More On Climategate
The full import of Climategate is slowly creeping into the Dead Tree Press, aka the Main Stream Media. The Blogosphere is miles ahead of the DTP/MSM, as usual though.
We mentioned several web sites with up-to-the-minute posts and discussions about Climategate in a previous post [here]. Another is Climategate at Watts Up With That [here], a compilation of all the related posts there.
The word “Climategate” was coined at WUWT by a commentator, Bulldust, the day the CRU email dam broke (11/19/2009) and the global warming hoax was exposed. The discussion there has been excellent and comprehensive, with links to the other leading climate realist sites.
Here are some of the latest musing from the Web:
Climategate: The Silence is Deafening from the Corporate Media
J Speer-Williams, Infowars, PrisonPlanet, November 29, 2009 [here]
By now most of us in the alternative media are aware of the some 61 megabytes of global warming research data of emails, documents, and computer code released by whistleblowers (or hackers), that have exposed climate scientists, at the University of East Anglia in Great Britain, as the frauds they’ve proven themselves to be.
This decade of emails and documents clearly concludes that global warming scientists have manipulated scientific data to “hide the decline” in global temperatures; and the fact that, there has been no statistically significant global warming for fifteen years, but our world has experienced a rapid and significant cooling for nine years.
So breath-taking has been this leaked data, to date, it has produced some startling headlines in the alternative media:
(1) Climategate: Greatest Scandal in Modern Science!”
(2) “Climategate? Smoking Gun? Blood in the Water?”
(3) “Global Warming Scientists Seek to Protect Their Government Funding by Corrupting the Peer-review Process.”
(4) “Climate Bombshell: Hackers {or Whistleblowers] Leak Emails Showing Conspiracy.”
(5) “Email Leaks Turn Up Heat on Global Warming Advocates.”
(6) “Climategate Scientists Caught Red-handed in Monumental Fraud.”
(7) “Bad Scientists? No Criminals!”
Now, these global warming scientists, who have been so severely exposed for the frauds they are, are crying, “Persecution!”. While their own emails prove they have been very busy planning how best to get tenured professors fired, who will not shallow the rotten fish of anthropogenic global warming, how to black-ball them from scientific journals, and prevent them from participating in the peer-review process. …
Climate change: this is the worst scientific scandal of our generation
By Christopher Booker, UK Telegraph, 28 Nov 2009 [here]
… What we are looking at here is the small group of scientists who have for years been more influential in driving the worldwide alarm over global warming than any others, not least through the role they play at the heart of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The senders and recipients of the leaked CRU emails constitute a cast list of the IPCC’s scientific elite, including not just the “Hockey Team”, such as Dr Mann himself, Dr Jones and his CRU colleague Keith Briffa, but Ben Santer, responsible for a highly controversial rewriting of key passages in the IPCC’s 1995 report; Kevin Trenberth, who similarly controversially pushed the IPCC into scaremongering over hurricane activity; and Gavin Schmidt, right-hand man to Al Gore’s ally Dr James Hansen, whose own GISS record of surface temperature data is second in importance only to that of the CRU itself. …
… the question which inevitably arises from this systematic refusal to release their data is –- what is it that these scientists seem so anxious to hide? The second and most shocking revelation of the leaked documents is how they show the scientists trying to manipulate data through their tortuous computer programmes, always to point in only the one desired direction –- to lower past temperatures and to “adjust” recent temperatures upwards, in order to convey the impression of an accelerated warming.
… This is what Mr McIntyre caught Dr Hansen doing with his GISS temperature record last year (after which Hansen was forced to revise his record), and two further shocking examples have now come to light from Australia and New Zealand.
In each of these countries it has been possible for local scientists to compare the official temperature record with the original data on which it was supposedly based. In each case it is clear that the same trick has been played – to turn an essentially flat temperature chart into a graph which shows temperatures steadily rising. And in each case this manipulation was carried out under the influence of the CRU. …
Cleaning Out the Climate Science Cesspool
by Paul Driessen November 28, 2009 [here]
As legions of scientists, activists, journalists, bureaucrats and politicians prepare to embark for Copenhagen, a predictable barrage of climate horrors has been unleashed, to advance proposals to slash hydrocarbon use and carbon dioxide emissions, restrict economic growth, and implement global governance and taxation.
CO2 has reached a new high (0.0385% of the atmosphere), we’re told, because of cars and “coal-fired factories of death.” Rising seas are forcing families to “flee their homes.” Oceans are becoming “toxic.” Climate change is driving Philippine women into prostitution. Higher temperatures will “increase the likelihood of civil war in Sub-Saharan Africa” and “bring human civilization to a screeching halt.” The Associated Press, BBC and other “mainstream” media dutifully regurgitate every press release.
However, the planet and science are not cooperating with the fear-mongering. There has been no statistically significant global warming for over a decade, despite steadily increasing CO2 levels – and for several years average annual global temperatures have actually declined.
Carbon dioxide plays only a minor role, many scientists now say, and our climate is still controlled by the same natural forces that caused previous climate changes: periodic shifts in ocean currents and jet streams, water vapor and cloud cover, evaporation and precipitation, planetary alignments and the shape of the Earth’s orbit, the tilt and wobble of Earth’s axis, cosmic ray levels and especially solar energy output.
Far worse for the Climate Armageddon movement, newly released emails from its leading scientists reveal a cesspool of intimidation, duplicity and fraud that could rock Copenhagen and the alarmist agenda to their core. The emails cast deepening suspicion over global warming data, science and models.
They reveal an unprecedented, systematic conspiracy to stifle discussion and debate, conceal and manipulate data, revise temperature trends that contradict predictions of dangerous warming, skew the peer-review process, pressure scientific journals and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to publish alarmist studies and exclude dissenting analyses, and avoid compliance with Freedom of Information requests. …
The stakes are incredibly high. This bogus, biased “science” is being used to justify expensive, intrusive, repressive, abusive treaties, laws and regulations. The new rules would undermine economies, destroy jobs, close down companies and entire industries, impoverish families and communities, roll back personal freedoms and civil rights – and enrich the lucky few whose lobbyists and connections enable them to corner markets for renewable energy technologies, carbon offsets and emissions trading.
For the most destitute people on the planet, the repercussions from this fraud are even higher. These people – 750 million in Africa alone – do not have electricity, cars, modern homes, jobs or hope for a better future. They die by the millions from malnutrition and lung, intestinal and insect-borne diseases that would be dramatically reduced with access to dependable, affordable energy.
But the alarmists’ bogus, biased “science” is being used to justify building a Climate Wall between these desperate people and the modern, energy-rich world. To justify perpetuating misery, disease and death. …
It is time to clean out the climate cesspool, and bring integrity, transparency and accountability back to science, law and public policy.
Skewed science
A French scientist’s temperature data show results different from the official climate science. Why was he stonewalled? Climate Research Unit emails detail efforts to deny access to global temperature data
By Phil Green, Financial Post, Nov 26, 2009 [here]
The global average temperature is calculated by climatologists at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia. The temperature graph the CRU produces from its monthly averages is the main indicator of global temperature change used by the International Panel on Climate Change, and it shows a steady increase in global lower atmospheric temperature over the 20th century.
Millions of measurements, global coverage, consistently rising temperatures, case closed: The Earth is warming. Except for one problem. CRU’s average temperature data doesn’t jibe with that of Vincent Courtillot, a French geo-magneticist, director of the Institut de Physique du Globe in Paris, and a former scientific advisor to the French Cabinet. …
The stain and stink of the Biggest Science Hoax Ever have polluted more than one branch of Science. The very Method of Science has been abused and perverted across the board in various environmental sciences from marine biology to alpine ecology and everywhere in between.
All of Academia and the General Public need to drink the antidote to the CAGW* kool-aid: the prune juice of uncompromising rationality.
It appears that the putative AGW consensus is now undergoing a 180-degree reversal; most scientists have already or will be soon rejecting it. Every worthwhile scientist should have been looking for evidence against the theory (which, by the way, is the proper method of science), and should now be displaying those findings with glee.
“Look at me! I have evidence against the theories of the hoaxers! Don’t fire me. I’m not one of them.” Etc.
I wish all you academic types best of luck with that, and a bit of advice: join us. Leap into the climate realist camp (aka “skeptics”) with both feet. Sooner is better than later.
*CAGW - catastrophic anthropogenic global warming, a demonstrably bogus theory.
Climate change data dumped
by Jonathan Leake, The Sunday UK Times, November 29, 2009 [here]
SCIENTISTS at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.
It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years.
The UEA’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was forced to reveal the loss following requests for the data under Freedom of Information legislation.
The data were gathered from weather stations around the world and then adjusted to take account of variables in the way they were collected. The revised figures were kept, but the originals — stored on paper and magnetic tape — were dumped to save space when the CRU moved to a new building.
In a statement on its website, the CRU said: “We do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (quality controlled and homogenised) data.”
The CRU is the world’s leading centre for reconstructing past climate and temperatures. Climate change sceptics have long been keen to examine exactly how its data were compiled. That is now impossible.
Roger Pielke, professor of environmental studies at Colorado University, discovered data had been lost when he asked for original records. “The CRU is basically saying, ‘Trust us’. So much for settling questions and resolving debates with science,” he said. … [more]
by Bob Z.
Two more links. The Wall Street Journal, for whatever reasons, seems to be leading the way on this.
Enviro defense:
http://www.pjtv.com/?cmd=video&video-id=2770
Follow the dollars:
http://tinyurl.com/AGW-WSJ-dollars
A new SPPI paper by Christopher Monckton has just been posted concerning “Climategate.” It is an expose of the corruption, the real science and what it all means in context. It can be viewed and downloaded [here].
by Bob Z.
The Wall Street Journal is rapidly becoming my favorite source of breaking Climate “Science” news. Here is one of the best and easiest to comprehend pieces I have seen on the topic yet:
http://tinyurl.com/AGW-and-WSJ-science
Climategate: Why it matters
The scandal we see and the scandal we don’t
By Andrew Orlowski, The UK Register, 30th November 2009 [here]
Reading the Climategate archive is a bit like discovering that Professional Wrestling is rigged. You mean, it is? Really?
The archive - a carefully curated 160MB collection of source code, emails and other documents from the internal network of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia - provides grim confirmation for critics of climate science. But it also raises far more troubling questions.
Perhaps the real scandal is the dependence of media and politicians on their academics’ work - an ask-no-questions approach that saw them surrender much of their power, and ultimately authority. This doesn’t absolve the CRU crew of the charges, but might put it into a better context.
After a week of scrutiny of the emails, attention is now turning to the programming source code. Three quarters of the material released is the work of the academics, much of which they had jealously guarded. This includes a version of the world’s most cited and respected temperature record - HADCRUT - and a number of surveys which featured prominently in the reports of the UN’s climate change panel, the IPCC. The actors here shaped the UN reports, and ultimately - because no politician dare contradict the ’science’ - shaped global policy.
The allegations over the past week are fourfold: that climate scientists controlled the publishing process to discredit opposing views and further their own theory; they manipulated data to make recent temperature trends look anomalous; they withheld and destroyed data they should have released as good scientific practice, and they were generally beastly about people who criticised their work. (You’ll note that one of these is far less serious than the others.)
But why should this be a surprise? … [more]
Why ‘climategate’ won’t stop greens
By LORRIE GOLDSTEIN, Toronto Sun, 26th November 2009 [here]
If you’re wondering how the robot-like march of the world’s politicians towards Copenhagen can possibly continue in the face of the scientific scandal dubbed “climategate,” it’s because Big Government, Big Business and Big Green don’t give a s*** about “the science.”
They never have.
What “climategate” suggests is many of the world’s leading climate scientists didn’t either. Apparently they stifled their own doubts about recent global cooling not explained by their computer models, manipulated data, plotted ways to avoid releasing it under freedom of information laws and attacked fellow scientists and scientific journals for publishing even peer-reviewed literature of which they did not approve.
Now they and their media shills — who sneered that all who questioned their phony “consensus” were despicable “deniers,” the moral equivalent of those who deny the Holocaust — are the ones in denial about the enormity of the scandal enveloping them.
So they desperately try to portray it as the routine “messy” business of science, lamely insisting, “nothing to see here folks, move along.”
Before the Internet — which has given ordinary people a way to fight back against the received wisdom of so-called “wise elites” — they might have gotten away with it.
But not now, as knowledgeable climate bloggers are advancing the story and forcing the co-opted mainstream media to cover a scandal most would rather ignore.
The problem, however, is those who hijacked science to predict a looming Armageddon unless we do exactly as they say, have already done their damage.
The moment they convinced politicians the way to avert the End of Days was to put a price on emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, the unholy alliance of Big Government, Big Business and Big Green was forged.
Big Government wants more of your taxes. Big Business wants more of your income. Big Green wants you and your children to bow down to its agenda of enforced austerity.
What about saving the planet, you ask? This was never about saving the planet. This is about money and power. Your money. Their power. … [more]
Mike, you’ve probably have seen the editorial written by George Will (it is in today’s R/G) from which this particularly pithy and relevant excerpt is from:
The Washington Post learns an odd lesson from the CRU materials: ‘Climate scientists should not let themselves be goaded by the irresponsibility of the deniers into overstating the certainties of complex science or, worse, censoring discussion of them.’ These scientists overstated and censored because they were “goaded” by skepticism?
Were their science as unassailable as they insist it is, and were the consensus as broad as they say it is, and were they as brave as they claim to be, they would not be “goaded” into intellectual corruption. Nor would they meretriciously bandy the word “deniers” to disparage skepticism that shocks communicants in the faith-based global warming community.
This is a really succinct view of the ramifications of the recent email exposition (tho I admit I had to look up the word meretriciously). As you have noted already, it is astounding this recent revelation has either not been in the media eye at all or has been summarily dismissed as in the case of the Washington Post.
And yet the Blogosphere is all afire with the CRU news. The Mainstream Media has just about jumped the shark, not only on this issue but most others as well.
We live in interesting times.
22F and plunging here right now. Canadian cold front moving in. The Earth is not getting any warmer as far as I can tell. Not around here, at any rate.
The Web Discloses Inconvenient Climate Truths
The world cannot trust scientists who abuse their power
By L. GORDON CROVITZ, Wall Street Journal, Nov 29, 2009 [here]
For anyone who doubts the power of the Internet to shine light on darkness, the news of the month is how digital technology helped uncover a secretive group of scientists who suppressed data, froze others out of the debate, and flouted freedom-of-information laws. Their behavior was brought to light when more than 1,000 emails,and some 3,500 additional files were published online, many of which boasted about how they suppressed hard questions about their data.
The emails, released by an apparent whistle-blower who used the name “FOI,” were written by scientists at the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in England. Its scientists are high-profile campaigners for the theory of global warming.
The findings from East Anglia have been at the core of policy reports by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The IPCC does not do its own research but compiles information relating to climate change. It has declared the evidence that the globe is warming to be “unequivocal,” a claim routinely cited by lawmakers in the U.S. and elsewhere as authoritative. …
The panel, which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore, now faces the inconvenient truth that it relied on scientists who violated scientific process. … [more]