MC

Source. Climate change emails between scientists reveal flaws in peer review A close reading of the hacked emails exposes the real process of science, its jealousies and tribalism Scientists sometimes like to portray what they do as divorced from the everyday jealousies, rivalries and tribalism of human relationships. What makes science special is that data and results that can be replicated are what matters and the scientific truth will out in the end. But a close reading of the emails hacked from the University of East Anglia in November exposes the real process of everyday science in lurid detail. Many of the emails reveal strenuous efforts by the mainstream climate scientists to do what outside observers would regard as censoring their critics. And the correspondence raises awkward questions about the effectiveness of peer review – the supposed gold standard of scientific merit – and the operation of the UN's top climate body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The scientists involved disagree. They say they were engaged not in suppressing dissent but in upholding scientific standards by keeping bad science out of peer-reviewed journals. Either way, when passing judgment on papers that directly attack their own work, they were mired in conflicts of interest that would not be allowed in most professions. The cornerstone of maintaining the quality of scientific papers is the peer review system. Under this, papers submitted to scientific journals are reviewed anonymously by experts in the field. Conducting reviews is seen as part of the job for academics, who are generally not paid for the work. The papers are normally sent back to the authors for improvement and only published when the reviewers give their approval. But the system relies on trust, especially if editors send papers to reviewers whose own work is being criticised in the paper. It also relies on anonymity, so reviewers can give candid opinions. Cracks in the system have been obvious for years. Yesterday it emerged that 14 leading researchers in a different field – stem cell research – have written an open letter to journal editors to highlight their dissatisfaction with the process. They allege that a small scientific clique is using peer review to block papers from other researchers. Many will see a similar pattern in the emails from UEA's Climatic Research Unit, which brutally expose what happens behind the scenes of peer review and how a chance meeting at a barbecue years earlier had led to one journal editor being suspected of being in the "greenhouse sceptics camp". The head of the CRU, Professor Phil Jones, as a top expert in his field, was regularly asked to review papers and he sometimes wrote critical reviews that may have had the effect of blackballing papers criticising his work. Here is how it worked in one case. A key component in the story of 20th-century warming is data from sparse weather stations in Siberia. This huge area appears to have seen exceptional warming of up to 2C in the past century. But in such a remote region, actual data is sparse. So how reliable is that data, and do scientists interpret it correctly? In March 2004, Jones wrote to Professor Michael Mann, a leading climate scientist at Pennsylvania State University, saying that he had "recently rejected two papers [one for the Journal of Geophysical Research and one for Geophysical Research Letters] from people saying CRU has it wrong over Siberia. Went to town in both reviews, hopefully successfully. If either appears I will be very surprised". He did not specify which papers he had reviewed, nor what his grounds for rejecting them were. But the Guardian has established that one was probably from Lars Kamel a Swedish astrophysicist formerly of the University of Uppsala. It is the only paper published on the topic in the journal that year. Kamel analysed the temperature records from weather stations in part of southern Siberia, around Lake Baikal. He claimed to find much less warming than Jones, despite analysing much the same data. Kamel told the Guardian: "Siberia is a test case, because it is supposed to be the land area with most warming in the 20th century." The finding sounded important, but his paper was rejected by Geophysical Research Letters (GRL) that year. Kamel was leaving academic science and never tried to publish it elsewhere. But the draft seen by the Guardian asserts that the difference between his findings on Siberia temperatures and that of Jones is "probably because the CRU compilation contains too little correction for urban warming." He does not, however, justify that conclusion with any data or analysis.Kamel says he no longer has a copy of the anonymous referee judgments on the paper, so we don't know why it was rejected. The paper could be criticised for being slight and for not revealing details about its methods of analysis. A reviewer such as Jones would certainly have been aware of Kamel's views about mainstream climate research, which he had called "pseudo-science". He would also have known that its publication in a journal like GRL would have attracted the attention of professional climate sceptics. Nonetheless, the paper raised important questions about the quality of CRU's Siberian data, and was a rare example of someone trying to replicate Jones's analysis. On those grounds alone, some would have recommended its publication. Kamel's paper admits the discrepancy "does not necessarily mean the CRU surface record for the entire globe is in error". But it argues that the result suggests it "should be checked in more regions and even globally". Jones was not able to comment on the incident. Critics of Jones such as the prominent sceptical Stephen McIntyre, who runs the Climate Audit blog have long accused him of preventing critical research from having an airing. McIntyre wrote on his web site in December: "CRU's policies of obstructing critical articles in the peer-reviewed literature and withholding data from critics have unfortunately placed issues into play that might otherwise have been settled long ago." He also says obstructing publication undermine claims that all is well in scientific peer review. Dr Myles Allen, a climate modeller at the University of Oxford and Professor Hans von Storch, a climate scientist at the Institute for Coastal Research, in Geesthacht, Germany signed a joint column in Nature when the email hacking story broke, in which they said that "no grounds have arisen to doubt the validity of the thermometer-based temperature record since it began in about 1850." But that argument is harder to make if such evidence, flawed though it might be, is actively being kept out of the journals. In another email exchange CRU scientist Dr Keith Briffa initiates what looks like an attempt to have a paper rejected. In June 2003, as an editor of an unnamed journal, Briffa emailed fellow tree-ring researcher Edward Cook, a researcher at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in New York, saying: "Confidentially I now need a hard and if required extensive case for rejecting [an unnamed paper] – to support Dave Stahle's and really as soon as you can. Please." Stahle is a tree-ring professor from the University of Arkansas. This request appears to subvert the convention that reviewers should be both independent and anonymous. Cook replied later that day: "OK, today. Promise. Now, something to ask from you." The favour was to provide some data to help Cook review a paper that attacked his own tree-ring work. "If published as is, this paper could really do some damage," he said. "It won't be easy to dismiss out of hand as the math appears to be correct theoretically, but it suffers from the classic problem of pointing out theoretical deficiencies, without showing that their improved [inverse regression] method is actually better in a practical sense." Briffa was unable to comment. Cook told the Guardian: "These emails are from a long time ago and the details are not terribly fresh in my mind." Jones did not restrict his harsh criticism of papers he saw as flawed to pre-publication reviews. He and Mann also had a reputation for harsh criticism of journals that published papers they disagreed with. In March 2003, Mann discussed encouraging colleagues to "no longer submit [papers] to, or cite papers in" Climate Research. He was angry about that journal's publication of a series of sceptical papers "that couldn't get published in a reputable journal", according to Mann. His anger at the journal had evidently been building for some time, but was focused in 2003 on a paper published in January that year and written by the Harvard astrophysicists Willie Soon and Sally Balunias. The pair claimed that Mann's famous hockey stick graph of global temperatures over the past 1,000 years was wrong. After analysing 240 studies of past temperatures from tree rings and other sources, they said "the 20th century is neither the warmest century over the last 1,000 years, nor is it the most extreme". It could have been warmer a thousand years before, they suggested. Harvard press-released the paper under the headline "20th century climate not so hot", which would have pleased lobbyists against the climate change consensus from the American Petroleum Institute and George C Marshall Institute, both of which had helped pay for the research. Mann told me at the time the paper was "absurd, almost laughable". He said Soon and Balunias made no attempt in the paper to show whether the warmth they found at different places and times round the world in past eras was contemporaneous in the way current global warming is. If they were just one-off scattered warm events they did not demonstrate any kind of warm era at all. Soon did not respond to Guardian requests to discuss the paper. The emails show Mann debating with others what he should do. In March 2003, he told Jones: "I believed our only choice was to ignore this paper. They've already achieved what they wanted – the claim of a peer-reviewed paper. There is nothing we can do about that now, but the last thing we want to do is bring attention to this paper" But Jones told Mann: "I think the sceptics will use this paper to their own ends and it will set [the field of paleoclimate research] back a number of years if it goes unchallenged." He was right. The Soon and Balunias paper was later read into the Senate record and taken up by the Bush administration, which attempted to get it cited in a report from the Environmental Protection Agency against the wishes of the report's authors. Persuaded that the paper could not be ignored, Mann assembled a group of colleagues to review it. The group included regular CRU emailers Jones, Dr Keith Briffa, Dr Tom Wigley and Dr Kevin Trenberth. They sent their findings to the journal's editorial board, arguing that Soon's study was little more than anecdote. It had cherry-picked data showing warm periods in different places over several centuries and had provided no evidence that they demonstrated any overall warming of the kind seen in the 20th century. The emails reveal that when the journal failed to disown the paper, the scientists figured a "coup" had taken place, and that one editor in particular, a New Zealander called Chris de Freitas, was fast-tracking sceptical papers on to its pages. Mann saw an irony in what had happened. "This was the danger of always criticising the sceptics for not publishing in the peer-reviewed literature. Obviously, they found a solution to that – take over a journal." But Mann had a solution. "I think we have to stop considering Climate Research as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues … to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board." Was this improper pressure? Bloggers responding to the leaking of these emails believe so. Mann denies wanting to "stifle legitimate sceptical views". He maintains that he merely wanted to uphold scientific standards. "Please understand the context of this," he told the Guardian after the scandal broke. "This was in response to a very specific, particularly egregious incident in which one editor of the journal was ­letting in a paper that clearly did not meet the standards of quality for the journal." Naturally de Freitas defends his actions during the incident. "I was never ever found to have done anything wrong, even in the rumpus over the Soon and Balunias paper. All accusations against me were fully investigated and my performance as editor of this journal was shown to be flawless." But many on the 10-man editorial board agreed with Mann. They concluded that their colleague de Freitas had ignored the anonymous advice of four reviewers to reject the paper. There was a revolt. Their chief editor von Storch wrote an editorial saying the Soon paper shouldn't have appeared because of "severe methodological flaws". After their publisher Otto Kinne refused to publish the editorial, von Storch and four other board members resigned in protest. Subsequently Kinne himself admitted that publication had been an error and promised to strengthen the peer review process. Mann had won his argument. Sceptical climatologist and Cato Institute fellow Pat Michaels alleged in the Wall Street Journal in December last year that the resignations by von Storch and his colleagues were a counter-coup initiated by Mann and Jones. This is vehemently denied by von Storch. While one of the editors who resigned was a colleague of Jones at CRU, von Storch had a track record of independence. If anything, he was regarded as a moderate sceptic. Certainly, he had annoyed both mainstream climate scientists and sceptics. Also writing in the Wall Street Journal in December, he said: "I am in the pocket of neither Exxon nor Greenpeace, and for this I come under fire from both sides – the sceptics and alarmists – who have fiercely opposing views but are otherwise siblings in their methods and contempt ... I left the post [as chief editor of Climate Research] with no outside pressure, because of insufficient quality control on a bad paper – a sceptic's paper, at that." The bad blood over this paper lingered. A year later, in July 2004, Jones wrote an email to Mann about two papers recently published in Climate Research – the Soon and Balunias paper and another he identified as by "MM". This was almost certainly a paper from the Canadian economist Ross McKitrick and Michaels that returned to an old sceptics' theme. It claimed to find urbanisation dominating global warming trends on land. Jones called it "garbage". More damagingly, he added in an email to Mann with the subject line "HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL": "I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin [Trenberth] and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer review literature is!" This has, rightly, become one of the most famous of the emails. And for once, it means what it seems to mean. Jones and Trenberth, of the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, had recently become joint lead authors for a key chapter in the next IPCC assessment report, called AR4. They had considerable power over what went into those chapters, and to have ruled them out in such a manner would have been a clear abuse of the IPCC process. Today, neither man attempts to deny that Jones's promise to keep the papers out was a serious error of judgment. Trenberth told the Guardian: "I had no role in this whatsoever. I did not make and was not complicit in that statement of Phil's. I am a veteran of three other IPCC assessments. I am well aware that we do not keep any papers out, and none were kept out. We assessed everything [though] we cannot possibly refer to all literature … Both of the papers referred to were in fact cited and discussed in the IPCC." In an additional statement agreed with Jones, he said: "AR4 was the first time Jones was on the writing team of an IPCC assessment. The comment was naive and sent before he understood the process." Some will not be content with that. Jones had been a contributing author to IPCC assessment reports for more than a decade and should have been aware of the rules. Climate Research is a fairly minor journal. Not so Geophysical Research Letters, published by the august American Geophysical Union (AGU). But when it began publishing what Mann, Wigley, Jones and others regarded as poor quality sceptical papers, they again responded angrily. GRL provided a home for one of a series of papers by McIntyre and McKitrick challenging the statistical methods used in the hockey stick analysis. When Mann's complaints to the journal were rebuffed, he wrote to colleagues in January 2005: "Apparently the contrarians now have an 'in' with GRL." Mann had checked out the editor responsible for overseeingthe papers . a Yale chemical engineer called James Saiers, and noted his "prior connection" with the same department at the University of Virginia, where sceptic Pat Michaels worked. He added, "we now know" how various other sceptically tinged papers had got into GRL. Wigley appeared to agree. "This is truly awful," he said, suggesting to Mann: "If you think that Saiers is in the greenhouse skeptics camp, then, if we can find documentary evidence of this, we could go through official AGU channels to get him ousted." A year after the row erupted, in 2006, Saiers gave up the GRL post.Sceptics have claimed that this was due to pressure from Wigley, Mann and others. Saiers says his three-year term was up. "My departure had nothing to do with attempts by Wigley or anyone else to have me sacked," he told the Guardian. "Nor was I censured, as I have seen suggested on a blog posting written by McKitrick." As for Mann's allegation, Saiers does not remember ever talking to Michaels "though I did attend a barbecue at his home back in the early 1990s. Wigley and Mann were too keen to conclude that I was in league with the climate-change sceptics. This kerfuffle could have been avoided if the parties involved would have done more to control their imaginations".

A few random quotes: “The common enemy of humanity is man. In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself.” Alexander King Co-Founder of the Club of Rome, (premier environmental think-tank and consultants to the United Nations) from his 1991 book The First Global Revolution “No matter if the science of global warming is all phony… climate change provides the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world.” Christine Stewart, former Canadian Minister of the Environment. “We’ve got to ride this global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic and environmental policy.” Timothy Wirth, former US Under Sec of State, current Head of the UN Foundation "Isn't the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn't it our responsibility to bring that about?" President of the Council of the United Nations's University for Peace, Head of the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janiero, Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and Founder of the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) “The data doesn’t matter. We’re not basing our recommendations on the data. We’re basing them on the climate models.” Prof. Chris Folland, Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research.

Source. Amazongate: new evidence of the IPCC's failures The IPCC is beginning to melt as global tempers rise, says Christopher Booker By Christopher Booker Published: 7:12PM GMT 30 Jan 2010 The claim in an IPCC report that 40 per cent of the Amazon rainforest could disappear through global warming turned out to be unfounded. It is now six weeks since I launched an investigation, with my colleague Richard North, into the affairs of Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the hugely influential body which for 20 years has been the central driver of worldwide alarm about global warming. Since then the story has grown almost daily, leading to worldwide calls for Dr Pachauri's resignation. But increasingly this has also widened out to question the authority of the IPCC itself. Contrary to the tendentious claim that its reports represent a "consensus of the world's top 2,500 climate scientists" (most of its contributors are not climate experts at all), it has now emerged, for instance, that one of the more widely quoted scare stories from its 2007 report was drawn from the work of a British "green activist" who occasionally writes as a freelance for The Guardian and The Independent. Last week I reported on "Glaciergate", the scandal which has forced the IPCC's top officials, led by Dr Pachauri, to disown a claim originating from an Indian glaciologist, Dr Syed Husnain, that the Himalayan glaciers could vanish by 2035. What has made this reckless claim in the IPCC's 2007 report even more embarrassing was the fact that Dr Husnain, as we revealed, was then employed by Dr Pachauri's own Delhi-based Energy and Resources Institute (Teri). His baseless scaremongering about the Himalayas helped to win Teri a share in two lucrative research contracts, one funded by the EU. The source the IPCC cited as its "scientific" authority for this claim, however (as Dr North first reported on his EU Referendum blog), was a propagandist pamphlet published in 2005 by the WWF, the environmentalist pressure group, citing a magazine interview with Dr Husnain six years earlier. Dr North next uncovered "Amazongate". The IPCC made a prominent claim in its 2007 report, again citing the WWF as its authority, that climate change could endanger "up to 40 per cent" of the Amazon rainforest – as iconic to warmists as those Himalayan glaciers and polar bears. This WWF report, it turned out, was co-authored by Andy Rowell, an anti-smoking and food safety campaigner who has worked for WWF and Greenpeace, and contributed pieces to Britain's two most committed environmentalist newspapers. Rowell and his co-author claimed their findings were based on an article in Nature. But the focus of that piece, it emerges, was not global warming at all but the effects of logging. A Canadian analyst has identified more than 20 passages in the IPCC's report which cite similarly non-peer-reviewed WWF or Greenpeace reports as their authority, and other researchers have been uncovering a host of similarly dubious claims and attributions all through the report. These range from groundless allegations about the increased frequency of "extreme weather events" such as hurricanes, droughts and heatwaves, to a headline claim that global warming would put billions of people at the mercy of water shortages – when the study cited as its authority indicated exactly the opposite, that rising temperatures could increase the supply of water. Little of this has come as a surprise to those who have studied the workings of the IPCC over the years. As I show in my book The Real Global Warming Disaster, there is no greater misconception about the IPCC than that it was intended to be an impartial body, weighing scientific evidence for and against global warming. It was set up in 1988 by a small group of scientists all firmly committed to the theory of "human-induced climate change", and its chief purpose ever since has been to promote that belief. The blatant bias of each of its four reports has been pointed out by scientists – notably the rewriting of key passages in its 1995 report after the contributing scientists had approved the final text. This provoked a magisterial blast from Professor Frederick Seitz, a former president of the US National Academy of Sciences, who wrote that in all his 60 years as a scientist he had never seen "a more disturbing corruption" of the scientific process, and that if the IPCC was "incapable of following its most basic procedures", it was best it should be "abandoned". The centrepiece of the IPCC's 2001 report was Michael Mann's notorious "hockey stick", the graph purporting to show temperatures in the late 20th century soaring at an unprecedented rate – later exposed as a statistical artefact. Another new book, The Hockey Stick Illusion by A W Montford, brilliantly tells the bizarre tale of how Mann's colleagues, calling themselves "the Hockey Team" and now at the heart of the IPCC, managed to resurrect the discredited graph for inclusion in its 2007 report. Montford's book, if inevitably technical, expertly recounts a remarkable scientific detective story. And of course, it was incriminating leaked emails between members of the Hockey Team that were at the centre of the recent "Climategate" scandal at the University of East Anglia. Most disturbing of all are the glimpses the story gives of the inner workings of the IPCC, an institution now so discredited and scientifically corrupted that only those determined to shut their eyes could possibly defend it. This is now compounded by the recent revelations by Dr North and myself in these pages of how its chairman, Dr Pachauri, has built a worldwide network of business links which provide his Delhi institute with a sizeable income. It is noticeable how many of those now calling for Dr Pachauri's resignation, led by Professor Andrew Weaver, a senior IPCC insider, are passionate global warming believers. Fearing that Pachauri damages their cause, they want him thrown overboard in the hope of saving the IPCC itself. But it is not just Pachauri who has been holed below the waterline. So has the entire IPCC process. And beyond that – and despite the pleading of Barack Obama, Gordon Brown and the BBC that none of this detracts from the evidence for man-made global warming – so has the warmist cause itself. Bereft of scientific or moral authority, the most expensive show the world has ever seen may soon be nearing its end.

Source. Scientists broke the law by hiding climate change data: But legal loophole means they won't be prosecuted By DAVID DERBYSHIRE Last updated at 11:21 PM on 28th January 2010 Scientist at the heart of the 'Climategate' email scandal broke the law when they refused to give raw data to the public, the privacy watchdog has ruled. The Information Commissioner's office said University of East Anglia researchers breached the Freedom of Information Act when handling requests from climate change sceptics. But the scientists will escape prosecution because the offences took place more than six months ago. The revelation comes after a string of embarrassing blunders and gaffes for climate scientists and will fuel concerns that key researchers are too secretive and too arrogant. It will pile pressure on the director of the university's climate change unit, Professor Phil Jones, who has stood aside while an investigation is carried out, and make it harder for him to return. The ruling followed a complaint from retired engineer David Holland-66, whose Freedom of Information-requests were ignored. Last night Mr Holland welcomed the watchdog's decision but said it was disappointing the researchers would not be prosecuted. 'All we are trying to do is make the scientists follow their own professional rules by being open, transparent and honest,' he said. 'We are not trying to show that human beings don't affect the climate, but to show that the science is not settled.' Scientists at the University of East Anglia were encouraged to delete emails concerning claims that man-made emissions were causing global warming The Climategate row broke in November when hundreds of stolen emails from the world-renowned Climate Research Unit in Norwich were posted online. More... Top climate change adviser calls for honesty from scientists in global warming debate Water vapour a 'major cause of global warming and cooling' The emails appeared to show researchers discussing how to manipulate historical temperature data and dodge requests under the Freedom of Information Act. One request came in 2008 from Mr Holland, a grandfather from Northampton and an engineering graduate. He was seeking evidence that scientists had cherry-picked research when preparing the previous year's UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. After the request was received, a message from one academic to another on May 28, 2008, said: 'Oh MAN! Will this c**p never end?' In other emails the researchers complained that the unit was being bombarded with FOI requests from sceptics. And in another, researchers appeared to be encouraging each other to delete emails. After the emails were published, Mr Holland complained to the Information Commissioner's Office. An ICO spokesman yesterday confirmed that the UEA breached the Freedom of Information Act. He added: 'The emails which are now public reveal that Mr Holland's requests under the Freedom of Information Act were not dealt with as they should have been under the legislation.' Climate change sceptics welcomed the ruling and called for the Climategate inquiry to be made public. Lord Lawson, head of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, said it should also investigate whether the CRU denied opportunities to scientists trying to publish dissenting views. Last week, the IPCC was forced to apologise after wrongly claiming the Himalayan glaciers could vanish within 25 years. Critics have also accused it of exaggerating the risk of tropical storms and hurricanes. Earlier this week, Britain's chief scientific advisor, Professor John Beddington, called on climate scientists to be more honest about the uncertainties of global warming.

Source. Updated January 28, 2010 U.N.'s Global Warming Report Under Fresh Attack for Rainforest Claims By Gene J. Koprowski - FOXNews.com A United Nations report on climate change that has been lambasted for its faulty research is under new attack for yet another instance of what critics say is sloppy science -- guiding global warming policy based on a study of forest fires. PRINTEMAILSHARE RECOMMEND (11) Phil P. Harris / Wikipedia A view of the Amazon basin forest north of Manaus, Brazil. A U.N. report stated that global warming is threatening the forests -- a statement that was recently discredited. A United Nations report on climate change that has been lambasted for its faulty research is under new attack for yet another instance of what its critics say is sloppy science -- adding to a growing scandal that has undermined the credibility of scientists and policymakers who back the U.N.'s findings about global warming. In the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4), issued in 2007 by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), scientists wrote that 40 percent of the Amazon rainforest in South America was endangered by global warming. But that assertion was discredited this week when it emerged that the findings were based on numbers from a study by the World Wildlife Federation that had nothing to do with the issue of global warming -- and that was written by a freelance journalist and green activist. The IPCC report states that "up to 40 percent of the Amazonian forests could react drastically to even a slight reduction in precipitation" -- highlighting the threat climate change poses to the Earth. The report goes on to say that "it is more probable that forests will be replaced by ecosystems ... such as tropical savannas." But it has now been revealed that the claim was based on a WWF study titled "Global Review of Forest Fires," a paper barely related to the Amazon rainforest that was written "to secure essential policy reform at national and international level to provide a legislative and economic base for controlling harmful anthropogenic forest fires." EUReferendum, a blog skeptical of global warming, uncovered the WWF association. It noted that the original "40 percent" figure came from a letter published in the journal Nature that discussed harmful logging activities -- and again had nothing to do with global warming. The reference to the Brazilian rainforest can be found in Chapter 13 of the IPCC Working Group II report, the same section of AR4 in which claims are made that the Himalayan glaciers are rapidly melting because of global warming. Last week, the data leading to this claim were disproved as well, a scandal being labeled "glacier-gate" or "Himalaya-gate." The Himalaya controversy followed another tempest -- the disclosure of e-mails that suggested that leading global warming scientists in the U.K. and the U.S. had conspired to hide a decline in global temperatures. "If it is true that IPCC has indeed faked numbers regarding the Amazon, or used unsubstantiated facts, then it is the third nail in the IPCC coffin in less than three months," Andrew Wheeler, former staff director for the U.S. Senate's Environment and Public Works Committee, told FoxNews.com. "For years, we have been told that the IPCC peer review process is the gold standard in scientific review. It now appears it is more of a fool's gold process." Wheeler, who is now a senior vice president with B&D Consulting's Energy, Climate and Environment Practice in Washington, said the latest scandal calls into question the "entire underpinnings" of the IPCC's assessment and peer review process. The U.N. did not return calls seeking comment on the scandal. Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, vice chairman of the IPCC, was quoted in the European press as saying, "I would like to submit that this could increase the credibility of the IPCC, not decrease it. Aren't mistakes human? Even the IPCC is a human institution." But not everyone agrees. Ross McKitrick, a professor of economics at the University of Guleph in Ontario, said the U.N. needs to start from scratch on global warming research and make a "full accounting" of how much of its research findings have been "likewise compromised." McKitrick said this is needed because the U.N. acknowledged the inaccuracy of the data only now that its shortcomings have been exposed. "They are admitting what they did only because they were caught," he told FoxNews.com. "The fact that so many IPCC authors kept silent all this time shows how monumental has been the breach of trust." Lubos Motl, a Czech physicist and former Harvard University faculty member, said the deforestation of the Amazon has occurred, but not because of global warming. He said it was due to social and economic reasons, including the clearing of cattle pastures, subsistence agriculture, the building of infrastructure and logging. "Such economically driven changes are surely unattractive for those of us who prefer mysterious and natural forests," says Motl. "But they do help the people who live in Latin America." The rapidly accumulating scandals surrounding climate change research appear to be driving the public away from its support for government measures to intervene. On Wednesday, Yale University and George Mason University released a survey showing that just 57 percent of respondents believe global warming "is happening." That was down 14 percentage points, from 71 percent, in October 2008. Fifty percent of people said they were "very" or "somewhat" worried about global warming, down 13 points from two years ago. Another poll released Monday by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press asked respondents to rank 21 issues in terms of their priority. Global warming came in last.

So my husband looked up Reality Steve and he says: (highlight if you want to read it... SPOILER)*** He chooses Vienna. Which would make me think that if he chooses her, that he didn't any of them and Vienna would be easier to dump in a way that wouldn't trash his "good boy" image.

I remember seeing that as well - but only once. They do edit those things to make us think something is happening when it's not - so we'll see. I think he did the honorable thing last night - sending all of those women home. But I just don't understand why he's keeping Vienna. She was first introduced to us as a spoiled Daddy's girl - poor little rich girl. We have only seen the girls hating her. They've told Jake and he's kept her. I wish I could understand why he kept her.

Source. Scientists using selective temperature data, skeptics say BY RICHARD FOOT, CANWEST NEWS SERVICE JANUARY 21, 2010 Call it the mystery of the missing thermometers. Two months after “climategate” cast doubt on some of the science behind global warming, new questions are being raised about the reliability of a key temperature database, used by the United Nations and climate change scientists as proof of recent planetary warming. Two American researchers allege that U.S. government scientists have skewed global temperature trends by ignoring readings from thousands of local weather stations around the world, particularly those in colder altitudes and more northerly latitudes, such as Canada. In the 1970s, nearly 600 Canadian weather stations fed surface temperature readings into a global database assembled by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Today, NOAA only collects data from 35 stations across Canada. Worse, only one station -- at Eureka on Ellesmere Island -- is now used by NOAA as a temperature gauge for all Canadian territory above the Arctic Circle. The Canadian government, meanwhile, operates 1,400 surface weather stations across the country, and more than 100 above the Arctic Circle, according to Environment Canada. Yet as American researchers Joseph D’Aleo, a meteorologist, and E. Michael Smith, a computer programmer, point out in a study published on the website of the Science and Public Policy Institute, NOAA uses “just one thermometer [for measuring] everything north of latitude 65 degrees.” Both the authors, and the institute, are well-known in climate-change circles for their skepticism about the threat of global warming. Mr. D’Aleo and Mr. Smith say NOAA and another U.S. agency, the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) have not only reduced the total number of Canadian weather stations in the database, but have “cherry picked” the ones that remain by choosing sites in relatively warmer places, including more southerly locations, or sites closer to airports, cities or the sea -- which has a warming effect on winter weather. Over the past two decades, they say, “the percentage of [Canadian] stations in the lower elevations tripled and those at higher elevations, above 300 feet, were reduced in half.” Using the agency’s own figures, Smith shows that in 1991, almost a quarter of NOAA’s Canadian temperature data came from stations in the high Arctic. The same region contributes only 3% of the Canadian data today. Mr. D’Aleo and Mr. Smith say NOAA and GISS also ignore data from numerous weather stations in other parts of the world, including Russia, the U.S. and China. They say NOAA collects no temperature data at all from Bolivia -- a high-altitude, landlocked country -- but instead “interpolates” or assigns temperature values for that country based on data from “nearby” temperature stations located at lower elevations in Peru, or in the Amazon basin. The result, they say, is a warmer-than-truthful global temperature record. “NOAA . . . systematically eliminated 75% of the world’s stations with a clear bias towards removing higher latitude, high altitude and rural locations, all of which had a tendency to be cooler,” the authors say. “The thermometers in a sense, marched towards the tropics, the sea, and to airport tarmacs.” The NOAA database forms the basis of the influential climate modelling work, and the dire, periodic warnings on climate change, issued by James Hanson, the director of the GISS in New York. Neither agency responded to a request for comment Wednesday from Canwest News Service. However Hanson did issue a public statement on the matter earlier this week. “NASA has not been involved in any manipulation of climate data used in the annual GISS global temperature analysis,” he said. “The agency is confident of the quality of this data and stands by previous scientifically-based conclusions regarding global temperatures.” In addition to the allegations against NOAA and GISS, climate scientists are also dealing with the embarrassment this week of the false glacier-melt warning contained in the 2007 report of the UN Panel on Climate Change. That report said Himalayan glaciers are likely to disappear within three decades if current rates of melting continue. This week, however, the panel admitted there is no scientific evidence to support such a claim. The revelations come only two months after the “climategate” scandal, in which the leak or theft of thousands of e-mails -- private discussions between scientists in the U.S. and Britain -- showed that a group of influential climatologists tried for years to manipulate global warming data, rig the scientific peer-review process and keep their methods secret from other, contrary-minded researchers.

Source. Glacier scientist: I knew data hadn't been verified By DAVID ROSE Last updated at 12:54 AM on 24th January 2010 Comments (36) Add to My Stories The scientist behind the bogus claim in a Nobel Prize-winning UN report that Himalayan glaciers will have melted by 2035 last night admitted it was included purely to put political pressure on world leaders. Dr Murari Lal also said he was well aware the statement, in the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), did not rest on peer-reviewed scientific research. In an interview with The Mail on Sunday, Dr Lal, the co-ordinating lead author of the report’s chapter on Asia, said: ‘It related to several countries in this region and their water sources. We thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policy-makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action. ‘It had importance for the region, so we thought we should put it in.’ Chilling error: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change wrongly asserted that glaciers in the Himalayas would melt by 2035 Dr Lal’s admission will only add to the mounting furore over the melting glaciers assertion, which the IPCC was last week forced to withdraw because it has no scientific foundation. According to the IPCC’s statement of principles, its role is ‘to assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis, scientific, technical and socio-economic information – IPCC reports should be neutral with respect to policy’. The claim that Himalayan glaciers are set to disappear by 2035 rests on two 1999 magazine interviews with glaciologist Syed Hasnain, which were then recycled without any further investigation in a 2005 report by the environmental campaign group WWF. It was this report that Dr Lal and his team cited as their source. The WWF article also contained a basic error in its arithmetic. A claim that one glacier was retreating at the alarming rate of 134 metres a year should in fact have said 23 metres – the authors had divided the total loss measured over 121 years by 21, not 121. Last Friday, the WWF website posted a humiliating statement recognising the claim as ‘unsound’, and saying it ‘regrets any confusion caused’. Dr Lal said: ‘We knew the WWF report with the 2035 date was “grey literature” [material not published in a peer-reviewed journal]. But it was never picked up by any of the authors in our working group, nor by any of the more than 500 external reviewers, by the governments to which it was sent, or by the final IPCC review editors.’ In fact, the 2035 melting date seems to have been plucked from thin air. Professor Graham Cogley, a glacier expert at Trent University in Canada, who began to raise doubts in scientific circles last year, said the claim multiplies the rate at which glaciers have been seen to melt by a factor of about 25. ‘My educated guess is that there will be somewhat less ice in 2035 than there is now,’ he said. Forced to apologise: Chairman of the IPCC Raj Pachauri ‘But there is no way the glaciers will be close to disappearing. It doesn’t seem to me that exaggerating the problem’s seriousness is going to help solve it.’ One of the problems bedevilling Himalayan glacier research is a lack of reliable data. But an authoritative report published last November by the Indian government said: ‘Himalayan glaciers have not in any way exhibited, especially in recent years, an abnormal annual retreat.’ When this report was issued, Raj Pachauri, the IPCC chairman, denounced it as ‘voodoo science’. Having been forced to apologise over the 2035 claim, Dr Pachauri blamed Dr Lal, saying his team had failed to apply IPCC procedures. It was an accusation rebutted angrily by Dr Lal. ‘We as authors followed them to the letter,’ he said. ‘Had we received information that undermined the claim, we would have included it.’ However, an analysis of those 500-plus formal review comments, to be published tomorrow by the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), the new body founded by former Chancellor Nigel Lawson, suggests that when reviewers did raise issues that called the claim into question, Dr Lal and his colleagues simply ignored them. For example, Hayley Fowler of Newcastle University, suggested that their draft did not mention that Himalayan glaciers in the Karakoram range are growing rapidly, citing a paper published in the influential journal Nature. In their response, the IPCC authors said, bizarrely, that they were ‘unable to get hold of the suggested references’, but would ‘consider’ this in their final version. They failed to do so. The Japanese government commented that the draft did not clarify what it meant by stating that the likelihood of the glaciers disappearing by 2035 was ‘very high’. ‘What is the confidence level?’ it asked. The authors’ response said ‘appropriate revisions and editing made’. But the final version was identical to their draft. Last week, Professor Georg Kaser, a glacier expert from Austria, who was lead author of a different chapter in the IPCC report, said when he became aware of the 2035 claim a few months before the report was published, he wrote to Dr Lal, urging him to withdraw it as patently untrue. Dr Lal claimed he never received this letter. ‘He didn’t contact me or any of the other authors of the chapter,’ he said. The damage to the IPCC’s reputation, already tarnished by last year’s ‘Warmergate’ leaked email scandal, is likely to be considerable. Benny Peiser, the GWPF’s director, said the affair suggested the IPCC review process was ‘skewed by a bias towards alarmist assessments’. Environmentalist Alton Byers said the panel’s credibility had been damaged. ‘They’ve done sloppy work,’ he said. ‘We need better research on the ground, not unreliable predictions derived from computer models.’ Last night, Dr Pachauri defended the IPCC, saying it was wrong to generalise based on a single mistake. ‘Our procedure is robust,’ he added.

That was awesome. The whole "I'm leaving"/ "I can't believe you don't want me to stay" was crazy lol It's scary how fast some of these people turn delusional. I think they're delusional long before they get on the show. In fact, I think many of them are picked BECAUSE they're whacked. It's the Jerry Springer aspect I suppose. I still watch this show. It's entertaining. But I do admit to DVRing it and fast forwarding through a lot of it.

Source. Updated January 20, 2010 U.N. Panel's Glacier-Disaster Claims Melting Away By Gene J. Koprowski - FOXNews.com The world's most famous climate change expert is in the midst of a massive controversy, as the leading environmental science institute he heads scrambled to explain data it promulgated for a U.N. report. NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio A satellite image of the Koettlitz Glacer in Antarctica. An oft-cited report by the U.N.'s IPCC panel that the Himalayan glaciers will melt by 2035 may soon be retracted. The world's most famous climate change expert is at the center of a massive controversy as the leading environmental science institute he heads scrambled to explain its assertion that the Himalayan glaciers will melt completely in 25 years. Rajendra Pachauri, head of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and director general of the Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) in New Dehli, India, said this week that the U.N. body was studying how its 2007 report to the United Nations derived information that led to its famous conclusion: that the glaciers will melt by 2035. Today, the IPCC issued a statement offering regret for the poorly vetted statements. "The Chair, Vice-Chairs, and Co-chairs of the IPCC regret the poor application of well-established IPCC procedures," the statement says, though it goes short of issuing a full retraction or reprinting the report. Pachauri told Reuters on Monday that the group was looking into the issue, and planned to "take a position on it in the next two or three days." The IPCC's 2007 report, simply titled AR4, claimed that "glaciers in the Himalayas are receding faster than in any other part of the world, and if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate." Hundreds of millions of people in India, Pakistan and China would be severely affected if the glaciers were actually to melt. There are some 9,500 Himalayan glaciers. Indian Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh questioned the findings of the 2007 report during a news conference. "They are indeed receding and the rate is cause for great concern," Ramesh said of the glaciers. But, he said, the IPCC's 2035 forecast was "not based on an iota of scientific evidence." One of the key elements in the growing scandal is the revelation that IPCC based some of its public proclamations on non-peer reviewed reports. "The data, all the data, needs to come to light," says Dr. Jane M. Orient, president of Doctors for Disaster Preparedness and an outspoken skeptic on climate change. "Thousands of scientists are capable of assessing it. The only reason to keep it hidden, locked in the clutches of the elite few, is that it decisively disproves their computer models and shows that their draconian emission controls are based on nothing except a lust for power, control and profit." The IPCC "made a clear and obvious error when it stated that Himalayan glaciers would be gone by 2035," added Patrick J. Michaels, a senior fellow in environmental policy at the libertarian Cato Institute, in an interview. "The absurdity was obvious to anyone who had studied the scientific literature. This was not an honest mistake. IPCC had been warned about it for a year by many scientists." A letter just released to the Science Web site underscores the mistake. Written by J. Graham Cogley of the department of geography at Canada's Trent University, it points out that "the claim that Himalayan glaciers may disappear by 2035 ... conflicts with knowledge of glacier-climate relationships, and is wrong." The dustup is the latest scandal in global warming science, coming after the disclosure of attempts to shade climate-science research findings at the U.K.'s East Anglia University and the failed talks in Copenhagen by environmental policymakers last month. The IPCC report had indicated that the total area of Himalayan glaciers would shrink from 500,000 square kilometers to 100,000 square kilometers within 25 years. The study cited a 2005 report by the World Wildlife Fund, an environmental advocacy group. The WWF study cited a 1999 article in New Scientist magazine that quoted another expert, who speculated that Himalayan glaciers could disappear within forty years. The speculative comments were not peer reviewed, and other reports have indicated that the glaciers are not retreating abnormally. "Most Himalayan glaciers are hundreds of feet thick and could not melt fast enough to vanish by 2035. The maximum rate of decline in thickness seen in glaciers at the moment is two to three feet per year, and most are far lower," Don Easterbrook, a professor emeritus of the department of geology at Western Washington University, told FoxNews.com. Pachauri, the IPCC chief, is under attack on another front, as well, as newspaper reports in India have commented repeatedly on his reportedly lavish lifestyle. TERI receives funding from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy, both of which did not respond to requests for comment from FoxNews.com. Reports indicate that there also are concerns in the United Kingdom surrounding 10 million British pounds in funding for TERI, and questions about TERI's objectivity. "It's about time that somebody started following the money trail to the big interests that want to prosper from the green regime, while the rest of the economy is crushed," Orient told FoxNews.com. "It's not as though the amount were a trickle."

That was awesome. The whole "I'm leaving"/ "I can't believe you don't want me to stay" was crazy lol We agree on something She was such a tease. She's 29 and a "nanny" in Nebraska and she obviously doesn't know how to have a real relationship with a real man. Jake won some respect from me with that move.

Amen! Here's a good source for information: Reference: 450 skeptical peer reviewed papers

Well, it's been interesting so far. The one crazy one you know that the producers made him keep actually left last night. Jake booted her out before a rose ceremony. Another one was playing games with him (teasing) and he shut her out at a rose ceremony. This guy isn't stupid. He's a pilot but he's terrified of heights. So they had him bungee jump! You'd think he could have nixed that right? Weird. If you see any commercials for the show, they're heavily edited. What appears to happen in the teasers isn't what happens at all. No surprise.

Haiti six days later. Warning - some of it is very graphic.

Source. (There's a video of him speaking at the link). Wyclef Jean Defends His Charity Calls For Evacuation of Haiti's Capital Updated: Monday, 18 Jan 2010, 7:11 PM EST Published : Monday, 18 Jan 2010, 5:17 PM EST BY LUKE FUNK MYFOXNY.COM - Haitian-born musician Wyclef Jean defended his charity against questions about its accounting practices as he called for the evacuation of Port-au-Prince at a Monday news conference. He is asking for international aid to help set up tent cities nearby to house 100,000 people. Jean is one of Haiti's most famous sons and has been a prominent voice in relief efforts since Tuesday's earthquake. He has raised more than $2 million through his charity, The Wyclef Jean Foundation Inc. It is also known as Yele Haiti. But he has also faced questions about its accounting practices. Jean said, "Let me be clear: I denounce any allegation that I have ever profited personally through my work with Yele Haiti. These baseless attacks are simply not true." The site SmokingGun.com- CLICK HERE TO READ THE DOCUMENT posted a report claiming that Internal Revenue Service records show the group has a lackluster history of accounting for its finances, and that the organization has paid the performer and his business partner at least $410,000 for rent, production services and Jean's appearance at a benefit concert. Jean called it a "fringe website with a history of pursuing sensationalist story lines." Wyclef Jean defended the charity on Monday as a young organization that had made mistakes but has also been effective. Any lingering questions about Jean's charity could cause some awkwark moments for executives at the major television networks. Jean is set to co-host a fundraiser that airs on Friday night. ============== Like I said earlier, I think his heart is in the right place with trying to help, and I hope the spotlight on his financial troubles will help him clean up his books so he can continue to help over there.

Just when you think it can't get any more entertaining.... (and sad)... Source. January 17, 2010 OOOPS! Scientists goof on Himilayan glacier retreat Rick Moran If anything, this story in The Times of London is good for a laugh - except that there's nothing funny about the people who wanted to use this information to steal trillions from the world's most productive nations. A WARNING that climate change will melt most of the Himalayan glaciers by 2035 is likely to be retracted after a series of scientific blunders by the United Nations body that issued it. Two years ago the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a benchmark report that was claimed to incorporate the latest and most detailed research into the impact of global warming. A central claim was the world's glaciers were melting so fast that those in the Himalayas could vanish by 2035. In the past few days the scientists behind the warning have admitted that it was based on a news story in the New Scientist, a popular science journal, published eight years before the IPCC's 2007 report. It has also emerged that the New Scientist report was itself based on a short telephone interview with Syed Hasnain, a little-known Indian scientist then based at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi. Got that? The IPCC Report on which the science of global warming rests - a report being used to justify ruining industrial civilization - used an old story based on a brief telephone interview with a scientist nobody ever heard of, in a general interest science magazine geared for non-scientists (The New Scientist) to push the notion that the glacier's in the Himalaya's would be gone in 25 years. It would be too easy to ascribe this idiocy to conspiracy. More likely, it is simply one more indication that the proponents of AGW don't care about the science and are promoting a political agenda.

Source. January 17, 2010 Climategate Redux Jane Jamison Climate-gate part I occurred in early December when a still-unknown person posted thousands of e-mails and documents on a scientific website. The e-mails showed that scientists at the leading "global warming" research institute in the world, East Anglia University's Climate Research Unit (CRU) had "changed" weather data to prove their climate-warming theories, and squelched dissenting opinions from skeptical scientists to maintain credibility for their fraud. Climate-gate part II begins now: The scientists with Icecap.us website announced findings late last week that not only was the CRU involved in producing fraudulent weather data, but two United States agencies, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), have also been falsifying climate reports for years. NOAA, the report concludes, is actually "ground-zero" for the fraud of global warming, not the East Anglia Institute. Climate researchers have discovered that government researchers improperly manipulated data in order to claim 2005 as "THE WARMEST YEAR ON RECORD." In a new report supported by SPPI, computer expert E. Michael Smith and Certified Consulting Meteorologist Joseph D'Aleo discovered extensive manipulation of the temperature data by the U.S. Government's National Climate Data Center (NCDC) in Asheville, North Carolina Smith and D'Aleo accuse these centers of manipulating temperature data to give the appearance of warmer temperatures than actually occurred by trimming the number and location of weather observation stations and then ‘adjuting the data in ways that increase the apparent warming. The results of Smith and D'Aleo's findings were aired in a special on KUSI-TV hosted by founder of the Weather Channel and long-time meteorologist and climate "realist", John Coleman. D'Aleo's preliminary report is HERE. Segments of the KUSI-TV report are HERE. SPPI'S website will print the final report soon. Not related directly to the investigation by the climate-gate scientists, but related nonetheless was another new report: Polar bears are not dying or drowning due to melting icebergs caused by climate change. There are so many polars bears in Canada, they are causing problems. This news is coming from Canadian wildlife agencies that have real live Inuit Indian hunters who count the real, live polar bears on the ground and in the water. The United States Geologic Survey (USGS), which has made the alarming findings about polar bear populations being extinct in 20 years, fly over in helicopters and make reports based on "analysis" of weather predictions. Gabriel Nirlungayuk, director of wildlife for Nunavut Tuungavik Inc.says it is getting "beary" scary in many Canadian towns: During the summer and fall, families enjoying outdoor activities must be on the look-out for bears. Many locals invite along other hunters for protection. Last year, in Pelly Bay, all the bears that were captured were caught in town, Nirlungayuk says. "You now have polar bears coming into towns, getting into cabins, breaking property and just creating havoc for people up here," he says. In the Western Hudson Bay area, where harvest quotas were reduced by 80 percent four years ago, communities are complaining about the number of polar bears. "Now people can look out the window and see as many as 20 polar bears at the ice-flow edge." Let the scientists report further on the intricacies of the graphs, maps, and calculations of "global warming fraud," and then turn it all over to a prosecutor and make these "scientists" pay for this outrageous hoax that has continued for decades and is still having huge financial impacts on policy, commerce and the economy. "Global warming" is a crime. Jane Jamison is publisher of the conservative news/commentary blog, UNCOVERAGE.net

OUCH! It's almost like they're telling people that they can cancel their donation to this group and put it somewhere else. I can see the concern regarding accountability, but they do have a point that they have a presence in Haiti and can help with the gangs, etc. Perhaps if he donates his time (for free!) to help the larger organizations, that would be the best way he can truly help. It will be interesting to see what happens with this now. Maybe with the huge spotlight on this, they'll have to do the right thing with the money. A bridge loan is a good start!

I couldn't find a thread for Danny Glover so I'm putting this here. Seriously, this is idiotic. (He also seems to be unaware of our attempts to help Haiti for decades!) Source. PACT WITH GAIA Tim Blair Friday, January 15, 2010 at 04:59am Actor Danny Glover believes that the Haitian earthquake was caused by climate change and global warming: Says Glover: “When we see what we did at the climate summit in Copenhagen, this is the response, this is what happens, you know what I’m sayin’?” His obscene opinion would be bigger news if Glover had – in the manner of others – idiotically blamed a less-fashionable deity.

Source. Text to Help Haiti: A Record Outpouring of Help Ian Paul, PCWorld Jan 15, 2010 12:31 pm Major U.S. wireless carriers say the numbers of people donating to Haitian relief efforts via text messages has been the largest and most successful outpouring of charitable giving of its kind to date. While the concept of giving via text messages is not new, the massive number of people giving via text messages is. As of Thursday U.S. cell phone users have contributed more than $5 million to the Red Cross for Haiti disaster relief in record time, according to the charity. In total, an estimated $7 million has been donated to charity relief organizations in $5 and $10 increments via text messages from all carriers. Jeffery Nelson, Verizon Wireless spokesperson told MSNBC the Haitian Relief Effort is "the largest outpouring of charitable support by texting in history - by far." Customers of all four major wireless carriers can send donations using SMS "shortcodes" without incurring any additional texting charges. Read on to see how your carrier is handling donations to Haitian relief. The Charities There are six charities that allow you to donate to Haitian relief efforts via SMS. They are: Yele Haiti ($5 donation), Clinton Foundation Haitian Relief Fund ($10 donation), International Medical Corps ($10 donation), International Rescue Committee ($5 donation), American Red Cross ($10 donation) and the Salvation Army of Upper Wisconsin ($10 donation). Anyone in the United States can use these shortcodes to donate to the charity of their choice using their mobile phone. All donations will be charged to you through your monthly wireless bill. Sprint Sprint customers have by far the widest range of charities to donate to Haitian Relief efforts. The carrier has waived all applicable SMS fees (retroactive from Wednesday) for donations to the American Red Cross, Yele Haiti, Clinton Foundation, International Medical Corps/Rescue Union Mission (shortcode 85944) and the International Rescue Committee. Sprint will pass on one hundred percent of your donation to the above charities. As of Thursday, Sprint customers had donated a total of $882,000 to Haitian Relief. In addition to waiving customer fees, the Sprint Foundation, Sprint's philanthropic arm, has donated $50,000 to the American Red Cross, and will match employee donations dollar-for-dollar up to another $50,000 between now and January 31. Making a potential $150,000 donation between the Sprint Foundation and Sprint employees. T-Mobile T-mobile is already offering free long distance to Haiti and free roaming for the rest of the month within the devastated country, now T-Mobile customers can donate to both the American Red Cross and Yele Haiti without incurring mobile SMS charges. One hundred percent of your donation will be forwarded to the charities. At the time of this writing, T-Mobile had not released any numbers about customer giving. T-Mobile will also be donating wireless equipment such as generators and phones to help rebuild Haiti's telecommunications infrastructure. AT&T The other two major wireless carriers have promised to waive texting fees only for donations to the American Red Cross. To give a $10 donation to the ARC text HAITI to 90999. AT&T has waived SMS fees for customers donating to the Red Cross retroactive to Thursday at 12:35:12 PM. One hundred percent of your donation will be passed on to the Red Cross. As of 6PM ET Thursday, AT&T says its mobile customers have donated $2.63 million to the American Red Cross via SMS--almost half of all SMS donations given to the Red Cross so far. The carrier's philanthropic arm is also donating $50,000 to Telecoms Sans Frontieres (Telecoms without Borders). Haiti's telecommunications network suffered a crippling blow due to the earthquake, and TSF is providing emergency telecommunications services in Haiti. Verizon Verizon says close to 140,000 customers have texted donations to the Red Cross (approximately $1.4 million). The Verizon Foundation is also donating $50,000 to both World Vision and Food for the Poor. The foundation will also match Verizon employee donations dollar-for-dollar up to $1000 per employee. Although donating by text has existed for several years, the Haitian relief effort is the biggest campaign of its kind to elicit donations from American mobile customers. Jeffery Nelson, Verizon Wireless spokesperson told MSNBC the Haitian Relief Effort was "the largest outpouring of charitable support by texting in history - by far." As of Thursday, total U.S. donations via text had reached $7 million, with more than $5 million of those proceeds going to the American Red Cross. The donation-by-text campaigns are not only a win for charities, but may also help repair the public images of wireless carriers famous for mystery charges, service problems and high fees.

DONATE TO THE RED CROSS CLICK HERE. Use your Hilton Honors points to donate to Haiti. CLICK HERE. Habitat for Humanity taking donations for Haiti shelters. CLICK HERE. The Clinton Foundation. Donate for Haiti. CLICK HERE. American Airlines Aadvantage Miles with Red Cross Donation. CLICK HERE.

Source. FACTBOX-U.S. military mobilizes thousands for Haiti relief 15 Jan 2010 00:44:20 GMT Source: Reuters Jan 14 (Reuters) - The U.S. military is mobilizing thousands of soldiers, sailors and Marines along with members of the Air Force and Coast Guard for relief efforts in Haiti. Here are the main military components announced so far: WHO'S THERE ALREADY? * The vast majority of the forces announced for Haiti have not yet arrived, but the military has flown in hundreds of rescuers and has advance teams and assessment teams on the ground. Air Force special forces were among the first military relief workers to arrive. The Coast Guard has deployed four ships as well as air support for evacuation efforts. The Navy destroyer USS Higgins, with about 320 sailors on board, arrived on Thursday. MORE THAN 5,000 MARINES, SOLDIERS * Up to 3,500 soldiers from the U.S. Army's 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg will be deployed in Haiti by Sunday. An advance group of about 125 troops were due to arrive on Thursday and 800 more will arrive on Friday. * Another 2,200 Marines from the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit at Camp Lejeune, N.C., may arrive this weekend or on Monday for what initially is expected to be about a 90-day deployment. AMPHIBIOUS GROUP, FLOATING HOSPITAL * An amphibious readiness group with three ships -- the USS Bataan, the USS Fort McHenry and USS Carter Hall -- will take the Marines to Haiti. This group can produce its own purified water. * A U.S. Navy aircraft carrier, the USS Carl Vinson, with a crew of between 4,000-5,000 sailors on board, is on the way and will arrive in the area by Friday, with 19 helicopters on board. It has three operating rooms, several dozen hospital beds and can produce fresh water. * The much-anticipated hospital ship, the USNS Comfort, will not arrive until around Jan. 22. It has 12 operating rooms and 250 hospital beds. The Pentagon says the Comfort is a slow-moving vessel and will need a week to arrive in Haiti. * Two additional ships, the USS Underwood and the USS Normandy, with 400 and 250 personnel, are expected to arrive on Jan 16. (Reporting by Phil Stewart; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

Source. The Haiti Earthquake One of the worst-ever natural disasters in the western hemisphere leaves the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince in ruins Haiti Tries to Dig Out as Corpses Pile Up By IOAN GRILLO / PORT-AU-PRINCE Friday, Jan. 15, 2010 Bodies are piled up in the street, obstructing traffic, as people start trying to cope with massive destruction in Port-au-Prince following Tuesday's massive earthquake Like a thick fog, the stench of death curdles the air in the streets of this shattered city. It comes from trundling trucks, where corpses are piled up and covered by bloodstained sheets, while young men with scarves on their faces warn onlookers to stand aside. It is expelled from pyres of burning tires that incinerate cadavers that have remained unattended too long in the dust and heat, lit by residents afraid that the carrion will attract prowling dogs and endanger children. And it surges through piles of rocks and rubble, where hospitals, schools, palaces and homes fell like cards as the ground shook with the fiercest earthquake to strike this island in two centuries. No one can tell how many have perished, and the exact number of dead will be almost certainly never be known. Thousands? Tens of thousands? Hundreds of thousands? The panorama of destruction appears endless. Street to street, neighborhood to neighborhood, ever more shattered buildings, wounded survivors and decaying corpses can be found. In one alley, two bodies lie across from a group of teenagers sitting and chatting. Around the corner, dozens of cadavers are piled in the remnants of a government building that reportedly had 1,000 employees. Photographer Shaul Schwarz, on assignment for TIME, saw corpses piled on the street impeding traffic. While there was certainly anger and frustration, the atmosphere is mainly calm, considering the scale of the catastrophe. Most of the city has no electricity, gasoline, phone lines, drinking water or working shops. But residents are clearing away the debris from outside their homes. At many of the large ruined buildings, groups of men work slowly taking apart the rubble with sledgehammers and chisels. They clear away the dead and search for the living. At a children's hospital, men search for the director who was in his first-floor office when five levels tumbled down. "We will get him out soon," says Pierre Josef, resting after swinging a hammer through the crumbling concrete. But the calm is not everywhere. On one street, dozens of men and teenagers storm into the collapsed building of a cellular-phone company, pushing and shoving over the spoils. As an expensive pickup truck drives fast through the crowd, some men shout and throw stones, cracking its window. The poorest country in the western hemisphere, Haiti is also a land of great inequality and social tensions rumble beneath the surface. But in the time of such catastrophe, it is more often solidarity that shines through rather than social grievances. Both rich and poor have been hammered by the earthquake. Like a nightmarish lottery, the tremor seemed to have picked out houses at random, devastating one building and sparing the next. An impervious-looking hotel has tumbled to the ground, while next to it a fragile-looking Catholic church stands tall. Most of those who escaped the collapsing buildings suffer on the streets. Miriam Rosseate, a 22-year-old student with a leg crushed by her falling house, bites her fist to fight the pain. She went for two days without medicine and when she was finally given an injection it didn't seem to help much. "I can't think of much except how much it hurts," she says, wincing. Other entire families struggle in tents made of sheets and twigs. Jean Manol, a 34-year-old tennis instructor, had both his home and the hotel he worked in destroyed. "We just have to keep fighting. This will pass," he says, sitting in a makeshift tent with his wife and two small children. Such make-do refugee camps sprawl across soccer fields, sidewalks and the middle of entire streets. Others have decided to leave the city completely. Rickety buses and trucks move in triple file carrying families, suitcases and even furniture. Some worry about disease. Some fear there could be a tsunami after the quake, a rumor that rippled through the street like water. Others just feel the countryside will offer them more safety. "There is nothing for us anymore," says a somber woman, carrying her baby in her arms as she climbs on a truck. "This city will never be the same again."

Source. Mystery object to whizz by Earth Wednesday (CLICK ON THE LINK ABOVE TO SEE THE IMAGE) News – A mystery object from space, as seen from the Skylive-Grove Creek Observatory in Australia, is about … Tue Jan 12, 1:52 pm ET WASHINGTON – A mystery object from space is about to whizz close by Earth on Wednesday. It won't hit our planet, but scientists are stumped by what exactly it is. Astronomers say it may be space junk or it could be a tiny asteroid, too small to cause damage even if it hit. It's 33 to 50 feet wide at most. NASA says that on Wednesday at 7:47 a.m. EST, it will streak by, missing Earth by about 80,000 miles. In the western United States it may be bright enough to be seen with a good amateur telescope.