California’s Global Warming Solutions Act, aka AB32, is predicated on the assertion by Governor Schwarzenegger and Mary Nichols, his appointee as Chairman of the California Air Resources Board 
(CARB) and others that the “the science of global climate change is unequivocal and there is consensus among credible scientists.” Evidence of such usually and typically point to the various studies by the United Nations’ International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) group of self-appointed experts. Just over a week ago, however, internal communications from part of the IPCC support network came to light that questions their honesty and integrity, and most certainly raises questions about the very “settled science” that lies (pun intended) at the heart of AB32.
As a quick reminder to those not closely familiar with California’s “landmark” global warming legislation, AB 32 added the following to the Health and Safety Code 38501.
Going back to the early 1980s, with funding from the U.S. Department of Energy, scientists at the United Kingdom’s University of East Anglia established the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) to produce the world’s first comprehensive history of surface temperature. It’s known in the trade as the “Jones and Wigley” record for its authors, Phil Jones and Tom Wigley It has served as the primary reference standard for the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) until 2007. It was this record that prompted the IPCC to claim a “discernible human influence on global climate.”
The Climate Research Unit has now had documents and emails revealed that demonstrates they manipulated data and excluded scientists who opposed their cause. Much of the CRU’s work has been central to the UN IPCC reports. Their seeming only defense to the bawdy history is to accuse those who found and released the information of criminal hacking, or to attempt to trivialize what is serious scientific malfeasance. Michael E. Mann, who directs the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University, quoted in a Washington Post article, said those folks are “taking these words totally out of context to make something trivial appear nefarious." Of course, this is the same “Hockey-Stick Michael Mann” who became infamous for statistical malpractice in constructing the now completely discredited “hockey stick” graph of alarming warming. Charts showing pending Earth temperatures “skyrocketing” like a hockey stick on a graph have been used to stir much emotion in support of massive government regulation.
It is important to distinguish between “data” and “models.” Data refers to what has happened in the past. Models are used to predict what might happen in the future. BUT, the models used in climate change are, fundamentally, based on statistical regression analysis of historical global temperatures, carbon dioxide levels, solar radiation, and other factors. This is a classic case of garbage in/garbage out, because the original data upon which the models were built do not exist.
The Telegraph has posted some of the more scathing excerpts from these emails, which the newspaper suggests points to manipulation of evidence and private doubts about the reality of global warming, though the much of the scientific language in the e-mails is esoteric and can be hard to interpret.
One notable e-mail from the e-mail files clearly describes how to squeeze non-conforming scientists from the peer review process:
One email suggests efforts to "hide the decline" [in global temperatures] (from an e-mail written in 1999): "I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and [sic] from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline." "Mike" refers to Jones’ colleague Michael Mann, who told the New York Times that the "trick" was simply a way of solving a data problem. In this case, the warming trend of the last century was found in tree-ring samples only up to 1960, but it continued in thermometer readings.
The data needed to verify the gloom-and-doom warming forecasts have disappeared. Apparently, they were either lost or purged from some old discarded computer. Only a very few people know what really happened, and they aren’t talking.
Putting together such a record isn’t at all easy. Weather stations aren’t designed to monitor global climate. Long-standing ones were typically established at points of commerce, which grow into cities that induce spurious warming trends in their records. Trees grow up around thermometers and lower the afternoon temperature. Further, as documented by the University of Colorado’s Roger Pielke Sr., many of the stations themselves are placed in locations, such as in parking lots or near heat vents, where artificially high temperatures are bound to be recorded. So the weather data that go into the historical climate records that are required to verify models of global warming aren’t the original records at all. Jones and Wigley, however, are not specific about what was done to which station in order to produce their record. Jones’s response to a fellow scientist attempting to replicate his work was, “We have 25 years or so invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?”
Reread that statement, for it is breathtaking in its anti-scientific thrust. In fact, the entire purpose of scientific replication is to “try and find something wrong.” The ultimate objective of science is to do things so well that, indeed, nothing is wrong [i.e. make it unequivocal]. Published papers demonstrate that the quality of land-based records is so poor that the warming trend estimated since 1979 (the first year for which we could compare those records to independent data from satellites) may have been overestimated by 50 percent.
Roger Pielke Jr., an esteemed professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado, requested the raw data from Jones. Jones responded:
If we are to believe Jones’s note to Pielke, CRU adjusted the original data and then lost or destroyed them over twenty years ago. What was destroyed or lost, when was it destroyed or lost, and why? Why haven’t the data been recovered? How have the climate models been changed to reflect a lack of foundational data? How can any model be reasonably verified if there is nothing against which to measure their performance. And, of course, why weren’t the damning ten-year old emails lost or destroyed?
Of course, we have yet to hear anything at all from the Governor or from CARB since this whole controversy erupted of the e-mails turning up. One can expect that CARB will press forward, come hell or high water, on the economy-destroying AB32 because the “science is settled.” Well if there 
are no data, there’s no science. California businesses, consumers and taxpayers deserve to know the answer to the question posed above; and AB32 should be suspended until the science, and apparent conspiracy, can be cleared up.
Or is it that the advocates of AB32 simply don’t care – because their “religion” of environmentalism doesn’t give them the latitude to question policies that promote their radical agenda? And in the case of the Governor, will he prioritize his “political legacy” over applying the brakes to massive regulations being imposed under the banner of questionable science (or non-science)?
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