Guest post submitted by Steve Garcia
(feet2thefire http://feet2thefire.wordpress.com )
It has now been more than 20 months since the CRU emails were outed, by whatever or whomever. Some day we may actually know who did it, but for now we certainly do not. Depending on who it was, we can only speculate now as to what the immediate motives were. Was it an insider who had seen the nastiness and not wanted to let it go on any longer? Was it an insider who had a grudge against someone at CRU? Was the server hacked into, as is claimed publicly by all on The Team and their many AGW brothers in arms?
Though all that will be extremely interesting if and when it happens, the bigger picture will eventually be this: Who won? And how decisive was Climategate, anyway? Or is it too early to tell? At some point people will try to assess that question. Is now a viable time to do that assessing?
I assert that it may not be too early to tell. And I think our side won, big time. After all, the lay of the land is certainly different. Having been caught trying to rig the game and even lying and fudging the data – and do be aware that much of the public does see it that way – The Team and the IPCC are struggling to gain the ascendancy and monopoly they once had. And it truly does not look like they are winning the battle. But once a witness or ‘expert‘ is caught in a lie, can they ever get the people who witness it to believe them again?
See this article at Der Spiegel, The Climategate Chronicle – How the Science of Global Warming Was Compromised
.
It is noteworthy that the first line of text in the article is a caption in a GERMAN magazine that reads:
To what extent is climate change actually occurring?
Before Climategate, that caption would most likely have read
To what extent is climate change occurring?
To the warmers, it wasn’t IF climate change was happening, but how bad it was going to be. One word – actually – is revealing, about how even German news sources are doubting what 21 months ago would have been traitorous heresy to doubt.
The momentum certainly appears to have shifted.
But has it?
To answer that, we have to go back to the autumn of 2009 and ask what the balance of power was at that time, to establish a baseline to measure from…
The balance of Power in early November 2009
For all intents and purposes, at that time The Team and the IPCC had a monopoly on telling the story of global warming. The Copenhagen Conference was just coming up in a couple of weeks, and the media blitz was about to get started.
Outside of Steve McIntyre’s ClimateAudit.org, WUWT, and a handful of other skeptical sites, little attention was paid to skeptical arguments. Almost no newspaper or news website – certainly no network news organizations – printed or broadcast any skeptical positions, except to denigrate them, or worse, to ridicule them as ostriches, anti-science wackos and warming “deniers” – the last one harkening back to Holocaust deniers, almost certainly intentionally.
Though Steve had poked holes that those in the know could cast doubt on Michael Mann’s Hockey Stick, which had gone over the heads of most of the world.
The warmers had browbeaten Roy Spencer and John Christy at UAH into changing their satellite adjustments (which I thought ended up being too big an adjustment).
At that time, those FOI requests referred to in the emails had been long since submitted. The stonewalling evident in the emails was well entrenched. The skeptics were trying to find enough information to attempt replication of The Team’s work but were having difficulty getting that information. Also, the public was almost entirely in the dark about there being any other possible side of the story, in spite of the work of Christy, Spencer, Richard Linzen, Willie Soon, and others, including many studies on the supposedly non-existent Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age that showed those two events were actually global, as opposed to Mann’s assertion that they were only regional.
Very little – almost none – of the research that argued against the AGW argument was getting out to the public. It is also shown in the emails that many of those studies were having trouble making it into the peer-reviewed literature – and that at least some of that was because The Team was blackballing authors they didn’t like, and sandbagging certain papers when The Team was chosen to be the reviewers.
With the power to control what the public heard or read, there was a definite one-sided tilt to the playing field/battle ground. The consensus was being spread far and wide, almost totally monopolizing what the public heard. Skeptics were marginalized, often ridiculed – and most mendaciously – accused of being in the pockets of the big energy interests (to this day, the AGW supporters assert that this latter is true, in spite of the fact that Anthony, a retired meteorologist, and Steve McIntyre, a retired auditor, are by far the most effective skeptics and have never been shown to be on anyone’s payroll. That those two attend conferences sponsored by or attended by energy industry representatives does not mean any more than that the U.S. and Libya are both in the U.N.)
These ad hoc allegations were parroted in article after article in the news media. Whenever it was necessary to give skeptics any press at all, it was bad press, usually with this: almost as an adjective, typical being something like (paraphrased) “the industry shill Willie Soon.” Almost no entry about a skeptic was complete without such an inflammatory remark by science editors or writers. Yet no such attempt was made to ascertain the source of the funding for AGW proponents – who were paying their way to conferences to Switzerland or resorts in the mountains of Austria, for example. That would have been bad enough, except that Watts and McIntyre weren’t taking money at all. A double standard was in effect, that any money coming from a pro-AGW entity was seen as noble and pure, while funding from industry was evil. Time after time after time, this is what went out in our newspapers and on TV and radio news.
Solid Information and Unambiguous Claims (NOT)
When I first came to ClimateAudit, long before Climategate I saw all the graphs and formulas and technical discussions, and I had two reactions. One was, “How am I ever going to learn about all this and keep up with these people? I’ve never seen a site with so much math.” (That is in spite of being fairly mathematically adept.) The other reaction was, “Gawd! At least there is something here to sink my teeth into.”
Finding any solid technical information about global warming from its supporters was difficult, if not impossible. Every post or article on the pro-AGW sites was filled with claims and summaries, but I didn’t want that. I wanted to go as straight to the source as possible. When I asked on Liberal sites for references, I was always directed to RealClimate, where there was claim after claim, assertion after assertion, paraphrasing after paraphrasing. But I wanted to see what the papers themselves said (not that most of it wouldn’t have been over my head in the beginning). And all the papers that were referenced were behind paywalls, so I couldn’t get into the nitty-gritty like I wanted to.
No one else could, either. Not unless they wanted to pay $30 per paper. So, in essence, their underlying story of CO2 was essentially being hidden from the public. And they knew it. The public was given summaries and assertions and headlines, mostly overstating and exaggerating the case against CO2. And the headlines were atop articles written by a small group of science editors around the country/world who, it turns out, were philosophically in bed with the AGW/IPCC folks. Article after article printed their assertions as fact – and more.
One thing that confused me was that human activities other than CO2 were being ignored. I found out later the reason was that Phil Jones’ co-authored study of UHI turned out to be extremely erroneous).
One thing I saw so often it angered me was that a headline would make an assertion of something as if it was unambiguous, yet when I would read deep into articles for the exact words of the scientists, I almost always saw qualifiers like “we believe,” “most think that,” “up to,” and “it appears that.” Where the scientists themselves were equivocating, the headlines and opening words asserted certainty. Any reader scanning the article would not go deep enough to se the caveats. For allowing this misrepresentation, the scientists should not be let off the hook, because they let those headlines stand without pointing out to the editors their level of uncertainty.
Uncertainty About AGW
It took until Judith Curry’s blog, Climate Etc, in 2010, for the issue of uncertainty to be addressed seriously and publicly by anyone near the AGW center. That was more than 20 years on down the line. Climate science should be, at the least, embarrassed that it did not come from themselves. And sooner. Give Dr. Curry credit for addressing that long overdue issue.
But as I understand it, that blog would never have existed had she not read enough of the Climategate emails and files to begin to question the claims of AGW. Seeing “The Team’s” reaction to her move to a middle ground and give some credence to the arguments of the skeptical community, it is clear that it took some courage for her to do that. Again, give her credit, this time for her integrity.
So, one thing that came out of Climategate was Climate Etc., and the establishment of a serious middle ground. The terrain was shifted that much, at least. What had been accepted as “consensus” had shifted toward “non-settled science.”
What Constitutes a Win?
As a lone Liberal here at WUWT, it has been a lonely 11+ years for me. But I have been treated with as much respect as I need, and have only been ridiculed once – when someone pointed out that I had used too many All-Caps. I took it like a man. I have never apologized to any fellow Liberals, and have lost a girlfriend of five years, but have made small inroads into a few peoples’ minds about AGW. But most of them thought I was addled in the brain. That was before Climategate. While few of those I talked with had read anything of substance about Climategate, with the main stream media’s shift to a small level of doubt, at least some peoples’ minds have opened up to the possibility that humans are not sizably to blame for whatever warming has existed.
My aim was never to prove that AGW didn’t exist, even though I was always in the small group that distrusted the adjustments, and do not believe (till shown with solid, replicatable science) that there ever was warming beyond us coming out of the Little Ice Age. I think it is enough to show that the science is too unsettled.
In order for that to happen, I always believed that something had to happen to throw doubt on the science behind the CO2 claims. Yes, in fact, I DID hope for a Watergate-style Deep Throat to show up. But that hope seemed so far-fetched that I never voiced it out loud. (So any of you that laugh at my 20-20 hindsight, laugh away. I can’t prove it.) Early on after the release of the emails, though, I was out there talking about Deep Throat. Whoever did it, may the gods favor him or her for many a year.
Now, in a court of law, to show reasonable doubt is enough for an acquittal. An acquittal, for the defense, IS a win.
Is there enough reasonable doubt?
With the level of attention given to AGW these days, with the yawns that greet claims against CO2 anymore, with governments abandoning efforts at controlling CO2 emissions, with even Germans (the most green country in Europe, if not the world) asking “To what extent is climate change actually occurring?” it seems perfectly appropriate to wonder if we have gotten an acquittal for CO2, simply by continuing to cast doubt and keeping at it like bulldogs (thank you, Steve and Anthony, in particular).
- If we got an acquittal for CO2, it is a win. There always was a reasonable doubt. The jury just had to wake up to it. Anthony and Steve M presented the case long enough and true enough so that could happen.
- If serious scientists are talking about the uncertainties in climate science, where they were not before, that is a win.
- If the world now does not accept the claims without some skepticism, it is a win.
- If previously stilled voices in the climate community now speak clearly and without being intimidated, it is a win.
- If more and more skeptical or neutral research papers are seeing the light of day, it is a win.
- If the news media has stopped calling us “deniers”, it is at least a partial win.
- If they sometimes don’t mention the ad hoc assertions of “industry shill,” it is a partial win. It means some of the respect is coming this direction.
- If the monopoly on climate change pronouncements is broken (and it is), then it is a win.
Perhaps at some point soon climate science will go back to being the sleepy ivory tower it always used to be. Hansen came along with his claims that we would be warming up (after the 1970s, ANY warming should have been seen as getting back to normal – and I assert that Hansen knew that – but he couldn’t pass up the opportunity to scream, The Sky is Falling!”). Before Mann and his legendary fundraising started an avalanche of money that the other climate scientists jumped on.
All in all, although we don’t want to jinx it, it might be just about the right time to wave the victory flag. We are certainly in a far different world vis-a-vis global warming than 21 months ago. The climatologists are, to a very large extent, being ignored. Yes, there is an IPCC coming up, and perhaps we should wait until that is over. But I will predict that no matter what hoohah comes out of it, it will not have 50% of the energy of the previous IPCCs, because governments just aren’t listening with baited breath anymore. If there is any place where the mojo counted, it was with governments. But it ain’t there any more.
Our victory lap is just around the corner. Yes, some people on the street will believe that the climate is changing, but – and this is the important part – then they think, “So what? We have other, more important things to worry about.”
Chicken Little is dead. Sprinkle the seasoning on and put it on the barbie.
Thank the Gods for Climategate.
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And I have true respect for your carefully considered opinion and humility Steve. However, in the absence of any solid opinion on CAGW (which you say you share), I personally (and I think others do too) generally default to believing what I used to believe. Their hypothesis is not proven, hence, what remains is what was there before. String theory has not been shown to demonstrate any new understanding of gravity, and in fact they have no experiments to do so much like climate science. The default position in physics with string theory not being proven is what is called the Standard Model. Physicists do not default to a position of “well maybe string theory is correct so we’ll base our new engineering understanding on it.”, they hold onto what they know until a hypothesis is run to ground without being disproved.
If, as I share with you, you harbor doubts and uncertainty on the role of Man/CO2 as a cause for CAGW, why then is it wrong to be certain that I can go about my daily business strongly holding to the “Standard Model” equivalent in climate, which is that the earth changes on it’s own, and really I should just prepare to adapt?
Russell:
Your post at July 22, 2011 at 8:05 am begins by saying;
“Good article. I would have liked to have seen some credit given to Australia’s John Daly (RIP) for being the first true skeptic.”
I accept your point (although my skepticism of the scare pre-dates John’s) and my post above, at July 22, 2011 at 3:26 am, goes some way to correct the omission. It includes this paragraph:
“Most of these campaigners have ‘shown their faces’ and have had some success. Climategate revealed the rejoicing of the ‘Team’ at the tragic death of John Daly. And Tim Ball is now silenced by a legal case that attempts to bankrupt him. This proves that critics of the ‘Team’ have had successes: the ‘Team’ would not have made these responces if their critics had been inefectual so could be ignored.”
Richard
Some years ago the current Canadian PM, before he came to office, called Kyoto nothing more than a money-sucking scheme. He would be right if AGW was not real, but was laughed off as a denier back then. Now that some governments (including Canada’s) are abandoning the consensus pseudo-science, it makes any carbon tax look like a money-sucking scheme. If the public sees things that way now then woe is the government that brings in such taxes.
At 6:02 AM on 22 July, John A had complained that he was:
Oh? Which Clinton? The corrupt cattle-futures-“trading” Woman With One Eyebrow or her even more corrupt raping, perjuring consort, “Bubba,” our former Irrumator-in-Chief?
But to continue from John A‘s comments:
True enough. But how many of those “who care about accuracy, scholarship, and integrity in science” have been “Liberal” fascists?*
They are notable by their rarity. They’re so damned few in comparison with the thousands of scheming “Liberal” fascist liars complicit in the AGW fraud that one remarks on them with the same exclamation of surprise commonly reserved for the discovery of raw diamonds in a child’s sandbox.
The socialists controlling and setting all agendas for the left wing of our authoritarian tyranny in these United States have made of the word “liberal” the exact antithesis of the usage it was accorded in political philosophy back in the 19th Century. The REAL liberal speaks and acts in defense of the unalienable rights of the individual human being to life, to liberty, and to property.
The modern “Liberal” fascist seeks to violate those rights, both in policy and in practice. These “Liberal” fascists have made of the word “liberal” a pejorative so hateful that they have of late tried to re-brand themselves with a predecessor term – “progressive” – which false flag the socialists flew in the last decade of the 19th Century and through the first several decades of the 20th.
The only real liberals left in America today have for the most part taken up the descriptor “libertarian.”
So are you a real liberal, John A, or just another “Liberal” fascist?
To continue with John A‘s comment:
The only way in which one can speak of a “middle ground” between “Liberal” fascism and the permanent rot at the root of social “traditionalist” pseudoconservatism is the sense in which one considers a “middle ground” between one grade or stage of cancer and the next.
Either – left unextirpated – will kill the victim.
Whether it’s “left wing liberalism” (sic) or “Fox news style right wingery,” a choice which makes no difference whatsoever to the defense of individual human rights is really no choice at all.
===
* As I’d mentioned in an earlier post, refer to Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning (2008).
Timely and pertinent article. Also good additional points on developing situations by Roger Knights (July 22, 2011 at 3:08 am).
Within the Climategate scandal is a point long since gone quiet: how the e-mails surfaced. Although the identity of the perpetrator, his technical method and the reason for his actions are said to be unknown, the lack of attention to these three aspects of the case is curious at the minimum and extremely important in what it may say. Think about it: the UEA, Jones, Mann and the Gore-ites say at the servers were hacked in their belief by an international conspiracy involving, probably, Russians, but the intel agencies of the world have not found out who did it, and are not looking any more.
Foreign nationals, possibly Russian, infiltrate British university servers connected, without doubt, to a computer system doing secret or at least highly confidential research for government agencies, including in all probability the Defense ministry (those big bucks are spread widely), and possibly connected to American computer systems doing even more important, strategically critical work, and no one has figured out what is going on?
Sorry, don’t believe it.
Trans-national hacking is an Interpol offence, but of course if the offence is civil in its effects, as this one has appeared to be, then the agency would likely close the file. However, the ACT of hacking is of great importance here, and the identity of the hackers has an even greater importance. Those who can screw with a mainstream, government-backed program are anarchists at best, and agents of political change at worst. You cannot, must not ignore the fact that there is a party, possibly internationally cohesive and conspiring, working with technical expertise to bring down publicly sanctioned national activities. The question around the boardroom table must be: after this, what next? This was direct action of an academic sort. Would the next action be as covert and subtle?
There are at least fiver agencies who, by their mandates, should have been looking into the breach of the UEA computer systems: the UEA, the local constabulary, Scotland Yard, Interpol and
the CIA. If, as proposed, an internal dissident wanted to disrupt the UEA, they did a good job and cost the UEA a lot of money, time and prestige. To harbour a troublemaker in their ranks would be unacceptable. The UEA would want that person or those persons removed at least from computer access. The Board of Governors would have had a legal responsibility to do so – what would happen if data or research paid for by private money were to be revealed, corrupted or destroyed? Would not someone be held financially responsible if it was revealed that the UEA failed to look, at least, for the culprit?
The local constabulary would be involved, of course, if the UEA said that an “illegal” act had been discovered. If unable to work the case themselves, they would have requested the services of the national forces: the police are set up this way. Scotland Yard, MI5 and the CIA would be concerned as the hack is not of one university server, but of a computer system in greatest probability connected to others where sensitive or secret work was being done. And would want to know if the hacker were involved in other computer attacks or were planning other attacks. NASA-Hansen next, or Gore? Would the covert and subtle work dis-empowering Britain’s climate change policies become overt, harsh acts of destroying computer data or the systems themselves? Are satellites at risk? Financial systems catering to the climate change powers and businesses?
Billions of dollars, political lives and large corporations rely on the stability of UEA (and other) pronouncements on AGW and, especially, CAGW. An attack on the basic science is an attack on all. In the morning light of Climategate Day One, all over the world computer specialists would be scrambling to know that they were safe now and had not already been infiltrated. And asking what the hell was going on. If the Russian connection were involved, then a Russia-Britain/USA political smackdown was in the wind. While China laughed. Which the politicos would not like: outside of money, face-saving is probably the most important act of any politician.
There is an obvious, if not must discussed, other possibility. The breach was the intentional act of Britain or America. By creating uncertainty in the fundamental science, all governments revieve breathing room to determine the political, economic and strategic wisdom of pursuing a path without global agreements. How wise is it to commit your electorate, taxpayers and economic strength to something that, without China and India on-board, will achieve nothing at great cost and pain? But how do you back off on something you have all declared is “settled” and “certain” and “the greatest threat to the planet”?
Australia is going it alone. Interesting. If the political world weren’t intellectually incapable and too ill-disciplined to carry it off for more than three-and-a-half minutes, one could think a conspiracy were afloat to, first, question the CAGW problem and then, regardless of the expressed uncertainty, see if the sheep would go for it anyway. But I wouldn’t give that paranoid thought a moment longer than necessary to write it down and dismiss it. Australian PM Guillard is doing her own crazy thing because she is a Believer and possibly got too much sun in her youth. But what is happening in America and Britain? Despite Al Gore and his Climate Reality Project in September, there is now enough questioning as a result of Climategate that in both countries what is said to be by the IPCC/experts that policy doesn’t appear to have to be determined exactly by the CAGW meme, or at least determined today.
All of which would come apart if it were determined that the UEA breach were, in fact, an “inside” job by official, governmental decree. And the best way to prevent that is to stop looking, or at least stop capable people looking. No Interpol gets asked to be involved, despite a cross-national criminal possibility. Leave it to the local constabulary and their 2004 Edition of Word on 10-year-old Dell computers.
This is the elephant in the room, the gorilla on the basketball court or gunman on the grassy knoll: the LACK, not activity, of serious investigative work to uncover the origins of the UEA e-mail leak. Climategate was useful to someone, and still is. What was certain, settled scientifically determined and socially responsible shows up as personal, philosophically driven agendas. Political and social pressures are tipping the balance – rightfully or not. Everyone can relax and have another scotch: the ticking of the bomb has slowed down, and it may not be just a clock and not a bomb, after all. Which is good news.
Which is what Climategate was to Those In Power. Good news. Thank the Lord they thought of it.
Tucci78 says:
July 22, 2011 at 7:38 am
One faction – the direct descendents of the Federalists – is called “the Republican Party.” The other is the National Socialist Democrat American Party (NSDAP).
Ok, we get it. It’s interesting how Tucci78 uses the Goebbels tactic of 90% truth mixed with 10% falsehood to warp opinion. What is the point? That we should not trust government? Even in the 60s, people were told by the Left not to trust the Establishment. It’s funny, because the radicals want us to trust their own Establishment today.
The Republican Party today may not be what it was at its founding, a grass-roots organization that opposed slavery. They were very much like the Tea Party today. Now we have an entrenched power structure supporting incumbents. Occasionally they do useful things that help people, if only to make sure there is a well-trained stable workforce available here. The truth is, business and labor need each other. There should not be an adversarial relationship, especially in this economy.
You sneakily use the letters of the Nazi party to describe the Democratic Party today. While I have no love whatsoever for those neo-communists, they are not putting people into konzentrationlagers. They are trying to rip apart the fabric of our nation to remake it into something entirely different. And they do believe they are an elite that must make decisions for the lesser people. For them, only a group is to be trusted. Powerful individuals are dangerous.
It is important to distinguish between the leaders and the followers. Followers might actually believe in the utopian fairy tales spun by the leaders of the Left. Teachers are stuck with a curriculum designed by the Left to undermine our traditions. That’s one reason to decentralize and return control to local school boards. Businesses are hamstrung by regulations that benefit bureaucracy and a few corporations that have struck deals with the government. GE is a good example of that. They are intimately involved with the Administration’s AGW agenda, and will expect to make $billions from the new smart grid markets imposed by these regulations. These are just two examples of how government has grown too big and needs to be cut dramatically.
Nevertheless, there still is power in the people. We need to seek leaders who work for the people. They do exist, but they are rare. Reagan was one. Both Bushes definitely were not, since they both believed more government was good. I would prefer a leader who worked for the people even if they weren’t as “qualified” as another candidate. To me, that means someone who understands government is now in competition with people, that we have reached a tipping point where its growth might not be stopped short of total collapse. It actually is worse than we thought.
In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. – R W Reagan
If we are going to change course, it will require another grass-roots effort to help our fellow citizens find a true alternative solution. Government cannot lead us out of this mess. They created it; they need it. We have to craft our own solution. Fora like WUWT are important tools for mapping out the issues, and giving us an opportunity to make better choices. I think it is becoming clear to most people that government does not have the answers, it is seeking more power, and is being run by people with less and less skill. In fact, government just gets in the way; it is a parasite, and should be limited to doing only the very least possible. That was the basic intent of the US Constitution – a government of limited powers. When government creates pervasive dependence, the parasite enters the final stages of feeding on the host. Unfortunately, it can take a long time for the parasite to die. Will the host survive? At what cost?
Change will occur. The question is, what will the future look like? How can we help shape a better outcome?
Timely and pertinent article. Also good additional points on developing situations by Roger Knights (July 22, 2011 at 3:08 am).
Within the Climategate scandal is a point long since gone quiet: how the e-mails surfaced. Although the identity of the perpetrator, his technical method and the reason for his actions are said to be unknown, the lack of attention to these three aspects of the case is curious at the minimum and extremely important in what it may say. Think about it: the UEA, Jones, Mann and the Gore-ites say at the servers were hacked in their belief by an international conspiracy involving, probably, Russians, but the intel agencies of the world have not found out who did it, and are not looking any more.
Foreign nationals, possibly Russian, infiltrate British university servers connected, without doubt, to a computer system doing secret or at least highly confidential research for government agencies, including in all probability the Defense ministry (those big bucks are spread widely), and possibly connected to American computer systems doing even more important, strategically critical work, and no one has figured out what is going on?
Sorry, don’t believe it.
Trans-national hacking is an Interpol offence, but of course if the offence is civil in its effects, as this one has appeared to be, then the agency would likely close the file. However, the ACT of hacking is of great importance here, and the identity of the hackers has an even greater importance. Those who can screw with a mainstream, government-backed program are anarchists at best, and agents of political change at worst. You cannot, must not ignore the fact that there is a party, possibly internationally cohesive and conspiring, working with technical expertise to bring down publicly sanctioned national activities. The question around the boardroom table must be: after this, what next? This was direct action of an academic sort. Would the next action be as covert and subtle?
There are at least fiver agencies who, by their mandates, should have been looking into the breach of the UEA computer systems: the UEA, the local constabulary, Scotland Yard, Interpol and the CIA. If, as proposed, an internal dissident wanted to disrupt the UEA, they did a good job and cost the UEA a lot of money, time and prestige. To harbour a troublemaker in their ranks would be unacceptable. The UEA would want that person or those persons removed at least from computer access. The Board of Governors would have had a legal responsibility to do so – what would happen if data or research paid for by private money were to be revealed, corrupted or destroyed? Would not someone be held financially responsible if it was revealed that the UEA failed to look, at least, for the culprit?
The local constabulary would be involved, of course, if the UEA said that an “illegal” act had been discovered. If unable to work the case themselves, they would have requested the services of the national forces: the police are set up this way. Scotland Yard, MI5 and the CIA would be concerned as the hack is not of one university server, but of a computer system in greatest probability connected to others where sensitive or secret work was being done. And would want to know if the hacker were involved in other computer attacks or were planning other attacks. NASA-Hansen next, or Gore? Would the covert and subtle work dis-empowering Britain’s climate change policies become overt, harsh acts of destroying computer data or the systems themselves? Are satellites at risk? Financial systems catering to the climate change powers and businesses?
Billions of dollars, political lives and large corporations rely on the stability of UEA (and other) pronouncements on AGW and, especially, CAGW. An attack on the basic science is an attack on all. In the morning light of Climategate Day One, all over the world computer specialists would be scrambling to know that they were safe now and had not already been infiltrated. And asking what the hell was going on. If the Russian connection were involved, then a Russia-Britain/USA political smackdown was in the wind. While China laughed. Which the politicos would not like: outside of money, face-saving is probably the most important act of any politician.
There is an obvious, if not must discussed, other possibility. The breach was the intentional act of Britain or America. By creating uncertainty in the fundamental science, all governments revieve breathing room to determine the political, economic and strategic wisdom of pursuing a path without global agreements. How wise is it to commit your electorate, taxpayers and economic strength to something that, without China and India on-board, will achieve nothing at great cost and pain? But how do you back off on something you have all declared is “settled” and “certain” and “the greatest threat to the planet”?
Australia is going it alone. Interesting. If the political world weren’t intellectually incapable and too ill-disciplined to carry it off for more than three-and-a-half minutes, one could think a conspiracy were afloat to, first, question the CAGW problem and then, regardless of the expressed uncertainty, see if the sheep would go for it anyway. But I wouldn’t give that paranoid thought a moment longer than necessary to write it down and dismiss it. Australian PM Guillard is doing her own crazy thing because she is a Believer and possibly got too much sun in her youth. But what is happening in America and Britain? Despite Al Gore and his Climate Reality Project in September, there is now enough questioning as a result of Climategate that in both countries what is said to be by the IPCC/experts that policy doesn’t appear to have to be determined exactly by the CAGW meme, or at least determined today.
All of which would come apart if it were determined that the UEA breach were, in fact, an “inside” job by official, governmental decree. And the best way to prevent that is to stop looking, or at least stop capable people looking. No Interpol gets asked to be involved, despite a cross-national criminal possibility. Leave it to the local constabulary and their 2004 Edition of Word on 10-year-old Dell computers.
This is the elephant in the room, the gorilla on the basketball court or gunman on the grassy knoll: the LACK, not activity, of serious investigative work to uncover the origins of the UEA e-mail leak. Climategate was useful to someone, and still is. What was certain, settled scientifically determined and socially responsible shows up as personal, philosophically driven agendas. Political and social pressures are tipping the balance – rightfully or not. Everyone can relax and have another scotch: the ticking of the bomb has slowed down, and it may not be just a clock and not a bomb, after all. Which is good news.
Which is what Climategate was to Those In Power. Good news. Thank the Lord they thought of it.
William says:
July 22, 2011 at 7:39 am
In reply to Brian`s comment:
“Climategate” scientist have been CLEARED.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jul/08/muir-russell-climategate-climate-science
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/14/AR2010041404001.html
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/10/climategate-scientists-cleared-yet-again-story-ignored-media-again.php
Stop slandering people. Please.
Does being found not guilty not mean anything anymore in this country?
Geez.
Steve McIntyre says:
July 22, 2011 at 6:51 am
People project a lot of views on me that I haven’t expressed. I do not think that Mannian hockey sticks have any statistical validity, but, at the end of the day, this is a secondary issue and I have not formed an opinion on whether feedbacks are neutral, weakly or strongly positive. To that extent, people should not assimilate me with people who have formed firm opinions on the matter.
—
But Steve you took on those who DID form a firm opinion based on shoddy work and in my view shook their monopoly on their climate science. If things go as I hope, then any carbon-based taxation or exchange scheme will be seen for the ruse that it is.
John Johnston July 22, 2011 at 12:41 am
I really need to thank you for providing that reference (/sarc). I was rather struck by the comment on page 6 of that report that Women and girls are recorded as 90% of those killed by the 1991 cyclone in Bangladesh. Unfortunately, the reference that was cited ( Ikeda, Keiko (1995) “Gender Differences in Human Loss and Vulnerability in Natural Disasters: A Case Study From Bangladesh.” Indian Journal of Gender Studies. 2(2):171-93.) is behind a pay wall. I spent another two fruitless hours searching for some other corroboration. Nada. While it is certain that children under 10 and women bore the brunt of the casualties in that disaster, I can find no evidence to support the 90% female claim; instead, this report is cited as evidence on other web sites and documents. Thus are urban legends born.
If anyine does have have access to the Ikeda paper, I’d be interested in seeing it.
I know in my circle of acquaintances it was a hands-down victory for skeptics. The folks I used to do battle with will not even talk on the subject anymore due to Climategate. And as someone who reads many other news sites the AGW stories have greatly diminished becasue as soon as someone posts one it get gutted by skeptics using information and quotes from Climategate.
I think when we look back it will be marked as the turning point for the general public. They saw enough slight of hand in Climategate to doubt anything the AGW crowd says ever again.
We would not have heard this a year ago….
http://d.yimg.com/nl/techticker/site/player.swf
And the endgame is?
Excellent overview article with a good recent timeline I can share with my friends to help explain how I moved from a curious, generalized knowledge sponge, with experience from the Space Sciences in the 60’s to the Ocean Sciences today, to a hardcore skeptic of many of the assertions made by climate scientists, particularly modeler’s predictions. The only statement I’d take issue with in the article is that of being the lone liberal here. I suspect there were many liberals like me, that observed, here and at other skeptic websites, but didn’t wish to to comment. Ironically, visits to RC, eventually sent me to CA, then WUWT, and so on. Perhaps, if those who post at RC, and other “Climate Change” websites, could casually refer to the existence of these skeptic sites, they could accomplish more in the furthering of knowledge seeking by the masses then even the veracity of the information in their comments. Thanks to All.
Climategate was a battle victory in the ongoing war between open society and authoritarian politics. SM and AW blogs puncture ‘evidence’ of catastrophic global warming, so they change the terms, smokescreens and mirrors, ‘ it’s climate change!’ Price of freedom, eternal vigilance and all that.
Hugh Pepper says:
July 21, 2011 at 10:54 pm
So long as climate issues are regarded as a PR problem, you win and the planet loses. Congratulations!
Thanks! Alarmists certainly see it as a huge PR problem, which is why they were so desperate to try to sweep it under a rug, spin, and whitewash it. Essentially, it was a victory against the Big Lie that C02 (“carbon”) is a dangerous, evil gas, so even though “we” won, humanity itself won. The planet lost nothing; in fact, if it could speak, it would say “yes, more C02 please, but don’t worry about me – I’ll be fine”.
Great summary! Big kudos are also due to the amazing work of the Idsos at CO2science.org. They showed very early on what the “peer-reviewed” articles were actually saying.
Brian:
Your post at July 22, 2011 at 9:42 am is mistaken. Nobody is “cleared” by a whitewash.
Richard
At 9:30 AM on 22 July, Hoser claims that I had used: “
…but Hoser doesn’t say just what “10%” part of my post was supposedly “falsehood.” Tsk. Hoser continues:
Yep. Even if only on the “stopped clock” premise, Hoser gets it right. Think about it. What kind of sick, twisted, sociopathic personality is required for the patient in question to conceive himself (or herself) to exercise the police power – the ability to send armed thugs against his (or her) inoffensive neighbors and compel them at gunpoint to surrender their lives, their liberties, and their property to the control of those who devote themselves to seeking and aggrandizing government office?
I mean, would you trust these vicious aggressors unmonitored in the presence of your children – unless, of course, you have been deprived of the choice to keep your children unmolested by these people by laws which make “public” education compulsory not only in funding but in attendance?
Heck, would you leave them alone with your dog and expect to come back with the animal not dragging its hindquarters on the rug and whining in pain?
The problem of inescapable and fatal perversity in the institution of civil government is compounded by the observed evidence that it is only the most duplicitous, ruthless, corrupt, and (let’s face it) evil specimens of H. sapiens politicus who win to the highest posts of elective and appointed office anywhere in the world. The term “kleptocracy” is effectively a nullity, for all governments are institutions of graft and other forms of thieving corruption. They always have been. What is it about the words “an armed Banditti” in Thomas Paine’s Common Sense (1776) that escapes Hoser‘s appreciation here?
But – hilariously! – Hoser goes on to write:
Oh, joy. One might wonder how anyone can be “…so mercifully free of the ravages of intelligence,” but that’s the condition of almost all supporters of the Red Faction nowadays, and has always been. Obviously, Hoser failed to follow the link to Prof. Wilson’s essay on “The Republican Charade,” and knows diddly about the history of the party, its roots in the Whig and the Federalist parties preceding its rise as a re-branding of mercantilism, and the dedication of this faction to the Hamiltonian “American System” popularized by Henry Clay and enforced at gunpoint – to the tune of more than six hundred Americans slain – upon the nation by “good Clay Whig” Abraham Lincoln, “The American Lenin.”
Oh, well. Ignorance is remediable by education.
Then Hoser complains that I
What “sneakily“? Admittedly, the supporters of “Liberal” fascism tend reliably to be even more abjectly illiterate than even the human cattle branded with an “R,” but I’d think that anybody with any intelligence whatsoever would get the obvious evocation of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party right off. Sheesh. Back to Hoser:
In truth, Hoser, both factions of our great “you-scratch-my-back-and-I’ll-hold-down-your-victims-so-you-can-rape-’em” perpetual incumbency have worked diligently to make of our nation itself one vast Konzentrationslager. Any who doubt this are invited simply to consider the real complicity of the Republican Party in the National Socialists’ sustained invidious effort to secure total victim disarmament among the law-abiding private citizenry.
Or, heck, just try to get on an airliner at any airport in these United States.
The rest of Hoser‘s post is well-intentioned but foolish fantasy. If we are “to distinguish between the leaders and the followers,” attention must be paid to the fact that the “leaders” have done – and are continuing to do – everything they can get away with, including overt criminal malfeasance in public office – to reduce the majority of their “followers” and all of those who have not been suckered into “following” them into a condition aptly described by economist F.A. Hayek as serfdom.
To be perfectly honest, I don’t understand how Hoser can repose any trust whatsoevr in government, both as it rots and stinks in these United States today and as an institution accorded powers that not even the malignantly mercantilist followers of Alexander Hamilton – in their wildest dreams of avarice and hatred for their innocent neighbors – thought it could achieve. Hoser writes:
Perhaps it’s just another “stopped clock” moment, but Hoser has the right of it. But to “craft our own solution,” the private people of these United States have to be free from the malignant effects of government. Were the average “followers” to understand thoroughly just how and why the roots of “this mess” are undisputably fixed in the fetid crap of overgrown, overreaching, overly intrusive civil government itself, and not merely in those “those neo-communists” of the NSDAP, that realm of Mordor-on-the-Potomac would be decorated tomorrow with the dangling corpses of just about every elected and appointed officer of the federal government, Red Faction as well as Blue.
As for what Hoser conceives to have been “…the basic intent of the US Constitution, there is proof again of the need to get an education. What we had with the Articles of Confederation was most definitely “a government of limited powers.”
What Hamilton et alia wanted to inflict upon their countrymen was effectively a copy of the mercantilist government of the United Kingdom – which the people of America had fought a long, bloody, and extremely costly war to get themselves away from. It was precisely no coincidence that Hamilton sought for himself the post of Secretary of the Treasury, which was established to fulfill the functions of Chancellor of the Exchequer in the UK.
At that time, the Chancellor of the Exchequer was the real chief of civil government. That’s what Hamilton was angling for.
When Hoser asks “…what will the future look like? How can we help shape a better outcome?” the answer is simply this:
If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always gotten.
Something else to consider.
The CAGW scare has been a godsend to Greenpeace, WWF, and Co. That one issue has brought them incredible cash flow. Not to mention power and influence. Heck, Greenpeace went from a ragtag group of whale protectors to an important piece of the IPCC process.
Most of the World’s media is either owned or effectively controlled by the state (US Media included) so will parrot the state line. That their people are mostly CAGW believers anyway only makes it worse.
Many corporate entities see CAGW as something they can get in on and profit from. There is the carbon trading, massive Gov subsidies to gain, projects to build, and so on. Not to mention that pumping a ton of cash into those areas gives them a certain amount of influence.
Third world countries see CAGW as a way to soak the rich counties.
Any entity that wants more control over “We the Idiots” sees CAGW as a perfect concept.
Any group that sees Humans as the problem to all the Earth’s ills, or worse, sees CAGW as a godsend.
Various individuals, who may or may not be true believers, see CAGW as a means to incredible wealth (and power.)
A whole lot of groups see CAGW as THE means to power and money. Does anyone really think they’ll willingly give that up just because the science doesn’t agree with CAGW? When do people ever willingly give up large amounts of power and money?
A win in court? Ok, I win a case against, oh… the Mafia. Any guesses as to what happens after the case is done? That court analogy only applies when the court’s rulings are followed. Al Gore’s fantasy movie was ruled as bunk (political propaganda) by the UK courts, and it’s still pretty much the CAGW textbook over much of the world.
We do have one thing in our favor, the general incompetence of much of the CAGW crowd and the seeming inability, or unwillingness, for whatever reason, of many of them to do good, honest science. Climategate was wonderful, but only the beginning.
My point is that if we stop and congratulate ourselves for winning then we lose. We have a long way to go. Also, let’s remember that many of the same faces were raising the alarm about global cooling in the 70s. They may just switch to the next “incredibly worrying thing” once CAGW worries go away.
Message to the Climategate Hacker: You, sir or madam, did a heroic thing in busting this scam open. We understand that you may get in trouble if you reveal your identity, but can you please make yourself known to us via some kind of pseudonym or cutout. If we can’t award you a medal, we can at least express our gratitude.
I think we should also give thanks to Pachauri for his Voodoo scientist remark. He, and his the accountants for Teri – Europe have been a steadfast and reliable friends of the sceptic’s cause. Keep at it Pachy, we are all rooting for you.
@ur momisugly Richard Courtney, who wrote:
“Most of these campaigners have ‘shown their faces’ and have had some success. Climategate revealed the rejoicing of the ‘Team’ at the tragic death of John Daly.”
Sorry, Richard, I missed your earlier statement when I scanned through the posts. I’m glad you acknowledged the work of John Daly. “The Team” had reason to rejoice. Daly was a thorn in their side. Daly’s website is still out there, but it hasn’t been updated in quite a while. It’s a good source for some of the early criticisms leveled at the warmists’ claims.
For readers who don’t know about John Daly’s website, here is the link:
http://www.john-daly.com/
Reading the comments above, I agree that a very good measure of how well our message is getting through can be found in the comments left by the public on newspaper blogs. The members of public who want to comment, a self selected group, are very well informed and are always making strong arguements backed up with factual links to this and other websites. The former havens of AGW luvvies, such as Monbiots blog on the Guardian, are unable to deal with this influx of informed debate that appears spontaneously under every newspaper posting about global warming. In this area the AGW brigade have already lost the war.
Where we have not made much progress is with the editors of the main stream media and politicians of the main parties. These people have their fingers in their ears every time a sceptic puts forward an opinion that is not in line with the IPCC’s view.
to go with the D-Day analogy, the UK was lost early in the climate wars just as Poland was lost at the outset of WW2. They will not be brought back until the fighting is over almost everywhere else.
The most important result of “Climategate”, as has been pointed out by at least one poster,w as that it led to the death of Waxman-Markey in the Senate. The death of THAT bill was the true turning point in this battle, because after that Congress changed hands, and it won’t be coming back. Mark that as the High Tide of the Warmistas.
And for Steve – although I tend to be considered “conservative” I find myself in a lot of agreement with what I call True Liberals. (labels are stupid, the only reason I don’t say I’m libertarian is that so many vocal “libertarians” are just potheads) I designate a “True Liberal” as one who realizes that the Democrat Party, as it is currently consituted, is in reality the complete antithesis of all True Liberal values. Their policies, if followed, will result in the complete destruction of everything that true liberals value.