Climategate 2: emails show "scientists" plan aggressive attack on sceptics

6 March, 2010 by

© Watts Up With That

Bonkers

Note that they’re not planning to just get the science right, which would be a start. No, they’re going to attack sceptics:

Undaunted by a rash of scandals over the science underpinning climate change, top climate researchers are plotting to respond with what one scientist involved said needs to be “an outlandishly aggressively partisan approach” to gut the credibility of skeptics.

In private e-mails obtained by The Washington Times, climate scientists at the National Academy of Sciences say they are tired of “being treated like political pawns” and need to fight back in kind. Their strategy includes forming a nonprofit group to organize researchers and use their donations to challenge critics by running a back-page ad in the New York Times.

“Most of our colleagues don’t seem to grasp that we’re not in a gentlepersons’ debate, we’re in a street fight against well-funded, merciless enemies who play by entirely different rules,” Paul R. Ehrlich, a Stanford University researcher, said in one of the e-mails.

Some scientists question the tactic and say they should focus instead on perfecting their science, but the researchers who are organizing the effort say the political battle is eroding confidence in their work.

“This was an outpouring of angry frustration on the part of normally very staid scientists who said, ‘God, can’t we have a civil dialogue here and discuss the truth without spinning everything,‘” said Stephen H. Schneider, a Stanford professor and senior fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment who was part of the e-mail discussion but wants the scientists to take a slightly different approach.

Erlich is the guy who once said we’d run out of oil by 1990, or something equally stupid and famously lost a bet to Julian Simon about the future prices of resources. Schneider is a serial bandwagon rider and was a global cooling alarmist in the 1970s, when that was the bandwagon-du-jour. Now of course it’s global warming, er, sorry, “climate change.”

Personally, I don’t consider myself a well-funded merciless streetfighter who plays by any rules other than getting to the scientific truth of climate change. These guys are off the freaking planet.

Read it here.

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Daily Bayonet GW Hoax Weekly Roundup

6 March, 2010 by

Skewering the clueless

As always, a great read! Apologies for the delay in getting this up…

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Katrina victims "to sue oil companies"

5 March, 2010 by

Evil oil companies to blame

This could be interesting. The victims of Hurricane Katrina are to sue oil companies for emitting CO2, fuelling “global warming” and sea-level rise and thereby intensifying Hurricane Katrina. Their enthusiasm is clearly not dampened by the fact that the precise point on which they rely has been debunked so many times I’ve lost count (and recently in the Hurricanegate fiasco). In order to succeed, they would need to establish a causal chain between the oil companies and the intensity of Hurricane Katrina through all the intervening steps: that the emissions from those companies caused an increase in temperature, that the increase in temperature caused hurricanes to be more energetic, and that Hurricane Katrina itself was intensified by that mechanism – an impossible task.

But oddly, they are only suing US oil companies. What if it was Chinese coal burning that was to blame? Or Indian? Or here’s a novel suggestion: it was natural forces at work, with no-one to blame except Mother Nature? No, that won’t do – in our litigation-obsessed culture, blame has to be apportioned for every event in life. If a meteorite that had been circling the sun for 4.5 billion years eventually collided with earth and hit their house, they’d blame George Bush… This action has about as much chance of success as Al Gore getting a degree in climatology:

Victims of Hurricane Katrina are seeking to sue carbon [dioxide? – Ed] gas-emitting multinationals for helping fuel global warming and boosting the 2005 storm.

The class action suit brought by residents from southern Mississippi, which was ravaged by hurricane-force winds and driving rains, was first filed just weeks after the August 2005 storm hit. [By ambulance chasing shysters, no doubt. As if the victims would have been able to formulate their thoughts in three weeks – Ed]

“The plaintiffs allege that defendants’ operation of energy, fossil fuels, and chemical industries in the United States caused the emission of greenhouse gasses that contributed to global warming,” say the documents seen by the AFP news agency.

The increase in global surface air and water temperatures “in turn caused a rise in sea levels and added to the ferocity of Hurricane Katrina, which combined to destroy the plaintiffs’ private property, as well as public property useful to them.”

More than 1,200 people died in Hurricane Katrina, which lashed the area, swamping New Orleans in Louisiana when levees gave way under the weight of the waves.

The suit, claiming compensation and punitive damages [of course, we must punish them for being so wicked – Ed] from multinational companies including Shell, ExxonMobile, BP and Chevron, has already passed several key legal hurdles, after initially being knocked back by the lowest court.

Three federal appeals court judges decided in October 2009 that the case could be heard. However, in February the same court decided to re-examine whether it could be heard this time with nine judges.

These guys must have money to burn.

Read it here.

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ABC gags Bob Carter's Drum article

4 March, 2010 by

Certainly not my ABC

Of course, you fool. The Drum bangs the drum for the Lefties of this world, not the rest of us. So Clive Hamilton was allowed to spout unexpurgated drivel for five days, without a hint of censorship, because everything he says fits with the ABC’s left-wing, climate hysteric agenda. Bob Carter on the other hand is a filthy flat-earth, smoking-doesn’t-cause-cancer advocating, big-oil-funded, creationism-believing denier, so they must use all means to suppress his views. Carter’s article was critical of James Hansen, and guess what? Hansen’s in Melbourne right now. As Quadrant puts it:

We can only guess at the pressures which have been exerted on the ABC to close down criticism of Hansen – and the cowardice which saw them conform. So much for Australia’s brave freedom fighters of the press.

So go to this link and read what the ABC deemed was not appropriate for you to read. And spread it around.

Your Their ABC – Banging the Drum for the Left.

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Jonathan Holmes: all sceptics are idiots

4 March, 2010 by

That’s the summary of another hopelessly biased piece on ABC’s The Drum (i.e. beating the drum for the Left), writing about balance in the media with respect to climate change. Jonathan Holmes is the oh-so-witty presenter of Media Watch and a confirmed climate alarmist. So we know which side of the fence this will be on. A few choice quotes:

What makes the issue more complicated than most is that the degree of scepticism in the community at large bears little relation to the degree of doubt that exists in the scientific community. Those who know the most are the least dubious that anthropogenic climate change is happening, and perhaps faster than they forecast just a few years ago.

In other words, if you don’t believe it, you’re just A STUPID BOGAN, got it? Then we have the inevitable cheap comparison between creationism and climate scepticism, starting off by claiming that the ABC doesn’t have to “balance” Richard Dawkins’ views on evolution:

Why not? Because creationism is espoused by rather few Australians, and therefore the ABC expects little demand for ‘balance’ on the topic? Or because the overwhelming scientific evidence does indeed support the ‘theory’ of evolution, as against intelligent design? Probably the former reason is far more important than the latter.

In other words, climate sceptics are really in the same camp as creationists, but because there are more of them in Australia than creationists, we at the ABC have to pander to their stupidity by giving a fake impression of “balance.” And he concludes:

But if I were running a science show on the ABC, I might well feel that what should guide me is the science, not shifts in popular opinion. And so far, for all the sound and fury, the vast majority of climate scientists remain convinced that the evidence for anthropogenic warming is getting stronger, not weaker, every year.

Hmm. I wonder what planet Holmes has been on for the last three months? Oh, I know. Planet ABC –  a left-wing elitist vacuum, isolated from reality.

Another great article from Your Their ABC.

Read it here.

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Idiotic Comment of the Day: James Hansen

4 March, 2010 by

Hansen (L), Homer (R)

James Hansen, Homer Simpson lookalike, is in Melbourne – lucky old Melbourne – spouting his usual mix of hysteria and lunacy. The Age fawns and grovels at his feet – not surprising since acres of Age copy is thanks to Hansen and his ilk. A few quotes deserve mention. On the plus side, he acknowledges that nuclear power has to play a part in Australia’s energy mix:

Renewable sources cannot be relied on solely, he believes, and ”it becomes a choice between coal and nuclear for baseload power”.

He would welcome Australia making a commitment to move to 100 per cent renewable energy – but said it would be a mistake. ”I think the chances of that working and being at a price that the public would be willing to pay is not very good,” he said.

But then it goes downhill:

”I don’t intend to be telling Australia what they should do for their energy source except that they can’t continue to burn coal without screwing everybody – including my grandchildren.

Charming. And my favourite:

”And exporting coal, and increasing exports of coal, is almost equivalent to being a drug dealer to the world.”

No hyperbole there, clearly.

Read it here.

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More heat than light

3 March, 2010 by

Climate sense

Paul Monk, writing in The Australian Literary Review, skillfully sums up the current parlous state of the climate debate, with reference to a number of recently published books from both sides of the debate. It is a long read, but very well worth it, and the conclusion is spot on:

Collectively we need to do better than this. Not only is that so because the stakes in climatic and economic terms, as everyone agrees, are about as high as they can get, whether the AGW hypothesis is correct or not; but because we need to cultivate better habits of debating matters of moment, as regards both what is so and what is to be done.

And it is for precisely this reason that the recent disclosures about the IPCC’s sloppy handling of evidence and the scandalously anti-scientific behaviour of the “hockey stick” team led by Americna climatologist Michael Mann and the East Anglia Climate Research Centre are so disturbing. These people have been supposedly conducting the AGW Solvay conference for about 20 years. What we are beginning to see is that they have not been following the Solvay rules at all. In fact, they have been seeking for some considerable time to prevent or discredit any attempt to refute their hypothesis and have manipulated evidence in an effort not merely to confirm it, as bona fide evidence might be taken to do, but to appear to confirm it, when they knew that there were all kinds of uncertainties in the data. This is, quite simply, inadmissible.

Georges Monbiot has lamented recently, in the wake of the Copenhagen conference, that “climate scepticism” is “spreading like an infectious disease”. He may or may not be right, but his attitude is dead wrong. The AGW hypothesis is, in the nature of the case contestable, a claim based on highly complex data. Where inferences from the data or the reliability of the data itself seem unclear or tendentious, scepticism is completely natural.

But more importantly, scepticism is the life blood of science and democracy. Those who sincerely believe AGW is threatening civilisation should themselves be as rigorously sceptical as possible. They should be soliciting challenges to their data and inferences. That’s what the scientific method is and it doesn’t end because someone, scientist or otherwise, feels certain of their ground. It goes on and we need it to do so.

It is the same with the proposal for an ETS as public policy. Let’s have an end of denunciation, vituperation and exasperation.

For the sake of science, civilisation and democratic governance, we need clarity in this matter. And clarity comes through making one’s arguments explicit and then trying to find where one could be in error. That’s the gold standard for all parties to all serious debates.

Read it here.

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VIDEO: Phil Jones at the UK Parliamentary Select Committee

2 March, 2010 by

Video of Prof. Phil Jones’ entire appearance at the UK Science and Technology Select Committee on 1 March 2010 (courtesy of live stream from Parliament TV, but converted and uploaded to YouTube by ACM). There are five parts, each of about 9 or 10 minutes. Jones is accompanied by the Vice Chancellor of the University of East Anglia, Prof. Edward Acton. Part 1 is here, links to the others follow:

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

They don’t exactly give PJ a tough ride, do they? To quote the former UK Labour Chancellor Denis Healey, it was like being savaged by a dead sheep…

Thanks to reader Pete for the original Parliament link (here) which is highly Mac unfriendly, the rats.

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"Standard practice"? Apparently not…

2 March, 2010 by

As Anthony at WUWT reports, learned and respected societies are distancing themselves from Phil Jones’ claim that withholding data was “standard practice” (see here):

The Royal Statistical Society:

The RSS believes that a crucial step in improving the quality of the debate on global warming will be to place the data, the analysis methods and the models in the public domain. (source)

The Royal Society of Chemistry:

The RSC firmly believes that the benefits of scientific data being made available and thus open to scrutiny outweigh the perceived risks. To this end, scientific information should be made available on request as outlined in the Freedom of Information Act. (source)

And earlier, and even more stinging rebuke from the Institute of Physics:

The CRU e-mails as published on the internet provide prima facie evidence of determined and co-ordinated refusals to comply with honourable scientific traditions and freedom of information law. The principle that scientists should be willing to expose their ideas and results to independent testing and replication by others, which requires the open exchange of data, procedures and materials, is vital. The lack of compliance has been confirmed by the findings of the Information Commissioner. This extends well beyond the CRU itself – most of the e-mails were exchanged with researchers in a number of other international institutions who are also involved in the formulation of the IPCC’s conclusions on climate change.

As a step towards restoring confidence in the scientific process and to provide greater transparency in future, the editorial boards of scientific journals should work towards setting down requirements for open electronic data archiving by authors, to coincide with publication. Expert input (from journal boards) would be needed to determine the category of data that would be archived. Much ‘raw’ data requires calibration and processing through interpretive codes at various levels.

Where the nature of the study precludes direct replication by experiment, as in the case of time-dependent field measurements, it is important that the requirements include access to all the original raw data and its provenance, together with the criteria used for, and effects of, any subsequent selections, omissions or adjustments. The details of any statistical procedures, necessary for the independent testing and replication, should also be included. In parallel, consideration should be given to the requirements for minimum disclosure in relation to computer modelling. (source)

Phil, mate, you’re on your own (apart from the rest of the AGW movement, that is).

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Phil Jones hid data because it was "standard practice"

2 March, 2010 by

In the hot seat

And, more importantly, it also shows the peer-review process is meaningless in alarmist climate science. That’s the ludicrous quote from Jones’ appearance before a Parliamentary committee. From The Daily Mail, via WUWT:

The scientist at the heart of the ‘Climategate’ row over global warming hid data ‘because it was standard practice’, it emerged today.

Professor Phil Jones, director of the University of East Anglia’s prestigious climatic research unit, today admitted to MPs that the centre withheld raw station data about global temperatures from around the world.

The world-renowned research unit has been under fire since private emails, which sceptics claimed showed evidence of scientists manipulating climate data, were hacked from the university’s server and posted online.

Now, an independent probe is examining allegations stemming from the emails that scientists hid, manipulated or deleted data to exaggerate the case for man-made global warming.

Prof Jones today said it was not ‘standard practice’ in climate science to release data and methodology for scientific findings so that other scientists could check and challenge the research.

He also said the scientific journals which had published his papers had never asked to see it.

The journals never asked to see it? Well of course, they wouldn’t would they? The peer-review process for alarmist climate science is non-existent. As long as a paper supports the consensus, it will be waived through without any scrutiny – and now we have the evidence to prove it: journals never asked to see the original data.

So the next time anyone says the peer-review process ensures that only decent research gets published, you know how to respond.

Read it here.

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