.jpg)
The fallout from the release of thousands of emails from the world’s top climate scientists has been swift. Some of those involved have begun to turn on each other and even the international organization that has driven the manmade climate change debate is turning its back on them.
The Climategate scandal spans the globe and includes scientists from top universities, government agencies and private institutions. While some have said the messages call into question the very science behind anthropogenic climate change, on a more personal level it calls into question the ethics of the men involved. Data manipulation and deletion, efforts to prevent sharing of information, collusion to prevent publication of dissenting opinions and many more charges have been leveled.
Dr. Phil Jones, head of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, was arguably featured most prominently in the emails. He apparently made requests of his colleagues to delete emails that he didn’t wish to see shared, made concerted efforts to withhold data, and worked with other scientists to stifle others opinions.
Jones temporarily stepped down from his position pending the results of an investigation. He has however seen little support from other scientists involved in the event.
Climate Change Examiner on Twitter
Or be notified by email when a new article from the Climate Change Examiner is posted. Click the 'Subscribe' link at the top or bottom of the article and enter your email address.
Dr. Michael Mann of Penn State University and author of the discredited ‘hockey stick’ graph was the recipient of one of the emails from asking him and other scientists to delete previous correspondence. In interviews since the event, Mann did not support Jones saying, “I can’t put myself in the mind of the person who wrote that email and sent it. I in no way endorse what was in that email.”
Mann disavowed deleting any messages however, when he received the message he did not object and in fact replied that he would forward the request to Dr. Eugene Wahl at the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC).Penn State is currently investigating Mann however that inquiry is being conducted in private just leading to doubts about its impartiality.
The scientists involved are key participants in the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The IPCC reports form the foundation for climate change action and are the driver behind the climate change summit now happening in Copenhagen.
In every field of endeavor, there might be a few ‘black sheep' who deviate from ethical practices.
~ Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, IPCC Chairman
After trying to dismiss the event, the UN announced they would investigate it. Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC said, “We certainly don’t want to brush anything under the carpet. This is a serious issue and we will certainly look into it in detail.” For unknown reasons, Pachauri later recanted saying instead it was not an investigation and rather they would look at it “just to see if there are any lessons for us that we might want to take onboard.”
Yesterday, Pachauri took steps to distance the IPCC from the scientists involved in what some say amounts to ‘running them under the bus.’ He told GulfNews.com, "In every field of endeavor, there might be a few ‘black sheep' who deviate from ethical practices.”
Climategate - All the latest developments
Complete climate change coverage from Examiner.com
Climate Change Examiner Facebook Page
Climate Change Examiner on Twitter
Or be notified by email when a new article from the Climate Change Examiner is posted. Click the 'Subscribe' link at the top or bottom of the article and enter your email address.
Others within the scientific community on both sides of the debate were appalled at the behavior of the Climategate scientists and few launched any defense. Scientific analysis demands being impartial and data needs to be truthful but the emails call both of those into question.
Within the University of East Anglia, the very source of the messages, one scientist said the event displayed ‘tribalism’ and questions whether the IPCC should continue to exist. Mike Hulme, climate scientist at UAE, told the New York Times, “It is possible that some areas of climate science has become sclerotic. It is possible that climate science has become too partisan, too centralized. The tribalism that some of the leaked emails display is something more usually associated with social organization within primitive cultures; it is not attractive when we find it at work inside science.” Hulme said the politicization of climate change within the IPCC compromised its mission saying, “It is also possible that the institutional innovation that has been the I.P.C.C. has run its course.”
Dr. John Christy of the University of Alabama and the state’s climatologist was a frequent target of the climate scientists. Christy told the Christian Science Monitor, “These people act in concert to diminish, reject, and otherwise denigrate findings with which they do not agree. Those of us who see problems with that message are aware of how the data are manufactured and interpreted to support that message -- and worse, how these establishment scientists act as gatekeepers for the "consensus" reports to suppress alternative findings.”
Even for those that believe man’s influence can drive climate, the scientists’ action is troubling. Roger Pielke Sr. is a senior research scientist at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at the University of Colorado. He has said that there is ‘incontrovertible evidence’ of man’s influence on global temperatures.
However, in an interview with PajamasMedia.com, Pielke questions the motives of those involved saying, “ there are serious issues exposed by the emails — including the goal of these scientists to prevent proper scientific disclosure of their data, as well as to control what papers appear in the peer reviewed literature and climate assessments.” He further raised the specter that those same scientists’ work and their efforts to squash dissenting opinions may have tainted the IPCC’s work. “The IPCC assessment, with which major policy decisions are being made, involves the individuals in the emails who have senior leadership positions,” he said.
Speculation has been high that the timing of the release of the emails was designed to coincide with the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen and if that were the goal, it appears to have been successful. Each day of the event has seen scientists and government officials attempt to defend climate science.
However, the very foundation of that science and the men behind it have been shaken by the controversy. With the scientists themselves apparently willing to compromise their impartiality, many are left wondering if the science is truly impartial and factual based.
Comments
Thanks for reporting the truth. There is too much money and power and faith involved in this for many journalists. They should be ashamed I hope someone keeps track of what was said so it can be rubbed in their faces. Of course even if we plunged into a deep freeze for the next 20 years, the faithful would still claim that AGW is real. Maybe we'll have to wait for them to die ad the next generation will do what it always does and clean the slate with real science.
The mainstream media has, for whatever reason, been in bed with AGW alarmist "scientists" for many years now. This kind of cheerleading has been a black eye for both science and journalism. Kudos to the Examiner for being one of the very few publications to dare buck the politically correct stance of what passes for America's fourth estate.
We don't need UN investigations or the State Run Media in the United States to get on board. What we need to do is write our representatives and tell them to cut the funding for this global warming crap immediately. And I did just that in letters to bothy my Senators and Congressman.
Regarding perversion of the peer-review process, Dr Philip Lloyd, a coordinating lead for the IPCC wrote this on 11/23/09:
http: //www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx?id=87726
“I was a co-ordinating lead author [or the IPCC]… [I]t gave me insight into the flaws behind the whole process.
The IPCC claims that it has...many reviewers of the scientists' work to produce their reports. There are two problems, however. In the scientific world I move in, “review” means that your work is scrutinised by several independent, anonymous reviewers chosen by the editor.
However, when I entered the IPCC world, the reviewers were there at the worktable, criticising our drafts, and finally meeting with all us co-ordinators ... in a draftfest.
...there was no independence of review, and the reviewers were anything but anonymous. The result was not scientific.
The process is so flawed and tantamount to fraud. As an authority, the IPCC should be consigned to the scrapheap."
This thing would not need thousands of scientists to be involved. All that was need was for one or two people in perhaps five or six countries to adjust the raw data. Anyone using the data when making a comparison to CO2 would find the results that had been seeded into the data. The scientists would not be aware that they were being played. They would honestly think that their conclusions were correct. Only none of their predictions would ever be confirmed.
All the papers that used the data, and all the papers that used those papers for support, would therefore be invalid. In the vast majority of the cases I would expect that the authors are without blame, they made no mistake. The mistake was encoded into the base data before they even started.
It would only have taken a dozen people in just the right places, and remember it took years to pull this off.
So who might have put these people in just the right place all those years ago?
WRITE your state and federal Attorneys General demanding Al Gore and others conducting Global Warming/Climate Change racketeering and mail fraud operations be brought to justice, indicted, tried, convicted and jailed. Carbon is the stuff of life. He who controls carbon, especially CO2, controls the world. Think of the consequences if you do nothing! For one, the UK is becoming the poster child for George Orwell’s “1984” and the US government’s sponsorship of this worldwide Global Warming propaganda campaign puts it in a class with the failed Soviet Union’s relentless violation of the basic human right to truthful government generated information. Given ClimateGate’s burgeoning revelations of outrageous government misconduct and massive covert misinformation, what are the chances that this Administration’s National Health Care sales campaign is anywhere near the truth?
Are you angry about this obvious fraud and the national media's complicity in the cover-up, misinformation, reframing and misdirection of the issue? Take responsibility and take action. STOP all donations to the political party(s) responsible for this fraud. STOP donations to all environmental groups which funded this Global Warming propaganda campaign with our money, especially The Environmental Defense Fund. They have violated the public trust. KEEP donations local, close to home. MAKE donations to Oklahoma’s Senator Inhofe, the only politician to stand firmly against this obvious government/media coordinated information operation (propaganda) targeted at its own people. People that government leaders and employees are sworn to protect. WRITE your state and federal representatives demanding wall to wall investigations of government sponsored funding and coordination of this and related propaganda campaigns and demand indictments of those responsible.
In real terms! Where does it go from here. We know that it is a fraud. I suspect it is going to be a pro alarmist whitewash with the ramped advertising of unprecedented warming taking place, the green activists now campaigning in force, etc!
It sickens me utterly that this is happening and I have no answers.
Who can we trust to put this right!
There are so few trustworthy media enterprises and most of these do not have significant enough resources or coverage to make any real impact. The masses are dumbed down so much that they are of no use.
Scientists are probably fearful for their funding/jobs so say nothing.
It leaves so few who are able to put this right and they have been active for years with no real impact on our governments steamrolling agenda.
Climategate was a start.
We insult their religion and tempt them to show us how powerful they really are.. Red handed and dirty as stink.. They will push it through anyway.. Seems we have no other option but to put the GOP back in power..
Rather ironic that it may have been the KGB that helped save the world from eco-marxism by hacking into the Siberian e-mail server to release those e-mail messages.
But, then again a few months back, Pravda released a more revealing look at the problems Barack Obama was foisting upon America than anything I've heard of in the New York times. Mainstream American "journalists" are worse than useless. By and large, they're a threat to freedom!!!
I agree that there are changes occurring, however, thanks to proof over the years and the various issues this fraud of Global Warming is taking the same route as Global Cooling and every other 'Global" menace that has popped up over the years...
Good article......I concur with some other respondents that we should demand our tax dollars stop being paid for this nonsense which was a fictional situation created to line the pockets of people like Al Gore because he thought he was robbed of the presidency.
Got something to say?
Examiner.com is looking for writers, photographers, and videographers to join the fastest growing group of local insiders. If you are interested in growing your online rep apply to be an Examiner today!