The Great Climate Debate commits suicide

I must confess that I am a little mystified as to which climate issue you are lamenting. Is it the young and promising debate or is it concrete action on the climate issue? I suggest that you cannot have concrete action until you have had the debate. It is the Climate Scientists, in league with cohorts in the UN, Government, NGOs and the media that have been exposed trying to bypass the debate and move directly to collecting the judicious grants and transfers on offer.
Michael Cosgrove draws a timeline of some of the key events which led to what he calls the “untimely suicide of what was a young and promising debate.”

I suppose that many of you are just as mystified as I am as to how the (albeit minimal) hopes of finally seeing some concrete action on the climate issue could possibly have been dashed just as the weight of scientific opinion and public opinion was beginning to put real pressure on the skeptics.
And I suppose that many of you are just as mystified as I am as to how it came to be that the debate became so totally discredited because of greedy, ego-driven and reckless actions carried out by some of the very people who were supposedly trying to help the planet.
We all know that governments and industrialists have had a tendency to minimise the problems –- all’s fair in love and war after all –- but what about the climate scientists? Are they any less corrupt than their opponents? What has happened since the run-up to Copenhagen and Climategate? How does it all fit together? Who loused the whole thing up? I have another question to ask, but I’ll save it for the end of this article.
Here are a few key dates from the sad and sorry saga of the untimely suicide of what was a young and promising debate. Read more.

Climate Fight Is Heating Up in Deep Freeze

One thing that comes out loud and clear is that this topic is still open for debate and the science is not settled!
WASHINGTON — As millions of people along the East Coast hole up in their snowbound homes, the two sides in the climate-change debate are seizing on the mounting drifts to bolster their arguments.
Skeptics of global warming are using the record-setting snows to mock those who warn of dangerous human-driven climate change — this looks more like global cooling, they taunt.
Most climate scientists respond that the ferocious storms are consistent with forecasts that a heating planet will produce more frequent and more intense weather events.

But some independent climate experts say the blizzards in the Northeast no more prove that the planet is cooling than the lack of snow in Vancouver or the downpours in Southern California prove that it is warming.
As an illustration of their point of view, the family of Senator James M. Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, a leading climate skeptic in Congress, built a six-foot-tall igloo on Capitol Hill and put a cardboard sign on top that read “Al Gore’s New Home.”
The extreme weather, Mr. Inhofe said by e-mail, reinforced doubts about scientists’ conclusion that global warming was “unequivocal” and most likely caused by human activity. Read more.

Spinning exoneration of Dr. Michael Mann Into “Whitewash”

I have read the full report of this inquiry Concerning the Allegations of Research Misconduct Against Dr. Michael E. Mann and find the whole business interesting. Here are my reasons – quotes are from the report:

1: No specific charges for Mann to confront
Instead the University had received:
“numerous communications (emails, phone calls and letters) accusing Dr. Michael E. Mann of having engaged in acts that included manipulating data, destroying records and colluding to hamper the progress of scientific discourse around the issue of anthropogenic global warming from approximately 1998. These accusations were based on perceptions of the content of the widely reported theft of emails from a server at the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in Great Britain.”
So, all sorts of wild claims were being made as part of the hysterical fall out from “climategate” – the illegal release of emails in the UK. This was promoted by conservative bloggers and media outlets, by the deniersphere’s echo chamber.
“….. no formal allegations accusing Dr. Mann of research misconduct were submitted to any University official …the emails and other communications were reviewed [and] synthesized [into] the following four formal allegations. …. The four synthesized allegations were as follows:”
1. Did you engage in, or participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions with the intent to suppress or falsify data?
2. Did you engage in, or participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions with the intent to delete, conceal or otherwise destroy emails, information and/or data, related to AR4, as suggested by Phil Jones?
3. Did you engage in, or participate in, directly or indirectly, any misuse of privileged or confidential information available to you in your capacity as an academic scholar?
4. Did you engage in, or participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions that seriously deviated from accepted practices within the academic community.
So – no formal charges or accusations. This forced the inquiry to synthesis their own from implied accusations from the deluge of hysterical emails and comments. They were not accusations of the inquiry or the University themselves!
2: No evidence to substantiate allegations
None at all. Not for any of the four allegations! The report discusses each accusation and detail and gives it’s clear finding that “there is no substance for this allegation.”
Naturally Dr Mann expressed pleasure at the result:
“I am very pleased that, after a thorough review, the independent Penn State committee found no evidence to support any of the allegations against me. …. This is very much the vindication I expected since I am confident I have done nothing wrong.”
This does sort of expose the hysterical “climategate” beat up for what it was, doesn’t it. We can seriously discuss deficiencies in the way scientists at the University of East Anglia handled freedom of information requests, how they should be disciplined for this, etc., because there are specific charges and evidence. But the witch hunt against individuals like Dr Mann is exposed as hysterical hot air.
3: Further investigation by peers required Read more.

IPCC now in Bizarroland: Pachauri releases “smutty” romance novel

Just when you think things can’t get any more bizarre with the IPCC, having just learned that the IPPC 2007 report used magazine articles for references, head of the IPCC, Dr. Rajenda Pachauri, provides comedy gold. According to the UK Telegraph, he’s just released what they describe as a “smutty” romance novel, Return to Almora laced with steamy sex, lots of sex. Oh, and Shirley MacLaine.

Here’s the good doctor, grinning like a Cheshire cat at his book launch in India on January 10th

As the UN’s climate change chief, Dr Rajendra Pachauri has spent his career writing only the driest of academic articles. But the latest offering from the chairman of the UN’s climate change panel is an altogether racier tome.

Some might even suggest Dr Pachauri’s first novel is frankly smutty.

WARNING ADULT CONTENT FOLLOWS: Read more.

Monckton: IPCC Chief Is Going To Jail

Not "should be going" you will note (when you look at the video), but "is going". The modal and tense choices are very telling and, I can guarantee, deliberate. Railway engineer and non-climate scientist, but very dodgy chief of the IPCC scam-mongers, Rajendra Pachauri "is going" to jail, says Lord Monckton. A philosopher and logician as precise and vigilant when it comes to language as Christopher Monckton would never have said, publicly or privately, that in this way unless he already knew there was strong enough evidence to permit him to say it without inviting some type of legal challenge.

It's fair to say, therefore, that things are about to get a lot better for us, the long-abused, stolen-from taxpayer - and much worse for Pachauri and his crew. That would, of course, also implicate this Labour government. What a surprise.
If in doubt, vote them out! Read more.

IPCC Fourth Assessment Report is rubbish – says yet another expert

Bishop Hill has unearthed a jaw-dropping critique of the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report. His post’s so delightful there’s no need for embellishment. Here it is in full: (Hat tip: R. Campbell/P.Keane)

While perusing some of the review comments to the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report, I came across the contributions of Andrew Lacis, a colleague of James Hansen’s at GISS. Lacis’s is not a name I’ve come across before but some of what he has to say about Chapter 9 of the IPCC’s report is simply breathtaking.
Chapter 9 is possibly the most important one in the whole IPCC report – it’s the one where they decide that global warming is manmade. This is the one where the headlines are made.
Remember, this guy is mainstream, not a sceptic, and you may need to remind yourself of that fact several times as you read through his comment on the executive summary of the chapter:
There is no scientific merit to be found in the Executive Summary. The presentation sounds like something put together by Greenpeace activists and their legal department. The points being made are made arbitrarily with legal sounding caveats without having established any foundation or basis in fact. The Executive Summary seems to be a political statement that is only designed to annoy greenhouse skeptics. Wasn’t the IPCC Assessment Report intended to be a scientific document that would merit solid backing from the climate science community – instead of forcing many climate scientists into having to agree with greenhouse skeptic criticisms that this is indeed a report with a clear and obvious political agenda. Attribution can not happen until understanding has been clearly demonstrated. Once the facts of climate change have been established and understood, attribution will become self-evident to all. The Executive Summary as it stands is beyond redemption and should simply be deleted.

I’m speechless. The chapter authors, however weren’t. This was their reply (all of it):
Rejected. [Executive Summary] summarizes Ch 9, which is based on the peer reviewed literature.

Simply astonishing. This is a consensus? Read more.

Hockey stick graph took pride of place in IPCC report, despite doubts

Emails expose tension between desire for scrupulous honesty, and desire to tell simple story to tell the policymakers

Michael Mann's record of temperature dubbed the "hockey stick graph" shows average global temperature over the past 1,000 years. Photograph: IPCC report

It is a persuasive image. The "hockey stick" graph shows the average global temperature over the past 1,000 years. For the first 900 years there is little variation, like the shaft of an ice-hockey stick. Then, in the 20th century, comes a sharp rise like the stick's blade.

The IPCC put the graph in the summary of its 2001 assessment reports. Although it was intended as an icon of global warming, the hockey stick has become something else – a symbol of the conflict between mainstream climate scientists and their critics. The contrarians have made it the focus of their attacks for a decade, hoping that by demolishing the hockey stick graph they can destroy the credibility of climate scientists. And in the man who first drew the hockey stick, a young paleoclimatologist called Professor Michael Mann of Penn State University, they have found an angry, outspoken and sometimes vulnerable foe.

Damagingly for the mainstreamers, the Guardian has discovered that there was a vitriolic debate within the mainstream science community in 1999, during preparation of the IPCC report, about the validity of the graph. Mann and CRU's tree-ring specialist Dr Keith Briffa are often portrayed by their enemies as co-conspirators, but the CRU emails reveal that back then they were actually in competing camps. Mann promoted his hockey stick. Briffa was very dubious, especially about the prominence the IPCC wanted to give it. Read more.

Victory for openness as IPCC climate scientist opens up lab doors

Ben Santer had a change of heart about data transparency despite being hectored and abused by rabid climate sceptics
Despite or because of? Also I have never met a climate change sceptic that had Rabies.

Ben Santer was accused by sceptics of 'scientific cleansing'. Photograph: Marcia Johnson

One man who has battled against climate sceptics longer than most is the climate modeller Ben Santer, who completed his PhD in climate science at the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in the 1983 before going to the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. He helped write the second IPCC assessment report, published in 1995. Most famously, this report claimed to find for the first time that "the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate" – essentially because the geographical pattern of warming across the globe matched that predicted by models. Santer was also lead author of some of the key research behind this claim and of the relevant IPCC chapter.

The main body of the report included lots of cavils about the claim to see the "discernible human influence". As another lead author on the critical chapter, Tim Barnett, then of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, part of the University of California, San Diego, told me in 1996: "We wrote a long list of caveats in that chapter. We got a lot of static from within IPCC, from people who wanted to water down and delete some of those caveats. We had to work very hard to keep them all in." But many did not make it to the summary for policy-makers, and the New York Times leaked the text with the headline: "Scientists finally confirm human role in global warming." Nothing about the balance of evidence there.
Santer's co-authors on the critical research included Phil Jones at the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia, Tom Wigley at the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, and others. But as the main author of the research highlighted in the summary, Santer found himself under instant attack. Remembering all this a decade later, he told me: "I was accused of politically motivated tampering with the IPCC assessment, and of irregularities in my own research. I had, they said, somehow forced Nature to publish [my research] under duress, and had falsified scientific documents. There were calls for my dismissal." Read more.

Senior Chinese climatologist calls for reform of IPCC

Lü Xuedu says Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is a young institution that needs to strengthen its credibility

The deputy director general of the China National Climate Centre Lü Xuedu has called for reform of the IPCC. Photograph: Franz Dejon/IISD

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) should be reformed to prevent political interference, improve research and reduce western bias, a senior Chinese climatologist has told the Guardian.

Lü Xuedu, the deputy director general of the National Climate Centre and a Chinese delegate to the Copenhagen conference, said the use of flawed projections about the speed of melting of Himalayan glaciers and recent allegations that scientists blocked criticism proved there are problems with the way some IPCC documents are assessed and checked.

Although he stressed support for the IPCC, of which China is an active participant, Lü said the young institution needed to strengthen its credibility.

"The IPCC is still in a developing stage. It cannot be perfect or complete. It needs reform, especially after problems were exposed," he said. "Some scientists take a political stance and wear coloured glasses, which means they do not look at issues in a comprehensive and objective way. The managing institute, authors and contributors of the assessment reports should be more objective in order to be more convincing." Read more.

New US climate service to help adapt to climate change

And I thought we were adapting rather well to climate change - I suspect this organization wants to move money around to pay for projects of dubious economic value.
The US will launch a national climate service aimed at serving as a one-stop shop of US climate information and at giving industries and farmers information to adapt to regional climate changes.

For 140 years, the National Weather Service and its forerunner, the US military's Weather Bureau, have tracked and forecast weather around the country. Now, that institution is about to be joined by a national climate service

The aim of the new service is to give energy companies, farmers, other climate-sensitive industries, and community planners the information they need to anticipate and adapt to the potential effects of global warming. In addition, it will serve as a single repository for US climate information, accessible via a single website.

US Commerce Secretary Gary Locke announced his department’s move to set up the service Monday, noting "some degree of climate change is inevitable."

The service, which will fall under the purview of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), will look beyond changes in daily or weekly weather to focus on changes in long-term trends – in temperature, precipitation, wind, and other weather features – that constitute a region's climate. Read more.

Is diesel dead?

The scrappage scheme has highlighted the benefits of small, cheap petrol engines. We examine the facts behind the predicted demise of diesel.

A vision of the near future? Photo: Connors Brighton

Diesel. Nasty oily stuff or thrifty saviour? Until fairly recently, you might have said that UK buyers were coming around to the second view.

In Europe, diesel's share of the new passenger car market has grown from 25 per cent to more than 50 per cent during the past decade, but in Britain, from a lower base, growth has been even faster during the same period (from 15 per cent to 43 and a bit).

In recent months, though, Britain's love affair with diesel has lost its ardour. The latest registration figures show that January-October sales last year dropped by almost 16 per cent compared with 2008, down from 832,200 to 700,131. As a proportion of the total market, diesel has fallen from 43.3 per cent in 2008 to 41.5 per cent last year.

Small percentages, yes, but big numbers. It's a trend that is also replicated in Europe, where during the past 12 months diesel's overall market share has fallen from about 52 per cent to less than 46 per cent. Even in Belgium, which has Europe's largest diesel penetration, market share has dropped by almost four per cent.
So what has happened? Does this change mark the end of diesel's European conquest? There are several contributing factors to what initially appears to be the demise of diesel. Read more.

If you're going to do good science, release the computer code too

Programs do more and more scientific work - but you need to be able to check them as well as the original data, as the recent row over climate change documentation shows

A map showing the martime jurisdiction and boundaries in the Arctic region. Only four colours are required - and we know why. Photograph: PA

One of the spinoffs from the emails and documents that were leaked from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia is the light that was shone on the role of program code in climate research. There is a particularly revealing set of "README" documents that were produced by a programmer at UEA apparently known as "Harry". The documents indicate someone struggling with undocumented, baroque code and missing data – this, in something which forms part of one of the three major climate databases used by researchers throughout the world.

Many climate scientists have refused to publish their computer programs. I suggest is that this is both unscientific behaviour and, equally importantly, ignores a major problem: that scientific software has got a poor reputation for error.

There is enough evidence for us to regard a lot of scientific software with worry. For example Professor Les Hatton, an international expert in software testing resident in the Universities of Kent and Kingston, carried out an extensive analysis of several million lines of scientific code. He showed that the software had an unacceptably high level of detectable inconsistencies.

For example, interface inconsistencies between software modules which pass data from one part of a program to another occurred at the rate of one in every seven interfaces on average in the programming language Fortran, and one in every 37 interfaces in the language C. This is hugely worrying when you realise that just one error — just one — will usually invalidate a computer program. What he also discovered, even more worryingly, is that the accuracy of results declined from six significant figures to one significant figure during the running of programs.

Hatton and other researchers' work indicates that scientific software is often of poor quality. What is staggering about the research that has been done is that it examines commercial scientific software – produced by software engineers who have to undergo a regime of thorough testing, quality assurance and a change control discipline known as configuration management.

By contrast scientific software developed in our universities and research institutes is often produced by scientists with no training in software engineering and with no quality mechanisms in place and so, no doubt, the occurrence of errors will be even higher. The Climate Research Unit's "Harry ReadMe" files are a graphic indication of such working conditions, containing as they do the outpouring of a programmer's frustrations in trying to get sets of data to conform to a specification.

Computer code is also at the heart of a scientific issue. One of the key features of science is deniability: if you erect a theory and someone produces evidence that it is wrong, then it falls. This is how science works: by openness, by publishing minute details of an experiment, some mathematical equations or a simulation; by doing this you embrace deniability. This does not seem to have happened in climate research. Many researchers have refused to release their computer programs — even though they are still in existence and not subject to commercial agreements. An example is Professor Mann's initial refusal to give up the code that was used to construct the 1999 "hockey stick" model that demonstrated that human-made global warming is a unique artefact of the last few decades. (He did finally release it in 2005.) Read more.

Global Warming And Journalists

Notice that all of these sceptic bloggers are self-employed businessmen. Their strengths are networks and feedback: mistakes get quickly corrected; new leads are opened up; expertise is shared; links are made. Prejudice and ignorance abound too, but the good blogs get rewarded with scoops and guest essays so they tap into rich seams of knowledge. When Montford first ran his now classic post called ‘Caspar and the Jesus paper’, about the shenanigans the IPCC had to resort to in order to get a flawed paper rebutting McIntyre into the peer-reviewed literature in time to use it in their report, word of mouth caused interest in his website to explode.

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The common theme in these three accounts is that journalists have lost their position as information gatekeepers. If people don’t trust journalists, they’ll go somewhere else. So it’s up to journalists to regain trust.
Some would say journalists can do so by being more honest about their own agendas and the limits to their knowledge. Others say journalists can win back the public by “framing” science in a way that uses the public’s emotions and fears. Read more.

Climate change will make world more 'fragrant'

I think I know where the smell is coming from - who pays these people?

Climate change will make the world more fragrant.

As CO2 levels increase and the world warms, land use, precipitation and the availability of water will also change.
In response to all these disruptions, plants will emit greater levels of fragrant chemicals called biogenic volatile organic compounds.
That will then alter how plants interact with one another and defend themselves against pests, according to a major scientific review.
According to the scientists leading the review, the world may already be becoming more fragrant, as plants have already begun emitting more smelly chemicals. Read more.

Disclosing the real risks of climate change

SEC says companies must disclose risks due to climate change. Seize the opportunity.

We are not weighing in on the climate debate. We are not opining on whether the world’s climate is changing, at what pace or due to what causes, Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Mary Shapiro insisted on announcing the SEC’s new “interpretive guidance” on climate change.

The Commission’s two Republican members objected that the Obama Administration was using the Commission to promote its global warming and renewable energy agenda (along with the EPA, NASA, Defense and Interior Departments and others). It’s true, but irrelevant.

Environmentalists and “ethical investing” groups had pressured the Commission for years to require corporate disclosure on climate matters. Now, as the SEC steps in, the Copenhagen treaty negotiations have collapsed in disarray. Cap-and-trade has bogged down over senators’ fears of further damage to the economy and their reelection chances. The Environmental Protection Agency has decreed that plant-fertilizing carbon dioxide is a “dangerous pollutant,” because senators are increasingly reluctant to micromanage the economy, companies and families, but the regulations’ forward trajectory is uncertain.

Michael Mann’s “hockey stick” graph and the ClimateGate email scandals have metastasized into a tsunami of revelations that have besmirched the IPCC’s credibility and its role as dominant arbiter on matters of energy and climate. Manipulated and missing temperature data. Doctored computer models and disaster scenarios. Alarmist scientists rejecting any studies that dissent from climate catastrophe claims. Headline-grabbing disaster “studies” about melting glaciers and parched rainforests based on rank speculation or written by World Wildlife Fund activists. “Mann-made” climate change, indeed.

Investors certainly do have a “fundamental right to know” which companies are well positioned to address future crises and opportunities, and which are not – as we are frequently reminded by activist investor groups like Institutional Shareholder Services and CALPERS. However, these groups want to use the SEC decision to drive cap-and-trade laws and “endangerment” rulings forward, and drive hydrocarbon use into oblivion. Read more.

Climategate Part II: Help us follow the money

Since it’s clear the Internet (notably the blogosphere) exposed the dubious science of anthropogenic global warming, thankfully before we all went broke (or more broke than we already are), it’s time to turn to our next assignment – following the money.

Cui bono in this giant metastasizing scam? Yes, we already know that the IPCC’s Rajendra Pachauri may have some ill-gotten gains, not to mention a few scientists who may have flown first class to Bali and other such boondoggles, but they are indeed small potatoes. Big money was – or was intended to be – made with carbon exchanges set up in Europe and the USA. Fraud at the European exchange to the tune of one and half billion dollars is already under investigation by Scotland Yard. But that’s the tip of the proverbial iceberg. As far back as July 2009, the Science and Public Policy Institute published a broadside – Climate Money – alleging that 79 billion had already been spent on this unproven science. That’s an extraordinary sum, even if exaggerated by eighty or ninety percent. Who knows how much has been spent and who has benefited? Read more.

U.S. Solar Market to Double in the Next Year

Government incentives and lower solar prices are starting to pay off.
In a few years, the United States is likely to be the world's largest market for solar power, eclipsing Germany, which has taken the lead as a result of strong government incentives in spite of the relative paucity of sunlight in that country. A number of factors could make growth possible in the United States--especially changes in legislation that give utilities incentives to create large solar farms.

Powering up: Workers help construct a solar power plant built by the Pasadena, CA-based eSolar. The mirrors focus light on a tower, generating heat for producing electricity. Credit: eSolar

Last year, the U.S. solar industry got off to a slow start, but sales rebounded in the second half of the year, largely because of a drop in the prices of solar panels of up to 40 percent, partly caused by an oversupply due to the recession. Revenues for many solar companies were likely flat, but the megawatts of solar installed in the United States overall grew by 25 to 40 percent last year, says Roger Efird, the chairman of the Solar Energy Industry Association and the managing director of Suntech America, a branch of Suntech Power, the largest maker of crystalline silicon solar panels in the world.

This year, Efird says, solar installations could double, reaching a gigawatt of capacity. "That's a big number," he says. "If you are in the solar business, you were talking watts 15 years ago, you were talking kilowatts 10 years ago, and you have trouble even talking megawatts today."

The growth had several likely causes, including decreasing prices for solar panels and installation costs, as well as increasing state incentives, which can make solar far more attractive. According to Harry Fleming, the CEO of Acro Energy Technologies in Oakdale, CA, these changes mean that the cost of a typical five-kilowatt rooftop solar system has dropped from $22,000 after state incentives are applied ($40,000 without them) to $16,000 in the last 18 months. Prices are expected to fall to $13,000 by the end of the year ($25,000 without incentives). "This is going to make solar a middle-class product," he says. Read more.

Mass. wind farm that Obama administration might support meets strong resistance

ABOARD THE IDA LEWIS -- Interior Secretary Ken Salazar journeyed out into Nantucket Sound on a Coast Guard vessel last week to signal the Obama administration's readiness to put some muscle behind wind energy. To do that, Salazar has to resolve a battle over building a wind farm on 25 square miles of open water that has driven a rift between environmentalists, infuriated local Native Americans and threatened one of the administration's cherished priorities.

The nearly decade-long fight over whether to construct a 130-turbine offshore wind farm near Martha's Vineyard has spurred numerous state and federal regulatory reviews. It has cost millions in lobbying fees and has prompted an intense political debate on Cape Cod and in Washington, setting those who back renewable energy against those who want to preserve the natural beauty of Nantucket Sound.

"The worst thing we can do for the country is to be in a state of indecision, and this application has been in a state of indecision for a very long time," said Salazar, who came to see the proposed site of the Cape Wind project and to meet with tribes that oppose it. Read more.

Climate scepticism grows among Tories

Green policies have potential to be as divisive as Europe, leadership warned
Most Conservative MPs, including at least six members of the shadow cabinet, are sceptical about their party's continued focus on climate change policies, it has been claimed.

The recent furore around "Climategate" has hardened the views of Tory MPs, many of whom were already unconvinced by the scientific consensus, and has led to increasing calls for the issue to be pushed down the priority list.
Tim Montgomerie, founder and editor of the ConservativeHome website, said climate change had the potential to be as divisive for the party as Europe once was. "You have got 80% or 90% of the party just not signed up to this. No one minded at the beginning, but people are starting to realise this could be quite expensive, so opinion is hardening." Read more.

The great global warming collapse - Margaret Wente

As the science scandals keep coming, the air has gone out of the climate-change movement

In 2007, the most comprehensive report to date on global warming, issued by the respected United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, made a shocking claim: The Himalayan glaciers could melt away as soon as 2035.

These glaciers provide the headwaters for Asia's nine largest rivers and lifelines for the more than one billion people who live downstream. Melting ice and snow would create mass flooding, followed by mass drought. The glacier story was reported around the world. Last December, a spokesman for the World Wildlife Fund, an environmental pressure group, warned, “The deal reached at Copenhagen will have huge ramifications for the lives of hundreds of millions of people who are already highly vulnerable due to widespread poverty.” To dramatize their country's plight, Nepal's top politicians strapped on oxygen tanks and held a cabinet meeting on Mount Everest.

But the claim was rubbish, and the world's top glaciologists knew it. It was based not on rigorously peer-reviewed science but on an anecdotal report by the WWF itself. When its background came to light on the eve of Copenhagen, Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the IPCC, shrugged it off. But now, even leading scientists and environmental groups admit the IPCC is facing a crisis of credibility that makes the Climategate affair look like small change.

“The global warming movement as we have known it is dead,” the brilliant analyst Walter Russell Mead says in his blog on The American Interest. It was done in by a combination of bad science and bad politics. Read more.