The first of several British investigations into the e-mails leaked from one of the world's leading climate research centers has largely vindicated the scientists involved.
The House of Commons' Science and Technology Committee said they had seen no evidence to support charges that the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit or its director, Phil Jones, had tampered with data or perverted the peer review process to exaggerate the threat of global warming — two of the most serious criticisms levied against the climatologist and his colleagues.
. . .
The e-mails appeared to show scientists berating skeptics in sometimes intensely personal attacks, discussing ways to shield their data from public records laws, and discussing ways to keep skeptics' research out of peer-reviewed journals.
One that attracted particular media attention was Jones' reference to a "trick" that could be used to "hide the decline" of temperatures.
"Hide the decline" was not an attempt to conceal data but was scientific shorthand for discarding erroneous data, the committee concluded. Similarly, Jones intended "trick" to mean a neat way of handling evidence, rather than anything underhanded, the inquiry found.
Once we’ve gotten past the quote-mining and distortion, the worst that can be said about the CRU emails is that the scientists sometimes come across as rude or dismissive, and say things in the emails that really aren’t very nice. However, the personal email messages between senior academics in any field are frequently not very nice. We tend to be very blunt about what appears to us as ignorance, and intolerant of anything that wastes our time, or distracts us from our work. [Gregory House syndrome? -H] And when we think (rightly or wrongly) that the peer review process has let another crap paper through, we certainly don’t hold back in expressing our opinions to one another. Which is of course completely different to how we behave when we meet one another. Most scientists distinguish clearly between the intellectual cut and thrust (in which we’re sometimes very rude about one another’s ideas) and our social interactions (in which we all get together over a beer and bitch about the downsides of academic life). Occasionally, there’s someone who is unable to separate the two, and takes the intellectual jabs personally, but such people are rare enough in most scientific fields that the rest of us know exactly who they are, and try to avoid them at conferences.
. . .
Now, in climate science, all our conventions are being broken. Private email exchanges are being made public. People who have no scientific training and/or no prior exposure to the scientific culture are attempting to engage in a discourse with scientists, and neither side understands the other. People misquoting scientists, and trying to trip them up with loaded questions. And, occasionally, resorting to death threatst. Outside of the scientific community, most people just don’t understand how science works, and so don’t know how to make sense of what’s going on.
And scientists don’t really know how to engage with these strange outsiders. Scientists normally only interact with other scientists. We live rather sheltered lives; they don’t call it the ivory tower for nothing. When scientists are attacked for political reasons, we mistake it for an intellectual discussion over brandy in the senior common room. Scientists have no training for political battles, and so our responses often look rude or dismissive to outsiders. Which in turn gets interpreted as unprofessional behaviour by those who don’t understand how scientists talk. And unlike commercial organisations and politicians, universities don’t engage professional PR firms to make us look good, and we academics would be horrified if they did: horrified at the expense, and horrified by the idea that our research might need to be communicated on anything other than its scientific merits.
. . .
The bottom line is that scientists will always tend to be rude to ignorant and lazy people, because we expect to see in one another a driving desire to master complex ideas and to work damn hard at it. Unfortunately the outside world (and many journalists) interpret that rudeness as unprofessional conduct. And because they don’t see it every day (like we do!) they’re horrified.
Some people have suggested that scientists need to wise up, and learn how to present themselves better on the public stage. Indeed, the Guardian published an editorial calling for the emergence of new leaders from the scientific community who can explain the science. This is naive and irresponsible. It completely ignores the nature of the current wave of attacks on scientists, and what motivates them. No scientist can be an effective communicator in a world where those with vested interests will do everything they can to destroy his or her reputation. The scientific community doesn’t have the resources to defend itself in this situation, and quite frankly it shouldn’t have to. What we really need is for newspaper editors, politicians, and business leaders to start acting responsibly, make the effort to understand what the science is saying, make the effort to understand what really driving these swiftboat-style attacks on scientists, and then shift the discourse from endless dissection of scientists’ emails onto useful, substantive discussions of the policy choices we’re faced with.
Heretic
Posts : 3520
Subject: Re: Climategate: University of East Anglia U-turn in climate change row 4/1/2010, 8:45 am
The actual report is here. It's worth checking out.
Heretic
Posts : 3520
Subject: Re: Climategate: University of East Anglia U-turn in climate change row 4/14/2010, 12:08 pm
UEA welcomes the Report by the Lord Oxburgh’s Independent Panel, both in respect of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) being cleared of any scientific impropriety and dishonesty, and the suggestions made for improvement in some other areas.
The Oxburgh findings are the result of the latest scrutiny of CRU’s research. The first was the original peer review which led to publication in some of the world’s leading international science journals; the second was the Inquiry by the Parliamentary Science and Technology Committee. Taken together, these must represent one of the most searching examinations of any body of scientific research. The veracity of CRU’s research remains intact after this examination.
We saw no evidence of any deliberate scientific malpractice in any of the work of the Climatic Research Unit and had it been there we believe that it is likely that we would have detected it. Rather we found a small group of dedicated if slightly disorganised researchers who were ill-prepared for being the focus of public attention. As with many small research groups their internal procedures were rather informal.
There's not even any skeptics around to comment anymore, is there?
Artie60438
Posts : 9728
Subject: Re: Climategate: University of East Anglia U-turn in climate change row 4/14/2010, 5:21 pm
Heretic wrote:
There's not even any skeptics around to comment anymore, is there?
Nope,they've taken their ball and gone home,whining all the way about how they were mistreated here by repeatedly being asked to back up their claims with facts.
UrRight
Posts : 3993
Subject: Re: Climategate: University of East Anglia U-turn in climate change row 4/14/2010, 5:57 pm
We'll get "NUKED: before the rest of the glaciers melt.
Cracks me up how people worry about climate change rather than the soldiers fighting for oil thAT AFFECTS THE CLIMATE; THE OIL REFINERIES IN iNDIANA...DROVE PAST THEM THE OTHER WEEK...NO WONDER MY MOM AND DAD's FRIENDS got cancer early in age in those areas.
We spew out more environmental waste that can't solve anything but a pin-hole in the sky. Factor in all of China, Iran, every country...all we have to look for is whether we ger "NUKED" by Iran for all the good deeds we did for the world. All we did was enable them and make us a crippled nation.
One nation can't do it all alone; it takes the whole world. Being we are a divided nation and world, just pray you survive the nuclear weapon war. All Obama did was draw more attention to his "power" and zap us out in no time. They do not like our leader. He doesn't even allow the press in on one of the most important meetings....what's he gotta hide? The transparency lie.
We're dying under our own pollution; who ya gonna blame? Take a ride by Gary's Steel Mills and tell me if that isn't in your water or in your ground...has to be...especially the stacks that are rotted iron steel mills deteriorated to the bone.
We're a half-azzed nation not tearing that un-used crap down, and revitalizing the lakefront..but long ago I was exposed to tons of dead fish in my 20s going to the Dunes. Stunk so bad, we never went back after high school. All of us at Thornridge can remember the dead fish piled up along the beach front. That was in the early 70s. (Ask Richardr Roeper, we knew each other and grew up in Dolton, same grades, same schools....). Everyone I know that lived near the steel mills or in Hegewish, died of cancer at an early age. I was told Hegewish had the highest rate of cancer....I could smell the air at night, a beautiful night...and had to shut the windows and turn on the A/C.
Pigeons starting shitting and squalling around the bottom basement porch, perched above on the roof out of the blue after living there from 98 to 2004. Never happened until 2004. Thank God I moved out. What I'm saying is, Chicago's Hegewisch neighborhood, EC and etc., is polluted and I don't think it's any different in Hammond..when I go to Michigan or go to Manhattan, IL, I smell nothing but fresh air and actually can't count the stars in the sky at night. Thesky is swarmed with twinkled stars. Here: no stars.
Last edited by UrRight on 4/14/2010, 6:03 pm; edited 1 time in total (Reason for editing : I type too fast for this flucker buffer)
Heretic
Posts : 3520
Subject: Re: Climategate: University of East Anglia U-turn in climate change row 4/14/2010, 10:11 pm
UrRight wrote:
Cracks me up how people worry about climate change rather than the soldiers fighting for oil thAT AFFECTS THE CLIMATE...
Rather than? No, as my history spanning three forums shows, I worry about it all. But seeing how this particular thread is about the "Climategate" nonsense...
Heretic
Posts : 3520
Subject: Re: Climategate: University of East Anglia U-turn in climate change row 6/24/2010, 10:19 am
I'd say that's a wrap, but logic, reason, and evidence don't seem to have an effect on "skeptics".
Heretic
Posts : 3520
Subject: Re: Climategate: University of East Anglia U-turn in climate change row 6/25/2010, 11:30 pm
A lie can get halfway around the world while the truth is still putting its boots on, as Mark Twain said (or “before the truth gets a chance to put its pants on,” in Winston Churchill’s version), and nowhere has that been more true than in "climategate." In that highly orchestrated, manufactured scandal, e-mails hacked from computers at the University of East Anglia’s climate-research group were spread around the Web by activists who deny that human activity is altering the world’s climate in a dangerous way, and spun so as to suggest that the scientists had been lying, cheating, and generally cooking the books.
But not only did British investigators clear the East Anglia scientist at the center of it all, Phil Jones, of scientific impropriety and dishonesty in April, an investigation at Penn State cleared PSU climatologist Michael Mann of “falsifying or suppressing data, intending to delete or conceal e-mails and information, and misusing privileged or confidential information” in February. In perhaps the biggest backpedaling, The Sunday Times of London, which led the media pack in charging that IPCC reports were full of egregious (and probably intentional) errors, retracted its central claim—namely, that the IPCC statement that up to 40 percent of the Amazonian rainforest could be vulnerable to climate change was “unsubstantiated.” The Times also admitted that it had totally twisted the remarks of one forest expert to make it sound as if he agreed that the IPCC had screwed up, when he said no such thing.
Still no comment at all, BWG? You repeatedly mention the "in it for the gold" conspiracy (though never with any proof) but never decry the profiteers of demonstrably false scandals and disinformation such as this.
Why is that? Why do you rally behind the same individuals and organizations that were behind the "tobacco ain't bad for you" disinformation campaigns from decades ago, and in many cases, use the exact same arguments for your "skepticism" of AGW that they used for their "skepticism" of the dangers of smoking?
Heretic
Posts : 3520
Subject: Re: Climategate: University of East Anglia U-turn in climate change row 7/13/2010, 11:50 am
Unsurprisingly to those with a functioning brain, yet another independent review vindicated those involved in the phony Climategate scandal:
Quote :
On the specific allegations made against the behaviour of CRU scientists, we find that their rigour and honesty as scientists are not in doubt. ... we did not find any evidence of behaviour that might undermine the conclusions of the IPCC assessments. ... But we do find that there has been a consistent pattern of failing to display the proper degree of openness
On the allegation of withholding temperature data, we find that CRU was not in a position to withhold access to such data or tamper with it. ... On the allegation of biased station selection and analysis, we find no evidence of bias. ... We do not find that the way that data derived from tree rings is described and presented in IPCC AR4 and shown in its Figure 6.10 is misleading. ... On the allegations that there was subversion of the peer review or editorial process we find no evidence to substantiate this ... On the allegations that in two specific cases there had been a misuse by CRU scientists of the IPCC process, in presenting AR4 to the public and policy makers, we find that the allegations cannot be upheld
Fail, fail, fail, fail, fail... and fail some more. What is this... the third, fourth, fifth investigation that failed to find any conspiracy or deceit? How embarrassing. Or it should be embarrassing, but the "skeptics" that championed this as the End of Global Warming and Al Gore seem unable to show the least bit of humility. Never underestimate the power of denial. This whole fiasco was such an epic failure on their part that I wonder if it wasn't done on purpose by someone at the CRU to demonstrate that AGW "skeptics" are anything but (similar to that entirely fabricated, demonstrably false, and yet hilariously published study in a "skeptic" journal a few years back). "Wot? Massive conspiracy?! No proof?? Truth!! TRUTH!111!!! ALL LIES FOR MONIES!!!11" And it would have worked brilliantly if not for the spectacular failure of the press.
So close. So, so close...
Heretic
Posts : 3520
Subject: Re: Climategate: University of East Anglia U-turn in climate change row 12/2/2010, 12:14 pm
A year ago today, an unidentified hacker published a zipped folder in several locations online. In this folder were approximately one thousand emails and three thousand files which had been stolen from the backup server of the Climatic Research Unit in the UK, a top centre for global temperature analysis and climate change studies. As links to the folder were passed around on blogs and online communities, a small group of people sorted through the emails, picking out a handful of phrases that could be seen as controversial, and developing a narrative which they pushed to the media with all their combined strength. “A lot is happening behind the scenes,” one blog administrator wrote. “It is not being ignored. Much is being coordinated among major players and the media. Thank you very much. You will notice the beginnings of activity on other sites now. Here soon to follow.”
. . .
These serious and potentially damaging allegations, which, upon closer examination, are nothing more than grasping at straws, were not carefully examined and evaluated by journalists – they were repeated. Early media reports bordered on the hysterical. With headlines such as “The final nail in the coffin of anthropogenic global warming” and “The worst scientific scandal of our generation“, libelous claims and wild extrapolations were published mere days after the emails were distributed. How could journalists have possibly had time to carefully examine the contents of one thousand emails? It seems much more likely that they took the short-cut of repeating the narrative of the deniers without assessing its accuracy.
Even if, for the sake of argument, all science conducted by the CRU was fraudulent, our understanding of global warming would not change. The CRU runs a global temperature dataset, but so do at least six other universities and government agencies around the world, and their independent conclusions are virtually identical. The evidence for human-caused climate change is not a house of cards that will collapse as soon as one piece is taken away. It’s more like a mountain: scrape a couple of pebbles off the top, but the mountain is still there. For respected newspapers and media outlets to ignore the many independent lines of evidence for this phenomenon in favour of a more interesting and controversial story was blatantly irresponsible, and almost no retractions or apologies have been published since.
The worldwide media attention to this so-called scandal had a profound personal impact on the scientists involved. Many of them received death threats and hate mail for weeks on end. Dr. Phil Jones, the director of CRU, was nearly driven to suicide. Another scientist, who wishes to remain anonymous, had a dead animal dumped on his doorstep and now travels with bodyguards. Perhaps the most wide-reaching impact of the issue was the realization that private correspondence was no longer a safe environment. This fear only intensified when the top climate modelling centre in Canada was broken into, in an obvious attempt to find more material that could be used to smear the reputations of climate scientists. For an occupation that relies heavily on email for cross-national collaboration on datasets and studies, the pressure to write in a way that cannot be taken out of context – a near-impossible task – amounts to a stifling of science.
Before long, the investigations into the contents of the stolen emails were completed, and one by one, they came back clear. Six independent investigations reached basically the same conclusion: despite some reasonable concerns about data archival and sharing at CRU, the scientists had shown integrity and honesty. No science had been falsified, manipulated, exaggerated, or fudged. Despite all the media hullabaloo, “climategate” hadn’t actually changed anything.
Sadly, by the time the investigations were complete, the media hullabaloo had died down to a trickle. Climategate was old news, and although most newspapers published stories on the exonerations, they were generally brief, buried deep in the paper, and filled with quotes from PR spokespeople that insisted the investigations were “whitewashed”. In fact, Scott Mandia, a meteorology professor, found that media outlets devoted five to eleven times more stories to the accusations against the scientists than they devoted to the resulting exonerations of the scientists.
The media, of course, was a willing participant in this fiasco. It was demonstrably false from the beginning, and any retarded denier that went on TV with this nonsense should have had his ass ground up and fed back to him by a journalist actually doing his job.
So are dwindling sales a response to falling industry standards in journalism, or are the falling industry standards a response to dwindling sales? I wonder.
Scorpion
Posts : 2141
Subject: Re: Climategate: University of East Anglia U-turn in climate change row 12/7/2010, 10:40 am
Yeah. Well it sure doesn't look like things are going to get better....
Instead of legislation aimed at reducing the emissions of greenhouse gases in the United States, some leaders of the incoming GOP majority have called for McCarthy-style hearings going after leading climate change scientists, seeking to prove that the scientific findings that have been peer-reviewed and widely accepted were in fact manipulated to deceive the public. A centerpiece of such an investigation would be the hacked emails that became the debunked scandal called "Climategate" on the right.
Isn't that special? We not only will have two more years of inaction, but also get to watch a witch hunt against the scientific community.
Heretic
Posts : 3520
Subject: Re: Climategate: University of East Anglia U-turn in climate change row 12/7/2010, 6:02 pm
Yeah, I keep hearing that. And China's laughing their asses off all the way to the bank. This story clearly describes the economic impact of our scientific denial.
I really think this lies solely at the feet of the GOP and their ridiculous kowtowing to the retarded creationists and climate deniers in their ranks. I almost wonder if a hearing would help... Clean house like they did with the morons in the Dover trial. Monckton vs. the Pentagon officials who've been dealing with the effects of climate change for the better part of a decade. Steve Milloy vs. members of the JASON defense advisory group. Thanks to deniers like BWG, we know Climategate is a completely fabricated controversy... The deniers would be forced to pick a narrative first. They'd have to decide first if it is happening (therefore excluding the Climategate "scandal") before they could trot out their explanation. Denying it's happening or trotting out a who's who list of conspiracy theorists would ruin them. It's volcanoes, or the sun, or water vapor, or aliens, or Al Gore's beard, etc. Yes; just as embarrassing as Dover.
Scorpion
Posts : 2141
Subject: Re: Climategate: University of East Anglia U-turn in climate change row 12/9/2010, 10:37 am
Heretic wrote:
Yeah, I keep hearing that. And China's laughing their asses off all the way to the bank. This story clearly describes the economic impact of our scientific denial.
Man, that is one scary frickin' article.
Heretic wrote:
I really think this lies solely at the feet of the GOP and their ridiculous kowtowing to the retarded creationists and climate deniers in their ranks. I almost wonder if a hearing would help... Clean house like they did with the morons in the Dover trial. Monckton vs. the Pentagon officials who've been dealing with the effects of climate change for the better part of a decade. Steve Milloy vs. members of the JASON defense advisory group. Thanks to deniers like BWG, we know Climategate is a completely fabricated controversy... The deniers would be forced to pick a narrative first.
Oh, they already have a "narrative." All they need to do is convince the American people that it's all part of the plan for a "New World Order." I certainly don't see any reason to believe that a witch hunt by the House Republicans is going to evolve into a "Dover trial," with actual facts presented. It will most likely just be another opportunity to sow more doubt among the American public.
Heretic
Posts : 3520
Subject: Re: Climategate: University of East Anglia U-turn in climate change row 12/9/2010, 12:23 pm
Quote :
I certainly don't see any reason to believe that a witch hunt by the House Republicans is going to evolve into a "Dover trial," with actual facts presented.
Such hearings don't have such rigorous rules of evidence as an actual courtroom, do they? It would end being just another PR campaign for deniers. But a man can dream...
Here's to hoping someone finally follows up on their threat to sue Al Gore.
Heretic
Posts : 3520
Subject: Re: Climategate: University of East Anglia U-turn in climate change row 12/9/2010, 12:38 pm
Scorpion wrote:
Oh, they already have a "narrative."
But do they? Arclight, Happy, BWG (depending on the day of the week), all those partisan hacks from the old board bought the Climategate narrative: "it's not happening at all; government conspiracy", a situation untenable to anyone with eyeballs and a brain (as even BWG pointed out before realizing its contradictory significance). That's a different narrative that "it is happening; it just ain't CO2."
Though maybe such a difference won't matter, since such a hearing would be far more informal and it's all just about anti-regulation anyway.
Christ, I hate politics...
Scorpion
Posts : 2141
Subject: Re: Climategate: University of East Anglia U-turn in climate change row 12/9/2010, 8:03 pm
Heretic wrote:
Christ, I hate politics...
When it comes to this issue, so do I.
We've probably run out of time to meaningfully mitigate the impacts of the damage that the steadily increasing climactic changes are going to bring. Hell, I fully expect a massive die off of the human race before it's over. I suppose that it's one way to address the unsustainable population growth that's occurring. But it's not going to be pretty, and it's a frickin' shame that an "advanced civilization" such as ours is seemingly unable to take action to avert a global disaster.
Apparently, we're no better than the natives of Easter Island. Honestly, this whole situation is downright pathetic.
Heretic
Posts : 3520
Subject: Re: Climategate: University of East Anglia U-turn in climate change row 2/28/2011, 10:04 am
A Republican-led federal probe of climate scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found no evidence that they manipulated data, after leaked e-mails in 2009 sparked the "climategate" controversy.
The investigation was conducted by the inspector general of the Commerce Department. It reviewed the 1,073 leaked messages, particularly the 289 that were exchanged with NOAA scientists, and interviewed NOAA chief Jane Lubchenco and her staff about them.
"We did not find any evidence that NOAA inappropriately manipulated data," the inspector general concluded in a recent report. It also cleared Lucbhenco for testifying before Congress that the e-mails did not weaken the science of climate change.
The probe was requested by Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, the top Republican on the environment committee, who has called global warming "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people."
:rolfcry:
So... can we finally point and laugh at the idiots that believed this fiasco?
Heretic
Posts : 3520
Subject: Re: Climategate: University of East Anglia U-turn in climate change row 11/23/2011, 1:48 pm
As if the first go 'round wasn't embarrassing enough. Apparently there's been another round of released emails from the hacking incident two years ago, released in time to attempt to seed doubt into the next climate conference.
Note: this isn't new information. It's still stuff that is at least two years old, and that's if it was recent when the hackers got a hold of it.
I can't imagine the amount of stupidity left to believe this kind of stuff, especially in light of the recent industry funded study demonstrating climate change to be a real and worrisome phenomenon, but facts never seem to matter to Republicans anymore.
So anyway, on with the show. I recommend reading the original article. There's quite a few links in it that I was just too lazy to reproduce here:
An ambulance pulls up behind you. You know it’s an ambulance because you can read AMBULANCE in your rear view mirror. But you can also read it when you look at the vehicle directly; because the human visual system has the ability to quickly correct complete inversions or left-right reversals of letters. In fact, a complete inversion is easier to read than letters that are rotated only partially.
This human ability to process complete inversions more quickly than just partial distortions, alas, lends itself to exploitation by ruthless propagandists who seek to create a chimerical world in which up is down, left is right, and good is smeared as evil.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in the netherworld of attacks on climate scientists.
Remember “climategate”? The illegal hack of personal emails released just before the Copenhagen climate conference in 2009 that some columnists pronounced to be the (approximately 132nd) “final nail in the coffin” of global warming?
Remember the “errors” in the IPCC’s 2007 report? “Amazongate”, “Himalayagate”, and so on?
What has happened to “climategate”?
What’s happened is this.
First, the UK Parliament’s Science and Technology Committee exonerated the scientist at the centre of the tempest, Professor Phil Jones, finding he has “no case to answer” and that his reputation “remains intact.”
Then Lord Oxburgh (former chairman of Shell-UK) and his panel likewise exonerated the researchers, finding their “work has been carried out with integrity, and that allegations of deliberate misrepresentation” are “not valid.”
Another enquiry, chaired by Sir Muir Russell, found the scientists’ “rigour and honesty” to be beyond doubt.
Two enquiries by his university also cleared Professor Michael Mann – who presented the first of now innumerable “hockey stick” graphs – of all allegations.
Ultimately the (conservative) UK Government concluded “the information contained in the illegally-disclosed emails does not provide any evidence to discredit … anthropogenic climate change.”
Not one, not two, but by now nine vindications.
This comes as no surprise to anyone with even a passing familiarity with the distinction between private chat and public actions.
And what has happened to the IPCC “Whatevergates”?
What’s happened is this.
First, the Sunday Times apologised and retracted its “Amazongate” story. There is no “Amazongate”; there is only the Amazon rainforest threatened by climate change.
Then the Dutch government accepted responsibility for erroneously informing the IPCC that 55% of the Netherlands are below sea level. In fact only 26% are at risk of flooding because they are below sea level, whereas the other 29% are, err, at risk of flooding from rivers.
And about a year after “climategate” broke, the BBC finally apologised to the University of East Anglia for its misleading coverage of the “climategate” pseudo-scandal.
All that’s left of the “Whatevergates”, therefore, is red-faced apologies and one indubitable IPCC error: the incorrect projection of the disappearance of Himalayan glaciers to 2035, as opposed to the more likely 2350. This error was drawn to the public’s attention by, wait for it, an IPCC author.
Can we now forget about “gate” in connection with “climate”?
No.
Because there are too many real climategates that must not escape attention.
First, there was another batch of private emails posted by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a “think” tank notorious even by American standards. Those emails — yes, a second hack — revealed the real climategate by being truthful, with one scientist stating: “Those who deny the biophysical facts of the world would deny … gravity” and “we’re not in a gentlepersons' debate, we’re in a street fight against … merciless enemies. Colleagues … are getting threatened with prosecution by … [US Senator James M.] Inhofe.”
That is the second real climategate: the McCarthyite attempts by Senator Inhofe to criminalise climate scientists — attempts to criminalise those who, 35 years ago, predicted the temperature rise by century’s end to within 1/10th of a degree.
This is no isolated incident: Virginia’s Attorney General, Ken Cuccinelli, has launched several frivolous lawsuits — despite losing an earlier one — against the University of Virginia in what the Washington Post called a “war on the freedom of academic inquiry"“. And Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman evoked Pastor Niemoeller’s cry against the erosion of humanity under the Nazis: “First, they came for the climate scientists…”.
The real climategate involves active censorship within NASA by Bush appointees, which the agency’s Inspector General later found to have “reduced, marginalized, or mischaracterized climate change science".
The real climategate involves Bush White House staff replacing assessments of the National Academy of Sciences with a discredited paper by two individuals with no expertise in climatology. This paper, funded by the American Petroleum Institute, was so flawed its appearance in a peer-reviewed journal led to the resignation in protest by three editors and the publisher’s unprecedented acknowledgement of mishandling.
Those are not merely historical episodes because the real climategate encompasses the ongoing complicity of some media organs.
In Canada, the real media climategate involves the ongoing list of defamatory articles by the “National Post.” The tabloid is finally being sued by Professor Andrew Weaver of the University of Victoria.
In Australia, the real media climategate involves the national daily newspaper, whose misrepresentations of science are legendary and, sadly ongoing.
Those real climategates are the tip of an iceberg of venality enveloping anti-science interests and their enablers.
And just a few hours ago, another illegal release of personal emails among scientists was dumped on to the world in the lead-up to the next climate conference in Durban. First Copenhagen, now Durban. When the science is so rock solid that it can no longer be reasonably doubted, all that is left is to steal private correspondence in a desperate attempt to disparage those who are trying to protect the world from the risks it is facing.
Joseph Welch famously brought down Joe McCarthy with a simple question: “Have you no sense of decency?”
This year has already witnessed multiple events that break climate records: the drought in East Africa, the worst drought in Texas' recorded history, and record breaking storms and floods in the US south. Those events, anticipated by climatologists decades ago, should remind us that those who persecute and harass scientists, or mendaciously misrepresent their actions and findings, have no sense of decency.
That is the real climategate.
chuckmo48
Posts : 289
Subject: Re: Climategate: University of East Anglia U-turn in climate change row 11/23/2011, 5:57 pm
They are all just sticking their heads in the sand...I just can't believe their thinking...Hey...but what do expect a lot of them voted for a repub candidate in the last primary that believes the Earth is just 2,000 years old!
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Subject: Re: Climategate: University of East Anglia U-turn in climate change row
Climategate: University of East Anglia U-turn in climate change row