Climate News Settled Science? Computer hackers reveal corruption behind the global-warming "consensus."
| 23 November 2009
"Officials at the University of East Anglia confirmed in a statement on Friday that files had been stolen from a university server and that the police had been brought in to investigate the breach," the New York Times reports. "They added, however, that they could not confirm that all the material circulating on the Internet was authentic." But some scientists have confirmed that their emails were quoted accurately.
The files--which can be downloaded here--surely have not been fully plumbed. The ZIP archive weighs in at just under 62 megabytes, or more than 157 MB when uncompressed. But bits that have already been analyzed, as the Washington Post reports, "reveal an intellectual circle that appears to feel very much under attack, and eager to punish its enemies":
In one e-mail, the center's director, Phil Jones, writes Pennsylvania State University's Michael E. Mann and questions whether the work of academics that question the link between human activities and global warming deserve to make it into the prestigious IPCC report, which represents the global consensus view on climate science.
"I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report," Jones writes. "Kevin and I will keep them out somehow--even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!"
In another, Jones and Mann discuss how they can pressure an academic journal not to accept the work of climate skeptics with whom they disagree. "Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal," Mann writes. . . .
Mann, who directs Penn State's Earth System Science Center, said the e-mails reflected the sort of "vigorous debate" researchers engage in before reaching scientific conclusions. "We shouldn't expect the sort of refined statements that scientists make when they're speaking in public," he said.
This is downright Orwellian. What the Post describes is not a vigorous debate but an attempt to suppress debate--to politicize the process of scientific inquiry so that it yields a predetermined result. This does not, in itself, prove the global warmists wrong. But it raises a glaring question: If they have the facts on their side, why do they need to resort to tactics of suppression and intimidation?
It is hard to see how this is anything less than a definitive refutation of the popular press's contention that global warmism is settled science--a contention that both the Times and the Post repeat in their articles on the revelations: "The evidence pointing to a growing human contribution to global warming is so widely accepted that the hacked material is unlikely to erode the overall argument," the Times claims. The Post leads its story by observing that "few U.S. politicians bother to question whether humans are changing the world's climate," and that "nearly three years ago the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded the evidence was unequivocal." (As blogger Tom Maguire notes, this actually overstates even the IPCC's conclusions.)
The press's view on global warming rests on an appeal to authority: the consensus among scientists that it is real, dangerous and man-caused. But the authority of scientists rests on the integrity of the scientific process, and a "consensus" based on the suppression of alternative hypotheses is, quite simply, a fraudulent one.
Rest…
Comments
A statement from the University which does the research which has been cited in many anti climate change articles.
www.uea.ac.uk/.../CRUupdate
I have long believed that the answer to this question lies in a 'race to the moon' type of effort. It's that important. To accomplish this, the USA, EU, Japan and perhaps others, should form an alliance of world-class scientists to determine the truth. That group should pull all stops, be funded by the U.N., and refuse to permit politics to intrude. For the USA, this is especially important given the current efforts toward self-imposed Cap and Trade -- and the dire consequences associated with it if, indeed, it is not necessary.
This used to be a debate until it became political. That ended the debate, and when one side "wins" they gain support. There are many scientists that still peer into this issue as scientists, meaning they look at it subjectively. They accept that their findings may be revisited, modified, and even dismissed since they weren't not dealing with all the facts when they came to their conclusions. That is what science is people. What we believe today is only theory and what we will believe tomorrow are only possibilities. A true scientist would never say case closed. Instead they would open their research update to rigorous hoping that it would stand up to the test of time.
Note - my favorite excerpt from the STOLEN emails was when one of the authors admitted that their models did not predict the cooling period we have had over the last decade, but instead predicted a warmer temps. Wait, what? Yeah I know, it's funny cause it's true.
Also, it's incorrect to say, "which they can only get to work when they introduce man made CO2." In point of fact, changes in the emissions of man-made CO2 do not correlate to changes in average global temperatures.
Let us follow where good science and the facts lead us...not where the money and politicians want us to go.
I love how no one ever brings up the fact that, while the Earth spins... it also tilts and the degree changes every so many years.. causing the climate in various regions to change on a natural level.
There are just too many ignorant and naive people who sit there and panic at these false claims and believe everything politicians and their corrupt scientist friends say. It's like those people who believe faith-healers are real... It has astounded me for years that so many thought all this crud is real and have backed it up and allowed these politicians and scientists to literally mug the economy.
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