After looking around the documents section of the CRU leak/hack, I noticed a few interesting PDFs. Both were made by (or with) DEFRA. The first is named "Your guide to Communicating Climate Change", and the second is named "Rules of the Game : Evidence base for the Climate Change Communications Strategy" They both are guides for how to communicate the dangers of climate change to others. Let's look at some excerpts, first from 'Your Guide':

I'm sure that the educated readers who visit climate science blogs won't need me to tell them that this is terribly inaccurate scientifically. But I will anyways.

"The blanket of gases (not a 'blanket') that keeps the surface of the earth warm and able to sustain life is getting thicker (not really), trapping (not 'trapping') in more heat. This is caused by the
release of greenhouse gases as we burn fossil fuels for energy and cut
down forests (cutting forests doesn't release CO2)...Carbon dioxide is the main greenhouse gas (not nearly), (awkward comma) which causes climate change."

They've started off on the wrong foot with poor science. They then reveal what they think of the public:

This is an arrogant and frightening section. First, they claim:

Research shows that among the general public, few people understand what is actually causing climate change.

This assumes that DEFRA fully understands what is "actually causing climate change", and anyone who disagrees with their complete knowledge, well, they just don't understand. Arrogant.

It is also frightening:

The first and most important thing is
to change the way people think about
climate change. Then we can try to
change their behaviour...

These are the challenges we need to
face, but something can be done. Firstly,
we need to change these attitudes.

This is a government agency! They are openly trying to change the population's attitudes, behaviors, and even their thoughts. How exactly do they recommend changing people's thoughts and behaviors? Here are two of their points:

Wow. "Don't create fear about climate change" is an excellent way to start a sentence, but then they add "without showing what people
can do about it." In other words, it's acceptable (desired even) to scare people with horrible climate change predictions, as long as you give them something to do about it. I think Al Gore would heartily agree. Their second point is even more revealing, and really funny:

Don’t rely solely on logic, facts or even money-saving incentives – people need to be inspired and provoked.

This could be the alarmist's motto. "Don't rely on logic or facts!" I do think the 'even' before money is interesting, they seem to think money is far more motivating than silly things like logic or facts. Their rationale for their dismissal of logic and facts is this: "people need to be inspired and provoked." I think this quote in addition to their previous reliance on fear says it all.

The second document, Rules of the Game, is no better. It starts off with one 'uberprinciple' about communicating climate change:

While I'm not even sure what this means, it seems condescending to say the least. Convincing us to use soap? Is this implying those who don't believe in climate change are unwashed masses? Let's look at their first two points:

"Don’t create fear without agency", sound familiar? Fear is alright, as long as they can do something about it. Even more interesting is their treatment of 'detractors'. "Those who deny climate change science are irritating, but unimportant." There you have it, straight from the horse's mouth. We are annoying, but unimportant. They should just ignore us. Forget about the unwashed, fearless detractors, full steam ahead! Here is my last point from these documents:

The unwashed masses don't understand information, they need emotions and visuals. Picture books. Movies with lots of slides showing drowning polar bears. Here is an example they put together themselves:

Again, shoddy science wrapped in fear.

We should be concerned when agencies, with the full coercive force of government behind them, cross the line from their bureaucratic duties into outright advocacy. Obviously DEFRA crossed that line years ago.

Review of UK Climate Change Indicators

Contract EPG 1/1/158
June 2003
(Revised Jan 2004)
Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs

It then lists the main contractors and the subcontractors. The University of East Anglia CRU is one of the subcontractors. Here is the rationale in their words for the report:

An update of the current set of UK indicators was also necessary, along with a reappraisal to assess whether :
- the original set of indicators was still appropriate;
- new indicators should be devised;
- indicators should be removed from the set

Ok, so they are determining if the original indicators are valid, whether there should be new indicators, and if some should be removed. They did decide that some needed to be removed based on unavailable data (such as potato yields and salmon populations). Mostly they decided that their indicators were good, and that they needed a new 'socio-economic' indicator. Actually, they were told they needed a new indicator by DEFRA. On page 7 (if viewing as pdf):

The Defra publication Foundations for our Future (June 2002) presents a variety of sustainable development indicators. Climate change is considered a cross-cutting theme within the report, and is reflected in two of the indicators :
• Emissions of greenhouse gases (UK emissions indicator); and
• Socio-economic impacts of climate change.

The second of these indicators had not yet been developed and Defra has a commitment to produce an appropriate indicator in time for the first revision of the Foundations for our Future report (publication expected June 2003).
This project explicitly identified a headline indicator of the socio-economic impacts of climate change indicator for inclusion in the report.It highlighted the reasons why this particular indicator was chosen above others, according to a defendable methodology.

So the real reason they are creating a new 'socio-economic' indicator of climate change is because they want a 'headline' in an upcoming DEFRA publication. The document then notes the actual meeting that took place to determine this new indicator, page 9:

A meeting was held on 27 March 2003 at Defra with the following objectives.

• To indentify and consider the lists of climate change indictors produced by the European Environment Agency, the UK Devolved Administrations, the Environment Agency and other relevant sources.
• To consult with representatives of the UK Devolved Administrations, the EA and UKCIP.
• To elicit views on gaps and weaknesses in the 1999 list of UK Indicators of Climate Change, covering climate, the natural environment, socio-economic and marine indicators.
• To consider the headline indictor required for the Defra publication ‘Foundations for our Future’

Spelling errors aren't mine. Here is what they wrote about the socio-economic indicator:

Headline socio-economic indicator

UEA has considered each of the main socio-economic indicators in the 1999 report.
The meeting considered indicators that the UK ‘can do something about’ such as (i) planning application refusals for building on flood plains, (ii) uptake of guidance for 20% increase in flood risk when making coastal defence plans, eg number of schemes taking this into account, and (iii) number of water management plans that take account of climate change. However, all these indicators presented difficulties in obtaining consistent data which could be interpreted with confidence. It was concluded that the insurance claims indicator met most criteria and was most robust, especially if new data sources could been identified

It doesn't end there. The document then notes each groups response to specific indicators, and one group responds to the possible socio-economic indicators, page 12:

7. Socio-economic Indicators (Jean Palutikof and co-workers)

- Indicator 12 (insurance claims) might be extended to include claims for flood damage, using Association of British Insurers’ statistics.
- Indicators 13-16 are OK
- Indicator 17 (lyme disease) should stay (despite criticism) but maybe look at European trends and add a new indicator on the number of notified cases of food poisoning.
- Indicator 18 (human mortality) stays.
- Indicator 19 (irrigation water use) stays, but a new indicator might be added on household water use – taking into account the EA indicator and going back before 1992.
- Indicator 20 (percentage potato area irrigated) - there have been no data since 1995, so this may be dropped.
- Indictors 21 and 22 stay.
- Indicator 23 (forage maize) should be dropped.
- A new indicator should be sought on the sale of air conditioners; maybe there is a trade association.
A new indicator should be sought on sales of beer and soft drinks.

Wow. That seems a bit reaching to me, the sale of air conditioners, beer, and soft drinks? Also, note the recommendation of adding an indicator for increased food poisoning. That comes up again.

The report then moves back into the existing indicators, and on page 28 they show an interesting chart. It is entitled 'Potential "New" ECN Climate Impact Indicators'. The list contains such things as Frog Spawning date and Bat Activity, and then lists such attributes as climate sensitivity and data availability. Another attribute is worth noting. 'Public Resonance' is listed, on a scale of one to three. Some issues are shown to have low public resonance, such as ground beetles, and some high, such as water quality. However one issue, the "Genetic" changes of beetles, does not land on the scale but says: "Low unless hyped up." Hyped up? Is this a technical term?

This focus on public perception continues. Perhaps the most blatant is on the issue of warm weather crops. In their summary on current indicators, page 63:

Warm weather crops (grapes and forage maize)
These indicators may be showing trends that are unrelated to climate, but they have public resonance and should be retained.

Well, if they have 'public resonance' then by all means, retain them. Who cares about their link to climate change? This is a revealing sentence, clearly the perception of impact from climate change is more important than the actual impact. This mindset reveals itself once more. Remember the recommendation for an new indicator of food poisoning? The last section of the report starts by saying (page 64):

11. Headline Socio-economic Indicator of Climate Change

UEA was asked to develop a ‘headline’ socio-economic indicator of climate impacts for inclusion in the DEFRA publication Foundations for our Future, which will undergo its first revision for publication in June 2003.

The UEA was asked by the UK's government agency DEFRA to create a 'headline' socio-economic indicator of climate impacts. This does not seem like un-biased science to me. They are specifically looking for a socio-economic indicator, presumably one which the level of 'public resonance' is already high and doesn't need to be 'hyped up'. So, what is one of the socio-economic indicators that the report recommends? Page 64:

11.1 Evaluation of potential new indicators

We have considered the possibility of adding an indicator on food poisoning occurrence. This would satisfy criteria related to policy relevance and public resonance. Moreover, the data are readily available. The time series contains three components:
i. an exponentially rising trend over time – by far the dominant influence;
ii. a seasonal cycle, peaking in summer and reaching a minimum in winter; and,
iii. interannual variability linked to temperature fluctuations.
We would only be interested in the third of these. Thus, the series would have to be detrended before it could be used as an indicator, making it difficult to explain to a general audience without being misleading. The long-term rising trend is likely to be due to failures in public and domestic hygiene.

Wait a minute. They are considering the indicator of food poisoning, and yet they admit the 'long-term rising trend is likely to be due to failures in public and domestic hygiene'. That would seem to exclude the indicator automatically, but again, the link to public perception is far more important than the actual link to climate change. Also, they say that food poisoning would 'satisfy criteria related to policy relevance and public resonance'. Yes, I'd imagine it would. Scaring people half to death seems to be a requirement for many climate alarmists (melting glaciers cut water supply to 750 million?).

While I cannot find the 2002 'Foundations for our Future' DEFRA publication, I do know DEFRA accepted food poisoning as an indicator of climate change. On this DEFRA webpage, under the Vulnerability to climate change section, they claim:

•Food Poisoning

Cases of food poisoning are likely to increase significantly, by perhaps 10,000 cases annually

I'm not claiming that the previous report led directly to this claim, but the claim must be regarded as suspicious in light of the 'likely to be due to failures in public and domestic hygiene' comment. Reading this report gives one the feeling that DEFRA is far more concerned with indicators which resonant with the public than indicators which actually reflect the changing climate.

In defense of the CRU, they issued a response to this review, in which they said:

“Public resonance” isn’t a very scientific reason for keeping things in which are only marginally correlated with climate, unless the other factors can be backed out (e.g. in the case of ozone, presumably we could model out the changing precursor emissions)?

The CRU is right on this one.

Direct EPA regulation without legislation is potentially crippling to the economy, and has many legislators crying foul. With cap-and-trade dead, the EPA has taken the lead in climate regulations, but they are not the only agency to create climate change regulations.

The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) requires federal agencies to look at the environmental impact of their potential regulations. On January 15'th, the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) said:

"CEQ believes that it is appropriate and necessary to consider the impact of significant Federal actions on greenhouse gas emissions and the potential for climate change to affect Federal activities evaluated through NEPA..." - Source

This means all agencies must ensure that their regulations do not impact greenhouse gas emissions negatively. Several Senators said about the CEQ's finding:

"Requiring analysis of climate change impacts during the NEPA process, especially at the project-specific level, will slow our economic recovery while providing no meaningful environmental benefits," - Source

Other agencies are involved. Just today the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ruled that companies must disclose potential effects of climate change in their corporate findings:

"Guidelines approved today require companies to weigh the impact of climate-change laws and regulations when assessing what information to include in corporate filings, the commission said. The SEC is responding to investors who said companies aren’t providing enough data on the potential risks to their profits and operations from environmental-protection laws." - Source

These guidelines also had several detractors, one of which stated that he was:

“troubled by an undertaking which seems so transparently political and such a breathtaking waste of the commission’s resources.” Source

Well said. With the EPA's scientific basis for their regulation of CO2 under scrutiny it makes little sense to attempt regulation through other agencies. Common sense would seem to dictate that they wait until the spotlight is removed from the EPA and climate science in general before they attempt even more regulation. I suppose common sense isn't all too common in Washington.