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NASA’s Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, are back in the news. The two rovers, which had a 90-day mission, have been exploring Mars for over six years now. Spirit is now stuck in a sand trap. Since it is still mostly functional, NASA is working to make it a stationary research platform.

Besides searching of signs of life, the Rovers’ mission is to analyze the Martian climate. The raw climate data they are providing have been invaluable for NASA scientists.

This pursuit of truth and knowledge, uncolored by narrow political interests, will have far-ranging impacts on the understanding of our own climate. In the distant future, it may even help us to terraform Mars. This is the scientific method at its finest.

NASA also does climate research here on Earth. Unlike the Martian research, the data are being massaged and manipulated. The growing Climategate scandal has not been kind to NASA.

Why are the Earth and Mars data being treated so differently? Maybe because there is no predetermined outcome that must be obtained by the data coming in from Mars?

The findings from Penn State University’s investigation into Climategate scientist Michael Mann were due this week, and today the university announced today that one allegation warranted further scrutiny:

In looking at four possible allegations of research misconduct, the committee determined that further investigation is warranted for one of those allegations. The recommended investigation will focus on determining if Mann “engaged in, directly or indirectly, any actions that seriously deviated from accepted practices within the academic community for proposing, conducting or reporting research or other scholarly activities.” A full report (http://www.research.psu.edu/orp) concerning the allegations and the findings of the inquiry committee has been submitted.

In the investigatory phase, as in the inquiry phase, the committee will not address the science of global climate change, a matter more appropriately left to the profession. The committee is charged with looking at the ethical behavior of the scientist and determining whether he violated professional standards in the course of his work.

Meanwhile, lawyers for the university have informed climate skeptic Ronald Armstrong (and probably others), who requested Mann’s emails via a Freedom of Information Act request and under Pennsylvania’s Right to Know Law, that Penn State is not subject to either transparency law because it is not an “agency:”

Consequently, the information you requested will not be disclosed since it is confidential and not made available to the public.

Legal weasel words, of course. In a high-profile misconduct case Penn State could certainly choose to release the records, but much like the Climategate conspirators, they can’t afford to let the public see. So they hide behind lawyers who are willing to do their dirty work for them — in this case, Katherine Allen at McQuaide Blasko in Central Pennsylvania.

What’s the matter, doesn’t PSU have some attorney hack on staff who could have cranked out this deflection, rather than paying outside counsel hundreds of dollars an hour to be their bad guy for them?

Last week the United Kingdom Information Commissioner’s Office-the body that administers the Freedom of Information Act-said the University of East Anglia had flouted the rules in its handling of an FOI request by British amateur climate analyst Doug Kennan.

Today the Guardian reported how Phil Jones, head of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, withheld information requested under freedom of information laws.

The CRU scientist’s wrongdoing and cover-up were only revealed after thousands of University of East Anglia emails were leaked to the internet, in an incident now known as Climategate.

It should be noted that the Competitive Enterprise Institute is involved in helping to further uncover the scandal that Keenan discovered. CEI’s legal team already has submitted a number of FOIA requests to government-employed climate scientists involved in the Climategate emails.

According to the Guardian,

“Jones and his Chinese-American colleague Wei-Chyung Wang, of the University at Albany in New York, are being accused of scientific fraud by an independent British researcher over the contents of a research paper back in 1990.

That paper, which was published in the prestigious journal Nature, claimed to answer an important question in climate change science: how much of the warming seen in recent decades is due to the local effects of spreading cities, rather than global warming?…

…The pair, with four fellow researchers, concluded that the urban influence was negligible. Some of their most compelling evidence came from a study of temperature data from eastern China, a region urbanising fast even then….

…But many climate sceptics did not believe the claim…

…But when Jones turned down requests from them to reveal details about the location of the 84 Chinese weather stations used in the study, arguing that it would be “unduly burdensome”, they concluded that he was covering up the error.

And when, in 2007, Jones finally released what location data he had, British amateur climate analyst and former City banker Doug Keenan accused Jones and Wang of fraud.

He pointed out that the data showed that 49 of the Chinese meteorological stations had no histories of their location or other details. These mysterious stations included 40 of the 42 rural stations. Of the rest, 18 had certainly been moved during the study period, perhaps invalidating their data…

…By then, Keenan had published his charges in Energy & Environment, a peer-reviewed journal edited by a Hull University geographer, Dr Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen.

The paper was largely ignored at the time, but Guardian investigations of the hacked emails now reveal that there was concern among Jones’s colleagues about Wang’s missing data – and the apparent efforts by Jones and Wang over several years to cover this up.

Those concerns were most cogently expressed to Jones by his ex-boss, and former head of the CRU, Dr Tom Wigley. In August 2007, Wigley warned Jones by email: “It seems to me that Keenan has a valid point. The statements in the papers that he quotes seem to be incorrect statements, and that someone (W-C W at the very least) must have known at the time that they were incorrect.”

Dr. Rajendra Pachauri is chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). And he has just released a brand new book. No, it isn’t a sequel to his 1976 Dynamics of Electrical Energy Supply and Demand: An Economic Analysis. It’s a novel, titled Return to Almora. It’s about an Indian climate expert in his sixties who travels around India, Peru, and the United States, making passionate love to women all along the way.

Yes, that’s right: Dr. Pachauri’s first novel is largely about sex; or, as The Daily Telegraph puts it, it’s about “a lot of sex – with a lot of women.”

Return to Almora’s publication comes at an interesting time for Dr. Pachuari. On January 20th, Pachauri was forced to publically apologize for a 2007 IPCC report which erroneously claimed that Himalayan glaciers would melt completely by 2035.

This week, The Sunday Telegraph revealed that the same IPCC report cites only two sources for its claims about the disappearance of mountain ice in the Andes and Alps. One source is an anecdotal article from a popular mountaineer magazine; the other is a Swiss geography student’s dissertation. Now Dr. Pachauri is being blasted in the press for permitting scholastic misconduct. He is also facing calls for his resignation.

Of course, in light of the release of Return to Almora, one can understand how Dr. Pachauri might be confused by the sudden fervent demand for factual accuracy. After all, novelists are encouraged to take creative license in their work—to expand upon the known and sacrifice truth to beauty.

Judging from Return to Almora’s first sex scene—which occurs on page 16, and which features a nubile “May” telling climate scientist “Sanjay” he is “absolutely superb after meditation”—I’d say it’s safe to assume Dr. Rajendra Pachauri has grown accustomed to embellishing fact with a little bit of fantasy.

Caleb Brown points to a study that finds a novel reason to oppose school choice: global warming. In a competitive educational marketplace, it is likely that fewer children would attend schools in their own neighborhood. That would mean less busing, and more driving in cars to get children to school. School choice, then, would contribute to global warming.

The study does not appear to be satire.

I imagine just about everyone at one time or another has been added to a mailing list of an organization or candidate who doesn’t align with their worldview. An amusing example of this hit the emailbox of the Commonwealth Foundation, via an message signed by environmentalist Teresa Heinz Kerry (renowned wife of two Johns), who asked recipients to provide their nominees for this year’s Heinz Awards (no, they’re not called Heinies for short):

For most of the program’s history, we have honored five awardees, one each in fields of great importance to John (Heinz), including arts and the humanities, the environment, public policy, technology, and the human condition. Last year, we made an exception to this approach, honoring 10 individuals for their work on the environment, one of John’s highest priorities. This year we want to take this focus even further.

The world is at a crucial moment, brought there by the scale of the human enterprise on Earth. Scientists refer to the cumulative effects of human activities and natural processes on the Earth as global change. The risks of failing to address global changeare too great to accept. Therefore, we seek nominations of people who are addressing global change in unique, innovative and powerful ways.

Note that environoiacs are now moving from “global warming” and “climate change” to “global change.” Let’s prevent humans from doing anything to affect the planet!

You might also recall that Commonwealth Foundation is the Pennsylvania think tank that called for an independent, outside investigation of Climategate‘s hockey stick scientist Michael Mann. I am sure they can come up with some innovative candidates for the awards. If I had the opportunity I would choose the Climategate whistleblower, who certainly instigated “global change” on the climate issue.

“Winter offered as proof of warming” declares a headline in the print edition of the Washington Post, although perhaps the irony of that  later struck the editors and they softened it a bit in the online edition to “Harsh winter a sign of disruptive climate change, report says.”

Nothing especially outrageous here. The enviros have been doing this for years; indeed, it’s why they adopted the term “global climate change” so that any change in climate or even just weather – which obviously this is – can be portrayed as a result of man’s nefarious activities in putting greenhouse gases into the air. The report, incidentally, is from the National Wildlife Federation that makes money by promoting global warming in the same way that GM makes money selling trucks.

But folks are having trouble buying it. A poll released Monday by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press asked respondents to rank 21 issues in terms of priority. Global warming came in dead last. It’s come in last before, but this time just 28 percent of those surveyed list global warming as a top priority, down from 35 percent in 2008.

Climategate, Himalayagate, Pachaurigate, and now NOAAgate — it’s hard to keep up with all the relevations and allegations buzzing around some of the biggest names in climate science.  

Earlier this week in the Telegraph, the intrepid James Delingpole debuted “Amazongate.” Like Himalayagate, this is a case in which the IPCC relied on a World Wildlife Fund (WWF) report, rather than a peer-reviewed scientific study, to make a scary claim about global warming.

The IPCC (Working Group II, Ch. 13, p. 596) says that, “Up to 40% of the Amazonian forests could react drastically to even a slight reduction in precipitation” due to global warming. The IPCC’s reference for this claim is Rowell and Moore (2000), which turns out to be an IUCN/WWF report, Global Review of Forest Fires.  

The IUCN/WWF report does cite a peer-reviewed study to support the 40% estimate: Nepsted et al. 1999. Large – scale Impoverishment of Amazonian Forests by Logging and Fire, Nature, Vol. 398, p. 505. The study is available here. 

But the Neptsed study doesn’t quite say what WWF suggests it does. The study says: “Because of the severe drought of 1997 and 1998, we calculate that approximately 270,000 km2 of Amazonian forest had completely depleted plant-available water stored in the upper five metres of soil by the end of the 1998 dry season. In addition, 360,000 km2 of forest had less than 250mm of plant-available soil water left by this time . . .”

The IUCN/WWF report reproduces that statement almost verbatim:
“Up to 40% of the Brazilian forest is extremely sensitive to small reductions in the amount of rainfall. In the 1998 dry season, some 270,000 sq. km of forest became vulnerable to fire, due to completely depleted plant-available water stored in the upper five metres of soil. A further 360,000 sq. km of forest had only 250 mm of plant-available soil water left.”

However, IUCN/WWF’s paraphase adds something — the “up to 40%” estimate. That figure does not appear in Nepsted et al.

Since the Amazon rain forest is estimated at 8.2 million km2 (http://rainforests.mongabay.com/amazon/), it would seem that about 8% (630,000 km2) of the region was threatened by the drought in 1998, not 40%.

Note also that the terms “climate change” and “global warming” do not appear in the text of the Nepsted study (although footnote 14 references a paper titled “Amazonian deforestation and regional climate change”).

Apparently, the IPCC recycled two claims in the IUCN/WWF report that the report’s supposed source – Nepsted et al. (1999) — did not make: namely, 40% of the rain forest is risk, and this is due to global climate change.

There may be other reasons to conclude that climate change endangers 40% of the rain forest, but they are not to be found in Nepsted et al. (1999) — the source for the IPCC’s source.