Professor John Quiggin
Image source here
From Andrew Bolt’s blog at the Herald Sun:
Professor John Quiggin complains of smears by sceptics:
In recent years, science and scientific institutions have come under increasingly vociferous attack, with accusations of fraud, incompetence and even aspirations to world domination becoming commonplace… Scientists have been constrained in fighting back by the fact that they are ethically constrained to be honest, whereas their opponents lie without any compunction.
Ethically unconstrained, Professor John Quiggin smears a sceptic:
In writing my previous post on the “Climategate” break-in to the University of East Anglia computer system, I remained unclear about who was actually responsible for the break-in theft of the emails, which were then selectively quoted to promote a bogus allegation of scientific fraud. Looking over the evidence that is now available, I think there is enough to point to Steven McIntyre as the person, along with the actual hacker or leaker, who bears primary moral responsibility for the crime…
So, to sum up, McIntyre organised the campaign which led to the creation of the file, obtained information from the CRU file system by means he declined to reveal, received the stolen emails shortly after the theft and made dishonest and defamatory use of the stolen information. Whether or not he was directly involved in the theft, or merely created the opportunity and benefited from the proceeds is impossible to determine, and essentially irrelevant.
OK professor, let’s see your evidence beyond this missive.
Somebody needs to educate Quiggin on the CRU ftp security blunder that was “the mole”. He doesn’t get it, and then proceeds to use that as “evidence” against McIntyre. It’s comical.
Here’s Professor Quiggin’s page at the University of Queensland:
http://www.uq.edu.au/economics/johnquiggin/
http://www.uq.edu.au/economics/index.html?page=15898
Does it strike anyone else that Professor John Quiggin’s photo above looks like an inmate or PD dept. intake photo? Something The Smoking Gun or TMZ would have on their websites?
Is Professor John Quiggin projecting?
.
.
The prof claims,
“McIntyre organised the campaign which led to the creation of the file,”
THAT tidbit seems to reinforce the early assessment/speculation that the files were compiled to respond to a Freedom of Info Request! And someone at CRU did that compilation….
…all of which makes one wonder what else is still lurking in the archives….
By the way, has CRU EVER provided the files per the FOI request(s) and provided them to McI. etc.???
If not, they’re still on the hook to do so–and recent commentary from the UK says that’s the law. So, have they complied, or, are they still breaking the law?
comical
Keep talking good doctor, you are helping your cause SO much.
Wow. That just blows my mind. Do climate scientists have ANY sense of ethics whatsoever?
If I was Steve, I’d sue this guy for libel.
Er – aren’t there laws about making these sorts of accusations? Libel laws?
Is it just recent that the page http://www.uq.edu.au/economics/johnquiggin/ is entirely blank?
PS to last: Quiggen’s page at Queensland isn’t working. Shocker.
“sniff…sniff”
Nope, doesn’t pass.
Quiggins should not assume that because he wins every game of “Clue,” that he is capable of being an actual detective.
From my point of view the real question is why John Quiggin is focussing on smearing critics?
Obviously there is bias and an intention of misbehavior, considering the fact that the CRU emails gives critics more questions than answers.
John Quiggin should be focusing on invalidate these criticism’s and not try to deduct the real scientific challenge.
Now would be an excellent time to file a libel suit (assuming there is no support for the allegations). There is nothing like getting a bunch of people under oath answering questions to a good trial attorney to find out the truth of the matter. This is particularly attractive approach in a jurisdiction with the English Rule where the loser pays the winner’s legal fees.
Unlike McIntyre, Professor Quiggin seems unaware of the criminal genius of Macavity.
This sad soul is not a scientist. He doesn’t understand the word “evidence” If he is using wishfull thinking for data, what does he do research on? Wishfull data?
I can never remember which one is slander and which one is libel. Either way, I’m guessing that the statement “point to Steven McIntyre as the person” is going to land Quiggen in trouble.
I hope that either Steven McIntyre has a very forgiving character; or John Quiggin has very deep pockets.
They are desperate! It is obvious! Obama says “Overwhelming scientific evidence of Global Warming” in the most serious speech that he gaves every year, the State of the Union Address, and his words are received with *MASSIVE* laughter. That proves how close to defunction Mainly Man Made Warming is, expect the Krugmans, the Stiglitz, the Sachs and the other academics that perpetually tell us that we will reach the paradise if we give even more opressive power to politicians to come along with this nonsense.
It is more obvious than ever that Big Academia, Big Media and Big Bureaucracy is a gigantic machinery for promoting more opressive power for politicians & bureaucrats based on theories that are garbage or downright fraud. I do not mean that all Academia, Media and Bureaucracy are so, I say many of them perpetually promote giving even more opressive power to politicians and bureaucrats; making gargantuan amounts of money through political opression is maybe the oldest profession, having an insane lust for getting opressive power over people is one of the oldest and most destructive passions so if you want opressive power you speack about it in the press or you promote papers according to your point in Academia.
Quiggins personal web page is blank.
I think you have caused Prof. Quiggins web site to crash. Page loading from Australia takes more time, but an infinite wait is ridiculous.
Note to Professor Quiggin:
When someone takes something that they legally have a right to, IT’S NOT THEFT!! In addition, the fact that McIntyre used information that should have been available through the FOIA process does not make him a thief.
Methinks he (Quiggin) doth protest too much!!
Professor John Quiggin is pathetic.
Indeed, he does smear McIntyre with no evidence.
And, this guy is a scientist?
I mean the contents of the e-mails apparently has no impact on his thinking — all he cares about is smearing a reasonable sceptic that called out the fraud.
But it’s too late for a strategy of stonewalling or smearing to work.
That he would drag this out, once again, shows that he doesn’t have much to argue against the substantive points raised in the e-mails.
Hmm. It appears his University web page has been disabled. Here is the Google cached version:
http://74.125.93.132/search?hl=en&q=cache:http://www.uq.edu.au/economics/johnquiggin/&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=
Wow.
It was bad enough when ‘climate scientists’ were merely sloppy hacks and egotistical idealogues.
Add paranoid delusionals to the list.
The real question is – does his University allow this to stand, and thus put their imprimatur on the accusation?
McIntyre should look into getting some volunteer legal resources in Queensland and should immediately file suit for slander – not against Quiggin, but against the University and the University President for condoning this. (Silence implies consent, after all) And then offer to settle for court costs in exchange for Quiggin’s immediate termination.
And yes, that’s a serious recomendation.
LOL, nice juxtaposition Anthony. Obviously, Professor John Quiggin doesn’t believe that ethical constraint to be honest applies to him.
The link to his page (at the bottom) isn’t working.
So he is complaining that the FOI file that was to be released (allegedly) was stolen?
“Over the next few months, CRU started preparing a response to McIntyre which resulted in the creation of a file called FOIA.zip. Over the weekend beginning Friday 13 November, someone located and copied this file from a back-up server at the university’s Climatic Research Unit, and distributed it widely among anti-science blog sites, including McIntyre’s. It’s unclear whether the extraction of the file required sophisticated hacking, simple illegal entry to a poorly protected site, or McIntyre’s “mole”. What is clear, as this report notes is that going after FOIA.zip indicates that someone in McIntyre’s circle of supporters was responsible. As the report says”
http://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2010/03/12/climategatethe-smoking-gun/
So the Information was ready to hand over but it was then stolen and published???
loutish, crude.
. Whether or not he was directly involved in the theft, or merely created the opportunity and benefited from the proceeds is impossible to determine, and essentially irrelevant.
So, it doesn’t matter whether the real world evidence supports your theory,?….
Yep. That’s sound like a climate scientist to me.
Wow! Steve is really under their skin. He’s made them irrational or should I say more irrational.
What a bunch of garbage. I can’t believe I wasted my time actually reading his whole blog entry. It is, however, written in the typical AGW proponent style: Provide an incredible story with anecdotal evidence and no references with which others can independently verify your story.
John Quiggin is trying so hard to cover his own incredibility, he’s spreading the wealth around.
He is not well regarded by inquiring minds in the land of Oz.
“He turned me into a newt!”
It’s comical … Yes, it would be if there were no consequences. Computer crime is punishable with hefty jail sentences in the US. So what what this guy does is accusing McIntyre in public of a fellony offense without any proof. If that’s not libelous, then what is?
Perhaps McIntyre is consulting his lawyers at this very moment, and good luck to him!
What can you add? The guy makes even Joe Romm sound concilliatory.
Anyway he is only an economist. Economists’ forecasts are about as good as those from climate models.
On Climate Realists site they would file this one under “you could not make it up”
McIntyre is the last person I would suspect. It has to be an inside job.
(and it is certainly not Charles the Moderator!) ;-)
Seems that the Prof has being on a walkabout without his sun hat.
I think this fella has spent too much time in the outback. The sun’s gone and affected his mind!
This pinheads just don;t get it. It only matters to those who the emails look bad as to how the information was released.It’s the content that matters!
Sigh. Those in ivory towers can’t help but feel beyond accountability to us poor uneducated folk. Wjy don’t we just keep our place?
This fool should be sacked immediately
The scientific dictatorship promised by Aldus Huxley has failed. The power grab behind AGW fraud is laid bare for us all to see.
Treason is the crime and nothing short of proper justice will suffice.
As the pressure builds it becomes ever more easy to define between the real scientists and those who truly do have aspirations for a global scientific dictatorship by the NWO we have all heard about and was spoken about by George Bush senior and Gordon Brown.
Quiggin has every reason to be quakin’.
They’re never going to find the mole. That much is clear now.
Good looking chap. I’d rather have Quiggan on my side when it gets too hot than Bolt. He’s got his head screwed on the right way, that’s for sure.
Well,this is comic relief,but is it a good idea to even link to this creep?
Ok, everybody who’s ever typed in the address of a public ftp server, and copied a readable file, then looked, and shared the information it contained must immediately turn themselves over to the proper authorities for punishment of their heinous, heinous crime against humanity. Don’t just sit there dumbfounded! Go! NOW! Criminals!
If you read the blog, you’ll see Mr. Pete and several others made mincemeat of the Professor. The mole. Ha ha ha ha.
================
Comments are closed on Quiggin’s blog post. I guess he couldn’t handle the critisism…..
So asking for information makes one a thief of information. Quiggin prefers slander to truth.
Like blaming the pesky kids in Scooby Doo, or Toto for tugging away the curtain in The Wizard of Oz.
That’s how it work today.
Lies, lies and nothing but lies to white wash their crooked science and motives.
John Quiggin is participating in a world wide organized counter propaganda offensive and you can expect similar publications popping up all over the media.
Here is another example:
John Houghton about ecofanatics.
http://motls.blogspot.com/2010/03/john-houghton-about-ecofanatics.html
We all know the science is broken.
What’s left is raw propaganda and political force.
And political force is the new strategy to overcome the onset of the failed science
Today the Federal State of North Rhein Westfalen, the former center of the German “Wirtschaftswunder” announced a 95% reduction of CO2 by 20250.
As a consequence NRW will be forced to shut down it’s coal plants, all car fuel stations, stop the distribution of oil to heat the offices and houses and probably close down all it’s airports and CO2 emitting industry and agriculture.
The country sides are already littered with useless wind parks responsible for a rise in the number of power blackouts.
At a political level there is no chance to introduce nuclear energy.
Besides that, it will take at least 20 years to build a network of nuclear power plants. Nobody knows where the money has to come from to make any significant investment because at this moment in time NRW hovers at the brink of bankruptcy.
The brainwashed population has no idea of the consequences of such a decision
and keeps quiet.
But this can change overnight!
Few people remember the time after WWI when France occupied NRW to loot the region for war compensation payments.
The coal and steel workers became fed up performing their slave labor for France and anarchy broke out. They simply bombed France out of the country.
No police and no army was able to control them.
With the EU already taking the shape of the former centralized Soviet Government structure we will see a process of top down centralization which will end democratic rule and turn NRW into a social and economic wasteland.
I predict NRW will become one of the most dangerous places in the world if this Government does not change it’s policies.
You didn’t expect that the funny letter in “Academics fight back on climate issues” would be the only attack, right? Expect more of this quality from other self-defined “social-democrats”. btw., the German ultra-left names it “democratic socialism”.
Few contributors here have asked in the past to leave politics out of a science blog (anti-science blog, in Quiggin’s world). They may realize by now, latest, it’s all about politics, not science in AGW movement.
What particularly amused me is that Prof. Quiggan’s link about halfway through his post, at ‘what is clear, as this report notes’, neatly contradicts his most egregious allegations. It’s as if the Professor didn’t read his own link, or didn’t think anyone else would.
Just desserts all around over there. Heh.
=================
Hey Quiggen, 1880 called and they want their beard back!
Isn’t this the same guy who tried to tie alleged shuffled papers to the vast “CRU Conspiracy”. I know Australia has a high tolerance for the mentally ill and all, but letting this guy pretend he’s a scientist is taking it a bit far don’t you think?
re, _Jim (05:21:24),
I also noticed his image but I saw a different picture. I see an angry hippy.
As to weather McIntyre did this, I very very highly doubt it. But who ever did it is a hero in my book.
I’d say that beard looks like he’s preparing for the next ice age, not the next Global Warming.
But really, is this the logic of someone who does “climate science”? Wait, I just answered my own question. No wonder they’re making insane accusations and writing book-sized letters.
The sad thing is that our tax dollars are supporting this circus.
Theft is a tricky term under English law anyway – if you ‘steal’ a car for ‘joy riding’ – it is not legally theft!!!
From here… http://www.sussex.police.uk/infocentre/text_version/content.asp?uid=449
“Theft – Definition of Theft
A person is guilty of theft if: he dishonestly appropriates property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it.
Reference: Section 1 of the Theft Act 1968.
Last Updated: 25/7/2008”
Orwellian.
John Quiggins page is now here… http://www.uq.edu.au/economics/index.html?page=15898
Anybody out there know how to nominate people for the Nobel Peace Prize?
I would like to nominate the person who courageously made the CRU E-Mails public.
I bet his University lawyers never approved that statement. If it can be funded, I also think going legal would be good. It’s a serious accusation and there is no evidence.
As for venue, this is the information age so would suggest the UK. We have a generous libel system and there seems to be precedence that being read in the UK means published in the UK to give jurisdiction. Might even prompt Norfolk constabulary to announce their findings. I know life in Norfolk is slow, but the investigation does appear to be dragging on.
Inhouse Fighting!
This could bring out some actual words of incrimination or finally some uncorputed data if they want a media fist fight. Split the scientists into two sides of scientists who want to come out and others holding their funding and careers.
True research side against the uncaring funding grabbers who don’t care what the data really produces side.
We don’t know that anybody committed a crime in revealing the ClimateGate emails, or if they did commit a crime but are protected by whistle-blower laws.
We don’t know the emails were stolen or misappropriated. Certainly somebody at CRU had the compile the files. Were the files found at a publicly accessible location? That would hardly make downloading the files a crime, would it?
Quiggin’s mighty facial hair deserves respect.
Quiggin wrote: I think there is enough to point to Steven McIntyre as the person, along with the actual hacker or leaker, who bears primary moral responsibility for the crime…
A ‘break-in theft’ becomes a leak. Why not a whistle blow? Something *is* very wrong at the heart of CRU.
I am coming to the conclusion that the green-lobby has successfully convinced so many politicians and scientists that sceptical science is a massive Big Oil funded nemesis that they just cannot help be utterly defensive, craven to politics and shoddy with their methods.
The constant alluding to a shady leviathan funding contrarian science is what has allowed billions of tax dollars and pounds to flood the pockets and bank accounts of policy friendly scientists.
As I said, a world wide coordinated warmist counter propaganda campaign.
Gore is back and he’s got Global Warming with him the MSM too!
http://bigjournalism.com/acary/2010/03/13/albert-arnold-gore-jr-is-back-and-hes-got-global-warming-with-him-the-msm-too/
I really think their campaign will back fire.
This summer there will be a follow up meeting to the Copenhagen meeting in Berlin followed by a meeting in Mexico at the end of this year.
The suicidal commitment of North Rhein Westfalen to reduce CO2 95% CO2 emissions by 2050 is nothing more but a political signal making the impression
real commitments are undertaken but on a Global Level the AGW doctrine is a dead horse.
I think the time has come to do research where the money comes from to finance this campaign and start sacking the responsible politicians!
Fraud is fraud and lies are lies, it’s as simple as that.
The comments made in the linked article are intellectually dishonest. The DDT one strikes me as being especially so. It is true that its use is not banned. It was re-introduced in South Africa of recent and the number of cases of malaria radically decreased. But for most of the balance of Africa, it is forbidden in the terms of our aid packages to give them DDT. Yeah, they can use it. Its just that they cannot buy it. No you didn’t starve the guy to death, you just made it illegal to sell him food. A distinction without a difference.
This “scientist” obviously understands evidence in the same context as Michael Mann.
Every day we have more and more evidence confirming that IQ of some of the “climate scientist” is within the range of max and min temperatures on the equator.
@ Jeroen (05:29:35) : From my point of view the real question is why John Quiggin is focussing on smearing critics?
Because it’s now a drag-’em-out, hang-’em-high street fight as per Ehrlich last week. Any sense of fair play–if it ever existed–is now out the window. And it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better.
Perfect example of the “Mind Projection Fallacy”; applied not to Nature, but to the issue at hand.
“Once one has grasped the idea, one sees the Mind Projection Fallacy everywhere; what we have been taught as deep wisdom, is stripped of its pretensions and seen to be instead a foolish non sequitur. The error occurs in two complementary forms, which we might indicate thus:
(A) (My own imagination) –> (Real property of Nature)
(B) (My own ignorance) –> (Nature is indeterminate)“
Our AGW promoter friends are whining about only receiving 85% soft ball questions instead of 100%.
I am sure that, as the tulip mania crested, those who had made fortunes selling tulip bulbs were angered that the skeptics said the tulips were over priced.
– After all, the tulips still bloom and everything, so nothing had really changed.
The reality is the AGW community is going through the stages of mourning.
Anger and denial, as represented in the essay this thread is based on, is typical of early stage mourning.
Wow, I wonder if the Prof is aware that the UK has a ‘Freedom of Information Act’ and that it is commonly referred to as FOIA, as opposed to it being anything to do with the US FOIA, or as he likes to put it: ‘An abbreviation often used for the US Freedom of Information Act, it suggests again that the leaker was familiar with the attempts by US bloggers and others to get release of tree ring and similar data.’
I really hope this guy’s prof-ship was due to a freebie giveout and not for actual work, as if this is anything to go by, in his work he must be making black=white and 2+2 = an orange.
Such commentry is unworthy of anyone irrespective of what side of any arguement they are on, frankly it makes them look very silly.
Must we be concerned for the students at the University of Queensland if this is representative of their professors and their teaching – massive assumtion, relative little or no background study and massive smears – not good
[snip]
I don’t have any doubt that Steve McIntyre’s revelations acted as a catalyst for someone. But to accuse Steve of criminal activity for speaking out is simply ludicrous.
The person(s) most responsible for the “break-in” are Jones, Mann, Briffa, Santer, et al, for their grossly unethical activity. It’s obvious that someone on the inside saw all this and decided enough was enough.
Apparently, the professor at Queensland sees no irony in his tirade against McIntryre whilst bemoaning allegations of “fraud and incompetence.”
@INGSOC (05:49:48) :
————————-
“He turned me into a newt!”
————————-
“I got better” ;-)
A civil action probably would yield little redress. However, the power of subpoena, would give awesome power to obtain documents otherwise unattainable. Some very awkward questions could also be directed at some major players. It would be great entertainment and a good education for the public. GK
I nominate Steve McIntyre for a Nobel Prize (if he is reponsible for Cimategate).
As for who “benefitted” … please all you AGWers, give back the trillion dollars you conned people out of!
Actually the FOI Laws were upheld. The other parties were in breach.
No one has ever said the emails release was illegal.
Just saying. It was public property.
I reckon merminks done it.
and Quiggins a goose, always has been.
Gordon Ford says “Quiggins personal web page is blank.”
The sentence should be shortened to say “Quiggins is blank.”
Wait i just looked at the Google cache of this twits web page he looks to be an economist. He also seems to have a distinct left ward tilt in his thinking. Wow climate science marches on seems they can’t attract real scientists, you know the kind that use empirical data rather than conjecture and supposition to base their world view on.
This from the link to the Professor Quiggin’s further statement:
In fact, as the U Penn investigation found, these claims were baseless.
Fitting that the “expert sleuth” doesn’t have a clue even on the basics.
“In FACT” – “U Penn” is the University of Pennsylvania, located in Philadephia.
“In FACT” – Michael Mann is employed by Penn State, in University Park, PA.
“In FACT” – Michael Mann may have worked at the University of Virgina, when his original alleged problematic actions were taken. So they would not likely be subject to review by his later employer, Penn State.
Rather than finding that many of the claims against Michael Mann were “baseless,” many of Mann’s alleged problems, stated in the first 3 Questions, were likely beyond the scope of a narrow administrative review of his employment at Penn State. Further, Mann’s alleged problems while he was employed at U of Virginia would not likely be subject to review by the Penn State administrator’s much more limited review.
“In FACT” – Penn State formed an entirely new committee of scientists to review some of the most serious allegations against him. Again though, their review would be limited to his time at his current employer and not to the serious allegations against Michael Mann prior to his employment at Penn State.
Below is Penn State’s “Decision 4” which widened the investigation of Michael Mann’s actions while he was at Penn State, via a New Committee, consisting of Scientists, instead of Administrators. Again note, this is investigation is NOT likely to deal with any serious alleged problems of Michael Mann’s actions, while he worked for the U of Virginia:
Decision 4. Given that information emerged in the form of the emails purloined from CRU in November 2009, which have raised questions in the public’s mind about Dr. Mann’s conduct of his research activity, given that this may be undermining confidence in his findings as a scientist, and given that it may be undermining public trust in science in general and climate science specifically, the inquiry committee believes an investigatory committee of faculty peers from diverse fields should be constituted under RA-10 to further consider this allegation.
Whilst the page listed above has been taken down, his university unit webpage is here:
http://www.uq.edu.au/rsmg/director
Note potential hockey stick in his cumulative citation graph (uptick commences 1986/7)
Professor John Quiggin should be more careful, under current British Laws on Defamation Steven McIntyre could sue for libel in the UK – simply because this can be read in the UK.
So unless the professor can prove his claims in court he should think hard about what he is writing.
The ruling was FOI breach, statute of limitiations over rode punishment.
But the ruling was FOI breach.
People all over the world can say what they say. That is the ruling.
He looks different here. Is this the same guy?
April Fools….oh, wait….
Hey I have a suggestion, lets require all climate scientists be honest. Not too much to ask is it? That way they can make their data, methods and results freely available, and not feel like they are betraying their granters purposes.
Why is it so common amongst leftist to blame the second person. McIntyre had no control over what people do. He certainly didn’t ask for it.
I didn’t know Anthony had this post so I wrote my own response.
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2010/03/15/believers/
Quiggin demonstrates the Climate Science Method- state the ‘fact’, model the evidence.
It’s like a guy being angry with his wife for catching him having an affair.
One thing I notice is this “climate scientist” has absolutely no science background whatsoever. He also has no psycology background or perhaps he would notice that he and the AGW religionists are projecting their own actions and ethics onto their opponents.
The crime to him is the release of what should have been available to begin with both according to scientific method and the law. He is untroubled apparently by the clear evidence of deceit, fraud, blind political ambition, and lousy scientific method that is represented by the CRU files.
This so called professor looks just like the Unabomber.
Show us the data
show us how you measured the data
Show us the code
That’s all I have to say any more.
John Quiggin forgot to say that he is Steve McIntyre himself. Just add a beard and a wig to Steve and you will see that the debate is over. He’s revealed this top secret that as his alter ego, he hacked the CRU servers, in order for his brother Elvis Presley to get some extra attention.
It doesn’t really matter much whether Elvis Presley lives in Tora Bora or on the Moon – the effect is the same. ;-)
Aelfrith,
the same laws apply in Australia.
The law makes no distinction in excuse.
Especially from a position of media or Authority.
He has an issue also in science ability, and if he used the University’s letterhead or authority we understand why his page is down.
QU has a very good law department.
Wow, How ‘1984’ of him.
Let’s see, his reasoning goes something like this ” A – McIntyre was among the first to question and criticize Mann and Jones, this led to B – other people criticizing Mann and Jones, which led to C – other people ‘breaking in’ to East Anglia to expose the truth, therefore McIntyre is ‘morally’ responsible because, if he had never started this questioning and criticizing thing, no one would have thought to ‘break in’.
What a wonderful piece of Soviet ‘Gulag’ style of reasoning.
Very similar to Dr Mann’s opening ‘conspiracy theory’ worthy reasoning in his recent ‘Discover Magazine’ interview. http://discovermagazine.com/2010/apr/10-it.s-gettin-hot-in-here-big-battle-over-climate-science/?searchterm=where%20does%20climate%20science%20go%20from%20here
“Ever since his “hockey stick” graph of rising temperatures figured prominently in Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, Mann has been at the center of the climate wars. His e-mail messages were among those stolen and widely published last November.
Let’s talk about the hacked e-mails and the ensuing climategate scandal. What happened?
My understanding—and I only know what I’ve read from other accounts—is that hackers broke into the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia and stole thousands of e-mail messages, which they then proceeded to distribute on the Internet. They even tried to hack into a Web site that I help run, called RealClimate.
Does anybody yet know where the attack came from?
No. There are many of us who would really like to know because obviously this is a serious criminal breach. And yet there’s been very little discussion, unfortunately, about the crime.
Who might have done the hacking?
“It appears to have been extremely well orchestrated, a very professional job. There also appears to have been a well-organized PR campaign that was all ready to go at the time these e-mails were released. And that campaign, involving all sorts of organizations that have lobbied against climate change legislation, has led some people to conclude that this is connected to a larger campaign by special interests to attack the science of climate change, to prevent policy action from being taken to deal with the problem.”
Yikes!
This poor fellow is going to feel like he has gone and kicked a beehive, if he dare faces his email tomorrow morning in Queensland.
Quiggin down under . . .
Interesting that he didn’t suspect Ross McKitrick — a fellow economist.
Quiggin needs to read Maruice Strong’s early speeches and writings on why he wanted to create the IPCC. Then note the criticisms of the IPCC first and second technical reports, in particular, the mention of the MWP. He could then explain why the exposed email from CRU mentioned their concern about the MWP period being a “problem” for the movement and how — magically it seems — Briffa knocks out a paper saying the coldest year in the millennium occurred during the MWP, only to be followed by Mann’s hockey stick.
. . . a very public apology from Quiggin to McIntyre is in order. If not, calling someone a thief in such a manner is slanderous and libelous.
Defamation:
1. A false and defamatory statement concerning another;
2. The unprivileged publication of the statement to a third party;
3. If the defamatory matter is of public concern, fault amounting at least to negligence on the part of the publisher; and
4. Damage to the plaintiff.
If McIntyre can show damages, he’s got a winner! The Herald Sun, as publisher, can be held accountable as well. Perhaps they should quickly print a retraction to protect themselves.
Ben (06:58:51),
Here’s an interesting interview with Judith Curry, followed by Michael Mann: click
I’ll leave it to others here to decide how Mann comes across.
Go to Quiggin’s cached page as by jondipietro {5:43:05}
http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:dTl_mHs2xjMJ:www.uq.edu.au/economics/johnquiggin/index.html
Click on some of the links.. you’ll see he is a “SOCIAL Scientist’ and a ‘statist’. For example he states that future employment hinges on the ‘service sector’. And only the state can provide enough employment in the service sector to make a dent.. especially for the academic graduate.
Which gets to the heart of the whole issue. Carbon being easy to tax and ubiquitous, the fraud having been discovered threatens society itself.
Not hard to understand, we all do understand, don’t we?
Here’s one of his books:
http://www.uq.edu.au/economics/johnquiggin/Books/WFA.html
Interestingly, he draws on a 1945 white paper as a preface.
Do we all recall the intervening post-war facts? Stunted economic growth in Oz, by low available labor force… which almost induced me to emigrate from the states.
Wasn’t he Prince Vultan in Flash Gordon the Movie?
ThomD (07:10:03) : “It’s like a guy being angry with his wife for catching him having an affair.”
How to you know?
First we had “new math”. That led to a generation of public school graduates who couldn’t balance a checkbook and legislators who thought $ billions was chump-change. Then we had “new science”. That led to temperature hockey-sticks and vanishing historic warm periods.
Now we have “new ethics”. That leads to the following trail of logic:
1) I question your conclusions and demand proof.
2) You hide the evidence.
3) Someone else finds your “hidey place”.
4) Someone else releases that evidence to the public without your permission.
5) I’m a thief.
I suppose this is what is meant by “scientists fight back”.
However, Professor John Quiggin’s statement is prima facie libelous, because he has accused McIntyre of having commited a crime, while at the same time admitting that he has no evidence.
Professor Quiggin, please note that where the subject of an accusation is a public figure, like a university professor, truth is a defense against the accusation of slander or libel.
By now Mr McIntyre is a public figure. So if you had produced some evidence to support your accusation, that would be your defence. But you have already stated that you have no evidence. Hence you have no defence at law. I would advise you to consult with legal staff of your university.
By contrast, in peer-reviewed papers published in reputable science journals, McIntyre has accused at least one researcher of malpractice while at the same time documenting in detail what the accused did and did not do that constituted the malpractice. The content of the released e-mails supports what McIntryre has argued for years and the content of the e-mails has not been disavowed by the authors. Mr McIntyre would argue that the truth of his accusations is his defence.
I once taught a graduate course in statistics and mathematical modeling, including principal components analysis, the object of Mr McIntyre’s criticism and his most valuable contribution to scientific auditing. I have also applied principal comonents analysis to satellite imagery. I can confirm from my own experience that McIntyre has identified true flaws in the Hockey Stick modeling.
What may never be proven is whether the malpractice results from incompetence on the part of the researcher or deliberate misuse of the technique.
I do not understand exactly what Professor Quiggin is objecting to. Does he think that malpractice by academics should not be exposed? Does he think that the exposure was not in the public interest?
Substantial public money is involved both in financing climate research and in implementing policies advocated by the recipients of the research. This means that the public is entitled to have the research audited.
Is this not obvious?
Unfortunately, the IPCC has shown itself to be biased by advocacy. McIntyre and McKittrick make a strong case for this too. They have urged that a “B-team” is needed to audit the work of the “A-team”. Their argument is that the IPCC member governments appoint delegates that are already compromised by their posts in national environmental agencies seeking to increase their budgets. Thus, governments cannot rely on their IPCC delegates to be unbiased.
Independent auditors are needed, as in the world of finance and business.
Member governments should be just as concerned about the direction of the ADB and World Bank and their own development cooperation agencies.
Consultants who work on projects financed by the ADB and World Bank can confirm that both organizations assume mitigation of climate change is both necessary and possible.
Their terms of reference for consultant’s go far beyond the science. These organizations are now paying for feasibility studies based on “climate science fiction”.
As an example, scientists do not claim that present models are good enough to make predicions on a regional or country basis. But the ADB and World Bank and bilateral agencies are gearing up to finance mitigation and adaptation projects based on these models.
Junk science spawns junk investment and the taxpayers of developing countries get to foot the bill. Moreover, even the poorest developing countries are being led to borrow money from international banks and to raise money by taxation to speculate on projects that have low probablilities of contributing anything at all to local economies.
The bottom line is that the quantum of money going into climate change demands better auditing of the science and better auditing of the institutions advocating policy and promoting public investments based on the science.
If it were not for McIntyre, most of us would still accept the Hockey Stick. Thanks to him we now realize that the graph is advocacy masquerading as science. Is that what Professor Quiggin objects to?
Check out http://www.uq.edu.au/rsmg/jq-journals . Look at what this guy is writing 200 papers on. Scary! Food, water, agriculture, insurance, trading …. Yeah, he’s a climate scientist, scarf. And check who gave him top honors, Thompson (ie trading & Wall Street).
Expect more of these attacks now that funding for “climate change researchers” is starting to be cut.
http://www.metronews.ca/toronto/comment/article/477381–demise-of-canadian-climate-research-would-impact-global-initiatives-scientists
“The 2010 federal budget, unveiled this month, offered no new cash to the decade-old Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences, a group that has been financing research on everything from melting glaciers to drought on the Prairies to the thawing permafrost.
The disappearance of a foundation that has made contributions to global initiatives on climate change is worrying for some in the international scientific community.”
Very worrying if their research grants are affected I’m sure.
Looks like the Quiggin’s pages at the Uni. have been pulled offline. All of them. Trouble with the lawyers and Criminal Defamation laws in Australia?
One can’t get away with publically accusing others of criminal activity (e.g. conspiracy to commit theft) unless they’ve been convicted by a court of law.
Steven McIntyre, had Quiggin bothered to do his homework before making the accusation, needed only to wait for the due processes of FOI in the UK (or their EU masters) to either get the data, or for prosecutions for violation of FOI to commence.
John Quiggin and the Smoking Gun
http://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2010/03/12/climategatethe-smoking-gun/
John Quiggen has published a simply shocking whirlwind
of facts and revelations.
However, having read both his timeline for Climategate
and the released CRU emails/data set/program there
are logical fallacies in his exposition.
Last July the CRU/Met reasoned that raw reports of
station data/temps from outside Great Britain they’ve
used as CRUTEM data were subject to non-disclosure
or restrictive use agreements between Met Office/CRU
and some of the various 170-plus reporting weather
organizations.
Although the data sought might be covered by such
agreements, the agreements themselves must be
government documents, and as such it is fitting and
proper for them to be published upon FIOA requests
if they aren’t already available to the public.
To obtain copies of these simple agreements, some
participants in Climate Audit and other blogs sent in
a grand total of 62 FOIA requests
Symbols of fallacy::
Not one of the thousand plus emails
released, not a single set of data included, and no
purloined program, in whole or in part can be
considered responsive in the legal sense
to the Climate Audit readerships’ cut and paste
“spam” FOI campaign.
Also, despite these very specific FOIA requests, the
CRU/Met has failed to produce a single restrictive
use agreement with the numerous data supplying
organizations dated prior to November, 2009.
The leading CRU/Met actors have failed to proffer
such publically cited agreements at various investigative
sessions while they were under oath and even when
entering such agreements would have been of
considerable benefit and assistance to the investigators.
Thus John Quiggin’s conclusion:
is demonstrably false.
Dr. John may have found something smoking.
It appears he inhaled, deeply.
edit
Anthony, ctm, other:
Could you please add a note beneath my above
R.S.Brown (08:33:37) :
indicating that Mr. Quiggin has revised his “Smoking
Gun” article, and eliminated the logical link between
the FOI campaign and the creation of the foia.zip file.
He made a lot of modifications to the article after
slipping in some snide remarks about the quality of
Mr. McIntyre’s supporters, and sealing the thread from
additional comments.
See above: jaymam (21:42:40) :
/edit
…………….Stef (05:32:34) :
I can never remember which one is slander and which one is libel???
————————————-
I can answer this Stef. Thankyou everyone. Stef: It’s very easy in this case…….
It’s the guy in the picture for both of them!!!!!
I wonder where this story would be if they had just followed through with the FOI request?
Good Mr. Quiggin says:
So the evidence points to “McIntyre’s circle of supporters”, because the “leaker was familiar with attempts by US bloggers …”. Thus are exposed as double agents all those boffins in the AGW blogger family (realclimate, parties to the climategate emails) who were also “familiar with attempts …”.
John Quiggens blog – comment away:
http://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2010/03/15/monday-message-board-167/#comments
How does someone this stupid and unethical get to be a professor?
What did Professor Quiggin think he was going to achieve with this?
Did he even read it before making it public?
He hasn’t a shred of evidence, makes a charge and can’t imagine the blowback?
This is the act of a pompous ass who’s arrogance overrides honesty and ethics.
And it’s yet another piece of the desperate tantrum the AGW academia is engaged in.
Along with their futile campaign to put the cat back in the bag.
Just imagine how deeply, personally offended many of them are from being challenged by non academics.
So McIntyre is guilty because he questioned authority? He created the situation which led to the (alleged) theft?
How many of you read Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago? Does this accusation sound familiar to you?
What’s next, a show trial with a guaranteed conviction and a sentence to a reeducation camp or state-run mental asylum?
Room: 551A Colin Clark Building, St Lucia
Phone: +61 7 3346 9646
Fax: +61 07 3365 7299
Email: j.quiggin@uq.edu.au
Personal Website
Qualifications
BA(Hons),BEc(Hons),MEc (ANU), PhD (UNE)
Profile
John Quiggin is an Australian Research Council Federation Fellow in Economics and Political Science at the University of Queensland. Professor Quiggin is prominent both as a research economist and as a commentator on Australian economic policy. He has published over 750 research articles, books and reports in fields including risk analysis, production economics, and environmental economics. He has also written on policy topics including unemployment policy, micro-economic reform, privatisation, competitive tendering, and sustainable management of the Murray–Darling system. He was awarded the Thomson ISI Australian Citation Laureate for Economics in 2004. He is a Fellow of the Australian Social Science Academy, the American Agricultural Economics Association, and the Australian Institute of Company Directors, and a Distinguished Fellow of the Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society.
Selected Publications
TOP 10 SELECTED RESEARCH PUBLICATIONS
Books:
Quiggin, J. & Chambers, R.G. (2000), Uncertainty, Production, Choice and Agency: The State-Contingent Approach, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Quiggin, J. (1996), Great Expectations: Microeconomic Reform and Australia, Allen & Unwin, St Leonards, NSW.
Quiggin, J. and Langmore, J. (1994), Work for All: Full Employment in the Nineties, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne.
Articles:
Quiggin, J. & Chambers, R.G. (2004), ‘Invariant risk attitudes’, Journal of Economic Theory, 117, 96–118.
Grant, S. and Quiggin, J. (2002), ‘The risk premium for equity: implications for the proposed diversification of the social security fund’, American Economic Review, 92(5), 1104–15.
Quiggin, J. (2001), ‘Environmental economics and the Murray–Darling river system’, Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics 45(1), 67–94.
Quiggin, J. and Chambers, R. G. (1998), ‘A state-contingent production approach to principal–agent problems with an application to point-source pollution control’, Journal of Public Economics 70, 441–72.
Dowrick, S. and Quiggin, J. (1997), ‘True measures of GDP and convergence’, American Economic Review 67(1), 41–64.
Quiggin, J. (1982), ‘A theory of anticipated utility’, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 3(4), 323–43.
Quiggin, J. (1981), ‘Risk perception and risk aversion among Australian farmers’, Australian Journal of Agricultural Economics 25(2), 160–9.
Correct me if I am wrong, but isn’t McIntyre Canadian?
Guys… take a step back a moment….
I think pursuing Quiggin at this time would be the wrong reaction from McIntyre. To pursue Quiggin and win would require McIntyre to prove damages. Quiggin shot his mouth off, and we have good reason to believe he’s wrong, but winning a libel case requires you to prove resulting personal damages. That would require McIntyre to prove professional damage (far more difficult for a retiree) or loss of income (also difficult for a retiree).
Since the truth is that, as noted here often, Quiggin is a wild-haired Grizzly Adams with an even wilder claim, the case would also have to take into consideration the credibility of Quiggin.
I’m firmly of the belief that, right now, even if Steve were to pursue Quiggin legally, the criteria for proving his case would cause the case to fail – specifically the inability to prove damages and lack of Quiggin credibility – and so the case would collapse. This failure to make the case stick would be taken and run with, by the crazy people, to mean that Quiggin was right and Steve was guilty.
Right now, the correct response is passive ambivalence. I think he’s looking for a sceptic tirade directed at him, and I think his intent is in some way to prove that sceptics are the wild-eyed lunatics in this exchange. He’s posted his opinion and, though he says he has evidence to support it, he hasn’t presented it.
I believe in the philosophy of giving someone enough rope to hang themselves, and my gut says that allowing Quiggin to get it all out of his system and then let QU sort him out.
ThomD: “It’s like a guy being angry with his wife for catching him having an affair”.
Sums it up nicely. But what was the affair with? Why did if cause them to have to hide the decline?
.. sorry.. last sentence.. my gut says *it’s better to allow* Quiggin…
Indeed, Dr. Quinn looks like a man with a mission.
His picture begs a Dr. Suess caption. “I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees!”
Would someone please get this guy his medicine?? I mean, if this is his PUBLIC photo portrait….!
Really, Steve was doing very well before the email disclosures, skewering the lot with their own faulty statistical treatments. I don’t think he particularly needed the information released in Climategate emails, except as validation that this bunch were not very professional.
I’m sure curious to know who the ultimate Climategate leaker was! The original statement posted with the emails seemed to imply that there was more out there, I wonder when the next shoe drops?
This is like Clinton blaming the media for the Lewinski scandal.
Also that photo looks like it could be labeled; “son of Manson”.
“Over the next few months, CRU started preparing a response to McIntyre which resulted in the creation of a file called FOIA.zip. Over the weekend beginning Friday 13 November, someone located and copied this file from a back-up server at the university’s Climatic Research Unit, and distributed it widely among anti-science blog sites, including McIntyre’s.”
Was not one of the first “anti-science” blogs to receive this the BBC? :)
As for it being a collection for Steve McIntyre, the contents always gave me the impression that it was what they would want to hide from him and anyone else for that matter. It was hidden away on an obscure server that only a mole could find is another line of speculation that works for me?
For the Record, regarding timing:
Michael Mann worked at the University of Virginia from 1999–2005.
As such, the bulk of the alleged Hockey Stick-related problems tied to Mann likely happened before Mann worked at Penn State and would likely be beyond their reviews.
Mann’s “Hockey Stick” Graph data problems, his problematic involvement with the UN IPCC’s 2001 report and his refusal to submit his data for standard scientific review, would be likely outside his employment at Penn State and therefore unlikely to be part of the first review by Penn State Administrators.
In addition, Penn State’s ongoing investigation of Michael Mann, covered in their Allegation 4, is to be conducted by scientists, not administrators.
Because Mann worked at the U of Virginia from 1999-2005, the ongoing Penn State review by a committee of scientists, is not likely to cover Mann’s “Hockey Stick” related problems, the ethics of Mann’s editorial actions with the UN IPCC’s 2001 report or the breach of scientific method procedures, due to Mann’s multi-year refusal to release his data for standard scientific review.
RealClimate was reportedly created in 2005, so Mann involvement with their alledged problems may or may not be while he worked at Penn State.
A google search puts him in the School of Economics at the University.
Lets not push him over the edge. His green investments are doing poorly, carbon prices are falling, his life’s work down the crapper. Poor guy cant even afford to buy a razor.
If Steve sues him, he better do it soon.
Rich D.
The offending accusation appears to have been removed, or it was certainly not there when I looked just now.
Quiggle-word “moral”, meaning that even if McIntyre had nothing to do with the crime, Quiggin holds him morally responsible.
No slander, there. McIntyre bears “moral” responsibility in the same way that I bear “moral” responsibility for slavery, due to the fact that I am a Caucasian American. People spew pseudo-ethical garbage like this constantly, without fear of retribution, because there’s no real allegation of wrongdoing. Just guild by association.
Which is just utter, cowardly crap. Obviously.
to paraphrase Dr. Quiggin:
“SM is responsible for the CRU whistleblower incident bc he created an environment where people wanted to reproduce climate scientists findings. I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees.”
Quiggin’s leap of faith on Steve may explain his belief in catastrophe; that and the teat of gov’t funding.
“Scientists have been constrained in fighting back by the fact that they are ethically constrained to be honest, whereas their opponents lie without any compunction.”
Should have cut to:
“Scientists have been constrained in fighting back by the facts”
I know where I’ve seen this guy before !
He’s Captain Haddock out of Tin Tin !!!
s/guild/guilt
Monday, post-DST timechange. Double whammy.
I’m not sure exactly what bit of this would be libellous, he doesn’t actually accuse McIntyre of very much substantive.
His blog;
http://johnquiggin.com/
This guy is a bit behind the main herd, he’s only at stage 2
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2010/2/24/josh-4.html
The higher up the Ivory tower these good professors go, the less oxygen is available for them to breath, the more delusional and paranoid their personalities become and the more we get to laugh at theses morons.
Ya ya ya . . I know it is not PC to laugh at mentally handicapped people, but these guys have a bad case of self-inflicted wound syndrome and it is funny to watch them come apart at the seems, to make fools of themselves.
Or maybe he is auditioning for the Comedy Network?
Makes sense actually. You see, there is no true evidence of AGW, yet he still believes it as fact. And there is no evidence of his accusation, but he believes it as fact.
Dr. Quinn looks a lot like some backwoods survivalist in that photo. All you need is a flannel shirt and an ax to make it complete.
Duck Xing, thanks for the background on Dr Quiggin. Frankly. I am more dismayed than before now that I knowing how eminent he is in Australia.
In fact, your description of the man is a big shock. What shocks me is that he is so lacking in common sense. He apparently either does not know enough science to understand McIntyre’s criticisms or does not care enough to read what McIntyre has published.
If he publishes a written statement calling someone a criminal for his scientific research, he should at least study the published papers. I have. And I know enough about principal components analysis to believe what McIntryre claims. So did Prof Wegman. Resume here: http://www.galaxy.gmu.edu/stats/faculty/wegman.resume2.pdfl
Simon H: If Oz’s libel laws are like the UK’s, it is the defendant who has to prove his case (ie Quiggin would have to prove his accusation is true) — I believe that in the US it is the Plaintiff who has to prove his case.
Sounds to me as if he has a kangaroo loose in the upper paddock. He seems to think that what he’s saying makes sense when even a cursory analysis reveals it as contradictory dross. The idea that SMcI’s legitimate requests for the information could be construed as art and part of any subsequent crime is peurile. He ignores completely the right to access principle that was obstructed by the CRU, and that there is a reasonable case for categorising the hacking or leaking of the FOI covered material in such circumstances as highly moral and legal – regardless of the conclusion any establishment investigation might reach. His summing up in the 2nd paragraph of his earlier confused assertions is just as unclear. What is clear is that here we have one more University professor whose mind is a bit messy and whose conception of morality is decidely suspect. And any scientific, economic or political views or research published by this guy are probably worthless – if the above paragraphs are any guide.
Comments on his blog about the very article we are discussing here;
http://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2010/03/12/climategatethe-smoking-gun/#comments
@ Ben (07:49:00) : Because Mann worked at the U of Virginia from 1999-2005, the ongoing Penn State review by a committee of scientists, is not likely to cover Mann’s “Hockey Stick” related problems, the ethics of Mann’s editorial actions with the UN IPCC’s 2001 report or the breach of scientific method procedures, due to Mann’s multi-year refusal to release his data for standard scientific review.”
Yes, but could they (or would they) contact UVa or UMass?
Those making comments would do well to read the reasoning behind the assertion, left out by Anthony for reasons of space:
http://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2010/03/12/climategatethe-smoking-gun/#more-8331
And the newspaper report that lead to his assertion;
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/04/climate-change-email-hacker-police-investigation
The face of Reason
Environmental organizations joining the new propaganda effort:
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2010/03/face-of-reason.html
At this stage, who cares, I say good on him. The real robbery would have been if we were saddled with taxes on bases of the false representation of data.
I’m confused.
UEA were putting a file together as pe FOIA to be handed over in response to Steve McIntyre’s request and before they had chance to just hand it over, perhaps Steve stole it? Why wouldn’t he have just waited for them to hand it over – he seems to have waited a saintly long time for it in the first place.
I do hope this guy is axed for trying to defend the indefensible.
Evo1
The “acceptance” stage is not far away now…
the pro-agw have been through the other stages of the Extended Kübler-Ross Grief Cycle: Shock, Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Testing,
Looks to me like Quiggin performed a clever “trick” by splicing fiction onto fact ….
He’ll be able to take credit for a new famous Australian phrase….
“That’s not a hockey stick…THIS is a Hockey Stick!”
Graphite (06:21:01) :
Theft is a tricky term under English law anyway – if you ’steal’ a car for ‘joy riding’ – it is not legally theft!!!
From here… http://www.sussex.police.uk/infocentre/text_version/content.asp?uid=449
“Theft – Definition of Theft
A person is guilty of theft if: he dishonestly appropriates property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it.
Reference: Section 1 of the Theft Act 1968.
Last Updated: 25/7/2008″
By that definition, there was no theft.
No one intended to permanently deprive the owners of the data, rather the person intended to liberate it to the owners, the taxpayers. The person who had “primary moral responsibility for the crime” was Jones. McIntyre simply (and with due process) created the responsibility to comply with the law. Since there has been no compliance, the statute of limitations surely cannot have run its course.
No one actually did deprive, permanently or otherwise, anyone of any data.
At most, this was a transfer of IP.
The peculiar thing about Quiggin’s poorly-considered decoupage of events is that the FOIA requests were after DATA, and the FOIA.zip was (as far as I’m aware) primarily composed of emails.
Which is not the same thing as data. Quiggin, in a sober moment, may come to see his mistake.
JQ’s comment as he shut down comments on this story says a lot:
March 13th, 2010 at 09:06 | #35 Reply | Quote
I think we’ve seen enough to demonstrate the intellectual and moral quality of McIntyre’s supporters. I’m calling a halt here. Comments on this thread are closed.
It is pretty amazing and grossly inaccurate summary of 137 comments. We all know Mr. Pete, who is invariably polite and temperate, and his inclusion is sufficient to give lie to the comment.
Paul Hudson of the BBC got the CRU e-mails a month before everyone else.
By this guy’s logic that should make HIM the prime suspect.
“…Whether or not he was directly involved in the theft, or merely created the opportunity and benefited from the proceeds is impossible to determine, and essentially irrelevant…”
Arguing (or, more accurately, ranting) from ignorance. Quigs is a leftist blogger, evidently hasn’t read the UEA emails, and is not primarily a physical scientist, based on lists of his publications.
A miasma of decay and desperation has settled over the CAGW movement. This smear indicates the level to which they’ve already sunk, and it’s going to get even worse. At some point, moral responsibility will be assigned, but not in the way that Mr. Quigs assumes.
If Quiggin can substantiate his allegations he should contact Norfolk Constabulary and provide them with whatever evidence he has.
If not, he would be well advised to get himself a damn good solictor.
Damages for defamation dont come cheap in the English legal system…
Professors like Quiggin lose all their credibility with posts like that one.
Is he a liar or a fool — no matter which, I can’t trust anything he says scientifically, either.
Proclaimed intellectuals should, at a minimum, try to sound intellectually honest and objective in their public statements.
Of course his blog does say “Commentary on Australian & world events from a social-democratic perspective”. I guess that absolves him.
It’s not IP if it does not enable anyone to make or use something that was secret know-how before. It’s just an ugly insight into a groupthink so extreme that it became a scam.
If McIntyre can invoke English libel laws (by saying that the harm was done to his reputation in the UK) he could presumably have a good case against Quiggin.
Saying that McIntyre, by asking a FOI request, was the cause of leaked data, is like saying that I, by putting all my jewellery in one box, caused my house to be robbed.
One of Quiggen’s comments at the link I provided;
“Since various commenters seem to have missed a basic point, let me restate. Gaining unauthorised access to someone else’s emails and publishing them is a crime.”
jack mosevich (05:57:48) :
Anyway he is only an economist. Economists’ forecasts are about as good as those from climate models.
Exactly! Real economists know their projections/forecasts are guesses. Anyone who says they can make solid future projections about economic or financial systems is full of crap and there are literally hundreds of years worth of research to back me up on that statement.
As someone who studied Economics, it is also the (main) reason I am a skeptic. No matter how many billions we pour into GCMs, it will never compare to the funding and motivation for predicting financial markets and that is still all about “as useful as an areshole right here * points to elbow”
I know everyone loves to hate Economists, but the good ones I met always prefaced any theory with “this is how we think it works” – it is the ultimate fuzzy science.
The parallels between Economics and climate science are everywhere, and just as in Climate Science you have snake oil salesmen trying to convince people that they know it all, or can explain it all, or can make predictions that are actually useful… all they’re really doing is describing trends, ascribing/attributing causation, and extrapolating the relationship in question.
A healthy dose of humility should be a prerequisite for anyone who calls themselves a Climate Scientist or an Economist… and while the latter has a long and well documented history to justify institutional humility (again, not accounting for the idiots who profess to know it all), the former does not seem to have learned that lesson yet.
To put it another way, it should be the exception in Economics for someone to say they can make hard and reliable forecasts… and the rule that a forecasts are stated as, more or less, one step removed from guesswork. For Climate Science it is the rule to overstate the confidence with which projections are made, and the exception (mainly from folks like Christy, Lindzen, Spencer, etc) that uncertainty is communicated.
I have no problem with us (metaphorically) throwing crappy Economists under the bus, but there are plenty of good ones out there too.
Francisedwardwhite (At 7:28:33): Great comment. Really incisive and correct on all points, IMHO. No system can pretend to stability (i.e. integrity) over any length of time without an error-correction (reality) function. If there is no accountability, no auditing, it is inevitable that the system will be consumed by its own BS at an accelerating rate. This happens in business. It happens with governments. It happens with any human institution. When we begin to ask “Why can’t these people understand this simple point?” it’s a sign that the rot is widespread; that these people can and do understand the point, but they desperately don’t want to.
I also resent Quiggin’s remark about “scientists” and “opponents”. Like, none of the skeptics (am I still allowed to use that word?) might be scientists too? And that ONLY scientists have any ethical standards.
ANGRY now.
Mcintyre shpuld sue.
Subsequent discovery might uncover more.
“the mole” should come forward.
Organizations such as UEA should be reminded heavy handedly that
their publicly funded research belongs to the public.
This type of malfeasance should be publicly reprimanded and this Quiggin
should suffer some consequences.
Government bodies around the world should be publicly
and definitively informed of the meaning of the documents in question and the questionable nature of the science and methods involved and all legislation
or international or intranational financial agreements created to punish the public should be promptly canceled.
It beggars belief that an “academic” could be so careless of facts that he will go into print accusing Steve McIntyre of causing the leaking of the files and emails by asking for them.
Do you know the more these guys put themselves in the public eye the more I see advocates who can’t engage in reasonable discourse.
Quiggins is being rather foolish. By making allegations about what occurred in East Anglia (located in Britain) he has laid himself open to a libel suit in the UK. That is very silly of him as the libel laws in the UK are notorious. It is the world’s absolutely worst jurisdiction to be sued for libel in.
Perhaps the posters here should be well inspired to visit an informative site such as “deepclimate” to appreciate the good aussie is not alone in his accusations…
It always pays to know your foes and appreciate their tenacity.
Quiggin (from his comments):
Oh, that’s a bit more specific. And possibly litigable. I’m not sure that McIntyre ever received anything other than a link.
If someone posting a link to comments constitutes receipt of stolen property, I think a great many people are in trouble.
So the reason AGW is busted is because……………of leaked emails(?). Gordon Bennett! I agree. McIntyre owes this guy no response. This guy has to earn the right to be responded to and he has not. Like CO2, he’s Irrelevant. Enjoy the freedom of not even having to respond. It’s a new day in the world and the model writers who wrote the models of how to invoke polictical power will have to go back their drawing board out-of-date drawing boards.
To the unknown leaker: ……..we salute you!
Graphite (06:21:01) :
Theft is a tricky term under English law anyway —
A person is guilty of theft if: he dishonestly appropriates property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it.
Since posting the CRU emails does not deprive CRU the use of them, it cannot be theft, then.
I understand that Prof Quiddich is an Economist. It would appear that, unlike most Economists, his economies appear to extend to the truth
Agree with other on this site. Golden opportunity for libel suit. Good trial atty could legally mine much information.
I have not read all the comments so this point may have been raised already.
To steal, theft, perloined or whatever other word you may choose means to take AWAY or as a police officer once told me ” to deprive the rightful owner of the use of the item “, At no time was the information taken away and the CRU was never for a milisecond deprived of its use therefore it could not have been stolen. If it was copied in violation of a confidentiality agreement this is a civil matter and there is no criminal activity in this case.
@R. de Haan (08:15:08) :
The face of Reason
Environmental organizations joining the new propaganda effort:
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2010/03/face-of-reason.html
—————————————————————-
Face of Reason??? – “Look at those snappers!”
(Romancing the Hockey stick (1984))
I grew up in a communist country under relentless indoctrination, ideological instilment, enlightenment towards bias approach considered to be only universally moral attitude, and all of these were reputedly scientific, objectively proved, and who don’t comprehend it he is not only immoral but also stupid with low cognitive capability to appreciate the scientific base of the unambiguous true. While attending a technical university I had to take in for examinations in scientific communism etc. to obtain an engineering degree. I was sorry for the time I had lost studying the catechism.
Now I appreciate it. My immunity against ideology and evangelization doctrines mocked as a science is very useful. The Carbonari doctrine and the carbon-socialisms into which it leads us are very obvious. The similarities of AGW doctrine and the scientific communism are so flagrant to guffaw me regularly as no real life buffo can beat them. Well, these Carbonari responses to Climategate are comic masterpieces to me. No comic could create such a parody of Red Commissars like the smearing CRU advocates as e. g. the Quiggino clown.
If you follow Quiggens’ dubious logic back, you will see that it was not Steve McIntyre who was responsible, but the people who caused Steve to take the action he did, so in Quiggins book, the finger should point firmly at Mann et al.
The headline “McIntyre accused by University of Queensland Prof of CRU break in” belies what Professor Quiggin said.
“I think there is enough to point to Steven McIntyre as the person, along with the actual hacker or leaker, who bears primary moral responsibility for the crime…”
“Whether or not he was directly involved in the theft, or merely created the opportunity and benefited from the proceeds is impossible to determine, and essentially irrelevant.”
Professor Quiggin is voicing his suspicion of McIntyre just as some voice their suspicion of Jones and Mann.
Perhaps he thinks what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
Wade (07:57:44)
To continue the Monty Python parade:
He’s a lumberjack, and he’s okay.
He sleeps all night and he works all day.
:P
Mods no harm no foul if you want to snip
What is it about guys with big black beards that make them super sensitive to criticism and want to lash out violently for the slightest reason?
From Patchi to this guy to sundry Talibans, Hamas, Hezbollah and Iranian clerics, the message is one of hate for anyone who dares offer the slightest criticism or any kind of alternative view. The self appointed purveyors of extreme versions of scientific or religious ‘truth’ know their continued existence depends on the constant scaring of the masses.
As a student, I grew a beard, the girls hated it, so I shaved it off and everything returned to normal. Probably not relevant, but it left a lasting memory – beards are not cool.
What a load of hockey pucks!
The headline “McIntyre accused by University of Queensland Prof of CRU break in” belies what Professor Quiggin said.
“I think there is enough to point to Steven McIntyre as the person, along with the actual hacker or leaker, who bears primary moral responsibility for the crime…”
“Whether or not he was directly involved in the theft, or merely created the opportunity and benefited from the proceeds is impossible to determine, and essentially irrelevant.”
Professor Quiggin is voicing his suspicion of McIntyre just as some voice their suspicion of Jones and Mann.
Perhaps he thinks what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
Ian H (09:59:53) :
Quiggins is being rather foolish. By making allegations about what occurred in East Anglia (located in Britain) he has laid himself open to a libel suit in the UK. That is very silly of him as the libel laws in the UK are notorious. It is the world’s absolutely worst jurisdiction to be sued for libel in.
==============
Is a suspicion the same as an allegation?
My wife always says, “How stupid can they be?”
And I reply, “They are trying so very hard to show you, dear.”
Idiot: one who is unaware of their surroundings.
John Galt (07:40:07) :
John – Steve is indeed Canadian. I am Canadian and Australian. John Q makes me embarrassed to be Australian.
A smug, sanctimonious, government employed economist somehow considers that he has the right to lecture engineers and scientists about climate change??
And without full disclosure: “I, John Quiggin, do personally declare that I wholly, totally and irrevocably support with the whole of my being, the control by government of the production and distribution of all means of modification of the wealth of society.”
That OK, John?
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that McIntyre fans have a double standard.
Allegations of wrongdoing based on suspicions are OK if directed at Jones and man.
Mere suspicion of wrongdoing is outrageous if directed at McIntyre.
Why can’t people just be honest?
Hey, Quiggins – the emails were unjustly being sequestered but now have been out. Even the IOP chastising CRU for not conforming to the FOIA dictates and who knows where the criticism and investigation will end. The IPCC nearly completely discredited. On and On.
Now YOU face possible significant libel charges. I’ve heard and learned that fairly well one can judge a man by his friends. I suggest you apologize, take cover and seek redemption for an obvious number of sins.
“Scientists have been constrained in fighting back by the fact that they are ethically constrained to be honest, whereas their opponents lie without any compunction.”
——–
You can say that again!
barry moore (10:19:32) :
If it was copied in violation of a confidentiality agreement this is a civil matter and there is no criminal activity in this case.
Please have a look at the “computer misuse act 1990” A UK gov document :
“the access he intends to secure is unauthorised”
“A person guilty of an offence under this section shall be liable on summary conviction to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months or to a fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale or to both”
Looks criminal to me!
…………all roads lead to a hut in…………..
Do we know whether WUWT is deemed a ‘ANTI-SCIENCE’ website by the AGW proponents?
About Beards: my mum always thought those that wore beards were hiding something (and I don’t think a lice nest was what she meant!!)
Wren (10:46:50),
That is one of the most perfect examples of psychological projection I’ve seen here.
So this “FOIA” leak of emails was nothing more than a diversion.
Who doesn’t like a good lawsuit now and then?
“Wren (10:44:28) :
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that McIntyre fans have a double standard.
Allegations of wrongdoing based on suspicions are OK if directed at Jones and man.
Mere suspicion of wrongdoing is outrageous if directed at McIntyre.
Why can’t people just be honest?”
We ARE being honest.
Why couldn’t Jones be honest ?
Right and wrong ?
It is wrong to phony up the science. Wrong to refuse FOI requests.
Wrong to threaten to delete data rather than let others examine it.
Wrong to pervert the peer review and publishing process.
And I am not even commenting on the wrongness of doing publicly funded research and tailoring a set of scientific conclusions to suit a political agenda, and then declaring such shaky and badly constructed conclusions to be “settled” and begin international legislation based upon them.
That is all wrong.
Exposing such malfeasance and countering the wrongdoing with clear-headed statistical analysis ( Mcintyre) is not wrong. It is the high form of right.
Get straight on your definitions of right and wrong.
Typical academic demigod. Living in the Ivory Tower gives these people a huge disconnect from reality.
In a claim for defamation, the normal butden of proof is reversed, in that it would be up Quiggin to convince a court that his statement was true.
ie: It wouldnt be up to Steve to prove that it was erroneous.
Judgement decided on the balance of probabilities. Heard before a District Judge in a county court, but it still means fingerbowls, laws of evidence and a judge in wig and gown sitting beneath the Royal Cipher of Her Majesty…
Ew.
Really, Ick. Yuck. I’ve always tried to avoid aging, nasty hippy types. You just pointed me to a flock. A gaggle? A swarm. A toxic, festering pile.
Those type will never, EVER understand reality. And Quiggen has a fan club. Oh well, ONE of them had to leave the commune to make money, right?
I’ll try that again in English:
In a claim for defamation, the normal burden of proof is reversed, in that it would be up Quiggin, as defendent, to convince a court that his statement was true.
ie: It wouldnt be up to Steve to prove that it was erroneous.
Judgement decided on the balance of probabilities.
Heard before a District Judge in a county court, but it still means fingerbowls, laws of evidence and a judge in wig and gown sitting beneath the Royal Cipher of Her Majesty looking over his/her spectacles at you…
ML (06:34:53) :
Every day we have more and more evidence confirming that IQ of some of the “climate scientist” is within the range of max and min temperatures on the equator.
__________________________________________________________________
More likely between the max and min temperatures on Pluto.
–Wren (10:46:50) :
“…the fact that they are ethically constrained to be honest,..”
Oh Wren, you do know how to feed a good laugh..
Sceptics were astonished at the existence and content of the UEA/CRU emails; a much better feeling than..mortified.
Smokey (10:52:14) :
Wren (10:46:50),
That is one of the most perfect examples of psychological projection I’ve seen here.
—————-
Reply:
We shouldn’t be surprised. As the emails indicated, the “climate scientists” were wondering where their projected global warming went, so they used subterfuge to project a fantasy. What they’re doing here to McIntyre is just more of the same.
Phil Jones needs to open everything he’s done so far for examination.
Reality: Eating worms to survive.
Reality show: Eating worms as a game to kick someone off the island.
Legally responsible: The person choosing to eat the worms.
Morally responsible: The person sitting at home watching the contestants, who is lending their eyeballs to the advertisers.
Truly responsible: The person who is checking their children’s homework and helping them do better work.
Responsible for their homework: The children.
Meanwhile, as this little side show Peyton Place distraction is going on, everyday in March has been above the 20 year record for tropospheric temperatures. See:
http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/
This follows on the heals of the 6th warmest February ever globally, and the warmest February on instrument record for the Southern hemisphere. So far, January-February have been the 5th warmest on record for the planet, and we are running ahead of both 1998 or 2003 as the warmest year (depending on which data you want to use).
Also, if the arctic sea ice is going to make a run to get into some positive anomaly state this winter, it better hurry, as the spring melt is about to begin and, and with arctic temps generally running well above average, it promises to be one heck of a melt season. If the arctic sea ice does not make it into the positive anomaly range, it will mark the 6th year in a row that it has failed to do so, meaning the arctic sea ice will have been below average for 6 years, despite the longest and deepest soloar minimum in a century…
The data continue to suggest the high probability that the AGWT is correct…
He remembers me someone whose name begins with Pacha… ummm I’m not sure … he was that guy in IPCC…
Quiggin looks like a -riggen convict. He should be bunged in behind bars with his mates where he belongs.
Surely he can be prosecuted for making these libellous allegations?
tfp (10:48:33) :
Please have a look at the “computer misuse act 1990″ A UK gov document :
“the access he intends to secure is unauthorised”
“A person guilty of an offence under this section shall be liable on summary conviction to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months or to a fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale or to both”
Looks criminal to me!
Please note that the alleged violation you are referring to is the act of acquiring access to the information – the law you’re referring to is essentially the computer/internet equivalent of breaking and entering. It has not been demonstrated that the person(s) responsible broke into anything.
The criminality of this event is a big question mark. Consider the following scenarios:
1.) If this were an internal leak, it would be a jaw-dropper if the whistle-blower protection was not granted (i.e. this would most likely be considered legal and immune from criminal or civil charges).
2.) If this information was left unprotected, it might be subject to specious civil charges (most likely without substance) but criminal charges would not apply since no “misuse” had to take place to gain access.
3.) If it was purloined somehow (hacked or cracked with a stolen password) then the Computer Misuse Act would apply to the gaining of entry, and civil charges for damages resulting from the release would carry much more water.
Only one of the three scenarios is “criminal”. I’d tend to say as well, and admittedly as my $0.02 on the subject, that it’s probably the least likely of the three. The point you raise is valid, the law in question could apply, but I don’t think it’s as much of a given that it does apply as you suggest.
Quiggin’s evidently chickened out on the comments thing at his site. Readers may be interested to know that he’s a regular poster at Crooked Timber (a sort of virtual senior common-room, for those who don’t know it, a marvellous little coterie of smugly superior leftist ivory-tower tenured academics, remarkable for their insular viciousness towards intruding hoi-polloi). Here’s his latest:
http://crookedtimber.org/2010/03/03/lindzen-and-no-statistically-significant-warming-since-1995/
Quiggin doesn’t control commenting at CT. You know what to do.
Wren (10:44:28) :
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that McIntyre fans have a double standard.
Allegations of wrongdoing based on suspicions are OK if directed at Jones and man.
BASED ON SUSPICION?
They put it in writing, how much more evidence do you need?
Have you read all of the emails?
” R. de Haan (06:14:37) :
[…]
Today the Federal State of North Rhein Westfalen, the former center of the German “Wirtschaftswunder” announced a 95% reduction of CO2 by 20250.”
No need to panic yet for the inhabitants of Düsseldorf, home town of Kraftwerk (or re-arranging The Robots to be played on goatskin drums):
it is only a suggestion of a Climate protection law coming from “several environment protection groups”; a report in german:
http://www.derwesten.de/nachrichten/politik/Umweltverbaende-wollen-neue-Kohlekraftwerke-verhindern-id2741803.html
A C Osborn is the typical rank and file wamer.
Never able to grasp the width and depth of fraud throughout the entire AGW movement.
Instead choosing to view all of it as unsubstantiated suspicion by an anti-science crowd funded by big oil.
The battle is raging with the Lubchecnos and Quiggins so confused and unethical they think they have a shot at salvaging the cause.
In reality they are only piling up the dirt next to their career graves until it fall upon them.
It appears to be an excellent example of “Inspector Clouseau” reasoning. “And I suspect you because I have no reason to suspect you!”
Big Fail.
Where does one begin the reading lesson for this man:
“By July 2009, CRU had advised McIntyre that climate data used in their work was available from the original sources, and that he should seek it from them.”
Really? Does this man not read the dates on things and the contents:
http://climateaudit.org/2009/07/24/cru-refuses-data-once-again/
McIntyre requested data that had been sent to Webster. This request was
mad June 26th. CRU responded within their mandated 20 day window.
On July 24th Mcintyre wrote the blog post and explains CRUs Claim:
the data CANNOT be shared because of confidentiality agreements.
Our good professor must have read this blog, because he notes what followed:
“24 July 2009: McIntyre organizes a spam FOI campaign against CRU, asking his supporters to send requests nominating five countries whose data they wanted of the form:
I hereby make a EIR/FOI request in respect to any confidentiality agreements)restricting transmission of CRUTEM data to non-academics involing(sic) the following countries: [insert 5 or so countries that are different from ones already requested]
(unsurprisingly, his supporters ignored the request to stick to new countries, and sent multiples of the same request)”
Now, read that. In front of him he has the request. It’s a request for confidentiality AGREEMENTS, not data. AGREEMENTS. And why agreements?
because the data was supposedly “confidential”
Reading Comprehension: F.
hey he is in Australia, Why dont you guys down under go write his bosses.
Check the employee guidelines. When did he blog? personal time or work time? Have fun
Can you imagine a world government with this kind of people in power?
Crooked timber has closed comments.
Hey, this is gunna be fun.
Isn’t it obvious? The real breaker-inner must have been Quiggin. He’s just accusing McIntyre to deflect suspicion away from himself.
Re: Simon H (07:42:16) :
…winning a libel case requires you to prove resulting personal damages. That would require McIntyre to prove professional damage (far more difficult for a retiree) or loss of income (also difficult for a retiree).
—
Not in the UK. First prove defamation, which should be straightforward given Quiggin’s stated he has no evidence. Damages are then assessed once defamation is proven, and in the UK can be considerable, especially if Justice Eady is a sceptic. As for loss of income, Steve mentioned he’s doing some consultancy here:
http://climateaudit.org/2010/03/08/pdac/
mining data can be extremely valuable and people working with that data need to be trustworthy and credible. Accusing someone of hacking or releasing data without authority could be very damaging. Read Climate Audit or the Hockey Stick Illusion and I think it’s easy to see Steve’s behaved with integrity and ethically throughout this long saga. The poor ethical standards are very much in the public doman post CRUTape, and are on the side of the self righteous.
Litigating this in the UK would seem a slam-dunk, especially with our current libel laws. Not litigating keeps the moral high ground, but these kinds of baseless personal attacks are damaging to careers and reputations. Litigation may not help move the CRU investigation along and may not discover much. Quiggins would need to prove his statements correct and he couldn’t necessarily rely on evidence from CRU or Norfolk Police.
Quiggens;
“March 13th, 2010 at 09:06 | #35 Reply | Quote
I think we’ve seen enough to demonstrate the intellectual and moral quality of McIntyre’s supporters. I’m calling a halt here. Comments on this thread are closed.”
re: Hu Duck Xing’s posting of Quiggin’s dossier:
I was rather shocked to realise that this is the Quiggin associated with anticipated utility; this is a very well-known contribution.
I think we’re seeing an example here of eminent (or at least prominent) insularity. It is fascinating to see the way he digs his heels in and doesn’t give an inch. No interest at all in looking at the situation in any way other than thru a received narrative. From the thrust of his remarks, he must still believe in the hockey stick.
NickB. (09:52:19) :
jack mosevich (05:57:48) :
Anyway he is only an economist. Economists’ forecasts are about as good as those from climate models.
Exactly! Real economists know their projections/forecasts are guesses.
——————————-
And the WHO and their forecasts of rampant pandemic swine flu spring to mind also. Level 6 my arse.
So, yes, they’re all ‘at it’.
W. Richards (12:06:11) : Hey, you are most probably right!, he is desperate, and by acussing McIntyre he attracts the attention of the police. He makes a good candidate for a whistleblower. :-)
I hope Steve consults legal counsel on whether Professor Quiggin has committed an actionable libel/slander, and if counsel so advises, takes action. I would contribute to the legal fund to pursue it, tho hopefully pro bono representation might be forthcoming.
What a stunning lapse in judgement to write a libelous accusation like this. Then again, perhaps the AGW religion is producing it’s own brand of suicide bomber. A legalistic suicide bomber who straps a liable and slander vest on and blows himself up along with the good reputation of the victim.
As Teal’C would say, “Indeed.”
Note what Quiggin has written and posted on his website, for example:
John Quiggin is a member of William Connolley’s band of wikipedia thugs. This guy is an unhinged nut – a fact his photo makes abundantly clear.
Wren (10:30:46) :
The headline “McIntyre accused by University of Queensland Prof of CRU break in” belies what Professor Quiggin said.
“I think there is enough to point to Steven McIntyre as the person, along with the actual hacker or leaker, who bears primary moral responsibility for the crime…”
“Whether or not he was directly involved in the theft, or merely created the opportunity and benefited from the proceeds is impossible to determine, and essentially irrelevant.”
Professor Quiggin is voicing his suspicion of McIntyre just as some voice their suspicion of Jones and Mann.
Perhaps he thinks what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
===============
Or maybe good for the Quiggin and to hell with goose and gander? I guess for some it all depends on how many column inches one can claim or how much air time comes one’s way.
Whether that is JQ’s objective I have no idea but what I have read so far seems to offer an odd interpretation if media exposure and opportunity was not the primary objective.
Notice Quiggin’s well-poisoning in the matter of Lindzen. Has he yet pointed out that Roy Spencer is an advocate of Intelligent Design?
No doubt he will, when he has a bone to pick with Spencer.
Mr McIntyre
Quiggin’s comments are libellous. Happy to discuss how we go after him under E
Simon H (07:42:16) :
Guys… take a step back a moment….
I think pursuing Quiggin at this time would be the wrong reaction from McIntyre. To pursue Quiggin and win would require McIntyre to prove damages. Quiggin shot his mouth off, and we have good reason to believe he’s wrong, but winning a libel case requires you to prove resulting personal damages.
Being attacked by a rabid economist in this manner can only *enhance* Mr. McIntyre’s reputation.
That is, if further enhancement of 24-carat gold were possible.
Steve Oregon (11:51:28) :
A C Osborn is the typical rank and file wamer.
Never able to grasp the width and depth of fraud throughout the entire AGW movement.
Steve, please carefully read what I wrote!!!!!!!!!
“They put it in writing, how much more evidence do you need?”
I am deeply offended at being called a “rank and file wamer”, I have never wamed in my life.
Or supported any AGW statements.
Kay (05:25:40) asked: “Wow. That just blows my mind. Do climate scientists have ANY sense of ethics whatsoever?”
Quiggin is not a climatologist.
Oh, I might as well mention that Quiggin featured in a blog post I wrote recently about the “reliable sources” in wikipedia:
http://pediawatch.wordpress.com/2010/03/05/reliable-sources-in-the-world-of-wikipedia-wow/
Doh! You aren’t supposed to give the Quiggin attention. Don’t feed the Quiggin!
I am not a big fan of the litigation route but this slandering ‘scientist’ must be sued out of principle and to put an end to this assault.
It would make a spectacular example to the rest of the IPCC gang and, even better, the examination of the ‘facts’ here would be very revealing.
In the meantime, this desperate and pathetic outburst is very revealing in itself.
R Gates,
Your statements border on the ludicrous, to state that feb temps are the “6th warmest ever” is misleading. How many times have we heard the ‘warmest ever’ quote while the actual timeline is missing.
How many years does the record go back and what source are you using and what is the actual anomoly?
You also state that the southern hemisphere temperature for jan/feb is the fifth highest on record, but again how long does the record go back and what source are you quoting from? Does it not occur to you temperatures are actually falling when you make statements like “fifth highest on record”?
Your silliest quote however regarding arctic temperatures being “generally running well above average” and yet again you provide no actual temperatures to back up this frankly wierd assertion(I wonder why?) more important is your apparent inability to comprehend that small rises in arctic air temperatures while still below the freezing point of water cannot melt sea ice. This statement leads you to speculate that this will lead to “one heck of a melt season” although quite how you can make such a wild assumption escapes me completely unless you are from the ‘wishing it makes it so’ school of thought.
I can understand your reluctance to provide substantial evidence to back up your cherry picked claims but here is a challenge for you.
Please provide the actual average temperatures of the arctic you claim are running well above normal so we can compare the actual difference.
The final statement that arctic ice levels “have been below average for six years” is specious because the records you quote are only 31yrs/21yrs long, quite how you can extrapolate such certain conclusions with such a tiny timeline is beyond me.
So here is another challenge to you, please provide the supposed artic sea ice maximum average and the actual 2010 ice maximum so we can see exactly how far short 2010 is from the 30yr mean and the 1979-2000 mean.
Your use of cherry picked data does you no credit, I for one would be more amenable if you provided actual details of timelines,temps and differentials.
You saved the best quote till last regarding the solar minimum, the AGW consensus does not recognize the influence of solar cycles on polar ice cover levels.
Does it take someone like me to point out that the solar maximum/minimum cycle theory states that the cycles take several years to have any effect on actual global temperatures and sea ice levels so in fact if the theory is correct which many in the AGW camp deny there would be a delay of several years before any solar minimum had any discernable effect.
Dear Mr McIntyre
My view is Quiggin’s comments may be libellous. I’m happy to discuss the terms upon which we might sue him and the University. It’s time to take apart “scientists” like this.
Keep up the excellent work.
Kind regards
Kevin Oram
Sometimes you just know there’s still ample room for the pharmaceutical industry to make so much more profit.
McIntyre need do nothing except let these attackers have enough rope to hang themselves.
Quiggins has a lot of egg on his tie right now and there isn’t a queue to thank him for his intervention from either side.
Presumably to prof has as much evidence for this particular claim as he does for agw……
The current “state of the art” at a glance then.
I can’t believe you’ve wasted a whole thread on John Quiggin. He’s a nobody.
Ignore him. He is self-evidently a complete jerk. There are far bigger and better battles to fight than wasting time and energy on such an irrelevant mental pygmy..
Speaking -er, writing – as a retired lawyer (and with an extremely sparse acquaintanceship with the law of defamation) I think Quiggin has been somewhat clever – whether by design or by accident I cannot say. He does NOT accuse McIntyre of actually being the hacker/leaker or of being a co-leaker/hacker or of planning the action or of explicitly inciting it. Instead of making accusations of legal/criminal wrongdoing, he has written a nasty smear using innuendo, omitting salient facts and misstating others.
The little nugget in the midden is his confident statement that the e-mails/documents were internally assembled in order to respond to the FOI requests. While many have speculated on that, he states it as a known fact. Does he have sources that have provided that info???
Reason for further FOI requests to track down the source??? ( I am assuming that Australia has such legislation.)
But what the poor kings and queens in their ivory towers don’t understand, is often they actually are incompetent.
It is now fully morphed into the EMOTIONAL realm and completely out of the SCIENCE and REASON realm!
“Quiggin down under” is a scientist (?) who promotes personal opinion over factual data in the “global warming” discussion.
He’s listened to, why?
I mean, I know why he’s listened to by GW alarmists – he fits the mold.
But the rest of us?
Dunno
Grant (11:28:51) :
–Wren (10:46:50) :
“…the fact that they are ethically constrained to be honest,..”
Oh Wren, you do know how to feed a good laugh..
Sceptics were astonished at the existence and content of the UEA/CRU emails; a much better feeling than..mortified.
====
Call me skeptical of people who call themselves skeptics. A true skeptic is evenhanded.
http://nobelprize.org/nomination/nomination_facts.html
Janice Baker (13:29:52) :
Speaking -er, writing – as a retired lawyer (and with an extremely sparse acquaintanceship with the law of defamation) I think Quiggin has been somewhat clever – whether by design or by accident I cannot say. He does NOT accuse McIntyre of actually being the hacker/leaker or of being a co-leaker/hacker or of planning the action or of explicitly inciting it. Instead of making accusations of legal/criminal wrongdoing, he has written a nasty smear using innuendo, omitting salient facts and misstating others.
=====
No he doesn’t, but the headline says he does.
” McIntyre accused by University of Queensland Prof of CRU break in”
Libel ?
“Sou (06:09:15) :
Good looking chap.”
Come on at least try to be believable.
Quiggen is actually a well respected economist and with an impressive list of publications (I count 5 in the highly prestigious AER alone). Having said that, there is no excuse for his blog posting. Its lack of accuracy is matched only by its lack of honesty and ethics. Anyone with a shred of integrity would correct and apologize. Let’s see if Quiggen does the right thing.
WHY not check out the CRU data for yourself? I made it available on my website, I know from my stats that lots of you go there, but I also know you dont actually look. What does this tell me?
http://www.knowyourplanet.com/climate-data/
Quiggin has been altering his post in what looks like an attempt to make it less defamatory. Quiggin already shut down comments after it was pointed out in his thread that his post was likely defamatory.
Google’s cached version of the page from March 13th is here (I have this saved in case google updates their cache):
http://tinyurl.com/ygvn9bo
Quiggin’s current version of the post is here:
http://tinyurl.com/ydad7hm
Some differences. The latest version adds the following sentence to the first paragraph:
“It seems unlikely at this point that the hacker/leaker wll be identified, so as far as criminal liability is concerned, we will probably never know.”
In the original version Quiggin stated:
“there is enough to point to Steven McIntyre as the person, along with the actual hacker or leaker, who bears primary moral responsibility for the crime.”
Which he subsequently changed to:
“there is enough to point to Steven McIntyre as the person (along with the
actual hacker or leaker of course) who bears primary moral responsibility for the crime.”
(“of course” is new).
In the original version Quiggin stated:
“Whether or not he [McIntyre] was directly involved in the theft, or merely created the opportunity and benefited from the proceeds is impossible to determine, and essentially irrelevant.”
Which has been changed to:
“Whether or not he [McIntyre] was directly involved in the theft, or merely created the opportunity and benefited from the proceeds is impossible to determine, and essentially irrelevant in moral terms.”
(“in moral terms” is new).
In the current post he states
“Note: I’ve updated this to correct some errors.”
I don’t think these changes constitute error-correction.
Kitefreak (12:16:38) :
And the WHO and their forecasts of rampant pandemic swine flu spring to mind also. Level 6 my arse.
So, yes, they’re all ‘at it’.
Until I started spending a good amount of time here, I never really took note of the concept of “post normal” science. IMO, this is not science at all – it’s all FUD. Guys like Quiggin have more in common with Witch Doctors than they do Einstein.
Come up with a sensational frightening scenario, use statistics and models as a replacement for the scientific method and generate “projections” that are not reproducible or falsifiable, call it consensus, and then latch on to scary trends and (no matter how short term they might really be) extrapolate EXTRAPOLATE EXTRAPOLATE for dramatic effect.
I’ve been trying to come up with a historical corollary for such behavior. There are definite tones of paranoia (Jim Jones?), scapegoating (name an oppressive dictatorship in the 20th Century that didn’t do this), orthodoxy vs. heresy (pick a religion), and personal esteem/gain at the cost of integrity (politics anyone).
Whatever it is, it is most assuredly not science… not anything more than the vestigial trappings of it at least.
“Quiggen is actually a well respected economist and with an impressive list of publications ”
He is also known for his appearance on Geico commercials.
“Quiggen is actually a well respected economist and with an impressive list of publications (I count 5 in the highly prestigious AER alone).”
Hmmmm. I suspect he is highly invested in carbon trading and green stocks. A smart economist would know the elite want this to be the next bubble. Perhaps this desperate smearing is a sign of the think tanks reconsidering going ahead with carbon legislation.
The kind of mindless blather Quiggen spouted is exactly the sort of thing one observes in people that learn some cherished religious viewpoint is wrong (e.g. a cult victim charitably “deprogrammed” via family intervention), but cannot, yet, accept the true facts (vs. the “facts” imposed via cult programming). It’s an early stage of grieving.
Unfortunately, the natural response is to devote more mental energy to holding onto the cherished belief…which, if it succeeds, leads to an even more rabid & irrational fanatic….
Thanks to Steve McIntyre, we aleready knew quite a lot of the content of the e-mails. “Hide the decline”, yup, already observed that. “Mike’s tricks”, yeah, already knew about them.
It’s all bad news for the “robustness” of some studies and some milieus relied upon by the IPCC, and the emails only confirmed what was known (well OK, there was more of course).
Now they can’t wish away the bad news, so they go for the messenger.
But no legal action is needed. Only popcorn. After all it’s great fun to watch how the alleged elite can make a complete fool of themselves.
Kay (08:11:01) :
@ Ben (07:49:00) : Because Mann worked at the U of Virginia from 1999-2005, the ongoing Penn State review by a committee of scientists, is not likely to cover Mann’s “Hockey Stick” related problems, the ethics of Mann’s editorial actions with the UN IPCC’s 2001 report or the breach of scientific method procedures, due to Mann’s multi-year refusal to release his data for standard scientific review.”
Yes, but could they (or would they) contact UVa or UMass?
The small review group is not a court. They would have no way to subpoena input from outside of Penn State from the IPCC, the U of Virginia or Yale, where Mann worked before Virginia.
The review group could not compel individuals outside of Penn State to present information or records and they couldn’t put them under oath to answer honestly. Nor would a university administration likely sanction a review of another universities’ internal problems. Mann’s alleged problems, from before his time at Penn State and those from Mann’s actions in outside groups like the UN IPCC, probably won’t be mentioned at all.
That could lead to the same kind of misinterpretations we saw after the first report. Their scope appeared to be narrowly defined. Yet some are making much more broad sweeping claims. Hmmm… a lot like their AGW claims?
Professor Quiggin is a “research” economist. Enough said.
For those with strong character: http://www.johnquiggin.com is his blog site. Used to have a bright red masthead but now morbid black.
Quiggin is very quick to sue people who slander him on blogs – tried that with Jennifer Marohasy’s commentators some years back. (Slander is short term defamation, like a verballing, while libel is long term, such as a written opinion).
Much like Richard Dawkins, Robyn Williams (of the Oz ABC) and similar fellow travelers on the AGW waggon – mean spirited.
Quiggin is notorious here in Australia for tendentious statements on environmental issues. He keeps trying to exonerate the Greens for opposing DDT use against the mosquito vector of malaria in the Third World. Quiggin stridently repeats that DDT wasn’t banned for this purpose. True, but unfortunately its use was discouraged by other means. Charities would only supply other insecticides which didn’t work. Loans were made conditional on not using DDT. The method of DDT application for anti-malaria purposes was spraying on the inner walls of houses, not indiscriminate spraying all over the environment. There was no rational basis for opposing this method. Yet for a long time it was opposed by Quiggin’s Green friends. Millions are estimated to have died as a result of this error.
Took the time to read some of his work – “sub-prime no problem” “Iraq disaster”
and a load of redistributive blather. Another Erlich-in-progress. They are
remarkably consistent. Even about being consistently wrong.
If facts aren’t your friend go ad hominem.
Jonathan Baxter (14:19:40) :
“Quiggin has been altering his post in what looks like an attempt to make it less defamatory. Quiggin already shut down comments after it was pointed out in his thread that his post was likely defamatory”
—————-
Well spotted. A sign of panic, perhaps?
Professor Wolfman
I am a Doctoral student at the University of Queensland. If I sight Professor John Quiggins of the School of Economics and Political Science on campus, I might pop over and ask him a few questions.
Do McIntyre defenders know if he is the person who organized a campaign that harassed the University of East Anglia with FOI requests?
The University of East Anglia received 58 FOI requests of similar nature asking for details on confidentiality agreements with different countries, many of which were identical except for the specific countries mentioned. Apparently, this was an organized effort, but the following rather amusing request was from a participant who failed to follow instructions:
“I hereby make a EIR/FOI request in respect to any confidentiality agreements)restricting transmission of CRUTEM data to non-academics involing the following countries: [INSERT 5 OR SO COUNTRIES THAT ARE DIFFERENT FROM THE ONES ALREADY REQUESTED]
1. the date of any applicable confidentiality agreements; 2. the parties to such confidentiality agreement, including the full name of any organization; 3. a copy of the section of the confidentiality agreement that “prevents further transmission to non-academics”. 4. a copy of the entire confidentiality agreement.”
Note: Words were put in caps for emphasis.
—–
The 58 FOI requests can be seen at
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/25032/response/66822/attach/2/Response%20letter%20199%20100121.pd
What a laugh!
http://www.uq.edu.au/economics/johnquiggin/news/2006-07-06-AFR.htm
Off topic, but Salinger in NZ appeared yesterday at the Board of Enquiry hearing for the Turitea wind farm. He was buried alive and the Board did not ask him one question about his AGW alarmist nonsense.
Graphite (06:21:01) :
They invented a whole new crime to cover what theft left out.
Taking without the owners consent.
The computer misuse act which relates to hacking contains a caveat that if no harm to the computer system it becomes a civil offence. I am willing to be corrected on this as it is a long time since I looked at it.
Either way. They are both summary offences & subject to the same 6 month statute of limitations as the FOI violations.
DaveE.
I suggest that we let Quiggin’s comments go through to the wicket-keeper: that is, ignore them! They really are not worth commenting upon; writing about his outburst in the manner we have, does not, in general, do our attempts to focus on demonstrating the falsity of the AGW hypothesis any good. The nature of Quiggin’s comments indicate that he does not appear to understand the science querying the AGW hypothesis; indeed Quiggin’s absence of crediting McIntyre with demonstrating the spurious methods used by Mann and co-workers in formulating the “hockey stick” time-temperature diagram could also indicate that he does not understand the tools, i.e. advanced parametric statistics, deployed by McIntyre and McKittrick in such a demonstration.
I believe that Steve McIntyre, through Climate Audit, gains stature from Quiggin’s outburst – McIntyre’s analytical approach in falsifying important elements of the AGW hypothesis, and his reasoned and dispassionate control of discussion on Climate Audit – is a good example for all of us – and it is McIntyre’s gain because it contrasts so dramatically with the emotive nature of Quiggin’s comments.
I feel that Steve McIntyre should not do anything about Quiggin – just continue to lead by example – and let Quiggin’s comments go through to the wicket keeper.
For some reason, I cannot take economist-turned wannabe-detective Quiggin seriously. To point the finger at McIntyre as having primary “moral” responsibility for the “crime” is to ignore the thousands of skeptics (most working independently of McIntyre) who have been crying foul against the AGW alarmism, and the proposed (costly) solutions. Quiggin’s second most outrageous comment on his blog states “That attempt failed and the files were then widely circulated to anti-science sites.” (An obvious reference to AGW skeptic sites, and is a use of Disinformation rule no. 5: “Sidetrack opponents with name calling and ridicule”.)
Quiggin’s makes repeated use of the phrase “stolen e-mails”, suggesting that they and all backups were deleted from CRU’s server(s), thus depriving their owners
of their property.
Please send a small donation to John Quiggin with a suggestion that he use the funds to purchase for himself an Oxford dictionary with which he should consult for the proper definition of the word “stolen”.
McIntyre would do best to simply ignore this Australian version of Inspector Jacques Clouseau.
“anti-science blog sites”
This is the criminal accusation…
The mentality that leads so-called intelligentsia to declare climateaudit.org an anti-science blog is a travesty, and very dangerous… As we speak the Intelligentsia Panel is formulating it’s version of “Inquisitional ‘Anti-Christ/Climate’ Witch Hunts”… Beware their wrath, they see you as all Evil incarnate…
They believe only they understand the Spirit of Science…
JimAsh (11:00:02) :
“Wren (10:44:28) :
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that McIntyre fans have a double standard.
Allegations of wrongdoing based on suspicions are OK if directed at Jones and man.
Mere suspicion of wrongdoing is outrageous if directed at McIntyre.
Why can’t people just be honest?”
We ARE being honest.
Why couldn’t Jones be honest ?
Right and wrong ?
It is wrong to phony up the science….
=====
That allegation against Jones is a good example of an allegation based on suspicion.
Why not be honest and call a spade a spade?
I can’t help feeling that Quiggin’s entire post is one long temper tantrum because he’s being ignored and his favourite apocalyptic fantasy is swirling around the plug-hole of history.
So Steve McIntyre bears “moral responsibility” for the leaking of the CRU emails?
Does he also bear responsibility for the scientific misconduct revealed in those emails and if not, who does Professor Quiggin? Does he bear responsibility for the FOIA requests made which were illegally and criminally rebuffed?
Quiggin’s rant reminds me very strongly of the sort of complaints made by fundamentalist Christians against atheists/non-believers for denying the Day of Judgment and atheists somehow bearing responsibility for sending so many people to Hell.
Like the tantrums that my young children sometimes act out (occasionally in the supermarket) the best advice I can give is just ignore the tantrum and get on with life.
I’m amused that a few are noticing that Prof. Quiggan shut down his thread after it was pointed out that it might be libelous, and is now modifying his post. Apparently pointing out to him that he was a fool wasn’t enough.
=====================
Is there any proof that McIntyre organized the FOIA form letter campaign?
The link in Grizzley Adams’ blog post just post to other blog posts that allege he’s behind it.
They really think SM is the friggin boogey man – AHAHAHAHAHA
He’s the new Exxon!!!!!!
DJ Meredith (08:22:14) :
Looks to me like Quiggin performed a clever “trick” by splicing fiction onto fact ….
—-
You are confused. The splice was the lying headline “McIntyre accused by University of Queensland Prof of CRU break in.”
That lie was spliced onto Quiggin’s “I think there is enough to point to Steven McIntyre as the person, along with the actual hacker or leaker, who bears primary moral responsibility for the crime…”
Why can’t people be truthful ?
Wren (15:14:30) :
Wow, aren’t you a clever little fellow? I am shocked, shocked I tell you that that “torrent” of 58 requests was organized in such a way. Who would have thought of such a thing?
Why, look here inspector, how would I have ever found it if it weren’t for you sharpies being on the job?
http://climateaudit.org/2009/07/24/cru-refuses-data-once-again/
(The phrase “hidden in plain sight” might come to mind, but that’s already been taken.)
Of course, referencing this directly runs the risk of people actually being exposed to the background behind the “torrent” of requests.
Couldn’t have that, now could we?
HGI (14:13:18) :
Quiggen is actually a well respected economist and with an impressive list of publications (I count 5 in the highly prestigious AER alone).
Well respected by who? He’s his own greatest fan.
The man is a blathering idiot.
R Gates
Surely you have been hanging out here long enough to realise that the temperature data is of dubious quality?
Is he wearing that beard for a bet? I’d probably believe the climate was warming if I had a great furball insulating my face.
“Wren (15:14:30) :
Do McIntyre defenders know if he is the person who organized a campaign that harassed the University of East Anglia with FOI requests?[…]”
No, Wren, i don’t know that.
I’m still laughing at the kangaroo loose somewhere in the upper paddock. Sometimes the best part of this blog is the comments.
Just another frustrated economist forever stuck in academia making another baseless allegation on an issue he has no idea about.
The CRU files were LEAKED they weren’t hacked. This is the ‘history deniers’ way of trying to smear again. IT experts investigating the leak have confirmed that a hack into the system, especially with such selectivity was impossible.
The ‘history deniers’ cannot bear to think that one of their own would rat on them and betray their ’cause’. So in their eyes, the best defence is to attack after all. Isn’t that right Al, James, Paul, Rajendra, Stephen, Kevin, Mike and Phil?!
And isn’t that right Professor Quiggin?
This terrible harassment of the keepers of climate secrets must stop… Stop I tell you!!!!
Do you really expect these scientist saviors of our perilously fragile planet to take even ONE moment away from their important work to answer a question?
Believe them… they only have your best interests at heart…
John M @ 16:03:23
Shhh. Wren’s much more fun naive.
================
ack – not my university. I think I’ll have to find a way to complain through the alumni organisation.
Why do academics from other disciplines keep getting involved in this business?
Simple Logic…
There wouldn’t be so many requests if the information sought was publicly available in the first place…
Of course, hiding information vital to the survival of our species on this planet shouldn’t be publicly available…
Wouldn’t want the rubes questioning the Dogma… They might actually start to think for themselves… eh…
Oh well, since the cat is out of the bag anyway. Wren, those FOIA requests were merely to see if Jones’ claimed excuse for not yielding data was true. Now, go check whether those confidentiality agreements were real or not and also, while you’re at it, wonder about the data he claimed he couldn’t reveal because of those agreements.
Wondering about the data should bring you up to date. We all wonder as we wander through this maze of disinformation.
===========
Cassandra King Said:
“R Gates,
Your statements border on the ludicrous, to state that feb temps are the “6th warmest ever” is misleading. How many times have we heard the ‘warmest ever’ quote while the actual timeline is missing.
How many years does the record go back and what source are you using and what is the actual anomoly?
You also state that the southern hemisphere temperature for jan/feb is the fifth highest on record, but again how long does the record go back and what source are you quoting from? Does it not occur to you temperatures are actually falling when you make statements like “fifth highest on record”?
Your silliest quote however regarding arctic temperatures being “generally running well above average” and yet again you provide no actual temperatures to back up this frankly wierd assertion(I wonder why?…”
______________
Oh, where to begin? First of all, I didn’t just pull these figures out of a hat, or make them up, but they come right from the latest climate data available, the really, there is nothing ludicrous about it. For the latest monthly analysis of data, including how warm it has been in January and February, simply go here:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/?report=global&year=2010&month=2&submitted=Get+Report
It is a wealth of “ludicrous” information, and would serve you well to read it.
For sea ice data, go here:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/get-file.php?report=global&file=nh-seaice&year=2010&month=2&ext=gif
and here:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/
For recent arctic temps go here:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/do_nmap.py?year_last=2010&month_last=2&sat=4&sst=0&type=anoms&mean_gen=02&year1=2010&year2=2010&base1=1951&base2=1980&radius=1200&pol=reg
or here:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/maps/
and click on Make Map.
The arctic and antarctic have been running warm for many years actually, despite the tripe that you hear and read.
For tropospheric temps (which are extremely critical in the whole AGW model by the way), best just to go here:
http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/
and explore over many years at all different altitudes, including into the stratosphere, where temps are dropping, just as predicted by AGWT. This is actually hard for AGW skeptics to explain. How could tropospheric temps be rising, but statospheric temps be falling? No AGW skeptic has explained a model of how this would be the case, but AGWT accounts for it perfectly.
So, if you look for the real data, you can find it, as ludicrous as that sounds, and I believe that a reasonable person would have to be more convinced that AGWT is probably right, than probably wrong. I at about 75% convinced, and I’d love someone to show me some REAL data to persuade me differently–and not some graph put up on an AGW skeptics web site, that doesn’t show where the data came from, how it was gathered, who gathered it, etc. I want science…not politics.
Here’s the irony Big Bird. While Jones and his Team cry crocodile tears over the harassment of the FOIA requests, in fact his lies were being nailed onto the wall for everyone to see.
Get thee to your ophalmologist, the Eagle, for advice on how to read the writing on the wall.
==============
Jonathan Baxter (14:19:40) :
You will excuse me but Australia seems to be full of really dumb organizations/institutions/governments/universities run by really dumb scientists. Having done considerable successful research there I can confirm this. Did you know you cannot light a wood barbecue in your backyard anywhere in Australia? (Its illegal). It is probably the most over-regulated, over-governed, over-rated, expensive country in the world. Even the Swedes find it (the rules and regulations)! Personal freedoms have been reduced to nothing. Basically its a country run by lawyers and this is one reason they will not let go of AGW easily. I invite anybody to go there and check it out.
Veronica (England) said:
“R Gates
Surely you have been hanging out here long enough to realise that the temperature data is of dubious quality?”
_______
Actually, I’ve been studying climate and physics long enough to know that the majority of the data is quite good and we are fortunate enough to live in a time when we have access to such amazing resources, and if we check and double check, we’ll eventually find the truth. Yes, there have been some outrageous errors made, and yes, some of the data needs to be simply thrown out, but taken in totality, I am 75% convinced that the AGWT is correct, meaning of course , that I am a 25% skeptic, and probably will always be so.
Here’s what I am waiting for:
1) Will 2010 (or possibly 2011) turn out to be the warmest year on instrument record? So far, the trend looks very favorable based on the global warmth we’ve seen in Jan. & Feb.) If 2010 does turn out to be warmer than 1998 or 2003 (depending on which data you’re using, and they were close), then how do the AGW skeptics account for that? 1998’s El Nino was stronger than the current El Nino, plus we’ve just come through the deepest solar minimum in a century, so if the potential record heat in 2010 is not caused by GH gases, than what will the skeptics attribute it to?
2) Will the arctic sea ice fall lower in 2010 during the summer minimum in September than it did in 2008 or 2009? In other words, will it approach the 2007 low? I don’t think it will go lower this year, but should go lower than 2008 or 2009. If it does, how do the AGW skeptics account for it, despite the fact that we’ve just gone through a century record deep solar minimum? AGWT has made clear projection and clearly stated that the sun is not as big a component as GH gases in driving the climate. It’s right there, on the line prediction…the arctic sea ice should decline and continue to decline on an annual basis until at some point this century, the arctic will be ice free in the summer. Pretty clear…pretty observable and testable hypothesis. And the FACT is, (despite the completely vacuous hype you hear) is that the arctic sea ice has not been in a positive anomaly state for 6 years now…
Von Adamski (16:06:19) :
I like it!
R. Gates (16:52:53) :
If none of those things happen, how will CAGWers account for that?
Actually, as a lukewarmer, I suspect we will get a record at some point. Call me when we reach Hansen’s Scenerio B.
Quiggin is used to having his opinions fawned over by the drones who comment regularly on his site. Disagreement leads to banning.
So he probably thought he could get away with his McIntyre post.
Actually, he banned me a couple of weeks ago. Since then, his weird logic has been noted in other blogs, and now hit the global audience with his attack on Steve McIntyre.
It’s karma!
R Gates @ 16:52:53
You yammer on about the recent Solar Minimum like you understand the sun’s link to climate. Clue us in, please; we’re all breathless.
And the heat now is from the strong El Nino. This is a Las Ninas predominant phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. What are you going to say next year when it is colder?
======================
In regard to the libel in Australian law losses do not have to be proven. Damages are at large. In addition to general or compensatory damages McIntyre would be awarded aggravated damages due to Quiggen’s hostility and motive. In addition to that he would have a strong argument for punitive damages to deter other chancers. McIntyre should sue the mad prof, University of Queensland and any of the warmist smart arses that have repeated the slander.
Happy hunting.
I would suggest a strongly worded letter to the University where he is employed written by a lawyer and demanding an immediate public apology and retraction.
Jimbo (16:33:44) :
Jonathan Baxter (14:19:40) :
“Quiggin has been altering his post in what looks like an attempt to make it less defamatory. Quiggin already shut down comments after it was pointed out in his thread that his post was likely defamatory.”
This won’t get to court. He is already backtracking hard and is sure to backtrack more should McIntyre shoot off a letter from his lawyer
Jimbo this wont help him to in defense to a finding of publishing a defamation. Snivelling and whining “sorry mate” will only mitigate the payout. Nor will the streaker defense – seemed like a good idea at the time. His only viable defense is insanity. No doubt caused by too much sun. Its called the warmist defense.
Quiggy is a demoralized provincial hack who probably couldn’t argue his way out of a rhetorical wet paper bag. Obviously, he’s upset. His whole life’s work has been revealed to be based on rubbish. Hope he’s got tenure and a well topped up super.
Whoever liberated the CRU emails is a great hero, a defiant revolutionary if he/she was an outside hacker or a a brave whistle blower if he/she is a Team associate. Only anti-science reactionaries and group-think collectivists oppose transparency and reform in the conduct of climatology, by whatever means necessary.
To grasp the hypocrisy of Qiggy’s position one only has to imagine if the hack/whistleblowing had occurred to an institution renown for AGW skepticism. Al Gore and James Hansen have repeatedly called for civil disobedience against anyone who doubts AGW. They have only received what they have wished many times upon others.
Climategate will become as much a part of science history as the Piltdown Mann episode. It has been a great honor to have merely hung out on Watts’ and McIntyre’s sites as witness to Anthony, Steve, Mosher, Jeff Id, Lucia, et al, deconstruction of the AGW artifice one rusted-on fallacy at a time. Together they have pioneered a whole new system for the review, testing and dissemination of scientific ideas that will no doubt lead to reforms in the peer review process as it is now practiced.
Being an Australian and a Queenslander, my observations are, 90% of people that have a rat hanging out of their mouth, consider themselves intellectually superior or own a sail boat !
But I think poor Quiggin has just has his head on up side down.
Our Little Stevie…….
I’m so proud of him….
I hope he lodges a complaint with the University, and then a Law Suit. I assume Aussi Universities have a code of Ethics? But then again, when it comes to Climate, it is clear to all that there is no ethics to be found anywhere.
R. Gates (16:52:53) :
Veronica (England) said:
“R Gates
Surely you have been hanging out here long enough to realise that the temperature data is of dubious quality?”
_______
Actually, I’ve been studying climate and physics long enough to know that the majority of the data is quite good and we are fortunate enough to live in a time when we have access to such amazing resources, and if we check and double check, we’ll eventually find the truth. Yes, there have been some outrageous errors made, and yes, some of the data needs to be simply thrown out, but taken in totality, I am 75% convinced that the AGWT is correct, meaning of course , that I am a 25% skeptic, and probably will always be so.
Here’s what I am waiting for:
1) Will 2010 (or possibly 2011) turn out to be the warmest year on instrument record?
Reply: I don’t think many of us who post here have the same confidence in the temperature collection methodology as you seem to have. Manipulating the location of stations, situating them adjacent to airports etc. seems to add a bit of a statistical bias in my book…
2) Will the arctic sea ice fall lower in 2010 during the summer minimum in September than it did in 2008 or 2009? In other words, will it approach the 2007 low? I don’t think it will go lower this year, but should go lower than 2008 or 2009. If it does, how do the AGW skeptics account for it, despite the fact that we’ve just gone through a century record deep solar minimum?
Reply: As of today’s reading, the Arctic ice sea extent is about 1 million square kilometers beyond the mean for 2006-2007, and appears to be in an upward direction:
If the sea ice continues to build, how will AGW sycophants account for it to their funding agencies?
The battle is on for the hearts and minds of the public and politicians, and climatologists shot themselves in both feet with the Climategate disclosures. All of us in the sciences are paying for this, let me assure you.
Please come back, this is an excellent place for debate. p.s. Anthony, would you please remove Quiggen’s photo from the top of this post? Every time I open the site, I scare my dog!!
I am truly embarrassed to live in a country where such behaviour is tolerated from university academics. Making unsubstantiated slurs against another person’s character should immediately be reprimanded IMHO. The guy clearly hasn’t got both oars in the water.
I think a duel would be appropriate.
Give the prof a sword and give SM a machine gun.
Mirosalv Pavlíček (10:25:29) :
Have you seen Václav Klaus’ writings on ‘global warming’? He also see structural similarities to communism in it.
R. Gates (11:30:07) : “Also, if the arctic sea ice is going to make a run to get into some positive anomaly state this winter, it better hurry, as the spring melt is about to begin and, and with arctic temps generally running well above average…”
Uh, no.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
Where do you get these odd notions? Does someone pay you to come here and post these bizarre claims?
I posted this on Quiggin’s personal site:
http://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2010/03/13/science-the-victim-of-dishonest-attacks/comment-page-2/#comment-257917
Quote:
I came here from Bolton’s rant. I saw the familiar smears, but Quiggin’s unsubstantiated claims that “McIntyre done it” are just appalling.
Then, I realised I’d read one of Quiggin’s articles “Uncertainty and Climate Change Policy”, 2008. It is simply useless stuff. The best bit was his “equation” where he says:
“Emissions = Population * Output / Population*Energy/Output*Emissions per unit Energy”
Or calling Emission “X” so as not to confuse with Energy “E”, we have X = P * O / P * E / O * X / E
Shuffling we get X = P / P * O / O * E / E * X or X = X.
Yes, proof that 1 = 1 is really helpful. And that in an Economic Journal too!
No, Quiggin’s article had no science in particular and made me certain that Aust Research Council Federation Fellows need to have enough AGW publications to guarantee next year’s round of funding.
Sadly, I had hoped there might some some real stuff about uncertainty, like how uncertain are the assumptions in the models, how are uncertainties handled when modeling a complex system over 50 or 100 years or so, and even the simple stuff, like do the models use arbitrary precision arithmetic or do the rely on the known, imperfect system of floating point calculations (where is it easy to demonstrate the (A – B) – C does not always equal A – (B – C)) and if they *do* use the basic floating point system, do they carry error estimates through the course of the calculations? Nope, no answers in Quiggin’s world of “Uncertainty”.
(BTW – The CRU code to calculate the world’s temperature over time uses the simple floating point representations and does no calculation of uncertainty nor does it handle intrinsic floating point errors (rounding, representational, etc).
It is also clear to me that Quiggin has not read many of the emails, nor has he looked at the code in the CRUtapes. My mouth was agape at almost every single email in there. If you have not done so, you must spend an hour or two simply dipping into the emails. They are appalling.
If you have read the HARRY-READ-ME.TXT file, then it seems much more likely that HARRY or someone near him *inside* CRU is the whistleblower, they got sick of the sloppy “science” surrounding Phil Jones and his collaborators.
Finally, you can not accept the “trick” of grafting the dendro record to the recent temp record because we don’t understand why the recent dendro does not match the recent temp and just say “oh, some unknown but unimportant reason makes them deviate”. That is precisely the loose reasoning that makes anyone with two brain cells turn away from the alarmists propaganda.
I was both appalled, and couldn’t help but laugh, reading the comments on Quiggin’s site. I assume the commenters are his students, for it would be too horrific to imagine they were adults. What a cloistered little island of intellectual naïveté!
In terribly serious moments of his plays Shakespeare would often have a fool and a clown wander across the stage, making comments of hilarious stupidity, to create comic relief. Otherwise the play’s seriousness would simply become unbearable.
I wonder if Quiggin’s students are aware they have supplied the comic relief to a hugely serious subject.
“Kay (05:26:42) :
PS to last: Quiggen’s page at Queensland isn’t working. Shocker.”
Google’s cached version of the page from March 13th is here .. : http://74.125.113.132/search?q=cache:mTEHg24z_9sJ:johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2010/03/12/climategatethe-smoking-gun/+quiggin+mcintyre&cd=5&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
courtesy of Anrew Bolt. Andrew has also “saved in case google updates their cache”
Wren (10:46:50) :
Wren,
do you pine for Marxism?
The problem with this is not actually whether or not 2010 or 2011 will be HOTTEST on record, the problem is that it may be the hottest on RECORD. It is already apparent that there are considerable issues relating to the ground based thermometer record and the analysis and adjustments associates with them. The satellite record gives a clearer and less issue related temperature variation, however, this has only been in existence for ~ 30 years.
30 years, unfortunately, is not enough of a time record on temperature to make much of any conclusions in relation to problems with AGW – primarily for the fact that the only record we have that is remotely close to accurate also spans the main timeframe that we have contributed so much CO2.
While splicing and adjusting the satellite data to the land based thermometer data may seem to give us an indication of trends over the last century or more, you cannot put the two together and proclaim an accurate record of temperature. This means as a whole you need to look at the ground temperature data (whose issues are numerous and in some cases defying common sense – look here http://chiefio.wordpress.com/) or using just the satellite record – which due to its short nature cannot be used to determine trends.
So it is a little hard to directly answer the question because the question assumes something that is not neccesarily accurate – “on record” means a considerably short period of time – like saying “these are the best shoes I’ve ever owned” when its only your third pair – the statement may be accurate (that they are the best you’ve had) but there is precious little to compare it with. This also applies to the last sentence “potential record heat”. Well yes – for the last 30 years, but thats not really the question that needs asking.
Unfortunately, you have done something very similar here – your comparing absolutes with short time spans. You have also attributed the 2007 minimum to global warming when more recent investigations are showing that temperatures were not responsible for the large fall in ice.
Relating to the question however, we have ~ the same amount of ice extent and area data as we do for satelite temperature data (that is around 30 years). Again you are talking about the decline in ice over a very short period of time – and assumed that it is the lowest its ever been. One iconic description attached to this reduction in ice is associated with the “North West Passage” opening up.
The interesting thing however, is that in recorded history (naval history) ships have gone through an open north west passage before our recorded satelite history.
As much as I don’t like wikki, it makes for easy copy pasting:
And these are only a few of them. In addition:
Common sense tells us that we may well have reached similar ice minimums over the last 100 years – just without the aid of a lovely satellite to show us. In addition, if we did approach the minimum of the current sea ice extent on one or more occasions over the last century, then why is the current minimum so worrying? There just isnt enough accurate data to say that what is occuring now is not natural events.
Now I am not saying this is evidence against AGW, what I am saying is that our perception of “on record” is very skewed in that it is an incredibly short period of time that we have had accurate data. This is why I am still sceptical and while there are AGW proponents out there hawking catastrophic messages when real world data disagrees, they will never get me to jump on board with the theory.
The defamation is still up here.
http://johnquiggin.com/
“Commentary on Australian and world events from a social-democrat perspective”
Indeed.
Moderator I may have missed an /blockquote tag there somehwere as the post has gone into quote of quote mode. If you notice it, could you just fix it so the post looks a little more ordered? Thanks :)
Mirosalv Pavlíček (10:25:29) :
Good to have a former victim of communism on side. I love your terminology – calling the AGW catastrophists the Carbonari is brilliant – has a kind of police-state ring to it, plus being short and sweet. Not sure what you mean by ‘buffo” though.
Wren (13:53:47) :
Call me skeptical of people who call themselves skeptics. A true skeptic is evenhanded.
………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Some skeptics are more evenhanded (equal) than others on the Animal Farm, hey Wren?
R. Gates (11:30:07) :
Don’t you realise there is an El Nino almost of the scale of 1998 going on?
So if you want to be taken seriously in your off topic rant at least compare apples with apples compare it with the early months of 1998 here
http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/uahncdc.lt
Now try to stay on topic.
joe (14:24:58) :
“Quiggen is actually a well respected economist and with an impressive list of publications ”
He is also known for his appearance on Geico commercials.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Why isn’t skepticism easy enough for even him to understand?
Does Australia have a libel law like the UK?
I suggest Steve use it.
Veronica (England) (16:05:57) :
R Gates
Surely you have been hanging out here long enough to realise that the temperature data is of dubious quality?
………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Dubious is not an issue. Having ‘N-A-S-A’ attached to GIStemp is the only authenticity needed.
Past comments from his web site sets his background tone;
Climate denial has had its day
John Quiggin Australian Financial Review
6 July 2006
The government’s inquiry into nuclear power has yet to hold hearings and take evidence, let alone produce a report. But its most important work has probably already been done. The announcement of the inquiry and the debate leading up to it has finally brought political reality in the debate over nuclear power and climate change into line with economic and scientific reality.
The only thing we know, with any reasonable degree of certainty, about the economics of nuclear power is that, at current prices, nuclear power is not competitive with generation based on burning carbon-based fuels like gas and coal. The most convincing evidence on this point is derived, not from engineering studies, but from simple observation. Even with a favourable regulatory environment like that of the United States, no new nuclear power plant has been commissioned for several decades. Nuclear power is growing only where it has some form of government backing.
If nuclear power is uneconomic at current prices, and is to be considered as a way of mitigating global warming, the economic policy problem has a simple answer. Put a price on carbon dioxide emissions either through a carbon tax or through requiring emitters to hold tradeable permits, and let the market find the most cost-effective solution. If the price of emissions rises enough, and no other solutions are more cost-effective, nuclear power will become competitive.
Handling those global-warming hot potatoes
John Quiggin Australian Financial Review
6 January 2007
2006 was a year for inconvenient truths. The Australian Labor Party finally recognised the inconvenient truth that it would never win with Kim Beazley as leader. The political elite in the US finally recognised the inconvenient truth that the war in Iraq has been a disastrous, and probably irreparable, failure.
Most notable of all, in the long run has been the recognition of the inconvenient truth presented in Al Gore’s amazingly successful documentary of the same name, that human activity is causing unsustainable global warming and other forms of climate change. Gore’s film partly caused and partly reflected a sudden shift in the terms of debate.
At the beginning of 2005, climate scientists were virtually unanimous in their support for the mainstream theory of human-caused global warming. However, the public debate in Australia and elsewhere did not reflect this.
Instead, a tiny minority of skeptical climate scientists, backed up by an array of amateur critics, right-wing pundits, and lavishly funded front groups managed to create the appearance of an evenly divided debate. During 2006, however, a combination of accumulating scientific evidence, exposure of the workings of front groups, and the direct experience of rising temperatures, droughts and bushfires destroyed the credibility of the sceptics once and for all, at least in Australia.
The government’s response has been to appoint a Task Force of a dozen members, all of whom are either representatives of fossil-fuel intensive companies and industries or senior public servants. The Task Force is supposed to develop a global system of emissions trading that will reduce CO2 emissions, while protecting the interests of Australian industry.
Unfortunately, any attempts to develop an alternative plan along these lines will run into yet another inconvenient truth. The probability of gaining global acceptance for any alternative system of emissions trading put forward by Australia is effectively zero.
The most plausible candidate though, is climate change. The government can scarcely imagine that a subsidy program for solar panels is going to do much to address the problem, or the political damage caused by a decade in which the main response to climate change has been to wish it out of existence.
John Quiggin Australian Financial Review
10 May 2007
It seems safe to assume that the Task Group on Emissions Trading, due to report on 31 May, will come out in favour of the general idea of emissions trading. However, the debate has moved so fast that the Task Group’s terms of reference, already seem obsolete. When the Task Group was announced, the government was still opposing any target for emissions reductions. Now the only serious question is whether the 50 to 60 per cent reductions proposed by Labor will be enough.
If the government is going to come up with a big new idea for the election, it could hardly do better than to announce ratification of Kyoto, along with a commitment to move Australia to the forefront of international emissions trading as soon as possible.
Denial industry in full cry
John Quiggin Australian Financial Review
16 August 2007
With John Howard’s conversion on the issue of climate change last year, it seemed that policy debate on the issue could finally proceed on the basis of mainstream scientific research, rather than fringe viewpoints and conspiracy theories. Some senior ministers remained unconvinced, but they seemed willing to keep quiet.
The latest report of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Science and Innovation throws all this into doubt. Four of the six government members of the committee (Dennis Jensen, Jackie Kelly, Danna Vale and David Tollner) signed a dissenting report denying that human activities are disturbing the climate in dangerous ways, and describing those who accept the mainstream view as “fanatics”. If this is the view of government members of a committee on science, we can only guess the currency of such ideas within the government as a whole.
The dissenting report is the usual sorry stuff, familiar to anyone who has followed this debate, though the nonsense about climate change on Mars, Triton and Pluto will be new to many. It’s the latest of many talking points put forward by the denial industry, none of which have stood up to scientific scrutiny. Its main advantage is that it is too new to have been comprehensively refuted in reports like those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Of course, climate changes as a result of natural processes. A huge amount of scientific effort over the past twenty years has gone into examination of the causes of the observed warming of recent decades. The outcome of this research, documented in four successive IPCC Reports has been a steady increase in confidence that the majority of recent warming is caused by human activity. When the IPCC process began, back in 1988, much of this warming was still in the future. The two decades since have been warmer than any since instrumental records began in the 19th century, closely fitting the predictions of climate modellers like James Hansen of NASA.
There’s little point in debating these issues further. The really interesting question is why such obviously deluded beliefs remain so influential on the political right, at least in Australia and the US. The answer lies in the creation of a complete parallel universe, with an array of think tanks, news sources and experts, and a conspiracy-theoretic view of the world, in which an (admittedly imperfect) organization like the IPCC can be seen as a stalking horse for socialism or world government.
*at least he had some insight!*
Actually, a well-publicised retraction/apology would be better. Maybe Steve’s lawyers could write it for Quiggen to read on air?
REPLY: Knowing Steve, I don’t think he’ll go anywhere near that sort of demand. – Anthony
The guy’s (Quiggin) a piece of work… he proudly blogs that because of the objection to the word “denialist” he now calls AGW skeptics “delusionists.” In a later comment he throws in a few ad homs against Lindzen for good measure. The smugness of the Broken log blog is almost stiffling.
I should probably make it clear that the “comments” I was referring to were not the 37 comments that followed Quiggin’s article accusing McIntyre. Rather they were comments on his personal site, which seems to have vanished. They discussed things such as a recent convention of atheists. They were wonderfully naive, sincere, and unwittingly hilarious.
Steve, sue the bastard!
Professor John Quiggin is angry and afraid.
Obviously, he does not like McIntrye. Whenever I see such a display of animosity towards an individual, I conclude the source of animosity is afraid of the object.
The AGW crowd is very upset with McIntyre. The emails released to the public were very revealing, for more reasons than we can suspect.
There is more to come on this story.
PS> What I find amazing is that the guy is supposed to be an economist and he completely fails to understand the devastating effect an ETS would have on the Australian economy. He really is away with the fairies.
The single most important thing to understand about the Australian economy is that we export by far the largest portion of both the energy we produce in primary forms and the manufactured goods that are energy-intensive. Until you comprehend this very, very basic fact about the Australian economy it is pointless to enter into a debate about an ETS in this country. An ETS would be enormously disruptive to underlying industries that drive this economy (i.e. mining and petroleum industries)… particularly in Queensland and Western Australia (the two states that fared best in the last decade or so).
Unfortunately the main populations and seats of Federal political power are in the failed/failing states of New South Wales, Victoria and the ACT (Australian Capital Territory). This is why the lunacy persists unabated.
Every time I see the “climate change” issues being pushed by Canberra I think it is time, once again, for Western Australians to push for another referendum on the one issue the State voted “Yes” on in the past… secession.
“I remained unclear about who was actually responsible for the break-in theft of the emails, which were then selectively quoted to promote a bogus allegation of scientific fraud.
Looking over the evidence that is now available, I think there is enough to point to Steven McIntyre as the person, along with the actual hacker or leaker,”
OK, I cherry picked the text from Q’s original blog (leaving out the qualifying phrase) but his intent seems clear enough to me.
As long as the prof. used the words “moral responsibility,” he’s not making a libelous accusation. He’s sorta saying that Steve sorta said, “Will no one get that data for me?” (Sorta (but not really) like that king who said to his knights, “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?”)
As a result, Intrade’s bid/asked odds-spread on 2010 being the warmest year on record have now edged up to 50 / 55. That’s still a bargain from a warmest perspective, as it ought to be around 60%, given that three major warmists have said the odds are “better than even” of a record-setting year. Place your bids here (click on the appropriate + sign). (You can place a bid below the current odds level, in hopes of catching a bargain):
http://www.intrade.com/jsp/intrade/contractSearch/index.jsp?clsID=20&grpID=7620
I suspect the prof’s. remark is follow-through on Schneider’s comment a week or so ago, “This is a political fight, and we’ve got to get dirty.” I suspect there’ll be more from their side in this vein.
I think we’d do best to just ignore this type of behaviour. It’s not constructive and its just shameful. I’m very sad that UQ has been brought into this as it is a great university but I don’t feel the slightest wish to engage Quiggin on any level.
“Scientists have been constrained in fighting back by the fact that they are ethically constrained to be honest, whereas their opponents lie without any compunction.”
Did this guy just get back from a bad trip?
Is it the water or what he’s smoking?
Caleb @ 19:10:38
There are 137 comments on Quiggin’s original post. The link just takes you to the last page. Shameless self-promotion alert.
=========================
“Stephan (16:47:17) :
You will excuse me but Australia seems to be full of really dumb organizations/institutions/governments/universities run by really dumb scientists. Having done considerable successful research there I can confirm this. Did you know you cannot light a wood barbecue in your backyard anywhere in Australia? (Its illegal). It is probably the most over-regulated, over-governed, over-rated, expensive country in the world. Even the Swedes find it (the rules and regulations)! Personal freedoms have been reduced to nothing. Basically its a country run by lawyers and this is one reason they will not let go of AGW easily. I invite anybody to go there and check it out.”
Sadly, you’re not far off the mark.
Kay (05:25:40) :
Wow. That just blows my mind. Do climate scientists have ANY sense of ethics whatsoever?
He’s not a scientist, he’s an economist’
We all know what a wonderful track record they have.
ANTHONY, PLEASE, exercise some discretion about allowing attacks based on the professor’s appearance, intelligence and other personal qualities, etc.
In my opinion, the ad hominem nature of many of these posts detracts from the high character of WUWT, which must surely be focused on what the professor has done: accused McIntyre while stating he has no evidence.
Do not the posters see that they bring themselves down to the same level by these unsavory statements?
The headline is inaccurate and should have read:
Aussie Prof: McIntyre Bears Moral Responsibility for CRU Break-In
“….but winning a libel case requires you to prove resulting personal damages. That would require McIntyre to prove professional damage (far more difficult for a retiree) or loss of income (also difficult for a retiree). ”
Standards vary from country to country, but the traditional Common Law definitions of libel and slander distinguish between slander/libel “per se”, where the damages are said to be inherent in the false and defamatory statement, and “per quod”, where damages have to be proven.
Falsely accusing someone of criminality traditionally has been “per se”.
“In an odd way this is cheering news !”
I have image copies and text copies of the various changes of text of Quiggan’s defamation, should anyone need them for evidence when the University of Queensland is taken to court. I imagine there will be hundreds of thousands of bloggers who will contribute for the legal expenses.
This is the defamation here:
“I think there is enough to point to Steven McIntyre as the person (along with the actual hacker or leaker of course) who bears primary moral responsibility for the crime.”
which has now been changed to:
“I think there is enough to point to Steven McIntyre as the person (apart of course from the actual hacker/leaker) who bears primary moral responsibility for the crime.”
Quiggin has bolded “moral” since my first post above.
“[McIntyre] bears primary moral responsibility for the crime.”
He’s also extended his disclaimer:
“And I’ve emphasized the point that we don’t know and will probably never know who actually stole or leaked the emails. That’s a question for the police. McIntyre’s responsibility, as I said, is moral.”
IANAL. It’s still a nasty, incoherent and mostly incorrect piece, but do the tweaks get him off the libel hook?
Billy Bob (20:50:55),
Even though damages may be minimal, a win is still a win; a brick in the wall, which others can reference.
Quiggin is just lucky that Steve McIntyre isn’t the kind of guy to force him or his employer to grovel.
well spotted jaymam: I missed the “along with” -> “apart from” switch in the latest iteration.
I listed a bunch of other changes at 14:19:40
Wren
Wren (15:14:30) :
Do McIntyre defenders know if he is the person who organized a campaign that harassed the University of East Anglia with FOI requests?
The University of East Anglia received 58 FOI requests of similar nature asking for details on confidentiality agreements with different countries, many of which were identical except for the specific countries mentioned. Apparently, this was an organized effort, but the following rather amusing request was from a participant who failed to follow instructions:
Yes, those of us who participated in the organized campaign know exactly what happened. I can even tell you how we organized the effort to make sure that all the countries got covered. Go read the comments. I put a list of all the countries in a comment. People then selected 5 countries, took those countries off the list and then posted the shortened list. It was hilarious because some people could not follow the simple instructions. But what do you expect from Volunteers. it was fun.
Now, what problem do you have with that exactly?
1. CRU consolidated all the requests into ONE REQUEST. That is their right to do. they responded to these requests in under the 18 hour mandated time time.
2. My request to them was different. I requested the agreements for 5 countries and then I also requested some additional documents. I did this because I knew they could consolidate all the requests into one request.
My additional request was DENIED because they thought it MIGHT take more than 18 hours.
3. CRU answered the 58 requests. Jones wrote a 1000 word essay and they posted up 4 of the agreements. ( or was it 5)
But for your sake wren lets lay out the facts.
1. In 2002 you ask Jones for data and he sends it to you. Jones says
he has to watch what he is doing because the data is covered by agreements.
2. in 2005, you write a paper critical of his co author, mann.
3. in 2007, you request data from Jones, an update to the data he gave you
in 2002.
4. he says no and tells you that 98% of the data is at GHCN.
5. In 2009 You learn that Jones has sent the data to Webster.
6. Jones gives the data to the MET.
7. You ask the MET for the data. They say no and claim that releasing the data will harm international relations. And they cite the existence of confidentiality agreements that Jones claims prevent him from releasing the data.
So, you have to ask yourself. Jones gave me the data before. Jones thinks that onlt 2% of it is covered by agreements. Jones gave the data to webster.
WHAT”S UP WITH THAT? what exactly do these agreements say? How can Webster get the data and not me? Jones gave it to me in 2002 before I was critical of him, WHAT GIVES? And what is this claim that international relations will be damaged?
So then you actually FIND the data ( a 2003 version, everyone forget this)
on the FTP site. You tell CRU that you will destroy it if they ask you to.
After all, international relations are at stake. After all, this is confidential data. CRU say nothing. Wow, Most confidentiality agreements require you to
inform the owner of the breech.
Anyways, you want to know WHY CRU denies you and yet releases it to Webster and posts it on FTPs. SO,
8. You ask CRU for the data given to webster.
9. CRU say NO. they cite agrements that preclude “release to non academics”
10. You know this is horse poo. So do your readers who have written confidentiality agreements. You restrict USE!
11. So, you test CRU. 4 academics request the data.
12. CRU change their excuse. Now they argue that the agreements prevent any release.
So at this point you know they are lying. they are making stuff up about the actual content of the agreements. So what is your next LOGICAL STEP?
you cant get the data because they say the data if covered by agreements.
They’ve switched their description of what the agreements say, so what do you do Wren?
Ask for the agreements.
I would ignore Prof. Quiggin, just like I ignore R. Gates. They both traffic in disinformation.
Here is a list of amendments made to Qiggan’s statement at http://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2010/03/12/climategatethe-smoking-gun/
Original text:
“By July 2009, CRU had advised McIntyre that climate data used in their work was available from the original sources, and that he should seek it from them.”
Amended text:
“By July 2009, CRU had advised McIntyre that climate data used in their work was available from the original sources, but that they couldn’t release it because some sources had supplied it under confidentiality agreements.”
Original text:
“Over the next few months, CRU started preparing a response to McIntyre. Over the weekend beginning Friday 13 November, someone located and copied files associated with this effort from a back-up server at the university’s Climatic Research Unit, and attempted to load it on to the RealClimate site under the name FOIA.zip (the files were in a directory called FOI2009).”
Amended text:
“Over the weekend beginning Friday 13 November, someone located and copied files (apparently associated with the CRU response to this effort, although this is unclear) from a back-up server at the university’s Climatic Research Unit, and attempted to load it on to the RealClimate site under the name FOIA.zip (the files were in a directory called FOI2009). That attempt failed and the files were then widely circulated to anti-science sites.”
Original text:
“As well as data, these files included large numbers of emails, selective quotation of which”
Amended text:
“These files included large numbers of emails, selective quotation of which was the primary focus of the subsequent bogus scandal. Whatever claims might be made about access to data, there is no justification for stealing and publishing other peoples’ mail. Everyone who passed on or made use of the stolen emails was guilty of an offence against normal standards of behavior.”
Original text:
“So, to sum up, McIntyre organised the campaign which led to the creation of the file, obtained information from the CRU file system by means he declined to reveal, linked to the stolen emails shortly after the theft and made dishonest and defamatory use of the stolen information. Whether or not he was directly involved in the theft, or merely created the opportunity and benefited from the proceeds is impossible to determine, and essentially irrelevant in moral terms.”
Amended text:
“So, to sum up, McIntyre, having earlier obtained information from the CRU file system by means he declined to reveal, linked to the stolen emails shortly after the theft and made dishonest and defamatory use of the stolen information. The excuse that he was not personally involved in the hack/leak, but merely benefited from the proceeds is essentially irrelevant in moral terms.”
Original text:
“Note: I’ve updated this to correct some errors. In particular, I mistakenly thought the name FOIA.zip had been assigned to the files by UEA, rather than by the hacker/leaker.”
Amended text:
“Note: I’ve updated this to correct some errors. In particular, I mistakenly thought the name FOIA.zip had been assigned to the files by UEA, rather than by the hacker/leaker. Also, it’s been pointed out in comments that the multiple emails referred to confidentiality agreements about data rather than data per se. And I’ve emphasized the point that we don’t know and will probably never know who actually stole or leaked the emails. That’s a question for the police. McIntyre’s responsibility, as I said, is moral”.
I’ve read Steve McIntyre on ClimateAudit say that getting involved in lawsuits for libel and/or slander is time consuming and expensive. So going by that I don’t think he’ll be bringing this to court.
I don’t think John Quiggin, or most people know it, but Steve McIntyre is a manmade global warming believer.
Perhaps what is even worse than this delusional weirdo defaming Steve M, is that we are all paying out the nose in taxes and tuition fees to have thousands and thousands of like minded lunatics, and in some cases people even much worse than Quiggin, teaching our kids, and having a large and supposedly authoritative say, in all of our societal policy debates!?
By allowing Indoctro-cation to masquerade as authentic Education, we’ve come to a situation where the lunatics themselves are in charge of, and are running all of the asylums. And we’re paying them very well to do so, while they eagerly pollute most of our policies, along with the minds of future generations…
Larry,
I take very strong objection to your statement that I “traffic in disinformation”. I have never presented one bit of information that was a lie, or in any way misleading. Just because I’m one of a few who believes that AGWT is likely correct, and the trends and data do not support your skeptical viewpoint is no reason to make such rude statements.
Of course, I won’t ask for an apology, as it would be pointless. And by the way, March tropospheric temps continue at 20 year record highs, and have for the entire month, especially check out 14,000, the heart of the troposphere, way way above the record highs, exactly in-line with AGWT:
http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/
Sorry this is not supporting the AGW skeptics viewpoint that somehow the recent solar minimum was going to bring about the “big chill”, but you have to call the data as you see it, and AGWT says quite clearly that the solar influneces on the climate is being trumped by the build-up of GH gases. 2010 on track to be the warmest on instrument record, just as the Met Office predicted…
how it happened
http://climateaudit.org/2009/07/24/cru-refuses-data-once-again/#comment-188541
http://climateaudit.org/2009/07/24/cru-refuses-data-once-again/#comment-188595
Is it vexacious?
http://climateaudit.org/2009/07/24/cru-refuses-data-once-again/#comment-188620
Nope, CA readers know that they can be treated as one request
http://climateaudit.org/2009/07/24/cru-refuses-data-once-again/#comment-188662
Last request
http://climateaudit.org/2009/07/24/cru-refuses-data-once-again/#comment-188659
CTM weighs in.
http://climateaudit.org/2009/07/24/cru-refuses-data-once-again/#comment-220633
Jones lies about our effort:
http://climateaudit.org/2009/07/24/cru-refuses-data-once-again/#comment-222742
I love it when people get the history wrong. It allows us to tell the story over and over and over and over again.
you see this is what they dont get. By continuing to hide things, and then lie about hiding them, and then lie about those lies, they give us the change to tell the whole story over again.
CRS, Dr.P.H. (17:33:08) said
“As of today’s reading, the Arctic ice sea extent is about 1 million square kilometers beyond the mean for 2006-2007, and appears to be in an upward direction:
If the sea ice continues to build, how will AGW sycophants account for it to their funding agencies? ”
_________
Now this is a perfect example of an AGW skeptic cherry picking data to support some preconceived notion. Why would want to compare the recent sea ice with a 2-year low period, as opposed to 20 years+ of data before that? This is just simple cherry picking. To be accurate and precise in seeing true trends you always want to look at the largest data set you have. Your graph above, yes, shows up upswing, but it still below a longer term average and hence, still in a negative anomaly state based on a more important longer term average.
These graphs are the best snapshots of the long term trends in the arctic:
And only those who really didn’t want to see what the true trends were, would call for looking at some much shorter trend. Bottom line: Despite the recent solar minimum, arctic sea ice has not into a positive anomaly state since 2004, and no amount of cherry picking of data will change that.
:
R Gates
what are you going to do when El Nino ends and temperatures take a precipitous drop as happened in 1999 after the 1998 El Nino?
The current 2009/2010 warming is from El Nino not co2. And the drop in temperature that come after El Nino dissipates is sure to come. That’s what the data shows us.
R Gates,
Thankyou for responding to my post regarding your lack of data and timelines, the links you provided were interesting but untill you actually provide figures to back up your assertions the links can only tell me what I already know.
I am still waiting for you to provide actual temperatures and timelines to back up your assertions however and the fact that you choose not back up your claims with actual evidence is disapointing but not unexpected.
The repeating of statements like “5th warmest” without giving figures is meaningless, likewise your bold assertions as to the future state of the arctic sea ice is meaningless unless you can back up your claims with actual figures and not links alone.
I challenge you to post the actual arctic average temperatures for this past winter period together with the 30yr mean, side by side so we can all see the differential.
Your use of cherry picked data and wild assumptions of future climate states does you no credit here, school children might be impressed with the “5th warmest in history” style of scaremongering but on this blog we much prefer assumptions to be backed up with actual data.
However I thank you for your response and look forward to a future post that gives a fuller and more detailed perspective.
This warmist smear BS has acquired a new name – Quigginry
mark (14:16:07) :
WHY not check out the CRU data for yourself? I made it available on my website, I know from my stats that lots of you go there, but I also know you dont actually look. What does this tell me?
http://www.knowyourplanet.com/climate-data/
======
It looks like only sum of the CRU data. Anyway, I’m not sure people want to check it out, and run the risk of not having anything to complain about anymore.
Fighting back ? you lot have been fighting the truth all along ,but you have been busted ,so get your crap and stick it where the sun doesn’t shine ,in fact give yourselves some of your own global warming crap ,even if i did warm, big deal there is nothing you lot can do to change anything you might think your gods but your not ,the Nasa data is no good and found to be fake http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiRK5by62KQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsQfr7wRZsw There you are wafflers ,get into that ,you will love it ,Your mate PHIL and the Nasa data which you all used on ,Russian data no good either , The trouble is guys we know more about whats going on than you guys ,your all fakes and your busted end of story ,and read the emails that tell you how corrupt Aust data is before any more waffle thanks.Co2 follows warming by up to 800yrs there is no correlation whatsoever and you know it too.
Amino Acids in Meteorites (22:23:18) :
R Gates
what are you going to do when El Nino ends and temperatures take a precipitous drop as happened in 1999 after the 1998 El Nino?
The current 2009/2010 warming is from El Nino not co2. And the drop in temperature that come after El Nino dissipates is sure to come. That’s what the data shows us.
=====
Wishful thinking won’t make it happen. Remember, El Nino and La Nina come and go, and the globe keeps getting warmer and warmer.
Douglas M. Chatham (05:41:38) :
Note to Professor Quiggin:
When someone takes something that they legally have a right to, IT’S NOT THEFT!! In addition, the fact that McIntyre used information that should have been available through the FOIA process does not make him a thief.
=====
Better tell the police. They are wasting a lot of time trying to find who did it.
Wren (15:14:30) :
Do McIntyre defenders know if he is the person who organized a campaign that harassed the University of East Anglia with FOI requests?
The University of East Anglia received 58 FOI requests of similar nature asking for details on confidentiality agreements with different countries, many of which were identical except for the specific countries mentioned. Apparently, this was an organized effort, but the following rather amusing request was from a participant who failed to follow instructions:
Yes, those of us who participated in the organized campaign know exactly what happened. I can even tell you how we organized the effort to make sure that all the countries got covered. Go read the comments. I put a list of all the countries in a comment. People then selected 5 countries, took those countries off the list and then posted the shortened list. It was hilarious because some people could not follow the simple instructions. But what do you expect from Volunteers. it was fun.
Now, what problem do you have with that exactly?
====
If I was a resident of the UK I wouldn’t like pranksters causing a waste of my tax money.
kim (20:21:03) :
There are 137 comments on Quiggin’s original post. The link just takes you to the last page. Shameless self-promotion alert.
Using the fine-structure constant there is the probability that one of those comments either absorbed or emitted a photon, right? 8^)
“Wren (00:45:39) :
If I was a resident of the UK I wouldn’t like pranksters causing a waste of my tax money.”
As a former UK resident and taxpayer, I don’t like the fact Dr. Phil Jones has received a massive 13 million pounds sterling in taxpayer funded grants over the course of ten years from ~1990 on wards and yet he feels completely at ease with the fact he’s lost critical raw data that I partly paid for.
Yeah, that’s one hell of a prank!
Why refute his “arguments” when he’s doing such a bang-up job himself?
I think I saw recently some info that Dr Hansen was in Australia this past week.
I know it is a weak correlation, but was Hansen’s presence the stimulus for Professor Quiggin’s silly diatribe?
John
Wren (00:45:39) : =>Wren (15:14:30) :
”””Now, what problem do you have with that exactly?
====
If I was a resident of the UK I wouldn’t like pranksters causing a waste of my tax money.””””
Wren,
What are you talking about?
Do you understand the purpose & nature of FOIA/FOI laws?
And do you understand the scientific method?
Do you understand the essential necessary critical roll of skeptics in the long history of western civilization and science?
It is reality [nature] that is deciding the arguments, not beliefs in AGW theories.
John
Wren (00:14:25) :
mark (14:16:07) :
“WHY not check out the CRU data for yourself? I made it available on my website, I know from my stats that lots of you go there, but I also know you dont actually look. What does this tell me?”
======
It looks like only sum of the CRU data. Anyway, I’m not sure people want to check it out, and run the risk of not having anything to complain about anymore.
Why, Wren — I’m shocked, nay, shocked and dismayed! That doesn’t sound very “even-handed” of you, lad — you *do* realize that you run the risk of compromising your painstakingly established street cred as a sceptical sceptic
Sorry. Laughing too hard to continue. My bad…
R. Gates (16:52:53) :
Here’s what I am waiting for:
1) Will 2010 (or possibly 2011) turn out to be the warmest year on instrument record? So far, the trend looks very favorable based on the global warmth we’ve seen in Jan. & Feb.)
The instrument record only runs thirty years. The *geologic* record shows we’re in a pretty *mild* period.
If 2010 does turn out to be warmer than 1998 or 2003 (depending on which data you’re using, and they were close), then how do the AGW skeptics account for that?
You’re making an assumption and then asking your question as though that assumption was an established fact.
1998’s El Nino was stronger than the current El Nino, plus we’ve just come through the deepest solar minimum in a century, so if the potential record heat in 2010 is not caused by GH gases, than what will the skeptics attribute it to?
See comment immediately preceding.
And the FACT is, (despite the completely vacuous hype you hear) is [sic] that the arctic sea ice has not been in a positive anomaly state for 6 years now…
The fact is that all the vacuous hype I’ve been hearing is that Arctic ice is *the* gold standard by which we’re supposed to be measuring the effects of AGW.
Wren (00:29:35) :
“Wishful thinking won’t make it happen. Remember, El Nino and La Nina come and go, and the globe keeps getting warmer and warmer.”
Yes – without any help from us, since the last ice age.
Anthony, ctm, other:
Could you please add a note beneath my above
R.S.Brown (08:33:37) :
indicating that Mr. Quiggin has revised his “Smoking
Gun” article, and eliminated the logical link between
the FOI campaign and the creation of the foia.zip file.
He made a lot of modifications to the article after
slipping in some snide remarks about the quality of
Mr. McIntyre’s supporters, and sealing the thread from
additional comments.
See above: jaymam (21:42:40) :
Wren (00:45:39) : “If I was a resident of the UK I wouldn’t like pranksters causing a waste of my tax money.”
Pranksters? Come on Wren. As a tax-paying resident of the UK who has on several occasions successfully used the FOIA to extract concealed but essential information from unwilling public bodies, I applaud the use of the Act to force the truth from the CRU.
Wren,
You say ‘If I was a resident of the UK I wouldn’t like pranksters causing a waste of my tax money’
I am a resident of the UK and with regard to my negative preferences for state spending, I’d rather UEA/CRU had obeyed the law in the first instance.
If a state-funded organisations refuse to comply with their legal obligations, there is a good tradition in the UK of populist engagement in ‘rough music’ or ‘uproar’; in other words to create a scandal and stink which effectively disrupts the operation of that organisation, in a peaceful manner, until it complies.
Anyway apologies for the lesson on basic civics, but I remain puzzled by your post. Perhaps you could explain why UEA/CRU’s decision not to obey the law was NOT the causation of the repeated flurry of FOI requests?
Also could you give us your view on the proposition that a single response, copied to each and all of those FOI requests, would have sufficed?
@Wren: “If I was a resident of the UK I wouldn’t like pranksters causing a waste of my tax money.”
It depends on what your views are about public servants complying with the law, or whether you think scientists should make sure the data from which they are drawing conclusions and publishing articles are in the public domain. Here’s the sequence of events:
1. Around 2003 McIntyre asked Phil Jones for the raw data used in one of Jones’ papers (I apologise I forget which);
2. Jones told him it was available publicly already, bit disingenuous this because as Jones must have full well known there was no way that McIntyre could have found the data he actually used;
3. The FOIA came into effect and McIntyre asked for the data under the FOIA.
4. Jones replied that he couldn’t because of contractual agreements made with other met offices (which, way could be true, but he didn’t mention that in years that this had been going on);
5. In 2009 58 FOI requests were made to see these contracts, I think three have been produced.
6. Jones/UEA say they’ve lost the original raw data during office moves – a strange, somewhat naive answer given that what will be now haunting them is why Jones didn’t tell anyone at the beginning, or during the years of requests. It also means that all papers that have been published using these data, or derivitives of them, should now be withdrawn because the results have become unreplicable.
If anybody was wasting British taxpayers’ money it was Jones. Oh and don’t be taken in by the “deluge” theory, only those that had contracts needed to be answered the others would simply need a response which said that no contract existed. Plain and simple the evidence suggests that Jones was indulging in scientific, and now legal, malfeasance by not producing the data when requested.
I think that we deviationists can be called anti-technocrats. We’re suspicious of experts, seeing them as a would-be new priesthood that attempts to elevate themselves above outside criticism, as having occupational-based vanity and motives, and as putting guild solidarity ahead of frankness. Here are supporting quotes from a booklet by Brian Martin, Strip the Experts.
===========
Here are two chapter epigraphs:
“No lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by the experience of life as that you never should trust experts.”
– Lord Salisbury.
“Expert: a person who avoids small errors as he sweeps on to the grand fallacy.” – Benjamin Stolberg
……..
P5: How often have you found the experts lined up against you? It happens all the time. “Don’t eat eggs – there’s too much cholesterol. …
In modern society, scientific experts are the new priests. … To challenge the experts is heresy.
Yet it can be done. The experts are vulnerable in a variety of ways. You can dispute their facts. You can challenge the assumptions underlying their facts. You can undermine their credibility. And you can discredit the value of expertise generally. Their weaknesses can be probed and relentlessly exploited.
P11: Especially when a contentious public issue is at stake, experts band together. They are reluctant to publicly expose each others mistakes, since it might hurt their cause.
P60: Most experts are remarkably narrow in training and experience. They are precisely the wrong people to be providing general direction for society.
P61: Experts collectively have a vested interest in expertise becoming a basis for status, power and wealth. This fact provides a basis for attacking expertise generally ….
P62: People rise to power beginning as credentialed intellectuals. Lawyers become politicians; engineers become corporation presidents; economists become government bureaucrats.
These different groups have several things in common. They defend formal training and credentials as essential to gain entry into occupations. … Most important, they promote a kind of society in which specialist knowledge, when linked to power, is seen as legitimate and worthy of great social rewards.
……….
Pp62-63: For the rising New Class, the only tolerable form of democracy is one with representatives who are suitably responsive to the experts. For experts with access to power, populism is dangerous.
Pp63-64: Experts are part of the New Class or Intellectual Class. These are names for a roughly defined group of people who use claims about knowledge to advance their status, power and wealth.
Incidentally, regarding Quiggin’s attack, here’s a relevant quote from Marin (P51):
Wren,
I am a UK taxpayer. I have no problem with people trying to drag taxpayer funded science, data and methods into the light. Whatever way you cut it it is a beneficial process, and leads to progress. It can either show up the science as shoddy and unworthy of being the fig-leaf that politicians hide behind for substantial changes in our way of lives and increases in taxation, or it can strengthen the science by withstanding many minds picking over it.
They were not pranksters. They were trying to get CRU to do something they could and should have done from day 1. It should never have been so painful and difficult to get the information that should have been published as a matter of course.
That begs, nay implores, the question …
(… WHO is really causing a waste of tax money?)
Tsk tsk tsk. The field of academia is all the poorer for Professor Quiggin’s effort. Certainly doesn’t put Australia in a good light. He can’t be a stupid man with all of those letters to his name. He should have known better. What on earth possessed him to say such awful things?
Under Australian law, Quiggin’s statements would be held to be defamatory. Quiggin’s respected position makes his accusations even more damaging.
Even though Quiggin has now modified the post, McIntyre still has 12 months in which to file suit. At the very least, he could insist on a formal apology and payment of McIntyre’s legal costs.
As for Quiggin, well, he’s based in QLD; Nuff said. QLD “personifies” the “state of mind” these “experts” exist in.
Wren,
As a UK taxpayer myself, I am far more concerned about (1) the non-work done by the likes of Phil Jones and Keith Briffa and (2) the implications for the British economy of the policies taken partly because of that non-work.
So actually, to have Jones and Briffa answering FOI requests is not a waste of money – in fact, it’s an investment, since it prevents them from causing the economic destruction as they’d otherwise be doing.
Speaking of Australian professors, back in 1991, an experienced Australian political activist in the peace and environmental movements, Brian Martin, Ph.D. (physics), wrote a brief (69-page) paperback, Strip the Experts, mentioned above, that describes effective tactics that were used in struggles against technical experts in controversial matters like nuclear power, fluoridation, and nuclear winter, among others. It can be bought on Amazon & Amazon UK for about $7 new, or read free here: http://www.bmartin.cc/pubs/91strip.html Here are some relevant morsels:
P9: The establishment has one great advantage: endorsements. Endorsements by prestigious experts. Endorsements by eminent professional bodies. The experts don’t even need to offer evidence and arguments. They can just refer to endorsements.
P16: Experts try to define the issue in terms that make their own expertise central.
P17: Raising “other facts” or shifting the focus of debate is of central importance in challenging experts.
P19: It is also vital to study the arguments of the experts themselves. Don’t rely on what the critics say that the experts say. … If you’ve also studied the critics, you should be able to see the weak points ….
It is essential that you check and double-check your facts. … Avoid super-dramatic claims and announcements and wild allegations of fraud and lying. Even if everything you say is true, it is usually more effective to avoid excesses of rhetoric.
Pp20-21: The arguments of experts depend vitally on assumptions, whereas a few facts here or there don’t make that much difference. Assumptions underlie everything we do and say.
Pp30-31: The care taken in designing and using the model is often forgotten in making grand pronouncements based on the results. In many cases an extra political assumption is involved ….
P33: The credibility of experts as experts depends to a surprising degree upon their credibility as individuals.
P33: Exposing failures is a powerful way to discredit experts. Nothing they can do in response is really effective.
Pp35-36: It is relatively easy to come up with an explanatory theory afterwards. Scientists know that whatever the evidence shows, a theory can be generated to explain it. It is much harder to come up with a successful prediction.
P37: Most people ignore their own inconsistencies and are not even aware of most of them. Experts are no different. To find inconsistencies, you will probably have to dig ….
P39: To determine whether or not a small percentage of people are suffering from a fluoridation-induced health problem requires special statistical skills. The specialist required is called an epidemiologist. Most doctors have no special training in this area.
P41: Financial interests can be indirect, in which case they can be called career or professional interests.
P42: Then there is psychological interest. The people who back a cause frequently tie their reputations to it. Its success represents their personal success, and vice versa. As a result, they are reluctant to recognize any evidence or argument that questions their cause.
P44: Whenever an issues enters the public debate, the “facts” presented in the debate are carefully selected and packaged for maximum effect. Inconvenient facts are brushed aside, and errors, gaps, assumptions, manipulations, extrapolations, and a whole range of operations on the facts are papered over. Sometimes the technical literature in the area is purged of admissions of shortcomings, since opponents can take advantage of the smallest weakness.
P44: Since the experts typically claim to be repositories of unsullied truth, when you show the smirches on their truth, it rubs off on the experts themselves.
P45: Fraud by scientists is more common than generally realized. But it is seldom exposed. To some people, McBride’s sins would seem small: he had changed a few figures. … But fraud is an extremely serious allegation against a scientist. … It took the persistence of a crusading journalist to bring the matter to public attention.
P57: Sociologists have also looked at the day-to-day activities of scientists. What have they found? Essentially, scientists are involved all the time in making value judgments and in persuading and being persuaded by other scientists and by outsiders. This applies to every detail, including what counts as a fact.
P58: The point of all this is that the process of scientific inquiry is shot through with personal factors which may be influenced by the wider politics of the issue. In the case of fluoridation, the opponents argue that proper checking of claims of harm from fluoride have not been made. If so, this could partly be because antifluoridationists have little scientific credibility, or because little money is made possible for research potentially critical of fluoridation, or because scientists who do research critical of fluoridation have difficulty in their careers.
P59: Strictly speaking, this should not discredit expertise, but simply make clear the context in which it operates. In practice, describing the social processes and political environment of science does serve to discredit it. This is because science has been sold to the public as objective knowledge that is untainted by social factors.
P66 (“Tips”): Keep cool and don’t act in haste. The idea is to open up the issue, not just let off steam.
Keep pressure on the experts. Some of them will do something foolish in anger.
It is more important to persuade sympathetic and neutral people than to win over those on the other side.
Pp67-69: (A good collection of References.)
@Wren (15:57:40) : “Why can’t people be truthful ?”
Yes, yes Wren, you do go on don’t you? How about: “hide the decline”; the attempts (presumably successful) to destroy the incriminating data; turning data upside down; the hockey stick; the ONE Yamal tree; etc; etc. – I too could go on, for a very long time about truthfulness. Most of us here know where the truth deficit lies (and lies and lies)……
jaymam, do you have the original post? I have three versions dating back to March 13th. Can you send me what you have? jbaxter .a t. panscient.com. Thanks.
A couple of pence worth.
While I would love to see SM sue this charlatan and empty his pockets, the many difficulties he would face would include persuading any court that being “accused” (credited?) with one of the most benificent acts by any single human in living memory constitutes a defamation. This should not discourage Steve from trying, though, as, regardless of the outcome, a case like this (provided he refused the inevitable offers of a settlement out of court) would tend to extract all sorts of evidence which the warmists would prefer to remain hidden.
Others have commented that Quiggin’s accusation supports the view that the FOIA.txt file was compiled in response to a FOI request they were resisting, but thought they might have to yield to. But I’ve often wondered whether it might have been a compilation of stuff they were planning to OMIT from such a disclosure?
One question that might usefully have been asked of Acton/Jones by the UK Parliamentary Committee would be “what was the purpose of the creation of the file named FOIA.txt?”
Gad, Wren, denseness like yours is unnatural, that is, contrived. Jones was lying and got caught on it. Deal with it. We are.
======================
Leif,
My view is that in our short lives, it is time and value that are the most precious commodities.
Of all the commenter arguments, one must decide which have the merits to pursue, if any. It depends on the quality of the homework done by the presenters. Who is buying it?
Simple? Probably.
Judgement? Of course.
Appreicate your mental discipline, once again.
And I also wonder where the hell your stamina comes from.
John
“Wren:
If I was a resident of the UK I wouldn’t like pranksters causing a waste of my tax money.”
Well you’re not, and I am, and I like it a lot. When you compare a couple of thousand quid to the £8billion or so to be picked from the pockets of electricity consumers to pay for the absurd “Feed in Tariffs”, the phrase “drop in the ocean” comes to mind.
Before I got to Piratin’ aargh.
I was a bank manager, my very first Branch was QU.
On loan from a mate.
JQ from QU embarrassed, Queenslands University.
Good luck with that. That’s why she went down to mattresses.
Economists they can get, embarrassment they wont have.
Me I’m from QIT. Aaargh.
R. Gates,
“2010 on track to be the warmest on instrument record, just as the Met Office predicted.”
Absolutely brilliant. The Met Office have been making predictions of milder winters and hotter summers for years and have yet to be proven right. So when 2010 turns out to be warmer than 1998, you stand up and say “this is the warmest on instrument record, just as the Met predicted.”
You remind me of the people who believe in psychics when they get a prophecy right, but forget to check all those times when the psychic is wrong.
Vincent,
The point really was about an explanation from the AGW skeptics as to how 2010 could be warmer than the last big El Nino year (1998), despite the fact that we just went through the longest, deepest solar minimum in a century. I’ve still not heard a satisfactory answer. As far as the Met Office goes and their predictions, I agree, make enough of them and you’re bound to get it right, but this still doesn’t take away from the fact that the tropospheric temps are doing exactly what AGWT says they will be doing the remainder of this century…going up. The troposphere is “where the action is” in terms of the actual dynamics of GH gas action. It is where the radiation is being absorbed and re-emitted by the GH gases, and as they accumulate, the tropo temps will go up…solar minimum or not, and El Nino years will only accentuate this trend, so 2010 El Nino Year will be warmer than 1998 El Nino year, even though the El Nino is not as strong in 2010 because we have a now have thicker “blanket” of GH gases in the troposphere.
These facts will upset many AGW skeptics…but cognitive dissonance is always painful…
Quiggin down under looks like he is typecast as a sheep herder…
@Tom FP
“But I’ve often wondered whether it might have been a compilation of stuff they were planning to OMIT from such a disclosure?”
My view too – if this was the stuff they were prepared to disclose (!) what the hell were they hiding? The Harry-Read-me would be quite enough to wreck their plans on its own.
John Whitman (01:32:03) :
Wren (00:45:39) : =>Wren (15:14:30) :
”””Now, what problem do you have with that exactly?
====
If I was a resident of the UK I wouldn’t like pranksters causing a waste of my tax money.””””
Wren,
What are you talking about?
Do you understand the purpose & nature of FOIA/FOI laws?
And do you understand the scientific method?
Do you understand the essential necessary critical roll of skeptics in the long history of western civilization and science?
It is reality [nature] that is deciding the arguments, not beliefs in AGW theories.
John
======
The purpose of FOI laws is not to give politically motivated individuals and groups a tool to harass scientists.
What the hell does any of this have to do with the scientific method?
Who you call skeptics, I call nitpickers. Exactly what has McIntrye contributed to the advancement of science?
kim (05:57:22) :
Gad, Wren, denseness like yours is unnatural, that is, contrived. Jones was lying and got caught on it. Deal with it. We are.
==========
Well I know hardly anyone ever lies, so if Jones lied that makes him an exceptional person. What where his lies?
RichieP (04:59:43) :
@Wren (15:57:40) : “Why can’t people be truthful ?”
Yes, yes Wren, you do go on don’t you? How about: “hide the decline”; the attempts (presumably successful) to destroy the incriminating data; turning data upside down; the hockey stick; the ONE Yamal tree; etc; etc. – I too could go on, for a very long time about truthfulness. Most of us here know where the truth deficit lies (and lies and lies)……
=====
Innuendos and allegations based on suspicions aren’t truth.
Wren, you are deliberately and ingenuously being dense. Jones was lying, McIntyre and his Band of Merry Pranksters caught him out on it, and partly as a result of that the HadCru temperature database has been revealed to have been built of sand on sand. This knowledge is a big, big plus for science.
Now go sit in the corner; don’t come near me, I value my legs.
==============
R Gates @ 07:08:07
You are yet another one being disingenuously dense. I asked you before to explain the Sun-Climate connection you use to support your point about the recent Minimum. So how about it? We’re all ears, since that connection is like ‘The Big Mystery’. Don’t keep us in suspense. Bonus; you’d get big gold prizes if you’d just explain it.
=======================
Peter B (04:32:33) :
Wren,
As a UK taxpayer myself, I am far more concerned about (1) the non-work done by the likes of Phil Jones and Keith Briffa and (2) the implications for the British economy of the policies taken partly because of that non-work.
So actually, to have Jones and Briffa answering FOI requests is not a waste of money – in fact, it’s an investment, since it prevents them from causing the economic destruction as they’d otherwise be doing.
====
Like Professor Quiggin, you are making an allegation based on a suspicion. Many posters here think that would be grounds for Jones and Briffa to sue you for libel.
kim (08:05:58) :
Wren, you are deliberately and ingenuously being dense. Jones was lying, McIntyre and his Band of Merry Pranksters caught him out on it, and partly as a result of that the HadCru temperature database has been revealed to have been built of sand on sand. This knowledge is a big, big plus for science.
Now go sit in the corner; don’t come near me, I value my legs.
==============
What were Jones lies?
Wren, he was lying about the confidentiality agreements keeping him from releasing the data. Why are you seemingly completely unable to grasp this concept?
==============
Wren,
“Who you call skeptics, I call nitpickers. Exactly what has McIntrye contributed to the advancement of science?”
Eh, exposing the errors in Mann’s Hockey Stick?
Exposing the errors in Briffa’s Hockey Stick?
Holding science up to the honorable traditions of adversarial scepticism?
R. Gates,
” but this still doesn’t take away from the fact that the tropospheric temps are doing exactly what AGWT says they will be doing the remainder of this century…going up.”
Well, that’s not all AGWT says is it? The climate models predict a tropical midtroposphere hotspot that hasn’t been found. I’m not saying that proves or disproves anything, just that observations aren’t a one-way street for AGWT.
Anyway, as for going up, wasn’t it Phil Jones himself who ‘fessed up that there has been no statisically significant warming since 1995?
Not saying that proves anything, mind. Just pointing it out.
You two are La La Monkeys mindlessly repeating ‘The Big Lie’ in hopes that the repetition will be persuasive. You are propagandists of the worst sort. Your problem is that hoi polloi have caught on to ‘The Big Lie’ and you just expose yourself to ridicule. And anger, I’m sorry to say.
====================
Wren @ 8:10:22
Hah, you’re getting carried away. Your comparison of Peter’s statement to that of Prof. Quiggin is ludicrous. However, I’m glad you agree that sad old Quiggin has been egregious.
============
I don’t think you realize it but your arguments have devolved into absurdities, Wren. You are actually very amusing.
===================
supercritical (02:32:06) :
Wren,
You say ‘If I was a resident of the UK I wouldn’t like pranksters causing a waste of my tax money’
I am a resident of the UK and with regard to my negative preferences for state spending, I’d rather UEA/CRU had obeyed the law in the first instance.
If a state-funded organisations refuse to comply with their legal obligations, there is a good tradition in the UK of populist engagement in ‘rough music’ or ‘uproar’; in other words to create a scandal and stink which effectively disrupts the operation of that organisation, in a peaceful manner, until it complies.
Anyway apologies for the lesson on basic civics, but I remain puzzled by your post. Perhaps you could explain why UEA/CRU’s decision not to obey the law was NOT the causation of the repeated flurry of FOI requests?
Also could you give us your view on the proposition that a single response, copied to each and all of those FOI requests, would have sufficed?
====
You don’t know for sure that UEC/CRU disobeyed the law.
Some think in the future all work subject to FOI law should be readily available for access. While I can see why such openness is advocated, I’m skeptical of whether it is, on-balance, a good idea. What is the downside? Would it inhibit scientists and reduce their productivity?
kim (08:12:05) :
Wren, he was lying about the confidentiality agreements keeping him from releasing the data. Why are you seemingly completely unable to grasp this concept?
==============
Well, there were confidentiality agreements, so these agreements were a reason he could use if he didn’t want to release the data, weren’t they?
REPLY: Your response is double stupid wrong Wren. Jones DID release the data, spurning such “agreements” when releasing it to “friendly” researchers such as Peter Webster. When McIntyre and others came calling, he hid behind the same “agreements”. His actions prevented replication, his actions were unlawful, his actions were unprofessional, his actions were arbitrary. Kim is right, you are being dense. I don’t know if you don’t have a clear understanding or if it is purposeful, however it is becoming tiring and you have hijacked the thread.
Thus, I’m declaring troll status for you. Commenters, don’t feed the troll. Moderators, snip as needed when this gets out of hand. Wren I suggest you take a time out from commenting to get a handle on the history. Then come back and comment. – Anthony
Vincent (08:12:27) :
Wren,
“Who you call skeptics, I call nitpickers. Exactly what has McIntrye contributed to the advancement of science?”
Eh, exposing the errors in Mann’s Hockey Stick?
Exposing the errors in Briffa’s Hockey Stick?
Holding science up to the honorable traditions of adversarial scepticism?
====
What advancements were made if no conclusions were changed?
Wren, you’ve got shut-eyed denial. AGW religion is the opiate of the masses.
================
[snip – take a break Wren, your arguments are circular]
Thus, I’m declaring troll status for you. Commenters, don’t feed the troll. Moderators, snip as needed when this gets out of hand. Wren I suggest you take a time out from commenting to get a handle on the history. Then come back and comment. – Anthony
—-
Thank you, Anthony and moderators! Cheers
Wren (08:51:48) : He can’t change the Conclusions in the IPCC Reports, but he has changed the conclusions drawn by millions of ordinary people around the world looking for the truth behind the IPCC conclusions and shown them as false.
R. Gates (22:04:44) :
Gates is wrong.
Constantly citing only the Arctic, while ignoring the Antarctic and the global status, is certainly misleading.
Also, cognititve dissonance can not by definition be applied to scientific skeptics. CD is based on beliefs, while skeptics question beliefs.
As I’ve stated since long before Mr Gates ever appeared on WUWT, I am perfectly willing to change my mind and accept that a rise in CO2 will lead to runaway global warming and climate catastrophe, if there is verifiable, testable, empirical evidence provided by those believing in the CAGW conjecture — along with honest, open and transparent cooperation regarding their raw data, code and methods.
But since the same people who are claiming that CAGW is right around the corner adamantly refuse to cooperate by sharing their raw data, their algorithms and their methodologies as the scientific method requires, then scientific skeptics rightly question those conclusions, which are based on secret alchemies that are kept unavailable from the public that paid for them.
The fact that so much money, status and political power is made available to those promoting CAGW, skeptics are skeptical of the people who say “trust us,” without agreeing to disclose their methods. It is the only reasonable course of action — at least until those sounding the climate alarm agree to convincingly show their methods to the general scientific community.
Is it reasonable to ask if Jones has the discretion under FOI law and confidentiality agreements to selectively release data covered by confidentiality agreements?
REPLY: I’m going to break the “don’t feed the troll” rule becuase this really needs to be explained to you clearly. Your questions are circular and pointless. It has been determined that there is prima facie evidence that Jones and this officer broke FOI law, but due to statute of limits cannot be acted on.
…the ICO has been alerted by the complainant and by information already in the public domain via the media, to a potential offence under section 77 of the Freedom of Information Act. The prima facie evidence from the published emails indicate an attempt to defeat disclosure by deleting information. It is hard to imagine more cogent prima facie evidence…In the event, the matter cannot be taken forward because of the statutory time limit.
Letter from UK Information Commissioner’s Office https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/summers_uea_ico_20100129.pdf
No more on this Wren, you are beaten, move on to something else. You’ve hijacked this thread long enough.
Read this, and post no more on this subject, we are done with your circular troll logic trying to defend Jones of of the indefensible. – Anthony
Anthony: Good call.
Wren,
“What advancements were made if no conclusions were changed?”
So you admit that McIntyre exposed the errors of the hockey sticks then? Good start, but Isn’t that enough in itself?
Let’s try this thought experiment. Let us imagine that Lindzen had published a paper that alleged to falsify the AGW hypothesis. The media trumpet the headlines “Top climate scientist finds flaw in global warming hypothesis” (you’ll have to suspend belief on that bit). Then McIntyre gets hold of the data and methods and proudly shows the flaws in Lindzen’s work. Do you a) applaud McIntyre for his good work, or b) accuse him of harrassment and medling and being politically biased?
Do you see where I’m going with this?
REPLY: Please don’t feed the troll.
From his bio at the university:
John Quiggin is an Australian Research Council Federation Fellow in Economics and Political Science at the University of Queensland. Professor Quiggin is prominent both as a research economist and as a commentator on Australian economic policy.
My God, he’s just another soft science believer! I was thinking (something he is obviously finds challenging) of engaging him but, as Mark Twain said, “I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed man.”
Well, I think I am trying the patience of Anthony and the moderators so I will post no more on this thread.
Petty minded and childish….the games up and they know it.
So much evidence that the AGW’s have been found out and they simply can’t take it.
Their cosy world is coming to an end so they turn on one of the sharpest brains that have undermined them.
Sue them Steve.
Two observations on this thread:
1 – Prof Quiggin looks like Terry Waite. [snip]
2 – any post from wren makes my ears bleed
That is all!
Quiggin is a master of denial and self delusion:
http://crookedtimber.org/2007/02/14/charlie-brown-and-the-football/
http://crookedtimber.org/2006/10/18/obvious-truths-finally-stated/
Here is the earliest screen image copy that I have of the first page of John Quiggin’s post
before it was altered to make it slightly less defamatory:
You complain about someone else cherry picking when you write, “Now this is a perfect example of an AGW skeptic cherry picking data to support some preconceived notion.” Then you turn around and commit the most flagrant act of cherrypicking imaginable by ignoring the vast majority of the existence of the Arctic. You write, “To be accurate and precise in seeing true trends you always want to look at the largest data set you have.” The largest dataset we have indicates the Arctic is normally without and totally free of ANY icecap and glaciations. That is zero icepacks, Zero icebergs, Zero glaciers, none, zip, nada, all she wrote, none at all. You wrote, “These graphs are the best snapshots of the long term trends in the arctic.” Given the fact that the Arctic normally has no such ice in the vast majority of the “largest dataset we have,” it is obvious for all to see you have, in your own words, cherrypicked…”data to support some preconceived notion” you have regarding AGW.
More utterances from the Prophet Lovelock
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/lovelock_sceptics_kept_us_sane/
Lovelock then and now
http://www.climatedepot.com/
We’ve lost our fear of hellfire, but put climate change in its place
Billions will die,” says Lovelock, who tells us that he is not normally a gloomy type. Human civilisation will be reduced to a “broken rabble ruled by brutal warlords”, and the plague-ridden remainder of the species will flee the cracked and broken earth to the Arctic, the last temperate spot, where a few breeding couples will survive
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/3622794/Weve-lost-our-fear-of-hellfire-but-put-climate-change-in-its-place.html
“The Sierra Club made the Nature Conservancy look reasonable. I founded Friends of the Earth to make the Sierra Club look reasonable. Then I founded Earth Island Institute to make Friends of the Earth look reasonable. Earth First! now makes us look reasonable. We’re still waiting for someone else to come along and make Earth First! look reasonable.”
— Quoted by Ron Arnold and Alan Gottlieb in their book Trashing the Economy (1993)
http://activistcash.com/biography_quotes.cfm/b/3507-david-brower
Uber-Hysteric Carbon Cult Prophet of Doom Lovelock serves the purpose of making all others look reasonable.. following the same propaganda “technique” enunciated by David Brower
ClimateGate “break-in, theft, robbery, etc.” None of this applies as the British Employment Act legally protects any employee of a public or private institution who leaks or whistle blows. It is VERY clear now that the Information Commissioner has indicated malfeasance, there is no theft crime – only the leaking of documents proving science subterfuge and manipulation.
Mr. Quiggman might want to invest in a new gumshoe certificate.
“”Wren (15:42:36) :
JimAsh (11:00:02) :
“Wren (10:44:28) :
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that McIntyre fans have a double standard.
Allegations of wrongdoing based on suspicions are OK if directed at Jones and man.
Mere suspicion of wrongdoing is outrageous if directed at McIntyre.
Why can’t people just be honest?”
We ARE being honest.
Why couldn’t Jones be honest ?
Right and wrong ?
It is wrong to phony up the science….
=====
That allegation against Jones is a good example of an allegation based on suspicion.
Why not be honest and call a spade a spade?”””
============
The spade is as called. Science BENT to serve a political agenda.
Earth will not become Venus.
Water will not rise 200 feet.
Ice is not permanent.
Glaciers melt. Glaciers are not your friend.
Polar Bears can swim hundreds of miles. Polar Bears are not your friends.
We do not live at 14,000 feet. ( except for some in castles in the air)
The Earth is NOT a closed system.
The sun DOES count.
Sometimes it rains a lot. Sometimes snow. It’ll be 90º in July. I’m a prophet.
You don’t know what you don’t know.
And games have been played at great peril to national sovereignty,
common sense, and actual planning and response to actual events and possible events.
Spade.
D. Patterson said:
“The largest dataset we have indicates the Arctic is normally without and totally free of ANY icecap and glaciations. That is zero icepacks, Zero icebergs, Zero glaciers, none, zip, nada, all she wrote, none at all.”
Oh Brother! I suppose then we should actually go to an even more absurd level and say the largest data set we have shows the Arctic (and Earth for the matter) should not really exist at all since they have not be around for the majority of the universe’s existence! Where does the rediculous comparison stop! We know that we are in an interglacial, and that the arctic sea ice goes through fluctuations, but IN THE TIME THAT ACCURATE MODERN RECORDS HAVE BEEN KEPT, we know that the arctic sea ice has showed a downturn in the last decade. I make the claim that it is most honest to look at the largest data set (meaning accurate records) as opposed to cherry pick the last year or six months, and then you turn that into some rediculous stretch covering who knows what past climate cycles.
Oh Brother!
Thank you Professor John Quiggin. You have just about proved in one shot that you and all other AGW alarmists are nothing more than hopeless scare mongers who belong in jail.
All this talk about the Arctic ignores the whole other end of the planet. It also leaves out the global ice extent totals. I’ve repeatedly posted those charts to the sound of… *crickets*
See, the
hypothesisconjecture is that CO2 is gonna getcha, and the Arctic ice extent proves it. But Arctic sea ice is simply a function of wind and currents, not temperature.Let’s compare current Arctic temperatures with the baseline of 1958 – 2002: click
I’m not frightened. Is anyone frightened? If so, be sure to take a flashlight to bed, so you can check for CO2 monsters under the mattress. You can never be too careful. They might getcha.
Moderators,
OK, starve him/her. I don’t want to use the T word.
But, be careful. PETA will start campaign to protect them.
John
Good call Anthony!
Be very careful. You may not be in his department, but he may have friends and allies in yours. The first rule of graduate-studentship: tread very cautiously, lest you affront those who control your future. Not brave advice, but judicious nonetheless, from all that I have heard.
/Mr Lynn
They sure are P.O. ed over there!!!
Bait n switch is what I call it. blame Mac and maybe no one will notice.
Wren (00:29:35) :
Wishful thinking won’t make it happen. Remember, El Nino and La Nina come and go, and the globe keeps getting warmer and warmer.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Yes, Wren, that’s why winters keep getting longer and harsher in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.
Still pining for Marx?
FOI in the UK? No one was suppose to tell there was one!
opps, forgot to say
/sarcoff/
I just read the comment about not feeding the troll.
Too late for the comment I just posted.
My apologies.
[we don’t allow Hitler parodies as funny as some of them are. At least I don’t in case there’s been inconsistency. ~ ctm]
R. Gates (16:39:05) :
You complain about cherrypicking, yet you turn right around and cherrypick only the one miniscule period in which the sea ice is decreasing during only one part of its most recent longer cycles. You then hold out the excuse, a false one at that, claiming its the only period of “TIME THAT ACCURATE MODERN RECORDS HAVE BEEN KEPT.”
You deny the most recent months and years in which the sea ice is increasing.
You deny the years preceding the satellite period in which the sea ice waxed and waned even more than the satellite period.
You deny the millenia time spans in which humans inhabited the Earth without an industrialized civilization and without perennial sea ice at the North Pole.
You deny the millions of years in which there was little or no perennial sea ice in the Arctic.
You deny the millions of years when it was normal for the Arctic to have no sea ice at all.
Then you have the audacity to accuse other commentators of “cherrypicking” the sea ice data before and after your choice of only a handful of years! Really?
You also describe the references to sea ice extents of the pre-satellite period as “absurd” and “ridiculuous.” Are they? How can they possibly be so absurd, ridiculous, or irrelevant to the most recent fluctuations during the satellite era, given the fact such sea ice extents normally do not exist through most of the last 550 milion years?
Perhaps you can enlighten us as to why we need to be concerned about the current relatively minor flucuations of perennial sea ice when the Arctic did not have perennial sea ice at the North Pole during tens of thousands of years of early human existence on the Earth? It was perfectly natural to have little or no perennial sea ice in the Arctic then, so why isn’t also natural to have much more sea ice now even at its lowest extents? In other words, what reason is there to be so tremendously and immediately alarmed about having more sea ice now, at its greatest and least extents, than our early human ancestors often had for tens of thousands of years in their day?
Here are most of the differences in three copies of Quiggan’s statement:
http://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2010/03/12/climategatethe-smoking-gun/
now that I have an earlier copy made by Jonathan Baxter.
Inserted after first paragraph:
“It seems unlikely at this point that the hacker/leaker wll be identified, so as far as criminal liability is concerned, we will probably never know.”
Original text:
“Looking over the evidence that is now available, I think there is enough to point to Steven McIntyre as the person, along with the actual hacker or leaker, who bears primary moral responsibility for the crime.”
Replaced with:
“Looking over the evidence that is now available, however, I think there is enough to point to Steven McIntyre as the person (along with the actual hacker or leaker of course) who bears primary moral responsibility for the crime.”
And that was further replaced with:
“Looking over the evidence that is now available, however, I think there is enough to point to Steven McIntyre as the person (apart of course from the actual hacker/leaker) who bears primary moral responsibility for the crime.”
Original text:
“(unsurprisingly, his supporters ignored the request to stick to new countries, and sent multiples of the same request)”
Replaced with:
“(unsurprisingly, his supporters ignored the request to stick to new countries, and sent multiples of the same request). In the end, CRU got over 100 FOI requests, all essentially identical, but different enough to pose a huge burden.”
Original text:
“25 July 2009: The next day McIntyre announced that he had got a mass of CRU data, essentially all that sought in the harassment campaign, from “a mole”. Note that this may be true or may be misdirection to protect external hackers.”
Replaced with:
“25 July 2009: The next day McIntyre announced that he had got a mass of CRU data, essentially all that sought in the harassment campaign, in a post headed “a mole”. McIntyre stated in comments that he had received the data from a person in the UK.”
Original text:
“Over the next few months, CRU started preparing a response to McIntyre which resulted in the creation of a file called FOIA.zip. Over the weekend beginning Friday 13 November, someone located and copied this file from a back-up server at the university’s Climatic Research Unit, and distributed it widely among anti-science blog sites, including McIntyre’s. It’s unclear whether the extraction of the file required sophisticated hacking, simple illegal entry to a poorly protected site, or McIntyre’s “mole”. What is clear, as this report notes is that going after FOIA.zip indicates that someone in McIntyre’s circle of supporters was responsible.”
Replaced with:
“Over the next few months, CRU started preparing a response to McIntyre. Over the weekend beginning Friday 13 November, someone located and copied files associated with this effort from a back-up server at the university’s Climatic Research Unit, and attempted to load it on to the RealClimate site under the name FOIA.zip (the files were in a directory called FOI2009). It’s unclear whether the extraction of the file required sophisticated hacking, simple illegal entry to a poorly protected site, or McIntyre’s “mole”. What is clear, as this report notes is that the name FOi2009 indicates that someone in McIntyre’s circle of supporters was responsible.”
And that was replaced with:
“Over the weekend beginning Friday 13 November, someone located and copied files (apparently associated with the CRU response to this effort, although this is unclear) from a back-up server at the university’s Climatic Research Unit, and attempted to load it on to the RealClimate site under the name FOIA.zip (the files were in a directory called FOI2009). That attempt failed and the files were then widely circulated to anti-science sites. It’s unclear whether the extraction of the file required sophisticated hacking, simple illegal entry to a poorly protected site, or McIntyre’s “mole”. What is clear, as this report notes is that the name FOi2009 indicates that someone associated with the campaign was responsible.”
Original text:
“Having received the stolen emails, McIntyre played a prominent role in disseminating dishonest and misleading claims about their contents, focusing on the phrases “trick” and “hide the decline” which were used to suggest a conspiracy to commit scientific fraud.”
Replaced with:
“Having been advised of the stolen emails, McIntyre linked to them and played a prominent role in disseminating dishonest and misleading claims about their contents, focusing on the phrases “trick” and “hide the decline” which were used to suggest a conspiracy to commit scientific fraud.”
Original text:
“So, to sum up, McIntyre organised the campaign which led to the creation of the file, obtained information from the CRU file system by means he declined to reveal, received the stolen emails shortly after the theft and made dishonest and defamatory use of the stolen information. Whether or not he was directly involved in the theft, or merely created the opportunity and benefited from the proceeds is impossible to determine, and essentially irrelevant.”
Replaced with:
“So, to sum up, McIntyre organised the campaign which led to the creation of the file, obtained information from the CRU file system by means he declined to reveal, linked to the stolen emails shortly after the theft and made dishonest and defamatory use of the stolen information. Whether or not he was directly involved in the theft, or merely created the opportunity and benefited from the proceeds is impossible to determine, and essentially irrelevant in moral terms.”
And that was further replaced with:
“So, to sum up, McIntyre, having earlier obtained information from the CRU file system by means he declined to reveal, linked to the stolen emails shortly after the theft and made dishonest and defamatory use of the stolen information. The excuse that he was not personally involved in the hack/leak, but merely benefited from the proceeds is essentially irrelevant in moral terms.”
Professor Quiggins wrote:
In recent years, science and scientific institutions have come under increasingly vociferous attack, with accusations of fraud, incompetence and even aspirations to world domination becoming commonplace…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Strong
[edit] Carbon Taxation Involvement
Jesse Ventura cited Maurice Strong as being a primary developer of global warming [16], with the goal of creating a global carbon credit taxation. Additionally, there are numerous claims that Edmund de Rothschild, a member of the well-known Rothschild family, was working with Strong as well. In essence, Strong has been promoting global warming since the 1980’s with the long term goal of helping the United Nations create a carbon tax [17] [18], potentially a trillion dollar business, mainly via carbon credit trading. In 1987, Strong and Rothschild presented the Brundtland Commission at the 4th World Wilderness Congress for a World Conservation Bank (or Global Environment Facility) which would provide a banking system for carbon taxation [19]. The Global Environment Facility (or GEF) is an existing multi-billion dollar fund through which green projects are created in 3rd world countries (the largest of its kind), while keeping a portion of the funds for management and administrative fees. Additionally, it hopes to trade the world’s debt for wilderness lands as collateral.
I haven’t seen this yet, but hmmm.
Rothschild Regrets Global Governance Tough To Activate
http://www.disclose.tv/action/viewvideo/35275/Rothschild_regrets_Global_Governance_tough_to_acti/
That picture of Professor Quiggins, he looks just like my Uncle Delmarr at his age. Bear hunter and fur trapper, he was, sorry.
Weren’t you afraid the rats or cockroaches were going to chew off your fingertips as you slept; or a snake would bite you? The families of soldiers like Patton and Eisenhower lived on Army posts where it was necessary to put each foot of the bed in a pan filled with kerosene. There was, of course, no smoking in bed.
I think that amounts to libel unless he has some hard evidence
Put this guy in a witless protection program.
jaymam @ 4:08:39
Thank you for that demonstration. It shows the March of the Psychometers very revealingly.
============
Thank you for the great story.
Well he will be off steves christmas card list for sure.