[Climate] Cap and Trade

[Grunthos]

In short, they cherry-picked the data to represent the pre-conceived conclusion, moving different data-sets in and out of the sum over the span of the graph in order to conceal the actual facts

That's fraud, not science. Done by an accountant, it would be called "cooking the books" and would net a long prison sentence.

Remember that famous Moynihan quote: "Everyone's entitled to heir own opinion, but not to their own facts."

[Tonus]

Originally Posted by Grunthos

In short, they cherry-picked the data to represent the pre-conceived conclusion, moving different data-sets in and out of the sum over the span of the graph in order to conceal the actual facts

That's fraud, not science. Done by an accountant, it would be called "cooking the books" and would net a long prison sentence.

Now imagine that those accountants worked with the people who certify their work to make sure that their fraud was rubber-stamped, and also worked with them to frustrate efforts to investigate their fraud?

Shady posted this link in SD at UGOP. It lists dozens of incriminating emails. Posts here by WUWT and here by Climate Audit also show that Jones' explanation for his "hide the decline" comment are untrue. Apparently there is a programmer's note in the code for those graphs that admits that it won't plot past 1960 using the original data. The note claims that "the real temperatures" will be used instead.

Once again, when the data that they were using stopped giving them the results they wanted, they replaced it with data that did. Apparently there has been no attempt to discover why the tree ring data diverges so strongly from the temperature record. They simply removed the part that didn't conform to their views. And that was just the tip of the (no longer melting!) iceberg.

[Tonus]

And the denial (irony!) is in full effect...

Associated Press: Global warming is worse than we thought! Really really bad! omg you gusy!!!

The Washington Post: Global warming is real, but skeptics are giving the good guys a tough time by hacking into their computers. But the good guys assure us that global warming is real, just like the IPCC report says.

New York Times: Bad guys hacked into servers and are uploading the private correspondence of the good guys in order to hide the truth about global warming! (Andrew Revkin is mentioned in some of the emails and appears to be a liason of sorts for the RealClimate guys, giving one of them a platform from which to write a letter complaining about the "terrorist" hack of the CRU server.)

Note: An interesting idea being floated by numerous respondents in the NYT comments, is that it appears that the documents were assembled in reponse to an FOI request. When the request was denied, the files were posted by an anonymous person. In other words, this isn't a "hack" in the classic sense, this seems to be the work of a whistleblower who realized that the truth was about to be buried yet again.

The LA Times: Meh, science isn't that important when debating climate change legislation anyway!

Expect this sort of bizarre reaction to continue for at least a short while, as it is the initial volley. When faced with something like this, the usual pattern is to deny everything, then try any number of tactics to deflect attention from the most damning portions. Focus on the "hack" of computers. Focus on one or two emails and dissect them endlessly so as to confuse the issue. Insist that "the science is settled" and that there is still an "overwhelming mountain of evidence" in favor of warming. Or, in the AP's case, just tell a bunch of lies and ignore reality (or use a time scale that starts in 1997, thus allowing 1998 to skew the results).

The LA Times' approach is the most interesting. Simply admit what skeptics have assumed all along- this is a political issue, and science didn't have anything to do with it aside from being used to give it a veneer of legitimacy. So if the science that supports warming is discredited, it didn't matter- what's important is that we cripple the world's economy to promote a 'green' agenda.

Expect the crap to pile up very very thick, but the evidence just seems to be overwhelming, and I do not see any attempts as yet to claim that any of the documents are fake. I bet that the hope is to push the issue aside in the hopes of getting something done at Copenhagen, but it seemed as if Copenhagen was going to be a failure even before this came up. Do you think that India and China, who have been wagging fingers at the western world over climate legislation, is going to ignore information that shows the US and UK to be massive hypocrites on the issue?

[NervousWreck]

As you know, hacked information is only valid when the papers don't like the victim.

[Tonus]

Originally Posted by NervousWreck

As you know, hacked information is only valid when the papers don't like the victim.

Indeed. Some commenters at the NYT site are pointing out that the Times has had no such compunction about how information was recovered when it shone a negative light on the Bush administration. But when a major story like this drops into their laps (and how can this not be a major story?) they wring their hands over the means by which the information was procured.

Of course, it's possible that this wasn't a hack at all. At WUWT, they make a reasonable attempt at explaining how this information may have gotten into the wild. After all, it's not the first time that CRU inadvertently left incriminating data in the open, which is how McIntyre got the Yamal data that he'd been asking about for ten years.

[Grunthos]

Did you see Lord Monckton's article today, Tonus? Spells it out:

Viscount Monckton on Climategate: ‘They Are Criminals’ (PJM Exclusive)

Posted By Christopher Monckton On November 23, 2009 @ 10:37 am In . Feature 01, Crime, Europe, Science & Technology, US News, World News | 98 Comments

This is what they did — these climate “scientists” on whose unsupported word the world’s classe politique proposes to set up an unelected global government this December in Copenhagen, with vast and unprecedented powers to control all formerly free markets, to tax wealthy nations and all of their financial transactions, to regulate the economic and environmental affairs of all nations, and to confiscate and extinguish all patent and intellectual property rights.

The tiny, close-knit clique of climate scientists who invented and now drive the “global warming” fraud — for fraud is what we now know it to be [1] — tampered with temperature data so assiduously that, on the recent admission of one of them, land temperatures since 1980 have risen twice as fast as ocean temperatures. One of the thousands of emails recently circulated by a whistleblower at the University of East Anglia, where one of the world’s four global-temperature datasets is compiled, reveals that data were altered so as to prevent a recent decline in temperature from showing in the record. In fact, there has been no statistically significant “global warming” for 15 years — and there has been rapid and significant cooling for nine years.

Worse, these arrogant fraudsters — for fraudsters are what we now know them to be — have refused, for years and years and years, to reveal their data and their computer program listings. Now we know why: As a revealing 15,000-line document from the computer division at the Climate Research Unit shows, the programs and data are a hopeless, tangled mess. In effect, the global temperature trends have simply been made up. Unfortunately, the British researchers have been acting closely in league with their U.S. counterparts who compile the other terrestrial temperature dataset — the GISS/NCDC dataset. That dataset too contains numerous biases intended artificially to inflate the natural warming of the 20th century.

Finally, these huckstering snake-oil salesmen and “global warming” profiteers — for that is what they are — have written to each other encouraging the destruction of data that had been lawfully requested under the Freedom of Information Act in the UK by scientists who wanted to check whether their global temperature record had been properly compiled. And that procurement of data destruction, as they are about to find out to their cost, is a criminal offense. They are not merely bad scientists — they are crooks. And crooks who have perpetrated their crimes at the expense of British and U.S. taxpayers.

I am angry, and so should you be.

What have the mainstream news media said about the Climategate affair? Remarkably little [2]. The few who have brought themselves to comment, through gritted teeth, have said that all of this is a storm in a teacup, and that their friends in the University of East Anglia and elsewhere in the climatological community are good people, really.

No, they’re not. They’re criminals. With Professor Fred Singer, who founded the U.S. Satellite Weather Service, I have reported them to the UK’s Information Commissioner, with a request that he investigate their offenses and, if thought fit, prosecute. But I won’t be holding my breath: In the police state that Britain has now sadly become, with supine news media largely owned and controlled by the government, the establishment tends to look after its own.

At our expense, and at the expense of the truth.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Article printed from Pajamas Media: http://pajamasmedia.com

URL to article: http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/viscoun...pjm-exclusive/

URLs in this post:

[1] now know it to be: http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/global-...-does-it-mean/

[2] Remarkably little: http://pajamasmedia.com/eddriscoll/2...s-fit-to-bury/

[Tonus]

I missed that one, thanks. Monckton has long been a particularly sharp thorn in the side of the alarmists, I'm sure that he has much reason to feel vindicated by the disclosure of those emails and documents.

[Shady]

Local meteorologist James Spann has linked to a searchable database of the data from the CRU. It can be found here.

[Tonus]

This article is actually a bit heartening. The writer believes that the emails are authentic and very damaging, and calls for Jones' resignation. He then opines that this isn't enough to bury the global warming movement, as there is still a lot of data and research backing the theory.

The second part of it is typical of the reaction of many alarmists. "But there's still so much evidence that proves it!" they cry. I have yet to see someone follow that cry with links to that mountain of evidence. I think that there's this feeling that they were sooo close, and the opportunity to cripple the world's economy is slipping out of their grasp, so they are scrambling.

But it's the first part that is important. A firm believer in man-induced warming, writing for a left-leaning paper that is just as firm in its support, has admitted that the emails and info are as bad as they appear to be, and that the people involved have ruined their reputations and harmed the global warming movement. I doubt that this is the beginning of an attempt to exorcise the group from The Church of Climate Change, but I'd love to see it happen. In the long term, this could benefit the enviro-nuts. But in the short term, it would be devastating.

And fun to watch.

[Edmaster]

Strawman arguments? From a global warming supporter? NAWWWW!