DANIEL HANNAN: Banning vacuum cleaners isn't about saving the planet - it's about Brussels grabbing even more powe. Daily Mail

Extremist parties are on the rise across Europe. The disaster of the French economy threatens to re-ignite the euro crisis. Russia is invading Ukraine. And what is the EU doing? Banning high-power vacuum cleaners.

Customers have been thronging High Street stores, like Boxing Day crowds, snapping up the last legal appliances that use more than 1,600 watts — the maximum power-limit decreed by Eurocrats and national politicians (including our own).

But it doesn’t stop there. Brussels is methodically working its way through our homes, proscribing any household machines that are deemed to use too much electricity. Televisions, dishwashers, tumble-dryers, toasters: all must now conform to the new low-power rules.

School sixth-formers used to debate whether the State had any place in the bedroom. Well, never mind the bedroom: I want the Government out of my bloody kitchen.

The last time we saw similar panic-buying was when the EU banned proper lightbulbs in 2009. A kind of dual stockpiling followed: retailers amassed the soon-to-be-outlawed incandescent bulbs, and consumers did the same.

Only now, five years on, have we ploughed through both sets of reserves. As a result, our rooms are lit by the strange light that comes from the low-quality halogen or LED versions.

Of course, the dimming of the lights may be useful when it comes to hiding the muck that vacuum cleaners are meant to remove. Various consumer organisations, including Which?, recommend the high-suction cleaners as the best way of extracting dirt rather than pushing it around.

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Now you may need SIX bins: Warning from Britain's biggest waste firm over new EU rules forcing people to recycle more Daily Mail

  Waste company Veolia has launched campaign against 'unnecessary bins'

  Firm says EU rules could mean people have to separate rubbish six times

  However legislation is so badly worded that full impact remains unclear 

Families may have to separate their rubbish into six bins from next year, Britain’s biggest waste firm warned yesterday.

EU rules coming into force this January dictate that councils should collect glass, paper, tin cans and plastic separately, to avoid contamination and ensure they can be properly recycled.

Veolia, which collects or sorts rubbish for a third of the population, said the regulations are likely to force councils to place more bins outside every home.

A spokesman said the firm is calling for ‘a nationwide policy of “no more unnecessary bins”’.

They warned: ‘From January 2015, EU rules mean households and businesses may need to separate their waste into six separate bins. Veolia thinks most of the sorting can be done post-collection and that four bins are more than enough.’

Government officials insist councils should be left to decide how to collect rubbish. They are looking closely at the wording of the revised EU Waste Framework Directive, which remains shrouded in confusion.

They claim the rules may not lead to more bins – as local authorities could be exempted if they demonstrate that adding bins is not feasible.

Officials also say waste could be collected in fewer bins and then separated by binmen on the pavement – but Veolia has dismissed this proposal as dangerous.

Read more here:

Comment:

Currently I use  3 bins, 2 for re-cycling ,(Brown and Green) and 1 for general waste, (Black)  all of which are provided by my local council,  the council uses an alternative weekly collection, so 1 week the green bin is collected, and on the 2^nd week the brown and black bins are collected,  this is because of some bureaucrats in Brussels have decided we need to re-cycle more,  increasing  from  3 bins up to 6 bins is just stupid  I agree we need to do some re-cycling ,  however for example, some plastics can be re-cycled, some cannot be re-cycled,  The UK Government and local authorities need to provide us with a more considered approach to the re-cycling process.

An ill wind blows as the surge of turbines stirs fears of silent danger to our health, Daily Express

TENS of thousands of Scots may be suffering from a hidden sickness epidemic caused by wind farms, campaigners have warned.

The Sunday Express can reveal that the Scottish Government has recently commissioned a study into the potential ill effects of turbines at 10 sites across the country.

More than 33,500 families live within two miles of these 10 wind farms – which represent just a fraction of the 2,300 turbines - already built north of the Border.

Hundreds of residents are now being asked to report back to Holyrood ministers about the visual impacts, and effects of noise and shadow flickers from nearby wind farms.

Campaigners fear that many people do not realise they are suffering from ailments brought on by infrasound – noise at such a low frequency that it cannot be heard but can be felt.

One such person is Andrew Vivers, an ex-Army captain who has suffered from headaches, dizziness, tinnitus, raised blood pressure and disturbed sleep since Ark Hill wind farm was built near his home in Glamis, Angus.

Mr Vivers, who served almost 10 years in the military, said the authorities had so far refused to accept the ill effects of infrasound despite it being a “known military interrogation aid and weapon”.

He said: “When white noise was disallowed they went on to infrasound. If it is directed at you, you can feel your brain or your body vibrating. With wind turbines, you don’t realise that is what’s happening to you.

“It is bonkers that infrasound low frequency noise monitoring is not included in any environmental assessments. It should be mandatory before and after turbine erection.”

Read more here:

Further reading:

REVEALED: The 'hidden’ peril of wind turbines that catch fire

‘Out of control’ SNP litter Scotland’s landscape with wind farms

Businessman sets up private toll road just 340 yards long charging motorists £2 a time to bypass closed section of main road. Daily Mail.

  The A431 Kelston Road between Bath and Bristol was shut in February following a landslip and won;t be repaired until the end of the year

  Local resident Mike Watts put up £150,000 of his own money to build bypass

  The route which opened yesterday is first privately run toll road to be built since cars became a familiar sight more than 100 years ago

  The toll road is just 340 yards in length but avoids a 10-mile detour

  Local council about road unhappy citing health and safety concerns 

A savvy grandfather who was sick of roadworks near his home has defied his council and built his own bypass toll road - the first for more than 100 years.

Businessman Mike Watts decided to open the thoroughfare - made of a mix of asphalt and chippings - to bypass a closed section of the A431 between Bath and Bristol.

The Kelston Road was shut in February following a landslip and officials say that it will not be repaired until the end of the year.

But a new makeshift road, which costs £2 a time to use, re-opens the important 'back road' - which is used by commuters going between the two cities.

Local villagers in nearby Kelston have repeatedly criticised Bath & North East Somerset Council for not re-opening the main road sooner and say it has caused major traffic problems in the area.

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Lunacy on sea: As Ministers agree to the world's biggest wind farm off Brighton, has Britain ever succumbed to a more catastrophic folly? Daily Mail

What should be our reaction to daft stories like the one recently reported in the Daily Mail about the 60ft wind turbine put up by the Welsh government outside its offices in Aberystwyth to proclaim to the world just how ‘green’ it is?

Erected at a cost of £50,000 to the taxpayer, it turned out that this turbine was so absurdly inefficient it was providing only £5 worth of electricity a month. It would take more than 750 years to make the money back.

In recent years, we have seen plenty of little tales like this, showing how often those who build these mini-turbines just to promote the wonders of wind power seem to get horribly caught out.

There was, for instance, the windmill put up next to a school in Portland, Dorset, which had to be switched off because it was killing so many seagulls that the headmaster had to come in early every morning to remove their corpses, so the children wouldn’t be upset.

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Scientist who claims fracking is dangerous and argues against drilling applications is a 'fraud who has lied about his credentials' Daily Mail

·        David Smythe accused of being less than totally honest over his credentials as shale gas expert

·        Retired geologist has been prominent in highlighting dangers of fracking

·        Professor at his old university accuses him of 'pseudo-scientific scaremongering'

·        Geological Society demands he stops claiming to be chartered geologist

·        Mr Smythe insists he has done extensive research into unconventional energy extraction

• 

 The retired geologist and former punk rock guitarist has been prominent in highlighting the dangers of fracking and last week helped to persuade a county council to reject an application to drill an exploratory shale well.

But a professor at his old university now accuses him of ‘pseudo-scientific scaremongering’.

The Geological Society has also written to Mr Smythe – who has the title ‘Emeritus Professor of Geophysics, University of Glasgow’ – demanding that he stops claiming to be a chartered geologist.

Glasgow University, where he last worked in 1998, has told him he must not suggest that its academics share his views. And Prof Paul Younger, Glasgow’s professor of energy engineering, said Mr Smythe – who played bass guitar in the 70s punk band The Rezillos – was unqualified to give expert evidence on fracking, having retired 16 years ago.

’He has published nothing on (shale gas) in any proper scientific forum – no doubt because he knows he would never get past peer review with his pseudo-scientific scaremongering

Read more here

The ship that totally failed to change the world, NS Savannah, BBC News

Fifty years ago the world's first nuclear-powered cargo-passenger ship sailed from the US to Europe on a publicity tour to persuade the world to embrace the atomic age. It didn't quite work out like that.

Sleek in shape, painted red and white, its interior decorated in what was then ultra-modern chrome, the NS Savannah wasn't quite like any other cargo ship.

It had facilities for passengers. The 600ft, 12,000-ton ship boasted a cinema, veranda bar and swimming pool. The cabins had no curtains. Instead, "polarised" windows, designed to cut glare, lined the sides of staterooms.

The ship was one of the few to spring directly from the imagination of a US president. In 1953, Dwight Eisenhower had made his famous Atoms for Peace speech, attempting to balance the growing fear of nuclear apocalypse with optimism about the possibility of civilian use of atomic energy.

And he wanted an atomic ship. A civilian one.

Revealed: How green zealots gagged professor who dared to question global warming

• Professor Lennart Bengtsson's study was rejected and branded 'harmful' 
• This sparked accusations that scientists are censoring findings 
• The 79-year-old is one of the world’s most eminent climate scientists
• Last week, he resigned from the Global Warming Policy Foundation's advisory council

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2631477/Revealed-How-green-zealots-gagged-professor-dared-question-global-warming.html#ixzz3230IMdyC
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Ground-breaking climate research that was controversially ‘covered up’ suggests the rate  that greenhouse gases are heating the Earth has been significantly exaggerated, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

Renowned Swedish scientist Professor Lennart Bengtsson of Reading University was at the centre of an international row last week when his study was rejected by a leading science journal after it was said to be ‘harmful’ and have a ‘negative impact’. 

The rejection sparked accusations that scientists had crossed an important line by censoring findings that were not helpful to their views.

Prof Bengtsson further claims one of the world’s most recognised science publications also decided not to use his research findings, because, he said, they were considered to be ‘uninteresting’.

Prof Bengtsson’s critical paper was co-authored with four colleagues. It focused on the growing gap between real temperatures and predictions made by computers.

In a recent key report, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stated the ‘climate sensitivity’ – the amount the world will warm each time carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere double – was between 1.5C and 4.5C.

According to Prof Bengtsson’s paper, it is more likely to be 1.2C to 2.7C. The implications of the difference are huge. If the planet is warming half as fast as previously thought  in response to emissions, many assumptions behind targets for reducing emissions and green energy subsidies are wrong.

The subsidies in turn have led to a significant increase in consumers’ power bills. Last week, it was revealed Environmental Research Letters had rejected his paper because it would be seized on by climate ‘sceptics’ in the media. 

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Fear: Professor Bengtsson of the University of Reading said the pressure was so great he feared for his health

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Established: The Global Warming Policy Foundation was set up by former Tory Chancellor Nigel Lawson and is regarded as being part of the 'sceptic camp' when it comes to climate change

Later the journal said it had rejected the paper because the reviewers questioned the paper’s methods.

But another journal turned it down without it even being sent out for peer review. Prof Bengtsson says this only normally happens if the editors believe the work is ‘trivial’ or ‘unimportant’.

Prof Bengtsson, 79, is one of the world’s most eminent climate scientists. Last week he was forced to step down from the council of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), the sceptical think-tank  set up by Lord Lawson.

 

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• Climate change scientist claims he has been forced from new job in 'McCarthy'-style witch-hunt by academics across the world

He was accused by former friends and colleagues of ‘crossing into the deniers’ camp’.
Prof Bengtsson said the pressure was so great he had feared for his health. He said he had been stunned by the ‘emotional’ reaction to his joining the GWPF.

‘The way some in the climate community behaved shocked me,’ he said. ‘It was as if I had been married for many years, and then discovered my wife was a completely different person.’

Prof Bengtsson said the paper  was now being considered by a third journal, after some revisions. But  he had asked for his name to be to  be removed in the wake of the row over the GWPF.

Is this the tipping point for climate McCarthyism?

Some climate scientists have long been warning that the planet is approaching a tipping point. Future historians may one day reflect that we reached it last week.

If they do, they won’t mean that this was when global warming became unstoppable. Instead, they’ll be pointing to the curious affair of Professor Lennart Bengtsson of Reading University as the moment that the rigid, authoritarian campaign to shut down debate on climate science and policy finally began to unravel.

For several years, this newspaper has been at the forefront of efforts to publicise the highly inconvenient truth that real world temperatures have not risen nearly as fast as computer models say they should have, thanks to the unexpected ‘pause’ in global warming which has so far lasted some 17 years.

As Prof Bengtsson has now discovered, anyone who draws attention to this will be vilified  and accused of ‘denying’ supposedly ‘settled’ science. 

The dogma – the insistence, as Bengtsson put it yesterday, that ‘greenhouse gas emissions are leading us towards the end of the world in the not-too-distant future’ – dominates many aspects of our lives, from lessons taught in primary schools to the vast and rising ‘green’ energy subsidies on household fuel bills. 

To be sure, Bengtsson’s treatment is not encouraging. As a former director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, he is one of the world’s most eminent experts.

Yet last week, he was accused of having joined the equivalent of the Ku Klux Klan and the Flat Earth Society, and of peddling ‘junk science’ – all because he accepted a place on the council of the Global Warming Policy Foundation. 

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Some climate scientists have long been warning that the planet is approaching a tipping point. Future historians may one day reflect that we reached it last week

So great was the pressure, he feared for his health, and decided to resign. The most cursory look at the GWPF’s website makes clear  it does not ‘deny’ any aspect of  the science of global warming, nor that this has happened in response to human activity. 

Its focus (as its name rather suggests) is on policy, where it has indeed been critical  of the approach thus far. But for the climate enforcers, that was enough. Bengtsson said: ‘I was labelled a heretic. I felt as if I was dealing with the medieval church.’

It also emerged that a paper he co-authored, arguing that temperatures would rise by  only half as much as the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change claims, had been rejected by a prestigious journal  – after an anonymous reviewer said publishing it would be ‘harmful’ to the environmental cause, because it was bound to be reported by media sceptics. 

Nevertheless, there are grounds for optimism. Perhaps it was simply that a man of Bengtsson’s stature who is still producing research at the age of 79 deserves respect, but the story was reported – not favourably, from the enforcers’ point of view – around the world. It even made the front page of The Times.

Some of those who deplored the ‘climate McCarthyism’ that Bengtsson experienced, such as Prof Judith Curry of Georgia Tech in Atlanta, have received similar treatment for saying global warming may not pose the imminent threat so many want us to fear. 

Others, however, were from the very centre of the climate science mainstream, such as Prof Mike Hulme of King’s College, London. 

He condemned scientists who ‘harassed’ those with whom they disagreed until they ‘fall into line’. 

But if this really was a tipping point, it will be because the areas of uncertainty in climate science are simply too big to be ignored: claiming the debate is over does not make this true. 

As former Nasa scientist Roy Spencer put it: ‘We might be seeing the death throes of alarmist climate science. 

They know they are on the ropes, and are pulling out all the stops in a last-ditch effort to shore up their crumbling storyline.’

So here’s a question. Like Bengtsson, this newspaper believes global warming is real, and caused by CO2. 

It’s also clear that, thus far, the computer models have exaggerated its speed. 

So what exactly are we and others who hold such views denying?

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World's top climate scientists told to 'cover up' the fact that the Earth's temperature hasn't risen for the last 15 years, Daily Mail

• Leaked United Nations report reveals the world's temperature hasn't risen for the last 15 years
• Politicians have raised concerns about the final draft
• Fears that the findings will encourage deniers of man-made climate change

By TAMARA COHEN, POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT

PUBLISHED: 20:40, 19 September 2013 | UPDATED: 20:41, 19 September 2013

 
 
 

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Scientists working on the most authoritative study on climate change were urged to cover up the fact that the world’s temperature hasn’t risen for the last 15 years, it is claimed.

A leaked copy of a United Nations report, compiled by hundreds of scientists, shows politicians in Belgium, Germany, Hungary and the United States raised concerns about the final draft.

Published next week, it is expected to address the fact that 1998 was the hottest year on record and world temperatures have not yet exceeded it, which scientists have so far struggled to explain.

The report is the result of six years’ work by UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which is seen as the world authority on the extent of climate change and what is causing it – on which governments including Britain’s base their green policies.

Concerns: Scientists have been urged to cover up the fact that the Earth's temperature hasn't risen for the last 15 years amid fears it would provide ammunition for deniers of man-made climate change

But leaked documents seen by the Associated Press, yesterday revealed deep concerns among politicians about a lack of global warming over the past few years.

Germany called for the references to the slowdown in warming to be deleted, saying looking at a time span of just 10 or 15 years was ‘misleading’ and they should focus on decades or centuries.

The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has changed its tune after issuing stern warnings about climate change for years

Hungary worried the report would provide ammunition for deniers of man-made climate change.

Belgium objected to using 1998 as a starting year for statistics, as it was exceptionally warm and makes the graph look flat - and suggested using 1999 or 2000 instead to give a more upward-pointing curve.

 

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The United States delegation even weighed in, urging the authors of the report to explain away the lack of warming using the ‘leading hypothesis’ among scientists that the lower warming is down to more heat being absorbed by the ocean – which has got hotter.

The last IPCC ‘assessment report’ was published in 2007 and has been the subject of huge controversy after it had to correct the embarrassing claim that the Himalayas would melt by 2035.

It was then engulfed in the ‘Climategate’ scandal surrounding leaked emails allegedly showing scientists involved in it trying to manipulate their data to make it look more convincing – although several inquiries found no wrongdoing.

The latest report, which runs to 2,000 pages, will be shown to representatives from all 195 governments next week at a meeting in Stockholm, who can discuss alterations they want to make.

But since it was issued to governments in June, they have raised hundreds of objections about the 20-page summary for policymakers, which sums up the findings of the scientists.

What it says will inform renewable energy policies and how much consumers and businesses will pay for them.

The report is expected to say the rate of warming between 1998 and 2012 was about half of the average rate since 1951 – and put this down to natural variations such as the El Nino and La Nina ocean cycles and the cooling effects of volcanoes.

A leaked copy of the United Nations report, compiled by hundreds of scientists, shows politicians in Belgium, Germany, Hungary and the United States have raised concerns about the final draft. Above, the United Nations headquarters building in New York

A German climate scientist - Stefan Rahmstorf, who reviewed the chapter on sea levels - yesterday admitted it was possible the report’s authors were feeling under pressure to address the slowdown in warming due to the ‘public debate’ around the issue.

The draft report, which is not new research but a synthesis of all the work being done by scientists around the world, is likely to be highly disputed at the three-day meeting.

It will make the case that humans are causing global warming with carbon emissions even more strongly upgrading it from ‘very likely’ in 2007 to ‘extremely likely’ it is manmade.

But scientists are under pressure to explain why the warming has not exceeded 1998 levels although the decade 2000-2010 was the hottest on record.

Alden Meyer, of the Union of Concerned Scientists based in Washington, said yesterday: ‘I think to not address it would be a problem because then you basically have the denialists saying: ‘Look the IPCC is silent on this issue.’

Jonathan Lynn, a spokesman for the IPCC said yesterday: ‘This is the culmination of four years’ work by hundreds of scientists, where governments get a chance to ensure the summary for policymakers is clear and concise in a dialogue with the scientists who wrote it, and have the opportunity to raise any topics they think should be highlighted.’

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Global warming is just HALF what we said: World's top climate scientists admit computers got the effects of greenhouse gases wrong , The Myth of Global Warming

Global warming is just HALF what we said: World's top climate scientists admit computers got the effects of greenhouse gases wrong 

• Leaked report reveals the world is warming at half the rate claimed by IPCC in 2007 
• Scientists accept their computers 'may have exaggerated' 
• Met Office to examine the report and 'respond in due course'

By DAVID ROSE

PUBLISHED: 22:01, 14 September 2013 | UPDATED: 01:06, 15 September 2013

 
 
 

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The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has changed its story after issuing stern warnings about climate change for years

A leaked copy of the world’s most authoritative climate study reveals scientific forecasts of imminent doom were drastically wrong.

The Mail on Sunday has obtained the final draft of a report to be published later this month by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the ultimate watchdog whose massive, six-yearly ‘assessments’ are accepted by environmentalists, politicians and experts as the gospel of climate science. 

They are cited worldwide to justify swingeing fossil fuel taxes and subsidies for ‘renewable’ energy.

Yet the leaked report makes the extraordinary concession that the world has been warming at only just over half the rate claimed by the IPCC in its last assessment,  published in 2007. 

Back then, it said that the planet was warming at a rate of 0.2C every decade – a figure it claimed was in line with the forecasts made by computer climate models. 

But the new report says the true figure since 1951 has been only 0.12C per decade – a rate far below even the lowest computer prediction.

The 31-page ‘summary for policymakers’ is based on a more technical 2,000-page analysis which will be issued at the same time. It also surprisingly reveals: IPCC scientists accept their forecast computers may have exaggerated the effect of increased carbon emissions on world temperatures  – and not taken enough notice of natural variability.

lThey recognise the global warming ‘pause’ first reported by The Mail on Sunday last year is real – and concede that their computer models did not predict it. But they cannot explain why world average temperatures have not shown any statistically significant increase since 1997.

lThey admit large parts of the world were as warm as they are now for decades at a time between 950 and 1250 AD – centuries before the Industrial Revolution, and when the population and CO2 levels were both much lower.

lThe IPCC admits that while computer models forecast a decline in Antarctic sea ice, it has actually grown to a new record high. Again, the IPCC cannot say why.

lA forecast in the 2007 report that hurricanes would become more intense has simply been dropped, without mention. 

This year has been one of the quietest hurricane seasons in history and the US is currently enjoying its longest-ever period – almost eight years – without a single hurricane of Category 3 or above making landfall.

One of the report’s own authors, Professor Myles Allen, the director of Oxford University’s Climate Research Network, last night said this should be the last IPCC assessment – accusing its cumbersome production process of ‘misrepresenting how science works’.

Despite the many scientific uncertainties disclosed by the leaked report, it nonetheless draws familiar, apocalyptic conclusions – insisting that the IPCC is more confident than ever that global warming is mainly humans’ fault.

It says the world will continue to warm catastrophically unless there is drastic action to curb greenhouse gases – with big rises in sea level, floods, droughts and the disappearance of the Arctic icecap.

Last night Professor Judith Curry, head of climate science at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, said the leaked summary showed that ‘the science is clearly not settled, and  is in a state of flux’. 

 

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She said  it therefore made no sense that the IPCC was claiming that its confidence in its forecasts and conclusions has increased.

For example, in the new report, the IPCC says it is ‘extremely likely’ – 95 per cent certain – that human  influence caused more than half  the temperature rises from 1951 to 2010, up from ‘very confident’ –  90 per cent certain – in 2007.

Prof Curry said: ‘This is incomprehensible to me’ – adding that the IPCC projections are ‘overconfident’, especially given the report’s admitted areas of doubt.

Head of climate science at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, said the leaked summary showed that 'the science is clearly not settled, and is in a state of flux'

Starting a week tomorrow, about 40 of the 250 authors who contributed to the report – and supposedly produced a definitive scientific consensus – will hold a four-day meeting in Stockholm, together with representatives of most of the 195 governments that fund the IPCC, established in 1998 by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). 

The governments have tabled 1,800 questions and are demanding major revisions, starting with the failure to account for the pause.

Prof Curry said she hoped that  the ‘inconsistencies will be pointed out’ at the meeting, adding: ‘The consensus-seeking process used by the IPCC creates and amplifies biases in the science. It should be abandoned in favour of a more traditional review that presents arguments for and against – which would  better support scientific progress, and be more useful for policy makers.’ Others agree that the unwieldy and expensive IPCC assessment process has now run its course. 

Prof Allen said: ‘The idea of producing a document of near-biblical infallibility is a misrepresentation of how science works, and we need to look very carefully about what the IPCC does in future.’

Climate change sceptics are more outspoken. Dr Benny Peiser, of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, described the leaked report as a ‘staggering concoction of confusion, speculation and sheer ignorance’. 

As for the pause, he said ‘it would appear that the IPCC is running out of answers .  .  . to explain why there is a widening gap between predictions and reality’. 

The Mail on Sunday has also seen an earlier draft of the report, dated October last year. There are many striking differences between it and the current, ‘final’ version. 

The 2012 draft makes no mention of the pause and, far from admitting that the  Middle Ages were unusually warm, it states that today’s temperatures are the highest for at least 1,300 years, as it did in 2007. Prof Allen said the change ‘reflects greater uncertainty about what was happening around the last millennium but one’.

A further change in the new version is the first-ever scaling down of a crucial yardstick, the ‘equilibrium climate sensitivity’ – the extent to which the world is meant to warm each time CO2 levels double. 

As things stand, the atmosphere is expected to have twice as much CO2 as in pre-industrial times by about 2050. In 2007, the IPCC said the ‘likeliest’ figure was 3C, with up to 4.5C still ‘likely’. 

Now it does not give a ‘likeliest’ value and admits it is ‘likely’ it may be as little as 1.5C – so giving the world many more decades to work out how to reduce carbon emissions before temperatures rise to dangerous levels. 

As a result of the warming pause, several recent peer-reviewed scientific studies have  suggested that the true figure for the sensitivity is much lower than anyone – the IPCC included – previously thought: probably less than 2C.

Last night IPCC communications chief Jonathan Lynn refused to comment, saying the leaked report was ‘still a work in progress’. 

The Met Office said it would examine the paper and respond in due course.

MET OFFICE'S COMPUTER 'FUNDAMENTALLY FLAWED' SAYS NEW ANALYSIS 

The British Met Office has issued ‘erroneous statements  and misrepresentations’ about  the pause in global warming  – and its climate computer model is fundamentally flawed, says  a new analysis by a leading independent researcher.

Nic Lewis, a climate scientist and accredited ‘expert reviewer’ for the IPCC, also points out that Met Office’s flagship climate model suggests the world  will warm by twice as much in response to CO2 as some other leading institutes, such as Nasa’s climate centre in America.

The Met Office model’s current value for the ‘equilibrium climate sensitivity’ (ECS) – how much hotter the world will get each time CO2 doubles – is 4.6C. This  is above the IPCC’s own ‘likely’ range and the 95 per cent certainty’ level established by recent peer-reviewed research.

Lewis’s paper is scathing about the ‘future warming’ document issued by the Met Office in July, which purported to explain why the current 16-year global warming ‘pause’ is unimportant, and does not mean the ECS is lower than previously thought. 

Lewis says the document made misleading claims about other scientists’ work – for example, misrepresenting important details of a study by a team that included Lewis and 14 other  IPCC experts. The team’s paper, published in the prestigious journal Nature Geoscience in May, said the best estimate of the ECS was 2C or less – well under half the Met Office estimate.

He also gives evidence that another key Met Office model is inherently skewed. The result is that it will always produce  high values for CO2-induced warming, no matter how its control knobs are tweaked, because its computation of the  cooling effect of smoke and dust  pollution – what scientists call ‘aerosol forcing’ – is simply incompatible with the real world.

This has serious implications,  because the Met Office’s HadCM3 model is used to determine the Government’s climate projections, which influence policy.

Mr Lewis concludes that the Met Office modelling is ‘fundamentally unsatisfactory, because it effectively rules out from the start the possibility that both aerosol forcing and climate sensitivity are modest’. Yet this, he writes, ‘is the combination that recent observations support’.

‘Children of MoS reporter should murder him’: vile abuse on Guardian site

The Mail on Sunday’s report last week that Arctic ice has had a massive rebound this year from its 2012 record low was followed up around the world – and recorded 174,200 Facebook ‘shares’, by some distance a record for an article on the MailOnline website.

But the article and its author  also became the object of extraordinarily vitriolic attacks from climate commentators  who refuse to accept any evidence that may unsettle  their view of the science. 

A Guardian website article claimed our report was ‘delusional’ because it ignored what it called an ‘Arctic death spiral’ caused by global warming.

Beneath this, some readers who made comments had their posts removed by the site moderator, because they ‘didn’t abide by our community standards’. 

But among those that still remain on the site is one which likens the work of David Rose – who is Jewish – to Adolf Hitler’s anti-Semitic rant Mein Kampf.

Another suggests it would be reasonable if he were to be murdered by his own children.  A comment under the name DavidFTA read: ‘In a few years, self-defence is going to be made  a valid defence for parricide [killing one’s own father], so Rose’s children will have this article to present in their defence at the trial.’ 

Critics of the article entirely ignored its equally accurate statement that there is mounting evidence the Arctic sea ice retreat has in the past been cyclical: there were huge melts in the 1920s, followed by later advances. 

David Rose¿s article in the Mail on Sunday last week attracted world wide interest

Some scientists believe that  this may happen again, and may already be under way – delaying the date when the ice cap  might vanish by decades or  even centuries. 

Another assault was mounted by Bob Ward, spokesman for the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at the London School  of Economics.

Mr Ward tweeted that the article was ‘error-strewn’.

The eminent US expert Professor Judith Curry, who unlike Mr Ward is a climate scientist with a long list of  peer-reviewed publications to  her name, disagreed.

On her blog Climate Etc she defended The Mail on Sunday, saying the article contained ‘good material’, and issued a tweet which challenged Mr Ward to say what these ‘errors’ were.

He has yet to reply.

'A REFLECTION OF EVIDENCE FROM NEW STUDIES'... THE IPCC CHANGES ITS STORY

Power house: The IPCC'S Headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland

What they say: ‘The rate of warming since 1951 [has been] 0.12C per decade.’

What this means: In their last hugely influential report in 2007, the IPCC claimed the world was warming at 0.2C per decade. Here they admit there has been a massive cut in the speed of global warming – although it’s buried in a section on the recent warming ‘pause’. The true figure, it now turns out, is not only just over half what they thought – it’s below their lowest previous estimate.

What they say: ‘Surface temperature reconstructions show multi-decadal intervals during the Medieval Climate Anomaly  (950-1250) that were in some regions as warm as in the late 20th Century.’

What this means: As recently as October 2012, in an earlier draft of this report, the IPCC was adamant that the world is warmer than at any time for at least 1,300 years. Their new inclusion  of the ‘Medieval Warm Period’ – long before the Industrial Revolution and  its associated fossil fuel burning – is a concession that its earlier statement  is highly questionable.

What they say: ‘Models do not generally reproduce the observed reduction in surface warming trend over the last 10 – 15 years.’

What this means: The ‘models’ are computer forecasts, which the IPCC admits failed to ‘see... a reduction in the warming trend’. In fact, there has been no statistically significant warming at all for almost 17 years – as first reported by this newspaper last October, when the Met Office tried to deny this ‘pause’ existed.In its 2012 draft, the IPCC didn’t mention it either. Now it not only accepts it is  real, it admits that its climate models  totally failed to predict it.

What they say: ‘There is medium confidence that this difference between models and observations is to a substantial degree caused by unpredictable climate variability, with possible contributions from inadequacies in the solar, volcanic, and aerosol forcings used by the models and, in some models, from too strong a response to increasing greenhouse-gas forcing.’

What this means: The IPCC knows the pause is  real, but has no idea what is causing it. It could be natural climate variability, the sun, volcanoes – and crucially, that the computers have been allowed to give too much weight to the effect carbon dioxide emissions (greenhouse gases) have on temperature change.

What they say: ‘Climate models now include more cloud and aerosol processes, but there remains low confidence in the representation and quantification of these processes in models.’

What this means: Its models don’t accurately forecast the impact of fundamental aspects of the atmosphere – clouds, smoke and dust.

What they say: ‘Most models simulate a small decreasing trend in Antarctic sea ice extent, in contrast  to the small increasing trend in observations... There is low confidence in the scientific understanding of the small observed increase in Antarctic sea ice extent.’

What this means: The models said Antarctic ice would decrease. It’s actually increased, and the IPCC doesn’t know why.

What they say: ‘ECS is likely in the range 1.5C to 4.5C... The lower limit of the assessed likely range is thus less than the 2C in the [2007 report], reflecting the evidence from new studies.’

What this means: ECS – ‘equilibrium climate sensitivity’ – is an estimate of how much the world will warm every time carbon dioxide levels double. A high value means we’re heading for disaster. Many recent studies say that previous IPCC claims, derived from the computer models, have been way too high. It looks as if they’re starting to take notice, and so are scaling down their estimate for the first time.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2420783/Global-warming-just-HALF-said-Worlds-climate-scientists-admit-computers-got-effects-greenhouse-gases-wrong.html#ixzz2ewPQLC3a
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