The emails are now being called "climategate" AP Photo Eugene Hoshiko
Right now the favorite story of Fox News and conservative commentators like Rush Limbaugh is what is now being called "Climategate." At issue are a number of emails hacked from the University of East Anglie Climate Research Center. Conservatives are using selective quotes from over 61 MB of emails to suggest that the global warming is in fact a myth. In addition skeptics allege that scientists and climate change believers are actively manipulating date to support their positions. Some of the more damning quotes which have picked out of the emails include:
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) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline."
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."
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."
When cropped in such a fashion the quotes certainly do appear to point out some grand global warming conspiracy. In our current media culture where people ingest their news through thirty-second sound bites the quotes provide the sort of "smoking gun" that climate change skeptics have always wanted. Unfortunately for the climate change believers the "truth" behind the emails takes more than thirty seconds to explain and that is why they are currently losing on this story. Here are some of the points currently be made by such climate change believers.
(1) The emails do not disprove the larger mountain of climate change data
The emails come from one group of scientists working on one very specific set of data. They in no way effect the credibility of thousands of other scientists working on climate change or the hundreds of other studies which also show that global warming is in fact real. To say that hacked emails from one group of scientists disprove a theory that has the support of the consensus of the scientific community is contrary to common sense. Was conservatism proven false because Mark Foley was sending inappropriate texts to Congressional page? If these scientists believe the world is round does that mean the world must be flat because of these emails? If the emails show anything they demonstrate that some scientists were engaging in questionable conduct in their experiments. It does not condemn the entire climate change community any more than Mark Sanford condemned the entire conservative community.
(2) The emails are completely taken out of context and a larger view shows that scientists were merely "talking about science"
Anyone who knows a true math or science nerd also knows that they commonly refer to "tricks" they use to solve a problem. These "tricks" are not ways to deceive but instead simply methods they use to find a solution. In this case one of the scientists behind the emails actually confirmed that the "trick" was simply a way to resolve an apparent contradiction in a data set.
Another scientists has said that a look at the larger context of the emails reveals that this was simply a group of scientists talking about science. If a group of prosecutors discussed how a defendants might be innocent, or how they might respond to argument of the defense, this does not mean the defendant is in fact innocent. This was an informal exchange of emails in which a group of scientists were exchanging ideas and thoughts. If most people had their email accounts hacked one could likely find some quotes which, when taken out of context, seem contradictory to their own beliefs.
(3) There is no actual "smoking gun" in the stolen emails
As bad as the email are when taken out of context none of them actually disprove global warming in anyway. There is no statement from a scientist saying "This global warming stuff is all a bunch of BS but I am going to keep publishing data to suggest otherwise so I can make more money." There is no definitive evidence that global warming is not happening or is not man-made in the emails. Instead what you have is over 61 MB's of emails which, when cut up, can appear to sow the seeds of doubt in the climate change theory. Climate change believers would love to be able to access the email accounts of oil lobbyist to see if they could accomplish the same task.
Comments
conservatives don't believe in science, therefore, they refuse to evolve....I believe the first conservative was an australopithecus robustus that just refused to evolve.
Nice try, but these were not a random handful of climate scientists, they were the most referenced and prominent in climate science. You are wrongly taking for granted that people won't read up for themselves and lack the middle school comprehension it takes to recognize this as the very end of co2 as deadly pollutant nonsense we've been enduring for too long now.
Ad Homs from walrus: The MO of liberals. They can't defend the actions of the AGW scammers & their scam, so they engage in personal attacks against others. The AGW sacmmers rigged scientific "consensus" on AGW. The AGW scammers intentionally put in bogus data & threw away 150 years of accurate data (among other crimes).
The author of this article tries to use a straw man by saying that it is just conservatives (Rush, etc) that are outraged. That makes it easier from him to advance his agenda. I have seen plenty of liberals that are ticked off as well.
The author of this article here says that selective quotes are being used, but that isn't true. The author of this article here is a liar, uses straw men & engages in spin. Yeah, just say that it was all taken out of context or that quotes were cherry picked...that is what RW did.
The AGW scammers said that the last 10 yrs were cooler, that they couldn't explain it, that they put in bogus data & that they stifled dissent.
Without the raw data we should just take Al Gore's word for it?
No Thanks.
@no thanks
Right on. The so-called "climate scientists" at CRU worked the closest with the UN's IPCC. The hacker(s) (be it an insider or not) knew that. Go right to the ones that are working more closely with the UN's IPCC and expose them for the frauds that they are.
It looks like jail time for these scammers is in order. The word is getting out. There is no way to get around the facts that these scammers tried to ruin the reputations of scientists that were skeptical of AGW, that they intimidated them, that they stifled dissent (or at least tried their hardest to) and that they cooked the books so to say on climate research.
" There is no definitive evidence that global warming is not happening or is not man-made in the emails."
Oh, no?
"From: Phil Jones <p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: John Christy <john.christy@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: This and that
Date: Tue Jul 5 15:51:55 2005
...
The scientific community would come down on me in no
uncertain terms if I said the world had cooled from 1998. OK it has but it is only 7 years of data and it isn't statistically significant."
No global warming for 7 years then, now it's been 11 years. Global warming is NOT happening.
al gore , all them govn agencies are just runnin to cover thier behinds any wieght they had towards thier argument has now dissapeard in my eye's its just a world government grab for our tax paying dollars for our god given right to breath and this proves it no matter what they say .. to be honest im sickend but relieved and thank god fox news ran with the story when everyone else wouldint .
@Ted Sheckler
They want us to. The AGW sacmmers tossed out years of research and put in bogus data, and threw out years more of accurate data collected all over and put in bogus data. The evidence is there for all to see. It has been admitted already. That is the newest revelation. But they are now saying that it was all an accident. Not buying that excuse, though. Not at all.
Ryan, they’re e-mails that anyone can read and understand, not lengthy discussions with academic data. What the e-mails show is all unethical academic and scientific behavior imaginable: hiding the DECLINE of overall global temperatures since 1998, stopping peer-review of such data, discrediting scientists who talk about the 11-year trend of cooling, and the most egregious is manipulating the data to fit their model and then suspiciously claiming to have lost the original data for any confirmation of their conclusions.
Internal dialogue includes admission that the scientists really don’t know what’s causing change in temperature:
“The fact that we can not account for what is happening in the climate system makes any consideration of geoengineering quite hopeless as we will never be able to tell if it is successful or not! It is a travesty!”
This data is the foundation for a global carbon tax that quickly adds-up into the trillions of dollars.
Nice try, but these were not a random handful of climate scientists, they were the most referenced and prominent in climate science. You are wrongly taking for granted that people won't read up for themselves and lack the middle school comprehension it takes to recognize this as the very end of co2 as deadly pollutant nonsense we've been enduring for too long now.
"There's nothing to see here. Move along..."
It's not going to work Ryan. The emails are very clear examples of fraud and the source code is even worse. Not to mention the fact that the CRU has "lost" all of it's original data that it used to formulate it's global warming "science".
You're not going to bury this one under the rug buddy. AGW is a dead theory. It's over. We don't want your carbon taxes imposed on the entire globe to enrich the likes of con-artists like Al Gore and Goldman Sachs.
NO MAS!
This article is a whitewash so its no wonder google puts it at the top of the list.
The actual hacked climate model source code explained by a software developer:
fascistsoup.com/2009/11/25/more-on-the-climategate-source-code/
This puts the emails to shame, trust me.
Over 3000 documents were leaked, the emails only comprised about a 1000 of those documents, the rest was source code and publications.
Give it up shill. You've been busted.
This would be the "So what if we are lying? It's true anyway!" defense. That dog won't hunt. Why are these rats falsifying data if the song they sing is true? Take a good look, people and start calling your represenatives and raising cane. You have been had.
Ryan,
I think this column demonstrates the degreee of scientific illiteracy throughout the journalism profession. The issue is pretty simple. If C02 is the cause of the recent warming there would be very strong correlation between CO2 and temperature. NOT JUST man made CO2, ALL CO2. The molecules are no different in how they affect longwave radiation, and there are NUMEROUS studies which have been kept out of the peer reviewed literature that show CO2 and temperature are very weakly correlated throughout geological history, and there is very strong proof that C02 LAGS temperature. As we say in science, correlation is not cause, but lack of correlation disproves causality. The recent 10 year cooling trend while C02 has increased are only the most recent demonstration of this lack of correlation. In addition, the recent studies by Dr. Lindzen at MIT prove that the basic theory is wrong. 2/3 more long wave radiation is escaping into space than the AGW theory and models predict.
This is the best Google can do -- to put this article at the top of a search for Climategate? Incredible. Ryan - do you actually believe this cover-up you've written or are you just looking for publicity? The data behind has been intentionally distorted. Therefore, any conclusions drawn from such altered data are completely moot.
Ryan, I don't envy you the position you find yourself in. It is very hard to come to grips with the realization that one has been duped, and duped very publicly, for a long time. The data, program code, and email dump from CRU, isn't part of a scientific debate. The materials throughout - no cherry picking required - show that the people involved were dishonest about what they were doing, knew that they were dishonest, and went ahead anyway. The revelation that their initial data sets were tossed years ago only hints at the real problem, namely that although it may be possible to retrieve the initial myriad of data sets from original sources, what has really been lost is all record of how those numbers have been massaged, manipulated, misused, transmogrified, and otherwise altered into what is now the premier historical temperature record upon which all UN/IPCC and other governmental policies are being based either directly or indirectly.
From the article: "There is no definitive evidence that global warming is not happening [in the emails]"
From the emails (IPCC lead author Kevin Trenberth): "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... Our observing system is inadequate"
Article: "Climate change believers would love to be able to access the email accounts of oil lobbyist to see if they could accomplish the same task."
They don't need to; oil companies have latched onto AGW bigtime and support it. BP, Shell all support the carbon treaty.
Article: "Anyone who knows a true math or science nerd also knows that they commonly refer to "tricks" they use to solve a problem."
But, you've taken the word "trick" out of context yourself; the very thing you accuse others of. Firstly, it's a "Nature" trick. So, trick is not an internal process but relates to what is to publically consumed in Nature. Secondly, "hide the decline" puts "trick" in conte
Tick, tock.
Fox News and Rush Limbaugh? Do you truly believe that anyone who sees Climategate for what it is -- the biggest scandal of all times --- to be in league with the likes of those goofballs?
Rush Limbaugh is a right wing buffoon who will tow the party line no matter how bad he looks. Ryan, you appear to be playing a buffoon for the left. A useful idiot if you will.
You do realize that the actual Fortran code used in the scam were released as well? With comments in the code as to where and how to apply cheats?
It will be interesting to follow your support for these crooks as more data is released, and other sources start to do the same. The floodgates are about to open.
Al Gore's got some splainin' to do!
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket."
— Eric Hoffer (The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements)
Lies, damned lies, and statistics.
The falsification of data and the conspiracy to commit same etc, constitutes serious criminal activity. Further, the granting of public funds for research warrants a federal investigation. I’m hoping the perpetrators, including possibly Professor Michael Mann, director of Pennsylvania State University’s Earth System Science Centre and a regular contributor to the popular climate science blog Real Climate, and their facilitators will be tracked down and prosecuted to the fullest extent the law allows. -- Michael Santomauro
This article was written like somebody is trying to save face. How do you like your crow? Grilled or fried?
"Nothing to see here folks." BTW the 'mountains of data' you just described have apparently been deleted. So we no longer have the raw data that they plugged into their algorithms and computer models. We just have the massaged data.
I also love how the media have taken the term 'tricks' and run with it. What are you, their defense attorney? Pathetic. What is the definition of the word is?
Anybody who reads all the emails knows there's some 'trickery' going on, but it has nothing to do with good science.
What a surprise, yet another "article" that ignores the extremely anti-science behavior of the so-called scientists. Any real scientist should be outraged by the attempts to suppress dissenting views, and the refusals to share data and methodologies. Perhaps it's too much to expect the vast majority of the population who have no scientific or engineering training to understand this. It is clearly too much to expect most journalists to understand this.
"thousands of credible scientists... who's work shows that MMGW is real" really?
Question 1) Who pays for all these scientists and their studies? Question 2)what happens to the few who are brave enough to challenge or question the consensus? No grants or funding perhaps? Don't get published in journals perhaps? The rest of these "scientists" will go along because they have families to support.3)Why does Gore refuse to debate the issue? How does he make his money? 4) Who really stands to lose big time if this turns out to be flawed science? Why is there no debate and GW is accepted as gospel? Who gains? Who loses? Why?
Why is climategate being covered by Fox,Drudge, but hardly a reference from CNN, MSNBC,ABC ?
Why is Fox ratings oblierating the other two?
Why is the Chron's circulation dwindling?
The answer may be found in your defense of the e-mail authors.
By the way, one of your heros at Penn State just stepped down. I am quite sure your "objective journalism" will race to his defense. How about this idea-have your heroes put Gore up defend his hockey stick, have the skeptics put up theirs (which shows the inverse) argue the facts in an open forum, let the world decide. (Instead of the Copenhagen Farce in which everyone will decide how to carve up the spoils and riches extracted from their respective citizenry).
UuuuuhhhhHHMMMM Ryan.....there are some WONDERFUL posts here. Most of them in fact. The First from Carl the Herman--LA Nonpartisan's got it nailed.
Read through them all Ryan and you will see the error of your ways. This is very important issue, involving all of our futures, the very integrity of science, the integrity of the press, distrust of the Government and it's bull-headed plunging ahead in spite of contrary data.
That Carl the ET-loving, 911-truther, believer in false flag attacks used as an excuse for a 'war of aggression' against Afghanistan, advocate of expanded government and pseudo monetary reform, etc., etc. you stroking jaime???
Real good company you're keeping!
Wow,
I am usually,even while under the spell of spirits, able to decipher whatever pile you drop onto the board. As to your last post...????????????????????????????????????
jaime, read Carl Herman's pages.
He seems to believe:
* The government is hiding the truth about ETs in our midst.
* 9/11 was a 'false flag' attack by members of our own government to engage in an illegal war of aggression against Afghanistan - and later, Iraq.
* While distrusting the government, he advocates for expanding its role in our lives way beyond any of the 'socialist' charges levied against the Democrats.
* He advocates a pseudo monetary reform that, in effect, is rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic and does nothing to reduce the influence of special interests.
And so forth.
He claims to be a historian, but has a limited knowledge of history before he came along. And he knows next to nothing about real science.
Like I said: (satire ON) Real good company you're keeping! (satire OFF)
That make it clear to ya?
Can't explain the earliest snow in recorded history in Houston yesterday. Must be global warming.
Could be, Jack - the science indicates increasing extremes of all kinds, including cold, as the global climate modifies.
Any idea what happens to the Texas Coast when the Atlantic conveyor collapses because of melting ice sheets in Greenland?
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