Dan Weiss from the Center for American Progress seems to have more than a little trouble with this interview. I wonder why they didn’t ask Joe Romm to be on?
Left to right: Michaels and Weiss
Here’s the video description as posted on YouTube:
Hackers broke into thousands of emails and documents from the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University last week and uncovered the global warming conspiracy.
Stuart Varney interviews scientist Pat Michaels, with the CATO institute, who was the target of physical threat from Climate Scientist Ben [Santer]. He also DESTROYS Dan Weiss, from the Center for American Progress.
Calls for an independent inquiry into what is being dubbed “Climategate” are growing as the foundation for man-made global warming implodes following the release of emails which prove researchers colluded to manipulate data in order to “hide the decline” in global temperatures.
In an interview with The Washington Times on Monday, Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) announced he would probe whether the U.N.s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) cooked the science to make this thing look as if the science was settled, when all the time of course we knew it was not.
Here’s the video:
Consider the outrage if these e-mails had been found in the offices of those who certify, (1) the accuracy of the delivery of gasoline pumps, (2) the safety of elevators and escalators, (3) the composition and proper installations of building materials, (4) the airworthiness of commercial aircraft, (4) the safety of medicines and medical devices, (5) the safety of power plants, (6) the crash-worthiness of automobiles, (7) that Environmental Impact Statements are correct and true, and on and on and on.
There would be no rationalizations, none whatsoever, presented to insist that the e-mails simply reflect Business as Usual. Independent investigations would be started immediately.
There’s not doubt that any neutral viewer watching this will be asking some serious questions about the whole AGW thing.
As for Dan Weiss – he looks just like Phil Silvers on amphetamine, and made even less sense. He didn’t know whether to argue that the emails were faked then equivocated when pressed. He argued that man is causing global warming because the government wrote some report to say it is. Confused local issues about lake levels with global temperatures; claimed global temperatures climbed half a degree in 12 years; said something about pollution which is a different issue entirely; mentioned sea level rise up an inch and a half – a meaningless statement.
I loved the way they split the screen down the middle so you can juxtapose Weiss’s manic “frothing at the mouth” style hysteria against Stuart’s calm and patient composure. Priceless!
Dan Weiss has a big mouth. He non stopped interrupted the moderator and avoided the questions.
He is like Joe Romm. When they get in a corner, they get extremmely loud and try to shout over the newsman and change the subject.
Weiss gave the Warm mongers a setback.
Weiss also lied. he said the e-mails can’t be authenticated and Jones not only authenticated them, he said they were from CRU.
We are going to see a surge. Romm is pushing 2099 threats and forcasts in greater numbers. He isn’t trained enough to get 2009 correct but claims he is perfect on 2099. Like we saw yesterday, if their forcasts are wrong, they have flopped in supporting their hypothesis.
Luboš Motl (23:34:42) :
“Great to see Michaels so optimistic and funny.
This Dan Weiss must be paid by some skeptic group because his performance is just insanely unattractive.”
Yes!!! Joe Romm on sister station Climate Progress and Dan are on Soros payroll and shill for the extreme left. Romm has the same angry demeanor. He starts name calling and spewing hostility.
Romm is afraid of Fox and a web site run by Morano called Climate Depot.
Google changed the behavior of Google News sometime in the last few hours. Today if you search for “climategate” it turns up mostly articles that do not have the word “climategate” in them. It did not do this yesterday.
Wow. 4 minutes of incoherent babbling and hyperventilating, a long winded, fact free appeal to authority basically saying all the now discredited scientists still say it’s warming! And half a degree rise in temp in the past 12 years when the emails say they can’t explain the drop! Talk about living in a fantasy world, the CAP guy was about the worst possible representative for his view with the possible exception of Ed Begely. The stammering, whining, and obvious and ineffective attempts at diversion were astounding, and you know, when a Liberal like someone from CAP has to quote George Bush to support his cause you know they have nothing at all to back up their cause.
Buffoons like Weiss and Ed Begley (peerreviewpeereviewpeerreview…) certainly hurt the Alarmist Cause more than they help it. The straws they grasp at are flimsy indeed. It’s very amusing to watch the desperation grow in the Alarmist camp. I guess now they are rightfully alarmed – at the coming demise of their AGW pseudo-religious ideology.
Weiss’ only argument is that the e-mails are fake. But they are not.
“Some of the emails probably had poorly chosen words and were sent in the heat of the moment, when I was frustrated. I do regret sending some of them.” – Phil Jones
“the selective publication of some stolen emails and other papers taken out of context is mischievous and cannot be considered a genuine attempt to engage with this issue in a responsible way.” – UAE
“In this email, I was discussing the importance of extending paleoclimate reconstructions far enough back in time that we could determine the onset and duration of the putative ‘Medieval Warm Period.'” – Michael Mann
Attacking the authenticity of the e-mails might make sense if they were fake, but there was never any question of that. Quoting a panel appointed by W. that issued a statement based on 20 years of doctored research didn’t bolster his case either.
I think the “global warming” thing is pretty much over. Maybe we can go back to worrying about something serious, like global cooling.
Icarus :
The cause of this increasing insensitivity of wood density to temperature changes is not known,……..
You miss the entire point. The problem isn’t that wood has been a temp. proxy for 950 years only to change suddenly in the last 50, the problem is that wood has never been a proxy. This simply shows the failure of this research and instead of stepping back to re-examine what they are doing, they ignore this failure and march forward. (see Groupthink)
The emails are no longer the issue. What has come out from Harryreadme and the code are damning. Anyone with a thought process can see the house of cards this is.
The data is tainted, the computer programs are buggy, the models don’t work, and we really don’t fully understand the system under study. Politicians willing to bet $10 trillion of our money on their conclusions should be taken out and shot – along with scientists who lie and deceive.
Weiss is behaving like a cultist when challenged on his belief system.Faced with the
facts-he almost slaps his hands on his ears and goes LALALALALA. The facts are these
E-mails are volcanic and will not be suppressed….
What Dan Weiss says, and Kevin Trenberth said in his debate with Fred Singer (?) is that, from the basic physics, the IPCC is right; end of story. What needs to be said very loudly and very clearly is that the IPCC is WRONG; there is NO physics to support the hypothesis of AGW. There are three crucial numbers on which the “physics” of AGW is based; radiative forcing for a doubling of CO2; how much this radiative forcing, by itself, causes global temperatures to rise; and climate sensitivity. NONE of these numbers can be measured experimentally. As such, they could all be subject to the Kelvin fallacy. The estimates of their values are based on NON-VALIDATED computer models.
So let me repeat. Weiss is WRONG in claiming that there is solid physics behind the IPCC hypothesis of AGW. Surely we need to start saying this loudly and clearly at every opportunity.
That was OK but could have been handed better – All Weis’s arguments based on “authority” (all the groups he listed that say AGW is a problem) all base that conclusion, in one way or another, based on data which very well may be manipulated to show the desired result (warming). As he said , your are entitled to your own opinion , but not your own data. Well, right now, it appears the the core the scientists pushing the AGW agenda may have thought otherwise – that they were entitled to their own data & made it look the way they wanted it to. If those points would have been brought up, it would have been much more convincing.
I cannot help but think of a certain mustachioed demagog (we all know and hate) in the “emotional” method of communication.
It worked in a society of people completely torn apart by economic problems, bitterness over recent (within 20 years) historical events, etc.
I don’t think it will work in our current political/economic environment.
Appropriate to this would be to quote a great American leader, Abraham Lincoln, and say, “You can fool some of the people all of the time, all of the people some of the time. But you can’t fool ALL of the people ALL of the time.”
As has been noted by others: “Pay no attention to the MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN!” I guess trying to say the leaked data is fabricated is like Dorthy saying, “Toto! Toto! Come back here.”
karus says that, according to Briffa, the “decline” is in the tree ring density, not temperature, owing to the recent divergent correlation of the rings to temperature. He concludes “it’s just good science”.
I’ll propose that if the tree rings show a known divergence since the measured record, and the cause is unknown, then they are thoroughly invalid as proxy without a measured reference. Insufficient sample sizes, unknown variables, and manipulation of data? That’s just bad science.
I was disappointed that Varney didn’t just hit Weiss straight up with the fact that the email’s authors have themselves acknowledged the authenticity. We need mainstream media to employ (as in use) topic-educated interviewers so that Weiss-like Weasels can’t get away with claims that amount to Bernie Madoff assuring us that our accounts are on solid ground and the evidence against him was illegally obtained.
We all need to make a concerted effort to contact all the mainstream media outlets with a demand to quit glossing over the issue by having ONLY the accused (and now clearly guilty) parties defending themselves, without addressing the REAL issue of the false science becoming the basis for a sure-to-fail political agenda.
Icarus:
Circular logic warning! If the “correlation between temperature and and tree rings” breaks down, then what assures there is any correlation with the past?
The fact of the matter is the tree ring/temperature correlation is BOGUS, period.
It’s pseudo science mumble jumbo. The king has no new clothes.
I’ve been making this point about the O18/O16 data used for long term (50,000 to 150,000 years) temperature records. It represents the number of thunderstorms in tropical coastal areas (primarily) and applying it to temperature is a STRETCH at best. Some established geo-scientist who has been using it to trace ocean currents and the like needs to stand up on this one and complain about its lack of validity for the climate application!
Peer review… A bunch of con-artists get together and develop a con. Then they break up into several teams and peer review the con in a journal. Result, this is a great investment that will double your money in no time at all and the gullible pour their life savings into it.
I echo the general view that if trees are unable to reflect post 1960 temerature fluctuation or even trends post 1960 then it requires nothing less than a leap of faith to suggest that they are indicative of anything prior to the magic cut off date of 1960.
All that said I was in stitches at poor old Weiss who did, indeed, appear to be shot through some sort of fish-eye lense, poor fellow!
Icarus, if we don’t know why the tree ring data has diverged with recent real temperatures, then it may have diverged in the past pre-instrumental times as well. Therefore, we should not be using tree ring data as a temperature proxy.
Oh yeah, and maybe tree ring data really hasn’t diverged, but the recent instrumental record database has been manipulated.
I guess you can’t think outside the CRU box.
RE MR WEISS
I GUESS BAGDAD BOB REALLY IS STILL ALIVE. GOTTA LOVE THOSE PLASTIC SURGEONS
the guy’s eyes started to get weird there. lol
The bbc has believed in two things for the last 10 or so years 1.Tony Blair and the labouir party are great and Global warming.Their first belief is now a bust so they have to hang on to the second. It seems that the only way they can do that is report anything that can by whatever tenious link be attached to it as climate change.
In the mean time the met office who are given lots of air time can not even forcast a 1000 year event( they forcast 100mm of rain in Cumbria when there was over 300mm ) but have somehow managed to get figures to tell us this year is one of the warmest on record.
I nominate Dan Weiss for MVP (most valuable player) on the skeptic’s team.
If I were the leader of the AGW camp, I wouldn’t let Dan Weiss within a mile of a microphone much less a camera.
Here is a clear example of someone speaking on behalf of AGW Scientists and again distorting climate facts in front of the tv public and again misleading the public . Dan Weiss said that global warming was unequivocal , that sea levels had risen 1 ½ inches and the temperatures had gone up 0.5 C degrees in the last dozen years
The fact is that climate warming has been non-existent for the last 9-10 years [ decline of[ – 0.0083/year] based on a composite of 4 major data sources between [jan/2001 and sept/2009.]
Sea level rise is non existent and flat since 2006 and had been rising at an average rate of only about 3.3 mm per year since 1994. There has been no unusual rise in this rate for 15 years.
In a nutshell, there is no unequivocal climate warming for the last 10 years :
These kind of misleading statements by the AGW supporting scientists are
happening every day around us and need to be challenged every time they happen . The CRU incident is just the latest pattern of disception and misinformation that has been going on for years .
I am hoping and seeing some encouraging signs that this may be tipping point that exposes the bias in much of the media today. If a majority of people begin to realize that many of their traditional news sources have been filtering stories to push a socialist/statist agenda. If people start questioning what they see and hear; then searching for opposing views and deciding who has made an honest and logical argument THEN there will be real hope for the free world IMO