The high-tech community has a vested interest in this story - since it was one of them that released the emails.
Has ‘Climategate’ forced businesses to reconsider the validity of the theory of anthropogenic, or human-caused, global warming?
Less than a week ago, hackers broke into the database of the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in Norwich, U.K. and published 1079 emails and 72 documents on the Internet, some authored by prominent American and British climate researchers.
That would normally just be a security story if not for what was written in some of the e-mails, which suggest that some of the scientists at the center colluded to exaggerate and manipulate global warming data to support the notion that human activity is causing, at least in part, global warming and climate change. Read more.
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Climategate: Science Is Dying
Surely there must have been serious men and women in the hard sciences who at some point worried that their colleagues in the global warming movement were putting at risk the credibility of everyone in science. The nature of that risk has been twofold: First, that the claims of the climate scientists might buckle beneath the weight of their breathtaking complexity. Second, that the crudeness of modern politics, once in motion, would trample the traditions and culture of science to achieve its own policy goals. With the scandal at the East Anglia Climate Research Unit, both have happened at once.
I don't think most scientists appreciate what has hit them. This isn't only about the credibility of global warming. For years, global warming and its advocates have been the public face of hard science. Most people could not name three other subjects they would associate with the work of serious scientists. This was it. The public was told repeatedly that something called "the scientific community" had affirmed the science beneath this inquiry. A Nobel Prize was bestowed (on a politician).
Global warming enlisted the collective reputation of science. Because "science" said so, all the world was about to undertake a vast reordering of human behavior at almost unimaginable financial cost. Not every day does the work of scientists lead to galactic events simply called Kyoto or Copenhagen. At least not since the Manhattan Project. Read more.
I don't think most scientists appreciate what has hit them. This isn't only about the credibility of global warming. For years, global warming and its advocates have been the public face of hard science. Most people could not name three other subjects they would associate with the work of serious scientists. This was it. The public was told repeatedly that something called "the scientific community" had affirmed the science beneath this inquiry. A Nobel Prize was bestowed (on a politician).
Global warming enlisted the collective reputation of science. Because "science" said so, all the world was about to undertake a vast reordering of human behavior at almost unimaginable financial cost. Not every day does the work of scientists lead to galactic events simply called Kyoto or Copenhagen. At least not since the Manhattan Project. Read more.
Climategate: Follow the Money
Last year, ExxonMobil donated $7 million to a grab-bag of public policy institutes, including the Aspen Institute, the Asia Society and Transparency International. It also gave a combined $125,000 to the Heritage Institute and the National Center for Policy Analysis, two conservative think tanks that have offered dissenting views on what until recently was called—without irony—the climate change "consensus."
To read some of the press accounts of these gifts—amounting to about 0.0027% of Exxon's 2008 profits of $45 billion—you might think you'd hit upon the scandal of the age. But thanks to what now goes by the name of climategate, it turns out the real scandal lies elsewhere.
Climategate, as readers of these pages know, concerns some of the world's leading climate scientists working in tandem to block freedom of information requests, blackball dissenting scientists, manipulate the peer-review process, and obscure, destroy or massage inconvenient temperature data—facts that were laid bare by last week's disclosure of thousands of emails from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit, or CRU. Read more.
To read some of the press accounts of these gifts—amounting to about 0.0027% of Exxon's 2008 profits of $45 billion—you might think you'd hit upon the scandal of the age. But thanks to what now goes by the name of climategate, it turns out the real scandal lies elsewhere.
Climategate, as readers of these pages know, concerns some of the world's leading climate scientists working in tandem to block freedom of information requests, blackball dissenting scientists, manipulate the peer-review process, and obscure, destroy or massage inconvenient temperature data—facts that were laid bare by last week's disclosure of thousands of emails from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit, or CRU. Read more.
Global warming: the truth
Climate change has mutated from a debate into a catechism. With so much at stake, says Fraser Nelson, can we afford to dispense with rational argument?
Last month, 1,000 emails leaked from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit. The institution is more important than it sounds: for decades, it has been at the centre of the global warming debate, keeping in touch with the close-knit group of scientists who guard the various projections about global warming. Or, as the emails showed, the lack thereof. ‘The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t,’ said one scientist. Another said: ‘We can have a proper result — but only by including a load of garbage.’
As the world leaders gather in Copenhagen to negotiate a successor to the Kyoto treaty it is unlikely the subject of these emails will be raised. This is not a forum for debate, but for the preaching of gospel. Already the head of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is hinting that the ‘fossil fuel lobby’ is responsible for the leaks — as if this made them any less damaging. They have hardly disproven global warming, but have exposed the way some scientists and academics see themselves on a crusade against the wicked deniers. Hysteria has taken the place of rational debate. Read more.
Last month, 1,000 emails leaked from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit. The institution is more important than it sounds: for decades, it has been at the centre of the global warming debate, keeping in touch with the close-knit group of scientists who guard the various projections about global warming. Or, as the emails showed, the lack thereof. ‘The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t,’ said one scientist. Another said: ‘We can have a proper result — but only by including a load of garbage.’
As the world leaders gather in Copenhagen to negotiate a successor to the Kyoto treaty it is unlikely the subject of these emails will be raised. This is not a forum for debate, but for the preaching of gospel. Already the head of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is hinting that the ‘fossil fuel lobby’ is responsible for the leaks — as if this made them any less damaging. They have hardly disproven global warming, but have exposed the way some scientists and academics see themselves on a crusade against the wicked deniers. Hysteria has taken the place of rational debate. Read more.
Global Warming Conspirators Feel the Heat
As the scandal over the Climatic Research Unit's e-mails continues to unfold, Allen Barton interviews Marlo Lewis of the Competitive Enterprise Institute about the latest developments, including reactions from the EPA. ("PJTV Daily") Watch video here.
Liar, Liar: The World's Not on Fire
Joe Hicks delves into memories of his leftist past to explain the psyche of global warming's true believers. ("The Hicks File") Watch the video here.
The Meaning of Motley CRU
It’s time for climate science to clean house. Whatever investigations come of Climategate, they should not stop with the United Kingdom.
Climate skeptics are having a field day in the blogosphere, celebrating the firestorm of controversy that has surrounded the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU). Until recently, the CRU was considered one of the world’s leading climate research centers, and it has exerted massive influence on the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The IPCC, in turn, has positioned itself as the ultimate authority on all things climate, even claiming a Nobel Prize (shared with Al Gore) for its work on global climate change.
If you’ve been living without an Internet connection, here’s a quick overview of l’affaire Climategate. On November 17, 2009, someone posted to the Internet a vast archive of materials that had been hacked or leaked from the CRU. When unpacked, the materials took up about 62 MB and consisted of more than 1,000 emails from prominent members of the CRU, and more than 3,000 documents that included everything from raw data to annotated computer code to lengthy reports documenting the frightfully disorganized state of the CRU’s vitally important data files. While the vast trove of information has not (and probably can not) be verified as 100 percent correct, none of the people cited has denied that the documents are legitimate, and some outside entities who were engaged in some of the email exchanges have confirmed that they are genuine. Read more.
Climate skeptics are having a field day in the blogosphere, celebrating the firestorm of controversy that has surrounded the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU). Until recently, the CRU was considered one of the world’s leading climate research centers, and it has exerted massive influence on the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The IPCC, in turn, has positioned itself as the ultimate authority on all things climate, even claiming a Nobel Prize (shared with Al Gore) for its work on global climate change.
If you’ve been living without an Internet connection, here’s a quick overview of l’affaire Climategate. On November 17, 2009, someone posted to the Internet a vast archive of materials that had been hacked or leaked from the CRU. When unpacked, the materials took up about 62 MB and consisted of more than 1,000 emails from prominent members of the CRU, and more than 3,000 documents that included everything from raw data to annotated computer code to lengthy reports documenting the frightfully disorganized state of the CRU’s vitally important data files. While the vast trove of information has not (and probably can not) be verified as 100 percent correct, none of the people cited has denied that the documents are legitimate, and some outside entities who were engaged in some of the email exchanges have confirmed that they are genuine. Read more.
Former NASA climate scientist pleads guilty to contract fraud
A former top climate scientist who had become of one the scientific world's most cited authorities on the human effect on Earth's atmosphere was sentenced to probation Tuesday after pleading guilty to steering lucrative no-bid contracts to his wife's company.
In addition to a year's probation, former NASA manager Mark Schoeberl, 60, of Silver Spring, was also fined $10,000 and ordered to put in 50 hours of community service. He admitted in the late summer that he had hid some $50,000 in NASA contracts for a company called Animated Earth, which was run by Schoeberl's wife, Barbara. Prosecutors alleged that Schoeberl tried to help his wife's firm for years. When his colleagues balked at giving no-bid contracts to his wife's firm, Schoeberl pressured them to steer money to his wife through indirect means.
Schoeberl was the chief scientist of the Goddard Space Flight Center's Earth Sciences Division and the head of the Aura Project, a NASA mission to study the Earth's ozone layer, air quality and climate. He has written extensively about the depletion of the ozone level, and the influence of humans on global climate change. Read more.
In addition to a year's probation, former NASA manager Mark Schoeberl, 60, of Silver Spring, was also fined $10,000 and ordered to put in 50 hours of community service. He admitted in the late summer that he had hid some $50,000 in NASA contracts for a company called Animated Earth, which was run by Schoeberl's wife, Barbara. Prosecutors alleged that Schoeberl tried to help his wife's firm for years. When his colleagues balked at giving no-bid contracts to his wife's firm, Schoeberl pressured them to steer money to his wife through indirect means.
Schoeberl was the chief scientist of the Goddard Space Flight Center's Earth Sciences Division and the head of the Aura Project, a NASA mission to study the Earth's ozone layer, air quality and climate. He has written extensively about the depletion of the ozone level, and the influence of humans on global climate change. Read more.
Do Smoking Guns Cause Global Warming, Too?
As we now know (and by "we" I mean "everyone with access to the Internet"), the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) has just been caught ferociously manipulating the data about the Earth's temperature.
Recently leaked e-mails from the "scientists" at CRU show that, when talking among themselves, they forthrightly admit to using a "trick" to "hide the decline" in the Earth's temperature since 1960 -- as one e-mail says. Still another describes their manipulation of the data thus: "[W]e can have a proper result, but only by including a load of garbage!"
Am I just crazy from the heat or were they trying to deceive us? Read more.
Recently leaked e-mails from the "scientists" at CRU show that, when talking among themselves, they forthrightly admit to using a "trick" to "hide the decline" in the Earth's temperature since 1960 -- as one e-mail says. Still another describes their manipulation of the data thus: "[W]e can have a proper result, but only by including a load of garbage!"
Am I just crazy from the heat or were they trying to deceive us? Read more.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Telegraph’s Booker on the “climategate” scandal
Excerpts from the Telegraph:
A week after my colleague James Delingpole, on his Telegraph blog, coined the term “Climategate” (Note: Delingpole reports via email he got it from WUWT, commenter Bulldust coined the phrase at 3:52PM PST Nov 19th – Anthony) to describe the scandal revealed by the leaked emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, Google was showing that the word now appears across the internet more than nine million times. But in all these acres of electronic coverage, one hugely relevant point about these thousands of documents has largely been missed.
The reason why even the Guardian’s George Monbiot has expressed total shock and dismay at the picture revealed by the documents is that their authors are not just any old bunch of academics. Their importance cannot be overestimated, What we are looking at here is the small group of scientists who have for years been more influential in driving the worldwide alarm over global warming than any others, not least through the role they play at the heart of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Professor Philip Jones, the CRU’s director, is in charge of the two key sets of data used by the IPCC to draw up its reports. Through its link to the Hadley Centre, part of the UK Met Office, which selects most of the IPCC’s key scientific contributors, his global temperature record is the most important of the four sets of temperature data on which the IPCC and governments rely – not least for their predictions that the world will warm to catastrophic levels unless trillions of dollars are spent to avert it. Read more.
Data adjustments in the UK Science Museum “Prove It!” poll on climate
Data adjustments in the UK Science Museum “Prove It!” poll on climate
Seems everywhere you look these days, data adjustments are being made. Shortly after WUWT first made the UK Science Museum Prove It! poll on climate change known here, Ric Werme and others have setup tracking systems to log the online voting data reported on the poll’s website, a poll that was said by its designers to be important enough to present to UK MP’s and representatives headed for Copenhagen.
Ric Werme sums it all up below. The question to the Science Museum is: What’s the spike all about? Another question is: why do the ending numbers posted on your website for the public differ so much from what was tracked and logged automatically from your own website? An explanation is required. – Anthony
By Ric Werme from his website here:
Science Museum In/Out Climate Counter Raw Data
The raw data is available graphically, thank you David, at http://proveit.isgreat.org/
This web page tracked the in and and out counts logged in yet-another-unscientific-poll, this one was created by the Science Museum. (It’s in London, they expect you to know that.) (The poll was whether to be counted in or out of helping to get the British Government to negotiate “a strong, effective, fair deal at Copenhagen.”)
Read more.
Seems everywhere you look these days, data adjustments are being made. Shortly after WUWT first made the UK Science Museum Prove It! poll on climate change known here, Ric Werme and others have setup tracking systems to log the online voting data reported on the poll’s website, a poll that was said by its designers to be important enough to present to UK MP’s and representatives headed for Copenhagen.
Ric Werme sums it all up below. The question to the Science Museum is: What’s the spike all about? Another question is: why do the ending numbers posted on your website for the public differ so much from what was tracked and logged automatically from your own website? An explanation is required. – Anthony
By Ric Werme from his website here:
Science Museum In/Out Climate Counter Raw Data
This web page tracked the in and and out counts logged in yet-another-unscientific-poll, this one was created by the Science Museum. (It’s in London, they expect you to know that.) (The poll was whether to be counted in or out of helping to get the British Government to negotiate “a strong, effective, fair deal at Copenhagen.”)
Read more.
Carlin: Climategate Will Now Hit the EPA
Alan Carlin — the EPA scientist whose skeptical report was hushed — says the EPA broke tradition and used external work (from the CRU/IPCC) for its proposals.
The emails and computer files from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) in Great Britain may prove to be of some importance to the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) current attempts to control greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.
This is because the EPA — perhaps at the urging of others in the Obama administration — has proposed to regulate GHG emissions on the basis of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports … and reports primarily based on the IPCC reports.
This is highly unusual for the EPA. I cannot think of any instance where the EPA depended so heavily on non-EPA synthesis reports to justify proposed regulatory action in their almost 39 years of existence.
As a result of this EPA decision, the EPA’s fortunes in regard to regulating GHGs are directly tied to the fate of the IPCC reports. Read more.
The emails and computer files from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) in Great Britain may prove to be of some importance to the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) current attempts to control greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.
This is because the EPA — perhaps at the urging of others in the Obama administration — has proposed to regulate GHG emissions on the basis of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports … and reports primarily based on the IPCC reports.
This is highly unusual for the EPA. I cannot think of any instance where the EPA depended so heavily on non-EPA synthesis reports to justify proposed regulatory action in their almost 39 years of existence.
As a result of this EPA decision, the EPA’s fortunes in regard to regulating GHGs are directly tied to the fate of the IPCC reports. Read more.
Climategate Outrage Explodes As Carbon Tax Agenda Collapses
Outrage surrounding the climategate scandal is increasing as desperate apologists for the crooks caught manipulating data to “hide the decline” in global warming attempt to distance themselves from the perpetrators, burning a few scientists to save the larger carbon tax gravy train in a cynical damage limitation exercise.
The potential for the climategate scandal to derail the gargantuan agenda to exploit fraudulent fearmongering about global warming in order to ram through a new carbon tax is growing after the ringleader of the scam, Phil Jones, the head of the Climactic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, temporarily stepped down pending an investigation.
In addition, Michael Mann, a professor in the meteorology department at Penn State University, whose emails were included in the climategate leak, is also the subject of an investigation into his work.
The UK Met office was also forced to go on the offensive and issue a statement which highlighted the 2007 IPCC report as evidence that their data was solid, despite the fact that the very scientists involved in the climategate scandal engaged in intimidation tactics and academic witch hunts to ensure data which they politically disagreed with was blocked from appearing in the IPCC report, as well as manipulating data that appeared in the IPCC report to “hide the decline” in global warming
Read more.
Global Warming Revolt - A carbon tax faces new opposition.
The global revolt keeps building against carbon cap and trade, not that you'd know it from the U.S. media. First the U.S. Senate postpones its bill, next countries meeting in Copenhagen this month can't agree on emissions cuts, then emails among climate scientists reveal rigged peer-review, and now comes a political uprising in Australia that may doom a carbon tax down under.
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has made a sweeping cap-and-trade bill the centerpiece of his legislative agenda, and for two years his climate alarmism has gone almost unchallenged. The conservative Liberal Party, which embraced a cap-and-tax scheme before losing the 2007 election, first said it would oppose any legislation that hurt the economy. Read more.
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has made a sweeping cap-and-trade bill the centerpiece of his legislative agenda, and for two years his climate alarmism has gone almost unchallenged. The conservative Liberal Party, which embraced a cap-and-tax scheme before losing the 2007 election, first said it would oppose any legislation that hurt the economy. Read more.
Victory!! Australia's Global Warming Bill Defeated
This is a huge victory for reasonable people everywhere - It can be done, on to Coppenhagen!
SYDNEY (AP) -- Australia's Parliament defeated legislation to set up a greenhouse gas emissions trading system on Wednesday, throwing a central plank of the government's plans to combat global warming into disarray.
The Senate, where Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's government does not hold a majority, rejected his administration's proposal for Australia to become one of the first countries to install a so-called cap-and-trade system to slash the amount of heat-trapping pollution that industries pump into the air. Read more.
SYDNEY (AP) -- Australia's Parliament defeated legislation to set up a greenhouse gas emissions trading system on Wednesday, throwing a central plank of the government's plans to combat global warming into disarray.
The Senate, where Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's government does not hold a majority, rejected his administration's proposal for Australia to become one of the first countries to install a so-called cap-and-trade system to slash the amount of heat-trapping pollution that industries pump into the air. Read more.
Climatologist Leaves Post in Inquiry Over E-Mail Leaks
Relentless pressure on these corrupt warmists is bearing fruit.
The head of the British research unit at the center of a controversy over the disclosure of thousands of e-mail messages among climate-change scientists has stepped down pending the outcome of an investigation.
Phil Jones, the director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in England, said that he would leave his post while the university conducted a review of the release of the e-mail messages. The university has called the release and publication of the messages a “criminal breach” of the school’s computer systems.
The e-mail exchanges among several prominent American and British climate-change scientists appear to reveal efforts to keep the work of skeptical scientists out of major journals and the possible hoarding and manipulation of data to overstate the case for human-caused climate change. Read more.
The head of the British research unit at the center of a controversy over the disclosure of thousands of e-mail messages among climate-change scientists has stepped down pending the outcome of an investigation.
Phil Jones, the director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in England, said that he would leave his post while the university conducted a review of the release of the e-mail messages. The university has called the release and publication of the messages a “criminal breach” of the school’s computer systems.
The e-mail exchanges among several prominent American and British climate-change scientists appear to reveal efforts to keep the work of skeptical scientists out of major journals and the possible hoarding and manipulation of data to overstate the case for human-caused climate change. Read more.
CLIMATEGATE: Follow the Money, Find the Power, Expose the Lies
Find out who's been fudging the numbers and who's full of hot air. Comment and watch here
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Still Hiding the Decline
Even in their Nov 24, 2009 statement, the University of East Anglia failed to come clean about the amount of decline that was hidden. The graphic in their statement continued to “hide the decline” in the Briffa reconstruction by deleting adverse results in the last part of the 20th century. This is what Gavin Schmidt characterizes as a “good thing to do”.
First here is the Nov 2009 diagram offered up by UEA:
Figure 1. Resized UEA version of Nov 2009, supposedly “showing the decline”. Original here ,
Here’s what UEA appears to have done in the above diagram. While they’ve used the actual Briffa reconstruction after 1960 in making their smooth, even now, they deleted values after 1960 so that the full measure of the decline of the Briffa reconstruction is hidden. Deleted values are shown in magenta. Source code is in first comment. Read more.
First here is the Nov 2009 diagram offered up by UEA:
Here’s what UEA appears to have done in the above diagram. While they’ve used the actual Briffa reconstruction after 1960 in making their smooth, even now, they deleted values after 1960 so that the full measure of the decline of the Briffa reconstruction is hidden. Deleted values are shown in magenta. Source code is in first comment. Read more.
Liberal leader in Australia forced out over ETS
This is a front line battle over cap & trade and its going down to the wire.
While Mr Abbott has pledged to deliver an anti-ETS policy as a condition of his leadership, up to eight Liberal MPs are threatening to cross the floor and vote with Labor.
Kevin Rudd only needs seven Liberal MPs to vote for an ETS in the Senate and it will become law.
Read more.
While Mr Abbott has pledged to deliver an anti-ETS policy as a condition of his leadership, up to eight Liberal MPs are threatening to cross the floor and vote with Labor.
Kevin Rudd only needs seven Liberal MPs to vote for an ETS in the Senate and it will become law.
Read more.
Warmists Give Climategate the Cold Shoulder
What do Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, and the Center for American Progress have to say about the growing Climategate scandal? Watch and comment here.
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