Cuccinelli Rebuffed: Judge Paul M. Peatross Jr. Rules for UVA

UPDATE: "A federal judge puts a damper on Mr. Cuccinelli's U-Va. witch hunt"---Washington Post (8-31-10)

"[T]he judge seemed skeptical of Cuccinelli's underlying claim about Mann, noting that Cuccinelli's deputy maintained in a court hearing that the nature of Mann's fraud was described in subsequent court papers in the case..."The Court has read with care those pages and understands the controversy regarding Dr. Mann's work on the issue of global warming. However, it is not clear what he did was misleading, false or fraudulent in obtaining funds from the Commonwealth of Virginia," Peatross wrote."---Washington Post (8-30-10)

The Washington Post (8-30-10) has published an article titled "Judge quashes Cuccinelli subpoena of U-Va. records":

An Albemarle County Circuit Court judge has set aside a subpoena issued by Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli to the University of Virginia seeking documents related to the work of climate scientist and former university professor Michael Mann.

Judge Paul M. Peatross Jr. ruled that Cuccinelli can investigate whether fraud has occurred in university grants, as the attorney general had contended, but ruled that Cuccinelli's subpoena failed to state a "reason to believe" that Mann had committed fraud.

The ruling is a major blow for Cuccinelli, a global warming skeptic who had maintained that he was investigating whether Mann committed fraud in seeking government money for research that showed that the earth has experienced a rapid, recent warming. Mann, now at Penn State University, worked at U-Va. until 2005.

According to Peatross, the Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act, under which the civil investigative demand was issued, requires that the attorney general include an "objective basis" to believe that fraud has been committed. Peatross indicates that the attorney general must state the reason so that it can be reviewed by a court, which Cuccinelli failed to do.

Peatross set the subpoena aside without prejudice, meaning Cuccinelli could give the subpoena another try by rewriting the civil demand to better explain the conduct he wishes to investigate. But the judge seemed skeptical of Cuccinelli's underlying claim about Mann, noting that Cuccinelli's deputy maintained in a court hearing that the nature of Mann's fraud was described in subsequent court papers in the case.

"The Court has read with care those pages and understands the controversy regarding Dr. Mann's work on the issue of global warming. However, it is not clear what he did was misleading, false or fraudulent in obtaining funds from the Commonwealth of Virginia," Peatross wrote.

Additionally, the judge said Cuccinelli could only ask about one of five grants issued to Mann that the attorney general has been seeking to investigate. That's because the other four involved the use of federal, not state, funds.

In a statement, Cuccinelli said he will take the judge's ruling into account and rewrite the civil investigative demand. Spokesman Brian Gottstein said Cuccinelli is also examining the ruling to decide whether to appeal.

"While this was not an outright ruling in our favor, I am pleased that the judge has agreed with my office on several key legal points and has given us a framework for issuing a new civil investigative demand to get the information necessary to continue our investigation into whether or not fraud has been committed against the commonwealth," he said.

Mann, meanwhile, said he was pleased with the judge's ruling.

"I'm very pleased that the judge has ruled in our favor," he said in a statement. "It is a victory not just for me and the university, but for all scientists who live in fear that they may be subject to a politically-motivated witch hunt when their research findings prove inconvenient to powerful vested interests.

"I'm looking forward now to trying to get back full time to the things I really care about: doing research and extending the forefront of our scientific understanding of the science of climate and climate change, teaching and advising students and postdoctoral scholars, and doing the best I can to communicate to the public important scientific findings," he said.

A spokeswoman for the University of Virginia said a statement from the university would be forthcoming.

Russian Wildfires Spread Across Radiation-Contaminated Forests

"[J]ust as Moscow kept many of Chernobyl's victims in the dark for days about the dangers they faced...Russia's leaders again tried to pretend nothing was wrong."---Time (8-19-10)

"Smog may be followed by radiation"--Russian Greenpeace/English (8-10-10) [See Greenpeace's Russian-language stories about the forest fires at the page Лесные пожары (forest fires), and especially the article "Лесники Брянской области потушили пожары в радиоактивных лесах, но опасность сохраняется" (8-24-10).]

"Greenpeace today published a map showing that wildfires are spreading across the radiation contaminated forests.

The map was generated using the map data of The International Atomic Energy Agency and information provided by the international fire monitoring system Fire Information for Resource Management based on NASA's MODIS satellite images."---"Smog may be followed by radiation," Russian Greenpeace (8-10-10)

Time (8-19-10) reports that Russia's wildfires are sending radioactive particles from April 26, 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power plant explosion into the air:

On Aug. 5, after the [Russian wildfires] had been going for almost a month, Emergencies Minister Sergei Shoigu said fire-prevention teams were focusing on forests around Bryansk, one of the regions most contaminated by the Chernobyl accident in what is now Ukraine. When the nuclear reactor exploded in 1986, it emitted hundreds of times more radiation than the Hiroshima bomb and coated most of Europe and the western Soviet Union in a radioactive haze. Millions of people were exposed, thyroid-cancer rates in children soared, and thousands are thought to have died from the fallout. "If fires break out [in Bryansk], radioactive particles could be stirred up along with the fumes from the fire, and a new zone of contamination could emerge," Shoigu told reporters. "I hope we will be able to get through this without fires turning up there."

No such luck. On Aug. 10, the Russian arm of Greenpeace said 20 fires were raging in forests affected by Chernobyl, with three of those in the fallout zones of Bryansk. As evidence, Greenpeace superimposed a satellite map of the burning sites onto a map from the International Atomic Energy Agency showing where radiation had seeped into the soil and vegetation after Chernobyl. The two clearly overlapped. Three days later, a deputy for the regional parliament in Bryansk, Lyudmila Komogortseva, found that radiation levels in the burning forests were six to 12 times higher than they were before the fires began.

But just as Moscow kept many of Chernobyl's victims in the dark for days about the dangers they faced — volunteer cleanup crews worked in the wreckage with their bare hands, unaware that they were being exposed to lethal doses of radiation — Russia's leaders again tried to pretend nothing was wrong. Official denials came thick and fast, first from the government's chief physician, Gennady Onishchenko, who in response to Greenpeace's revelation told the Interfax news agency, "There's no need to sow panic. Everything [in Bryansk] is fine." But in a rare break in the federal ranks, the state forestry-protection agency, RCFH, published details on its website showing that as of Aug. 6, contrary to Onishchenko's assurances, there were 28 wildfires in Bryansk covering 269 hectares, including 9 hectares in the most radioactive parts of the region's southwest.

That was when Shoigu changed his line about the risk of radiation and rebuked the RCFH for spreading "false information." Hours later, the agency's website went down, and it remained inaccessible until the morning of Aug. 18 — when it went back online with no mention of the Bryansk fires. RCFH deputy director Nikolai Bobrinsky told TIME that the agency was just following a request from the Emergencies Ministry that it stop going public with information about the fires to avoid spreading panic.

This means that for now, all information from the fallout zones comes through the ministry. On Aug. 18, it organized a trip to Bryansk for observers and environmentalists. Ivan Blokov, who went on behalf of Greenpeace, says the trip left some of the most crucial questions unanswered and convinced him only that the region's firefighting infrastructure is "in a state of collapse" and would be unable to contain a major fire in the radioactive forests.

According to Komogortseva, who took a helicopter tour of the region with ministry officials on Aug. 18, the fires in Bryansk finally seem to have been extinguished. Yet thousands of tons of radioactive deadwood still litter the forest floor, she says. The wood could release a cloud of radiation if ignited. The levels would be a tiny fraction of what Chernobyl poured into the atmosphere 24 years ago, but experts have warned that winds could carry radioactive particles deep into Europe, and the effects are difficult to predict because of the lack of reliable data from Bryansk.

Some European officials are worried. Vice President of the European Parliament Rodi Kratsa said in a letter to the chamber last week that there are "serious risks" of radiation reaching Europe and asked her fellow deputies to find out whether Russia has a "prevention plan ... to avoid the release of radioactive particles into the atmosphere." Right now, though, the only such plan in Moscow seems to be aimed at preventing information leaks that could embarrass the government. To the Russians who have lost their homes, their livelihoods and their loved ones, that's not nearly enough. [See full text.]

Russia's 2010 Wildfires: "A Miser Pays Twice"

"Vladimir Chuprov of Moscow’s Greenpeace office said Mr Putin’s reform had left 70,000 forest guards without work, dismantling a monitoring system that would have been of great help in the current situation. “Now no one even knows exactly where the fires are,” he said. “The 120,000 men from the emergency ministry sent to fight the fires don’t even know how to fight forest fires because they are trained only in fighting fires in cities and industrial objects.”---Financial Times (8-7-10)

Russian environmentalists claim that miserly government policies have contributed to the destructiveness of the summer wildfires. Russian Greenpeace has published an article titled "A Miser Pays Twice" (8-10-10) after the Russian proverb скупой платит дважды, the Russian equivalent of penny-wise pound-foolish.

It has been interesting to read Russia's official press agency RIA Novosti quote NASA about the location of fires in Russia. NASA has an office in Russia, and maybe NASA satellites and scientists have been helping the Russians locate some of those more than 500 wildfires in their huge country. RIA Novosti reports that the smoke is so thick that saltellites cannot always see the fires. Here is a link to the word Russia on the NASA search engine. Here is a link to the word NASA on the RIA Novosti site.

RIA Novosti has a special report in Russian called Hot Summer--2010. The articles are in Russian, but you can use your Google translation tool. The articles frequently quote NASA satellite data.

Communism may be finished in Russia, but that does not mean that there is no federal role for fighting wildfires. According to the British newspaper The Financial Times (8-7-10):

Criticism is mounting of the [Russian] authorities handling of the wildfires. At least 52 people have perished, while the death rate in Moscow and other regions was reportedly surging due to the effects of smog.

A new Forest Code rubber-stamped by parliament under Vladimir Putin, then Russian president, in 2006 has come under intense criticism for dismantling a federal safety system, transferring responsibility for safety to regional authorities and tenants such as logging companies, which have performed badly.

Vladimir Chuprov of Moscow’s Greenpeace office said Mr Putin’s reform had left 70,000 forest guards without work, dismantling a monitoring system that would have been of great help in the current situation. “Now no one even knows exactly where the fires are,” he said. “The 120,000 men from the emergency ministry sent to fight the fires don’t even know how to fight forest fires because they are trained only in fighting fires in cities and industrial objects.”

Union of Concerned Scientists Debunks Errors in Virginia Attorney General Cuccinelli's July 13 Court Filing

"Cuccinelli falsely maintains [in his July 13, 2010 court filing] that climate scientists are primarily motivated by money, and suggests they are skewing their research results to attract grants. He also fails to take into account the self-correcting nature of scientific review. (page 4)...It would be essentially impossible for so many scientists to collude to manufacture research results in such a widely studied field as climate and go undiscovered for decades. Regardless of Cuccinelli’s claims, the Mann et al. hockey stick is one of the most extensively reviewed pieces of scientific research of our time. Over the years, the paper’s conclusions have been upheld as scientifically valid by several independent studies as well as a National Academy of Sciences (NAS) review. Cuccinelli essentially is alleging that those independent scientists as well as the NAS are all party to a conspiracy.---Union of Concerned Scientists (8-2-10)

[See also the Union of Concerned Scientists' Timeline of the Virginia Attorney General's Misguided Investigation]

In his error-filled July 13, 2010 court filing requesting documents from the University of Virginia related to climate scientist Michael Mann, Attorney General Cuccinelli is spouting Pravda's canards (see here and here) about the supposedly greedy, dishonest climate scientists who allegedly misled people about global warming.

Time (8-2-10) observes:

Two months before Copenhagen, [Russia's] state-owned Channel One television aired a documentary called The History of a Deception: Global Warming, which argued that the notion of man-made climate change was the result of an international media conspiracy. A month later, hackers sparked the so-called Climategate scandal by stealing e-mails from European climate researchers. The hacked e-mails, which were then used to support the arguments of global-warming skeptics, appeared to have been distributed through a server in the Siberian oil town of Tomsk, raising suspicion among some environmental activists of Russia's involvement in the leak....

"Broadly speaking, the Russian position has always been that climate change is an invention of the West to try to bring Russia to its knees," says Vladimir Chuprov, director of the Greenpeace energy department in Moscow [More here]. Case in point: when Medvedev visited Tomsk last winter [early 2010], he called the global-warming debate "some kind of tricky campaign made up by some commercial structures to promote their business projects." That was two months after the Copenhagen talks.

Russian and Soviet propaganda campaigns often depict scientists as crafty and meretricious, although the leaders frequently publically re-evaluate their propaganda. Even in Russia, politicians eventually retract ridiculous lies about scientists because they need to deal with reality.

In his famous 1956 "Secret Speech" to the 20th Party Conference, Nikita Khrushchev stated:

Let us...recall the “affair of the doctor-plotters [who were falsely accused of taking money from the U.S. government to poison Soviet leaders].”

(Animation in the hall.)

Actually there was no “affair” outside of the declaration of the woman doctor [Lidiya] Timashuk [more here], who was probably influenced or ordered by someone (after all, she was an unofficial collaborator of the organs of state security) to write Stalin a letter in which she declared that doctors were applying supposedly improper methods of medical treatment.

Izvestiya (3-19-92) reported:

[Russian intelligence chief Yevgeni Primakov]mentioned the well known articles printed a few years ago in our central newspapers about AIDS supposedly originating from secret Pentagon laboratories. According to Yevgeni Primakov, the articles exposing US scientists' "crafty" plots were fabricated in KGB offices.

Russia's President Medvedev recently stated that global warming is happening. RIA Novosti (7-31-10) reports that President Medvedev stated:

"What is happening to our planet's climate should motivate all of us, I mean, states and heads of non-governmental organizations, to take more active steps to resist global warming."

This affirmation of global warming is an about-face for President Medvedev. As noted above, when he visited Tomsk two months after the Copenhagen Climate Conference, President Medvedev characterized the global-warming debate as "some kind of tricky campaign made up by some commercial structures to promote their business projects."

It should be pretty obvious that President Medvedev's former views are shared by U.S. and British global warming denialists. They are the same conspiracy theories that are spread by Fox News. I certainly hope that President Medvedev continues to listen to what the world's great scientists are saying about global warming. Even if the immediate cause of Russia's terrible forest fires is not due to global warming, the effects are a harbinger of things to come.

Soviet and Russian canards about the "plots" of "crafty" scientists are reminiscent of older anti-Semitic propaganda about cunning, meretricious Jews. We note that Cuccinelli, not the scientist Dr. Michael Mann, received 55,000 dollars from a Florida-based criminal who is sought by federal and state authorities for defrauding people who believed they were donating to a charity for Navy veterans.

The Union of Concerned Scientists (8-2-10) reports:

Latest Court Filing from Ken Cuccinelli Continues to Make Basic Scientific Errors

Below are a dozen of the most egregious errors the Union of Concerned Scientists found in Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli's July 13 court filing [here] requesting documents from the University of Virginia related to climate scientist Michael Mann.

1. Cuccinelli inaccurately asserts that the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age "disappeared" in Mann et al.’s original hockey stick paper.

2. Cuccinelli misrepresents the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

3. Cuccinelli falsely maintains that climate scientists are primarily motivated by money, and suggests they are skewing their research results to attract grants.

4. Cuccinelli exaggerates the importance of the hockey stick, implying that it provides the rationale for laws that would require emissions reductions.

5. Cuccinelli cites a paper that criticized the hockey stick, but fails to cite refutations of that paper’s conclusions or the unusual circumstances under which it was published.

6. Cuccinelli uncritically cites a study by Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick that erroneously criticized Mann et al.’s hockey stick research.

7. Cuccinelli implies Mann was hiding something in a data folder marked "CENSORED," but fails to acknowledge that the folder was publicly available.

8.Cuccinelli extensively cites the 2006 Wegman report, but fails to note valid criticisms of that report.

9. Cuccinelli incorrectly cites three emails that were stolen last fall from Mann.

10. Cuccinelli and his staff again make a basic mistake when describing the now well-known email that features the phrases "trick" and "hide the decline."

11. Cuccinelli confuses the Muir Russell report’s criticism of a Phil Jones graph with Mann et al.’s hockey stick research.

12. Cuccinelli’s filing demonstrates a lack of understanding of how science works.

Climate Data to Be Opened Up

The University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU) reports (7-28-10):

Climate scientists at the University of East Anglia will soon be demonstrating new methods of providing open access to research data - thanks to a major new investment from JISC [here] to improve the way UK university researchers manage their data.

Dr Simon Hodson, programme manager at JISC, said: “Climate scientists have been under the spotlight recently: there have been technical and cultural challenges to making data and methods openly available, and a perception of failure to do so has been taken by critics of mainstream climate science as an indication of unsound science.

“Clearly, confidence in research findings – among scientists and the general public – depends upon the underpinning data and methods being open, reusable and verifiable. What is more, researchers aren’t just producers of data; they are also consumers, so by funding projects which will improve practice and will give climate scientists and others better guidance on research data management JISC aims to help them make that data more usable and valuable,” he added.

Three independent reviews focused on hacked emails from climate scientists at UEA. The reviews found that the CRU researchers’ scientific rigour and honesty was not in doubt, but the House of Commons Science and Technology Select Committee said that climate scientists should take even more steps to make available all their supporting data – right down to the computer codes they use – in order that research findings should be properly verifiable.

The Climatic Research Unit at UEA, in partnership with the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) e-Science Centre, is now embarking on a JISC-funded project that will address this recommendation. The centre provides computing, data storage and networking infrastructure for today’s advanced science facilities. Building on previous work between the two organisations, the project will examine how best to expose climate data for re-use, make it easier for researchers to cite the data and also to understand its validity. The results will be used by the British Atmospheric Data Centre, who already provide access to a significant proportion of the climate data output of the UK research community.

Professor Trevor Davies, Pro Vice-Chancellor, Research Enterprise and Engagement at UEA, commented: “Climate research data now plays a pivotal role in understanding our planet and shaping the political response to change. We are already one of the major providers of climate data in the UK, but want to go further. The results of this project will provide an exemplar to climate researchers across the academic and government sectors as they seek to respond to demands for even more open access to data. We are very pleased that JISC has recognised this need, and we look forward to our collaboration with the STFC e-Science Centre.”

STFC’s Dr Andrew Woolf remarked: “This JISC programme comes at an exciting time as technical innovations in web science converge with an expectation of greater access to publicly-funded data. We look forward to working with UEA to apply these emerging developments to the challenges of climate research, providing standardised access to processed data, linked both to raw observations and meaningful descriptions of intermediate processing.”

The UEA team, led by Dr Tim Osborn, is one of eight departments around the country who will be working towards models of better data management practice and making data more openly available for reuse by universities and other interested parties.

Other universities involved in this innovative research are the Universities of Bath, Cambridge, Manchester, Newcastle, Oxford, Southampton and King’s College London; the subject areas covered include materials science, freshwater biology, epidemiology and data intensive modelling to predict disease. All the projects are exploring ways of making data and the code used for computer assisted analysis more openly available, in some cases by linking them to publications.

Dr Hodson concluded: “Climate science is by no means unique in the need for researchers to analyse complex data from a number of different sources. The aim of this investment is to improve the way research data is managed in UK universities. By showing how research data can be made more open, this JISC-funded programme will help achieve proper recognition for the essential place of data creation and management in the research process.”

Find out more about the research data management programme.

RIA Novosti Explores the Possible Causes of Russia's Catastrophic Summer Wildfires

"[Roman Vilfand, the the head of the Russian state meteorological center,] said this summer has been 'catastrophic' in Russia, adding that an increase of eight degrees Centigrade in average temperatures can be observed only once in approximately 5,000 years."---RIA Novosti (8-13-10)

Google Web search for Roman Vilfand (Роман Вильфанд)

"There is strong evidence that the immediate cause [of Russia's heat wave] can be placed at the doorstep of an extreme pattern of atmospheric winds---widely referred to as blocking."---"The Russian Heat Wave of 2010" Draft Report by NOAA CSI - 13 August 2010

The worlds' scientists are exploring the causes of Russia's catastrophic wildfires. Russia's official press agency, RIA Novosti, has published an interesting article that explores the possible causes of the catastrophic fires in Russia this summer. The article is titled "Hurricanes, tornadoes may follow heat wave in Central Russia" (8-13-10). This article is a lot more informative than the delusional article by the historian-lunatic Andrei Areshev, who claimed that global warming was caused by secret climate weapons manned by U.S. climate scientists. It seems that even Russian lunatics are confirming that global warming is a fact, although I suspect that if those scheming U.S. scientists ever get their hands on dastardly climate weapons, the first target they "erase" will probably not be in Russia.

The RIA Novosti article quotes a prominent Russian scientist, Roman Vilfand, the head of the Russian state meteorological center. This may be the agency known in Russia as the Federal Service for Hydrometeorology and Environmental Monitoring or ROSHYDROMET (Росгидромет) or it may be a different agency. I wrote about ROSHYDROMET here. Dr. Vilfand is described by RIA Novosti (8-13-10) as "the head of the Russian state meteorological center" and by Business News (8-16-10) as "previously the head of Russia for Hydrometeorology."

[UPDATE: The ROSHYDROMET (Росгидромет) site says that the chief of the agency is Alexander Frolov who was appointed by Prime Minister Putin on March 15, 2010.]

The RIA Novosti article also quotes a British scientist named Mike Blackburn from a subscription-only article in New Scientist titled "Frozen jet stream links Pakistan floods, Russian fires" (8-10-10).

Another interesting New Scientist article that explores the possible causes of the Russian wildfires is titled "Is climate change burning Russia?" (8-12-10) which responds to some questions:

What caused the heatwave?

The primary cause was a "blocking event" – a static atmospheric pattern that has trapped a high-pressure bubble over western Russia since mid-July, pulling in hot air from Africa.

Blocking events naturally occur from time to time. There is evidence that low solar activity increases their numbers, and the sun is currently in a period of minimum activity.

Jeff Knight of the UK Met Office says that the climatic pattern known as El Niño was also a factor. Around the new year, the eastern tropical Pacific heated up, sending a slow-moving wave of heat around the globe – conditions that are characteristic of El Niño. "It warms the global mean temperature with a delay of about six months," says Knight. This extra packet of heat will have increased the likelihood of heatwaves around the world.

Is climate change to blame?

Computer models of climate are not detailed enough at present to reproduce blocking events, making it impossible to say whether rising greenhouse gas concentrations makes them more likely to happen.

However, whatever the mechanism, there is a large body of evidence to suggest that climate change increases the number of heatwaves and make them longer. Since 1880 the frequency of extremely hot days has nearly tripled and the length of heatwaves across Europe has doubled. Models also predict that climate change will push up peak temperatures faster than average temperatures.

This is an example of climate change's tendency to increase the likelihood of extreme weather events. The number of very hot days is forecast to increase fivefold by 2100. One model study has suggested that Paris, France, will see the frequency of heatwaves grow by 31 per cent over the century, and that by 2100 they will last twice as long.

The consequences will be widespread. Agricultural yields are likely to drop, and summer death rates will rise worldwide. True, winter death rates will drop during milder winters, but this will not offset the extra summer deaths.

However, it is important to bear in mind that no single weather event can be reliably linked to climate change. "It's a statistical tendency, a push in one direction," says Joanna Haigh of Imperial College London. The Russian heatwave might have occurred anyway, without help from greenhouse gases. All we can say for sure is that such events are more likely in a warmer world.

RIA Novosti (8-13-10) reports:

Central Russia will face a high risk of tornadoes and hurricanes as the long-awaited weather change comes to the region next week, a top Russian meteorologist said.
"As a rule, such disastrous events [tornadoes and hurricanes] take place when weather changes dramatically," said Roman Vilfand, the head of the Russian state meteorological center.

He earlier said that the high pressure system over central Russia will start dissipating next Tuesday, as first changes will appear in the atmospheric circulation for the first time since June 21.

Meteorologists expect the temperature in Central Russia to finally drop to 23-28 degrees Centigrade on Tuesday.
A scorching heat wave has gripped much of European Russia since mid-June, which coupled with the worst drought since the 1970s has made the countryside particularly susceptible to wildfires.

Thousands of emergency workers and military personnel have been working round the clock for almost three weeks to fight fires in 22 Russian regions, which have so far killed more than 50 people and left over 3,500 homeless. The immediate economic cost of the fires has been estimated at $15 billion.

Vilfand said this summer has been "catastrophic" in Russia, adding that an increase of eight degrees Centigrade in average temperatures can be observed only once in approximately 5,000 years.

Mike Blackburn of the University of Reading, U.K. said the unusual holding patterns in the jet stream are to blame for the heat in Russia and rains in northern Pakistan, as well as for other less catastrophic events observed around the world this summer, The New Scientist has reported.

"In recent weeks, meteorologists have noticed a change in the jet stream's normal pattern. Its waves normally shift east, dragging weather systems along with it. But in mid-July they ground to a halt," the magazine quoted the scientist as saying.

MOSCOW, August 12 (RIA Novosti)

U.S. Response to Forest Fires in Russia

The State Department has issued this press release (8-13-10):

13 August 2010

U.S. Response to Forest Fires in Russia
U.S. to provide technical equipment, humanitarian relief to Russia

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Office of the Spokesman
August 13, 2010

Fact Sheet

U.S. Response to Fires in Russia

The U.S. Government has worked with the Government of Russia (GoR) to outline a comprehensive U.S. response to the severe, ongoing forest fires in the Russian Federation. The U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Department of State, U.S. Agency for International Development and U.S. Department of Defense are working to provide the following technical equipment and humanitarian relief:

U.S. Government Response:

• The U.S. is shipping technical equipment valued at $2.5 million to the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations and the Russian Federal Forestry Agency Airborne Forest Protection Service including personal protective equipment, fire-protective clothing, large water storage tanks, hand tools for firefighters, and other general purpose fire-fighting tools. Total overall U.S. support for this effort is estimated to be valued at $4.5 million.

• Two C-130 aircraft from U.S. EUCOM and a charter flight from California are scheduled to arrive in Moscow after 6:00 p.m. local time on Friday, August 13.

• Two additional C-130 flights are scheduled to arrive tomorrow, August 14.

• A second charter aircraft is expected to arrive in Moscow on or before Tuesday, August 17.

• On August 12th, the U.S. Government and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) signed a grant for $50,000 to support the relief operations of the Russian Red Cross in Russia. Relief items include blankets, bedding, and food parcels for approximately 1600 victims.

State of California Response:

• The State of California is coordinating with USAID/OFDA to deliver fire resistant clothing, which was identified as a key need by the Federal Forestry Agency Aerial Fire Service.

Public Donation Information:

The U.S. Embassy in Moscow is posting regular updates on the fires and has a link to a live webcam so the public can see the atmospheric conditions first hand. USAID/OFDA has also activated the Center for International Disaster Information (CIDI) to coordinate donations from individuals and organizations. For more information, visit www.cidi.org or call (703) 276-1914

(Distributed by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://www.america.gov/)

President Medvedev Says Russians Have Serious Lessons to Learn from the 2010 Wildfires

"What is happening to our planet's climate should motivate all of us, I mean, states and heads of non-governmental organizations, to take more active steps to resist global warming."---Russian President Dmitry Medvedev (RIA Novosti, 7-30-10)

"We have serious lessons to learn from what has happened."---Russian President Dmitry Medvedev (RIA Novosti, 8-21-10)

This summer, Russia has been suffering from a heatwave, a drought, and hundreds of destructive wildfires. Russia's official government news agency, RIA Novosti, has frequently been citing NASA satellite reports about the fires. Sometimes, however, the smoke is so thick that NASA cannot see the ground or even some of the fires. Here is a link to the word Russia on the NASA search engine. Here is a link to the word NASA on the RIA Novosti site. RIA Novosti has a special report in Russian called Hot Summer--2010. The articles are in Russian, but you can use your Google translation tool. The articles frequently quote NASA satellite data.

NASA even has a Moscow Liason Office at the U.S. Embassy. NASA's representative in Russia is Patrick Buzzard. Mr. Buzzard has a Russian-English blog, but he hasn't posted since May. Maybe he is busy manning the satellites.

NASA satellite maps, computer simulations, can help scientists spot places in danger of wildfires before blazes even begin. Probably this mission will become even more important as the earth is impacted by droughts caused by global warming. Perhaps NASA has even been able to help the Russians spot some of these fires so they could be extinguished.

I don't know if the fires this summer in Russia can be attributed to global warming. One swallow does not make a spring; on the other hand, these catastrophic wildfires may be a harbinger of global warming in Russia. When scientists study global warming, they track long-term trends, not single events.

According to "The Russian Heat Wave of 2010 Draft Report by NOAA CSI - 13 August 2010," the immediate cause of Russia's heat wave can be attributed to an extreme pattern of atmospheric winds---called "blocking"---"a static atmospheric pattern that has trapped a high-pressure bubble over western Russia since mid-July, pulling in hot air from Africa."

New Scientist (8-12-10) reports:

Computer models of climate are not detailed enough at present to reproduce blocking events, making it impossible to say whether rising greenhouse gas concentrations makes them more likely to happen.

Some articles in RIA Novosti have attributed the fires to global warming. One Russian conspiracy theorist, a historian named Dr. Andrei Areshev, even claimed that U.S. scientists are causing global warming by using secret "climate weapons" against other countries! Paranoid conspiracists like Areshev do a lot of damage because their conspiracies make people afraid of the very scientists who could help them solve their problems. Dr. Andrei Areshev doesn't understand global warming so he can only make up a conspiracy theory, but that doesn't mean that climate scientists don't understand what is happening.

RIA Novosti (8-21-10) reports:

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said earlier on Friday that the government has managed to overcome the wildfire crisis and has valuable lessons to learn from the experience.

"Russia has gained control and on the whole I think that the situation has normalized," Medvedev said. "We have serious lessons to learn from what has happened."

I wonder what lessons President Medvedev will learn from this terrible summer. Perhaps he will learn to listen to NASA instead of spreading canards in the official media cooked up by dishonest, destructive troublemakers like Lord Christopher Monckton and Dr. Andrei Areshev about the "crafty plots" of climate scientists.

Last winter, the Kremlin-financed Russia Today satellite T.V. interviewed the English conspiracist Lord Monckton who promoted the view that global warming was a "hoax" cooked up by Western scientists. His claims were not challenged by climate scientists. This summer, Russia's official press agency RIA Novosti reported Dr. Andrei Areshev's defamatory claim that U.S. climate scientists were causing global warming with secret "climate weapons." How can it be that in the winter global warming is a "hoax" that isn't happening and in the summer the climate scientists are causing global warming with secret climate weapons?

In the U.S. destructive canards about the "plots" of climate scientists are also spread by politicians such as Oklahoma Senator Inhofe and Virginia's Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli. Those two American politicians are even persecuting climate scientists. History will remember Inhofe and Cuccinelli as destructive, mendacious demagogues who followed the money instead of leading the people.

Even in Russia, politicians eventually retract ridiculous lies about scientists because they have to deal with reality.

In his famous 1956 "Secret Speech" to the 20th Party Conference, Nikita Khrushchev stated:

Let us...recall the “affair of the doctor-plotters.”

(Animation in the hall.)

Actually there was no “affair” outside of the declaration of the woman doctor [Lidiya] Timashuk [more here], who was probably influenced or ordered by someone (after all, she was an unofficial collaborator of the organs of state security) to write Stalin a letter in which she declared that doctors were applying supposedly improper methods of medical treatment.

Izvestiya (3-19-92) reported:

[Russian intelligence chief Yevgeni Primakov]
mentioned the well known articles printed a few years ago in our central newspapers about AIDS supposedly originating from secret Pentagon laboratories. According to Yevgeni Primakov, the articles exposing US scientists' "crafty" plots were fabricated in KGB offices.

Official Government media in a great nation should help people understand what scientists and the peer-reviewed literature are saying. Government media shouldn't be spreading ignorant conspiracy theories that confuse people with lies and half-truths as if it were some mendacious blog like Marc Morano's Climate Depot.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is a good example of official media that explains science and debunks conspiracy theories financed by selfish and short-sighted fossil fuel interests. See here and here.

Virginia Court Hears Arguments Regarding Virginia's Attorney General Cuccinelli's Request for Michael Mann's Email and Other Documents on Friday

UPDATES: "Cuccinelli pursuit of UVa documents continues; judge to issue ruling within 10 days"
(Roanoke Times, 8-2o-10)

"Judge to rule in 10 days on Cuccinelli climate case against University of Virginia"
(Washington Post, 5-21-10)

This Stalin-era political cartoon from the satirical magazine Krokodil (January 1953) depicts the "Doctors' Plot." A "saboteur-doctor" is being unmasked as a poisoner of the Soviet political and military leadership. Dollars from U.S. intelligence agencies are falling out of the doctor's pocket. As soon as Stalin died in 1953, Soviet leaders reevaluated and denounced this conspiracy theory.

In his famous 1956 "Secret Speech" to the 20th Party Conference, Nikita Khrushchev stated:

Let us...recall the “affair of the doctor-plotters.”

(Animation in the hall.)

Actually there was no “affair” outside of the declaration of the woman doctor [Lidiya] Timashuk [more here], who was probably influenced or ordered by someone (after all, she was an unofficial collaborator of the organs of state security) to write Stalin a letter in which she declared that doctors were applying supposedly improper methods of medical treatment.

Soviet and Russian propaganda have often accused their own scientists as well as Western scientists of concocting criminal plots. During the so-called "Climategate" email scandal, which began on November 20, 2009, the Kremlin-financed satellite channel Russia Today used the Western denialist Lord Monckton to advance the view that global warming was a "swindle" being perpetrated by Western scientists. The Russian propaganda said the same thing as British and American global warming denialists.

American politicians who are global warming denialists tend to be conservative, right-wing Republicans such as Senator James Inhofe and Virginia's Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli. Denialist politicians often get money from fossil fuel interests. Some American denialists are also in the conspiracist "9-11 Truth Movement." These people claim that President George W. Bush or his minions are the true masterminds behind the 9-11 attacks. One example of a "Truther" publication is the "Rock Creek Free Press", which titled an article on Climategate "Science Scandal of the Century: The World's Most Influential Climate Scientists Get Caught 'Fudging' the Data."

Virginia's Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli continues to spread ignorant denialist propaganda even though the official Russian media is no longer promoting the view that global warming is a scientific "swindle." The official Russian media and President Medvedev now say that global warming is happening, although the paranoid Russian scholar Andrei Areshev has claimed that secret U.S. "climate weapons" are causing global warming! See my blog for articles about how the Russian media reports on global warming.

On Friday, a Virginia court will be hearing oral arguments regarding Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli's scandalous persecution of the climate scientist Dr. Michael Mann. Instead of persecuting Dr. Mann, I think Mr. Cuccinelli should investigate his political sugar daddy "John Doe," AKA "Bobby Thompson."

Attorney General Cuccinelli should tell Virginians why "John Doe" AKA "Bobby Thompson" gave him 55,000 dollars.

Shouldn't Attorney General Cuccinelli be trying to find out who is picking up the mail from "Suite 275" in Washington D.C. instead of sending ignorant petitions to the EPA that elaborate on his conspiracy theory about the s0-called "hoax" of global warming? After all, the so-called "national headquarters" of "Bobby Thompson's" crooked charity, the U.S. Navy Veterans' Association, is nothing but a P.O. box numbered 275 at a UPS store in Washington D.C.

For all we know, Cuccinelli may have been given money by "John Doe" to persecute scientists who study global warming. People usually want something when they give politicians $55,000.

For all we know, in additon to pocketing money from Amerians that was supposedly for Navy veterans, "Bobby Thompson" may have even laundered money from fossil fuel businesses into political donations to denialist politicians. For example, the Jacksonville, Florida-based Russian energy company ITERA was investigated by the FBI for an improper relationship with the former Congressman Curt Weldon. [See also here.]

Cuccinelli's conspiracy theory about the "hoax" of global warming reminds me a lot of Stalin's "Doctors' Plot" and the KGB's propaganda that U.S. scientists made AIDS to kill blacks.

I will never vote for any Republican politician as long as the Republicans collaborate with fossil fuel interests---foreign or domestic---who are funding the ideology of climate denialism disguised as "science."

Cuccinelli persecutes a great scientist who can help us fight global warming and gets money from a criminal instead of protecting Virginians from global warming and thieves like "Bobby Thompson."

Cuccinelli is not a leader; he is a demagogue who is orchestrating scandals and spreading canards about the science of global warming instead of solving real problems and prosecuting real criminals.

Cuccinelli better hope that Bobby Thompson is just an ordinary crook who pays-off politicians and not an operative for some fossil fuel corporation or Petrostate.

Western fossil fuel companies are funding so-called "scientific" organizations that deny that global warming. I doubt that the operatives of the Russian petrostate and its fossil fuel oligarchs are just sitting on their hands. The FBI has already been investigating ITERA for an improper relationship with the former politician Curt Weldon.

US Environmental Protection Agency Dismisses Allegations Against University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit CRU

The Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia has issued the following statement:

US Environmental Protection Agency dismisses allegations against CRU

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has examined every one of the hacked CRU emails and has strongly affirmed that it finds nothing more than "candid discussion of scientists working through issues that arise in compiling and presenting large complex data sets".

On 29 July 2010, the EPA denied 10 petitions which challenged the Agency’s 2009 determination that climate change is real, is occurring due to emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities, and threatens human health and the environment.

The petitions claimed that climate science could not be trusted, citing the CRU emails and asserting a conspiracy that they said invalidated the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the US National Academy of Sciences, and the US Global Change Research Program.

After months of serious consideration of the petitions and of the state of climate change science, the EPA has found no evidence to support these claims. In contrast, it says its review shows that climate science is credible, compelling, and growing stronger.

The agency reviewed all of the stolen CRU emails, concluding:

… petitioners have routinely misunderstood or mischaracterised the scientific issues, drawn faulty scientific conclusions, resorted to hyperbole, impugned the ethics of climate scientists in general, characterised actions as “falsifications” and “manipulation” with no basis for support, and placed an inordinate reliance on blogs, news stories, and literature that is often neither peer reviewed nor accurately summarized in their petitions. Petitioners often “cherry-pick” language that creates the suggestion or appearance of impropriety, without looking deeper into the issues or providing corroborating evidence that improper action actually occurred.

The agency makes clear that:

Petitioners’ assumptions and subjective assertions regarding what the e-mails purport to show about the state of climate change science are clearly inadequate pieces of evidence to challenge the voluminous and well documented body of science that is the technical foundation of the Administrator’s Endangerment Finding.

(from: http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/endangerment/petitions.html)

Professor Trevor Davies, Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the University of East Anglia, said: “This is a thorough and forensic investigation which puts the allegations clearly into context and is a welcome addition to the growing body of independent reports which have exonerated our researchers of any wrongdoing in their science.”

Links:

Full information on EPA’s findings and the petitions

EPA Press release

EPA Myths versus Facts

Fact sheet

Extracts from the EPA documents specifically about CRU

Russian Foreign Ministry Thanks U.S. for Assistance in Tackling Raging Wildfires

This photo is from an article in the Washington Post (8-9-10) about 100s of terrible wildfires that have spread across Russia.

Today, the official Russian news agency RIA Novosti (8-14-10), thanked the U.S. for helping Russia battle the blazes:

Russia thanks U.S. for help in smothering wildfires - Foreign Ministry

Russia is grateful to the United States over the assistance in tackling the wildfires raging across the country, Russian Foreign Ministry said on Saturday.

On Friday U.S. President Barack Obama made a phone call to his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev to express his condolences about the disastrous environmental situation in Central Russia and the readiness to supply firefighting equipment.

"Obama reiterated the U.S. readiness to supply the necessary firefighting equipment and render expert assistance," kremlin.ru official website said.

Later that day the United States sent to Russia two planes with state-of-the-art nonflammable uniform for firefighters, special shoes, helmets and glasses onboard. Additional two aircraft with firefighting equipment are expected to arrive.

The Russian area on fire has decreased by 8,000 hectares and is now 56,200 hectares.

A scorching heat wave has gripped much of European Russia since mid-June, which coupled with the worst drought since the 1970s has made the countryside particularly susceptible to wildfires.

Thousands of emergency workers and military personnel have been working round the clock for almost three weeks to fight fires in 22 Russian regions. The immediate economic cost of the fires has been estimated at $15 billion.

MOSCOW, August 14 (RIA Novosti)

On the same day, RIA Novosti (8-14-10) detailed the nature of U.S. assistance to Russia:

U.S. aids Russia with $4.5 mln of firefighting equipment amid raging wildfires

The United States sends to Russia firefighting equipment worth some $4.5 million to help combating raging wildfires in the country that "is home to nearly one fourth of the world's forests," the U.S. Department of State said.

A scorching heat wave has gripped much of European Russia since mid-June, which coupled with the worst drought since the 1970s has made the countryside particularly susceptible to wildfires.

"The United States today began deliveries of firefighting equipment valued at approximately $2.5 million to bolster Russia's fire suppression efforts. These deliveries will include water tanks, pumps, hand tools, fire-protective clothing, and medical kits," Philip Crowley, department's secretary of state said in a statement.

"The United States also contributed $50,000 to support the operations of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) to provide relief items, including blankets, bedding, and food parcels, for victims. The State of California has generously contributed additional supplies of fire-protective clothing. Total overall U.S. support for this effort is estimated to be valued at $4.5 million," he continued.

Foreign countries have sent more than 550 foreign firefighters and 100 units of machinery, including six planes and seven helicopters, to help Russia extinguish wildfires raging across the country due to abnormal heat and drought.

"The United States stands with the people of Russia as they fight to contain the destructive spread of wildfires, which have taken lives and displaced many from their homes. We are taking action to support the heroic efforts of Russian firefighters and emergency responders as they seek to bring these fires under control," Crowley said in his statement.

Thousands of emergency workers, military personnel and volunteers have been working round the clock for over a month to fight fires in 22 Russian regions, which have so far killed more than 50 people and left over 3,500 homeless. The immediate economic cost of the fires has been estimated at $15 billion.

WASHINGTON, August 14 (RIA Novosti)

EPA Rejects Claims of Flawed Climate Science

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has released a document titled "EPA Rejects Claims of Flawed Climate Science." The document rejects the allegations (see below on the EPA document) incited by unknown "Climategate" hacker/provocateurs who claim that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by Western climate scientists.

Some "denialists"---people who deny the scientific evidence of man-made climate change---even accuse the scientists of communist sympathies and of using this so-called "hoax" to increase government powers. Well, if climate change is real---and all major American and international scientific organizations believe climate change is happening---shouldn't we use the powers of government to combat this threat? Isn't that what government is for? Did we leave the NAZI, Communist, and Islamist terrorist threats to the private enterprise system?

Ironically, the allegation that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by Western scientists was also spread by the Russian tabloid Pravda, by the Kremlin-financed English-language satellite channel Russia Today, and by other Russian media in the days before the Copenhagen Climate Summit.

The Russians often spread propaganda about the "plots" of Western scientists. The KGB's AIDS conspiracy theory was still being repeated by President Obama’s minister Rev. Wright, even though KGB chief Primakov admitted in Izvestia in 1992 that the KGB made up those stories about the plots of crafty US scientists.

As Izvestiya (3-19-92) famously reported:

[KGB chief Yevgeni Primakov] mentioned the well known articles printed a few years ago in our central newspapers about AIDS supposedly originating from secret Pentagon laboratories. According to Yevgeni Primakov, the articles exposing US scientists' 'crafty' plots were fabricated in KGB offices.

Like Rev. Wright, Virginia's denialist Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli continues to repeat the Russian propaganda's discredited canards about the "plots" of our most famous climate scientists. Attorney General Cuccinelli complained to the EPA about the alleged corruption of climate scientists (see below) and is persecuting the climate scientist Michael Mann on trumped-up allegations of fraud based on the "Climategate" emails.

There are so many other conspiracies that Cuccinelli could unmask instead of the climate change "hoax." For example, where are the aliens at Area 51?

Virginians are wondering why Attorney General Cuccinelli doesn't investigate the criminal who gave him 55,000 dollars and who stole the name "Bobby Thompson" from another person and who is being sought on a "John Doe" warrant issued by Attorney General Richard Cordray of Ohio.

Instead of persecuting climate scientists, why doesn't Attorney General Cuccinelli apprehend this "John Doe," who also operated his bogus charity, the U.S. Navy Veterans' Association, in Virginia? Why doesn't Virginia's Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli issue an arrest warrant for this criminal who ripped-off Virginians and whose "national headquarters" is a UPS mailbox in Washington D.C.? I wonder about who is collecting the mail from "Suite 275" a lot more than I wonder about Dr. Michael Mann's so-called "fraud."

Here is the full-text of the EPA document (7-29-10):

EPA Rejects Claims of Flawed Climate Science

Release date: 07/29/2010

Contact Information: Cathy Milbourn (News MediaOnly) Milbourn.cathy@epa.gov 202-564-4355

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today denied 10 petitions challenging its 2009 determination that climate change is real, is occurring due to emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities, and threatens human health and the environment.

The petitions to reconsider EPA’s Endangerment Finding claim that climate science cannot be trusted, and assert a conspiracy that invalidates the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and the U.S. Global Change Research Program. After months of serious consideration of the petitions and of the state of climate change science, EPA finds no evidence to support these claims. In contrast, EPA’s review shows that climate science is credible, compelling, and growing stronger.

“The endangerment finding is based on years of science from the U.S. and around the world. These petitions -- based as they are on selectively edited, out-of-context data and a manufactured controversy -- provide no evidence to undermine our determination. Excess greenhouse gases are a threat to our health and welfare,” said EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson. “Defenders of the status quo will try to slow our efforts to get America running on clean energy. A better solution would be to join the vast majority of the American people who want to see more green jobs, more clean energy innovation and an end to the oil addiction that pollutes our planet and jeopardizes our national security.”

The basic assertions by the petitioners and EPA responses follow.

Claim: Petitioners say that emails disclosed from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit provide evidence of a conspiracy to manipulate global temperature data.

Response: EPA reviewed every e-mail and found this was simply a candid discussion of scientists working through issues that arise in compiling and presenting large complex data sets. Four other independent reviews came to similar conclusions.

Claim: Petitioners say that errors in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report call the entire body of work into question.

Response: Of the alleged errors, EPA confirmed only two in a 3,000 page report. The first pertains to the rate of Himalayan glacier melt and second to the percentage of the Netherlands below sea level. IPCC issued correction statements for both of these errors. The errors have no bearing on Administrator Jackson’s decision. None of the errors undermines the basic facts that the climate is changing in ways that threaten our health and welfare.

Claim: Petitioners say that because certain studies were not included in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, the IPCC itself is biased and cannot be trusted as a source of reliable information.

Response: These claims are incorrect. In fact, the studies in question were included in the IPCC report, which provided a comprehensive and balanced discussion of climate science.

Claim: Petitioners say that new scientific studies refute evidence supporting the Endangerment Finding.

Response: Petitioners misinterpreted the results of these studies. Contrary to their claims, many of the papers they submit as evidence are consistent with EPA’s Finding. Other studies submitted by the petitioners were based on unsound methodologies. Detailed discussion of these issues may be found in volume one of the response to petition documents, on EPA’s website.

Climate change is already happening, and human activity is a contributor. The global warming trend over the past 100 years is confirmed by three separate records of surface temperature, all of which are confirmed by satellite data. Beyond this, evidence of climate change is seen in melting ice in the Arctic, melting glaciers around the world, increasing ocean temperatures, rising sea levels, shifting precipitation patterns, and changing ecosystems and wildlife habitats.

“America’s Climate Choices,” a report from the National Academy of Sciences and the most recent assessment of the full body of scientific literature on climate change, along with the recently released “State of the Climate” report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration both fully support the conclusion that climate change is real and poses significant risk to human and natural systems. The consistency among these and previously issued assessments only serves to strengthen EPA’s conclusion.

Information on EPA’s findings and the petitions

More information on climate change

Review America’s Climate Choices report

Review State of the Climate report

Review information on Indicators of Climate Change