5 years ago today, a cache of emails was dropped into the lap of several Climate blogs, including WUWT. Paul Matthews has a great writeup on it:
On 17th November 2009, comments appeared on a number of sceptic blogs such as here at the Air Vent. The comment started with the text:
“We feel that climate science is, in the current situation, too important to be kept under wraps.
We hereby release a random selection of correspondence, code, and documents.
Hopefully it will give some insight into the science and the people behind it.
This is a limited time offer, download now:”
This was followed by a link to the file of emails and a brief summary of some of the contents.
What I think is the most succinct quote from Paul’s article is this:
“To me, the real scandal was not so much that two or three climate scientists behaved badly, but that virtually the entire climate science community tried to pretend that nothing was wrong”
More here: https://ipccreport.wordpress.com/2014/11/17/climategate-anniversary/
On November 19th, WUWT broke the story, and I’ll have some reflections on the past 5 years in a couple of days.
h/t to Barry Woods
It was a glorious day indeed for we got to look into their souls. And what we found was suspected by many but not nearly to the extent that it proved to be.
Happy Climategate Day!
Many times since Climategate many commenters have said words to the effect of:
It was a wonderful gift. On the post of 19th November 2009 WUWT had 1,616 comments!
Yep. Incredibly I had just stumbled upon WUWT for the first time that night and stayed up all night agog with excitement and reading calls for calmness in case it was a hoax. An unforgettable night. Thanks to whoever did it.
This reminds me of the current discussion of Jonathan Gruber in the scope and magnitude of deception. It shows that the climate non-scientists were not alone in their disrespect of truth. When the climategate story was first published, I thought it was too good to be true.
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/joseph-rossell/2014/11/17/climategate-after-five-years-ten-credibility-killing-quotes-leaked
Might as well use this one again….
Climategate shows that climate science as it exists today is full of Jonathan Grubers, those bent on advancing a personal agenda rather than looking after the welfare of the world’s people. Let’s hope people wise up and demand the truth from people under our employ, and also the transparency that was promised us in 2008.
The defining moment that forged many a doubter into a true skeptic.
I had Comment Number 4 back then. 🙂 Happy 5th Anniversary, everyone!
I think the traditional gift for the 5th is wood. Perhaps a slice of tree rings? 🙂
I was #1–not that I had anything much to say.
Don’t forget
How often have we heard that since David Bowie sang it in 1971?
Unfortunately, little happened. However, we did continue to spend many, many billions of taxpayer dollars based on the AGW fairytale.
History will not look kindly on these people, especially in light of the myriad of serious problems we face around the world.
I think a lot has happened.
Kyoto is dead.
Australia changed direction.
The US has no carbon tax or carbon trading scheme.
The president of the US just cut a bogus deal with the ChiComs to try and save face with the greens and is using the EPA which can be reversed by the next president. (so long as “congress shall make no law” we’re good.)
Germany will fail to meet CO2 goals
Five short years ago we were on the verge of a one world government.
Copenhagen was a done deal and everybody was on board except a few right wing oil shills.
I feel like we helped save humanity…
or at least delayed man’s demise by demanding truth.
The people smelt a rat and the skeptical blogs pointed out who the rats were.
We’re not done but we’re making progress.
Amen
“Unfortunately, little happened. However, we did continue to spend many, many billions of taxpayer dollars based on the AGW fairytale.”
Their crediility was lost thats something.
“virtually the entire climate science community tried to pretend that nothing was wrong”
On the other hand, the climate scientific community is not a police force; they are normal people with careers and jobs. And it is damaging to swim against the flow, particularly in a field that is politically charged.
It’s worth remembering that when Andrew Wakefield’s fake vaccine studies were retracted, the investigations that lead up to those retractions was instigated largely by a journalist, not other scientists.
Will, I both agree and disagree. I agree that the “the climate scientific community is not a police force; they are normal people with careers and jobs”.
However, speaking out against scientific malfeasance is crucial for maintaining the public’s confidence in scientists. They did not do so.
As a result, a recent Rasmussen poll showed that over 60% of those questioned think that climate scientists are faking the data. Not just wrong. Faking it.
Nor was their any reason to continue to fete and listen to the people shown by Climategate to be acting either unethically or illegally. It’s like asking Peter Gleick to chair a session at the (from memory) AAAS meeting. Those are not just doing nothing. Those are actively lauding and supporting liars, cheats, and criminals.
So while the “climate scientific community” has successfully resisted the temptation to tell the truth about the Climategate unindicted co-conspirators, the cost has been huge, both to climate science, and to science in general.
As someone said, “For evil to triumph, it’s only necessary for good men and women to do nothing” … and man, have they done nothing, in spades and with bells on …
So I don’t let them off the hook as easy as you do. The mess is in their backyard, and by and large they have steadfastly refused to have anything to do with cleaning it up. And as a result, they won the battle … but all of science is losing the war.
w.
It’s worse than we thought…
The scientists don’t recognize their backyard (climate science) as a mess.
Willis,
This is as it should be. Skepticism, even of scientific claims, by the public, is healthy. This is a learning exercise, for some members of the public at least, although this detour in science has some years to play out yet.
It’s 69%:
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/environment_energy/69_say_it_s_likely_scientists_have_falsified_global_warming_research
Man-made global warming has been falsified in both the general and technical senses of the term. I agree with the 69% of the population which believes that 97% of “climate scientists” are rent-seeking. lying slimeballs who put their careers and ideology ahead not only of a search for reality but the health and welfare of seven billion people.
Dead-on, Willis
Which puts “climate scientists” below professional politicians, ambulance chasing PI lawyers and used car salesmen in public regard. They might however have just pipped out drug dealers, violent mass murderers (which in effect they are, only white color instead of violent) and child molesters in the respect which they are accorded.
Speaking of child molestation, wasn’t being indirectly compared to his PSU colleague Jerry Sandusky one of the issues with which Mann took National Review and Mark Steyn? That Mann is to science as Sandusky was to sport? That Mann molested data similarly to Sandusky’s “horse play” in the showers with disadvantaged boys? Sounds fair to me.
Mikey is after all proud of being a public figure, although of course with typical false modesty, he claims that notoriety was thrust upon him. He never sought it. No, not he.
Not to detract from the dreadful seriousness of child abuse, but Mann and his unindicted co-conspirators have caused the deaths of at least tens of thousands.
One could view the climate science situation as being very similar to the Muslim situation, if the majority are really decent people that we should trust, why is it so hard to hear them condemning those that are shaming their faith?
Perhaps much of the public realizes that their work is automatically suspect when they insist on only presenting one side of the issue. I know of only one other area that this has occurred (HIV/AIDS controversy), but imagine if no debate were allowed on many of the other political issues, as in WE know what is good for you and WE think that you the public are just too stupid too make an informed decision.
Will Nitschke November 17, 2014 at 6:45 pm
Thanks, Will, but I disagree strongly. Skepticism is one thing. But when 69% of the American public are not just skeptical, but think that the scientists are actively falsifying the data, that’s bad for climate science and science in general.
Regards,
w.
Willis,
I understand why some people are really upset, but if the expectation is that (putting myself in their shoes) I have to go out there and defend this abstraction thing called “science” and the result will be personal attacks, criticism of my credibility and reputation, ostracization, and damage or destruction of my career, then no thanks. I’ll keep my mouth shut, which is what I suspect 97% are doing.
…As a result, a recent Rasmussen poll showed that over 60% of those questioned think that climate scientists are faking the data. Not just wrong. Faking it…..
____________________________________________________________________________________
Willis, this was exactly my concern, not just when this started but decades before when I saw John Christy hauled before Albert Gore’s senate committee simply because he wrote a paper, using old satellite data, that contradicted the then existing AGW meme (1990). I learned a lot about science an politics at that time and since that gave me pause. Much has been made over the years about Eisenhower’s warnings in his farewell speech about the military industrial complex. More needs to be written about his equally grave warnings about the confluence between federal dollars and science.
Science is not a substitute for religion as many take it. It is a process, no more no less, of using instrumentality to measure the natural world in order to gain understanding of how it works. We have augmented that with computers and in many ways computers and computer analysis has led us astray, allowing us to use their power to make predictions that are not justified by the data.
In the 1920’s we had a name for this, perversion of science, it was called technocracy. I have a great book from 1934 wherein a group of engineers, using advanced analysis, declared that capitalism was doomed and that civilization must be reordered and control be turned over to the technocrats in order to save it. To me computer modeling of climate is the modern technocratic fallacy.
Back to the data!
Will Nitschke November 17, 2014 at 8:56 pm Edit
Thanks, Will. I expected that some people would just stay schtumm. What I didn’t expect is for the perpetrators to be feted, for their investigations to be total whitewashes, for them to be invited to chair meetings of the AAAS, and for them to not suffer even mild indignity from the assembled masses of scientists, much less their just punishment.
Look, many of these climate scientists cannot be fired, so it can’t be that holding them back. And some people, like Judith Curry, spoke out loud and clear about the abuses … and became famous as a result, it didn’t “destroy their careers”.
To understand my objection, think about what happened to Peter Gleick. He got caught committing mail fraud, for heavens sake. He cost the Heartland Institute big money. He either forged a document (most likely) or “merely” disseminated a document that he knew to be forged. Those are crimes, for goodness sake, not just some minor scientific infraction.
I find the silence about that kind of action to be reprehensible.
Next, you seem to think that the choice was either say something and perhaps experience opposition, or say nothing and lose nothing … but in fact, what was lost was most precious—the trust of the public in their field of science. I’d say that was an extremely bad trade.
Finally, no one is being asked to “go out there and defend this abstraction thing called “science””. They are being asked to speak up against things like mail fraud, the destruction of evidence sought under an FOI request, the subverting of the IPCC rules, and the “investigations” that never even asked the easy questions, much less the hard ones.
I gotta say, I don’t find that a hard ask, particularly when it is the trust in their own field of science that is being destroyed by these miscreants. They may have won the battle to save their personal reputations by staying quiet . But they lost the war, since their reputations are now trashed along with all other climate scientists, the people that think climate scientists are faking their data certainly don’t exclude them from the tarring just because they stayed quiet …
Best regards,
w.
Willis,
While I’m sympathetic to your arguments, I just can’t follow how this would work in practice. While each research field has its peculiarities, what’s happening in climate science is not necessarily unnormal. Climatology should be an obscure field that most of us don’t even know exists. It rose to prominence for political reasons only. Let me offer another example: Most of us sciencephiles would be familiar with the seminal research paper by Miller–Urey in origins of life research. What’s less well advertised is that Miller affectively blocked publication of papers that were critical of his work or that proposed alternate explanations. He was able to do this because it was his team that essentially controlled the peer review process. Or one might look at the countless useless and dubious medical procedures recommended routinely by doctors. Many of these procedures, often expensive, have no scientific basis at all. The reason why people undergo these procedures (PRP or stem cell treatments for ligament damage are first to spring to mind) is because they trust their doctors and they trust their doctors because they believe their doctors are being ‘scientific’. Or there is the entire field of psychoanalytics. I’ve never meat a psychology academic who didn’t think the psychoanalytic fraternity were anything more than a bunch of crack pots. But psychoanalytic associations have all the trappings of ‘science’ including journal publication. Psychology academics only rarely criticize psychoanalytic practitioners. What they usually do is roll their eyes, shake their heads, and ignore them.
It’s a sad state of affairs. I’m not pretending to have solutions. There is little you write I disagree with. Only on one thing I am less worried. If the reputation of science takes a few knocks, that is not always all bad.
w says “speaking out against scientific malfeasance is crucial for maintaining the public’s confidence in scientists. They did not do so.”
+1
Hi, Willis,
To be fair – James Lovelock – the scientist who started all this “warming stuff”, with the backing of Thatcher (as a further excuse to attack the mining unions, forcing the closure of the UK coal mines, – still with 300 years of coal left) – has back-tracked substantially;-
http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/04/23/11144098-gaia-scientist-james-lovelock-i-was-alarmist-about-climate-change
(For some reason the above link is “broken” on his web-site); –
http://www.jameslovelock.org/key7.html
This is what he thinks now ……….
“……..we were all so taken in by the perfect correlation between temperature and CO2 in the ice-core analyses [from the ice-sheets of Greenland and Antarctica, studied since the 1980s]. You could draw a straight line relating temperature and CO2, and it was such a temptation for everyone to say, “Well, with CO2 rising we can say in such and such a year it will be this hot.” It was a mistake we all made.”
http://www.nature.com/news/james-lovelock-reflects-on-gaia-s-legacy-1.15017
Regards
Alan J.
Where is there a modern day Hercules to cleanse these Augean stables called “Climate Science?” Certainly not among today’s main stream media.
Willis Eschenbach
November 17, 2014 at 7:47 pm
But “climate scientists” do actively fake the data, which crime has spread even down to the level of NOAA’s thermometer readers.
Corrupt climate pseudo-science has tarnished the reputation of real science. This is just one of the baleful outcomes of this mass-murdering, anti-human conspiracy.
Government-funded “scientists” aren’t the only flunkies faking data. Many if not most federal data sets are phony, notably unemployment and inflation numbers.
The people know from their own lives that these “data” are fudged, at best, so it’s natural that they’d doubt (correctly) the validity of climate figures.
Scrolling and skimming the comments, hit on this with author’s name off-screen. Read it, and thought, “Wow, very sharp and cogent. Whodunnit?” Then saw the w. Figgers.
Edit: “Nor was
theirthere any reason …”Dr. Andrew Wakefield’s discoveries have been verified when the same vaccine/autism connection was found by scientists is two other countries. Repeatability is part of the essence of science.
But there is good news. Every case of autism has been found to have abnormal gut bacteria. That can be fixed and then the susceptible child can probably be vaccinated.
Currently, pediatricians are in denial on the harms of vaccines while the number to be given has risen to an outrageous 69. Meanwhile many parents now know a child or family who has been harmed by vaccines. Therefore trust–and vaccination compliance rates–have been dropping. You can help. Investigate this matter with a lot more care than you have shown so far and get the gynecologists in your area to check gut flora of mothers at birth. You will improve the future and the health of the whole city.
Logic would tend to dictate that improper gut bacteria would probably be the result of antibiotic use as with C.Diff. However, one could surmise that C. Diff or similar troublesome gut bacteria could also take hold without a precursive cause. Oddly this condition is usually treated medically with antibiotics but probiotics are sometimes used and the newest procedure uses a fecal transplant.
http://www.webmd.com/digestive-disorders/clostridium-difficile-colitis
http://www.ageofautism.com/2012/08/age-of-autism-science-summary-.html
http://www.mayoclinic.org/medical-professionals/clinical-updates/digestive-diseases/quick-inexpensive-90-percent-cure-rate
ladylife, you may be right or wrong, but this is not just the wrong thread, it’s also the wrong website for a discussion of autism and vaccination. There are a number of websites dedicated to just such discussions, and they are the place for your contribution.
I’m not saying it’s a bad thing to discuss … it’s just a terrible place to discuss it.
w.
As the mother of 4 sons, one of whom (son #2) is autistic, I have no idea what on earth you are talking about. As a scientifically-literate observer of the entire MMR vaccine controversy, and as a historian of science, I am confident that Wakefield’s studies have been thoroughly debunked, funded as they were by a law firm seeking to target a pharmaceutical firm in a class-action lawsuit by parents of autistic children. Lancet rebutted the paper it had published, and disavowed Wakefield’s flawed ‘science’. Very often studies are published elsewhere that appear to confirm the original study, and these too are usually found to be flawed after the original study was debunked. Not only was there a conflict of interest in the Wakefield study, but the sample size was pitiful and useless for affirming a link – 12 patients in all, not a statistically viable study.
I was skeptical about this claim from the very beginning, as once my son was diagnosed I finally could understand why he had been different from earliest infancy. He did not develop autism after birth, he was born that way. I can only assume that this study was fed by, in some cases, belated parental awareness of difference in their child that might coincide with the timing of MMR vaccinations.
I can affirm that there is likely a genetic component to autism, as I have a nephew who is also autistic (the son of one of my brothers. And I am pretty sure my ‘gut flora’ were pretty much the same when I gave birth to my wonderful autistic son and when I gave birth to my normal third son. Yes, fully autistic individuals have weird bowels (more information than that would be TMI) but my son did not get this from me!
It’s very sad that some believe nonsense such as “Dr. Andrew Wakefield’s discoveries have been verified”. I understand why people might cast around looking to blame some group for a personal tragedy that has affected them. The fact of the matter is that his papers were retracted and he is widely reviled for putting people’s lives at risk. Nonetheless, he will always have worshipers.
Climate skepticism also tends to attract contrarians – people who disagree with mainstream science *because* it’s mainstream – but the reason why I raised this topic was because it was a clear example of how the medical community utterly failed to police their own standards. Much like the climate science community.
There has been no bigger game-changer than the release of these e-mails. It essentially leveled the playing field in the AGW discourse.
Fortunately, the weather has helped in persuading the common man that maybe AGW isn’t what he had been previously told.
MSM desperately clings to some reversal of the weather, but until then, MSM will continue to run their propaganda.
If skeptics wish to further help their cause, it is time to start making long range forecasts of their own and get those predictions printed and circulated.
Now it’s called “Grubering” or being “Grubered”.
I have aways thought that “Warmergate” was a better name for it.
Maybe now would be a good time to summarize what happened with III.
Mike G, I don’t know if you’re an evil warmist troll but I’m not, for sure, and I can’t understand the deathly silence that surrounds CG III.
Does everybody else know what was in the final stash and it’s just Mike G and me that missed that episode?
So where is the final stash? Isn’t it time for that?
Agreed. Was CG III a bust? Or what? So what gives? Why the deafening silence??
What? I heard about II and Himalayagate, but what is this 3?
LLG, just search this blog. It seems to be a delicate subject as our host has the key to the III. I have been told they are of no consequence, but there are 220,000 of them. Hopefully we will be able to judge for ourselves someday,……
http://hotair.com/archives/2014/11/17/what-the-mainstream-media-wont-tell-you-about-global-warming/
The anniversary is bringout out the pundits.
There may be good reason for hanging on to the trump card. It may be keeping some over a barrel.
Some great commentrs on this thread;
http://drtimball.com/2013/what-happened-to-the-220000-leaked-climatic-research-unit-cru-emails/
Dr. Gruber has stellar qualifications and a stellar reputation. Nonetheless, Democrats persuaded him to lie to each and every American for a mere $400,000. Democrats are throwing tens of BILLIONS of dollars at 1st, 2nd & 3rd tier climate scientists. Image the tales they are willing to tell to keep that money flowing in.
[Gruber’s total take was 3.9 million dollars from the democrat politicians. And he now is still holding several 400,000.00+ contracts with other states. .mod]
Correction. Had stellar credentials and reputation.
Which he himself has cast to the winds because he had to prove in multiple venues, in multiple ways, (leaving no doubt) how much smarter he was than the ordinary stupid voter he despises.
A wonderful example. But Obummer takes pride of place in this stupid narcissistic category.
Yes, in today’s 24-hr news cycle and Internet access to everything, it doesn’t take much to destroy a reputation.
And Jonathan Gruber’s reputation is toast.
He’s so radioactive neither Pelosi nor Obama claim to have ever heard of him.
But then, they’ve become just as radioactive as Gruber!
“Democrats persuaded him to lie to each and every American for a mere $400,000.”
He was not persuaded, it’s part of his ethos. His chagrin is that he was caught.
My, my, how time flies. We knew the emails (and harry-read-me) would be big. But we could hardly imagine the picture of malfeasance and conspiracy which would emerge in the following months. Back then, WUWT was a little special-interest site, virtually unknown in the larger blogosphere. Times have changed, and things sure are different now.
ClimateGate After Five Years: Ten Credibility-Killing Quotes from Leaked Files That Media Ignored . . .
Ten just as bad could be posted, and ten after that and ten after that.
ClimateGate is truly the gift that keeps on giving. Too bad the federal courts wouldn’t let the public look at Mann’s UVA emails for which the taxpayers paid.
And it has only gotten worse in the five years that have passed, since the GIGO models and cooked book “data series” have been shown ever more egregiously wrong with each passing month.
The truly shameful response was not “that virtually the entire climate science community tried to pretend that nothing was wrong” but rather that virtually the entire institutional science community tried to pretend that nothing was wrong.
Not just the AGU, the WMO, and the AMS, but the Royal Society itself, the US National Academy, the American Physical Society, the American Chemical Society, and every single (pdf) major national science academy in the world; with a recent reiteration by the European Academies Science Advisory Council (easac) (pdf), which represents the “National Science Academies of the European Union (EU) Member States.”
It’s beyond shameful.
Indeed its the playing of the three wise monkeys by the very people that should have acted as gatekeepers , that may mean science in general gets a kicking when ‘the cause ‘ falls not just climate ‘science’ and for that we may all be sorry.
Has for the RS , under various heads they become fully on board the cause to such an extent they handing ‘Lew paper ‘30,000 to work at Bristol after his rubbish has been exposed in Austral . They long given up any right they had to be consider people who view good science has important for the sake of scoring political points .
“Climategate” a moment in time when Climatology became ‘Climastrology’ and Science became a Seance.
Liked this hitting of some of the many low points:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/11/17/evidence-that-dr-michael-mann-misled-a-court/#comment-1791657
Hold the celebration. The victory appears Pyrrhic:
Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/nov/17/white-house-taunts-gop-climate-change/#ixzz3JNZhNWEj
Hard as it may be to believe, The Puppet President and his handlers are hell-bent on marching off the “Climate Change” cliff. And the Republicans are too gutless to stop them. What they should do is just live up to their Constitutional role and shut down the damned federal government until the miscreants in the White House just pack up and leave, with their tails between their legs. But don’t hold your breath.
/Mr Lynn
Oops! Screwed up the blockquote tags. From headline in bold to “funding” was all a quote from the Washington Times article. If the moderator can fix it, I’d appreciate it. /Mr L
Pardon but no, L.E Joiner. Pyrrhic, “Another victory like this and we are undone”, is not correct for this. The better description of the administration’s statement would be a Parthian shot which one fires as they flee a lost battle.
Now, saber them down.
Mike, I was describing all the Climategate boasting as Pyrrhic. The Warmists carry on as if there were no battle at all. They aren’t fleeing. /Mr Lynn
I do get tired of the “too gutless” meme.
In the lead up to the shutdown last October, the Republican spending proposal was perfectly defensible on the merits. The response from the administration, Democrats, and MSM was a full throated scream: no negotiations with hostage takers, no compromise, and the shutdown began.
After 11 days of steadily plummeting poll results, the Republicans finally caved, their caucus in tatters. The public, even conservatives, blamed the Republicans and not the Democrats for the shutdown. This happened even though politicians like Mitch McConnell were razor sharp and defended the Republican position on any talk show that would have him.
These guys are politicians. They live to get re-elected. It is completely unrealistic to expect them to fall on their swords just to please bystanders.
The real villains here are the MSM, academics and Hollywood. I.e., the culture. So long as the culture is overwhelmingly on the left, Republican politicians are going to be able to do very little. Mark Steyn has been terrific on this issue for those who are interested.
TYoke has a good point: “The real villains here are the MSM, academics and Hollywood. I.e., the culture. So long as the culture is overwhelmingly on the left, Republican politicians are going to be able to do very little.”
Another kind of counter-culture needs to arise. Find pop artists to write songs such as “The Day Science Died,” and filmmakers to produce movies where the villains are lefty power and money grubbers – or is that spelled gruber now!?
Their job is not to “get reelected”. Their job is to represent us. If that representation requires them to do something unpopular with someone else, so be it.
While MSM, academics and Hollywood are indeed the real villains, the Republicans, elected to fight them ar enablers.
Last year during the ‘shutdown’ the vicious bastards in the Obama White House shut down the parks and kept Honor Flight veterans out of the WWII Memorial on the Mall, and the liberal media tried to blame the Republicans (mainly Ted Cruz) for it all. But this year the public voted for Republicans in droves. “The culture” may be on the left, but the people aren’t.
Mark Levin points out that because Congress has the power of the purse under our Constitution, withholding funding is a perfectly legitimate tactic, and one which is in effect built into our system.
/Mr Lynn
Looks like our President Who Lies is about to create another scandal. There’s no stopping some idiots.
The combination of Climategate and the Pause ought to have destroyed the credibility of the doomsters. Not to mention serious scientific analyses showing that the Hockey Stick was bogus, that the IPCC models include substantial guesswork and bias, and that the IPCC verbiage often goes well beyond the IPCC science.
Sadly, our current institutions are so decadent that climate alarmism remains the dominant belief among media, politicians, diplomats and other policy-makers
Hockey stick confirmed by a dozen other studies, and now 2014 is the warmest year on record.
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/xmillenia.htm
Oh wait, it’s all just a global institutional conspiracy, right? Whew! I’m so relieved…
The AIP is participating in the bowdlerization of science, Barry, by posting that graph with a temperature scale despite the fact that none of those proxy lines represent a physical temperature series. Not one of them.
This is how far the termites have chewed, that now even physicists accept a statistical falsehood.
They have completely lost their critical sense.
http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/lappi/gisp-last-10000-new.png
How convenient of you to eliminate the medieval warm period after all “we have got to get rid of the medieval warm period”.
Please show these studies, so that we can all enjoy a hearty belly laugh.
Thanks.
Interesting that the graph you link to only goes to about 2000. Why don’t you show a graph that shows anything beyond that when you mentioned 2014 in your post? Is it maybe because the data doesn’t support your argument? Also, the graph you linked to uses “Instrumental” readings to show the greatest 20th century temperature increase yet the scale is in 10ths of a degree going back to the early 1800’s. That’s amazing accuracy for hand made thermometers. Does that “instrumental” record include satellite data? Or just human eye observations of thermometers? It’s interesting that the next closest curve (PS20014) peaks at less than half of the “instrumental” curve.
Barry,
Your link has a bogus reconstruction. That kind of misrepresentation is exactly what Climategate was all about. The conspiracy — and Climategate showed that’s exactly what it is — was all about creating a false alarm in order to generate money and power. The ‘Hockey Stick’ is not based on reality.
As far as “the warmest year on record”, that is not only nonsense, but the entire false alarm over a perfectly natural, minor *fluctuation* of only about 0.7ºC — over more than a century — is nothing but Chicken Little arm-waving over what is actually a very benign global temperature. A change of only 0.7º over a century is very rare in the temperature record.
You are one of those people who took a mistaken position early on, before many facts were available, and now your stupid ego won’t allow you to admit you were wrong. The planet has been far warmer in the past; up to 12 degrees warmer, with no ill effects. But you are clucking over a possibleM 2º rise, for which there is no evidence. It is pure unfounded speculation.
Plenty of readers here have changed their minds based on new information. But there are always some who can’t, or won’t. They are the problem, not the solution.
Did you just forget John Beale.
How about EPA sue and settle.
IPCC says not causing extreme weather.
“Never let a crisis go to waste”.
I truly wonder if it’s honest ignorance on your part or you’re just a paid for propaganda pusher?
Why do you trust them so?
Earth’s climate history is longer than the last 50 years, Barry.
As with any revelations that go against the elite; those involved close ranks, ‘investigations’ are stacked, PR replaces fact and information is withheld or destroyed. It’s a typical blueprint.
David in Cal November 17, 2014 at 5:44 pm
Sadly, our current institutions are so decadent that climate alarmism remains the dominant belief among media, politicians, diplomats and other policy-makers.
I am not sure if it is a “belief” or just a handy club to beat around the head and shoulders those they want to dominate. Although we know that CAGW will end just like the Dodo bird and the Carrier Pigeon, we still have to fight the good fight, as it won’t go away by itself. Just don’t know when it will end and how much more suffering will have to be endured and treasure will have to be spent.
I’m glad you allowed me to play a small part in ClimateGate Anthony. Thanks.
The pause was already well developed in 2009. They were talking about it with CRU. No doubt they are talking about it ‘off-list’ still.
That’s more the reason to point fingers at the weasels who pretended nothing was wrong with the behaviour of very well known scientists.
The mendacious defences arrayed for the public have continued! Can you believe it? They still discuss hidden heat and clock-spring energy leaping out of mythical deeps.
The amazing thing is the extent to which the fix is in with the media. The breadth of the betrayal of humanity is astonishing to me.
Crispin
The worst part, in my view, the almost unbelievable part, is the sheer number of politicians and civil servants who have a duty to seek the truth, who have appointed biased advisors, and avoided eminent skeptics, to maintain their wilfull ignorance. Ditto learned societies where a minority take it upon themselves to ignore and exclude the membership and write a warmist report. Everyone obviously has their price, even if the transaction is purely internal.
I raise a toast to the person(s) who released it. You did it great and hopefully someday when everyone realizes that they’ve been had that you can come forward and collect your Nobel Prize. You deserve it.
Ditto, whoever did this is an unsung hero. I don’t blame the person for staying low, but perhaps in another 10-20 years when the lack of warming is indisputable by even the most hardened Warmist and the hypothesis has been universally rejected he or she can come forward and get the recognition they deserve.
Worth remembering that Google immediately began running interference for the Climategate crew until I called them on it: http://talkingabouttheweather.wordpress.com/2009/12/02/google-gate/
[And we thank you for that effort. .mod]
The Hood vs the Bismark or the dozens of smaller ships. Congrats on your part of sinking the Bismark!
As you must know, Bismarck and Prinz Eugen sank Hood catastrophically, but the Empire struck back with Fairey Swordfish biplane torpedo bombers and the RN’s surviving surface ships.
Don’t forget the “Prince of Wales”
Somehow, the Prince of Wales and Repulse came together in peoples’ minds in 1941, and the connection was enhanced when the current incumbent of the title started to demand prominence.
Thanks. Climate skepticism is a true people’s movement, against an oppressive, entrenched elite trying desperately by hook or crook, mostly the latter, to hold onto its ill-gotten gains and privileges. In the end, truth, justice and the scientific method will prevail, I hope and believe. After all, Nature is on the skeptics’ side. Or as Jefferson so aptly put it, Nature and Nature’s God.
People do forget that Hood was just an old Battlecruiser, though a lovely ship. When the real RN Battleships intercepted, things changed. Though as you say, a combined op., and a worthy opposing flotilla. Brett
The Swordfish were obsolete! That was, in fact, why the Bismarck had trouble dealing with them. The Bismarck’s anti-aircraft system was designed to deal with faster planes, and could not easily be turned down to meet slow, creaky, biplanes.
Canada is blessed to have three of these wonderful aircraft, as loveable as a torpedo bomber, ie machine of death, can be. Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia each have one.
They’re perhaps most important historically for the Taranto raid which gave the IJN the idea for Pearl Harbor.
Interesting Harold, so tonight I punched in climategate and there are a few links that popped up. Most especially http://www.ucsusa.org about the “debunking the skeptics” was interesting and undated so not sure how old it is but it is an interesting CYA story nonetheless.
add Debunking Misinformation About Stolen Climate Emails in the “Climategate” Manufactured Controversy | Union of Concerned Scientists, sorry
Harold,
Thanks for your past efforts with google. Your link and related comments are a dramatic documentation of the firestorm created by the release of the ‘climategate’ emails.
And a special thanks to FOIA, whoever you are 😉
I am not sure how I feel right now. But thank goodness for climategate Depression is a good deal of my feelings. When I entered the university I thought engineering was going to be my profession. My first introductory class in Geology changed all that. To think that the professors that created the experience of thinking outside the envelope. Plate tectonics were just getting some traction but we were still having text books that supported the cyclothymic theories. Over beer after the last afternoon classes we debated both theories and felt how could previous great theorist have gotten it so wrong. Money! You go where the money is and academia was not ready for plate tectonics until overwhelming evidence and new technologies made it undeniable. The same right now. a great deal of money is there to be had, a lot of money. I think back on my undergraduate days and say thank god my professors exposed us to all the theories and challenged us to find out the truth of which one was correct. Someday hopefully again students will brainstorm over a beer haw did they get so wrong
I had been sceptic-at-a-distance about climate science. Then I was watching the lead up to Copenhagen, and the MSM hype thereof. I was just not happy with this…being an earth scientist, and dealing with carbonate rocks (basically the world’s hugest “carbon” sink), Things just weren’t adding up. The whole song and dance was a fait accompli, there was no more debate, they were going to ramrod some agreement or another, blah, blah, blah. Everybody talked as if we were going to roast. Knowing that the Cretaceous Period was hugely warmer (for example) and so named for its enormous Chalk deposits (calcium carbonate of prodigious quantities), I began to smell rats everywhere. I began to look at blogs…and arrived, serendipitously, into the beginning of Climategate. Well, that pretty much confirmed the rodent-pee that I was smelling.
What happened to the adjustments of temperature records after Climategate? Well, they just accelerated them.
While there was shock in the climate science community for months afterward and investigations from Climategate, it eventually lead to them to just becoming more bold in the exaggerations because they got away with the earlier versions of exaggeration, scot-free.
There needs to be consequences for doing wrong in all forms of human activities or else there is just incentive to do more wrong. Humans respond to the carrot and the stick, to reward and punishment.
Climate science has the stick and the punishment part exactly backwards. That means the carrot and the reward systems are also, exactly backwards.
Or rather, society has it backwards for climate science.
It won’t change until there is finally some consequences for exaggerating. Write your congressman. It has to start somewhere.
Former VA AG Cuccinelli tried, but the federal courts in on the scam gutted his heroic effort. If the new Congress doesn’t act, then maybe that meeting in 2017 will. By then the “Pause” will have lasted longer than did the perfectly natural late 20th century warming, or have already turned noticeably down. Since the long term trend is toward colder temperatures, that’s the way to bet for the next move. Sorry, Willis, but it’s only natural. And statistical.
Cathy R,
If george e. smith sees your post, watch out! ☺
I look forward to whatever he has to say, without having a clue what it’s likely to be.
I am so glad I was a daily visitor to WUWT for a couple of years before Climategate – because few experiences in life have equalled the exhilaration of the day Climategate broke on WUWT. It was so wonderful to see documented proof that climate science was being seriously twisted by rent-seeking, egotistical individuals. It was a confirmation of stuff I had been ranting about to trusted friends (and a few unsuspecting individuals) for several years – and an affirmation of the astute theories put forward by WUWT sleuths and of course McIntyre at Climate Audit, and a few others. It was also a perceptible blow to the excessive policies of Obama and other alarmists.
What remains a disappointment is the continued silence or closing of ranks by the majority of other scientists and academics. As long as the money is still flowing in this direction, I don’t see CAGW propaganda being recanted by the academic, media and political establishments.
I, too, have been a daily visitor and occasional commenter here since the Surface Station days.
I still find it hard to believe that Climategate was not an end to this vast deception. All that hard evidence, all that lying and fraud……. It’s almost like living in some alternate universe.
Sometimes I despair, but have to believe the truth will out.
(Having said that, I really enjoyed the light relief last Christmas when Turney got stuck in the ice……….:0)
I did too, but you know, they decorated this captain of the “Ship of Fools”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/01/21/spiritofmawson-fiasco-leader-gets-award-for-excellence/
what happened with the encrypted file containing 20,000+ emails? will that ever be released?
^^^^^ THIS ^^^^^
I remember that the key was said to have been released (to a small number of recipients) last year.
So far as I know, nothing of wide interest has subsequently been made public – presumably the remaining emails were all of the “discussion to finalize slides, 3pm Tuesday, rm 411” variety.
Has it only been five years? It seems like forever. Loved the Nixon cartoon too. Even Nixon had the integrity to keep the tapes, unlike the warmists and their deleted emails.
Perhaps the world needs a new Nixon, at least willing to be real in private.
Totally agree, Marcus. Are certain bloggers conspiring to Gruber their readers because they ar too stupid. No satisfactory answer was ever given. Why wait till the “O” is gone?
Well it is now official. The Ecos want to have us all live in Brazilian shanty towns. Except them of course.
Socialism is never for the Socialist……
“Power to the people!” means “Power to me and my friends!”.
“Workers of the World UNITE…to serve your masters…”
That was a helluva week. I’ll see if I can find the status of CG III for those who asked above. But I would speculate that with the protected release of II and III, that the handful of people that received the key just haven’t found it important enough to prioritize, especially if they found or felt there is little of interest after a cursory look.
Every year or so I read the comments under my coming out Post when I need a warm and fuzzy.
If I find anything to report on CG III, I’ll comment in this thread, probably by editing this comment.
I won’t hold my breath. For all those who have the key to have dropped the subject suddenly like it was a hot potato, there must have been some pretty serious threats made by some pretty powerful people with deep pockets to pay lawyers, which makes me fear for Steyn. I don’t expect an answer. I’m just a curious type. It seems most people know enough to not even ask but I seemed to have missed the memo on that, too.
That’s my take on it, too.
It is a very pregnant silence. Even the warmies aren’t goading us. It’s bizarre.
Was Gruber involved?
Quoting
Willis Eschenbach
November 17, 2014 at 10:10 pm
…
Thanks, Will. I expected that some people would just stay schtumm. What I didn’t expect is for the perpetrators to be feted, for their investigations to be total whitewashes, for them to be invited to chair meetings of the AAAS, and for them to not suffer even mild indignity from the assembled masses of scientists, much less their just punishment.
end quote
This is not just a response to climate science today (or, in reality, to the activities of a few highly visible perpetrators), it is the normal political response to any agents who carry out policy in a dirty, aggressive, even mass murdering way — when those activities get exposed. It has been going on for thousands of years in much the same way and there are plenty of examples righr here in the past 50 years . Support and reward them to successfully whitewashes their actions in the eyes of the majority. Otherwise, they being agents, either directly or in just the minds of the public, criticism, anger, and demands for justice against their actions and crimes would reflect back up to the heads of the power structure. Sometimes this kind of propaganda backfires but mostly it is very effective.
Enter the world of the 30% who still believe the lies.
Reduce that group by 5% as a goal.
Our world of the 70% who knowing need not to spend so much time patting ourselves on the back for the knowing.
Use facts, do not even name names or point fingers at this one or that one.
Enter the world of the elected ones who support the lies and fraud and reduce them by votes at the polls on two, four, six and eight year cycles.
As the time moves so will the truth and winning the battle of truth.
Later the time will be compressed by history and those we save in the future will think we did it ever so fast.
History has its way on all of us who become its dust.
Identify the self-correction mechanism in climate focused science in the past ~30 years.
It was not identified by the traditional so-called MSM. Nor identified by academe. Nor identified by authoritarian government.
It was identified by a few reasoning individuals.
That is how science corrects itself.
John
17 November, 2009: the day grubering the climate was arrested.
Speaking as a non-scientist, at their core, there is something fundamentally wrong with the scientific community if they can’t be repelled by alarmism and something fundamentally and tragically wrong if they can even just stand there and let others among them attack those who are repelled. At their core, they are not coming from science. It’s not really about my public community perception of the community, though. It’s more basic than that. It’s the absence of science at the heart of science.
I was first introduced to the bullying of AGW by the efforts of Ross McKitrick and Steve McIntyre. Climategate emails were confirmation that AGW “climatologists” are arrogant, dishonorable, militant environmentalists/Malthusians. Thanks for your exposure of dimly-lit backrooms and political scheming.
Catherine Ronconi November 18, 2014 at 9:42 am
Thanks, Catherine, but it’s a bit more nuanced than that. While some climate scientists have faked the data, most haven’t. However, all of them are getting tarred with the same brush.
I hold that this is because by and large, those who have NOT faked the data haven’t spoken out against those who HAVE faked the data.
Finally, the main problem is not the faking of data. It’s the shoddy level of the analyses of real data that is the problem—models upon models, poor citation practices, no data or code as used, using model outputs as inputs to other models, no error bars, the list goes on.
Regards,
w.
Willis,
IMO the fakery is far more important than easily shown false or rigged analysis like the HS.
What individual “climate scientists” do is not the issue. The fact is that taxpayers cannot even trust the raw data as reported anymore, let alone the “adjusted” data sets. The gatekeepers are the worst phoneys. All three main surface records–HadCRU, NOAA and NASA GISS–are worse than worthless, just like most government figures.
It’s a criminal conspiracy which may not end until some of the major offenders are perp walked. These are the same anti-scientific, rent-seeking swine who set up an unneeded Death Valley station opposite a south-facing cliff in the so far vain hope of “recording” a new all time US high.
You can’t trust anything produced by government bureaucrats, especially if masquerading as white coat wearing “scientists”. Go ahead and imagine that most “climate scientists” are honest, but then how do you explain their going along with what they have to know is an outrageous hoax threatening everybody on the planet except them and their bosses? They are all culpable, just as were the death camp prison guards along with the N@z! leaders.
The best you can say about the Climanazees is that so far they’ve probably killed only tens or hundreds of thousands rather than the millions murdered by the original Nazees or Rachel Carson and tens of million by the original Communists. But give them time.
A whole lot of eye opening was done back then among a lot of semi-interested people at that point. This event drew a lot of people to science process and scrutiny of policy over reach. That event plus Grubering has changed and educated a lot of voters on the tactics of the policy elite.
I haven’t heard anything about the third release of emails. Were there no important quotes to be found in Climategate 3? Or are the few people who got the key still searching the emails?
Climategate was shocking enough all by itself, but what blew me away was the fact that the mainstream PhD climate scientists weren’t blown away, the MSM wasn’t blown away, tenured professors in disciplines far removed from climate science, weren’t blown away, all the world’s scientific institutions weren’t blown away….Man to have that solid a block of dishonesty and shamelessness should blow any civilized decent person away. And they can still say the problem with ordinary people not getting upset about global warming is that scientists haven’t crafted the message well enough to counteract a puny handful of unfunded active sceptics.
what a day to remember. thanx to whoever it was who released the incriminating material, and thanx to those who had the courage to post it online.
Pat Frank wrote-
The truly shameful response was not “that virtually the entire climate science community tried to pretend that nothing was wrong” but rather that virtually the entire institutional science community tried to pretend that nothing was wrong.
Not just the AGU, the WMO, and the AMS, but the Royal Society itself, the US National Academy, the American Physical Society, the American Chemical Society, and every single (pdf) major national science academy in the world; with a recent reiteration by the European Academies Science Advisory Council (easac) (pdf), which represents the “National Science Academies of the European Union (EU) Member States.”
How true this i! When Rus Istvan, whose opinion I usually respect, and others demean Obama’s intelligence for following the warmist agenda that the above societies promote, I think it’s very superficial reasoning to blame Obama. Heads of state are not climate scientists; almost all of them have followed the lead of the scientific societies. Now I do condemn Obama for choosing a serial doomsday science adviser, but I mostly blame the science community that Watts and Frank have condemned. Politicians, almost all of them, take the intellectual and moral shortcuts you read about in Machiavelli and Reinhold Niebuhr. I remember when Barry Goldwater voted against the voting Rights Act of 1964 in order to get the Republican nomination. I was a friend of Barry Goldwater (through ham radio) plus my father was one of three journalists invited to travel with him during the presidential campaign (both were WWII bomber pilots). Now Barry Goldwater was a smart and decent man. As a brash young graduate student, I told him personally that I could not vote for him because of his senate vote. He looked ashamed, but changed the conversation to ham antennas. Politics is a a dirty business. Obama has left wing global warming zealots he has to appease if his party is to have a chance at winning elections. Republicans have their right wing zealots, Ask Boehner!
If you want politicians to act reasonably on issues like global warming- get the scientific societies to be reasonable and truthful. Obama like Goldwater and virtually every other politician will do what they have to to get elected. That does not make them stupid or narcissistic
You’re putting the cart before the horse, IMO.
Obama has encouraged systemic lying in institutional “climate science” and environmental regulation. He has gotten the “scientific” advise he wanted and paid for.
When the Democrat Party switched from being for working stiffs like coal miners, hard hats, Teamsters, car makers, etc, to giving to members of its new coalition, ie public employees, trial lawyers and limousine liberals, what they want, the funding followed.
You are giving Obama credit he certainly doesn’t deserve. Obama pushed this garbage in his first two years when he had a congress controlled by Democrats. He couldn’t even get them at that time to pass his carbon-capping legislation and abandoned his efforts until now. He has seen that no one stops him, or even tries to do so, so why should he refrain from using his new found powers as a tyrant to push this nonsense.
How naive can you possibly be, especially at your age?
The popular excuse for every despot in history has been, oh, it’s just his evil advisors!
Obama chose his advisors because they agreed with him and were in on the shakedown scam.
It’s obvious to apparently everyone here but you that Obama has been riding the climate scam from the git-go.
Where do we get such lame excuse makers?
Catherine what I wrote about Obama and Goldwater and politicians is not a scientific hypothesis, We can probably only agree to disagree, but I’m open to hearing your evidence that Obama encouraged systematic lying in institutional climate science as opposed to following the advice of his climate advisor and the scientific societies referred to above,
You get what you pay for. He who pays the piper calls the tune.
Obama appointed the venal EPA flunkies who have waged the war on coal. The possibility of in effect taxing breathing via carbon credits is mouthwatering to Marxist statists like Obama.
His administration encouraged lying not only in the EPA but the IRS, NSA, DoJ, VA and other organs of state power guilty of lawlessness, to include destruction of evidence. Before the “missing” IRS emails was the EPA administrator’s secret email account.
Obama, like so many other Marxist watemelons, was a big backer of man0made climate change before he ever received the advice of a single “expert” as president. He ran on a “climate change” platform:
http://elections.nytimes.com/2008/president/issues/climate.html
So the war on coal, opposition to the pipeline, EPA rulings against the real science, etc, were only to be expected. He chose advisers who agreed with him. It’s not that he can be excused for being misled. He hired the liars from whom he wanted to hear, to give him cover to do what he wanted to do.
How much more evidence do you need?
As I just posted above, Obama could not get his own Democrat controlled Congress to pass these economy-busting measures back in 2009. He knows this is a scam and is all about grabbing power and the ability to control peoples’ lives. He full knows what he is doing and that none of it has anything to do with science. He didn’t just hear about it on today’s news like just about everything else he does.
Catherine,
Did you read by question? I wrote “I’m open to hearing your evidence that Obama encouraged systematic lying in institutional climate science as opposed to following the advice of his climate advisor and the scientific societies.” This seems to be a hot button issue for you resulting in more than just the motivated reasoning so common in political discussion. I suggested the perspective of reading Machiavelli and Reinhold Niebuhr. Please also read more history such as the history of our founding fathers and how they were perceived and written about in the political press during their administrations. Demeaning and dehumanizing political adversaries is so very common and a poor substitute for discussing ideas and power, don’t you think? I may be wrong, but I think part of the reason climate scientists have been reluctant to “face up” to the realities of climate science is because they want to avoid the whirlwind of the political extremism of so many on both sides of the issue.
I’m pretty sure that my knowledge of Machiavelli and the Founders at least equals yours. I fail to find anywhere in your comment the least hint of actual response to any other overwhelming evidence of Obama’s intentional abuse of “science” to further his anti-American, collectivist, Chicago-style extortionist agenda. No surprise.
How dare you lecture me, who has sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution with my life, about that document’s contents? What have you ever risked for the republic created by the Founders?
The reason that “climate scientists” refuse to face reality is because they know they have been paid liars for decades, which mendacity has cost humanity trillions in treasure and untold lives. Plus, people just don’t like to be shown wrong.
Perhaps I should add that I’ve read Machiavelli in Italian and Montesquieu in French. The latter is especially relevant since we’re now misruled by a tyrant who would trash the separation of powers which the Framers found so important in designing a government.
Doug Allen,
Clear it is you do not have the heart, courage, mean streak needed to do in these climate thugs/liars/criminal cult of money and therefore stand back as there are those like me and Catherine who will get the ugly job done. It will be a real back alley knock down drag out, the evil is great, organized, and well funded by gold and supported by great evil. Your sort of smart to stay out of the line of fire.
Had we fought this hockey stick fraud data for gold fight when needed the Obama care lie and fraud would never have been possible.
John Boehner is a leader of the coward nation operation, of not much use to U.S..
The fight is near, the fight must be.
Too, Mr. Allen had you been the one with the ability to release the Climate Gate e-mails looks like we would never have had them released.
It is like that seems to some.
Good morning Catherine,
Your “Obama is a Marxist, a tyrant” bla bla bla is as counterproductive as it is absurd. Words have meanings. Sure, there will be many here who share the same motivated reasoning and even believe Obama is a Muslim bla bla bla. It’s the counterproductive that I want to address, not the refusal to to be reasonable. BTW, I appreciate your many good comments and references on the global warming/climate change which I agree with. Unfortunately, you and many others here (but not Anthony or Curry at her blog) undermine the important message of CAGW fiction with over-reach as great as the CAGWers.
I teach a global warming/climate change class in the Osher Life Long Learnring program at a nearby university. The students are mostly retired professionals or successful businessman- scientists, engineers, teachers, economists – college graduates interested in continued learning experience. They are mostly woefully ill informed about climate science and its data. They have not visited climate blogs (fewer than 5%) and have no knowledge of Delingpole and his watermelon hypothesis. They are pretty mainstream who read their liberal or conservative news sources with the amount of skepticism you’d expect of well educated, successful persons.
My class is data centered, but does begin with Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth and its critics, the movies and videos, back and forth with the CAGW and the critics. This is a conscious effort to deprogram those (most of the students) who have strong, but poorly informed opinions, before we start studying the history of climate science and then the science of climate science emphasizing the data. I have found that introducing students to the many informative climate blogs is counterproductive because of the extremism of political commentary by the liberal “greens” and by the conservative “reds” who use climate science as a proxy for their culture wars. Even someone as hypocritical as Lewandowski is at least partly right about the extremists on both sides, himself included. My students who view political comments like yours, Catherine, are very apt to discount everything you say about climate science which I already said I appreciate and agree with.
The counter-productive point is well -made.
Climate Science is not simple. Providing an easy short-cut to understanding will be grabbed by most people who aren’t actively engaged with the topic.
Most Green Policies are regressive and should be opposed by the Left (I am on the political left). But as a short-cut to understanding the Left believes in cAGW and the Right doesn’t. So the Left supports Regressive policies – that’s mad.
If the science was sound it wouldn’t be a political issue. We would all agree something need to be done and we could move on to the policy debate as to “What to do?”.
But the science is at best unproven. So the science needs to be engaged with. And that’s impossible if you think that ‘to doubt high climate sensitivity’ means you must subscribe to ‘a covert Communist takeover of the Whitehouse (by Muslims)’.
You may believe that. Who knows, you may be right to believe that. But it doesn’t help. It is not persuasive.
Or on the other hand, by believing that ‘the Koch brothers and Jewish bankers secretly control the world’ (I know that my side, on the Left has, its unpersuasive wing too).
Interesting. All worthy (or, at least, worthwhile) causes have the usual percentage of crazies.
P.S., As a (very devoted) RINO, I am not on the “political” left. I am an apostate. But I am a liberal and will always be one. I was immersed in dialectic, tutored in deconstruction. I don’t think a lot of the commenters here can claim they were assigned Other Voices Other Rooms (Truman Capote) or Death in Venice in High School. It has been hard-wired. I am regarded more favorably by conservatives than liberals. But I am not of them. They are not my people. And when I fight, I use the weapons, tools, and tactics of the left, because those are the weapons I have — and know how to use.
Evening… I’m a long-time reader here posting specifically to agree with this point, as it irks me hugely. I am British, a psychology graduate, and left-wing enough that I’d imagine most of you would regard me as a diseased hippy.
Regardless, this is about lying and the wholescale abuse of science, statistics and manipulation of the public. I see that as something that should transcend all political allegiences.
For what it’s worth, I’m generally a supporter of gradually moving over to renewables but primarily for geopolitical reasons (ie. to end the stranglehold that repressive regimes like Saudi Arabia have on the rest of the world). Clearly, reduction of air pollution is a worthwhile goal but not because we’re all going to drown or anything ridiculous. None of that excuses outright lying, fabricating data and abuse of the scientific process.
The fact that so many otherwise extremely intelligent people I know are taken in by it, along with the almost total collusion of all the major mainstream media outlets. No warming for 18 years, CO2 increases, ergo hypothesis falsified… plus, it’s been a lot warmer than this before. It seems pretty simple. Real science is not conducted by “consensus”.
It saddens me that I know people who have wasted time studying for an MSc in “Climate Change Policy” – http://www.bristol.ac.uk/cabot/postgrad/msc-ccsp.html
We’re all on the same side. Please spare a thought for those of us “over here” who are isolated and can’t speak out for fear of abuse, ad hominem, and sadly, losing friends. As much as I feel strongly about this, it’s not worth falling out with half the people I know over. I know I’m not the only one.
Thank you for the breath of sanity.
– a Leftie
Evening… I’m a long-time reader here posting specifically to agree with this point, as it irks me hugely. I am British, a psychology graduate, and left-wing enough that I’d imagine most of you would regard me as a diseased hippy.
Regardless, this is about lying and the wholescale abuse of science, statistics and manipulation of the public. I see that as something that should transcend all political allegiences.
For what it’s worth, I’m generally a supporter of gradually moving over to renewables but primarily for geopolitical reasons (ie. to end the stranglehold that repressive regimes like Saudi Arabia have on the rest of the world). Clearly, reduction of air pollution is a worthwhile goal but not because we’re all going to drown or anything ridiculous. None of that excuses outright lying, fabricating data and abuse of the scientific process.
The fact that so many otherwise extremely intelligent people I know are taken in by it, along with the almost total collusion of all the major mainstream media outlets astonishes me daily. No warming for 18 years, CO2 increases, ergo hypothesis falsified… plus, it’s been a lot warmer than this before. It seems pretty simple. Real science is not conducted by “consensus”.
It saddens me that I know people who have wasted time studying for an MSc in “Climate Change Policy” – http://www.bristol.ac.uk/cabot/postgrad/msc-ccsp.html
We’re all on the same side. Please spare a thought for those of us “over here” who are isolated and can’t speak out for fear of abuse, ad hominem, and sadly, losing friends. As much as I feel strongly about this, it’s not worth falling out with half the people I know over. I know I’m not the only one.
Thank you for the breath of sanity.
– a Leftie
There is a different understanding available.
There are many ideologically motivated climate focused scientists who support a crusading movement trying to give more credibility to the weak based theory of significant AGW from CO2 by fossil fuel. I do not think those supporters pretended that nothing was wrong with the CG scientists’ bad behavior. Instead, it appears to me, that such supporters thought it was a necessary postmodern justified scientific process that creates science to serve a predetermined ‘ideology based good’ for some social end. In other words the supporters look as if they think science should be subjectively based on human ideology instead of objectively based on reality. That is the metaphysical/epistemic approach of giving higher priority to ideas than reality. To me it looks like they (the supporters in the science community) did not ignore or pretended anything wrt CG bad behavior by a handful of scientists; it looks like they were fairly compliant to a certain subjectively based philosophy of science.
John
Doug Allen,
1. Obama is a Marxist… check
2. Obama is a tyrant… check
I constantly tell people: do not listen to his words! Watch his actions. Then you will know.
Usurping the legislative process is what a tyrant does. The excuses being made for giving a blanket free pass to millions of people who are here illegally — they are citizens of other countries who are deliberately violating the law by being here — and who are being invited to become permanently ensconced here, with no fear of, or repeal of our existing laws, is nothing but tyranny. Maybe your definition is different, but that’s mine. Tyranny is lawless rule by decree. That is exactly what we are seeing. Obama disregards and despises our laws.
Barry Obama was raised by Marxists; he attended a Marxist church with a Marxist pastor for more than twenty years, donating tens of thousands of dollars in the process. He is always surrounded by Marxists, who never criticize the path he is on. Rather, they cheer him on. You can have an opinion that he isn’t a Marxist, but my view is different. I look at his actions; I don’t listen to his words because he lies like a child caught with candy he shouldn’t have.
Just like the ‘carbon’ scare, where we ask folks what it would take to finally convince them that the purveyors of that scam are wrong, what would it take for you to see that Obama is a lying Marxist who deliberately violates the Constitution? To me, that is a tyrant. After that, the only thing we should be discussing is how much of a tyrant he is — and how much worse it will get.
November 19.
Stalingrad Day.
The Turning Point.
They did say the Tipping Point would come in 2009. didn’t they?