Memorandum submitted by Anne Stallybrass
(CRU 41)
MY PERSONAL
INTERESTS
1. I am involved in an environmental group,
Green World Trust. In that capacity my interest is both environmental
and human, as a responsible planetary citizen. GWT were about
to establish a local Transition Towns initiative (a fast-growing
movement that strives to harness creative grassroots responses
to the "twin threats" of global warming and Peak Oil).
But this needed adherence to Anthropogenic Global Warming. I investigated
the science; it took eight solid weeks which turned into a nightmare
as I uncovered a monster, whose tentacles appeared to have gone
very deep, with bad science in very many areas.
THE NEED
FOR LEGISLATION
2. Much of what I say here has to be general,
since the emails leak is but a part of a larger problem that needs
changes in the law to protect the integrity of science in future;
such changes require a proper understanding and investigation
of the larger problem. The references provide the detail I cannot
provide here. There must be freedom of debate, and public access
to scientific data and methodology used to advise on global policies
regarding Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) and any scientific
matters requiring public response.
THE SCIENCE
OF AGW
3. The scientific conclusion I reached was,
eventually, unequivocal; manmade global warming is so small, if
it exists at all, and natural variations are so much larger, that
our current contribution to warming cannot even be measured. Always,
CO2 follows temperature, it did not lead in the past and it does
not lead now; its greenhouse gas qualities are already at near-maximum
effect. One factor that has seriously compromised the measurements
of temperature, and has not been adequately reckoned with by either
CRU, NOAA, or GISS, is the Urban Heat Island effect. Despite recent
UEA denials (2/2/10), Jones' 1990 study that claimed UHI is not
a serious problem, is still seriously challenged, regarding the
provenance and trustworthiness of the Chinese records, and the
behaviour of his co-author Wang. Several amateur studies, done
out of volunteers' own pockets, have showed UHI of up to several
degrees (1), which when translated to the global temperature records,
is estimated to remove more than half the warming of the last
century. And warming is, on balance, beneficial, not harmful.
I could answer every single scientific "answer to skeptics",
that has been issued by the BBC, the Royal Society, and so on.
I wrote up my story, and the scientific basis for my conclusions,
on the GWT website, to make this grave matter accessible to ordinary
folk who had no time or inclination for study as I had had. Many,
including many readers of the Times Higher Educational Supplement,
have thanked me for this work. (2)
THE PUBLIC
FACE OF
SUPPRESSION
4. I found, with the declaration by Al Gore
and others that there was "consensus" among all reasonable
scientists, that my hitherto-assumed freedom to question or dissent
had vanished. Those who doubted the "consensus" have
been likened to holocaust deniers. All the science organizations
have been putting out what I now know is bad science. Children
at school are being taught lies—the most frightening lie
being the demonization of CO2, since all increase is beneficial
to plant growth and harmful to nothing.
5. The need to re-include "citizens'
science", just as a court of law includes "12 just men
and true": Simple checks the professionals could have easily
done, unpaid volunteers have done instead. UHI is only one of
several major problems with the three surface temperature records
used for IPCC, all of which skew the temperatures towards an apparent
warming effect. Skeptics have found the same small network of
players behind them all; the only "objective" check
has come from the painstaking researches of the few who have seen
through the bad science and have not been under intolerable pressure
to stay silent.
REFERENCES (1)
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/31/uhi-is-alive-and-well/
(2) http://www.greenworldtrust.org.uk/Science/Curious.htm
(3) http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/09/picking-out-the-uhi-in-global-temperature-records-so-easy-a-6th-grader-can-do-it/
(4) http://www.greenworldtrust.org.uk/Science/Scientific/UK-records.htm
February 2010
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