Posted by Patrick Courrielche Jan 8th 2010 at bigjournalism.com
How a tiny blog and a collective of climate enthusiasts broke the biggest story in the history of global warming science – but not without a gatekeeper of the climate establishment trying to halt its proliferation.
It was triggered at the most unlikely of places. Not in the pages of a prominent science publication, or by an experienced muckraker. It was triggered at a tiny blog – a bit down the list of popular skeptic sites. With a small group of followers, a blog of this size could only start a media firestorm if seeded with just the right morsel of information, and found by just the right people. Yet it was at this location that the most lethal weapon against the global warming establishment was unleashed.
The blog was the Air Vent. The information was a link to a Russian server that contained 61 MB of files now known as Climategate. Within two weeks of the file’s introduction, the story appeared on 28,400,000 web pages.
Not entirely the “death of global warming” as many have claimed – what happened with Climategate is much more nuanced and exponentially more interesting than the headlines convey. What was triggered at this blog was the death of unconditional trust in the scientific peer review process, and the maturing of a new movement – that of peer-to-peer review.
This development may horrify the old guard, but peer-to-peer review was just what forced the release of the Climategate files – and as a consequence revealed the uncertainty of the science and the co-opting of the process that legitimizes global warming research. It was a collective of climate blogs, centered on the work of Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, which applied the pressure. With moderators and blog commenters that include engineers, PhDs, statistics whizzes, mathematic experts, software developers, and weather specialists – the label flat-earthers, as many of their opponents have attempted to brand them, seems as fitting as tagging Lady Gaga with the label demure.
This peer-to-peer review network is the group that applied the pressure and then helped authenticate and proliferate the story.
Now, as expected, the virtual organism that is the global warming establishment resisted release of the weapon. At the first appearance of the Climategate files, which contained a plethora of emails and documents from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit, the virtual organism moved to halt their promulgation. Early on, a few of the emails were posted on Lucia Liljegren’s skeptic blog The Blackboard. Shortly after the post, Lucia, a PhD and specialist in fluid mechanics, received an email from prominent climatologist Gavin Schmidt from the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS). It said in part, “[A] word to the wise… I don’t think that bloggers are shielded under any press shield laws and so, if I were you, I would not post any content, nor allow anyone else to do so.”
In response to my inquiry about his email, Schmidt posited, “I was initially concerned that she might be in legal jeopardy in posting the stolen emails.” Gavin Schmidt was included in over 120 of the leaked correspondence.
Gavin Schmidt
When asked if she thought the Climategate documents were a big deal at first sight, Lucia responded, “Yes. In fact, I was even more sure after Gavin [Schmidt] sent me his note.”
Remember these names: Steven Mosher, Steve McIntyre, Ross McKitrick, Jeff “Id” Condon, Lucia Liljegren, and Anthony Watts. These, and their community of blog commenters, are the global warming contrarians that formed the peer-to-peer review network and helped bring chaos to Copenhagen – critically wounding the prospects of cap-and-trade legislation in the process. One may have even played the instrumental role of first placing the leaked files on the Internet.
Read the rest of the story here.
h/t to Ed Scott from a correctly admonished charles the moderator
kwik (16:25:10),
Thanks for that link.
Here are additional angles:
1. Members of these societies who might be dubious about AGW were afraid to stand up against the fire-breathing activists and vicious, close-minded fatheads who would be mightily offended if anyone tried to stand in the way of their quest for an endorsement.
2. And dubious members they knew they lack the “ammo” and citations to respond to the alarmists’ dozens of talking points.
3. The activists sold their POV by marginalizing dissenters are cranks or crooks, the same way that Jones marginalized McIntyre to the FOI investigator. (To me, this was the most objectionable aspect of Climategate.)
4. The societies were fed a a document containing seemingly conclusive counterpoints to skeptics’ objections, and the societies dug no deeper.
5. The activists marginalized dissenters as “anti-science” types akin to deniers of the link between smoking and cancer, objectors to fluoridation, creationists, etc. This was a smart (though despicable) technique guaranteed to elicit a knee-jerk response.
6. The activists presented an analysis of the situation that looked scientific in that it depended on measuring lots of data, computing a budget based on interacting forces, modeling the system’s behavior, etc. It LOOKS like physics. Since a lot of science bigwigs arrogantly think that science can solve any problem, given time and tools, society officials probably didn’t stop to ask whether this was one of those fields where things are too complex and there are too many potential unknowns for a billiard-ball approach like current climatology to be useful. They just figured, “it walks like a duck,” so “cheers.”
“Stefan (15:38:58) :
@BrendanH
I think you’re replying to
Julian in Wales (11:19:47)”
So I am. Apologies for the error.
anna v (12:22:00) Your personal story …
You make a very good case and I will add that I too did not pay much attention to the global warming band wagon in part because I was busy with other things and I had only a dial-up connection to the internet. We signed up for a DSL connection in September of 2008 and within a few weeks I was a full C-AGW skeptic. The high speed connection provided information that the magazines, newspapers, and earth science publications I received did not. One of the first things I did was go to the Chair of the Physics Department of the local U. and ask for a copy of a modern physics textbook so as to brush up on my old science. That also allowed me to search for information using the correct terms. It helped a lot.
Quote: jorgekafkazar (12:26:41) :
“Science as a pure discipline has died, starting many decades ago. There are tens of thousands of corrupt papers, most of which passed peer review without dissent, and some of which are still being quoted as holy writ in various fields.”
One example, “The supernova trigger for the formation of the solar system,” simply ignored experimental data from 1975 that would have falsified the now-popular model:
http://www.omatumr.com/Data/1975Data.htm
With kind regards,
Oliber K. Manuel
Sharon (06:19:30) : Mods, forgive me, without a preview function, I know not what I post.
There is a brilliant “Greasemonkey” application which gives a preview function to “Submit Comment” using Firefox for WUWT?
I picked it up from Climate Audit, but cannot find the story there today.
Click this line for a start.
It is intriguing as to why most politicians and press globally are uncritically pro-AGW.
One suggestion I read is that it is a cover for the fact that we are past ‘peak oil’, which will require similar ‘green’ initiatives, but could cause panic if aired as fact. It was interesting to see that the French carbon tax was thrown out because all the exemptions meant that it only really applied to large oil users.
Another possibility is that influential people and companies, such as the Wall Street banks, are making huge amounts of money from it.
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I accepted AGW as fact until I saw the UK’s Channel 4 documentary ‘The Great Global Warming Hoax’ [I live in the UK]. It seemed cogent and factual. A few days later a ‘comedian’ [Marcus Brigstocke] appeared on a BBC radio comedy show and basically harangued Channel4 for showing it … the producer was rubbish, the program was rubbish, etc. and ‘How very DARE they suggest global warming is not man made’! I then spent 6 hours on the web and my vote went to Channel 4. At the time I just supposed that the warm-mongers were simply mistaken, and not propagating a blatent fraud as now seems apparent.
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On Friday’s BBC World Business Report it said the UK government would be awarding a £160 billion contract for wind turbines later that day. I did not see anything on the later news programs so I do not know what happened. I think these turbines are supposed to supply 17% of the UK’s energy. Several coal-fired power stations are due to be decommissioned in 5 years time with no replacements planned so it may be that Gordon Brown [‘Saver of the World’] intends the turbines to replace these! Another contributor pointed out that the UK’s biggest turbine had been becalmed for the past three weeks! I can see a very unpleasant future here in the UK! In the upcoming elections all three main parties are fanatically pro-AGW so no choice there. The BBC recently said that over 50% of the UK ‘still’ did not believe in AGW. I suspect that might be rather higher now, especially if Piers Corbyn’s prediction that the cold ‘snap’ will last well in to February.
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The ‘green shirts’ worry me – we may be creating a band of fanatical terrorists who could do far more damage than Al-Queda ever could if things start going against them.
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Apologies for a waffly post!
Climategate turning into Pressgate
Kendra (10:22:01) : … Well, shall I try to finish the article or will it just get worse?
Cannot advise on that, Kendra, but can say it was worthwhile if only because it generated your very interesting and thought-provoking comment. Thank you.
Roger Knights (09:50:46) :
Roger – I concur with your observation on the AGW “powers that be” continuing to ride on forcefully despite an obvious turn of events. I agree that there is considerable risk politically and academically if this movement implodes in the near future. Frankly, I amazed more have not jumped off the AGW train, to at minimum – stand by the tracks for awhile and see what happens…
Roger Carr (17:41:27) :
There is a brilliant “Greasemonkey” application which gives a preview function to “Submit Comment” using Firefox for WUWT?
I picked it up from Climate Audit, but cannot find the story there today.
Click this line for a start.
Testing testing.
Roger Carr (17:41:27) :
There is a brilliant “Greasemonkey”
It installed, but I cannot get it to put any pages on its scripts choice. So it is not working.
I have windows XP home edition so maybe that is the problem.
anna v (21:30:21) :
It installed, but I cannot get it to put any pages on its scripts choice. So it is not working.
I have windows XP home edition so maybe that is the problem.
Greasemonkey is what the application at Climate Audit runs on.
Here is the link for “CA Assistant,” pointing at the comment from the programmer announcing the latest version.
I already posted about it on “Tips and Notes” after finding out the new version works on WUWT as well. However, I also found out the cool buttons for certain HTML tags look nice, the result with Preview will look pretty, but when you really post here you will only get whatever HTML the site will allow you to have. So the superscript and subscript will show in Preview but not after posting, might be a few others working the same.
Oh, and it works on Firefox, whether on Windows or Linux. It works on certain variants, such as Iceweasel with Debian Linux as I have. So having XP Home is (likely) not the issue, you just need the CA Assistant script.
Stefan (12:55:44):
I myself have wondered in the past whether to mention anything about Spiral Dynamics (SD), but in most threads here, it would seem OT.
What you don’t say (and this isn’t a criticism! :-)) is that people in different states of what one might loosely term “psychological disposition”, according to SD, are allocated different mnemonic “Colours”. At any given time, broadly speaking, most people within a given society are deemed to be in a characteristic state (on average). In Western societies, for instance, the average state may currently be somewhere around Orange, or Green (not to be confused with the usual connotation of “Green”, though the two frequently coincide), having come out of a preceding Orange state. Orange probably started to become prevalent in Europe around the Enlightenment and led to the development of modern capitalist, democratic, technological societies. Then, as you say, probably with the post-war baby-boomer generation, we started to see the rise of the Green meme.
It’s important to realise that there have always been some individuals in all epochs, however few, who have been in states more “advanced” than average. These have often been the movers and shakers, those who have had enormous influence on the evolution of human societies. They were the first in earlier periods to see the world in novel ways; we forget that the average mediaeval person, for example, wasn’t like us, just happening to live centuries ago. No: s/he actually perceived the world differently, wasn’t able for dear life to see things as we take them for granted today.
In non-western cultures, we still see predominantly pre-Orange societies – such as Blue and even Red. Blues tend to be conservatives with a small “c”, and are often conventional religionists; they deem scripture/ideology-inspired morality important. In the West, at least in Europe, we see less and less of Blue, but in the States, it has a substantial constituency. This may be why Creationism is such a big issue there, but much less so in Europe. Red, incidentally, is where the likes of Ghengis Khan were at: Reds don’t give a monkeys about issues of morality (it’s more to do with pride/shame) or about seeing things from any other point of view than their own. We still see them today in tribal societies.
We all have a bit of the different Colours in us, and each Colour can be expressed in a positive or a negative way. Ken Wilber, the great guru of integral studies, bangs on about “The Mean Green Meme” (MGM), which seems to be having a field day in present times. Yes, the good aspects of Green include sensitivity and inclusivity, but on the mean side, it gives rise to things like Political Correctness and unquestioning acceptance of AGW – or any suitable Trojan Horse. This feeds its tendency to categorise any who (seemingly) disagree as being mentally deficient Neanderthals. This may be the source of the appalling hubris of those who think:
1. Human beings are the most potent force in nature.
2. Many human beings are purposely stymieing their agenda.
3. Only they hold the right opinions and attitudes.
4. Their ends, doubtless well-intentioned, are much more important than the means used.
5. Knowledge is relative; this links in with “post-normal science”. To some extent, they may be right about the relativity of knowledge, but that doesn’t imply that any scientific theory is as good as any other. Science doesn’t work like ideology.
You won’t find Mean Greenies bothering themselves to study the science in detail, or with a completely open mind. They don’t actually care much about the science: they’re much more focused on it as a useful tool to get them, and everyone else, where they think it’s best to be. They can’t really appreciate the importance of the truth of the means; they’re much more concerned with the truth of the ends.
And those ends are probably noble: one important (and positive) aspiration of the Green Meme is to have an egalitarian world focused on spiritual rather than materialistic values. I dare say there’s a little bit of positive Green (or possibly even a lot) in many WUWT readers; but what turns them on most is the truth of the means, if I might put it that way.
I for one care passionately about the truth/untruth of AGW, and want to understand the science as best I can so that I can make up my own mind about it. This is because I have a very strong belief that the best possible action one can perform is the one based on truth. The best truth I am aware of at the moment is that AGW is very far from settled science and that we shouldn’t do anything precipitously to combat human CO2 production. Maybe those with superior scientific understanding than mine are able to take it further – and feel they can justifiably say AGW is *definitely* wrong. I have a strong *suspicion* it is, but can’t be 100% sure.
I think it’s useful to be aware that others who aren’t primarily Green are also in the mix. I think I see the mean sides of Orange – and maybe a bit of atavistic Blue and even Red – in the CRU emails. Pure mean Blue may be represented by those out to make money, at the same time seeing the world and its “endless” resources as having been created by God to be exploited by man. Mean Reds may be represented by third-world dictators who saw Copenhagen as a chance to enhance their power and benefit their tribal kleptocracies.
So, according to SD as I understand it, there is something rather complex going on in human society right now, maybe in its own way just as complex as climate itself. We tend to look at things from our own POV, and find it mysterious that there is such seeming polarisation on the issue of AGW. Yes, there are two sides, and many choose one or the other without adequate consideration of the science (but not all do).
We’re all looking at the same data, but the difference is, we are looking at it from different angles and have different motivations. However, there’s a regrettable tendency on both sides to demonise the other, to tar it with the same, monochromatic, brush. So all AGWers may be seen as New-age nutcases, and all sceptics as uncaring money-grabbers in the pay of Big Oil. But in reality, it is far, far more nuanced than that. And it’s only because the issue is of such great moment that it is so noticeable, and so many people have such strong feelings about it.
The stage after Green is Yellow, the start of what Wilber et al. regard as the “integral” stages. I don’t want to go there, because I think he and his acolytes seem to have rather superior opinions of themselves despite asserting that all the Colours or Memes have some validity and should be honoured. I suspect quite a few of them are actually pretty close to mean Greenies themselves.
None of what I’ve said should be taken as an expert analysis of SD, and my mistakes (there are bound to be some) are my own. Nor am I touting SD as actually being correct; only that it has a certain amount of useful explanatory power that can get one thinking out of the box a little.
In my opinion, what I see at WUWT and other sceptical blogs is a community of people amongst whom there are sizeable numbers who are focused, above all else, on discovering the truth. I have less often detected this on pro-AGW sites, but I won’t say it’s completely absent; sincerity isn’t the exclusive preserve of sceptics.
At the end of the day, we’re all human beings with human faults and failings, and in some areas, most of us are capable of acting on the “mean” side of any given meme according to specific circumstances (come on – I’ll bet you’ve acted tribally on occasion, or conspicuously taken the ideologically-driven “high ground”, for instance). If we can keep this in mind, then we can perhaps look more charitably at those who “oppose” us and get less wound up by them. After all, being wound up is, strictly speaking, irrelevant to any search for truth; and may, if we let it, get in the way of our finding it.
On a final point, there is a difference between “container” and “content” in SD. The same underlying world view (content) may come in superficially different containers. Greens are frequently passionately concerned about the environment, but not all of them will necessarily accept AGW as the main issue. Some may focus on such things as biodiversity or population control, for example. Some of them are on the good side of the meme, and can be very caring and sensitive people with sensible suggestions. And the same goes for all of the different “Colours”. A well-balanced human being would be able, according to specific circumstances, to draw on the good side of each; and as for the rest of us, well, as I’ve said, we may lapse into meanness in any of them.
Most of the press and other MSM have been in the control of a small number of people, who use it to influence the public regarding their own agenda. With a few exceptions the ‘freedom of the press’ was lost some years ago, and the resultant tame pussy cat pushes propaganda and false memes.
This resulted in the rise of the Blogosphere as an organ or free speech and investigative journalism. It also provided a meeting ground for like-minded people to exchange information and views anonymously.
Without the Blogosphere, many scandals would have been buried by the MSM, and I expect we wouldn’t have heard much about the sceptics view of AGW or the Climategate documents if it didn’t exist.
It is my view that while subverting the peer review process was bad enough, the CRU/Hadley/GISS/IPCC cabal real crime was subverting the whole scientific method, and turning the whole of climate science into a political football.
There are three kinds of lies – lies, damned lies, and Catastrophic Anthropomorphic Global Warming.
kadaka (22:21:22) :
Greasemonkey is what the application at Climate Audit runs on.
Here is the link for “CA Assistant,” pointing at the comment from the programmer announcing the latest version.
I installed the CA Assistant
Lets see if something happened
ah, just got the preview button.
lets try the italics
Roger,
That may be about the best compliment I ever got! Thank you.
I’d like to also join Indiana – I love a good laugh too (not planning H1N1 shots but do have to be careful with the coffee).
I’d like to use your line, only with de facto attribution of course or do I need permission?:
“May I slip my one-liner under yours?”
Well, off I go to see what other wonderful news and comments there are today (late Sunday morning here).
Thanks to everyone for the kind words. When the whole story is told there will be some other people to thank here. The nice thing about a community project is that there is plenty of thanks to go around, an army of davids where we rely on each other to get things done. My role, all things considered, is slight, PUNY, compared to the years of work that anthony and stevemc have put in. really puny. Hopefully a few good phrases you can use to communicate your ideas more forcefully or funnily. delight and instruct.
different ways of looking at things, hopefully constructive.
Also, most people here and at CA and at Lucia’s know I’m a Lukewarmer. That’s secondary to my commitment to open data; open code; and open debate. basically, that means I’m open to have my mind changed. If they open the data and open the code and I move toward the cool side of the debate, it will be because of the evidence. If I move warm ways, again because of the data. here is what I see: The minute I call somebody a denialist, I basically sour any hope of reasoning with them. The same goes for calling whole classes of people frauds. Err, the Piltdown Mann joke didn’t win me many friends. opps. my bad. I’m pretty sure I’ve called some people sun spot nuts here and there. opps. my bad.
Being a Lukewarmer means I get it from both sides. But you know what?
People who disagree with me here at WUWT treat me a heck of a lot better than my opponents at RC or Tammy’s place. Thanks for that.
Reply: I have no idea how you ended up caught in the spam filter, but here it is released. ~ ctm
Kendra (02:48:46) : (to me) Roger, I’d like to use your line, only with de facto attribution of course or do I need permission?
Permission not needed, nor attribution, Kendra. No ego involved; I just wish to see this dragon slayed.
@Michael Larkin
I’m glad you’re on this forum and I agree with everything you wrote.
In particular, I felt that the tone you convey in your post, is about the importance of respecting other views, that whatever values meme we might be dealing with in a debate, that people still have a right to be who they are, and deserve to be respected.
For me, the multiple lines of Integral model, where cognitive development can be far ahead of moral development, (ie. the clever nazi) is where the humility comes back after reading weighty tomes that state, “if you get this book then you’re probably got some Turquoise active” … yeah… cognitively. Meanwhile my mean little Red and Blue motivations and sub-personalities are running around in the basement. Just to give an example—a bit of a sidetrack but relevant in a way—a friend one day criticised his partner for having behaved outrageously at a party, but her reply was that he was just being “sexist”, for had she been a man, he would have no doubt congratulated her for being so “assertive”.
It is just one of those things that reminds me, how do you understand what someone really wants at their motivational core, when, as you say, the content might be quite different to the container? When a Robert Mugabe claims his country is being ruined by British Imperialism? Or when George Monbiot writes in The Guardian that “Climate change denial is spreading like a contagious disease.” What is the core motivation in each case?
David Ball keeps asking, what do you, the climate change people, really want? What kind of world do you want? I think that’s a really interesting question.
If I recall, Don Beck and Chris Cowan wrote in Spiral Dynamics that a way to understand better, is to begin by asking a person what they want, and then asking them why they want that, and after each answer, keep asking in turn, and why do you want that? Eventually you may both discover the core motivation, the core value, that is active, for that person, on that issue.
For example, two people might both refuse medical advice. On the surface it looks like the same decision. But underneath, one has a Red motivation that nobody is going to put them into an institution (hospital) where their life will be controlled, and the other person has a Green motivation where they’d rather spend time bonding with family and look at the quality of their life. (There must be better examples, I just made that one up.)
The difficulty with the climate change debate, is that on the one hand there are elements that have chosen to pursue highly polarizing tactics. I would suspect that George Monbiot is genuinely morally concerned for the welfare of African poor, but cognitively hasn’t got available a better model for addressing the complexity of that problem, so it is merely anti-capitalist-exploitation. That’s just a guess. People would really need to have a dialogue and see what he says is his core concern.
On the other hand, the debate is very complex, precisely because there are so many different values and mental models in play. There’s an article by Don Beck where he suggests using global warming as an issue to use to speak to multiple values simultaneously, as a superordinate goal, because it affects all values. So there’s even more complexity if some of what is going on is say, the United Nations trying to use Spiral Wizardry and Yellow values to “handle” the world. Could this be the fabled Mean-Yellow?
One way or the other, Climategate seems to be serving an important function, it seems to be about depolarizing the debate. Climategate may be of greatest service in this respect. It frees up people to have more nuanced conversations. Then perhaps we can begin to learn what all the voices really want.
Blogs and Forums have re-established an old institution of what led to the American Republic: Committees of Correspondence.
The original committees, formed from the mid-1760s on, spread truth to and about the power of the time. They planned and coordinated the Continental Congresses, and eventually “proclaimed Liberty throughout the land”.
Thanks to the Internet with blogs like this one, the word may be spread far more swiftly than paper on horseback. It does not even require a tax stamp.
Scant wonder that Prince Waxman wishes to grasp control of the Internet. Let us pray for a resolution similar to that of the Stamp Act, but without blood this time.
There are some great quotes here so let me add a quote that I’ve oft thought about in view of glowbull warmongering and the unholy alliance of guvmint, academia, media and those so-called ‘leading scientists’.
In President Eisenhower’s farewell address, his reference to the ‘military-industrial complex’ is the one that always seems to be remembered first and quoted. However, just a few sentences further, he offers another and in my view a more serious warning…..’Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.’ Sounds quite apropos considering those players at the heart of climategate (or climediagate as I’m more inclined to call it).
kadaka (22:21:22) :
Thanks for the tip, the preview works, but I find that I am missing most of the thread. It says there are 125 entries and I only see maybe 10 . I tried to find whether there is a page counter, with no success.
Help again?
thanks
Kadaka
ignore my last ( not the thanks !).
Just noticed the Settings link on the top right, and changed it so I could have all the comments again.