How corrupt is government climate science?

By Paul Homewood

http://www.cfact.org/2016/04/09/how-corrupt-is-government-climate-science/

We know that the IPCC Summary for Policymakers (SPM) does not always reflect what is actually in the scientific chapters. But evidence is now emerging that the US State Dept has attempted to influence what was written in both the SPM and chapters.

Ron Arnold has this damning essay on CFACT:

Many have suspected that U.S. political intervention in climate science has corrupted the outcome. The new emergence of an old 1995 document from the U.S. State Department to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change confirms those suspicions, or at least gives the allegation credence enough to ask questions.

It’s troubling that a FOIA lawsuit came up empty – “no such correspondence in our files” – when the old 1995 document was requested from the U.S. State Department late last year. This raises a certain ironic question: If I have a copy of your document, how come you don’t?”

State’s response is also somewhat unbelievable because the document that fell into my hands showed State’s date-stamp, the signature of a State Department official and the names of persons still living – along with 30 pages of detailed instructions on how to change the IPCC’s science document and the summary for policymakers.

The document itself consists of a three-page cover letter to Sir John Houghton, head of IPCC Working Group I (Science), from Day Mount, Deputy Assistant Secretary, Acting, Environment and Development, United States Department of State, along with the thirty-page instruction set with line-by-line “suggestions,” written by scientist Robert Watson and others.

Among the more revealing tidbits is a remark scolding a scientist for being honest about the weakness of aerosol forcing data: “We clearly cannot use aerosol forcing as the trigger of our smoking gun, and then make a generalized appeal to uncertainty to exclude these effects from the forward-looking modeling analysis.”

One instruction was to change a correct statement about warming rates into a flat lie: “Change ‘continue to rise’ to ‘rise by even greater amounts’ to provide a sense of magnitude of the extended change.”

The entire document is too convoluted and technical to summarize here, so it is posted here in PDF form for your detailed examination. The document posted here is unchanged and unaltered in any way from exactly what I received from a well known and credible source that must remain anonymous to avoid harm or retribution.

There is evidence that the document is authentic based on a specific mention in the 2000 Hoover Institution report by S. Fred Singer and Frederick Seitz, “Climate Policy—From Rio to Kyoto: A Political Issue for 2000—and Beyond.”

The 1995 document raises 2016 questions about the State Department’s actions in the subsequent United National IPCC Assessment Reports. What did they do? Where are the correspondence and instructions to change the science in all the IPCC Assessments? What is the Obama State Department doing to corrupt climate science to its forward its radical social and political agenda? Some of that is obvious. It’s the clandestine part we need to know.

I don’t expect our government to answer truthfully. If they did, they might have to start a RICO investigation of themselves.

Read the State Department document and decide for yourself whether these questions are worth asking.

http://www.cfact.org/2016/04/09/how-corrupt-is-government-climate-science/

Robert Watson’s name crops up a lot. He has filled various roles in the climate and environmental establishment down the years, including the World Bank and DEFRA. He was chairman of the IPCC from 1997 to 2002, and is currently Director of Strategic Development at the Tyndall Centre.

Andrew Revkin once described him as "outspoken advocate of the idea that human actions—mainly burning coal and oil—are contributing to global warming and must be changed to avert environmental upheavals." Which does not say much for his scientific objectivity!

The document that Ron Arnold links to has a lot of technical stuff, but I spotted some interesting snippets.

Note the words:

In keeping with past practice in WG I, it is essential that the chapters not be finalized prior to the completion of discussions "at the IPCC WG I plenary in Madrid, and that chapter authors be prevailed upon to modify their text in an appropriate manner following discussion in Madrid.

Note:

What’s more surprising, however, is that a completely new set of estimates by Oerlemans (who is a lead author) has been introduced, suggesting a rise of only 27 cm. IPCC will have to decide which estimates to use, a matter on which the U.S. might want to weigh in.

The alternative set of sea level rise estimates in section 7.5.3 should be deleted,

Note:

The new draft (10/9/95) responds well to most of the comments of the United States on the earlier (4/18/95) draft of Ch. 8,

There are many similar comments throughout the document about changes to chapters.