Climategate Cover-up Continues

by DR. TIM BALL on MAY 19, 2011

in GOVERNMENT,LEGAL,PHILOSOPHY,POLITICS,THEORY

Up to a point Clive Crook, senior editor of the The Atlantic, wrote a brilliant assessment of the whitewash that were the three investigations of the Climategate fiasco:

I had hoped, not very confidently, that the various Climategate inquiries would be severe. This would have been a first step towards restoring confidence in the scientific consensus. But no, the reports make things worse. At best they are mealy-mouthed apologies; at worst they are patently incompetent and even wilfully wrong. The climate-science establishment, of which these inquiries have chosen to make themselves a part, seems entirely incapable of understanding, let alone repairing, the harm it has done to its own cause.

Crook correctly condemned the Climategate inquiry failures. He says they failed to restore confidence in climate science, which is essential to resolving the climate change problem. He never asked the next logical question: why would they fail to act as he expects? Maybe it’s because Crook doesn’t realize there is no climate problem.

The degree to which those in official climate science are incapable is illustrated by the reaction. The answer is in the reaction the whitewash has triggered; an orchestrated attack on the skeptics, those who dare to perform science by proving the hypothesis wrong, to ask questions or demand debate. Why? The obvious answer is because the public was increasingly skeptical as evidence accumulated that the hypothesis was wrong.

It’s why the inquiries avoided the real issue – the science. The University of East Anglia (UEA), Muir Russell and Penn State inquiries were set up to examine the behavior of the scientists involved. They concluded that what went on was within normal patterns of interchanges and activities between groups of scientists. It’s inconceivable that any reasonable person reading the emails can reach such a conclusion. UEA and Muir Russell both said the Lord Oxburgh inquiry would examine the science. At a press conference on February 11, 2010 Muir Russell said,

Our job is to investigate scientific rigor, the honesty, the openness and the due process of CRU’s approach as well as the other things in the remit and compliance with rules. It’s not our job to audit CRU’s scientific conclusions. That would require a different set of skills and resources.

The Royal Society, which was heavily and politically involved all along, took charge. In a press release they said,

The Royal Society will provide advice to the University of East Anglia in identifying independent assessors to conduct this reappraisal.

They chose Lord Oxburgh, seriously biased Chairman of the Carbon Capture and Storage Association as chair, identified the few published articles they would consider, and selected a committee of people openly committed to the ‘official’ science.

Imagine Steve McIntyre’s surprise when in reply to this email…

I am writing to you in your capacity as Chairman of the Science Appraisal Panel, which reported on April 14, 2010 on the independent external reappraisal of CRU’s science that had been announced by the University of East Anglia in February 2010. It has come to my attention from a reliable source that, during one of his interviews with the Science Appraisal Panel, Phil Jones (of CRU) admitted that it was probably impossible to do these [1000-year temperature] reconstructions with any accuracy.

…Lord Oxburgh wrote,

Dear Dr Mcintyre, Thank you for your message. What you report may or may not be the case. But as I have pointed out to you previously the science was not the subject of our study. Yours sincerely, Ron Oxburgh

The bold type is McIntyre’s because by their own words, the entire objective of Lord Oxburgh’s study was the science.

Now they’ve brought out the big guns to try and reestablish the false claims that humans are causing global warming and climate change that guaranteed impending doom unless we behave the way they want. Prince Charles, with the massive carbon footprint and privileged non-productive life, in a speech at an event organized by the Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership “…launched an attack on climate sceptics, deriding them for peddling ‘pseudo science’ and for apparently intimidating people from ‘adopting the precautionary measures necessary to avert environmental collapse’”.

David Suzuki, whose Foundation is funded by oil companies and chaired by James Hoggan (whose PR company has alternate energy companies for clients), says:

It must be difficult, if not downright embarrassing, to be a climate-change denier these days.

No, what’s embarrassing is continued use of the term “climate change denier” with its holocaust connotation, and the fact that all skeptics and deniers acknowledge climate change. My entire career has involved educating people about how much climate changes. The question is what is the cause, but that’s science. It is the same pattern as before. Demonstrate your scientific ignorance and make personal attacks rather than answer the questions posed by skeptics or inferred by the facts.

Michael Mann is also on the attack, but that is his method as members of the CRU understood. Here is what one email said about Mann’s behavior.

Anyway, there’s going to be a lot of noise on this one, and knowing Mann’s very thin skin I am afraid he will react strongly, unless he has learned (as I hope he has) from the past…

His reaction is to blame those who dare to ask scientific questions or legitimately seek the data and how he achieved his results. He is guilty throughout the emails of many things, but especially of the one criticism the Muir Russell leveled at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) – and that is failure to disclose information. Ironically, his comment about those who dared to pursue science is more applicable to himself and the CRU people, but that is clearly beyond his comprehension. He is quoted as follows:

I guess what we all underestimated was the degree, the depth of dishonesty, dirtiness, and cynicism to which the climate change denial movement would be willing to stoop to advance their agenda. That’s the only thing that I think surprised many of us.

This from one who helped set up RealClimate to attack anyone who dared to question, to get editors fired, to manipulate the peer review process and to block from publication articles that pointed out the problems with their science.

In order to be a little bit more pro-active, a group of us (see below) have recently got together to build a new ‘climate blog’ website: RealClimate.org which will be launched over the next few days … The idea is that we working climate scientists should have a place where we can mount a rapid response to supposedly ‘bombshell’ papers that are doing the rounds and give more context to climate related stories or events.

Mann had connections with well-placed media people, including Andrew Revkin of the New York Times and Richard Black of the British Broadcasting Corporation. On 29 September 2009 he wrote to Revkin,

A necessary though not in general sufficient condition for taking a scientific criticism seriously is that it has passed through the legitimate scientific peer review process. Those such as McIntyre who operate almost entirely outside of this system are not to be trusted.

This is said knowing full well how they controlled the peer review process. When Paul Hudson, former Met Office employee working at the BBC, wrote an article that questioned the CRU science, Mann wrote,

We may do something about this on RealClimate, but meanwhile it might be appropriate for the Met Office to have a say about this, I might ask Richard Black what’s up here?

It appears Richard Black did speak to and intimidate him because when Hudson was the first recipient of the leaked emails, he sat on them.

Why didn’t any inquiry ask him who leaked the emails? Simple! Whoever did it knew the science and how it was being corrupted. That is what they’ve tried to avoid all along. Ironically and sadly, the inquiries were unnecessary. Former CRU Director Phil Jones had already admitted the emails were legitimate and the facts they promoted were wrong. He acknowledged global temperature has not increased since 1998 and that the Medieval Warm Period existed. Both were critical science issues promoting the false science. Climategate, like its namesake Watergate, will ultimately collapse because of the cover-up reinvigorated by the phony inquiries. The problem is, we still don’t know who leaked the emails.

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