This gets better and better. Check out this must-read at Pajamas Media:
This may seem obscure, but the science involved is being used to justify the diversion of literally trillions of dollars of the world’s wealth in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by phasing out fossil fuels. The CRU is the Pentagon of global warming science, and these documents are its Pentagon Papers…
So what does this all mean? It does not mean that there is no warming trend or that mankind has not been responsible for at least some of the warming. To claim that as result of these documents is clearly a step too far. However, it is clear that at least one branch of climate science — paleoclimatology — has become hopelessly politicized to the point of engaging in unethical and possibly illegal behavior.
It’s got everything: organized coverup, manipulation of data, subversion of the peer review process - hell, there wasn’t any real peer review - and willful violation of the UK’s FOI law. And wait, that’s not all - you also have the hopelessly hosed climate modeling code.
…what will really bring down this house of cards is when it’s revealed how awful and completely unreliable the computer code is. It’s no surprise that those who created the “models” didn’t want them released.
And the CRU was no small-beer lab. Declan McCullagh at CBS:
…In global warming circles, the CRU wields outsize influence: it claims the world’s largest temperature data set, and its work and mathematical models were incorporated into the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2007 report. That report, in turn, is what the Environmental Protection Agency acknowledged it “relies on most heavily” when concluding that carbon dioxide emissions endanger public health and should be regulated.
It was no real surprise to the skeptics, who probably didn’t expect their suspicions to be confirmed so completely. Writes Ed Morrissey:
Most critics of AGW advocacy have never considered it science in the first place. This just shows that we were right; it’s a religious belief, and its high priests apparently have few scruples about rigging the models and the data to show what they want, rather than pursue science and the scientific method…
Meanwhile, look who’s being wooed by the AGW lobby:
Veterans groups have become a key weapon for environmentalists in their bid to win over swing votes on California Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer’s climate change bill.
But selling the military community on the importance of climate change was not automatic. In fact, five years ago, the topics of climate change and energy efficiency were considered about as relevant to national security as sunspots.
So, in order to sell cap-and-trade (Boxer’s bill), you have to figure out who is being the most stubborn and forge coalitions to hit ‘em where they live. For example, defense mavens Sen. Lindsey Graham and former Sen. John Warner, among others, have been enlisted by the Pew Environment Group to do some targeted outreach.
The group is one of many actively lobbying on the climate bill in the Senate, targeting lawmakers from Arkansas, Montana, Pennsylvania and Florida — anyone they think needs persuading to vote in favor of Boxer’s bill…
“We seem to be standing by and, frankly, asking for perfectness in science,” Gen. Gordon Sullivan, the former Army chief of staff, said in the report. “But the trend line is very clear.” In climate change, he said, “we have a catastrophic event that appears to be inevitable.”
In fact, Sen. Warner and retired Adm. John B. Nathman spoke at UM’s Urey Lecture Hall just last month. Using the gravity of national security, the Pew speakers hope to get skeptical laymen on board, or at least shame them into silence.
The good news: Sen. Inhofe (R-Okla.) is on the case.
on Nov 25th, 2009 at 1:47 am
I’ve been saying that global warming is BS ever since that asinine theory emerged two decades ago. Global warming is the biggest scientific fraud since the Piltdown Man.
on Nov 25th, 2009 at 6:54 am
Mike, one problem we’re having in Montana is that is has been warmer and drier here. I can’t remember the last time we went a month without going above zero in a couple decades. So we have the anecdotal anxieties piling up, even when snowpacks are normal. How has Texas been? I remember some brutally hot summers there circa 1980.
More snow, please!
on Nov 25th, 2009 at 11:59 am
Looks like there are some programmer notes that point to “cooking the books.” http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/25/climategate-hide-the-decline-codified/#more-13197
on Nov 25th, 2009 at 1:03 pm
Surely there is more here than meets the eye. Surely you will wait to judge. Surely you wouldn’t jump on this without waiting for more fallout, and some context for the emails that were, apparently, if those who wrote them are to be beleived, cherry-picked.
Surely you’re more fair than that.
I am one who would love to see atmospheric deterioration turn out to have been a false alarm. I would love to know that the beetles will die, the glaciers return, the poles harden up again. I want that so much that I could be easily swayed by evidence supplied by Exxon or stolen emails that purport to tell a story of a massive swindle involving scientists across generations and continents, all of them dishonest communists who practice witchcraft, want to destroy capitalism and become lesbians.
I would fall for all of that stuff, so great is my desire, so powerful the urge to deny. I would fall for all of that.
But in the end, I only have to look around and see that things are changing. Maybe we will be better off with corn from the Northern Territories. Maybe Alaskan wine will turn out to be good. Maybe it will not hurt us as bad as some think it will.
That’s one way to look at it without denying.
on Nov 25th, 2009 at 1:05 pm
Yes I saw that. Hilarious, though it really needs confirming that it wasn’t doctored by the “hacker.”
It seems like this is not a hack but more of a leak by whoever was gathered info for the FOI request in 2005.
on Nov 25th, 2009 at 1:09 pm
Oops, did we cross-comment, Mark?
So, we notice things are changing - so we need cap and trade?
One implies the other. Right…
on Nov 25th, 2009 at 1:20 pm
Cap and trade is a market-based solution, and if Matt Taibbi is right, another field to be tilled by Goldman Sachs. Just because I say A doesn’t mean I want B.
Frankly, nothing is going to change. Copenhagen has been so dumbed down that Obama is safe to go there and pontificate without committing to anything threatening.
I am at a point where I am merely looking for bright spots. Even Al Gore is at that point - I don’t have the book, but I listened to him talk on CSPAN, and he is all about the positive things that are going on.
Colorado is decimated by pine beetles. If it were isolated, if it did not fit into the bigger picture, it would just be unfortunate. It hurts to see forests destroyed like that. But for so long as people are looking for reasons to deny, there will be no change.
on Nov 25th, 2009 at 1:38 pm
I suspect that it was our mismanagement of forests that led to the pine beetle problem. Or, forest management’s natural unwillingness to let it burn as it would have 200 years ago.
Plus I don’t deny there has been warming. But the “science” behind this has just suffered a severe blow. It was a sham. We can’t just still go along with these people on faith, because it was hot three summers ago and skiing has sucked here for 10 years. I mean that’s what it seems to come down to when the sciencey part is gone - people’s anecdotal observations. Not good enough
on Nov 25th, 2009 at 2:02 pm
They said that it was forest mismanagement that was causing the fires too. Turns out that if it rains, they don’t burn. And,if we had colder weather, we wouldn’t have spreading beetle infestations. Forest management is an oxymoron - it’s what loggers want us to believe. If you are a hammer, every solution looks like a nail?
Honestly, how does one deal with the sort of reasoning you’re putting up here? The very idea that thousands of scientists doing serious peer-reviewed work is undone by a few emails is ludicrous, but it has won the day with you. If you eliminate the clutter, if you stick with hard science and forget about the quacks, if you stay with peer reviewed studies, you will find that the vast majority of climate scientists are fearful of the consequences of atmospheric deterioration, and that their warnings are unheeded because of this innate desire we have to believe those things that are easier to believe. Climate change denial is like a siren song … it is so much easier than to face problems.
Of course, at the root of it is the ethos of growth, the idea that we can continue to do what we are doing because it is … God’s will? Capitalism is infallible?
Can’t argue with that.
on Nov 25th, 2009 at 2:11 pm
“you will find that the vast majority of climate scientists are fearful of the consequences of atmospheric deterioration, ”
There you go… We’ve been hearing that one a lot haven’t we - it’s settled science! Are you sure? I’m not. They’re going to have to do a better job than just hand-waving, cooked data and intimidation now. I don’t think you’re even looking at this stuff Mark. Too much hassle, not your thing, whatever.
Analysis by the scientist who made the 2005 FOI request:
http://omniclimate.wordpress.com/2009/11/24/willis-vs-the-cru-a-history-of-foi-evasion/
on Nov 25th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
I don’t recall using the phrase “settled science”. There is general agreement, and as we all know, the general agreement of one generation is often undone by the next.
Your article is one of many that nip at the heels, but has Mr. Eschenbach ever done any peer-reviewed research on the subject?
Didn’t think so.
And that’s the problem - the whole denial industry is fueled by skeptics whose only job is to tear down, and they don’t do a very good job of it, but like Sarah Palin, don’t have to put up much substance to earn the plaudits of the right wing.
Show me peer-reviewed science that gives evidence that the mainstream scientific community is wrong. I’m all ears. I want to feel good about things too!
on Nov 25th, 2009 at 4:06 pm
Mark: “Show me peer-reviewed science that gives evidence that the mainstream scientific community is wrong. I’m all ears. I want to feel good about things too!”
Here are 450 such papers: http://www.populartechnology.net/2009/10/peer-reviewed-papers-supporting.html
on Nov 25th, 2009 at 4:25 pm
Sorry Mark, didn’t mean to impute general sentiments to you specifically the way you do to me.
on Nov 25th, 2009 at 4:42 pm
I guess Mark took time out to communicate with the Borg Collective for further instructions.
on Nov 25th, 2009 at 5:10 pm
Interesting…from Daily Tech,
“Of 528 total papers on climate change, only 38 (7%) gave an explicit endorsement of the consensus. If one considers “implicit” endorsement (accepting the consensus without explicit statement), the figure rises to 45%. However, while only 32 papers (6%) reject the consensus outright, the largest category (48%) are neutral papers, refusing to either accept or reject the hypothesis. This is no “consensus.”
“The figures are even more shocking when one remembers the watered-down definition of consensus here. Not only does it not require supporting that man is the “primary” cause of warming, but it doesn’t require any belief or support for “catastrophic” global warming. In fact of all papers published in this period (2004 to February 2007), only a single one makes any reference to climate change leading to catastrophic results.”
These changing viewpoints represent the advances in climate science over the past decade. While today we are even more certain the earth is warming, we are less certain about the root causes. More importantly, research has shown us that — whatever the cause may be — the amount of warming is unlikely to cause any great calamity for mankind or the planet itself.
on Nov 25th, 2009 at 6:02 pm
Craig - your 450 list needs a little peer reviewing - no less than 82 of them are from a non-peer-reviewed journal. It’s just another right wing publicity stunt.
http://greenfyre.wordpress.com/2009/11/15/450-more-lies-from-the-climate-change-deniers/
And mind you, 82 is just at first blush. I presume that the rest will be winnowed down too.
Carol - you truck with these people, you own them. Don’t ever tell me you have not imputed left wing sentiments to me. Some I own, others not. If you are not a fan of Palin, I apologize, and await your first brave foray into a post critical of any right wing sentiment.
Dana - please link. Your cited words could be very misleading if taken out of context.
on Nov 25th, 2009 at 7:25 pm
Mark, I have bucked the right many times, only you were either not hip enough to catch it or just not interested. You see what you want to see, i.e., what fits your stereotype of a conservative blogger, and filter out what does not fit.
In fact, I suspect you do not even read my posts. I understand; you’re a busy guy.
on Nov 25th, 2009 at 9:03 pm
Link me, link me, link me. I’m all eyes.
on Nov 26th, 2009 at 8:35 am
No, I won’t. It’s not worth it, and it would still go over your head. I am never going to turn on my party in any dramatic way just to win credibility from you. That’s too easy a play.
Besides, I blew up the old blog so it would be hard to find stuff in archives…
Happy Thanksgiving.
on Nov 26th, 2009 at 9:52 am
Mark, as to the 82, they appeared in E&E. Some argue this journal is peer reviewed and others say it is not.
In climate science, peer review, is YOUR gold standard. What we have learned from the Climate Gate e-mails is the how PR has been manipulated by those with an agenda who fit the facts to the narrative and discard inconvenient truths. Roger Pielke, Sr. speaks to this: http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2009/11/26/e-mail-documentation-of-the-successful-attempt-by-thomas-karl-director-of-the-u-s-national-climate-data-center-to-suppress-biases-and-uncertainties-in-the-assessment-surface-temperature-trends/
The props are knocked out from under the alarmist PR process through the failure to live by the scientific process. Here’s how it is suppose to work: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/24/the-people-vs-the-cru-freedom-of-information-my-okole%E2%80%A6/
Falling back on debunked Borg talking points just doesn’t cut it now.
on Nov 26th, 2009 at 8:16 pm
Still other emails reveal that the Phil Jones and others at the center engaged in campaigns of trying to silence skeptics, removing them from the journal peer-review process.
Heh. Damn peer reviews.
http://www.dailytech.com/Climategate+Stunning+Deception+and+Misconduct+at+UK+Warming+Research+Center+Revealed/article16889.htm
One of the most damaging emails was sent by the head of the climatic research unit, Phil Jones. He wrote “I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow - even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2009/nov/25/monbiot-climate-leak-crisis-response
Someones got some ’splainin to do!
on Nov 27th, 2009 at 9:16 am
Lame…. lame.
First of all, you have credibility with me, not that it matters. I’m just a nonconformist. I know you’re a smart one. That’s why I come here.
Second, I don’t expect you to “turn on [your] party”. Belonging is far more important than thinking.
Here’s what would do if I were you -I would go to Republicans blogs and light your farts and let them have it.
But that’s just me.
on Nov 27th, 2009 at 10:20 am
The goal post moving is astonishing in these comments.
“Show me peer-reviewed science that gives evidence that the mainstream scientific community is wrong. I’m all ears. I want to feel good about things too!”
…
“And mind you, 82 is just at first blush. I presume that the rest will be winnowed down too.”
-
Roger Pielke Sr. has done great peer reviewed work with UHI effect, and his son (who is surely no skeptic) has shown that the U.N. IPCC (and Gore’s) claim of hurricane damage increases is questionable.
Roger Pielke Jr. weighed in on “peer reviewed” …
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2009/11/redefining-peer-review.html
-
As I’ve been saying for some time … science will win.
-
Also, Gregg’s on this subject as well …
http://electriccityweblog.com/?p=6799
on Nov 27th, 2009 at 1:06 pm
“Belonging is far more important than thinking. ”
Holding oneself aloof as an independent is far safer than being a active member of a party with all its conflicts and contradictions. It’s a fight, all the time, in meat space.
I think global warming has become the common wisdom (such as it is) in polite society that most GOPers believe it as well. It’s going to be a battle undoing all that indoctrination.
BTW, that was a False Choice you came up with, Mark. Well done.
on Nov 27th, 2009 at 4:58 pm
How has Texas been? I remember some brutally hot summers there circa 1980.
Texas is the same as always: hot summers and mild winters. I’ve noticed no warming trend - in fact, back on December 25, 2004, my birthplace of Laredo had its first White Christmas in recorded history.
on Nov 27th, 2009 at 5:50 pm
James - the “450-peer-reviewed articles” just went viral recently, and it is going to take time for people t sift through them to determine if indeed they are as claimed. But right off the bat, we learned that 82 of them were not as claimed.
The science on the denial side of the atmospheric deterioration debate has consisted of a game of fake science, anecdotes, and lists of names of supposed scientists. The criticism has always been that they are not rigorous, that they are paid by Exxon, that it is junk, non-peer reviewed science.
So up pops 450peer-reviewed articles, and right away we learn taht 82 are fake, and I’ll withhold judgment on the rest until qualified people pass judgment on them. See a pattern?
Anyway, any debate that I have ever heard between accredited scientists and deniers, the scientists seem to be able to dismiss them with some ease. The nly credible guy I’ve heard on your side is that Swedish guy, who wrote a pretty good book and doesn’t deny the science, but only says that our resources are better spent fighting the effects, like increased malaria, than the cause, which cannot be stopped (too late).
Yes, outside your parties, we are not active and there are conflicts or contradictions. You got me. It takes more courage to belong to a large powerful organization than to fight one.
on Nov 27th, 2009 at 6:10 pm
By the way, the response to the leaked emails was predictable. I am to read anyone on your side who has withheld judgment or not used them as a source of validation. It seems pointless to argue with you folks, as your minds are made up and you long ago lost any skepticism. All you are doing now is jumping around like a bunch of monkeys let out of the cage when some sort of news breaks that apparently favors your view.
I come here because liberals are boring and predictable. I urge you all to read Skeptical Environmentalist by Bjorg Lomborg. It will put a little polish on your knobs.
on Nov 28th, 2009 at 9:33 am
Mark, I come from a long line of snooty non-joiners so I know the pseudo-intellectual rationale. We were better than those (presumed) lemmings who went to meetings and agreed with each other on everything. Kinda like you now, only this was back in the 1950s. You were an altar boy or something back then, right? SoCal was ahead of the curve on social trends, as usual.
But the aloofness is pretty tired now. It looks more like anomie, or laziness.
Shove your alienation.
on Nov 28th, 2009 at 10:18 am
Oh, and shorter Mark T: Nothing to see here, move along.
Meanwhile, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/28/science/earth/28hack.html?_r=1