricorn
invests its clients' funds in makers of eco-friendly products".
There are countless other vested interests besides those of Pachauri and Gore. Around the world huge amounts of government money have been made available for research on climate change. Inserting the words "climate change" into a grant proposal, and exaggerating the impact of global warming, puts you ahead of the crowd. From individual researchers to whole institutes, it is effectively a matter of toeing the IPCC party line in exchange for cash bonanzas.
IPCC lacks climate expertise
Dr William Schlesinger, biogeochemist and president of the Cary
Institute of Ecosystem Studies, notes that 80% of the IPCC's member had
absolutely no dealing with climate as part of their academic studies.
Professor Paul Reiter, from the Institut Pasteur in Paris, gave written evidence to the Select Committee on Economic Affairs about the IPCC Second Assessment Report, Working Group 11, Chapter 18 on Human Population Health. He said "The amateurish text of the chapter reflected the limited knowledge of the 22 authors".
Dr Richard Courtney relates how the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration asked him to be a peer reviewer for the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report. He explains what happened: "My review of its First Draft was damning, but the Second Draft retained all the basic faults I had pointed out. I made comments on the Second Draft but they were also ignored".
Deliberate distortions
Dr Willem de Lange, an expert in Oceanography, coastal processes and
climatic hazards, was listed by the IPCC as one of approximately 3000
scientists who agreed that there was a discernable human influence on
climate. But as he told me personally, he did not agree with the IPCC
projections of sea level rise and threats to Pacific Islands. Instead he
had indicated how research clearly shows that coral atolls and
associated islands are likely to increase (not decrease) in elevation as
sea level rises. So the IPCC's assumptions were invalid, and he was
convinced that the IPCC's projections were unrealistic. The IPCC ignored
his comments.
The IPCC's "thousands of scientists"
I've heard several politicians referring to the "thousands of
scientists" supposedly associated with the IPCC. For instance, Prime
Minister Kevin Rudd has said "This is the conclusion of 4000 scientists
appointed by governments from virtually every country in the world, and
the term "very likely" is defined in the scientific conclusion of this
[IPCC] report as being 90% probable".
On the other hand, statistician Dr John McLean has many years experience investigating and analyzing climate data and other climate-related issues. He makes the comment "How many times have you heard or read words to the effect that 4000 scientists from the IPCC support the claims about a significant human influence on climate? It's utterly wrong". In fact "Fifty-three authors and five reviewers are all that can be said to explicitly support the claim of a significant human influence on climate. The figure of 4000 is a myth".
Unsupported U-turn
Dr McLean has also noted how the IPCC's draft 1995 Scientific Report
included the following three statements: "None of the [scientific]
studies cited above has shown clear evidence that we can attribute the
observed [climate] changes to the specific cause of increases in
greenhouse gases". "No study to date has positively attributed all or
part [of observed climate change] to anthropogenic causes". "Any claims
of positive detection of significant climate change are likely to remain
controversial until uncertainties in the total natural variability of
the climate system are reduced". But in the IPCC's actual 1995 Summary
Report for Policymakers, widely distributed through the media and
governments, the above three statements had been replaced with this
contrary statement: "The balance of evidence suggests a discernible
human influence on global climate". Such a secret and unsupported U-turn
was inexcusable, yet politicians seemed oblivious to the problem.
Ignoring reliable data
Additionally, the IPCC has essentially ignored temperature data from
reliable sources such as mountain-top weather stations, satellites, and
radio-sonde balloons. Instead, they have used other (and notoriously
unreliable) temperature data which had been collated and stored at the
Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (of which more
below). The IPCC also ignored data from the Argo Network of over 3000
worldwide ocean buoys which shows ocean cooling (not warming). In other
words the IPCC's summary statements of unreliable data, which have
overly influenced trusting politicians around the world, are essentially
worthless.
The world has been warming since the Little Ice Age of the 1700s, long before the rise in man-made carbon dioxide. But since 2001, satellite data show it has been cooling despite the continuing rise in cxarbon dioxide. This does not mean that global warming is over, only that something other than carbon dioxide is the main driver of temperature change. This graph was not included in the original letter and is redrawn from http://joannenova.com.au. For the latest update visit http://www.junkscience.com
Whistleblowers uncover a scandal
Many scientists have been warning politicians for some time that the
storm clouds are gathering, and that the IPCC will prove to be the
biggest scandal in the history of science. Accordingly, Professor
Sackett, I trust you have been keeping up to date with the latest
scandalous developments at the University of East Anglia and elsewhere.
Let me give you a synopsis:
At the end of 2009 about 1000 emails and 3000 documents located on the Climate Research Unit server at the University of East Anglia were hacked and leaked by whistleblowers. Collectively the leaked material reveals serious abuse of the scientific process. Climate scientist Professor Tim Ball was explicit about the emails and documents: "The argument that global warming is due to humans, known as the anthropogenic [man-made] global warming theory, is a deliberate fraud. I can now make that statement without fear of contradiction because of a remarkable hacking of files that provided not just a smoking gun, but an entire battery of smoking guns. ... Carbon dioxide was never a problem and all the machinations and deceptions exposed by these files prove that it is the greatest deception in history, but nobody is laughing. It is a very sad day for science".
The rest of my letter gives examples from the leaked emails that document the IPCC's abuse of the scientific process. The abuses include suppression of inconvenient evidence, manipulation of data, conspiracy to withold data, rampant dishonesty, and ousting critical journal editors. It could hardly get any worse.
Clique of authors
The emails reveal a clique of authors working covertly to ensure that
only those papers supporting man-made global warming were published.
Statistician Professor Wegman, in his report to the National Academy of
Science, named those standing at the centre of this scandal. Climate
scientist Ptrofessor Tim Ball has done the same, saying "The dominant
names involved are ones I have followed throughout my career including
Phil Jones (Director of the Climate Research Unit at the University of
East Anglia), Benjamin Santer, Michael Mann (Director of the Earth
System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University), Kevin
Trenberth, Jonathan Overpeck, Ken Briffa and Tom Wigley. I have watched
climate science hijacked and corrupted by this small group of
scientists".
In effect these scientists controlled the IPCC, the IPCC's crucial report chapters, and the IPCC's Summary for Policy Makers which went out to politicians and the media. Remember their names because they appear again and again in the incriminating evidence that follows.
Pressure on editors
Emails uncovered by the whistleblowers indicate that pressure was
brought to bear on editors of journals that published papers arguing
against the IPCC agenda. For instance, in one email Phil Jones says "He
and Kevin [Trenberth] will keep some papers out of the next IPCC
report". And in email exchanges between Jones, Director of the Climate
Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, and Michael Mann,
Director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State
University, they discuss how they could pressure an academic journal not
to accept the work of climate skeptics with whom they disagree. Thus
Jones says "I will be emailing the journal to tell them I'm having
nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome
editor".
In other emails Grant Foster was looking for comments about a paper that was critical of the notion of man-made global warming. Jones gave Foster a list of people, telling him that "These reviewers would know what to say about the paper [i.e. bad things] without any prompting". Similarly, when Ken Briffa discusses a skeptical article with Ed Cook, he says in confidence that he needs to put together a case to reject that article. And when discussing the IPCC's draft Fourth Assessment Report, Mann acknowledges that the paleoclimate chapter would be contentious, but they have the right people to deal with it.
Professor Wegman went on to warn "It is immediately clear that Mann, Rutherford, Jones, Osborn, Briffa, Bradley and Hughes form a clique, each interacting with all of the others. A clique is a fully connected subgraph, meaning everyone in the clique interacts with everyone else in the clique".
Manipulating data
The emails also indicate that the clique manipulated data to favour the
notion of unprecedented man-made global warming. Such manipulation of
data, for political and/or ideological reasons, is misconduct at best
and fraud at worst. Other emails acknowledged the frustration the clique
experienced trying to find evidence to "prove" man-made climate change.
For instance, Tom Wigley admitted to Michael Mann that a figure used to refute Christopher Monckton's criticism (see later) was deceptive. He also said there had been a number of dishonest presentations of model output by authors and the IPCC, as when sea surface temperatures were manipulated to make the results look both warmer and plausible.
Worse, the Climate Research Unit scientists have been working in league with US scientists who compiled the climate data for the Goddard Institute for Space Studies. The latter data contains numerous biases which inflate the supposed natural warming of the 20th century. (In fact satellite data shows there has been no global warming since the late 1970s and significant cooling since 2001, see graph.) In the USA the Competitive Enterprise Institute has now filed three Notices of Intent to File Suit against the Goddard Institute over their 3-year refusal to provide documents requested under the US Freedom of Information Act.
Mathematician Christopher Monckton, former scientific advisor to Margaret Thatcher, describes those implicated by the leaked emails as a "Close-knit clique of climate scientists who invented and now drive the "global warming" fraud -- for fraud is what we now know it to be -- and tampered with temperature data". He adds "I have reported them to the UK's Information Commissioner, with a request that he investigate their offences and, if thought fit, prosecute".
Australia's Professor Ian Plimer agrees with Monckton's position, saying "Here we have the Australian government underpinning the biggest economic decision this country has ever made and it's all based on fraud".
Conspiracy to withold data
There's more. Emails indicate that the clique conspired to ensure that
data was not made available to other researchers who requested such data
via Freedom of Information Acts in both the UK and the USA. This is
extremely serious because it prevents other scientists from checking
the conclusions.
For instance, in one email Phil Jones says "The two MMs [McKittrick and McIntyre] have been after the Climate Research Unit's data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I'll delete the file rather than send it to anyone". In other emails Tom Wigley discusses how they could deal with UK Freedom of Information laws, and Jones suggests using technical arguments to avoid complying, for example by saying the data was covered by agreements with outsiders, which agreements the Climate Research Unit would then be "hiding behind". Jones adds that they were co-ordinating themselves to resist Freedom of Information laws.
Another response was to simply brush off any request for the data. For instance, when climate scientist Warwick Hughes asked for the data and method that Jones used to support his claim of a 0.6C temperature rise since the end of the 19th century, Jones responded "We have 25 years or so invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?"
Christopher Monckton makes the point: "Data destruction, as they [the Climate Research Unit] are about to find out to their cost, is a criminal offence. They are not merely bad scientists -- they are crooks. And crooks who have perpetrated their crimes at the expense of British and US taxpayers". He was not joking -- in response to the scandal (which has been well aired in British newspapers but less so in Australian newspapers), Phil Jones has stood down while an inquiry is being carried out.
Rampant dishonesty
Particularly damning are the emails indicating that the clique knew full
well that the Earth was cooling even as they conspired to prevent this
information getting out. For example Phil Jones explains how he used
Michael Mann's "trick of adding in the real temps to each series" to
"hide the decline". Apparently Mann knew full well that the planet was
cooling. In another email, Tim Osborn discusses how data can be
truncated to stop an apparent cooling trend showing up in the results.
In another email, Ken Briffa confesses "I know there is pressure to present a nice tidy story as regards apparent unprecedented warming in a thousand years or more in the [temperature] data, but in reality the situation is not quite so simple -- I believe that the recent warmth was probably matched about 1000 years ago". This clearly undermines the IPCC's argument that current global warming is "unprecedented". In fact Michael Mann attempted to remove this earlier warm pewriod using his infamous and now thoroughly discredited "hockey stick" graph. Similarly Dr Jonathan Overpeck had stated previously to Professor David Deming "We must get rid of the Medieval Warm Period".
Another incriminating email is by Dr Trenberth, a climatologist at the US Centre for Atmospheric Research and lead author for the 2001 and 2007 IPCC assessments. He says "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment [this lack was of course completely contrary to what the IPCC was climing], and it is a travesty that we can't". Similarly, exchanges between Wigley and Mann suggest that they not only knew the planet was not warming but they knew little about the energy sinks involved: "What you said was 'we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment'. Now you say 'we are nowhere close to knowing where the energy [which should be causing warming] is going. In my eyes these are two different things -- the second relates to our level of understanding, and I agree that this is still lacking".
Ousting critical journal editors
The dishonesty doesn't end there. Emails indicate that the peer-review
process for journal articles was influenced by the same clique of
scientists. In one email, Phil Jones writes to Michael Mann and asks if
the work of academics who question the link between human activities and
global warming deserve to make it into the IPCC report, implying that
they should be kept out. Jones writes "Kevin [Trenberth] and I will keep
them out somehow -- even if we have to redefine what the peer-review
literature is!".
In another email, Jones and Mann discuss how they can pressure an academic journal not to accept the work of climate skeptics with whom they disagree. For instance, Tom Wigley complained that Professor Hans von Storch, from the Meteorological Institute of the University of Hamburg, was partly to blame for papers critical of man-made global warming being published in the journal Climate Research. Wigley suggested they tell its publishers that the journal was being used for misinformation. He also said that whether this was true or not didn't matter -- they needed to stop skeptical articles, if necessary by getting the editorial board to resign.
And in some cases they succeeded. For instance, when McIntyre (one of the two Ms previously referred to) published a skeptical paper in Geophysical Research Letters in 2005, Michael Mann challenged the editor James Saiers over the publication. Tom Wigley said that if the editor was skeptical about man-made global warming they should get him ousted. And in fact the editor was duly ousted.
Bringing the bad guys to account
Michael Mann sums up his pro-IPCC position in a damning email to Jones
and Schmidt: "As we all know, this [climate debate] isn't about truth at
all, its about plausibly deniable accusations". Some legislators have
now asked that funding be withheld until the Pennsylvania State
University takes action against Mann. Dr Eduardo Zorita, senior
scientist at the Institute for Coastal Research in Germany and IPCC
author (one of the few good guys) has stated publicly that Mann, Jones
and others should be banned from the IPCC process because "The
scientific assessments in which they may take part are not credible
anymore".
Following the standing down of Phil Jones, Professor Mike Hulme from the University of East Anglia (the same university that houses the Climate Research Unit) suggests that "The IPCC has run its course. The tribalism that some of the leaked emails display ... is not attractive when we find it at work inside science". But it is worse than that. The IPCC Reports are the foundation for Australia's Garnaut Report and for the Kyoto and the Copenhagen Accord. It seems likely that all are based on falsified science and manipulated data.
Changing position because of the evidence
British journalist George Monbiot, environmental and political activist
and one of the fiercest media propagandists for man-made global warming,
has now reversed his position in light of the damning evidence. "It's no
use pretending that this isn't a major blow. The emails ... from the
Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia could scarcely be
more damaging. I am now convinced that they are genuine, and I'm
dismayed and deeply shaken by them". He goes further: "I apologise. I
was too trusting of some of those who provided the evidence I
championed. I would have been a better journalist if I had investigated
their claims more closely".
Where does this leave the Australian government?
At present, the Australian government's quest still appears to be the
ridiculous (and forlorn) hope of manipulating global temperatures by
tweaking the relatively small amount of carbon dioxide that Australian
industries emit compared to the many natural sources such as volcanoes
and the decomposition of organic matter. But carbon dioxide is a minor
greenhouse gas compared to water vapour; and in the Earth's past its
concentration was orders of magnitude higher with no associated warming.
It is difficult to see how Australia's Chief Scientist could believe
that, by tweaking the low levels of man-made carbon dioxide, we can
"keep the overall level of global warming at 2 degrees average".
I can understand how some scientifically illiterate politicians might want us to believe we have found a "magic" planetary thermostat, but this is not the thinking I would expect of Australia's Chief Scientist. Let me come back to the point you made to Peter Mares about advice that the Chief Scientist should be giving to the government, namely "The government shouldn't be surprised by any advice. That is to say that we consult carefully before giving it".
I hope you will now look closely at the growing international scandal about the IPCC's abuse of science, and at those who stand to make a great deal of money from emissions trading. I also hope you will inform the government of the 450+ peer-reviewed papers which challenge the notion of man-made global warming but which were ignored by the IPCC. For example, Tedesco and Monaghan have recently published an article in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, showing that the ice melt during the Antarctic summer of 2008-2009 was the lowest ever recorded in satellite data history -- let me know if you would like the full list. To me and other geoscientists, anything less would not match your claim of "consulting carefully".
Sincerely.
Dr John Happs
[Six weeks later, no reply or acknowledgement had been received from Professor Sackett]
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