Who are the deniers now? The climate lobby hasn't learned a thing from the CRU email scandal

“All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome.” So spoke George Orwell, and if the emails stolen from the Climate Research Unit prove anything it’s that he was dead on. No better evidence of this mentality exists than Professor Michael Mann’s attempt to downplay the significance of the emails in an interview with a fellow examiner:

SA: What does Phil Jones mean by "hide"?
MM: I think we expressed this best in the "RealClimate" article. Here's an adapted version of the text: "As for the ‘hide the decline’, comment, I assume what Phil Jones was referring to was the well known that Keith Briffa’s maximum latewood tree ring density proxy data diverges from the temperature records after 1960 (this is more commonly known as the “divergence problem”) and has been discussed in the literature since Briffa et al in Nature in 1998 (Nature, 391, 678-682). Those authors have always recommend not using the post 1960 part of their reconstruction, and so while ‘hiding’ is probably a poor choice of words (since it is ‘hidden’ in plain sight), not using the data in the plot is completely appropriate, as is further research to understand the reason for the "divergence"."
 

Prof. Mann’s response to the leak reveals the same disturbing pattern among climate scientists that was revealed in the emails: evidence that does not support the theory (or even - *gasp* - contradicts it) is ignored. Tree ring evidence from before 1960 supports the current theory, so it is valid. Tree ring evidence after 1960 does not, so it is dismissed as invalid. No real reason is given why the evidence after 1960 should be considered less valid than evidence before it (other than that it contradicts what Mann believes), and the fact that there is a “divergence problem” between temperatures and the attendant tree rings from those years does not cause these scientists to question whether their initial assumption that tree rings mirror temperatures may have been incorrect. Rather, they simply ignore the curious “problem” and assume that an explanation is out there somewhere (which, of course, will require more funding to find). This type of thing is what happens when you accept a theory a priori and then attempt to prove it, rather than searching through the evidence without a prior assumption and letting it guide you where it may. That’s a perfect example of bad science.

Keep in mind that without an accurate correlation between tree rings and modern temperatures there is no reason to believe that tree rings accurately reflect temperature from time periods before records were kept, and without proof of what temperatures were like thousands of years ago the entire global warming thesis falls apart. The only objective measure of whether the tree ring test is valid is how tree rings compare to recorded temperatures, and the “divergence problem” shows that they do not always match. At the very least that means that factors other than temperature affect the tree rings, and if they do that now then they likely did in the past as well. That should cast serious doubt on pronouncements about what temperatures were like thousands (or millions) of years ago that are based on this obviously faulty evidence.

There is little doubt, even among most conservatives, that there is some degree of validity to the climate change thesis. But the current climate alarm movement has gone far beyond the available evidence, advancing a manufactured scientific “consensus” built on shoddy evidence, a priori assumptions, and censorship of dissenting views. The leaked CRU emails proved that, and Prof. Mann’s weak attempt to dismiss their importance only shows that our climate scientists have not learned a thing from this experience. Then again, practicing honest science might jeopardize their climate change funding, so they probably can’t risk it.

The tree ring scenario brought up by Prof. Mann is only one example out of many of this type of dishonest, viewpoint-driven science that tries to make the evidence fit the theory instead of vice versa.
To see all of the leaked CRU files, go here.
For more examples of shoddy science being put at the service of a political agenda, go here.