Climate Audit

Update (Steve): I’ve read the Wegman Report and it’s obviously very gratifying. I won’t be able to provide a review for about a week as we’ve got a family reunion this week-end with two of my sisters and their families arriving from Colorado and B.C. , plus I’ve got to do some preparation for next week. It’s not that I don’t have anything to say about it.

John A: The report mentioned in today’s WSJ article has been released on the House Energy Committee’s website.

The full report is here and the shorter factsheet is here

The Chairman of the Committee on Energy and Commerce as well as the Chairman of
the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations have been interested in an
independent verification of the critiques of Mann et al. (1998, 1999) [MBH98, MBH99]
by McIntyre and McKitrick (2003, 2005a, 2005b) [MM03, MM05a, MM05b] as well as
the related implications in the assessment. The conclusions from MBH98, MBH99 were
featured in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report entitled Climate
Change 20013: The Scientific Basis. This report concerns the rise in global temperatures,
specifically during the 1990s. The MBH98 and MBH99 papers are focused on
paleoclimate temperature reconstruction and conclusions therein focus on what appear to
be a rapid rise in global temperature during the 1990s when compared with temperatures
of the previous millennium. These conclusions generated a highly polarized debate over
the policy implications of MBH98, MBH99 for the nature of global climate change, and
whether or not anthropogenic actions are the source. This committee, composed of
Edward J. Wegman (George Mason University), David W. Scott (Rice University), and
Yasmin H. Said (The Johns Hopkins University), has reviewed the work of both articles,
as well as a network of journal articles that are related either by authors or subject matter,
and has come to several conclusions and recommendations. This Ad Hoc Committee has
worked pro bono, has received no compensation, and has no financial interest in the
outcome of the report.

Now read on….