ClimateGate: US insurance body condemns CRU; Monckton fingers NASA

The argument about the science behind 'man made global warming' being "settled" is hammered with a heavy double blow today.

First up is a letter from Robert Detlefsen Ph.D., Vice President, Public Policy of the American National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies (NAMIC).

To put this in perspective, NAMIC say about themselves: "Founded in 1895, the National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies is the largest, most diverse national insurance trade association in the United States. NAMIC represents the interests of its property/casualty insurance company members and their policyholders. NAMIC’s membership includes farm mutual insurance companies, single-state and regional writers, and national insurers operating across North America. The more than 1,400 NAMIC members underwrite 41 percent of the automobile and homeowners insurance market and 31 percent of the business insurance market in the United States."

Detlefsen's letter to U.S. regulators (pdf file), made available to the world courtesy of E&E News and the New York Times, is a strong indicator of the re-evaluation of the case for 'man made global warming' after the ClimateGate scandal first broke.

Detlefsen writes:

"The CRU e-mails show that a close-knit group of the world’s most influential climate scientists actively colluded to subvert the peer-review process (and thereby prevent the publication of research by scientists who disagreed with the group’s conclusions about global warming); manufactured pre-determined conclusions through the use of contrived analytic techniques; and discussed destroying data to avoid government freedom-of-information requests.

Viewed collectively, the CRU e-mails reveal a scientific community in which a group of scientists promoting what has become, through their efforts, the dominant climate-change paradigm are at war with other scientists derisively labeled as “skeptics,” “deniers,” and “contrarians.” The insularity and non-collegiality of these climate scientists had previously been noted in a 2006 report to Congress prepared by a committee of statisticians led by Dr. Eugene Wegman of George Mason University. The Wegman Report examined the body of research behind the widely-publicized “hockey stick” graph, which purported to show a dramatic and unprecedented increase in average global temperature during the twentieth century. After thoroughly discrediting the hockey stick graph, the report observed that “authors in the area of paleoclimate studies are closely connected and thus ‘independent studies’ may not be as independent as they might appear on the surface.” The report further noted “the isolation of the paleoclimate community,” concluding that “even though they rely heavily on statistical methods, they do not seem to be interacting with the statistical community.” When members of paleoclimate community were asked to explain and defend their work, “the sharing of research materials, data and results was haphazardly and grudgingly done.”

In short, because serious questions have been raised about the integrity of contemporary climate science, NAMIC believes it would be exceedingly risky for any insurance company to make important business decisions based on an uncritical acceptance of the dominant scientific paradigm on climate change. Put differently, we believe there is considerable risk involved in an approach to assessing “climate risk” that assumes the validity of any particular theory or set of beliefs about anthropogenic global warming."

Meanwhile, our friend Lord Monckton is fingering NASA and accusing them of dodgy data.

In their latest news post, Lord Monckton's Science and Public Policy Institute state:

"In a new report, computer expert E. Michael Smith and Certified Consulting Meteorologist Joseph D’Aleo discovered extensive manipulation of the temperature data by the U.S. government’s two primary climate centers: the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) in Asheville, North Carolina and the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) at Columbia University in New York City. Smith and D’Aleo accuse these centers of manipulating temperature data to give the appearance of warmer temperatures than actually occurred by trimming the number and location of weather observation stations."

And SPPI promise further revleations, writing: "The Smith-D’Aleo paper mentioned in this press release was commissioned by SPPI, and the full copyrighted version will be released and posted at SPPI in the next few days".

Judicial Watch also have their own NASA related question marks.

Get the popcorn everyone...