A series of events appears to be unfolding in the UK that provide for a serial story. As they say in the news biz “it has legs”.
Two more stories have emerged from the Guardian by Fred Pearce. They read like Climate Audit narratives rather than Guardian stories we’ve come to know in the past. In fact, Climate Audit is heavily cited, a first that I can recall.
Here are the two headlines:
and this one….
The Guardian is keeping up the pressure on UEA/CRU and Dr. Jones. It’s almost like a “death spiral” to borrow a phrase from Dr. Mark Serreze of NSIDC.
I would not be surprised if resignations are being considered.
h/t to Dr. Richard North of the EU Referendum for links
UPDATE: It appears that the Guardian reporter has tipped his hand. WUWT commenter “dodgy geezer” writes:
…note this comment from the Guardian, explaining why they seem to be addressing the skeptical line for the first time. It seems they are building the story into a big ‘disproof’ of the skeptical position. Find it at:
………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Question – What is the purpose for publishing all these articles by Fred Pearce?
Many thanks for your comments and questions. The fall-out from the hacked UEA emails is the hottest story in climate science at the moment and a lot of claims about what they tell us have been flying around since they were made public in November.
The Guardian’s editorial line is that global warming is happening and caused by human actions, but that does not mean we are blind to contradictory evidence. It would be remiss of us journalistically to ignore a story like this where the actions of leading scientists are being seriously called into question.
We asked Fred to do a thorough investigation into some of the unanswered questions.
Is there evidence in the emails of data manipulation? Is there evidence of abuse of peer review and FOI? Is there evidence of “hiding” temperature declines? Is there evidence of fraud and conspiracy? etc etc
The answer to most of these questions turned out to be no. But it would be wrong of us not to have asked them. The aim of this investigation (which continues tomorrow) was to produce a more nuanced account of what went on behind the scenes of climate science than has appeared elsewhere. Some of it is not pretty, but significantly, the science of global warming has not been seriously challenged.
J Randerson
………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
It may be that Jones will be made the sacrifice for the FoI transgressions, so that they can get the bus back on the road.
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Dodgy Geezer 17:16:04
I just read the article and don’t know how to respond??
What the hell planet is that man on???
The BBC is pushing anti AGW.??? I’ll have to have a while to think on that. Its sad, so sad. I may have to go to bed and sleep on it.
Mike U.K. (17:27:17),
Thanks for the correction on Fred Pearce’s name. I wouldn’t want him to think I was referring to anyone else.
This site alone [WUWT] is fast approaching 35 million hits, and there are many, many more sites skeptical of the IPCC, the CRU, NASA, NOAA, and their paid sycophants.
Word of their shenanigans is getting out. Sooner or later they’re going to have to admit they made up the data as they went along. And as Dan Rather now knows, “fake but accurate” is a failed defense.
Don’t trust The Guardian, they are part of scam. They used to have RealClimate down as a partner site, although that seems to have gone. They’re spinning the Mann investigation as well.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/03/climate-scientist-michael-mann
royfomr (17:31:09),
You’re right. Even though that’s what I think [and even more so, after just finishing reading a couple of Pearce’s articles], I should not have used ‘liars’ when referring to him and the BBC. That wasn’t nice.
“Mendacious” would be a more appropriate term.
Something has certainly changed over at the Guardian. George Monbiot’s blog seems to be less moderated now. Any Sceptic that used to post was taken down within minutes, a sure sign, in my book, not to waste ones time reading anything printed there.
Trust the Guardian? Only if its hanging on a piece of string in my toilet! The reporters and staff at the rag are similar to lots of scientists. Stay onside or funds will dry up!
As for the BBC mans approach to Anthony, maybe the investigation of bias at the Beeb has some people worried. Just maybe they are looking at the position Jones had got himself into.
Anyway, back to the weather 😉
I would be highly suspicious of overtures from the malicious media.
Remember “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.” and “A leopard does not change his spots.” One needs to perform a scruples check on them to see if they have any.
AGW theory is getting ready to implode, the MSM is running for the cover of “unbiased reporting”. the politicians and MSM will just blame it on the scientists. taxpayers pick up the tab.
If The Guardian is thinking that they can just cut a Jones-shaped lump of gangrene from AGW and convince everyone that all is right with the global warming world afterwards I think they are in for a shock. Let’s not forget that we, as WUWT readers, are aware of many of the problems with AGW so The Guardian articles merely scratch the surface, but most people have seen little or nothing which is sceptical.
In the UK anyone who isn’t particularly interested in the subject may well have previously seen nothing on TV and read nothing much in the papers from a sceptical point of view. Those few articles which have appeared have previously been totally in the right-leaning press and hence easily written off by anyone with a different political outlook.
These new articles in a non-right paper may well cause a huge disillusionment for a lot of previously ignorant people which a “climate science is otherwise squeaky clean” coda will do little to reverse.
Once the genii is out of the bottle…
RE REPLY: I suppose the photo of flames used with this caption
Why should that bother anyone? Copy editors often go for the sensational. Harassment of scientists does bother me, though. Mann is being basically exonerated – he did nothing wrong – but all these “investigations”, including those following the stolen e-mails, turn into time sinks. Of course, the perps are safely immune from FOIA requests – I doubt anyone here is willing to have their e-mails made public.
Have I attacked anyone in my comments? No – I was just pointing out that while celebrating the latest writings of Fred Pearce, your readers might be interested in the other articles he has written. And what the h-e-double-hockey-stick is “hid and snipe”?
REPLY: The implication of harrasment with the house in flames? You are blind
PaulH (15:23:35) :
Visit http://www.bluehill.org/instruments/instruments.html and click on the images under “Sunshine Instruments” near the bottom for a photo of one in use and the paper record it produces.
I’ll never understand how people know something is when the evidence is that it is not proven, and while more and more the evidence is piling up that it is not true.
“PaulH (15:23:35) :
What is the purpose of the glass sphere in the Gloomian (oops Guardian) photo of the Yamal weather station?
REPLY: Its a Campbell-Stokes sunshine duration recorder – Anthony”
And here I was thinking that it was the IPCC’s crystal ball………
I should have added and no one can see the data.
The mental image that I have is that the alarmist AGW argument has been a giant game of Jenga and we all know how that game ends. They over-stretched and toppled the tower themselves with the Copenhagen fiasco being the final brick. As the tower falls, the complicit media are faced with a dilemma – do they support the narrative that they have helped build up or do they honour a more personal narrative of journalists being “truth-seekers”.
I’m afraid that the Guardian thinks its a lot smarter than it actually is in attempting to deal with this dilemma through compartmentalising ‘bad’ scientists from ‘good’ science. They’ll soon find out that there will always be another scientist to throw under the bus…
As previously noted, the comments are the most interesting part of the articles. I found the following one of the most interesting:
Fentonchem
4 Feb 2010, 2:01AM
“timber hauled from the permafrost of the Yamal peninsula”
Trees do not grow in permafrost.
The Yamal peninsula is, at present, permafrost.
The ‘team’ show that the Yamal peninsula is warmer now than at any time in the past.
The Yamal tree series proves that the temperature of the permafrost Yamal peninsula is higher than it has been for more that 1500 years.
These tree rings of trees found in the permafrost clearly demonstrate that there are no trees in the permafrost. Q.E.D.
Sounds like dodgy science.
Just weighing in. It’s great that the Guardian and others are finally owning up to the *problems* with climate science. Their now just discovering stuff that many of us knew long ago and was widely reported on the blogs. And they’re reporting it like its news!
Unfortunately, I get the impression they think the problems are minor, and primarily a PR problem. They want to sweep this (climategate, glaciergate, disastergate, amazongate, climingmagazinegate, studentpapergate, Mannomaticgate, etc…I can’t keep up!) under the rug. They’re positioning themselves for “Sure, a few mistakes were made, but the science is still sound. Just a few bad apples.” And they will probably throw a few inconvenient souls under the bus (Jones, Pachauri, and perhaps Mann for a long shot!).
We need to keep the pressure on. Thanks to Anthony, Steve, Jeff, Chiefio, and many, many others for keeping their feet to the fire. But now is not the time to celebrate victory – the battle is just beginning.
>>You only have to look at this appalling piece from
>>today’s issue (the Graun is supposed to be a serious
>>newspaper) to see that:
>> http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/feb/03/bbc-climate-change-denier
You know they are running scared when they start mentioning the tin-foil hats. I have debated many times with these kind of guys on other forums, and the format is always the same.
a. Rational and lively debate.
b. They are beginning to lose the argument.
c. Copious verbal abuse and stigmatisation.
d. Declaration you are wearing a tin-foil hat.
e. If they want to be abusive, I turn up the rhetoric a notch.
f. Screams of horror that I could say such things to such pure, white and innocent beings. Shock, horror and hurt feelings all around.
g. They leave the forum.
.
With the Gruniad (Guardian), we have got to step d. .
.
My take on this: go read Sir Humphrey’s take on how to handle issues like this.
The take home message is simple: embrace the person or position who you intend to destroy………
Beware Greeks bearing gifts………..
Re: Dodgy Geezer (Feb 3 15:21),
[quoting Guardian’s comment]
“Some of it is not pretty, but significantly, the science of global warming has not been seriously challenged”
This is the same line that Borenstein [friend of the CRU crew] and his buddies took in that AP “analysis” that hit many front pages on Dec. 13. But, to the Guardian’s credit, unlike Borenstein et al, they certainly see more problems than AP did.
“Is there evidence in the emails of data manipulation? Is there evidence of abuse of peer review and FOI? Is there evidence of “hiding” temperature declines? Is there evidence of fraud and conspiracy? etc etc
The answer to most of these questions turned out to be no.”
*sigh*. Turned out to be? Turned out to be???
How can they know that because the data has not been released?
How can they even claim that when they are running the headline that they are?
It seems that the Guardian’s left hand doesn’t know what its even further left hand is doing.
Roll on the Select Committee! The Iraq War committee is dredging up some interesting stuff, let’s hope this one does too.
Some of the MSM have realised that they can sell more newspapers by reporting the scandalous behavior of CRU and the IPCC. Even the BBC has realised that it needs to adopt a more neutral appearance to keep the punters happy. The various ‘gate’ stories are important, but in the scale of AGW they are peripheral.
The basic climate science is rock solid and so is the scientific consensus and the MSM has kept its distance from that argument.
The sceptics (including me) avidly scan the blogs to find the ‘killer blow’, the disclosure that exposes AGW as a big mistake or hoax. Is that ever going to happen? The basic science depends on just two claims, i.e. steep global temperature rise and CO2 is the cause. Disproving just one of these at MSM level could be critical. Joe, E M Smith and Anthony published the closest to a killer blow just recently but the MSM ignored it.
Obviously they don’t fully believe the evidence and they must be wary of effectively accusing the US Government (or its Agencies) of fiddling the temperatures. What can we do to convince them that we are right? That is the challenge. I would be interested to hear the views of the authors.
I don’t know whether anyone else noticed this. One commenter on the Guardian post asked the question “What is the purpose for publishing all these articles by Fred Pearce?”. This was replied to by staff writer James Randerson, who inter alia replied:
[JRanderson, 3 Feb 2010, 9:30PM, Staff]
“The Guardian’s editorial line is that global warming is happening and caused by human actions…”
In other words, it’s not interested in looking where the science leads. AGW is the editorial line. It is being pushed from the top. Articles must support the AGW agenda even if it’s phoney. If Monbiot and Pearce want to continue writing for the Guardian they are obliged to toe this editorial line. Therefore Pearce, who is getting involved in lots of articles now (over two months too late) simply cannot behave as a proper investigative journalist since he has to conform to an editorial line. This thus taints everything he says. Do bear this in mind when reading Pearce’s articles in the Guardian.
Not A Carbon Cow (17:08:05) :
John Finn (15:48:26) :
You can’t be following along and be serious about the below:
I can and I am. Your list contains not one shred of evidence that the surface temperature record has been manipulated to show temperatures warmer than they would otherwise be.
This allegation can simply be brushed aside by showing the agreement in trends over the past 20 years between UAH, RSS, GISS and Hadley. It can be pointed out that UAH is the datase trusted by sceptics. It can also be pointed out that UAH also shows strong warming in the arctic which supports the GISS extrapolation. The arctice summer ice melt since 2000 also supports the GISS extrapolation.
Furthermore ‘accurate’ trend calculation does not necessarily need accurate and precise measurement. AGWers will be able to show that siting issues and UHI have only a negligible effect on the overall trend. Note if there’s no trend in UH – then UH will not affect the trend.
Finally, there has been a surface station project which is intended to highlight poor siting issues across the US. The 30 year US trends (1979-2008) for UAH and GISS are as follows:
GISS +0.25 deg per decade
UAH +0.25 deg per decade
Where’s the problem?
The argument will be messy and, in my opinion, will be blown out of the water. The world has warmed in the past 100 years or so; whether GISS have have over-stated the rate of warming by a couple of hundredths of a degree or so is irrelevant (or will be seen as such). If it hasn’t warmed why are all the solar supporters trying to explain the warming.
Focus on the weaknesses to which AGWers can’t easily respond. The nature ‘trick’, in particular, and the (tree ring) reconstructions, in general, are areas where they are vulnerable. Show that there is nothing ‘unprecedented’ about modern warming. Use the GISS record to show that the world was warming at a similar rate between 1915 and 1945 as it has since ~1975. Use it again to show that the arctic warmed almost 2 degrees in this same period when CO2 levels were barely above pre-industrial levels.
RE: hro001 (00:59:50) :
That’s because the science has not been seriously challenged. Where are the scientific papers showing that CO2 is no longer a greenhouse gas? That CO2 levels are not rising? That warming has not occurred? That a bulk of the recent warming is not due to CO2? That the climate sensitivity is not around 3 degC/doubling?
Accusations are not proof. Do you think that if Pachauri is out of the way that thousands of scientific papers will suddenly disappear? If Mann can be silenced, that glaciers will stop melting? If you want to start earning some cred, publish that surfacestations paper in a reputable journal. If it’s rejected, publish the reviews.
royfomr (15:11:26) :
Think it’s time to reward the Guardian for being brave. I’ve pledged to buy at least one copy a day for all of next week.
All are welcome to join me.
If you are a Brit and don’t have a strong heart, I would skip Wednesday’s edition, which usually contains adverts for +100 pages of non-jobs in the government sector. Gordon B has so trashed our economy that this has become the weekly dose of adding insult to injury.