Guest post submitted by Steve Garcia
(feet2thefire http://feet2thefire.wordpress.com )
It has now been more than 20 months since the CRU emails were outed, by whatever or whomever. Some day we may actually know who did it, but for now we certainly do not. Depending on who it was, we can only speculate now as to what the immediate motives were. Was it an insider who had seen the nastiness and not wanted to let it go on any longer? Was it an insider who had a grudge against someone at CRU? Was the server hacked into, as is claimed publicly by all on The Team and their many AGW brothers in arms?
Though all that will be extremely interesting if and when it happens, the bigger picture will eventually be this: Who won? And how decisive was Climategate, anyway? Or is it too early to tell? At some point people will try to assess that question. Is now a viable time to do that assessing?
I assert that it may not be too early to tell. And I think our side won, big time. After all, the lay of the land is certainly different. Having been caught trying to rig the game and even lying and fudging the data – and do be aware that much of the public does see it that way – The Team and the IPCC are struggling to gain the ascendancy and monopoly they once had. And it truly does not look like they are winning the battle. But once a witness or ‘expert‘ is caught in a lie, can they ever get the people who witness it to believe them again?
See this article at Der Spiegel, The Climategate Chronicle – How the Science of Global Warming Was Compromised
.
It is noteworthy that the first line of text in the article is a caption in a GERMAN magazine that reads:
To what extent is climate change actually occurring?
Before Climategate, that caption would most likely have read
To what extent is climate change occurring?
To the warmers, it wasn’t IF climate change was happening, but how bad it was going to be. One word – actually – is revealing, about how even German news sources are doubting what 21 months ago would have been traitorous heresy to doubt.
The momentum certainly appears to have shifted.
But has it?
To answer that, we have to go back to the autumn of 2009 and ask what the balance of power was at that time, to establish a baseline to measure from…
The balance of Power in early November 2009
For all intents and purposes, at that time The Team and the IPCC had a monopoly on telling the story of global warming. The Copenhagen Conference was just coming up in a couple of weeks, and the media blitz was about to get started.
Outside of Steve McIntyre’s ClimateAudit.org, WUWT, and a handful of other skeptical sites, little attention was paid to skeptical arguments. Almost no newspaper or news website – certainly no network news organizations – printed or broadcast any skeptical positions, except to denigrate them, or worse, to ridicule them as ostriches, anti-science wackos and warming “deniers” – the last one harkening back to Holocaust deniers, almost certainly intentionally.
Though Steve had poked holes that those in the know could cast doubt on Michael Mann’s Hockey Stick, which had gone over the heads of most of the world.
The warmers had browbeaten Roy Spencer and John Christy at UAH into changing their satellite adjustments (which I thought ended up being too big an adjustment).
At that time, those FOI requests referred to in the emails had been long since submitted. The stonewalling evident in the emails was well entrenched. The skeptics were trying to find enough information to attempt replication of The Team’s work but were having difficulty getting that information. Also, the public was almost entirely in the dark about there being any other possible side of the story, in spite of the work of Christy, Spencer, Richard Linzen, Willie Soon, and others, including many studies on the supposedly non-existent Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age that showed those two events were actually global, as opposed to Mann’s assertion that they were only regional.
Very little – almost none – of the research that argued against the AGW argument was getting out to the public. It is also shown in the emails that many of those studies were having trouble making it into the peer-reviewed literature – and that at least some of that was because The Team was blackballing authors they didn’t like, and sandbagging certain papers when The Team was chosen to be the reviewers.
With the power to control what the public heard or read, there was a definite one-sided tilt to the playing field/battle ground. The consensus was being spread far and wide, almost totally monopolizing what the public heard. Skeptics were marginalized, often ridiculed – and most mendaciously – accused of being in the pockets of the big energy interests (to this day, the AGW supporters assert that this latter is true, in spite of the fact that Anthony, a retired meteorologist, and Steve McIntyre, a retired auditor, are by far the most effective skeptics and have never been shown to be on anyone’s payroll. That those two attend conferences sponsored by or attended by energy industry representatives does not mean any more than that the U.S. and Libya are both in the U.N.)
These ad hoc allegations were parroted in article after article in the news media. Whenever it was necessary to give skeptics any press at all, it was bad press, usually with this: almost as an adjective, typical being something like (paraphrased) “the industry shill Willie Soon.” Almost no entry about a skeptic was complete without such an inflammatory remark by science editors or writers. Yet no such attempt was made to ascertain the source of the funding for AGW proponents – who were paying their way to conferences to Switzerland or resorts in the mountains of Austria, for example. That would have been bad enough, except that Watts and McIntyre weren’t taking money at all. A double standard was in effect, that any money coming from a pro-AGW entity was seen as noble and pure, while funding from industry was evil. Time after time after time, this is what went out in our newspapers and on TV and radio news.
Solid Information and Unambiguous Claims (NOT)
When I first came to ClimateAudit, long before Climategate I saw all the graphs and formulas and technical discussions, and I had two reactions. One was, “How am I ever going to learn about all this and keep up with these people? I’ve never seen a site with so much math.” (That is in spite of being fairly mathematically adept.) The other reaction was, “Gawd! At least there is something here to sink my teeth into.”
Finding any solid technical information about global warming from its supporters was difficult, if not impossible. Every post or article on the pro-AGW sites was filled with claims and summaries, but I didn’t want that. I wanted to go as straight to the source as possible. When I asked on Liberal sites for references, I was always directed to RealClimate, where there was claim after claim, assertion after assertion, paraphrasing after paraphrasing. But I wanted to see what the papers themselves said (not that most of it wouldn’t have been over my head in the beginning). And all the papers that were referenced were behind paywalls, so I couldn’t get into the nitty-gritty like I wanted to.
No one else could, either. Not unless they wanted to pay $30 per paper. So, in essence, their underlying story of CO2 was essentially being hidden from the public. And they knew it. The public was given summaries and assertions and headlines, mostly overstating and exaggerating the case against CO2. And the headlines were atop articles written by a small group of science editors around the country/world who, it turns out, were philosophically in bed with the AGW/IPCC folks. Article after article printed their assertions as fact – and more.
One thing that confused me was that human activities other than CO2 were being ignored. I found out later the reason was that Phil Jones’ co-authored study of UHI turned out to be extremely erroneous).
One thing I saw so often it angered me was that a headline would make an assertion of something as if it was unambiguous, yet when I would read deep into articles for the exact words of the scientists, I almost always saw qualifiers like “we believe,” “most think that,” “up to,” and “it appears that.” Where the scientists themselves were equivocating, the headlines and opening words asserted certainty. Any reader scanning the article would not go deep enough to se the caveats. For allowing this misrepresentation, the scientists should not be let off the hook, because they let those headlines stand without pointing out to the editors their level of uncertainty.
Uncertainty About AGW
It took until Judith Curry’s blog, Climate Etc, in 2010, for the issue of uncertainty to be addressed seriously and publicly by anyone near the AGW center. That was more than 20 years on down the line. Climate science should be, at the least, embarrassed that it did not come from themselves. And sooner. Give Dr. Curry credit for addressing that long overdue issue.
But as I understand it, that blog would never have existed had she not read enough of the Climategate emails and files to begin to question the claims of AGW. Seeing “The Team’s” reaction to her move to a middle ground and give some credence to the arguments of the skeptical community, it is clear that it took some courage for her to do that. Again, give her credit, this time for her integrity.
So, one thing that came out of Climategate was Climate Etc., and the establishment of a serious middle ground. The terrain was shifted that much, at least. What had been accepted as “consensus” had shifted toward “non-settled science.”
What Constitutes a Win?
As a lone Liberal here at WUWT, it has been a lonely 11+ years for me. But I have been treated with as much respect as I need, and have only been ridiculed once – when someone pointed out that I had used too many All-Caps. I took it like a man. I have never apologized to any fellow Liberals, and have lost a girlfriend of five years, but have made small inroads into a few peoples’ minds about AGW. But most of them thought I was addled in the brain. That was before Climategate. While few of those I talked with had read anything of substance about Climategate, with the main stream media’s shift to a small level of doubt, at least some peoples’ minds have opened up to the possibility that humans are not sizably to blame for whatever warming has existed.
My aim was never to prove that AGW didn’t exist, even though I was always in the small group that distrusted the adjustments, and do not believe (till shown with solid, replicatable science) that there ever was warming beyond us coming out of the Little Ice Age. I think it is enough to show that the science is too unsettled.
In order for that to happen, I always believed that something had to happen to throw doubt on the science behind the CO2 claims. Yes, in fact, I DID hope for a Watergate-style Deep Throat to show up. But that hope seemed so far-fetched that I never voiced it out loud. (So any of you that laugh at my 20-20 hindsight, laugh away. I can’t prove it.) Early on after the release of the emails, though, I was out there talking about Deep Throat. Whoever did it, may the gods favor him or her for many a year.
Now, in a court of law, to show reasonable doubt is enough for an acquittal. An acquittal, for the defense, IS a win.
Is there enough reasonable doubt?
With the level of attention given to AGW these days, with the yawns that greet claims against CO2 anymore, with governments abandoning efforts at controlling CO2 emissions, with even Germans (the most green country in Europe, if not the world) asking “To what extent is climate change actually occurring?” it seems perfectly appropriate to wonder if we have gotten an acquittal for CO2, simply by continuing to cast doubt and keeping at it like bulldogs (thank you, Steve and Anthony, in particular).
- If we got an acquittal for CO2, it is a win. There always was a reasonable doubt. The jury just had to wake up to it. Anthony and Steve M presented the case long enough and true enough so that could happen.
- If serious scientists are talking about the uncertainties in climate science, where they were not before, that is a win.
- If the world now does not accept the claims without some skepticism, it is a win.
- If previously stilled voices in the climate community now speak clearly and without being intimidated, it is a win.
- If more and more skeptical or neutral research papers are seeing the light of day, it is a win.
- If the news media has stopped calling us “deniers”, it is at least a partial win.
- If they sometimes don’t mention the ad hoc assertions of “industry shill,” it is a partial win. It means some of the respect is coming this direction.
- If the monopoly on climate change pronouncements is broken (and it is), then it is a win.
Perhaps at some point soon climate science will go back to being the sleepy ivory tower it always used to be. Hansen came along with his claims that we would be warming up (after the 1970s, ANY warming should have been seen as getting back to normal – and I assert that Hansen knew that – but he couldn’t pass up the opportunity to scream, The Sky is Falling!”). Before Mann and his legendary fundraising started an avalanche of money that the other climate scientists jumped on.
All in all, although we don’t want to jinx it, it might be just about the right time to wave the victory flag. We are certainly in a far different world vis-a-vis global warming than 21 months ago. The climatologists are, to a very large extent, being ignored. Yes, there is an IPCC coming up, and perhaps we should wait until that is over. But I will predict that no matter what hoohah comes out of it, it will not have 50% of the energy of the previous IPCCs, because governments just aren’t listening with baited breath anymore. If there is any place where the mojo counted, it was with governments. But it ain’t there any more.
Our victory lap is just around the corner. Yes, some people on the street will believe that the climate is changing, but – and this is the important part – then they think, “So what? We have other, more important things to worry about.”
Chicken Little is dead. Sprinkle the seasoning on and put it on the barbie.
Thank the Gods for Climategate.
Great post. Thanks for the overview.
Some editing is needed. In particular, this sentence:
“Though Steve had poked holes that those in the know could see cast doubt on Michael Mann’s Hockey Stick, which had gone over the head of most of the world.”
… stands out as an incomplete thought.
I love a good Who Dunnit! So my suggestion for who dunnit is an organization that stood to profit from cleaning up the mess. A near covert, off the radar kind of place that works between the weave, playing both sides. A group such as but not necessarily, Outside Organisation. It is a delicious story – use your shadowy talent to pry embarrassing information from within and then hire on to undo the damage.
Thank the Gods for Climategate
So say we all.
The fact that people like Paul Ehrlich are still taken seriously proves there is no victory in this fight. Take away CAGW and the professional worrying class will find some other disaster that’s just over the horizon and only avoidable by giving them massive amounts of regulatory power and money. When the first scientist successfully predicted a solar eclipse another ‘scientist’, probably of the climate variety, started demanding silver and gold to guarantee the moon would spit out the sun so life could go on, and he made sure failure to pay meant eternal darkness. The problem isn’t CAGW, it’s human nature, which for reasons unknown demands a certain portion of the population always believes some form of apocalyptic idiocy which can only be avoided if THEY, the believers, get to ‘run things’ for the rest of us.
Steve G.:
Thanks for sharing your perspective of our (skeptical) shared journey. I do worry a victory dance is a little premature, but that’s my superstitious side, worried about jinxing our success. On the other hand, honestly, there were very few periods in which I have ever experienced as much elation as after Climategate.
Like you, I expected something like what did happen to occur, or for the truth to be revealed somehow after the climate refused to cooperate with the conspiracy (for conspiracy it was, in the true sense, with a small number of people collaborating to fix the outcomes, aided by willing dupes and conniving politicians). That is because the scientific pronouncements did not stand on their own merits; there was a sense of urgency very similar to the railroading that George W. Bush et al. carried on prior to invading Iraq: we have only ‘x’ number of years to act or it will be too late, etc.
The only unusual thing about this particular fraud was it’s size, audacity and stupidity.
Conspiracies usually fall apart and one of this size it was bound to do so sooner or later.
Not that if had been later very serious damage might have been done by then.
But as always in these matters remember the old rhyme.
‘Treason doth never prosper. Whats the reason? for if it do none dare call it treason.’
They came close with this one and the echoes will take a long time to die away. But the damage they have done to their cause and their Green supporters is irreparable.
It took thirty years for Greenery to become a powerful political cult but it’s time has passed and it will be forgotten within a generation.
Kindest Regards
Human history is mostly a series of bad choices, missed opportunities, and tragically bad outcomes. Every so often, however, there are good choices, siezed opportunities, and wildly good outcomes. The American Revolution was one example, the ClimateGate leaks another.
Of relevance to this topic is the issue of the lack of accountability afforded to scientists in our society, particularly as it relates to the current “climate change” policies.
As a professional engineer I am held responsible, accountable and liable for my work. If I am subsequently shown to be wrong, I can be sued for huge amounts of money, lose my livelihood, and in the worst case, could go to jail.
On the other hand, I view with growing alarm the activities of “climate scientists”. The list of their errors and failed forecasts seems endless; their work seems, at best, to be wildly speculative.
Despite this abysmal track record, some of our hugely expensive public policies, such as here in Australia, the construction of desalination plants, the flooding in Brisbane, and “The Carbon Tax”, can be traced back to these speculations.
Given the immense impact of their work, why are “climate scientists” not held to the same accountability and liability standards as are engineers?
Perhaps if “climate scientists” were held responsible for their work and a few were to lose their livelihoods, then “climate science” would cease being an oxymoron. Similarly, consequent public policy would gain in credibility as it became based more on fact and less on interpretive ideology.
the vested interests haven’t even started playing hardball yet.
Interesting, but IMHO, from where I’m standing, it’s premature to be celebrating anything.
Sadly, Chicken Little is alive and well in Federal Government in Australia – although due to a spectactular series of own goals, they have pretty much thrown themselves on the barbie and handed the marinade, baster and cooking instructions to the opposition and skeptics. However, it remains to be seen if the current bold skeptism can hold up under the never ending onslaught of ‘the sky is falling’ media sanctioned propaganda. 2 years until general election, its going to be interesting.
The Hockey Stick emails provide a record of the efforts to cherry pick data to hide the medieval warm period and the Little Ice age and efforts to destroy emails related to the cover up and efforts to block papers that challenge the foundation of the extreme AGW hypothesis.
My paleoclimatic text books have these graphs which are taking from published papers. The historical record supports the assertion that the medieval warm period and the little ice age occurred.
http://www.amazon.com/Little-Ice-Age-Climate-1300-1850/dp/0465022723
IPCC 1990 Figure 7c.
http://climateaudit.files.wordpress.com/2008/05/lambh23.jpg
http://climateaudit.files.wordpress.com/2008/05/lambh24.gif
http://www.crispintickell.com/images/ccwa_fig2.jpg
Great read. The whistle blower is a hero.
Once Australia blows up its government on the carbon tax/cash grab, that will be the end of government support and the end of the AGW fairy tale.
Ding dong the witch is dead. The wicked witch is dead.
A battle was won. Concensus Climate Change was forced out from behind Ivory Towers into the open.
They cannot go back to them. They must now either impose thier Carbon Tax and other revenue enhancements overtly, or give it up. Catchy slogans like ‘saving the planet’ and ‘trust us’ won’t cut it.
I’m not waving the victory flag until we’ve seen “The Team” dragged through the courts and sent to prison for the rest of their lives.
Not to mention the civil proceedings to secure compensatory and punitive damages.
Sorry, folks. I’m Sicilian. I want revenge.
A win will be when governments worldwide stop entertaining carbon taxes, ETS’ ect. and admit there is no problem. The IPCC will be shut down for good. We’re still a long way off, but without climategate, none of this would be possible. It was indeed a turning point.
The Warmers have permanently stained the reputation of science by intentionally ignoring it’s core tenets. A win on that score will be a long time coming, if ever.
More importantly, It will not be a win until the all the politicians and their minions who would use the Thermageddon hoax to subjugate us under the most micromanaging, statist control ever imagined are tarred, feathered and branded with a scarlet AGW on their foreheads.
Tucci78 says:
July 21, 2011 at 8:12 pm
“Sorry, folks. I’m Sicilian. I want revenge.”
_________________
Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes.
I agree that the article needs editing to be readable. For example:
“One thing that confused me was that even human activities other than CO2 were being ignored. I found out later on the reason for that Phil Jones’ co-authored study of UHI that turned out to be extremely erroneous)”
makes no sense. Even the parentheses are unbalanced.
Yes, the tide has turned but, there is still much to do. There are lags in politics as well as climate. Summer gets hotter after the solstice. Some in govenment are still happily pushing the AGW bandwagon along (Australia’s labor party, US EPA). The great majority of people are barely aware of the debate. Some friends and coworkers still think of me as an addle pated climate fool. The decisive battle may have been won. It may take a decade of global cooling for the climate war to end.
Aussie2011 says:
July 21, 2011 at 7:50 pm
Of relevance to this topic is the issue of the lack of accountability afforded to scientists in our society, particularly as it relates to the current “climate change” policies.
As a professional engineer I am held responsible, accountable and liable for my work.
Indeed. Professional Engineers owe a duty of care to the PUBLIC. What about “Climate Scientists”? No wonder we distrust them. We are trained that way.
“The paramount value recognized by engineers is the safety and welfare of the public.”
References – many – see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering_ethics#Obligation_to_society
(I know, I know but references are ok)
Wayne Delbeke, P.Eng.
The warmists aren’t even beginning to concede. Tonight on the Fox news blog one of the headlines is about a Danish (?) study that blames mass extinction on a ‘carbon’ methane burp caused by global warming heating up the oceans. They ain’t giving up – they’re not even CLOSE to giving up. Just more and more of this crap.
We have had some good fighters for the scientific method in Australia also. Jennifer Marohasy, David Evans, Bob Carter, Ian Plimer and sorry if I missed a few.
Andrew Bolt, Tim Blair and Miranda Devine and Piers Akerman were journalists and some I have missed for sure, that stood against the warmist orthodoxy. Even at the debate at the National Press Council, the journalists had not done even basic checking of the facts let alone economic checking. They were just left wing noddies.
Now they have egg on their face they will not change. Lack of character.
We haven’t won until the warmists finish spending all that tax money… And THAT day is, sadly, tragically, a LOOOoooOOong day off…
“It is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” Or something like that. All the best.
Well written, Steve.
Andrew Montford’s ‘The Hockey Stick Illusion’ gives a detailed chronology of Steve McIntyre’s struggle with ‘The Team’ and then the IPCC, for data and source codes. It is a story that beggars belief about those that consider concealing public information to be an art form, and does not date.
The same thoughts apply to a certain Australian political leader.
Take heart dear Steve,
This site is not the libertarian mecca that the other sites may convey. Heck, Anthony is documented more liberal and environmental than your “liberal” friends:
http://www.thelocal.de/national/20110713-36277.html
Walking the walk is where you can sort the “passions” that the faux liberals seem to have. Take Germany and the switching back to COAL in order to replace their nuclear fear, utter hypocrisy.
Even if you are liberal in thinking (I actually am and proud of it), it is not bad. Libertarian is just an extreme of conservationism that becomes liberal. At least it is thinking, but the faux liberals insist on changing the world in the shortest time. Faux liberals want ALL projects to proceed at the same time, but can not wait.
Anyhow, I have noted many liberals on this and many other anti-CAGW sites (though SimonH has been AWOL for a while) that can not stand the consensus of science. Consensus is not science.
You are in good company, being a thinker of the mind and not all heart.
Being agnostic/atheist myself, I find that the CAGW crowd violated almost all of Sun Tzu’s teachings (Art of War) and that is why things fell apart. My favorite is:
“So it is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you can win a hundred battles without a single loss.”. — They assume all liberals are on their side and they could not be more wrong. They also think that we are all lemmings, try again.
Nice post!
Liked that summation Steve, to me the tipping point if the is such a thing in climate speak will be when Governments allow or insist on at least one Inquiry that does its job properly. The CRU Inquiries are a rotting carcase that either needs revisiting for the good of climate science, or will it be some unfortunate future “follow the Mann” scientist that gets his or her future destroyed. To me Michael Mann and his fellow travellers should recant and withdraw “for the good of climate science”
I have spent years like you and asking the AGW side to explain why they think this or that peer reviewed paper does not challenge their view, or that a statement from one of many sceptical climate scientists didn’t make them stop and reconsider their trenchant position. The initial response was ridicule towards me personally, and any suggestion they could be wrong as the over whelming consensus of science meant forget it – move on – its dangerous, and you are in the way.
When pressed on the science and on sceptical papers, again no science, just abuse and denigration and more abuse, absolutely illogical and unscientific, and the more respected the source of the science, Singer? Lindzen? just shills I was told, paid by big oil, tobacco and worse, then the CRU emails shocked everyone and for a while the abuse abated, but then was replaced with threats, menaces, things could “happen” and that by asking questions, we were killing the future, our type should have been strangled at birth, we were baby killers. My car was splashed with blood and egged by cowards who struck in the night, all for expressing a confidence in the new scientific peer reviewed papers that inconveniently challenged their AGW belief.
These guys were past reasoning with, exhibiting a religious mania, that had no relationship with science – pure dogma, but amazingly claiming scientific truth justified their stance in the name of humanity and the future of the planet – absolute nutters!!
The worst thing though was they appeared to have the world media captive to their view and emboldened by the whitewash inquiries, we had no say and they would sweep us aside first at Copenhagen and when that failed Can Cun and to all intents and purposes and with the media connivance, they did partially get their way.
If it hadn’t been for Anthony, Climate audit and Climate Etc,and others, I am sure the lies would have rolled all over us. They hated Judith Curry for her courage in tackling the bullies at Real Climate who denied scientists the right to either reply or post alternative views, and, still deny the emerging science, to protect what they thought was their owned science of climate.
I think we have a long way to go, it will take a lot of courage and perseverance as they have entrenched themselves, so for that reason we need a tipping point to clean the blot they have created on Climate Science, once and for all.
If there is a “carbon tax”, does that mean we carbon based life forms may become illegal? What about polar bears? Don’t they breath out CO2 as well as being carbon based?
I have seen “progressives” start to call carbon dioxide by the name carbon monoxide. Only on Internet threads so far; but they recommended “realclimate.com” so I figure they have some connection.
Good overview Steve.
Thanks!
Well, you know, it might indeed be gods to thank. There is the Gore Effect, you know. I would love to get hold of adequate data to figure out whether that effect is real, or just an amusing collection of coincidences, with skeptics ignoring all the times that the weather warmed up when the Goracle blew into town.
A win is when Hansen admits that the climate models have to be tied like a pretzel to match CO2 with the temperature curves.
A win is when Mann’s Hokey Team (misspelled on porpoise) beat each other with real hickory sticks until nobody remains standing.
A win is when Phil Jones admits he had his data all along.
A win is when Monckton shows up for a debate but nobody else shows up.
A win is when Al Gore takes an honors class in climate science from Dr. Fred Singer and gets higher than a D-.
A win is when the UEA publishes the name of the brave soul that outted their heinous crimes and that person receives an honorary doctorate in ethics, writes a best-selling book and gets a lucrative movie contract.
A win is when the EPA finally realizes that C on the periodic table is an English abbreviation for carbon and not the cyrillic letter that stands for Socialist.
Thanks, Steve Garcial and you, Anthony, for having published it — HARRY_READ_ME is my hero!
Tucci78 says: July 21, 2011 at 8:12 pm
Sorry, folks. I’m Sicilian. I want revenge.
Did ya’ never hear of “Irish Alzheimers”? Sicilians, once in awhile, on occasion. may forget. The Irish? They forget everything but the grudges.
Yes, thank God for Climategate because it means that so many of us don’t have to be concerned about something like this:
“A remarkable world record was set at Khassab (airport), Oman on June 27th when the minimum temperature for the day failed to fall below 107.1°F (41.7°C). This is the highest minimum temperature ever recorded in the world to date.”
Excellent post: cogent, introspective, candid, and intellectually honest.
Some progress has been made, but as a Californian, I do not see victory at hand whilst the California Air Resources Board is implementing a cap-and-trade programme here, nor as an American where the EPA has the power to declare CO2 a pollutant.
Even if the scientific community and the public came round on this issue and stood together in abnegation of CAGW, my fear is that the political and economic damage will last well into the future. It will be like trying to get rid of a “temporary” tax after its expiration date: next to impossible.
Good post and many thanks to people such as the Leakers or hackers(who cares) and Anthony, Mcintrye, Jo Nova and many more for their tireless efforts for the thinkers of this world!!
BUT, IMO there should be know victory dance or lap at least till the fat lady sings, and i do not see that happenning for a while. The warmist still have to many other things to harp on and about to dance now.
Steve, that was an excellent synopsis of what occurred. There are only a couple of things I would quibble about, but I’m a conservative…….
Outstanding job! We have won. They don’t know it, yet. The proof of uncertainty is clear to anyone who wishes to see. The proof of the manipulation of data and minds is clear to any who wish to see. The proof of intentional deception is clear for any who wish to see.
I look forward to the time when we can argue and discuss things such as economics and politics without the distraction of a common enemy.
We are almost done. Not quite yet. We have to carry the ball across the line We are weary of the discussion, but stubborn. Fatigue isn’t an issue for us, because intellectual curiosity is what we possess for leisure. In this view, they will never win the debate, because we pursue truth while they pursue an agenda. If they can never win, we can never lose……….. intellectually.
Again, well done.
James Sexton
Excellent post Mr. Garcia. Perhaps you might wish to do another regarding the, as seen from todays perspective, huge ramifications of Bush taking the presidency in 2000 versus the victory going to the completely flawed climate view extremist Gore. It is hard to imagine the misery Gore as president would have created by pushing totally unnecessary climate legislation that would have crippled our economy for absolutely nothing. As difficult as things for real climate science have been given the politics of irrational climate fear alarmists funded with billions of dollars in grants from the government with the blind support of media advocacy it would have been for worse if Gore had been president. Yes indeed thank the gods of rational science for Climategate but also thank your lucky stars that Gore failed in his bid for the highest elected office in the land where he would have done unbelievable and disastrous damage to our country.
Good post. I just want to add however, that Dr Curry (of Ga tech!) had invited Steve M. to Tech to meet with other climate scientists long before climategate! She had also conversed with skeptics at CA and had been under considerable criticism for doing so! Along with Steve, Ross, Andrew M., Anthony, Jo Nova, Donna L. and others (along with the honest scientists Lindzen, Christy, Spencer, Balinaus, Soon and others) history will see her as one of the ones that, perhaps, saved western civilization from the doomsayers.
steve –
there are more (american) liberals on this site than perhaps you have noticed, and some like myself who have even voted Green, as has joanne nova.
thank the leaker for Climategate. whoever he/she is, it’s clear they knew what to leak.
there is no doubt the number of CAGW “believers” has plummeted as a result of Climategate.
indeed, it would be interesting to know how many of the left-over “beievers” have actually had the courage to read the emails or tried to understand HARRY-READ-ME.
thanks as well to Big Mac, Anthony, the Bish, Joanne Nova, Judith Curry et al for their tireless work towards maintaining the scientific method so that we don’t return to the dogmatic “scientific fundamentalism” that existed in the past.
there is a long way to go, but the sceptics are so accommodating, i am sure we will continue to join in the battle until the day when the ad homs stop and we can enjoy a nature documentary without fear the dreaded “carbon footprint” will be mentioned.
celebrate life. it’s all we have.
Oakden Wolf says:
July 21, 2011 at 9:53 pm
Yes, thank God for Climategate because it means that so many of us don’t have to be concerned about something like this:
“A remarkable world record was set at Khassab (airport), Oman on June 27th when the minimum temperature for the day failed to fall below 107.1°F (41.7°C). This is the highest minimum temperature ever recorded in the world to date.”
What a load. The highest minimum temperature ever recorded in the world to date? Did the fool who wrote this article have access to every temperature reading ever taken in the world to date? There will always be alleged record-breaking temperatures, high or low, happening somewhere in the world, but only a con artist would pretend to know the entire temperature record of Planet Earth.
And yes, Climategate does mean we do not have to be concerned about media scares like this, because it clearly demonstrates that professional climate alarmists will say and do anything that suits their agendas. As skeptics know, an airport can be one he worst places to take a local planetary temperature, often adding many degrees, but maybe the reporter never heard of jet exhaust.
The problem is the Liberal press do not understand the scientific and economic implications of the Hockey Stick cherry picking and the climate sensitivity issue. The propaganda tool of calling anyone who critically discusses this issues a “denier” has made it difficult for any “liberal” or “environmentalist” to read the critical information and think through this problem.
The IPCC are advocating spending trillions of dollars on a carbon monitoring bureaucracy, on a carbon tax bureaucracy, and on bureaucracy that will control the spending of trillions of dollars.
The AWG extreme leaches have tried to create a scenario where this is a right (Republicans) vs left (Democrats) issue. That is ridiculous. Fiscal conservative Democrats do not want trillions of tax dollars wasted on boondoggle.
From a public standpoint it does not matter if the perpetrates of the Climate Gate scandal are charged or fired. The issue is trillions of tax payer’s dollars that will be wasted and the consequences of a currency collapse.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/Lindzen-and-Choi-GRL-2009.pdf
http://www.nsstc.uah.edu/atmos/christy_pubs.html
So long as climate issues are regarded as a PR problem, you win and the planet loses. Congratulations!
It’s still too early to call the battle won. Here in Australia, we are just about to get a CO2 tax and the government has 2 years before the next election. I think the crazies here have pushed this CO2 tax even harder because they are hoping to influence Rio. I will start to call the victory if Rio fails as badly as Copenhagen, the CO2 tax in Australia is rescinded (or better the government falls trying to make it law) and other significant governments (e.g., UK & Germany) publically put some distance between themselves and CAGW amelioration. I think the victory would be complete when the anticipated global cooling becomes an obvious trend in, say, 10 years time.
I am really worried that with stupid governments like Australia’s going to Rio with a CO2 tax, something will get passed that commits the world to pointless, unaffordable CO2 emissions reductions. The CAGW lobby is making this their Alamo, it seems to me. I hope they get well and truly scalped but as I say I have some worries based on the crazy government policies here Down Under.
And thank you for opening my eyes.
The media are grossly uneducated on basic scientific principles, let alone the detail, complex and largely still evolving area of science that is climatology. The media simply do not understand that climate is a multi-disciplinary science and involves atmospheric scientists, physicists, oceanographers, astrophysicists, solar scientists, earth scientists, geologists and so on and so on. Its much easier for the media to get a “shrill” to provide scientific “input”.
For example, lawyer John Connor is typically labelled by the media as a ‘climate expert’, whereas Ian Plimer, earth scientist with over 40 years experience is certainly not.
Interesting in the Australia media in particular, that so-called ‘climate experts’ are rarely scientists at all, and certainly not climate scientists. John Connor, Ross Garnaut and Godhelpus Clive Hamilton and other extremists are the climate experts in the media’s eyes, yet real scientists with real experience are not.
Much easier for the media to get the ‘salesperson’ in and label he or she as the expert, and leave the earth scientists for another day.
We in the UK haven’t won until the Climate Change Act 2008 is repealed. And the renewables scam is topped. And the BBC is cleansed. And the propaganda is ceased in schools and everywhere else. Abd, and… the list is seemingly endless.
Won the battle, not the war. Even then the trick is to win the peace too.
Pardon the analogy but i reckon we’ve only shof down a couple of Japs over Pearl Harbour. Still gotta fight Guadalcanal, Midway, Iwo Jima before we win.
I’m with the two of you all the way. Must have gotten both some Sicilian and Irish genes along the way in the distant past. I am very angry about this AGW hoax and will leave for the imagination what I think about the AGW hoaxsters.
and yet susan rice, us ambassador to the un, reproached the security council today for not issuing a strong statement that global warming was a global security issue.
she doesn’t ad lib; she follows most explicit instructions from her president.
they have no way given up – they are just going to try a different route.
so yes, climategate stopped them rushing in the front door. now watch the back door.
I can’t wait for the movie… any script writers out there?
Who would play the key roles?
Jones…. Mann?….suggestions?
I am hoping we will see some response from the people of the UK this winter. There is an across the board rise for all domestic energy services exceeding 10%. (much higher in some cases) Coupled with the increase in fuel costs which are driving up transport costs which in turn is reflecting on rising food prices. The strong possibility of another cold winter should rouse the public out of their state of apathy and then, maybe, the media will pay attention to excellent articles published almost daily on the internet by the likes of Steve Garcia and many, many others.
Then, and only then, might the questioning of the powers that be begin.
Unfortunately we aren’t at the end of this nonsense. We’re not at the beginning of the end. Possibly, after Climategate, we are at the end of the beginning.
Here in the UK, all those inside the political bubble are more-or-less passionate True Believers. European Parliament? Same thing. European nation states? A few doubts in Czech Republic, Poland but basically the same thing. The Governments in Australia and USA the same, although both do have SOME opposition. And so it goes on right across the developed world. And the UN of course.
The Third World have been told that all their problems are down to the developed world, who owe them a “Carbon Debt”. That one will blossom and bear fruit for sure. Another excuse for terrorism when it turns out the cheque ISN’T in the post.
All the Scientific Institutions have been hijacked by True Believers.
Almost all the media (and especially in the UK) are almost monolithically warmist.
Big Finance are on board with what is seen as an opportunity to perpetrate another sub prime scam but on a much bigger scale.
The pseudo-scientific cAGW scam has spawned a host of voracious sub-scams, like BigWind which are skimming Billions from taxpayers and electricity users.
Sure, many more ordinary folks are becoming sceptical, or pehaps that should be cynical. A normal mortal can only stand so many scare stories. But they won’t do anything about it (and what can they do, with only alarmists to vote for?) until they shiver in the dark.
But victory? That’s a very, very long way off. This baby is way too big to fail.
A fine post, Mr. Garcia. While I generally just read WUWT, Climate Audit, Icecap and Pielke, Sr., I do read them most every day, as I have for the last four years or so.
No summary and account of the change in circumstances over the past 20 months would be complete without an acknowledgement of the enormous contribution of Steve McIntyre. I know this is implicit in your post, but IMO it should be explicit. No person on the planet has done more to save mankind from the excesses, malfeasance and dishonesty of the Team and their power-seeking, liberty-crushing fellow-travelers. Climategate confirmed the bad conduct and evil intent. Steve McIntyre, sometimes ALONE had the courage to face down these forces. Climategate is the event; McIntyre is the Man.
Don’t think there’s any doubt that ClimateGate was the tipping point – before then the AGW fascists had it all their own way. The world owes whoever did it a debt of gratitude. But there’s still a long long way to go before sanity is restored!
Win or something less, Climategate was certainly a giant step forward.
In all likelihood, the hero responsible is monitoring sites like WUWT and may well be among us. I would be if I were he.
And to that person should you be lurking: you are a hero although an unknown one you are sure to remain. And the least we can do is pause and give thanks from time to time, and perhaps celebrate with a day in your honor or with something like: “The Tomb of the Unknown Hacker.”
I was actually thinking of the title of the thread as I was driving home from work this evening.
I was thanking the creator for Climategate as I was listening to the George Noory show.
I’m not taking the Blame for the Climate Changing or the Weather. The blame is all on them.
I’m only to blame and take responsibility for all the crap I pulled in my 50 years of life. Not the climate changing or the weather. Got IT!
Climategate has already been discussed:
http://liveweb.archive.org/http://www.skepticalscience.com/search.php?Search=climategate&x=18&y=7
Can we cut the climategate stuff already?
Sadly, the BBC has taken the retrograde view by announcing that it will not automatically give sceptics airtime to balance warmist views (not that we saw much of that anyway):
http://www.tvlicenceresistance.info/climate-change-sceptics-should-get-less-bbc-coverage-and-be-challenged-more-vigorously-says-report-on-science-output/
(I was glad to find a reference that did not involve using the BBC website, as it goes against the grain driving traffic to it).
According to the above link:
“Another corporation source said: ‘When there is a clear consensus, we don’t need to put the other side.
‘But this does not mean we are not going to have people who don’t agree with climate change, because balance is important.’”
So whilst the world seems to be moving to a more questioning stance, the BBC is starting to shut down debate, based on the report of geneticist Steve Jones, because of the existence of a consensus on climate change . A flavour of Jones’ other views is given in Wkipedia:
“Human evolution
Jones’ view that in humans “Natural selection has to some extent been repealed” dates back at least to 1991 and has been the focus of a number of newspaper reports and radio interviews. His views are largely based on his claim that reduced juvenile mortality, decreasing age of fathers, and greater interconnectedness of populations in Western societies reduce evolution. Both the data supporting these assertions and his views of the way these factors influence evolution in populations have been extensively criticised by other academics.
Creationism
Jones has stated that creationism is “anti-science” and criticised creationists such as Ken Ham. Jones suggested in a BBC Radio Ulster interview in 2006 that Creationists should be disallowed from being medical doctors because “all of its (Creationism’s) claims fly in the face of the whole of science” and he further claimed that no serious biologist can believe in biblical creation. For Jones, ‘evolution is the grammar of biology’. Jones elaborated on his full position on creationism in a public lecture entitled ‘Why creationism is wrong and evolution is right’.
Private education
In an interview on the BBC Radio 5 show ‘5 Live Breakfast’ hosted by Nicky Campbell and Shelagh Fogarty on 13 January 2009, Jones described private schools as a “cancer on the education system”. Jones cites private schools as one of the reasons that Britain remains as socially stratified as it is. Among the advantages in private schools compared to state schools, Jones listed smaller classroom sizes, highly-trained teachers, better facilities, and coaching through university interviews.
Religion
Jones, along with 54 other public figures, signed an open letter published on 15 September 2010 in The Guardian, stating their opposition to Pope Benedict XVI’s state visit to the UK.”
I find it ironic that his views on Creationism would have been dismissed (or worse) only a couple of centuries earlier because of the prevailing consensus.
Given that the UK state broadcaster has pretty much declared that it isn’t biased enough against climate sceptics, I think it’s perhaps a little premature to be declaring victory.
Unfortunately, the game is about keeping people in the western world scared to death of something. (Keep ’em afraid, and they can be controlled.) The real players who help to bring that about are essentially faceless and nameless, but they can buy whatever reality they wish people to accept if they just throw enough money at it, or they manipulate some government stooge to throw the money for them.
When the fear of imminent environmental disaster has played out its usefulness, they will turn to something else. You’ll know the whole thing is really over when Hollywood begins making movies that poke fun at AGW.
When I was a kid, the big scare was “THE BOMB.” Remember “duck and cover” and “fallout shelters?” It began to die with the film “Dr. Strangelove.” The film was subtitled, “How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb.”
I wonder what the title of the first, great climate comedy will be? It shouldn’t be to hard to come up with one.
Steve
Yes, thank the Gods for Climategate. But it was a strategic gain, not a knockout blow.
The warmists have not surrendered. Here’s a publication endorsed by the former Irish president Mary Robinson, that claims to demonstrate that Climate Change increases the risks of forced marriage and sexual violence to young girls! For crying out loud!
http://www.plan-uk.org/resources/documents/35316
But I will predict that no matter what hoohah comes out of it, it will not have 50% of the energy of the previous IPCCs, because governments just aren’t listening with baited breath anymore.
That should be “bated breath” (partially held breath). “Baited breath” would mean that the breath was somehow baited to lure someone as bait lures a fish.
I think the scientific claims, on their own, would have done little more than result in an occasional news paragraph; after all we have had some pretty absurd scientific claims over the years which have come to nothing.
What boosted the ‘industry’ was when the environmental groups like Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, WWF and others saw an opportunity to promote their anti- capitalist, anti -globalization agendas. In turn, business saw an opportunity to exploit the concerns and make money. Finally, governments, in particular left leaning governments saw an opportunity to control and tax its subjects.
Yes, there is evidence, that there is a waning of governmental interest but, in Britain at least, billions are still being spent on windmills which to an investor are almost a license to print money, so generous are the subsidies. So, until governments stand up and publicly announce it was all a mistake, the battle is not won.
FYI; References to US-centric “Liberal” notions makes no sense in the rest of the world. We’ve never been quite able to understand how you’re able to divide absolutely everything there is in the world up into two opposite camps … 😉
I also believe the weather is just as much the reason for sceptic voices in popular media as any Climategate fallout, but that might be my Northern Europe-centrism talking.
Oakden Wolf says:
July 21, 2011 at 9:53 pm
“Yes, thank God for Climategate because it means that so many of us don’t have to be concerned about something like this:
“A remarkable world record was set at Khassab (airport), Oman on June 27th when the minimum temperature for the day failed to fall below 107.1°F (41.7°C). This is the highest minimum temperature ever recorded in the world to date.””
You did notice the word “airport” in your quote, right?
Although who is interesting , perhaps more interesting is why. For within that why may be far more information on the workings and of CR and in the workings of CRU is just how ‘settled ‘ the science really was and is . I would take a bet that in reality the situation always was that there was far to many unknowns and uncertainty to ever make the claims that where made and retain scientific validity . But the ambitions of some and the political desires of others lead to the notion scientific validity being abandon for more earthly wants.
Excellent post. However, I won’t be dancing any victory happy dance until
the willful destruction of the UK’s energy security and economycriminally insane government policies like this have been stopped dead in their tracks.In Toronto (and North America in general), we’ve just had one of the worst heat waves in decades, with many record highs being shattered. Last night the CTV news report was dedicated to the phenomenon, virtually pushing away every other news story.
Not once — not ONCE — did anyone mention “global warming,” “climate change,” or “climate disruption.”
Vaclav Klaus is speaking here in Australia. One of his points is that he does not believe in the innocence of the alarmists. The parallels with his experience under communism are too strong. In other words, alarmists are alarmists for the same reasons that communists are/were communists; a great stick to beat others with, a shortcut to money and power, a way to instil fear and obtain social status that their meagre talents would otherwise not entitle them to.
A sobering thought but one that is borne out by the sheer obduracy and irrationality of the CAGW crowd. None of their predictions ever come true? Don’t worry they will, and in the meantime keep sending money. People ask good and pointed questions? Smear them, insult them, harass them, do absolutely anything rather than address issues and science. Someone who is genuinely frightened for the future of the earth, as I was, is keen to examine anything that might buy time or constitute a reason to be less fearful.
So these people will not stop until they are stopped, by political means. I agree with Lubos Motl and James Delingpole about that. The alarmists have nothing else going for them and not too deep down they know it.
I am sorry, but I can not see this issue in terms of win or lose.
We all lose:
Science loses credibility.
Major health and environmental problems lose because we neglect them in the name of the battle on GW.
Poor countries lose because they may be forced to abandon their hope for progress.
And we all lose a lot of money spent on a non issue, while the world is being bent on solving a non problem.
Too much money was already spent and too much scientific harm has already been done for this to be any kind of win.
The only thing left for us now is to try and salvage as much as we can.
Other big wins for skepticism were:
1. The refusal of China to go along at Copenhagen. No carbon reduction elsewhere will mean anything if they aren’t involved, so this “break in the ranks” is very significant.
2. The failure of the Senate to pass Obama’s cap and trade bill. More generally, the swing of the GOP toward skepticism. With the exception of Canada’s conservatives, this is the only other major Western (or even global?) party to do so. The refusal of the US to “get with the program” disrupted the bandwagon effect prior to Copenhagen.
3. The rise of the Internet, which has broken the MSM’s stranglehold and allowed skeptical commenters to disrupt the consensus.
4. The visible underperformance of renewable energy installations in Spain and elsewhere, like the UK. This will become more apparent as the years go by. If there’s no practical renewable alternative to fossil fuels, Greenism loses most of its appeal.
5. Himalaya-gate and associated revelations of IPCC / Pachy sloppiness + bias + arrogance.
6. (Developing): The revelation that the IPCC unjustifiably created a fudge factor (using Bayesian statistics) that doubles the global climate sensitivity. The whole case for catastrophic warmism rests on this high sensitivity, so this exposure could turn out to be a mortal blow. See: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/07/05/the-ipcc-and-high-biased-climate-sensitivity/
7. (Developing): The global financial crisis, which will put a crimp in the West’s spendthrift psychology and capabilities. The crisis of the euro has the potential to unwind the EU and with it, its we-know-best bureaucracy and legal powers.
8. (Developing): Recent backpedaling or conflicting messages from science news about such things as a coming hiatus in warming, the uncertain effects of coal (China’s coal cools the planet), etc. Support from CERN for Svenmark’s theories would help.
9. (Developing): Failure of the planet to warm to the extent predicted.
10. (Developing): Poor performance of carbon-trading vehicles and investments in renewables.
Would the fact that people vote out a political party because it introduces carbon taxes, be considered as a major battle won, if not the war itself? Just thinking.
Great article b.t.w. I found it contains a lot of what went through my head since climategate.
Steve Garcia:
I think your judgement is premature. There is a long, long way to go before the AGW-scare is over. Copenhagen was the ‘tipping point’ that fenestrated the scare, not Climategate. And much damage will result before the AGW-scare fades to become a forgotten memory like the Acid Rain scare.
Climategate enabled a change to public perception and nothing else. It was important because it revealed to anyone who cared to look what many of us already knew.
The real ‘tipping point’ in the AGW-scare was a few months after Climategate and was at Copenhagen. The Big Players such as China and India refused to join in the economic flagellation being promoted by the West. And those Big Players would have done that whether or not Climategate had occurred.
The large developing countries were willing to go along with the Kyoto Protocol because it imposed restrictions on developed countries (i.e. Annex A countries) but not them (i.e. Annex B countries) so the Kyoto Protocol was a direct economic benefit to them. But the Copenhagen Treaty would have included them in emission constraints (i.e. economic restrictions) and they simply refused to agree to that. (Their refusal tactic was to say they would not constrain their emissions until their per capita emissions reached those of the average in the West).
Climategate enabled a change to public perception and nothing else. And several posters here have pointed that out.
Gnomish points out that US policy on AGW has not changed and “Susan Rice, US Ambassador to the UN” acted on it today.
Several posts (i.e. Richard111, Martin Brumby, oglidewell, etc.) point out that the UK government and politicians are united in their making UK energy and environment policies subservient to the AGW-scare.
John Johnston shows Irish politicians are the same.
Indeed, Martin Brumby points out that the scare is affecting government policies in many countries and several continents.
And the media – especially the BBC and the ABC – remain extremely partisan and pro the AGW-scare.
Attacks on ‘climate realists’ (which I and so many others have suffered) continue as KenB reports in this thread at July 21, 2011 at 9:08 pm.
For decades there have been people campaining for realism and scientific integrity to replace the AGW-scare. We have had our successes and failures. The Climategate whistleblower is one who has provided a success although he/she has chosen not to be identified.
Most of these campaigners have ‘shown their faces’ and have had some success. Climategate revealed the rejoicing of the ‘Team’ at the tragic death of John Daly. And Tim Ball is now silenced by a legal case that attempts to bankrupt him. This proves that critics of the ‘Team’ have had successes: the ‘Team’ would not have made these responces if their critics had been inefectual so could be ignored.
Climategate was one step along a long road. It was important to public perception but, importantly, governments are still travelling along that road. The road changed direction at Copenhagen so it will not reach its originally intended destination. But politicians keep marching along that road and they are trampling on the public as they march. It is clear that they will keep marching until they recognise that their desired destination is no longer attainable.
Richard
Good article – but the news hasn’t spread far enough. Here in the UK, home of Climategate, Government policy is still to cut carbon emissions by 80% by 2050, and recently announced measures will sharply rack up energy costs for both consumers and industry, to pay for windmills and nuclear power stations.
It’s not just the politicians. Save-the-Planet lobbying by Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, etc. is to be expected, but mainstream charities like Oxfam and Christian Aid have been actively lobbying the EU politicians for deeper cuts in carbon emissions, despite the harm (including death from cold) that extortionate heating costs will do to vulnerable elderly people, and despite the hunger and starvation that turning food crops into biofuel causes through higher food prices worldwide. Funny stance for charitable organisations. Sorry, not funny at all, more like tragic.
A (long) list of organisations who still support the hysteria can be found at the bottom of the page at http://www.stopclimatechaos.org/ .
Ghandi said: At first they ignore you, then they mock you, then they attack you, and then you win. We are at stage 3.
Great post, but I fear that the Team’s state-of-the-art advocacy skills will keep them in gravy for a while yet.
In Australia and Britain there are powerful politicians with that mad evangelical look in their eyes. Just as Eisenhower warned about a self-sustaining military-industrial complex, the Global Warming Industry still has great momentum. The worst governments (good ol’ USA for bucking the western trend!) are feeding green extremist groups with tax pounds/dollars extracted from honest citizens. (Man, the airline tickets and hotel bills for October’s Durban shindig come out of OUR pockets.)
How much of this fiscal mugging is a sop to ubergreen activists with their hysterical street protests, their face-painting, their banners shreiking about ‘climate crime’? There is no equal-and-opposite movement on our side: yer level-headed sceptic with a family life and a job to hold down just hasn’t got the angst and fury. There is no opposite to a ‘climate camp’ or a runway flashmob, and hence no political pressure to snuff out the megabucks solutions to an illusory threat.
We need a hero; an Antigore.
The warmers may have experienced their “Stalingrad” but this has only halted their seemingly junstoppable advance, they are no longer the Juggernaut, but there is a long way to have to push them back to “Berlin” to achieve total victory. The warmers are down but they are not out. This is no time for us to rest, the warmers must be treated just like the Germans who presented such a hard crust on the defense, they must be hammered continuously from all sides until they are finally vanquished.
gnomish says:
July 21, 2011 at 11:38 pm
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
While the Somalis and Kenyans are dying of hunger, the UN is pushing for converting crops-for-food farm land to crops-for-fuel. Thus food is becoming more expensive, pushing all people down towards the poverty line, pushing the poor who live below the poverty line even lower, while those who were just managing to stay alive are now literally dying of hunger. Meanwhile Susan Rice (Obama’s proxy) is more interested in spending trillions of dollars to push down the temperature by 0.6C than to save all those Somali babies from starvation and death.
Good work, Brother Steve,
To link the words ‘skeptic’, ‘victory’ and ‘climategate’ all in one article is certainly a feat of enviable literary gymnastics. Climategate will certainly go down in the annuls of history for us [those which must not be named] together with other great, well known victories such as the Vietnam War, Dunkerque and The Charge of the Light Brigade!
Now that the ‘Great Cooling’ has taken a firm hold on the planet (except for a little local weather in the US) and the Arctic ice is showing a clear recovery again this year (well done Village voters for being right on the button yet again 🙂 ), soon all our Warmisticating foes lies will be revealed to the world.
And Brother. Nice touch completely confusing the politics of action and the science of the so-called ‘Global Warming’. “The science is garbage because governments aren’t acting” – PRICELESS! I must remember that approach next time I take on a Waarmistering deceiver..
Victory to Sun!
This is how the AGWers are paid money that isn’t their’s and they are not worthy of earning. It is just a scam:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/8596583/Met-Office-staff-awarded-1.5m-bonus-pot-despite-another-year-of-bungled-forecasts.html
Oakden Wolf:
““A remarkable world record was set at Khassab (airport), Oman on June 27th when the minimum temperature for the day failed to fall below 107.1°F (41.7°C). This is the highest minimum temperature ever recorded in the world to date.””
I am pretty sure that nobody was recording the daily temperature at Khassab Airport during the Roman Warm Period, or during the previous warmer 8000 years to when the last ice age ended.
I am also certain that there wasn’t any temperature recordings taken during any of the previous interglacials, many of which were warmer than this current one.
So although that may be the highest minimum daily temperature on the instrumental record for that location (and how long has there been an airport there? If you have a naturally hot location, and you stick a large blanket of black tarmac on it, then it is likely that a temperature record will be broken there.) It certainly is not the highest minimum daily temperature ever.
@ Aussie2011 says: July 21, 2011 at 7:50 pm
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I fully agree with your comments on accountability. The same should apply to politicians. Both should be liable to compensate people who have suffered loss as a result of negligent error. For sure, these people would not have the wherewithall to make full redress but if they stood to lose their own personal fortune, it would encourage them scrutinise their actions with far more care.
Politicians are always in a no lose situation since they are spending someone elses money and therefore do not seem to give a damn as to how it is wasted..
I accept that politicians need to be guided by experts (often scientists) but as a matter of policy they should ecourage close scrutiny of the expert advice they are receiving so as to to test its varicity. They should never as a policy try and close down debate on the merits of the advice they are receiving and to do so is negligent.
But whilst I accept that politicians may not be able to understand the science, some of their policies for mitigation are pure madness, and I consider to be negligent. The Aussie Cap & Trade is one good example. Huge cost, no significant reduction of global temperature and therefore nothing achived. likewise, windfarms. Not one conventional generator has been decomissioned as a result of all the wind turbines erected. The UK government is just realising that in order to support the windfarms it is erecting it wil have to build 17 or so new conventional generators.If it simply went ahead and built these conventional generators, there would be no need for any windfarm to be built. Such duplication is pure madness. Such a easte of cost and no significant reduction in the amount of CO2 emissions is achieved. Similar observations apply to solar in high latitude. No doubt solar has it place but not in a cloudy northern latitude country. This type of mitigation policy is clearly negligent and the politicians who voted for this should be held accountable for the increased energy costs which ordinary citizens have to pay.
In fact, with the social state, the madness is greater since with rising energy costs, the amount of money that the government will have to pay out in increased social payments (whether these will be pension payments or out of work benefit) will inevitably have to go up to reflect the increased cost of living. So when the government levies a green tax, it has to additionally increase taxes on those that are working so that the state can increase its hand outs to those not working so those not working can afford to pay the green tax being levied by the energy companies/by the government through the back door. It is such a wonderful thing to be able to spend other people’s money.
The real problem is how can a system be indroduced that makes these scientists and politicians accountable for their actions.
Let us keep the name of she/he secret for the obvious reason that more may be forthcoming.
Anthony,
Science is in far worse shape than you think.
Exclusion of many areas has generated a mass amount of theories that missed molecular lensing of the atmosphere, mechanics, magnetic influence of the sun, fiction of planetary inertia(gravity), shape, speed and motion, loss of water vapor are excluded from the current planetary understanding.
Current formulas and equations are strict and need correction constantly due to the planet slowing and movement away from the sun.
Temperatures on this planet are artificially created if we had no water or proper gases to keep this system in a stable cycle.
Brian says:
July 22, 2011 at 12:13 am
Oh no, Brian. This is all just getting started. Climategate was the day The Team was breached–D Day, as it were. The battle is simply escalating; mother nature is NOT cooperating as the Warmistas have predicted; and many previously accepted climate “truths” have been swept away (along with the so-called “experts” that have hoodwinked the masses–the IPCC is particularly guilty). The problem you’re having is that much of the public is now laughing at your “cause”; you’ve been outted.
You can sulk and hide away in some closet, bemoan the fact that your side is losing, and post silly comments like the above on WUWT, but that’s just further evidence that the momentum has swung to the other side–not yours.
@Oakden Wolf says: July 21, 2011 at 9:53 pm
[ ]
“A remarkable world record was set at Khassab (airport), Oman on June 27th when the minimum temperature for the day failed to fall below 107.1°F (41.7°C). This is the highest minimum temperature ever recorded in the world to date.”
OK, Oakden Wolf. Please supply a link for maximum / minimum daily temperatures for Khassab (airport), Oman for the last 1,000 years so we can check out whether this is in fact the highest minimum ever recorded for this location. We can then have a look at other locations for comparison.
Haven’t got 1,000 years data? OK, then how about 150 years? No? 50 years? 20 years maybe?
C’mon, this thing isn’t looking quite as “remarkable” after all.
But when we have it sorted we can start examining the proof that this “remarkable” (or not) record was caused by Climate Change. Then we can scratch about and see how much of that was caused by “Greenhouse Gasses”, then how much by CO2 and eventually come up with the contibution from human CO2 emissions.
Drat, I forgot to turn off my phone charger on the 26th June. Must have been that charger that tipped the thing over. Sorry, all you good folks who live in Khassab (airport), Oman!
Unfortunately, we are a long way from winning this battle and it will not be won before the MSM picks up the gauntlet and closely scrutinises the scientific evidence underpinning the manmade GW theory AND the political response to global warming, its effectiveness at curtailing temperature and the costs involved. Indeed, the MSM should question whether it is in our interests to seek to hold back temperature rise and whether a warmer planet would in fact be beneficial not detrimental.
There are some factors that may work towards the MSM re-evaluating its stance on GW. First, the increased energy costs are bound to cause hardship and will inevitably lead to deaths amongst some old age pensioners. Stories of hardship and death appeal to the media and if these events happen, there will inevitably be more and more stories appearing in the MSM (not just on internet blogs). Further the ordinary person will begin to feel the financial cost of green policies and in poor economic times, he will not like that feeling and will begin to question why he is paying so much tax. Second, if global temperatures continue to stall or better still fall (which many foresee as a consequence of an inactive sun and negative ocean phases). After 5 or 10 years of this, it will become ever more difficult to sell stories of impending doom and the better story to sell will be what has happened to global warming? Third, if winters continue to be cold and snowy. In the UK for example, the goverrnment/local authorities appear incapable of coping with cosd snowy conditions and the country grinds to the halt. The press love to run with this type of story showing government as hapless. The story is even better if the Met Office has predicted a mild winter. If there has been a change in jet stream patterns, it may well be the case that there will be more frequent cold winters and stories of this type will appear more regularly. It is counter intuitive to the ordinary person that Global Warming causes cooling and this happens this will inevitable start shifting public opinion. The press to some extent reflects public opinion and should public opinion shift, the press will follow and with ever more stories appearing in the press casting doubt on AGW, the public will become more sceptical thereby encouraging the press to run yet more such stories. Fourth, as far as the UK is concerned, our energy planning is a disaster. Unless there is a change of tack, within the next 10 years, there will be rolling blackouts. People will question why they are paying so much more for energy and yet are not being allowed to use as much and at times are not even able to use any due to power cuts.
I can see the battle being won within the next 20 years whenthere is a new influx of politicians who have not themselves introduced stupid schemes, but today, it is far from over.
How anyone could possibly believe the preposterous claims that have been put forth absolutely boggles the mind. Obviously, there are a great many people who have no concept of thermodynamics in any way shape manner or form. I remain totally aghast.
Thanks Steve for this perspective on Climategate. I remember the evening when it broke, definitely a “before and after” moment.
Poor ol Joe Romm still has not realized what he is gotten himself into pursuing the Murdochs (his wife is 100% warmista) and most of his press is too except for Fox TV. He still does not get it that it was an insider who leaked the emails and that the NORFOLK police were probably instructed by the MET police through Wallis to NOT investigate. The poor sucker is now asking them to investigate This is one thing that we concur with on, with Joey.
Climategate – like garbage hidden under the snow, it was doomed to be revealed when spring came (as all other corruption sooner or later …)
—–
“With the level of attention given to AGW these days, with the yawns that greet claims against CO2 anymore, with governments abandoning efforts at controlling CO2 emissions, with even Germans (the most green country in Europe, if not the world)”
Ever heard of Sweden and Norway …? We have had CO2 taxes in a number of years now and it will remain. Even the existing right-wing government (ie prime minister) in Sweden has stressed that no matter what science achieves, so we’ll keep those taxes … (His party (Moderateerna, cons.), calls itself “New Labour Party” …)
Disagree strongly with Richard A.:
“a certain portion of the population always believes some form of apocalyptic idiocy which can only be avoided if THEY, the believers, get to ‘run things’ for the rest of us.”
Nope, Gaia is unique. There are always lots of cults, but until Gaia came along, none of them wanted to “run things.” The more serious ones wanted to convince the world to prepare for the end; the less serious ones wanted to generate millions for their founders. Most wanted to control their followers, but none of them cared about ruling the unbelievers.
No other cult ever succeeded in taking over ONE government or ONE complete school system or ONE country’s media. Gaia has taken over ALL the governments and ALL the school systems and NEARLY ALL the media. Nothing else remotely compares.
Steve Garcia,
A good message. Thank you. Another title could have been ‘Less We Forget Climategate’.
I would just add that the main victory has been a vastly increased VIGILANCE. It is now, more than ever before, extremely difficult for biased climate science to slip past skeptical scrutiny in the climate sphere.
The top strategy for skeptics should be establishing even more ‘vigilance processes’ that will overwhelm all attempts at subterfuge by the agenda driven IPCC AGWist Pseudo-Science. There are still gaps in our VIGILANCE network. Keep working.
There can never be rest for us; that is the price of liberty.
Some celebration is good, but we should keep in mind that it just for one win in a continuous essential effort to sustain our vigilance.
John
I would be more inclined to believe that a programmer (or maybe a group of them) did it. These would be the people who had to work on the code and found it to be such an unholy mess that they were driven to weekend drinking binges just to get the taste of the task out of their mouths.
At the very least, I can imagine the disdain they felt for these high and mighty self-proclaimed climatologists ordering them to “make stuff up” to get the programme to work the way they wanted it to work.
I’m baffled by the “lone liberal on WUWT” remark. There are plenty of liberals on here and elsewhere. Steve McIntyre self-identified himself as a “Clinton Democrat” in US political terms. I would probably be similar.
There are plenty of commenters here who make banal and pretty insulting references to Hitler and Nazism in the context of AGW believers, but there are equally many more commenters who care about accuracy, scholarship and integrity in science and want to know what the facts are, and how much about climate science is real and how much is hype and misdirection.
I think there is a broad middle ground between left wing liberalism and Fox News style right wingery, and there are a large number of people concerned that a large part of environmentalism has been co-opted by a revivified form of State-controlling authoritarianism.
We are not engaged in a scientific dispute about climate, we are engaged in a political and ideological war for the replacement for “Western” civilization. Science is just ammunition in this war.
The Sicilians and Irish amnesiacs on this thread might appreciate the opinion of Conan the Barbarian:
Mongol General: Hao! Dai ye! We won again! This is good, but what is best in life?
Mongol: The open steppe, fleet horse, falcons at your wrist, and the wind in your hair.
Mongol General: Wrong! Conan! What is best in life?
Conan: To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.
Troed Sångberg says:
July 22, 2011 at 1:57 am
There are two types of people in the world. Those who divide people into two groups, and those who don’t.
Freedom won requires continued vigilance and safe keeping, and at far greater levels than what was required to win it.
Here in the US, the EPA continues to run out AGW regulations without letup. Last night Obama threatened to veto any legislation that contained a cut to the EPA’s budget.
The fight is far from won.
The driving force behind CAGW has been political from the start. “Climate scientist” were hired to find reasons to set global controls on the use of fossil fuels. They did what they were hired to do. The final battles will be political or in the courts. True science is objective rather than subjective like religion and politics. CO2 is being retried with expert witnesses on both sides being called to testify. Who do you think the jury (public) will believe?
Steve, I hope you’re right that our side has won.
Personally, I think it’s way to early to declare victory. I hope you’re right and I’m wrong…
An outstanding observation* that bears repeating.
.
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(*Numbering added; paragraph reformatted)
.
When the US EPA, the DOE and many of the other Federal and state entities are dedicated to completely recasting our energy sources and economy based on debatable conclusions advanced by the IPCC, there is no win. The US, Australian, German, and UK economies are at great risk due to their actions. China, India and other countries talk the talk but build conventional and nuclear power at breakneck speeds to become ever more economically powerful while we resort poor, low energy density sources like wind and solar. A perception of winning in the face of economic catastrophe being foisted our our nations is a big mistake!
Perhaps the changes in general perception will develop into a healthier situation, but actions currently underway are not suggesting a win on any meaningful terms.
Thanks Steve for this timely perspective. I remember well the night that Climategate broke, and its significance does indeed grow with time.
People project a lot of views on me that I haven’t expressed. I do not think that Mannian hockey sticks have any statistical validity, but, at the end of the day, this is a secondary issue and I have not formed an opinion on whether feedbacks are neutral, weakly or strongly positive. To that extent, people should not assimilate me with people who have formed firm opinions on the matter.
Nor do I see how so many commenters have arrived at such certainty in their opinions, when I, after considerable study of the matter, have been unable to do so. I urge people to be less confident in their opinions. On a policy side, I think that there is an important empirical question of whether it is reasonable to rely on solar and wind as a large-footprint solution, but I haven’t written much on the topic.
Great post …
I would point out that Ms. Curry knew all of this stuff was going on long before the ClimateGate emails were made public. What she did has nothing do with with being courageous but was all about covering her behind … fudged data is fraud not uncertainty …
She could have started her blog years before … Now THAT would have taken courage … everyone involved in climate sceince knew what was going on for years but wanted to keep the prestige and money … she knew her side was not arguing in good faith for years before Climategate …
Alas, Chicken Little is not yet dead. In the UK, the government has launched on a 110 billion program to de-carbonise (sic) the UK by building thousands of windmills. And they’re also building 17 gas-powered power stations for when the wind isn’t blowing (or blows too hard). But those power stations will be running much of the time in stand-by mode. This is cheaper for the operating companies, but puts out more CO2 than if they were running at optimum power. Conclusion: the government is spending 110 blliion in order to increase CO2 emissions. This is a true sign of madness. We are still in the hands of the lunatics.
Let’s see what the reaction is to this:
http://www.newsmax.com/SciTech/ActNowonClimateUNScientist/2011/07/20/id/404237
He’s baaaack.
Pachauri cautioned that the widely accepted goal of preventing average global temperatures from increasing by more than 2.0 Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) compared to preindustrial times is fast slipping beyond reach.
To achieve that goal in a cost-effective manner “concentration of greenhouse gases [in the atmosphere] must peak not later than 2015,” he said.
Brian says:
July 22, 2011 at 12:13 am
Climategate has already been discussed:
http://liveweb.archive.org/http://www.skepticalscience.com/search.php?Search=climategate&x=18&y=7
Can we cut the climategate stuff already?
Translated into Progressive, er, “logic”:
“Everything that has been ‘discussed’ has ‘already been discussed’. And everyone knows that ‘we should not discuss further what has already been discussed’ – or, indeed, even relate the present to the past – except for discussing that ‘it’ has ‘already been discussed’. Therefore, shut up about ‘the climategate stuff already’….oops, except also for reading what I call the ‘discussion of climategate’, then not speaking or thinking of its content further, except, of course, upon future notice from me – because, as we have agreed, it has ‘already been discussed’.
“Which reminds me, yon irritant proles, further important instructions and rules…Now hear this! Until notice from me, you may only say, ‘Yes, Master’…and maybe, ‘ommmmmmmmm’, because I am a very lenient Master – all of these things themselves also now matters which have ‘already been discussed’. Note carefully, though, that the matter of your future ‘death threats’ – likely upon your next spoken or written words – has not ‘already been discussed’!
“So shut up already! Can’t we all just
compromiseget along?”At 1:57 AM on 22 July, Troed Sångberg had written:
No problem. For you furriners, here’s a civics lesson.
America’s first political party, the Federalists, created our present central government by way of a malevolent mercantilist conspiracy, convening a gathering to “revise” the then-obtaining Articles of Confederation. They sealed the proceedings to prevent their political opponents (a loose bunch that came to be called the “Anti-Federalists,” including not only patriots like Patrick Henry [whose response to the call for that “revision” was – literally – “I smell a rat!”] but also the entire state of Rhode Island) from interfering with the plans of Alexander Hamilton and his fellow criminals to impose upon our nation a scheme which would give the governing class – themselves – the power of the purse, which means first and foremost the power to lay and collect taxes.
Under the Articles of Confederation, the several states of our union had explicitly denied that power to the central government, an arrangement that kept said government weak and helpless to do anything but manage some very limited tasks, and preempted the sorts of predation and destruction that had precipitated (for example) our present recession.
Among the other malevolences inserted in that charter by the Federalists was a election scheme which would ensure a “winner takes all” result for every congressional district in the legislature (and later, by way of the machinations of the Federalists’ heirs to impose the 17th Amendment, for every seat in the upper chamber, the U.S. Senate).
There are effectively no positions in our national legislature which are not occupied by one or another faction of what has become our permanent institutional perpetually incumbent Boot-On-Your-Neck Party. One faction – the direct descendents of the Federalists – is called “the Republican Party.” The other is the National Socialist Democrat American Party (NSDAP), which gave up all pretense of being “Democratic” when its members in the Congress enacted Obamacare over the enraged opposition of most of their core constituencies in 2010.
In the U.S. Senate, two seats are occupied by nominal “independents,” Bernie Sanders of Vermont (who has always been an avowed and openly declared Socialist), and Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut (who had run as an “independent” in 2006 when the NSDAP had refused to nominate him, and again won the seat he had occupied since the elections of 1988). Both of these “independents” happily caucus with the National Socialists, and vote almost unfailing in support of the “Liberal” fascist agenda.
To better understand the nature of our alleged “right-wing” faction, I heartily recommend Professor Clyde Wilson’s 2006 essay “The Republican Charade: Lincoln and His Party,” where we read:
For a similar insight into the National Socialists, begin with Jonah Goldberg’s 2008 book Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning.
The scheme of government inflicted upon our nation by the Federalists effectively disenfranchises millions of Americans – indeed, the majority of Americans – making the votes of dissenting individuals absolutely worthless. This is one of the reasons, perhaps the principal reason, why millions of Americans simply do not vote in elections where candidates stand for office in our national government.
If you live in a state or congressional district where there is an established majority opposed to your political preferences – or you oppose both “state capitalism” and National Socialism – you have no voice whatsoever.
Why bother to vote? “When being raped, you might as well relax and try to enjoy it.”
For my own part, I’ve accepted the advice of Robert A. Heinlein, who wrote:
For the majority of Americans, that’s the only option left to us.
Regarding the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) fraud, for example, even if one knew nothing whatsoever about the evidence for or against this preposterous bogosity, or even about the principles of scientific method, consideration of the moral, intellectual, and political character of the advocates of “doing something” about this supposed catastrophe would serve satisfactorily to give presumptive indication of just how utterly invalid – and damnable – it truly is.
I think this brief note should prove helpful. Any further questions will be gladly received.
Steve McIntyre says:
July 22, 2011 at 6:51 am
“I urge people to be less confident in their opinions.”
You are truly a humble man.
Please allow people who have supported you, been belittled, called vile names and threatened, to do a little jig and rejoice that we can now get back to real science. No matter where anyone stands, science has been harmed.
In reply to Brian`s comment:
Brian says:
July 22, 2011 at 12:13 am
Climategate has already been discussed:
http://liveweb.archive.org/http://www.skepticalscience.com/search.php?Search=climategate&x=18&y=7
Can we cut the climategate stuff already?
Brian,
You appear to not understand the implications of the Climategate emails. A cabal of scientists cherry picked specific tree ring data to remove the Little Ice Age and Medieval warm period from the climate record. The same scientists deleted emails to hide the conspiracy and worked behind the scenes to block publication of data that undermines the extreme AGW hypothesis. The scientists in question are key authors in the IPCC process and run the blog Real Climate.
The Climategate emails provide direct proof that there is a subset of climate scientists who are key authors and editors in the IPCC who have a non-scientific agenda (creating propaganda for the extreme AGW hypothesis blocking papers that disprove the extreme AGW hypothesis.)
Normally when a scientist is caught manipulating data and deleting protected emails the scientist in question would be fired and likely face criminal prosecution. As the evidence of data manipulation and conspiracy is black and white in this case and the scientists in question were not fired and charged, it appears others tacitly or openly support the propaganda agenda (End justifies the means. Truth and facts do not support the position so lies and propaganda are necessary.)
As most are aware the extreme AGW hypothesis is being used to justify spending trillions of dollars on a UN carbon monitoring bureaucracy, on a world financial transaction tax, and on a UN bureaucracy to hand out the taxed dollars for different boondoggles.
A key strategy in the extreme AGW propaganda is calling those who discuss the published papers that disprove the extreme AGW hypothesis “deniers” and stating over and over “the science is settled”. That strategy is necessary as the science does not support the extreme AGW hypothesis.
Extreme AGW Hypothesis – 3.3 C warming for a doubling of CO2 (positive feedback) IPCC ar4
Reality AGW – Less than 1C warming for a doubling of CO2 with the majority of the warming occurring at high latitudes (negative feedback)
There are two key scientific issues:
1) The Little Ice Age and the Medieval Warm Period happened for a reason. The sun was at its highest activity for the longest period of continuously high activity in 10,000 years for the last 30 years of the 20th century. Solar cycle 24 is the start of either a Dalton type minimum or a Maunder Minimum. The paleoclimatic record shows the planet’s temperatures swings from cold to warm tracking the magnetic field cycle of the sun. There are roughly a 100 published paper that explain the mechanism. The solar magnetic field changes directly and indirectly change the amount of ions that create in the earth’s atmosphere which affect the amount cloud formation and the lifetime of cloud formation on the earth. The solar cloud modulation effect is greatest over the ocean which is ion poor and is greatest from about latitude 40 to 70. The prevailing winds push the bands of clouds that are formed over the oceans with accumulation at the edge of the continents. Regions of the ocean as predicted by the solar modulation mechanisms have started to cool. The solar cycle 24 cooling was delayed due to a second significant effect which occurs when the solar cycle abruptly changes.
2) Detailed analysis indicates the planet’s response to a change in forcing is negative (planetary cloud cover increases when the planet is warmer which reflects more solar radiation back into space) as opposed to positive (planet amplifies a change in forcing such that the planet warms more the original forcing.) The IPCC extreme AGW prediction of a 3.3C warming for a doubling of CO2 requires the planet’s response to forcing to be positive (amplifying) as opposed to negative (planet resists changes with stabilizes planetary temperature).
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100017393/climategate-the-final-nail-in-the-coffin-of-anthropogenic-global-warming/
Attempts to disguise the inconvenient truth of the Medieval Warm Period (MWP):
……Phil and I have recently submitted a paper using about a dozen NH records that fit this category, and many of which are available nearly 2K back–I think that trying to adopt a timeframe of 2K, rather than the usual 1K, addresses a good earlier point that Peck made w/ regard to the memo, that it would be nice to try to “contain” the putative “MWP”, even if we don’t yet have a hemispheric mean reconstruction available that far back….
Manipulation of evidence:
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.
Suppression of evidence:
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.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/Lindzen-and-Choi-GRL-2009.pdf
The observed behavior of radiation fluxes implies negative feedback processes associated with relatively low climate sensitivity. This is the opposite of the behavior of 11 atmospheric models forced by the same SSTs. Therefore, the models display much higher climate sensitivity than is inferred from ERBE, though it is difficult to pin down such high sensitivities with any precision. Results also show, the feedback in ERBE is mostly from shortwave radiation while the feedback in the models is mostly from longwave radiation. Although such a test does not distinguish the mechanisms, this is important since the inconsistency of climate feedbacks constitutes a very fundamental problem in climate prediction.
http://www.nsstc.uah.edu/atmos/christy_pubs.html
LIMITS ON CO2 CLIMATE FORCING FROM RECENT TEMPERATURE DATA OF EARTH
The global atmospheric temperature anomalies of Earth reached a maximum in1998 which has not been exceeded during the subsequent 10 years. The global anomalies are calculated from the average of climate effects occurring in the tropical and the extratropical latitude bands. El Niño/La Niña effects in the tropical band are shown to explain the 1998 maximum while variations in the background of the global anomalies largely come from climate effects in the northern extratropics. These effects do not have the signature associated with CO2 climate forcing. However, the data show a small underlying positive trend that is consistent with CO2 climate forcing with no-feedback.
At 7:13 AM on 22 July, John Campbell (gawd, isn’t that a name to conjure with!) writes about the UK government’s “110 billion program to de-carbonise (sic)” the nation upon which they prey, commenting:
…to which the proper response is an admonition not to attribute to mental illness what is better explained by criminal mens rea“
Excellent article.
The final victory will occur when all the ill-advised government mandates, special interest legislation and government subsidies aimed at fixing AGW are terminated. It is the incredible waste of the national wealth on this “snipe hunt” over the last couple of decades that has been the problem. The people who have benefited from this effort are not the public, not the many but the few ….. the special interests.
All scientists know that the greatest difficulty is proving a negative – to prove that dangerous global warming was not occurring. Even more so when all scientists agree that CO2 warms the atmosphere. It has been an uphill battle but you are right the warmists now no longer hold sway and are – sometimes malevolently – on the defensive. Only the BBC takes a Nelsonian stance.
When they admit no wrongdoing and continue business as usual, the answer must be no.
Aussie2011 says:
July 21, 2011 at 7:50 pm
I couldn’t have put it better myself, as one professional engineer to another well done you!
To Richard S.Courtney (we have had brief communications before)
I fully agree that in Europe at least, & in the UK in particular, it is too earlry to claim victory, although it would be true to claim some restoration of balance albeit small over here! The BBC is rallying on another tack already! With the technically & scientifically illiterate parlimentary leaders, in particular one Chris (the Loon) Huhne& his merry men, our enrergy policy is barking mad, produced by the barking mad, & what should be done with that which barks, & that which is mad? Answers on a post card in no less than 10 words to: Alan the Brit’s Veteranary Clinic, Stringem Up Avenue,
Riseupandslaughterthemallville. UK. I’m only joking……………………………or am I?????? Perhaps it really is time to give the halfwits the geo-engineering solutions to give them that ladder out of the snake pitafter all?
@Darren Parker says:
July 21, 2011 at 8:04 pm
the vested interests haven’t even started playing hardball yet.
——
That may be true, but the Sun bats last.
Don’t be too hard on them:
http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1623
Good article. I would have liked to have seen some credit given to Australia’s John Daly (RIP) for being the first true skeptic. I was already suspicious of the IPCC when I found his website in the very early days when the IPCC was just getting up to full steam and at their most strident. Daly wasn’t given any credence in the insular world of climate science because he wasn’t technically a climate scientist. He was just a very intelligent man with a passion for ferreting out and exposing the truth. Daly’s site provided me with lots of counter-arguments which I used to annoy the relentlessly pro AGW commentators in the mainstream media. It was a lonely existence to express AGW skepticism back in the early 90s. I’m sure I’ll be forgiven for a little gloating at having been vindicated. Without Daly’s site, I would have fallen in with the rest of the naive believers.
I’m glad we’ve made so much progress vis-a-vis ACO2 being a non-starter. At the same time, I despair that in turning from the climate, the real man-caused environmental problems will be ignored as well.
I hate seeing municipalities dumping raw or poorly processed sewage in our streams and lakes. I see “public” landfills leaking fluids into streams, and rivers, and lakes. And, yes, I see companies, most of them small, dumping hazardous waste into storm drains and streams in the middle of the night – they sometimes get found and prosecuted here in Houston, but the problem exists everywhere.
These are the real environmental problems, and wasting resources on Climate Change has worsened the problem. Now people seriously concerned about real threats to the environment will be cast into the same pit as the miscreants who preached “Evil Man” and the Climate.
Maybe Willis Eschenbach can do a targeted piece on real pollution and the role Government plays – think Hanford, Washington, and areas in Tenn. around some of the TVA powerplants.
That would give many people the education they need to lead the battles.
Thankyou kindly Anthony!
Steve McIntyre says:
July 22, 2011 at 6:51 am
“People project a lot of views on me that I haven’t expressed………”
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Steve, you’re missing the point. Of course people project many views you haven’t expressed. Whether you like it or not, you have the paternal mantle of skepticism. True, there is much you haven’t stated, but there is much that you have influenced and caused. While many of us were skeptical long before your visible dispute with the hockey stick supporters, you were a watershed moment for most of us. Before M&M, many of us viewed our skepticism as nearly singular. Our arguments were confined to conversations in taverns and letters to the editor and such. We were relegated to a class of people reserved for nutters and the like. Like Steve Garcia, when I found your website, I found most of the statistical discussion beyond my scope of understanding(I went to my local university and purchased a statistical text book), but, I almost cried with relief. I wasn’t alone! There were many of us! And, they weren’t mouth frothing mad!! To the contrary, these weren’t emotive conversations, but well articulated, intelligent and reasoned discussions. Many more are now skeptical of climate science because of your destruction of the graphical icon. No, you’ve never weighed in on much of the skeptical ideas prevalent today. It is almost a matter of frustration for many of us. But, perhaps its better this way. So, yes, you haven’t opined on much, but much is attributable to you! So, quit being like a curmudgeon and enjoy the moment. It’s well deserved.
James Sexton
Sorry, Steve, but nobody has “won” anything. The scientific method still is under assault and the CAGW meme still embedded in too many unthinking minds or minds that are unable to understand the complexities or don’t want to. Just be grateful that the door has been opened to doubt self-serving press releases and self-promoting researchers. Let’s not overreach by turning the debate into a football game. The whole point is to understand climate and to be able to anticipate its effects. Gloating over temporary advantage is more the warmist’s style than the sceptic’s. Articles like this only feed the trolls. No more, please.
And I have true respect for your carefully considered opinion and humility Steve. However, in the absence of any solid opinion on CAGW (which you say you share), I personally (and I think others do too) generally default to believing what I used to believe. Their hypothesis is not proven, hence, what remains is what was there before. String theory has not been shown to demonstrate any new understanding of gravity, and in fact they have no experiments to do so much like climate science. The default position in physics with string theory not being proven is what is called the Standard Model. Physicists do not default to a position of “well maybe string theory is correct so we’ll base our new engineering understanding on it.”, they hold onto what they know until a hypothesis is run to ground without being disproved.
If, as I share with you, you harbor doubts and uncertainty on the role of Man/CO2 as a cause for CAGW, why then is it wrong to be certain that I can go about my daily business strongly holding to the “Standard Model” equivalent in climate, which is that the earth changes on it’s own, and really I should just prepare to adapt?
Russell:
Your post at July 22, 2011 at 8:05 am begins by saying;
“Good article. I would have liked to have seen some credit given to Australia’s John Daly (RIP) for being the first true skeptic.”
I accept your point (although my skepticism of the scare pre-dates John’s) and my post above, at July 22, 2011 at 3:26 am, goes some way to correct the omission. It includes this paragraph:
“Most of these campaigners have ‘shown their faces’ and have had some success. Climategate revealed the rejoicing of the ‘Team’ at the tragic death of John Daly. And Tim Ball is now silenced by a legal case that attempts to bankrupt him. This proves that critics of the ‘Team’ have had successes: the ‘Team’ would not have made these responces if their critics had been inefectual so could be ignored.”
Richard
Some years ago the current Canadian PM, before he came to office, called Kyoto nothing more than a money-sucking scheme. He would be right if AGW was not real, but was laughed off as a denier back then. Now that some governments (including Canada’s) are abandoning the consensus pseudo-science, it makes any carbon tax look like a money-sucking scheme. If the public sees things that way now then woe is the government that brings in such taxes.
At 6:02 AM on 22 July, John A had complained that he was:
Oh? Which Clinton? The corrupt cattle-futures-“trading” Woman With One Eyebrow or her even more corrupt raping, perjuring consort, “Bubba,” our former Irrumator-in-Chief?
But to continue from John A‘s comments:
True enough. But how many of those “who care about accuracy, scholarship, and integrity in science” have been “Liberal” fascists?*
They are notable by their rarity. They’re so damned few in comparison with the thousands of scheming “Liberal” fascist liars complicit in the AGW fraud that one remarks on them with the same exclamation of surprise commonly reserved for the discovery of raw diamonds in a child’s sandbox.
The socialists controlling and setting all agendas for the left wing of our authoritarian tyranny in these United States have made of the word “liberal” the exact antithesis of the usage it was accorded in political philosophy back in the 19th Century. The REAL liberal speaks and acts in defense of the unalienable rights of the individual human being to life, to liberty, and to property.
The modern “Liberal” fascist seeks to violate those rights, both in policy and in practice. These “Liberal” fascists have made of the word “liberal” a pejorative so hateful that they have of late tried to re-brand themselves with a predecessor term – “progressive” – which false flag the socialists flew in the last decade of the 19th Century and through the first several decades of the 20th.
The only real liberals left in America today have for the most part taken up the descriptor “libertarian.”
So are you a real liberal, John A, or just another “Liberal” fascist?
To continue with John A‘s comment:
The only way in which one can speak of a “middle ground” between “Liberal” fascism and the permanent rot at the root of social “traditionalist” pseudoconservatism is the sense in which one considers a “middle ground” between one grade or stage of cancer and the next.
Either – left unextirpated – will kill the victim.
Whether it’s “left wing liberalism” (sic) or “Fox news style right wingery,” a choice which makes no difference whatsoever to the defense of individual human rights is really no choice at all.
===
* As I’d mentioned in an earlier post, refer to Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning (2008).
Timely and pertinent article. Also good additional points on developing situations by Roger Knights (July 22, 2011 at 3:08 am).
Within the Climategate scandal is a point long since gone quiet: how the e-mails surfaced. Although the identity of the perpetrator, his technical method and the reason for his actions are said to be unknown, the lack of attention to these three aspects of the case is curious at the minimum and extremely important in what it may say. Think about it: the UEA, Jones, Mann and the Gore-ites say at the servers were hacked in their belief by an international conspiracy involving, probably, Russians, but the intel agencies of the world have not found out who did it, and are not looking any more.
Foreign nationals, possibly Russian, infiltrate British university servers connected, without doubt, to a computer system doing secret or at least highly confidential research for government agencies, including in all probability the Defense ministry (those big bucks are spread widely), and possibly connected to American computer systems doing even more important, strategically critical work, and no one has figured out what is going on?
Sorry, don’t believe it.
Trans-national hacking is an Interpol offence, but of course if the offence is civil in its effects, as this one has appeared to be, then the agency would likely close the file. However, the ACT of hacking is of great importance here, and the identity of the hackers has an even greater importance. Those who can screw with a mainstream, government-backed program are anarchists at best, and agents of political change at worst. You cannot, must not ignore the fact that there is a party, possibly internationally cohesive and conspiring, working with technical expertise to bring down publicly sanctioned national activities. The question around the boardroom table must be: after this, what next? This was direct action of an academic sort. Would the next action be as covert and subtle?
There are at least fiver agencies who, by their mandates, should have been looking into the breach of the UEA computer systems: the UEA, the local constabulary, Scotland Yard, Interpol and
the CIA. If, as proposed, an internal dissident wanted to disrupt the UEA, they did a good job and cost the UEA a lot of money, time and prestige. To harbour a troublemaker in their ranks would be unacceptable. The UEA would want that person or those persons removed at least from computer access. The Board of Governors would have had a legal responsibility to do so – what would happen if data or research paid for by private money were to be revealed, corrupted or destroyed? Would not someone be held financially responsible if it was revealed that the UEA failed to look, at least, for the culprit?
The local constabulary would be involved, of course, if the UEA said that an “illegal” act had been discovered. If unable to work the case themselves, they would have requested the services of the national forces: the police are set up this way. Scotland Yard, MI5 and the CIA would be concerned as the hack is not of one university server, but of a computer system in greatest probability connected to others where sensitive or secret work was being done. And would want to know if the hacker were involved in other computer attacks or were planning other attacks. NASA-Hansen next, or Gore? Would the covert and subtle work dis-empowering Britain’s climate change policies become overt, harsh acts of destroying computer data or the systems themselves? Are satellites at risk? Financial systems catering to the climate change powers and businesses?
Billions of dollars, political lives and large corporations rely on the stability of UEA (and other) pronouncements on AGW and, especially, CAGW. An attack on the basic science is an attack on all. In the morning light of Climategate Day One, all over the world computer specialists would be scrambling to know that they were safe now and had not already been infiltrated. And asking what the hell was going on. If the Russian connection were involved, then a Russia-Britain/USA political smackdown was in the wind. While China laughed. Which the politicos would not like: outside of money, face-saving is probably the most important act of any politician.
There is an obvious, if not must discussed, other possibility. The breach was the intentional act of Britain or America. By creating uncertainty in the fundamental science, all governments revieve breathing room to determine the political, economic and strategic wisdom of pursuing a path without global agreements. How wise is it to commit your electorate, taxpayers and economic strength to something that, without China and India on-board, will achieve nothing at great cost and pain? But how do you back off on something you have all declared is “settled” and “certain” and “the greatest threat to the planet”?
Australia is going it alone. Interesting. If the political world weren’t intellectually incapable and too ill-disciplined to carry it off for more than three-and-a-half minutes, one could think a conspiracy were afloat to, first, question the CAGW problem and then, regardless of the expressed uncertainty, see if the sheep would go for it anyway. But I wouldn’t give that paranoid thought a moment longer than necessary to write it down and dismiss it. Australian PM Guillard is doing her own crazy thing because she is a Believer and possibly got too much sun in her youth. But what is happening in America and Britain? Despite Al Gore and his Climate Reality Project in September, there is now enough questioning as a result of Climategate that in both countries what is said to be by the IPCC/experts that policy doesn’t appear to have to be determined exactly by the CAGW meme, or at least determined today.
All of which would come apart if it were determined that the UEA breach were, in fact, an “inside” job by official, governmental decree. And the best way to prevent that is to stop looking, or at least stop capable people looking. No Interpol gets asked to be involved, despite a cross-national criminal possibility. Leave it to the local constabulary and their 2004 Edition of Word on 10-year-old Dell computers.
This is the elephant in the room, the gorilla on the basketball court or gunman on the grassy knoll: the LACK, not activity, of serious investigative work to uncover the origins of the UEA e-mail leak. Climategate was useful to someone, and still is. What was certain, settled scientifically determined and socially responsible shows up as personal, philosophically driven agendas. Political and social pressures are tipping the balance – rightfully or not. Everyone can relax and have another scotch: the ticking of the bomb has slowed down, and it may not be just a clock and not a bomb, after all. Which is good news.
Which is what Climategate was to Those In Power. Good news. Thank the Lord they thought of it.
Tucci78 says:
July 22, 2011 at 7:38 am
One faction – the direct descendents of the Federalists – is called “the Republican Party.” The other is the National Socialist Democrat American Party (NSDAP).
Ok, we get it. It’s interesting how Tucci78 uses the Goebbels tactic of 90% truth mixed with 10% falsehood to warp opinion. What is the point? That we should not trust government? Even in the 60s, people were told by the Left not to trust the Establishment. It’s funny, because the radicals want us to trust their own Establishment today.
The Republican Party today may not be what it was at its founding, a grass-roots organization that opposed slavery. They were very much like the Tea Party today. Now we have an entrenched power structure supporting incumbents. Occasionally they do useful things that help people, if only to make sure there is a well-trained stable workforce available here. The truth is, business and labor need each other. There should not be an adversarial relationship, especially in this economy.
You sneakily use the letters of the Nazi party to describe the Democratic Party today. While I have no love whatsoever for those neo-communists, they are not putting people into konzentrationlagers. They are trying to rip apart the fabric of our nation to remake it into something entirely different. And they do believe they are an elite that must make decisions for the lesser people. For them, only a group is to be trusted. Powerful individuals are dangerous.
It is important to distinguish between the leaders and the followers. Followers might actually believe in the utopian fairy tales spun by the leaders of the Left. Teachers are stuck with a curriculum designed by the Left to undermine our traditions. That’s one reason to decentralize and return control to local school boards. Businesses are hamstrung by regulations that benefit bureaucracy and a few corporations that have struck deals with the government. GE is a good example of that. They are intimately involved with the Administration’s AGW agenda, and will expect to make $billions from the new smart grid markets imposed by these regulations. These are just two examples of how government has grown too big and needs to be cut dramatically.
Nevertheless, there still is power in the people. We need to seek leaders who work for the people. They do exist, but they are rare. Reagan was one. Both Bushes definitely were not, since they both believed more government was good. I would prefer a leader who worked for the people even if they weren’t as “qualified” as another candidate. To me, that means someone who understands government is now in competition with people, that we have reached a tipping point where its growth might not be stopped short of total collapse. It actually is worse than we thought.
In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. – R W Reagan
If we are going to change course, it will require another grass-roots effort to help our fellow citizens find a true alternative solution. Government cannot lead us out of this mess. They created it; they need it. We have to craft our own solution. Fora like WUWT are important tools for mapping out the issues, and giving us an opportunity to make better choices. I think it is becoming clear to most people that government does not have the answers, it is seeking more power, and is being run by people with less and less skill. In fact, government just gets in the way; it is a parasite, and should be limited to doing only the very least possible. That was the basic intent of the US Constitution – a government of limited powers. When government creates pervasive dependence, the parasite enters the final stages of feeding on the host. Unfortunately, it can take a long time for the parasite to die. Will the host survive? At what cost?
Change will occur. The question is, what will the future look like? How can we help shape a better outcome?
Timely and pertinent article. Also good additional points on developing situations by Roger Knights (July 22, 2011 at 3:08 am).
Within the Climategate scandal is a point long since gone quiet: how the e-mails surfaced. Although the identity of the perpetrator, his technical method and the reason for his actions are said to be unknown, the lack of attention to these three aspects of the case is curious at the minimum and extremely important in what it may say. Think about it: the UEA, Jones, Mann and the Gore-ites say at the servers were hacked in their belief by an international conspiracy involving, probably, Russians, but the intel agencies of the world have not found out who did it, and are not looking any more.
Foreign nationals, possibly Russian, infiltrate British university servers connected, without doubt, to a computer system doing secret or at least highly confidential research for government agencies, including in all probability the Defense ministry (those big bucks are spread widely), and possibly connected to American computer systems doing even more important, strategically critical work, and no one has figured out what is going on?
Sorry, don’t believe it.
Trans-national hacking is an Interpol offence, but of course if the offence is civil in its effects, as this one has appeared to be, then the agency would likely close the file. However, the ACT of hacking is of great importance here, and the identity of the hackers has an even greater importance. Those who can screw with a mainstream, government-backed program are anarchists at best, and agents of political change at worst. You cannot, must not ignore the fact that there is a party, possibly internationally cohesive and conspiring, working with technical expertise to bring down publicly sanctioned national activities. The question around the boardroom table must be: after this, what next? This was direct action of an academic sort. Would the next action be as covert and subtle?
There are at least fiver agencies who, by their mandates, should have been looking into the breach of the UEA computer systems: the UEA, the local constabulary, Scotland Yard, Interpol and the CIA. If, as proposed, an internal dissident wanted to disrupt the UEA, they did a good job and cost the UEA a lot of money, time and prestige. To harbour a troublemaker in their ranks would be unacceptable. The UEA would want that person or those persons removed at least from computer access. The Board of Governors would have had a legal responsibility to do so – what would happen if data or research paid for by private money were to be revealed, corrupted or destroyed? Would not someone be held financially responsible if it was revealed that the UEA failed to look, at least, for the culprit?
The local constabulary would be involved, of course, if the UEA said that an “illegal” act had been discovered. If unable to work the case themselves, they would have requested the services of the national forces: the police are set up this way. Scotland Yard, MI5 and the CIA would be concerned as the hack is not of one university server, but of a computer system in greatest probability connected to others where sensitive or secret work was being done. And would want to know if the hacker were involved in other computer attacks or were planning other attacks. NASA-Hansen next, or Gore? Would the covert and subtle work dis-empowering Britain’s climate change policies become overt, harsh acts of destroying computer data or the systems themselves? Are satellites at risk? Financial systems catering to the climate change powers and businesses?
Billions of dollars, political lives and large corporations rely on the stability of UEA (and other) pronouncements on AGW and, especially, CAGW. An attack on the basic science is an attack on all. In the morning light of Climategate Day One, all over the world computer specialists would be scrambling to know that they were safe now and had not already been infiltrated. And asking what the hell was going on. If the Russian connection were involved, then a Russia-Britain/USA political smackdown was in the wind. While China laughed. Which the politicos would not like: outside of money, face-saving is probably the most important act of any politician.
There is an obvious, if not must discussed, other possibility. The breach was the intentional act of Britain or America. By creating uncertainty in the fundamental science, all governments revieve breathing room to determine the political, economic and strategic wisdom of pursuing a path without global agreements. How wise is it to commit your electorate, taxpayers and economic strength to something that, without China and India on-board, will achieve nothing at great cost and pain? But how do you back off on something you have all declared is “settled” and “certain” and “the greatest threat to the planet”?
Australia is going it alone. Interesting. If the political world weren’t intellectually incapable and too ill-disciplined to carry it off for more than three-and-a-half minutes, one could think a conspiracy were afloat to, first, question the CAGW problem and then, regardless of the expressed uncertainty, see if the sheep would go for it anyway. But I wouldn’t give that paranoid thought a moment longer than necessary to write it down and dismiss it. Australian PM Guillard is doing her own crazy thing because she is a Believer and possibly got too much sun in her youth. But what is happening in America and Britain? Despite Al Gore and his Climate Reality Project in September, there is now enough questioning as a result of Climategate that in both countries what is said to be by the IPCC/experts that policy doesn’t appear to have to be determined exactly by the CAGW meme, or at least determined today.
All of which would come apart if it were determined that the UEA breach were, in fact, an “inside” job by official, governmental decree. And the best way to prevent that is to stop looking, or at least stop capable people looking. No Interpol gets asked to be involved, despite a cross-national criminal possibility. Leave it to the local constabulary and their 2004 Edition of Word on 10-year-old Dell computers.
This is the elephant in the room, the gorilla on the basketball court or gunman on the grassy knoll: the LACK, not activity, of serious investigative work to uncover the origins of the UEA e-mail leak. Climategate was useful to someone, and still is. What was certain, settled scientifically determined and socially responsible shows up as personal, philosophically driven agendas. Political and social pressures are tipping the balance – rightfully or not. Everyone can relax and have another scotch: the ticking of the bomb has slowed down, and it may not be just a clock and not a bomb, after all. Which is good news.
Which is what Climategate was to Those In Power. Good news. Thank the Lord they thought of it.
William says:
July 22, 2011 at 7:39 am
In reply to Brian`s comment:
“Climategate” scientist have been CLEARED.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jul/08/muir-russell-climategate-climate-science
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/14/AR2010041404001.html
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/10/climategate-scientists-cleared-yet-again-story-ignored-media-again.php
Stop slandering people. Please.
Does being found not guilty not mean anything anymore in this country?
Geez.
Steve McIntyre says:
July 22, 2011 at 6:51 am
People project a lot of views on me that I haven’t expressed. I do not think that Mannian hockey sticks have any statistical validity, but, at the end of the day, this is a secondary issue and I have not formed an opinion on whether feedbacks are neutral, weakly or strongly positive. To that extent, people should not assimilate me with people who have formed firm opinions on the matter.
—
But Steve you took on those who DID form a firm opinion based on shoddy work and in my view shook their monopoly on their climate science. If things go as I hope, then any carbon-based taxation or exchange scheme will be seen for the ruse that it is.
John Johnston July 22, 2011 at 12:41 am
I really need to thank you for providing that reference (/sarc). I was rather struck by the comment on page 6 of that report that Women and girls are recorded as 90% of those killed by the 1991 cyclone in Bangladesh. Unfortunately, the reference that was cited ( Ikeda, Keiko (1995) “Gender Differences in Human Loss and Vulnerability in Natural Disasters: A Case Study From Bangladesh.” Indian Journal of Gender Studies. 2(2):171-93.) is behind a pay wall. I spent another two fruitless hours searching for some other corroboration. Nada. While it is certain that children under 10 and women bore the brunt of the casualties in that disaster, I can find no evidence to support the 90% female claim; instead, this report is cited as evidence on other web sites and documents. Thus are urban legends born.
If anyine does have have access to the Ikeda paper, I’d be interested in seeing it.
I know in my circle of acquaintances it was a hands-down victory for skeptics. The folks I used to do battle with will not even talk on the subject anymore due to Climategate. And as someone who reads many other news sites the AGW stories have greatly diminished becasue as soon as someone posts one it get gutted by skeptics using information and quotes from Climategate.
I think when we look back it will be marked as the turning point for the general public. They saw enough slight of hand in Climategate to doubt anything the AGW crowd says ever again.
We would not have heard this a year ago….
http://d.yimg.com/nl/techticker/site/player.swf
And the endgame is?
Excellent overview article with a good recent timeline I can share with my friends to help explain how I moved from a curious, generalized knowledge sponge, with experience from the Space Sciences in the 60’s to the Ocean Sciences today, to a hardcore skeptic of many of the assertions made by climate scientists, particularly modeler’s predictions. The only statement I’d take issue with in the article is that of being the lone liberal here. I suspect there were many liberals like me, that observed, here and at other skeptic websites, but didn’t wish to to comment. Ironically, visits to RC, eventually sent me to CA, then WUWT, and so on. Perhaps, if those who post at RC, and other “Climate Change” websites, could casually refer to the existence of these skeptic sites, they could accomplish more in the furthering of knowledge seeking by the masses then even the veracity of the information in their comments. Thanks to All.
Climategate was a battle victory in the ongoing war between open society and authoritarian politics. SM and AW blogs puncture ‘evidence’ of catastrophic global warming, so they change the terms, smokescreens and mirrors, ‘ it’s climate change!’ Price of freedom, eternal vigilance and all that.
Hugh Pepper says:
July 21, 2011 at 10:54 pm
So long as climate issues are regarded as a PR problem, you win and the planet loses. Congratulations!
Thanks! Alarmists certainly see it as a huge PR problem, which is why they were so desperate to try to sweep it under a rug, spin, and whitewash it. Essentially, it was a victory against the Big Lie that C02 (“carbon”) is a dangerous, evil gas, so even though “we” won, humanity itself won. The planet lost nothing; in fact, if it could speak, it would say “yes, more C02 please, but don’t worry about me – I’ll be fine”.
Great summary! Big kudos are also due to the amazing work of the Idsos at CO2science.org. They showed very early on what the “peer-reviewed” articles were actually saying.
Brian:
Your post at July 22, 2011 at 9:42 am is mistaken. Nobody is “cleared” by a whitewash.
Richard
At 9:30 AM on 22 July, Hoser claims that I had used: “
…but Hoser doesn’t say just what “10%” part of my post was supposedly “falsehood.” Tsk. Hoser continues:
Yep. Even if only on the “stopped clock” premise, Hoser gets it right. Think about it. What kind of sick, twisted, sociopathic personality is required for the patient in question to conceive himself (or herself) to exercise the police power – the ability to send armed thugs against his (or her) inoffensive neighbors and compel them at gunpoint to surrender their lives, their liberties, and their property to the control of those who devote themselves to seeking and aggrandizing government office?
I mean, would you trust these vicious aggressors unmonitored in the presence of your children – unless, of course, you have been deprived of the choice to keep your children unmolested by these people by laws which make “public” education compulsory not only in funding but in attendance?
Heck, would you leave them alone with your dog and expect to come back with the animal not dragging its hindquarters on the rug and whining in pain?
The problem of inescapable and fatal perversity in the institution of civil government is compounded by the observed evidence that it is only the most duplicitous, ruthless, corrupt, and (let’s face it) evil specimens of H. sapiens politicus who win to the highest posts of elective and appointed office anywhere in the world. The term “kleptocracy” is effectively a nullity, for all governments are institutions of graft and other forms of thieving corruption. They always have been. What is it about the words “an armed Banditti” in Thomas Paine’s Common Sense (1776) that escapes Hoser‘s appreciation here?
But – hilariously! – Hoser goes on to write:
Oh, joy. One might wonder how anyone can be “…so mercifully free of the ravages of intelligence,” but that’s the condition of almost all supporters of the Red Faction nowadays, and has always been. Obviously, Hoser failed to follow the link to Prof. Wilson’s essay on “The Republican Charade,” and knows diddly about the history of the party, its roots in the Whig and the Federalist parties preceding its rise as a re-branding of mercantilism, and the dedication of this faction to the Hamiltonian “American System” popularized by Henry Clay and enforced at gunpoint – to the tune of more than six hundred Americans slain – upon the nation by “good Clay Whig” Abraham Lincoln, “The American Lenin.”
Oh, well. Ignorance is remediable by education.
Then Hoser complains that I
What “sneakily“? Admittedly, the supporters of “Liberal” fascism tend reliably to be even more abjectly illiterate than even the human cattle branded with an “R,” but I’d think that anybody with any intelligence whatsoever would get the obvious evocation of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party right off. Sheesh. Back to Hoser:
In truth, Hoser, both factions of our great “you-scratch-my-back-and-I’ll-hold-down-your-victims-so-you-can-rape-’em” perpetual incumbency have worked diligently to make of our nation itself one vast Konzentrationslager. Any who doubt this are invited simply to consider the real complicity of the Republican Party in the National Socialists’ sustained invidious effort to secure total victim disarmament among the law-abiding private citizenry.
Or, heck, just try to get on an airliner at any airport in these United States.
The rest of Hoser‘s post is well-intentioned but foolish fantasy. If we are “to distinguish between the leaders and the followers,” attention must be paid to the fact that the “leaders” have done – and are continuing to do – everything they can get away with, including overt criminal malfeasance in public office – to reduce the majority of their “followers” and all of those who have not been suckered into “following” them into a condition aptly described by economist F.A. Hayek as serfdom.
To be perfectly honest, I don’t understand how Hoser can repose any trust whatsoevr in government, both as it rots and stinks in these United States today and as an institution accorded powers that not even the malignantly mercantilist followers of Alexander Hamilton – in their wildest dreams of avarice and hatred for their innocent neighbors – thought it could achieve. Hoser writes:
Perhaps it’s just another “stopped clock” moment, but Hoser has the right of it. But to “craft our own solution,” the private people of these United States have to be free from the malignant effects of government. Were the average “followers” to understand thoroughly just how and why the roots of “this mess” are undisputably fixed in the fetid crap of overgrown, overreaching, overly intrusive civil government itself, and not merely in those “those neo-communists” of the NSDAP, that realm of Mordor-on-the-Potomac would be decorated tomorrow with the dangling corpses of just about every elected and appointed officer of the federal government, Red Faction as well as Blue.
As for what Hoser conceives to have been “…the basic intent of the US Constitution, there is proof again of the need to get an education. What we had with the Articles of Confederation was most definitely “a government of limited powers.”
What Hamilton et alia wanted to inflict upon their countrymen was effectively a copy of the mercantilist government of the United Kingdom – which the people of America had fought a long, bloody, and extremely costly war to get themselves away from. It was precisely no coincidence that Hamilton sought for himself the post of Secretary of the Treasury, which was established to fulfill the functions of Chancellor of the Exchequer in the UK.
At that time, the Chancellor of the Exchequer was the real chief of civil government. That’s what Hamilton was angling for.
When Hoser asks “…what will the future look like? How can we help shape a better outcome?” the answer is simply this:
If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always gotten.
Something else to consider.
The CAGW scare has been a godsend to Greenpeace, WWF, and Co. That one issue has brought them incredible cash flow. Not to mention power and influence. Heck, Greenpeace went from a ragtag group of whale protectors to an important piece of the IPCC process.
Most of the World’s media is either owned or effectively controlled by the state (US Media included) so will parrot the state line. That their people are mostly CAGW believers anyway only makes it worse.
Many corporate entities see CAGW as something they can get in on and profit from. There is the carbon trading, massive Gov subsidies to gain, projects to build, and so on. Not to mention that pumping a ton of cash into those areas gives them a certain amount of influence.
Third world countries see CAGW as a way to soak the rich counties.
Any entity that wants more control over “We the Idiots” sees CAGW as a perfect concept.
Any group that sees Humans as the problem to all the Earth’s ills, or worse, sees CAGW as a godsend.
Various individuals, who may or may not be true believers, see CAGW as a means to incredible wealth (and power.)
A whole lot of groups see CAGW as THE means to power and money. Does anyone really think they’ll willingly give that up just because the science doesn’t agree with CAGW? When do people ever willingly give up large amounts of power and money?
A win in court? Ok, I win a case against, oh… the Mafia. Any guesses as to what happens after the case is done? That court analogy only applies when the court’s rulings are followed. Al Gore’s fantasy movie was ruled as bunk (political propaganda) by the UK courts, and it’s still pretty much the CAGW textbook over much of the world.
We do have one thing in our favor, the general incompetence of much of the CAGW crowd and the seeming inability, or unwillingness, for whatever reason, of many of them to do good, honest science. Climategate was wonderful, but only the beginning.
My point is that if we stop and congratulate ourselves for winning then we lose. We have a long way to go. Also, let’s remember that many of the same faces were raising the alarm about global cooling in the 70s. They may just switch to the next “incredibly worrying thing” once CAGW worries go away.
Message to the Climategate Hacker: You, sir or madam, did a heroic thing in busting this scam open. We understand that you may get in trouble if you reveal your identity, but can you please make yourself known to us via some kind of pseudonym or cutout. If we can’t award you a medal, we can at least express our gratitude.
I think we should also give thanks to Pachauri for his Voodoo scientist remark. He, and his the accountants for Teri – Europe have been a steadfast and reliable friends of the sceptic’s cause. Keep at it Pachy, we are all rooting for you.
@ Richard Courtney, who wrote:
“Most of these campaigners have ‘shown their faces’ and have had some success. Climategate revealed the rejoicing of the ‘Team’ at the tragic death of John Daly.”
Sorry, Richard, I missed your earlier statement when I scanned through the posts. I’m glad you acknowledged the work of John Daly. “The Team” had reason to rejoice. Daly was a thorn in their side. Daly’s website is still out there, but it hasn’t been updated in quite a while. It’s a good source for some of the early criticisms leveled at the warmists’ claims.
For readers who don’t know about John Daly’s website, here is the link:
http://www.john-daly.com/
Reading the comments above, I agree that a very good measure of how well our message is getting through can be found in the comments left by the public on newspaper blogs. The members of public who want to comment, a self selected group, are very well informed and are always making strong arguements backed up with factual links to this and other websites. The former havens of AGW luvvies, such as Monbiots blog on the Guardian, are unable to deal with this influx of informed debate that appears spontaneously under every newspaper posting about global warming. In this area the AGW brigade have already lost the war.
Where we have not made much progress is with the editors of the main stream media and politicians of the main parties. These people have their fingers in their ears every time a sceptic puts forward an opinion that is not in line with the IPCC’s view.
to go with the D-Day analogy, the UK was lost early in the climate wars just as Poland was lost at the outset of WW2. They will not be brought back until the fighting is over almost everywhere else.
The most important result of “Climategate”, as has been pointed out by at least one poster,w as that it led to the death of Waxman-Markey in the Senate. The death of THAT bill was the true turning point in this battle, because after that Congress changed hands, and it won’t be coming back. Mark that as the High Tide of the Warmistas.
And for Steve – although I tend to be considered “conservative” I find myself in a lot of agreement with what I call True Liberals. (labels are stupid, the only reason I don’t say I’m libertarian is that so many vocal “libertarians” are just potheads) I designate a “True Liberal” as one who realizes that the Democrat Party, as it is currently consituted, is in reality the complete antithesis of all True Liberal values. Their policies, if followed, will result in the complete destruction of everything that true liberals value.
Tsk. The War of Northern Aggression (a “civil” war is fought for the control of government, while the southern states seeking to escape the Morrill Tariff and the other depredations of “the American System” fought a war of secession precisely equivalent to the American Revolution) cost more than six hundred thousand American lives.
Jeez. Like los warmistas I just committed a multiple-orders-of-magnitude error.
The difference between them and me, of course, is that my inaccuracy was inadvertent, and theirs have been deliberate.
Hoser says:…..Tucci78 says:…… John says…… Steve Mc affirms……
========================================================
Guys, you’re missing the picture. While I generally agree with Tucci’s apparent posit that this climate alarmism is a product of leftist ideology. The socio-economic implications are simply unmistakable. But, this isn’t reflective of all leftists or moderates, or anything else. There are many well-meaning (albeit errant thinking) people of all stripes and persuasions. Instead of focusing on the political or economic positions of individuals in the skeptic camp, we should, in this particular instance, celebrate the diversity (OMG! I can’t believe I just typed that!) of the people gathered to oppose this bit of insanity. Skeptics engage for various different reasons. BTW, being a long-time reader here, I can avow that there are several more “liberals”(this word holds a different meaning to different people) that frequent and participate at this site than just one. There are many. That liberals and conservatives, Christians, atheists and agnostics, wealthy and poor, professionals and common laborers and many other seemingly polar opposites can all come together in a singular opposition to this literal and figurative power grab is to be embraced. We benefit little from these domestic squabbles, though I’ve partaken in such.
How and why does this happen? Because of the vast and broad implications of the CAGW hypothesis and the proposed solutions to this imaginary crisis. First and foremost, the science is wrong! The math is wrong! But, also, the politics are wrong!! (Just ask any Aussie that pops by and you can see the direct political effect this notion has.) And, the economics are wrong!! This is why we see such a diverse field engaged in skepticism.
Once this madness is done, we can go back to being advisories, hopefully, in a much more cordial manner than what was in the past. I’ve come to a new-found respect for the people whose views are diametrically opposed to mine in the political/economic/theological arena, yet have raised the same voice of opposition to the CAGW hypothesis. My faith in humanity is renewed! One day, perhaps years from now, I look forward to discussing and debating various issues with some of the people with whom I’ve become so familiar on some other blog or forum. But, until then, even in the worst view, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”.
James
At 12:09 PM on 2 July, Julian in Wales writes:
Hm. It’s been my experience that that the overwhelming majority of the old, legacy, dying, bankrupt “Liberal” fascist newsrags in these United States censor AGW-skeptical posts on their Web sites with viciousness and despatch, and getting a letter printed in any of their print editions to debunk or even question the religious orthodoxy of los warmistas is next to impossible.
Sure, there are “members of public who want to comment, [and who] are very well informed and are always making strong arguments backed up with factual links.”
They’re the ones whom the American “Liberal” fascist media Web sites censor and ban.
Not one to have much faith in ‘conspiracy theories’ but…..
A certain government scientist is found dead in mysterious circumstances during the WMD crisis….
A certain news reporter is found dead in mysterious circumstances during the ‘phone hacking’ crisis….
Has anyone investigated whether any member of the CRU has dies in ‘mysterious circumstances’ on or around the date of the email releases?
TBH I find it incredulous that the instigator of the release has kept schtumm or hasn’t been identified/outed. Is this because identification will reveal he/she is no longer with the living?
Like I say, it’s a conspiracy theory
This was my first submitted post, and did not know yesterday that it had been posted. Thanks, Anthony for posting it. Thanks, everyone for the response.
For the occasional clumsy sentences, apologies to all. My interface wasn’t so good for catching them all during my editing – and may have caused some.
@a jones July 21, 2011 at 7:41 pm:
Absolutely. And they deserve it. They are even now sinking into the obscurity from whence they came.
@Interstellar Bill July 21, 2011 at 7:43 pm:
Without the persistence of WUWT and CA, and a few staunch others, would Climategate have happened – or have meant as much? Look at the site visits of WUWT and CA right after it became news. People had somewhere to GO, to read about it – and read OUR side of the story. Climategate propelled them here, but without this site and CA, they could not inform themselves. And once here, they could find out that, YES, there was science behind our arguments. The warmist’s claims of us being anti-science could be found to be lies.
@charlie July 21, 2011 at 8:06 pm:
Charlie, good points. But they have lost their forum. The news media is magnitudes more likely now to question their pronouncements. Governments are VERY soft on support for action in that direction. CAGW has almost dropped off the bottom of the chart of things people are focused on. They have begun to panic, and that and their stridency are the reasons for the own goals. Their mojo is gone. And everyone knows it – especially them. That is why they are talking about how they present their arguments – they know that what worked before no longer works.
Yes, maybe it is too early to gloat – but if so, not by much.
@SOYLENT GREEN July 21, 2011 at 8:23 pm:
IMHO, not quite so. They were exposed as cheaters and liars, by their own words. Way more news media people got that. That was the story: “Scientific conspiracy caught in the act!” Once found to be a liar, who believes you anymore? Once found to be a data fudger, what other scientists will take your word for anything? Their reputations are in the dumpster, with the public, AND with governments. (Given, it was the need to satisfy pols that drove it, but the pols are steadily abandoning them, anyway. It is like Michael Douglas’ character in “Falling Down,” at the end, where he says, “You mean I’m the bad guy?“)
@intrepid_wanders July 21, 2011 at 9:07 pm:
Thanks for the brotherhood.sisterhood. (…can’t tell from your moniker!)
The last is very true. On DailyKos, I have been warned I would be banned for thinking for myself – for simply posting that some European governments were upset about having been duped on the swine flu. Being on message is as important there as it was in CRU. I have long since stopped reading DKos. DemfromCT there is like Michael Mann, but without the credentials, just an attack dog. No open dialog, except within their bounds.
At WUWT, if warmists comment here, Anthony lets them come. Once in a while they make good points, though not often. CA, too.
Since Climategate we have more often seen reports such as this.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/sea-level-rises-are-slowing-tidal-gauge-records-show/story-fn59niix-1226099350056
I think that global temps being flat for a decade has had an important impact. I’m really not sure how significant climategate would have been if, by chance, temperatures had been continuing upward at 0.15C / decade since 1997.
Of course, if temps take a 0.1C+ jump due to the 2010 El Nino, we may still find that climategate was less significant than it now seems. While if temperatures take a dive over the next decade as expected, that will be the stake in the heart of CAGW.
I’ve read with interest most of the comments and have not found one that mentioned the science academies and their attitude. IMHO until the science academies, particularly the Royal Society and the US National Academy of Sciences, recant (I use the expression deliberately) and accept that scientific observations do NOT support the projections of CO2 mediated warming derived from modelling, we will not see much change in attitude from Governments, the UN or the media.
@James Sexton July 21, 2011 at 10:27 pm:
Part of my point was that even though they aren’t giving up, they have neither the monopoly nor the audience they once had. Bit by bit, their audience has fallen away, taking them down another notch.
I agree with all who way the war isn’t over completely. WWII wasn’t over in December of 1944, but the end was inevitable by then. With so many abandoning them, their pronouncements aren’t carrying nearly the weight they always did before Climategate. It isn’t the speakers, it is the audience that has changed, and the Team and warmists aren’t “getting it.” It takes two to tango.
@Hugh Pepper July 21, 2011 at 10:54 pm:
Hugh, that is the point. You warmists are wrong on that “end of the world” spiel. You haven’t proven it. Your leaders at CRU had to twist the data around to make it look like something it wasn’t, and you never did research proving that other causes weren’t part of the warming, which turned out to be temporary. The scientific method is that you have to falsify each cause until you have only one standing, and even then to show what mechanism was behind it. None of that has been done. Claiming that all other things are constants, thus making human CO2 activity the lone culprit, is non-scientific logic. You needed to prove that all the others are constant; assumptions aren’t science. Your main men fudging the data and then trying to cover it up – that doesn’t fly with real scientists. There is a reason it was called Climate-gate and that that name stuck: it was the cover-up in Watergate that took down Nixon. And the cover-up took down CRU. And if there had been any inquiries with teeth, the CRU buggers would be in jail or out of jobs – or both. Even Phil Jones acknowledged in early 2010 that the 1990s warming had the same slope as two other recent periods – ones lacking CO2 increases. And the real thing is that you would have a lot of us skeptics agreeing with you, if by human activity you meant land use. We all see that as distorting the data, because of improperly low UHI adjustments. No, the planet is not going to hell in a hand basket. That is an extremist position that does not hold water.
@Old Nanook July 21, 2011 at 11:49 pm:
OldNanook, I certainly did think I pointed out Steve’s central and vastly important part in all this. Without his dogged persistence to get it it right (the data and the maths), the events spelled out in the emails would never have happened. Steve carried this issue himself, and was the lightning rod around whom we all rallied. Anthony and his terrific web site here helped make it all that much more accessible. But, yes, Steve is the Man. Steve was the trigger for us, and for the illegal behavior at CRU. No doubt about it. I could not agree more.
@Robert A July 21, 2011 at 11:53 pm:
I could not agree more.
Or Leaker. I totally think it was an inside job. The consistence of the emails and files and their being on target – that would take months and months by an outsider to weed them down to what we have. My vote goes for a leaker. But either one, he has my respect, always.
@oglidewell July 22, 2011 at 12:31 am:
It is noted that you put in the term “a little” in front of premature. That is my point in this article. It may be time for us to begin thinking in terms of vioctory – all the better to savor it when it comes. It is my assessment that Climategate was conclusive, though I respect those who think it is right now too early to claim victory itself. I do, too. But look at that list in the post, of things we won. Each was a battle. Climategate was not only a tipping point, it was a sea change, too. Not to many of those happen in a lifetime. And at some point we need to look back and see how much it changed things. Now may not be so bad a time to do that.
I believe that public opinion is changing against AGW, but it is the majority of politicians who still have too much to lose by jumping off of this convenient bandwagon.
If you want to see the current level of immediately orchestrated and shrill oppostion to one of the few politicians who has dared to speak out, see this link.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/8610998/Polands-EU-budget-commissioner-in-climate-change-controversy.html
@frank Lee MeiDere July 22, 2011 at 2:32 am”
VICTORY! Weather is not climate! At least somewhere! Hallelujah! We have changed the lay of the land. I love it!
@delhi July 22, 2011 at 3:04 am:
My first reaction to this was “Man! That is harsh!” Then I got to thinking about it. “Meagre talents?” Climate science is 90% math – mostly assembling other people’s data, then applying statistics methods. Phil Jones was so inept he couldn’t even file his data properly. One good read of HARRY_READ_ME.txt is enough to curl one’s hair. Michael Mann can be commended for tackling the climate history of the last 1,000 years for the entire globe – but he wasn’t up to the task; his maths were inadequate, as Steve M showed. Even going back to James Hansen, coming out of the cold 1970s, he made a lucky call that the climate would warm, before anybody else – and he has been living off that ever since. Carl Sagan’s career was to get into NASA and then live off the glory of that, and he supposedly refuted Velikovsky on the 800-900°F surface temperature of Venus, which no one else had been able to do, and they were getting desperate. He did it with the concept (which I think doesn’t even apply to Earth OR Venus) of the runaway greenhouse effect, which they jumped on like suffocating people and an Oxygen mask. Some of the other AGW climate folks? Not impressed. Very much like I envision Klaus’ Bolsheviks. Good parallels!
@roger Knights July 22, 2011 at 3:08 am:
Roger – All good points to ad to the mix. Thanks!
@Pamela Gray July 22, 2011 at 5:53 am:
Agreed, on all points. That is the most likely. Second would be a young idealist climate scientist who had the same kinds of thoughts. Early on, I suspected Jones or Briffa, and do keep them in my own sights. Mann leaned on both these guys unmercifully, and I don’t think they liked it. Mann is the guy driving the whole thing , the Enforcer. And CRU was tasked with massaging to suit him. He was the “great funding magnet,” so, if they wanted to keep the gravy train going, they had to knuckle under to him. He had no morals, taking out editors and scientists alike. Anyone who seethed and took it is, IMHO, a candidate. But yes, the programmers should be at the top of the list. They needed and had full access to all the files. And one of them may have even written a program to sort through them and copy them per certain parameters. Probably a walk in the park for them. I can just envision, that one day when a programmer is asked to do one more unethical thing, and a switch in his head just flips, and he decides, “Screw ’em! This has gone too far.”
Whoever you are, Deep Leaker, I bow to you.
“This is not a smoking gun; this is a mushroom cloud,” said Patrick J. Michaels, a climatologist who has long faulted evidence pointing to human-driven warming and is criticized in the documents.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/21/science/earth/21climate.html
Sorry I’m somewhat late to the party here.
A non-Climategate item that I think helped bolster the the skeptical side of the story was the COP meeting in Copenhagen, especially with items like:
> Stories of delegates’ dinners running out of caviar. (Hey, at least they didn’t order too much).
> Stories of limos being brought in from England to help with transportation.
> Stories by reporters left out in the cold – literally out in the below average temps.
> President Obama leaving a day early to beat the blizzard about to hit Washington.
> Video of Air Force One landing in the beginning part of the blizzard.
Personally, I was sorry to see the storm track shift from home in New England to an area where it wasn’t wanted, but boy, it was a great year to sacrifice some decent snow storms to the DC area.
@John A July 22, 2011 at 6:02 am:
Honestly? You’re the first I’ve run across whom I’ve seen admit it, John. Nice to meet you.
@Fred H. Haynie July 22, 2011 at 6:12 am:
In the early years of the global warming issue, it was James Hansen facing a Congress that didn’t know it’s rear end from a hole in the ground about climate. Hansen’s Chicken Little act scared them (IMHO) into thinking that it was real. Once they were lobbied hard enough about it, they accepted it as fact.
Our government has been under the thumb of oil interests for one hundred years, more or less. In the 1950s it is why the government had the CIA oust (freely elected) Mossadegh in Iran and replaced hiom with the Shah. In the 1960s the CIA installed Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Both were to ensure American oil companies had the very best set-up (as in most profits) in those countries. It is why we manipulated Saddam in 1991, and the reason it happened again in 2003, when Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11. He was no cooperative enough for our oil companies, so we got rid of him. The vast majority of the 9/11 terrorists were from Saudi Arabia, and we did not invade them, because we already HAD the right control there.
To say that our government would take actions detrimental to the oil companies is nonsensical. To drive UP the cost of gas at the pump? Certainly. But not to control fossil fuels to the detriment of our oil industry. Ain’t ever going to happen.
My take for now: The Congress simply accepted Hansen’s scenario as real. So did most of the world governments. It started with Hansen, but once the governments got hold of it, once the UN got involved, then the tail started wagging the dog. And CRU, being the nexus of contact between the two – climate scientists and governmental/UN agencies – was where they had to cater to the politicians in a language the pols could undersatnd. Given the level of understanding of the pols worldwide, that meant dumbing it down. Which meant clear, unambiguous reports. Which meant don’t confuse anybody with any contradictory “minority reports” or contradictory facts or studies. Mann managed that side of things, in order to keep the vast dollars flowing. He was doing what he understood the pols to wanted. But it didn’t start with the pols. They didn’t know feces from Shinola.
Tucci78 says:
July 22, 2011 at 11:20 am
Really, so much anger, so few solutions. My point was precisely to do what we haven’t done. We can help people govern themselves by helping to develop and promote an alternative approach that government would never want, but people would prefer if they only knew about it.
That’s leading from the bottom up.
Yes, dude. You were sneaky, basically holding others in contempt by slipping in the NSDAP without explaining why you chose those letters to describe the Democratic Party. And it was a low blow. Let’s analyze: On the one hand, if they didn’t make the connection, they didn’t deserve the explanation. On the other, if they did recognize it, they didn’t need an explanation. I’d call that arrogance.
You’ve read the Federalist Papers (no doubt fuming). The Articles were a failed attempt. For example, the States failed to take responsibility for their debts.
Stop sniping, O one of superior wattage. Propose something that other people can criticize. It’s one thing to gripe, it’s another thing entirely to put yourself on the line and lead. Have you ever run for office? Since I have to guess, I’d say no. Too challenging to get votes?
I tried being a Libertarian around 1980, and started a campus group at UC Berkeley. A few years later, I realized that party would get nothing done, ever. They were filled with people who loved to argue, theorize, and do nothing useful whatsoever. I rejoined the Republicans, holding my nose, but believing we had a shot with them. I have been active in politics since then, knowing you have only yourself to blame if you don’t get out there and do something.
I’ve won two elections. I fight for the people I represent every day. I go up against this oppressive government that expects people to pay more and more without limit. I know the government’s approach is not sustainable. How do we stop them? Not by theory alone. I take what some consider dangerous positions standing against AGW measures. I have strongly argued against green environmentalism in my official capacity. I take the heat because I’m doing the right thing for my constituents. When they get tired of me, they’ll pick someone else.
I spend time here because it helps me get more ammunition, and refine my arguments. By the way, I’m educated probably too well, thank you very much. I can analyze scientific literature just fine on my own, having a PhD in Biophysics. I don’t have time to read everything you might consider essential, but I’ve read Hayek, for example. I believe I can bring in a small element of practical poltical experience mixed with science. Unfortunately, I don’t find that blend particularly common. Too many lawyers running for office.
So rip this post, or ignore it. It doesn’t matter to me. I’ll keep doing what I’m doing, and I think helping to make life better for other people and myself by working with them (as opposed to complaining about everyone else).
James Sexton says:
July 22, 2011 at 12:12 pm
Indeed. This is the wild mix we need to find workable solutions.
Despite the fact that James Sexton (12:12 PM, 22 July) is trying tell us “We can all get along,” Hoser‘s gotta be a Republican, guessing (wrongly) that I’ve never run for election to public office when I’ve done so twice.
The local republicans actually tried to recruit me after I savaged the Democratic incumbent in debate and demonstrated that their own puerile excuse for a candidate was nothing more than a “go along to get along” waste of time and space.
That pretty much describes all the Republicans in my corner of the country. It’s about as cyanotically “Blue” a slough of despond and corruption as it’s possible to get, meaning that what we call “Republicans” around here tend overwhelmingly to hold that title in precisely the same sense as it was accorded the losing side in the Spanish Civil War.
If Hoser has managed to work within that unlimed outhouse to accomplish anything of benefit to the people in his polity, good for him. If he hasn’t been sold down the river by his leadership yet, however, he sure as hell will be. In the words of writer L. Neil Smith:
donaldc, James Sexton, Hoser and feet2thefire:
Thankyou for your thoughts which I have read with interest.
Donaldc, at July 22, 2011 at 3:02 pm you say;
“I’ve read with interest most of the comments and have not found one that mentioned the science academies and their attitude.”
I think you – and also all politicians – would be interested to read the paper by Richard Lindzen that details – with names – the organised usurption of the Leaderships of the major science acadamies. It can be read at
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16330
Of particular note in the paper is its Section 2 titled ‘Conscious Efforts to Politicize Climate Science’.
James Sexton, I have personal reason to be especially grateful for your comments at July 22, 2011 at 12:12 pm that include this statement;
“Instead of focusing on the political or economic positions of individuals in the skeptic camp, we should, in this particular instance, celebrate the diversity (OMG! I can’t believe I just typed that!) of the people gathered to oppose this bit of insanity. Skeptics engage for various different reasons. BTW, being a long-time reader here, I can avow that there are several more “liberals”(this word holds a different meaning to different people) that frequent and participate at this site than just one. There are many. That liberals and conservatives, Christians, atheists and agnostics, wealthy and poor, professionals and common laborers and many other seemingly polar opposites can all come together in a singular opposition to this literal and figurative power grab is to be embraced. We benefit little from these domestic squabbles, though I’ve partaken in such.”
Yes! I am a left wing socialist of the old-fashioned British kind and I have been opposing the AGW-scare for much longer than most who oppose it.
Reading some of the comments posted in this thread I could almost think that we left-wingers should be excluded from opposition to the AGW-scare. Clearly, the writers of some posts in this thread have no understanding of the old adage, ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend’.
Hoser, your posts at July 22, 2011 at 7:51 pm and July 22, 2011 at 7:57 pm have given me much joy as an observation of integrity always does: clearly, you are a man dedicated to the public service. Thankyou for that. Your and my politics are very different, but politicians whose hearts are in the right place deserve recognition, and they do not deserve the kinds of generalist attacks that those of your political persuasion have received in this thread.
feet2thefire, I agree with much of what you say but write to comment on some.
You say;
“It is my assessment that Climategate was conclusive, though I respect those who think it is right now too early to claim victory itself.”
I disagree. As I explain in my post at July 22, 2011 at 3:26 am, I think the failure to reach agreement at Copenhagen was conclusive and not Climategate.
Were it not for the failure at Copenhagen then the political machine which funds and energises the AGW-scare would continue unabated for the foreseeable future whether or not Climategate had happened. But the scare is now certain to stall. It will not collapse but – bit by bit – it will grind to a halt until it becomes as forgotten as the Acid Rain scare of the 1980s.
You repeatedly suggest that Hansen started the AGW-scare. Not so, he raised awareness of it in the US.
The scare was affecting governments around the world for a decade before Hansen was used as the trigger to get the US to join in.
The late Bert Bolin started the scare that was picked-up and promoted for political reasons by the then UK Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, who later dropped it when its usefulness to her had ended (I provide an explanation of her political reasons at
http://www.john-daly.com/history.htm
This explanation is part of a paper – with some updates made in 1999 – of a paper I produced in 1980 that predicted the AGW-scare would occur whether or not any empirical evidence for AGW were obtained. The paper was commissioned by BACM who rejected this prediction as being “extreme”, “far fetched” and “implausible” but since then the AGW-scare has occurred and no empirical evidence for AGW has yet been discovered).
I hope these observations assist continuance of the interesting debate in this thread.
Richard
To Anton, Ken Hall, Martin Brumby, and DirkH:
Some thoughts on your comments. 1, yes I’m aware that it’s an airport. It’s also in a desert. Is the effect of tarmack so strong that it drives the temperatures up more drastically than other coastal airports in deserts (Jiddah comes to mind)? 2, if the airport effect in Oman is so important, then why hasn’t a all-time global temperature record been set here before? 3, has anyone noted that a massive number of all-time minimum temperature records have been set in the U.S. over the past few days? (http://www.climatecentral.org/blogs/record-heat-wave-continues-with-record-warm-overnight-lows/) I beleive there is a likely relationship between the mechanism causing these; and not all those numrous records were set at airports or in urban locations. 5, the record was clearly set for modern instrumental records. Referencing back to past climatic periods such as the MWP isn’t the focus here, it’s the causes of the current observations.
6, I know as well as anyone that any single weather event is not directly attributable to global climate trends. Thus it would be inane to say that this heat wave is caused by climate change. However, I’m sure you all have read about this recent study:
Diffenbaugh, N., and M. Ashfaq. Intensification of hot extremes in the United States. Geophys. Res. Lett., (in press) DOI: 10.1029/2010GL043888
Interesting how it’s about the one year anniversary of the online publicaton of this study. Timely.
I checked to see if this study was discussed here on WUWT, expecting that it would have been, and it was (“Modeling the big toasty”). Reading that, I discovered a potential prediction highlighted in one of the comments:
“Temperatures equaling the hottest season on record from 1951 to 1999 could occur four times between now and 2019 over much of the U.S., according to the researchers.”
So rather than debate fruitlessly about the long-term significance of the extreme records that have been set over the past few days, let’s see how the rest of this summer plays out, because the authors of the paper are going to need 2 more summers like this one (presuming that the rest of the summer maintains the heat “momentum”) for their semi-prediction to be correct. If on the other hand the Sun wanes quickly into minimum and the PDO remans in the cold phase, then this one particular weather event should be viewed as anomalous, rather than trendy. Correct?
I reckon it’s time to follow the IPCC dollar trail, particularly now in Australia. Each AGW public proponent should be asked to state if they have ever benefited from IPCC funding – directly or indirectly. With a followup request for all their funding sources (past and present) to be made easily accessible online, as is already the case with many reputable researchers.
Thanks from me, too, to Anthony, Steve, and the others with foreheads bruised from hitting the brick wall. It’s beginning to crack, guys!
Oakden Wolf:
At July 22, 2011 at 11:21 pm you say:
“So rather than debate fruitlessly about the long-term significance of the extreme records that have been set over the past few days, let’s see how the rest of this summer plays out, because the authors of the paper are going to need 2 more summers like this one (presuming that the rest of the summer maintains the heat “momentum”) for their semi-prediction to be correct.”
But their “semi-prediction” is meaningless and is almost certain to be proved right whether or not AGW exists. The globe has been warming from the LIA for ~300 years and global temperature records have only been kept for ~100 years. Therefore, of course this decade is the warmest on record. But the global temperature has not risen and has fluctuated about a level for more than a decade.
This means heat waves (which happen somewhere each summer) will provide local high temperature records. So, it would be surprising if their semi-prediction were not to come true.
This is analagous to a person who climbs a hill then walks across a plateau. As he walks across the plateau each bump in the ground raises him higher than any point during his climb. Does that mean the hill has more height for him to climb before he reaches the top? No, he may have more height to climb or his walk may take him down the other side of the hill. If he is walking through a cloud so he can only see a very short distance ahead then he has no indication of whether his walk will take him up or down. But he can reasonably assume he will go over some more bumps before he goes up or down
Richard
Ja, Ya, we heard all about how above it all the (solidly collectivist authoritarian leftist) EU and much of the ROTW is. Except: what is the UNIVERSAL solution pushed and demanded by AGW believers, except a global socialist super-government? Make no mistake: control over and taxation of energy use and production IS global tyranny. It’s the whole ball of wax. Not to mention the inevitable mass murder by starvation of the poor of developing nations everywhere.
The barely-subsurface conviction Greens have that the world’s population must be decreased significantly is tightly tied in to the type of administrative and global enforcement power they want.
So if that’s not leftist thinking on steroids, please tell us what it is. We’re all ears.
Thanks for a good overview. This is a revealing acocunt of the (un)scientific psychodrama of the AGW bandwaggon. It is not just climate sceptics who have been attacked, but the very foundations of scientific provenance have been undermined. This will take a long time to repair.
kelleys_eye;
Your local Grammarnasty here:
“TBH I find it incredulous that the instigator of the release has kept schtumm or hasn’t been identified/outed. ”
You may be incredulous, but the circumstances driving you to it are then incredible, or non-creditable. “Incredulous” is a state of mind, or of expression thereof.
Trying to parse the situation, I wonder if The Whistleblower is perhaps in such a key position that it would detonate the whole CRU if the identity was exposed. It’s truly strange how all the “investigations” have faded into the mist.
For those of you who are not familiar with the experiments of Danish scientist Henrik Svensmark’s research on climate change, I would recommend that you use your preferred search engine to locate his “youtube” presentations of his controversial findings.
Richard S Courtney says:
July 22, 2011 at 10:45 pm
Reading some of the comments posted in this thread I could almost think that we left-wingers should be excluded from opposition to the AGW-scare. Clearly, the writers of some posts in this thread have no understanding of the old adage, ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend’.
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The squabbling is inevitable. It goes to the impetus of ones reasoning for involvement in this issue. Witness Tucci’s and Hoser’s discussion. I think they would find they have more in common than differences, but, their differences are ones of great importance to them.
As I stated and Tucci pointed out, the word liberal has been commandeered. Most liberals of the classic sense are horrified by the totalitarian overtones and the lack of a moral compass of this climate issue and their advocates, just as many others. But it does illustrate the greater implications of issue. There’s much more at stake than just a carbon tax.
@Tucci…….. Rodney King? lol, come on, man!
And @ Hoser & Tucci, I’d like to thank you guys for better demonstrating the difficulties of American politics than I could ever articulate. Hoser, like you I once looked toward the Libertarian party. I was disappointed to say the least. The thoughts and ideas, for the most part, were very palatable. The practical applications of such simply weren’t based in reality. I’ve long held that this nation would benefit greatly from a 3rd party. But, in the short and moderate terms, it would imperil this nation, because the base would come from all those who rise against the modern American liberalism. (Which shouldn’t be confused with classic liberalism.) This is the current role of the Republican party, but their shortcomings are too obvious, and too many to overlook.
On a personal note, I ran for public office(local) twice and lost. This was during the time I dabbled with the Libertarian party. The problem I found, was that while many appreciated and agreed with my views and promised support, my target base was so entrenched with the idea that nothing could or would been done in a positive manner. In other words, I failed to inspire them beyond looking for the next hit off of the bong or the next swill of a draught of beet. Solutions…… that’s the easy part. Getting people behind the ideas of the solutions…… that’s trick.
“Every country has the government it deserves.” ————– Joseph de Maistre
And if that posit is true, it doesn’t reflect well upon us at all.
While ClimateaGate definitely had impact, the world economic situation can be credited with the real change in Government priorities. As seen in the faux investigations of ClimateGate, the Politicians are still champing at the bit for more control and will use everything they have to gain it. Only the economics could even scratch that world.
Thank God for Climategate, and thank God for Anthony Watts! I’m not brown-nosing. Before finding this site, I thought I was alone in believing that the AGW emperor had no clothes.
Update: Here’s an 11th item to the list of ‘wins” for skepticism that I posted here at http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/07/21/thank-the-gods-for-climategate/#comment-704229 :
11. (developing): The IPCC’s own-goal in basing its renewables-feasibility report on a Greenpeace document, as described in these two WUWT threads, and on releasing its overstated press release a month before the report:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/07/24/greenpeace-and-the-ipcc-the-edenhofer-excuse/
http://climateaudit.org/2011/06/30/nature-on-renewables-and-natural-therapies/
@kuhnkat July 23, 2011 at 6:14 pm:
Correct, to a point. The real “THUD” came from Copenhagen, when it was leaked to the lesser countries that the G-8 countries (not sure and can’t look up, my ISP’s modems are mostly down) had a scheme to dodge most of what Kyoto had decided. Frankly, I was stunned at Kyoto that the G-8s would agree to what they did. Copenhagen turned out to be the undoing of that. Right on the heels of Climategate, that spun Copenhagen out of control. Kyoto died.
Once the MSM got a does of AGW science and poltics falling apart, they seemed to be more interested in hearing about their dirty laundry, which enabled Glaciergate and more to hit the fan. The warmists were reeling, and there was enough interest in “hiding the decline” to keep their decline energized.
Once back on their heels, they panicked. It certainly did their cause no good when Phil Jones stepped down (temporarily, is turned out). He came out looking like a coward, for those who paid attention to that. But without the DRU chief in place, there was no one running the asylum, and no central spin control. That isn’t surprising, IMHO, because their ability to manage their own data led me to believe they really weren’t all that organized in the first place. Center stage in CAGW fell in their laps in the first place, and they weren’t up to the task. With Pachauri on top at the IPCC, it was a bit like The Three Stooges Meet Abbot and Costello.
The world economic situation likely was behind the pulling of the generosity cord by the G-8 countries. So, that domino fell first, yes. That would have caused the Copenhagen dysfunction, all by itself. Climategate, in fact, MAY not be a factor in what the governments are doing.
But that would not have given us skeptics a voice in the MSM. That did come from Climategate. The information monopoly was busted by Climategate. And we may not have even gotten a lot of extra press – but their side lost a whole lot of free press. They aren’t getting such a free ride anymore. And what they are getting isn’t drumming up 25% of what it used to. The world DID notice. And what the world saw was a conspiracy (I don’t use the word metaphorically) to hide studies and data that the world didn’t like, coming from supposedly pristine and pure scientists. Then they began panicking, with the whitewashes/inquiries, which everyone either ignored or picked apart. All those did was to keep Climategate before the public eye a bit longer, for which we should thank them!
They DO think they are still on top, and they are. But look at how much wind has been taken out of their sails. The mountain that they had made from a molehill had gone most of the way back to being a molehill. AGW is now so far down the list of priorities in the public’s mind that it might as well be snail darters.
@donaldc July 22, 2011 at 3:02 pm:
Good point, donaldc.
I don’t think there will be a coup de grace until the data is proven wrong. That all still needs to be freed up and the adjustments/homogenizations that The Team made can be determined (they were, of course, supposed to have been included with the journal submissions). Some are still unreleased; when all the chipping away at their stonewall is done, and those data and methodologies are audited/replicated, Steve M and others will be able to again show that, no, the maths were not done properly. The Berkely project I am suspicious of, personally, though it might open the door a little bit further.
The governments have taken their positions, and will change their minds ONLY when it is politically expedient to do so. SOME of those governments will wait till the very end, but several have been bailing already. Yes, some of that – perhaps the majority – have been because of economic factors. But economic factors existed before, and they ignored them, so for those it will be a matter of thresholds being crossed, limits being exceeded. Some have become disenchanted. That is what we want, really, just disenchantment. Reasonable doubt. And even for the staunch supporters prior to Climategate, there has been movement.
As to the scientific societies, of course they should be ashamed of themselves for taking up their present positions. Time will embarrass them all. And it is well on its way to doing just that. Time has a way of including events. Events will occur. I am certain of that.
In the meantime, look at where we are now, versus 21 months ago. We are no longer the crazies. They are in a panic still, and will be, to try to recover their mojo. And that ain’tagonna happen. The G8 governments will not go along with the IPCC. It is too expensive. The IPCC/UN will have to yield on many points, and the G8 nations will push harder and get even more changes.
The La-La Landers aren’t going to win. The world is too practical.
As usual, you start with a false premise, throw in a series of straw men and just downright lies, and argue for a conclusion that isn’t even valid because the basis for it is completely false.
Meanwhile, the vast amount of empirical data unequivocally demonstrate the planet is warming and human activity is the primary reason. No amount of distortion, fabrication, and faulty premises change that fact.
Now that there has been a furor in the UK over phone hacking by News Corp, I see that Keith Olbermann is *speculating* that someone in the Murdoch empire may have been responsible for the ‘Climategate’ affair. No proof — no case.
At 8:01 AM on 29 July, Spector writes:
Since when have the “Liberal” [snip] ever needed “proof” for anything they assert? Jeez, just look at the CAGW fraud….
But if it were to prove truthful (Olbermann? Nah!), it’d qualify Rupert Murdoch for a Nobel Prize in the sciences – Physics, wouldn’tcha think?