From Andrew Bolt, my “mate” down under at the Herald Sun, comes this surprise. I’ll have to say, it is to George Monbiot’s credit to do this. I embrace his first statement, because it succinctly sums up the situation:
It’s no use pretending that this isn’t a major blow. The emails extracted by a hacker from the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia could scarcely be more damaging(1). I am now convinced that they are genuine, and I’m dismayed and deeply shaken by them.
– George Monbiot on his personal blog
George seems to realize that, “it’s worse than we thought”.
From Andrew Bolt:
Even George Monbiot, one of the fiercest media propagandists of the warming faith, admits he should have been more sceptical and says the science now needs to be rechecked:
It’s no use pretending that this isn’t a major blow. The emails extracted by a hacker from the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia could scarcely be more damaging. I am now convinced that they are genuine, and I’m dismayed and deeply shaken by them.
Yes, the messages were obtained illegally. Yes, all of us say things in emails that would be excruciating if made public. Yes, some of the comments have been taken out of context. But there are some messages that require no spin to make them look bad. There appears to be evidence here of attempts to prevent scientific data from being released, and even to destroy material that was subject to a freedom of information request.
Worse still, some of the emails suggest efforts to prevent the publication of work by climate sceptics, or to keep it out of a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. I believe that the head of the unit, Phil Jones, should now resign. Some of the data discussed in the emails should be re-analysed.
Sure, Monbiot claims the fudging of what he extremely optimistically puts as just “three or four” scientists doesn’t knock over the whole global warming edifice, yet…
If even Monbiot, an extremist, can say that much, why cannot the Liberals say far more? And will now the legion of warmist journalists in our own media dare say as Monbiot has so belatedly:
I apologise. I was too trusting of some of those who provided the evidence I championed. I would have been a better journalist if I had investigated their claims more closely.
Scepticism is the essential disposition of our craft, yet too many journalists have abandoned it. Remember: the opposite of sceptical is gullible.
UPDATE: Here’s the screencap from Monbiot’s blog on the Guardian:
Click to see the original.
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OT: A surprising story here from the BBC (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8375884.stm). It talks about winter, temperature and excess deaths. It relates the number of excess deaths in Winter to temperature and, for the first time I can remember, fails to mention how climate change would impact these figures. Curious. I can’t work out why, I mean after all it has the required elements – death and temperature.
CARBON TAX IS THEFT – PLAIN AND SIMPLE.
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=181254384531#/group.php?gid=181254384531&v=wall
Some of us have known for a while. Welcome aboard, George, apology accepted. JD.
Joseph Murphy (07:34:58) :
I’ll second that.
And I’m guessing Watt Tyler (05:51:33) might, as well?
Like any good leftist caught with his paw in whatever cookie jar he happens to be pilfering at the time, Monbiot ”admits” guilt (sort of), passes the buck, attempts damage control and plays the victim. Next he’ll walk off with the cookie jar.
If you give his words any credibility now, he will only reinvest that credibility to get away with more wackiness in the future.
When summing over the totality of this experience, paying him homage now for what we think is sincere remorse will only end up costing us in the end. In fact, it bears a striking resemblance to one of those fishing scams, “if you give me $5,000 now, then I’ll send you $1,000,000,000 tomorrow,” except in the realm of social, ideological and moral currency.
MattyS (04:06:14) and others saying where is the apology in the article.
Monbiot’s apology is in a reply to a poster in the subsequent comments thread, not his original sarcastic article. Its repeated in a different form later in the thread too and appears sincere. Here;
QUOTE
23 Nov 2009, 9:18PM
Sabraguy:”But now I suggest you review your file of correspondence and articles, and figure out who you need to apologize to.”
Monbiot “I apologise. I was too trusting of some of those who provided the evidence I championed. I would have been a better journalist if I had investigated their claims more closely.”
ENDQUOTE
I thought Watson (UK Govt. science advisor) on BBC Newsnight hung Jones out to dry, but in terms of his behaviour as opposed to his competence (i.e. he seemed to accept the rubbishing of skeptics and the FOI emails were genuine.)
I believe Watson was once Jones’ boss, therefore I surmise Monbiot felt comfortable he was being consistent in the UK Govt. damage limitation policy. (This seems to be to dump Jones for incorrect behaviour rather than bad science.)
Don’t think you even have to argue conspiracy, presumably Monbiot simply watched the BBC programme?
Well I’m inclined to go with the poke in the eye theory.
He starts off making sure we know that the released data was illegally stolen. It is becoming increasingly likely that that is not the case; at least as I read the information coming out.
The FOIA2009 designation indicates a carefully gathered up collection of potentially damning materials, in a single location; right outside the dog’s kennel.
It would take some really knowledgeable person to go through all the stuff there must be in that institution, to assemble that zip file, without a lot of non inflammable stuff. I haven’t heard a lot about the police being all over that place looking for the break-in, which may not have even occurred.
I have to say that the Citing by Anthony of this Monbiot piece and the link to his site, is actuallyy the first time I have even looked at or read any of his stuff; although I have seen his name mentioned in dispatches on a very small number of occasions.
If this is a sample of his work, I am glad I have not wasted my time; gives me the creeps reading just that one “apologetic” post and it’s psychedelic e-mail.
About the only sane thing he says is calling for Jones to resign. I’m still thinking that Jones looks like a prime candidate for whoever constructed FOIA2009. From there on it gets a little foggier; but it seems he would know all the players.
What would be of great interest is to see where all the tentacles at the US end link to. It would seem that Penn State, GISS, and RC are fully constrained by the linkages.
I hope that Senator Inhofe really goes after a full accounting of the US end of this anchor; it certainly seems “shovel ready”.
But I buy the Monbiot mud in your eye thesis. You can’t even trust these guys, when it appears they are ploaying straight.
Remember the fable of the boy who cried wolf.
How are you going to resurrect some credibility, Monbiot. Same goes for Andy Revkin. You got yourself into the lobster pot very simply Andy; now let’s see you get out.
OK. Do we have any idea what the CRU scientists are doing right now? I mean other than Jones stating he doesn’t remember. What are they doing *right now*? Are they cleaning out their offices? Have they consulted legal counsel who (no doubt) has told them to shut up and give no interviews?
We see what the blog-o-sphere is reacting. How is Mann, Briffa, Overpeck, etc, etc reacting? What are they doing? Business as usual?
At last!
Climate Gate makes it to the Dutch Press:
http://www.telegraaf.nl/binnenland/5399648/__Jarenlang_geknoeid_met_klimaatfeiten__.html
OH OH, did my post get caught in a spam filter of some kind? It’s not appearing here yet.
I don’t know why the BBC has a problem with stolen data as the UK Government doesn’t mind using it – it even pays the thief
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/money/tax/article3423610.ece?pgnum=2
“This is obviously a spoof message with spoof links. But tell me, Forfismum, are you having fun or trying to pick up our ISP addresses by using false Telegraph newspaper links.
Please do inform”
Are you Moonbat in drag ? That was a genuine message to highlight that 2 links on the Telegraph were not working for some hours this AM. They now have one working at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/conservation/6642790/Climate-change-emails-plot-or-damp-squib.html
Now ,what is your problem perhaps I can help?
PS Are you trying to discredit me in some way?
Obviously, all of this will be ignored by the White House …
LarryOldtimer (20:32:51) :
All of this clearly points out the importance of what Anthony has been doing. When garbage goes in, garbage will always be the outcome. Instead of arguing about how the garbage looked smelled or was shaped, researchers should have been working at replacing the garbage input with actual and reliable data.
I had an interesting idea along these lines. Perhaps what the blogosphere needs is to collect some data. We have shown the ability to check weather station siting, how difficult would it be to obtain our own cores? All we need are standardized tools and methodologies.
We pick tree types that the dendros think provide the best measure of ‘temperature’. We use GPS and cameras to identify each tree. Put it all on the web. Show a map with elevation and other siting info for each tree. Have graphs that show running averages, divergences, whatever, that get updated when new data is available.
Being the gate keepers of the data is their chief weapon. That and their strangle hold on peer review. Peer review and data are their two main tactics, along with a tyrranical control of major climate institutions. Data, peer review and the tyrannical control of major institutions are amongst their many weapons.
Ok, I have to go, so I’ll now post the main point of what didn’t appear before.
Like any good leftist caught with his paw in whatever cookie jar he happens to be pilfering at the time, Monbiot ”admits” guilt (sort of), passes the buck, attempts damage control and plays the victim. Next he’ll walk off with the cookie jar.
What follows is based on the assumption that the data under discussion are not forgeries. Should that turn out to be the case, the following should be ignored.
@Woodfortrees:
Sorry, Paul, nice try but, “Actually, I’m not even sure what he’s apologising for not investigating; as far as I’m aware from the summaries I’ve seen in the public domain (I’ve not looked at the files, nor do I intend to, given their provenance) the worst charge is that CRU got themselves into a siege mentality and were sometimes more concerned with defending the message than the science, and that their internal data management and software process have been pretty poor – and, evidently, their data security as well.” won’t wash. The worst charge is that Prof. Jones and others appear to have colluded to suppress evidence, evade the provisions of the law, coerce the editorial boards of journals, etc., etc. while being paid by the taxpayer. This is not only illegal (evasion of FoI law provisions) but deeply unscientific. (It’s unethical as well, but I doubt that cuts much ice, as he appears to be genuinely baffled as to what that might mean).
As many commenters here and elsewhere have pointed out, this is not something trivial to be laughed off with infantile sarcasm, but a blow at the very foundation of the Man-made Global Warming bandwagon, since most of the so-called “evidence” in support of it either came from or was filtered through CRU, whose leader expressly admits his intentions to prevent publication of contrary evidence and hide the effects of clearly contradictory data.
For little Moonbat to claim that there are “several hundred” lines of other evidence in support is a new one on me. Where are they? Virtually all the “evidence” starts from the assumption that global temperatures have shown unprecedented rises in the latter half of the twentieth century. The emails and more importantly the programs and databases show that to be untrue, and Jones et al are shown to have been hiding that fact.
Bear in mind that it is always for the proposer of an hypothesis to supply the evidence in support. It is your job to convince me, Mr. Moonbat, and not vice versa.
Moonbat doesn’t honestly believe that what he was doing was journalism, does he?
TIm Huck (08:17:04) :
As I have mentioned before, that’s been done by Wolfram Alpha.
One good example of what they have there is the temps for central Greenland for several decades. See the lead story here.
http://antigreen.blogspot.com/2009/09/melting-greenland-you-would-be-hard-put.html
One pic/graph says it all.
http://i50.tinypic.com/301j8kh.jpg
Richard: You quoted Dr. Hans von Storch in boldface: “2. Scientists like Mike Mann, Phil Jones and others should no longer participate in the peer-review process or in assessment activities like the IPCC!”
The entire quote in context reads, “I would assume that more interesting issues will be found in the files, and that a useful debate about the degree of politicization of climate science will emerge. A conclusion could be that the principle, according to which data must be made public, so that also adversaries may check the analysis, must be really enforced. Another conclusion could be that scientists like Mike Mann, Phil Jones and others should no longer participate in the peer-review process or in assessment activities like IPCC.”
There’s a significant diffference.
Richard: Oops. Forgot the link to Dr. Hans von Storch’s webpage:
http://coast.gkss.de/staff/storch/storch.htm
Regards
Today’s Daily Telegraph carries on page 5 an article by Matthew Moore about the e-mails, much of which attempts to downplay the implications.Following this is an article by Geoffrey Lean, one of The Telegraph’s primary ‘environmental commentators’, who could be described as a well mannered and good natured George Monbiot.The content is much the same.There is a lamentable similarity in the environmental ‘reporting’ of the ‘right’ and ‘left’ press in the U.K. however,both The Telegraph and The Guardian are effective for lighting the chiminera.I stopped relying on the U.K. media several years ago for plausible information on climate issues.
The funny thing is, if the AGW believers get their way and limit this fire to “three or four” climatologists, a fat lot of luck getting anyone to fill their roles and pick up this mess where Phil and Mann left off.
As Phil admitted “this is getting very complex”…. if they weren’t lying then Phil could be replaced easily. But how to do pick up a lie when all the data and documentation has been deleted?
MangoChutney (06:01:07) :
why is Gavin posting at RC and answering questions / censoring, instead of doing his day job?
I am so sorry. I apologize. I didn’t tell you he works for James Hansen and is paid by the government? NASA
We work for them and they do NOT work for us. He is doing the planet a favor.
Disputin: I agree, there’s a lot of bad stuff in there in terms of scientific ethics, FOI etc., and I’m not condoning their behaviour, only (to some extent) explaining it as being down to a misplaced idea that there is some kind of ‘war’ going on – an idea that afflicts both ‘sides’, I might add.
As far as the data goes, since I use HADCRUT3 as one of the prime sources on WoodForTrees I’m obviously very concerned about its quality. However I’ve not (yet) seen anything that suggests that (paraphrasing) “the programs and databases no longer show that there have been unprecedented rises in the latter half of the twentieth century” – in other words, that the recent data has been polluted in some way.
OK, if Steve McIntyre or someone else finds a smoking gun of the form
for(int year=1990; year<2000; year++) temperature+=0.3;
(Alright, it would be in FORTRAN, but I forgot all that many years ago!)
then fair enough – but I haven't heard of one yet, and I severely doubt they will. As Monbiot rather clumsily points out, you'd have to believe the same fudge happened to GISTEMP (OK, some here might believe that!), but also RSS and UAH, and all the other indirect indicators. Doesn't work for me, I'm afraid.
So I'm not saying this doesn't look bad for those involved, but I don't see how it can be extrapolated into "imminent doom of AGW theory", which many seem to be doing. I think that was the point of Monbiot's article, but I agree with someone earlier that he could take some lessons in satire from Swift, or even Python…
It will never cease to amaze me how so called intelligent people lose the ability to have a measure of balance. Why must Monboit divide the world into good and evil? Why must it be that only if AGW is an outright scam will Monboit renege his religion and plead forgiveness for all those he called deniers of science and frauds.
Monboit has exposed himself… not evil just simple.