The emails of several leading warmist scientists' look to have been hacked, going back for at least thirteen years, back when these people thought they were untouchable.
“Scientists” included in the hacked emails include Phil Jones, the man who “corrected” temperature data for the IPCC to account for the Urban Heat Island effect and then “lost” the raw, uncorrected data (I “would rather destroy the CRU data than release it” he says in one email); Michael Mann, who concocted the bogus ‘Hockey Stick’ used by the IPCC to deny the Medieval Warm Period (“'As we all know, this isn't about truth at all, its about plausibly deniable accusations” he says in another); Keith Briffa, the author of a later hockey stick (whose deceptions have already been uncovered by Steve McIntyre); self-confessed liar Stephen Schneider, an adviser to Al Gore; and James Hansen, the man who insists coal trains are like the death trains to the gas chambers, and who also advises The Goracle on warmism.
If genuine, and there’s every reason to suppose they are (even if the words Ian Wishart are included in some of the alleged verifications of them), the emails take you “behind the curtain” in the preparation and presentation of the last several years of warmist revelations. If what’s been uncovered is genuine, there’s evidence here of systematic deception:
- concealing real doubts about the theory of man-made global warming (AGW);
- concealing inconvenient facts that don’t fit the theory of AGW;
- misdirecting attention away from the truth (a tactic being used as we speak by the Real Climate bluffers;
- confessing that PR trumps truth;
- massaging raw data to fit the AGW theories;
- massaging models to make the data fit AGW theories
- destroying the very data on which the world’s temperature record is based;
- conspiring to avoid releasing public data to the public under Freedom of Information requests;
- turning peer-reviewed science journals into shills for warmism;
- using supposedly “neutral” climate blog Real Climate to control the message and hide dissent;
- cynically blackballing climate skeptics to avoid confronting their arguments.
Taken together, they suggest, as even the New York Times sniffily admits, “that climate scientists conspired to overstate the case for a human influence on climate change.”
It’s already been called “the blue-dress moment,” the 'Climate Pentagon Papers' and 'a scandal that is one of the greatest in modern science'. It’s like lifting a rock and seeing what’s scuttling round underneath the surface. If true, this is a scandal that should do to politicised science what the global economic meltdown should have done to mainstream macroeconomics.
As Chris Horner says, “If legit, this apparently devastating series of revelations will be very hard for the media to ignore.”
“I didn't say impossible [to deny] — the [media are] fully vested partners in the global warming industry, because catastrophism sells. But so does scandal, and this appears to be the makings of a very big one. Imagine this sort of news coming in the field of AIDS research. Then reflect that the taxpayer spends more on climate-related research than on the entire suite of AIDS programs, far beyond drug research.”
And even more than AIDS research, the warmists’ “science” is used to justify shutting down or seriously shacking the industry that keeps us all alive.
So, very hard to deny, very hard to ignore -- Though I’m sure, like the paid warmist shills at the likes of Real Climate (whose leading author Gavin Schmidt is himself included in the emails), they’ll try. They’ll be trying very hard – after all, it’s their meal ticket that’s at stake.
Lots of links, discussion and analysis all around the place about the hacks and what they’ve revealed, especially at Watts Up With That, Climate Depot, Climate Audit, Reference Frame, The Blackboard . . .
This story will keep on running.
UPDATE: Gooner writes a speech for John Key:
Earlier this week Lucy Lawless, and that failed NIWA
spindoctorscientist, Jim Salinger, tried to pull a stunt by giving John Key the airfare money to fly to Copenhagen next month. Key refused.
He should now go. I have written his speech (see below).Ladies and Gentlemen
New Zealand has this week been shown to be the least corrupt country in the World.
We are justifiably very proud of that.
On that basis we do not wish to be involved with the cheats, liars and frauds running the climate change circus.
We are pulling out of Kyoto and scrapping the ETS.
Have a nice conference.
I'm now flying back to New Zealand in Al Gore's private jet.
Best John Key speech ever, I’d say. Not that there’s stiff competition or anything.
UPDATE 2: From around the traps:
- Read Andrew Bolt: The warmist conspiracy: the emails that most damn Jones, keeper of world temperature records for the past 1000 years:
"If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone . . . We also have a data protection act, which I will hide behind. . . I did get an email from the FOI person here early yesterday to tell me I shouldn’t be deleting emails . . . Can you delete any emails you may have had... I’m getting hassled by a couple of people to release the CRU station temperature data. Don’t any of you three tell anybody that the UK has a Freedom of Information Act ! . . . ”
- Scientists Write Open Letter to Congress: 'You Are Being Deceived About Global Warming' -- 'Earth has been cooling for ten years'
- Michael Mann - Penn State and University of Virginia, premiere climate scientist, inventor of hockey sticks: "These two are clowns..."
- Phil Jones, on the data: “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.”
- Phil Jones again, guardian of the data: “I will be emailing the journal to tell them I’m having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor. . . . It results from this journal having a number of editors. The responsible one for this is a well-known skeptic in NZ [Chris de Freitas]. He has let a few papers through by Michaels and Gray in the past. I’ve had words with Hans von Storch about this, but got nowhere. Another thing to discuss in Nice!”
- From Tim Blair:
“Climate Research Unit director Phil Jones – alleged author of that “hide the decline” email – expresses another (alleged) opinion:If anything, I would like to see the climate change happen, so the science could be proved right, regardless of the consequences.
Of course, if change doesn’t happen, it won’t prove that science was wrong. It’ll prove that certain scientists were. As Ed Morrissey notes:
Here we have scientists who cling to the theory so tightly that they reject the data. That’s not science; it’s religious belief.
- Pejman Yousefzadeh sums up [hat tip Tim Blair]:
We know this: The language used in many of the e-mails is offensive, crude, disparaging towards climate skeptics (including a disgusting statement made in the aftermath of the death of one global warming skeptic), and against the spirit of scientific inquiry on multiple levels. If these scientists had the doubts they appear to have had concerning global warming, they should have gone public with those doubts. That way, they would have lost neither their integrity, nor their ability to state that the weight of the evidence supports the theory of anthropogenic global warming. Instead, they engaged in . . . this.
- “After the leaking of the emails, exactly who are the deniers now?”
- Courtesy of The Catasphrophist:
“
Wow. Confirmed this is real. Uncompresses to 165 MB — of which 7.6 MB are emails — and the rest is funding data & grant applications, external correspondence, PR docs, scientific papers, datasets, reports, graphs (etc) from the CRU (Climate Research Unit) at East Anglia University — not the ‘Hadley’ Center for Climate Prediction & Research (i.e. UK Meterological Office at Exeter) as is being reported. CRU prepares climate models, influences intra-governmental policy, and is pro-actively involved in manipulating the ‘climate change’ narrative in the UK.”
[Get the ZIP file here or here (or torrent). Read/search the emails here. Funding spreadsheet, pdj_grants_since1990.xls is online here.]
- If the hacked archive is no longer available at its original source, it is available at two other file-sharing services: MegaUpload and FileDropper.
- Climate Depot Exclusive - Continuously Updated 'ClimateGate' News Round Up
UPDATE 4: To help understand the way ‘The Team’ thinks, follow a chain of emails of The Team’s reaction to criticism from Steve McIntyre (of Climate Audit), who had already destroyed one of The Team’s ‘hockey stick’ graph showing faked temperature records, and was taking in interest in another:
Read The Alarmists Do "Science": A Case Study – posted at Powerline [hat tip KG]
UPDATE 5: “Scientist” Phil Jones, whose emails and files it was that hackers have now exposed to the the disinfecting power of daylight, looks certain to resign says the Not Evil Just Wrong blog:
Phil Jones: Resignation Inevitable
“It now looks certain that Phil Jones (right), Director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, will resign his post.
“However his departure could damage the pursuit of climate truth.
“Jones resignation comes after leaked emails revealed his unethical and possibly illegal deletion of publicly funded scientific research. He did this to avoid findings and data that contradicted his climate alarmism from being released through the Freedom of Information Act.
“However Jones's resignation will be for this unethical/legal breach of the law.
“But that is not the true scandal. The truly awful behavior by Jones is that he has changed and deleted the scientific record. He has removed data from the view of his colleagues and scientists across the world and across the generations. . . “
And Duncan Davidson at The Wall Street Journal isn’t just calling for resignations from The Team; in concluding his column ‘Fear and Loathing in Global Warming’ he reckons resignation isn’t good enough for them.
“The admissions in the emails are so bad these clowns should go to jail for fraud - Fraud of a Bernie Madoff scale. Fraud with a capital F. . .
“It’s time for the GW Plumbers to go to jail: Phil Jones, Michael Mann, Gavin Schmidt, James Hansen, Keith Briffa, Malcolm Hughes and Kevin Trenberth. They were the ones circulating the emails, they were the co-conspirators of the fraud, and they deserve to be treated as the self-righteous con men they have been shown to be.
“If Al Gore were President, he would have to resign.”
UPDATE 6: More email and document excerpts below from Karl Denninger. The comments are his.
* * * First, an email from Jones:
“It was good to see you again yesterday - if briefly. One particular thing you said - and we agreed - was about the IPCC reports and the broader climate negotiations were working to the globalisation agenda driven by organisations like the WTO. So my first question is do you have anything written or published, or know of anything particularly on this subject, which talks about this in more detail?”
Comments Ettinger: Oh, so it's not about the planet getting warmer, but rather is a convenient means of advancing an agenda that has already been pre-determined?
* * * Here are some interesting "meta statistics" on the documents, and the number of times the words referenced appear:
-
Fraud: 79
-
Falsify: 6
-
Inflate: 14
-
Conceal: 5
-
Hide: 19
Just for starters.
* * If you think that's bad, you might like this - from the file "ipcc-tar-master.rtf":
General Comments
The idea that climate without human intervention can only undergo “natural variability”, and that “climate change” can only result from human activity is false and fallacious. It is in conflict with all that we know of evolution and geology. It is simply wrong to assume that “ climate change” automatically implies human influence on the climate.
This fallacy is embraced by the Framework Convention on Climate Change, but the IPCC (Footnote to “Summary for Policymakers. Page 1) claim that they are prepared to accept “natural variability” as “climate change”. They are, however, unwilling to accept the truth, which is that climate can change without human intervention.
....
47 out of 91 models listed in Chapter 9 assume that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is increasing at the rate of 1% a year when the measured rate of increase, for the past 33 years, has been 0.4% a year. The assumption of false figures in models in order to boost future projections is fraudulent. What other figures are falsely exaggerated in the same way?
UPDATE 7: More local coverage at the Herald, TVNZ, Stuff, TV3, Kiwiblog, Whale Oil and The Briefing Room.
UPDATE 8: It’s okay, The Herald has covered the story. On page A16. Bottom. Under the fold. Brilliant.
59 comments:
If there was any evil socialist conspiracy to concoct AGW, then these stolen emails should have exposed it.
I don't see any smoking gun here.
I have looked through this stuff and can't imagine how someone would take the time and effort to create it out of the blue. There's just too much. Also note that some commenters recognize emails they themselves exchanged with Jones et al in this material. I don't doubt its genuine, the question is where is the rest? 1000 emails is nothing for 10 years or so. Personally I like the spreadsheets showing the enormous amounts of money these jokers raked in in subsidies and grants. Disgusting, how you get fooled by the very people you pay for doing 'research'.
Doesn't look like the NZ media is very interested so far. Amazing.
Monsieur,
Please, provide a full refernce for the original claim that AGW is an evil socialist conspiracy.
Sean.
@ Sean: Just google "Lord Christopher Walter Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley"
Whither now the Green party?
More overhyped easily refuted arguments from your camp.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/11/the-cru-hack/#more-1853
"No doubt, instances of cherry-picked and poorly-worded “gotcha” phrases will be pulled out of context. One example is worth mentioning quickly. Phil Jones in discussing the presentation of temperature reconstructions stated that “I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.” The paper in question is the Mann, Bradley and Hughes (1998) Nature paper on the original multiproxy temperature reconstruction, and the ‘trick’ is just to plot the instrumental records along with reconstruction so that the context of the recent warming is clear. Scientists often use the term “trick” to refer to a “a good way to deal with a problem”, rather than something that is “secret”, and so there is nothing problematic in this at all. As for the ‘decline’, it is well known that Keith Briffa’s maximum latewood tree ring density proxy diverges from the temperature records after 1960 (this is more commonly known as the “divergence problem”–see e.g. the recent discussion in this paper) and has been discussed in the literature since Briffa et al in Nature in 1998 (Nature, 391, 678-682). Those authors have always recommend not using the post 1960 part of their reconstruction, and so while ‘hiding’ is probably a poor choice of words (since it is ‘hidden’ in plain sight), not using the data in the plot is completely appropriate, as is further research to understand why this happens."
Monsieur
Have you read the emails already?
LGM
David S. said. More overhyped easily refuted arguments from your camp.
An important attribute of science is to understand what they are talking about rather then repeat the partyline..
: This was brought up in 2004 at RC and was denied as Jean S details at WUWT,
When smoothing these time series, the Team had a problem: actual reconstructions “diverge” from the instrumental series in the last part of 20th century. For instance, in the original hockey stick (ending 1980) the last 30-40 years of data points slightly downwards. In order to smooth those time series one needs to “pad” the series beyond the end time, and no matter what method one uses, this leads to a smoothed graph pointing downwards in the end whereas the smoothed instrumental series is pointing upwards — a divergence. So Mann’s solution was to use the instrumental record for padding, which changes the smoothed series to point upwards as clearly seen in UC’s figure (violet original, green without “Mike’s Nature trick”).
Hence the HS disappears and so does a significant part of AGW.
Maksimovich
@ LGM: I haven't read the emails already. Just the cherry-picked collections from the denialist bloggers, that PC has posted.
One thing is very clear.
This should prove to anyone that denies the science behind climate change that there is no conspiracy.
There is no evidence of conspiracy to concoct AGW between these scientists.
There is no evidence of conspiracy to create a World Government between these scientists.
Just a group of scientist trying to do their job, with a lot of additional hassle from ideologues like Steve McIntyre trying to make out that they were liars.
@Monsieur & David Knox: Shouldn't you include the quotation marks around what you've posted, which are basically just re-quoted talking points from Real Climate?
@PC: That's the end of your conspiracy theory.
Monsieur, cherry picking sections from emails there may well be. It makes sense to do so, as no-one is going to read every bit.
However, the opposite, assuming that the comments are out of context, and cherry picking one or two examples to counter is of the same quality of counter argument.
What stands on its own in these emails is the DELIBERATE attempts by some to discredit, blackball, ignore and make false accusations about the scientists who have analysed the "data" and found it wanting. That is being written off as "only human", as well it may be, but it doesn't excuse the bad science implicit in those actions.
@ZenTiger: What stands is a noble group of scientists, unwilling to cower to the unscientific berating of the economist, Steve McIntyre.
Were you talking to me PC? My last name isn't Knox and I have put quotation marks around the relavent passage, even linking to the orginal post directly above, so your post doesn't really make sense if it IS directed at me. It's just that I don't see another post from a different David... so it's a little odd.
Monsiur,
I am confused. Is it PC's conspiracy theory or Lord M's? You certainly didn't provide a reference to anything PC asked when I questioned you earlier comment. Also, having followed you advice and googling Lord M I get Wikipedia which quotes him as saying "the need of the international left for a new flag to rally round". Hardly the stuff of conspiricy. Do you have any actual evidence beyond the most banal of assertion?
Sean.
Sorry guys, but anybody who has ever been remotely near an academic institution, particularly at postgraduate level, knows bloody well that one has to be very careful with applying statistics, let alone 'adjusting' source data. There is no academic in this world who will write to another, even his best mate that he has been playing around with source material or even has been trying different statistical methods on the same data to see whether that will result in something that closer fits the hypothesis. This sort of "hinting" at it is the closest they will come to it. To now use the fact that these jokers talk in roundabout terms about their fraud to say that there was nothing untoward happening is like saying that Philip Field just accidentally had a couple of rooms to paint.
By the way, the NZ slime stream seems to have missed the news altogether.
Monsieur
You write, "I haven't read the emails already."
OK. So you haven't read the emails.
Yet you then write, "This should prove to anyone that denies the science behind climate change that there is no conspiracy."
Hang on a second. You have not read the emails...
You write, "There is no evidence of conspiracy to concoct AGW between these scientists."
But you have not read the emails...
Yet here you are making allegation, assertion and conclusions about material you have not read, evidence you have not reviewed, matters you are completely unfamiliar with, context you are unaware of...
You are blind, blundering along with a silly faith, full of random allegations and baseless conclusions.
What fatuous nonsense!
Try not to be such a fool. Next time do the research BEFORE commenting.
LGM
LGM
@ LGM: I don't need to read the emails.
Any hint of conspiracy would have been highlighted by now.
"Any hint of conspiracy would have been highlighted by now"
Well, it has been. You need to get around more Monsieur.
John Hinderaker, at Powerline:
http://www.powerlineblog.com/
Even the most skeptical people in the media had to pause a little before rushing to print to ensure the leaks were not bogus.
Such hoaxes have been perpetrated before by the alarmists and then they scream at the incompetence of those taken it.
However, the file has now been verified and the mainstream media will gradually get dragged into it because it is a major scandal and scandals sell better than even alarmism.
Monsieur is not one to let the facts get in the way og his belifs is he?
His attitude defines the meaning of ignorant.
@Lucy: "Monsieur is not one to let the facts get in the way og his belifs is he?"
I belif the expression is "to let the facts get in the way of a good story".
Yes Lucy,
Monsieur has been politly asked to produce evidence several times now, but he has yet to front up with anything of the sort.
Sean.
@ Sean: When I referred to an "evil socialist conspiracy to concoct AGW",
I was paraphrasing a general theme alluded to by many Global Warming denialists.
Instead of Global Warming being detected and researched by a large community of dedicated and hard-working professional scientists, Global Warming is described as being cooked up by a bunch of radicals bent on instigating a world government.
In way of reference, I offer you this...
"Last week, Gordon Brown and his chief economist both said global warming was the worst "market failure" ever. That loaded soundbite suggests that the "climate-change" scare is less about saving the planet than, in Jacques Chirac's chilling phrase, "creating world government". This week and next, I'll reveal how politicians, scientists and bureaucrats contrived a threat of Biblical floods, droughts, plagues, and extinctions worthier of St John the Divine than of science."
Climate chaos? Don't believe it
By Christopher Monckton, Sunday Telegraph
Published: 12:01AM GMT 05 Nov 2006.
Regardless of Monsieur's views on AGW he is correct about the One Wold Govt conspiracy nutbars who chose this platform to advance their anti-semitic agenda. There is no proof that AGW was/is a conspiracy.
For those who are unaware, the money behind the One World Govt Plot is supposed to be fronted by George Soros (Jewish international financier) and the mastermind is Saul Alinsky (Jewish radical.) Also Obama is in the pay of the Rothschild's (Jewish financiers).
I don't believe for one second that the nutbars on the Far Right understand the implications of the above. I think they are too dumb.
Ruth,
You are far to generous. Earier in this thread Monsieur accused PC of being such a "nutter". He has yet to provide a single example of PC's nutter credentials.
Further, Lord M seems to have a good case that those on the left use AGW for their political ends (as the right use terrorism). But it seems far fetched to imply that he is suggesting that lefties invented AGW. That is what concpiricay means. Anything shoprt of that is not suggesting conspiracy.
For fear of reapeating myself, Monsieur, do you have any actual evidence of the claims you are making?
Sean.
The environmental movement in general and the AGW alarmism does not fit into the general model of conspiracy.
It much more like a Dawkins meme, or simply a religious or ideological belief which proves attractive to many millions of people.
It is not customary to describe the early Christians as members of a conspiracy and they were not. They just happened to be presenting a belief system much of the world was waiting for - just as later on much of the world was waiting for the ideas of Adam Smith.
Sean, those on the left and right have used this for their own ends. Including those on the right who think they are attacking the left when in fact they are empowering them. Sometimes the Libz position has been a bit like a creationist one.
Personally I have always been somewhat sympathetic to the idea of AGW. But I have always said that if carbon emissions are a problem then you decrease carbon emissions - you certainly don't open dealing rooms.
I'm pleased it seems to be unravelling before too much money is lost.
@ Sean: I hope this reference will suffice.
Great Is Truth, and Mighty Above All Things
Keynote address to the 2009 International Conference on Climate Change Environment
By Lord Christopher, 03/12/2009
Newton Gate
http://carbonfixated.com/newtongate-the-final-nail-in-the-coffin-of-renaissance-and-enlightenment-thinking/
Monsieur,
1) This does not address your claim that PC is suggesting conspiracy.
2) Lord M does not use the word conspiracy once in that link. Makes the claim that he is accusing concpiracy appear rather thin.
Sean.
@ Sean: You're becoming disingenuous.
You stated "Earier in this thread Monsieur accused PC of being such a "nutter".
Could you please provide a full reference for the comment where I did so?
Sean and Monsieur,
Not really interested in what you are discussing here, it seems to me that you are ignoring the big issue. In this post (and from these emails - well the ones I have managed to read), we see incontrovertible evidence of the perversion of the scientific method by researchers whose theories are being used to reduce the living standards of all of us - including the world's poorest people.
I am quite frankly stunned by what I am reading.
Thanks for the links PC
Julian
Wow. Stick a fork in it.
At least Scoop has covered it. Shame on the other media in NZ though - the biggest story of the week and it gets nary a mention in the MSM. You know which side they're on.
"Not Evil Just Wrong" Ummm... it's looking evil now.
Total straw man to say that this doesn't prove conspiracy. So-called climate change is just an idea that appeals to control freaks and man-haters of all stripes. There's no conspiracy in that.
I can't be bothered discusing ecology with the vast majority of people any more as there is no rational conversation to be had with someone who is holding a gun at you.
This latest revelation merely confirms what I've always thought must be true - that the climate change movement is propagated by fraudsters and thugs.
There are legitimate reasons for scientists to not wish to publish raw data. Aside from the fact they are the ones that froze their asses off working some drill at McMurdo station, reducing the data to useful information might require *extensive* analysis, with tricky calibration methods and complex number crunching. The "raw data" could easily be misused by people who don't understand it.
A general description of the emails, from the Wall Street Journal is interesting:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125883405294859215.html?mod=googlenews_wsj#articleTabs%3Dcomments
The publicly posted material includes years of correspondence among leading climate researchers, most of whom participate in the preparation of climate-change reports for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the authoritative summaries of global climate science that influence policy makers around the world.
Okay, so we know these are some of the top gurus of the global warming movement.
A partial review of the emails shows that in many cases, climate scientists revealed that their own research wasn't always conclusive. In others, they discussed ways to paper over differences among themselves in order to present a "unified" view on climate change. On at least one occasion, climate scientists were asked to "beef up" conclusions about climate change and extreme weather events because environmental officials in one country were planning a "big public splash.
If this is accurate I think it shows a highly politicized organization as opposed to a purely scientific one.
to add more:
it's not uncommon to suggest reviewers, since after all you need people who will actually understand what is being discussed, and that means finding experts with credentials in that particular area. Does that taint the review process? Well, yes, a little, as the selected reviewers are likely to support conclusions that mesh with their own work. I don't know how you get around this problem, since non-expert reviewers won't be able to provide much valid criticism.
Alexander
Is it valid to withhold data that was paid for by other people; for example, by taxpayers?
Is it valid for scientists to hide the corruption and manipulation raw data?
Is it valid to restrict the distribution of raw data to buddies, bum chums, "peers", mates, fellow rorters, hiding outrageous "errors", incompetence and rorting?
Is it valid to pretend that ALL people, other than those elevated to the celestial glories of a guild of self-apointed "experts", are unfit to review (let alone evaluate) raw data and drect evidence?
LGM
@ Julian & Sam: Does "PC claims that a problem was caused by evil socialists" sound far-fetched to you?
(I rest my case)
Because of those emails, everyone has a behind-the-scenes insight into how those scientists worked. And to understand what they were grappling with, especially when it came to presenting a summary of findings, to an unscientific audience who would have to make decisions based on them.
Clarity and (when possible) the generalisation of opinions into a unified voice were essential in order to communicate the results and ramifications of their wider research.
It must also be apparent how difficult it was at times to reach agreement on the wording of such a report.
I think claiming that those scientists were complicit in misrepresenting the paleo-climate data is doing them a great disservice.
Righto. Now there's been a chance to review some of these emails, it is possible to make a few recommendations.
Firstly, these banal little fibbers should be immediately sacked. Then they should be charged with criminal fraud. Let's have the entire story exposed and thoroughly examined in public.
Next, this grotty matter reveals some of the major problems with nationalised science and government funded "research." It is imperative to get government out of science immediately. The risks of, and actual expression of, corruption and rent-seeking and glory-hunting and politicisation of "science" are far too great for present arrangements to be suffered to continue. Further the opportunity costs are too high and the achievement of genuine useful and productive results are too modest (where they occur at all).
Close these statist institutions or sell them off where possible. If they are not supported by the public at large then the resources should be reallocated to better use.
Do it soon, before the rortists slime their way out of the trouble they are in and commit to yet more mischief.
LGM
Isn't the total lack of MSM coverage (as pointed out by PC in update 7) utterly sickening ?
Monsieur
You have not made a case. What you've done is presented arbitrary assertion, after which you admited you hadn't examined the actual material you were commenting upon. That is, you had not read the material that you relied upon to make your claim. Incredible!
You've destroyed whatever credibility you may have once had.
There is a saying, "The truth will make you free." You'd do well to acquaint yourself with what truth is and then consider the significance of the saying.
LGM
@ LGM: I finished reading through the emails last night.
I recommend everyone does look at them
for the reasons that I outlined in my previous comment.
@Ruth
What I think we are seeing here is the far left seeing AGW as a means of increasing the power of govt and the crony capitalists seeing AGW as a way to to scam trillions of dollars into massive money trading accounts; an accidental alliance of mutual benefit for the power hungry.
As for the NZ MSM they are more likely to me too fixated with the fact a kiwi has just won aussie idle.....
@Sean F.: The phenomenon you describe is a common one.
Bruce Yandle famously described it as a mutually beneficial alliance of "bootleggers and baptists."
It would be a stretch to automatically assume the skeptic are any more moral or ethical in their pursuit of their own agendas.
As someone who believes in climate change I don't find anything damning in the info.
It is a couple of cherry picked emails out of thousands and represent peoples thoughts and opinions in private which are usually les considered and can change by the minute.
The recent data on NZ Glaciers shows they are continuing to shrink. That slams any skeptic arguments right there.
Barry
You write, "As someone who believes in climate change I don't find anything damning in the info."
Well, you're certainly not one to let the reality of the situation get in the way of prejudicial belief! The trouble for you is that it doesn't matter a whit what YOU believe. What counts is what HAS occurred here- the activities these conmen & fellow believers have been caught undertaking.
Tricking up results, manipulating measurement, corrupting data and the like is nothing other than fibbing. The most junior of under-graduates are taught not to engage in such silliness. One would expect that full-time, professional, career academics and "scientists" would know not to engage in it.
Professional word-smithing & employing elegant sounding euphemism does nothing other than attempt to obscure the truth. That too is dishonest. None of it validates the behaviour of these tainted little crooks.
You've also written: "The recent data on NZ Glaciers shows they are continuing to shrink. That slams any skeptic arguments right there."
No, moron, it does nothing of the sort. To even start an attempt to make that argument you'd need to demonstrate complete understanding of the mechanism causing changes in the glaciers to occur. In other words you'd need to know the WHY. And that you do not have the faintest clue about.
LGM
@Barry "The recent data on NZ Glaciers shows they are continuing to shrink. That slams any skeptic arguments right there."
In the S.I - the East Coast glaciers have been decreasing for centuries - a process that has been in motion since well before the industrial revolution.
On the West Coast, Franz Josef and Fox grow and shrink dramatically (due to steep slope) depending on the amount of snow accumulation received about 5-7 years earlier - which has little to do with temperature.
Generally, temperate glaciers are a poor measure of temperature trends because of the lag time in accumulation rates, changes in snowfall patterns, terminal lakes which speed up melting and other factors such as debris accumulation on top of the ice insulating the glacier.
You need a new measure to damn the skeptics.
As part of an overall trend (which is what climate change is) glaciers world wide have been on a steady decline/shrik phase since the industrial revolution.
"The [climate change] denialists and the general public see the loss of ice [in glaciers] due to precipitation as distinctly different than the loss of ice due to temperature," Hardy said. "They don't understand that temperature and precipitation changes are one and the same in terms of changes on the global scale of climate."
retreating glaciers on a wide scale over a prolonged period does not take a rocket scientist to get to the cause - a general rise in temperatures.
So people who claim "no evidence for warming" are deluding themselves.
@Barry "glaciers world wide have been on a steady decline/shrik phase since the industrial revolution."
So if glaciers have been melting since the mini-ice age in the 17th century (which I'm not disputing) and human CO2 emissions did not really get going until the second half of the 20th century, where exactly is the human cause to the glacial melting?
With a couple of exceptions glaciers have largely been retreating since the height of the last ice age 20,000 years ago. This process started well before humans started driving SUV's. This retreat has been particularly pronounced in the east coast glaciers of the South Island. So when looking for evidence of anthropogenic global warming you need to look beyond temperate glaciers as your ultimate proof.
Which brings us full circle, back to Barry's baseless wee faith. He believes! That aint a proper way to do science, let alone a decent way to live.
LGM
So I take it you have no beliefs then LGM?
Tim
I employ the term "belief" in the sense that it means confidence in the existence of an entity/entities, their attributes and their interactions, in the absence of evidence of reality sufficient to support a rigorous proof, and/or in the absence of a logical, consistent, non-contradictory attempt to approach such a proof.
In that context I answer your question. No, I don't believe.
In dealing with situations such as the AGW theory the best policy is to understand that one either has specific knowledge of reality sufficient to know what is going on, or one has some knowledge but it is insufficient to know what is occuring, or one does not know. In the third category it is always possible to propose ideas, make supposition, have hunches, search for solutions to problems and seek to win knowldege, but it is never valid to substitute proposition, supposition, proposal etc. for knowledge. It is never valid to make that substitution and then claim that one has in fact gained possesion of knowledge.
LGM
The story has at last made it onto TVNZ news this morning! ABout time!
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