Archive for the ‘News’ Category
Congressman Paul speaks on the floor
February 25th, 2010 | 
Author: Congressman Paul speaks on the floor about assassinations of Americans by their own government.
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Even the Criminals of Climategate Avoid Gore
Even the Criminals of Climategate Avoid Gore
By Dr. Tim Ball Wednesday, December 16, 2009
“It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them.”—Mark Twain.
Twain’s observation is precisely the issue with the Nobel Peace Prizes given to Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The IPCC are now completely discredited because the ‘scientists’ at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia controlled the data, the computer models and the press releases officially known as the Summary for Policymakers (SPM).
Their prizes were obtained for work deliberately falsified then used for policies that creates unnecessary hardship rather than peace. Equally disgraceful is how one prizewinner, Al Gore, distorted and falsified the distortions and falsifications of the other prizewinner, the IPCC.
Gore was already discredited, especially when his carbon footprint was found too big for his mouth. Other discredits include; the millions he made from his misdirection on carbon; failure to answer questions or participate in debate; character assassination of scientists who raised legitimate questions; the false claim that “the science is settled”, and failure to correct the major errors in his movie “An Inconvenient Truth”. Gore must have created a major dilemma for the IPCC and CRU.
A minor dilemma was the contradiction over projected sea level rise. The IPCC 2001 Report said, “Global mean sea level is projected to rise by 0.09 to 0.88 m between the years 1990 and 2100,”. The 2007 Report raised the lower projection to 0.18 m but significantly lowered the upper limit to 0.59 m. In his ridiculous movie, Gore predicted a 20 ft (6m) rise but gave no time frame. Recently he made the false statement that the Arctic ice cap is the size of the continental US. Wrong! That is the amount that melts and refreezes every year. Then he said it would be all gone in 5 to 10 years, but ice this year has already recovered what it lost in the last few years.
Now, in a more bizarre twist, we learn Gore’s claim about the Arctic ice came from another scientist, Dr. Wieslav Maslowski. The professor then claimed Gore misquoted him, but his prediction was published in a Danish journal.
The problem is they’re both wrong, but that is the pattern of the climate issue. Lies on lies on lies create the tangled web Sir Walter Scott predicted when you practice deception.
But Gore doesn’t stop. There are academics and scientists lining up to provide him with more false information. He incorrectly claims Antarctica and Greenland are melting. Maybe he got the Antarctic idea from the false research produced by some at CRU that Antarctica is warming.
And he is still at it with incredibly stupid comments. On the Conan O’Brien show of 11/12/09, he said the temperature in the mantle, the deep layer immediately below the crust, is several million degrees just two kilometers down. This is many times hotter than the Sun. It is truly frightening to think this man was one step away from the Presidency, no wonder Clinton didn’t support his presidential run.
The CRU gang had to know what Gore was presenting in his movie and speeches, yet I am unable to find any direct reference to him in their emails. When they occur it is in outsider emails. I am unaware of any public comments by CRU people about Gore’s work; it appears they studiously avoided him. You must be bad when the criminals avoid you.
Gore says the emails “don’t change established conclusions.” “These private exchanges between these scientists do not in any way cause any question about the scientific consensus.”
Well he got that completely wrong too but it’s not surprising because he misinterpreted their original work. Maybe he is relying on another academic source. Trevor Davis, Pro-Vice-Chancellor of Research at the University of East Anglia says, “There is nothing in the stolen material which indicates that peer-reviewed publications by CRU, and others, on the nature of global warming and related climate change are not of the highest-quality of scientific investigation and interpretation. CRU’s peer-reviewed publications are consistent with, and have contributed to, the overwhelming scientific consensus that the climate is being strongly influenced by human activity.”
What planet is this Davis on? Besides the clear evidence of criminality there is also the deliberate falsification of the science and perversion of the scientific publication and peer review process. His statement shows a complete lack of understanding of the email content and climate science. Like Watergate the problems of Climategate are compounded by the cover-up and nobody does it better than universities. Davis began with his condemnation of the leaks when first disclosed, but he had no problem with leaked emails he obtained about funding and provided to the CRU gang.
Of course, they were bringing in massive amounts of funding and that apparently bought Davis’s support. I watched funding create disturbing behavior and biases throughout academia.
No wonder the CRU gang ignored Gore. He took their false work and falsified it some more. Of course, they couldn’t denounce him because they might expose their own corruption. Together they achieved only one success by disproving the adage that there is honor among thieves.
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/18005
U.N. Climate Talks Deadlocked as Clashes Erupt Outside
U.N. Climate Talks Deadlocked as Clashes Erupt Outside
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
COPENHAGEN — Clashes both diplomatic and violent punctuated the U.N. climate conference in Copenhagen on Wednesday, as major disputes threatened to derail plans for world leaders to sign an agreement that continues to elude negotiators.
While baton-wielding police outside battled protestors in the streets, a series of setbacks and continued roadblocks in negotiations left some of the meeting’s most important nations saying the conference was in trouble.
“The process is not transparent,” complained a high-ranking official with the Chinese delegation, one of the conference’s most important players. “We are opposed to the proceeding.”
The Chinese were referring to the text of a new draft document that was reportedly being circulated by the Danish delegation, which is host to the conference. But there was confusion even on that point, as some denied even the existence of the new text.
SLIDESHOW: Copenhagen Clashes.
With the talks clearly deadlocked, Connie Hedegaard, former Danish climate minister, resigned from the conference presidency to allow her boss, Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen to preside as world leaders from 115 nations streamed into Copenhagen. She was to continue overseeing the closed-door negotiations.
The Chinese and some other developing nations have objected to what they say is the inclusion of material in the new document that was not covered in negotiations among the many working groups of diplomats who have toiled for more than a week here in the hope of producing an agreement that world leaders could sign. According to the Chinese official, the new document changes seem to have “come from the sky.”
Meanwhile, developed countries like the United States and members of the European Union continue to press for verifiable concessions that developing countries say they are unable to make.
In yet another sign of trouble at the conference, the U.S. delegation canceled its daily press briefing, as while some conference attendees scrambled to put a positive face on developments.
“We have made real progress in the last few weeks leading up to Copenhagen and I think it is still possible to reach an agreement here that captures that progress and provides a foundation for achieving even greater progress over the coming years,” said Elliot Diringer, from the Pew Center on Global Climate Change.
Diringer called the latest diplomatic snafu “procedural posturing,” and conceded countries are “Not yet close” to any substantive agreement.
Other officials were more blunt.
“I regret to report we have been unable to reach agreement,” John Ashe of Antigua, chairman of one negotiating group, reported to conference Wednesday morning.
In those overnight talks, the American delegation apparently objected to a proposed text it felt might bind the United States prematurely to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, before the U.S. Congress acts on the required legislation. U.S. envoys insisted, for example, on replacing the word “shall” with the conditional “should.”
“A lot of things are in play,” said Fred Krupp of the U.S. Environmental Defense Fund. “This is the normal rhythm of international negotiations.”
Hundreds of protesters marched on the suburban Bella Center, where lines of Danish riot police waited in protective cordons. Some demonstrators said they wanted to take over the global conference and turn it into a “people’s assembly,” and as they approached police lines they were hit with pepper spray.
Police said 260 protesters were detained.
Television pictures showed a man being pushed from the roof of a police van and struck with a baton by an officer.
Tens of thousands rallied in the streets of the Danish capital last weekend, demonstrating growing public awareness of the worldwide danger of ever-rising temperatures. Scientists say global warming will lead to the extinction of plant and animal species, the flooding of coastal areas from rising seas, more extreme weather, more drought and diseases spreading more widely.
The Copenhagen talks so far have been marked by sharp disagreements between China and the United States, and between rich and poor nations. After nine days of largely unproductive talks, the lower-level delegates were handing off the disputes to environment ministers in the two-week conference’s critical second phase.
Organizers still hope break deadlocks that threaten to leave the meeting with no major accomplishments to be presented to President Barack Obama, Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao and more than 110 other world leaders arriving for Friday’s finale.
The lack of progress disheartened many, including small island states threatened by rising seas.
“We are extremely disappointed,” Ian Fry of the tiny Pacific nation of Tuvalu declared on the conference floor. “I have the feeling of dread we are on the Titanic and sinking fast. It’s time to launch the lifeboats.”
Others were far from abandoning ship. “Obviously there are things we are concerned about, but that is what we have to discuss,” Sergio Barbosa Serra, Brazil’s climate ambassador, told The Associated Press. “I would like to think we can get a deal, a good and fair deal.”
Governments had weeks ago given up hope of concluding a finished treaty at Copenhagen and aimed instead at establishing a framework, through decisions here, for negotiating more formal agreements next year.
Much of the uncertainty in the Copenhagen talks stems from how slowly the first U.S. legislation to cap carbon dioxide emissions is moving through Congress. Passage of a U.S. climate change bill is expected no earlier than next spring — and many other nations are unwilling to make their final commitments until the U.S. does.
The draft texts being debated behind closed doors in Bella Center hinge on four key issues, and negotiating views are generally divided between rich nations and developing ones.
EMISSIONS:
Industrialized nations are under pressure to cut back even more on emissions of carbon dioxide and other global-warming gases, while major developing countries such as China and India are being pressed to rein in the growth of their emissions. Environmentalists and poorer nations say richer countries should reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent or more by 2020, compared with 1990 levels, to avoid serious climate damage. The European Union has pledged 20, possibly 30 percent. The U.S. has offered only a 3-to-4 percent cut.
FINANCING:
Richer nations have discussed a “prompt-start” package of $10 billion a year for three years to help developing nations adjust to the impact of global warming and switch to clean energy. Developing nations want to see commitments by wealthy nations for years more of long-term climate aid financing. Expert studies say hundreds of billions of dollars will be needed each year, and the developing nations are trying to establish stable revenue sources, such as a global aviation tax.
MONITORING:
The U.S. and developed nations want some kind of international verification of emissions actions by developing nations. China, India and others are resisting what they consider potential intrusions on their sovereignty.
LEGAL FORM:
For Europe, Japan and other developed nations, new, deeper emissions cuts will take the form of an extension of quotas under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. The U.S., which rejected Kyoto and wants to remain outside it, likely to be included in a separate package that also deals with major developing countries. The level of legal obligation on each “track” may vary, particularly since the big developing countries — China and India — do not want to be bound by any international treaty to carry out their pledges of emission cuts. They prefer voluntary goals.
Fox News’ William LaJeunesse in Copenhagen, and The Associated Press, contributed to this report.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,580346,00.html
Inconvenient truth for Al Gore as his North Pole sums don’t add up
Inconvenient truth for Al Gore as his North Pole sums don’t add up
December 15, 2009
There are many kinds of truth. Al Gore was poleaxed by an inconvenient one yesterday.
The former US Vice-President, who became an unlikely figurehead for the green movement after narrating the Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth, became entangled in a new climate change “spin” row.
Mr Gore, speaking at the Copenhagen climate change summit, stated the latest research showed that the Arctic could be completely ice-free in five years.
In his speech, Mr Gore told the conference: “These figures are fresh. Some of the models suggest to Dr [Wieslav] Maslowski that there is a 75 per cent chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during the summer months, could be completely ice-free within five to seven years.”
However, the climatologist whose work Mr Gore was relying upon dropped the former Vice-President in the water with an icy blast.
“It’s unclear to me how this figure was arrived at,” Dr Maslowski said. “I would never try to estimate likelihood at anything as exact as this.”
Mr Gore’s office later admitted that the 75 per cent figure was one used by Dr Maslowksi as a “ballpark figure” several years ago in a conversation with Mr Gore.
The embarrassing error cast another shadow over the conference after the controversy over the hacked e-mails from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit, which appeared to suggest that scientists had manipulated data to strengthen their argument that human activities were causing global warming.
Mr Gore is not the only titan of the world stage finding Copenhagen to be a tricky deal.
World leaders — with Gordon Brown arriving tonight in the vanguard — are facing the humiliating prospect of having little of substance to sign on Friday, when they are supposed to be clinching an historic deal.
Meanwhile, five hours of negotiating time were lost yesterday when developing countries walked out in protest over the lack of progress on their demand for legally binding emissions targets from rich nations. The move underlined the distrust between rich and poor countries over the proposed legal framework for the deal.
Last night key elements of the proposed deal were unravelling. British officials said they were no longer confident that it would contain specific commitments from individual countries on payments to a global fund to help poor nations to adapt to climate change while the draft text on protecting rainforests has also been weakened.
Even the long-term target of ending net deforestation by 2030 has been placed in square brackets, meaning that the date could be deferred. An international monitoring system to identify illegal logging is now described in the text as optional, where before it was compulsory. Negotiators are also unable to agree on a date for a global peak in greenhouse emissions.
Perhaps Mr Gore had felt the need to gild the lily to buttress resolve. But his speech was roundly criticised by members of the climate science community. “This is an exaggeration that opens the science up to criticism from sceptics,” Professor Jim Overland, a leading oceanographer at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said.
“You really don’t need to exaggerate the changes in the Arctic.”
Others said that, even if quoted correctly, Dr Maslowski’s six-year projection for near-ice-free conditions is at the extreme end of the scale. Most climate scientists agree that a 20 to 30-year timescale is more likely for the near-disappearance of sea ice.
“Maslowski’s work is very well respected, but he’s a bit out on a limb,” said Professor Peter Wadhams, a specialist in ocean physics at the University of Cambridge.
Dr Maslowki, who works at the US Naval Postgraduate School in California, said that his latest results give a six-year projection for the melting of 80 per cent of the ice, but he said he expects some ice to remain beyond 2020.
He added: “I was very explicit that we were talking about near-ice-free conditions and not completely ice-free conditions in the northern ocean. I would never try to estimate likelihood at anything as exact as this,” he said. “It’s unclear to me how this figure was arrived at, based on the information I provided to Al Gore’s office.”
Richard Lindzen, a climate scientist at the Massachusets Institute of Technology who does not believe that global warming is largely caused by man, said: “He’s just extrapolated from 2007, when there was a big retreat, and got zero.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/copenhagen/article6956783.ece
Bloomington, Indiana Herald-Times Treats Law-Abiding Gun Owners like Registered Sex Offenders!
Bloomington, Indiana Herald-Times Treats Law-Abiding Gun Owners like Registered Sex Offenders!
Tuesday, December 01, 2009
On November 30, 2009, the Bloomington Herald-Times made the following announcement:
“This week, HeraldTimesOnline.com will launch its new gun permit database. You’ll be able to search gun permit records by county, city or town and street.”
The Herald-Times has begun receiving calls and emails, and their response is a defiant defense of their online gun permit database.
Anyone who visits the newspaper website will be able to search the number of permits on a given street or neighborhood. Although at this point the names and house numbers are not listed, the newspaper’s website treats law-abiding Indiana gun owners like sex offenders on a searchable database.
It is NRA’s firm belief that there is no public good served by the publishing or cataloguing private citizens’ gun ownership information, and that more harm is done by such an action. Law-abiding Hoosiers should not be subjected to the same treatment as sex offenders, and if the newspaper won’t listen to their constituents and customers, then NRA Members and Indiana gun owners should send a financial message by cancelling their subscriptions to the Bloomington Herald-Times.
Please contact the Bloomington Herald-Times to respectfully voice your displeasure at the irresponsible action the newspaper has made.
Scott Schurz, Sunday Hoosier Times/Editor-in-Chief
(812) 331-4250
Sschurz@heraldt.com
E. Mayer Maloney Jr., Publisher
(812) 331-4251
Mmaloney@heraldt.com
Bob Zaltsberg, Editor
(812) 331-4364
rzaltsberg@heraldt.com
New Red Scare over Green Lies
ClimateGate and the UN:
Believe it or not, the UN just whined that climategate is the Russian’s fault. It appears that the United Nation’s position is that the obvious cover-up of the false doctrine that is global warming perpetrated by global warming “scientists” is not the fault of the lying scientists, but that of the assumed “paid” Russian hacker that hacked the globaloney scientist’s emails and exposed the cover-up to the world. Convoluted reasoning, no?
Remember when you were a child and your Mother discovered through hearing about it from the neighbors that you were doing something you weren’t supposed to be doing? Remember how instead of taking responsibility for your actions you cried that it wasn’t right that someone narced on you? Well, that is the same sort of childish, facile reasoning that the UN has employed to explain away this climaegate scandal.
Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, a vice-chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), recently said that the hacked emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) were obtained and hyped by Russia in order to “destroy public confidence” in the “science” of man-made global warming… or is it now “climate change”? It’s hard to keep up with their constant name changing as they look for more sellable rhetoric.
Just like that kid that’s mad at getting caught but can’t see that he is at fault in the first place, the UN is now trying to get everyone to consider this as “hackergate” instead of climategate. Various UN folks are in essence telling us not to look “here,” but to instead look “over there.”
A few quotes:
“This is not ‘climategate’ it’s ‘hackergate’. Let’s not forget the word ‘gate’ refers to a place where data was stolen by people who were paid to do so. So the media should direct its investigations into that.” — Achim Steiner, director of the UN Environment Program
“We are spending a lot of useless time discussing this rather than spending time preparing information for the negotiators.” — Jean-Pascal van Ypersele
Yes, like a bad magician telling us to look at his right hand while his left hand is fishing around in his pocket for the “magic” card, the UN is trying desperately to make us forget about the actual contents of the emails while continuing to parlay its particular brand of economy-killing “magic” with its IPCC climate policies.
Skepticism against global warming is growing. Fortunately, it seems that the UN and these “climate change” salesmen are now fighting a rearguard action to try and keep their big government, nanny state plans rolling forward. The sad truth is that all their nanny state styled, economically inviable policies are little different than the sort of anti-capitalist (read anti-American) policies that have been pushed by the UN since it first met.
It’s all just another effort to eliminate local control and custom and vest all power in a central, singular body. And that goal is the most tyrannical idea of them all. Without custom, the unitary state without question devolves into tyranny. Without these intermediary institutions, these strong and voluntary associations outside of governmental control, there is no way to maintain civil liberty. But with them in place there is no way for far off masters to fully control the people. The UN and other nanny staters, therefore, must destroy these institutions.
For its part, the UN would see these local interests and even local governments squelched leaving itself as the arbiter of man’s relations, his education, his field of work, even his very soul. And the policies of “carbon trading” and the other prescriptions emanating from the global warming true believers are intended to do just that.
But people are starting to wake up. India has let it be known that it rejects Danish climate proposals. Australia has had a major party shake up over the issue with the result that its own cap and tax plan has arrived still born. And a recent Rasmussen poll found that more Americans than ever are skeptical about the science behind global warming. Cracks are appearing in the credibility of global warming.
So it’s no wonder that the UN is trying to make this into “hackergate” instead of “climategate.” Just as the refrain from the “well informed” during the Cold War was that an inordinate fear of communism, a red scare, was discreditable — even as they lost that fight when communism fell — now the same sorts of people are trying to substitute the old red arguments with green ones. And in a similar vein these folks are trying to discredit skeptics of their green policies. So, green is the new red, indeed. Let us strive to defeat these attempts as well.
http://biggovernment.com/2009/12/07/climategate-and-the-un-new-red-scare-over-green-lies/#more-42046
‘Networks Finally Cover ClimateGate, And They Couldn’t Be More Biased’
Bozell: ‘Networks Finally Cover ClimateGate, And They Couldn’t Be More Biased’
ABC finally reported on ClimateGate on Sunday. But they provided no specifics from the reams of emails and data from East Anglia University that caused the scandal, and concluded their report with the flatly incorrect assertion “The science is solid, according to a vast majority of researchers, with hotter temperatures, melting glaciers, and rising sea level providing the proof.”
NBC reported on ClimateGate on both Friday and Sunday. On Friday they fretted that the scandal may end up “giving politicians from coal and oil-producing states another reason to delay taking action to reduce emissions.” And on Sunday they assured viewers “the evidence is overwhelming that man is behind climate change.”
Neither ABC nor NBC noted that many of the “vast majority of researchers” to which they refer are at the heart of the ClimateGate data distortions and cover-up, and the “overwhelming” “evidence” they cite may very well have been tampered with by these researchers.
CBS did a decent report on Saturday, but aired it on a show they knew their college football coverage blackout would prevent most Americans from seeing.
Media Research Center President Brent Bozell:
“Well, NBC, ABC and CBS FINALLY got around to reporting on ClimateGate. Much like with the stories of Van Jones and ACORN, the rest of the world enjoyed a laugh at their expense while waiting for them to play catch up.
“It wasn’t worth the wait. NBC and ABC’s reports were so biased, they left their audiences as ill-informed afterwards as they were before. And CBS came about as close to blacking out their own coverage as possible.
“ClimateGate is a huge story that is only just beginning to unfold. And I’m betting that NBC, ABC and CBS think they’ve done their duty and are done reporting on it. Hardly. This is a story that cries out for an investigation, the networks haven’t even scratched the surface, and they’re now done with it. So much for news from the broadcast ‘news’ networks.”
Coverage rundowns:
Friday: NBC Nightly News Takes Up ClimateGate, But Frets It Could ‘Delay Taking Action‘
Sunday: ABC Still Silent on ClimateGate, Touts ‘Growing Scientific Evidence’ on Warming
Sunday: ABC and NBC Acknowledge ‘ClimateGate,’ But Remain Undeterred: ‘Science is Solid‘
Monday: NBC’s Thompson Covers Climategate on Today Show Only to Dismiss It
SilenceGate
The mainstream media’s conspiracy of silence proves the point. Their continued cover-up is as much a part of this crime as the actual scientific fraud. ABC, CBS and NBC are simply co-conspirators exercising their 5th Amendment rights.
I have coined the phrase here today SilenceGate! 12-05-2009
Obama’s refusal to investigate ‘Climategate’ emails is ‘unconscionable’
Rep. Issa: Obama’s refusal to investigate ‘Climategate’ emails is ‘unconscionable’
The White House’s unwillingness to open a similar inquiry could now only be characterized as “a sad abdication of their responsibility to ensure that U.S. policies are not driven by corrupted science and data,” the congressman added.
Motivating Issa’s calls for a probe into climate change research, and the U.N.’s decision to launch one, was the publication last month of thousands of e-mails and other documents that global warming skeptics say prove the phenomenon does not exist.
Some of those e-mails contained discussions about how to best portray data sets, among other topics. Scientists maintain their comments have been taken out of context, but those who fiercely oppose the climate change thesis argue the e-mails invalidate all the research.
The U.N. announced it would probe that data this week, mostly because some of the research in question touches on related work either completed or promoted by its own Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
But the White House has largely dismissed the litany of Republican calls to open an inquiry into that research — Issa’s included — because its top scientists contend one controversy hardly undermines decades of more reliable research on climate change.
“It is important to understand that these kinds of controversies and even accusations of bias and improper manipulation are not all that uncommon in science, in all branches of science,” said Dr. John Holdren, the president’s science adviser.
Three Things You Absolutely Must Know About Climategate
Three Things You Absolutely Must Know About Climategate
They’re calling it “Climategate.” The scandal that the suffix –gate implies is the state of climate science over the past decade or so revealed by a thousand or so emails, documents, and computer code sets between various prominent scientists released following a leak from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia in the UK.
This may seem obscure, but the science involved is being used to justify the diversion of literally trillions of dollars of the world’s wealth in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by phasing out fossil fuels. The CRU is the Pentagon of global warming science, and these documents are its Pentagon Papers.
Here are three things everyone should know about the Climategate Papers. Links are provided so that the full context of every quote can be seen by anyone interested.
First, the scientists discuss manipulating data to get their preferred results. The most prominently featured scientists are paleoclimatologists, who reconstruct historical temperatures and who were responsible for a series of reconstructions that seemed to show a sharp rise in temperatures well above historical variation in recent decades.
In 1999, Phil Jones, the head of CRU, wrote to activist scientist Michael “Mike” Mann that he has just “completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps … to hide the decline”(0942777075). This refers to a decline in temperatures in recent years revealed by the data he had been reconstructing that conflicted with the observed temperature record. The inconvenient data was therefore hidden under a completely different set of data. Some “trick.”
Mann later (2003) announced that “it would be nice to try to ‘contain’ the putative ‘MWP,’ even if we don’t yet have a hemispheric mean reconstruction available that far back” (1054736277). The MWP is the Medieval Warm Period, when temperatures may have been higher than today. Mann’s desire to “contain” this phenomenon even in the absence of any data suggesting that this is possible is a clear indication of a desire to manipulate the science. There are other examples of putting political/presentational considerations before the science throughout the collection.
Secondly, scientists on several occasions discussed methods of subverting the scientific peer review process to ensure that skeptical papers had no access to publication. In 2003, Tom Wigley of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, complained that paleoclimatologist Hans von Storch was responsible for “the publication of crap science ‘in order to stimulate debate’” and that they “must get rid of von Storch” (1051190249) as an editor of the journal Climate Research (he indeed subsequently resigned).
In 2005, Michael Mann said that there was a “fundamental problem w/ GRL now,” referring to the journal Geophysical Research Letters published by the American Geophysical Union (AGU), because “they have published far too many deeply flawed contrarian papers in the past year or so” and “it is probably best to do an end run around GRL now where possible.” Tom Wigley responded that “we could go through official AGU channels to get him [the editor of GRL] ousted” (1106322460). A few months later, the editor of GRL having left his post, Mann comments, “The GRL leak may have been plugged up now w/ new editorial leadership there” (1132094873).
Having seemingly succeeded with Climate Research and Geophysical Research Letters, the most recent target of the scientists’ ire has been Weather, a journal of the Royal Meteorological Society (RMS). Phil Jones commented in March 2009, “I’m having a dispute with the new editor of Weather. I’ve complained about him to the RMS Chief Exec. If I don’t get him to back down, I won’t be sending any more papers to any RMS journals and I’ll be resigning from the RMS” (1237496573).
This issue is all the more important because the scientists involved in these discussions have repeatedly accused their critics of being irrelevant because they fail to publish in the peer reviewed literature. For example, in October this year, Mr. Mann told Andy Revkin of the New York Times:
[L]egitimate scientific skepticism is exercised through formal scientific circles, in particular the peer review process. Those such as [Stephen] McIntyre [the target of much of the criticism in the CRU Papers] who operate almost entirely outside of this system are not to be trusted.
If you are saying on the one hand that you will not take notice of someone until they have been published while on the other you are working behind the scenes to stop any such publication, I would venture to suggest that you are not operating with any degree of bona fides either towards the media or the legitimate scientific process.
Finally, the scientists worked to circumvent the Freedom of Information process of the United Kingdom. Nowhere is this better evidenced than in the email reproduced in full below (minus Dr. Jones’ contact details):
From: Phil Jones <p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: “Michael E. Mann” <mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: IPCC & FOI
Date: Thu May 29 11:04:11 2008Mike,
Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4?
Keith will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment – minor family crisis.
Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t
have his new email address.
We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.
I see that CA claim they discovered the 1945 problem in the Nature paper!!
Cheers
Phil
The context in the subject header is clearly the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOI), while AR4 refers to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. What is most important to know here is that, according to the Taxpayers’ Alliance in the UK, “at least one FOI request on exactly this correspondence had apparently been submitted by a David Holland on May 5th 2008.”
The Freedom of Information Act, however, explicitly forbids deletion of any material subject to a FOI request. The penalty for such a criminal act is a fine of up to £5,000. Presumably being found guilty of such an act, or even suggesting it, would also bring about significant disciplinary procedures at any reputable university. A complaint has been made to the British information commissioner.
This is, however, just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to attitudes toward FOI. Numerous other references are made about ways to avoid divulging information (the following summaries are by the blogger Bishop Hill):
Tom Wigley discusses how to deal with the advent of FoI law in UK. Jones says use IPR argument to hold onto code. Says data is covered by agreements with outsiders and that CRU will be “hiding behind them.”(1106338806)
Jones says that UK climate organisations are coordinating themselves to resist FoI. They got advice from the Information Commissioner [!](1219239172)
Jones tells Mann that he is sending station data. Says that if McIntyre requests it under FoI he will delete it rather than hand it over. Says he will hide behind data protection laws. Says Rutherford screwed up big time by creating an FTP directory for Osborn. Says Wigley worried he will have to release his model code. (1107454306)
There appears to be a prima facie case that there was a conspiracy to prevent the release of information subject to FOI.
There are many other disturbing revelations in the CRU Papers, including a particularly disturbing assessment by a computer programmer of the state of CRU data. These have yet to be fully analyzed.
So what does this all mean? It does not mean that there is no warming trend or that mankind has not been responsible for at least some of the warming. To claim that as result of these documents is clearly a step too far. However, it is clear that at least one branch of climate science — paleoclimatology — has become hopelessly politicized to the point of engaging in unethical and possibly illegal behavior.
To the extent that paleoclimatology is an important part of the scientific case for action regarding global warming, urgent reassessments need to be made. In the meantime, all those responsible for political action on global warming should stop the process pending the results of inquiries, investigations, and any criminal proceedings. What cannot happen is the process carrying on as if nothing has happened.
This could prove to be climate science’s Vietnam.
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/three-things-you-absolutely-must-know-about-climategate/
