So, as keenly interested parties around the world examine the CRU e-mail cache, the major media remain mostly silent. Well, except the BBC reported that the University of East Anglia CRU has acknowledged the hack (or more likely leak). And the New York Times environment section has taken notice. Those are safe ways to stick your toes in the water.
Here is a good summary of the emails from Bishop Hill in the UK. Is the lack of increase in global temps since 1998 the reason Global Warming somehow morphed into Climate Change? And if it’s just change, why are we supposed to care?
Handy email search engine is posted here.
By now Climate Change has become integral to the enviros’ agenda, see, e.g., the George Ochenski column and Dave Wanzenried story in this week’s Independent. Ochenski makes a reasonable environmental argument against development of the Otter Creek coal deposits, but resorts to this as his coup de grâce.
It’s a mystery, when the effects of global warming are increasingly impacting nations and ecosystems across the planet, how the coal market could rebound. In fact, in the last several years, as forests die, seas warm, and myriad species face disruption if not extinction, many proposed coal-fired power plants across the nation and world have been cancelled…
Meanwhile my state senator sticks to his guns.
State Sen. Dave Wanzenried estimates that about half of his legislative colleagues still have a tough time stomaching the idea that humans cause climate change. That makes the veteran Missoula legislator’s conservation-minded stance unpopular at times in Helena.
“I’ve taken a lot of heat,” says Wanzenried. “I’ve taken a lot of criticism.”.
So, what would they do without the eschatology of anthropogenic global warming - the threat of hellfire and damnation if we do not mend our ways? How can they save the planet if they can’t frighten voters and voters’ children about the hot, barren wasteland of the future? They may have to return to more mundane arguments for clean air, clean water and soil integrity as ends in themselves.
Oh, then there is UM’s new Climate Change Program. We need an ever-increasing supply of new Climate Change soldiers as legislators, lobbyists, government apparatchiks - and journalists! Are we cutting-edge here or what? Au contraire…Missoulapolis postulates the Touch America* Rule: By the time Montana is all-in, it’s all over.
Possible motivations for fraud? Follow the money. For example, frequent CRU emailer Phil Jones’ research grants (£13.7 million). Quite the heist.
Query: How will this affect cap-and-tax? Will John McCain and his fellow wobblies get the word in time?
Last, history in the making…the original link.
*Got it! I knew there had to be a better name for the rule.
on Nov 21st, 2009 at 4:49 pm
The first warning sign that a scientific theory might be incorrect or even completely bogus is vehemence. When the proponents of the new theory vehemently oppose contrary evidence, rather than welcome it in the true tradition of scientific debate, you know something is fishy.
The next warning sign is when a has-been public figure, such as an ex-vice president, who has never made any money in his life, suddenly becomes obscenely rich as the self-proclaimed prophet of the new theory and whips up the uneducated masses to a fever pitch. This is also the stage at which the know-it-all lefty bloggers pile in, all of whom have been searching for some sort of secular apocalypse to replace their Christian eschatology.
The final warning sign that the new theory is not merely wrong but is in fact a fraud occurs when laws are passed forcing everyone to accept it.
on Nov 21st, 2009 at 5:42 pm
Good post Carol.
For the record, from the heavily read Saturday edition of the Washington Post …
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/20/AR2009112004093_pf.html
and we hear from one of main players in all this, a Freedom of Information champion if there ever was one, Steve McIntyre …
http://camirror.wordpress.com/2009/11/21/test/
As those who have tried to follow this at internet speed know, his site climateaudit.org has been put on it’s knees over the last couple of days. (They had to use a mirror site)
on Nov 21st, 2009 at 5:50 pm
One more thing, if this is indeed the work of a whistle-blower, instead of a “hacker”, will the MSM award him with praise and addoration as they do with defense department officials (for example) back in the Bush daze?
on Nov 23rd, 2009 at 5:36 pm
Double plus good!
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/17102
‘Jones claims the files were obtained illegally as if that absolves the content. It doesn’t and it is enough to destroy all their careers. Jones gave a foretaste of his behavior in 2005. Warwick Hughes asked for the data and method he used for his claim of a 0.6°C temperature rise since the end of the nineteenth century. Jones responded, “We have 25 years or so invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?” He has stonewalled ever since. The main reason was because it was used as a key argument in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Reports to convince the world humans caused rapid warming in the 20th century. The emails obtained are a frightening record of arrogance, and deception far beyond his 2005 effort.’