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2009: Penn State to investigate Michael Mann;
In recent days a lengthy file of emails has been made public. Some of the questions raised through those emails may have been addressed already by the NAS investigation but others may not have been considered. The University is looking into this matter further, following a well defined policy used in such cases. No public discussion of the matter will occur while the University is reviewing the concerns that have been raised.
An unhappy colleague. Mike Hulme of UEA (location of CRU)
But this episode might signify something more in the unfolding story of climate change. This event might signal a crack that allows for processes of re-structuring scientific knowledge about climate change. It is possible that some areas of climate science has become sclerotic. It is possible that climate science has become too partisan, too centralized. The tribalism that some of the leaked emails display is something more usually associated with social organization within primitive cultures; it is not attractive when we find it at work inside science.
It is also possible that the institutional innovation that has been the I.P.C.C. has run its course. Yes, there will be an AR5 but for what purpose? The I.P.C.C. itself, through its structural tendency to politicize climate change science, has perhaps helped to foster a more authoritarian and exclusive form of knowledge production – just at a time when a globalizing and wired cosmopolitan culture is demanding of science something much more open and inclusive.
A contributing author to the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report, Eduardo Zorita, Department of Paleoclimate, GKSS Research Center (Germany)
“Why I think that Michael Mann, Phil Jones and Stefan Rahmstorf should be barred from the IPCC process”
Frank J. Tipler, professor of mathematical physics at Tulane University
The now non-secret data prove what many of us had only strongly suspected — that most of the evidence of global warming was simply made up. That is, not only are the global warming computer models unreliable, the experimental data upon which these models are built are also unreliable. As Lord Monckton has emphasized here at Pajamas Media, this deliberate destruction of data and the making up of data out of whole cloth is the real crime — the real story of Climategate.
It is an act of treason against science. It is also an act of treason against humanity, since it has been used to justify an attempt to destroy the world economy.
Dr. John Lewis, Dep’t of Physics & Physical Oceanography, Memorial University (by email);
It is worth noting, in regard to the deletion of raw data by the CRU that real scientific organizations are rather fierce about raw data. NASA, for instance, gives the Principal Investigator (and group) sole access to data for one year, and one year only. After that, the data are placed in the public domain. I do know that some PIs have asked for longer embargos – whether they got them or not I don’t know, but if so, not easily. If the PI simply deleted data it would be the end of his or her career.
NASA’s view is that data collected with public monies should be available to the public; and without copyright – US gov’t materials generally are not copyrighted. All of this is to a good end – the PIs get the obvious results, but some data – e.g. for the IRAS mission – have continued to yield information upon reanalysis even 15 years after the IRAS shut down.
Not every installation is set up to handle terabytes of data, but CRU was very well funded apparently, and anyway, if they couldn’t handle it they shouldn’t have collected or received it.
The CRU leaks will confirm the views of every half-baked political scientist in the world, that science does not deal in fundamental truths but is, rather, a politically negotiated discourse. It is very disturbing.
I am a young climate researcher (just received my master’s degree from xxx University) and have been very troubled by the emails that were released from CRU. I just want to applaud and support your response on climateaudit.org [95% of it 🙂 ]. Your statement represents exactly how I have felt as I slowly enter this community. The content of some of the emails literally made me stop and wonder if I should continue with my PhD applications for fall 2010, in this science. I was so troubled by how our fellow scientists within the climate community have been dealing with opposing voices (on both sides). I hope we can all learn from this and truly feel that we are going to need voices like yours to fix these problems in the coming months and years.
Dr. Judith Curry is Chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Audio: An Australian reporter hears something he may not have anticipated – scathing criticism from Aynsley Kellow, Professor and Head of the School of Government at the University of Tasmania. Expert reviewer for the United Nation’s IPPC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) Fourth Assessment Report: Climate Change and Key Vulnerabilities. (Or go directly to the mp3 here.)
Vit and Gord
I said last week that until “moderate” scientists speak-up the entire community will wear this debacle. The same can be said for “moderate” Muslims and journalists with respect to the aforemention woes in their communities.
Maybe we should upgrade SteveM from an Order of Canada to a Noble Nomination.
He deserves it . . . what he is doing is world saving.
Fred,
Receiving a Nobel nowadays is akin to being told you’re just a dumbass.
Somebody needs to come up with an award to replace the tainted Nobel prize first. But definitely, McIntyre deserves the Order of Canada. I think Ezra Levant does, too. Both of these gentlemen have exposed the rot that has eaten away at Western civilization via the doctrine of political correctness, among others.
Vit’s latest postings kinda remind me of the old Priests of Dagon. Their idol is lying on the ground smashed to bits and they are busily trying to prop it up again.
Personally I draw a distinction between the science and pseudo science. Science is that which is provable with empirical evidence. Pseudo science is that which is mere speculation and conjecture clothed in scientific techno babble.
Unfortunately many who call themselves scientists are in truth pseudo scientists and too many actual scientists are afraid to call them on it lest it lead to the diminution of their Idol named Science.
Finding life on Mars in a rock found on earth and AGW both fit the pseudo science category. Great speculation and wonderful conjecture but no definitive proof except that which the pseudo scientist calls proof.
I long for the day that Science gets rid of its idolatry and resumes its rightful place of a tool mankind can use to ease his way in this world.
In other words when science starts calling a crock a crock society will be a better place.
“electronics recycling”
Prime example of the provincial governments fixing a problem that didn’t exist. Their solution to a non-problem? … collect a tax to pay someone to do what an already established industry would pay to do. As Aaron has pointed out, there is money electronics recycling.
I agree with vitruvius but signing a petition and expecting this to be a serious response in this climate (excuse the pun) is not realistic.
It is not really remarkable that the media and policians are attempting to minimize/obscure Climategate.
These elements stand to lose from this bigtime.
Al Gore/Suzuki—reduced to ridicule from exalted statis—-not to mention financial oblivion.
Lizzy May and the Greens—-who?
The LIBRANOs were enjoying Canadians short memories re Adscam now this…..
OBOZO and Democrats in general—-now at worst are charletans…at best bumbling idiots….
The EU eurocrats now are exposed as what they are—undemocratic, statist, elistist, plutocrats…
Too many powerful or power seekers have hitched their wagons to this turkey…..
You don’t really think they are going to give up without one helluva fight—do you?
I’m listening to Bill Good this morning on CKNW and I have to shake my head at how slow information makes its way to our “betters” in the media. This doofus is just beginning to hear about climategate and even then he has the stupidity to say that, in fairness to skeptics, he has asked his producers to find a climatologist with recent peer reviewed work that stands against the warmer theory. Norman Spector had to point out to Bill that one of the major points from the frickin’ e-mails is that climatologists have actively worked to PREVENT any access to peer reviewed literature by skeptics. What a moron!!
But then, just to show that Spector isn’t much better, Normy says that the e-mails look bad but that doesn’t change the science. I guess he hasn’t taken the time to read Harry-Read-Me.TXT!!
Oh, and the other stooge in this little threesome kept repeating that The Queen, no less,is pressing for action on climate change, as if SHE is a peer reviewed climatologist.
“Between 2008 and 2012, the UK power sector will make an additional €1.3bn (£1.18bn) purely from carbon trading, with windfall profits mostly going to the coal sector.”
Just to give you an idea of the money involved in this scam. And we wonder why the socialist networks like the BBC and CBC wont cover this story?
An interesting study in denial, Circular logic,
And all the other tecniques to cloud the argument,
When one method fails they move onto the next.
Has any one started list of former believers.
They will most likely be the ones to crack the walls of denial.
Kinda like watching an intervention with an addict.
I want to lay a claim on a new medical term
Post AGW Fraud syndrom.
If Alfred Nobel (inventor of TNT and an arms manufacturer) were nominated for his own prize, would he win? Nope. He be beat out by science fiction movie maker Al Gore.
Now hang on Tulk et al. I have provided you with a list of 31,000 scientists who affirmed that this climate-change scam is bunk over two years ago. Perhaps they should have done more, such as bomb the United Nations; I’ll leave that for Saylaman to decide since he seems so interested in that. But if you’re going to argue that the vast majority of scientists were complicit in this, Tulk, then you need an order of magnitude more data for your argument to hold. So until you show me a list of 310,000 scientists who affirmed that it is not bunk, I don’t believe you. Of course, if you’re willing to simply make things up as you go, without data, like the climate-change industry, the media, politicians, and other religions do, then please feel free to just ignore me and science in general. You won’t, apparently, be alone.
Vit:
31000 is a drop in the ocean. Your demand that we come up with a list of 310000 is silly. They had no need to sign such a thing – they were and still are the dominant opinion. You would not have found such a list in NAZI Germany – a plebiscite denying the holocAUst when they were denying one even existed.
You are, of course, entitled to your assertion, Gord.
As for needing hard data vit, surely you aren’t suggesting that 31000 is concrete proof that the majority of scientists are not culpable in this scandal. This is not science , it’s politics and polls and plebiscites are not on par with hard scientific data.
The problem is has and always will be that science is conducted by humans and humans have bias.
The left/socialist bias is rampant in the science and university commnity as a whole in large part because they are wards of a government or quasi- government system – they haven’t had to worry about where their income is coming from and thus they are big fans of having the whole world run in a similar manner. They are by default anti-business, anti-profit and very close-minded in this regard. As a rule they are very bigotted – bigotted as all bigots are out of ignorance and naïveté to the point that they will follow pied pipers like suzuki and gore and trust government media like the CBC.
Acid rain and CFCs and Kyoto were tailor made to fit their bigotry.
I don’t need to prove they were not culpable, Gord: one can’t prove a negative. It is incumbent upon you, sir, should you wish to assert that the vast majority are culpable, to provide evidence thereto. Your anecdotal arguments about some unmeasured sub-set of those who claim to be scientists are insufficient.
Just found this at CFP:
It includes the Maurice Strong link as well.
The Scientists Involved in Deliberately Deceiving the World on Climate
By Dr. Tim Ball Monday, November 30, 2009
Liberal is an anagram of braille. Appropriate because they appear unable to see or read about the climate science scandals.—Tim Ball
The Public and Mainstream Media Still Don’t Grasp the Implications.
Tentacles of Climategate will reach far as information is divulged. People will rush to get on or off the bandwagon depending on their involvement. As a first hand observer, I must outline the history, identify the people involved and provide context.
,,,,
,,,Strong took their claims to the green movements through the 1992 Rio Conference. Strong’s powerful connections in Canada were apparently used to involve Environment Canada (EC) in development of the IPCC and CRU connections. ,,,,,
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/17364
A very telling find, G.
Snap shots of those at the center of the CRU scandal. Pictures of them meeting/scheming and planning the fraud – the “scientific/technological” complex.
Wine & dine – wonder who picked up the tabs ?
Gord you are so far off base its unbelievable. I am a chemical analyst, my area of expertise is in food research. What do you think my opinion would mean to the climate science field? Thats right, absolutely nothing. My feelings on the topics are: 1) With the massive amount of statistics they are using they should be required to have at least 2 PhD’s with a statistics background. Do they? I don’t know I have my own work to worry about. 2) If the Harry Read Me file is an example of their computer code, What kind of nonsense is in their computerized climate models? Were they created by computer science PhD’s or themselves? I don’t know, as I said before I don’t have the time to learn a new field of science. Please do not for a minute think other scientist agree just because we do not speak out. Most of us are just as much novices as you are in the field of climate junk science.
“Document Reveals U.N.’s Goal of Becoming Rule-Maker in Global Environmental Talks
Environmentalism should be regarded on the same level with religion “as the only compelling, value-based narrative available to humanity,” according to a paper written two years ago to influence the future strategy of the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP), the world’s would-be environmental watchdog.
The purpose of the paper, put together after an unpublicized day-long session in Switzerland by some of the world’s top environmental bureaucrats: to argue for a new and unprecedented effort to move environmental concerns to “the center of political and economic decision-making” around the world — and perhaps not coincidentally, expand the influence and reach of UNEP at the tables of world power, as a rule-maker and potential supervisor of the New Environmental Order.
The positions argued in that paper now appear to be much closer at hand; many of them are embedded in a four-year strategy document for UNEP taking effect next year, in the immediate wake of the much-touted, 11-day Copenhagen conference on “climate change,” which starts on Dec. 7, and which is intended to push environmental concerns to a new crescendo.
The major difference is that the four-year UNEP plan expresses its aims in the carefully soporific language that U.N. organizations customarily use to swaddle their objectives. The Swiss document makes its case passionately — and more important, plainly — than any U.N. official document ever would.
The ambitious paper, entitled “The UNEP That We Want,” was the product of a select group of 20 top environmental bureaucrats and thinkers, including UNEP’s current No. 2 official, Angela Cropper. The document was later delivered to UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner.
Other participants included Janos Pasztor, currently head of the team pushing U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s unprecedented Seal the Deal lobbying campaign to pressure U.N. member governments into signing a new environmental agreement at Copenhagen; Julia Marton-Lefevre, head of the World Conservation Union; Dominic Waughray, currently head of environmental initiatives at the World Economic Forum; and Maria Ivanova, a Bulgarian academic who is director of the Global Economic Governance Project at the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy.
Another important attendee was John Scanlon, listed on UNEP’s website as principal advisor to UNEP’s Steiner. Among other things, Scanlon is credited in his UNEP biography with being the leader in developing UNEP’s new medium-term strategy, “Environment for Development,” covering the period from 2010 to 2013. The draft version of the strategy was presented to a UNEP’s Governing Council and a meeting of the world’s environmental minister’s in February 2008, and subsequently approved.
The Swiss paper was written not by Scanlon but by Mark Halle, the Europe-based director of trade and investment for an influential environmental think-tank, the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), which originated in Canada and now operates in some 30 countries. IISD, which still has heavy Canadian government support, bills itself as a research institute promoting policies that are “simultaneously beneficial to the global economy, the global environment and to social well-being.”
Even though all of the Swiss participants took part in the brainstorming, the responsibility for the ideas in the paper are his own, Halle emphasized to Fox News, after he was contacted last week about the document. The paper itself says it offers “elements,” not a “complete offering,” of what UNEP should consider for its role in the years ahead.
Despite those limitations, the report was “very well received” by UNEP’s hierarchy, according to Halle, and “it has had a great impact internally.” He added, “I have participated in several discussions and presentations of the ideas.”
Click here to read Halle’s document.”
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,577827,00.html
…-
“the rules of the game
Recommendations to the Climate Change Communications Working Group:
Evidence base for the Climate Change
Communications Strategy
The game is communicating climate change;
the rules will help us win it.”
“Why were the principles
created?
The game is communicating
climate change; the rules will
help us win it.
These principles were created as
part of the UK Climate Change
Communications Strategy, an
evidence-based strategy aiming
to change public attitudes
towards climate change in the
UK. This is a ‘short version’
of a far longer document of
evidence that can be found at
http://www.defra.gov.uk.”
http://cdfe.org/uploads/File/RulesOfTheGame.pdf
Is the godfather of the Kyoto treaty a public servant or a profiteer?
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122368007369524679.html
I agree that the ‘rotten apples’ in science are far fewer than the good scientists. The problem for scientist’s credibility is not the frequency but the magnitude. AGWCC has become the face of science for at least a decade, it was everywhere in the media. The policy implications based on this science was massive. Many people were already uncomfortable with the expensive and intrusive political solutions. Now, if an investigation reveals fraud, the media and politicians will not hesitate to make science the scapegoat.
Could scientists have done more? I don’t know. The fact is that scientists of many different fields used AGWCC to get grants, no matter how tenuous the relationship. There is a always a reaction and the price to be paid for selling out will likely be public distrust of science in general.
In an ideal world people would recognize the difference between good science and junk science. In the real world this is not what happens. Think of some comparisons:
Lawyers are ambulance chasers
Politicians would throw their mothers under the bus
It is not a stretch to imagine:
Scientists are unethical grant-hunters and should not be trusted
I’m finding it amusing how people are speaking of scientists as if they are a special class or members of some exclusive club. Anyone with a little post secondary education in any of the sciences may call themselves a scientist.
BTW, that would make myself and a very large portion of SDA readers all scientist! So you see, we’re not exactly a rarity. 😀
Vit: depending on how you phrase it, either side could be trying to prove the negative. The reality is that scientists – people who daily work on proving (or disproving) things in that realm have been massively quiet on the actions and very public intolerance of the subset that worked on issues relating to AGW. They can be blamed in the same way as the German citizenry were during the third Reich and the way the moderate Muslim community has been today.
One thing is for sure, after this ALL of science will be veiwed more skeptically, just as business leaders, and moderate Muslims are today and Germans back in the day.
“as the only compelling, value-based narrative available to humanity,”
I could hardly begin..except to say in 1930’s Germany…
You’re still waving your hands, Gord. Show me the numbers,
and then we’ll talk. Until then, I remain skeptical. Though I
will say this: I think it will be a very good thing if this whole
fiasco results in better transparency in public-policy science.
An excellent column on the trust science issue here:
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MzYyOTVhZTAzNTFlN2VmM2EyMDgxZWIxOTAzNmViZGY=&w=MA==
Thanks for that link, Gord, I agree: John Derbyshire’s column is excellent. And you are probably already aware of this, since I’ve been peddling it, but Onora O’Neill’s lecture on Why Doesn’t the Public Trust Scientists? is also, in my opinion, excellent.
Vitruvius, thanks again.
I saw MOST of Onara O’Neill’s lecture (got interrupted about 3/4 way through).
But, as you say, it is really excellent. And BTW, what a calming effect she has, what?
I own a small regulated entity. From my experience over nearly 30 years, I can tell you that her remarks about regulation were absolutely correct.
Not sure if she covered this, but there is a most perverse aspect to government regulation: the public too often relies on it to the extent that it relaxes its own vigilance; puts its trust where it isn’t warranted. Moroever, regulation all too often punishes the already compliant while being only a very minor annoyance to the sociopaths.
This will sound extreme but I long ago came to the conclusion that, for example, the public would be safer WITHOUT securities commissions.
I watch the BBC news channel on satellite TV, why because I am living in a ex communist state and it does give me ‘some’ English, English? why is it that there are no English people on BBC ? are they all dead?
Perhaps it is Obamas plan, borrow trillions from China then get A Gore and the green party to suddenly find out that China is the biggest and fastest expanding exporter of CO2 and get consumers to embargo all Chinese goods, country goes broke, hyper inflation reduces the USA debt to very little, job done. PS dont tell China!!
Perhaps it is Obamas plan, borrow trillions from China then get A Gore and the green party to suddenly find out that China is the biggest and fastest expanding exporter of CO2 and get consumers to embargo all Chinese goods, country goes broke, hyper inflation reduces the USA debt to very little, job done. PS dont tell China!!