Tracking the evolution of ‘Climate Gate’.

Year 2000:
archives.cnn.com...

A blue-ribbon panel of climate scientists has issued a report saying that global warming is "undoubtedly real."
The report, announced Wednesday night in a statement by the National Academy of Science's National Research Council, takes an unusually strong stand on the issue. It also undermines a principal argument used by scientists who dissent with the majority view, which is that global warming is well under way with possibly dire environmental consequences.
The panel stopped short of declaring a definite link between human activity and global warming.

Year 2001:
www.pbs.org...

STEPHEN SCHNEIDER: Not only do we think it's going to get warmer, and maybe unprecedentedly warmer, but we may change the incidence of extreme events-- that is, droughts and floods, heat waves, El Nino might intensify, and perhaps the most worrisome of all to me is
increased intensity of hurricanes, because it's the top-end powerful storms that do most of the damage. SPENCER MICHELS: Schneider and his colleagues say that one degree Fahrenheit of warming in the last century is pushing nature around. Glaciers are receding, lake and river ice is melting earlier, birds are migrating from the tropics sooner, marine communities are moving North along the California coast, and coral-- very sensitive to temperature change-- is dying, or bleaching, threatening to ruin the economies of areas that depend on it for tourism.
STEPHEN SCHNEIDER: So far, I would argue that we can't claim that's done any harm. But what it says is that even the one degree Fahrenheit is sufficient, now, to cause an impact on nature. And the projections for the future are, if we're lucky, a few degrees more, and if we're unlucky, ten. And ten, to me, would be certainly catastrophic for nature.

Year 2002:
www.cbsnews.com...

The report released by the Environmental Protection Agency was a surprising endorsement of what many scientists and weather experts have long argued — that human activities such as oil refining, power plants and automobile emissions are important causes of global warming.

But it suggests nothing beyond voluntary action by industry for dealing with the so-called "greenhouse" gases, the program Bush advocated in rejecting a treaty negotiated in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997 calling for mandatory reduction of those gases by industrial nations.

Year 2003:
www.nasa.gov...

Recently observed change in Arctic temperatures and sea ice cover may be a harbinger of global climate changes to come, according to a recent NASA study. Satellite data -- the unique view from space -- are allowing researchers to more clearly see Arctic changes and develop an improved understanding of the possible effect on climate worldwide.
The Arctic warming study, appearing in the November 1 issue of the American Meteorological Society's Journal of Climate, shows that compared to the 1980s, most of the Arctic warmed significantly over the last decade, with the biggest temperature increases occurring over North America.

Year 2004:
news.nationalgeographic.com...

To prove a scientific consensus on global climate change, Oreskes searched the scientific literature for papers published between 1993 and 2003 with the words "global climate change" in their abstracts. She found 928.
"Not one of the papers refuted the claim that human activities are affecting Earth's climate," she said.
According to her review, the scientific literature indisputably links greenhouse gas emissions from human activities—such as driving cars and burning oil and coal to generate electricity—with a rise in surface-air and subsurface-ocean temperatures.
However, Oreskes goes on to write that "many details about climate interactions are not well understood, and there are ample grounds for continued research to provide a better basis for understanding climate dynamics."

Year 2005:
news.nationalgeographic.com...

A broad scientific census says that Earth is already experiencing significant global warming. So how hot will it get, how soon, and to what effect?
Some climate scientists warn that the pace of global warming could be much more rapid than that predicted even a few years ago.
"Any time you get into projections, you get into a lot of uncertainties. But the [climate] models are getting a lot stronger," said Jay Gulledge, a senior research at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change in Arlington, Virginia.
Gulledge says some current projections point to a rise in average global temperature of 0.5°C (slightly less than 1°F) by the year 2030.

Year 2006:
www.cnn.com...

No one can say exactly what it looks like when a planet takes ill, but it probably looks a lot like Earth.
Never mind what you've heard about global warming as a slow-motion emergency that would take decades to play out. Suddenly and unexpectedly, the crisis is upon us.
From heat waves to storms to floods to fires to massive glacial melts, the global climate seems to be crashing around us.
The problem -- as scientists suspected but few others appreciated -- is that global climate systems are booby-trapped with tipping points and feedback loops, thresholds past which the slow creep of environmental decay gives way to sudden and self-perpetuating collapse. That's just what's happening now.
It's at the north and south poles -- where ice cover is crumbling to slush -- that the crisis is being felt the most acutely.

Year 2007:
www.cnn.com...

Global warming is here and humans are "very likely" the blame, an international group of scientists meeting in Paris, France, announced Friday.
"The evidence for warming having happened on the planet is unequivocal," said U.S. government scientist Susan Solomon, who also is a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
"We can see that in rising air temperatures, we can see it in changes in snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere. We can see it in global sea rise. It's unequivocal," she said.
In a 21-page report for policymakers, the group of climate experts unanimously linked -- with "90 percent" certainty -- the increase of average global temperatures since the mid-20th century to the increase of manmade greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Year 2008:
www.telegraph.co.uk...

First, all over the world, temperatures have been dropping in a way wholly unpredicted by all those computer models which have been used as the main drivers of the scare. Last winter, as temperatures plummeted, many parts of the world had snowfalls on a scale not seen for decades. This winter, with the whole of Canada and half the US under snow, looks likely to be even worse. After several years flatlining, global temperatures have dropped sharply enough to cancel out much of their net rise in the 20th century.
Ever shriller and more frantic has become the insistence of the warmists, cheered on by their army of media groupies such as the BBC, that the last 10 years have been the "hottest in history" and that the North Pole would soon be ice-free – as the poles remain defiantly icebound and those polar bears fail to drown. All those hysterical predictions that we are seeing more droughts and hurricanes than ever before have infuriatingly failed to materialise.
Even the more cautious scientific acolytes of the official orthodoxy now admit that, thanks to "natural factors" such as ocean currents, temperatures have failed to rise as predicted (although they plaintively assure us that this cooling effect is merely "masking the underlying warming trend", and that the temperature rise will resume worse than ever by the middle of the next decade).

Year 2009:
www.cnn.com...

Human-induced global warming is real, according to a recent U.S. survey based on the opinions of 3,146 scientists. However there remains divisions between climatologists and scientists from other areas of earth sciences as to the extent of human responsibility.

Year 2010:
www.foxnews.com...

Latif, a professor at the Leibniz Institute at Germany's Kiel University and an author of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, believes the lengthy cold weather is merely a pause -- a 30-years-long blip -- in the larger cycle of global warming, which postulates that temperatures will rise rapidly over the coming years.
At a U.N. conference in September, Latif said that changes in ocean currents known as the North Atlantic Oscillation could dominate over manmade global warming for the next few decades. Latif said the fluctuations in these currents could also be responsible for much of the rise in global temperatures seen over the past 30 years.
Latif is a key member of the UN's climate research arm, which has long promoted the concept of global warming. He told the Daily Mail that "a significant share of the warming we saw from 1980 to 2000 and at earlier periods in the 20th Century was due to these cycles -- perhaps as much as 50 percent."
The U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSICD) agrees that the cold temperatures are unusual, and that the world's oceans may play a part in temperatures on land.
"Has ocean variability contributed to variations in surface temperature? Absolutely, no one's denying that," said Mark Serreze, senior research scientist with NSIDC. But the Center disagrees with Latif's conclusions, instead arguing that the cold snap is still another sign of global warming.
"We are indeed starting to see the effects of the rise in greenhouse gases," he said

It seems to me that in just 10 years we went from being sceptical. Then accepting global warming, not man made. Then accepting global warming being man made. Now thinking we might be cooling off. This just seems whacky to me.

What does everyone think of the information. Doesn't it seem like the global warming scientists in only a couple years said there was man made global warming, doesn't that sound kind of strange?

It all comes down to money. Government (aka taxpayer) grants and research funding are readily available to any researcher who claims a link of the project to "climate change". Untold trillions, around the globe.

Obama is trying to get another $500 billion, as we speak (type), for a new Climate Change Commission.

Hey Misoir, I would like you to put together a correlary piece to show the global cooling trend that was the big deal back in the 70's and 80's.

That would open some more eyes.

If you would like, I made a thread about it. I will not post it, I do not want to spam you.

I remember being in grade school and being warned of global cooling. I just find this WHOLE thing idiocy in reverse.

Some will remember the spectacle, NOT quite as bad as this due to the FACT their is an agenda behind this one.

S&F

You can’t resolve away climate change

My stance on climate change is clear: the scientific evidence that we’re getting warmer is overwhelming, and the most likely cause is that it’s human-produced. The first is fact, the second is a conclusion based on a lot of evidence.

Climategate showed us that the noise machine is in full swing; nothing in those emails takes away from the fact that there are multiple and independent lines of evidence that we’re warming up. And the talking heads on Fox and other right-wing media saying that the harsh winter is evidence against global warming shows how dumb of an argument they’re willing to make.

But it’s not just the stuffed shirts in the media making their own reality as they go along; some people in the government are trying to legislate it. Climate change deniers in both Utah and South Dakota have passed resolutions essentially condemning the science and reality of climate change. In Utah it was just a broadside at the science; in South Dakota it’s aimed at a "balanced teaching of global warming in the public schools."

Yeah, sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

Besides the creationist analogies, the South Dakota resolution sounds like something out of 1984:

WHEREAS, the earth has been cooling for the last eight years despite small increases in anthropogenic carbon dioxide;

Wrong! The Earth has been warming overall, and the last decade was the warmest on record, with records going back to 1880.

WHEREAS, there is no evidence of atmospheric warming in the troposphere where the majority of warming would be taking place;

Wrong! The troposphere is warming.

WHEREAS, historical climatological data shows without question the earth has gone through trends where the climate was much warmer than in our present age.

Yes, and the Earth went through a period of heavy bombardment from asteroids and comets a few hundred million years after it formed. Just because something happened once doesn’t make it safe.

WHEREAS, carbon dioxide is not a pollutant but rather a highly beneficial ingredient for all plant life on earth. Many scientists refer to carbon dioxide as "the gas of life";

Wow. I mean, wow. Let’s lock these guys in a room filled with CO2 for an hour or two and see how much life is left in them. And I love the "many scientists" line. You know what? A whole lot more scientists call it a greenhouse gas.

Wow.

WHEREAS, more than 31,000 American scientists collectively signed a petition to President Obama stating: "There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, or methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the earth’s climate…"

This petition has been thoroughly debunked before; it’s nothing more than an attempt to muddy the waters by deniers.

However, my absolute favorite part of the South Dakota resolution is this next bit. Are you sitting down? Good:

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED [...]
(2) That there are a variety of climatological, meteorological, astrological, thermological, cosmological, and ecological dynamics that can affect world weather phenomena and that the significance and interrelativity of these factors is largely speculative; and

Wait, what? Did those guys in the South Dakota legislature actually say astrological?

Geez, no wonder they can’t figure out that global warming is real. They think they’re reading their horoscopes! It makes me wonder if they just want the planet to warm up so that their state has milder winters.

It angers me that the science of so many topics has been warped and mutilated by people with a political agenda. I have no such agenda, except to speak the truth as I see it. I make no money if global change is real, I get no power, no thrill. In fact, the idea of a substantially warmer planet scares me, if not for myself, then for my daughter and everyone destined to live in that environment.

The politicians who would vote yes on these resolutions are doing so out of a near-religious belief that global warming is not real — they’re the otter in that picture. Contacting them probably won’t help; I suspect that if every last constituent they had contacted them, they would still cleave to their beliefs.

But I urge people to write their congressional representatives anyway. And spread the word; if these two states deny reality this blatantly, then others will follow. Bet on it.

And if other states follow suit, they may doom all of us.

[edit on 21-2-2010 by john124]

reply to post by john124


I am not sure quite what you are driving at so my apologies in advance if I have read you wrong.

Begin Rant:

One thing that really irritates me is that Warmists seem to have this impression, no they think it is a fact, that Climate Realists (I hate the label Deniers) are saying that there is no climate change.

This is NOT the case. The 'argument' is to the cause of climate change and whether it is manifestly human produced or for the most part as a result of a natural cycle. No one with a modicum of sense will deny that weather patterns are changing, but what they are changing, and the effects of the change are what is up for debate.

In addition another 'label' given to Climate Realists is 'polluters'. Just because we disagree as to the cause of climate change does not mean that we are in the pockets of the oil and coal companies and want to create as much pollution as we can with impunity. Personally I am very much in favour of reducing emissions, not of carbon dioxide, but of Sulphur Dioxide and other power station gasses and particulates. I am a great believer in recycling and fervently believe that we should be doing everything we can to conserve resources and find alternatives, but not by unfair taxation of carbon for the profit of the wealthy.

End rant:

Eee that feels better lad!

Well, for me it comes down to the same points all the time..

1) The majority of big points for the pro ManMade Global warming end have been falsified and are lies...

2) The majority of big points AGAINST ManMade Global Warming are speculative..

3) All governments need to wean off oil in the next 50 years or face complete economic destruction as a result of the speculative market...

4) We still need to stop polluting our planet NOW!!!

5) Climate change is real and cyclical, whether we have caused this cycle cannot be determined properly as a result of the interference of the free market.

The Outcome For Me is..

I already live in the EU which has a very small carbon footprint per person for our wealth..
I also recycle almost everything I use..
I have switched to wind generated electricity..
I check energy usage on electrical products and buy the most economical..
I drive economically..
I also live in probably the highest carbon taxed EU state..

So while I don't buy the ManMade Global Warming stuff, I have still drastically cut my emissions over the past couple of years and think everyone should anyway..