NOTE: Updates added, refresh for latest.
The Muir Russell Report is out. Read here in PDF. Unfortunately Russell is another apologist who doesn’t ask relevant questions of both sides, only one side. Even BBC now thinks the CRU wears a halo:
Compare that to:
CRU’s Dr. Phil Jones’s response of 21/02/2005 to Warwick Hughes’s request for Jones’s raw climate data:
“Even if WMO agrees, I will still not pass on the data. We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it.“
Here’s some comments around the web, link to the report follows:
I guess the main question coming out of the Muir Russell report is when is he going to be appointed to the House of Lords and his choice of appelation. Lord Muir of Holyrood?
They adopted a unique inquiry process in which they interviewed only one side – CRU. As a result, the report is heavily weighted towards CRU apologia – a not unexpected result given that the writing team came from Geoffrey Boulton’s Royal Society of Edinburgh.
The issue here is whether Wahl and Briffa violated IPCC rules. Asking Overpeck about this is not very helpful since Overpeck is hardly impartial. Muir Russell had to examine what Wahl and Briffa actually did and then examine the conduct against actual IPCC rules, not after-the-fact opinions by parties to the conduct.
The findings of the Fred Pearce Inquiry on this point stand:
These back channel communications between the paper’s authors [Wahl] and IPCC authors [Briffa], including early versions of the paper, seemed a direct subversion of the spirit of openness intended when the IPCC decided to put its internal reviews online.
More from Steve:
Muir Russell said that it wasn’t the scientists weren’t to blame for defamatory language in emails, e.g. calling people “frauds”, “fraudit”, “bozos”, “morons” and so on. It was Microsoft’s fault.
They asked:
Indeed, some submissions have characterised them as ‗unprofessional‘, or as evidence of CRU‘s contribution to a ‗poisoned atmosphere‘ in climate science.
Muir Russell blamed email itself for the language:
14. Finding: The extreme modes of expression used in many e-mails are characteristic of the medium. Crucially, the e-mails cannot always be relied upon as evidence of what actually occurred, nor indicative of actual behaviour that is extreme, exceptional or unprofessional.
They observe:
Extreme forms of language are frequently applied to quite normal situations by people who would never use it in other communication channels.
But defamatory language by CRU scientists in emails is still defamatory language. That the scientists wouldn’t use such language face-to-face with the targets of their abuse is no justification. Ask Tiger Woods about email.
=============================
UPDATE from Anthony:
Yes, I’m sure Sir Muir didn’t think this was unprofessional…nooo. Pictures are worth a thousand words, but I doubt Sir Muir ever looked at this one:
From: “thomas.c.peterson” To: Phil Jones Subject: [Fwd: Marooned?] Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2007 11:10:02 -0500
Hi, Phil,
I thought you might enjoy the forwarded picture and related commentary below.
I read some of the USHCN/GISS/CRU brouhaha on web site you sent us. It is both interesting and sad. It reminds me of a talk that Fred Singer gave in which he impugned the climate record by saying he didn’t know how different parts were put together. During the question part, Bob Livzey said, if you don’t know how it is done you should read the papers that describe it in detail. So many of the comments on that web page could be completely addressed by pointing people to different papers. Ah well, you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it think.
Warm regards,
Tom
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v445/n7128/full/445567a.html
Nature 445, 567 (8 February 2007) | doi:10.1038/445567a
Editorial
“The IPCC report has served a useful purpose in removing the last ground from under the sceptics’ feet, leaving them looking marooned and ridiculous.”
– Thomas C. Peterson, Ph.D. NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center 151 Patton Avenue Asheville, NC 28801 Voice: +1-828-271-4287 Fax: +1-828-271-4328
Attachment Converted: “c:\eudora\attach\marooned.jpg”
Here’s NCDC Tom Peterson’s (GHCN lead investigator) cartoon diddle:
I think NCDC should figure out how much public funded time Peterson spent on this and dock his pay.
=============================
The notion that IPCC reports are supposed to present a selective view of climate science, representing the judgments of a select group of experts is in fact contrary to the mission of the IPCC.
The Muir Russell mischaracterization of the IPCC becomes relevant in the report when it uses the characterization as a criterion for evaluating the efforts revealed in the emails to minimize or exclude certain perspectives. For instance, the Muir Russell report explains with respect to one alleged instance of exclusion of peer reviewed literature from IPCC drafts that (p. 76):
Those within the [IPCC] writing team took one view, and a group outside it took another. It is not in our remit to comment on the rights and wrongs of this debate, but those within the team had been entrusted with the responsibility of forming a view, and that is what they did.
This speaks directly to problems of the IPCC, revealed to some degree by the emails, but of much broader concern. The IPCC is supposed to “identify disparate views” not hide them from view or take the side held by the author team. Had the Muir Russell review actually taken an accurate view of the IPCC, it is likely that its judgment about the appropriateness of the behaviors revealed by the emails would be considerably different.The Register/Orlowski:
Russell was appointed by the institution to investigate an archive of source code and emails that leaked onto the internet last November. The source code is not addressed at all. His report suggests that the problems were of the academics’ own making, stating that they were “united in defence against criticism”. Yet the enquiry found that despite emails promising to “redefine” the peer review publication process, and put pressure on journal editors, staff were not guilty of subverting the IPCC process, and their “rigour” and “honesty” were beyond question.
…
The panel avoided examining the scientific work of the CRU Team – as have the two other reviews of the leaked archive by Lord Oxburgh, and the Commons Select Committee on science. If the academics had used bats’ wings or tea leaves to create temperature reconstructions, that wasn’t a matter for any of the panels to judge. And this is undoubtedly a shortcoming. The voter is entitled to see the evidence and understand the arguments that may answer the question: “Is this climate thing anything to worry about?”
===================================================
UPDATE:
In the event, the inquiry conducted detailed analysis of only three cases of potential abuse of peer review. And it investigated only two instances where allegations were made that CRU scientists such as director Phil Jones and deputy director Keith Briffa misused their positions as IPCC authors to sideline criticism. On the issue of peer review and the IPCC, it found that “the allegations cannot be upheld”, but made clear this was partly because the roles of CRU scientists and others could not be distinguished from those of colleagues. There was “team responsibility”.
The report is far from being a whitewash. And nor does it justify the claim of university vice-chancellor Sir Edward Action that it is a “complete exoneration”. In particular it backs critics who see in the emails a widespread effort to suppress public knowledge about their activities and to sideline bloggers who want to access their data and do their own analysis.
Most seriously, it finds “evidence that emails might have been deleted in order to make them unavailable should a subsequent request be made for them [under Freedom of information law]”. Yet, extraordinarily, it emerged during questioning that Russell and his team never asked Jones or his colleagues whether they had actually done this.
===========================================
UPDATE:
The investigations thus far are much like having a trial with judge, jury, reporters, spectators, and defendant, but no plaintiff. The plaintiff is locked outside the courtroom sitting in the hall hollering and hoping the jury hears some of what he has to say. Is it any wonder the verdicts keep coming up “not guilty”? – Anthony Watts
Sing louder, choir; sing louder…you are fading away.
Adolf Balik says:
July 7, 2010 at 12:15 pm
I am no end of satisfied. There were reasons for allegations that the AGW scam was a plot but without a smoking gun it was only one of many conspiracy theories. Then the smoking gun came in the form of CRU e-mails. Well of course there were reasons for allegations the plot was much wider and includes political circles. Now, these white-washing investigations produce the smoking guns proving the political level of the conspiracy like a production line providing added value to the e-mails.
That’s a great synopsis Adolf, that’s exactly the way I see it and I’m making sure as many people as possible have a chance to see it that way too. That’s the reality of it.
This entire episode has nothing whatsoever to do with “finding the truth” or “identifying wrong-doing”.
Climategate broke when Ed Miliband (Millepede the Younger) was Secretary of State at the newly created Department of Energy and Climate Change from 3 October 2008 to 11 May 2010. He was, and remains, a green nutter with absolutely no understanding of anything to do with science. Google him to see his “career”!
Millepede the Younger has been succeded by Chris Huhne who is of the opinion that 2,500 MORE windmills will meet all of the UK’s energy needs for the next decade or longer. ( http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1285898/Chris-Huhne-pushes-tougher-action-climate-change-mean-wind-farms.html)
The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, previously Millepede and now Huhne, has at his disposal millions of pounds Sterling to allocate for “research”.
Nobody who has any form of connection with the UAE is going to do anything at all to jeopardise the chances of that institution of getting its snout deep into that financial trough. Muir Russell accepted a pay rise which raised a few eyebrows in 2007. (http://www.heraldscotland.com/pound-23-000-pay-rise-for-university-principal-1.871413) He’s “one of the boys” and has done his mates a favour which, no doubt, will be called in in the future.
There’s been no “investigation”, it has all been an exercise in “scratch your back, now scratch mine”.
And the British public know it.
nice how richard co-opts sceptics to suit his own ends:
6 July: BBC Richard Black: Climate data: what’s hidden?
Certainly there have been differences between the various inquiries carried out so far – notably (as Fred Singer correctly reminded me during the week) that they’ve examined different areas of climate science…
It’s (Muir Russell) taken the longest of the inquiries, and would appear to be the most thorough, although there are areas in which you could reasonably argue it could have been more thorough – indeed the team admitted as much, but pointed out that it actually had to finish and reach a conclusion sometime…
The Muir Russell team investigated this by just about the simplest method you could think of. They downloaded the data themselves from public databases, and wrote a computer program that would combine the datapoints into a temperature record for the instrumental period.
The entire process took less than two days. All the data they needed was freely available, writing the code was a cinch, and it produced a curve similar to the ones produced by CRU and its counterparts in the US and Japan.
Anyone competent in the field could do the same, the inquiry team elaborated. You can take out data points you don’t like, you can apply whatever correction factors you want (such as the one that Nasa’s GISTEMP series uses to compensate for the dearth of measuring stations across the Arctic), and you can therefore end up with a temperature curve that might look a little different: but don’t say it can’t be done, because it can.
And while the university should have responded much better to Freedom of Information requests – which the university admits – many of the FoI requests came, the Muir Russell panel said, from competent people who should have known that the data is freely available and can easily be processed.
The Muir Russell report won’t satisfy everyone that everything is rosy in the bed of climate science – and of course, it hasn’t investigated whether the overall IPCC picture of climate science is sound, because to do that you’d need a very different sort of panel…
It might be thought notable, however, that criticism from the most prominent “sceptical” commentators and bloggers has so far concentrated on issues such as openness and dealing with FoI (Global Warming Policy Foundation), whether IPCC rules on data submission were broken (Climate Audit) or the job of an IPCC author (Bishop Hill), rather than hidden data or the lack of an impact on the overall picture of global climate change….
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/richardblack/2010/07/i_started_mondays_post_with.html
the above follows Richard’s last post with its ‘scare sceptics’ tactics:
5 July: BBC Richard Black: Dutch courage for climate mainstream
The Canadian National Post and Financial Post newspaper group is being sued for libel by Canadian scientist Andrew Weaver – a particularly interesting action, in that it seeks to make the paper liable for readers’ comments appended to articles as well as for the articles themselves.
There’s a chance, I gather, that even more explosive libel suits may follow
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/richardblack/2010/07/dutch_courage.html
7 July: gwpf: Benny Peiser: Investigation Into Climategate Inquiries Announced
The Global Warming Policy Foundation has criticised the Independent Climate Change Email Review for a lack of openness and transparency in its inquiry. In response, the GWPF has announced that it has commissioned its own investigation into the way the three Climategate inquiries have been set up, how they were conducted an how they arrived at their conclusions.
The investigation will be conducted by Andrew Montford. Andrew Montford is the author of The Hockey Stick Illusion: Climategate and the Corruption of Science, a history of some of the events leading up to the release of emails and data from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. The findings of the report will be published at the end of August…
http://www.thegwpf.org/climategate/1204-investigation-into-climategate-inquiries-announced.html
Perhaps you should look into the background of Muir Russell, his role in the construction of the Scottish Parliament building in Edinburgh and the comments about his conduct by the investigation into the vast overspend, as well as how firmly Glasgow University is part of the Establishment in Scotland.
You would then see exactly why he was chosen.
Then, of course, you could start to look at the UEA, in general, and the links it had to the people in power in the 1980’s and 90’s, and how many of them are still in Government and policy-making circles.
And then nothing might surprise you
Excerpt from the Register article on the matter:
To reach this particular conclusion, for example, the report finds a criterion: a “consistence of view” with earlier work. The earlier work here was in fact produced the academics under scrutiny. So, having compared the CRU academics’ work against their previous work, and found it to be consistent, they are cleared of malpractice.
Got that? Because the investigation found that the actors has acted consistently –with malice aforethought– they were then cleared of any misdeeds, if only that they continued to do such.
That’s one heck of a legal argument, that. I wonder if a real criminal might make use of it in a court of criminal law?
“Once to every man and nation,
Comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth with false-hood,
For the good or evil side;
…”
James Russell Lowell (1819-1891)
Will there be a second chance?
The climate data that CRU dragged it’s feet kicking & screaming on FOIA release showed no significant warming the past 10-15 years.
To say that the Climate Unit did not hide data is to play with the words to give a false impression.
Spin.
Hmm!
Here’s a thought …
http://www.thegwpf.org/climategate/1206-david-holland-a-ruling-more-significant-than-russell-review.html
@Smokey
“The plain fact that a very aggressive investigation by the police has found nothing to indicate “theft” shows that whoever copied and disseminated the emails was authorized to do so. That could easily have been any of a few dozen individuals.”
People with unfettered access to an Exchange server? More like countable on one hand. Which makes the list of possible suspects for an internal leak very short indeed. And the capabilities of the alleged external hacker(s) all the more astonishing. There’s also something very rotten going on in discussions of this investigation – notice that they continually refer to “the CRU server”. What’s wrong with this is that in order to hack and mine for the correct emails the outsider would have needed to crack the University’s exchange server, which is a whole league more serious than the hacking of a machine sitting in the CRU itself, yet no where is it alleged that the UEA’s exchange server itself was hacked.
I am now watching the Biased Broadcasting Corporation’s Newsnight report on this latest whitewash. 3 interviewees in the studio. 2 warmists and 1 skeptic. As ever, loading the deck, and giving at least twice the airtime to the warmist propaganda.
The final item of the Today programme on the radio this morning, previewing the release of the whitewash contained 2 interviews. A Guardian journalist and Lord Stoned. Same old same old.
Just about everyone I speak to these days just does not believe the religious zealotry coming out of government, “science”, or the BBC.
When will they give it up?
Based on the BBC pension fund investments in “green energy” etc, probably never.
Worth reading what Dr. Evan Harris, from a previous CRU investigation had to say about this. I don’t know about anyone else, but this really bothers me:
““The response of sceptic groups, like the Global Warming Policy Foundation, in rejecting all three enquiries merely demonstrates that conspiracy theorists and the anti-science brigade are never satisfied by due process and scientific methods and it is more important that such groups are marginalised by policy-makers.” [Emphasis mine]
While climate researchers protest for their own credibility, Chinese industry aims it’s might in posthoc support of the AGW cause. Newly assembled domestic vehicles should cost less and have enhanced Sino-content, lol.
BTW, it’s good to see the BBC maintain their warmist stance in the face of funding cutbacks. They can make up the difference by appealing environmental trusts.
http://seekingalpha.com/article/213367-who-s-winning-china-s-auto-industry-race
“The BBC thinks”
I am surprised to see that on WUWT, all in the UK are well and truly aware that the BBC does not need to think because it “knows”.
Just the same as The Guardian “knows” and has its 10:10 campaign. The news media used to employ journalists, even the odd investigatory one (rare and endangered species, maybe I should contact WWF, but they can’t all have taken up wrestling) , now they employ “campaign mangers”.
How about a totally new idea where the UK MSM report the news, investigate it and report their findings, rather than being hell bent on making the news?
The Guardian makes claims of what influence its campaign will have had by October? Very much like the wonderful BBC statement “and on the news tomorrow”?
“The BBC thinks” no sir, no longer. The BBC is strictly “on message” and on a mission, along with The Guardian and the real green, socially aware Rupert Murdoch Sky machine.
As Steve Mc said earlier today “You cannot be serious”!
Paul Martin says:
July 7, 2010 at 10:34 am
Whitewash should only be used on Stevenson Screens.
The end result of all these inquiries may become a world wide shortage of whitewash!
last nite BBC Talking Points / Have Your Say answered Muir Russell’s request for “a concerted and sustained campaign to win hearts and minds” to restore confidence in the team’s work.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/07/07/muir_russell_climategate_report/
with its program being entirely on should we trust the scientists, interspersed with BBC talking points and interviews re:
7 July: BBC World Sce: What would be the impact of summers without ice in the Arctic?
Many scientists predict that the Arctic Ocean will be completely free of summer ice within the next 50 years.
What impact would that have for the region and the rest of the world?
One Planet reporter Richard Hollingham joined a scientific expedition that is attempting to find out.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/news/2010/07/100707_arctic_op_sl.shtml
yet BBC Talking Point/Have Your Say website today has NOT a mention of this program anywhere, even tho the website page – http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/talking_point/ – is up-to-date and has the above Arctic article on the page. in fact, i almost felt i imagined the whole thing, except for this in an completely unrelated blog:
7 July: Beliefnet: Rod Dreher: How trustworthy are scientists anyway?
This morning on the way into the office, I heard a radio discussion on the BBC on whether or not scientists and researchers ought to be more open for scrutiny in the wake of the East Anglia climate office scandal. One commenter said yes, because scientists should want their research open for public scrutiny, because that’s precisely how science improves. Another said no, not really, because public debate can be so abusive these days; researchers are loath to open themselves up to the kind of viciousness that’s routine nowadays…
On the BBC debate, one listener wrote that of course we should trust scientists, because our only other choice is to trust religious leaders, which is obviously (in his view) unacceptable…
http://blog.beliefnet.com/roddreher/2010/07/how-trustworthy-are-scientists-anyway.html
shame on you, BBC.
The grinding bureaucratic procedures of the British Establishment wins again.
Right or wrong is irrelevant, as long as the decisions and conclusions reached are ‘sound’.
A mild smack on the wrist and then an attitude of: “let’s now all forget about this sordid mess” – that’s the official line.
Someone once said something similar, I think it was: “Let them eat cake.”
I have spent a lot of time at DailyKos.com over the last decade.
But climate warming and bird flu and swine flu they are just impossibly uncritical in their thinking processes. They accept anything from any warmer as if it is infallible.
Independent Review of Climategate – NO Dishonesty
There is not one person at Kos’s site who knows anything about Muir Russell. Even I don’t know much about him, except what I’ve read here. They believe from the bottom of their hearts that he is independent. They believe that he and his panel interviewed critics.
If any other Kos site haunters besides me ever come here, I would like to see them pipe up.
They do have some critical faculties in some areas. But it is amazing how little in the area of climate warming.
I was literally threatened with being blackballed when I posted a story about swine flu that disagreed with the status quo there – an article in which European governments complained that they had been had by the swine flu makers. In it I pointed out that there were two sides to this story.
In another story I asked why I couldn’t find any links to scientific papers on Kos’ site, but that on the climate denier sites there were links to studies all over the place. It must have been that one slid by the censors.
I don’t even recommend anyone here actually read the story link above, except to see how easily they swallow their side of the story and accept Muir Russell as independent. At no point do they give his bona fides, tell what his connections might be or might not be, in order to SHOW that he is independent. They simply declare it and then accept his whitewash as a valid and objective inquiry.
So, I float between two worlds – sometimes agreeing with them and sometimes I think the people here are a bunch of fine fellows. Both sides in the wider picture have blinders on – about something. I am sure I do, too. I try to not have them. I have to pull my punches from time to time – but sometimes I let fly. For example, climate warming is pretty much the only thing I ever agreed with George W Bush about. Some common ground was bound to show up somewhere.
So, anyway, if you can stomach it, have a laugh…
@ur momisugly wws July 7, 2010 at 9:39 am:
I was thinking, “Years from now, when the warmist predictions all come out like the ones about no snow in England and kids having to be told what it was, and the real world convinces everyone that warming has not happened, this review will be looked at as a small footnote, and anyone who looks it up will wonder how the CRU data fudgers were ever believed or supported by anyone.”
Yes, they will lose the war – because reality is reality. Spin-producing reviews mean nothing when 100 years of no warming haven’t brought on the end of mankind.
Picking up my point about looking back in 100 years, from the second page of the article in The Register at http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/07/07/muir_russell_climategate_report/page2.html
Many will join Trenberth in his angst. His kind will bemoan the travesty of that lack of warming. In a decade or two, the rest of the world will begin to bemoan the travesty of the entire climate warming silliness. In several decades the bemoaning of the travesty will be ubiquitous.
My first thoughts after beginning to try to track down the science behind the claims were basically, “Holy crap! It’s nothing but Chicken Little.”
The whole world will know that, long before the year 2100.
Anthropogenic global warming will be the travesty, in most people’s minds.
P.S. This is the first time I’ve seen CRU founder Lamb’s temperature graph from 1990 (see page 1 of the article if you haven’t seen it before). Awesome. YES, that is the real MWP and the real LIA.
O, Brian Norman Roger Rix, wherefore art thou?
O, Baron Rix, CBE your services are in dire need. A job awaits you, travel involved. You will be required to play matinee in the House of Commons, first house in the Lords and second house in Holyrood, with the occasional mid-week matinee for the BBC in East Anglia. Lots of opportunity for misquotes, innuendos, double entendres, trousers around ankles, and, and, and I can promise you it will run longer than The Mouse Trap!!
Bring long johns and vest they will definitely be the order of the day. And my 15% of course, plus your obligatory carbon credits, got a good mover for them out here on the Fens, he says they fly out to the Far East.
Brian, as you often remarked “there is no business like show business!” Or is there?
It can take up to 40 years for a scientific hoax to be accepted as a hoax. In the meantime, anyone questioning the hoax is likely to be attacked.
Charles Dawson (1864 – 1916) was an amateur British archaeologist who is credited and blamed with discoveries that turned out to be imaginative frauds, including that of the Piltdown Man which he presented in 1912.
Questions about the Piltdown find were raised from the beginning, first by Arthur Keith, but also by paleontologists and anatomists from the American Smithsonian and from Europe. Those disputing the find were attacked in very personal terms. Challenges to Piltdown Man arose again in the 1920s, but were again dismissed. In 1949, further questions were raised about the Piltdown Man and its authenticity, which led to Piltdown proven conclusively a hoax in 1953.
In 2003, Dr Miles Russell published the results of his investigation into Dawson’s antiquarian collection and concluded that at least 38 specimens were clear fakes. Russell has noted that Dawson’s whole academic career appears to have been “one built upon deceit, sleight of hand, fraud and deception, the ultimate gain being international recognition”. (From Wikipedia)
They are so far behind the curve. This rear guard action means little. The damage has been done. Climategate was the TIPPING POINT.
In any public perception issue, there is a period when one side has the ball in their court and while that is so, the public only hears their side, so the public accepts what they hear, not having any reason to doubt it (except for a few iconoclastic SOB contrarians who are demonized and marginalized as well as possible).
But comes the TIPPING POINT, and the veil is pulled off the eyes of the public. It does not have to be enough to convince the public that the contrarians are correct. It is enough that the public begins to look and listen critically, considering that there might be more than one side to the issue.
Once the public’s eyes are opened, well. . . . you can’t put the genie back in the bottle.
As an example, check out the following from Lawrence Solomon.
You see, their war is being lost on all fronts…
Lawrence Solomon: Catastrophism Collapses
It is good to see an awakened populace and leaders paying attention.
Can they regain their mojo?
Probably not. And isn’t that a horrible thing?
Whitewashes after everyone knows they were dickwads – hahahahahaha. CRU is a laughing stock. Who cares what office Phil Jones occupies now? The IPCC is fading in its power, scientists in other fields look at CRU as data fudgers and “those guys who gave science a bad name.” Those other scientists are not likely to forgive and forget and jump on that bandwagon again.
THAT IS THE MAIN THING! Their mojo is OVAH!
Climate science will go back to the backwater where it spent its first century. Like a rock group, CRU will be semi-prominent on “What Ever Happened to _______” lists.
This review means NOTHING. Their mojo ended in November through February, when everyone got to see how they were distorting everything over at the good old IPCC. Climategate took the wheels right out from under Copenhagen, and the emails got read by enough people. Then Glaciergate, Pachaurigate and Amazongate were total embarrassments.
Putting Bandaids on their owies doesn’t give them back their prominence. And at this stage it doesn’t matter if we are right or they are.
The main thing is that the world woke up. They don’t get a free ride anymore.
So let us not fret over their medics’ attentions to their wounds, or with their rear guard actions. Their offensive was beaten back, and the most they can expect from now on is trench warfare and stalemate. The science from our side is no longer looked at as extremist positions. Their efforts to control peer review will never again go unmonitored. Peer reviewers will give both sides more or less equal shrift.
BOTH SIDES ARE BEING HEARD! Isn’t that what we really wanted?
feet2thefire says:
July 7, 2010 at 6:16 pm
[–snip for brevity–]
BOTH SIDES ARE BEING HEARD! Isn’t that what we really wanted?
Yes, both sides are being heard. However, those whom control the MSM are making bloody damned sure that the truth is given such short shrift as to be a faint whisper amidst the flamethrower mouths of the talking heads on the TEE VEE.
You’d be lucky to even read –or hear– of a contrary opinion which hasn’t been attenuated to the point of meaninglessness.
From where I see things, it’s largely places such as WUWT which are ‘getting the word out,’ because otherwise the word isn’t well known at all.