Even the Lefties at Harry's Place are disturbed by Climategate

On Friday the Guardian reported that hackers had broken in to computers belonging to the world-renowned Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. Evidence of allegedly dodgy practices was revealed:

Climate change sceptics who have studied the emails allege they provide “smoking gun” evidence that some of the climatologists colluded in manipulating data to support the widely held view that climate change is real, and is being largely caused by the actions of mankind.

Colleagues in other institutions rushed to defend their fellow scientists:

“It does look incriminating on the surface, but there are lots of single sentences that taken out of context can appear incriminating,” said Bob Ward, director of policy and communications at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics. “You can’t tell what they are talking about. Scientists say ‘trick’ not just to mean deception. They mean it as a clever way of doing something – a short cut can be a trick.”

George Monbiot, also writing in the Guardian, took a different view yesterday:

Yes, the messages were obtained illegally. Yes, all of us say things in emails that would be excruciating if made public. Yes, some of the comments have been taken out of context. But there are some messages that require no spin to make them look bad. There appears to be evidence here of attempts to prevent scientific data from being released, and even to destroy material that was subject to a freedom of information request.

Worse still, some of the emails suggest efforts to prevent the publication of work by climate sceptics, or to keep it out of a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

While I don’t have enough of a scientific background to comment on the subject matter of the documents, nor enough time to hunt for and even skim review them I’m more than able to recognise anti-scientific methods when it’s as blatant as this.

Honest people will have to re-examine their attitude to man-made climate change in light of this revelation.
http://www.hurryupharry.org/2009/11/24/climategate/

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How about Climaquiddick then?

RON BAILEY eschews the term “Climategate,” but says: “Hmmm. Data not agreeing with model predictions. Very interesting. And of course, Flannery is right, science does work through ‘a robust interchange and testing of ideas.’ But interchanging ideas about how to hijack some aspects of peer review and by trying to suppress the work of researchers with whom one disagrees? Messy indeed.”

UPDATE: Reader Kenneth Hitchens writes: “Indeed, it’s Climaquiddick. Or is it too early for that?” Well, the press is playing along, which makes it more a -quiddick than a -gate so far . . . .

http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/88908/

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I am sick to my stomach. Even more than feeling ashamed - I feel betrayed.

From the Greenie Watch blog (which was mentioned in this morning's issue of The Australian):

A reaction to the hacked emails from a grassroots AGW believer

A post[er] on the Christian Science Monitor named "Ron" sums up the impact of the scandal that is rocking the United Nation's global warming establishment. These comments may turn out to be the inconvenient sentiment of many.

As a long time AGW supporter I must say I found the emails very disturbing. I spent hours reading them myself. I don't know if they qualify as “smoking gun” that the AGW science is bust, but I just cannot ignore it.

I feel ashamed for the behavior of our leading scientists. Even more than feeling ashamed – I feel betrayed. For years I trusted that science will prevail over the unsubstantiated skeptic view. These emails reveal a very disturbing picture of ideology overriding science. Science being bent out of shape to support a hypothesis.

They reveal unbelievable arrogance. These people whom I trusted so much think they are

- above the law (destroying email, refusing FOIA, tax evasion)

- above the data (“hide the decline”, remove the cooling blip)

- above their peers (get uncomforting journal editors fired, block skeptic publications)

- above the rest of us (manipulate the message, presentation and media)

I am sick to my stomach. I know there are so many other hard working scientists that have not tainted themselves. But this group – Phil Jones, Ken Briffa, Mike Man, Gavin Schmidt have casted a huge shadow of doubt over the entire field and caused a huge damage to the green movement.

I talked with many of my friends who, like most of us, continue to believe in AGW, and we think that as long as these guys continue to lead the science and the IPCC assessments they will continue to taint all of the good work done by thousands of other scientists.

We need to acknowledge that wrong was done. We need to replace the tainted leadership and continue the research without the air of doubt.

SOURCE
http://antigreen.blogspot.com/

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Lawmakers Probe Climate Emails

Congressional Republicans have started investigating climate scientists whose hacked emails suggest they tried to squelch dissenting views about global warming.

An aide to Rep. Darrell Issa (R., Calif.), the ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said investigators are studying the documents, which unknown hackers stole last week from the computer of a prominent British climate-research center.

Investigators are focusing on the correspondence of White House Science Adviser John Holdren, he said. Dr. Holdren, a point man for the Obama administration on climate change, sent one of the hacked emails. In the 2003 email, Dr. Holdren, then at the Woods Hole Research Center in Woods Hole, Mass., defended research by Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University, a scientist who believes global warming is man-made and who also sent some of the hacked emails.

Full article here http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125902685372961609.html

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When Scientists Become Politicians

Over thousands of years, at each step, the response of the scientists was to continually adjust and refine their theories to conform to the data, not the other way around. This is how science is done and how we developed the knowledge that has given us such tremendous and accelerating scientific and technological breakthroughs in the past century. It is occasionally reasonable to throw out a bad data point if it is in defiance of an otherwise satisfactory model fit, as long as everyone knows that you’ve done so and the rationale, but a deliberate and unrevealed fudging of results in an attempt to make the real world fit one’s preconceptions is beyond the scientific pale. Journal articles have been thrown out for it; PhD candidates have lost their degrees for it.

But such behavior, along with attempts to cover it up and dishonestly discredit critics, is exactly what was revealed in a leak of emails last Friday ^[6] from a research facility in eastern England. And it was not the behavior of previously unknown researchers on some arcane topic of little interest to anyone outside their own field. It was the behavior of leading luminaries in perhaps the greatest scientific issue and controversy of our age: Whether or not the planet is warming to a potentially dangerous degree as a result of humanity’s influence. It is a subject on which billions — if not trillions — of dollars worth of future economic growth and costs hinge

..............................................................................

But scientists are human, with human failings. Thomas Kuhn noted half a century ago that science doesn’t always follow the idealized model of the objective scientist seeking only truth; it is often driven by fashions and fads, peer pressure, and a lust for glory and respect by the other courtiers of the court that fund them. So we may never know whether this defense of a flawed theory arose from the sense of power that it might give them over the rest of our lives. Or perhaps it was due to simply an emotional attachment to a theory in which they had invested their careers. Either way, what they did was not science, and they should be drummed out of that profession. They can no longer be trusted.

Many in the climate change community have condemned what they call “skeptics,” often to the point of declaring them de facto criminals and assigning them to the same category as Holocaust deniers ^[8]. They tell us that “the science is settled” and that we should shut up. But every scientist worthy of the name should be a skeptic. Every theory should be subject to challenge on a scientific basis. Every claim of a model’s validity should be accompanied by the complete model and data set that supposedly validated it, so that it can be replicated. That is how science works. It is how it advances. And when the science is supposedly “settled” and they refuse to do so, it’s not unreasonable to wonder why.

Full article here http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/global-warminggate-the-science-is-unsettled/

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Tim Flannery now admits that the science isn't settled after all

Even alarmist Tim Flannery, confronted on Lateline with the emails of the global warming conspiracy, concedes holes in the “science is settled” argument and admits to what he didn’t before:

We’re dealing with an incomplete understanding of the way the earth system works… When we come to the last few years when we haven’t seen a continuation of that (warming) trend we don’t understand all of the factors that create earth’s climate...We just don’t understand the way the whole system works… See, these people work with models, computer modelling. So when the computer modelling and the real world data disagree you’ve got a very interesting problem… Sure for the last 10 years we’ve gone through a slight cooling trend.

And on these now-admitted uncertainties we must scrap all coal-fired generators, impose massive new taxes, shut entire industries, hand billions to the UN and change the way we live?

Incidentally, note that journalists absolutely refused to hear exactly this from me on Insiders. Even Lateline host Tony Jones will now hear from Flannery what he wouldn’t just days earlier from sceptic Tony Abbott

http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/the_global_warming_conspiracy_news_spreads/

Follow the link, there is stacks more there.

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George Monbiot "deeply shaken" by Climategate

It just gets better and better.

From Tim Blair:

Greeno supremo George Monbiot concedes:

It’s no use pretending this isn’t a major blow. The emails extracted by a hacker from the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia could scarcely be more damaging. I am now convinced that they are genuine, and I’m dismayed and deeply shaken by them.

Yes, the messages were obtained illegally. Yes, all of us say things in emails that would be excruciating if made public. Yes, some of the comments have been taken out of context. But there are some messages that require no spin to make them look bad. There appears to be evidence here of attempts to prevent scientific data from being released, and even to destroy material that was subject to a freedom of information request.

Worse still, some of the emails suggest efforts to prevent the publication of work by climate sceptics, or to keep it out of a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. I believe that the head of the unit, Phil Jones, should now resign.

The Great George has spoken. Tim Flannery is also sounding a little wobbly. At that same link, Terry McCrann: “This is one of those moments in time. You are either on the right side of history or you are not.”

http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/timblair/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/dismayed_and_shaken/

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Wine I drank yesterday - Mollydooker Two Left Feet Shiraz Merlot Cabernet 2008

This is a liquor shop's write up. And it's true. Where do we start?! With complex aromas of raspberry, plum, white chocolate and a touch of smoky earth, it is rich and layered with spicy dark fruit, chocolate and silky tannins. Consistently one of our top-rated Lefty wines, this blend has superb aromas of butterscotch, plum, white chocolate, cherries and raspberry. Its big, unctuous texture and incredibly dense, spicy fruit give you a wonderfully rounded mouth-feel and a silky smooth finish. As in years past, the mouth-filling texture gives this wine a very long finish. Delicious!

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Wow, this is DYNAMITE! And you can the T-shirt now too!

SORRY - Posterous made a mess of posting this but, as it was easier to fix on the Posterous blog than here, go here to get the full post http://maniraptor.posterous.com/wow-this-is-dynamite-and-you-can-the-t-shirt

Scientists accused of 'manipulating global warming data'

Still a developing story, - it made the front page of this morning's The Australian - but the recent hacking, (or release by an insider), of the computer system at the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia has the potential to be a major scientific scandal and the "tipping point" in the debate over man-made climate change.

The first reaction of many people to the news that emails, data files etc had been released onto a publicly accessible file sharing website, and that they appeared to vindicate and support many of the claims made by climate sceptics about how the science behind the claims of catastrophic climate change was being manipulated by a core of activist scientists, was caution.

It all appeared too good to be true.

Surely it had to be a hoax contrived by someone wanting to discredit the sceptics at the point when it is becoming clear that more and more people were starting to listen to them and to question the hysterical doom-mongering of transnational money making rackets like Greenpeace and the WWF.

(Glenn Milne has an interesting piece today, which includes this after poring over all the leading published surveys, CPI concludes of climate change: ”The trend over the past 18 months has seen a significant softening in concern for the issue.)

Even The Age's cartoonist is asking questions that the Age mostly dares not to:

But no, the CRU has confirmed that its system was hacked and has moved to change all passwords there.

There may still be some carefully hidden booby traps in the material, but Professor Phil Jones from the CRU has essentially admitted that it is genuine.

And he may be a very worried man at the moment.

Apart from emails that appear to clearly indicate how these men colluded with each other to manipulate results to make sure they were what they wanted them to be, whether the data supported them or not, ie that they engaged in scientific fraud, Jones may have engaged in criminal behaviour by deleting emails subject to official freedom of information requests.

Email 1107454306 is particularly interesting. In it, Dr Jones writes:

The two MMs [McKittrick and McIntyre] have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone.

What makes this interesting is that the CRU, in later years, If you are interested in more on global warming material [from Bishop Hill], check out Caspar and the Jesus Paper [This is about how the Hockey Stick was shown to be false] and The Yamal Implosion, or check out the forthcoming book."

Here's Powerline's take.

And yes, you can actually get the T-shirt!

“What really annoys me about this whole thing," comments Chilly in Connecticut, “is that it’s been out there for 24 hours already, and I still can’t find anyplace to buy a Hide the Decline t-shirt.”

You can now, Chilly:

Also available: mugs, bags, aprons and so on. This could lead to a whole line of fashionable denialist – or correctivist – wear. Meanwhile, here’s a leftist’s view of the CRU email scandal:

If this is revealed to be motivated by a wish to derail political action at Copenhagen or what may come after, those responsible have committed crimes against humanity.

An insider may face the firing squad … when solar rifles are invented.

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And did you know that global warming causes prostitution?

Wow! Another item we can add to the list of unlikely things caused (or about to be caused) by global warming: Maybe global warming is really bringing a new Noah’s Flood to once more drown a sinful world: Suneeta Mukherjee, country representative of the United Nations Food Population Fund (UNFPA), said women in the Philippines are the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change in the country. “Climate change could reduce income from farming and fishing possibly driving some women into sex work...” Andrew Bolt [Note the use of two of the words absolutely critical to climate change bullshittery - could and possibly.]

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Germany's Der Spiegel acknowledges global warming appears to have stalled

Germany’s Der Spiegel now acknowledges what barely a ABC journalist or presenter (such as [Tony] Jones) will even discuss: Global warming appears to have stalled. Climatologists are puzzled as to why average global temperatures have stopped rising over the last 10 years. Some attribute the trend to a lack of sunspots, while others explain it through ocean currents… The planet’s temperature curve rose sharply for almost 30 years, as global temperatures increased by an average of 0.7 degrees Celsius (1.25 degrees Fahrenheit) from the 1970s to the late 1990s. ”At present, however, the warming is taking a break,” confirms meteorologist Mojib Latif of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences in the northern German city of Kiel. Latif, one of Germany’s best-known climatologists, says that the temperature curve has reached a plateau. “There can be no argument about that,” he says. “We have to face that fact.” Even though the temperature standstill probably has no effect on the long-term warming trend, it does raise doubts about the predictive value of climate models, and it is also a political issue. For months, climate change skeptics have been gloating over the findings on their Internet forums. This has prompted many a climatologist to treat the temperature data in public with a sense of shame, thereby damaging their own credibility. “It cannot be denied that this is one of the hottest issues in the scientific community,” says Jochem Marotzke, director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg. “We don’t really know why this stagnation is taking place at this point.” Just a few weeks ago, Britain’s Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research added more fuel to the fire with its latest calculations of global average temperatures. According to the Hadley figures, the world grew warmer by 0.07 degrees Celsius from 1999 to 2008 and not by the 0.2 degrees Celsius assumed by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. And, say the British experts, when their figure is adjusted for two naturally occurring climate phenomena, El Niño and La Niña, the resulting temperature trend is reduced to 0.0 degrees Celsius—in other words, a standstill. The claim that scientists have been reluctant to acknowledge an undoubted fact for fear of “shame” says so much that is both damning and worrying. Odd, by the way, that Jones in quoting the Hadley Centre at Abbott [follow the link below for the full post for the part this is referring to] somehow failed to quote that last bit. Andrew Bolt

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Deranged Palin-haters stoop to new lows

Whatever else you can say about Palin, she has certainly got inside the heads of many Leftoids and driven them completely stark raving mad. From Andrew Bolt: How deranged are Palin-haters? So much so that the Daily Kos has urged readers to pepper the Internet with a fake quote from her that it’s helpfully prepared: the fictional copy block, below, contains the full Palin quote, we will be giving Palin a dose of her own medicine. Most people will read the quote and believe Palin really did say something that inane. And I would love for her to have to refute it the same way she had to refute Tina Fey’s “front porch” quote. It’s so astonishing that the Left, which claims to oppose Palin because she’s a bad person, could stoop to such nastiness so often to discredit her. I simply don’t understand the mindset, but would instinctively support the target of people that foul. Say of Palin what you will, but if some on the Left must invent quotes to show how bad she is, it’s clear that what she does say can’t be bad enough for even them. Oh, and here’s what you now get when you look up that Daily Kos site. (More at the link above.)

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Richard Dawkins and the crappy 'humanoid dinosaurs' that just won't die

See Tetrapod Zoology for the full post: Regular readers will know that I'm not exactly a fan of the idea - discussed here and there in the technical (Russell & Séguin 1982, Russell 1987), popular (Hecht 2007, Socha 2008, Naish 2008) and speculative literature (McLoughlin 1984, Magee 1993) - that non-avian theropod dinosaurs might have evolved into humanoids had they not bought the farm 65 million years ago [image below by Matt Collins]. So it's slightly surprising to see well known evolutionary biologist and author Richard Dawkins take up the mantle of 'humanoid dinosaur' supporter in an article Michael Shermer has written for Scientific American. Things started with Shermer's argument that aliens - if real - will not resemble bipedal primates (he put this forward in a brief youtube video). Dawkins mostly agreed, but also responded with the argument that perhaps the odds aren't so vanishingly small after all, citing Simon Conway Morris's opinions and the dinosauroids of the speculative literature in his defence!

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Rarely seen picture of the inside of an actual Can-o-Whoopass

From SondraK

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Stephen McIntyre: Global warming’s most dangerous apostate

Yet Mr. McIntyre is first to admit his work is no bullet aimed at the heart of the theory of man-made climate change. Rather, his work—chronicled in papers co-written with environmental economist Ross McKitrick and more than 7,000 posts on his Climateaudit.org Weblog—does something much more important: It illustrates the uncertainty of a science presented as so infallible as to justify huge new taxes on rich countries along with bribes to poor ones in order to halt their fossil-fueled climbs to prosperity. Mr. McIntyre offers what many in the field do not: rigor. Full post at Watts Up With that?

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Reading bin Laden his rights

Lindsay Graham frequently drives us crazy, but it can't be denied that he has his moments. In today's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, he took Eric Holder to the woodshed: Graham is right, of course. Under the Obama administration's policies, if we capture Osama bin Laden tomorrow, the first thing we will have to do is read him his rights, and the second is get him a lawyer at taxpayer expense. The argument that Holder tries to interpose--maybe we won't have to Mirandize bin Laden because the evidence of his guilt is "overwhelming"--is pathetic. Can you imagine trying to explain to a federal judge that a criminal defendant had a constitutional right to have his rights read to him, but you skipped that step because the evidence of his guilt is overwhelming? The fact that the Obama administration needs to resort to such silly evasions demonstrates that its policy is indefensible. To the extent that the Obama administration tries to justify its criminalization of the war against terror, its excuse is that doing so "vindicates the rule of law." But, as Holder's exchange with Graham showed, the administration is happy to abandon the "rule of law" as soon as it becomes inconvenient. In that regard, one basic question has always been, what happens if we prosecute Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his confederates and the result is an acquittal or a hung jury? The rest from Powerline here.

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Penny Wong & the Department of Climate Change caught lying?

Certainly appears that way. From Andrew Bolt: Climate Change Minister Penny Wong this week released a suspiciously-timed report claiming 250,000 Australian homes could be drowned by rising seas by 2100, thanks to global warming. The report claimed that warming could cause the seas to rise not by the 59cms that the most gloomy IPCC model put as the upper limit, but by 1.1 metres - or even 1.90 metres. More than three times as much. In a post below, with the help of reader Lazlo, I show how Wong’s report, produced by her own department, actually told untruths about the IPCC predictions and relied on a discredited paper to justify its much more alarmist figure. Now Kris Sayce, editor of Money Morning, picks yet more trickery in the report - trickery that should have been spotted by any competent, unbiased scientist in Wong’s department. Here’s just one extract from his email mail-out: But first I’ll give you the (Wong’s) Department’s interpretation of the (Bureau of Meterology’s) research (on sea level rises): “Global mean sea level has risen about 20 centimetres since pre-industrial times (Figure 2.6), at an average rate of 1.7 millimetres per year during the 20th century. Since 1993, high-quality satellite observations of sea levels have enabled more accurate modelling of global and regional sea-level change. From 1993 to 2003, global sea level rose by about 3.1 millimetres per year, compared to 1.8 millimetres per year from 1961 to 2003. These rates of increase are an order of magnitude greater than the average rate of sea-level rise over the previous several thousand years.” Is that enough to scare you? An average of 3.1 millimetres per year between 1993 to 2003… But hold on, let’s see what the Bureau of Meteorology actually had to say...: “A useful datum to distinguish abnormally high sea levels is the Highest Astronomical Tide (HAT), the highest level that can be predicted to occur under any combination of astronomical conditions. Likewise the Lowest Astronomical Tide (LAT) is the lowest level that can be predicted under any combination of astronomical conditions. To properly determine HAT and LAT tidal predictions must span at least 18.6 years, which is the period of a full rotation of the moon’s orbital plane about the ecliptic.” In other words, using a ten year time frame is not scientifically valid as it doesn’t take into account the full 18.6 year orbit of the moon. And every fifth grader knows that the moon influences the tides… But look at the quote above from the Department again. It states, that since pre-industrial times the global mean sea level has risen at “an average rate of 1.7 millimetres per year during the 20th century.” It then says that between 1961 to 2003 the rate was “1.8 millimetres per year.” But shock horror, between 1993 to 2003 (too short a period to measure remember) it was “3.1 millimetres per year.” That surely proves the man-made effect and that it has increased rapidly during the last sixteen years, right? Only, there’s one small sentence the Department didn’t include in their summary of the BoM’s report. It’s this, and it relates to the increase between 1993 and 2003: “Studies have shown that comparably large rates of average sea level rise have been observed in previous decades.” In other words, far from this being a unique phenomena, BoM has “observed” similar large increases in previous decades. Why would the Department not include this in its report? And it doesn’t quite fit in with the Department’s artistic licence when they claim, “These rates of increase are an order of magnitude greater than the average rate of sea-level rise over the previous several thousand years.” That’s just not true as BoM says they’ve seen these increases observed in previous decades… The whole ‘science’ or the interpretation of the science behind climate change is getting ropier and smellier the more we look. Wong should now withdraw her report and apologise for such shoddy advocacy-by-scare, masquerading as science. Shame on her.

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If Sarah Palin had said this, instead of Al Gore...

EARTH’S CORE AT “MILLIONS OF DEGREES.” If Sarah Palin said it, it would be proof of impenetrable ignorance. But since Al Gore said it . . . it’s proof of impenetrable ignorance! “On the other hand, he’s gotten rich, so I guess the joke is on us.” The Instapundit

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In practice, wind power does NOT reduce carbon emissions

From Greenie Watch: The introduction to a very long and thorough study below: Integrating random, highly variable wind energy into an electricity system presents substantial problems that subvert wind technology’s ability to offset the use of fossil fuels–and avoid air emissions, including carbon dioxide (CO2). Measuring this accurately is important because many believe that wind projects significantly reduce such emissions. This analysis finds that natural gas used as wind back-up in place of baseload or intermediate gas (in the absence of wind) results in approximately the same gas burn and an increase in related emissions, including CO2. Extrapolating from this example to the whole, the working hypothesis is that intermittent wind (and solar) are not effective CO2 mitigation strategies because of inefficiencies introduced by fast-ramping (inefficient) operation of gas turbines for firming otherwise intermittent and thus non-usable power. Much more HERE

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John McCain - Palin's book a "good account" of campaign

From the Powerline blog: According to the Washington Post "multiple former McCain [campaign] officials" are disputing, and indeed trashing, Sarah Palin's account of the campaign, as presented in her new book, Going Rogue, which is already a best-seller. Nearly all of these former campaign officials have chosen to remain anonymous. But according to USA Today, one high-level campaign official has gone on the record to call Palin's book "a good account." That official is Senator John McCain.

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