The Great and Powerful Climate Oz

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The Great and Powerful Climate Oz
Global warming fearmongers say restaurants must stop serving ice water.
By JOHN FUND, Wall Street Journal, DECEMBER 1, 2009

ClimateGate -- the controversy surrounding the leaked e-mails from the Climatic Research Unit at Britain's University of East Anglia -- means not only a credibility problem for some of the world's leading climate researchers. It also means a credibility problem for the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose latest influential report, known as the AR-4, calls evidence of global warming "unequivocal."

These IPCC findings are largely based on the work of CRU, whose scientists are shown in the leaked emails to have suppressed "inconvenient" data, ruthlessly excluded some scientists from peer-reviewed journals and flouted Freedom of Information laws governing public documents,

All this might seem alarming to someone who relied on CRU studies, but not to Rajendra Pachauri, who chairs the IPCC. "This private communication in no way damages the credibility of the AR4 findings," he told Reuters. "The entire report writing process of the IPCC is subjected to extensive and repeated review by experts as well as governments."

Never mind, too, that the University of East Anglia has admitted to discarding much of the raw temperature data on which its heavily massaged "proofs" of global warming are based. Mr. Pachauri has good reason to want to gloss over inconvenient facts. The man who joined Al Gore in sharing the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize is too busy calling for an end to the Western lifestyle. "Today we have reached the point where consumption and people's desire to consume has grown out of proportion," he tells The Observer, a British newspaper.

In the near future, he explains, car use will have to be "curbed," hotels and restaurants will stop serving ice water, and guests will have their energy use monitored. Heavy taxes will also have to discourage people from flying and force them to take the train. Last year, he called for sharp cutbacks in meat consumption because of the greenhouse emissions livestock are responsible for.

Mr. Pachauri says the key to realizing his ascetic vision is mobilizing young people, who "will be far more sensitive than adults, who have been corrupted by the ways we have been following for years now." Hmm, hundreds of emails showing scientists working together to distort their findings obviously isn't the kind of "corruption" Mr. Pachauri worries about. The real scandal is that burger and iced tea you're about to consume.
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UK climate scientist to temporarily step down

(AP) – 1 hour ago

LONDON — Britain's University of East Anglia says the director of its prestigious Climatic Research Unit is stepping down pending an investigation into allegations that he overstated the case for man-made climate change.

The university says Phil Jones will relinquish his position until the completion of an independent review into allegations that he worked to alter the way in which global temperature data was presented.

The allegations were made after more than a decade of correspondence between leading British and U.S. scientists were posted to the Web following the security breach last month.

The e-mails were seized upon by some skeptics of man-made climate change as proof that scientists are manipulating the data about its extent.