By Steven Hayward, The Weekly Standard (via The GWPF)
No amount of context can possibly exonerate the CRU gang from some of the damning expressions and contrivances that appear repeatedly in the new emails. More so than the 2009 batch, these emails make clear the close collaboration between the leading IPCC scientists and environmental advocacy groups, government agencies, and partisan journalists.
The conventional wisdom about blockbuster movie sequels is that the second acts are seldom as good as the originals. The exceptions, like The Godfather: Part II or The Empire Strikes Back, succeed because they build a bigger backstory and add dimensions to the original characters. The sudden release last week of another 5,000 emails from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) of East Anglia University—ground zero of “Climategate I” in 2009—immediately raised the question of whether this would be one of those rare exceptions or Revenge of the Nerds II.
Before anyone had time to get very far into this vast archive, the climate campaigners were ready with their critical review: Nothing worth seeing here. Out of context! Cherry picking! “This is just trivia, it’s a diversion,” climate researcher Joel Smith told Politico. On the other side, Anthony Watts, proprietor of the invaluable WattsUpWithThat.com skeptic website, had the kind of memorable line fit for a movie poster. With a hat tip to the famous Seinfeld episode, Watts wrote: “They’re real, and they’re spectacular!” An extended review of this massive new cache will take months and could easily require a book-length treatment. But reading even a few dozen of the newly leaked emails makes clear that Watts and other longtime critics of the climate cabal are going to be vindicated.
Climategate I, the release of a few thousand emails and documents from the CRU in November 2009, revealed that the united-front clubbiness of the leading climate scientists was just a display for public consumption. The science of climate change was not “settled.” There was no consensus about the extent and causes of global warming; in their private emails, the scientists expressed serious doubts and disagreements on some major issues. In particular, the email exchanges showed that they were far from agreement about a key part of the global warming narrative—the famous “hockey stick” graph that purported to demonstrate that the last 30 years were the warmest of the last millennium and which made the “medieval warm period,” an especially problematic phenomenon for the climate campaign, simply go away. (See my “Scientists Behaving Badly,” The Weekly Standard, December 14, 2009.) Leading scientists in the inner circle expressed significant doubts and uncertainty about the hockey stick and several other global warming claims about which we are repeatedly told there exists an ironclad consensus among scientists. (Many of the new emails make this point even more powerfully.) On the merits, the 2009 emails showed that the case for certainty about climate change was grossly overstated.
More damning than the substantive disagreement was the attitude the CRU circle displayed toward dissenters, skeptics, and science journals that did not strictly adhere to the party line. Dissenting articles were blocked from publication or review by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), requests for raw data were rebuffed, and Freedom of Information Act requests were stonewalled. National science panels were stacked, and qualified dissenters such as NASA prize-winner John Christy were tolerated as “token skeptics.” The CRU circle was in high dudgeon over the small handful of skeptics who insisted on looking over their shoulder, revealing the climate science community to be thin-skinned and in-secure about its enterprise—a sign that something is likely amiss. Even if there was no unequivocal “smoking gun” of fraud or wrongdoing, the glimpse deep inside the climate science community was devastating. As I wrote at the time (“In Denial,” March 15, 2010), Climategate did for the global warming controversy what the Pentagon Papers did for the Vietnam war 40 years ago: It changed the narrative decisively.
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The AGW scientists appear to be so far up their own backsides, that the ineptness of their own abilities is obscured.
However ,they may still be right, that is still to be detrmined.
The above reads like a bad press release; wait, it *is* a press release … oh never mind in that case …
.
davidmhoffer says:
December 4, 2011 at 11:08 am
David A;
Congradulations, nobody has responded to “Science FTWs” attempt to hijack the thread.>>>
Since your post plenty of people have responded, and I think that is a good thing. I’ve seen a lot of comments of late alone the line of “don’t feed the trolls” and that’s the wrong approach
===========================================================================
@davidmhoffer
As a recent arrival and sporadic web citizen may I applaud your remarks. I can’t tell anyone here when it may or may not be worth any investment of your own time and attention to respond to “troll” comments, but there are loads of people like me (more or less) who are trying to get up to speed on these issues, especially since the CG2 emails were released.
It is a good “educational” opportunity to the extent that serious people here are willing to fill it. I appreciate all thoughtful and informative posts that I read….. of course I don’t want any thread to get filled up with “troll” diversionary tactics, but to the extent that WUWT posters are willing to provide corrective information and analyses it is most appreciated by less “experienced” visitors like me…..
Yes! Everyone is focused on individual emails, but the climate community and the public MUST focus on the forest. The behavior is WRONG and renders their work USELESS. That is the opposite of what the public is hearing and the shame of Climate Scientists and the science community at large (for allowing it to continue).
This anomaly was not created out of vacuum, but of purpose… and intent. GK
btw, David A. no offense but this is a pet peeve of my high school drama teacher for both pronunciation and spelling:
it is “congraTulations” with a ‘t’ both in spelling and pronunciation, although it’s become so common to pronounce it as though there were a ‘d’ that perhaps the spelling will have to be changed
Skiphil says:
December 4, 2011 at 1:10 pm
btw, David A. no offense but this is a pet peeve of my high school drama teacher for both pronunciation and spelling:
it is “congraTulations” with a ‘t’ both in spelling and pronunciation, although it’s become so common to pronounce it as though there were a ‘d’ that perhaps the spelling will have to be changed>>>
I can only imagine the ire the pronunciation of “wednesday” must have raised….
skiphil;
@davidmhoffer
As a recent arrival and sporadic web citizen may I applaud your remarks. I can’t tell anyone here when it may or may not be worth any investment of your own time and attention to respond to “troll” comments, but there are loads of people like me (more or less) who are trying to get up to speed on these issues, especially since the CG2 emails were released. >>>
Well welcome to the forum then!
I’ll ask you in advance to have some patience from time to time. There’s come claims made from time to time that have been debunked so many times in so many ways on this forum that some people get frustrated going over known ground… again and again and again. Ask questions though, challenge opinions you don’t think seem quite right, and you’ll be shocked at how much there is to learn here, and from who. That’s not to say you will get a polite answer to every question, this forum can get pretty serious rough and tumble, but what you won’t get is your questions edited and then ridiculed out of context by the moderators. There’s only one thing worse on this forum than spouting warmist dogma that is wrong, and that is posting skeptic dogma that is wrong, and when skeptics go afte each other onthe ffine points of science…then what you are getting is REAL science.
davidmhoffer says:
Don’t take drive by comments by trolls as an annoying attempt to hijack a thread. Take it as a golden opportunity to show the silent majority just how easy it is to butt a troll off a bridge.
Yes, and the trolls actually give the best case Climate Science has for its “hypotheses” by even using important elements of its own “method”, that is, no case and only a strong-arming “perception is reality” propaganda method. Which can be easily shown, then contrasted with more facts, reason, and real science.
We don’t like to see what Climate Science, enc., is doing, but it is very clear what they are doing.
I’m not so sure the drama teacher could make a solid case for “congratEEOOlate,” let alone, “congratOOlate.” First we would need to know whether the word made its way into English by way of French, or directly from scholastic Latin. At any rate, the former pronunciation leads automatically to a fricative ‘t,’ like a dental ‘ch’ sound, so that “congraCHUlate” has probably been around since the word’s introduction. Then the ‘ch’ sound becomes voiced, yielding, “congraJUlate,” which is easily pronounced by those of us with no Broadway diction credentials or training in Classical Latin. The point being, the teacher may be advancing an anciently unattested English pronunciation based on the Latin spelling.
As for “failing trophic cascades” we must ask which are the more likely causes, over fishing, exotic species mixing by way of bilge water, or a change in sea temperature of a fraction of a degree, tantamount to shifting species a few dozens of miles poleward. Just more irrational, pseudoscientific gibberish, worthy of any troll. –AGF
Bill Parsons, “Fredo” is Fredo Corleone, the brother of Michael Corleone. In “The Godfather : Part II”, Michael had Fredo killed after Fredo unsuccessfully conspired to have him, Michael, killed.
“Heck we impeached Nixon for less! ”
Actually, we never got around to it, because his people could count the votes, and he resigned before the House of Representatives could actually bring articles of impeachment to a vote. Only two US Presidents have been impeached by the HOuse: Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton, neither of whom was convicted by the Senate (and thereby removed from office) although Johnson held on by the barest of margins.
Oh. Apologies to Mr. Hayward. I enjoyed your article, by the way.
(Note to self: when you think you’re being funny, take a few deep breaths.)
Uck. By that standard, how ’bout a “j”? That’s even more common.
“”””” markus says:
December 4, 2011 at 12:51 am
The headlines misleads in that it could have more clearly said SOME CLIMATE SCIENTISTS BEHAVING BADLY.
”
Not true markus. You would have a valid complaint if; and only if, the headline had said :
” ALL” climate scientists behaving badly.
“SOME” is quite superfluous.
“”””” richard verney says:
December 4, 2011 at 2:45 am
Slightly O/T but I thought that some would like to see how our political elte behave at The Durban COP 17 jamboree, whoops I mean convention “””””
You are forgiven for posting that ridiculous flick Richard. I caught a “news” bulletin on the T&V from the Communist Red Chinese all news all the time in English station, and some silly woman was spouting off about what they were going to do in Durban; as if anybody was going to pay attention to her.
I’d swear on my last month’s pay stub, that it was that dame in the blue on the right.
I didn’t see anyone in the flick than has a clue about dancing; or choreography. I’m sure they are as knowledgeable about climate science.
“”””” science ftw says:
December 4, 2011 at 3:51 am
Yet more nitpicking and propaganda which is of course the only option for morons who lack the scientific credentials to put up legitimate scientific argument. Meanwhile coral reefs are bleaching, trophic cascades are failing, permafrost continues to melt at unprecedented rates and average temperatures continue to rise. You cannot argue with real data so you resort to politicising and propaganda mongering. It is one of the saddest traits of human nature along with wilful ignorance. You people make me sick.
Well ftw, I would gladly apologise for your sickness, but then it is hard to apologise to something that doesn’t have the guts to put its own name to its complaint.
Meanwhile the typical mid summer (northern) extreme daily temperature range on earth stays solidly between about -90deg C and + 60 deg C, and due to an impeccable argument by Galileo Galilei, every Temperature between the extremes is present somewhere on earth simultaneously; in fact there are an infinite number of places on earth that have any one of those Temperatures.
So now which particular Temperature is it that is causing the coral reefs to bleach; I mean of course only those ones that have not ever bleached before ?
I’d like to see that data of yours that shows that average Temperatures continue to rise. Why we have cast in concrete many examples of Temperatures that were reported years ago, by such august bodies as GISS, and this site has published many instances, in which some of those Temperatures actually went down; years after they were first observed to have gone up.
The result is that an appearance of recent Temperature rise, is more honestly characterized as a post publication diminution of the earlier reported Temperatures.
You can’t blame any of that shenanigans on “you people”. Maybe it is the behavior of the recorded history revisionists that is making you sick.
@ur momisugly Skyfil and davidmhoffer
In general I agree with both of you. Science ftw made a comment very early in the thread, completely off topic and insulting to the general reader here as well and so over the top it was almost a parody of alarmism. In my view it should have been blocked in moderation as off topic. Once posted I agree with your expression of the need to respond. To a degree here we are preaching to the quire, but it is a growing quire. I hope the educated posters here will also post at their local newspapers when they print a CAGW article.
With regard to gramatical errors, yikes, please ignore them in my posts or the thread really will be hijacked. Do not let discernment of the placement of a comma, account for a climate understanding coma. (-;
And rightly so. The day of the week is named for Odin, chief of the gods in Norse myhology. It was also spelled and pronounced as “Wodin”. Thence to “Wodin’s day”, and then the the second syllable was likely shortend and then dropped, causing the “n” and “d” to swap places and our current pronunciation as if it was spelled “Wendsday”.
The treatment of trolls here is something I respect. Trolls get a free pass the first time and the community responds to them. I usually learn something from those instances, as I have in this thread. I don’t see much in the way of follow-up trolling …and I like that too. I presume that is due to 2 things:
– Moderators are breaking that cycle of dreariness early on.
– Trolls don’t have a real case to make and, after having lit the bag on fire and rung the doorbell, they run off giggling into their anonymity.
Too many comment sections are ruined by the drop-in-and-poopsters.
This looks to be a nice, safe place to track and participate in an important debate.
This whole caper looks to me like someone who is close to one or a few of the main characters is the whistleblower. His teasing releases are designed to put the most amount of pressure on people he genuinely cares for while inflicing the least amount of damage. Warning shots landing ever closer to the bow. The whitewashing of CG1 and the lack of any resignations from the leading cast has resulted in this release and the information that some many thousands more e-mails await. Perhaps a coverup attempt exposed? A conspiracy to delete e-mails?
This is soap opera stuff.
The MSM should be eating this up. I wonder what could get their interest???
Hmmm, has Michael Mann ever been to Aruba?
Having carefully followed the sequence of events, I now feel confident in predicting the outcome of Climategate II:
The Nobel Committee will reaffirm its support of The Consensus and The Cause, by awarding IPCC a second Nobel Peace Prize.
I believe global warming is a complete hoax . I also believe that warming may open farmland in China ,Russia and Canada and feed the world.
Norris Allen says:
December 5, 2011 at 5:59 pm
I believe global warming is a complete hoax . I also believe that warming may open farmland in China ,Russia and Canada and feed the world.>>>
You know, that’s a great point! All the jokes about people getting suckered into buying swamp land in Florida, one would think a get rich quick, buy tundra in Canada would have emerged by now….
Let me know when Scientific American does a mea culpa, and I might resubscribe.
noaaprog;
Don’t bother even then. It would take many years to reassemble competent writing and editing staff, all of whom have fled or been evicted.