Playing hide and seek behind the trees

Still hiding the decline.
How about hiding the assumption that post-1960 tree rings aren’t correlated to temperature but pre-1960 are? Did the trees join the counter-culture and start taking drugs?
They aren’t un-hiding anything. They are just digging a deeper hole.

Aimee has a point. Why are we wasting our time here when there’s exploding kitten fun to be had.

Dear Aimee
As an hysterical alarmists you don’t have to exaggerate everything. I’m sure 5 minutes would be more than enough.
Regards
Michael

Aimee, I just came across this comment on the WSJ, and felt it relevant to what you have said. It was authored by one Bill Gnade.
“Yes, yes. Our skepticism is but a ruse to distract folks of the truth you’ve descried: we are heartless brutes. We are naught but crass egotists who care for no one but ourselves. We might as well proclaim ourselves solipsists, as nothing but our own relentless self-interest exists to us, for us. Seriously, we are myopic misanthropes. We hate life; the living. We pray for a melted earth. We hope with a lover’s zeal for the heat death of the planet. We dream of little else but toxicity, of leaving the earth worse off than we found it. We don’t seek to leave our mark on life. We seek to leave our stain.”
Enjoy.

DRE (23:24:22) :
Hence Mann’s new paper where he discovers the MWP, which can only make me wonder about the timing of its release and the meaning of its release. Honestly, at this point, one can only wonder what else is hiding under the carpet.

Isn’t this anything more than a theoretical discussion ? Let there be (and there was) some warming in the Middle Ages. And yes, some tried to deny that and present graphs without this warm period. On purpose. To make us scared. But does that change anything about the fact that we are living in a relative warm period. Since 10 years there is no additional warming observed any more, but there are also almost no moments that the global temperature did drop below the used reference temperature.
Does the presence or absence of the Medieval warm period on a graph change something on the fact that humans puts biljons of tons of CO2 in the atmosfere ? And maybe you can argue that CO2 is almost armless in this low concentrations. Yes but CO2 is never emitted alone. Always there are a lot of other co-emissions that are much more dangerous for environment and health.
So does the recognition or denial of the Medieval Warm period remove our moral duty to take the best possible care of our planet ? Is the presence or absense of some tree ringdate a sign to waste our natural resourses and to blow anything we like into the atmosfere ? I don’t think so. Maybe CO2 reduction will not keep us cooler, but certainly it will make us beter humans.

Willem de Rode (23:40:50) :
So does the recognition or denial of the Medieval Warm period remove our moral duty to take the best possible care of our planet? Is the presence or absense of some tree ring date a sign to waste our natural resour[c]es and to blow anything we like into the atmos[ph]ere? I don’t think so.
OK. The problem is that now the current warm period cannot be directly linked to CO2 because a past warm period is in need of explaining without the effects of CO2. This is a problem for the idea that our burning of fossil fuels is the cause of the current warm period. Just because the two are correlated does not mean that one causes the other. We do not “blow anything we like into the atmosphere”. There are very strict emissions laws in the U.S. on what can and cannot be emitted without proper cleanup, and lest we forget HFCs are banned. We also have a moral duty to ensure that we take care of humanity, a concept that sadly seems lost in American society today. I could elaborate but this website is not the place for that argument. Suffice it to say that many people would suffer if they were not allowed to use CO2 producing fuels for heat or electricity. Hospitals use an enormous amount of electricity to care for patients, for example.
Maybe CO2 reduction will not keep us cooler, but certainly it will make us bet[t]er humans. Maybe CO2 reduction will not keep us cooler, but certainly it will make us be[t]ter humans.
I find the last sentence of this especially perplexing. If CO2 reduction may not keep us cooler, how would it make us better humans?

@Aimee Gardens,
Perhaps you could back, with evidence, some of your statements. Science estimates thath there are 10 million species alive on Earth at the moment with somewhere around 1.4 million currently known, although some say there may be up to 100 million. That said, by your reckoning we have somewhere between one month to 10 months left, perhaps less than a month if we are not the last species on the short end of the stick.
Also the Polar caps are, as you quite correctly say, being bombarded by solar radiation every moment. All that radiation from 370-700 nM has a nasty side effect of causing a very serious electro-chemical reaction called photosynthesis. This process has caused a multitude of unwanted organisms to flourish on our one and only mother.
Nothing is ever wrong with asking questions even if that means you are denying things like the Earth being flat. In fact there are many people who deny the increase in Polar Bear populations contrary to all evidence.
What is truly dangerous? Rank anti-intellectualism that embraces pseudo- science, hysterical emotionalism, and neo-pagan ideologies of sacrifice to appease the Earth because we are dangerously out of balance and facing tremendous disaster. This is nothing new, sadly, it was a main plank of a particularly virulent political ideology in Germany from the 1920’s to the mid 1940’s but rather than being called Conservation it is now Environmentalism.

Here is the YouTube video with Steve mentioned by name:

Guys and Gals, let’s leave Aimee alone she’s too easy a target.
Aimee, you are entitled to your views, but please don’t call people who don’t hold them “deniers” it is meant to associate sceptics with those who deny the holocaust, why would anyone with the arguments on their side do that?
As for Briffa, the question being begged by all this is why they had confidence in the data before 1960 once they noticed the downtick. Surely then without instrumental temperature measurements to compare to the earlier proxies they use of those proxies would have been invalid?

I agree, I think Aimee’s naivety suggests she is very young and should be left alone as being too easy a target. Let it go everyone.

Willem: The point is in fact that implementing desperate means to cut CO2 may actually make us the opposite of “better humans”. In fact, it may already have killed hundreds of thousands: The ridiculous and very short-sighted political decisions to force the use of biofuel may have been partly responsible for the food crisis of the last couple of years. The 2006-2008 food price rally probably was partly due to a financial bubble, so it’s hard to tell how many people were really killed by biofuel promotion, but there’s no doubt it will get much worse if this crazy (in its current incarnation, i.e. using food for fuel, future biofuel technologies may be better) biofuel promotion continues.
And to Aimee: Stupid, short-sighted promotion of biofuel most certainly also has made species go extinct! E.g. in Indonesia, where rain forests have been replaced with palm oil fields, releasing so much CO2 in the process that CO2 saved by using palm oil diesel will have to “pay back the upfront CO2 payment” over several hundred years before it’s balanced.
Let’s start being better humans by protecting our environment from dangers that we KNOW are real: E.g. help developing countries build clean, modern coal power plants to avoid the brown clouds that kill thousands of people (and that may even be the main cause of e.g. the melting Himalayan glaciers). And let’s not stop the developing countries from economic development by denying them these power plants. Then we’re really being “better humans”.
Another small example of how political decisions may actually harm the environment: The EUs decision to ban normal light bulbs at a time when the “green” light bulbs still contain mercury, which necessarily will make it into the environment (I stockpile the old Edison-bulbs I find, I live far north where we mostly need light in the heating season, and we have electrical heating anyway, so the heat from the light bulbs isn’t wasted).
As long as the scare scenarios of a “burning world” are very far from “settled science”, those of us who have /real/ concern for the environment understand that one needs to thread carefully. The road to hell is paved with good intentions…

The Briffa 2000 graph is very different to the Briffa 1998 fig 5 here:
http://eas8001.eas.gatech.edu/papers/Briffa_et_al_PTRS_98.pdf
(Briffa 1998 is based on trees from across the N hemisphere.)
How did Briffa create the change ?

Mmmmm . . . kitten !

For those who want to watch exploding kittens. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Doh3InpBq4g
For the rest of us, I had to watch the travesty of melting Glaciers in the Himalyas as the harbinger of doom as the lead item on our NZ National TV news, followed by how Copenhagen will save us all and that our PM has committed us to pay $25 million – or up to $50 million as our guilt tax. The MSM do live on a different planet. Climategate only appears on blogs here, the MSM is completely subverted to AGW.

The Aimee comment is just precious.
“It still amazes me why you deniers are willfully accepting that millions of species going extinct every month”
There are currently 1.8 million known species of plants and animals living on the planet Earth. According to Aimee, every living creature on planet Earth will be extinct by the end of this month…
That’s some real interesting news. You would think that even CNN would be covering this mass extinction.
Cheers
Cheers

Aimee,
“and the polar caps being bombarded by solar radiation.”
I think you’ll find that 1/2 of the World is always being bombarded by solar radiation – it’s called daylight.

doctorbulldog ;
RE: “It still amazes me why you deniers are willfully accepting that millions of species going extinct every month”
Well, when you line on a planet this small with a core temperature of a few million degrees, that sort of thing is bound to happen every now and then.

Aimee, you’ve got lots of replies but I can’t resist. Serious question about values:
If you had the ability to reduce human population down to 1 billion, would you do it?
(remember, before modern technology, the whole of Europe had maybe 30 million people).

Aimee: I like my pets, especially my cat. I have no plans to nuke him. But, there are people out there who have proposed to take away our historical companions to save the planet.
I like trees too. But I have no plans to engage in frivolous lawsuits, like certain groups do, to halt management of of our forests to satisfy their vision of the good old days. I don’t care for placing wildfires on the endangered species act.
If you want to save the Planet, Aimee, fine, do your part. But make sure you address the hypocritical lifestyle that Al Gore lives.

Capn Jack Walker (23:28:14) :
FergalR (23:31:23) :
Using that word is an insult to the victims of the holocaust Aimee.
You live in a strange world. Most would accept these definitions as acceptable use:
wiki
Denial is a defense mechanism in which a person is faced with a fact that is too painful to accept and rejects it instead, insisting that it is not true despite what may be overwhelming evidence.
websters
denier1 definition de·nier (də nir′; for 2, den′yər; Fr də nyā′)
noun
1.a small, obsolete French coin of little value
2.a unit of weight for measuring the fineness of threads of silk, rayon, nylon, etc., equal to .05 gram per 450 meters
Etymology: ME dener < OFr denier < L denarius, denarius
denier2 definition de·nier (dē nī′ər, di-)
noun
a person who denies
deny definition deny (dē nī′, di-)
transitive verb denied -·nied′, denying -·ny′·ing
1.to declare (a statement) untrue; contradict
2.to refuse to accept as true or right; reject as unfounded, unreal, etc.
3.to refuse to acknowledge as one's own; disown; repudiate
4.to refuse the use of or access to
5.to refuse to grant or give
6.to refuse the request of (a person)
7.Obsolete to forbid

A French person tipped me off to it. Said I needed to go look into it for myself.
I have to say that just before that, I got a shock when I read what their Doomsday Mitigation plans were.
How long do you think it will be before some noteables in the AGW camp jump back to the Coming Ice Age alarmism?

I think Aimee’s a troll. And a damn good one.
Kevin wrote:
What is truly dangerous? Rank anti-intellectualism that embraces pseudo- science, hysterical emotionalism, and neo-pagan ideologies of sacrifice to appease the Earth because we are dangerously out of balance and facing tremendous disaster. This is nothing new, sadly, it was a main plank of a particularly virulent political ideology in Germany from the 1920’s to the mid 1940’s but rather than being called Conservation it is now Environmentalism
Hey Kevin, I’d like to subscribe to your newsletter.

Aimee Gardens (23:20:28) :”…polar caps being bombarded by solar radiation.”
Anthropogenic sunlight?

Mike Nicholson (02:41:03)
………entrenched in the “ warmist” camp, tend on the whole to verge on the hysterical and……….warmist”
It was hysteria that frightened us all in to the warmist camp.
A whole generation of “warmists” are popping their heads over the parapet,
to see ask what’s really going on, unfortunately, the the only language we have learned in the camp is full of hysteria, this is reflected in our questions. Please be Patient.

Scientificus Hubristicus (Mucho Moola)
Although there are reports that gametes have been collected and stored by Environmentalists.

Aimee appears to be echoing a view often heard from Greens – massive species losses are occurring due to tropical deforestation. For a reality check see Whitmore & Sayer (eds), 1992, Tropical Deforestation And Species Extinction, chapter 6 by Brown and Brown. Much of this is available on Google Books. The chapter cited examines the Brazilian rainforests – and concludes that the Greens are engaging in outrageous hype once again. While areas of high species diversity can be found in the Amazon rainforest, these high-diversity areas are confined to particular regions. They are not characteristic of the rainforest as a whole. The authors therefore challenge the Green claims of enormous species losses.

MILLIONS…of species going extinct PER MONTH! LOL
If you check the WWF website you will discover that there are approximately 10,000 documented species currently on the endangered species list. And you will also note that none of them have gone extinct in the last YEAR, let alone the last month.
As a climate “denier” and a conservative environmentalist, I am all for taking what steps are practical and necessary to look after the diversity of our ecosystems, but there is little to no evidence that species extinction has increased in the last half century in response to the supposed severe global warming.
You may also wish to check your facts regarding polar bears. Their population is INCREASING. By a factor of two in the last 25 years.

Wow, I’m amazed by how many people fell for Amiee’s satire. Can’t you see that she is just making the same ludicrous ill-informed statements made by so many average Joes, but taking it to the next level? e.g. confusing global warming with the alleged CFC caused hole in the ozone layer. Classic.
on topic-> Looking through that code reminds me of how much I have forgotten about programming since I gave up software development. My degree is mocking me.

PhilW – very good comment.
I’m sorry that Aimee has taken up so much of the posters’ space – because I think Steve’s material is important. No good blowing off too much (ctm – lesson taken in, thanks) and missing out on the science as a result – because ClimateGate all hinges on getting the awfulness of the science across to enough people, including other scientists and enough MSM. In fact, I like Steve’s snipping policy in this respect, keeping to the subject, and constantly refining and homing in.
I found a “hat trick” of tricks hidden in those tiny details, that become clear when you overlay the original WMO graph and the new UEA release. I’ve enlarged the details, done blink comparisons, and written explanations for newcomers click
This is an expansion of what I posted before, but done more carefully and with some new, important details (IMO). I took time out to do this because this evidence seems so central to the whole of ClimateGate, and it’s important that people can understand it easily. It takes what Steve has written here a little further.
I hope this helps everyone. But please correct me if I’ve got anything wrong.

“and the polar caps being bombarded by solar radiation . . .”
Well said. Let me add to what is a profound point. Have all you “deniers” any idea just how long this radiation has been going on? What’s worse, if it’s not one of the poles, it’s the other one and it lasts for a good six months every year And stuff.
Sorry for the rant but I’ve just had a not dis-similar argument with a former scientific colleague which was at almost as low a level. Pitiful.
The stupid fools who peddle this kind of irrational tosh seem not to grasp that solving a non-existent problem on a global scale is not only highly destructive environmentally but diverts significant resources badly needed elsewhere. It is thus likely to be the direct cause of considerable human suffering.
That is as good a practical reason for getting the science right as I can imagine however much it offends some (mostly white middle class) folks’ quasi-religious ideas.
Deny that if you can to, say, a parent whose child has chronic malaria but not electricity. I’m sure they’ll appreciate it.
At the end of the day, AGW theory and the greed and ignorance that surrounds its final “solution” could prove as destructive to humanity as Fascism was (which BTW also had roots in bogus science).
I agree that the post’s a laugh – but it isn’t funny. Different things.
Mike says above “I won’t make any cheap comments about people like Aimee”. That’s perfectly proper but OTOH I’d argue that the possible human cost of this scandal does need thinking about and those making it must think of the possible consequences of their actions should they prove to be wrong.

Time to start awarding “Rathers”. Initially I thought they should be limited to journalists that don’t cover Climategate, or who cover it and say that never mind AGW is still valid. But then I saw statements from Carol Browner and Lisa Johnson and I thought they needed an award as well. And now with Aimee I think that she should get an award as well. So “Rahters” will be given to Jouralists and others will get “Rahterettes”. Carol, Lisa and Aimee all get Ratherettes.
I’m having a certificate made to send to the awardees. Feel free to do the same and send them to appropriate honorees. I’m working on an award for Jones, Mann, et al.

chillybean said:
“As long as you don’t mind being party to the death of millions in the third world due to food shortages that will be caused by the AGW fraud. I can’t see how that is being a better human?”
Oh, you mean like the millions that have died due to malaria since the greenies banned the only effective mosquito control chemical available?

Aren’t the AGW alarmists more accurately described as “deniers” and “skeptics”?
I think so.

Amiee, I told you a million time to stop exaggerating!

Thanks for that analogy Aimee,I didn’t need that image in my head,and you profess to care about animals?10 minutes on high?How do you know?Don’t answer,I don’t want to know.

PhilW (00:32:11) :
Give Aimee a break..
For more than ten years I have listened to, and lived my life believing that AGW was true. I also pushed my convictions on my children.
The obvious shock in the posts by those of you who suspected this scandal is is glaringly obvious. For me, and millions of others like me coming to terms with this scandal, has been, and still is an extremely painful process.
——————————————–
PhilW, Welcome to a whole new reality, where allegations of how reality works should be provable and not taken on faith alone. I accept that it is can be a very painful and disorientating process to realise that something that you may have believed in whole-heartedly is not what you believed it to be, that people you trusted acted in a less than trustworthy manner.
You and your fellow awakeners are most welcome here.
Personally I feel that people from both sides of the debate should stop, reflect and acknowledge that there is, and has been, and will continue to be a debate. That there is NO scientific consensus specifically on the rate or extent of climate change, let-alone the amount of causation that can be fully laid at the door of man. (rather than Mann)
What I find truly outrageous is the amount of time, effort and money that is poured into this CO2 debacle, and real and catastrophic localised, yet large scale, environmental disasters are happening in various regions of the world, ignored by the political classes entirely.
Perhaps this could be a chance to get the world to stop the CO2 fraud and actually do something about the deforestation reality!

Re: Kim W
I just shot my cereal out my nose,, I am making those exploding kittens my screen saver..

“You may also wish to check your facts regarding polar bears. Their population is INCREASING. By a factor of two in the last 25 years.”
That is why polar bears are not on the endangered species list. They are on the threatened species list. The criteria for the threatened species list are not as stringent as for the endangered species list, as their massively increasing numbers would preclude them.
Only in climate alarmist world could the fact that the polar bear population has doubled land them on the threatened species list.

Re Aimee Gardens (23:20:28) :
Aimee, it is worse then we thought.
You said “millions of species going extinct every month.”
Since there is a TOTAL of about two million species, all life on earth will be gone in less than two months. Start panicking. Or maybe you exaggerate almost as much as Jones and Mann and Hansen and Briffa, and Stieg and the rest of the Warmies
Wake up girl, you been had

Aimee might well be a troll, but in my Montana university town, where a local faculty member shares a Nobel with Al, I meet an Aimee nearly every day.

What are the two nearly overlapping black lines on the original graph? IMO visually they are what produces the impression of out-of-control temperature increase.
Is there any universally agreed known good data publicly available? if so, Is anyone aware of a graphic that directly compares the dot-earth blog graph of yesterday with that data?

Gavin Schmidt doing the perp walk … priceless …

BTW – The fundamental Buddhist precepts are either identical to or overlap with multiple of the Ten Commandments. Undoubtedly, back in the 5th Century BC or earlier, rabbis made it far enough East to influence holy men in India.

millions of species going extinct every month

Are you being serious? You don’t actually believe what you wrote, do you?
According to IUCN (since 1500):

Box 1. Summary of the 2008 IUCN Red List update
There are 869 recorded extinctions, with 804 species listed as Extinct and 65 listed as Extinct in the Wild;
http://data.iucn.org/dbtw-wpd/edocs/RL-2009-001.pdf

How do you get from 869 total, to millions a month is beyond me. It seems like you are using Mann’s code to make an uptick in extiction rates! Making a hockey stick out of species loss….nice try.

****************
Aimee Gardens (23:20:28) :
It still amazes me why you deniers are willfully accepting that millions of species going extinct every month and the polar caps being bombarded by solar radiation. Do you enjoy watching your planet explode like a kitten burned alive in a microwave on high for 10 minutes? I think something is wrong with you people 🙁
**************
But thanks to nuclear power, there are tens of millions of new species created each month. Right.

Charles the Moderator :
Please next time delete nonsense EVEN if it has entertainment value .
The net result of this troll is that it has very effectively KILLED a serious and interesting study by S.McIntyre .
And I am sure that it was the intent – make people remember only a stupid troll post and ignore everything about UEA and its wrongdoing .
It’s called deviation of attention and look how efficient it is !

Thoughts;
Is there (there should be) a corrolary to Godwin’s Law stating that calling someone a denier is the equivalent of calling them a Nazi. Debate ended, time to move on.
We could then have some agreement that it’s time to end this ridiculous debate.
Possibly we could move foreward if someone could reconstitute the ‘lost’ archive data and use it to re-establish the science.
It would really be helpful to know what our climate has done over the last couple hundred years, and more helpful to know what it’s done recently. Even if there remains some debate on that issue.
Maybe then we could begin to establish what drives our climate, and (better still) what it’s about to do. The notion that agenda driven science has put blinders on our society and therefore could make us more vulnerable to what may be an impending LIA or MWP (modern warm period) is unacceptable.
No more Proprietary Data, no more unsharable code or algorithms. How the blankety blank did Science (notice the capital letter there) get so distorted as this? Reproducible results from shared methodology, not just assurances from ‘peers’, who may or may not be close friends with a vested interest.
Do you know what happens when politicians or organized religion gets too deeply involved in science? NO ONE EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION!!
And Aimee; you would do well to spend a few years reading and learning some serious math. 10 million per month? You sound like Al Gore and his ‘millions of degrees at the core’ b.s.
(I notice you’ve not yet replied to anyone who has mocked your original post.)

John Trigge said:
“I think you’ll find that 1/2 of the World is always being bombarded by solar radiation – it’s called daylight.”
A greater problem is the bombardment of the sun by terrestrial radiation and that happens 24/7, rendering the sun unfit for habitation.

Oh TomVonk don’t be such a square.
CTM gave us all a bit of light relief.

TomVonk,
I agree totally. I particularly avoided making a post until now for that reason.

Ok back to the TOPIC.
What I cannot wrap my head around is that LINE through the middle.
Someone told me a few days ago it was today’s temps, then I read it was 1961-90, and see it here, finally. So very month an anomaly is reported it’s a divergence from that area. It implies some kind of mean or average at first glance.
So ok, I finally see that as evidence that 61-90 was warmer than what they could discern from history, as if temperatures were measured more accurately in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s as the cities spread.
Who chose that particular time period and why?
This is so crazy, we’re talking about TENTHS of a single degree C, ontological angels is all I see dancing on the head of this pin!

re Espen
on EUs decision to ban normal light bulbs
Yes that was a meaningless token decision, whatever one’s take on environmental politics.
There is research even by EU governments themselves to show that supposed savings end up marginal, and light bulbs don’t give out CO2 anyway – power stations do, and can (and will) of course be dealt with directly.
Even if electrical products had to be targeted, taxation is better, retaining choice, while (unlike with bans) giving government income on the reduced sales, income that can in turn give environmental spending if needs be.
2 billion annual EU light bulb sales (=like USA) shows, or showed, the potential income possibilities just on light bulbs, though, as said, taxation is in principle wrong too, merely better for all sides than bans.
About the unpublicised industrial politics that led to the EU ban:
http://www.ceolas.net/#li1ax
——————————
Emission Policy Alternatives
http://ceolas.net/#cce1x
Introduction: The need – or not – to deal with emissions
The Overall Picture
Emission sources, land and ocean cycles, agriculture and deforestation
1. Direct Industrial Emission Regulation
Mandated reduction of CO2, monitored like other emission substances
2. Carbon Taxation
Fuel Tax — Emission Tax
3. Emission Trading (Cap and Trade)
Basic Idea — Offsets — Tree Planting — Manufacture Shift — Fair Trade — Surreal Market — Allowances: Auctions + Hand-Outs — Allowance Trading — Companies: Business Stability + Cost — In Conclusion
4. Contracted CO2 Reduction
Private companies compete for contracts to lower CO2 emissions.

Willem de Rode (23:40:50) :
“Yes but CO2 is never emitted alone. Always there are a lot of other co-emissions that are much more dangerous for environment and health.”
You need to read some of Bjorn Lomborg. It is precisely because there are other environmental concerns which are more important than CO2 that we need to get off this fixation with a harmless gas and focus on controlling those emissions which do real harm. We can do much more good pounding down the “tall poles in the tent” than we can by wiggling the tent flaps.

well, my reply to all this is Chiefio-size-length. YOU HAVE BEEN WARMED!
“ClimateGate reflections: Groupthink, Courtesy, Trolls, and Good Science”
For the first time ever, I was cross with WUWT for allowing a whole thread on an important topic to get railroaded by one hysterical alarmist. It drowned Steve’s important point, namely that the “hide the decline” is still continuing, and it hid my own “absolutely essential” contribution 🙂 ……….. rats! And Tom Vonk was also not amused… but then Plato Says said “Oh TomVonk don’t be such a square. CTM gave us all a bit of light relief.” and Plato Says also has a point.
It made me start thinking about the conditions which brought about this…. err, emotional outburst… and also remember that whilst various climate skeptics have been faced with serious threats to profession, life and limb, I’ve now heard that Prof Jones has had to ask for police protection. This concerns me. The last thing I want is that my actions should inspire anything smacking of revenge.
ClimateGate, as a high point in the saga of the serial corruption of Climate Science, has affected a lot of us very deeply. Many here (self included) admit to being hooked on WUWT, CA, whatever, as a lifeline to sanity. Many of us have burned the midnight oil since Climategate broke. WUWT, amazing as ever in its prolific outpouring of key material as well as courtesy, has been on overdrive yet has kept going, and is evolving to accommodate developments.
If ever one wanted proof that you cannot objectify Science by removing the human element, this is it. WUWT and CA have above all taught and reminded me that people make or break the science, and that courtesy is the first prerequisite for… the development of good science. Courtesy gives one space to explore those “aha!” flashes of insight, without being made to feel foolish. And it is a give-and-take process, as the best of us can go over the top in the heat of the moment. Likewise, I have compassion for the belief the CRU cabal and many other warmists have, that they are latter-day Robin Hoods tackling Dangerous Global Warming. Compassion, but not respect. This belief, which has a lot to do with the phenomenon of “Group Think”, is a dangerous one.
Here are eight symptoms indicative of groupthink according to Wikipedia sourcing Janis1977.
1. Illusions of invulnerability creating excessive optimism and encouraging risk taking.
2. Rationalizing warnings that might challenge the group’s assumptions.
3. Unquestioned belief in the morality of the group, causing members to ignore the consequences of their actions.
4. Stereotyping those who are opposed to the group as weak, evil, biased, spiteful, disfigured, impotent, or stupid.
5. Direct pressure to conform placed on any member who questions the group, couched in terms of “disloyalty”.
6. Self censorship of ideas that deviate from the apparent group consensus.
7. Illusions of unanimity among group members, silence is viewed as agreement.
8. Mind guards — self-appointed members who shield the group from dissenting information.
The collapse of the UK bank Northern Rock is thought to be a recent major example of groupthink. I would add the Challenger disaster, the Madoff financial deceptions, the mass suicide of the followers of Jim Jones, and the rise of the Third Reich. And, to some extent, every single religion – in which Scientism and Atheism and Warmism have all the worst qualities of religions. And I don’t think WUWT is exempt either. But having said this, I think that groupthink may be part of our survival psychology – perhaps it’s there for a reason – and the best we can do is become aware so that it serves rather than drives.
Recently several posts of high scientific merit have been posted, during this time of “high noise to signal ratio” and I hope they do not just get buried. I hope that the new ClimateGate department will help archive not just the important “ClimateGate” news but also the unfolding good science, so that its development can continue. I hope this might be an opportunity to develop a contents index to the website, rather like our opposite numbers Skeptical Science, Gristmill and RealClimate have already got, IMO quite rightly. For in the end, it is the science to which we must continue to refer, even though close on the heels of this comes the question – how the heck do I communicate to a rabid warmist?
I faced this question ages back and decided that being an amateur put me in the strong position of seeing things afresh and that I had enough grasp of science and scientific method to write up a Primer, an introduction to sceptical / realistic Climate Science, with adequate science and from the point of view of an ex-warmist – and that this would be a Good Thing.
I could see clearly that a skeptics’ wiki would be desirable, even ideal… but lacked the skill or time to do this. But ClimateGate is another opportunity to do something like this, to consolidate the skeptics’ knowledge base, to be able to speak both to professionals like Judith Curry, to dedicated amateurs who have vital professional skills like RomanM, to dedicated amateurs who lack skills but care about good science, and even (by association) to dedicated amateurs like Aimee who lack skills and seem (to us) to lack all vestiges of commonsense, courtesy, or understanding of Scientific Method. Aimee has succumbed to the going “group think” about climate change. But are we free of group think ourselves? Do we need to step outside the whole process a bit more, to see… important breakthroughs in the whole of Science being given a chance, that would not have come about without this crisis?…. a difficult birth-process?…. the future of Science By Blog?…. how to help reclaim good science?…. how to discern and sideline the religious/groupthink elements on ALL sides?…. and perhaps recognize that it is ok to be passionate…. and even fail sometimes…. if we can also just step outside ourselves and watch, become aware…. and leave space for…. Life to unfold…. WUWT…. back to passionate curiosity.
No conclusions, we are in the middle of interesting times… but just as the Silent Minute was the “one weapon the Germans could not match” during the second World War, so reflection is…. perpetually a source of new life and hope.

de Rode –
95% of all CO2 production would be emitted even without humans on the planet.
In 1997, Indonesian peat fires may have released 13% – 40% as much carbon as fossil fuel burning does in a single year
I know I rely on Wiki – but the point is the same.

And NOAA used the same code for the deleted existing data [Briffa’s diverging data] as it does for years with absolutely no existent data.
So the question arises as to whether NOAA’s [NCDC’s ?] archive can be trusted to not in effect hide data as non-existent when it actually exists.
And the question arises as to whether NOAA, CRU, the IPCC, and now the UEA are all somehow linked up in the process that hides certain data which would tend to disprove the existence of the hockey stick.

Plato Says:
his conservative MP responded—
“I will continue to accept that we cannot consider it sensible to pollute our atmosphere with carbon and not expect it to have a destabilising effect on our climate system. For that reason, I will carry on supporting measures to decarbonise our economy”
Carbon polluting atmosphere? Decarbonise economy?
Don’t use fuel of any kind, not even wood, no plastics, no rubber, no food (has carbon in it)… Someone isn’t thinking.
Oops, my bad. I forgot he’s a politician.
Prepare to enter the dark ages….

Lucy Skywalker. Very good points. I too, believe we should focus on Steve M. and your work, and not get sidetracked. Although some of the posts were hilarious. fm

It looks like I am in a tiny minority to say that Aimee’s posting looks like irony (said to be an extinct species in the USA). Everything in her note is so OTT that it has all the earmarks of a spoof. Lighten up folks, life isn’t totally serious.
IanM

Lucy, good points. Mark Wagner, you’re absolutely right. I’ll keep pummelling media sources here to have them focus on the real crime not the titillating emails. And of course, Amiee’s post had me laughing out loud in public— it allowed me to get a seat all to myself on the crowded bus homeward.

All: Can you help me?
I emailed Starbucks to tell them I am boycotting their stores for supporting cap and trade.
**They replied, “Our decision to support cap and trade legislation is based on what we’ve learned firsthand. Our coffee buyers and agronomists work with farmers everyday and they’ve seen how climate change is impacting our business. Rainfall and harvest patterns are shifting. Communities that once could easily grow coffee are now struggling. We’ve also seen how reducing the use of electricity and water in our stores results in both cost savings and benefits the environment.”**
It seems no one can make the distinction between conservation and environmentalism (as in reducing global population, imposing global governance, removal of nation-state, censorship and criminal punishment of objecters)
We need to get this out.
http://www.starbuckscontactcenter.com/?group=CR&template=CR319&CN=7697696&aspect=88721
We can explain the difference between conservation and the treasonous beliefs of “environmentalists: behind the cap and trade laws being considered by the “free” world.
If we can get just Starbucks to restate their position, we may accomplish something. I’m not sure where else to turn. This problem is overwhelming to me, because I love America, and believe I am watching her commit suicide.
The multinational companies, the ones who benefited from a free market system, are turning on that system to break it.
A list of these companies is at nocapandtrade.com. They pay the news services for advertising services. The news services hear from them on a daily basis.
I suggest we all contact Starbucks together here.

Aimee looks like a stooge to me.
Notice how; if you leave out the trees the graph looks even warmer. If they really wanted to hide anything they could have just left out the trees altogether.
Kevin (15:01:28) is right. Jones published about this problem before the email was written.
Some hiding.

First a few words to Kathryn before I get on-topic below:
One thing to tell Starbucks is that elevated CO2 actually may be very good for coffee growers. This article seems to indicate (I’ve not read the article and don’t know enough biology to do so, I guess) that coffee responds positively to elevated CO2: http://www.springerlink.com/content/m32315525666100x/
Most plants that respond positively to high CO2 levels also become more water-efficient. So, it may well be that in a high-CO2 world, coffee growers can return to the environmentally friendly shadow growth method, and use less water than before.
***Trying to get on-topic:***
What are the main components of the Briffa analysis discussed by Steve McIntyre? If it’s the Polar Urals or Yamal, I wonder why they would think there is a “divergence”, when in fact the nearby long-running station Ostrov Dikson has had temperatures that’s similar to the Briffa graph. I created this graph: http://i45.tinypic.com/2ns6jk6.jpg by downloading June-August temperatures for Ostrov Dikson from GISS. To avoid too much noise (arctic temperatures are extremely variable), I smoothed the curve with a centered 3-year mean. The Briffa series ends in 1994, please note that that corresponds to approximately the start of the current warm period of Ostrov Dikson. Also note that the temperature fluctuations are strikingly high, even with my smoothed curve, and despite the fact that this place is close to the Arctic Ocean: As you can see, most 3-year means between 1940 and 1960 were above 3.5 C, while the period 1965 – 1975 was below 2.5 C.

To Moderator:
On reflection, given WUWT’s new, post-Climategate circumstances, I’d echo calls for our long-suffering moderators to deal with aimee-trolls not because they are not genuine but because they are wildly OT and waste both the site’s and visitors’ resources. (I wish I hadn’t added to the noise.)

“Name ONE species that went extent in the last 3 months.”
~ charles the moderator.
Scientific integrity in climate science.
I think that seems to be pretty much extinct. Although the last remnants probably passed away years ago, it’s absence is only now becoming known to the public.

Aimee a troll? I do not care, it is hypocrisy to throw stones at Aimee when we are so upset at the ‘holding responses in the queue” that goes on at the website that refuses to call Steve by his name.
Lets fast forward this Climategate debacle to its obvious resolution. Most of the deleted emails are probably stored at the ISP. I know in the U.S. they are required to be, the question is has that time expired? Because taxpayer dollars were fraudulently acquired and squandered on a non problem there will be a paper trail. As the investigation unfolds somebody will spill the beans to avoid prison time. Then, it will be CYA time on steroids. The spineless politicians will do whatever it takes to keep their jobs. The real question is, how high up the food chain does the conspiracy go? Remember, Dear Leader Obama claims that he got his start in politics with the help of the Sierra Club and the League of Conservation Voters. Whether you like the president or not there is no denying that he is a smart man and an astute politician who needs to win just one more election. Since, for politicians the end justifies the means who will be sacrificed so that the president can continue to “do the work of the people”?
Most Americans, even in these hard times, enjoy a standard of living that most of the world envies. The average American DOES pay attention whenever a politician attempts to reach into his wallet. As the true magnitude of this scandal unfolds everybody involved will be so busy driving the bus over everyone else that it is going to look like a destruction derby. What is sad is that when future real environmental concerns arise nobody will believe the environmentalists. Any sane human being cares about the planet. The good news is the far left will not be able to execute their master plan for world domination through control of the worlds energy. BTW, I despise the far left as much as I do the far right. All that is necessary for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing. Thank you Steve for having the courage to do that which is right.

Harold Blue Tooth (Viking not phone) (15:45:11) :
Niclas Sand Engberg (06:36:46) :
“Name ONE species that went extent in the last 3 months.”
~ charles the moderator.
I wish I could say useful idiots went extict. But I can’t. I saw one named Bill O’Reilly on tv last night.
Is that the best you can do, a half witted ad hominem attack on Bill O’Reilly? I guess if I could not make an intelligent argument I would be tempted to stoop as low. Fortunately, I have some class. BTW, “tv” is an acronym for television and should be capitalized. Also, you misspelled extinct. Perhaps you should invest in a dictionary? It couldn’t hurt and it might help to build character, yours! Also, by watching The O’Reilly Factor you may build your vocabulary as Mr. O’Reilly often shares interesting additions to fortify just about anyones diction.