Nothing to see here

Robyn Williams is the ABC’s science correspondent and a fully paid-up alarmist. And guess what, despite not having read the Climategate emails himself, decides, based on comments from alarmist journals, that they have no effect whatsoever on the alarmist cause. There’s a surprise:

So what do the emails reveal? I hesitate to pronounce. I haven’t read them. Instead, I called those who have, such as Fred Pearce from New Scientist. He said, in an NS editorial, that any suggestion the informal emails formally compromise the science is ‘ludicrous’. (I broadcast Pearce on The Science Show last week). The Economist, always rigorous in its analysis of major issues, said much the same.

The journal Nature, with its immense and authoritative record surveying the science scene over hundreds of years said this about any ‘fraud’,:

“This paranoid interpretation would be laughable were it not for the fact that obstructionist politicians in the US Senate will probably use it next year as an excuse to stiffen their opposition to the country’s much needed climate bill. Nothing in the e-mails undermines the scientific case that global warming is real – or that human activities are almost certainly the cause. That case is supported by multiple, robust lines of evidence, including several that are completely independent of the climate reconstructions debated in the e-mails.” [The kind of language used in this paragraph demonstrates perfectly that Nature is no longer a science journal that can ever be taken seriously – Ed]

This last point is exactly the one with which I led in that discussion following Swindle on ABC TV. The evidence resembles that of a murder case. The detective finds 20 separate leads all pointing to the same villain.

I suggest you read the emails. And then think again about whether the alteration of data, hiding of inconvenient facts, threatening journals that publish inconvenient papers and deleting emails in response to FOI requests is what transparent science is all about.

With journalists like Williams on the case, no wonder the Australian public doesn’t hear anything about climategate from the ABC.

Read it here.

P.S. And if you want more evidence of alarmist journalists playing down Climategate, see AP’s Seth Borenstein being hauled over the coals here.

Not much sympathy here

Hypocrisy Alert: Whilst it is deplorable that any scientist should receive death threats as a result of his or her views, it is interesting that the media have picked up so eagerly on this story. The sceptic scientists have been on the receiving end of all kinds of abuse, hatemail and worse for years, and yet no one in the media bats an eyelid, probably thinking secretly “they get what they deserve”. As soon as the boot’s on the other foot, it’s fawning sympathy and acres of copy:

An Australian born scientist at the centre of the East Anglia University email affair says he has received a number of death threats.

Dr Tom Wigley, a former director of the university’s Climatic Research Unit, has had several of his emails hacked and used by climate change sceptics to suggest that he and his colleagues have been distorting data about the evidence of global warming.

He is unable to reveal the details of the threats, as they are now being investigated by the FBI and UK police.

Dr Wigley told Eleanor Hall on The World Today that, while the threats are genuinely frightening, he is not surprised.

“This sort of thing has been going on at a much lower level for almost 20 years and there have been other outbursts of this sort of behaviour – criticism and abusive emails and things like that in the past,” he said.

“So this is a worse manifestation but it’s happened before so it’s not that surprising.“

And it all provides the perfect platform to wheel out the “move along, nothing to see here” line on the CRU emails:

He rejects suggestions that scientists have been exaggerating about the effects of climate change and says the emails were simply scientific questioning.

“We don’t base policy by what is said in personal emails from people who are just developing some sort of scientific story,” he said.

And unfortunately, this kind of story helps the scientists under scrutiny to take on the role of victim, and victim status is very useful in the propaganda battle to deflect the media away from the real story.

Read it here.

The ABC finally, finally, acknowledges the CRU leaks with a slot on Lateline (hosted by arch ABC alarmist Tony Jones). And whilst they do interview Andrew Bolt, they wheel out Andy Pitman, another hysterical alarmist, to pooh-pooh everything in the material (even the threats to destroy data, which Pitman excuses as reasonable behaviour when confidentiality agreements are in place – utter nonsense of course). And the presenter of the segment is none other than the author of the dire ABC Copenhagen Blog, Margot O’Neill, so of course, she gives the last word to Pitman.

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UPDATE: The ABC then goes overboard and give an entire article to Australian Alarmist of the Year Tim Flannery, to flannel his way out of the fix the warmists are in:

Climate change sceptics are hailing the emails as proof the research data has been skewed and suppressed.

But Dr Flannery says the scientific community knows enough to say greenhouse gases cause global warming, and that humans are responsible.

“The thing is we deal with an incomplete understanding of the way the Earth’s system works, we know enough to say as the IPCC said that greenhouse gases cause warming,” he said.

“They are 90 per cent-plus sure that it’s caused by humans, we can go that far.

“In the last few years, where there hasn’t been a continuation of that warming trend, we don’t understand all of the factors that creates Earth’s climate, so there are some things we don’t understand, that’s what the scientists were emailing about.”

Admitting you don’t know everything there is to know about the climate? That must hurt.

Read it here.