Why those emails are lethal

Laura Latini

I find it astonishing that a professor from SOAS - Britain's superfortress of relativism and "critical theory" - should find these data so dishonest as to be unacceptable. Dishonesty is native in SOAS. This is like Al Capone complaining about dishonest trading.

Watt Tyler

It is dead Melanie, but our leaders don't seem to see any significance in its laying prostrate and stiffened amongst the droppings on the newspaper covered floor of its cage.

Brown, and Cameron by his silence (and his record on the matter), think that they are going to get away with the fact that they wanted to sign us up to a scam, and to a further erosion of sovereignty. Indeed, the MSM in this country, guilty as hell in the conspiracy as it is on its own terms, won't move to pull the rug from under their feet.

And meanwhile, in recent days at Copenhagen, we have glimpsed our future at the hands of the Global Warming Tyrrany - the most worrying incident being the "Hitler Youth" one.

We know the AGM theory is dead, and if it was only as comical as a dead parrot. But what we have is an undead creature rather like a vampire, the grip of which we can't escape its undead grip even if we replace Brown with Cameron. This is why the next GE is so important, and it is why the time has come at last to vote for a real change.

Tasman

"... manipulation of tree-ring data which stands proxy for temperatures in the past before records began."

There is a word missing!
"which supposedly stands proxy"

Pete

This can't be happening again, I went though Y2K, 3 years of sleepless nights, billions spent on I.T. with the same "the world is going to end" crowd, nothing happened and nobody went to jail, for this shakedown. (I got suspended twice for trying to point out the obverse. I was too young to get it then)

What concerns me is "The Boy That Cried Wolf" something really bad well eventually happen but no-one will ever believe it.

Paul from Texas

They're trying to do something similar with ocean temperature data, splicing data from two different collection/measuring systems to manipulate the 'before and after' view to create or exaggerate an increase in a selected time series.
-------------------------

We’ve had many prominent global warmists in the U.S. calling for public trials for non-believers, especially skeptical scientists. At the time it sounded crazy, since skeptics were willing to answer questions, anytime, anywhere. There was no need to compel them to testify.

It’s the opposite with the global warming scientists. They are not behaving like honest scientists; they are behaving like they’ve got a lot to hide. Perhaps they need to be compelled to testify. Fraudsters are afraid to debate in public. Honest activists would love the public platform. They've been asking Al Gore or any global warmist to debate the subject for 10 years now, but they keep refusing.

You'd think now might be a really good time to arrange for the biggest public debate in world history. Lots of cameras, lots of green commercials, lots of celebrities in the audience, live on world TV. Maybe even has some live music at halftime. Trophies to be awarded throughout.

Since the science is settled, why not take the opportunity to bring out the secret data and evidence, and finalize this matter once and for all, put on a good show, and move forward with the global carbon government, global carbon police, and global carbon tax… and at the same time, get more famous, more important, wealthy beyond your biggest dreams, and maybe even win a Nobel Prize or two.

You know these people would love to do this but they just can’t, because the evidence doesn’t exist. It was just a theory. Their obsession and overstatement of CO2 greenhouse effect doomed the movement from the start. They should have chosen water vapor. Shhhh.

A public trial suddenly doesn’t sound so bad, for them. We demand some answers!

Mladen Andrijasevic

One of the clearest explanations I’ve read is here:
Understanding Climategate's Hidden Decline
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/12/understanding_climategates_hid.html

elixelx

I find it astonishing that a commenter on this thread, probably a guardian and defender of all absolutes, should find the data honest and acceptable BECAUSE it has been criticised by an institution whose philosophy and POV she disagrees with!
Like AGW-believers and mad tyrants throughout history have done, once more it is the bringer of bad news that must be destroyed, and the news itself denied!

Roy

To catch up on all the scaremongering that has taken place in the last half century or so, a good read is: "Scared to Death" by Christopher Booker & Richard North, (from BSE to Global Warming). To just touch on one would be the asbestos scare. So shocking and correct was the first findings and the alarm and panic that followed that authorities got carried away slowly and completely in the century to follow. Even the safe white asbestos used in concrete etc., was vilified and banned. Such was the huge compensation claims and insufficient science done or any publicity of the correct knowledge coming to light, it became a calamitous situation. As usual lawyers had a field day; amounts paid in fees in the US and elsewhere became known as the greatest legal fraud in history. Even today people are unaware of this great scandal and unaware of the unnecessary upheaval and huge expense that went into this over done scare. Where then was the correct scientific information and where is it now with global warming?

Charles

Pete: the Y2K bug was a real problem waiting to happen. The billions spent on it stopped it from happening.

Mel's Parrot

"GW theory is deader than Monty Python’s parrot. Get over it."

Yes, because the only data to support AGW comes from the CRU.

Oh, whoops, I forgot about the thinning Arctic sea ice and the retreat of the glaciers. And the physicochemical properties of CO2. And positive feedback loops from the northern tundra. And paleoclatharate analysis.

Nevermind eh? Better luck next time Mel. I'm sure you'll be banging on about it again soon enough.

nagarjuna

Charles, the efficacy of the spend on Y2K is seriously in doubt. Some parts of the world did spent huge amounts (e.g., US,UK)and nothing happened. Unfortunately, other parts of the world spent almost nothing (e.g., Italy) and ... nothing happened.

Mel's Parrot, I think you are missing the point of the CRU debacle. First, many of the AGW validating data sets are interdependent. If the CRU data are corrupt - and now the general consensus, after some initial denial, seems to be that they are corrupt - how many other data sets have also become tainted. Second, even with regard to the truly independent data sets, if the East Anglia team was afflicted by a confirmation bias, isn't it reasonable to suspect that other proponents of AGW might also have been so afflicted?

Larry in Tel Aviv

"AGW theory is deader than Monty Python’s parrot. Get over it."

If only, the AGW believers are marching ever onward like ClimateGate never happened. They just will continue to ignore the facts here like they ignore the jihad. Nothing is gonna change here. The media have just quashed this scandal, by largely ignoring it - so most of the general public, even if aware of it, have no idea how damaging ClimateGate actually is.

Anna

"AGW theory is deader than Monty Python’s parrot. Get over it."

Dream on, Melanie. I happen to agree with you, but there are too many vested interests, too many people making fortunes out of AGW, too many authoritarians salivating at the prospect of controlling their fellow citizens. They will fight to the death to sustain the scam.

margalit shinar

My problem with AGW does not stem, pace Gordon Brown, from any anti-science stance, but rather, as these emails reveal further, that the entire issue has been so politicized, so radicalized, that it is impossible for the layman to reach the truth of the matter. It is not science as such which is at stake here, but rather its cynical appropriation by a new religion replete with prophets, high priests, deliberate obfuscation of knowledge, heretics etc.

david elder

The 'decline' or divergence problem in tree-ring temperature proxy studies encountered by Briffa from 1960 onwards, and truncated underneath other temperature series (!), has been discussed in an interesting paper by Craig Loehle in Climatic Change June 2009. He suggests that some trees are sensitive to heat, and the warming of the late 20th century - whether natural, anthropogenic or a mixture of both - caused the divergence between thermometer readings and the lower tree-ring proxy measurements in recent decades. If so, it could be awkward to pick up the Medieval Warm Period with tree rings (the warming could reduce this ring growth too). But there are other proxies than tree rings, proxies which are not subject to this problem; and if there is a WMP it should show more readily with these. Loehle claims that this is the case. Scrutiny of his thesis would be desirable; but if it stands up, it would tie together a number of things - the decline or divergence in recent tree-ring temperature proxies, the difficulty in getting a WMP trace with some trees, and the more positive indications of a WMP with other kinds of proxies. This field of research could be interesting to watch.

Mel's Parrot: the ice in the Arctic is much affected by natural cycles like the Arctic Oscillation (e.g. ScienceDaily 29 Dec 2004). And the properties of CO2 include a logarithmic relationship between it and temperature; in plain english more and more CO2 has less and less warming effect. The rise in temperature from doubling CO2 is only expected to be about 1 deg C. Higher figures reflect an interpretation that the small CO2 driven rise will evaporate more water vapour, a potent greenhouse gas. But water vapour can also form clouds - what if these on balance cool the earth? I don't think the science on this key point is settled.

ClimateGate has not totally slain anthropogenic global warming - I wouldn't be surprised if there is at least some AGW at some stage. But ClimateGate has exposed an unhealthy clique of over-influential AGW alarmists. This needs to be honestly admitted for the long term good of science.

Terry in Oz

Melanie, we all know this was a scam from its very conception. We all know that Climategate has killed any credibility to AGW or its 'scientists'.

But on the other hand, AGW has spawned a whole industry of publicly funded research, private carbon trading markets and political capital. Its advocates know they are toast in any objective sense.

But this scam has now gone spiritual, merely, in my view, to protect the credibility of those who were taken in by it or promoted it or benfitted (and continue to) from it.

That's why Climategate isn't even a topic for debate in Copenfrauden, nor does it affect the spiritually devoted minions who dwell at that conference of the gullible.

And that is the danger. That despite all the facts, the age of reason has been jetissoned in favour of the new Inquisiton, the new fascism, the new communism. Dedicated to saving the planet by accepting no debate as to why it is wrong. Accepting no facts illustrating its stupidity. Saving the planet - the one true faith, not to be denied at any cost. And like its predecessors in bigotry, it will kill millions if it succeeds.

"Oh, whoops, I forgot about the thinning Arctic sea ice and the retreat of the glaciers."

This is not evidence of global warming. Local melting of ice is thermodynamically compatible with net cooling.

MartinW

Straws in the wind, but I sense that the more perceptive of the 'climate deceivers' (aka 'warmists') are beginning to realise that the game is up for the temperature delusion, so are starting to talk more forcefully about acidification of the oceans and the extinction of everything in a shell. We shall see how this pans out in the media. It's not that the 'climate deceivers' are changing their stance, just that they see a more profitable line in keeping the bandwagon going.

Dbrak

Oh, whoops, I forgot about the thinning Arctic sea ice and the retreat of the glaciers.

Such local warming is also thermodynamically compatible with global cooling. It is not evidence of AGW.

mcmrjp

Melanie the GW supporters are more about defeating capitalism than threats to the environment. This postulation keeps coming up at Copenhagen. The same people that march against capitalisation are there as well. They are trying to subvert this discussion for their own ends and the public are being conned.

David

Mann (quoted above):

"I don’t think that doubt is scientifically justified"

This sounds like the words and thought processes of a fanatic, not a scientist.

Perhaps a better Monty Python reference would be "nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition".

Pete

Charles; Your probably to young to remember but the world worked just fine before computers and since their introduction they crash all the time, so what? re-boot & deal with the problem ones.

Just a FYI many thousands of legacy computers systems are running plants in the 3rd world that were never touched and their working just fine thank you very much.

Like I say, this is just another shakedown for money.

As a side note, I was hoping the tree hugger crown could have gotten some of this stuff through, I was going along with this for years, anything to clean up the planet get ride of many of the fossil fuels etc, but they blew it, people don't like being told their stupid, well not everyday anyway.

Rachael

Oh, yes, the fight is not over.

Those with vested interests in this will fight like cornered animals.

Think how much money governments would have to admit taxing and wasting. How much money 'green' energy companies stand to lose.

The state-funded broadcaster - also up to its neck in all this - knew this as soon as it was handed those emails and, hey presto, decided to sit on them.

That's why those emails were posted on a Russian server.

The leaker(s) realised the British MSM weren't to be trusted.

This blows their credibility for good and that's why they'll fight like cornered wolves. Hilary Benn is today banging on about ocean acidification as he squirms to justify this colossal waste of money.

Total farce.

daniel maris

Yes, Laura, in the vipers' nest league I'd put SOAS just behind Chatham House, but probably above the BBC :)

Of course SOAS is not far off being an Islamist franchise so it may be that the SOAS view is this climate change business is all a fiendish infidel plot to stop Crusader-Zionists using oil and thus weaken the glorious Ummah.

In jest one hopes...but these days...

Philo

I have heard it said that the data set that is the subject of this scandal is only one of three independent attmepts to construct a time series, and that all three agree fairly closely. Is this correct?

I have also heard it said that this time series represents only one piece of evidence in support of the argument, and that the argument does not stand or fall on what has been concocted at East Anglia. Is this correct?

Ian C

Dead or not there is so much vested interest in the pre-scandal status quo - as exmplified by the whole Copenhagen miasma and the 'new report' released this week on acidification of the oceans that conveniently sweeps aside the need for warming to be the issue.

The man the CRU have appointed to investigate is a warmist, the IPCC have gone back on their invetsigation and Copenhagen is carrying on as if this has no bearing.

It will still take a decade to kill this. Don't make the mistake that we all did (including Monbiot after a fashion) that it is over.

solemnman

David Elder
Perhaps you can enlighten me about something I read some time ago.It concerns a study of ocean evaporation using evaporation plates distributed in various places- which led to the conclusion that there is less evaporation taking place due to global cooling( which could be the cause of some of the droughts we're experiencing).If the ice caps are breaking up and melting -wouldn't melting cause ocean cooling?Doesn't heat ,like water,seek it's own level?

EC

It's ironic, isn't it, that only the Russian's could be trusted with the information that could finally blow the gaff on the West's very own brand of 'soviet science.' i.e. AGW.

Augustus

Stress has broken out in Copenhagen. The African nations,
supported by the group of 77
developing nations, have broken off negotiations. They are accusing the developed world of trying to renege on the Kyoto treaty with regard to their CO2 emissions agreements. They are demanding definite accords towards a second treaty, instead of only talks about long-term predictions about climate change and possible solutions. All grandstanding of course. But there a connected problem. The Kyoto Protocol will soon come to an end, and with it elapses the whole trading circus in Remewable Energy Certificates, i.e. carbon dioxide emission rights.
The goose that lays the golden egg is under threat, and that's reason enough for panic. In Europe alone during 2009, over 85bn euros were traded in emission rights. And that's peanuts compared to the world trade. This is estimated to be somewhere between 1-2 trillion by 2020.

So with such large amounts at stake, it becomes obvious why so much effort is being made to
raise the climate hysteria to such heights. It also explains why those involved in climategate creep away in shame.
If the world loses its belief in
the climate disaster to come the whole emission trading business will cave in like a house of cards. And the great irony of this carbon trading business is that it has no effect whatsoever on the total amount of CO2 emissions actually
emitted. But this world trade in hot air isn't meant to either. It's simply a golden goose of enormous proportions. A
never-ending gigantic fraud with which to rob the brave and
gullible citizens of their money. And with CO2 as the ultimate non-product.

Sergey

Ian C: Yes, it is over. Today it was announced that no decision will be agreed in Copenhagen, except to return to the issue 6 years later. In diplospeak, it means "never".

Valerunner

Pete.

I'm with Charles on the Millenium Bug.

I know it was real from personal experience as an IT professional since 1968, who actually wrote some programs with the bug in. It was rife in commercial systems but it was easy to detect and fix and that's why it was different from all the other scares. It was easy to fix so it was fixed, ergo no Armageddon.

Nobody expected systems developed in the 70s and 80s to be still running by 2000 but any programs developed since about 1990 or with no processing involving time periods more than a few hours weren't affected - hence your Third World experience.

Of course it was hyped - the IT profession has its fair share of crooks. Aeroplanes were never likely to fall out of the skies but some companies would have got into serious financial difficulties if most of their systems were allowed to fall over.

Your 're-boot' comment reveals your ignorance of real-world Business computing, I'm afraid.

I know this article is about the AGW scam (I'm with you on that) but I've read this rubbish about the millenium bug so many times recently that I had to put the record straight.

De Rigueur

Soros has got his fingerprints all over this scam.

He funds all the anti-capitalist stuff.

Someone should sort him out.

Colin

In the rush to make carbon the most lucrative, highest margin traded commodity the world has ever seen, the CRU scandal is nothing more than an inconvenient speed bump.

There are far too many vested interests at work here. The truth will not be allowed to get in the way of the sheer scale of the financial gain, not to mention the scope for authoritarian control this opportunity affords.

The concept of AGW is a godsend for authoritarian governments and greedy corporations. Much better than the ice age theories that were being peddled by the "scientists' thirty years ago...

Dixon

"Charles
December 14th, 2009 8:22am
Pete: the Y2K bug was a real problem waiting to happen. The billions spent on it stopped it from happening."

We dont actuallly know that, do we. Its like the man who carried a yellow flag around Hyde Park to ward off lions. There are no lions in Hyde Park. Which proves a yellow flag will ward off lions.

This is exactly the same circularity that makes AGW impossible to disprove. Whatever happens, whether temperatures rise or temperatures fall will be regarded as proof of the hypothesis.

Its also why the Copenhagen process is so dangerous. If CO2 emissions are reduced, at immense cost to every one of us ( I'll bet about 25% of average income ) then when temperatures continue to not rise, as now, the AGW camp can claim they were right and that the measures worked, locking us into them forever!

Dixon

"Sergey
December 14th, 2009 5:39pm
Ian C: Yes, it is over. Today it was announced that no decision will be agreed in Copenhagen, except to return to the issue 6 years later. In diplospeak, it means "never"."

I hope you are right. Its a pity Michael Crichton isnt around to take up the E-mails story.

Someone tell me, just how did he die so young and so suddenly, after writing an anti AGW book?

Sergey

"In fact, one skeptic raised this very issue about tree-ring data in a comment posted in 2004 on RealClimate, the blog operated by climate scientists. The comment, which questioned the propriety of “grafting the thermometer record onto a proxy temperature record,” immediately drew a sharp retort on the blog from Michael Mann, an expert at Penn State University:

“No researchers in this field have ever, to our knowledge, ‘grafted the thermometer record onto’ any reconstruction. It is somewhat disappointing to find this specious claim (which we usually find originating from industry-funded climate disinformation Web sites) appearing in this forum.”"
Mann lied then and would lie again.

HarleyDavidson

Some of those emails Melaine's article is all about.

* Kevin Trenberth says they can’t account for the lack of recent warming and that it is a travesty that they can’t.(1255352257)

* Mann tells Jones that it would be nice to ‘”contain” the putative Medieval Warm Period’. (1054736277)

* Kevin Trenberth says climatologists are nowhere near knowing where the energy goes or what the effect of clouds is. Says nowhere balancing the energy budget. Geoengineering is not possible.(1255523796)

* Mann launches RealClimate to the scientific community.(1102687002) (For those of you still getting their info from RealClimate - Mana's propaganda wing)

* Briffa says he is sick to death of Mann claiming his reconstruction is tropical because it has a few poorly temp sensitive tropical proxies. Says he should regress these against something else like the “increasing trend of self-opinionated verbiage” he produces. Ed Cook agrees with problems.(1024334440)
=====================

I'd like to deal with this last email because I checked it's varsity myself. The following facts speak for themselves.

Simply look at the surface data of GISS /www.giss.nasa.gov/data/update/gistemp/station_data/> and try to find something reliable in the tropics:
Look e.g. to the data for Salvador, a town of 1.5 million inhabitants. That should be compared with rural stations to correct for urban heat island effect. But the nearest rural stations are 458-542 km away from Salvador (Caetite, Caravela, Remanso). And their data are so spurious, that it is impossible to deduct any trend from them. Quixeramobin is the nearest rural station with more or less reliable data over a longer time span, and shows very different trends than Salvador. Or look at Kinshasha (what a mess!), 1.3 million inhabitants, Brazzaville (opposite the Congo stream), and something rural in the neighborhood (Mouyondzi – 173 km, M’Pouya – 215 km, Djambala – 219 km,…). East Africa is not better: compare the “trends” of Nairobi with these of Narok, Makindu, Kisumu, Garissa,… Rural data trends with some reliability on a longer time span are very rare in the whole tropics. Only expanding towns have (sometimes) longer data sets which are hardly correctable. The unreliability of the data in the tropic range is thus obvious, that one can wonder how a “global” surface temperature trend can be calculated to any accuracy… But temperate or polar Russia is not better. All but one rural station ceased operation in 1980 ( I imagine this was caused by Russia's near economic collapse about that time). What is left are large cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg (heat islands)

How can the CRU brazenly claim (global) warming with more than half the world's info completely missing?

Joe Strummer

The emails are lethal for the AGW maniacs ? Not if you just had the bad luck to watch BBC's One Show. They had a disgraceful biased item on the programme regarding those pesky " AGW deniers" where they lined up "experts" to berate the heretics with not ONE person to counter the AGW claims. I don't know who I feel more embarrassed for, the BBC and their shameless and partial affront to journalistic integrity or myself for paying the licence fee for this grotesque force fed propaganda posing as science.

Pete

Valerunner

Your experience obversely was quite different from mine, to then assume a colleague in a slimier field is therefor is some a 3rd world retard is this why the climate change guys are wining.

Some of the equipment "certified" to work after being "fixed" still needed a re-boot and that was from the engineers out of the US & UK working on the project and not my idea.

We had no Pig-Iron to deal with though, well ahead of that.

Baron

Joe Strummer: my feelings exactly. Not that one would expect the pseudo-liberal BBC fruitcakes to have someone balancing the ranting of the hideous eco man, but just a sentence or two about the faking of the evidence would have been appropriate.

The sooner the outfit folds up the better.

Martin Turnbull

When there is doubt about who has committed a crime, the question should always be, “Who stands to gain from it?” The answer often leads to the perpetrator.
Who stands to gain from supporting and pushing the unproven theories on which global warming is predicated?
Easy – those who want to control us and tax us more.
Our present computers can’t even tell with accuracy what the weather will be like next March. Why should we believe that they can predict the exact percentage of temperature rise around the world in a hundred years time?
Easy – we shouldn’t.
Humans have been on this earth for maybe 1% of its existence. Are our masters seriously saying they understand its workings well enough to control it?
Easy – that’s exactly what they’re saying.
One thing we can be sure of – throughout human history, the few have always sought to control the many. For the most part, the results have been unpleasant.
The attempts to control us have been packaged in many different ways – we have a direct line to God; we know what’s best for you because we have information you don’t have; you owe us your loyalty because we say so and we have the power; etc. etc.
We will never stop power-hungry megalomaniacs from trying to control us; but we can defeat them on each and every occasion if we resist hard enough. To do that, we must withdraw our collective cooperation with them and our collective acquiescence in their right to govern us.
In Britain, we have an election coming up. That is our chance to make it plain that we will vote against anyone who tries to empty our pockets in the name of the environment.

George Steiner

I am just one of these simpleminded engineering types but when I see temperatures expressed in tenth of a degrees from proxy data I dismiss it as noise.

I have looked at how tree ring data is supposed to relate to temperature and I will say that in my judgement it is not good enough for first order approximation.

I have looked at how oxygen isotope ratios relate to temperature data and say that it may in some cases be good enough for first order approximation.

To use such techniques of measurements and construct from them a cast iron climate history is preposterous, naïve, ignorant? But then to base public policy on it is treachery.

Boris

The other day reporting from Copenhagen, the BBC reporter was regretting the developing nations’ temporary withdrawal from the talks because they wanted the assembled governing Western elites to limit the rise in world temperature not to 2% but 1.5%.

How vain, pompous and arrogant have we become if we think that it’s in our gift to command nature. It truly amazes that we want to ‘regulate’ an entity that has been clocking for billions of years, self-correcting in spite of the many catastrophic disasters, the scale of which by far surpassed that of the CO2 discharge from burning fossil fuels.

We cannot eredicate the flu, predict, let alone prevent earthquakes, not even protect against sudden downpours, but fine-tuning world temperature’s fine, easy, let’s just pass a resolution and the problem’s solved. This doesn’t border on certifiable insanity, it’s much worse.

The Soviet communists were also keen to interfere with the forces of nature albeit on a smaller scale aiming to ‘command the winds and the rains’. If we are not careful, we may end up as they did.

EC

The Soviet communists were also keen to interfere with the forces of nature albeit on a smaller scale aiming to ‘command the winds and the rains'

You'd have to be some kind of Knut to try that!

andrew adams

Rose's article is nonsense.

Rose claims that Briffa recalculated his reconstruction as a result of the cited email exchange, but Briffa had already published the new version in Science months earlier.

Rose claims that the post-1960 divergence problem arose from Briffa's new calculation, it didn't - he had mentioned it in his paper in Nature a year earlier.
Rose claims that the "hide the decline" email refers to the graph in the IPCC report but it doesn't, it relates to the "WMO Statement on the Status of the Global Climate in 1999".
And the interpretation put on perfectly innocent phrases in these emails is just perverse.

David Alcock

This farce will run and run. There are too many vested interests and opinions for it to go away unless a major government initiative, here or elsewhere, commits to sorting it out. The Russians whose science contradicts APG will now swing along with it following their classification as a developing nation, as they will be beneficiaries of reparations by the 'carbon criminals'.

The US could do it but it's the 'Great Satan' of the warmists, lacking political credibility, and BOb wants to be green anyway.

I have a scientific background and have tried to get at the 'facts' but as Ian Plimer's book shows it is enormously complicated and APG is impossible to prove.The effects are small, as one earlier contributor has pointed out and variations are surely only noise. By the same token it is impossible to disprove with any significant degree of reliability.

My own conclusion is that the warmist case is riddled with corruption, blind self interest and political ideology, I therefore lean firmly to disregarding it. There is,as yet, no case to answer but answer it we will have to with damaging levvies and ill founded energy policies, that will set us back years and perhaps for a generation.

One scary aspect is what will the developing nations do with the handouts? Anyone who has read Dambisa Moyo's book 'Dead Aid' would realise that it could be blown on sales of Mercs and Beemers, private jets, lavish celebrations and global excursions for many a bejewelled entourage.

Happy days.

Y Harris

It's not dead. It's just resting. It's pining for the fjords. There! It just moved!

Dixon

Brace yourselves for the item on Newsnight when "Ethical Man" Justin Rowlatt is going to educate a selection of the audience of Top Gear ( Im not making this up...thats what he actually said )in what idiots they are to be sceptics using two plastic bottles and a bunch of household sundries in a kitchen somewhere aided by actual "scientists".

Or should that be "science-priests".

Prepare yourselves for the storm-winds of condescension, selective editing, patronising disingenuous narrative and overwhelming bias. Yes, its the BBC innit.

logdon

From Biased BBC site.

COMPARE AND CONTRAST...
Interesting to reflect on the news the BBC reports that Gordon Brown is to provide extra equipment for our Armed Forces in Afghanistan to the tune of £150m (over 10 years, natch). This £150m is not new money, however, and must be found from the existing MOD budget. Last week, the BBC reported Brown committing an extra £300m to a Climate Change Fund for chirpy third world kleptocracies and since there was no mention then of cuts elsewhere, we can assume this was "new money" he found. So, you might then ask yourself why it is that not one intrepid BBC journalist wondered aloud why an extra £300m can be conjured up on the one hand for Copenhagen cultists but £150m for our military must be financed by cuts elsewhere? Is there no BBC curiousity left these days? Can't the State broadcaster ask difficult questions of this government, and if not, why not?

John.

How can the general public be made aware of the fact that there is an extremely convincing case to be made against the pro-AGW people? So far as I know no-one is handing out anti-AGW information in Copenhagen, the BBC, the press and the government are all completely pro-AGW and no anti-AGW info. is ever made available by the first two or by the govīt. When the Africans etc. threaten to leave the conference, instead of cheering, the info. sources available to the public treat it as something to be alarmed about. Why send more billions to Swiss bank accounts, via Africa - for completely bogus reasons? How can we muster forces and begin to fight back? Talking and talking in these columns is not changing a thing.

Frank P

Dixon

Did you watch after Newsnight tonight on BBC 2, the documentary "Earth - The Climate Wars; Part 1: The Battle Begins"?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00dhlgl/Earth_The_Climate_Wars_The_Battle_Begins/

Dr Iain Stewart the BBC's guru on Geology and Geography; erstwhile lecturer at Strathclyde and Bristol Universities, now Senior Lecturer at Plymouth University (undoubtedly a Gramscian saturate - sorry - graduate), with the help of the BBC archives and a massive contingent of technie film/graphics bullshitters, screened the most one-sided, melodramatic bolstering of the AGW scam that I have so far seen - other than Gore's extravaganza. He had the mic and the camera all to himself and no doubt a budget that could have insulated every house in Britain.

It contained nothing or no one to challenge his assertions; an hour of unadulterated propaganda. Part II is tomorrow night in the same slot. The only way that BBC could ever redeem itself from this blatant piece of AGW religiosity would be to let Lord Monckton and Melanie Phillips have equal slots to counter this onslaught on public opinion. Mind-blowing audacity and timed to coincide with the last days of the Stockholm scam and boondoggle. Utterly disgraceful; Manipulation and doomsday scaremongering at its worst!

(Unless of course Stewart, having set up the pro AGW case tonight, destroys it tomorrow with a fair and balanced account of the UEA fraud revelations and agrees that it blows the AGW theory out of the water. I shall not be holding my breath for that possibility to become reality).

floatingvoter

Although I do tend to think that much BBC bashing is a bit paranoid I must say even I am beginning to think where the independence has gone.

There is a major flaw in a theory which is derived from data which now one else can now re-analyse. Forget the emails, is it believable that a scientist threw away the original data on which much of climate change theory relies. It is only believable if data was fiddled or unsound in some way. Otherwise scientists just don't throw away data like this.

I can't see why a brave journalist won't take this on. Surely there is doubt. It would be a start for someone just to say that.

James Hodson

Dixon said: "Brace yourselves for the item on Newsnight when "Ethical Man""

My sides are aching from laughter.

I'm not sure what is worse, the BBC being biassed (no change there) or the all too easily-convinced Top Gear kitchen cabinet.

I wonder, would Prof. Sir David King have stormed out (possibly the kitchen was too hot) and demanded a press conference if the Top Gear fans had disagreed with him?

Australians for Non-Bigoted Thinking

WHO ARE THE REAL FABRICATORS and SPIN MERCHANTS ?

It was so easy to take a few cherry picked quotes from Ian Plimer's book to try and make him look a fraud who fabricated evidence on Tuesday nights Lateline on the ABC. (http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2009/s2772906.htm)-(it's worth looking at the video) ; re the 1998 global temperature figure, re a paper on satellite temperature measurements. Some people may be fooled by this and believe he is some sort of charlatan. However, I chuckled as I realized that it was The Guardian's George Monbiot and The ABC's Tony Jones that looked like fools and shysters. They were fixated on micro points of Plimer’s book, which in isolation could sound misleading and confusing. This was either because they did not have the ability to understand the complexity of issues raised, or, that they were deliberately trying to simplify the issues into false moralizing yes or no answers, purely as a means of trying to besmirch Ian Plimer’s reputation and to advance their own Climate Change Agenda. It would seem the latter reason was more to the fore in understanding their 'logic'. For instance, when Ian Plimer tried to explain the serious problem of the unreliability of measuring global temperatures, he was basically ignored by both other parties, and bullied by Monbiot to answer a question about a paper regarding temperatures measured by satellites, which of course was a sneaky way of evading the core issue; unreliable temperature measurements and their lack of validity as measures of climate change.

George Monbiot reminds me of Joseph Goebbels who said, ‘If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.' This among other examples was in relation to the preposterous claim that Plimer was fabricating the evidence regarding that the world was indeed a lot warmer during the medieval period and in Roman times, that sea levels during this period were not significsntly higher than now, and yet there were no industries producing the CO2 levels we see today. These are well established facts that people like Jones and Monbiot conveniently ignore and refuse to face the truth about. To do so would blow their Global Warming Theory right out of the water. I can only deduce from this that both Jones and Monbiot are in fact fabricators and spin merchants themselves, for they are not behaving as objective journalists that they purport to be, but more like global warming propagandists seeking to misrepresent Plimer, by not investigating his well researched reasons for regarding anthropogenic global warming science to be self-servingly selective, unreliable, invalid and corrupt.

P.S.

A good summary of Plimer debunking the myths of climate change science is here. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1231673/Global-warming-Dont-wait-The-Earth-tricks-carbon-count-control.html

Rachael

Climategate goes SERIAL: now the Russians confirm that UK climate scientists manipulated data to exaggerate global warming

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100020126/climategate-goes-serial-now-the-russians-confirm-that-uk-climate-scientists-manipulated-data-to-exaggerate-global-warming/

Stuart Seacole Smith

It's somehow strange, hearing the great and the good in Copenhahagen speaking in oddly hushed, dreadladen worried-to-death tones (adoringly lapped up by the BBC drones of course), of the very real danger that "a deal won't be clinched" in Copenhagen.

Speaking as an insignificant taxpayer in the "rich west", I have a slightly sick queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach as well, but in my case it has more to do with the unappealing prospect of the nauseating muppets who represent us agreeing (just as a little starter...) to shipping 100 billion dollars a year to developing countries "to combat climate change". How nebulous is that?

And all this based on some spectacular leaps of faith:
- that AGW is the determining factor in climate change
- that developing countries will (i) work out exactly what it is they're supposed to do, and (ii) not spend the cash on other things they might actually want.

So, 100 billion to be pissed up the wall every year from now to eternity. If they get their way, this is just the beginning. And they haven't even really begun the work of destroying our own ability to create wealth in the future.

Someone please pass me a sick-bag - and quick too!!!

Arthur

It has now been 60 days since Brown told us we have 50 days to save the earth by giving all our money to fast-breeder third world failed states that
export their surplus population to enrich the west.
10 days after the deadline, the earth still rotates, wobbles in its solar-driven, magnetospheric axial tilt .... and the third world continues
to demand whiteys money and an apology for generating, by our industries, the wealth we have given them to continue their breeding/famine cycles,
which are in tune with the weather we are supposed to control in order to prevent them continuing to do so.
-

Spin a gyroscope and call it the earth.
Take a magnet and call it the sun.
Represent the fluctuating energy from the sun by moving the magnet around the gyroscope.
The magnetic field generates force within the gyroscope.
Solar energy generates force within the earth.
The force within the earth triggers geophysical stress that manifests as volcanoes, earthquakes, floods etc.
The process is continuous and cyclic.

Charles

The Monbiot-Plimer Lateline debate transcript is on ABC's website.

http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2009/s2772906.htm

Basically, Plimer is making things up (including willful misrepresentation of other people's findings), and evades basic questions about the provenance and accuracy of his data; data which is crucial to his argument.

Mr Melrose

Mel Said -
Every so often, a book is published which, it is instantly clear, is the definitive last word on the subject. Such a book has just appeared on the global lunacy of anthropogenic global warming (AGW). In his devastating study Heaven and Earth. Global Warming: The Missing Science (Quartet) Ian Plimer, Professor of Mining Geology at the University of Adelaide and previously Professor of Earth Sciences at the Universities of Melbourne and Newcastle systematically shreds the theory and the hallucinatory propaganda industry it has spawned. There is simply nothing left of it when he has finished – and he does so from the perspective of real science which the theory has so shockingly betrayed.

Ian Said -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPdhUdF6SJ4

Oh Dear.

Sergey

Charles: Ian Pilmer is a scientist. George Monbiot is nobody. He can not even understand scientific argument. This is utter arrogance of him to pretend he can have a rational debate with a scientists on equal footing.

Lungfish

Ian C- hmmm thinking and sleeping on it. Can't make up my mind.

Lupus Lungfish

Dixon- you reckon Crichton was bumped off?- must admit I'v always had my suspicions.

Mr Melrose

Well, It’s a good job Ian Pilmer wasn't debating with a real scientist. It was embarrassing enough as it was, waving his book around and saying I will have to check the references etc (well, just go to the page and check, Ian)

Ian showed his true colours by launching into a 'They just want to tax us' rant and moaning about the 'sticky fingered' third world.

Ian Pilmer is all about right-wing/libertarian politics. Science plays a very small part in his thinking.

Mr Melrose

Sergey - A child of five could have a scientific debate with Ian Pilmer on an equal footing - just refuse to answer questions, ramble off on strange tangents of your own and if all else fails just wave your colouring-in book around shouting – ‘All the answers are in here, I'll show you in a minute', but obviously never do.

john west

It is time we had an open debate on the climate change with those for and those against and let them produce all the evidence for and against.The trouble is Sky and the B,B,C very rarely comment on the growing sceptisism,that there is growing disbaleif in man made global warming.LETs have all the evidence put on the table so that it can be scrutinised.It seems that we are not allowed to seen or hear anything against man made globale warming,because we cant make decisions,it is allways to complicated for us to understand.LET us decied,we have seem how goverments can manipulate the facts to suit themselfs just look at the IRAQ inquiry.We can belief nothing they or there cronies say.

Sergey

Mr.Melrose: He never refused to answer the questions, but was interrupted FIVE times when he tried to do this, even after he repeatedly reminded to Monbiot that it is "high of bad manners" to interrupt your opponent. In the end, he was not allowed to explain his position. His political affiliation is tangential to the essence of argument, and I must adnit that I completely agree with Pilmer that handouts to Turd World thugs is a waste of money and can not a bit mitigate the misery of its population.

george l. trotter

data adjusted to suit/fit a political agenda not surprising, just disgusting!

John.

It seems that we now live in a country in which the M.P.s act completely against the wishes of the majority of the population and the voters can do not a thing about it. How many people are keen on handing over their hard-earned money to the thieving heads of African governments and their ministers when we ourselves are deep in debt, need money for our troops and also to help our own unemployed, sick and homeless? How many of us believe in the discredited CO2 theory on which this whole carbon tax system is based? Very few in both cases, yet the large majority of the people in this country are totally unable to do a thing to stop their money being given to thieves on the basis of a bogus premise. Is this what can be called a democracy?

Mr Melrose

Pilmergate

In which Ian gets right to the point, answerers the questions, and proves his book is right

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2009/09/14/correspondence-with-ian-plimer/

Or not. His last response is quite something.

Are you climate skeptics seriously pinning your science on this idiot?

I'd look somewhere else if I were you!

Sergey

Mr.Melrose: By assaining a "homework" for Monbiot, Pilmer wanted to measure his scientific literacy, and found none. So all Gavin Schmidt rants about this homework are irrelevant. Incidentally, some of these questions about earth radiation balance can not be answered not only by Monbiot, but actually by nobody: they are not solvable at the present level of knowledge, and the only reason to ask them was to demonstrate that Monbiot does not know these salient facts. So two persons look like idiots now: Monbiot and Gavin Schmidt. His answers to this homework are lies and dishonest attempts to avoid the essence of argument by strawmen and distractions.

Charles

Sergey, I'm confused. Plimer wrote to Monbiot that "My thirteen questions were also to check whether you have really read Heaven and Earth because this is where the answers to my questions lie."

But you say that "some of these questions about earth radiation balance can not be answered not only by Monbiot, but actually by nobody: they are not solvable at the present level of knowledge."

So who's right? You (some questions are essentially unanswerable) or Plimer (look in the book for the answers)?

I still think Monbiot's requests to Plimer about the provenance of Plimer's data are perfectly reasonable. And Plimer does come across as being very evasive when asked those questions. In fact, looking again at the ABC transcripts, Plimer doesn't actually answer them.

Sergey

In my book, assertion that some problem has no solution is an answer, too. I have not read Plimer's book, it is not sold in Russia, but some of these questions are clearly formulated so that no other answer is possible.

Rosa Thompson

Oh my goodness! This article is amazing! As a secondary student who has seen the obvious flaws in the "global warming" concept within the United States, I am glad to see that there are others in the international community that also have their wits about them!