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Thursday, December 03, 2009

Climategate Video and Atlantic Monthly Speaks

Clive Crook, the highly respected senior editor of the Atlantic Monthly, has waded in on what is now being called, “Climategate”. Liberals take notice. Even the mainstream press, like the the Atlantic Monthly and the NY Times, is abandoning you.

First, though, let’s have a little fun:

IF VIDEO WON'T LOAD GO HERE.

More on Climategate

Clive Crook 30 Nov 2009 Atlantic Monthly (Excerpt)

"In my previous post on Climategate I blithely said that nothing in the climate science email dump surprised me much. Having waded more deeply over the weekend I take that back.

The closed-mindedness of these supposed men of science, their willingness to go to any lengths to defend a preconceived message, is surprising even to me. The stink of intellectual corruption is overpowering. And, as Christopher Booker argues, this scandal is not at the margins of the politicised IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] process. It is not tangential to the policy prescriptions emanating from what David Henderson called the environmental policy milieu [subscription required]. It goes to the core of that process.

One theme, in addition to those already mentioned about the suppression of dissent, the suppression of data and methods, and the suppression of the unvarnished truth, comes through especially strongly: plain statistical incompetence. This is something that Henderson's study raised, and it was also emphasised in the Wegman report on the Hockey Stick, and in other independent studies of the Hockey Stick controversy.

Of course it is also an ongoing issue in Steve McIntyre's campaign to get hold of data and methods. Nonetheless I had given it insufficient weight. Climate scientists lean very heavily on statistical methods, but they are not necessarily statisticians. Some of the correspondents in these emails appear to be out of their depth. This would explain their anxiety about having statisticians, rather than their climate-science buddies, crawl over their work.

I'm also surprised by the IPCC's response. Amid the self-justification, I had hoped for a word of apology, or even of censure. (George Monbiot called for Phil Jones to resign, for crying out loud.) At any rate I had expected no more than ordinary evasion. The declaration from Rajendra Pachauri that the emails confirm all is as it should be is stunning. Science at its best. Science as it should be. Good lord. This is pure George Orwell. And these guys call the other side "deniers".

While I'm listing surprises, let me note how disappointed I was by The Economist's coverage of all this. "Leaked emails do not show climate scientists at their best," it observes. No indeed. I should say I worked at the magazine for years, admire it as much as ever, and rely on the science coverage especially. But I was baffled by its reaction to the scandal. "Little wonder that the scientists are looking tribal and jumpy, and that sceptics have leapt so eagerly on such tiny scraps as proof of a conspiracy," its report concludes. Tiny scraps? I detest anti-scientific thinking as much as The Economist does. I admire expertise, and scientific expertise especially; like any intelligent citizen I am willing to defer to it. But that puts a great obligation on science. The people whose instinct is to respect and admire science should be the ones most disturbed by these revelations. The scientists have let them down, and made the anti-science crowd look wise. That is outrageous.” Atlantic Monthly
And the shoes start dropping:
UK climate scientist to temporarily step down

Dec 1 2009 Breitbart.com

LONDON (AP) - Britain's University of East Anglia says the director of its prestigious Climatic Research Unit is stepping down pending an investigation into allegations that he overstated the case for man-made climate change.

The university says Phil Jones will relinquish his position until the completion of an independent review into allegations that he worked to alter the way in which global temperature data was presented.

The allegations were made after more than a decade of correspondence between leading British and U.S. scientists were posted to the Web following the security breach last month.

The e-mails were seized upon by some skeptics of man-made climate change as proof that scientists are manipulating the data about its extent.

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2 Comments:

At 7:39 AM, Anonymous Joe said...

Is it any wonder why Al Gore refuses to debate Lord Christopher Monckton of the UK on Global Warming or Climate Change? Al has a problem trying to remember the temperature of the Earth's core, so I can see why he doesn't have the guts to debate an issue with someone he can't BS. For people like Al Gore, it's all about the money that can be made from this so called Climate Change agenda while the folks get stuck paying the high taxes imposed under some kind of future U.N. agreement. In the mean time,"the anointed one", our "Imperial Lizard" in the White is still going to Copenhagen to meet with all the other fakes and phonies of his far Left ilk to talk about who knows what. Maybe they'll try to come up with some kind of phony excuses for Climate-gate. I can just hear them now; "We've been able to bluff our way so far, and we'll get through this one too." "All we have to do is throw them a fish and they'll grab it like they always do!" What a crock of crap!

 
At 8:03 AM, Anonymous Mason said...

This doesn’t surprise me. I have long suspected NASA was manipulating their data, because some of their raw data did not agree with their finding, I.e. Arctic and Antarctic ice coverage has been increasing and yet they claim the polar ice mass is decreasing. One claimed this was true because once he saw a polar bear fall through the ice, so he concluded that all of the ice was thin. Anyone with common sense knows that ice thickness varies all over the place because of upwelling and currents. The claim that polar bears are being endangered because of global warming is in conflict with their numbers which are increasing at an alarming rate. The claim that the increased calving of glaciers in Antarctica was another sign of global warming but when you look at the data it is because the ice buildup at the head of the glacier is rapidly increasing. The claim that 1000 scientists agreed about Global Warming at the 1996 IPCC meeting, actually there were only 65 scientists present and many of those disagreed with the finding put forth of that meeting. The other 935 attendees were bureaucrats. And when one disagrees with these alarmists, they never present a rebuttal but simply dismiss the whole thing. A liberal way of trying to destroy the individual that doesn't agree with them. Note that Obama bureaucrats are using this technique as well as the liberal press. Sound the revolution against these tactics!

 

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