Climategate and Copenhagen

Tomorrow the Copenhagen Summit begins. Just a few weeks ago the Climategate scandal broke – something that can only be described as providential. With most of the Western world ready to do a deal with the devil, the revelation of fraud and fake science has heavily put the brakes on things.

Sure, there is still plenty of hype and messianic delusions centring on Copenhagen, but a good deal of the wind has been taken out of its sails, thanks to the exposure of the leaked emails. Climategate remains the most significant story of the year, and ever so slowly the mainstream media is being forced to deal with it.

Of course most of the belated coverage by the MSM is far from objective. It mostly seems to play down the story, shoot the messenger, and pretend nothing has ever happened. Thus articles are now appearing in the MSM in which the whole issue is being shrugged off or rejected.

In response to one such article in a Melbourne newspaper, I sent this letter in: “For weeks the mainstream media has refused to even cover what may be the most remarkable story of the year, if not the decade: Climategate. Now, finally, when it is being covered, it is all in the form of furious attacks and rebuttals. So just who exactly are the real deniers and sceptics here?” I of course don’t expect to see the letter printed.

But remarkably there has been at least one bit of truth telling in the MSM. I refer to an interview done last week on the ABC Radio National program, Counterpoint (30 November). On that program was Aynsley Kellow who is described this way: “Professor and Head of the School of Government at the University of Tasmania. Expert reviewer for the United Nation’s IPPC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) Fourth Assessment Report: Climate Change and Key Vulnerabilities.”

He is thus a somewhat important player in the whole climate change debate. But he has been quite taken back by Climategate, and was not afraid to say so. When asked if the sort of behaviour which occurred in Climategate was typical of the scientific community, this is how he responded:

“It’s not the way scientists should behave and, indeed, I must say that most of the climate scientists that I know here in Hobart don’t behave in this kind of way, at least not that I see. But it’s more than just some colourful language between climate scientists. The emails and the data released include some of the computer code that they’ve used to manipulate the raw data, and I’m afraid that they indicate modes of operation that should be anathema to any decent scientist.”

The interview continues: “Michael Duffy: Can I just ask you to explain to our listeners why this code is so important, because I don’t think a lot of people are aware of it.

“Aynsley Kellow: Almost everything in climate science is not raw data by the time we see it, it’s been subject to manipulating using computer code and so on, and there are now some details…listeners who are familiar with the hockey stick controversy might realise that Michael Mann, the author on that paper and one of the people mixed up in these emails, as indeed was Gavin Schmidt of course, so they’re trying to defend their reputations so he would say that, wouldn’t he…but he steadfastly refused requests to make his code available.”

“And now of course we’ve got access to that code and we can see, for example, that they were quite well aware in what they were doing in excluding results from their analysis beyond the 1980s because there was a divergence between what the tree ring proxies were showing and what they knew the temperature to be. And the computer program has written very nicely for us saying that they’re stopping the analysis at 1980 and they’ll fill in the other results since then manually. This is in many ways worse than many of us expected when we knew about this case from the outside without access to these kinds of exchanges.

“So it’s certainly not just the case of some colourful language being expressed in emails amongst scientists. What you have is evidence of a quite clear willingness to manipulate raw data to suit predetermined results, you’ve got a resistance to any notion of transparency, an active resistance to freedom of information requests or quite reasonable requests from scientists to have a look at data so that it can be verified.

“You’ve got evidence of attempts to subvert the peer review process, you’ve got evidence of pressure being placed on editors to reject dissident views on climate science, and then these people of course are then the lead authors in the IPCC report and they’re talking about keeping peer reviewed science that has managed to get into the literature out of the IPCC report and ultimately then talking about making sure it doesn’t find its way into the all-important summary for policy makers, which is about all the politicians and bureaucrats read. So it’s serious stuff and that’s why I think George Monbiot feels betrayed by this and has said that Phil Jones at the Climate Research Unit should be sacked or should resign.”

The entire interview is well worth reading, and I encourage you to do so. Let me offer just one more quote by Kellow, this time dealing with the Australian scene:

“Just by way of an interesting example, Garth Paltridge, who is in Hobart here and has now retired, did a paper looking at all the weather balloon data which is available for about 50 years and couldn’t find much evidence that as the Earth had warmed slightly that vital increase in water vapour was there. He eventually had it published but when it was first submitted for publication it was rejected on the basis that the message that it would send would give too much encouragement to sceptics, which really just draws attention to the need to open up the scientific process, to deal with this kind of attempt to politicise it, to suppress views that are inconvenient, because unless we very quickly establish and re-establish some quality assurance mechanisms in the conduct of climate science then we’re heading for a potentially very costly…either way a very costly set of policy responses based on some science in which we can have much less faith now than we had in the past.”

Green Hypocrisy

As mentioned, the shocking revelations of Climategate will certainly dampen the enthusiasm and green zealotry at Copenhagen. But that won’t stop thousands of bureaucrats, rock stars and world leaders from attending. And of course most of them will go at tax-payer expense.

But an interesting article about this just appeared in the Sunday Mail. Here is one quite interesting excerpt: “Environmental groups are concerned the conference, which will draw 15,000 delegates, will add significantly to the problem it purports to solve. Conference organisers have estimated that, excluding air travel, overall emissions will be 40,500 tonnes of carbon dioxide, or 2.7 tonnes per person. The majority of the emissions will come from transporting delegates from hotels to the conference centre and lighting the venue.”

Australians will be especially guilty: “Australia will emit more than 400 tonnes of greenhouse gases in sending one of the world’s largest parties to this month’s Copenhagen climate talks. The Australian delegation is tipped to number up to 90 state, federal and local government politicians and officials, surpassing more populous nations such as Britain. Britain is only sending 38 delegates and support staff. In a conference lasting just 11 days, Australia’s delegation for the climate change gabfest will produce emissions equivalent to nearly 30 years’ output for the average Australian home.”

It sounds like all these politicians and bleeding heart lefties would do the environment a whole lot more good if they simply stayed at home, and stopped jet-setting all over the globe for all these questionable talkfests. But politicians and bureaucrats always love junkets, especially when we poor taxpayers are left footing the bill.

However, the providential revelations coming out of Climategate are a wonderful counterweight to all the mischief and nonsense that Copenhagen is likely to come up with. Thanks to these damning revelations, we can all hope that things at Copenhagen will at least be a tad less bad than otherwise expected.

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/counterpoint/stories/2009/2757619.htm#transcript
http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,26445747-953,00.html

[1401 words]

11 Replies to “Climategate and Copenhagen”

  1. I really enjoyed reading this morning that the climate change summit that will produce as much carbon dioxide as a town the size of Middlesbrough. There are 1,200 gas guzzling limos in service for this summit, many of which have been driven hundreds of miles from other countries because there wasn’t enough limos in the country. 140 private planes will also be used.

    You really have to laugh at times.

    Stuart Mackay, UK

  2. Counterpoint is, for the most part, a lone exception to the usual ABC assembly-line PC nonsense. So it hardly surprises me that Counterpoint is the one section of the ABC that Cimategate has been given real attention. In fact, it is the one ABC program that has some really great interviews.

    Having said this, I don’t believe people (especially Christians) are waking up to how much global warming activism is pushing us towards world government (and world Green religion).

    Check out this story for instance:

    “Environmentalism should be regarded on the same level with religion ‘as the only compelling, value-based narrative available to humanity,’ according to a paper written two years ago to influence the future strategy of the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP), the world’s would-be environmental watchdog.”

    http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,577827,00.html

    And this:

    ‘With the reverberations of climategate still echoing, it has now emerged that children are being greenwashed in public schools by being forced to sing climate cult ditties and hate their parents as part of a United Nations propaganda program aimed at capturing young minds, as the UN itself officially acknowledges the global warming mantra as a new religion.

    A shocking new UN strategy document also reveals how elitists are recruiting members of academia from all over the globe in an effort to hide the “end-run” around national sovereignty that their program represents.

    “When did global warming turn into a forced religion?,” asks the New York Post’s Andrea Peyser as she tells the story of how her daughter came home from school singing the words ” . . . You can hear the warning — GLOBAL WARMING . . . “.’

    http://www.prisonplanet.com/shocking-un-document-divulges-climate-cult-brainwashing.html

    Damien Spillane

  3. Some organizations are going into panic mode as more people are not buying into man-made global warming anymore and the lie continues to unravel. Every day more people are understanding that the idea that CO2 is a pollutant is just stupid. But here you have the US Environmental Protection Agency spouting this rubbish.
    http://www.moonbattery.com/archives/2009/12/epa_may_be_read.html

    It’s not about the environment, it’s about power, greed and/or eco-sanctimony. Any human activity whatsoever – including breathing – gets to be regulated, controlled and taxed. It’s insane.

    Meanwhile, the planet actually shows a remarkable ability to regulate itself:
    http://energytribune.com/articles.cfm?aid=2665

    Also UK weather service to re-examine 160 years of data
    http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2009/12/05/climategate-uk-weather-service-re-examine-160-years-data

    …and Andrew Bolt gets seriously higher traffic on his blog because the mainstream media refuse to report it honestly.
    http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/two_million_hits_a_month/

    Eight times normal internet traffic on the day ClimateGate broke? The MSM is slitting its own throat.

    Mark Rabich

  4. An excellent article from which I quote at length here:

    With 20,000 delegates, advocates and journalists jetting to Copenhagen for planet Earth’s last chance, the carbon footprint of the global warming summit will be the only impressive consequence of the climate change meeting. Its organizers had hoped it would produce binding caps on emissions, global taxation to redistribute trillions of dollars, and micromanagement of everyone’s choices.

    Barack Obama, understanding the histrionics required in climate change debates, promises that U.S. emissions in 2050 will be 83 percent below 2005 levels. If so, 2050 emissions will equal those in 1910, when there were 92 million Americans. But there will be 420 million in 2050, so Obama’s promise means that per capita emissions then will be about what they were in 1875. That. Will. Not. Happen.

    Disclosure of e-mails and documents from the Climate Research Unit in Britain — a collaborator with the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — reveals some scientists’ willingness to suppress or massage data and rig the peer review process and the publication of scholarly work. The CRU materials also reveal paranoia on the part of scientists who believe that in trying to engineer “consensus” and alarm about warming, they are a brave and embattled minority. Actually, never in peacetime history has the government-media-academic complex been in such sustained propagandistic lockstep about any subject.

    Skeptics about the shrill certitudes concerning catastrophic manmade warming are skeptical because climate change is constant: From millennia before the Medieval Warm Period (800 to 1300), through the Little Ice Age (1500 to 1850), and for millennia hence, climate change is always a 100 percent certainty. Skeptics doubt that the scientists’ models, which cannot explain the present, infallibly map the distant future.

    The Financial Times’ peculiar response to the CRU materials is: The scientific case for alarm about global warming “is growing more rather than less compelling.” If so, then could anything make the case less compelling?

    The travesty is the intellectual arrogance of the authors of climate change models partially based on the problematic practice of reconstructing long-term prior climate changes. On such models we are supposed to wager trillions of dollars — and substantially diminished freedom.

    http://townhall.com/columnists/GeorgeWill/2009/12/06/earths_next_last_chance

    In other news, Senator Steve Fielding has just released this statement:

    I have proposed a Royal Commission to investigate the science behind climate change and whether or not man made carbon dioxide emissions are responsible, and the Productivity Commission to look into the economics of an emissions trading scheme or carbon pollution reduction scheme.

    Of course the second half of that relies on the first half, in which case they can all go home early, and ordinary people can breathe a sigh of relief at dodging more financial hardship.

    Mark Rabich

  5. I have worked to better the environment through education and research at SF State University’s Sierra Nevada Field Campus. I think we can do our most important work by fixing wetlands. However I have become increasingly skeptical of CO2 induced warming. I tried to engage Mann’s RealClimate website in debate but often had posts deleted, or have a post attacked and then denied posting any replies. So I know first hand some of these scientists are willing to manipulate the appearance of science.

    As a skeptic I see a warming which CO2 probably has some small impact. But I do not think natural variability has been well modeled. And the current warming may be no different than the Mideival warm period. What AGW proponents push is a perception of the hockey stick where climate was stable and slightly cooling and only recently shoots up. It creates an illusion that the Mideival Warm period and Little Ice Age never happened. However their proxies used to create the hockey stick have not withstood the test of time. Their proxies have shown a decline these past 50 years when observation said it has increased. This called into question the hockey stick and is why they felt they “must hide the decline”. The clearest article showing how Jones and Mann tried to misrepresent the past climate and mislead the public by “hiding the decline” has been written by Marc Sheppard. A must read that is well documented! Go to http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/12/understanding_climategates_hid.html

    Jim Steele, USA

  6. Can anyone see, in this fiasco, a parallel with the “Tower of Babel” Gn 11:1-9? The only thing which will come out of this talkfest is that renegade science will finally receive its comeuppance.
    Dunstan Hartley

  7. Unfortunalely Dunstan, I don’t think it will “… finally receive its comeuppance.” I think the lefties have far too much at stake to let a little glitch like this get in their way. It’s global governance they want, and by hook or by crook, they’ll get it. Never let let a little truth stand in the way of a good story!
    Kev Downes

  8. RULE BY EPA
    EPA, controlled by Obama’s Marxist-leaning bureaucrats, will take over the management of life and work in America, to protect us all from the dangers of air-borne plant food, carbon dioxide. It is like second-hand smoke, only in this case it is second hand plant food. Instead of hanging with the unjustified notion of global warming by lighter-than-air plant food blanketing the earth, they are using the smoking argument. If we inhale that plant food, we’ll all die. Of course, the same people are hell-bent on euthanizing the elderly, infirm or too young to contribute as a means of decreasing medical care and plant food expiration. When we view the people as one mass, a community, instead of individuals with peculiar interests, it is appropriate to amputate parts of the community body that do not contribute, or stand in the way of their social progress. Hitler did it! We didn’t approve of it then, why do we approve of it now? claysamerica.com
    Clay Barham, USA

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