By Charles Rotter and Anthony Watts
From Charles:
It was ten years ago today that I personally first viewed the instructions to download the Climategate files from the anonymous Russian server. That set in motion a series of events still affecting the outcome of worldwide energy and environmental policy today. The whitewashers at the BBC, The Guardian, and elsewhere have started putting up their officially sanctioned narrative version, amounting to little more than nothing to see hear move along.
I wrote up my contemporaneous version of events here.
Anyone who wants to rebut claims of exoneration can use this Ross McKitrick paper for reference.
A couple of days ago we reposted Judith Curry’s excellent 10 year anniversary write up.
There’s little I can say that Dr. Curry does not touch upon, except for the fact that it is gratifying to see ideas we help disseminate echoing back to us via both traditional and social media.
At the time of the event, Patrick Courrielche did one of the best jobs covering it in the media.
His original three part series can be found here (part 1), here (part 2), and here (part 3)
Patrick also published an interview with Anthony Watts, Steve McIntyre, Steve Mosher, and myself earlier this year on his Redpilled America Podcast. It is excellent and worth a listen.
Signed, Charles Rotter
From Anthony:
Coincidentally, 10 years ago today is not only the day that “Mr. FOI” released the files, it was (and is) WUWT’s birthday. On November 17th, 2006, I wrote my first post.
In November 2009, while Charles was holding the fort at WUWT and examining the emails left by “Mr FOI”, I was in Brussels at a climate skeptic conference being put on by Hans Labohm.
I remember the first message I got from him: “You need to look at this!“. Then reading the emails, wide-eyed, and realizing I was about to go through security at the EU, I wondered about the timing….and told Charles that under no circumstances would we write anything about it or release it until I was back on U.S. soil. Then, after clearing customs at Dulles two days later, I sat down in the airport, and wrote the story, breaking the news on the 19th. I was literally the last person on the plane back to Sacramento, and in those days, WiFi on planes didn’t exist. So I was faced with over six hours of unknowing. Thoughts of “what have I done?” raced through my mind. See the “Red Pilled America” audio interview above for my personal recollections.
Luckily, James Delingpole picked up the story for his column, and it’s entry into the British newspaper The Telegraph started the chain reaction that made the story grow, becoming the “worst scientific scandal of our generation“.
Today, I look back, especially at the latest BBC “whitewash” of the issue, and I shake my head. These people, journos and climate scientists alike – have learned absolutely nothing. This piece, by Tony Thomas in Quadrant, tells the story.
Today, anyone questioning this colossal enterprise is told to “respect the science”. Based on the Climategate emails released in 2009, 2013 and 2015, I’d rather respect the Mafia, who at least don’t claim to be saving the planet. For example, today we’re told that warming of 2degC above pre-industrial level is some sort of a tipping point of doom. Phil Jones, Director of the Climatic Research Unit, emailed on September 6, 2007, that the supposed 2-degree limit was “plucked out of thin air”, a throwaway line in an early 1990s paper from the catastrophists at the Potsdam Climate Impacts Institute.
Mr. Thomas reminded me of this particularly nasty email excerpt about Steve McIntyre (who used his superior statistical skills to refute Mann’s work), Mann wrote, in August 2007,
I have been talking [with] folks in the States about finding an investigative journalist to investigate and expose [him].
But while proponents of “the cause” (most notably the execrable Michael E. Mann in a recent op-ed for Newsweek) pat themselves on the back comforting each other with “there’s nothing to see here”, there are reasons to rejoice about Climategate ten years later.
Climategate brought chaos to Copenhagen aka COP15 – critically wounding the prospects of cap-and-trade legislation in the process. It helped the world dodge the climate mania bullet for 5 years, until the Paris accord in 2015.
Donald Trump became aware of the Climategate story, years before he became President, and I have to think (since he has mentioned it) that it affected his opinion.
Added:
“[Climate change is] a very complex subject. I’m not sure anybody is ever going to really know…. they say they have science on one side but then they also have those horrible emails that were sent between the [Climategate] scientists…. Terrible. Where they got caught, you know, so you see that and you say, what’s this all about. I absolutely have an open mind.”
– President-elect Donald Trump, “Donald Trump’s New York Times Interview: Full Transcript,”
And as we know, as President, he fulfilled his campaign promises and pulled the USA out of the Paris Climate Accord, and gutted the draconian EPA.
For that, I am proud to have had a part, along with the Heartland Institute, whose advice and support gave Trump even more ammunition to pull off the withdrawal from the Paris accord.
While 10 years have made climate science and its supporters even more shrill and less believable than ever, it is a testament to everyone who has been involved in WUWT that we are still running and still the “go to” website on climate. Many others, like Grant Foster’s laughably named “Open Mind” have fallen into near invisibility. Think that’s low? Ken Rice, aka “And then there’s physics” is so far off the radar, he’s not even a blip. Some have simply been delegated to the dustbin of history, such as Joe Romm’s “Climate Progress” labeled the “indispensible blog” for climate alarmism, now defunct. I count these losers lack of influence as a victory too.
But, the best is yet to come. After taking a year in the backseat to recharge and rebuild (thank you Charles) big things are about to happen. While Hotwhopperish wannabees still screech over scraps of influence, WUWT is just getting warmed up.
Soon, I’ll make the announcement, and you’ll see why WUWT is not only “still the one” but still growing. The next ten years will bring even more. Stay tuned, it’s going to be fun, but more importantly, it’s going to be influential.
With sincerest thanks to all who have lent their expertise, support, and readership on this wild ride, I remain, dedicated as ever. I’ll let Josh have the last word. – Anthony Watts
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Climategate was indirectly responsible for bringing me here. I learned about it on a different blog almost as soon as it happened, and WUWT became my go-to for analysis. I was already a sceptic due to my geology background, but the release pretty much cemented that scepticism. I’ve been a regular reader here since, and I learn stuff every time. Not coincidentally, the damage control on Climategate is what caused me to switch from Google to Duckduckgo as my primary search engine. I haven’t trusted them or their motives since.
So, happy birthday to the blog, and keep up the great work. I’m looking forward to see what you have up your sleeve. 🙂
“Today, I look back, especially at the latest BBC “whitewash” of the issue, and I shake my head. These people, journos and climate scientists alike – have learned absolutely nothing. ”
The author is implying that the scientists and journalists want to learn. or are after the truth.
They are not, facts are to be used only if they fit the Marxist narrative.
To say that the BBC have learnt nothing from the Climategate scandal is probably untrue. If you watch BBC News from within UK the first image you have is of the presenter against a background of about 50 or more “journalists ” with PCs scanning world news and with the best braoadband access in England to the Internet .
Given that a shift is 8 hours and BBC News is 24 /7 then there must be a least 150 – 200 journalists each day exposed to all the recent and historical data on the pressing stories of the day , of which climate change is one of the most prominent.
They cannot be unaware of the exposes on your site , Anthony, nor those of P Homewood on “Notalot…” against the untruths of McGrath and other at the BBC , or the papers contradicting or moderating the extremes of AGW at Notrickszone” .
Yet they ignore all that . They must be aware of it , assuming all those journalists are not just indulging in porn sites or emaiiling each other , so why do they ignore the evidence ?
Perhaps someone could explain what motivates them ?
What motivates them is the prospect of having to a Fonzie admitting he was wrong –
They want to keep their jobs.
At heart, this is all about the money.
Back then, the two biggest science blogs were WUWT and Pharyngula, run by PZ Myers. Pharyngula is still around, but greatly diminished in influence. They had a post and thread on Steve McIntyre back then, that really illustrated their sneering attitude towards any type of climate skepticism:
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/11/08/hello-stan-palmer/
They’ve sort of faded off, and are now demonizing people like Steven Pinker, Sam Harris, Michael Shermer, and even Richard Dawkins for not towing the line on their views.
“towing the line”
Where are they towing it to?
Another gem by the Distinguished Professor Michael E. Mann:
https://www.newsweek.com/climate-gate-fake-news-climate-denialism-1471826
Thanks for having us as your audience, Anthony Watts. A lot of things have passed in front of me, with the most memorable part being, NOT debunking the alarmists, but making it clear that they support the bad, intentionally erroneous reports by people like Mann for the sole purpose of gouging money out of the government, and also for exposing the real danger to us all: the politics involved in this that the foolish follow.
Please keep it up.
One thing still keeps me awake at night… What’s in the all.7z readme file?
10 years have made climate science and its supporters even more shrill and less believable than ever
However, the news media allowed at least some skepticism a decade ago. As recently as 2004, Roger Harrabin ran an item on the BBC quoting the WMO as saying temperatures had not risen since 2004. He was stomped on from huge heights for that, fled to the Iberian peninsula (or similar) to get away from it, and neither the BBC nor the WMO have allowed any such a view since. The original BBC story was changed to hide the facts; but I still have a copy somewhere.
Now the main media of the countries I know best — NZ, Australia and the UK — have decided as a policy not to publish any items that in any way question the official line. They will no longer even allow comments or letters to the editor giving contrary views.
The recent bog-standard Australian bushfires (four dead, 400 homes lost) are being flogged as a “catastrophe” and “the worst ever” by the ABC, BBC and NZ media despite them being nowhere near as bad as the 2009 ones (in which 173 people died and 3500 homes were destroyed), and even those were not the worst. Fire is normal in the Australian landscape; its eucalpt trees (which burn ferociously) require fire to propagate. What is not normal is the huge number of homes people have built amidst the eucalpyt forests; and attempts to prevent fires, which make the inevitable ones far worse. But the media won’t allow this and shouts down anyone who tries to point it out.
And of course the One True Cause is the only reason being given for these latest fires, yet that Cause was barely mentioned in the far worse ones a decade ago. That is how extreme the Cause has become to its promoters and believers. It is now the reason for everything that happens.
News items are increasingly hysterical and shrill. Almost one in three news items now seems to claim we’re about to fry, burn or be drowned, and new aspects have come into this. Every vegan and his lentil-patch has climbed aboard, and now the media also bombard us with items about how the farming triumphs that feed the world are destroying the planet and we all need to become vegan, which would of course result in mass-starvation, which is what I think they want.
There is a massive anti-human stance taking over all this. The other day, for the first time, I even saw articles claiming how much “carbon” we breathe out. This kind of thing is reducing humans to the level of the farm animals they despise on the basis of the “carbon” they create.
Roger Harrabin ran an item on the BBC quoting the WMO as saying temperatures had not risen since 2004
My apologies for not proofreading. “not risen since 1998.” Maybe you can change it.
My hearty thanks, too, to Anthony and Charles the Moderator. I look forward to things to come.
I red pilled myself about Global Warming exactly 2 years before CimateGate, as GW was a briefly a hot election issue here in NZ. Researching these things on the internet led me to your site, which I have followed since. (Though the red pilling process was brought about more by an absence of proof of the Warmists’ tenets anywhere on the net.)
Because I was aware of the main issues (both scientific and political), and knew the personalities involved, I found ClimateGate rather interesting, and relatively easy to follow (albeit very long). Also most entertaining. However, the opposite is the case for the proverbial man in the street. I cannot overly stress the importance of writings by the likes of James Delingpole, who are able to reduce a long, complex and multi-faceted thing (the ClimateGate e-mails) to its essentials for the general reader.
“I cannot overly stress the importance of writings by the likes of James Delingpole, who are able to reduce a long, complex and multi-faceted thing (the ClimateGate e-mails) to its essentials for the general reader.”
A pity the Telegraph de-platformed him.
James Delingpole is now at Breitbart News and going as strong as before. Required reading.
I cannot overly stress the importance of writings by the likes of James Delingpole, who are able to reduce a long, complex and multi-faceted thing (the ClimateGate e-mails) to its essentials for the general reader.
Yes, I, too, came to WUWT via James Delingpole’s Telegraph blog. That was some time before he headlined the Climategate emails. I had recently retired and therefore had the time to read, read, read. Being on the Telegraph the same as JD – and for 60 years no less, I then found the wonderful Christopher Booker, whose two books “Scared to Death” and “The Real Global Warming Disaster” I could never praise highly enough. He was an investigative journalist par excellence – and it is a great loss that he is no longer with us.
Thank you Anthony, Charles and your whole team plus all the excellent commenters who, over the years, have kept me well-informed and been the source of so many links to invaluable sources of further information, facts and evidence.
A belated Happy Birthday from me and may you continue to do so brilliantly in the future (for as long as it takes) as you have done in the past. I am another one who waits, with bated breath, to see what your ‘announcement’ is going to reveal.
Thanks WUWT. Indisputably the best site for keeping informed on climate related matters for time poor people like me. Great posts and very informative comments.
Thank you Anthony and Charles. We love you.
Those climate alarmists. They are like the Bourbons, are they not?
Congratulations Anthony and Charles. Happy birthday WUWT. I have had a lot of fun here over the years contributing a few guest blogs and lots of comments; but mainly I have learned a lot, and had some great fun reading the erudite commentary and burning sarcasm of those who post often. Sometimes I have laughed so loudly that my wife worried something was wrong.
I’m looking forward to this upcoming news.
The best analysis of the Climategate emails can be downloaded here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/dn4232/the_climategate_emails_circa_2010_proving_climate/
Phillip Bratby November 17, 2019 at 1:07 pm
The best analysis of the Climategate emails can be downloaded here:
On reddit ?? I’ll just have to take a look see.
Phillip Bratby November 17, 2019 at 1:07 pm
Wow 65,000 words with the key characters in color coded text and comments by the author sentence by sentence. It will take some time to read the whole thing.
Maybe that Reddit page should be in the WUWT blogroll.
I wonder how many children or participants in the Extinction Rebellion activities have even heard of this Climategate Event. Far too inconvenient for teachers to mention in the classrooms.
Thanks WUWT and Antony in particular. You have kept me sane over the years (I think?)
Very much looking forward to the next push
A very happy birthday WUWT, and many many more, until you totally prevail and aren’t needed any more. Which will be in the face of advancing glaciers. Then won’t we rue the lack of effective greenhouse gases!
Only when the lights go out, not before.
Sad but true.
MJE VK5ELL
Any discussion of climategate should probably include a reminder of the allegations raised at the time about the conduct of internet search engine companies.
My memory may be off, but I believe us readers, or at least myself, read the first information about/from the FOIA release on November 19th or 20th.
I think much of the early discussion centered around Gavin’s warnings that people could be sued/prosecuted for reading the emails.
Here on WUWT, Bishop Hill’s, TallBloke’s, Climate Audit and Lucia’s the Blackboard.
It was during the following two weeks that the sheer volume of despicable behavior by alleged scientists was laid bare. Something that no amount of sham investigations can ever erase.
Even though access to that original tranche of emails is difficult to find. It took me a number of searches a few months back to winnow out the desmog and sks and other sites’ falsehoods.
Congratulations to WUWT, Anthony Watts and Charles the Moderate. We are looking forward to future revelations.
Anthony and Charles, we cannot thank you enough for keeping the light of honest science burning at WUWT. That sound you can hear is applause from your British followers thundering across the pond. Thanks also to all the contributors, amateur and professional, who have added to the weight of knowledge and opinion here.
My elder brother Dave introduced me to WUWT many years ago and I have never looked back.
As a former journalist who has worked alongside BBC editors and reporters, I can tell you that part of the problem is that the organisation is institutionally socialist. A journalistic mindset that is bred in the bone. The reason that global warming will not be covered in a balanced way at the BBC is that several years they took the decision – formally – NOT to cover the issue in a balanced way. Breathtaking I know, particularly for a state broadcaster with such huge influence and editorial reach. But the UK’s feeble politicians let them get away with it.
These days it’s hard to find honest science reported in an evenhanded way. But that’s what we get at WUWT. Thanks guys. And please keep up the good work.
I found WUWT via Solar Cycle 24. I remember one night reading a comment: “A miracle has happened.” I read it, hoped it was true, and continued. A miracle had happened.
But it’s going to take more than one miracle. The forces of Leftist darkness are aligned and spreading their poison via compliant media all around the globe.
Pretty often I find myself thanking God (or whoever is in charge) that FOIA did this for us. I wonder where they are right now, hope they are well, and hope that we will someday find out their name.
With gratitude, FOIA.
JM
As explained before over at Judith’s, I came late to the party in 2011 as a result of uncovering major NRC climate consequence dishonesty to Congress while doing three years of research for my first (2012) ebook, Gaia’s Limits. My first posting here and there.
So missed realtime Climategate completely.
But as a more or less active participant since 2011, I look forward to AW’s pending announcement and whatever further contributions can be made to WUWT pro bono.
And Thank You, Mr. Watts, for this site and your dedication to the truth.
I look forward to your announcement.
Thanks for the exoneration link, been wondering. Reminds me of things in departments past.
“They were not falsifying data; they were trying to construct an understandable graph for those who were not experts in the field. The so-called “trick” was nothing more than a statistical method used to bring two or more different kinds of data sets together in a legitimate fashion by a technique that has been reviewed by a broad array of peers in the field.”
“This would have been impossible had his activities in reporting his work been outside of accepted practices in his field.”
It is clear that they were writing and graphing for the (us) peasants. Some of us had old school statistics training.