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Head of 'Climategate' research unit admits sending 'pretty awful emails' to hide data Scientists at the heart of the Climategate row were yesterday accused by a leading academic body of undermining science's credibility. The Institute of Physics said 'worrying implications' had been raised after it was revealed the University of East Anglia had manipulated data on global warming. The rebuke - the strongest yet from the scientific community - came as Professor Phil Jones, the researcher at the heart of the scandal, told MPs he had written 'some pretty awful emails' - but denied trying to suppress data. Professor Phil Jones On the spot: Professor Phil Jones being grilled by the Science and Technology committee in the Commons yesterday The Climategate row, which was first revealed by the Daily Mail in November, was triggered when a hacker stole hundreds of emails sent from East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit. They revealed scientists plotting how to avoid responding to Freedom of Information requests from climate change sceptics. Some even appeared to show the researchers discussing how to manipulate raw data from tree rings about historical temperatures. In one, Professor Jones talks about using a 'trick' to massage figures and 'hide the decline'.
More... * 'Environmentally-friendly' biofuels are more harmful to the planet than normal fossil fuel * It's official: This winter was the coldest for more than 30 years * QUENTIN LETTS: Lord Lawson labelled them climate alarmists Giving evidence to a Science and Technology Committee inquiry, the Institute of Physics said: 'Unless the disclosed emails are proved to be forgeries or adaptations, worrying implications arise for the integrity of scientific research and for the credibility of the scientific method. 'The principle that scientists should be willing to expose their results to independent testing and replication by others, which requires the open exchange of data, procedures and materials, is vital.' Last month, the Information Commissioner ruled the CRU had broken Freedom of Information rules by refusing to hand over raw data. But yesterday Professor Jones - in his first public appearance since the scandal broke - denied manipulating the figures. Looking pale and clasping his shaking hands in front of him, he told MPs: 'I have obviously written some pretty awful emails.' He admitted withholding data about global temperatures but said the information was publicly available from American websites. And he claimed it was not 'standard practice' to release data and computer models so other scientists could check and challenge research. 'I don't think there is anything in those emails that really supports any view that I, or the CRU, have been trying to pervert the peer review process in any way,' he said. Professor Jones, who was forced to stand down as head of the CRU last year, also insisted the scientific findings on climate change were robust. By David DerbyshireLast updated at 8:34 AM on 02nd March 2010 Al's latest global-warming whopperAl's latest global-warming whopperLast Updated: 9:03 AM, March 2, 2010 Al Gore's defense of global-warming hysteria in Sunday's New York Times has many flaws, but I'll focus on just one whopper -- where the "Inconvenient Truth" man states the opposite of scientific fact. Gore says, "The heavy snowfalls this month have been used as fodder for ridicule by those who argue that global warming is a myth, yet scientists have long pointed out that warmer global temperatures have been increasing the rate of evaporation from the oceans, putting significantly more moisture into the atmosphere -- thus causing heavier downfalls of both rain and snow in particular regions, including the Northeastern United States."Gore: Still citing predictions that science has disproved.Gore: Still citing predictions that science has disproved. It's an interesting theory, but where are the facts? According to "State of the Climate" from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, "Global precipitation in 2009 was near the 1961-1990 average." And there was certainly no pattern of increasing rain and snow on America's East Coast during the post-1976 years, when NOAA says the globe began to heat up. So what was it, exactly, that Gore's nameless scientists "have long pointed out"? A 2008 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, "Climate Change and Water," says climate models "project precipitation increases in high latitudes and part of the tropics." In other areas, the IPCC reports only "substantial uncertainty in precipitation forecasts." In other words, the IPCC said that its models predicted some increases in rain or snow -- not observed them. And only in high latitudes or the tropics, which hardly describes New York or Washington, DC. In fact, recent research actually contra dicts Gore's claims about "significantly more water moisture in the atmosphere." In late January, Scientific American reported: "A mysterious drop in water vapor in the lower stratosphere might be slowing climate change," and noted that "an apparent increase in water vapor in this region in the 1980s and 1990s exacerbated global warming." The new study came from a group of scientists, mainly from the NOAA lab in Boulder. The scientists found: "Stratospheric water-vapor concentrations decreased by about 10 percent after the year 2000 . . . This acted to slow the rate of increase in global surface temperature over 2000 to 2009 by about 25 percent." Specifically, the study found that water vapor rising from the tropics has been re duced, because it has gotten cooler there (another inconvenient truth). A Wall Street Journal headline summed it up: "Slowdown in Warming Linked to Water Vapor." Moisture in the lower stratosphere (about 8 miles above the earth's surface) has been going down, not up. Aside from clouds, water vapor accounts for as much as two-thirds of the earth's greenhouse-gas effect. Water vapor traps heat from escaping the atmosphere -- but clouds have the opposite effect (called "albedo") by reflecting the sun's energy back into space. And snow on the ground from the IPCC's predicted precipitation in high latitudes would have the same cooling effect as clouds. What the new research suggests is that changes in water vapor may well trump the ef fect of carbon dioxide (only a fraction of which is man-made) and methane (which has mysteriously slowed since about 1990). This raises an intriguing question: Since the Environmental Protection Agency declared that it has the authority to regulation carbon emissions because of their presumed effect on the global climate, why hasn't the EPA also attempted to regulate mist and fog? Alan Reynolds, a Cato Institute senior fellow, is author of "Income and Wealth." Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/al_latest_global_warming_whopper_TolFbG2ccT5XPtKtXoOx0L#ixzz0h3wXZ9Va solar panel rip-off?Are we really going to let ourselves be duped into this solar panel rip-off? Those who hate environmentalism have spent years looking for the definitive example of a great green rip-off. Finally it arrives, and nobody notices. The government is about to shift £8.6bn from the poor to the middle classes. It expects a loss on this scheme of £8.2bn, or 95%. Yet the media is silent. The opposition urges only that the scam should be expanded. On 1 April the government introduces its feed-in tariffs. These oblige electricity companies to pay people for the power they produce at home. The money will come from their customers in the form of higher bills. It would make sense, if we didn't know that the technologies the scheme will reward are comically inefficient. The people who sell solar photovoltaic (PV) panels and micro wind turbines in the UK insist they represent a good investment. The arguments I have had with them have been long and bitter. But the debate has now been brought to an end with the publication of the government's table of tariffs: the rewards people will receive for installing different kinds of generators. The government wants everyone to get the same rate of return. So while the electricity you might generate from large wind turbines and hydro plants will earn you 4.5p per kilowatt hour, mini wind turbines get 34p, and solar panels 41p. In other words, the government acknowledges that micro wind and solar PV in the UK are between seven and nine times less cost-effective than the alternatives. It expects this scheme to save 7m tonnes of carbon dioxide by 2020. Assuming – generously – that the rate of installation keeps accelerating, this suggests a saving of about 20m tonnes of CO2 by 2030. The estimated price by then is £8.6bn. This means it will cost about £430 to save one tonne of CO2. Last year the consultancy company McKinsey published a table of cost comparisons. It found that you could save a tonne of CO2 for £3 by investing in geothermal energy, or for £8 by building a nuclear power plant. Insulating commercial buildings costs nothing; in fact it saves £60 for every tonne of CO2 you reduce; replacing incandescent lightbulbs with LEDs saves £80 per tonne. The government predicts that the tradeable value of the carbon saved by its £8.6bn scheme will be £420m. That's some return on investment. The reason for these astonishing costs is that the government expects most people who use this scheme to install solar panels. Solar PV is a great technology – if you live in southern California. But the further from the equator you travel, the less sense it makes. It's not just that the amount of power PV panels produce at this latitude is risible, they also produce it at the wrong time. In hot countries, where air conditioning guzzles electricity, peak demand coincides with peak solar radiation. In the UK, peak demand takes place between 5pm and 7pm on winter evenings. Do I need to spell out the implications? We have plenty of ambient energy, but it's not to be found on people's roofs. The only renewables policy that makes sense is to build big installations where the energy is – which means high ground, estuaries or the open sea – and deliver it by wire to where people live. But the government's scheme sloshes money into places where resources are poor and economies of scale impossible. We don't need to guess the results: the German government made the same mistake 10 years ago. By 2006 its generous feed-in tariffs had stimulated 230,000 solar roofs, at a cost of ¤1.2bn. Their total contribution to the country's electricity supply was 0.4%. Their total contribution to carbon savings, as a paper in the journal Energy Policy points out, is zero. This is because Germany, like the UK, belongs to the European emissions trading scheme. Any savings made by feed-in tariffs permit other industries to raise their emissions. Either the trading scheme works, in which case the tariffs are pointless, or it doesn't, in which case it needs to be overhauled. The government can't have it both ways. A week ago the German government decided to reduce sharply the tariff it pays for solar PV, on the grounds that it is a waste of money. Just as the Germans have begun to abandon their monumental mistake, we are about to repeat it. Buying a solar panel is now the best investment a householder can make. The tariffs will deliver a return of between 5% and 8% a year, which is both index linked (making a nominal return of between 7% and 10%) and tax-free. The payback is guaranteed for 25 years. If you own a house and can afford the investment, you'd be crazy not to cash in. If you don't and can't, you must sit and watch your money being used to pay for someone else's fashion accessory. Had this money been spent instead on insulation or double glazing, it could have helped relieve fuel poverty at the same time as cutting emissions. But the feed-in tax is both wasteful and regressive. The government has now decided not to oblige people to improve the efficiency of their homes before they can claim a tariff: you'll be paid to put a solar panel on your roof even if the roof contains no insulation. Though there's a system to ensure functioning devices are installed, it can't be long before thousands of petty criminals discover the perfect carousel fraud, bypassing their solar panels by connecting the incoming wire to the outgoing wire. By buying electricity for 7p and selling it for 44p (if you sell power to the grid rather than using it yourself, you get an extra 3p), they'll make a 600% profit. Amazingly the government has decided not to measure how much electricity people are selling, but "to pay export tariffs on the basis of estimated (deemed) exports". Elsewhere in its report it boasts of "encouraging a risk-based approach to audit and assurance". Come on in, you crims, the door is wide open. So who is opposing this lunacy? Good question. The Conservatives, Liberal Democrats, Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace have lined up to denounce the government for not being generous enough. The only body to have called this right so far is the loathsome TaxPayers' Alliance, but nobody listened because it has cried wolf too often. There appears to be a cross-party agreement to squander the public's money. Why? It's partly because many Tory and Lib Dem voters hate big, efficient windfarms, and this scheme appears to offer an alternative. But it's mostly because solar panels accord with the aspirations of the middle classes. The solar panel is the ideal modern status symbol, which signifies both wealth and moral superiority, even if it's perfectly useless. If people want to waste their money, let them. But you and I shouldn't be paying for it. Seldom has there been a bigger public rip-off; seldom has less fuss been made about it. Will we try to stop this scheme, or are we a nation of dupes?
  
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