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ClimateGate: Physicists request change in APS policy statement

By Lawrence B. Ebert, Esq.

A group of physicists are requesting, in view of the revelations in ClimateGate, that the APS alter its statement on global warming.

Included in the changes is a DELETION of the text:

The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring.

and an inclusion of the text:

Current climate models appear insufficiently reliable to properly account for natural and anthropogenic contributions to past climate change, much less project future climate.

see also

ClimateGate: is a flawed academic consensus really the best?

Meanwhile, back at the Obama ranch (from SETH BORENSTEIN):

The science is proper and this is about a small fraction of research on the issue, said John Holdren, a physicist who has studied climate change.

"The e-mails do nothing to undermine the very strong scientific consensus ... that tells us the earth is warming, that warming is largely a result of human activity," said another government scientist Jane Lubchenco. A marine biologist and climate researcher, she heads the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

(...)
After complaining of "scientific fascism" and "scientific McCarthyism," Sensenbrenner chastised Holdren for his 2003 e-mail, when he was at Harvard, that dealt with skeptics by "calling them names."

What the e-mail, not read by Sensenbrenner, showed was that Holdren used ironic quotes around the word "Harvard" in describing two of his colleagues who are global warming skeptics. Holdren also had forwarded to other scientists an article he described as "for your entertainment" in which he was quoted as saying the two skeptics were "wrong." Holdren defended his e-mail.

Of the email, from the Canadafreepress:

Obama Science Czar John Holdren is directly involved in CRU?s unfolding Climategate scandal. In fact, according to files released by a CEU hacker or whistleblower, Holdren is involved in what Canada Free Press (CFP) columnist Canadian climatologist Dr. Tim Ball terms ?a truculent and nasty manner that provides a brief demonstration of his lack of understanding, commitment on faith and willingness to ridicule and bully people?.

(...)

On 16th October 2003 Michael Mann, infamous for his lead in the ?hockey stick? that dominated the 2001 IPCC Report, sent an email to people involved in the CRU scandal; ?

Dear All,

Thought you would be interested in this exchange, which John Holdren of Harvard has been kind enough to pass along?? At the time Holdren was Teresa and John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy & Director, Program in Science, Technology, & Public Policy, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, John F. Kennedy School of Government. (Editor?s Note: He is now Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, and Co-Chair of the President?s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology?informally known as the United States Science Czar. )

??In an email on October16, 2003 from John Holdren to Michael Mann and Tom Wigley we are told:

??I?m forwarding for your entertainment an exchange that followed from my being quoted in the Harvard Crimson to the effect that you and your colleagues are right and my ?Harvard? colleagues Soon and Baliunas are wrong about what the evidence shows concerning surface temperatures over the past millennium. The cover note to faculty and postdocs in a regular Wednesday breakfast discussion group on environmental science and public policy in Harvard?s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences is more or less self-explanatory.?

The Wednesday Breakfast Group
?This is what Holdren sent to the Wednesday Breakfast group.

?I append here an e-mail correspondence I have engaged in over the past few days trying to educate a Soon/Baliunas supporter who originally wrote to me asking how I could think that Soon and Baliunas are wrong and Mann et al. are right (a view attributed to me, correctly, in the Harvard Crimson). This individual apparently runs a web site on which he had been touting the Soon/Baliunas position.?

Full post as published by IPBiz on December 05, 2009 (boomark / email).