NOAA: Climate Change Driving Arctic Into A 'New State' With Rapid Ice Loss And Record Permafrost Warming

Arctic sea ice is melting much, much faster than even the best climate models had projected. The reason is most likely unmodeled amplifying feedbacks. Image via Arctic Sea Ice Blog.

"Scary New Report on Arctic Ice" is the Weather Channel's headline for NOAA's sobering 2012 Arctic Report Card.

Everyone should indeed be scared by what we are doing to the Arctic because it will accelerate global warming, speed up sea level rise, and make deadly superstorms like Sandy more frequent and more destructive (see "NOAA Bombshell: Warming-Driven Arctic Ice Loss Is Boosting Chance of Extreme U.S. Weather").

This is what's new up north in 2012:

New records set for snow extent, sea ice extent and ice sheet surface melting, despite air temperatures - a key cause of melting - being unremarkable relative to the last decade.

Multiple observations provide strong evidence of widespread, sustained change driving Arctic environmental system into new state.

Here's a video summary from NOAA:

Two of the most worrisome highlights are:

• Below the tundra, record high permafrost temperatures occurred in northernmost Alaska.
• Duration of melting was the longest observed yet on the Greenland ice sheet, and a rare, nearly ice sheet-wide melt event occurred in July.

The record Greenland melt is scary because if the Greenland ice sheet disintegrates, sea levels would rise 20 feet - and the process appears to be accelerating to a critical "tipping point" (see also "Science Stunner: Greenland Ice Melt Up Nearly Five-Fold Since Mid-1990s"). Indeed, polar researcher Jason Box, lead author of the Greenland section of the report, told the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco:

"In 2012 Greenland crossed a threshold where for the first time we saw complete surface melting at the highest elevations in what we used to call the dry snow zone," he told reporters at the AGU. "As Greenland crosses the threshold and starts really melting in the upper elevations it really won't recover from that unless the climate cools significantly for an extended period of time which doesn't seem very likely."

The tundra warming is scary because it is a frozen locker of carbon whose defrosting will further accelerate warming (see "Carbon Feedback From Thawing Permafrost Will Likely Add 0.4°F - 1.5°F To Total Global Warming By 2100)."

Here is more detail on what's happening in the tundra:

• In 2012, new record high temperatures at 20 [meters, 65 feet] depth were measured at most permafrost observatories on the North Slope of Alaska and in the Brooks Range, where measurements began in the late 1970s. Only two coastal sites show exactly the same temperatures as in 2011.
• A common feature at Alaskan, Canadian and Russian sites is greater warming in relatively cold permafrost than in warm permafrost in the same geographical area.
• During the last fifteen years, active-layer thickness [ALT] has increased in the Russian European North, the region north of East Siberia, Chukotka, Svalbard and Greenland.

The "ALT is the top layer of soil and/or rock that thaws during the summer and freez[es] again during the fall, i.e., it is not permafrost."

The report makes painfully clear why all of these Arctic trends are going to continue - global warming and amplifying feedbacks:

Large changes in multiple indicators are affecting climate and ecosystems, and, combined, these changes provide strong evidence of the momentum that has developed in the Arctic environmental system due to the impacts of a persistent warming trend that began over 30 years ago. A major source of this momentum is the fact that changes in the sea ice cover, snow cover, glaciers and Greenland ice sheet all conspire to reduce the overall surface reflectivity of the region in the summer, when the sun is ever-present. In other words, bright, white surfaces that reflect summer sunlight are being replaced by darker surfaces, e.g., ocean and land, which absorb sunlight. These conditions increase the capacity to store heat within the Arctic system, which enables more melting - a positive feedback. Thus, we arrive at the conclusion that it is very likely that major changes will continue to occur in the Arctic in years to come, particularly in the face of projections that indicate continued global warming.

Anyone who thinks we can delay aggressive deployment of carbon-free technology simply has shut their eyes and ears to the growing scientific evidence.

Related Post:

• Death Spiral Watch: Experts Warn "Near Ice-Free Arctic In Summer" In A Decade If Volume Trends Continue

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/12/06/1293011/noaa-climate-chang

Why Claims About Reductions Of U.S. Carbon Dioxide Emissions Are Misleading

by Kevin Matthews

A person - a public figure, member of the media, maybe even an international climate negotiator - could be confused about U.S. carbon dioxide emissions.

In August, 2012, the Associated Press reported this:

In a surprising turnaround, the amount of carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere in the U.S. has fallen dramatically to its lowest level in 20 years, and government officials say the biggest reason is that cheap and plentiful natural gas has led many power plant operators to switch from dirtier-burning coal."

Since August, the misleading meme of shrinking U.S. greenhouse gas emissions has been picked up and carried forward by a variety of respected sources. As recently as November 26, for instance, the Guardian reported on how the findings were influencing climate negotiations:

Greenhouse gas emissions from the US have fallen sharply in recent years, owing to the replacement of coal-fired power generation by gas in the US, following its widespread adoption of shale gas.

Jonathan Pershing, a senior negotiator for the US, said: "Those who don't know what the US is doing may not be informed of the scale and extent of the effort, but it's enormous."

Given these claims, you'd think that there was solid information that U.S. greenhouse gas emissions have dropped. But the real story is somewhat different.

Back in August, the U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA), part of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) that collects and reports certain energy-related data, posted an article centered on this graph:

<hat graph is labeled obscurely, but with partial accuracy, as showing U.S. "carbon dioxide emissions from energy demand."

That's the same as "carbon dioxide emissions from energy use" or "carbon dioxide emissions from energy consumption," which is primary data collected by the EIA. It's relatively easy to track in real time, since it's essentially based on adding up the sales figures for coal, oil, and natural gas.

Therein lies the first layer of confusion. The EIA does not include biomass combustion energy, hydroelectric power, or true renewables like wind and solar in its main energy consumption figures. Except for biomass, there is little CO2 associated with the use of these clean energy sources.

So the EIA graph in the article should be labeled as U.S. "carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel consumption." In fact, that's exactly how the graph is labeled in EIA's deeper technical reports. According to the most recent official EPA figures, carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel consumption represented about 79% of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2010.

Starting a tally of this U.S. fossil fuel use "grade inflation," we can use these terms:

(CO2 emissions from fossil fuel use) + (CO2 emissions from all other energy use) = (total CO2 emissions from energy use).

The big headline on the EIA article adds another level of exaggeration. It says "U.S. energy-related CO2 emissions in early 2012 lowest since 1992." Note the shift from "energy-use" CO2 emissions to "energy-related" CO2 emissions.

The headline is directly wrong because the underlying data does not include CO2 emissions from energy production and distribution such as flaring of natural gas, an increasing element in the U.S. EIA seems to use the this sloppy label regularly.

(CO2 emissions from energy use) + (CO2 emissions from energy production & distribution) = (energy-related CO2 emissions)

The headline also sets people up for another natural error. While CO2 is the biggest greenhouse gas, it's not the only one. It's common practice in adding up climate numbers to convert all the differing units of other greenhouse gases into CO2-equivalent values.

It's tedious to always say "CO2-equivalent greenhouse gas emissions." And pretty often, people just say "CO2 emissions" when "CO2-equivalent emissions" is what they really mean.

That's just a little slippage in our language, but it has big implications for the numbers.

(energy-related CO2 emissions) + (non-CO2 energy-related emissions) = (energy-related greenhouse gas emissions)

Missing Methane

The biggest energy-related non-CO2 emissions are methane - and that's huge.

Estimates of energy-related methane emissions are in flux, as traditional industry numbers are being looked at more closely. Current research, in line with a recent NOAA report, suggests under-reporting by the fossil fuel industry may be on the order of 2 percent of natural gas used, suggesting total methane losses on the order of 4%. Since methane is about 21 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO2 (in the time frame of a generation), we can multiply (4% methane leakage) x (21 times GHG impact compared to CO2) = 84%. That shows that methane emissions from the natural gas system may have a CO2-equivalent greenhouse gas impact roughly comparable to the GHG impact in CO2 from burning the gas. While the methane emissions may prove to be somewhat smaller, there's little doubt they are significant.

This is part of the picture described by guest bloggers Shakeb Afsah and Kendyl Salcito in the Climate Progress article "Shale Gas And The Overhyping Of Its CO2 Reductions."

By leaving out methane, and other things, the EIA data really only describes one specialized slice of emissions. It's a big slice, but not one to freely generalize from.

Because renewables are missing from the EIA data, which has been widely and inappropriately generalized, it's all too easy for pundits and reporters to simply compare the coal curve and the natural gas curve against the (baseless) overall conclusion of dropping emissions, and then call out lower natural gas prices as the cause of U.S. progress - thus leaving out the significant growth of renewables. But that's another story.

Ultimate Confusion

As noted above, it's apparently been easy for analysts and media alike to take the EIA information to the final level of misinformation, trumpeting that CO2 levels have fallen to their lowest levels in 20 years or that greenhouse gas emissions have fallen sharply.

The claim is wrong, because to get to greenhouse gas emissions overall, all the non-energy-related emissions sources also need to also be included. To summarize and complete the equation:

EIA data: (CO2 emissions from fossil fuel use)
+ (CO2 emissions from all other energy use)
+ (CO2 emissions from energy production & distribution)
+ (non-CO2 energy-related emissions)
+ (all non-energy-related greenhouse gas emissions)
= total greenhouse gas emissions

Methane, flaring, and biomass emissions not included in the primary EIA numbers mean those numbers don't fully reflect energy-related GHG emissions.

According to the official U.S. GHG emissions inventory, the non-energy-related emissions (from agriculture, logging, other land use changes, etc.) represent another ~20 percent of the total, on top of the ~80 percent of GHG emissions that are directly energy-related.

EPA to the Rescue

The EIA used to actually calculate and report its own U.S. total greenhouse gas emissions numbers. That EIA overall GHG inventory was discontinued in 2011, due to mid-year budget cuts, according to an EIA source. However, the agency has never been the source of the official U.S. inventory.

The official U.S. greenhouse gas emissions inventory has been produced for many years by the EPA, following detailed international reporting protocols. It's presented to the United Nations every April, in a careful and fairly hard-to-read formal report.

The most recent official EPA inventory, reported in April 2012 and showing total U.S. emissions for 2010, shows our emissions going up that year:

r> The current EPA inventory report shows total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions for 2010 up 3.2% over 2009 emissions, with an average annual growth rate from 1990 through 2010 of 0.5%. It's hard to say what increase or decrease the U.S. inventory for 2011 will show, when the EPA releases it in April 2013, or what the inventory for 2012 will show when it comes out in April 2014. Unless someone is prepared to duplicate the EPA's work, and do it faster, we can expect to wait for those numbers.

Bottom Line

U.S. major media and others have been trumpeting a false meme of declining U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, spinning off from EIA data that actually shows a much narrower trend.

While the primary EIA data represents a large, very specific piece of the overall U.S. emission inventory, it's fundamentally misleading to inflate its importance. Nonetheless, this seems to have been done regularly by the EIA itself, and to an even greater degree by downstream users of EIA information.

In the past, EIA produced an overall emissions inventory. Because energy consumption is easier to collect and report on quickly than other types of emissions, they continue to produce reports including U.S. CO2 emissions from energy use, which the EIA releases at a pace tantalizingly close to real time.

No doubt it's frustrating to media and officials who love to report on realtime score cards, but the only official U.S. greenhouse gas emission inventory comes from the EPA. It takes a while for all the data to be collected and complied - and impatience is no reason to misrepresent the data available.

In any case, year-to-year ups and downs in U.S. emissions are not very meaningful relative to the scale of the climate mitigation challenge we face together. In the U.S., we need to be planning and faithfully implementing, in every sector of our economy, in every government, agency, and large organization, roughly 5% reductions in total greenhouse gas emissions, every year, year-on-year, for the rest of our lives.

And no blip in annual emissions, whether actual or invented, is going to rescue business-as-usual from this fundamental need for real climate action.

Kevin Matthews is Editor-in-Chief of Architecture Week.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/12/05/1275811/why-claims-about-r

Train with toxic cargo crashes

A bridge collapsed in the West Deptford area of New Jersey Friday, sending several train cars carrying toxic chemicals crashing into a creek below, the U.S. Coast Guard said.

http://rss.cnn.com/~r/rss/cnn_us/~3/IlPEMgAtGHo/index.html

http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/30/us/new-jersey-train-derail/index.html

House Committee Leaders Deny Climate Change While Extreme Weather Devastates Their States

by Jackie Weidman and Whitney Allen

On November 27th, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) announced new and returning House committee chairmen (and yes, they are all men). Some of these congressmen will run committees with jurisdiction over federal climate, energy, and environmental programs. This includes funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Clean Air Act, balancing the use of our public lands between energy production and recreation, and determining the infrastructure needs of a nation that now faces unpredictable extreme weather threats linked to climate change.

The vast majority of these chairmen voted for legislation that would dismantle EPA's ability to limit industrial carbon pollution, and for retention of special tax breaks for the oil and gas industry. Oil and gas, coal, and electric utility companies have cozied up to many of these chairmen, giving them roughly $3.8 million in campaign contributions over the course of their careers.

Meanwhile, many climate-related extreme weather events have severely afflicted Americans over the past two years, including in their home states. Record-breaking drought and heat waves, severe floods, and heavy storms wreaked havoc for the families living in the chairmens' backyards. Scientists predict that these weather events will become more frequent and/or severe if the industrial carbon pollution responsible for climate change remains unchecked.

Let's take a look at some of the Republicans who will oversee federal climate, energy, and environmental programs over the next two years, as well as their campaign contributions from the industries responsible for most climate pollution:

Rep. Sam Graves (Missouri) - Small Business Committee

In a May 2010 op-ed in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Rep. Graves claimed that limiting carbon pollution is "out of touch with the people who keep this country running." Yet, the farmers, ranchers, and small business owners he refers to in his column dealt with crippling drought conditions this summer across Missouri and the Great Plains, a disaster that Midwestern scientists say "is consistent with an observed warmer climate."

In addition to drought, Graves' home state was also afflicted by other extreme weather events in 2011, including a Missouri River flood that inundated homes and businesses. All of Missouri's counties were declared disaster areas from the three main extreme weather events hitting the state, including the Joplin tornado disaster.

Graves has received $150,000 in campaign contributions from electric utilities throughout his career.

Rep. Frank Lucas (Oklahoma) - Agriculture Committee

In his first term as committee chair, Rep. Lucas voted to prevent the Department of Agriculture from helping farmers adapt to a changing climate that will include more droughts, heat waves, and heavy storms. Meanwhile, his home state of Oklahoma suffered from 8 extreme weather events that each caused at least $1 billion in total damages each.

Two of these events include the crippling heat and drought conditions that have overwhelmed his home state in both 2011 and 2012. This year's drought recently expanded, and as of November 20^th 44 percent of winter wheat crops and 80 percent of the pastures in Oklahoma are experiencing poor to very poor conditions. All of the counties in Lucas's state were declared disaster areas due to the drought. The average household in Oklahoma earns 17 percent below the national median income. The Oklahomans afflicted by the drought and other extreme weather events have less income to recover and rebuild from these episodes.

Lucas took $467,325 in oil and gas contributions and $145,992 from electric utilities over the course of his career.

Rep. Mike McCaul (Texas) - Homeland Security

Texas experienced 10 extreme weather events with $1 billion plus in damages each in 2011-12. Every single Texas county was in a declared disaster area, and it received more federal disaster aid than any other state since 2009.

In his new position, Rep. McCaul will oversee FEMA, including its disaster relief and recovery efforts, which should be comforting to Texans. But Rep. McCaul voted to approve the 2013 House Budget Plan that would have handicapped the government's ability to respond to disasters, something he openly criticized when it affected his district. McCaul asserts, "It shouldn't have taken that long," for FEMA to respond to wildfires that spread through Texas in 2011. He has not acknowledged that he would support government efforts to cut back the program even further.

Rep. McCaul received $300,000 in oil and gas contributions throughout his career.

Rep. Hal Rogers (Kentucky) - Appropriations Committee

Rep. Rogers' committee is hostile to disaster relief and recovery. It voted to slash FEMA's budget by $87 million (2011) and $182 million (2012). Budget cuts restrict FEMA's ability to provide disaster relief, food and shelter, and flood management assistance for state and local governments. Roger's home state of Kentucky suffered from four separate tornado and severe storm events in 2011-12 with at least $1 billion in damages each. Half of Kentucky's counties were in declared disaster areas from the four events, and households in these counties earn, on average, 19 percent below the U.S. median household income.

Rogers has received over $830,000 in campaign contributions from fossil fuel industries throughout his career.

Rep. Paul Ryan (Wisconsin) - Budget Committee

Over the past two years, Rep. Ryan voted more than a dozen times to block Environmental Protection Agency public health rules, including pollution reduction measures that would limit carbon pollution from power plants. While serving as Budget Committee Chairman, Rep. Ryan authored a budget that would have hurt FEMA's ability to help state and local governments repair or replace damaged infrastructure after a major disaster.

Although his budget does not mention FEMA by name, the plan would have cut discretionary federal funds to FEMA and other agencies. The reductions in the FEMA budget would have shifted a significant portion of disaster response and recovery costs to states and cities. Rep. Ryan's home state of Wisconsin experienced three billion-dollar in damages weather events in 2011-12. Nearly two-thirds of its counties were in declared disaster areas.

Ryan received $263,600 in campaign contributions from oil and gas companies throughout his Congressional career.

Rep. Lamar Smith (Texas) - Science, Space and Technology

As Climate Progress recently reported, Rep. Smith is the new chair of the Science Committee. Yet he does not accept the overwhelming scientific consensus on man-made climate change. In fact, Rep. Smith has repeatedly attacked the media for reporting on the mountains of scientific evidence confirming this fact. Smith claims that they are "determined to advance the idea of human-made global warming."

While Rep. Smith seeks to assert that climate change is just an "idea," his state has continued to suffer from the impacts of climate related extreme weather. Texas has experienced more billion-dollar in damages weather events than any other U.S. state in the past two years. The 2011-12 droughts decimated Texas crops, threatened the state's water supply, and severely harmed its cattle industry. Ironically, while pollution-fueled climate change helped cause severe economic losses in his state, Rep. Smith assured Americans that "oil and natural gas fuel our economy and sustain our way of life."

Rep. Smith is heavily supported by the oil and gas industry. It is his second largest contributor, shelling out half of a million dollars on his campaigns over the course of Rep. Smith's career.

Rep. Fred Upton (Michigan) - Energy and Commerce Committee

The Energy and Commerce Committee oversees many aspects of energy production and industrial pollution. Rep. Upton will head it up again. He has repeatedly said that he does not believe climate change is man-made, even though he used accept this scientific fact. Upton became a fierce critic of the EPA's authority to limit industrial carbon pollution. In fact, he authored the "Energy Tax Prevention Act" (H.R. 910) to amend the Clean Air Act by repealing the scientific "endangerment finding" by EPA that greenhouse gases endanger human health. This bill would have permanently prevented EPA from limiting climate change pollution.

Upton, claimed that "this legislation will remove the biggest regulatory threat to the American economy," without any independent analysis to demonstrate this claim. Months after working to get the bill through the House, multiple severe weather events hit Michigan in July 2011, causing $1 billion in damages.

Rep. Upton received $1.2 million- more than any other House committee chair - over the course of his career from the electric utility and oil and gas industries.

Jackie Weidman is a Special Assistant for Energy Policy at the Center for American Progress; Whitney Allen is an intern on the energy team at the Center for American Progress.

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Amazon destruction 'at new low'

The destruction of Amazon rainforest reaches its lowest level since monitoring began 24 years ago, the Brazilian government says.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-20512722#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa

Rep. Lamar Smith, Who Criticized 'The Idea Of Human-Made Global Warming,' Set To Chair House Science Panel

Climate advocates celebrated after winning nearly every Congressional race they targeted during the national elections, including four of the "Flat Earth Five" climate deniers in the House of Representatives. But with the balance of power essentially the same in Washington, many rightly worried that little would change moving into the 113th Congress.

Case in point: yesterday's nomination of Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX) to chair the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology - a body with jurisdiction over many laboratories, NASA, the National Science Foundation, and the National Weather Service.

Smith is a climate skeptic who has taken to the House floor to rant against scientists and journalists "determined to advance the idea of human-made global warming." Here's Smith in a 2009 speech after scientists' emails were hacked from a server at the University of East Anglia:

"We now know that prominent scientists were so determined to advance the idea of human-made global warming that they worked together to hide contradictory temperature data. But for two weeks, none of the networks gave the scandal any coverage on their evening news programs. And when they finally did cover it, their reporting was largely slanted in favor of global warming alarmists. The networks have shown a steady pattern of bias on climate change. During a six-month period, four out of five network news reports failed to acknowledge any dissenting opinions about global warming, according to a Business and Media Institute study. The networks should tell Americans the truth, rather than hide the facts.

In fact, independent reviews found that climate scientists neither hid nor tampered with data.

Compared to the outgoing chair of the committee - Texas Republican Ralph Hall - Smith has been a bit more "moderate" in his skepticism of climate change. Last year, Hall said he doesn't "think we can control what God controls" and explained that he wasn't concerned about global warming because he's "really more fearful of freezing," even though "I don't have any science to prove that."

Smith acknowledges on his website that the climate is changing; however, he does not mention the overwhelming consensus within the scientific community that humans are responsible.

Over his political career, Smith has received $500,000 from oil and gas. And just last year, he received $10,000 from Koch industries.

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British MP On Climate Committee Advising On Coal Power For $300 An Hour

by Graham Readfearn, via DeSmogBlog

A British MP revealed to be holding $400,000 worth of share options in an oil firm while sitting on an influential parliamentary climate change committee is also being paid $300 an hour to advise an Indian company building a coal fired power station, DeSmogBlog has discovered.

Veteran Conservative MP Peter Lilley has billed the New Delhi-based Ferro Alloys Corporation Limited (FACOR) for at least 220 hours of consultancy advice and is still working for the group.

It emerged in The Guardian last week that self-described "global lukewarmist" Mr Lilley, a director with Tethys Petroleum, was also holding $400,000 worth of share options in the company which is drilling for oil and gas in Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

As The Guardian reported, Mr Lilley is also paid by Tethys to attend meetings and provide advice and has received about £47,000 (US$75,000) in the past year.

The UK Parliament's register of members' financial interests shows that in the period from January to June this year, Mr Lilley racked up 228 hours of work for Tethys, FACOR and IDOX plc, a document management company where he is also a director.

The register shows how Mr Lilley was paid £37,696 (US$60,360) for 220 hours of "advice on the management and flotation of a power generating subsidiary" by Ferro Alloys Corporation Limited between July 2011 and June 2012.

FACOR is building a 100MW coal fired power station at Randia in the state of Orissa in eastern India to provide electricity to its ferro alloys plant, with excess power being sold to the grid.

Mr Lilley's latest payment from FACOR suggests an hourly rate of £187 (US$300). The payments from Tethys and FACOR come on top of Mr Lilley's annual MP's salary of £65,738 (US$105,000).

Mr Lilley has recently been appointed to the UK Parliament's Energy and Climate Change Committee, which examines the policies of the government's Department of Energy and Climate Change.

Environment groups criticised the appointment, which has been seen as a sign that "anti-green" forces were gaining hold on the UK's Conservative Party.

In a response to questions from me, Mr Lilley confirmed his work with FACOR was continuing. I asked if his work with the oil and coal sectors represented a conflict of interest, "given your position on the climate committee in a parliament as internationally influential as the UK." I also pointed out that the "peer reviewed literature would suggest that coal power is detrimental to the climate".

In a feisty and provocative response, Mr Lilley said:

Can you suggest any policies of the UK government which this Committee exists to scrutinise which have, will or conceivably might affect the profitability of an Indian power company or for that matter an oil company whose operations are entirely in Central Asia? Far from a conflict of interest, my knowledge of the Energy sector (I was a financial analyst specialising in the Energy sector before becoming a minister) is helpful - for example at today's hearings of the Committee I was able to point out that there is no obvious reason for the British government to give the oil industry special tax breaks to incentivise shale gas development, as others assumed. I imagine the only reason anyone should raise the absurd suggestion of a conflict of interest is because they are unable to refute the views I have expressed on the Economics of Climate Change and therefore have to resort to innuendo. I am sorry you have so little faith in your position that you need to resort to that.

Mr Lilley also attached a copy of a report he authored for the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a climate sceptic group founded by Lord Nigel Lawson, a former chancellor in the Margaret Thatcher government.

The report criticised the UK Government's perceived reliance on the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change. Mr Lilley's interests in Tethys and his lucrative consultancy work for FACOR are not disclosed in the report.

Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at London School of Economics and Political Science, has said Lilley's GWPF report was based on "misrepresentations and bad economics".

The GWPF, which claims to be non-political, has refused to disclose its funders but it was revealed earlier this year that one financier was major Conservative Party donor and billionaire Michael Hintze, an Australian-born UK-based hedge fund manager.

Several requests to FACOR for comment went unanswered.

Graham Readfearn is an independent journalist based in Queensland, Australia, with 15 years experience as a reporter and writer on newspapers, magazines, radio and online. This piece was originally published at DeSmogBlog and was reprinted with permission.

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