Nov 23 2009

Climategate? Or just business as usual?

Category: environment,global warming,scienceharmonicminer @ 10:20 am

The lies of the global warming eco-panic crowd may finally be exposed in Climategate: the final nail in the coffin of ‘Anthropogenic Global Warming’?

If you own any shares in alternative energy companies I should start dumping them NOW. The conspiracy behind the Anthropogenic Global Warming myth (aka AGW; aka ManBearPig) has been suddenly, brutally and quite deliciously exposed after a hacker broke into the computers at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (aka Hadley CRU) and released 61 megabites of confidential files onto the internet. (Hat tip: Watts Up With That)

When you read some of those files, including 1079 emails and 72 documents, you realise just why the boffins at Hadley CRU might have preferred to keep them confidential. As Andrew Bolt puts it, this scandal could well be “the greatest in modern science”. These alleged emails, supposedly exchanged by some of the most prominent scientists pushing AGW theory, suggest:

Conspiracy, collusion in exaggerating warming data, possibly illegal destruction of embarrassing information, organised resistance to disclosure, manipulation of data, private admissions of flaws in their public claims and much more.

One of the alleged emails has a gentle gloat over the death in 2004 of John L Daly (one of the first climate change sceptics, founder of the Still Waiting For Greenhouse site), commenting:

“In an odd way this is cheering news.”

But perhaps the most damaging revelations , the scientific equivalent of the Telegraph’s MPs’ expenses scandal, are those concerning the way Warmist scientists may variously have manipulated or suppressed evidence in order to support their cause.

It is, of course, early days in the investigation of the stolen emails.  Perhaps it will all turn out to be a huge hoax.  But, here are more details.

Of course, the AGW eco-panic mongers of the world will say that this isn’t the only data, that many other independent data sources have confirmed the same conclusions, and it can’t ALL be a hoax.

Maybe not.  Some of it could be just simple, politically motivated non-science.  There are probably some well-meaning sorts who have particular data that doesn’t, by itself, refute AGW, so they have trusted those who are sure they have data that confirms it.  But it seems that maybe there aren’t as many scientists as previously claimed who are “sure” they have confirming data…  so they cook the books.

Here is an attempt at damage control.  You can decide how successful you think it is.  My impression: while accusing the hackers of “cherry picking”, they have “cherry picked” the emails the hackers “cherry picked” to try to make their points.  Your mileage may vary.  But I wonder how many of these bleats about the nasty, illegal, immoral hackers were issued by people who were similarly distressed when the New York Times exposed critical US programs to protect us from terrorists.  (You may say this is a loose connection, but the political dimension of the AGW controversy is the entire point….  and the politics of eco-panic mongers and anti-American Leftists are remarkably parallel.)  Here is someone who takes it more seriously.

This seems like a good time to review all those scientists who have thought all along that AGW was, if true, a very minor contributor to whatever overall warming may exist (which it seems is less and less).

h/t:  Mike