Tag: News

Responses to “Climategate”–the leaked e-mails from Britain’s University of East Anglia and its Climatic Research Unit — remind me of the line “Are your feet wet? Can you see the pyramids? That’s because you’re in denial.”Climate catastrophists like Al Gore and the UN’s Rajendra Pachauri are downplaying Climategate: it’s only a few intemperate scientists; there’s no real evidence of wrongdoing; now let’s persecute the whistleblower. In Calgary, the latest fellow trying to use the Monty Python “nothing to see here, move along” routine is Prof. David Mayne Reid, who penned a column last week denying the importance of Climategate.Unfortunately for Reid, old saws won’t work in the Internet age: Climategate has blazed across the Internet, blogosphere, and social networking sites. Even environmentalist and writer George Monbiot has recognized that the public’s perception of climate science will be damaged extensively, calling for one of the Climategate ringleaders to resign.What’s catastrophic about Climategate is that it reveals a science as broken as Michael Mann’s hockey stick, which despite Reid’s protestations, has been shown to be a misleading chart that erases a 400-year stretch of warm temperatures (called the Medieval Warm Period), and a more recent little ice-age that ended in the mid-1800s. No amount of hand-waving will restore the credibility of climate science while holding onto rubbish like that.Climategate reveals skulduggery the general public can understand: that a tightly-linked clique of scientists were behaving as crusaders. Their letters reveal they were working in what they repeatedly labelled a “cause” to promote a political agenda.That’s not science, that’s a crusade. When you cherry-pick, discard, nip, tuck, and tape disparate bits of data into the most alarming portrayal you can in the name of a “cause,” you’re not engaged in science, but in the production of propaganda. And this clique tried to subvert the peer-review process as well. They attempted to prevent others from getting into peer reviewed journals — thus letting them claim skeptic research wasn’t peer-reviewed — a convenient circular (and dishonest) way to discredit skeptics.Finally, people know that a fish rots from its head. The Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia was considered the top climate research community. It was the source of a vast swath of the information then that was funnelled into the supposedly “authoritative” reports of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.If scientific objectivity is corrupt at the top, there’s every reason to think that the rot spreads through the entire body. And evidence suggests it has. A Russian think-tank recently revealed the climate temperature record compiled by the Climatic Research Unit cherry-picked data from only 25 per cent of Russia’s climate monitoring sites, the sites closest to urban areas, biased by the urban heat island effect. The stations excluded data from 40 per cent of Russia’s total land mass, which is 12.5 per cent of all the Earth’s land mass.Reid’s indignation about Climategate is beyond ludicrous. “It is wrong,” intones Reid, “to castigate people for things said in private, and often taken out of context.” He equates the response to Climategate with a “lynch mob.” Funny, the professor seems to have highly selective indignation; he is apparently unaware of the unremitting attacks on people skeptical of climate science or policy by climate scientists and politicians.People skeptical of any aspect of climate change have long been called “deniers,” an odious linkage with Holocaust denial, and various luminaries have called for them to be drowned, jailed, and tried for crimes against humanity. One prominent columnist called skepticism treason against the very Earth itself.As for indignation about the release of private correspondence, where was Reid’s indignation when Greenpeace, looking for something to spin into an incriminating picture, stole skeptic Chris Horner’s trash? Where was his indignation a few years ago when scientist Steve Schroeder showed a routine letter of mine to another climate scientist (Andrew Dessler), who posted it to the Internet where it was spun into the scurrilous accusation that I was trying to bribe UN scientists? Reid’s indignation is the chutzpah of a man who kills his family then wants pity because he’s an orphan.The Climategate scandal, like others in biology and medicine erodes the credibility of both the scientists involved, and the institution of scientific research. And it should: it has become evident that there is a lot of rot going on in the body of science, and too little effort made to fix it.A start could be made. They should start by practicing the scientific method: release all data, and release all assumptions and methods used to process the data at the time of publication. Make it available to researchers (even lay researchers) who are outside the clique so the work can be checked. Had the researchers involved in Climategate done this from the beginning, instead of circling their wagons and refusing to allow outsiders to check their work, they would have taken less hectoring. As a bonus for them, Climategate would never have happened.Former IPCC reviewer Kenneth P. Green, has his doctorate in environmental sci ence and engi neering and is an Advisor to the Frontier Center for Public Policy, ( www.fcpp.org).Green is a Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.Source by Ken Green

Aside from ideologues, hydrocarbon haters, Gaia worshipers, profiteers and power-grabbing politicians, most of the sentient world is beginning to realize that the hysteria over global warming disasters is based on dubious to fraudulent temperature data, analyses, models, reports and peer reviews. Climate Research Unit emails, HARRY_READ_ME.txt computer memos, and blatant tampering with Australian, Russian, UK and US temperature data make the scandal impossible to ignore or explain away. They also helped ensure that Copenhagen descended into an expensive, carbon-emitting gabfest – and that China and India rejected any deal that would force them to curtail their energy generation, economic growth and poverty reduction programs. Senator Barbara Boxer is an exception. She is ignoring the obvious and doing her best to divert attention from the scandal, circle the alarmist wagons, cover up the fraud, obstruct justice – and ram through another legislative power grab. “This isn’t Climategate,” the California Democrat insists. “It’s email theft gate.” The problem isn’t the fraud; it’s that a hacker or whistleblower revealed the fraud. She needs to wake up and smell the cesspool. It’s not theft gate. It’s Taxpayer Robbery Gate. We, the taxpayers, We the people – paid for this bogus “research.” We paid billions of dollars for it – and providing the data, computer codes and analytical methods is a condition of the employment and research grants for these scientists. The work belongs to us. We own it. We the People, our elected representatives and our climate realist scientists have a right to examine this supposed evidence of planetary disaster, to ensure that it’s driven by science, and not ideology. That it’s complete, accurate – and honest. That it backs up the alarmist scientists’ call for draconian, life-altering restrictions on energy use. That the CRU cabal did not alter, lose, ignore, toss or destroy “inconvenient” data and evidence that might get in the way of their agendas and predetermined results. Not only were we stonewalled for years, while these UK and US scientists refused to divulge their data, computer codes and methodologies. Not only did the scientists who wrote these emails and did this phony research refuse to let taxpayers, other scientists, and even members of Congress and Parliament see their raw data and analyses. Not only did they prevent debate and replace peer review with a perverted system that allowed only a small network of like-minded colleagues to examine – and applaud – their work. They also excluded, denounced and vilified anyone who asked hard questions or challenged their actions. In short, they robbed us! They took our money, and defrauded us. Even worse, the Taxpayer Robbery Gate scientists are working hand-in-glove to pressure the United States, Great Britain and world into spending trillions of dollars fighting “catastrophic manmade climate change” … slashing our energy use, living standards and employment base … enacting unaccountable global government … redistributing wealth and technology … restricting our liberties and civil rights … and keeping millions of families deprived of energy and in permanent destitution. This is the same California Senator who berated an Air Force general for calling her Ma’am. Who treated scientist, physician and author Michael Crichton like a child molester, for daring to disagree with her on global warming and suggest that double-blind climate studies would guard against errors and fraud. Who displays an un-American intolerance for any witnesses who question her views. The Boxer-White House effort makes the Watergate cover-up and obstruction of justice look like a juvenile prank. It’s paving the way for cap-tax-and-trade laws that would nationalize the entire US economy – by the same divisive, dictatorial elements that are nationalizing our banking and healthcare systems. They understand, even if the general populace still does not, that by controlling carbon they will control our lives. Just imagine the Boxer, White House and media outcry and denunciations if these emails and fraudulent actions had involved oil companies and climate disaster “deniers.” But of course, if Boxer & Co. didn’t have double standards, they wouldn’t have any standards “We’re honest. We have nothing to hide,” the accused scientists keep saying. That’s wonderful. But then they need to back up their protestations with action. They need to come clean. Stop manipulating data and hiding documents and emails. Cooperate with investigators. Honor FOIA requests. Share data and computer codes. Stop attacking scientists who disagree with them. Make all climate studies, for and against manmade global warming disaster claims, subject to real peer review and open to public examination. They need to engage in full-blown public debates with climate change realists and skeptics. The profiteering scientists, their highly suspect work and the institutions that sponsor them need to be investigated – thoroughly, by an independent, incorruptible team of knowledgeable scientists, modelers, statisticians and law enforcement officials. If they are convicted, they need to be penalized for defrauding and robbing us. They deserve jail time, dismissal and permanent bans from any future federal grants to them, their research labs and their universities or government offices. The hacker or whistleblower should get a Congressional Medal of Freedom or Nobel Peace Prize – not a congressional investigation. At the very least, he has revealed how petty, shameful and corrupt the four-alarm climate “research” establishment is, and how the hypothesis of manmade climate chaos is a house of cards built on a foundation of sand. In so doing, he may have prevented further unjust enrichment of the perpetrators of this billion-dollar funding and science scam. This bogus science is behind every US, EU and UN proposal to restrict and control our energy, economy, living standards and fundamental liberties – in the name of preventing computer-conjured global warming disasters. By inaugurating Climategate, the whistleblower may have forestalled or prevented wars over increasingly scarce energy and resources caused by this phony science. We need to start over on the global warming science – with honest scientists who do everything in the open. Or just scrap the entire process, accept that climate change is mostly natural and cyclical, and adapt to it the same way our ancestors did, using the wealth and technology that hydrocarbon fuels have given us. _______________ Paul Driessen is senior policy adviser for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), which sponsors the All Pain No Gain education campaign and petition against job-killing global warming policies and the ClimateDepot website for the latest news and views on climate change. He is also a senior policy adviser to the Congress of Racial Equality and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power – Black Death.Source by Paul Driessen

The scandal that has rocked climate change science encompasses a 30 year time span and dozens of the world’s top climate scientists. A thorough analysis of all of the Climategate emails entailed an extraordinary amount of work to correlate the emails with the events that were happening at the time – until now. A new chart puts the entire event and the last 30 years of applicable climate science in an easy to use format. Created by Mohib Ebrahim, the new graphical timeline provides a complete picture of the events in the emails in an easy to read and use format. “ClimateGate: 30 years in the making” digests all of the pertinent emails, documents, historical events and graphs down to one large chart that can be viewed on screen or printed. The chart is hosted on the Australian website JoNova and will be updated regularly as new information is discovered and analyzed. It is an important document for anyone interested in the scandal and all of the events leading up to it. Follow the link below to download the chart.

• ClimateGate: 30 years in the making – Download chart in various formats
• Complete Climategate coverage from the Climate Change Examiner

Source by Tony Hake