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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The apology was hollow, as evidenced by the fact that he used it as a launching pad for some irrelevant, sardonic social satire. In the future, he will be able to disavow the comments early on in the piece by saying they were part and parcel of the satire that followed.
He’s a fraud, he’s always been a fraud and that will never change.
I found that last part of the Monbiot piece to be a huge piece of sarcasm, which made me doubt the first part.
Whereas I commend him for saying that Phil Jones should resign dont be fooled by that apology. He is sarcastic and tongue-in-cheek.
This is what he says:
“.. do these revelations justify the sceptics’ claims that this is “the final nail in the coffin” of global warming theory?.. Not at all. They damage the credibility of three or four scientists. They raise questions about the integrity of one or perhaps two out of several hundred lines of evidence. To bury manmade climate change, a far wider conspiracy would have to be revealed. .. Had I known that it was this easy to rig the evidence, I wouldn’t have wasted years of my life promoting a bogus discipline.”
From “Global warming rigged? Here’s the email I’d need to see”
The email:
“From: ernst.kattweizel@redcar.ac.uk
Sent: 29 October 2009
To: The Knights Carbonic
Gentlemen, the culmination of our great plan approaches fast. What the Master called “the ordering of men’s affairs by a transcendent world state, ordained by God and answerable to no man”, which we now know as Communist World Government, advances towards its climax at Copenhagen. For 185 years since the Master, known to the laity as Joseph Fourier, launched his scheme for world domination, the entire physical science community has been working towards this moment.
…
Then began the most hazardous task of all: our attempt to control the instrumental record. Securing the consent of the scientific establishment was a simple matter. But thermometers had by then become widely available, and amateur meteorologists were making their own readings. We needed to show a steady rise as industrialisation proceeded, but some of these unfortunates had other ideas. The global co-option of police and coroners required unprecedented resources, but so far we have been able to cover our tracks.
The over-enthusiasm of certain of the Knights Carbonic in 1998 was most regrettable. The high reading in that year has proved impossibly costly to sustain. Those of our enemies who have yet to be silenced maintain that the lower temperatures after that date provide evidence of global cooling, even though we have ensured that eight of the 10 warmest years since 1850 have occurred since 2001. From now on we will engineer a smoother progression.
Our co-option of the physical world has been just as successful. The thinning of the Arctic ice cap was a masterstroke. The ring of secret nuclear power stations around the Arctic circle, attached to giant immersion heaters, remains undetected, as do the space-based lasers dissolving the world’s glaciers.
Altering the migratory and reproductive patterns of the world’s wildlife has proved more challenging. Though we have now asserted control over the world’s biologists, there is no accounting for the unauthorised observations of farmers, gardeners, birdwatchers and other troublemakers. We have therefore been forced to drive migrating birds, fish and insects into higher latitudes, and to release several million tonnes of plant pheromones every year to accelerate flowering and fruiting. None of this is cheap, and ever more public money, secretly diverted from national accounts by compliant governments, is required to sustain it.
The co-operation of these governments requires unflagging effort. The capture of George W Bush, a late convert to the cause of Communist World Government, was made possible only by the threatened release of footage filmed by a knight at Yale, showing the future president engaged in coitus with a Ford Mustang. Most ostensibly capitalist governments remain apprised of where their real interests lie, though I note with disappointment that we have so far failed to eliminate Vaclav Klaus. Through the offices of compliant states, the Master’s third grand law has been established: world government will be established under the guise of controlling man-made emissions of greenhouse gases.
Keeping the scientific community in line remains a challenge. The national academies are becoming ever more querulous and greedy, and require higher pay-offs each year. The inexplicable events of the past month, in which the windows of all the leading scientific institutions were broken and a horse’s head turned up in James Hansen’s bed, appear to have staved off the immediate crisis, but for how much longer can we maintain the consensus? Knights Carbonic, now that the hour of our triumph is at hand, I urge you all to redouble your efforts. In the name of the Master, go forth and terrify.
Professor Ernst Kattweizel, University of Redcar. 21st Grand Warden of the Temple of the Knights Carbonic.
This is the kind of conspiracy the deniers need to reveal to show that man-made climate change is a con. The hacked emails are a hard knock, but the science of global warming withstands much more than that.
What he still cannot see is the confusion between GW and AGW.
Did anyone bother to go to his blog? I kinda get the impression he’s being sarcastic and isn’t apologizing at all–don’t you?
Whatever Monbiot really means, it somehow brings to mind that there must be an awful lot of restraint now taking place at keyboards in CRU. Nobody wants to produce the next interesting email.
David, did you read through to the end?
To me, this shows that Monbiot is still full of BS (bad science).
I would have been a better journalist
Huh, he’s a journalist?
Shout out to a. jones (21:14:21) :
“But is this Saul on the road to Damascus?…”
Looked at from a far star, humanity has once again come out ahead to thus deserve our lonely place in the Universe. Indeed we both fretted about abusing our good host of a planet and then likewise took unfair advantage of our period instrumental era doubt.
Now we are set free…to bathe ourselves in glorious realization that we are a benign part of the trees and the algae that pulsate with glowing determinate meaning.
And so it’s O.K. to slaughter a fat pig and lick our fingers in guilt free joy, secure in the knowledge that spare ribs just more or less no matter what anybody else says, taste like that which God intended good food to taste like.
It is a sad attempt at humour. Monbiot is simply making a tactical move. Admit the obvious, act self righteous and then do exactly what you planned to do in typical Humphrey Appleby style. The satire muddies his intent. But Monbiot fundamental view as a Watermelon has not changed.
I’m with some of the others here (climate heretic, Lucia, etc)…it is not really an apology. It reminds me of how Roy Spencer’s April Fools Day joke actually fooled some people.
Sympathy?
I give NO sympathy to anyone how cannot exhibit the simplest of actions … honesty. For that is all that was necessary. The simplest of things … honesty. Why is honesty so difficult to find these days?
When reading the complete blog entry, this appears to be a highly sarcastic entry – I don’t think he’s apologising one little bit – and you’re playing right into his hands if you think he is.
Regards.
They damage the credibility of three or four scientists
Huh, three or four?
It’s more than four. And they are the centerpiece of global warming—not just some scientists representing “one or perhaps two out of several hundred lines of evidence”. There are no “several hundred lines of evidence”.
Very strange. Yes, Moonbat seems to be willing to slice off an arm (Jones) to save the patient. Other than that, the ‘apology’ is pure sarcasm, amateur damage control.
Next step: the MSM will weigh in heavily with a full propaganda barrage to discredit the emails.
nth step: although this is not a conspiracy per se, there are probably people who are orchestrating the true-believing puppets like Hansen, Jones, Mann, Briffa, et al. If one of the puppet masters themselves should defect, the investigation could rapidly work its way up the chain to the IPCC and beyond. This is too great a risk. I suspect that these key people will soon start to turn up dead in UN building stairwells. That is real damage control.
I think what this scandal shows above all else is that the AAM industry is essentially a political narrative using the MSM and bought off stooge ‘scientists’ to provide a fake consensus and a fake veneer of sicentific evidence added to cover the whole thing.
It looks like the IPCC was set up to filter evidence out that contradicted the narrative, the governments involved used their financing and ‘editorial’ control of scientific institutes like the CRU/Hadley/met office/GISS etc placing toady yes men and paymasters in control of research budgets and buying in the services of green fanatics like FoE/GP/WWF by providing generous funding.
The close links to all these groups was a compliant MSM science and environment cabal that could be relied upon to report the science as settled.
It is to be expected that if the scandal cannot be killed and or ignored/downplayed then scapegoats will be presented, a few bad apples will be left out for the wolves in an attempt to kill the story.
It was just a few bad apples on the edges of the consensus they will say, the science is still robust and the vast bulk of the evidence for AAM is still valid, it should be noted that the MSM is still peddling the Copenhagen manufactured propaganda and it highlights perfectly how the MSM is outdated, incompetent, out of touch, compliant, bought off and ideologically compromised.
In the UK it looks like the BBC and the met office both with very close links to the government and green groups have been exposed as hugely biased and compromised, the two organisations are staffed and run by people who are very sympathetic to the AAM cause and have close links to green pressure groups, in effect the met office and the BBC are willing tools and have been extremely active in presenting the AAM science as settled, the scandal has yet to reach those two bodies and if it does the whole AAM charade will collapse.
I’ll respect anyone who has the courage to question deeply held beliefs, especially someone in such a prominent and influencial position in media as Monbiot. The world and its issues are complex, and anyone should be forgiven/excused for thinking one way about things when the reality is different.
So credit indeed to Monbiot, if he is indeed being genuine- which I assumed on first read of his article. Here is is targetting Phil Jones, who is the author of many of the most revealing/damaging emails. It would be a strange move to single out the most guilty if he were simply trying to get a kick out of sceptics by feigning shock/indignation. Calling for Jones’ resignation seems pretty harsh unless the feelings invoked by the hacked emails are genuine feelings.
If he’s not being sincere, then it’s quite disapppointing. The most revealing thing about the emails to me is the attitude, which doesn’t seem to me the correct attitude for a scientist. At all. Perhaps Monbiot shares this attitude (his other articles which I’ve read suggests he may, or may have), and therefore imagines that the Team and the ‘side’ and argument that the Team represents is beyond reproach. If everything the Team stands for is right, and every argument raised to the contrary wrong, then Monbiot can feel empowered enough to say whatever he likes (even if this may be confusing for a few AGW faithful who are reading his blog at this senstive time).
Anyway, the emails do seem to have struck a chord with a lot of people. Whatever Monbiot or others do or say now, some kind of cat is out of the bag, and it’s not going to go back in a hurry.
To bury manmade climate change, a far wider conspiracy would have to be revealed. Luckily for the sceptics, and to my intense disappointment, I have now been passed the damning email which confirms that…
More of his caustic, smug sarcasm.
Where’s the apology? I’ve reread his statement here and directly on Monbiot.com but I cannot find an apology. What I do find are several admissions, some damage control, and then an attempt at humor to toss it all aside.
Monbiot’s effort is focused on admitting several points, offering out a fall guy and “three or four scientists,” and a recheck of one or two recordsets. He’s attempting CYA for himself and the religion of global warming. I do not see this working.
First, I’ve seen several references in recent days to 42+ and even as many as 75 scientists intimately involved with Jones and the email released so far clearly offer up at least a dozen regularly sharing email and many others intermittently. Elsewhere I recall reading or hearing that there may be 500 leading global warming scientists around the world. The core group is likely much less with most being just followers and wannabes. Anyway, my point is that a significant percent of the leading global warming scientists are likely involved in Jones’ and company shenanagans. As a whole, they no longer have any credibility.
Second, Montbiot admits to some data problems and suggests (hopes) that only a couple are suspect enough to require rechecking. I’m guessing the bad data is very widespread as data is reused and manipulation appears from the email to be common practice. Who can be trusted to say without rechecking that data A is good and data B is bad?
Montbiot statement that this is not the final nail in the coffin of global warming theory is about like Nixon saying he wasn’t a crook.
While his carbonic knights spoof email bit was sarcastic, I think in this instance it would be best for our side if we acted the bigger men and took his apology at face value *while holding him to it in the future*. I would encourage everyone to send him things to investigate objectively. The proof of his sincerity will come out in his subsequent actions: Will he lead the charge to ensure Jones is canned? Will he support similar efforts against other bad actors? Will he stand with us in demanding that all climate researchers uphold the highest standards of data transparency, openness and disclosure of raw data, meta data, methods, etc? As these emails demonstrate, the public facades they present at RealClimate are drastically different from their real faces, which lends credence to the argument that all scientific discussion SHOULD be done publicly, in the open, on blogs, in a collaborative manner between investigator, skeptic, peer reviewer, auditor, and the general public. Only by engaging in the entire scientific process in this way in public will science recover the publics trust.
Monbiot’s staging a tactical retreat, he’s not suing for peace.
But what we’ve got here is that some of the guys implicated in misdeeds by the released data are near the top of the climate-science food chain. This might not cut the head off the snake, but it might just disrupt the organism enough to shake loose some other interesting responses further down.
Huh, I think he’s being sarcastic and not contrite.
Climate Heretic is absolutely correct!
Anthony, I would strongly suggest that you append this story to include the entire story. Monbiot is ridiculing skeptics, not apologizing for anything. Your story is very misleading as it is!
I encourage everyone to read all of Monbiot’s blog post, especially the final paragraph. He is simply trying to piss in your eye!
He’s NOT!!! Read his entire blog post! Read ALL of it!
He’s full of crap and mocking you!
” Climate Heretic (20:30:37) :
Uhm anyone read the Monbiot blog post, he is making fun of you, me, us. He does not believe what he posted, it is a sacarsm laden poke in the eye.
The lead in is simply to set you up for the punchline.
People be a little wary in our reading of the reactions of AGWers.”
Heretic,you may be right……….but,
Having read the rest of the email including that extraordinary riposte, the ‘Knights Carbolic’,I am in two minds.
1.One is that (sincere or not), he is in survival mode, sees the writing on the wall and apologises first, gaining notoriety (he is getting good press out of this) for doing so, this gives him publicity, and,oddly enough, a foot in both camps as I believe that genuine believers will take a lot of convincing and he could change his mind back again just as quickly. I am suspicious of the speed of conversion.
2.The other thought is that he is genuinely remorseful and the Knights Carbolic nonsense is literary way of dispelling embarrassment.
I favour No1.
I am angry right now about this, these people are not even worthy opponents, my response? I am going out to trim my front bushes to within an inch of their life.
With the fraud now exposed will the Nobel Prize be revoked?
This would be no different from disqualifying an Olympic Gold Medalist when they test positive for drugs?
Surely a fraudulently obtained Nobel Prize that was given for the greatest hoax since the Piltdown Man should be returned and awarded to someone actually worthy?