Excerpts from the Telegraph:
A week after my colleague James Delingpole, on his Telegraph blog, coined the term “Climategate” (Note: Delingpole reports via email he got it from WUWT, commenter Bulldust coined the phrase at 3:52PM PST Nov 19th – Anthony) to describe the scandal revealed by the leaked emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, Google was showing that the word now appears across the internet more than nine million times. But in all these acres of electronic coverage, one hugely relevant point about these thousands of documents has largely been missed.
The reason why even the Guardian‘s George Monbiot has expressed total shock and dismay at the picture revealed by the documents is that their authors are not just any old bunch of academics. Their importance cannot be overestimated, What we are looking at here is the small group of scientists who have for years been more influential in driving the worldwide alarm over global warming than any others, not least through the role they play at the heart of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Professor Philip Jones, the CRU’s director, is in charge of the two key sets of data used by the IPCC to draw up its reports. Through its link to the Hadley Centre, part of the UK Met Office, which selects most of the IPCC’s key scientific contributors, his global temperature record is the most important of the four sets of temperature data on which the IPCC and governments rely – not least for their predictions that the world will warm to catastrophic levels unless trillions of dollars are spent to avert it.
Dr Jones is also a key part of the closely knit group of American and British scientists responsible for promoting that picture of world temperatures conveyed by Michael Mann’s “hockey stick” graph which 10 years ago turned climate history on its head by showing that, after 1,000 years of decline, global temperatures have recently shot up to their highest level in recorded history.
Given star billing by the IPCC, not least for the way it appeared to eliminate the long-accepted Mediaeval Warm Period when temperatures were higher they are today, the graph became the central icon of the entire man-made global warming movement.
Since 2003, however, when the statistical methods used to create the “hockey stick” were first exposed as fundamentally flawed by an expert Canadian statistician Steve McIntyre, an increasingly heated battle has been raging between Mann’s supporters, calling themselves “the Hockey Team”, and McIntyre and his own allies, as they have ever more devastatingly called into question the entire statistical basis on which the IPCC and CRU construct their case.
…
There are three threads in particular in the leaked documents which have sent a shock wave through informed observers across the world. Perhaps the most obvious, as lucidly put together by Willis Eschenbach (see McIntyre’s blog Climate Audit and Anthony Watt’s blog Watts Up With That), is the highly disturbing series of emails which show how Dr Jones and his colleagues have for years been discussing the devious tactics whereby they could avoid releasing their data to outsiders under freedom of information laws.
Read the complete essay at the Telegraph
It will be interesting to watch the output of the climate science journals in the coming months to see how they any have been affected by this. The quality of reviews, quality of publication, etc.
Please support Christopher by putting in comments below his article. I have.
Maybe, just maybe the MSM will look further and deeper into the murky depths of this scandal. And a scandal it is………
Booker writes a damning article…. and rightly so. The scientific conduct of CRU is nothing less, then an absolute scandal.
The people, as our Politicians repeat over and over again, who Write the “Science”, are nothing less then proven scoundrels, who have been caught cooking the books.
The hypothesis of AGW is flawed and a fraud to boot.
But they were right, things are “heating up.”
Meanwhile back at the ranch, our Sydney Morning Herald today runs this headline : “Commonwealth unites against climate change” and as you guessed, still no mention of ClimateGate !
Is the silence of the mainstream press just politics and/or are the media mogels somehow set up to make mega bucks out of emissions trading ? Follow the money for a real story.
But the BBC remains largely silent on the issue. Is this internal bias or government pressure? UK citizens, complain to the BBC and write to your MP.
IWth all due respest it didn’t take much imagination to coin the term ‘Climategate’
Almost every scandal since Watergate has included the suffix -gate
Excellent article. Not too much technical gibberish. Gets the relevant points across nicely!!
Russia Today has 2 clips online,one has an interview with Ex Uk minister.
“A group of scientists are so loyal to each other that they’re determined to agree with each other even more than they are determined to agree with the facts. So if the facts no longer correspond with their theories, they try and change the facts rather than their theories. And the people who benefit from it are the scientists themselves: they feel morally superior leading a crusade apparently to save the world and they get large grants from the government,” Lilley said.
http://rt.com/Top_News/2009-11-24/scientists-rather-change-facts.html
Here in Aus there is still very little reporting in the msm – except of course from Andrew Bolt, unfortunately he is labelled a denier who doesn’t care about the future. The rest of the MSM especially the ABC see the whole issue as irrelevant. From what I read of the scandal so do most of the governments of the world and it is full steam ahead with Emission Trading Schemes and Copenhagen. Surely some government needs to say whoa, lets check the facts
That’s it. Impossible to cover up, beyond the inevitable attempts we will have to witness from the political establishment. Booker appears in actual print. Delingpole, bless his cotton socks, has been banging the drum in the online only edition. The Times is finally reporting too.
Largely thanks to you at WUWT, and the commenters here.
I’d be ecstatic if it wasn’t for the collateral damage these guys have caused, to science, their honest colleagues, to fantastic old institutions like the Royal Society – motto ‘Nullius in Verba’, On the Word of No-one.
Sad. But so relieved.
Now to turn the tanker round.
Bull Dust dubbed it first and I recorded his contribution for posterity.
“TonyB (16:11:29) :
Bulldust (15:52:36) : said
“Hmmm how long before this is dubbed ClimateGate?”
At 15:52:36, Bulldog”
Tonyb
I do science for a living and I am apalled! Deleting raw data is the most heinous crime that can be committed by any scientist. The actions of the CRU are criminal by all scientific principals and ethics, That they are supported by other climate scientists around the world (in both hemispheres) is disgusting!
oops, “principles”… I am so angry I hit submit too soon
Astounding article. I never thought I would see something like this in MSM print. Even the Economist has been a lot more guarded with its two articles on Climategate this week. 100+ years of high integrity history or advertising revenue for them to consider.
The 9am Andrew Marr show (BBC) has just started and they have the leader of the green party in, with no counterweight by the looks of it. A mention of global warming science being overplayed but it’ll just be a whitewash. Now I do make myself angry for this Sunday by watching it or not…!
BBC REPORTED SUPPRESSED LEAKED EMAILS
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1231763/BBC-weatherman-ignored-leaked-climate-row-emails.html
“The BBC has become tangled in the row over the alleged manipulation of scientific data on global warming.
One of its reporters has revealed he was sent some of the leaked emails from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia more than a month ago – but did nothing about them.
Despite the explosive nature of some of the messages – which revealed apparent attempts by the CRU’s head, Professor Phil Jones, to destroy global temperature data rather than give it to scientists with opposing views – Paul Hudson failed to report the story.
This has led to suspicions that the scandal was ignored because it ran counter to what critics say is the BBC’s unquestioning acceptance in many of its programmes that man-made climate change is destroying the planet. “
Maybe it’s time to give Nick Griffin our support, he’s off to Copenhagen…..
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2009/11/28/taxpayers-will-pay-for-bnp-leader-nick-griffin-s-5-star-copenhagen-trip-115875-21856491/
I left a comment, and usually do. I just think that for the most part we are really going to get nowhere. Just watching the Marr show on BBC with Mariella Frostrup and Matthew Paris reviewing the papers. They (and everybody else on the telly, for that matter) seem to accept that there will be agreement and eventually legislation on climate change, and they all seem to accept that it’s real and something needs to be done. No-one questions that the science could be wrong, or that the figures are fiddled, climate change is just happening, and it’s all out fault, and by introducing global governance it’s all going to be stopped dead in its tracks. Marr also interviewed that horrendous green woman, Caroline Lucas and hung on her every word without question.
She said, in defence of the CRU, that “you can’t equate climate to temperature”, amongst other things when the question of the E mail leaks was raised, and just brushed over the whole issue as a “bit of an embarrassment”, and that “although temperatures over the last 10 years may have shown cooling, over the last 100 years, they have been rising”
It’s truly unbelievable how apparently intelligent people can take all this on board without question, or batting an eyelid – are they aware of the possible consequences? Do they care?
It’ll all be too late, soon. We’ll’ be sold down the river, our economies ruined (more so than they are already), deprived of our way of life, robbed of our cash and probably freezing to boot.
“out fault” should, of course be “our fault”. Fingers not working this morning.
I think what is happening is this is causing people who never otherwise would have, to take a look at the other side. Instead of finding wild loonies intent on destroying the planet, they are finding a much more methodical and open approach that has uncovered some serious doubts that need to be discussed.
There is the email, which leads to the code, which leads to the non reproducibility, which ultimately leads people to look how some of this is actually derived. At that point you see things like temp records being grafted onto truncated proxy records, you see data being adjusted to fit models, you see intentional misrepresentation in graphs, and everyone with high school math gasps. You just can’t do some of that stuff, not even when baking a cake.
Then another article gets written.
There seems to be a substantial separation between the power brokers – politicians, media, activists and the self styled ‘urban elite’, and the bulk of ordinary people.
The uprising is occurring in phenomenal numbers against what they’ve passively seen for years as a blatant fraud / con trick, but have previously viewed merely as a minority issue fit for green cranks and extremists. Now it’s at the forefront of the political agenda and the threat is suddenly very real.
We’ve had enough and the people are revolting!
[snip]
Thank you Christopher for being almost the only source of information and comment in the UK on the climate fraud.
It’s a pity that The Telegraph has such a Jekyll & Hyde attitude on the subject and that much of your good work is often neutralized by the propaganda writings of Leane, Gray et al. Don’t the editors ever read the response to the numerous articles on both sides which show a massive majority of its readers don’t believe the AGW rubbish and that the Telegraph is doing a great disservice not only to truth, but to the opinions and interests of its own readership and the interests of the UK and society as a whole?
Perhaps in view of these latest revelations, you will now be allowed to report on that other great scandal emanating from the same institution, the UEA CRU and on which you have been noticeably silent, the “One Tree” Briffa saga.
We certainly need a high profile Public Inquiry into Climategate. (Whether we get one is another matter.)
It is absolutely the case, however, that Lord Rees is absolutely unacceptable as he has completely bemired himself – and the Royal Society – in the AGW hoax.
Lord Rees would be as good a choice as getting Harold Shipman to Chair an Inquiry into Health Patient Care or to use Tom Cruise to conduct an Inquiry into religious cults.
It is no good suggesting Lord Monckton, obviously. But the Inquiry has to be Chaired by someone like a senior High Court Judge who has no entrenched views on AGW.
I have written to my MP and Phil Willis MP who chairs the House of Commons Select Committee on Science & Technology, urging this course of action. Isuggest other UK readers do the same.
I don’t think we’ll succeed. But we must try.