Climategate: how the MSM reported the greatest scandal in modern science

By James Delingpole Politics Last updated: November 21st, 2009

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100017451/climategate-...

Here’s what the Times has had to say on the subject:

E-mails allegedly written by some of the world’s leading climate scientists have been stolen by hackers and published on websites run by climate change sceptics.

The sceptics claim that the e-mails are evidence that scientists manipulated data in order to strengthen their argument that human activities were causing global warming.

(Yep – definitely an improvement on their earlier, non-existent coverage; but not exactly pointing up the scandalousness of this scandal).

And the Independent:

(Yep. Nada).

And here’s how The New York Times (aka Pravda) reported it:

Hundreds of private e-mail messages and documents hacked from a computer server at a British university are causing a stir among global warming skeptics, who say they show that climate scientists conspired to overstate the case for a human influence on climate change.

(Yep. That’s right. It has only apparently caused a stir among ’skeptics’. Everyone else can rest easy. Nothing to see here.)

And here’s how the Guardian has reported it:

Hundreds of private emails and documents allegedly exchanged between some of the world’s leading climate scientists during the past 13 years have been stolen by hackers and leaked online, it emerged today.

The computer files were apparently accessed earlier this week from servers at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit, a world-renowned centre focused on the study of natural and anthropogenic climate change.

(Oh. I get it. It’s just a routine data-theft story, not a scandal. And a chance to remind us of the CRU’s integrity and respectability. And – see below – to get in a snarky, ‘let’s have a dig at the deniers’ quote from Greenpeace).

A spokesman for Greenpeace said: “If you looked through any organisation’s emails from the last 10 years you’d find something that would raise a few eyebrows. Contrary to what the sceptics claim, the Royal Society, the US National Academy of Sciences, Nasa and the world’s leading atmospheric scientists are not the agents of a clandestine global movement against the truth. This stuff might drive some web traffic, but so does David Icke.”

Here’s the Washington Post:

Hackers broke into the electronic files of one of the world’s foremost climate research centers this week and posted an array of e-mails in which prominent scientists engaged in a blunt discussion of global warming research and disparaged climate-change skeptics.

The skeptics have seized upon e-mails stolen from the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in Britain as evidence that scientific data have been rigged to make it appear as if humans are causing global warming. The researchers, however, say the e-mails have been taken out of context and merely reflect an honest exchange of ideas.

(Ah, so what the story is really about is ’skeptics’ causing trouble. Note how as high as the second par the researchers are allowed by the reporter to get in their insta-rebuttal, lest we get the impression that the scandal in any way reflects badly on them).

Here is the BBC:

E-mails reportedly from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU), including personal exchanges, appeared on the internet on Thursday.

A university spokesman confirmed the email system had been hacked and that information was taken and published without permission.

An investigation was underway and the police had been informed, he added.

(Ah yes, another routine data-theft story so dully reported – “the police had been informed, he added” – that you can’t even be bothered to reach the end to find out what information was stolen).

Meanwhile, the Climategate scandal (and I do apologise for calling it that, but that’s how the internet works: you need obvious, instantly memorable, event-specific search terms) continues to set the Blogosphere ablaze.

For links to all the latest updates on this, I recommend Marc Morano’s invaluable Climate Depot site.

And if you want to read those potentially incriminating emails in full, go to An Elegant Chaos org where they have all been posted in searchable form.

Like the Telegraph’s MPs’ expenses scandal, this is the gift that goes on giving. It won’t, unfortunately, derail Copenhagen (too many vested interests involved) or cause any of our many political parties to start talking sense on “Climate change”. But what it does demonstrate is the growing level of public scepticism towards Al Gore’s Anthropogenic Global Warming theory. That’s why, for example, this story is the single most read item on today’s Telegraph website.

What it also demonstrates – as my dear chum Dan Hannan so frequently and rightly argues – is the growing power of the Blogosphere and the decreasing relevance of the Mainstream Media (MSM).

This is not altogether the MSM’s fault. Partly it is just the way of things that more and more readers prefer their news and opinion served up in snappier, less reverent, more digestible and instant for.

But in the case of “Climate Change”, the MSM has been caught with its trousers down. The reason it has been so ill-equipped to report on this scandal is because almost all of its Environmental Correspondents and Environmental Editors are parti pris members of the Climate-Fear Promotion lobby. Most of their contacts (and information sources) work for biased lobby groups like Greenpeace and the WWF, or conspicuously pro-AGW government departments and Quangos such as the Carbon Trust. How can they bring themselves to report on skullduggery at Hadley Centre when the scientists involved are the very ones whose work they have done most to champion and whose pro-AGW views they share?

As Upton Sinclair once said:

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.”

So don’t expect this scandal to be written up in the MSM any time soon. But why would you want to anyway? It’s all here, where the free spirits and independent thinkers are, on the Blogosphere.

UPDATE: I particularly recommend Bishop Hill’s superb summary of some of the key points of the CRU correspondence.
(http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2009/11/20/climate-cuttings-33.ht...)

Also, Andrew Bolt’s summary of the correspondence likely to be most damaging to the reputation – and career, we can but pray – of Professor Phil Jones, the head of the CRU.
(http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/commen...)

And do check out Watts Up With That, whose traffic went through the roof yesterday, enabling to demonstrate scientifically that Hockey Stick is after all a genuine phenomenon – and not merely a figment of Michael Mann’s overactive imagination.
(http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/20/release-of-cru-files-forge-a-new-h...)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEiLgbBGKVk

We Are Change Colorado @ Al Gore Book Signing - Activist Rips Up Al's Book in Front of His Face

My first big doubts about global warming came when I found out about the temperature data manipulation at NASA (climategate - USA edition). The recent hacking scandal at UEA (climategate - UK edition) put me firmly on the skeptic camp. Now confirmation comes from the other side of the world that indeed the global warming campaign is a bogus scheme for some hidden agenda.

Climategate Scandal Spreads to New Zealand as MSM Continues Ostrich Act

By P.J. Gladnick
November 26, 2009 - 11:32 ET

Oops! If the mainstream media was hoping that the Climategate
scandal would be limited to the University of East Anglia's Climate
Reasearch Unit (CRU) in Norwich, England, they are out of luck. This
scandal has now reared its ugly head on the other side of the globe at
New Zealand's National Institute of Water and Atmospheric research
(NIWA)  which is that nation's chief climate advisory unit.

Watts Up With That? reposting from New Zealand's TBR.cc Investigate magazine's breaking news forum explains this latest development in the widening Climategate scandal: 

The scandal breaks as fears grow worldwide that
corruption of climate science is not confined to just Britain’s CRU
climate research centre.

In New Zealand’s case, the figures published on NIWA’s website
suggest a strong warming trend in New Zealand over the past century.

A warming trend! This must be serious enough to shout "ManBearPig!"  And here is a NIWA graph of the supposed warming trend:

Here is the caption under that NIWA graph:

Figure 7: Mean annual temperature over New Zealand,
from 1853 to 2008 inclusive, based on between 2 (from 1853) and 7 (from
1908) long-term station records. The blue and red bars show annual
differences from the 1971 – 2000 average, the solid black line is a
smoothed time series, and the dotted [straight] line is the linear
trend over 1909 to 2008 (0.92°C/100 years).

Mama, save me! I'm scared! But wait. Watts Up With That? provides us with a very important caveat in the form of another graph:

But analysis of the raw climate data from the same temperature stations has just turned up a very different result:

Gone is the relentless rising temperature trend, and
instead there appears to have been a much smaller growth in warming,
consistent with the warming up of the planet after the end of the
Little Ice Age in 1850.

The revelations are published today in a news alert from The Climate Science Coalition of NZ:

Straight away you can see there’s no slope—either up or down. The
temperatures are remarkably constant way back to the 1850s. Of course,
the temperature still varies from year to year, but the trend stays
level—statistically insignificant at 0.06°C per century since 1850.

Putting these two graphs side by side, you can see huge differences. What is going on?

Yeah? What is going on? Why did NIWA frighten your humble correspondent?

Why does NIWA’s graph show strong warming, but graphing
their own raw data looks completely different? Their graph shows
warming, but the actual temperature readings show none whatsoever!

Have the readings in the official NIWA graph been adjusted?

It is relatively easy to find out. We compared raw data for each
station (from NIWA’s web site) with the adjusted official data, which
we obtained from one of Dr Salinger’s colleagues.

Requests for this information from Dr Salinger himself over the
years, by different scientists, have long gone unanswered, but now we
might discover the truth.

What did we find? First, the station histories are unremarkable.
There are no reasons for any large corrections. But we were astonished
to find that strong adjustments have indeed been made.

About half the adjustments actually created a warming trend where
none existed; the other half greatly exaggerated existing warming. All
the adjustments increased or even created a warming trend, with only
one (Dunedin) going the other way and slightly reducing the original
trend.

The shocking truth is that the oldest readings have been cranked way
down and later readings artificially lifted to give a false impression
of warming, as documented below. There is nothing in the station
histories to warrant these adjustments and to date Dr Salinger and NIWA
have not revealed why they did this.

One station, Hokitika, had its early temperatures reduced by a huge
1.3°C, creating strong warming from a mild cooling, yet there’s no
apparent reason for it.

We have discovered that the warming in New Zealand over the past
156 years was indeed man-made, but it had nothing to do with emissions
of CO2—it was created by man-made adjustments of the temperature. It’s
a disgrace.

NIWA claim their official graph reveals a rising trend of 0.92ºC per
century, which means (they claim) we warmed more than the rest of the
globe, for according to the IPCC, global warming over the 20th century
was only about 0.6°C.

Pardon the interruption here but does anybody else notice how it is
the much maligned blogosphere that is doing the detailed footwork that
the mainstream media should, but won't, do? Okay, I return you now to
the unfolding Climategate scandal:

NIWA’s David Wratt has told Investigate magazine this
afternoon his organization denies faking temperature data and he claims
NIWA has a good explanation for adjusting the temperature data upward.
Wratt says NIWA is drafting a media response for release later this
afternoon which will explain why they altered the raw data.

“Do you agree it might look bad in the wake of the CRU scandal?”

“No, no,” replied Wratt before hitting out at the Climate Science
Coalition and accusing them of “misleading” people about the
temperature adjustments.

Manipulation of raw data is at the heart of recent claims of corrupt
scientific practice in climate science, with CRU’s Phil Jones recently
claiming old temperature records collected by his organization were
“destroyed” or “lost”, meaning researchers can now only access manipulated data.

So far this New Zealand scandal remains unreported in the American MSM but, to its credit, there is a report
on this latest Climategate outbreak across the pond by James Delingpole
the UK Telegraph. Meanwhile, if the U.S. media ever pull their ostrich
heads out of the sand, they will have a huge amount of catching up to
do in this scandal.

—P.J. Gladnick is a freelance writer and creator of the DUmmie FUnnies blog.

Monckton: Caught Green-Handed - Climategate Scandal

http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/Monckt...

in no way constitute proof of a big “AGW Hoax” or a “Climategate” smoking gun, as these well known anti-environmental fringe groups like to claim.

Let’s start by getting some perspective on this whole debate:

1) These well known anti-environmentally-biased fringe organizations/people (including CATO, WSJ, James Delingpole, P.J. Gladnick, etc.) making these hyperbolic assertions have NO credibility on the issue.

2) These types of hyped claims ("The Anthropocentric Global Warming Theory is Finished!", "It's All Been Proven to be a Hoax!", blah, blah, blah) by global warming deniers have been made continuously for decades every time any scrap of potentially contrary material has been discovered (or manufactured), regardless of how weak or irrelevant these scraps invariably turn out to be.

3) It’s important to acknowledge that this collection of yet to be authenticated leaked emails and papers (a presumably careful selection of (possibly edited?) correspondence dating back to 1996 and as recently as Nov 12) by only 3 or 4 climate research scientists (out of 2500 climate scientists globally) that, among other things, seem to show them reacting badly to the pressure from skeptics, did not occur in a vacuum. Rather, the long running and viscous campaign waged against climate research scientists by the fossil fuel industry and anti-environmental interests is essential to identify and acknowledge before one can understand the context of the hostile and adversarial environment these scientists were operating in.

4) It is more than likely that in any organization you will find people saying things in private emails with the assumption that they will never be made public, that would embarrass people or that would indicate people talking about things in a flippant/disrespectful manner or openly discussing ideas/proposals that might be considered unethical but never get beyond the discussion phase (i.e., are never implemented). In other words, by stealing private emails, you could easily dig up dirt on just about anyone, whether deserved or not.

5) The timing of this particular episode is highly suspicious - occurring just on the eve of the COP15 Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, as well as the first US Senate debate on a possible new carbon trading regime. There is very good indication that this episode is part of a pre-planed smear campaign by certain interests/individuals who have a history of using dirty tricks against their opponents.

There may or may not be proof of unethical behavior by the few scientists named in these stolen correspondence, and it is an important issue that needs to be investigated. If any proof of such behavior is subsequently discovered, then the individual(s) involved should be reprimanded, and possibly some rules of transparency should be revamped to ensure that the highest quality of scientific ethics and disclosure are adhered to. But, before people make any hasty conclusions about the issue, they first need to make sure that they have a proper understanding of the context and a balanced view of the whole science and debate around AGW and the politicization of such, as well as the key actors, interests, and tactics that have been brought to bear in the history of this extremely politicized debate and ongoing disinformation campaigns.

FULL DISCLOSURE: I have been involved with the environmental movement since the mid-1990's and have a degree in Environmental Studies from UCSC. In 2000 I was working with Greenpeace on the Climate Campaign and got to attend the UN Global Climate Change Talks 2000 (COP-6) in The Hague Netherlands as an observer with 220 other students and youth from the US.

The Importance of Fact Checking and Bias Checking

Before really getting into the nitty gritty of these complex scientific debates and addressing the contents of these stolen papers/emails, it behooves us to proceed with caution and to not just blindly accept any and all claims and opinions being published on the internet, or in the popular media for that matter, on the issue without checking into the biases and credibility of the individuals/entities making such claims. There has been quite a history of certain interest groups and problematic con artists attempting to sway public opinion and manipulate the science on the issue for their own nefarious purposes. There are some groups that should be mentioned in particular that have been heavily involved with disinformation campaigns on the issue:

1) the fossil fuel and related industries
These interests have poured literally billions of dollars into efforts to counter the AGW science and manipulate public opinion. They have created or funded hundreds of organizations that fight against environmental regulations and attempt to sway public opinion away from environmental advocacy, utilizing every dishonest tactic in their bag of disinformation tricks.

ExxonMobil is probably the most notorious and aggressive fossil fuel corporation in this endeavor.

The denial industry by George Monbiot
ExxonMobil is the world's most profitable corporation. Its sales now amount to more than $1bn a day. It makes most of this money from oil, and has more to lose than any other company from efforts to tackle climate change. To safeguard its profits, ExxonMobil needs to sow doubt about whether serious action needs to be taken on climate change. But there are difficulties: it must confront a scientific consensus as strong as that which maintains that smoking causes lung cancer or that HIV causes Aids. So what's its strategy?

The website Exxonsecrets.org, using data found in the company's official documents, lists 124 organisations that have taken money from the company or work closely with those that have. These organisations take a consistent line on climate change: that the science is contradictory, the scientists are split, environmentalists are charlatans, liars or lunatics, and if governments took action to prevent global warming, they would be endangering the global economy for no good reason. The findings these organisations dislike are labelled "junk science". The findings they welcome are labelled "sound science".

I highly recommend reading the full article The Denial Industry

2) right wing free market fanaticism - libertarians, right-wing republicans, the christian right, etc.

The "libertarian"/objectivist ethics are based on unhindered self-determination. Radical self-interest. A view of freedom in which we are all able to be as selfish as we want as long as we don't shit on our neighbors. But of course that involves a tiny little perspective that doesn't view the people outside our field of view as being our neighbors.

Since free market capitalism is the single best way of ruining the environment yet conceived, and since free market capitalism is also the "ideal" of "freedom" as theorized by right-"libertarians" like Ayn Rand and acolytes like Alex Jones, the only choice is between denying the severity of the ecological problem or accepting that free-market capitalism is indeed collective suicide. It's much easier to reject the science than reject one's most cherished beliefs on human freedom (no matter how ridiculous -- and the idea that capitalism has anything to do with freedom is indeed a ridiculous notion).

Examples of right-wing free market fanatic publications/groups involved in the issue:

WALL STREET JOURNAL: this is about the most anti-environmentally-biased major newspaper you could possibly find on the entire planet. Pretty much goes with the philosophy and morals of Wall Street, whose mantra is: Profit above people, the environmental, labor, democracy, community sustainability, or anything else, PERIOD.

CATO INSTITUTE: Funded by right wing wealthy families, right wing foundations, and corporations such as ExxonMobil. According to wikipedia: The Cato Institute is a pro-free market, libertarian think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C.
[...]
Cato has held a number of briefings on global warming with global warming skeptics as panelists. In December 2003, panelists included Patrick Michaels, Robert Balling and John Christy. Balling and Christy have since made statements indicating that global warming is, in fact, related at least some degree to anthropogenic activity.
[...]
Three out of five "Doubters of Global Warming" interviewed by PBS's Frontline were funded by, or had some other institutional connection with, the Institute.

3) Front Groups funded by fossil fuel or other industries and right-wing anti-environmental interests
examples:
The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (TASSC): according to wikipedia: an industry-funded lobby group which promotes the idea that environmental science on issues including smoking, pesticides and global warming is "junk science", which should be replaced by "sound science". It is operated by Steven Milloy from his home in Potomac, Maryland.
[...]
TASSC was created in 1993 by the APCO Worldwide public relations firm, and was funded by tobacco company Philip Morris (now Altria). TASSC was listed in a confidential Philip Morris memo under "PM Tools to Affect Legislative Decisions".[1]. The leading public advocate of TASSC is Steven Milloy, whose webpage junkscience.com was, until 2006, affiliated with the Cato Institute.
Initially, the primary focus of TASSC was an attempt to discredit research on Environmental Tobacco Smoke as a long-term cause of increased cancer and heart problem rates in the community -- especially among office workers and children living with smoking parents [1]. It subsequently advanced industry-friendly positions on a wide range of topics, including global warming, smoking, phthalates, and pesticides. Later still, they extended the role of TASSC to Europe using Dr George Carlo. TASSC used the label of 'junk science' to criticise work that was unfavorable to the interests of its backers.
[...]
TASSC was only one of many such groups.

The Fossil-Fuel-Funded Denial Industry
Nothing that these 3 or 4 scientists named in Britain's Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia email bruhaha have been caught doing, as indicated by (a fair, contextual interpretation of) these emails comes even close to being comparable to the unethical and criminal behavior that the climate change denial industry has been observed and documented doing for the last 2 decades. The fossil fuel industry has funneled literally billions of dollars into trying to persuade the world that climate change is not taking place by misrepresenting the science and in some cases outright fabricating the science - we’re talking about direct and straight forward scientific fraud. In one instance, they published a paper that was made into a counterfeit National Academy of Sciences Proceedings, copying the font and format, with a forward by a previous chairman of the National Academy of Science, to fraudulently make it look as if it was in fact from that organization. That document has become known as the "Oregon Petition" and purports to contain 17,000 signatures of "scientists" opposing efforts to curb AGW, but in fact is one of the biggest frauds ever perpetrated in an effort to discredit and roll back concern over AGW. See Case Study: The Oregon Petition from sourcewatch.org

This is just one incident among an endless history of dirty tricks that have been utilized by these disinformationists for a long time.

At the very least I think it has to be acknowledged that many of these "man-made global warming skeptics" have intimate ties to extremely powerful energy corporations, groups which obviously have a vested interest in disputing the scientific consensus:

Excerpts from The Heat is on: The Climate Crisis, the Cover-Up, the Prescription, by Ross Gelbspan, published by Addison Wesley Longman, May 1997.

Sellout Scientists:
Industry-funded Skeptics Undermine Global Warming Consensus

Things to keep in mind:

- There is an overwhelming concensus amongst the World's 2500 climate scientists that Anthropogenic Global Warming is very real and is a serious issue. Thousands of peer-reviewed papers have been published proving AGW

- There is overwhelming physical and empirical evidence from hundreds of independent lines of data/observational evidence that correlate and corroborate each other regarding AGW

- It is very hard to find a single scientist (and there are a relatively few among the 2500 global climate scientists), who disputes the basic facts of Anthropocentric Global Warming, who is without funding from the fossil fuel or related industries.

- Not a single scientist who disputes the basic facts of Anthropocentric Global Warminga has published a peer-reviewed paper - until the 2003 publication of the Soon and Baliunas paper, in which skeptics managed to take over a peer-reviewed journal by buying it from the publisher and then corrupting the peer-review process, prompting the resignation of the chief editor and half the editorial board over the blatant corruption of the peer-review process. See Stormy Times For Climate Research for the whole story.

- The documented manipulation by the Bush Administration and other governments most corrupted by fossil fuel special interests (such as Australia under the John Howard Administration) to re-write the conclusions of the reports on global warming by government scientists in order to downplay/suppress the level of concern/seriousness of the issue of AGW indicates that the elites, if they are involved in manipulation of climate science, have primarily tried to suppress the alarm over AGW rather than exaggerate it, contradicting the claims of pushers of the "AGW is a hoax” hypothesis.

To expect to find evidence of an over-arching global conspiracy by the "NWO elites" to manufacture an "Anthropogenic Global Warming Hoax" in some email discussions between the climate research scientists is naive at best, even if it were true. But nothing contained in the emails provides any evidence whatsoever of any such thing, just potentially bad behavior by a few scientists in response to the harassment from skeptics. Reading through the emails, one finds that there is no evidence of any worldwide conspiracy, no mention of George Soros or the Rockafellers nefariously funding climate research, no grand plan to ‘get rid of the Medieval Warming Period’, no admission that global warming is a hoax, no evidence of the falsifying of data, and no ‘marching orders’ from socialist/communist/vegetarian overlords. The truly paranoid will probably put this down to the hackers also being in on the plot though.

Mainly this is just a really sad development that is sure to intensify the polarization of the whole climate change issue that will create gridlock and prevent any possibility of sensible policy consensus (which is undoubtedly one of the primary goals of those behind this latest episode) and, with Alex Jones' predictable over-hyped sensationalistic BS over the issue, will further discredit 9/11 Truth by association with raving right wing anti-environmentalist, anti-progressive-everything-ist extremists :(

The more one looks into this whole UEA hacked e-mail bruhaha, the more one finds evidence that there are connections to a pre-planned and well coordinated and sophisticated operation by notorious long-time right-wing dirty trickster operatives.

The first clue to look at is Qui Bono? Let's start with the timing. The storyline is too clever, the timing on the brink of both the Copenhagen (COP-15) Climate Talks and the US climate bill too convenient. Obviously, there are very powerful interests that we can easily identify who have $Billions, if not $Trillions at stake and would very much like to sabotage both of those policy-making initiatives one way or another. Can you guess who these might be?

The second clue is to look into the key individuals/organizations most closely associated with this smear campaign and see what we find. This story of the hacked UEA e-mails has been led from the beginning by the denial site clmatedepot.com. The coordinator of climatedepot.com is Marc Morano, a libertarian right self publicist and former aid to the outspoken denier Senator Inhofe, who has been seeking to become a kingpin in the climate denial industry.

Swift Boating the Climate Scientists

Marc Morano? Just who is Marc Morano? Let's go to sourcewatch.org and find out. Ok, I'll reprint some of the text for you here:

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Marc_Morano
Marc Morano runs the climate denial website ClimateDepot.com for the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, a conservative anti-environmentalism think tank. Until spring of 2009, Morano served as communications director for the Republicans on the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. Morano commenced work with the committee under Senator James Inhofe, who was majority chairman of the committee until January 2007 and is now minority ranking member. In December 2006 Morano launched a blog on the committee's website that largely promotes the views of climate change skeptics.
Morano is a former journalist with Cybercast News Service (CNS), which is owned by the conservative Media Research Center. CNS and Morano were the first source in May 2004 of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth claims against John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election [1] and in January 2006 of similar smears against Vietnam war veteran John Murtha.
Morano was "previously known as Rush Limbaugh's 'Man in Washington,' as reporter and producer for the Rush Limbaugh Television Show, as well as a former correspondent and producer for American Investigator, the nationally syndicated TV newsmagazine."[1]

Wow. I don't know about you, but it seems to me that this whole UEA e-mail campaign seems to go much deeper than the purported notion that some random climate skeptic hacker just happened to obtain compromising internal documents that just happened to have happened right at the most unfortunate time one could possibly imagine for those concerned about trying to mitigate the Global Warming crisis (and, conversely, at the most fortunate possible time for those who have an interest in opposing any such initiatives) just before some major US policy legislation and international agreements are to be decided. Hmmm...

At the very least the UEA e-mail campaign is an application of the dirty political tactics MO by professional right wing operatives to climate change campaigning. Obtaining compromising internal documents is the holy grail of dirty political campaigns, so why would not campaigners who became accomplished dirty-tricksters in US politics not seek to apply the same tactics against the poorly defended intranet/internet servers of a provincial university? And, as we have learned from the history of the Fossil Fuel Denial Industry, the most underhanded and dishonest right-wing political operatives are more often than not doing the bidding of very powerful corporate/industry interests who seek to destroy anything that stands in the way of their ability to maximize their profits, the environment and the majority of humanity be damned.

Although different in context and content, there are marked similarities between the Swift Boat campaign and the hacking of the UEA e-mails. Both were sophisticated strategies to undermine trust. Both identified trust and integrity as a major strength of the opponent and then played carefully chosen story lines to undermine them. As both national and international climate change policy are still to be decided, I don't think we've seen the last of the dirty tricks operations by any means. I expect more stepped up and viscous efforts to try to sabotage and discredit the publics' trust and respect for the international scientific consensus and research on the issue, along with the campaigns to address the crisis going forward...

So, who's he afraid of? Monkton? Can't take the "heat?" Will Gore now be only doing controlled TV appearances?

Watts Up With That
Thursday, December 3, 2009

It seems the uncertainty about Copenhagen is growing. When Al baby pulls the plug, you know it’s hosed.

From Berlingske: Al Gore cancels lecture during COP15

Former U.S. vice president has canceled his event, more than 3,000 Danes have purchased a ticket. Photo: JOSE MENDEZ

Looks like they will get a refund though. Might be worth more as a collectors item in ten years though.

I wonder how many people have shelled out $1200 to shake Al’s hand? Maybe not enough and he couldn’t cover the expenses for his private jet?

From the Washington Post:

“Have you ever shaken hands with an American vice president? If not, now is your chance. Meet Al Gore in Copenhagen during the UN Climate Change Conference,” notes the Danish tourism commission, which is helping Mr. Gore promote “Our Choice,” his newest book about global warming in all its alarming modalities.

“Tickets are available in different price ranges for the event. If you want it all, you can purchase a VIP ticket, where you get a chance to shake hands with Al Gore, get a copy of Our Choice and have your picture taken with him. The VIP event costs DKK 5,999 and includes drinks and a light snack.”

Wait, what? How much is that in American dollars? The currency conversion says it all, too: 5,999 Danish kroners is equivalent to $1,209.

“If you do not want to spend that much money, but still want to hear Al Gore speak about his latest book about climate challenges, you can purchase general tickets, ranging in price from DKK 199-1,499 depending on where in the room you want to sit,” the practical Danes advise. “There will be large screens, so that everyone will get a good view.”

Yah, such a deal.

Watts Up With That
Thursday, December 3, 2009
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/03/gore-cancels-on-copenhagen-lecture...

I have to admit to being totally ignorant of some of these issues... found this helpful...

[Improve]

CO2 is a greenhouse gas because it increases the temperature level of the earth in the same way the heat is generated inside the greenhouse where plants are grown. Greenhouses or glass houses trap the heat within thereby increasing the temperature within the glasshouse. In the same way, CO2 acts like a blanket in the earth atmosphere and prevents the heat from escaping from the earth's surface, leading to a rise in global temperatures.

A:

Shortwave energy (that emitted by the sun) passes through the atmosphere pretty much unimpeded, ultimately to be intercepted by the ground. The warm ground emits longwave radiation in proportion to the fourth power of its temperature. In a completely dry, CO2-less and ozone-less atmosphere, this upwelling longwave radiation would all be lost to space. Carbon dioxide absorbs upwelling long wave radiation and re-emits it back to the ground, thereby reducing the amount of heat that escapes to space, warming the planet. The warmer planet evaporates more water, and the water vapor absorbs even more longwave radiation than the carbon dioxide, warming the planet even more.

A:

The two answers above are not quite correct. This is how it works.
Incoming solar radiation is widely distributed across the electromagnetic spectrum. Some wavelengths (mostly visible light) get through the atmosphere to the surface, some don't. Of the radiation that gets through, some is reflected and some is absorbed by the surface of the earth. The reflected radiation is not an issue, because it goes right back into space at the same wavelengths that it came in at, unimpeded, just like on the way in. It is only the absorbed radiation that is a problem. This radiation is later re-emitted, but in the form of Infrared Radiation (IR).
Certain atmospheric gases, known as "greenhouse gases", absorb IR, then re-emit it back into the atmosphere. Some percentage of this re-emitted IR (after a long sequence of re-absorptions and re-emissions by other greenhouse gas molecules) eventually works its way back down to the lower atmosphere and is said to "warm" the surface. This is the "greenhouse effect". The "greenhouse effect", in and of itself, is a completely natural thing, and also a very good thing. Without it, the surface would be far too cold for life as we know it to exist.
At this point, it must be emphasized that carbon dioxide (CO2) is just one of many "greenhouse gases". It is not the most important, nor the most abundant. That distinction belongs to water vapor. Even without carbon dioxide, water vapor alone would cause enough of a greenhouse effect to keep us very near the warm temperatures that we enjoy. Also worth emphasizing is the fact that greenhouse gasses do not "trap" IR. They absorb, then re-emit the IR, in a completely random direction. It could go up, down, sideways, or any direction in between. Re-absorption by other greenhouse gas molecules complicates the path and destination of an individual unit of IR, but what it all boils down to is that something less than half of the IR absorbed by greenhouse gases eventually finds its way back to the surface, with the remainder escaping into space.
Though the greenhouse effect itself is completely natural, and very beneficial, global warming scientists believe that anthropogenic (man-made) emissions of carbon dioxide (mostly from burning fossil fuels) have increased CO2 in the atmosphere to a point where we are now experiencing what could be called an "enhanced greenhouse effect". This artificial enhancement of the greenhouse effect, could cause significant warming of the atmosphere and the surface, over and above what the natural greenhouse effect causes. Though such additional warming will have both positive and negative consequences for human beings and other life on the planet, global warming scientists believe that the negative consequences far outweigh the positive consequences. (However, in reality, they have no scientific basis for that belief - they just believe, just because it's "man-made", just because it's not "natural", that it must be "bad". Even the alarmist IPCC admits that no one can be certain which effects will dominate, but, in true alarmist fashion choose to err on the side of pessimism. But that is a completely different discussion, not appropriate to the question at hand.)
Now, here's an important point that global warming scientists don't mention. Though carbon dioxide definitely absorbs IR, it only absorbs IR in two very narrow ranges of wavelengths, one between 2.5 and 3 microns, and another between 4 and 5 microns. This is a small percentage of the total IR emitted by the surface. I don't know exactly how small (because I can't find any source for the wavelength distribution of IR emitted from the surface), but it's probably less than 10%, and perhaps as low as 4%. And even in those ranges, CO2 has to compete with water vapor, which also absorbs 2.5-3-micron IR. So, even if carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increased a thousand-fold, and even if there was no water vapor, there is a limit to how much IR CO2 can absorb, and that limit is 10% (or less) of all the IR emitted from the surface. And of that 10%, over half of it still ends up escaping into space.
This limit of absorptivity is important because some skeptics argue that, between water vapor and CO2, every available ray of IR within the absorption ranges of CO2 is already being absorbed. Additional molecules of CO2, therefore, will have zero effect on the total absorption of IR. So future warming due to CO2 is simply not possible. The only way CO2 could absorb any more IR than it is already absorbing is if 1) the surface started re-emitting more IR, which could only happen if more sunlight reached the surface, or 2) atmospheric water vapor levels dropped, freeing up more IR to be absorbed by CO2, in which case, warming would not occur, because that radiation was already being absorbed by the water vapor that disappeared. In fact, if the second option occurred, temperatures would in fact drop, because water vapor absorbs IR over a much wider range than CO2, and therefore, CO2 cannot completely offset the loss of IR absorption by water vapor. However, the existence of CO2, replacing the IR absorption of some of the lost water vapor, would mitigate this temperature drop. Therefore, at current levels, CO2 could be said to be somewhat of a stabilizer of the greenhouse effect, taking up part of the slack when water vapor levels drop too low. In this respect, it is good to have an excess of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
It is also possible that, even at pre-industrial concentrations of atmospheric CO2, we were already above the "saturation point" of IR absorption by CO2, and therefore, even the warming that has occurred in the last 150 years could not have been caused by carbon dioxide.

A:

The answer directly above is also not quite correct.

CO2 absorbs at many different wavelengths. It is true that the 'band saturation effect' can occur, such that absorption in a particular wavelength can be saturated. According to Seinfeld and Pandis (2006), this effect is important for atmospheric CO2, however it does not mean that increases in CO2 have no effect. They say that doubling CO2 from is present day concentration leads to a 10-20% increase in its total greenhouse effect. This is because if absorbs at many different wavelengths. For more information, look up CO2 absorption spectrum in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, from Air Pollution to Climate Change, by Seinfeld and Pandis (2006).

---

I don't know what the previous answerer means by "many different wavelengths", but there are, in fact, an infinite number of wavelengths between 2.5 and 3 microns. So, yes, in that respect, it is true that CO2 absorbs IR over "many different wavelengths". But it's still less than 10% of the total IR emitted by the Earth's surface. And it still has to competed with water vapor over those wavelengths, and the it is still a valid point that increasing CO2 in the atmosphere will have little effect on temperatures. If Seinfeld and Kramer say otherwise, they are lying.
But let's say, for the sake of argument, that Seinfeld and Costanza are right, and "doubling CO2 from is present day concentration leads to a 10-20% increase in its total greenhouse effect". So what?! The total greenhouse effect is about 32 degrees C. CO2's share of that is 7-26%. Taking the midpoint of that range, 16.5%, and applying it to the total 32 degrees results in just 5.28 degrees C. That's how much of the current greenhouse effect can be blamed on CO2. If the level of atmospheric CO2 doubled, according to Seinfeld and Newman, the effect of CO2 would increase by just 10-20%. Again, taking the midpoint of that range, 15%, that's just 0.792 degrees C. That's how much global average annual temperatures would increase if atmospheric CO2 doubled.
Now, that may no sound like a lot. In fact, it's smaller than the margin by which your local TV weatherman misses tomorrow's temperature forecast. But if the global average temperature went up by that much, it could create some problems for us. But here's the thing. Atmospheric CO2 levels are currently about 400 parts per million (ppm). To double them, we would have to increase them by another 400 ppm, to a total 800 ppm. It took 150 years to double them from 200 ppm to 400 ppm. At that rate (about 1.33 ppm per year), it would take 300 years to double them again to 800 ppm. We don't have enough fossil fuels left to do that. Not in 300 years or 300,000 years. So, stop worrying.
It is better that you spend your time worrying about what will happen if we ban fossil fuels. After all, if the alarmists are right, that's the only way to stop global warming. What happens to the world's economy when we don't have gasoline to fuel our cars and diesel to fuel our trucks? Electric cars? Yeah, right! Even if they could come up with a viable
electric car, where do you think the electricity comes from? Coal, that's where! What happens when we can't grow enough food to feed the world because we can't use diesel in our tractors? What happens when people have to suffer through 100+ degree summers and subzero winters without air conditioning and home heating? What happens when China an India (now the number 1 and number 3 carbon dioxide emitters in the world) refuse to go along with any plan to stop global warming? How many people will die in that war? Will global warming even matter when they launch their nuclear missiles at us, or we launch ours at them?

A:
Sort of a qualifying statement: I do not support nor deny the claims of global warming, I wish to only better clarify a previous statement about ppm increase in CO₂ over the last century or so. Now, to make a slight modification to what was said about the doubling of concentration of CO₂ from 200 ppm to 400 ppm in 150 years, the main problem that has been posed is that the concentration increase is NOT linear. The 1.33 ppm increase per year is an average which is by no means incorrect, it is just slightly misleading. The overall year to year increase of CO₂ concentration in our atmosphere is clearly not linear. As shown below in a decade by decade comparison of CO₂ concentrations in our atmosphere.
Concentration (in ppm)
294 in 1900, 297 in 1910, 301 in 1920, 304 in 1930, 308 in 1940, 311 in 1950, 315 in 1960, 323 in 1970, 338 in 1980, 354 in 1990, 370 in 2000
The numbers from the above table are approximations taken from the global warming debunking site, http://brneurosci.org/co2.html
The graph the I pulled these numbers from is approximately half way down the site's page.

A:
To be precise, the current concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is ~380ppm.
The above answers miss the point of anthropogenic induced global warming in a geological context. With data from ice cores, speleothemes (cave records) and other geochemical/geological records, we know that CO2 has been higher than it is today in geologically recent times, specifically around 12 thousand and 125 thousand years ago. At these times, there was much less ice, higher seas and weaker thermohaline circulation, the currents in the ocean driven primarily by cooling of surface waters at the poles. Earth has the ability to adjust these changes and life with it, because the changes occur over thousands of years.
The problem with the current increase in CO2 and associated warming is that it is happening very fast (in geological terms). Never before has such a sharp or drastic change in atmospheric chemistry occurred without an extreme catastrophic event like a volcanic eruption or cosmic impact. The main fear that earth scientists have is that the current changes may be so rapid that a runaway situation may occur and life and climatic systems will not be able to equilibrate. Rapid melting of continental ice in Greenland for example, may result in a fresh water cap on the north pacific, which would halt the thermohaline circulation (the gulf stream) and prevent warm equatorial waters from upwelling there. this occurred during the younger dryas, known as a Heinrich even, and resulted in the drastic cooling of Europe to arctic conditions similar to that of Siberia.
In essence, global warming resulting from increased CO2 may have any number of known and as yet unknown effects on the earth, many of which may be catastrophic for man kind. Once they occur, it will be too late to do any thing about them. For this reason, it is important that humanity acts as a whole to preserve the natural system on which we depend. It is important to regard scientific opinion with skepticism, because this maintains sciences integrity, but when faced with overwhelming evidence from many different sources, the skeptical argument becomes weaker, and should eventually be abandoned. We have reached that point with the issue of global climate change.

A:
A few tweaks:
The frequencies are not infinite. Frequencies are dictated by the energy of the photon. The energy of the photons are absorbed and emitted by electronics moving from one distance away from the nucleus (orbit) to an orbit closer to the nucleus. There is a finite number of orbits and a larger, but finite number of combinations of jumping from one orbit to another, some more common than others. This is an aspect of quantum theory.

Next, we may speak of saturation in which every IR photon is absorbed, but what can change is RE-absorption. At any given moment there is a probability that an absorbed IR photon will escape to space and the atmosphere will have given off that tiny quantum of heat energy. There is a second probability that the photon will be intercepted by another greenhouse gas atom. If you add more unsaturated atoms into the mix (such as doubling the CO2), you decrease the chances of the carbon dioxide escaping. That second atom can instead emit the heat out of the atmosphere or into a subsequent greenhouse gas atom. The more atoms, the more obstacles to the earth releasing heat. The same amount of IR can be retained more efficiently like adding another layer of clothing before you go outside. You have the same heat, but you keep more of it.

A:

From above:

"Never before has such a sharp or drastic change in atmospheric chemistry occurred without an extreme catastrophic event like a volcanic eruption or cosmic impact."

Two points on this. First, I note with satisfaction that the alarmists are no longer claiming that the rate of temperature increase is unprecedented. Only the sharp rise in CO₂ (and even that is qualified, as explained in the second point). Fact is, no one really knows how rapidly temperatures rose in the past, because thermometers, as we know them, did not even exist until less than 300 years ago, and worldwide coverage was achieved less than 150 years ago. So we rely on so-called "proxy data" for pre-instrumental temperature records. But proxy data is not exact (though some, like isotope levels in ice cores, are closer than others, like tree rings). More importantly, all sets of proxy data are local, not global. There is no one single temperature proxy that covers the entire planet, so in order to come up with a global average temperature, you have to average together several completely different types of proxy data, which compounds the error geometrically. Fact is, we really don't know much about temperatures beyond 150 years ago, let alone how fast they rose or fell. However, it is worth noting that the most precise of all temperature proxies, isotope levels in ice cores (specifically from Vostok, Antarctica) show at least 13 periods in the last 10,000 years when temperatures rose faster than they are rising now (and 12 periods when temperatures fell faster). Of course, this is only local temperatures, and it doesn't tell us much about global temperatures. But that's my point. We don't know jack about global temperatures beyond the 150-year instrumental period.

Second, the contributor quoted above qualified his statement about drastic changes in atmospheric chemistry with the phrase "without an extreme catastrophic event like a volcanic eruption or cosmic impact". What he's saying is that only a "catastrophic event" can cause atmospheric chemistry to change as much as we are changing it now. But these catastrophic events happen all the time. Obviously, volcanic eruptions more often than cosmic impacts, but between the two, you can pretty much bank on one or two "catastrophic events" every thousand years. The key here is to think about what happened (or more importantly, did NOT happen) in response to the atmospheric changes brought about by these catastrophic events. Did they set off a runaway series of events that led to permanent hothouse or snowball Earth? No, they did not. And that is my point. The Earth's climate is dominated by negative feedbacks. If it wasn't, then every catastrophic event in the last 5 billion years would have resulted in either runaway warming or runaway cooling. But it didn't happen. The climate always recovered. Yes, the bigger the catastrophe, the longer it took to recover. The asteroid that hit off the coast of Mexico 70 million years ago took a long time to recover from. But Mount Saint Helens's eruption, not so long. To the extent that you can call mankind's pumping CO₂ into the atmosphere a "catastrophe", it is much closer, in magnitude, to the Mount Saint Helens eruption than to the Yucatan impact. So forgive me if I'm not ate up with worry over it.

I know AGW is a rather unpopular topic at WTCD, but I want to post what I think is the truth on this issue. Though AGW is not as nefarious as 9-11,  there are similarities in that we are being bamboozled to lend our support to a cause which is not for our benefit but that of vested interests who have control of the media or in this case, the "peer review process".

Since AGW is now facing very serious challenges, I am heartened that at least on this matter, info disseminated by bloggers are finally beating back the propaganda by misguided scientists and their well meaning but misinformed supporters.

And now for Africagate

Posted by Richard Sunday, February 07, 2010

Following an investigation by this blog (and with the story also told in The Sunday Times), another major "mistake" in the IPCC's benchmark Fourth Assessment Report has emerged.

Similar in effect to the erroneous "2035" claim – the year the IPCC claimed that Himalayan glaciers were going to melt – in this instance we find that the IPCC has wrongly claimed that in some African countries, yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by up to 50 percent by 2020.

At best, this is a wild exaggeration, unsupported by any scientific research, referenced only to a report produced by a Canadian advocacy group, written by an obscure Moroccan academic who specialises in carbon trading, citing references which do not support his claims.

Unlike the glacier claim, which was confined to a section of the technical Working Group II report, this "50 percent by 2020" claim forms part of the key Synthesis Report, the production of which was the personal responsibility of the chair of the IPCC, Dr R K Pachauri. It has been repeated by him in many public fora. He, therefore, bears a personal responsibility for the error.
In this lengthy post, we examine the nature and background of this latest debacle, which is now under investigation by IPCC scientists and officials.

(continued at http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2010/02/and-now-for-africagate.html )