(McAdam/ImageChef)
Regardless of the efforts on the part of the mainstream media to ignore Climategate—the biggest pseudoscientific hoax since the Piltdown Man—the wheels of justice are starting to grind, and the future doesn’t look good for the cabal of global warming (AGW) “scientists.” To paraphrase the words of our favorite pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright: “The global warming chickens are coming home to roost.”
For years, these high-priests of environmentalism have been hectoring us about our use of carbon-based fuels; claiming we are destroying the planet. (Click HERE for a complete list of the evils that environmentalists claim are caused by global warming.) Now, after a bunch of the conspirators’ emails have been leaked to the public (via the internet media), a period of de-frocking of these charlatans seems to be on the horizon.
Breitbart is reporting that Britain's University of East Anglia has forced Dr. Phil Jones, director of its prestigious Climatic Research Unit (CRU), to step down, pending an investigation into allegations that he overstated the case for man-made climate change.
Dr. Phil Jones (Photo: CRU)
As a result of the release of his compromising emails, the university has ordered Dr. Jones to relinquish his position until the completion of an independent review into allegations that he worked to alter the way in which global temperature data was presented.
In the U.S., over at Pennsylvania State University, the student newspaper, The Daily Collegian, reports that the university is conducting an inquiry into the controversy surrounding Penn State meteorology professor Dr. Michael Mann (creator of the infamous “hockey stick” graph), whose leaked emails have sparked an international debate over whether he and his colleagues distorted data on global warming. The e-mails appeared to suggest that the researchers—including Dr. Mann—had fabricated or manipulated data on global warming.
Dr. Mann told Collegian reporter Laura Nichols that he “understands the process and is glad the university is taking appropriate action.” "I would be disappointed if the university wasn't doing all they can to get as much information as possible," Mann said. "I'm very happy they're doing it." Sure he is.
Dr. Michael Mann (Photo: PSU)
In one of the emails, CRU’s Dr. Jones writes his colleagues to tell them that he had "just completed Mike's (Dr. Mann’s) Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (i.e., from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline." The “decline” they were talking about hiding is the dendrological (tree-ring) data that indicates a recent eleven year period of global cooling.
In congress, Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, last week called for hearings on the recent disclosure of emails that reveal apparent attempts to manipulate data, vilify scientists with opposing viewpoints, and circumvent information disclosure laws.
(Animation: coasterpunk.com)
“The emails reveal possible deceitful manipulation of important data and research used by the US Global Change Research Program and the IPCC,” Inhofe said. “For instance, one scientist wrote of a ‘trick’ he employed to ‘hide the decline’ in global temperature trends, as well as discussed attempts to ‘redefine what the peer-review literature is’ to prevent papers raising questions about anthropogenic global warming from appearing in IPCC reports.”
This controversy “could have far-reaching policy implications,” Inhofe continued, “affecting everything from (to name a few) cap-and-trade legislation, state and regional climate change programs,” and “the Environmental Protection Agency’s ‘Proposed Endangerment and Cause or Contribute Findings for Greenhouse Gases Under Section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act’…” These policies “will have enormous economic impacts, not least the EPA’s proposed endangerment finding, which, when finalized, will lead to a torrent of new federal regulations that will destroy thousands of jobs and make electricity and gasoline more expensive for consumers and small businesses.”
(Lampoon: classicalvalues.com)
We all remember the famous suggestion of the “Deep Throat” character in liberal Hollywood’s magnum opus, All The President’s Men: “Follow the money.” Well, the Wall Street Journal this week did just that.
If you learned that public policy institutes such as the Aspen Institute, Heritage Institute, and the National Center for Policy Analysis—conservative think tanks that have offered dissenting views on the AGW theory—were funded by ExxonMobil to the tune of $7 million, you might come to the conclusion that these AGW skeptics had something of a conflict of interest. You might even find this scandalous.
The Journal discovered that the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit, or CRU—home turf of the Dr. Phil Jones, of email fame—was the recipient, between 2000 and 2006, of some $19 million worth of research grants; a sixfold increase over what had been awarded in the 1990s.
The WSJ continues: “The European Commission's most recent appropriation for climate research comes to nearly $3 billion, and that's not counting funds from the EU's member governments. In the U.S., the House intends to spend $1.3 billion on NASA's climate efforts, $400 million on NOAA's, and another $300 million for the National Science Foundation. The states also have a piece of the action, with California—apparently not feeling bankrupt enough—devoting $600 million to their own climate initiative.”
One of the best explanations of this whole AGW debate (Sorry, Al, the debate ain’t quite over yet) can be found in the article The Climate Science Isn't Settled, by Dr. Richard S. Lindzen, professor of meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. According to Dr. Lindzen, the confident predictions of catastrophe by AGW proponents are unwarranted.
“Claims that climate change is accelerating are bizarre,” writes Dr. Lindzen. “The general support for warming is based not so much on the quality of the data, but rather on the fact that there was a little ice age from about the 15th to the 19th century. Thus it is not surprising that temperatures should increase as we emerged from this episode. At this point there is no basis for alarm regardless of whether any relation between the observed warming and the observed increase in minor greenhouse gases can be established.”
While it will be personal misfortunes if Dr. Mann and Dr. Jones lose their jobs and their reputations, the rest of us will doubtless be a lot better off. The Democrats’ Cap and Trade energy tax bill appears to be dead in the U.S. Senate, and a number of major nations have promised to walk out in protest at this month’s Copenhagen climate conference. The AGW scam is clearly on a decline; one which even Dr. Jones and all his email co-conspirators will be unable to hide. The fat lady ain’t sung yet, but she’s in the wings, and warming up. Unlike our planet.
Read more: Global warming: An inconvenient hoax
Read more: Global warming fraud uncovered
Watch the video: The rogues’ gallery of climate crooks and their crimes
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Comments
Great article!
"Doubt is our product, since it is the best means of competing with the 'body of fact' that exists in the mind of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy. Spread doubt over strong scientific evidence and the public won’t know what to believe."
Sadly, we in the science community know all too well what happens when money gets in the way of 'science'. Not unlike evolution, where there seems to be overwhelming evidence that life does evolve, even if we don't magically know every detail and it takes decades to piece together the smallest fragments -- climate change happens. These folks have done good science, and the public a service in bringing the debate forward. But they've clearly cut their own throats with fraud, and their personal careers should pay the price. However, does that diminish the importance of examining our contributions to climate change, or how much our cultural behavior may (or may not) affect our children? If we turn a blind eye to that under the flag of 'conservativism', what kind of 'conservative' would we be? Kind of lame to blast the whole of the message if some of the messengers are sucked into the ego/money machine that modern science has become. Not unlike politics.
1. A manufactured controversy that is motivated by profit or extreme ideology to intentionally create public confusion about an issue that is not in dispute.
2. Effort is often accompanied by imagined conspiracy theory and major marketing dollars involving fraud, deception and polemic rhetoric.
Why don't the boneheads in the press ever ask elites the relevant questions and demand straight answers? Check the freakin' numbers!
Mankind's total contribution to so-called greenhouse gas emissions is 0.117% yearly according to the numbers I've seen.
How is tinkering at the margins of 0.117% going to control the climate of the Earth?
What have these idiots been smoking?
I wish to state clearly my anger at the attempts being made by non-scientists to hijack my conference. Any moment now I expect it to be pronounced by these same amateurs that the sky is not in fact falling.
Sincerely,
Chicken J Little M.A D.Sc OMG, Organiser
What a load of rubbish and lazy journalism.
Looks like you haven't even bothered to read the 'scandalous' emails you are writing about.
Some badly written emails but they have no impact on the science of climate change, which is beyond doubt.
As for trying to cover up the current stagnation in global temperatures...who is trying to cover it up? It is in every model. The average global temperature now remains around 3/4 of a degree celsius higher. There is no cover up.
Sadly, fools like you are just getting louder.
Hopefully, it is nothing more than a desperate final rearguard.
I wonder where these so-called skeptics will be when the sky, in fact, does fall on them. Do you suppose they never learned any mathematical "tricks" in school? Well, they probably didn't, since they don't seemed to have learned anything aside from know-nothingism.
No doubt they will have moved on to another "controversy"--standing hip-deep in the swelling seas, they'll shrug and say, "Who, me?"
What a terrible article. You act like these individuals are the only ones doing climate research, and because they have poorly worded emails that global climate change must not exist.
You may not believe in climate change but if you want to see the Glaciers in Glacier National Park I suggest you hurry before they are all gone. Then againg maybe you would like open a mining company in Greenland. New land will so be available for exploration. I am old enough to remember when there was a supposed scientific controversy about whether smoking caused cancer. The tobacco industry was successful in producing "science" puporting to show that the link between smoking and cance was a "hoax" for years.
Good article. Nice to see a sensible article coming out of the uber liberal bastion that is San Francisco. Is there climate change happening? Yes. Is it our fault with our evil cars and smokestacks? No. Pick up any elementary school earth science book...the planet went through many climate changes before we were even around. Three basic problems here...1) environmental zealots who can't see past their misguided ideals, 2) greedy scientists trolling for grant money and using the zealots to achieve that end and 3) the media who fuels the fires in the name of sensationalism and, you guessed it, dollars. 'Follow the money' indeed...
Set aside politics, personalities, and opinions. These scientists are bad scientists and should be drummed out of their trade and punished. One cannot not go as far as calling them classical 'evil scientists' because they do not have the required genius for such a title. All we have seen in the e-mails is thuggish behavior, stonewalling, and the ability to run filtering transforms on data, not very clever stuff here.
It seems they have determined if they manipulate the data enough times, the ‘real’ truth would retro-actively evolve in a sort of Lamarkian fashion to converge into ‘their’ truth. It boggles the mind trying to think what was going on in their heads, and it is better not to go there.
It is a sad time for honest scientists, especially for the ones trying to get the Climategate message out with the MSM freezing-out the message. This is not their (honest scientists) world, and Darwinian Evolution will soon winnow them out.
By the way, great article. I did read the e-mails, and I am sure you did too. I am a Ph.D. scientist, and I couldn't believe the amateur crap these researchers did. For god's sake they selectively low-pass filtered portions of their data! If you pull such ‘tricks’ on your data you must call it out in your publication. I am not against ‘tricks’ if they are explicitly called out, and called out each time you present the data. There is a time to use them and a time not to. Trickyness was not the worst of their sins. Fiddling with the peer review is probably the worst sin. Let’s not even get into the millions of dollars they stole from taxpayers because I want only to focus on the sloppiness of their data handling.
Exxon Mobil made a profit of over $45 billion in 2008... do you think they can afford to hire a few astroturfers and manufacture a "grassroots" campaign? Naw... they wouldn't do that, would they?
Great article...
I have degrees in Math, Physics, and electrical engineering. I make my living through the application of real science. Suppressing/manipulating data is THE cardinal sin of science. It should be punishable by career death. These charlatans should never get another dime from anyone for their crap science.
The cheerleaders who site the other 'scientific data' are just as guilty of suppressing some of the data to the contrary and there is plenty of that data as well.
I.e. you point out, the little ice age persisted from the 15th to 19th centuries, it is common sense that a few centuries of warming might follow 4 centuries of cooling. Exactly like it has for dozens of previous ice ages, none of which were caused by man.
Also, the most important data being suppressed, the global temperatures have gotten cooler recently, not warmer.
Why is that cheerleaders? The answer is we don't know and we need to figure it out. That requires looking at ALL the data
It is all very well making smart remarks about Chicken Little but the evidence is uncontested: the sky is indeed 3.142cm lower today than in when records began in A.D. 1066.
The time is coming when those who ridicule AGW will have nothing left to eat but their words.
We are still melting all over the Earth.
No time for love, Dr. Jones!
Martin Woodhouse appears to be correct. We checked with the NOAA folks out at Louisville International Airport this morning, and the ceiling over Louisville is low, and falling. --Louisville Public Policy Examiner
Tom: Thanks for the nice comment. Yes, San Francisco is an "uber liberal bastion," and we print both a paper and an internet edition of Examiner out there. But our home office is high in the hills of Denver, Colorado, and your Louisville Public Policy Examiner's office is across the street from City Hall, in good ol' Derbytown. Our editor (praised be his name) does not tell us what side of any issue to write about; he only insists that we get our facts straight, and, whenever possible, refrain from pornography, libel, and split infinitives. That is something, up with which, he will not put. --Louisville Public Policy Examiner
I'm shocked at this good article! "anthropogenic global warming" and "0.117%" - sums it up for me.
I've read 10% of the emails, and my mouth was hanging open.
I love the truth - whatever the form - it's all that really matters, right?
Thank goodness those emails will prove that my starting point has not been permanently moved north due to lack of snow in Wasilla.
It is a good thing that those emails can prove beyond a doubt that National Geographic News was dead wrong when they reported on the almost complete disappearance of my glacier.
Just like CRU tried to do, NASA and GISS are also fighting FOIA requests.
BTW, concerning the hacked CRU emails - what is relevant is the computer code. The computer code was cooked. The real data was thrown out and the junk data was put in in its place.
Now the AGW crowd (look at the post below this by Mount K) is having to resort to using useless anecdotal evidence to back up their AGW claims. The AGW crowd is in full denier mode. Bunch of deniers.
When did we become anecdotal? We climbed Mount Kilimanjaro.
The start of the Iditarod has been permanently moved north from Wasilla due to lack of snow. I was mayor of Wasilla and saw with my own eyes the lack of snow.
Maybe Climate Science will fix itself.
Without a Requirement to Post all raw and adjusted data, all models, all equations used, etc. -- Climate Science will die.
I applaud CRU at UEA in its decision to open up. I trust they will!
Without posting the detailed process that leads to one's conclusions, one's 'Science' is not science -- it is belief.
If I tell you that "Unicorns Exist", you have a right to say "Prove it".
Then I produce a Unicorn of course.
Or short of that, I post in detailed fashion the logic of why I propose the Theory of Unicorn Existence (TUE).
You then have the ability to examine my detailed reasoning, data, and model that led to my TUE.
A Theory is not science if it cannot be falsified -- and if you hide your model then no one can falsify your conclusions re AGW.
Otherwise, for example, the only way to disprove my TUE would be an exhaustive search of all universes to eliminate the existence of Unicorns anywhere and everywhere.
Not Good!
Hey Kili Man Jaro,
Please read up on why you lost your snow:
"Mt. Kilimanjaro's ice loss is due to land use" at www.skepticalscience.com/mount-kilimanjaro-snow.htm
And while your are at it, please understand the issue is not about our warming Earth (which is a good thing) --- the issue is "Is the Warming caused by Anthropogenic Factors?"
There is a Mountain of a Difference.
Shaun/ Eric,
Good call
I have worked in research and development for the last 18 years. Although I have a lot less college I would never EVER fudge my data. It is completely wrong. I would much rather lose my job than try to prove an agenda.
I feel in every way that anyone who is this irresponsible should also possibly have their Doctorate pulled. It is a sign of integrity that they do Not deserve.
This is completely outside of the debate of weather or not global warming exists or not .
Psssst. Nobody tell Obama. We wouldn't want it to cause him any trouble with that Al Gore agenda (the one that got Obama in front of the Democrat convention and that is to make the "elite" Democrats rulers of the world through the United Nations taking over it).
A retired insurance broker once told me, "Figures lie, and liars figure."
It figures :-(
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