Tag Archives: climategate

Wednesday evening, I had the honor of attending a presentation given by noted ‘climate change’ skeptic Lord Christopher Monckton, sponsored by the Bull Run Republican Women’s Club in Manassas, Virginia.

As I didn’t think it appropriate to ask a long-winded Chris Matthews-type question, I essentially wanted to know (with all the revelations of deliberate fudging of climate data to “prove” global warming is happening) what the legal ramifications on the players could be, considering how many billions of dollars cities, states, businesses, corporations, as well as whole nations have spent going “green”, not to mention the adverse effects on developing nations?

Lord Monckton’s response was direct and to the point: “Jail the lot!”

If we find out Al Gore is changing his legal residence to Boca Raton, you’ll know the heat is on.

USA Today on Thursday devoted a front page story to defending one of the key scientists involved in November's ClimateGate scandal.

In a piece entitled "Questions about research slow climate change efforts," author Brian Winter -- oh the irony! -- omitted important information about Penn State University's controversial global warming alarmist Michael Mann while downplaying the seriousness of the e-mail messages at the heart of the matter.

The main article also dishonestly ignored how Mann is being investigated by his own university concerning his involvement in the scandal, and actually NEVER even mentioned the scientist's infamous "Hockey Stick" graph that has been widely discredited by climatologists and meteorologists around the world.

Instead of a fair and balanced treatment of Mann and issues related to his view of anthropogenic global warming, readers were unfortunately presented with a grossly one-sided and disingenuous report evident in the very first paragraphs:

The violent threats are not what bother Michael Mann the most. He's used to them.

Instead, it's the fact that his life's work — the effort to stop global warming — has been under siege since last fall. That's when Mann suddenly found himself in the middle of the so-called "climategate" scandal, in which more than 1,000 e-mails among top climate scientists — including Mann — were obtained illegally by hackers and published on the Internet.

With this beginning, Mann was depicted as the victim in this matter, someone the reader should sympathize with RATHER than question.

Is this journalism? Is this what should be on the front page of a major newspaper or somewhere in its opinion pages?

But Winter wasn't done acting as Mann's defense attorney, for these are paragraphs four and five:

In a rare extended interview, Mann acknowledges "minor" errors but says he has been bewildered by the criticism — including a deluge of correspondence sent to his Pennsylvania State University office that, he says, occasionally has turned ugly.

"I've developed a thick skin," Mann says. "Frankly, I'm more worried that these people are succeeding in creating doubt in the minds of the public, when there really shouldn't be any."

Minor errors? Really?

Well, if Winter was actually a journalist, and not a global warming sycophant, he might have informed readers what the former director of the British Climatic Research Unit at the heart of ClimateGate, Phil Jones, told the BBC about these "minor errors" last month, in particular the infamous "hide the decline" phrase in one of the e-mail messages in question:

This remark has nothing to do with any "decline" in observed instrumental temperatures. The remark referred to a well-known observation, in a particular set of tree-ring data, that I had used in a figure to represent large-scale summer temperature changes over the last 600 years.

The phrase 'hide the decline' was shorthand for providing a composite representation of long-term temperature changes made up of recent instrumental data and earlier tree-ring based evidence, where it was absolutely necessary to remove the incorrect impression given by the tree rings that temperatures between about 1960 and 1999 (when the email was written) were not rising, as our instrumental data clearly showed they were.

Unlike Winter, those that have studied these e-mail messages know that "hide the decline" was no "minor error." It was an intentional manipulation of climate data.

More importantly, it related directly to Mann, as his infamous "Hockey Stick" graph used data from these tree rings.

As Winter noted, "Mann's research, which used tree rings, coral and other historical indicators to estimate how temperatures have risen in recent centuries, has been used by the IPCC in its reports."

As such, this article -- whose third sentence talked about Mann's "life work" -- completely ignored that his most important contribution to this debate was seriously questioned not only by the e-mail messages themselves, but by the former head of the organization at the heart of the scandal who admitted to the BBC that temperature data from these tree rings has been found to be inaccurate.

How could Winter POSSIBLY ignore such an inconvenient truth in an article about Mann?

But it gets worse, for the piece also never actually referred to the name of Mann's work -- the infamous "Hockey Stick."

Yep. Nowhere in this almost 1700-word piece defending Mann's "life work" is "Hockey Stick" mentioned.

Is it possible this was intentionally omitted because someone at USA Today might have then insisted that Winter inform readers that this graph has been widely discredited by scientists around the world including indirectly Jones just last month?

No, facts like that were unimportant, as were others that might have made the reader wonder why Winter was going so far out of his way to defend Mann.

Although the article referred to a recent finding that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change improperly claimed -- using what can only be called junk science! -- Himalayan glaciers would be gone by 2035, Winter for some reason chose not to inform his readers of other errors recently discovered in IPCC reports.

All Winter needed to do was look at a Scientific American article published Wednesday to gain a little knowledge on the subject marvelously entitled "IPCC Errors Prompt Review by International Science Academies":

African crop yields wither, along with the Amazon rainforest; Himalayan glaciers disappear by 2035. These are the erroneous predictions ascribed to the most recent report from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)—a document reviewed by some 2,500 scientists and other experts as well as vetted by more than 190 countries. So does the fact that a few errors crept into a more than 3,000 page report merit a revision of IPCC processes?

That is the question facing a new panel to be assembled by the InterAcademy Council (IAC) in Amsterdam, a composite board of many of the world's national scientific bodies, such as the National Academy of Sciences in the U.S. "This will be an independent review," says physicist Robbert Dijkgraaf, president of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the IAC co-chairs, about the evaluation requested by the U.N. and the IPCC. [...]

"What it will do is see what are the procedures and how can they be improved. How can we avoid perhaps that certain types of errors are not made?"

Dijkgraaf should know. After all, one of the errors made by the IPCC came as a result of information provided directly by the Dutch government about the percentage of the Netherlands that would be vulnerable to flooding as a result of rising sea levels. The government corrected that percentage in a subsequent statement.

Although Winter touched on this development -- "The United Nations announced Wednesday that it would bring in an outside panel of scientists to help review an occasional study put together by a U.N. body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)" -- he chose not to inform his readers of these other errors in the IPCC reports or their seriousness.

Obviously, that would have interfered with the mission:

Despite the mistakes, Mann says the core argument — that the Earth is warming, humans are at least partly responsible, and disaster may wait unless action is taken — remains intact.

"I look at it like this: Let's say that you're in your car, you open up the owner's manual, and you discover a typo on page 225. Does that mean you stop driving the car? Of course not. Those are the kind of errors we're talking about here," Mann says. "Nothing has fundamentally changed."

Nothing has fundamentally changed? 

Well, using Mann's car example, and what's going on right now with Toyota, the answer might actually be that you DO stop driving the car.

After all, these errors aren't typos. These are serious mistakes in not only the science involved in various predictions key to the global warming argument, but also the science involved in determining what global temperatures were before the thermometer was invented.

As such, again using Mann's car example, if one found serious flaws in the engine and drive train of a car, would you keep driving it?

Unfortunately, Winter's readers might, for his goal was to downplay the seriousness not only of ClimateGate, but of all the recent errors found in crucial IPCC documents.

Instead of acting like a journalist looking to get to the heart of a very controversial issue, Winter took a side, and set out to convince readers that not only didn't Mann do anything wrong, but also that it's his accusers that are at fault.

This was also accomplished by citing only one scientist skeptical of manmade global warming with this meager reference that had nothing specific to do with Mann or his work:

It has been a dramatic reversal of fortune for a movement that, just a few years ago, thought it was "invincible," says Leighton Steward, a geologist and global warming skeptic. "We've all been kind of giggling as we watch this thing fall apart," he says.

Imagine that.

The person at the heart of this scandal who is currently being investigated by his own school was given free rein to offer his side of the argument without almost no opposing viewpoints, and not one scientistific opinion was cited to specifically address Mann's involvement in ClimateGate or the veracity of his work. 

In fact, the only other skeptic referred to by Winter was Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), but he's not a scientist.

Making matters worse, Winter even gave Mann the last word:

Citing climate data, Mann says "there's a better than 50-50 chance" that 2010 will be the hottest year ever. That, more than any political statement, could refocus the debate, he says.

"If we don't act on this, it's not a failure of science," Mann says. "It's our failure as a civilization to deal with the problem."

How disgraceful. 

Aren't journalists supposed to question those caught making errors? 

If Mann worked for the oil or coal industry, and had been found to be in the middle of a scandal to misreport vital information to the public, would he have been treated so favorably in this front page story, or given such latitude to explain his side? Would there have been absolutely no scientists cited attacking his views?

Or would he have been torn to shreds much like the heads of Toyota were when they appeared on Capitol Hill? Or how the financial services industry's CEO's are continually lambasted by the press as being corrupt and greedy?

Unfortunately, because Winter and most American so-called journalists like the industry Nobel Laureate Al Gore is the de facto CEO of -- and let's be clear about this: the advancement of the manmade global warming theory IS an industry! -- all those involved get defended when they make mistakes, and their detractors are labeled as corrupt and possessing greed-filled motivations.

Must be nice for them to have advocates working for them in the press rather than scrutinizing their every word and move, wouldn't you say? 

Once again, this is by no means surprising. For years, NewsBusters has been informing readers about the disgraceful coverage of manmade global warming by America's press.

This front page piece by USA Today is a perfect example, and all those involved should be deeply ashamed of themselves.

Serious errors are now being uncovered in IPCC reports, and those involved in supplying scientific information to the United Nations have been shown to be manipulating data, withholding their methodologies, and preventing dissenting views from being incorporated in such reports.

Rather than exposing what's going on along with all those involved, America's press have taken it upon themselves to participate in the disinformation campaign while sheltering the guilty from blame or scrutiny.

Quite simply, almost forty years since the first scandal called "Gate" erupted, the press now have taken the side of the burglars, and are assisting "All The President's Men" rather than exposing them.

Talk about your inconvenient truths. 

Tonight! Kimberly Guilfoyle! GOP analyst Mary Smith! John Devore! and Michael Waltrip!

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Wow!

It's like Christoper Joyce of National Public Radio is completely unaware of ClimateGate. Phil Jones?  Never heard of him. Oh, he is the former head of Britain's Climatic Research Unit who now admits manipulating data? No matter. You see, we have our minds made up and the reason people are becoming increasingly skeptical about "climate change" aka global warming is that they have a narrow worldview. Such is the laughable premise put out there by NPR's Joyce:

Over the past few months, polls show that fewer Americans say they believe humans are making the planet dangerously warmer, despite a raft of scientific reports that say otherwise.

This puzzles many climate scientists — but not some social scientists, whose research suggests that facts may not be as important as one's beliefs.

 Joyce then contrasts the "narrow" beliefs of a coal company executive with that of "open-minded" Robert Kennedy, Jr:

"It's a hoax," said coal company CEO Don Blankenship, "because clearly anyone that says that they know what the temperature of the Earth is going to be in 2020 or 2030 needs to be put in an asylum because they don't."

On the other side of the debate was environmentalist Robert Kennedy, Jr.

"Ninety-eight percent of the research climatologists in the world say that global warming is real, that its impacts are going to be catastrophic," he argued. "There are 2 percent who disagree with that. I have a choice of believing the 98 percent or the 2 percent."

One problem for Kennedy is that the skeptical scientists number quite a bit more than just 2 percent. And of course, he also completely ignores the ClimateGate revelations.

NPR then reinforces its theory that people can only be skeptical of the global warming dogma due to sociological reasons:

To social scientist and lawyer Don Braman, it's not surprising that two people can disagree so strongly over science. Braman is on the faculty at George Washington University and part of The Cultural Cognition Project, a group of scholars who study how cultural values shape public perceptions and policy beliefs.

"People tend to conform their factual beliefs to ones that are consistent with their cultural outlook, their world view," Braman says.

Yes, forget the facts about global warming. You can only be skeptical about it because of your "cultural outlook." 

Yet more psychobabble about why the skeptics are so "close-minded."

"Basically the reason that people react in a close-minded way to information is that the implications of it threaten their values," says Dan Kahan, a law professor at Yale University and a member of The Cultural Cognition Project.

Yup. No facts, no data cited in this rationale for why people have become increasingly skeptical of the global warming beliefs. Just a sociological study that suggests skeptics are somehow "narrow-minded." 

So please don't read up on the facts of ClimateGate, Mr. Joyce. It could shatter your comfy narrow world view about the "absolute certainity" of global warming." 

Yvo de Boer resigned yesterday as Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Here are three key passages from the official announcement at the UN's web site:

The top United Nations climate change official said today that he has made the “difficult decision” to step down from his position, citing his desire to pursue new opportunities to advance progress on the issue in both the private sector and academia.

.... Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a statement that he was informed by Mr. de Boer of his decision two days ago and respected his decision, but “with regret.”

“Developing countries need to move as quickly as possible toward a future of low-emissions growth and prosperity,” he stressed, noting that millions of people in Africa and around the world are suffering from climate change’s effects.

These people are still living in the fantasy world they have constructed over the past two decades.

Sadly, so is the Associated Press.

Friday, the AP's Arthur Max composed a pathetic pity piece for de Boer while avoiding any mention of ClimateGate or the shocking admissions of Phil Jones, the true root causes of de Boer's demise. As you'll see, Max even took the opportunity in his third paragraph to put in a plug for human-caused global warming as a cause of bad weather in general:

A weary U.N. aide quits climate post

The sharp-tongued U.N. official who shepherded troubled climate talks for nearly four years announced his resignation yesterday, leaving an uncertain path to a new treaty on global warming.

Exhausted and frustrated by unrelenting bickering between rich and poor countries, Yvo de Boer said he would step down July 1 to work in business and academia. With no obvious successor in sight, fears were voiced that whoever follows will be far less forceful than the skilled former civil servant from the Netherlands.

His departure takes effect five months before 193 nations reconvene in Cancun, Mexico, for another attempt to reach a worldwide legal agreement on controlling greenhouse-gas emissions, blamed for the gradual heating of Earth that scientists predict will worsen weather-related disasters.

The resignation "comes at the worst time in the climate-change negotiations," said Agus Purnomo, Indonesia's presidential assistant on climate change. "His decision will ultimately add to the difficulties we already have in reaching a successful outcome in Mexico."

But others said the talks would move ahead unhindered and could even be a window for shifting course. "There's certainly no reason his resignation should slow progress," said Alden Meyer, of the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington. "The key to progress remains with the major countries."

De Boer made the announcement two months after a disappointing summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, that ended with a nonbinding accord brokered by President Obama promising emissions cuts and immediate financing for poor countries - but even that failed to win consensus agreement.

Todd Stern, Obama's climate envoy, praised de Boer as "an enormously dedicated leader" who made a major contribution to fighting climate change.

Readers need to recall what de Boer really wanted to resolve in Copenhagen, as originally reported at the conference's web site (link is to Google-cached copy, as the original link no longer works):

1. How much are the industrialized countries willing to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases?
2. How much are major developing countries such as China and India willing to do to limit the growth of their emissions?
3. How is the help needed by developing countries to engage in reducing their emissions and adapting to the impacts of climate change going to be financed?
4. How is that money going to be managed?

“If Copenhagen can deliver on those four points I’d be happy,” says Yvo de Boer.

As Lord Christopher Monckton pointed out ahead of the conference last year, Copenhagen was about creating the shell of a worldwide government with genuine authority to unilaterally enforce its will, and about the transfer of vast sums of money from rich nations to poor nations in the name of repaying so-called "climate debt."

Yesterday, shortly after de Boer's announced resignation, Claudia Rosett at Pajamas Media told us why that effort really failed, and why his usefulness had ended (internal links were in original):

Polar bears may be doing fine, but the climate commissars of the United Nations are feeling the heat, as their claims of scientific “consensus” melt under them.

... De Boer’s departure can’t come soon enough. For almost four years, this ramped-up Dutch bureaucrat has been one of the chief purveyors of climate alarmism, carbon-emitting his way around the globe from Bonn to Bali to Copenhagen, pushing UN plans for a global “climate change regime.”

... No one elected de Boer to his high-level perch. He was appointed in August, 2006 as one of the parting gifts to the world of the same former Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who presided as the UN’s chief administrator of the giant scam known as Oil-for-Food. De Boer is neither a scientist nor an economist.

... Not that de Boer is recanting any of his own cant. In announcing his resignation, he tried to slide around the mush of the UN’s Copenhagen climate summit last December. He made no mention of such climategate revelations as the leaked East Anglia emails or the recent BBC interview in which one of the pillars of UN climate “science,” Phil Jones, admitted that for the past 15 years he has found no statistically signficant evidence of global warming (not that Jones seems able to keep track of his own data).

Instead, de Boer told the press: “I have always maintained that while governments provide the necessary policy framework, the real solutions must come from business.” And so, never a man to abandon his beliefs, he now believes “The time is ripe for me to take on a new challenge, working on climate and sustainability with the private sector and academia.” Apparently, his concern for the planet now impels him to move on to a consultancy with the well-heeled accounting firm of KPMG.

The only things worse than having an apparatchik like de Boer taunt the world over its refusal to totally restructure itself in the name of the now unproven and unsupported nonsense I often refer to as "globaloney" are first, knowing that a Big Four accounting firm is willing to provide him a rich refuge, and second, realizing that the establishment media in the U.S. is so invested in globaloney that it won't acknowledge reality when it delivers multiple smacks to the face.

Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.

The absolutely stunning global warming revelations this weekend by the man in the middle of the ClimateGate scandal have gone almost completely ignored by America's press.

As NewsBusters reported Saturday, Phil Jones, the head of the British Climatic Research Unit at the heart of ClimateGate, told the BBC: the recent warming trend that began in 1975 is not at all different than two other planetary warming phases since 1850; there has been no statistically significant warming since 1995, and; it is possible the Medieval Warm Period was indeed a global phenomenon thereby making the temperatures seen in the latter part of the 20th century by no means unprecedented.

Jones also admitted that he and his fellow scientists manipulated figures to hide a decline in crucial tree-ring data thereby questioning the validity of the entire global warming theory.

Despite the seriousness of these revelations, much as what happened when the ClimateGate scandal first broke, with the exception of Fox News, America's media have almost totally boycotted this amazing story:

• No mention by the New York Times
• No mention by the Washington Post
• No mention by USA Today
• No mention by ANY major U.S. newspaper EXCEPT the Washington Times
• No mention by the Associated Press
• No mention by Reuters
• No mention by UPI
• No mention by ABC News
• No mention by CBS News
• No mention by NBC News
• No mention by MSNBC 

For its part, CNN FINALLY got around to covering this story with a very brief mention Tuesday:

JOHN ROBERTS, CNN ANCHOR: There's also something else that's out there. Phil Jones from the University of East Anglia, the climate research unit, the guy that was at the center of this recent e-mail controversy late last year, has said in an interview with the BBC that he has not seen any, quote, "statistically significant warming since 1995," though he says he still believes that the earth's temperature has warmed. And he also said that he might be missing some of the data that is responsible for his climate models.

Of course, skeptics are jumping all over this, saying the whole thing is a farce. Global warming doesn't exist.

What do you think of the Professor Jones situation, the lack of statistically significant warming, and the fact that he may have misplaced some of the records?

JOHN CHRISTY, PROFESSOR, ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCE, UNIV. OF ALABAMA- HUNTSVILLE: Well, I think what Phil Jones is saying is that Mother Nature is perfectly capable of making the temperature rise and fall through the past several hundred years. And in terms of the data problems, well, we do have to be careful when we're talking about public policy, that means trillions of dollars, and we haven't had that very hard and critical situation where you take care of data and make it publicly available to everyone. And that needs to be done now.

That's it!

Bear in mind that the Jones BBC interview was published Saturday. NewsBusters reported the revelations at 6PM Eastern Time the same day. And yet CNN first mentioned the story possibly as much as 72 hours AFTER the BBC piece.

I guess that's why CNN is no longer considered the most trusted name in news.

Speaking of which, much as it did when ClimateGate broke, FNC has been all over this story addressing it on "Fox News Sunday," on Monday's "Glenn Beck Show," on Monday's "Special Report," and on Monday's "Hannity."

By contrast, for their part, the rest of the news media have found filmmaker Kevin Smith being thrown off a Southwest plane for being too fat MUCH more important:

• The New York Times reported it
• The Washington Post reported it
• The Associated Press reported it
• UPI reported it
• ABC News reported it
• CBS News reported it
• CNN reported it -- 14 TIMES!

Well, I guess "journalists" have to have their priorities, don't they?

Once again, much as what happened with ClimateGate, America's press are asleep at the wheel concerning a major story involving global warming.

There's no other way of saying it: when it comes to Al Gore's favorite money-making myth, the American media are almost criminal in their behavior.

Shame on them!!!

*****Update: Marc Sheppard has more.

The U.S. Chamber strongly supports efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere, but we believe there’s a right way and a wrong way to achieve that goal.

The wrong way is through the EPA’s endangerment finding, which triggers Clean Air Act regulation. Because of the huge potential impact on jobs and local economies, this is an issue that requires careful analysis of all available data and options. Unfortunately, the agency failed to do that and instead overreached. The result is a flawed administrative finding that will lead to other poorly conceived regulations further downstream.

Today the Chamber is filing a formal petition indicating it will challenge EPA’s decision to trigger Clean Air Act regulation, based on lapses in EPA’s process in making that decision. The Chamber’s legal challenge will focus specifically on the inadequacies of the process that EPA followed in triggering Clean Air Act regulation, and not on scientific issues related to climate change or endangerment.

We continue to call for Congress to address climate change policy through the legislative process, rather than having EPA misapply environmental statutes like the Clean Air Act or Endangered Species Act that were not created to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Emphasis mine.

In addition to ignoring its own internal rules and working outside the legislative branch, the EPA is acting on a 2007 Supreme Court Ruling, which, based on new developments in the Climategate scandal, should be revisited. The ruling states the EPA was found to have the authority to regulate emissions that contribute to global warming and climate change. In addition, the Court stated:

Based on respected scientific opinion that a well-documented rise in global temperatures and attendant climatological and environmental changes have resulted from a significant increase in the atmospheric concentration of “greenhouse gases,” a group of private organizations petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to begin regulating the emissions of four such gases, including carbon dioxide, under §202(a)(1) of the Clean Air Act, which requires that the EPA “shall by regulation prescribe…

The EPA, in concert with with Obama administration, is attempting to force through a modified version of cap-and-trade through regulation, a signal that Obama realizes cap and trade is dead in the Senate–especially after this death blow to the global warming/climate change movement:

Professor Jones also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now – suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon. And he said that for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically significant’ warming.

It will be interesting to watch the Obama administration attempt to circumvent and spin lead scientist Professor Jones’ statements. Will the EPA revise its final report based on this new information?

Global warming, climate change, and cap and trade will be that much harder for the Left to sell. Americans weren’t buying them in the first place. Cap and trade was recognized for what is was and is–the legislation that provided the trigger for the transfer of wealth to poor nations–wealth redistribution on a global scale.

What, now, is the fate of the “Copenhagen Accord” non-binding agreement where:

The Copenhagen Accord is a 12 paragraph document that sets a 2 degree Celsius limit on future warming. Its provisions address emissions cuts, verification and deforestation. It would also commit 100 billion dollars from wealthy countries and global institutions over the next 10 years to help poor countries adapt to climate change.

Based on all of the new information on climate change and the manipulation of the “science” for some 15 years, it will be revealing if the United States adheres to this agreement. If Obama continues with this nonsense of climate change and insists on transferring United States’ wealth to third world countries, my assertions have been correct all along–that the core intentions of the Obama agenda are to place severe hardship on the American people by destroying the nation’s wealth. After all, Obama is intentionally proposing, supporting, and forcing policies through–by any means–that bankrupt the United States and weaken our economy, discourage businesses from investing and hiring workers, deepening unemployment and stifling innovation, and squeezing the American people into desperation for federal aid (there is a record number of food stamp recipients now, for example) and health care benefits.

It seems the end goal of the Obama Administration is to make people dependent upon the federal government. How’s that for some hope and change.

The British scientist in the middle of November's ClimateGate scandal says that contrary to what Al Gore and many in the media claim, the debate concerning manmade global warming is not over.

"There is still much that needs to be undertaken to reduce uncertainties, not just for the future, but for the instrumental (and especially the palaeoclimatic) past as well," Phil Jones, the former head of Britain's Climatic Research Unit told the BBC.

In a lengthy Q&A published at BBC.com Saturday, Jones also said: the recent warming trend that began in 1975 is not at all different than two other planetary warming phases since 1850; there has been no statistically significant warming since 1995, and; it is possible the Medieval Warm Period was indeed a global phenomenon thereby making the temperatures seen in the latter part of the 20th century by no means unprecedented.

Maybe most important, Jones explained what "hide the decline" in ClimateGate e-mail messages meant confirming they manipulated data (questions in bold, h/t Sonic Frog via Glenn Reynolds): 

A - Do you agree that according to the global temperature record used by the IPCC, the rates of global warming from 1860-1880, 1910-1940 and 1975-1998 were identical? [...]

[T]he warming rates for all 4 periods are similar and not statistically significantly different from each other. [...]

B - Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming

Yes, but only just. [...]

G - There is a debate over whether the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) was global or not. If it were to be conclusively shown that it was a global phenomenon, would you accept that this would undermine the premise that mean surface atmospheric temperatures during the latter part of the 20th Century were unprecedented?

There is much debate over whether the Medieval Warm Period was global in extent or not. The MWP is most clearly expressed in parts of North America, the North Atlantic and Europe and parts of Asia. For it to be global in extent the MWP would need to be seen clearly in more records from the tropical regions and the Southern Hemisphere. There are very few palaeoclimatic records for these latter two regions.

Of course, if the MWP was shown to be global in extent and as warm or warmer than today (based on an equivalent coverage over the NH and SH) then obviously the late-20th century warmth would not be unprecedented. On the other hand, if the MWP was global, but was less warm that today, then current warmth would be unprecedented.

We know from the instrumental temperature record that the two hemispheres do not always follow one another. We cannot, therefore, make the assumption that temperatures in the global average will be similar to those in the northern hemisphere.

Now comes the part of the Q&A many will find most interesting:

K - How much faith do you have - and should we have - in the Yamal tree ring data from Siberia? Should we trust the science behind the palaeoclimate record?

First, we would all accept that palaeoclimatic data are considerably less certain than the instrumental data. However, we must use what data are available in order to look at the last 1,000 years.

I believe that our current interpretation of the Yamal tree-ring data in Siberia is sound. Yamal is just one series that enters some of the millennial long reconstructions that are available.

The current interpretation of the tree-ring data is "sound." Yet, Jones earlier said (emphasis added), "There is still much that needs to be undertaken to reduce uncertainties, not just for the future, but for the instrumental (and especially the palaeoclimatic) past as well."

Q - Let's talk about the e-mails now: In the e-mails you refer to a "trick" which your critics say suggests you conspired to trick the public? You also mentioned "hiding the decline" (in temperatures). Why did you say these things?

This remark has nothing to do with any "decline" in observed instrumental temperatures. The remark referred to a well-known observation, in a particular set of tree-ring data, that I had used in a figure to represent large-scale summer temperature changes over the last 600 years.

The phrase 'hide the decline' was shorthand for providing a composite representation of long-term temperature changes made up of recent instrumental data and earlier tree-ring based evidence, where it was absolutely necessary to remove the incorrect impression given by the tree rings that temperatures between about 1960 and 1999 (when the email was written) were not rising, as our instrumental data clearly showed they were.

This "divergence" is well known in the tree-ring literature and "trick" did not refer to any intention to deceive - but rather "a convenient way of achieving something", in this case joining the earlier valid part of the tree-ring record with the recent, more reliable instrumental record.

I was justified in curtailing the tree-ring reconstruction in the mid-20th Century because these particular data were not valid after that time - an issue which was later directly discussed in the 2007 IPCC AR4 Report.

This is important, for most people still don't understand what the decline they were trying to hide was.

As Marc Sheppard wrote in December, "[T]he decline Jones so urgently sought to hide was not one of measured temperatures at all, but rather figures infinitely more important to climate alarmists -- those determined by proxy reconstructions." He continued:

Jones was working on a cover chart for a forthcoming World Meteorological Organization report [PDF], "WMO Statement on the Status of the Global Climate in 1990," when he wrote the e-mail. As the graph would incorporate one reconstruction of his own plus one each from Michael Mann and Keith Briffa, Jones was informing them that he had used the trick on Mann's series at the same 1980 cutoff as MBH98, but found it necessary to use 1960 as the cutoff on the Briffa series.

Now, Jones has admitted this to the BBC: "[It] was absolutely necessary to remove the incorrect impression given by the tree rings that temperatures between about 1960 and 1999 (when the email was written) were not rising, as our instrumental data clearly showed they were."

In simple terms, Briffa's tree-ring data showed a decline in temperatures between 1960 and 1999 that weather stations around the world disagreed with. So, Jones spliced into Briffa's data set the real "instrumental" numbers for that period thereby hiding the decline.

This should raise eyebrows for a number of reasons. First, Jones and Company gave no notification to folks receiving this data -- including the Intergovernmental Panel and Climate Change -- that Briffa's numbers included instrumental data.

But more importantly, as the tree-ring numbers deviated so demonstrably from the observed temperature data between 1960 and 1999, why should anyone believe they're accurate for any periods in the past that can't be confirmed with instrumentation?

The entire global warming myth depends on tree-ring data that was grossly errant for forty years in the last century. This makes the decline ClimateGate scientists were trying to hide FAR MORE serious than most people believe.

Moving backward in the Q&A, there was another issue addressed by the BBC readers will find interesting:

N - When scientists say "the debate on climate change is over", what exactly do they mean - and what don't they mean?

It would be supposition on my behalf to know whether all scientists who say the debate is over are saying that for the same reason. I don't believe the vast majority of climate scientists think this. This is not my view. There is still much that needs to be undertaken to reduce uncertainties, not just for the future, but for the instrumental (and especially the palaeoclimatic) past as well.

So, the scientist at the heart of the ClimateGate scandal doesn't think the debate is over.

Given what he's now confirmed about significant flaws in the tree-ring data, the only thing surprising is that he'd admit it.

Are you listening Mr. Gore? 

Poor Seth Borenstein of the Associated Press.

Since the AP science reporter wrote his December 12, 2009 defense of the alleged scientists who have promoted the alleged perils of human-caused global warming, the scandal known as ClimateGate has inexorably widened. It has deeply tarnished never-deserved reputations; revealed the entire premise to be based on fraudulent, corrupted, manipulated and/or nonexistent data; and taken the entire enterprise to the point where it is utterly without objective credibility.

Thus, it would be understandable if poor Seth might be looking for some way, any way, to inject in his two cents yet again without being forced to defend the indefensible.

He found a bit of an outlet on Friday in his coverage of this year's virtually unprecedented U.S. snowfalls. How unprecedented? This may be the first time 49 out of 50 states have snow on the ground at the same time.

Here are key factual paragraphs relating to the U.S. situation in Borenstein's report, followed by his veer-off into global warming near its end (bolded by me):

49 states dusted with snow; Hawaii's the holdout

Forget red and blue (AP) -- color America white. There was snow on the ground in 49 states Friday. Hawaii was the holdout. It was the United States of Snow, thanks to an unusual combination of weather patterns that dusted the U.S., including the skyscrapers of Dallas, the peach trees of Atlanta and the Florida Panhandle, where hurricanes are more common than snowflakes.

More than two-thirds of the nation's land mass had snow on the ground when the day dawned, and then it snowed ever so slightly in Florida to make it 49 states out of 50.

... Snow paralyzed and fascinated the Deep South on Friday. Snowball fights broke out at Southern Mississippi University, snow delayed flights at the busy Atlanta airport, and Louisiana hardware stores ran out of snow supplies. Andalusia, Ala., shut down its streets because of snow. And yet, Portland, Maine, where snow is usually a given, had to cancel its winter festival for lack of the stuff.

Weather geeks turned their eyes to Hawaii. In that tropical paradise, where a ski club strangely exists, observers were looking closely at the islands' mountain peaks to see if they could find a trace of white to make it a rare 50-for-50 states with snow. But there was no snow in sight.

... The idea of 50 states with snow is so strange that the federal office that collects weather statistics doesn't keep track of that number and can't say whether it has ever happened. The office can't even say whether 49 out of 50 has ever taken place before.

... The all-time record (for U.S. snow cover) is February 1978, with 7.31 million square miles. There is a chance this February could break that. There is also a chance that this could go down as the week with the most snow cover on record, (head of the Global Snow Lab at Rutgers University David) Robinson said.

... As long as this pattern persists we have potential for additional storms," said Dan Petersen, lead winter weather forecaster at the National Weather Service prediction center in Camp Springs, Md.

... A snowy winter doesn't disprove - or prove - global warming, Petersen and Robinson said. This is weather, which is variable, not long-term climate, and there is a huge difference.

"This has nothing to do with long-term trends," Petersen said. "This is just a several-week period."

Hey Seth, if you already knew the answer to your question, and you knew that that answer to be "it's irrelevant," why did you even bring it up?

In reaction to his December piece, the folks at the Watt's Up With That? blog took the reporter and his employer to the woodshed for a drop-dead obvious conflict of interest. AP was apparently okay with assigning Borenstein to the ClimateGate story even though he had been a de facto part of that story, as an involved party in several ClimateGate-related e-mails.

Looking at the bright side, at least Borenstein didn't come out and try, as did the News York Times (HT NewsBuster Martin Finkelstein), to tie some kind of generalized increase in weather extremes to global warming.

Have some compassion for Seth (but not too much). It must not be easy having been conned by greens.

Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.

East Anglia University, which came under fire a few months ago for the now infamous ClimateGate email scandal, announced yesterday that it is launching an independent probe into the work of its Climate Research Unit (CRU).

Wall Street Journal's Guy Chazan reports the story today  -- found on page A15 of the print edition -- noting that the independent review led by Sir Muir Russell will "reappraise the CRU's scientific conclusions."

But Chazan noted that some critics argue that a deeper problem underpinning ClimateGate is not addressed by the probe:

"To do an assessment of the scientific research...is sort of beside the point," said Judith Curry, chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. "The main issue is to provide open access to the data and the metadata ... and let the broader community assess the data sets."

British wire service Reuters has a full story on the development here, and FoxNews.com also has an article on the story, written by British sister network Sky News.

It remains to be seen how American print and broadcast outlets will cover the story.

The global warming scandal keeps getting worse. Revelations over the last few weeks show that many important assertions in the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were based on misquotes and false claims from environmental groups, not on published academic research as originally claimed. This is on top of the recent mess regarding data, where the three most relied-on data series used by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2007 assessment report still not been released. Other information indicates that data have been systematically biased to produce a rise in measured temperatures when actual temperatures were falling or flat.

Take some of the false claims in the 2007 IPCC report.

– The IPCC claims that the Himalayan glaciers could melt away as soon as 2035. The forecast was based on a media interview with a single Indian glaciologist in 1999, and the Indian glaciologist who was interviewed, Syed Hasnain, says that he was misquoted, indeed he had provide no date. Professor Hasnain discovered the mistake in 2008 when he read the IPCC’s published report, but he said: “There are many mistakes in it. It is a very poorly made report. . . . My job is not to point out mistakes. And you know the might of the IPCC. What about all the other glaciologists around the world who did not speak out?”

Even more disturbingly, Rajendra Pachauri, the U.N.’s climate chief, first denied that he knew about the error before the Copenhagen global warming conference. He only admitted that he knew about it before the conference when a writer for the journal Science, Pallava Bagla, pointed to email correspondence that he had with Pachauri last fall.

– The IPCC warned that because of global warming the world had “suffered rapidly rising costs due to extreme weather-related events since the 1970s.” They cited one study to support their claim, but when the research was published in 2008, after the IPCC report was released, the study noted: “We find insufficient evidence to claim a statistical relationship between global temperature increase and catastrophe losses.”

– The IPCC warned that up to 40 percent of the Amazon rain forest might be wiped out by global warming, but the sole source for that claim was a non-refereed report authored by two people who the Sunday Times of London referred to as “two green activists,” one of them with the World Wildlife Fund.

– The IPCC even got wrong the percentage of the Netherlands that is below sea level. The report claims that the percent is 55 percent, when the right number is 26 percent.

On February 3rd, Mr. Pachauri however defended the UN’s IPCC report by saying that the critics “are people who deny the link between smoking and cancer; they are people who say that asbestos is as good as talcum powder. I hope that they apply [asbestos] to their faces every day.” While Pachauri admits that the IPCC was inaccurate about the Himalayan glaciers melting, he claimed that the attacks were motivated by “business interests” who “spread a lot of disinformation.”

Finally, it should be noted that Britain’s Information Commissioner’s Office, which enforces that country’s freedom of information act regulations, has come to some conclusions regarding Climategate. The ICO found that the University of East Anglia breached violated British law by refusing to comply with requests for data concerning claims by its scientists that man-made emissions were causing global warming. The UK Daily Mail reports that “the scientists will escape prosecution because the offences took place more than six months ago.” Out of 105 freedom of information requests, Professor Phil Jones, who headed the university’s Climate Research Unit, only complied with 10 requests.

For too long global warming proponents have claimed that their claims can’t be questioned. Science should be more transparent than this. But relying on misreported news stories and white papers put out by non-scientists from advocacy cases isn’t science.  Why these climate temperature data has been hidden and why researchers won’t answer questions on adjustments that they have made has become quite troubling. In this age of computers and website, there is no excuse for hiding data.

And that’s the point, I guess. Watch this ad for a “clean diesel” car by Audi, and good luck getting this slightly modified version of the Cheap Trick classic “Dream Police” out of your head. I couldn’t get it out with a lobotomy. It’s been playing off and on in my brain since it first aired during the Super Bowl.

But beyond the diddy, I also can’t get the vision of a fascist “green” future out of my head — even if it’s portrayed with a heavy dollop of of “Reno: 911“-style cop-show parody. Good comedy has to have a grain of truth in it to work, and this spot has plenty. It’s not just a peek at a ridiculous future, but a look at our “be green or else” present. An overreaction? Tell that to the chief of America’s Green Police, San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom, who Tweeted:

“Ok .. That ‘green police’ Audi commercial hits home..”

And hits home hard. San Francisco, which proudly considers itself the greenest city in America, has mandated composting for all residents and businesses. Failure to comply results in an escalating scale of fines. No word on whether Newsom was proud or embarrassed to see his Green Police state in San Francisco reflected in an ad.

There’s no doubt the ad is funny, but one is left to wonder what Audi’s purpose was? I’m still a bit flummoxed. Did Audi intend to produce a screed against the Green Police as a way to appeal to those who are fed up with years of constant eco-scolding? One would think not, since the “punch line” is that if you own a clean-diesel Audi, you get to drive right through a green checkpoint. But the other 40 seconds of the one-minute spot dovetail nicely with the growing fatigue and skepticism the public feels about the “green” initiatives of government — especially in the wake of the ClimateGate scandals.

Or did Audi believe the public is in lock-step with the green agenda, and figured people would get a laugh out of a satire of paranoid, know-nothing skeptics, and actually want a car that keeps you on the “good side” of environmental policy. If so, it strikes me as a horrible miscalculation to assume the country is full of people who think like Al Gore and Barbara Boxer. The German carmaker, too, seems to be a bit confused about its own ad.

The Green Police are a humorous group of individuals that have joined forces in an effort to collectively help guide consumers to make the right decision when it comes to the environment. They’re not here to judge, merely to guide these decisions.

Ha ha ha! Just “guide” us, eh? By slamming a dude’s head into the checkout line for choosing plastic? Not here to judge? Tell that to the folks scrambling away from their too-hot hot tub. (I know. It’s only a commercial, and a funny one to boot. Still, to pretend there’s no judgment being made on people’s freedom to make decisions about how they may go about their ordinary lives is ridiculous.)

There’s been a good bit of commentary about this ad in the blogosphere. Ben Boychuk at Infinite Monkeys thought the ad was “cleverly written and produced (the anteater was a cute touch)… and utterly horrifying.”

Two bits in particular really bothered me: The part where the Green Police put some hapless homeowner in the back of a squad car as a news reporter explains the perp was caught using incandescent lights; and the Cops-like scene where the bewildered couple is rousted for setting their hot tub’s thermostat too high.

Ben notes how Audi explains there are “numerous real Green Police units globally that are furthering green practices and environmental issues.”

For example, Israel’s main arm of the Ministry of Environmental Protection in the area of enforcement and deterrence is called; you guess it, the Green Police. New York has officers within the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation that are fondly called the “Green Police”. The Green Police is also the popular name for Vietnam’s Environmental Police Department and the UK has a group who dresses in green as part of the Environment Agency’s squad to monitor excessive CO2 emissions.

Wait. What? A Western carmaker is holding up Communist Vietnam as a good example to follow? And we’re supposed to admire the fact that “free” countries like Israel and Great Britain send bureaucrats around to monitor the emissions of its citizens? I don’t care if they wear cute green outfits, that’s a bit creepy and fascist to me. Such agencies don’t merely “further green practices and environmental issues.” They enforce government-desired life practices through a knock on the door. Big difference.

But, I suppose the joke’s on me. Steve Hayward at No Left Turns sees this as a victory for those of us who’ve had enough of the enviro-scolds:

What’s more over than Mark Sanford’s marriage or John Edwards’ reputation? The environmental movement, that’s what. … Is [the ad] mocking environmentalism?  Um. . . yeah. Your moral authority is pretty thin when a major advertiser finds it safe to take this approach. Think anyone would ever try something like this about the civil rights movement? Or the feminist movement?

Point taken. And it should be a source of comfort that those who believe in bossing us around in the name of “saving the planet” (which doesn’t need saved) are a little worried about the mixed messages in this ad. But I live in a state, California, which recently:

• proposed fining and jailing people for the crime of driving with under-inflated tires;

• considered a bill banning cars with black paint from being sold (because black cars trap more heat in the summer and require more use of the air conditioner to make the driver comfortable);

• banned wood-burning fireplaces in new home construction (and restricts it in “grandfathered-in” homes from time to time by bureaucratic fiat); and

• outlawed 25 percent of flat-screen TVs on the market because a panel of bureaucrats say they use too much power;

I could list more examples, including a bit from the Audi ad that is actually true: Incandescent light bulbs will be contraband in the United States starting in 2012. Sure looks like the Green Police are real to me. Happily, Audi has now armed those who would oppose the reordering of society through environmental mandates with a nice bit of video to splice into footage of Al Gore, Barbara Boxer, John Kerry, Henry Waxman, Barack Obama and others ordering us how to live our lives.

Get crackin’, YouTube fiends! A golden propaganda moment awaits.

"The Climate Consensus may hold the establishment — the universities, the media, big business, government — but it is losing the jungles of the web. After all, getting research grants, doing pieces to cameras and advising boards takes time. The very ostracism the sceptics suffered has left them free to do their digging untroubled by grant applications and invitations to Stockholm."

The 13th Annual Energy & Environment Conference, held in Phoenix Feb. 1-3, isn’t the sort of place where global warming “deniers” are exactly welcome. In fact, by my observations, the skeptical caucus at the event consisted entirely of: James M. Taylor, a senior fellow for environment policy at The Heartland Institute; Keith Lockitch, a fellow of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights; and me. All the other attendees spent their time discussing how the U.S. government — or, even better, a “global government” — needs to compel us all to live “greener” lives through schemes like cap-and-trade. Environmentalists are a bossy and power-hungry lot.

Lockitch gave a presentation arguing free-market economies are better positioned than socialist societies to deal with any severe weather events caused by climate change — and was called a “denier” and compared to a shill for “Big Tobacco” for his trouble. Taylor got off a little easier, receiving only scoffs and curious-to-annoyed glances for asking inconvenient questions.

But that’s not to say we were the only people to question the assumptions of the attendees who believe the “science is settled” on global warming. Perhaps the greatest challenge came from one of their own — renowned climate scientist William Sprigg — who urged his colleagues to stop treating the ClimateGate scandal as irrelevant noise promoted by “deniers.” In an amazingly telling moment, green energy consultant Andy Van Horn, who introduced Sprigg, admitted he’d never heard of ClimateGate until Sprigg suggested it a few weeks ago as a topic worthy of discussion. (Who are the real “deniers” again?)

Sprigg, adjunct research professor in the Institute of Atmospheric Physics at the University of Arizona, believes the planet is on a potentially dangerous warming path and atmospheric carbon dioxide is to blame. He also led the technical review of the first global warming report issued by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 1990. Clealry, Sprigg is no “outlier” or “rebel,” but one of the most respected and “mainstream” scientists in the field of climatology. So it came to a bit of shock to the audience when Sprigg expressed concerns about how contrarian scientists are treated with contempt by many of his colleagues.

It’s not right, he said, that the game is rigged to keep skeptics out of peer-reviewed journals. It violates the scientific method to refuse to release raw data so others can test your theories. And it’s a big mistake to keep defending the likes of infamous “Hide the Decline” emailers Phil Jones and Michael Mann. The very credibility of the entire discipline of climate science is at stake, Sprigg said, and it’s time to stop ignoring this fact. As one might imagine, this all did not go over very well in the audience — who were undoubtedly expecting to hear a lecture ratifying their view that ClimateGate was no big deal when they saw Sprigg’s topic on the agenda.

I recorded Sprigg’s remarks on video for Heartland, and (from what I could tell) mine was the only camera in the room. The footage below features Taylor — who is also managing editor of Environment & Climate News — asking Sprigg what he thinks the future holds for the wholly corrupted IPCC. Sprigg nodded as Taylor referred to “mounting scandals” at the IPCC and then responded:

“There will be some reform. I think there are going to be big changes in the peer review process for the IPCC. There will be — there are — calls for the head of [IPCC Chairman Raj] Pachauri. Some of my colleagues have written letters saying that he needs to be taken off the job.”

In his 24-minute lecture, Sprigg also:

• warned of a growing perception that “the IPCC is biased, conflicted, [and] pushing political agendas.”;

• called for a new climate research agency supported not entirely by the government, but in conjunction with the private sector;

• and declared: “We need to stick to our scientific principles,” and “improve our peer preview process, and expand the stakeholders’ role to keep us all honest.”

It was a remarkable presentation, one that The Heartland Institute has summarized with commentary in the video below. One gets the feeling Sprigg has put himself on the path to pariah status among the true-believers of global warming, But this honest scientist deserves praise from all sides of the debate for demanding politics, group-think and a desire to control our lives through government mandates not replace scientific rigor.

On Thursday’s CBS Evening News, anchor Katie Couric lamented the impact ClimateGate and other recent scandals involving fraudulent global warming data have had on the climate change debate: “Experts insist the overall conclusion remains the same, that climate change is real, but...such errors provide ammunition to skeptics.”

In a report that followed, correspondent Mark Phillips cited accusations of data tampering against Penn State University climatologist Michael Mann, but explained: “An academic board today cleared Mann, saying his science holds up, but the damage may have already been done.” Phillips went on to detail other data errors, including a false United Nations climate panel report on melting Himalayan glaciers and the ClimateGate scandal at Britain’s East Anglia University.

Phillips observed how the “series of gaffes by climate change scientists,” has created “a frustrating time for those who believe the basic science in global warming remains true.” A clip was then played of Imperial College London climatologist Brian Hoskins fretting: “it appears the whole edifice has been undermined by these couple of bricks that are flaking a bit.”

Phillips concluded his report by explaining the real problem facing global warming advocates: “The scientists may still believe they’re winning the scientific argument, but they’re in danger of losing the public relations war.”    

Here is a full transcript of the segment:

6:47PM TEASE:

KATIE COURIC: When we come back, new doubts about climate change thanks to some sloppy work by scientists.

6:50PM SEGMENT:

KATIE COURIC: The U.N.’s climate chief admitted today scientists made mistakes in a major study of melting glaciers in the Himalayas. Experts insist the overall conclusion remains the same, that climate change is real, but as Mark Phillips tells us, such errors provide ammunition to skeptics.

MARK PHILLIPS: You know you’re in trouble when you’re being spoofed on YouTube.

PARODY SONG: Making up data the old hard way, fudging the numbers day by day.

PHILLIPS: The subject of the spoof is Michael Mann of Penn State University, who is accused of tampering with climate data to produce his famous hockey stick graph, which shows that the rise in manmade greenhouse gases corresponds to a rise in world temperatures. An academic board today cleared Mann, saying his science holds up, but the damage may have already been done.

SONG: Hide the decline.

PHILLIPS: The biggest splash these days in the global warming argument may not be caused by the world’s melting glaciers. It may be caused by a series of gaffes by climate change scientists. The latest one involves temperature data from weather stations in China used in global warming calculations. The problem is that where weather stations are matters. One located in the city will give a consistently higher temperature reading than one out in the country. The allegation is that the researchers used Chinese data when they didn’t really know where their weather stations were. It’s just a small part, they say, of a worldwide database, but it’s the little mistakes that matter. Mistakes like the line in the last report by the U.N. panel on climate change, which claimed glaciers in the Himalayas might disappear by the year 2035. The panel had to admit the claim was wrong and the climate change skeptics jumped in.

PATRICK MICHAELS [SENIOR FELLOW, CATO INSTITUTE]: Any scientist that read that 2035 figure just laughed because they knew it couldn’t be true. There’s no doubt the trust in the U.N. panel has been undermined.

PHILLIPS: Trust was already undermined by the series of leaked e-mails at Britain’s University of East Anglia, one of the world’s big climate science centers, would seem to show that inconvenient facts were being hidden. It’s a frustrating time for those who believe the basic science in global warming remains true.

BRIAN HOSKINS [PROFESSOR, IMPERIAL COLLEGE LONDON]: I am concerned that it appears the whole edifice has been undermined by these couple of bricks that are flaking a bit.

PHILLIPS: And that’s a danger, in your view?

HOSKINS: It is a danger. Oh, I totally agree.

PHILLIPS: The scientists may still believe they’re winning the scientific argument, but they’re in danger of losing the public relations war. Mark Phillips, CBS News, London.

I have looked over the Penn State University’s report issued yesterday, “RA-10 Inquiry Report: Concerning the Allegations of Research Misconduct Against Dr. Michael E. Mann, Department of Meteorology, College of Earth and Mineral Sciences”. Below are eight points addressing my initial impressions, in the order they appear in the report (with one bracketed exception from page 4, moved up slightly in order of appearance here].

Findings_Mann_Inquiry –

My take-away, to spoil the ending for you, is that the panel revealed most of what we need to know about the ability of this internal inquiry to credibly assess charges of misfeasance, by limiting their evidentiary pursuit outside of select blogs and media reports to speaking with Mann, aided by a supportive NAS report (to the exclusion of the Wegman Committee report, inexplicable including for a factor cited, below) and one panel member interviewing ex parte two Mann supporters.

In my opinion, by this approach they did not do, and will in hindsight not be deemed as having done, themselves or their institution any favors.

1. This is simply a point of interest but, in describing the CRU e-mail cache that finally (not first) shined a light on Mann’s practices so as to bring the sort of scrutiny that can yield direct professional consequence, the panel chose the word “purloined”, vs. hacked or stolen. P. 3, p. 5.

This is an odd word choice in the general style and vocabulary of the document, and I am guessing that this was selected as the most neutral term; even if it includes “to steal”, the word also contemplates the actions of a suddenly unwelcome “whistleblower”, that erstwhile celebrated creature which the facts available indicate was the source of the documents long-sought under the UK’s freedom of information law.   p. 3

2. The panel considered the NAS report that Mann’s suspect practices had prompted, but not the Wegman Committee Report p. 3. The University’s odd decision had already been noted by others, for its sheer incomprehensibility. Even CRU emails acknowledge the importance of reading both, not one of them (go here and hit search for the numerous entries; why, even Mann delves into the Wegman problem his CRU emails at issue — assuming this mail wasn’t weeded out in the paring down from 377 “Mann” emails to focus on 47 of them). “No inquiry, even (especially?) threshold , can be credible if it excludes that detailed assessment of relevant behavior even if it addresses work predating Mann’s tenure at PSU..so did the NAS report the panel reviewed.” Not that the reports predated his tenure, they addressed work that did.

3. Just as a point of interest, I was struck by the panel’s inclusion of this assessment in a ten-page summary of two-months’ work. “Throughout the interview, Dr. Mann answered each question carefully:”    p. 4  ["... In addition, Dr. Mann provided a ten page supplemental written response to the matters discussed during his interview." P. 4]

4. In the in-person interview, “He explained the content and meaning of the emails about which we inquired;”  p. 4

It is problematic that they only interviewed Mann even to reach a threshold determination. If the content and meaning of the emails is important, as is implicit, then why would they not speak to the authors of these important emails mentioning him, and many others not written by him, which made the final cut for scrutiny and assessment?

Consider this in a judicial context and you see the curiosity of calling in Mann but only Mann to explain what other people wrote and meant. Happens in trials all the time. Um, like when the authors are dead.

5. “He explained that he never used inappropriate influence in reviewing papers by other scientists who disagreed with the conclusions of his science;” though I note that this does not cover Mann pressuring others re: reviewing and publication. Seems sort of relevant, even if he did also issued a blanket denial of any inappropriate behavior.

6. “On January 22, 2010, the inquiry committee and Dr. Brune met again to review the evidence, including but not limited to Dr. Mann’s answers to the committee’s questions, both in the interview and in his subsequent submissions. All were impressed by Dr. Mann’s composure and his forthright responses to all of the queries that were asked of him.” (emphasis added) The assertion of Mann’s “forthrightness” alone, given inter alia the panel did not, as noted above, apparently interview others necessary to make such a determination (outside of one panel member meeting ex parte with two well-known Mann supports, see bottom of page 4), is troubling. But I suppose that’s what internal inquiries and other self-policing often produces.

7. The money conclusion, except for any that inform your assessment of the credibility of the inquiry, is this:

Finding 4. After careful consideration of all the evidence and relevant materials, the inquiry committee could not make a definitive finding whether there exists any evidence to substantiate that Dr. Mann did engage in, or participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions that deviated from accepted practices within the academic community for proposing, conducting, or reporting research or other scholarly activities.” Pp. 6-7.

Reading the panel’s quantification of this finding over the next two pages, they sure look like a band edging over toward the outcome, when the music (inquiries) stops, that leaves them standing pretty squarely on the spot staked out in the initial wagon-circling, dismissive response of the relevant and cloistered scientific community detailed by Wegman et al. Maybe they behaved less purely than is the driven snow, but that’s more a matter of perception derived from “private” correspondence never intended for outside assessment; who has not been indiscreet? However that is not the same as violating laws, etc.

The wagon-circlers in ClimateGate’s early days involved climate scientists waving away the actions of fellow climate scientists with whom they shared parallel interests of not seeing their gravy train derailed; Indeed, the panel summarizes that response of others as “nothing more than the private discussions of scientists engaged in a hotly debated topic of enormous social impact.”

Penn State risks the appearance of waving away the actions of a fellow Penn Stater with whom they share the interests in this not being a drawn-out tawdry affair for the University. We will see how they distinguish their own, surely more verbose ultimate conclusions from the wagon-circlers’ pithy dismissal.

8. Also troubling is the panel’s selective notation that “some may seek to use the debate over Dr. Mann’s research conduct and that of his colleagues as a proxy for the larger and more substantive debate over the science of anthropogenic global warming and its societal (political and economic) ramifications”. P. 8.

Yes. And some may seek to diminish the scrutiny of Mann’s research and conduct and that of his colleagues to protect the larger and more substantive industry that they represent. Why only one of these interests is worth mentioning is of a part with the panel being taken by just how forthright their subject was, despite not acquiring context to make that judgment but which assertion was material for inclusion in a ten-page assessment of more than two months’ work.

Sadly, the panel’s express focus, the only one among the relevant issues which troubles them for further inquiry — “questions in the public’s mind about Dr. Mann’s conduct of his research activity, given that this may be undermining confidence in his findings as a scientist, and given that it may be undermining public trust in science in general and climate science specifically” (p. 9) — is likely to be viewed in hindsight as having revealed a driving desire of dispelling questions and rehabilitating Mann, “science” and/or the University, not into fairly exploring the substance.

In conclusion, these points all remind us of the frequent need for and widespread use of independent inquiry when seeking to truly discern the meaning and importance of credibly alleged misfeasance. Penn State is heading toward concluding that this is all a big misperception, a matter of appearances more than substance. Something similar can be said about their initial assessment. Appearances matter, and this doesn’t appear good.

In looking at four “possible allegations” of research misconduct against meteorology professor Michael Mann, a Penn State University panel has determined that further investigation is warranted for one of them.

The allegations — or “possible allegations” as they put it — stem from Mann’s alleged involvement in the “ClimateGate” e-mails scandal that surfaced in early December and seemed to show evidence of fraud and conspiracy among the research scientists and others whose work formed much of the basis of calls for extreme climate change regulation.

At the center of the scandal was Mann, the inventor of the famous “hockey stick” graph which claimed to show that, after 1,000 years of decline, global temperatures had shot up to their highest level in recorded history. It was made famous in Al Gore’s Academy Award®-winning documentary on global warming, “An Inconvenient Truth.”

While this is good news, I suspect panel members are secretly hoping someone else will shoulder responsibility for determining Mann’s guilt or innocence before they’re forced to reach any conclusion(s).

Below is the text of the release about the inquiry issued by members of the panel a short while ago:

University Park, Pa. — An internal inquiry by Penn State into the research and scholarly activities of a well-known climate scientist will move into the investigatory stage, which is the next step in the University’s process for reviewing research conduct.

A University committee has concluded its inquiry into allegations of research impropriety that were leveled in November against Professor Michael Mann, after information contained in a collection of stolen e-mails was revealed. More than a thousand e-mails are reported to have been “hacked” from computer servers at the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in England, one of the main repositories of information about climate change.

During the inquiry, all relevant e-mails pertaining to Mann or his work were reviewed, as well as related journal articles, reports and additional information. The committee followed a well-established University policy during the inquiry (http://guru.psu.edu/policies/ra10.html ).

In looking at four possible allegations of research misconduct, the committee determined that further investigation is warranted for one of those allegations. The recommended investigation will focus on determining if Mann “engaged in, directly or indirectly, any actions that seriously deviated from accepted practices within the academic community for proposing, conducting or reporting research or other scholarly activities.” A full report (http://www.research.psu.edu/orp) concerning the allegations and the findings of the inquiry committee has been submitted.

In the investigatory phase, as in the inquiry phase, the committee will not address the science of global climate change, a matter more appropriately left to the profession. The committee is charged with looking at the ethical behavior of the scientist and determining whether he violated professional standards in the course of his work.

The investigatory committee will consist of five tenured full professor faculty members who will assess the evidence in the case and make a determination on Mann’s conduct.

Worth noting is the time frame set forth by university policy:

If an investigation is undertaken pursuant to this policy, the investigation should normally be concluded, and a decision made by the Vice President for Research and Dean of the Graduate School, within 120 days from the initiation of the investigation.

Stay tuned!

Graham Smith of the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has revealed to Jonathan Leake of the London Sunday Times that his office has uncovered wrongdoing on the part of the University of East Anglia’s (UEA) Climate Research Unit (CRU). In a letter to Leake, Smith writes:

The emails which are now public reveal that Mr Holland’s requests under the Freedom of Information Act were not dealt with as they should have been under the legislation. Section 77 of the Freedom of Information Act makes it an offence for public authorities to act so as to prevent intentionally the disclosure of requested information..

Climate Email -

Currently the law prevents the authorities from taking any action against CRU, and the ICO office will recommend changes to the law to close the loophole.

On Nov 19^th after I alerted the internet to the Climategate files, I contacted Andrew Revkin of the New York Times. The message: follow the FOIA. He didn’t; Leake did. Score one for the London Times. As the story unfolded Tom Fuller and I grumbled about with the coverage of the FOIA story. A book fell out of that. Climategate:the Crutape letters, now available on Kindle and as a Lulu Ebook.

The story behind Holland’s FOIA request (here and here) requires close reading of blogs, scientific papers, leaked mails, FOIA requests, IPCC drafts, and expert reviewer comments. There is no simple take away. Except this: the Climate scientists corrupted the IPCC process, the science journal process, the statistical process, and the FOIA process to silence one man– Stephan McIntyre –and to waterboard the climate data till it delivered the message they wanted delivered, an icon more compelling than the “Hockey Stick.”

No one who can put two brain cells together can argue that these processes and the people who abused them are untainted. Instead, they will argue that nothing changes in the science. But without a trusted process there is no science. Surely, the specter of global warming does not earn a last place in the concerns of Americans. But it’s been driven there by the public’s lack of trust in the process. In their rush to judgment, the climate scientists, convinced of the nobility of their cause, have engaged noble cause corruption. Lucky for them a loophole in the law may save them from prosecution, but should not save them from disbarment.

The case is clear. In an effort to shoe horn a paper into the IPCC report, the scientists working together with Stephen Schneider of Climate Change journal, destroyed the credibility of chapter 6 of the 4^th Assessment of the IPCC. And they knew as they hijacked the process that Stephen McIntyre was watching. Yet they persisted and were caught. One scientist, Phil Jones, even suggested changing the dates on papers to hide the misdeed. But there was no hiding of the misdeed as they left a paper trail of violations.

The critical violation revolves around the submission of comments outside the IPCC process. All comments must pass through official channels. Overpeck, the task master for chapter 6 makes this clear in the mails. But the “Jesus Paper”, the paper that will save the Hockey stick is different. In defiance of process the lead author, Keith Briffa, contacts and is contacted by the authors of the “Jesus Paper,” Casper Ammann and Eugene Wahl.  That correspondence, evident to McIntyre, a reviewer of chapter 6, was one target of Holland’s FOIA.

The details of Holland’s requests are covered at Climate Audit. On May 6^th 2008 CRU acknowledged his request. On the 3^rd of June they denied his request. On the 4^th he appealed and they rejected his appeal on June 20^th.

At 6:30 on May 27^th 2008 , the scientists in CRU  were directed by FOIA officer Palmer to contact Ammann and find out if he considered his mails confidential. That was the predetermined excuse Palmer had suggested for rejecting Holland’s request. Palmer, fearing an appeal wanted to do things “by the book.” Which in this case meant suggesting to Ammann that his mails were confidential. Ammann appears to think otherwise. His response, however, was not taken into account and the refusal was issued.

Between the time when Palmer suggested that confidentially would be the excuse (May 27^th) and the denial (June 3^rd), Phil Jones would close the door on any potential appeal. He would request that everyone involved delete their mails.

The deletion of the mails might have worked. But buried in a mail from Wahl to Briffa, we have Briffa’s original mail, detailing the circumvention of the IPCC process. Worried that he cannot be objective in evaluating McIntyre, Briffa shipped a confidential file to Wahl in direct violation of the policy that Overpeck had explained to Roberts, in essence asking Wahl to evaluate his “Jesus Paper.”

In the end, of course, the full extent of the misdeeds will be detailed by the ICO, this is my take on the matter given the evidence in the climategate files. And while they have escaped prosecution, it’s clear that CRU and CRU employees cannot be trusted with the public interest. Beyond that we can wonder if action will be taken against them under the laws of misconduct in a public office, or under conspiracy laws in the UK. The legal status of destroying email in the US bears investigation.

Graham Smith of the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has revealed to Jonathan Leake of the London Sunday Times that his office has uncovered wrongdoing on the part of the University of East Anglia’s (UEA) Climate Research Unit (CRU). In a letter to Leake, Smith writes:

The emails which are now public reveal that Mr Holland’s requests under the Freedom of Information Act were not dealt with as they should have been under the legislation. Section 77 of the Freedom of Information Act makes it an offence for public authorities to act so as to prevent intentionally the disclosure of requested information..

Climate Email -

Currently the law prevents the authorities from taking any action against CRU, and the ICO office will recommend changes to the law to close the loophole.

On Nov 19^th after I alerted the internet to the Climategate files, I contacted Andrew Revkin of the New York Times. The message: follow the FOIA. He didn’t; Leake did. Score one for the London Times. As the story unfolded Tom Fuller and I grumbled about with the coverage of the FOIA story. A book fell out of that. Climategate:the Crutape letters, now available on Kindle and as a Lulu Ebook.

The story behind Holland’s FOIA request (here and here) requires close reading of blogs, scientific papers, leaked mails, FOIA requests, IPCC drafts, and expert reviewer comments. There is no simple take away. Except this: the Climate scientists corrupted the IPCC process, the science journal process, the statistical process, and the FOIA process to silence one man– Stephan McIntyre –and to waterboard the climate data till it delivered the message they wanted delivered, an icon more compelling than the “Hockey Stick.”

No one who can put two brain cells together can argue that these processes and the people who abused them are untainted. Instead, they will argue that nothing changes in the science. But without a trusted process there is no science. Surely, the specter of global warming does not earn a last place in the concerns of Americans. But it’s been driven there by the public’s lack of trust in the process. In their rush to judgment, the climate scientists, convinced of the nobility of their cause, have engaged noble cause corruption. Lucky for them a loophole in the law may save them from prosecution, but should not save them from disbarment.

The case is clear. In an effort to shoe horn a paper into the IPCC report, the scientists working together with Stephen Schneider of Climate Change journal, destroyed the credibility of chapter 6 of the 4^th Assessment of the IPCC. And they knew as they hijacked the process that Stephen McIntyre was watching. Yet they persisted and were caught. One scientist, Phil Jones, even suggested changing the dates on papers to hide the misdeed. But there was no hiding of the misdeed as they left a paper trail of violations.

The critical violation revolves around the submission of comments outside the IPCC process. All comments must pass through official channels. Overpeck, the task master for chapter 6 makes this clear in the mails. But the “Jesus Paper”, the paper that will save the Hockey stick is different. In defiance of process the lead author, Keith Briffa, contacts and is contacted by the authors of the “Jesus Paper,” Casper Ammann and Eugene Wahl.  That correspondence, evident to McIntyre, a reviewer of chapter 6, was one target of Holland’s FOIA.

The details of Holland’s requests are covered at Climate Audit. On May 6^th 2008 CRU acknowledged his request. On the 3^rd of June they denied his request. On the 4^th he appealed and they rejected his appeal on June 20^th.

At 6:30 on May 27^th 2008 , the scientists in CRU  were directed by FOIA officer Palmer to contact Ammann and find out if he considered his mails confidential. That was the predetermined excuse Palmer had suggested for rejecting Holland’s request. Palmer, fearing an appeal wanted to do things “by the book.” Which in this case meant suggesting to Ammann that his mails were confidential. Ammann appears to think otherwise. His response, however, was not taken into account and the refusal was issued.

Between the time when Palmer suggested that confidentially would be the excuse (May 27^th) and the denial (June 3^rd), Phil Jones would close the door on any potential appeal. He would request that everyone involved delete their mails.

The deletion of the mails might have worked. But buried in a mail from Wahl to Briffa, we have Briffa’s original mail, detailing the circumvention of the IPCC process. Worried that he cannot be objective in evaluating McIntyre, Briffa shipped a confidential file to Wahl in direct violation of the policy that Overpeck had explained to Roberts, in essence asking Wahl to evaluate his “Jesus Paper.”

In the end, of course, the full extent of the misdeeds will be detailed by the ICO, this is my take on the matter given the evidence in the climategate files. And while they have escaped prosecution, it’s clear that CRU and CRU employees cannot be trusted with the public interest. Beyond that we can wonder if action will be taken against them under the laws of misconduct in a public office, or under conspiracy laws in the UK. The legal status of destroying email in the US bears investigation.

The State of the Union Address is ordinarily a bore. It generally consists of a laundry list of proposals, and the list nearly always seems interminable. If Barack Obama has moxie, however, tonight could be different. His State of the Union Address could be a real game changer.

Here is how he could do it – if he was really intent on saving his Presidency and on turning a disgraceful performance in that office into something worthy of eulogy. This evening, after the usual formalities, he could say.

My fellow Americans, let me begin by stating the obvious. The state of our union is not good. We seem to be – we may be – coming out of a recession. But, if so, the recovery is not only jobless; it is accompanied by an increase in unemployment.

This is contrary to my expectation. When I became President, my economic advisers told me that the rate of unemployment would be considerably lower now than it is. They were mistaken, and I erred in taking their advice. The fault is mine. I may not have gotten us into a severe recession, but I advanced proposals and I pursued policies which have prolonged and deepened it. I am at fault.

To be precise, I signed into law a so-called stimulus bill that has thus far retarded economic growth by greatly increasing the size of the federal bureaucracy, the expense of supporting it, and the national debt. I urged Congress to pass cap-and-trade legislation that, had it become law, would have greatly increased the cost of energy, and I encouraged Congress to pass a healthcare reform that would have increased not only the cost of medical care but the burden on employers attendant on hiring. Everything that I did in my first year in office contributed to economic uncertainty and made employers less likely to hire and investors wary of investing. I am at fault.

When I became President, I knew next to nothing about economics. I had never run a business, and the only political experience that I had had was in running for office. I have now had a tutorial, and the lessons have been learned at a considerable expense – not just to me but to you. The fault is mine.

I have now learned those lessons, and I am now intent on doing everything within my power to promote an economic recovery and prosperity. To that end, I invite everyone in Congress – Republicans as well as Democrats – to join with me in reversing course.

First, I propose that we move towards a balanced budget and even towards a reduction in the national debt. To this end, I propose that Congress repeal the stimulus bill and enact a spending freeze and a hiring freeze with regard to all domestic programs, and I ask that Congress sanction the establishment of a bipartisan commission – made up of Republicans and Democrats in equal numbers – to recommend which federal programs should be eliminated. At the national level, we have been living beyond our means, and we cannot continue to do so. There are, I suspect, departments in the federal government that have no reason to exist: departments that concern themselves with matters – such as education – which are best left to the states, the localities, and individual citizens.

Second, I ask Congress to make permanent the tax cuts initially proposed by President Bush. I once spoke of the government creating jobs. I now realize that jobs in the government are parasitic on jobs in the private sector and that a tax code that punishes entrepreneurs for their success is a tax code that discourages the creation of jobs by the only people genuinely capable of creating the jobs that matter.

Third, I ask that for a three-year period Congress relieve employers of the payroll contribution made to the Social Security administration so that they can hire new workers and rehire as many as possible of those laid off.

Fourth, I call on Congress to set aside the cap-and-trade bill passed last year by the House of Representatives. To my dismay and embarrassment, we have recently learned  that the work done by the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, which formed the basis for the four reports issued by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is a sham – that the data was doctored, that the computer simulation was a fraud, and that systematic efforts were made by the most prominent climate scientists to corrupt the peer-review process and suppress legitimate criticism: all for the purpose of imposing a strait jacket on the world economy. In my inaugural address, I promised to “roll back the specter of a warming planet” and “restore science to its rightful place.” I intend to be true to my word. Until there is a genuine consensus among the scientists dealing with climate change, I would urge that we do nothing at all. Above all, I urge that nothing be done that would slow down this country’s economic recovery or inhibit economic growth.

Fifth, I call on Congress to set aside the question of healthcare reform. I objected, when I ran for the Democratic nomination for the Presidency, to the notion that American citizens should be forced to buy health insurance. I regret having deviated from that position. I have learned in recent days by way of careful study that only a small proportion of those lacking health insurance lack it because it is unavailable to them. I now recognize that most of those without such insurance are either illegal immigrants, who do not deserve our support, or young people or well-to-do people with no need or desire for insurance. I do not doubt that changes need to be made in our healthcare system, but I am now persuaded that we should enact only those changes that can be made without adding directly or indirectly to the cost of insurance or the burden of taxation.

Sixth, I have decided to keep the prison at Guantamo open and to have all terrorists whom we catch tried by military tribunals. Here also I was in error. We are at war, ladies and gentleman. We have to win this war – and coddling terrorists is not the way to do it.

There is, of course, much else that could be said, but this is not the time. As a nation, we need at this point in our history to focus our attention on the economy and on the twilight war against Islamic terrorism in which we are now engaged.

I doubt very much whether President Obama will say anything of the sort. But if he did – and if he followed through – I am confident that he could restore his stature, regain a measure of popularity, and rescue his party from the cataclysmic defeat in store for it in November. I am told that Newt Gingrich once said of William Jefferson Clinton that the man never stopped learning. Can anything of the sort be said of Barack Obama? Soon – all too soon — we will learn.

Yesterday, Media Research Center (MRC) President and NewsBusters Publisher Brent Bozell sat down in the MRC studio for a Skype interview with Breitbart.tv's "B-cast." [see video embed below the page break]

The topic: the latest MRC special report, "Omitting for Obama," which is a study of four stories --- Van Jones, Anita Dunn, ACORN, and ClimateGate -- "highlighted by the New Media in 2009 that were damaging to the Obama 'brand'" but were avoided like the plague by the old guard mainstream media.

 

CNN on Tuesday highlighted the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change use of a unsubstantiated claim about the Himalayan glaciers melting by 2035 to put pressure on politicians across the globe. Meteorologist Rob Marciano thought the “snafu” on the part of the IPCC was “inexcusable,” while anchor Rick Sanchez put the panel and its head on his “List You Don’t Want to Be On.”

Marciano brought up the week-old story during a segment 49 minutes into the 8 am Eastern hour. He played a sound bite from climatologist Jim White, who was attending the annual Steamboat Springs Weather Summit in Colorado (Marciano was on-location in Steamboat Springs). The CNN meteorologist voiced his agreement with White, who blasted the IPCC’s exaggeration:

MARCIANO: All right, one of many things we’re talking about out here later today [at the 21st annual Weather Summit in Steamboat Springs, Colorado]- we’re going to talk about climate, some of the- some top climate scientists are out here, and I got to talk to one of them yesterday, Jim White, and asked him about the IPCC report- you know, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. There was a bit of snafu the past week or so, where they said that the glaciers in Himalayas we’re going to be gone by 2035. Well, that ended up being bad science, and this is what Jim had to say about that.

JIM WHITE, UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO: Too much is riding on the fact that we get it right as scientists. I know that they got it right in their scientific literature, all right? It was just put down wrong in the IPCC report. But that itself is inexcusable.

MARCIANO: It is inexcusable, and it’s hurting the credibility somewhat of that Nobel Prize-winning organization, and it’s frustrating climate scientists here certainly in the U.S.

Just over eight hours later, near the end of the 3 pm Eastern hour, Sanchez singled out IPCC head Rajendra Pachauri during his “List You Don’t Want to Be on” segment on his Rick’s List program:

SANCHEZ: And here we go- time now for the ‘List You Don’t Want to Be On.’ It’s a tricky name to pronounce, but it’s an important story. He is Rajendra Pachauri. He is not just a global warming expert. He is in charge of the United Nations panel on climate change. He signed off on a memo that said the Himalayan glaciers will melt by the year 2035. Really? That soon? Just 25 years from now, you say?

If the global warming opponents needed more ammunition, he just gave it to them, by overreaching. Pachauri’s group has since apologized. Oops.

The CNN anchor fairly moderated a debate on the issue of climate change weeks earlier on the December 3, 2009 edition of his program, during the height of CNN’s coverage of the ClimateGate scandal.

On January 18, Chris Hastings and Jonathan Leake of The Australian reported that “[t]he peak UN body on climate change has been dealt another humiliating blow to its credibility after it was revealed a central claim of one of its benchmark reports - that most of the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035 because of global warming - was based on a ‘speculative’ claim by an obscure Indian scientist.” Almost a week later, the Daily Mail from the UK revealed that “[t]he scientist behind the bogus claim in a Nobel Prize-winning UN report that Himalayan glaciers will have melted by 2035 last night admitted it was included purely to put political pressure on world leaders. Dr Murari Lal also said he was well aware the statement, in the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), did not rest on peer-reviewed scientific research....Dr Lal, the co-ordinating lead author of the report’s chapter on Asia, said: ‘It related to several countries in this region and their water sources. We thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policy-makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action.’”

CNN on Tuesday highlighted the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change use of a unsubstantiated claim about the Himalayan glaciers melting by 2035 to put pressure on politicians across the globe. Meteorologist Rob Marciano thought the “snafu” on the part of the IPCC was “inexcusable,” while anchor Rick Sanchez put the panel and its head on his “List You Don’t Want to Be On.”

Marciano brought up the week-old story during a segment 49 minutes into the 8 am Eastern hour. He played a sound bite from climatologist Jim White, who was attending the annual Steamboat Springs Weather Summit in Colorado (Marciano was on-location in Steamboat Springs). The CNN meteorologist voiced his agreement with White, who blasted the IPCC’s exaggeration:

MARCIANO: All right, one of many things we’re talking about out here later today [at the 21st annual Weather Summit in Steamboat Springs, Colorado]- we’re going to talk about climate, some of the- some top climate scientists are out here, and I got to talk to one of them yesterday, Jim White, and asked him about the IPCC report- you know, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. There was a bit of snafu the past week or so, where they said that the glaciers in Himalayas we’re going to be gone by 2035. Well, that ended up being bad science, and this is what Jim had to say about that.

JIM WHITE, UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO: Too much is riding on the fact that we get it right as scientists. I know that they got it right in their scientific literature, all right? It was just put down wrong in the IPCC report. But that itself is inexcusable.

MARCIANO: It is inexcusable, and it’s hurting the credibility somewhat of that Nobel Prize-winning organization, and it’s frustrating climate scientists here certainly in the U.S.

Just over eight hours later, near the end of the 3 pm Eastern hour, Sanchez singled out IPCC head Rajendra Pachauri during his “List You Don’t Want to Be on” segment on his Rick’s List program:

SANCHEZ: And here we go- time now for the ‘List You Don’t Want to Be On.’ It’s a tricky name to pronounce, but it’s an important story. He is Rajendra Pachauri. He is not just a global warming expert. He is in charge of the United Nations panel on climate change. He signed off on a memo that said the Himalayan glaciers will melt by the year 2035. Really? That soon? Just 25 years from now, you say?

If the global warming opponents needed more ammunition, he just gave it to them, by overreaching. Pachauri’s group has since apologized. Oops.

The CNN anchor fairly moderated a debate on the issue of climate change weeks earlier on the December 3, 2009 edition of his program, during the height of CNN’s coverage of the ClimateGate scandal.

On January 18, Chris Hastings and Jonathan Leake of The Australian reported that “[t]he peak UN body on climate change has been dealt another humiliating blow to its credibility after it was revealed a central claim of one of its benchmark reports - that most of the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035 because of global warming - was based on a ‘speculative’ claim by an obscure Indian scientist.” Almost a week later, the Daily Mail from the UK revealed that “[t]he scientist behind the bogus claim in a Nobel Prize-winning UN report that Himalayan glaciers will have melted by 2035 last night admitted it was included purely to put political pressure on world leaders. Dr Murari Lal also said he was well aware the statement, in the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), did not rest on peer-reviewed scientific research....Dr Lal, the co-ordinating lead author of the report’s chapter on Asia, said: ‘It related to several countries in this region and their water sources. We thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policy-makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action.’”

A 2007 warning from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that Himalayan glaciers would be completely gone by 2035 due to global warming may be retracted in the coming days.

New revelations concerning this claim indicate that it actually came from a 1999 article in a scientific journal that was in no way verified by any members of the IPCC.

As Britain's Sunday Times reported Sunday, in the wake of ClimateGate e-mail messages showing IPCC scientists manipulating climate data, a retraction of this Himalayan glacier warning would further undermine claims by these people that the science is settled concerning man's role in global warming (h/t Ed Morrissey):

Two years ago the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a benchmark report that was claimed to incorporate the latest and most detailed research into the impact of global warming. A central claim was the world's glaciers were melting so fast that those in the Himalayas could vanish by 2035.

In the past few days the scientists behind the warning have admitted that it was based on a news story in the New Scientist, a popular science journal, published eight years before the IPCC's 2007 report.

It has also emerged that the New Scientist report was itself based on a short telephone interview with Syed Hasnain, a little-known Indian scientist then based at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi.

Hasnain has since admitted that the claim was "speculation" and was not supported by any formal research. If confirmed it would be one of the most serious failures yet seen in climate research. The IPCC was set up precisely to ensure that world leaders had the best possible scientific advice on climate change.

Professor Murari Lal, who oversaw the chapter on glaciers in the IPCC report, said he would recommend that the claim about glaciers be dropped: "If Hasnain says officially that he never asserted this, or that it is a wrong presumption, than I will recommend that the assertion about Himalayan glaciers be removed from future IPCC assessments." 

This is what the New Scientist reported on June 5, 1999:

MELTING Himalayan glaciers are threatening to unleash a torrent of floods into mountain valleys, and ultimately dry up rivers across South Asia. A new study, due to be presented in July to the International Commission on Snow and Ice (ICSI), predicts that most of the glaciers in the region will vanish within 40 years as a result of global warming.

"All the glaciers in the middle Himalayas are retreating," says Syed Hasnain of Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi, the chief author of the ICSI report. A typical example is the Gangorti glacier at the head of the River Ganges, which is retreating at a rate of 30 metres per year. Hasnain's four-year study indicates that all the glaciers in the central and eastern Himalayas could disappear by 2035 at their present rate of decline.

Glaciers cover around 17 per cent of the Himalayas and contain thousands of cubic kilometres of water. Taken together with those on the neighbouring Tibetan plateau, they represent the largest body of ice on the planet outside the polar regions. Furthermore, their meltwater makes up two-thirds of the flow of great South Asian rivers such as the Ganges, on which hundreds of millions of people depend.

But Hasnain's working group on Himalayan glaciology, set up by the ICSI, has found that glaciers are receding faster in the Himalayas than anywhere else on Earth. Hasnain warns that as the glaciers disappear, the flow of these rivers will become less reliable and eventually diminish, resulting in widespread water shortages.

According to the Times, Hasnain's report didn't say anything about the glaciers being gone by 2035:

The IPCC's reliance on Hasnain's 1999 interview has been highlighted by Fred Pearce, the journalist who carried out the original interview for the New Scientist. Pearce said he rang Hasnain in India in 1999 after spotting his claims in an Indian magazine. Pearce said: "Hasnain told me then that he was bringing a report containing those numbers to Britain. The report had not been peer reviewed or formally published in a scientific journal and it had no formal status so I reported his work on that basis.

"Since then I have obtained a copy and it does not say what Hasnain said. In other words it does not mention 2035 as a date by which any Himalayan glaciers will melt. However, he did make clear that his comments related only to part of the Himalayan glaciers. not the whole massif.

Britain's Daily Mail also reported on this matter Sunday:

The revelation is a major blow to the credibility of the IPCC which was set up to provide political leaders with clear, independent advice on climate change.

It follows the 'Climategate' email row in which scientists at the University of East Anglia appeared to have manipulated data to strengthen the case for man-made climate change.

Dr Benny Peiser, of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, said: 'The IPCC review process has been shown on numerous occasions to lack transparency and due diligence.

'Its work is controlled by a tightly knit group of individuals who are completely convinced that they are right. As a result, conflicting data and evidence, even if published in peer reviewed journals, are regularly ignored, while exaggerated claims, even if contentious or not peer-reviewed, are often highlighted in IPCC reports.

'Not surprisingly, the IPCC has lost a lot of credibility in recent years. It is also losing the trust of more and more governments who are no longer following their advice - as the Copenhagen summit showed.'

The flawed claim appeared in chapter 10 of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, which stated: 'Glaciers in the Himalaya are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate.'

New Scientist filed its own report on this growing controversy last Monday:

Glaciologists are this week arguing over how a highly contentious claim about the speed at which glaciers are melting came to be included in the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. [...]

Vijay Raina, a leading Indian glaciologist, wrote in a discussion paper published by the Indian government in November that there is no sign of "abnormal" retreat in Himalayan glaciers. India's environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, accused the IPCC of being "alarmist". [...]

Graham Cogley, a geographer from Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada, says the 2035 date is extremely unlikely. "At current melting rates it might take up to 10 times longer," he says.

Not surprisingly, the growing controversy is causing a lot of fingerpointing according to New Scientist:

However, the lead author of the IPCC chapter, Indian glaciologist Murari Lal, told New Scientist he "outright rejected" the notion that the IPCC was off the mark on Himalayan glaciers. "The IPCC authors did exactly what was expected from them," he says.

"We relied rather heavily on grey [not peer-reviewed] literature, including the WWF report," Lal says. "The error, if any, lies with Dr Hasnain's assertion and not with the IPCC authors."

But Hasnain rejects that. He blames the IPCC for misusing a remark he made to a journalist. "The magic number of 2035 has not [been] mentioned in any research papers written by me, as no peer-reviewed journal will accept speculative figures," he told New Scientist.

"It is not proper for IPCC to include references from popular magazines or newspapers," Hasnain adds.

Indeed it is not. As Ed Morrissey noted Sunday:

So the IPCC read the interview in which Hasnain speculated — with no scientific evidence whatsoever — that a portion of the Himalayan glaciers would melt at some indeterminate time, and concluded that the entirety of the massif would evaporate by 2035.  They never even bothered to wait for Hasnain’s report to see exactly what he claimed, and why.  Instead, they just inflated the unsubstantiated speculation with a zeppelin of greenhouse-gas hyperbole and stated categorically that the entire glacial structure in the Himalayas would be gone in a quarter-century.

This is what passes for science at the UN.  This is what passes for science at the IPCC.  It’s also what passed for science at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit.

And AGW hysterics like to call skeptics deniers, in what is clearly the most obvious case of projection on the global stage.

The only questions remaining are will the IPCC retract this warning, and how will American media report the retraction if it occurs.

After all, this glacial melt claim is pivotal to climate alarmism. If it is retracted, and the IPCC admits that it unscientifically based its conclusion on one article in one journal, not only would this undermine its own credibility as a scientific organization, but it would remove one of the great threats alarmists like Nobel Laureate Al Gore use to scare people into believing this myth.

No matter how you slice it, coming only two months after ClimateGate first unfolded, it is quite clear the wheels are falling off the manmade global warming bus. 

Ain't it grand?

A scientist in the middle of the ClimateGate scandal received economic stimulus funds last June.

As NewsBusters reported on November 28, Penn State University is investigating Professor Michael Mann, the creator of the discredited "Hockey Stick Graph," for his involvement in an international attempt to exaggerate and manipulate climate data in order to advance the myth of manmade global warming.

According to the conservative think tank the National Center for Public Policy Research, Mann received $541,184 in economic stimulus funds last June to conduct climate change research.

With this in mind, NCPPR issued a press release Thursday asking for these funds to be returned:

In the face of rising unemployment and record-breaking deficits, policy experts at the National Center for Public Policy Research are criticizing the Obama Administration for awarding a half million dollar grant from the economic stimulus package to Penn State Professor Michael Mann, a key figure in the Climategate controversy. 

"It's outrageous that economic stimulus money is being used to support research conducted by Michael Mann at the very time he’s under investigation by Penn State and is one of the key figures in the international Climategate scandal.  Penn State should immediately return these funds to the U.S. Treasury," said Tom Borelli, Ph.D., director of the National Center's Free Enterprise Project.
 
Professor Mann is currently under investigation by Penn State University because of activities related to a closed circle of climate scientists who appear to have been engaged in agenda-driven science.  Emails and documents mysteriously released from the previously-prestigious Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom revealed discussions of manipulation and destruction of research data, as well as efforts to interfere with the peer review process to stifle opposing views.  The motivation underlying these efforts appears to be a coordinated strategy to support the belief that mankind's activities are causing global warming. [...]

The $541,184 grant is for three years and was initiated in June 2009.

Potentially adding insult to injury, Penn State received additional stimulus funds to investigate the impact of climate change last week:

A nearly $1.9 million grant from the National Science Foundation is enabling a Penn State-led group of researchers to continue studies on the potential effects of climate change on the spread of infectious diseases, such as malaria and dengue. The grant is part of federal stimulus funding authorized under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

This grant appears to have nothing to do with Mann's department. However, given the high-profile the university is currently under as a result of his involvement in ClimateGate, it seems absurd that any federal funds involving climate change would be going to this school while it is investigating its chief proponent of this myth.

Maybe more importantly, why are economic stimulus funds being given to a university for scientific research in the first place, especially one with such political overtones?

As NCPPR noted in its release:

"It's no wonder that Obama's stimulus plan is failing to produce jobs.  Taxpayer dollars aren't being used in the ways most likely to spur job creation.  The stimulus was not sold to the public as a way to reward a loyalist in the climate change debate.  Nor was the stimulus sold as a way to promote the Obama Administration's position on the global warming theory...As is often the case, political considerations corrupt the distribution of government funds," said Deneen Borelli, a fellow with the National Center's Project 21 black leadership network. 

Despite the obviously controversial nature of this funding and its recipient, I can identify absolutely no media coverage concerning the matter.

I'm sure now that NCPPR has exposed this hypocrisy, press outlets across the fruited plain will be aggressively investigating economic stimulus grants to Mann and others involved in the ClimateGate scandal in order to inform the public about how their tax dollars are being spent.

Of course, I'm not holding my breath. 

Today E&E News reports (subscription required) green group faux-rage that industry reps were consulted on drafting an amendment by Sen. Lisa Murkowski to (IMO, rather unwisely) grant the Democrats a one-year reprieve from their looming political nightmare of EPA threatening to actually try and regulate greenhouse gas emissions from stationary sources by regulation under a Clean Air Act never designed for such foolishness.

Such unseemly whimpering is about as credible as the greens’ phony “hacked emails!” outrage, over what was from all appearances a whistleblower releasing “ClimateGate” email evidence of dirty green tricks. These are the same crowd whose slimy green tactics include stealing my trash on a weekly basis and working with, e.g., the Guardian to dishonestly cobble together unrelated, out-of-context (unlike ClimateGate) excerpts from emails to paint a false picture. (”Greens involved in journalism process!”; sadly, the Guardian never called me for their “story” about, well, me, so I must confess I wasn’t involved).

Specifically, E&E notes how:

“the Washington Post reported yesterday that [Bracewell & Giuliani's Jeff Holmstead] and another former EPA official, Roger Martella, ‘helped craft the original amendment Murkowski planned to offer on the floor last fall.’…

Environmentalists pounced on the reports as evidence that coal and oil interests are behind Murkowski’s efforts. ‘We now have proof that lobbyists for Big Oil, dirty coal and other special interests are directly involved in recent attempts to bail out big polluters and gut the Clean Air Act,’ said a Sierra Club press release. ‘What’s more, these big polluter lobbyists are the same former Bush administration officials who completely disregarded the Clean Air Act and even disobeyed the Supreme Court for years.’

Frank O’Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch, said, ‘It’s pretty clear who’s supporting and behind Murkowski. It’s clearly the coal cabal and others who would try to block EPA from taking action.’”

Ahem. Yes, it’s pretty clear who’s behind what. Shall we set up shop outside the Environment and Public Works’ Majority offices to see who’s working on things, kids? To discover the horror that your team goes to the unconscionable lengths of asking outside experts for their expertise?

So, on top of raising again that uncomfortable little Enron thing, allow me refresh the greens’ memories about how terrible it is that industry be involved in the process:

United States Climate Action Partnership (USCAP) is a “Baptists and bootleggers” coalition of pressure groups like NRDC with mostly rent-seeking industry. like Duke Energy, Exelon and other energy players who’ve crafted a scheme for windfalls at your expense as their price for pushing Gang Green’s agenda.

Together, USCAP companies seek a pact with the governing class and ideologues to secure their own future and was even credited with providing the “blueprint” for the Waxman-Markey House cap-and-trade bill.

This according to that right-wing rag the Los Angeles Times in the article titled “Industry leaders join Obama on emissions limits: Companies want to help shape global warming legislation in Congress, figuring the right plan could help profits. Their support could be key to pushing it through”.

The paper acknowledged how USCAP companies helped to push this enormous energy tax hike past the finish line in the House, singling out Duke Energy and Alcoa for “marshaling votes on Capitol Hill, working behind the scenes with committee negotiators and providing what House leaders call a blueprint for compromise.” In his victory lap, bill co-author Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts cited this cynical profiteering-slash-toadying, calling their support “indispensable.”

E&E News failed to mention such matters. It does seem, however, that Big Green is very upset about the practice by its Big Business wing to be a key player in the Greens’ effort to impose the biggest tax increase in American history, and that we should renew our efforts to tell the public about this.

Climate-gate could further complicate the re-election prospects of congressional representatives from industrialized states who are already playing defense over the economic costs of climate change legislation.

Thousands of  emails leaked to the Internet from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom appear to substantiate a growing body of research that questions the idea of man-made global warming. Climate-gate has the potential to emerge as an unexpected gift to Republican candidates in this year’s midterm elections. But there’s the rub.

With the exception of Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), and a handful of other elected officials, Republicans have been reticent to engage and debate the dubious claims of human induced global warming, laments Steve Milloy, editor and founder of JunkScience.com.

“Too many of them don’t understand the issue and the extremism that stands behind green activism,” he observes. “They are afraid of being labeled as anti-environment and are just not well-equipped or well informed enough to confront policies that could result in an unprecedented expansion of government power.”

At the very least, 2010 Republican challengers could invoke the email scandal to demonstrate how research has been falsified and distorted to advance a political agenda at odds with the economic well-being of many Americans. This in turn could open the way to a larger discussion of global warming science and the role of the United Nations.

Waxman-Markey (H.R. 2494), which passed the House last year by a 219-212 vote in June, calls for reducing total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 83 percent below 2005 levels by 2050. The legislation would impose a “cap and trade” regime that limits the amount of carbon dioxide that could be released into the atmosphere. Companies exceeding their prescribed limit would have to buy “carbon allowances” in a government-contrived system.

At least six Democratic senators are now urging the White House to back away from pushing “cap and trade” in the midst of an election year. Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) and Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) are among those who have expressed reservations.

Virginia’s Bob McDonnell very deftly turned Waxman-Markey back against his Democratic opponent in last year’s race for governor. His landslide election victory should encourage other Republican candidates looking to capitalize on economic concerns.

“Cap and trade is opposed by most employers in Virginia because they see what it’s going to do to the cost of goods and services,” McDonnell explained in an interview. “It is strongly opposed by the coal industry, for instance, which is vitally important to Southwest Virginia. Cap and trade is just bad policy and the more citizens understand that it’s going to increase their electricity rates over time the more they are going to oppose it.”

Nationwide data measuring the impact of Waxman-Markey in a new study commissioned by the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) and the American Council for Capital Formation (ACCF) yielded the following results:

• Cumulative loss in gross domestic product (GDP) up to $3.1 trillion (2012-2030)
• Employment losses up to 2.4 million jobs in 2030
• Residential electricity price increases up to 50 percent by 2030
• Gasoline price increases (per gallon) up 26 percent by 2030.

The NAM/ACCF study includes data on all 50 states.

In Virginia, for example, the NAM/ACCF study estimates that at least 41,400 jobs could be lost by 2030 as a result of lower industrial output that would follow from higher energy prices. Virginia residents would also see their disposable income reduced by $103 to $235 per year by 2020 and $608 to $1,096 by 2030 as a consequence of Waxman-Markey.

There’s no question that industrial states stand to lose the most and this should become a point of contention in 2010, just as it was in the Virginia governor’s race. But free market advocates who are looking to unseat cap and trade proponents now have the added benefit of climate-gate.

Even as cap and trade stalls in the U.S. Senate, the Obama Administration now appears poised to use the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) endangerment finding on Co2 to make an end run around democratic channels.

This maneuvering suggests that the economic arguments standing alone will not be sufficient over the long-term and must be co-joined with scientific data that can be included in litigation challenging the endangerment finding. But Republican candidates should get started now in exposing anti-scientific research that underpins alarmist positions on global warming.

In their messaging to voters they can draw from the expertise of numerous, well-credentialed skeptics who have found expression for their own research, despite the best efforts of the scientific establishment.

Over 31,000 scientists, including over 9,000 Ph.Ds, have signed off on a petition circulated through the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine that states human activity is not responsible for causing catastrophic disruption of the earth’s climate system. Moreover, over 700 scientists have now endorsed a U.S. Senate minority report that questions man-made global warming.

Charles Dunn, dean of the Regent University School of Government based in Virginia Beach, Va., sees opportunities for Republican candidates running in parts of the south and the mid-west especially. As it turns out, these are some of the same states that would be disproportionately affected by cap and trade.

Liberal media organs and Democratic operatives sought to make an issue out of McDonnell’s connection with Regent University during the campaign. In the end, Dunn suspects this coverage may have actually benefitted the Republican candidate in that it further heightened his esteem among social conservatives. Consequently, McDonnell was better positioned to make an issue out of energy policy because his base was already solidified, he surmises.

Throughout the campaign, McDonnell emphasized his support for expanded nuclear power and for offshore drilling. That’s what the public likes to hear and Republican candidates in other states can build on this approach by asking their Democratic counterparts to account for the junk science that constrains American ingenuity.

The one good thing you can say about Andrew Freedman's "Cold weather in a hot climate" entry at the Washington Post's Capital Weather Gang blog (HT James Taranto at the Wall Street Journal's Best of the Web) is that he's at least not hiding his bias.

Boiling it down, Freedman believes that weather broadcasters should use the occasions of heat waves and serious storms as global warming teachable moments, yet become strict info relayers when it's extraordinarily cold. In doing so, he advocates a continuation of what Julie Seymour at the Media Research Center's Business & Media Institute has already observed:

The news media constantly misuse extreme weather examples to generate fear of global warming, but when record cold or record snow sets in journalists don’t mention the possibility of global cooling trends. While climatologists would say weather isn’t necessarily an indication of climate, it has been in the media, but only when the weather could be spun as part of global warming.

Freedman, whose post quotes Julie's work without linking to it, confirms that the bias she has observed is in his case quite conscious. In the process, he goes to a leading apologist for the "Hide the Decline" Climategate charlatans who have fraudulently been manipulating their so-called scientific research while "somehow" losing critical raw data, propagandizing and scrubbing supposedly objective reference sources like Wikipedia, and attempting to discredit, intimidate and marginalize skeptics for a decade or more:

When covering a heat wave, I would be on solid scientific footing if I were to say that the event is consistent with observations and projections of global climate change.

.... where skeptics see a media conspiracy to ignore cooling, I see an effort to accurately communicate climate science to the public. Of course there is a "possibility" that the earth is cooling, but virtually every peer reviewed climate study has shown the opposite to be true.

.... So what, then, should the press be doing differently today? In my view, journalists should make an effort to include the broader climate context whenever it is scientifically justified. That means that it might be unnecessary to mention climate change in a story about a short-term cold snap, but could be integral to a story on heavy snowfall.

For perspective on how this might be done, I turned to Joe Romm of the liberal Center for American Progress (CAP), who has been pushing for more coverage of the links between extreme weather and climate events and global climate change.

"If we see record-breaking extremes of a very certain kind -- those that are consistent with climate science predictions -- those I think are newsworthy," Romm told me in an e-mail interview earlier this week. .... "merely reporting it's cold in January isn't news that has any relevancy to global warming."

Romm is a senior fellow at CAP's Action Fund and is the editor of its Climate Progress blog. While the CAP Action Fund characterizes itself as "a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization," a Thursday blog entry by Romm reassures his readers that "Democratic majorities are safe, for now." NewsBusters colleague Noel Sheppard has noted in previous posts how Romm tagged global warming as the cause of a December blizzard and a June rainstorm.

Other recent shrill posts at the Climate Progress Blog carry such titles as:

• "Rolling Stone on “The Climate Killers: 17 polluters and deniers who are derailing efforts to curb the climate catastrophe.”
• "Meteorological Malpractice: Accuweather’s Joe Bastardi pushes the “70s Ice Age Scare” myth again."
• "Chris Matthews: Politico serves as the Drudge-Like “news conduit” for Dick Cheney."
• "Can U.S. skiing be saved?"

The last entry cited makes reference to a 2006 "sky is falling" study about the weather in Apsen, Colorado, fretting that "if global carbon emissions continue to rise, Aspen will warm by 14 degrees by the end of this century," and asserting that "Continued growth in global greenhouse gas emissions is projected to end skiing in Aspen by 2100 and possibly well before then." But Julie Urquhart, Aspen correspondent at the Glendwood Springs (CO) Post Independent, reported on January 1 that the weather in the three Decembers has stubbornly failed to cooperate with the hysteria:

December in Aspen: Average snowfall, but boy, was it cold

.... The average low temperature last month was 4.97 degrees Fahrenheit, according to data maintained by the city's water department. That compares to an average low of 9.97 degrees in December 2008 and 9.77 degrees in December 2007. The average low in December 2006 was a relatively balmy 11.83 degrees.

The Journal's Taranto made this quite fitting observation yesterday:

To figure out how to cover a disputed and highly politicized area of science, Freedman turns to an advocacy group on the left. He thereby reinforces every suspicion global-warming skeptics have ever had about the media. He may thereby have unwittingly done a service to the truth.

Thanks, Andrew.

BMI's Matthew Philbin also caught another egregious example of Freedman's bias at the same WaPo blog in February of last year.

Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.

We live in seriously challenging times – times that warrant serious conversations on the state and direction of our nation.  From the fiscal crash course our nation is on to the ever-present threat we face from Islamic terrorism, there’s plenty of fodder for constructive political discourse.  Many on the Left, however, are bent on marginalizing opposing views by any means necessary.  The censorship and number fudging exposed in ClimateGate is one recent example.

The tea party movement seems to perpetually be in the crosshairs of the Left’s most insidious propaganda artists.  A post on taxpayer subsidized NPR’s blog that’s getting some attention this week features a video by Mark Fiore entitled “Learn to Speak Tea Bag.”  The cartoon gives mock step-by-step instructions on what Fiore believes is the modus operandi of tea party activists.  Fiore unintentionally serves up a nearly all-inclusive package on all that is dishonest and malicious about the Left’s continued campaign to discredit this wildly popular grassroots force.

Fiore’s isn’t the first and likely won’t be the last tea party hit job.  Everyone from the President to “mainstream” media commentators have joined in since the movement’s inception in February 2009.  This multifaceted attack on the tea party movement has revealed an interesting trend that mirrors the evolving tactics of a maladjusted, intellectual deficient schoolboy bully.

Kindergarten: Don’t like what someone has to say? Call them stupid! A central theme of Fiore’s video is that those that make up the movement are uneducated.  I’ve collectively seen hundreds of thousands of attendees at the various tea party events I’ve been to.  While degrees aren’t required for admittance, I think it is safe to say that there are a few smart folks in this large, popular movement.   Furthermore, how Fiore and others can simultaneously deride the movement as dumb yet high-tech GOP “Astroturf” is beyond me.

While Fiore mockingly encourages viewers to “learn to speak tea bag,” he could use some lessons on the English language.  His presumably self-penned biography contains a glaring redundancy: “[Fiore]…creates political animation from an undisclosed location somewhere in San Francisco.”  [Emphasis added] As Michelle Malkin recently wrote, obscure cartoonists like Fiore aren’t the only ones trying to tally IQs.  In a piece that reads at best as a backhanded compliment to the movement’s influence, David Brooks of the New York Times recently juxtaposed the tea party movement with…Democrats?  No! He contrasted them with the educated class.  Ah!  The Left’s agenda is not only inherently progressive, but intellectually informed and fact based!

High School: When the pesky protestors just won’t go away, make a sex joke and call them gay! Fiore invokes “tea bag,” a reference to “teabagging,” a sexual act invoked to mock the tea party movement – an implicitly homoerotic joke.  This is a staple in the Left’s anti-tea party propaganda campaign lexicon. (See other slurs from Anderson Cooper, Rachel Maddow, and Keith Olbermann, to name a few.)

College: If simple name calling just won’t work, it’s time to break out the big guns – something politically charged and completely unfounded that just sucks the air out of the room.  Drop the racism card! This is a very common (and very effective) tactic invoked by intellectually frustrated leftist students, aging hippy professors, and university administrators on campuses across the country. Chris Matthews isn’t the first to invoke it, but he recently revived this move in a double whammy sexual/racist slur.

Graduate School: When the racist card gets old, it’s time to get to undermine the foundation of the issue at hand.  Fudge the facts!  Fiore isn’t the only one guilty of this of course, but his video has one real whopper.  In it, he implies that tea party activists are being dishonest about the health care debate because many Republicans have received money from health care industries.  This is a great trick.  For one, it implies a necessary link between the movement and the GOP – a fallacy. While the principles of the tea party movement – fiscal conservatism, individual responsibility, limited government – are more often than not going to be advanced by the Republican Party, there is no intrinsic link.  For example, at the event I ran on tax day 2009 in Chicago, Michael Steele was publicly turned down as a speaker.  (Not surprisingly, this received little press coverage and certainly wasn’t weighed as hard evidence of the movement’s nonpartisanship.)

Nor is there a responsibility of all tea party activists to answer for the political contributions of a handful of Republicans.  It is, of course, fair game to dig into the political contributions of politicians opposing and pushing ObamaCare.  Sure, many Republicans have and will continue to receive money from “special interest groups” including those related to the health care industry.

So do Democrats, though.  In fact, Barack Obama received more money from health industry lobbyists than any presidential candidate in history. Not only did he receive more than his opponent John McCain, but more than George W. Bush in both of his campaigns combined.

Does this impact President Obama’s allies’ votes or closed-door House-Senate reconciliation for a final ObamaCare bill? How about the President’s policy stances?  What about his decision to renege on his promise to televise health care debates and to instead hold closed-door meetings with these very same special interests in the West Wing?  (For more “odd alliances” exposed, see my review of Tim Carney’s Obamanomics.)

Dropout: When none of these more “cerebral” attempts work, many on the Left drop the attempt at any semblance of reasonable discourse and turn to threats. Tea party activists regularly receive threatening emails and phone calls.  Others are at the receiving end of actual violence.  Take Kenneth Gladney, who had racial slurs, fists, and feet hurled upon him by SEIU thugs at a tea party protest.

While these transparent attempts to undermine this movement are frustrating, I encourage my tea party compatriots to take heart and stick to the high road.  These superficial tactics and inaccurate claims will lose their effectiveness in the long-run.  As with the bullies you may have encountered in the buses and hallways of your school years, these attacks reveal deep emotional and intellectual voids in the hearts and minds of those that perpetrate them.  Finally, if your mere involvement in the political process is triggering this much vitriol from politicians and members of the media big and small, you’ve got to be doing something right.

So, China went big into windmill and solar panel production, causing the media and other liberals to breathlessly swoon over this further evidence of the wisdom of us mandating the things even though all it proves is that China is not dumb.

Rich countries say all weather is now their fault and vow to spend billions on uneconomic, inefficient and intermittent energy sources regardless of their merits or performance as penance and to show their seriousness of purpose in feeling really, really bad about the whole thing they alone talked themselves into. China volunteers to make the machines for us because, without absurd “green” policies of the sort causing energy prices to rise so high that seniors burn books to stay warm — in fact, China rejects the Kyoto agenda precisely because it has sworn off of that sort of poverty and knows what would keep them there — they can do it more cheaply.

And then they go to Copenhagen and hold us up for billions in new, “climate aid”, with more than a whiff of reparations about it because, after all, our government aided and abetted that line of argument.

So please don’t be surprised by China’s reaction when confronted, like the rest of our hemisphere, by yet another severe winter of the sort RFK Jr. and others swore were a thing of the past thanks to Man-made global warming. That reaction is to claim that the severe winter is instead further evidence of the same phenomenon that, erm, supposedly made such things extinct. Because to not say so might threaten the billions in “climate aid” and windmill sales.

It just might work. Because, you know, we’re like that now, willing to believe everything that happens is further evidence of a theory that nothing can disprove or even cause a rethink (”faith”, anyone?). And we have useful idiots willing to also say anything to aid in the cause.

This is how countries can make themselves look so incredibly simple to the world while laboring to appear so sophisticated.

This year saw the birth of the tea party movement, the rise of administrative radicalism, and a suppression of information unlike ever before seen. Were it not for the new penny presses, blogs and the investigative citizens who author them, much of this information would be six feet under. When the media goes state and becomes nothing more than an echo chamber for the government, the task of sharing truth falls to the original keepers of liberty: the American people.

These are the most Underreported Stories of 2009:

1. CLIMATEGATE
Al Gore needs something to sustain him and his big pimpin’ life down at his ginormous, energy-sucking mansion in Tennessee. Thus the green market was born, a made-up market chock full of products like carbon credits and other Willy Wonka (but not as cool) ish items for people to buy as a way to feel good about themselves and their contribution to the planet without having to actually do anything. They don’t need a God! They need a Prius!

Celebrities Botoxed within an inch of their lives began popping up in PSA’s about global warming, about how we need to drive inefficient clown cars that run on electricity (which is still produced in coal-powered plants but hey, whatever) to save the planet. Musicians like Sheryl Crow crowed about using just a square of toilet paper to remove waste that has a greater street value than her latest album. All the hubris manifested in regulations handed down from Congress upon the automobile industry, the coal industry, et al., until finally! Cap’n Trade appeared in the House.

Cap’n Trade will rape and pillage your energy bills and even boss you around when it comes to remodeling or rehabbing a home. It’s almost like … congress has nothing better to do.

Then … there was Climategate. Russian hackers revealed emails from a British university (whose edicts on global warming are included in the U.N.’s decision-making process on climate) which showed that the scientists basically had no idea what they hell they were talking about but they did know that their original assessment of increased global temperatures was unsupported by data, thus, “hide the decline.”
2. THE TEA PARTY MOVEMENT
I feel bad for the staffer that had to check Nancy Pelosi’s pants after over a million tea party protesters marched past her window on September 12, 2009.

The tea party movement sprung from plain old disenchantment, disappointment, and outright anger at being fleeced by a government who mistook their primary job as being “spend cash mon-nay” rather than execute the Constitution. What began as a few groups of several hundred people gathering in the cold back in February morphed into a movement so big that now talk of PACs and third parties (total crap idea, that latter) are commonplace and a Republican candidate has no hope of winning an election without the tea party support.

The most misreported and misunderstood thing about the tea party is its political leanings. The tea party has no political leaning. It stands straight for limited government, low taxes, and liberty for all. Disagreement with those tenets is an accidental admission of socialism on the part of the antagonist. The beauty of the tea party movement is that it is independent and thus a true check and balance of the Republican and Democrat parties. It’s not a pawn of the GOP, thus untouchable in criticism of the Democrats – I view it as an unattached conscience of the Republican party.

The tea parties have been smeared, and while some haven’t helped against the charges of astroturf due to their worship of both God and money, the movement is pure.

A new version of the Minuteman has sprung from this movement: the patriot activist with the Gadsen flag on her shoulder and a video recorder or camera in her hand.

3. FORT HOOD AND ISLAMIC EXTREMISM IN THE U.S.
A guy with a history of terrorist activity (the FBI had been watching him for months) and bent on mass murder screams “ALLAHU AKBAR!” before shooting a pregnant soldier point-blank at a military base and the media would rather cover its genitals like a dog and cower in the corner rather than define the terrorist as a terrorist.

Rather, the media interviewed people who said that shooter Malik Nadal Hasan had “trouble fitting in” and isn’t it so sad how he was treated differently because of his religion? Lightbulb moment: hey! Perhaps he was treated differently because he felt prejudiced against his fellow soldiers whom he viewed as infidels who should die?

Hasan had “soldier of Allah” printed on his business cards, for crying out loud.

Nevermind that he was a participant in Obama’s transition Homeland Security  team. Oops!

4. ACORN and SEIU
Only in America can you offer to help smuggle in underage sex workers as part of your description as a taxpayer-funded “community organizer” and still get federal dollars after the scandal breaks. James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles exposed ACORN for what it truly is: a malignancy that consumes the life out of depressed areas that it never, ever improves, ever, all in the name of making residents dependent upon the teat of government welfare so as to exploit them for votes later”neighborhood organizing.”

Michael Walsh explains the repurcussions of the dynamic duo’s work:

The Senate voted 83-7 in favor of de-funding the controversial group. The House voted 345-75 to cut ACORN’s funding, and more than 20 states have demanded either a full investigation of ACORN or that they lose their funding. The IRS also ended up cutting their connections to the group.

O’Keefe and Giles made a mockery of the media who retaliated by refusing to cover the story, further hammering the last nail into their own coffin.

Despite all of this, Big Government wrote how after this egregious corruption, Democrats like Roland Burris still found a way to push for continued ACORN funding by slipping a provision requiring such in Harry Reid’s senate fauxcare bill.

SEIU shares #4 with SCORN (typo and it stays) after several of its purple people beaters attacked Kenneth Gladney (a black street vendor who I’d previously seen selling pro-Obama buttons at Obama’s Arnold, MO townhall) at Russ Carnahan’s townhall in Mehlville, Missouri after profiling him and assuming him to be a black conservative. One of the country’s most shocking and underreported race-provoked attacks grew worse when his brother, Keith Gladney, spoke out in his brother’s defense and is said to have been canned from his job two days before Christmas as a result.

At the time of this writing neither Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, or President Obama have offered to arrange a beer summit between Kenneth Gladney and Andy Stern.

5. HCR COVER-UP
The majority of the country opposes Harry Reid’s Senate bill but nevertheless, Reid bribed it through. Government media served as a mouthpiece for the administration and its policy on fauxcare, giving the President multiple hours of free network prime-time hours to peddle his snake oil on the airwaves.

The Senate vote marks the turning point in our government where those elected to represent the constituency failed to do the jobs for which they were placed in office. It was a vote of tyranny, not of representation.
6. NEA
The White House is attempting to mimic Leni Riefenstahl by rounding up those in the arts and entertainment industry and using them as the vehicles through which President Obama can peddle his agenda, I wrote back in September. Big Government combed over this scandal which went completely ignored by the media. Union baby Buffy Wicks, from the Office of Public Engagement and Serve.gov, the NEA, and others joined a variety of artists and promoters on a conference call, the goal of which was to figure out how to create propaganda to support Obama’s policies.

Big Government Editor Mike Flynn expounded further on the scandal and reminded readers how Wicks used the Serve.gov portal as a way to funnel volunteers to ACORN and other pro-Obama organizations, at taxpayer expense.

Jinkies! Looks like artists are going to have to work harder and nab more photos that other people have taken so that they can do cheesy, tri-color alterations to them that pass as pretentious, overrated and quasi-Photoshop Level 1 “art” to the people whose discernment went off the rails.

7. DHS, NAPOLITANO TARGET DISSENT
While the Department of Homeland Security and Janet Napolitano were busy marking down the names of veterans, grandmas, and college kids who waved the military-authorized Gadsen Flag or questioned Obama’s policies in public as “possible domestic terrorists,” real terrorists were already in our country, shooting up our military bases and attempting to detonate planes. Michael Savage, himself the target of the British government based upon his dissent, filed suit against Napolitano in April over DHS’s “right wing extremist” report. The charges stated:

“It is a civil rights action brought under the First and Fifth Amendments to the United States Constitution, challenging the policy, practice, and custom of the United States Government that targets for disfavored treatment those individuals and groups that are considered to be ‘rightwing extremists.”

Under the Obama administration, the government has brazenly trained its eye on those who respectfully question the government. Liberals who complained over the Patriot Act demonstrated their devotion to party over liberty by going silent as their American brethren were targeting for doing no more (less, actually) than they the liberals did under Bush.

7. KEVIN JENNINGS – FISTGATE
It wouldn’t be right if our current administration broke tradition with nominating completely inept radicals to high positions of power (gotta pay off those political favors!) and lucky for you betting types, that streak wasn’t broken with Safe Schools Czar Kevin Jennings.

Ah yes, the Three Rs and One F of education: Readin, Ritin’ and ‘Rithmetic. Oh, and Fisting. The required credentials for such a post:

Jennings was appointed to the position largely because of his longtime record of working to end bullying and discrimination in schools. In 1990, as a teacher in Massachusetts, he founded the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), which now has over 40 chapters at schools nationwide. He has also published six books on gay rights and education, including one that describes his own experiences as a closeted gay student.

Behold, the comedy gold:

“Jennings was obviously chosen for this job because of the safe schools aspect… defining ’safe schools’ narrowly in terms of ’safe for homosexuality’,” Peter Sprigg, a senior fellow at the Family Research Council, told FOXNews.com.

“But at least half of the job involves creating drug-free schools, and we’ve not been offered any evidence about what qualifications Jennings has for promoting drug-free schools.”

Jennings’ detractors note that he made four references to his personal drug abuse in his 2007 autobiography, “Mama’s Boy, Preacher’s Son: A Memoir.” On page 103, discussing his high school years in Hawaii in the early 1980s, Jennings wrote:

“I got stoned more often and went out to the beach at Bellows, overlooking Honolulu Harbor and the lights of the city, to drink with my buddies on Friday and Saturday nights, spending hours watching the planes take off and land at the airport, which is actually quite fascinating when you are drunk and stoned.”

Er … oops? Nobody’s perfect, but it just seems practical to maybe not glorify drug use in your book while trying to get a job which requires you to keep schools and kids drug free. Too obvious?

Oh, but then came the revelations as to what GLSEN’s recommended reading actually included and Katy-bar-the-door. It was discovered that at a GLSEN conference (in conjunction with the MA Department of Education no less) elementary school kids were taught how to engage in sex acts.

Gateway Pundit reported mercilessly – as I’d hoped that anyone who cared about the well-being of our schoolchildren would do – about the “recommended reading” list Jennings chose for GLSEN and young schoolchildren which included graphic descriptions of rest-room sex and more.

State media was silent and liberal sites, such as Media Matters, defended Jennings.
8. VAN JONES
Van Jones signed his political death certificate when he signed a 9/11 truther petition stating that he believed that our own government took down the Twin Towers and not terrorists, the petition brought to light by Gateway Pundit. Of course, under an administration that refuses to even use the language because it may hurt the feelings of suicide bombers and be judged as “divisive,” one can see how Jones might not understand that the terrorists are actually our enemies.

The radical environmental czar (a one-time STORM participant, a Marxist organization) and admitted communist in the Obama administration was forced to resign, further tainting the judgement of the administration, who later admitted to not having vetted Jones well enough.

The disparity between the eerie silence from state media and the raucous exclamations from the blogosphere was expected but sad nonetheless.
9. OBAMA’S LACK OF SUCCESS
Don’t expect to see much media criticism – even if it’s objective and deserved – of our infant Messiah president. The media has a lot invested into him and they unofficially hung the last shred of their validity on his success. It’s not to say that conservatives don’t want a successful president; we define success differently than liberals. Conservatives want the United States to be successful in foreign relations, we want a thriving economy, success in maintaining individual liberty, all the good stuff of which America is made. Conservatives don’t want to see plans to nationalize and thereby socialize the private sector because the very irony of such economic strategy is that it hasn’t been successful in multitude of countries in which it’s been implemented.

Conservatives aren’t the only ones questioning Obama’s trajectory; he’s been sliding in the polls since spring; the majority of Americans disapprove of his march on health care reform; yet the media downplays all of this because they’ve gambled it all on the success of this political neophyte who quit his job as a senator so he could hightail it to Washington. (What was that the left said about quitters?)

The media’s complicity in shoring up a failing president has given an excuse for the current congressional body to repeatedly ignore the will of the people. Blogs are the new penny press; corporate media is dead.

Happy New Year!

This morning on The Dennis Miller Show, Guest host Andrew Breitbart interviewed Steven M. Mosher, a frequent contributor to the web site ClimateAudit.org.  You probably haven’t heard of Mr. Mosher, but you should have.  And that was the reason for our interview this morning.  Andrew used his six hours of national radio time (yesterday and today) to highlight the top stories from the “Under Media”.   ACORN, NEA, Van Jones, ClimateGate, stories that were virtually ignored by the major networks and pooh-poohed by the NY Times were, in fact, the stories that not only grabbed YOUR attention, but also drove legislation here at home as well as in Copenhagen.

Mr. Mosher was instrumental in promulgating the now infamous “hacked” emails from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.  These e-mails have called into question the methods, the calculations, the peer review process, even the overall SCIENCE involved in the Global Warming arguments that drove the Cap and Trade Legislation as well as the UN Climate Conference and Kyoto Protocols.  Mr. Mosher obtained these emails on a CD from an unidentified colleague.  After days of review, Mr. Mosher realized the importance of the information he was sitting on, and he began the process of posting the information on various “Climate Change” websites and blogs.  Because the postings came from Mr. Mosher, the community immediately took them seriously.  The rest is “Under Media” history.

At the end of the ten minute interview, in-studio guest Adam Baldwin asked Mr. Mosher the final question:

“I think one of the big, missing stories here is how the scientific publishing mechanism is corrupted.  I mean, I think of “Global Warming” as kind of a religion, and what you see in the mails is how they construct the canon, of how they corrupt the journal publishing, to get the papers published what they WANT published, with the reviewers that they want reviewing it and the papers they don’t want published, they keep out.”

What is the last, remaining argument the Global Warming cultists have?  “There are no peer reviewed studies!”  In this one, succinct statement, Mr. Mosher connects the Climate-gate e-mails with a silver bullet to the heart of this argument.  Why are there no peer reviewed studies?  Because the “Peers” are silencing dissent through intimidation and bullying.  It is the way the left has been trying to move their agenda forward for years.

Against ebryonic stem cell research?  “You are anti-science!”

Against Same-sex Marriage?  “You hate gay people!”

Against partial-birth abortion?  “You hate women!”

In favor of keeping terrorists in Gitmo?  “You are a torturer!”

And, in the words of Congressmen, Senators and even a former President:

Against Obamacare?  “Racist!”

Poll after poll have recently affirmed that the ClimateGate revelations (I actually say “affirmations“) dealt a mortal blow to the public’s belief in the environmentalist brass ring of “catastrophic Man-made global warming.” The dishonesty exposed therein iced the cake for a public attentive to the increasingly shrill and absurd alarmist campaign, demonstrably cooler temperatures cool and the sky remaining precisely where we left it.

Troubled by such results, several green groups to rush out polls of their own, riddled with gauzy questions generally distilling to “wouldn’t you want to save the planet from destruction if you could get rich doing so?” I oversimplify, but not grossly. This week the National Wildlife Federation claimed two-thirds of Americans want federal limits on greenhouse gases! Surely a Congress desperate to do something popular will hop on board this train? Not likely.

The shocker from these forays is that a substantial number have so little regard for the alarmist claptrap that they’re willing to dismiss even loaded questions designed to elicit a positive response.

You may recall a Washington Post poll conducted a few years ago, even before the cooling trend became pronounced, and severe winters of the sort that green activists assured us were now a thing of the past serially returned. That poll prompted a WaPo headline trumpeting that the public wanted to address climate change “at whatever the cost”.

This is the sort of tool employed for years to support the talking point that it was that mean George W. Bush that stood between the United States, nay, the world, in agreeing to climate harmony in the form of a treaty and domestic cap-and-trade language (Copenhagen just now put the lie to that, for any who actually believed the argument).

Of course, the Post pollsters didn’t actually pressure test that result, laden with cheap virtue as are all such ventures where the only cost is a reply. All they dared learn was that “at any cost” meant to the majority something less than a dollar more per gallon. If only cap-and-trade would merely inflict that harm, why, the greens might be onto something. But our president has admitted the axiom that cap-and-trade is designed to cause energy prices to “necessarily skyrocket”, “bankrupt[ing]” industries.

So despite the flurry of greenie claims that the public is, too, with them, another poll came out this week commissioned by the National Federation of Independent Business. Its results track far better with the only poll that matters, more on which in a moment.

NFIB found that two-thirds of small business owners and managers — the people whose sentiments drive three-fourths of new-job creation — oppose a cap-and-trade scheme.  52 percent of voters oppose it, making it about as popular as Obama’s health care takeover. 54 percent of small business owners and managers, and 42 percent of voters, believe that such a system would result in job loss.

The reason the results were different is that NFIB’s pollsters added context to what they were asking, if possibly more soberly than is warranted but, hey, they erred on that side for credibility giving them a leg up on the greens. So respondents were at least challenged to consider that the policies are not free-ice cream — even if still just in answering a poll question, which hurts slightly less than actually paying the additional amounts or losing your job. Polls claiming to show public support for cap-and-trade seem to prefer a don’t ask, don’t tell approach.

Elected lawmakers, who appear to jealously guard only one job — their own — are unlikely to try and ram through cap-and-trade next year as the greens’ polls indicate would be the popular thing to do. In fact, numerous self-styled “centrist” Democrat senators and even the occasional liberal like Sen. Jay Rockefeller have indicated that, no, this appears to be a good issue to think about for 2011. That’s an odd-numbered year, you see, with no elections, and the public, as reflected in the NFIB poll, want nothing to do with this scheme and want their lawmakers to have even less to do with it.

So let the greens wave about polls whose questions smack more than a little like scripts from late-night real estate get-rich-quick infomercials. Senators know that this stove is hot, and they aren’t about to lay their own hands on it. That’s not to say there won’t be feints and even a few death throes this Congress to try and convince a dispirited left-wing base that they should be excited about voting in 2010.

But cap-and-trade is a dead parrot. In a way, that’s a shame. Actually trying to pass it would allow for salting the political earth from which the sneaky, cynical idea sprang. But that, too, shall come.

Christmas Day is upon us, a day of celebration for Christians AND Hollywood: Christmas Day is the day when many blockbuster and Academy Award wannabes are released. If you’re a screenwriter...

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Attention Santas:

This missive is directed at the guardians of, and donors to, tiny humans. If you fall into that category you likely are already familiar with Build-A-Bear, a world-wide corporation that provides the most innocent of services. They sell customizable stuffed animals. Make your own bear, dog…penguin. Cute concept.

So cute, in fact, that the Build-A-Bear empire sweeps across nearly every state and into 17 other countries. You’ll find their outlets in shopping malls everywhere and even some ballparks. The company also has a website called Build-A-Bearville.com where children can play an interactive video game that, on it’s surface, is unlikely to raise suspicion or sound alarms.

But when your unsuspecting tot logs on and hops a virtual train to the North Pole…you should know that he or she will be informed — by Santa Claus — that Christmas may be canceled this year due to Global Warming. Below is part two of the 3-part video.

Here’s an excpert (1:07-2:22):

Girl Elf: Santa, it’s gone!

Papa Elf: It’s gone, It’s gone!

Santa: What’s gone?

Girl Elf: Tell ‘em, Dad!

Papa Elf: The North Peak.

Santa: A mountain? A mountain’s gone? How is that possible?

Ella the polar bear: Santa, sir, that’s why I’m here. That’s why we’re here. The ice is melting!

Santa: Yes, my dear, we know, the climate is changing. There’s bound to be a little melting.

Ella: It’s worse than that, Santa, a lot worse! At the rate it’s melting, the North Pole will be gone by Christmas!”

Santa: My, my…all of this gone by next Christmas? I don’t think so.

Ella: No sir, not next Christmas, this Christmas! The day after tomorrow!

And this is merely the tip of the dialogue iceberg, if you’ll forgive me for putting it that way. You can view parts one and three here and here. Children of the world can look forward to priceless exchanges such as, “Oh my! Where will the polar bears live?” and my personal fave: “Where will the elves live?”

I suspect you’d like to think it can’t get any worse than that. Thus, it pains me to tell you that animated characters actually break into a discussion of satellite photos and that Mrs. Claus conducts a rather unscientific experiment involving ice cubes.

Needless-to-say, this constitutes brainwashing on the sleaziest and most sinister level. The good news is that this nonsense isn’t coming from our government this time and the rocky economy is our friend here. People, we have the means, if we have the will, to topple these charlatans who shamelessly prey on little children. So boycott Build-A-Bear. And, more importantly, tell the world why.

Go tell it on the mountain, and hurry, before it melts.

Climate Progress's Joe Romm says this weekend's blizzard that rocked the Eastern seaboard was caused by global warming.

That's right, folks: you can add winter storms to the neverending list of things Nobel Laureate Al Gore's bogeyman is now responsible for.

Of course this isn't at all surprising, for Romm blamed the 2007 Minnesota bridge collapse on global warming.  

Potentially just as interesting was how Romm initially tried to downplay the severity of this storm in his article published Sunday:

As for the East Coast storm, my home in DC did get 18 inches of snow — although if this had been a true blizzard, I doubt my flight from Copenhagen on Saturday would have been allowed to land in Dulles airport and I wouldn’t of been able to get home 12 hours after I left Denmark. [...]

If having snow around the holidays on the East Coast were strange, I doubt the song “White Christmas” would have been written.

So, this WASN'T an extreme event? Not so fast:

The Capital Weather Gang reports that the DC snowstorm has set multiple records (previous in parentheses):

• National: All-time December daily (11.5″, 12-17-1932) and monthly snowfall (16.2″, 1962)
• Dulles: All-time December daily record (10.6″, 12-12-1982) and second highest December snowfall (24.2″, 1966)
• Baltimore: All-time December daily (11.5″, 12-17-1932) and monthly snowfall (20.4″, 1966)

Interesting, wouldn't you agree? First he said, "Nothing to see here. Move along."

Then he showed actual data proving the weather event was historic.

Kind of like Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) claiming he voted for war funding before he voted against it!

But Romm wasn't done:

So it is inane for anyone in the media to cite this massive DC snowstorm as somehow counterintuitive or ironic against the backdrop of Obama’s Copenhagen deal.

In fact, this record-breaking snowstorm is pretty much precisely what climate science predicts. 

And therein lies the rub, for alarmists like Romm and the rest of his ilk have stacked the deck so that no matter what happens with the weather, it's caused by global warming:

• Excessive heat
• Excessive cold
• Droughts
• Floods
• Warm winters
• Cold winters
• Hot summers
• Cold summers
• Autumns with great foliage colors
• Autumns lacking foliage colors
• Lack of snow
• Abundance of snow

You name it, these charlatans blame it on global warming, and they want the media to comply:

I’m not say [sic] that the media should link every extreme weather event the way [New York Times columnist Andrew] Revkin did. But when we have “worst on record” type events, or 100-year floods — and especially ones that last more than a day and/or hit a broad area — then I think the reporter has an obligation to include the issue.

So, unless all weather events stay within ranges these folks consider "normal," it's evidence of global warming.

I guess this is why Romm's fellow scientists involved in ClimateGate did everything within their power to flatten out past temperature extremes so as to make more recent data APPEAR extreme.

Readers are highly encouraged to review Marc Sheppard's outstanding American Thinker piece on this very subject. 

The point here is that alarmists like Romm want everyone to believe that weather in the past was much less extreme than it is today so that they can blame anything supposedly out of the ordinary on global warming.

Which makes these people the Bernie Madoffs of climatology and meteorology. After all, the key to Madoff's successful Ponzi scheme was convincing new and existing investors that he was producing higher returns than he really was.

This is exactly what Romm and his ilk are doing: exaggerating current weather events while downplaying what happened in the past so as to convince the public it all correlates with the predictions emanating from their own climate models.

Of course, as Marc Sheppard proved, when proxies created by them don't fit the desired result, they just splice in other numbers that do -- just like Madoff did. But this is FAR worse, for these folks demand media assist them with the scam.

With this in mind, while press members jump on the left-wing's castigation of bankers and Wall Streeters as the scum of the earth, maybe they should set their sights on climate alarmists like Romm who are involved in a far more nefarious plot involving a far greater number of people. 

by Carbie the Climate Clown Emmett K. Bozo Distinguished Professor of Climate Pantomimology, University of East Anglia EU Regional President, Union of Concerned Climate Scientists and Street...

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PBS Ombudsman Michael Getler agreed with conservative letter-writers that the NewsHour covered Climategate "lightly and well after the fact," even though he expressed the standard liberal belief that the "overwhelming" evidence is on the man-made dramatic warming side, and there's a "danger of establishing false equivalence" -- in other words, the liberals have more truth on their side.

But in a letter solicited from Getler, NewsHour senior producer Murrey Jacobson refused to admit any imbalance, even as he suggested their coverage has properly centered on "this fact: The majority of leading scientists here and abroad say that evidence is pointing to a warming planet; that the problem is getting worse; and that human activity contributes to that problem."

In his letter, Russell Cook of Phoenix, Arizona took issue with Jim Lehrer citing his "rules" for reporting, including his pledge to avoid one-sidedness:

Regarding guidelines for MacNeil/Lehrer journalism that Jim Lehrer recited on 12/4, one in particular — "Assume there is at least one other side or version to every story" — appears to have been contradicted for years, considering the NewsHour’s consistent lack of skeptic scientists as guests to rebut IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] scientists.

Lehrer also said of his NewsHour staff, "They will be doing what they do best, reporting and analyzing the top stories of the day." Contrast that with the NewsHour not mentioning the CRU [the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, one of the world’s leading climate science centers] Scientist Email Scandal until a week after the news broke, nor offering more than one other cursory mention of it since then, despite the firestorm of the issue elsewhere.

Jacobson's letter was defensive and avoided the entire question of Climategate:

Throughout our years of covering climate change, we have always worked to strike the right balance of covering the news surrounding this story and the long debate on different views about global warming. I think we have largely succeeded at doing that, but I realize there are views on both sides that will take issue with our coverage. There is a reason many of our stories in the last couple of years have been more focused on developments about what to do about climate change — instead of the debate about the science behind it. The story of what should — or should not — be done is the primary concern of many lawmakers, global leaders, scientists and CEOs now....

We have taken note of these ideas and will continue to do so. But we have also tried to make sure that our coverage reflects this fact: The majority of leading scientists here and abroad say that evidence is pointing to a warming planet; that the problem is getting worse; and that human activity contributes to that problem."

Getler acknowledged that Jacobson didn't really attempt to respond to conservatives:

I’m going to come to the aid of both the viewer and the NewsHour in a more specific attempt to respond to Mr. Cook. I agree that the NewsHour has not done a good job on this latest development concerning the unauthorized but fascinating release by computer hackers on Nov. 17 of more than 1,000 internal e-mails from the CRU. The NewsHour has touched on it briefly four times, as far as I can tell, on the Nov. 26, Dec. 3, 7 and 9 broadcasts, but very lightly and well after the fact.

This is not what you’d call a made-for-television story and the major networks have not done much with it either, but it does seem more newsworthy than the NewsHour treatment suggests. How much more it is worth is another question.

Getler doesn't notice the irony that Lehrer, the one who sneered that talk-radio never discusses substance, seems to have skipped the substance on this story. Right after this passage is where Getler stated his belief in dramatic global warming, and added "It is worth covering the other side, but there is also the danger of establishing a false equivalence."

Earlier in his Mailbag column, Getler strongly responded to a conservative who suggested it wasn’t very restrained or objective for the Ombudsman to dismiss the Bush administration’s case for WMD in Iraq as "bogus." Getler slams Team Bush for a "false sense of certainty." Isn’t it possible the global warming scaremongers might have a false sense of certainty, and might be exaggerating or even  manufacturing a threat? That seems to be what emerges from the hacked e-mails. Getler wrote:

But the administration did not present its case as we "think" Saddam has WMD, or we "believe" he has them. Rather, it made its case repeatedly with what turned out to be a false sense of certainty. "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us," Vice President Cheney told the Veterans of Foreign Wars on Aug. 26, 2002.

Every sentence from Al Gore seems to begin with "There is no doubt" about global warming.

Climate alarmists have put enormous pressure on the western media to suppress knowledge of facts inconvenient to their scientific arguments using a variety of methods to supress dissenting opinion.

Besides threatening journalists, promoting the use of Nazi-esque insults like the word "deniers," and bullying scientists who publish research papers critical of their near-religious beliefs, alarmists have taken to the web with aplomb, most famously exposed in the ongoing "ClimateGate" scandal.

Engaging in politicized science via email isn't the only cyber activity that left-enviro activists engage in however. Wikipedia is also a favorite target, particularly for a British global warming activist named William Connolley who seems to have made it his life's mission to censor climate realists in the online encyclopedia.

Connolley claims he is employed currently as a software developer and has not disclosed that he is paid to engage in wiki enviro-activism. Considering that most of his wiki contributions seem to happen outside of business hours GMT, it seems likely that Connolley is interacting with Wikipedia on his personal time.

Climate alarmism seems to have become a personal obsession for him, however. Just this past Thursday, the UK Green Party politician made 31 comments or revisions to articles according to his user contributions page.

In the month of August 2009 (one which I picked randomly), Connolley had a total of 451 edits or comments, averaging out to 15 every day of the month. That, mind you, is with a two-week hiatus of August 15th through 24th where Connolley made no edits factored in.

During June of 2009, Connolley literally could not take a break from Wikipedia, making a whopping total of 815 contributions to the site spread over every day of the month, an average of 27 each day.

What sorts of edits has Connolley made to Wikipedia, however? For that, let's turn to Canadian journalist Lawrence Solomon who has this excellent summary of just some of Connolley's numerous wiki actions:

Starting in February 2003, just when opposition to the claims of the band members were beginning to gel, Connolley set to work on the Wikipedia site. He rewrote Wikipedia's articles on global warming, on the greenhouse effect, on the instrumental temperature record, on the urban heat island, on climate models, on global cooling. On Feb. 14, he began to erase the Little Ice Age; on Aug.11, the Medieval Warm Period. In October, he turned his attention to the hockey stick graph. He rewrote articles on the politics of global warming and on the scientists who were skeptical of the band. Richard Lindzen and Fred Singer, two of the world's most distinguished climate scientists, were among his early targets, followed by others that the band especially hated, such as Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, authorities on the Medieval Warm Period.

All told, Connolley created or rewrote 5,428 unique Wikipedia articles. His control over Wikipedia was greater still, however, through the role he obtained at Wikipedia as a website administrator, which allowed him to act with virtual impunity. When Connolley didn't like the subject of a certain article, he removed it - more than 500 articles of various descriptions disappeared at his hand. When he disapproved of the arguments that others were making, he often had them barred - over 2,000 Wikipedia contributors who ran afoul of him found themselves blocked from making further contributions. Acolytes whose writing conformed to Connolley's global warming views, in contrast, were rewarded with Wikipedia's blessings. In these ways, Connolley turned Wikipedia into the missionary wing of the global warming movement.

Quite disturbing indeed.

Incidentally, Connolley is currently up for election as a Wikipedia administrator. If you are a registered user, you can cast your ballot against his left-wing propaganda campaign here.

Such a horrendously biased an obsessed individual should not be allowed to decide what is neutral or fair, the ostensible guiding principle of Wikipedia.

 

In this episode, “NewsBusted” covers: President Obama, Government Bailouts, George W. Bush, Nancy Pelosi, Joseph Stalin, America’s Debt Ceiling, Robin Williams, Climategate, Porn Star Karaoke,...

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From the Associated Press:

President Barack Obama declared Friday a “meaningful and unprecedented breakthrough” had been reached among the U.S., China and three other countries on a global effort to curb climate change but said much work was still be needed to reach a legally binding treaty.

“It is going to be very hard, and it’s going to take some time,” he said near the conclusion of a 193-nation global warming summit. “We have come a long way, but we have much further to go.”

The president said there was a “fundamental deadlock in perspectives” between big, industrially developed countries like the United States and poorer, though sometimes large, developing nations. Still he said this week’s efforts “will help us begin to meet our responsibilities to leave our children and grandchildren a cleaner planet.”

The deal as described by Obama reflects some progress helping poor nations cope with climate change and getting China to disclose its actions to address the warming problem.

But it falls far short of committing any nation to pollution reductions beyond a general acknowledgment that the effort should contain global temperatures along the lines agreed to at a conference of the leading economic nations last July.

Read the whole article here.

No doubt the media will spin this as some important development and chalk up a point in Obama’s column. Make no mistake, however, this is a disaster for Big Green, Inc. Copenhagen had been planned to usher in legally-binding emission caps. An epic fail. A very Merry Christmas to all!

5. Hide the Decline: “Climategate” and the CO² ruling

Why it’s important: The unauthorized release in November of 61 megabytes of confidential files and emails hacked from the computers at the East Anglia Climate Research Unit – Ground Zero of the “anthropogenic global warming” racket – shocked nearly all sentient people into the realization that scientists could be just a corruptible as your average politician or, worse, your average “environmental journalists” as they sought to “hide the decline.” While each country’s capo di tutti capi was gathering in Copenhagen to hatch yet another scheme to beggar the industrialized West in the name of collective guilt, the scandal burbled along under the radar as rational people finally had the proof they needed that the Chicken Little alarmists were, well – crowing capons.  For years, skeptics had been derided by such barking lunatics as Albert Arnold Gore, Jr., as “deniers” – the word was deliberately loaded to evoke the Holocaust – even as the Man Who Flunked Out of Divinity School did his best to dodge all challenges to his newfound religion:

Meanwhile, with AGW going up in smoke like a fruitless sacrifice to a god that failed, and the Waxman-Markey “cap and trade” extortion bill faltering in Congress, along came the EPA, right on schedule, with its “endangerment finding” that carbon dioxide – you know, the stuff you breathe out when you exhale, and the same stuff that makes the good green plants happy, healthy and wise – is, of all things, a “pollutant.”  Still, the news for the Karbon Krazies just keeps on getting worse.

Why the MSM ignored the story: Are you kidding?  Corporations such as General Electric – the closest thing we have in America to the Krupp Steel Company – have bet the farm on “green technology,” and have mobilized their propaganda arm, better known as NBC/MSNBC, to go along with the charade.  Even the “Special” Commentator, Keith  Olbermann himself, is not dumb enough to bite the hand that feeds him.  And as for the New York Times, its climate apologist/blogger, Andrew C. Revkin, went for the progressive trifecta with a recent post that brought together “climate change,” money and, of course, George Soros.

4. Death Panels

Why it’s important: Because Sarah Palin, the woman who rules the world from her secret redoubt somewhere in the bowels of Facebook, said it.  What else do you need to know?  In one pithy phrase, the Woman Who Drives the Left Nuts drove them nuts yet again by summing up all that is wrong and monstrous about Obamacare.

My original comments concerned statements made by Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, a health policy advisor to President Obama and the brother of the President’s chief of staff. Dr. Emanuel has written that some medical services should not be guaranteed to those “who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens….An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia.”  Dr. Emanuel has also advocated basing medical decisions on a system which “produces a priority curve on which individuals aged between roughly 15 and 40 years get the most chance, whereas the youngest and oldest people get chances that are attenuated.

President Obama can try to gloss over the effects of government authorized end-of-life consultations, but the views of one of his top health care advisors are clear enough. It’s all just more evidence that the Democratic legislative proposals will lead to health care rationing, and more evidence that the top-down plans of government bureaucrats will never result in real health care reform.

Why the MSM ignored/made fun of the story: Are you kidding?  It’s an article of faith among the left that Sarah Palin is the stupidest woman in the world, too dumb to know how dumb she really is.  She’s the avatar of all their worst fears: a woman who declined to exercise her right to choose, who loves God, hunts and fishes and, in her spare time, exerts a political influence all out of proportion to her actual elected office – which, come to think of it, at the moment is none.  The Gaia-fearing progressive’s worst nightmare is of Sarah climbing in through his window one moonless night, there either to convert him to Christianity, take him on the Iditarod, or gut him and serve him up for supper.  So fearful is the Tolerant Left of Sarah that they set her church on fire with people inside it — after which, of course, she was the one who apologized, “if the incident is in any way connected to the undeserved negative attention the church has received since she became a vice presidential candidate.”

3. The “Army Psychiatrist” and other Muslim plots against America.

Why it’s important:  Because, eight years after 9/11, the ongoing jihad against our country continues, whether we want to recognize it or not.  And yet, whenever there is an incident, the authorities, led by the FBI, immediately assure us that “there’s no evidence” it has anything to do with terrorism, and then slowly have to back away from their politically correct stupidity.  Recall the “Beltway sniper,” John Allen Muhammad, who recently met his Maker at the hands of the people of Virginia for murdering ten people in the Washington, D.C., area in 2002.  Or Najibullah Zazi, the “Denver man” who turned out to be an al-Qaeda-trained Afghan terrorist who wanted to blow up the New York City subways.  And then, in a class by himself, is Nidal Malik Hasan, the “Soldier of Allah” who (allegedly) shot and killed 13 real American soldiers last month at the Fort Hood army base in Texas.  And what was the MSM’s first reaction?  Why to describe him as an “Army psychiatrist,” of course!  Here’s the Christian Science Monitor’s take: note the scrupulous omission of the “M-word”:

As the military begins its eighth year of the war on terror, much of the focus has been on the inability to fully support the growing number of troops diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder or traumatic brain injury. But the events at Fort Hood cast the issue even wider. According to reports, Mr. Hasan desperately wanted to avoid being deployed to a war zone. While there appeared to be several reasons for this, including a conviction that he was a victim of harassment, he was also troubled by the stories he heard from overseas.

Why the MSM ignored the story: Are you kidding?  For the clueless media, it’s all about the narrative, and the narrative has no room for card-carrying (in Hasan’s case, literally) Muslim terrorists deliberately infiltrating the officer corps, being trained in the use of weapons, and then unleashed on unarmed and unsuspecting grunts who were getting ready to ship out.  That sounds too much like the old Soviet “illegals” program, in which likely moles were found, cared for, supported and guided as far up the governmental food chain as Moscow Center could get them.  And Allah forbid that anyone in the “Christian” Science Monitor say something derogatory about Arab culture.

No, the official “narrative” is about an America at the breaking point, an Army stretched too thin, and the horrors of war – even when, like Hasan, you experienced them second-hand.  In the annals of pseudo-intellectual academic codswallop, “Secondary Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder” has to rank right up there with phrenology and the eugenics movement endorsed by the sainted Planned Parenthood screwball Margaret Sanger, who, among other things, recommended forced sterilization.  As Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., famously said: three generations of imbeciles are enough!

But there’s a larger reason the MSM punted on this one, aside from the usual sob-sister features analyzing the slayer’s “motives.”  It’s an ugly truth, but here goes: they want us to lose.  As long as nothing, you know, too violent happens, especially to them.  For a generation of reporters and columnists raised on moral equivalence, nurtured on cultural relativism and wedded to the notion that our enemies are really friends who just haven’t tried to kill us yet, every foiled terrorist plot is “a bunch of clowns” and every Hasan is an “Army psychiatrist.”  After all, we deserve it.  With friends like the media, who needs enemies?

Meanwhile, let’s bring the jihadis here to America!  Yeah – that’ll work.

2. ACORN

Why it’s important: Let’s let Hannah Giles, who played the “prostitute” in the now-famous videos, explain:

Back in early September ACORN, one of the most established community organizing groups in the United States, found itself involved in an undercover video scandal involving a pimp, a prostitute, tax fraud, the smuggling of underage girls from El Salvador and a brothel used to fund a congressional campaign. Within days of releasing footage of ACORN employees assisting the pimp and prostitute with their business plans, the Census declared it was severing all ties with ACORN. The Senate voted 83-7 in favor of de-funding the controversial group. The House voted 345-75 to cut ACORN’s funding, and more than 20 states have demanded either a full investigation of ACORN or that they lose their funding. The IRS also ended up cutting their connections to the group.

Why the MSM ignored it: Are you kidding?

Because 25-year old James O’Keefe and 20-year old Hannah Giles acted on a hunch, took a risk, sought the truth and shone a giant light on corruption. If it weren’t for media daredevil Andrew Breitbart their story would have never caused the shockwaves it did. The MSM is afraid of stories like Giles’s and O’Keefe’s because: 1) it makes them look useless; why aren’t the professionals breaking stories like this? How dare the tykes take the initiative? 2) The release method and style of the videos was intended to resonate with everyday Americans, not gain the approval of the media elites 3) The story had everything to do with a corrupt entity. And unfortunately, rather than exposing corruption the MSM has itself adopted a questionable and shady lifestyle.

1.  It’s the End of the Media as We Know It And We Feel Fine

It’s only fitting that the last word goes to Andrew Breitbart:

Why it’s important: The absolute admission by the reigning media class that they are not objective journalists and earnest gumshoe reporters is cause for celebration. The cabal that made sure George W. Bush became a toxic name to the body politic had even greater plans in 2008 when it offered up one-term senator and former Punahou School benchwarmer, Barack Obama, as the candidate of the millennium. Now that the deed is done, multiple scandals that would have felled mere-mortal presidents have gone completely unreported. Who needs Teflon when it’s not you who’s frying in the pan? Problem for the ostriches, however: the undermedia — the Internet, social networking, talk radio — has grown to become a formidable checks and balances for the traditional media. The current paradigm bodes ill for those rooting for ABC, NBC, CBS, The New York Times, Time Magazine, et al. As their readership and viewership plunges with every missed megastory, so do those eyeballs transfer to the more reliable and democratic new media now being fueled by citizen journalists testing their abilities in groundbreaking investigative journalism.

Why the MSM ignored it: Are you kidding?

5. Hide the Decline: “Climategate” and the CO² ruling

Why it’s important: The unauthorized release in November of 61 megabytes of confidential files and emails hacked from the computers at the East Anglia Climate Research Unit – Ground Zero of the “anthropogenic global warming” racket – shocked nearly all sentient people into the realization that scientists could be just a corruptible as your average politician or, worse, your average “environmental journalists” as they sought to “hide the decline.” While each country’s capo di tutti capi was gathering in Copenhagen to hatch yet another scheme to beggar the industrialized West in the name of collective guilt, the scandal burbled along under the radar as rational people finally had the proof they needed that the Chicken Little alarmists were, well – crowing capons.  For years, skeptics had been derided by such barking lunatics as Albert Arnold Gore, Jr., as “deniers” – the word was deliberately loaded to evoke the Holocaust – even as the Man Who Flunked Out of Divinity School did his best to dodge all challenges to his newfound religion:

Meanwhile, with AGW going up in smoke like a fruitless sacrifice to a god that failed, and the Waxman-Markey “cap and trade” extortion bill faltering in Congress, along came the EPA, right on schedule, with its “endangerment finding” that carbon dioxide – you know, the stuff you breathe out when you exhale, and the same stuff that makes the good green plants happy, healthy and wise – is, of all things, a “pollutant.”  Still, the news for the Karbon Krazies just keeps on getting worse.

Why the MSM ignored the story: Are you kidding?  Corporations such as General Electric – the closest thing we have in America to the Krupp Steel Company – have bet the farm on “green technology,” and have mobilized their propaganda arm, better known as NBC/MSNBC, to go along with the charade.  Even the “Special” Commentator, Keith  Olbermann himself, is not dumb enough to bite the hand that feeds him.  And as for the New York Times, its climate apologist/blogger, Andrew C. Revkin, went for the progressive trifecta with a recent post that brought together “climate change,” money and, of course, George Soros.

4. Death Panels

Why it’s important: Because Sarah Palin, the woman who rules the world from her secret redoubt somewhere in the bowels of Facebook, said it.  What else do you need to know?  In one pithy phrase, the Woman Who Drives the Left Nuts drove them nuts yet again by summing up all that is wrong and monstrous about Obamacare.

My original comments concerned statements made by Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, a health policy advisor to President Obama and the brother of the President’s chief of staff. Dr. Emanuel has written that some medical services should not be guaranteed to those “who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens….An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia.”  Dr. Emanuel has also advocated basing medical decisions on a system which “produces a priority curve on which individuals aged between roughly 15 and 40 years get the most chance, whereas the youngest and oldest people get chances that are attenuated.

President Obama can try to gloss over the effects of government authorized end-of-life consultations, but the views of one of his top health care advisors are clear enough. It’s all just more evidence that the Democratic legislative proposals will lead to health care rationing, and more evidence that the top-down plans of government bureaucrats will never result in real health care reform.

Why the MSM ignored/made fun of the story: Are you kidding?  It’s an article of faith among the left that Sarah Palin is the stupidest woman in the world, too dumb to know how dumb she really is.  She’s the avatar of all their worst fears: a woman who declined to exercise her right to choose, who loves God, hunts and fishes and, in her spare time, exerts a political influence all out of proportion to her actual elected office – which, come to think of it, at the moment is none.  The Gaia-fearing progressive’s worst nightmare is of Sarah climbing in through his window one moonless night, there either to convert him to Christianity, take him on the Iditarod, or gut him and serve him up for supper.  So fearful is the Tolerant Left of Sarah that they set her church on fire with people inside it — after which, of course, she was the one who apologized, “if the incident is in any way connected to the undeserved negative attention the church has received since she became a vice presidential candidate.”

3. The “Army Psychiatrist” and other Muslim plots against America.

Why it’s important:  Because, eight years after 9/11, the ongoing jihad against our country continues, whether we want to recognize it or not.  And yet, whenever there is an incident, the authorities, led by the FBI, immediately assure us that “there’s no evidence” it has anything to do with terrorism, and then slowly have to back away from their politically correct stupidity.  Recall the “Beltway sniper,” John Allen Muhammad, who recently met his Maker at the hands of the people of Virginia for murdering ten people in the Washington, D.C., area in 2002.  Or Najibullah Zazi, the “Denver man” who turned out to be an al-Qaeda-trained Afghan terrorist who wanted to blow up the New York City subways.  And then, in a class by himself, is Nidal Malik Hasan, the “Soldier of Allah” who (allegedly) shot and killed 13 real American soldiers last month at the Fort Hood army base in Texas.  And what was the MSM’s first reaction?  Why to describe him as an “Army psychiatrist,” of course!  Here’s the Christian Science Monitor’s take: note the scrupulous omission of the “M-word”:

As the military begins its eighth year of the war on terror, much of the focus has been on the inability to fully support the growing number of troops diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder or traumatic brain injury. But the events at Fort Hood cast the issue even wider. According to reports, Mr. Hasan desperately wanted to avoid being deployed to a war zone. While there appeared to be several reasons for this, including a conviction that he was a victim of harassment, he was also troubled by the stories he heard from overseas.

Why the MSM ignored the story: Are you kidding?  For the clueless media, it’s all about the narrative, and the narrative has no room for card-carrying (in Hasan’s case, literally) Muslim terrorists deliberately infiltrating the officer corps, being trained in the use of weapons, and then unleashed on unarmed and unsuspecting grunts who were getting ready to ship out.  That sounds too much like the old Soviet “illegals” program, in which likely moles were found, cared for, supported and guided as far up the governmental food chain as Moscow Center could get them.  And Allah forbid that anyone in the “Christian” Science Monitor say something derogatory about Arab culture.

No, the official “narrative” is about an America at the breaking point, an Army stretched too thin, and the horrors of war – even when, like Hasan, you experienced them second-hand.  In the annals of pseudo-intellectual academic codswallop, “Secondary Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder” has to rank right up there with phrenology and the eugenics movement endorsed by the sainted Planned Parenthood screwball Margaret Sanger, who, among other things, recommended forced sterilization.  As Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., famously said: three generations of imbeciles are enough!

But there’s a larger reason the MSM punted on this one, aside from the usual sob-sister features analyzing the slayer’s “motives.”  It’s an ugly truth, but here goes: they want us to lose.  As long as nothing, you know, too violent happens, especially to them.  For a generation of reporters and columnists raised on moral equivalence, nurtured on cultural relativism and wedded to the notion that our enemies are really friends who just haven’t tried to kill us yet, every foiled terrorist plot is “a bunch of clowns” and every Hasan is an “Army psychiatrist.”  After all, we deserve it.  With friends like the media, who needs enemies?

Meanwhile, let’s bring the jihadis here to America!  Yeah – that’ll work.

2. ACORN

Why it’s important: Let’s let Hannah Giles, who played the “prostitute” in the now-famous videos, explain:

Back in early September ACORN, one of the most established community organizing groups in the United States, found itself involved in an undercover video scandal involving a pimp, a prostitute, tax fraud, the smuggling of underage girls from El Salvador and a brothel used to fund a congressional campaign. Within days of releasing footage of ACORN employees assisting the pimp and prostitute with their business plans, the Census declared it was severing all ties with ACORN. The Senate voted 83-7 in favor of de-funding the controversial group. The House voted 345-75 to cut ACORN’s funding, and more than 20 states have demanded either a full investigation of ACORN or that they lose their funding. The IRS also ended up cutting their connections to the group.

Why the MSM ignored it: Are you kidding?

Because 25-year old James O’Keefe and 20-year old Hannah Giles acted on a hunch, took a risk, sought the truth and shone a giant light on corruption. If it weren’t for media daredevil Andrew Breitbart their story would have never caused the shockwaves it did. The MSM is afraid of stories like Giles’s and O’Keefe’s because: 1) it makes them look useless; why aren’t the professionals breaking stories like this? How dare the tykes take the initiative? 2) The release method and style of the videos was intended to resonate with everyday Americans, not gain the approval of the media elites 3) The story had everything to do with a corrupt entity. And unfortunately, rather than exposing corruption the MSM has itself adopted a questionable and shady lifestyle.

1.  It’s the End of the Media as We Know It And We Feel Fine

It’s only fitting that the last word goes to Andrew Breitbart:

Why it’s important: The absolute admission by the reigning media class that they are not objective journalists and earnest gumshoe reporters is cause for celebration. The cabal that made sure George W. Bush became a toxic name to the body politic had even greater plans in 2008 when it offered up one-term senator and former Punahou School benchwarmer, Barack Obama, as the candidate of the millennium. Now that the deed is done, multiple scandals that would have felled mere-mortal presidents have gone completely unreported. Who needs Teflon when it’s not you who’s frying in the pan? Problem for the ostriches, however: the undermedia — the Internet, social networking, talk radio — has grown to become a formidable checks and balances for the traditional media. The current paradigm bodes ill for those rooting for ABC, NBC, CBS, The New York Times, Time Magazine, et al. As their readership and viewership plunges with every missed megastory, so do those eyeballs transfer to the more reliable and democratic new media now being fueled by citizen journalists testing their abilities in groundbreaking investigative journalism.

Why the MSM ignored it: Are you kidding?

In September 2006 when Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez called George W. Bush the Devil at the United Nations, the Bush-hating press couldn't get enough of the comment.

On Friday, Chavez spoke to the U.N. climate change conference in Copenhagen after President Obama made his keynote address, and much as he did three years ago, the Venezuelan despot said, "It still smells of sulfur here," referring to the lectern.

Given the attention Chavez's claim got three years ago when he made it about Bush, how will Obama-loving media report such a statement being made about their hero? (video embedded below the fold with transcript, h/t Fausta):

HUGO CHAVEZ: That's why we thank the president for giving President Morales and me a chance to speak.

It would have been regrettable if they had attempted to veto us in this meeting. I don't even want to think about it, no, nor suspect it.

As Lula already said, the Kyoto Protocol can not be declared dead or extinguished, which is what the US pretends to do.

Which is why Evo tells a great truth: If Obama, Nobel War Prize, said here, by the way, it smells of sulfur here.

It smells of sulfur. It keeps smelling of sulfur in this world.

The Nobel War Prize has just said here that he came to act. Well, then show it, sir, don't leave by the back door, eh?

Do everything you need to do for the US to adhere to the Kyoto Protocol, and let's respect Kyoto, and empower Kyoto, and respond to the world in a transparent fashion.

Readers are advised that when Chavez made this comment about Bush in 2006, the media were all over it.

A Google search of "Chavez," "Bush," and "Devil" yielded over 40,000 results. There's even a Wikipedia page about it.

This was such a popular media incident that when Chavez told the U.N. the sulfur smell was gone in September 2009 -- a reference to Bush being out of the White House and Obama being in -- the press had another field day with the story.

With that in mind, it should be fascinating to see how the Obama-loving media report this now that the tables have been turned on the object of their affection.

Stay tuned. 

As President Obama jets off to Denmark for the UN’s climate conference, I hope he will take some time as he flies over the Atlantic Ocean to revisit the science that led him to this trip.

The EPA sure didn’t.

Last week, unelected officials at the EPA abruptly put an end to honest debate by unilaterally declaring carbon dioxide a “harmful substance” and putting themselves in position to begin regulating emissions from every business and farm in America.

In making this rash decision, they have relied heavily upon findings by climate-change scientists that have been subsequently discredited by the scientists’ own e-mails, which indicate data manipulation and the exile of fellow researchers who didn’t agree with the group’s accepted, foregone conclusions.

As governor of a state that will be unfairly and dramatically impacted by the EPA’s ill-informed decision – one that will cost each Texas family $1,136 annually in higher costs and eliminate as many as 400,000 Texas jobs – this is simply unacceptable.

If EPA officials are prepared to put hundreds of thousands of hardworking Texans out of work, and take nearly $100 a month more out of the pockets of people already struggling to make ends meet, my belief is that they owe these people – at the very minimum – the benefit of making sure the science they’re depending upon is sound.

I said so in a letter I sent to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson last week as a formal request that the EPA immediately reverse its decision.  I haven’t heard anything back, and with President Obama on his way to Copenhagen, I doubt seriously that I will.

It would appear that “looking good” on the world stage has trumped good policy and sound science.

Ignoring the arguments of Texas because we’re the national leader in traditional energies is one thing.  But if that’s their position now, the EPA is sadly behind the times.

Over the past decade, Texas has added more wind power than all but four other countries, and tens of thousands of megawatts of new, efficient power plants that use less fuel for each megawatt hour produced.  Texans have also pioneered new drilling techniques that have unlocked vast new domestic natural gas supplies and rejuvenated old oil wells, increasing our national security.

Today, Texas air is cleaner, even after many years of a rapidly growing economy and population. We’ve slashed ozone-forming pollutants by nearly half and have made tremendous progress in lowering emissions that actually harm people’s health.  But if that isn’t enough for the EPA, maybe they’ll take note that a side effect of all of our efforts has been that our carbon dioxide emissions have fallen by more than nearly every other state and even every country in the world except Germany.

Rather than examine what’s working in Texas and follow our example, the current administration seems intent upon passing massive new energy taxes and draconian regulations, whether through EPA mandate or via equally ill-advised cap-and-trade legislation still pending in the Senate.

This is the surest way to knock America’s struggling economy completely off its feet and forever damage our ability to compete in the global marketplace.

Again, Texans will suffer more than most. We are already seeing major employers delaying or cancelling billion-dollar-plus projects due to uncertainty about what Congress or the EPA might do. That translates into thousands of jobs that won’t be filled, and the loss of much-needed tax revenue for local schools.

It’s just the beginning of the sacrifices Texans will be called upon to make.

Studies have shown that when they open their monthly electricity bill, Texans will have to pay an additional $50 per month, and when they fill up their truck with gas, they’ll have to shell out an additional $16.  Texas farms will see significantly higher costs for fuel and fertilizer, and many may be forced to close farms that have been in their families for generations.

Worst of all, these costs will be imposed on our citizens for no benefit.   Even setting aside the now-discredited science upon which they’re based, even the EPA has admitted that these massive energy taxes and regulations will have no impact on the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere.

Texas is proof that traditional energy sources can vibrantly coexist with renewable and cleaner emerging technologies and that free markets and limited government are far more conducive to job growth, energy security, and fostering new technology than the Washington way.

From the we-can’t-make-this-stuff-up files, we bring you the trailer for Reptilicus, a Danish-American horror movie from 1961. In short, an ancient, nearly invincible, monster is unearthed by oil drillers (!) and goes on a rampage through the streets of Copenhagen (!).  Today, people obsessed about oil-drilling are rampaging through the streets of Copenhagen! So…anytime anyone says global warming or climate change…reply, “reptilicus”…oh, and drink!

Over at ICECAP.us Meteorologist Joe D’Aleo has posted an item on a “Russian Bombshell” highly relevant to the ClimateGate scandal. The Russian media first posted the story and now some Brits are loving it.

The long and the short of it is best summarized by the Telegraph’s James Dellingpole: “What the Russians are suggesting here, in other words, is that the entire global temperature record used by the IPCC to inform world government policy is a crock.”

That is, we have yet further evidence that the data is being cooked to make the long-running claim of an increase in global temperatures, and now to diminish the apparent cooling of said temps. As the gang at EU referendum tout, “it is in Soviet Union that the CRU, NOAA, NASA show the greatest warming.”

Around the world temperature stations have been widely decommissioned in rural and higher elevations, and we see an over-emphasis on increasingly urbanized (and therefore warmer) stations in the curious selection process as to what temperatures should count, and how much. The latter point references the fact that the data is then adjusted, and we are also seeing an increase in adjusting urbanized (that is, artificially warm) temperature records not down, but upward.

Excerpted in pertinent part, Joe Writes:

On Tuesday, the Moscow-based Institute of Economic Analysis (IEA) issued a report claiming that the Hadley Center for Climate Change based at the headquarters of the British Meteorological Office in Exeter (Devon, England) had probably tampered with Russian-climate data.

The IEA believes that Russian meteorological-station data did not substantiate the anthropogenic global-warming theory. …The data of stations located in areas not listed in the Hadley Climate Research Unit Temperature UK (HadCRUT) survey often does not show any substantial warming in the late 20th century and the early 21st century.

The HadCRUT database includes specific stations providing incomplete data and highlighting the global-warming process, rather than stations facilitating uninterrupted observations. …

IEA analysts say climatologists use the data of stations located in large populated centers that are influenced by the urban-warming effect more frequently than the correct data of remote stations.

The reason this cherry-picking is relevant — as is the apparent similar gamesmanship being played with other countries examined in recent days including China and New Zealand — because our NOAA compiles the global dataset and the rest work from it. So when CRU claimed that it “lost” its raw data, what they’re saying is the claim to have lost which stations they chose from NOAA’s compilation, making it impossible for those who wish to check it to discern how they got the answer they did.

If it is what it appears to be, and my dozen years working with these people and the past few weeks peeking further inside thanks to ClimateGate tell me that it is, then this is root-cause corruption.

Meanwhile, they are scrambling madly to stitch up an agreement in Copenhagen politically committing the U.S. to the long-desired wealth-transfer. The question is which moves faster, the collapse of the increasingly likely scientific fraud, or the global governance set.

The exposure of ClimateGate and the impending failure of the Copenhagen climate summit have the global warming community on the ropes. And to add insult to their injury, Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., has taken his one-man truth squad to Copenhagen, to continue to underscore just how absurd the idea of anthropogenic global warming is.

That has drawn the ire of the left, which knows it's losing momentum here and abroad as the Copenhagen summit is nearing the end. And that has enticed two prominent left-wing heroes, MSNBC "Countdown" host Keith Olbermann and Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" host Jon Stewart to taking on Inhofe.

On Olbermann's Dec. 14 broadcast, he awarded Inhofe the second-place prize in his "Worst Persons in the World" segment, based on Inhofe disputing the so-called "warmest decade on record" talking point that is a favorite of global warming alarmists and is based on narrowly interpreted climate data.

"The silver to Sen. James Inhofe, the senator from the oil business," Olbermann said. "When even Fox ‘Noise' has to break it to you that the World Meteorological Organization has found this decade as the warmest on record, you would know you were in trouble. Not the ‘Hofer.' ‘It means very little because that was based on the same flawed science, the IPC[C] science that we've been looking at.'"

And this ClimateGate stuff - it's much ado about nothing in Olbermann's mind. Based on his narrow account of the scandal, global warming is going to be a pressing issue no matter what the circumstances or evidence to the contrary.

"What he means by that is the stolen e-mails he's been looking at," Olbermann said.  "More bad news on that front for the ‘Hofer.' The Associated Press had five reporters and seven scientists, including experts on the ethics of research, analyze the 1 million words in the 1,073 hacked e-mails that supposedly constitute ClimateGate. They concluded that they stonewalled skeptics and discussed hiding data, but the messages don't support claims that the science of global warming was faked."

If Olbermann had actually gone to the original Associated Press article, instead of relying on some left-wing interpretation of the article, he would see that the AP found some problems with the practices at the University of East Anglia, "an influential source of climate science."

"One of the most disturbing elements suggests an effort to avoid sharing scientific data with critics skeptical of global warming. It is not clear if any data was destroyed; two U.S. researchers denied it," Seth Borenstein, Raphael Satter and Malcolm Ritter wrote for the AP on Dec. 12. "The e-mails show that several mainstream scientists repeatedly suggested keeping their research materials away from opponents who sought it under American and British public records law. It raises a science ethics question because free access to data is important so others can repeat experiments as part of the scientific method. The University of East Anglia is investigating the blocking of information requests."

But despite those criticisms and questions about Borenstein's cozy association with the global warming alarmism community, where there is documented proof he showed his hand to one side before the other, Olbermann had the gall to make a whopper of a claim about the AP.

United Nations security officials have once again prevented a journalist from asking attendees at the climate change conference in Copenhagen questions about the growing ClimateGate scandal.

This time, the person on the receiving end of the apparently forbidden queries was Nobel Laureate Al Gore.

Much as when Ireland's Phelim McAleer tried to ask Stanford professor Stephen Schneider questions Thursday about the controversial e-mail messages obtained from the British Climatic Research Unit last month, McAleer was similarly rebuffed by Gore and his entourage Monday.

Not only did the former Vice President completely refuse to answer questions about his blatant misrepresentations of the age of the most recent e-mail message obtained from Britain's CRU, a U.N. security official actually disconnected McAleer's microphone to make sure any answers would be unrecorded (video embedded below the fold, h/t Climate Depot):

As reported by Not Evil Just Wrong Monday:

In several recent interviews the former vice president said that the Climategate emails were "sound and fury signifying nothing...the most recent one is more than 10 years old."

However the reality is that the most recent email from Climategate is less than two months old. The emails undermine the science of Climate Alarmism and that is why the alarmists are so reluctant to address them or like Mr Gore they make factually incorrect statements about how relevant they are.

Mr. Gore says he cares a lot about science and scientific accuracy. His whole theory of Climate Alarmism depends on it but today at the United Nations Copenhagen Climate Conference he refused several opportunities to correct the record when asked about his errors by journalist and film maker Phelim McAleer. Instead his Press Secretary grabbed McAleer's microphone to stop questions being put to the vice-president.

Have U.N. security officials been instructed to prevent journalists from asking climate realists uncomfortable questions?

Consider what happened when McAleer tried to ask Gore confidant Dr. Schneider about ClimateGate days earlier:

This is some scary stuff, folks.

Yet, according to LexisNexis, the only major media outlet to report the Schneider incident was the Washington Times.

Will this episode go similarly ignored?

More importantly, will Gore EVER have to answer questions concerning the falsehoods he continually spreads?

Notice how the mainstream media pretty much avoids the inconvenient scandal of ClimateGate? Although this scandal seems to mark the end of blind faith in the global warming dogma, it could also represent the final act of the long MSM suicide that has been going on for the past few years. That is the assertion made by author, broadcaster, and columnist Gerald Warner in a fascinating UK Telegraph article:

Climategate is a global household name. No cat has ever emancipated itself more completely from the bag. It is a world-wide scandal – thanks to the internet. Yet, as its ramifications proliferate and dominoes continue to fall, the most repeatedly asked question online is: how can the mainstream media ignore this? Well, we know the answer to that: the MSM are in thrall to the leftist consensus. End of story.

Accordng to Warner, ClimateGate is not just another scandal. It could be the terminal event of the media in their slow suicide whose pace has been quickening over the past few years:

Are the mainstream media capable of surviving their sidelining of the number one global scoop? Are they finally committing suicide? Are they, in fact, any longer mainstream? Every historian knows that any significant trend in society will show warning symptoms over a long period; but the final catastrophe will usually be triggered by a single event. For the moribund MSM that decisive blunder may well be Climategate.

Another feature of any doomed institution is that it signals its imminent demise by behaving in a manner that is contrary to its nature and purpose. Every city in the developed world contains news rooms in which cringing journalists struggle to satisfy the imperative demands of editors for a scoop. Yet the obvious scoop – the BIG ONE of journalistic mythology – is consigned to the waste basket. This is the journalism of Isvestia and Pravda, with all the commercial viability that attached to that school of news reporting.

"Move along. Nothing to see here." That was the attitude of most of the MSM after their quick initial reporting (if any) of ClimateGate. 

Here is the Warner prognosis of the ailing MSM:

The dead-tree press is already on the critical list. In the United States, in the six months to 31 March this year, newspaper circulation slumped by 7 per cent, according to the US Audit Bureau of Circulations. This was a steeper decline than in the two previous recorded periods (you can reasonably attribute that to the vomit-inducing idolatry of Barack Obama that permeated the American press at that time). In the UK the comparable figure was 5 per cent. How many businesses do you know that record such declines, in an unreversed trend, and survive?

And Warner is equally as critical of the BBC which does it best to promote the global warming ideology:

That is the despised organisation that relentlessly inflicts climate alarmist propaganda, fairy tales, “bedtime stories” on the British public, in the style of Radio Moscow, circa 1954 (“Implement the resolutions of the 23rd Congress…” “We have 27 minutes to save the polar bears from melting…”). No intelligent or inquiring individual believes, respects or trusts the BBC. Ditto the print media that is similarly spewing out Al Gore’s trashy superstition.

And since the MSM is failing in its task to provide information, people are increasingly turning to the internet as their news source:

So, instead of proving its worth, serving truth and debate, arresting the attention of the public by exposing our rulers’ lies, the MSM are rolling over to become a mouthpiece of the consensus, repelling readers and viewers as they go online, just as citizens in Iron Curtain countries once tuned in covertly to Western media. The internet is the new samizdat. All of this may still be a relatively gradual process while all citizens are being deprived of is information and debate. But when the bill is presented to sustain the phoney religion consecrated at Copenhagen, when taxes rocket, when we can barely see by the light of mercury bulbs, when every amenity of life is threatened – will people still be willing to pay money for newspapers and television channels that tell them to submit to this tyranny, when they could be exploding the myth and freeing society?

And now for the Gerald Warner money quote on the MSM suicide:

...The Mainstream Media are hanging themselves – it is doubtful that they can any longer be described as mainstream. These are turkeys voting for Christmas.

LOL! Although here in America, it would be more apt to say: "These are turkeys voting for Thanksgiving." 

ClimateGate is devastating to the global warming industry, as alarmists are admitting, if mostly off-the-record and to sympathetic journalists (but I repeat myself). On its heels, however, and particularly for those dealing with insistent alarmists whimpering how ClimateGate reveals nothing, this is a must read. In context, it might be just as damning in the eyes of those open to reason.

It comes from an IPCC coordinating lead author who details the IPCC process’s inherent corruption — affirming the details thereof that I also painted after speaking to former lead authors in The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism — and he joins the impressive ranks of actual “leading scientists” cutting their IPCC ties for the same reason. As you read it recall the specific defenses against ClimateGate’s meaning.

A compelling angle to this is that it appears to have been written days before ClimateGate documents made their way to select servers and before the admissions were widely known.

Ha-tip Marc Morano at Climate Depot.

The Climatic Research Unit at the heart of the ClimateGate scandal has taken down most of the information previously available at its website.

Prior to November's release of controversial e-mail messages and documents from Britain's University of East Anglea, there was a separate website for the institution's CRU that allowed readers to review articles and studies created by and for the Unit.

Now, no matter what link one tries to access via a Google search, it directs you to a page that reads: "Due to the present high volume of visitors to this page, you will shortly be directed to the latest news about CRU on the main University of East Anglia website, or you can go there immediately by clicking on this link."

Once there, readers are exclusively offered the follow:

CRU Statements

• Sir Muir Russell to head the Independent Review into the allegations against the Climatic Research Unit (CRU)

  Today the University of East Anglia (UEA) announced that Sir Muir Russell KCB FRSE will head the Independent Review into allegations made against the Climatic Research Unit (CRU). Read more

  Thu, 3 Dec 2009

• CRU update 3

  Professor Phil Jones has today announced that he will stand aside as Director of the Climatic Research Unit until the completion of an independent Review resulting from allegations following the hacking and publication of emails from the Unit. Read more

  Tue, 1 Dec 2009

• CRU update 2

  The University of East Anglia has released the following press release and statements from Prof Trevor Davies, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research, Prof Phil Jones, head of the Climatic Research Unit, and from CRU. Read more

  Tue, 24 Nov 2009

• CRU update 1

  It is a matter of concern that data, including personal information about individuals, appears to have been illegally taken from the university and elements published selectively on a number of websites. Read more

  Mon, 23 Nov 2009

As such, you can now only retrieve statements from CRU concerning the current controversy, but NOT information and data related to it.

For instance, as Anthony Watts reported moments ago, you can no longer retrieve information about Keith Briffa's tree ring data which is so crucial to the whole manmade global warming myth.

In fact, the following links available at Google all redirect to the CRU Statements page:

• Climatic Research Unit
• Index of /cru
• Temperature Trends: Surface (CRU)
• Data available from CRU
• About the Climatic Research Unit
• CRU information sheets
  

Some pages don't redirect at all. Temperature Trends: Surface (CRU) goes to a page that says, "Sorry, but the page you requested does not exist."

As for the idea that this is because of "the volume of visitors," Watts noted, "[I]f indeed 'traffic' is a concern, redirecting to another page on the UEA server system doesn’t do much for the load, it just moves it around."

Will global warming-obsessed media that have been either ignoring or downplaying ClimateGate notice what's happened at the website of the CRU in the middle of this scandal, and if they do, how will they report it?

Stay tuned. 

Network journalists who were quick to see racists, haters and extremists amongst the “tea party” protesters were oblivious on Saturday to communists in the “climate justice” march in Copenhagen whose cause they trumpeted -- even as the video they showed included brief shots of marchers waving red flags displaying the Soviet Union's hammer and sickle.

“The streets were filled today with tens of thousands of protesters from around the world, demanding action to stop global warming,” NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt announced before Anne Thompson marveled: “An extraordinary sight in front of Denmark's parliament building: 35,000 protesters filling the square, stepping off on a slow march with an urgent plea: Save the planet.”

On the CBS Evening News, anchor Jeff Glor touted how “around the world tonight, protesters are creating heat over climate change. In Copenhagen, where UN talks on global warming are under way, police estimate 40,000 activists marched, mostly peacefully, to demand an agreement that produces real change.” Reporter Sheila MacVicar began: “From India to Australia, from China to Copenhagen, tens of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets.”

Neither Thompson nor MacVicar mentioned the communist participation obvious from the video that producers ran with their narration, though a Financial Times article included the less-appealing parts of the coalition: “The protesters were a mix of environmental campaigners, church groups and ordinary Danes, many with children, as well as anarchists and communists.”

In a post for the Santa Barbara Independent, Ethan Stewart noted: “From Communist groups and Greenpeace to radical vegetarians and a pro-Iranian crew, there were not many activist sub groups without representation in the march.”

Holt introduced the Saturday, December 12 NBC Nightly News story:

Now to Copenhagen. The streets were filled today with tens of thousands of protesters from around the world, demanding action to stop global warming. Their demonstrations were mostly peaceful, but still hundreds were arrested. Our report tonight from chief environmental affairs correspondent Anne Thompson in Copenhagen.

From the top of Thompson's report:

An extraordinary sight in front of Denmark's parliament building: 35,000 protesters filling the square, stepping off on a slow march with an urgent plea: Save the planet. The four-mile trek to the site of the climate talks was part street theater, part political theater....The marchers have a simple message for the delegates. Stop talking and start acting.

[A Danish man] pushed his 10-month-old son, worried about his future and the future of those elsewhere in the world.

MAN: I definitely want them to, to make an agreement that's fair also in the third-world countries.

THOMPSON: That's what the marchers call climate justice. They want rich countries to help poor countries already dealing with the affects of disappearing natural resources by creating $100 billion fund. But at the negotiating table, rich countries are only talking about a quick-start $10 billion fund....

From the CBS Evening News, Jeff Glor set up MacVicar:

Around the world tonight, protesters are creating heat over climate change. In Copenhagen, where UN talks on global warming are under way, police estimate 40,000 activists marched, mostly peacefully, to demand an agreement that produces real change. Here is Sheila MacVicar.

MacVicar:

From India to Australia, from China to Copenhagen, tens of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets. Their point, to drive home demands for binding global agreement on climate change as negotiators, scientists and activists head into the final week of the climate conference.

Today, former presidents, top models and a retired arch bishop lent their voices in support of an agreement, any agreement....

Spoilers Coming…. AMC’s The Prisoner was awful. The headache inducing flashbacks, incomprehensible sudden and rapid scene changes, incessant and interminable runs through the desert to...

View Original Post

Canada’s Macleans has a profile of the skeptic at the center of the ClimateGate e-mails (what, you expected an American newspaper to cover this story?):

The private emails and logs leaked last month from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia can’t tell us whether industrial activity is really heating the earth’s atmosphere and endangering civilization. But they have settled the identity of the Great Satan of climate science. Torontonian Stephen McIntyre, a gentle, persistent amateur who had no credentials in applied science before stepping into the global warming debate in 2003, is mentioned more than 100 times.

In the emails, leading climate researchers dismiss him as a capitalist hireling or a hapless “bozo,” and argue about the relative merits of ignoring him versus counterattacking him, even as others acknowledge that his criticisms have merit and imitate his use of the Web as a venue for hyper-detailed scientific discussion. At one point in 2005, CRU director Phil Jones, now under suspension, ponders the possibility that McIntyre might use U.K. freedom-of-information laws to obtain raw weather-station data compiled by the CRU. He grumbles: “I think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone.” The overall impression is that of 100 elephants stampeding in confusion and panic around a mouse.

The political stakes are now so high when it comes to the “Climategate” scandal, and motives are being questioned so loudly on both sides, that few are noticing the remarkable story at the heart of it all: a 62-year-old mining executive and squash enthusiast has, for better or worse, found his way into the centre of a major scientific melée—almost by accident—and been able to make legitimate contributions.

McIntyre first became notorious in 2003 for his statistical critique, co-authored with economist Ross McKitrick, of the “hockey stick graph” that showed global temperatures rocketing upward in the 20th century. The hockey stick, featured in the 2001 report by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, had a profound influence on policy worldwide, and played a starring role in presentations like Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. The McIntyre-McKitrick critique called attention to uncertainties in its temperature reconstructions dating back before 1600, to certain problems with dendrochronology (the use of tree rings to estimate past temperatures), and to issues with the statistical calculations underlying the hockey stick. Some climatologists insist that the graph tells the same story when you correct for all this, but much of the critique is now accepted, and the hockey stick, whose weaknesses are better understood, has itself become a somewhat inconvenient distraction for climatologists and environmentalists.

Meanwhile, McIntyre, working alone, has gone on to score further critical points. In 2007, he caught a mistake in the reporting of U.S. surface temperatures by NASA’s Goddard Institute that was quickly acknowledged, with thanks, and corrected. (NASA’s gracious manner contrasts sharply with the attitudes displayed behind the scenes at the CRU.)

The truth is that McIntyre, 62, little resembles the caricature of a wild-eyed climate-change “denier.” He is scrupulous about focusing his criticism on statistical procedures and disclosure practices. He is polite to, and about, climate scientists. He refuses to make grand categorical statements of the “Global warming is just commie horse puckey” type, preferring to remain agnostic, and he discourages such talk on his website,Climate Audit.

Read the whole profile here.

Today, in 2000, Al Gore gave up his campaign to steal the Presidential Election.

A Nobel Peace prize, an Academy Award, a temporary fixation on a bogus issue and hundreds of millions of dollars to Al because of all this, are small prices to pay to keep this man away from the levers of real power. Al’s father ultimately expressed remorse for his efforts to block the Civil Rights Act, perhaps Al the Lesser will one day atone for his own ‘inconvenient’ sins.

Nobel Laureate Al Gore should debate former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and all those who don't believe man is responsible for global warming.

So said MSNBC political analyst Richard Wolffe Friday in an appearance on "Countdown."

This was in response to substitute anchor Lawrence O'Donnell bringing up Palin's answer to conservative talk radio host Laura Ingraham's question concerning the former Governor debating Gore about climate change. 

What followed was rather comical if you understand how many people from around the world have challenged the Global Warmingist-in-Chief to a head-to-head without him once accepting (video embedded below the fold courtesy our friend Story Balloon, relevant section at 3:50):

LAWRENCE O`DONNELL, HOST : Now, there is something she might be right about when she was talking to Laura Ingraham on the radio show about the -- in her war of words with Al Gore. Is she right? Would Al Gore not want to, as she put it in her words, "lower himself" to debate her? And if he did, is she also right that he would -- that she would, in her words, "get clobbered" if they had a debate?

RICHARD WOLFFE, MSNBC POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, now, here`s the skill of Sarah Palin -- setting expectations so low that it`s easy to say, "I`ll buy them." Even where there to be this crazy hypothetical debate between the two of them, let`s face it, Sarah Palin didn`t get clobbered in her debate against Joe Biden. She doesn`t answer the questions. She doesn`t even refer to the question.

In fact, whoever the commentators or the hosts are or whatever debate she has in mind, it`s irrelevant, because she will talk about precisely what she wants.

Would Al Gore do it? I would love to see Al Gore debate the whole array of deniers of climate change. Put them all up. Let`s have a whole sort of Oxford Union style debate and let them have at it. It would be great TV.

What a fabulous idea, Richard. Make it happen!

After all, since Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" came out in 2006, he has regularly been asked to debate by climate realists from across the globe. 

Christopher Monckton, former adviser to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, issued the following challenge in March 2007:

In a formal invitation sent to former Vice-President Al Gore's Tennessee address and released to the public, Lord Monckton has thrown down the gauntlet to challenge Gore to what he terms "the Second Great Debate," an internationally televised, head-to-head, nation-unto-nation confrontation on the question, "That our effect on climate is not dangerous."

Monckton, a former policy adviser to Margaret Thatcher during her years as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, said, "A careful study of the substantial corpus of peer-reviewed science reveals that Mr. Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth, is a foofaraw of pseudo-science, exaggerations, and errors, now being peddled to innocent schoolchildren worldwide." [...]

Monckton calls on the former Vice President to "step up to the plate and defend his advocacy of policies that could do grave harm to the welfare of the world's poor. If Mr. Gore really believes global warming is the defining issue of our time, the greatest threat human civilization has ever faced, then he should welcome the opportunity to raise the profile of the issue before a worldwide audience of billions by defining and defending his claims against a serious, science-based challenge."

The arena of the glittering "Second Great Debate" will be the elegant, Victorian-Gothic Library of the Oxford Museum of Natural History, which was the setting for the "Great Debate" between the natural scientist T. H. Huxley and Bishop "Soapy Sam" Wilberforce on the theory of evolution, following the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species. Lord Monckton says he chose this historic venue "not only because the magnificent, Gothic architecture will be a visually-stunning setting for the debate but also because I hope that in this lofty atmosphere the caution and scepticism of true science will once again prevail, this time over the shibboleths and nostrums of the false, new religion of climate alarmism."

Gore didn't accept.

Dennis Avery, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, challenged Gore the following month:

April 16, 2007

Honorable Albert Gore
2100 West End Avenue, Suite 620
Nashville, TN 37203

Dear Mr. Gore:

You and I each have books on global warming at the top of the New York Times non-fiction best-seller list.

Your book, An Inconvenient Truth, claims that the earth's recent warming is humanity's fault, and that society must give up most of its current energy supply in order to prevent climate catastrophe.

The book I co-authored, Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1,500 Years, assembles historic writings and physical evidence of the planet's past warming/cooling cycles, and experimental evidence showing how variations on the sun can affect the earth's always-varying temperatures. My book says our warming is natural, unstoppable-and not very dangerous anyway.

These books represent the two leading explanations for the earth's recent temperature changes-and they conflict. If global warming truly is the most important public policy issue of our day, then it is high time the public got to hear the arguments from both sides matched up against each other. How else can people make informed decisions? Therefore, I formally challenge you to debate me at a public event, preferably to be televised or carried by a radio station, sometime in the coming months.

Please contact my office at 540-337-6354 or contact me by email cgfi@hughes.net so we can begin discussing details as to the time and location of the debate.

Sincerely,

Dennis T. Avery, Senior Fellow
Hudson Institute, Washington, D.C. 

Gore didn't accept.

Months later, a Wharton marketing professor offered Gore a $10,000 bet about who could best predict what would happen to global temperatures in the next ten years.

Gore didn't accept.

In August 2007, Avery reiterated his challenge:

Best-selling author Dennis Avery is the next prominent figure to challenge the facts Al Gore is promoting in his global warming crusade. Mr. Avery is co-author of Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1,500 Years. [...]

The list of Al Gore detractors continues to grow as his extreme rhetoric and conclusions get dissected by scientists, economists, and researchers. Avery joins Lord Christopher Monckton (former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher advisor), Bjorn Lomborg (Danish economist), author Michael Crichton, Prof. S. Fred Singer (former director of the U.S. National Weather Service), Tim Ball, Ph.D. (historical climatologist), Prof. Ian Clark (University of Ottawa), and Prof. Richard Lindzen (MIT) among others. [...]

Gore has refused all debate challengers to date. Joseph Bast, president of The Heartland Institute, noted, "Maybe it's because climate alarmists tend to lose when they debate climate realists. Or because most scientists do not support climate alarmism." The Heartland Institute has run more than $500,000 of ads in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Washington Times promoting a debate.

Not surprisingly, Gore has ignored all of these challenges as well as one from Czech Republic President Vaclav Klaus in May 2008.

Just how adament is the Nobel Laureate against appearing with folks who don't agree with his views concerning this issue?

Well, in April, Monckton was supposed to appear with Gore at a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing on climate change. At the last minute, Monckton's invitation was rescinded by House Democrats because Gore refused to attend if Monckton was allowed to speak.

More recently, Gore turned down an invitation to discuss global warming on the premiere episode of John Stossel's new FBN program.

With this in mind, Mr. Wolffe, if you and your friends at MSNBC can actually get Gore to debate this issue, please do, for the list of folks happy to attend is long and distinguished.

Of course, readers are advised not to hold their breath. 

Leave it to MSNBC "Hardball" host Chris Matthews to go into creepy mode over the possibility one could be skeptical about the theory of anthropogenic global warming.

On his Dec. 11 broadcast, the same guy who got a thrill up his leg over President Barack Obama and made an awkward pass at CNBC host Erin Burnett on live television, used a bizarre portrayal to describe those who don't ascribe to the theory that man is causing the globe's temperature to increase (emphasis added).

"Well, what do you think when you read these miserable people in The Wall Street Journal op-ed pages? And I -- I picked The Wall Street Journal. I don't get it. There's some kind of culture out there that sits around and talks to itself, and pleases -- pleasures itself, I should say, over the argument that there isn't any climate change. What is in their breakfast that makes them do this? Why do they ignore science? Maybe they're the same people that ignore the evidence of evolution and millions of years of bones. What is it about them that just -- and they're -- and they're pandered to by the editors of The Wall Street Journal and other organs, like Fox News."

Matthews was interviewing Brenda Ekwurzel, a climate scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, who trotted out the usual array of talking points on the ClimateGate emails, and that this is the hottest decade on record (a declaration that has been deemed inconclusive as government bureaucracies have been reluctant to make their data publicly available) and that Arctic sea ice was melting (although some contend it is increasing elsewhere.)

But Matthews was less concerned about those particulars and wanted Ekwurzel to illustrate a doom-and-gloom scenario for his viewers.

"OK, let's get away from style and aesthetics, to the simple question - if nothing is done, significantly, over the next 20 years or so about climate change, what's going to happen to this planet, on which all our children live, and some of us will still be here?" Matthews said. "What will happen if we don't do anything? Seriously, draw me the picture now for those watching this Friday night."

According to Ekwurzel, it will take 1,000 years for the earth to absorb excess carbon (even though New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman insists it's more like 3,000 years). But Ekwurzel contends it could mean bad news for coastal areas - including New Orleans.

"What's very important to remember is that the carbon dioxide we've emitted to the atmosphere, scientists have shown that it will take about 1,000 years for the earth to absorb this excess carbon," Ekwurzel said. "That means that we will be trapping heat for our children, ourselves, our grandkids. And this is something that has long-term consequences. Sea level rise can be profound for some small island nations, the Gulf Coast of New Orleans, Florida, parts of the Bay Area of San Francisco."

That wasn't a satisfactory answer for Matthews. He wanted something else to indict The Wall Street Journal and Fox News, since he claimed the alarmists were losing the debate.

"Let's assume that for the next ten years you don't win the argument," Matthews said. "I don't think you're going to win it in the Senate. I hope you do, but it may not happen like it did in the House. If nothing gets done, will it be -- when will it be evident to even The Wall Street Journal types and the Fox News types, where they can't lie anymore -- I'm sorry, you never know about motives -- they can't deny anymore. At what point will that happen?"

And according to the "Hardball" host, the last hope is for their cause is something tangible to force "the voices of inaction" to come to their senses.

"Maybe the kids will start talking to their parents when they sit around at the men's grill at the golf course, and sit around the train and the commuter train and agree with each other," Matthews said. "They ought to check in with the reality of the world. So far they've not. I look at people now in such powerful denial. They are beating you, Brenda -- doctor -- in this fight. They are beating you. The voices of inaction are beating the voices of action. I just wait to hear when the evidence is going to be so profound they can't deny it anymore."

A Stanford professor with ties to Nobel Laureate Al Gore and the growing ClimateGate scandal used United Nations security officials at the climate conference in Copenhagen to halt questions about e-mail messages obtained from Britain's Climatic Research Unit.

Dr. Stephen Schneider was speaking at the Bella Centre Thursday when Irish journalist Phelim McAleer began asking about ClimateGate.

McAleer is known for his documentary "Not Evil, Just Wrong," which challenged the content of Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth," as well as for confronting the former Vice President during a lecture in October only to have his microphone turned off.

According to a video just posted at Big Government, UN security officials stepped in when McAleer tried to ask the Professor inconvenient questions (video embedded below the fold):

Professor Stephen Schneider's assistant requested armed UN security officers who held film maker Phelim McAleer, ordered him to stop filming and prevented further questioning after the press conference where the Stanford academic was launching a book. [...]

He asked Professor Schneider about his opinions on Climategate - where leaked emails have revealed that a senior British professor deleted data and encouraged colleagues to do likewise if it contradicted their belief in Global Warming. [...]

During some testy exchanges with McAleer, UN officials and Professor Schneider's assistants twice tried to cut short McAleer's question.

However as the press conference drew to a close Professor Schneider's assistant called armed UN security guards to the room. They held McAleer and aggressively ordered cameraman Ian Foster to stop filming. The guard threatened to take away the camera and expel the film crew from the conference if they did not obey his instructions to stop filming Professor Schneider. [...]

Two officers corralled the film crew and one officer can be seen on tape threatening the cameraman. The Guard can also be heard warning that if the crew did not stop filming their would seize the equipment and the journalists expelled from the conference.

McAleer apparently has lodged an official complaint about his treatment:

"I have met Mr Christopher Ankerson the UN's head of security for the conference and he has confirmed it was Professor Schneider's staff who asked the security guards to come corral us at the press conference. Mr Ankerson could not say what grounds the security guard had for ordering us to stop filming."

"This is a blatant attempt to stop journalists doing journalism and asking hard questions. It is not the job of armed UN security officers to stop legitimate journalists asking legitimate questions of senior members of the UN's IPCC."

Professor Schneider was interviewed for McAleer's "Not Evil Just Wrong" documentary but lawyers later wrote to McAleer saying he was withdrawing permission for the interview to be used.

Schneider has been a controversial global warming alarmist for quite some time. As NewsBusters reported in October, he appeared in a 1978 television program warning Americans of a coming Ice Age (relevant section at 6:04):

Since then, Schneider has been a close confidant to Gore. In fact, as McAleer demonstrated in the following video, Schneider was with the Global Warmingist-in-Chief when he acknowledged winning the Nobel Peace Prize:

According to a Google News search, only Edie.net and a blog at the Stanford Review have reported this incident. 

Color me extremely unsurprised. 

Despite appearing on CNN and MSNBC Wednesday, Nobel Laureate Al Gore was apparently too busy to discuss global warming on the premiere episode of John Stossel's new Fox Business Network program.

To kick off his new show Thursday, Stossel chose the controversial subject of climate change, and invited on a number of guests to address the issue in great detail.

According to an e-mail message sent to Stossel's producers on November 23, "the growing influence of the climate crisis message and the demand on Mr. Gore's time" made it impossible for the former Vice President to attend.

Of course, Gore's busy schedule didn't prevent him from being interviewed by CNN and MSNBC on Wednesday, nor did it stop him from appearing on NBC's "Saturday Night Live" just two days before he declined Stossel's invitation.

I guess even an esteemed Nobel Laureate has to understand his limitations (video embedded below the fold with partial transcript):  

JOHN STOSSEL, HOST: I wish that Al Gore were here to debate him (Jerry Taylor, Energy Analyst for the Cato Institute) and me. We asked Vice President Gore, and his office sent this e-mail saying: "It's very difficult to decline invitations such as yours, but it's an unfortunate inevitability of the growing influence of the climate crisis message and the demand on Mr. Gore's time. (Boos from audience) We do apologize, but thank you for your interest." (Via email 11/23/09).

Come on, Mr. Gore. The idea that you don't have time is pretty silly. You have time to go on programs like "Saturday Night Live." It's not a time issue. (Applause) Truth is, you won't debate anyone. You've been asked lots of times, but you always say no. But if you do ever want to debate, we'd love to offer you the air time. We will give it to you. I'll give you a special phone number that goes to this phone. Glenn Beck has that red phone that goes to the President. For you Mr. Gore, the green phone. I await your call.

Of course, Stossel was quite right: despite claiming to be an expert on this subject, Al Gore refuses to debate anyone. And, he only goes on television programs where he knows he can say whatever he wants, regardless of accuracy, and never get challenged.

Such is what happened when he appeared with CNN's John Roberts and Kiran Chetry Wednesday morning, and with MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell Wednesday afternoon.

That media not only comply with Gore's ability to present unchallenged falsehoods to the nation, but also let him get away with never being on the air with anyone that disagrees with his views, is nothing less than appalling.

That said, Stossel shouldn't hold his breath waiting for this charlatan's call. 

Gore's got the media in his back pocket, and he'll never voluntarily relinquish control.

Keith Olbermann is furious at ABC's David Wright for "selectively editing" a clip from the Daily Show with John Stewart. Olbermann called for Wright to be fired for this horrendous slight against journalistic integrity, then proceeded to selectively edit the same segment.

The Daily Show clip in question (reported initially at NB by Noel Sheppard) showed John Stewart fuming at the infamous East Anglia CRU staff for attempting to "hide the decline" by manipulating climate data. Wright showed Stewart saying, "Poor Al Gore, global warming completely debunked, via the very Internet you invented. Oh!"

Olbermann, in dubbing Wright the "worst person," showed an expanded clip of Stewart clearly denying that ClimateGate has "debunked" the global warming theory: "Poor Al Gore, global warming completely debunked via the very Internet you invented. Oh! Oh, the irony, the irony. Actually, the real story is not quite that sensational. Now, does it disprove global warming? No, of course not!"

But this clip was edited as well. So, asks Greg Pollowitz at the National Review Media Blog, if Wright should be fired, "what should MSNBC do to Olbermann for his cut-and-paste job?"

The full transcript shows Stewart remarking that ClimateGate now gives skeptics greater cause to doubt the supposed consensus on global warming.

(BEGIN VIDEO)

UNKNOWN PERSON: A hacker in England got hold of emails between leading scientists which skeptics say show a clear effort to raise fears about global warming, and hide evidence against it.

(END VIDEO)

JON STEWART, HOST: Oh for f**k's sake! Poor Al Gore. Global warming completely debunked via the very Internet you invented. OH. OH the irony. The iro—-ny. Actually, the real story isn't quite that sensational. Basically, emails stolen from scientists at one of the leading centers for global warming show them discussing the work, a bit, how do I put this, casually.

(BEGIN VIDEO)

UNKNOWN FOX ANNOUNCER READING EMAIL MESSAGE FROM CLIMATEGATE PARTICIPANTS): "The fact is we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't." (Kevin Trenberth)

    "I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline." (Phil Jones, CRU Director)

(END VIDEO)

STEWART: (Laughing) See, I tell you it's nothing. He was just using a trick to hide the decline. It's just scientist speak for using a standard statistical technique recalibrating data in order to trick you into not knowing about the decline. But here's what's great about science: in disagreement, we go back and look at the raw data.

(BEGIN VIDEO)

UNKNOWN FOX NEWS ANNOUNCER): University scientists say raw data from the 1980s was thrown out.

(END VIDEO)

STEWART: Oh for f**k's sake! Why would you throw out raw data from the '80s? I still have Penthouses from the '70s! Laminated. What did you keep?

(BEGIN VIDEO)

UNKNOWN FOX NEWS ANNOUNCER): The scientists say they kept something called "value added data".

(END VIDEO)

STEWART: Value added data? What is that, numbers fortified with art? Truth plus, now with lemon? It doesn't look good. Now does it disprove global warming? No, of course not. But it does put a fresh set of energizers in the Senate's resident denier bunny.

But Olbermann stopped short, ending the clip with Stewart's outright rejection of skeptics' claims, and failing to include any of the material prior to that rejection.

So if Olbermann is so furious that Wright would selectively edit the Daily Show, and if he believes that Wright should be fired for it, why would he turn around and do the same thing, and what does he think MSNBC should do about it? Shouldn't he be held to the same standard?

Olbermann's selective outrage demonstrates that he will only attack figures in the media when their reports contradict his liberal talking points. Selective editing is okay, by his standards, as long as it seeks to make the correct point: the liberal one.

Imagine if a Bush administration official had said this:

“For most of the 200 years since the Industrial Revolution, people were blissfully ignorant of the fact that emissions caused a greenhouse effect. It’s a relatively recent phenomenon.”

That was the Obama administration’s “special envoy for climate change”, Todd Stern. Now, the Industrial Revolution is generally accepted as having begun in or about 1850. And of course Svante Arrhenius famously posited the greenhouse effect hypothesis in 1896 (and as a very beneficial thing, incidentally). So, it’s fair to say that this claim is somewhat off.

But the greenhouse effect is not the same as the modern Left’s claim that economic liberties must be ceded to the state, and economic activity held in check, to avoid Man’s marginal greenhouse gas contribution creating dangerous climate change. That is the recent phenomena, following on the heels of the ill-fated manufactured panic over Man-made global cooling which served as the previous excuse for this agenda. But the ignorance is fairly revealing: it’s not about the climate or the science to these people.

Regardless, the reporter did not correct the administration’s misunderstanding of the science and his editor either did not know or care about the rather detached assertion. It fit the script. But you may be surprised to learn that the paper has not always been so forgiving of misunderstandings of the matter by political officials.

Still, always remember the mantra: it was Bush and his team who were dumb. These guys are really, really smart. Really.

Our friends at Minnesotans for Global Warming have released a fabulous new video just in time for the holidays.

Entitled "It's a ClimateGate Christmas," Elmer and his team took your favorite Christmas carols and inserted lyrics involving Nobel Laureate Al Gore's favorite bogeyman.

As you would expect, Gore is the subject of many of the tunes (video embedded below the fold with partial song list):

• Oh ClimateGate, Oh ClimateGate
• Don't Sign Your Name
• Hide the Decline
• They Had a Tree Ring Data
• I'm Dreaming of a Carbon Neutral Christmas
• Al Gore Is Coming To Town
• Away In A Prison
• We Wish You Some Global Warming

Thomas Friedman of the New York Times dismissed the ClimateGate scandal during an interview on Thursday’s Situation Room on CNN, labeling it “nonsense” and an “idiot debate.” Anchor Wolf Blitzer only pressed Friedman slightly when he repeated his call for a “price on carbon that would trigger mass innovation in green technology,” meaning a large surtax on fossil fuels.

Blitzer raised ClimateGate during the second half of his interview with Friedman: “Let’s talk about ‘Hot, Flat and Crowded’ and global warming; this conference that’s under way in Copenhagen right now. The release of these e-mails, what’s called ‘ClimateGate,’ how much damage does that do to those who say man does have this significant role in global warming and this whole debate takes a new twist as a result of that?”

The New York Times columnist immediately played the “denier” card, and pointed to his favorite country, China, as an example of a society that wasn’t paying any attention to the scandal:

FRIEDMAN: Well, clearly, the skeptics and deniers are saying to use these e-mails to say all the research is wrong. Let’s see, all the research, from all the research centers in the world, built up over 50 years, is wrong? Because a couple of climate scientists talking to each other in private- you know, based on statements that they probably wished they had rephrased- sorry, Wolf, I don’t buy it....I’m disappointed with the language they [the scientists who wrote the leaked ClimateGate e-mails] used...But I’m not focused on them. Wolf. I’m focused on the fact that we know for the last 1,000 years- okay, that the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has stayed steady. We also know since the Industrial Revolution, it suddenly spiked, and with that spike, [there] has been a spike in global average temperatures. We know that, okay. We know that for multiple sources.

And, by the way, Wolf, you know who’s not debating this nonsense at all? China. China’s not debating this at all. They know their glaciers are melting. They know something’s happening. And you know what they’re trying to do? They’re trying to clean our clock in solar, wind, [unintelligible], because they know it’s happening. They’re not caught up in this idiot debate, and that’s where we should be.

Later in the interview, the CNN anchor asked about President Obama’s involvement with the climate change interview: “Obama, from your perspective, talks a good game, but is he doing enough?” Friedman replied, “ I think he is off to a very good start. I still think we need to have a price on carbon that would trigger mass innovation in green technology.” Blitzer interrupted with a reasonable follow-up question: “Can the U.S. economy afford that right now?” His guest answered, “Well, can we afford $5, $6 [a] gallon gasoline? Because that’s where we’re headed if we don’t do anything else.”

Less than a week earlier, Friedman was on CNN’s Campbell Brown program on December 3, and made many of the same talking points on climate change that he did during his interview with Blitzer.

The transcript of the relevant portion of the interview, starting at the 31 minutes past the 4 pm Eastern hour mark:

BLITZER: Let’s talk about ‘Hot, Flat and Crowded’ and global warming; this conference that’s under way in Copenhagen right now. The release of these e-mails, what’s called ‘ClimateGate,’ how much damage does that do to those who say man does have this significant role in global warming and this whole debate takes a new twist as a result of that?

FRIEDMAN: Well, clearly, the skeptics and deniers are saying to use these e-mails to say all the research is wrong. Let’s see, all the research, from all the research centers in the world, built up over 50 years, is wrong? Because a couple of climate scientists talking to each other in private- you know, based on statements that they probably wished they had rephrased- sorry, Wolf, I don’t buy it. The fact is-

BLITZER: But you yourself wrote in your column the other day that-

FRIEDMAN: Oh, I’m disappointed- yeah.

BLITZER: They should have- shouldn’t done it, those scientists.

FRIEDMAN: I’m disappointed with the language they used, and I’m sure if they could redo it now, if they knew they were speaking in public, they would write it differently. But I’m not focused on them. Wolf. I’m focused on the fact that we know for the last 1,000 years- okay, that the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has stayed steady. We also know since the Industrial Revolution, it suddenly spiked, and with that spike, [there] has been a spike in global average temperatures. We know that, okay. We know that for multiple sources.

And, by the way, Wolf, you know who’s not debating this nonsense at all? China. China’s not debating this at all. They know their glaciers are melting. They know something’s happening. And you know what they’re trying to do? They’re trying to clean our clock in solar, wind, [unintelligible], because they know it’s happening. They’re not caught up in this idiot debate, and that’s where we should be.

BLITZER: But you say ‘idiot debate’ because the former vice president, Al Gore- he refers to those who question global warming as ‘global warming deniers,’ as if they’re- you know, Holocaust deniers, if you will,

FRIEDMAN: Right.

BLITZER: And they really have no place at the table. Do these scientists who are skeptics have a place at the table?

FRIEDMAN Wolf, absolutely. What they need to do is put forward a counter-thesis to the vast body of scientific research that says basically the greenhouse blanket around the Earth is getting thicker with greenhouse gases, it’s trapping more heat, [and] it’s going to raise average temperatures. What we don’t know- what we do know is exactly how fast that will happen, when the red lines will come, what the climate might do to naturally balance. We don’t know any of that, Wolf. But you know what I do- when I face a problem that is irreversible- the gas stays there for a long time, Wolf- when I face a problem that’s irreversible and has a potentially catastrophic outcome- you know what I do, Wolf? I buy insurance. That’s what the whole climate strategy is about- what those of us care about climate change is about- is, let’s buy a little insurance, because if we’re right, okay, we are really headed for trouble.

BLITZER: Obama, from your perspective, talks a good game, but is he doing enough?

FRIEDMAN: I think he is off to a very good start. I still think we need to have a price on carbon that would trigger mass innovation in green technology-

BLITZER: Can the U.S. economy afford that right now?

FRIEDMAN: Well, can we afford $5, $6 [a] gallon gasoline? Because that’s where we’re headed if we don’t do anything else.

BLITZER: So you have no doubt about any of this?

FRIEDMAN: I have no doubt that we need to do something. I have many- I don’t know any better than anybody else what- exactly when, you know, the problem might hit. It’s all about the odds, Wolf. It’s all about the odds. When I heard the odds were 90%, if I smoked, I’d get cancer- I said, you know what? I don’t think that’s a very good idea. Well, the world is smoking now. We don’t know when, how it will hit- what could counterbalance, but I’d like to buy insurance when I see a problem like that.

BLTIZER: Gore speaks of five, ten, fifteen years before those polar ice caps melt. Are you with him on that?

FRIEDMAN: I have no idea. I’m not a climate scientist. All I know is this, Wolf: the world is enveloped in a greenhouse blanket. We know that’s what regulates the climate and the weather on Earth so it makes it habitable. We’re making that thicker with greenhouse gases. As we do, we’ll trap more heat. As we trap more heat, average temperatures will rise and more ice will melt. When? How fast? I don’t really know. All I know is if that reaches an irreversible process that ends in catastrophe, we are a bad biological experiment, and therefore, Wolf, I’d like to buy a little insurance.

BLITZER: Insurance is always good. Thanks very much, Tom Friedman, for coming in. The book is entitled, ‘Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution and How It Can Renew America.’ It was a huge bestseller [in] hardcover. It is now out in paperback. I’m sure it will be a big bestseller as well. Thanks very much.

FRIEDMAN: Appreciate it- thank you.

Showing the sense of humor millions of Americans fell in love with last year, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin said Thursday that critics of her previous day's op-ed in the Washington Post "kind of got all wee-weed up about it and wanted to call me and others deniers."

Palin, chatting with conservative talk radio host Laura Ingraham, was obviously poking fun at something President Obama said over the summer: "There's something about August going into September where everybody in Washington gets all wee-weed up."

According to Palin, who might have been referring to derogatory comments from folks like MSNBC's Chris Matthews, Andrea Mitchell, and Keith Olbermann, such was the reaction to her published views on global warming and the United Nations climate change conference currently taking place in Copenhagen (YouTube audio embedded below the fold courtesy our friend Story Balloon, partial transcript):

LAURA INGRAHAM, HOST: Would you agree to a debate with Al Gore on this issue?

SARAH PALIN: Oh my goodness. You know, it depends on what the venue would be, what the forum, because Laura, as you know, if it would be some kind of conventional, traditional debate, with his friends setting it up or being the commentators, I'll get clobbered, because they don't want to listen to the facts. They don't want to listen to some reasonable voices in this. And that was proven with the publication of this op-ed where they kind of got all wee-weed up about it and wanted to call me and others deniers of changing weather, weather patterns, and climate conditions, trying to, you know, make the issue into something that it is not.

INGRAHAM: Well, what if it's an Oxford style proper debate format? I mean, he's going to chicken out. I mean, if you challenge him to a debate, do you actually think he would accept it?

PALIN: I don't know. I don't know. Oh, he wouldn't want to lower himself I think to, you know, my level to debate little old Sarah Palin from Wasilla.

Actually, Governor, Gore refuses to debate anybody on this issue regardless of where they're from. 

So don't feel bad.

[See update below.] Good Morning America weatherman and global warming alarmist Sam Champion asserted on Twitter that ClimateGate is "not reportable as such." This analyst queried him on the site about why the morning show has completely ignored hacked E-mails showing that some climate scientists are faking data on global warming.

On Wednesday, Champion Tweeted back: "i kno what u refer to! there is quite a controversy surrounding the veracity of that stolen info...not reportable as such." [Grammar original to post.] Not reportable as such? Whether or not one likes the story, the scientists are not disputing that the hacked e-mails are real. And considering that one of the individuals accused of altering data also contributed to a UN panel on climate change, how is this story "not reportable?"

In an earlier response on Twitter, Champion seemed confused about whether his program had covered the subject: "hey scott..thot i did...we follow all climate stories...arnd the world..ev day...and report fact based claims."

On Thursday, the ABC weatherman replied to MRC intern Mike Sargent. On the subject of ClimateGate, Champion asserted, "WN did ur story last nite!" Indeed, World News did look into the subject on Wednesday. Reporter David Wright saw the scandal as an impediment to global warming legislation. He complained, "Just as the world seems finally poised to do something about global warming, an inconvenient scandal."

However, because some ABC programs (This Week also covered it) have reported on ClimateGate, doesn’t mean that Good Morning America gets a pass for ignoring the story, three weeks after it broke.

Champion has a long history of global warming alarmism. On January 31, 2007, he anchored a segment that hyperventilated, "Will Billions Die from Global Warming? New Details on Thirst and Hunger."

On February 8, 2008, a terrified Champion hyperbolically speculated, "And now to our series 'Global Warming: Global Warning.' Could global warming one day force us into space to live?"

For those interested in Tweeting Champion about his comments, he can be reached here.

UPDATE : 2009-12-10 16:45:05

Sam Champion responded to this article on Twitter: "wow, scott hope u get some readers off this sad stunt." [Note: Twitter is a public website and my affiliation as an MRC News Analyst is clearly stated in my Twitter profile.]

"Having given her sleight of hand stamp of approval to the birthers, Sarah Palin is now moving on to an almost equally popular far right mythology, climate change denial."

So began MSNBC's Keith Olbermann in his number one story on Wednesday's "Countdown."

"Getting her facts wrong and misrepresenting her record as governor of Alaska, again, not enough for Palin`s latest foray into opinion piece, this one for 'The Washington Post,'" said Olbermann. "So she went into full-on denial, climate change is all political mode."

The "Countdown" host then brought on the Nation's Chris Hayes who claimed that people who don't believe in manmade global warming are like folks who "argue that 9/11 was an inside job" (video embedded below the fold courtesy our friend Story Balloon, partial transcript with commentary):

KEITH OLBERMANN, HOST: Having given her sleight of hand stamp of approval to the birthers, Sarah Palin is now moving on to an almost equally popular far right mythology, climate change denial. In our number one story on the COUNTDOWN, Sister Sarah goes op-ed, and former vice president and Nobel Peace prize winner Al Gore refers to her, quote, era of unreality.

Stop the tape! 

For the record, this is what Palin wrote at her Facebook page last week:

Voters have every right to ask candidates for information if they so choose. I've pointed out that it was seemingly fair game during the 2008 election for many on the left to badger my doctor and lawyer for proof that Trig is in fact my child. Conspiracy-minded reporters and voters had a right to ask... which they have repeatedly. But at no point - not during the campaign, and not during recent interviews - have I asked the president to produce his birth certificate or suggested that he was not born in the United States.

- Sarah Palin

Is she wrong? Do voters not have that right? Does saying that they do mean that Palin has "given her sleight of hand stamp of approval to the birthers?"

That's absurd, for believing that folks have the right to ask about Obama's birth certificate doesn't mean that you agree he wasn't born in America.

If it does, that means that if you feel folks have the right to believe in any conspiracy theory, you therefore must agree with the theory, correct?

Somehow Olbermann and his ilk miss this:

OLBERMANN: Getting her facts wrong and misrepresenting her record as governor of Alaska, again, not enough for Palin`s latest foray into opinion piece, this one for "The Washington Post." So she went into full-on denial, climate change is all political mode. Referring to the president`s role in the upcoming international climate conference in Copenhagen, quote, "instead of staying home from Copenhagen and sending a message that the United States will not be a party to fraudulent scientific practices, the president has upped the ante. He plans to fly in at the climax of the conference in hopes of seeing a deal. What Obama really hopes to bring home from Copenhagen is more pressure to pass the Democrat`s cap and tax proposal. This is a political move. The last thing America needs is a misguided legislation that will raise taxes and cost jobs, particularly when the push for such legislations rests on agenda-driven science. The president should boycott Copenhagen."

Since hackers have uncovered the emails of one climate research unit, which let its ambition for publication lead to massaging of data, change deniers like Palin are crying climate-gate. When our own Andrea Mitchell asked the former vice president about Palin`s claim, Mr. Gore drilled, baby, drilled.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AL GORE, FMR. VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Global warming deniers persist in this era of unreality. After all, the entire north polar ice cap, which has been there for most of the last three million years, is disappearing before our eyes. What do they think is causing this?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

OLBERMANN: Mr. Gore also cited the long list of other recent tangible effects of climate change, like record storms, droughts, fires. And when asked about Palin`s claim on her Facebook page that these are, quote, doomsday scare tactics pushed by environmental priesthood --

Isn't it interesting how Olbermann and his ilk always castigate global warming skeptics as playing fast and loose with the facts, but never question what Nobel Laureate Al Gore says?

After all, we don't know that there's less sea ice in the Arctic Circle than there's ever been in the last 3 million years. We've only been doing satellite analysis of the region since 1979. 

We also don't know that recent storms, droughts, and wildfires are either worse than has ever happened on the planet before or are caused by man's small increase to atmospheric CO2 since 1750.

As such, Olbermann just proved Palin's point about "environmental priesthood." But I digress:

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GORE: The scientific community has worked very intensively for 20 years within this international process. And they now say the evidence unequivocal. a hundred fifty years ago, this year, was the discovery that CO2 traps heat. That is a principle in physics. It`s not a question of debate. It`s like gravity. It exists.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

OLBERMANN: Well, now we`re going to bring in gravity, huh? By the way, Sister Sarah, even if all you anti-factualists were right, and climate change is entirely cyclical, not at all man-made, what would be the agenda, as you call it, carried out in its name? As Thomas Friedman noted recently, our nation`s economy would be powered by more energy sources, wind, solar, cleaner biofuels; new electric cars would run on batteries; America would become less dependent on foreign oil dictators; our trade deficit would improve. Agenda-driven insanity, indeed.

Stop the tape!

Once again, Olbermann was employing a strawman issue, for climate realists aren't opposed to the use of alternative energy sources. Instead, they're against government imposing additional taxes and regulations to solve a problem that has yet to be proved exists.

OLBERMANN: Let`s turn now to the Washington editor of "The Nation," Chris Hayes. Chris, good evening.

CHRIS HAYES, "THE NATION": Good evening, Keith.

OLBERMANN: Why did "The Washington Post" let us get lectured about science and politics by someone who quit her only state office, and has a pastor who runs these precautionary exorcisms on her so she can stave off witchcraft.

This is astoundingly hypocritical, for if the Post shouldn't print space to Palin, then why are Olbermann and MSNBC spending so much precious air time on her? 

This irony was clearly lost on Keith and his guest:

HAYES: I thought it was a really atrocious decision on the part of "The Washington Post" to run this op-ed. What exactly it contributed to the debate -- there are people like Greg Mankiw, who worked in the Bush White House, an economist at Harvard. He`s a very conservative guy. He strongly opposes the cap and trade. He wants to see a carbon tax. There is a debate to be had.

But to give over your op-ed page to someone who makes, essentially a conspiracy claim, it would be like if they turned it over to someone who wanted to argue that 9/11 was an inside job. "The Washington Post" would never, in a million years, do that and they shouldn`t be doing this.

Hmmm. So, the Post opinion pages shouldn't include views suggesting that people are exploiting a political agenda to receive tax dollars. That might end up significantly reducing the number of submissions!

OLBERMANN: From Mrs. Palin`s point of view, from the GOP point of view, is this at all about getting elected anymore, or is this just kind of political cover for big business? Keeping the country safe from polluters for another hour, another month, another year, whatever it is they can manage?

HAYES: Luckily, they go hand in hand. I actually think what`s motivating Palin -- and you can actually see, she has moved, you know, in the direction of the conspiracy theorists on this issue. What`s motivating her is the fact that the polling on this is really disturbing, because it has become an article of faith among the right wing base that this is a grand socialist conspiracy to usher in state control.

Stop the tape!

This is nonsense, for the polls are showing that people across the entire political spectrum are changing their opinion concerning global warming as Pew reported in October: 

The decline in the belief in solid evidence of global warming has come across the political spectrum, but has been particularly pronounced among independents. Just 53% of independents now see solid evidence of global warming, compared with 75% who did so in April 2008. Republicans, who already were highly skeptical of the evidence of global warming, have become even more so: just 35% of Republicans now see solid evidence of rising global temperatures, down from 49% in 2008 and 62% in 2007. Fewer Democrats also express this view - 75% today compared with 83% last year. 

As such, Hayes was basically making stuff up:

HAYES: So I think she`s really, as she is want to do, pandering to that base right now. I think what`s driving that kind of op-ed, more than any kind of business shilling, is the fact that it has become one of these issues, like the birth certificate, that you can sort of win points with the base with.

OLBERMANN: And by the way, the video we`re seeing right now, that was taken in July in Washington, D.C. All right, that`s -- bad joke, I`m sorry. But let`s put all these points together now about the predilections of the far right and what they believe and what they don`t. What is the Palin explanation for polar ice melting, which she acknowledges. If it is witchcraft, why has she not sent Pastor Moothy (ph) to fix it. A slightly more serious version of that, and if this is not man-made, if it is part of the right-wing agenda, if it all should be theocratically interpreted, if it`s all in God`s hands, how come Sister Sarah, with her direct line to God, has not instructed God to fix this?

HAYES: You know, what`s really interesting about this op-ed is that it`s not even internally logically consistent conspiracy mongering. There are two alternate theories of the conspiracy the denialists make. One is, yes, the world is warming, but it is not caused by humans. The other, the science that says the world is warming is fake and part of the conspiracy. And she endorses both. It cannot, those both cannot obtain.

What? These are mutually exclusive? Why?

After all, climate realists don't deny that temperatures have been rising since the end of the Little Ice Age. They just don't believe increases in CO2 are largely the cause as do global warming advocates.

On top of this, many realists believe the actual increase has been exaggerated by a number of factors including data massaging and poor collection techniques at the 1,221 weather stations across the country.

With this in mind, despite Olbermann's snickering, what Hayes said concerning this was absurd and showed an alarming ignorance concerning the matter: 

HAYES: The fact of the matter is, she governs the one state in the union that is most immediately seeing the effects of climate change. The permafrost is actually melting. There are houses that have cracked because of it in the state of Alaska. And because of that, she was forced to kind of acknowledge the fact that warming is happening. She can`t have it both ways.

And the editors of "The Washington Post" didn`t see fit to make any kind of intervention, to at least have a logically consistent piece of work on their pages.

OLBERMANN: Which brings up the idea of an end game for the GOP and Palin. What is the end game? Let`s say they are 100 percent right, that climate-gate exists, that this is a scam, that changes in climate are natural. Do they have a plan for how to keep the government together, to criminalize abortion during the rapture and the upcoming ice age and/or universal sweat lodge, whichever comes first?

HAYES: You know, I don`t know what the right-wing government`s plan is. But I will say, on an extremely serious note, that this -- you know, we`ve talked about this in a million different ways -- and Al Gore -- and there are a lot of messengers who are better at this than I am. But it`s hard to over-state the stakes right now, in Copenhagen, in the climate change legislation moving through Congress. We are at a sort of pivotal moment in the fate of the Earth, but also as a test of the moral fabric of American democracy. And history is going to look extremely, extremely unkindly on this op-ed and the people that are using their platform to sort of propagate this very monstrous deception.

Once again, what was that Palin said about an "environmental priesthood?"

Chris Wallace, host of "Fox News Sunday" is the latest in a long line of observers to note the essentially religious fervor of those who believe man is responsible for global warming, and the blind faith with which they cling to the science behind it.  

Wallace, appearing on the Fox Business Network's Dec. 10 "Imus in the Morning" program to discuss the President's European trip with stops in Oslo and Copenhagen, said the religious conviction is evident in the way climate change alarmists treat those who challenge the theory.

"The President's going to Copenhagen - so he's flying all over the world leaving a Sasquatch-like carbon footprint," host Don Imus said. "So what's that all about?"

Wallace admitted he neither disputed nor subscribed to the theory of anthropogenic global warming, but he did note how so-called global warming skeptics were portrayed.

"Look, the climate warming thing is pretty interesting," Wallace said. "One of the things I love is - is that people who don't believe it, and look I'm not smart enough to know if it's true or it isn't true, but - are called deniers, like this is a religion and they're denying a fact."

For example, Newsweek's Eleanor Clift recently conceptually answered skeptics who say there is no proof man is behind global warming. Her reply: there is no proof of God either.

That sentiment, according to Wallace runs counter to is supposed to work. Science makes room for skepticism.

"I mean science is science and supposedly strong science accepts the idea of skeptics and particularly in a science like this that is not - well, I suppose the Al Gores of the world would say it is totally proven. But it doesn't seem to be proven, and ClimateGate is an example of how this has become kind of a religion. And people who are skeptics about it - I think it is fair to call them skeptics, but to call them deniers ascribes a certainty, a kind of religious certainty to climate change that I don't think exists," Wallace said.

ABC and CBS discounted the scientific relevance of the admissions and obfuscations displayed in the ClimateGate e-mails, but on Wednesday night they finally devoted full stories to the controversy and quoted the “most-damning” of the e-mails, the ones referring to a “trick” to “hide the decline” in a temperature measurement and in which a scientist fretted “we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment, and it is a travesty that we can't.”

The two networks, however, painted the “stolen” e-mails not as laudatory whistle-blowing, but as an unwanted impediment to the left's global warming agenda. “Just as the world seems finally poised to do something about global warming, an inconvenient scandal,” ABC's David Wright began in playing off the title of Al Gore's movie. He despaired that “as the controversy heats up, the consensus about making the tough choices to curb carbon emissions threatens to crumble.”

On CBS, Wyatt Andrews relayed how “to many Republicans, ClimateGate proves that global warming is a deception,” before he countered: “But if that's true, it's a fraud adopted by most of the world's leading scientists, along with NASA, the U.N., the American Medical Association, and the National Academies of Science of 32 countries, including the United States. To most of them, ClimateGate is a sideshow compared to one overwhelming fact:” Viewers then were treated to this declaration from the scientist with the “hide the decline” boast: “The last decade is the warmest decade on record.”

ABC anchor Charles Gibson set up the World News segment:

In Copenhagen right now, world leaders are focused on the long-term and potentially devastating effects of climate change, global warming. And for all the scientific ammunition being presented at the U.N. conference, some stolen e-mails are giving encouragement to global warming skeptics.

Meanwhile, NBC continued its blackout of any embarrassing disclosures in the e-mails as anchor Brian Williams introduced a story:

As we've been reporting, there's been a world conference going on in Copenhagen. It's about climate change and global warming, but that subject heated up here today with a newspaper article by Sarah Palin, and then a return shot from Al Gore.

Reporter Anne Thompson concluded with the usual agenda: “At the climate talks, the bigger issue is American credibility, and will the United States live up to its promise to cut carbon dioxide emissions?”

Earlier rundowns of how the evening newscasts have ignored and dismissed ClimateGate:

Friday: “NBC Nightly News Takes Up ClimateGate, But Frets It Could 'Delay Taking Action'”

Sunday: “ABC and NBC Acknowledge 'ClimateGate,' But Remain Undeterred: 'Science is Solid'”

Monday: “Nets Panic: Clock at Zero in 'Life and Death' Effort to Avoid 'Global Catastrophe'”

Tuesday: “CBS and NBC Trumpet UN Predictions About Warmest Decade Since 1850”

The MRC's Brad Wilmouth corrected the closed-captioning against the video to provide these transcripts of the stories on the Wednesday, December 9 evening newscasts:

ABC’s World News:

CHARLES GIBSON, IN OPENING TEASER: Hot topic: Did scientists skew their research to support theories about global warming?

...
            
GIBSON, BEFORE COMMERCIAL BREAK: And still ahead on World News, have global warming skeptics found a smoking gun? The controversy over climate change will be our "Closer Look."

...

GIBSON: We began tonight's broadcast with the powerful blast of bitter cold and snow that's blanketing much of the country – and its powerful, to be sure. But its effects will be short-lived. In contrast, in Copenhagen right now, world leaders are focused on the long-term and potentially devastating effects of climate change, global warming. And for all the scientific ammunition being presented at the U.N. conference, some stolen e-mails are giving encouragement to global warming skeptics. David Wright has our "Closer Look."

DAVID WRIGHT: Just as the world seems finally poised to do something about global warming, an inconvenient scandal.

GLENN BECK, FOX NEWS CHANNEL: Let's start with the science that has been so settled for all these years.

WRIGHT: Skeptics of climate change suddenly have plenty of new fodder.

REP. JAMES SENSENBRENNER (R-WI): There is increasing evidence of scientific fascism that's going on.

WRIGHT: 1,000 e-mails dating back more than a dozen years stolen from a top climate research center in Britain.

SENATOR JAMES INHOFE (R-OK): For the taxpayers' sake, let's look at this controversy from top to bottom.

WRIGHT: As the controversy heats up, the consensus about making the tough choices to curb carbon emissions threatens to crumble.

JON STEWART, THE DAILY SHOW: Poor Al Gore! Global warming completely debunked via the very Internet you invented. Oh!

WRIGHT: In the e-mails, the scientists are downright dismissive of naysayers. In one message, a researcher at Lawrence Livermore Labs offers to "beat the crap out of" a leading skeptic. In another, Penn State's Michael Mann suggests hiding data from dissenters, writing, "This is the sort of ‘dirty laundry' one doesn't want to fall into the wrong hands."

MICHAEL MANN: Imagine somebody going through all of the emails you ever sent, looking for a single word or phrase that could be twisted.

WRIGHT: One of the most damning e-mail exchanges credits Mann with a "trick" to "hide the decline" in temperatures. In another, the head of the National Center for Atmospheric Research writes a colleague, "The fact is, we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment, and it is a travesty that we can't."

KEVIN TRENBERTH, NATIONAL CENTER FOR ATMOSPHERIC RESEARCH: It shows human nature at work, but I don't think it throws any, casts any aspersions on the science.

WRIGHT: Global warming may be a scientific issue, but it's also a hot-button political debate. So right now, the scientists aren't the only ones on the defensive. Politicians are, too.

LISA JACKSON, EPA ADMINISTRATOR: There is nothing in the hacked e-mails that undermines the science.

WRIGHT: That may be true, but the e-mails threaten to undermine the political effort under way in Copenhagen.

JAMES HOGGAN, HOGGAN AND ASSOCIATES PR: This is going to get worse. They are going to use this and blow it up way beyond anything that the evidence supports.

WRIGHT: At a recent book signing in Chicago, Al Gore was a soft target.
                                
UNIDENTIFIED MALE PROTESTER: Research Climategate! This guy is a fraud! It's a scam!

WRIGHT: The protesters wasted little time posting their antics online, where their message now has a worldwide megaphone. David Wright, ABC News, Washington.

CBS Evening News:

KATIE COURIC: President Obama will be spending a lot of time on Air Force One. He's flying tonight to Oslo where he'll accept the Nobel Peace Prize tomorrow. He returns home on Friday. But next week, it's back to Scandinavia for the climate conference in Copenhagen. The U.S. and China squared off there today, each accusing the other of failing to cut greenhouse gases. And Wyatt Andrews tells us the entire conference is taking place under a cloud that's become known as Climategate.

WYATT ANDREWS: To anyone skeptical about the science of global warming-
                    
REP. DARRELL ISSA (R-CA): Climategate.

REP. MIKE PENCE (R-IN): Climategate.

REP. MARSHA BLACKBURN (R-TN): Climategate.

ANDREWS: -Climategate is the biggest scandal ever.

GLENN BECK: They're just cooking the books.

ANDREWS: Climategate is the term being used for a handful of e-mails stolen last month from  the influential CRU, the Climatic Research Unit in England. By far, the most embarrassing e-mail is from 1999 in which CRU's director Phil Jones brags that he's used a trick to "hide the decline." "Hide the decline" meaning hiding studies from tree rings that show the earth cooling since 1960 when actual temperatures show a trend toward warming. The phrase "hide the decline" is now so infamous it's being spoofed on YoutTube.

CLIP OF VIDEO WITH CARTOONS OF PROF MICHAEL MANN AND A COW SINGING:: Hide the decline, hide the decline.

ANDREWS: And the fact that global temperatures have gone down in some years was in other e-mails, with one scientist lamenting, "we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment, and it is a travesty that we cant." To many Republicans, Climategate proves that global warming is a deception.

REP. JAMES SENSENBRENNER (R-WI): And at worst it's junk science, and it is a part of a massive international scientific fraud.

ANDREWS: But if that's true, it's a fraud adopted by most of the world's leading scientists, along with NASA, the U.N., the American Medical Association, and the National Academies of Science of 32 countries, including the United States. To most of them, Climategate is a sideshow compared to one overwhelming fact:

PROF. MICHAEL MANN: The last decade is the warmest decade on record.

ANDREWS: Michael Mann is the professor who's being lampooned in that YouTube video. Mann says "hide the decline" was never an attempt to deceive, it was the use of real temperatures to show a real trend.

MANN: Those who deny the existence of this problem, who don't have the science on their side, have instead engaged in a smear campaign to distract the public, to distract policymakers.

ANDREWS: Climategate advocates do want political traction. They hope any uncertainty over manmade global warming might change the President's plan to offer CO2 cuts in Copenhagen next week. Wyatt Andrews, CBS News, Washington.

ABC and CBS discounted the scientific relevance of the admissions and obfuscations displayed in the ClimateGate e-mails, but on Wednesday night they finally devoted full stories to the controversy and quoted the “most-damning” of the e-mails, the ones referring to a “trick” to “hide the decline” in a temperature measurement and in which a scientist fretted “we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment, and it is a travesty that we can't.”

The two networks, however, painted the “stolen” e-mails not as laudatory whistle-blowing, but as an unwanted impediment to the left's global warming agenda. “Just as the world seems finally poised to do something about global warming, an inconvenient scandal,” ABC's David Wright began in playing off the title of Al Gore's movie. He despaired that “as the controversy heats up, the consensus about making the tough choices to curb carbon emissions threatens to crumble.”

On CBS, Wyatt Andrews relayed how “to many Republicans, Climategate proves that global warming is a deception,” before he countered: “But if that's true, it's a fraud adopted by most of the world's leading scientists, along with NASA, the U.N., the American Medical Association, and the National Academies of Science of 32 countries, including the United States. To most of them, Climategate is a sideshow compared to one overwhelming fact:” Viewers then were treated to this declaration from the scientist with the “hide the decline” boast: “The last decade is the warmest decade on record.”

ABC anchor Charles Gibson set up the World News segment:

In Copenhagen right now, world leaders are focused on the long-term and potentially devastating effects of climate change, global warming. And for all the scientific ammunition being presented at the U.N. conference, some stolen e-mails are giving encouragement to global warming skeptics.

Meanwhile, NBC continued its blackout of any embarrassing disclosures in the e-mails as anchor Brian Williams introduced a story:

As we've been reporting, there's been a world conference going on in Copenhagen. It's about climate change and global warming, but that subject heated up here today with a newspaper article by Sarah Palin, and then a return shot from Al Gore.

Reporter Anne Thompson concluded with the usual agenda: “At the climate talks, the bigger issue is American credibility, and will the United States live up to its promise to cut carbon dioxide emissions?”

Earlier rundowns of how the evening newscasts have ignored and dismissed ClimateGate:

Friday: “NBC Nightly News Takes Up ClimateGate, But Frets It Could 'Delay Taking Action'”

Sunday: “ABC and NBC Acknowledge 'ClimateGate,' But Remain Undeterred: 'Science is Solid'”

Monday: “Nets Panic: Clock at Zero in 'Life and Death' Effort to Avoid 'Global Catastrophe'”

Tuesday: “CBS and NBC Trumpet UN Predictions About Warmest Decade Since 1850”

The MRC's Brad Wilmouth corrected the closed-captioning against the video to provide these transcripts of the stories on the Wednesday, December 9 evening newscasts:

ABC’s World News:

CHARLES GIBSON, IN OPENING TEASER: Hot topic: Did scientists skew their research to support theories about global warming?

...
            
GIBSON, BEFORE COMMERCIAL BREAK: And still ahead on World News, have global warming skeptics found a smoking gun? The controversy over climate change will be our "Closer Look."

...

GIBSON: We began tonight's broadcast with the powerful blast of bitter cold and snow that's blanketing much of the country – and its powerful, to be sure. But its effects will be short-lived. In contrast, in Copenhagen right now, world leaders are focused on the long-term and potentially devastating effects of climate change, global warming. And for all the scientific ammunition being presented at the U.N. conference, some stolen e-mails are giving encouragement to global warming skeptics. David Wright has our "Closer Look."

DAVID WRIGHT: Just as the world seems finally poised to do something about global warming, an inconvenient scandal.

GLENN BECK, FOX NEWS CHANNEL: Let's start with the science that has been so settled for all these years.

WRIGHT: Skeptics of climate change suddenly have plenty of new fodder.

REP. JAMES SENSENBRENNER (R-WI): There is increasing evidence of scientific fascism that's going on.

WRIGHT: 1,000 e-mails dating back more than a dozen years stolen from a top climate research center in Britain.

SENATOR JAMES INHOFE (R-OK): For the taxpayers' sake, let's look at this controversy from top to bottom.

WRIGHT: As the controversy heats up, the consensus about making the tough choices to curb carbon emissions threatens to crumble.

JON STEWART, THE DAILY SHOW: Poor Al Gore! Global warming completely debunked via the very Internet you invented. Oh!

WRIGHT: In the e-mails, the scientists are downright dismissive of naysayers. In one message, a researcher at Lawrence Livermore Labs offers to "beat the crap out of" a leading skeptic. In another, Penn State's Michael Mann suggests hiding data from dissenters, writing, "This is the sort of ‘dirty laundry' one doesn't want to fall into the wrong hands."

MICHAEL MANN: Imagine somebody going through all of the emails you ever sent, looking for a single word or phrase that could be twisted.

WRIGHT: One of the most damning e-mail exchanges credits Mann with a "trick" to "hide the decline" in temperatures. In another, the head of the National Center for Atmospheric Research writes a colleague, "The fact is, we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment, and it is a travesty that we can't."

KEVIN TRENBERTH, NATIONAL CENTER FOR ATMOSPHERIC RESEARCH: It shows human nature at work, but I don't think it throws any, casts any aspersions on the science.

WRIGHT: Global warming may be a scientific issue, but it's also a hot-button political debate. So right now, the scientists aren't the only ones on the defensive. Politicians are, too.

LISA JACKSON, EPA ADMINISTRATOR: There is nothing in the hacked e-mails that undermines the science.

WRIGHT: That may be true, but the e-mails threaten to undermine the political effort under way in Copenhagen.

JAMES HOGGAN, HOGGAN AND ASSOCIATES PR: This is going to get worse. They are going to use this and blow it up way beyond anything that the evidence supports.

WRIGHT: At a recent book signing in Chicago, Al Gore was a soft target.
                                
UNIDENTIFIED MALE PROTESTER: Research Climategate! This guy is a fraud! It's a scam!

WRIGHT: The protesters wasted little time posting their antics online, where their message now has a worldwide megaphone. David Wright, ABC News, Washington.

CBS Evening News:

KATIE COURIC: President Obama will be spending a lot of time on Air Force One. He's flying tonight to Oslo where he'll accept the Nobel Peace Prize tomorrow. He returns home on Friday. But next week, it's back to Scandinavia for the climate conference in Copenhagen. The U.S. and China squared off there today, each accusing the other of failing to cut greenhouse gases. And Wyatt Andrews tells us the entire conference is taking place under a cloud that's become known as Climategate.

WYATT ANDREWS: To anyone skeptical about the science of global warming-
                    
REP. DARRELL ISSA (R-CA): Climategate.

REP. MIKE PENCE (R-IN): Climategate.

REP. MARSHA BLACKBURN (R-TN): Climategate.

ANDREWS: -Climategate is the biggest scandal ever.

GLENN BECK: They're just cooking the books.

ANDREWS: Climategate is the term being used for a handful of e-mails stolen last month from  the influential CRU, the Climatic Research Unit in England. By far, the most embarrassing e-mail is from 1999 in which CRU's director Phil Jones brags that he's used a trick to "hide the decline." "Hide the decline" meaning hiding studies from tree rings that show the earth cooling since 1960 when actual temperatures show a trend toward warming. The phrase "hide the decline" is now so infamous it's being spoofed on YoutTube.

CLIP OF VIDEO WITH CARTOONS OF PROF MICHAEL MANN AND A COW SINGING:: Hide the decline, hide the decline.

ANDREWS: And the fact that global temperatures have gone down in some years was in other e-mails, with one scientist lamenting, "we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment, and it is a travesty that we cant." To many Republicans, Climategate proves that global warming is a deception.

REP. JAMES SENSENBRENNER (R-WI): And at worst it's junk science, and it is a part of a massive international scientific fraud.

ANDREWS: But if that's true, it's a fraud adopted by most of the world's leading scientists, along with NASA, the U.N., the American Medical Association, and the National Academies of Science of 32 countries, including the United States. To most of them, Climategate is a sideshow compared to one overwhelming fact:

PROF. MICHAEL MANN: The last decade is the warmest decade on record.

ANDREWS: Michael Mann is the professor who's being lampooned in that YouTube video. Mann says "hide the decline" was never an attempt to deceive, it was the use of real temperatures to show a real trend.

MANN: Those who deny the existence of this problem, who don't have the science on their side, have instead engaged in a smear campaign to distract the public, to distract policymakers.

ANDREWS: Climategate advocates do want political traction. They hope any uncertainty over manmade global warming might change the President's plan to offer CO2 cuts in Copenhagen next week. Wyatt Andrews, CBS News, Washington.

ABC and CBS discounted the scientific relevance of the admissions and obfuscations displayed in the ClimateGate e-mails, but on Wednesday night they finally devoted full stories to the controversy and quoted the “most-damning” of the e-mails, the ones referring to a “trick” to “hide the decline” in a temperature measurement and in which a scientist fretted “we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment, and it is a travesty that we can't.”

The two networks, however, painted the “stolen” e-mails not as laudatory whistle-blowing, but as an unwanted impediment to the left's global warming agenda. “Just as the world seems finally poised to do something about global warming, an inconvenient scandal,” ABC's David Wright began in playing off the title of Al Gore's movie. He despaired that “as the controversy heats up, the consensus about making the tough choices to curb carbon emissions threatens to crumble.”

On CBS, Wyatt Andrews relayed how “to many Republicans, Climategate proves that global warming is a deception,” before he countered: “But if that's true, it's a fraud adopted by most of the world's leading scientists, along with NASA, the U.N., the American Medical Association, and the National Academies of Science of 32 countries, including the United States. To most of them, Climategate is a sideshow compared to one overwhelming fact:” Viewers then were treated to this declaration from the scientist with the “hide the decline” boast: “The last decade is the warmest decade on record.”

ABC anchor Charles Gibson set up the World News segment:

In Copenhagen right now, world leaders are focused on the long-term and potentially devastating effects of climate change, global warming. And for all the scientific ammunition being presented at the U.N. conference, some stolen e-mails are giving encouragement to global warming skeptics.

Meanwhile, NBC continued its blackout of any embarrassing disclosures in the e-mails as anchor Brian Williams introduced a story:

As we've been reporting, there's been a world conference going on in Copenhagen. It's about climate change and global warming, but that subject heated up here today with a newspaper article by Sarah Palin, and then a return shot from Al Gore.

Reporter Anne Thompson concluded with the usual agenda: “At the climate talks, the bigger issue is American credibility, and will the United States live up to its promise to cut carbon dioxide emissions?”

Earlier rundowns of how the evening newscasts have ignored and dismissed ClimateGate:

Friday: “NBC Nightly News Takes Up ClimateGate, But Frets It Could 'Delay Taking Action'”

Sunday: “ABC and NBC Acknowledge 'ClimateGate,' But Remain Undeterred: 'Science is Solid'”

Monday: “Nets Panic: Clock at Zero in 'Life and Death' Effort to Avoid 'Global Catastrophe'”

Tuesday: “CBS and NBC Trumpet UN Predictions About Warmest Decade Since 1850”

The MRC's Brad Wilmouth corrected the closed-captioning against the video to provide these transcripts of the stories on the Wednesday, December 9 evening newscasts:

ABC’s World News:

CHARLES GIBSON, IN OPENING TEASER: Hot topic: Did scientists skew their research to support theories about global warming?

...
            
GIBSON, BEFORE COMMERCIAL BREAK: And still ahead on World News, have global warming skeptics found a smoking gun? The controversy over climate change will be our "Closer Look."

...

GIBSON: We began tonight's broadcast with the powerful blast of bitter cold and snow that's blanketing much of the country – and its powerful, to be sure. But its effects will be short-lived. In contrast, in Copenhagen right now, world leaders are focused on the long-term and potentially devastating effects of climate change, global warming. And for all the scientific ammunition being presented at the U.N. conference, some stolen e-mails are giving encouragement to global warming skeptics. David Wright has our "Closer Look."

DAVID WRIGHT: Just as the world seems finally poised to do something about global warming, an inconvenient scandal.

GLENN BECK, FOX NEWS CHANNEL: Let's start with the science that has been so settled for all these years.

WRIGHT: Skeptics of climate change suddenly have plenty of new fodder.

REP. JAMES SENSENBRENNER (R-WI): There is increasing evidence of scientific fascism that's going on.

WRIGHT: 1,000 e-mails dating back more than a dozen years stolen from a top climate research center in Britain.

SENATOR JAMES INHOFE (R-OK): For the taxpayers' sake, let's look at this controversy from top to bottom.

WRIGHT: As the controversy heats up, the consensus about making the tough choices to curb carbon emissions threatens to crumble.

JON STEWART, THE DAILY SHOW: Poor Al Gore! Global warming completely debunked via the very Internet you invented. Oh!

WRIGHT: In the e-mails, the scientists are downright dismissive of naysayers. In one message, a researcher at Lawrence Livermore Labs offers to "beat the crap out of" a leading skeptic. In another, Penn State's Michael Mann suggests hiding data from dissenters, writing, "This is the sort of ‘dirty laundry' one doesn't want to fall into the wrong hands."

MICHAEL MANN: Imagine somebody going through all of the emails you ever sent, looking for a single word or phrase that could be twisted.

WRIGHT: One of the most damning e-mail exchanges credits Mann with a "trick" to "hide the decline" in temperatures. In another, the head of the National Center for Atmospheric Research writes a colleague, "The fact is, we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment, and it is a travesty that we can't."

KEVIN TRENBERTH, NATIONAL CENTER FOR ATMOSPHERIC RESEARCH: It shows human nature at work, but I don't think it throws any, casts any aspersions on the science.

WRIGHT: Global warming may be a scientific issue, but it's also a hot-button political debate. So right now, the scientists aren't the only ones on the defensive. Politicians are, too.

LISA JACKSON, EPA ADMINISTRATOR: There is nothing in the hacked e-mails that undermines the science.

WRIGHT: That may be true, but the e-mails threaten to undermine the political effort under way in Copenhagen.

JAMES HOGGAN, HOGGAN AND ASSOCIATES PR: This is going to get worse. They are going to use this and blow it up way beyond anything that the evidence supports.

WRIGHT: At a recent book signing in Chicago, Al Gore was a soft target.
                                
UNIDENTIFIED MALE PROTESTER: Research Climategate! This guy is a fraud! It's a scam!

WRIGHT: The protesters wasted little time posting their antics online, where their message now has a worldwide megaphone. David Wright, ABC News, Washington.

CBS Evening News:

KATIE COURIC: President Obama will be spending a lot of time on Air Force One. He's flying tonight to Oslo where he'll accept the Nobel Peace Prize tomorrow. He returns home on Friday. But next week, it's back to Scandinavia for the climate conference in Copenhagen. The U.S. and China squared off there today, each accusing the other of failing to cut greenhouse gases. And Wyatt Andrews tells us the entire conference is taking place under a cloud that's become known as Climategate.

WYATT ANDREWS: To anyone skeptical about the science of global warming-
                    
REP. DARRELL ISSA (R-CA): Climategate.

REP. MIKE PENCE (R-IN): Climategate.

REP. MARSHA BLACKBURN (R-TN): Climategate.

ANDREWS: -Climategate is the biggest scandal ever.

GLENN BECK: They're just cooking the books.

ANDREWS: Climategate is the term being used for a handful of e-mails stolen last month from  the influential CRU, the Climatic Research Unit in England. By far, the most embarrassing e-mail is from 1999 in which CRU's director Phil Jones brags that he's used a trick to "hide the decline." "Hide the decline" meaning hiding studies from tree rings that show the earth cooling since 1960 when actual temperatures show a trend toward warming. The phrase "hide the decline" is now so infamous it's being spoofed on YoutTube.

CLIP OF VIDEO WITH CARTOONS OF PROF MICHAEL MANN AND A COW SINGING:: Hide the decline, hide the decline.

ANDREWS: And the fact that global temperatures have gone down in some years was in other e-mails, with one scientist lamenting, "we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment, and it is a travesty that we cant." To many Republicans, Climategate proves that global warming is a deception.

REP. JAMES SENSENBRENNER (R-WI): And at worst it's junk science, and it is a part of a massive international scientific fraud.

ANDREWS: But if that's true, it's a fraud adopted by most of the world's leading scientists, along with NASA, the U.N., the American Medical Association, and the National Academies of Science of 32 countries, including the United States. To most of them, Climategate is a sideshow compared to one overwhelming fact:

PROF. MICHAEL MANN: The last decade is the warmest decade on record.

ANDREWS: Michael Mann is the professor who's being lampooned in that YouTube video. Mann says "hide the decline" was never an attempt to deceive, it was the use of real temperatures to show a real trend.

MANN: Those who deny the existence of this problem, who don't have the science on their side, have instead engaged in a smear campaign to distract the public, to distract policymakers.

ANDREWS: Climategate advocates do want political traction. They hope any uncertainty over manmade global warming might change the President's plan to offer CO2 cuts in Copenhagen next week. Wyatt Andrews, CBS News, Washington.

ABC and CBS discounted the scientific relevance of the admissions and obfuscations displayed in the ClimateGate e-mails, but on Wednesday night they finally devoted full stories to the controversy and quoted the “most-damning” of the e-mails, the ones referring to a “trick” to “hide the decline” in a temperature measurement and in which a scientist fretted “we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment, and it is a travesty that we can't.”

The two networks, however, painted the “stolen” e-mails not as laudatory whistle-blowing, but as an unwanted impediment to the left's global warming agenda. “Just as the world seems finally poised to do something about global warming, an inconvenient scandal,” ABC's David Wright began in playing off the title of Al Gore's movie. He despaired that “as the controversy heats up, the consensus about making the tough choices to curb carbon emissions threatens to crumble.”

On CBS, Wyatt Andrews relayed how “to many Republicans, Climategate proves that global warming is a deception,” before he countered: “But if that's true, it's a fraud adopted by most of the world's leading scientists, along with NASA, the U.N., the American Medical Association, and the National Academies of Science of 32 countries, including the United States. To most of them, Climategate is a sideshow compared to one overwhelming fact:” Viewers then were treated to this declaration from the scientist with the “hide the decline” boast: “The last decade is the warmest decade on record.”

ABC anchor Charles Gibson set up the World News segment:

In Copenhagen right now, world leaders are focused on the long-term and potentially devastating effects of climate change, global warming. And for all the scientific ammunition being presented at the U.N. conference, some stolen e-mails are giving encouragement to global warming skeptics.

Meanwhile, NBC continued its blackout of any embarrassing disclosures in the e-mails as anchor Brian Williams introduced a story:

As we've been reporting, there's been a world conference going on in Copenhagen. It's about climate change and global warming, but that subject heated up here today with a newspaper article by Sarah Palin, and then a return shot from Al Gore.

Reporter Anne Thompson concluded with the usual agenda: “At the climate talks, the bigger issue is American credibility, and will the United States live up to its promise to cut carbon dioxide emissions?”

Earlier rundowns of how the evening newscasts have ignored and dismissed ClimateGate:

Friday: “NBC Nightly News Takes Up ClimateGate, But Frets It Could 'Delay Taking Action'”

Sunday: “ABC and NBC Acknowledge 'ClimateGate,' But Remain Undeterred: 'Science is Solid'”

Monday: “Nets Panic: Clock at Zero in 'Life and Death' Effort to Avoid 'Global Catastrophe'”

Tuesday: “CBS and NBC Trumpet UN Predictions About Warmest Decade Since 1850”

The MRC's Brad Wilmouth corrected the closed-captioning against the video to provide these transcripts of the stories on the Wednesday, December 9 evening newscasts:

ABC’s World News:

CHARLES GIBSON, IN OPENING TEASER: Hot topic: Did scientists skew their research to support theories about global warming?

...
            
GIBSON, BEFORE COMMERCIAL BREAK: And still ahead on World News, have global warming skeptics found a smoking gun? The controversy over climate change will be our "Closer Look."

...

GIBSON: We began tonight's broadcast with the powerful blast of bitter cold and snow that's blanketing much of the country – and its powerful, to be sure. But its effects will be short-lived. In contrast, in Copenhagen right now, world leaders are focused on the long-term and potentially devastating effects of climate change, global warming. And for all the scientific ammunition being presented at the U.N. conference, some stolen e-mails are giving encouragement to global warming skeptics. David Wright has our "Closer Look."

DAVID WRIGHT: Just as the world seems finally poised to do something about global warming, an inconvenient scandal.

GLENN BECK, FOX NEWS CHANNEL: Let's start with the science that has been so settled for all these years.

WRIGHT: Skeptics of climate change suddenly have plenty of new fodder.

REP. JAMES SENSENBRENNER (R-WI): There is increasing evidence of scientific fascism that's going on.

WRIGHT: 1,000 e-mails dating back more than a dozen years stolen from a top climate research center in Britain.

SENATOR JAMES INHOFE (R-OK): For the taxpayers' sake, let's look at this controversy from top to bottom.

WRIGHT: As the controversy heats up, the consensus about making the tough choices to curb carbon emissions threatens to crumble.

JON STEWART, THE DAILY SHOW: Poor Al Gore! Global warming completely debunked via the very Internet you invented. Oh!

WRIGHT: In the e-mails, the scientists are downright dismissive of naysayers. In one message, a researcher at Lawrence Livermore Labs offers to "beat the crap out of" a leading skeptic. In another, Penn State's Michael Mann suggests hiding data from dissenters, writing, "This is the sort of ‘dirty laundry' one doesn't want to fall into the wrong hands."

MICHAEL MANN: Imagine somebody going through all of the emails you ever sent, looking for a single word or phrase that could be twisted.

WRIGHT: One of the most damning e-mail exchanges credits Mann with a "trick" to "hide the decline" in temperatures. In another, the head of the National Center for Atmospheric Research writes a colleague, "The fact is, we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment, and it is a travesty that we can't."

KEVIN TRENBERTH, NATIONAL CENTER FOR ATMOSPHERIC RESEARCH: It shows human nature at work, but I don't think it throws any, casts any aspersions on the science.

WRIGHT: Global warming may be a scientific issue, but it's also a hot-button political debate. So right now, the scientists aren't the only ones on the defensive. Politicians are, too.

LISA JACKSON, EPA ADMINISTRATOR: There is nothing in the hacked e-mails that undermines the science.

WRIGHT: That may be true, but the e-mails threaten to undermine the political effort under way in Copenhagen.

JAMES HOGGAN, HOGGAN AND ASSOCIATES PR: This is going to get worse. They are going to use this and blow it up way beyond anything that the evidence supports.

WRIGHT: At a recent book signing in Chicago, Al Gore was a soft target.
                                
UNIDENTIFIED MALE PROTESTER: Research Climategate! This guy is a fraud! It's a scam!

WRIGHT: The protesters wasted little time posting their antics online, where their message now has a worldwide megaphone. David Wright, ABC News, Washington.

CBS Evening News:

KATIE COURIC: President Obama will be spending a lot of time on Air Force One. He's flying tonight to Oslo where he'll accept the Nobel Peace Prize tomorrow. He returns home on Friday. But next week, it's back to Scandinavia for the climate conference in Copenhagen. The U.S. and China squared off there today, each accusing the other of failing to cut greenhouse gases. And Wyatt Andrews tells us the entire conference is taking place under a cloud that's become known as Climategate.

WYATT ANDREWS: To anyone skeptical about the science of global warming-
                    
REP. DARRELL ISSA (R-CA): Climategate.

REP. MIKE PENCE (R-IN): Climategate.

REP. MARSHA BLACKBURN (R-TN): Climategate.

ANDREWS: -Climategate is the biggest scandal ever.

GLENN BECK: They're just cooking the books.

ANDREWS: Climategate is the term being used for a handful of e-mails stolen last month from  the influential CRU, the Climatic Research Unit in England. By far, the most embarrassing e-mail is from 1999 in which CRU's director Phil Jones brags that he's used a trick to "hide the decline." "Hide the decline" meaning hiding studies from tree rings that show the earth cooling since 1960 when actual temperatures show a trend toward warming. The phrase "hide the decline" is now so infamous it's being spoofed on YoutTube.

CLIP OF VIDEO WITH CARTOONS OF PROF MICHAEL MANN AND A COW SINGING:: Hide the decline, hide the decline.

ANDREWS: And the fact that global temperatures have gone down in some years was in other e-mails, with one scientist lamenting, "we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment, and it is a travesty that we cant." To many Republicans, Climategate proves that global warming is a deception.

REP. JAMES SENSENBRENNER (R-WI): And at worst it's junk science, and it is a part of a massive international scientific fraud.

ANDREWS: But if that's true, it's a fraud adopted by most of the world's leading scientists, along with NASA, the U.N., the American Medical Association, and the National Academies of Science of 32 countries, including the United States. To most of them, Climategate is a sideshow compared to one overwhelming fact:

PROF. MICHAEL MANN: The last decade is the warmest decade on record.

ANDREWS: Michael Mann is the professor who's being lampooned in that YouTube video. Mann says "hide the decline" was never an attempt to deceive, it was the use of real temperatures to show a real trend.

MANN: Those who deny the existence of this problem, who don't have the science on their side, have instead engaged in a smear campaign to distract the public, to distract policymakers.

ANDREWS: Climategate advocates do want political traction. They hope any uncertainty over manmade global warming might change the President's plan to offer CO2 cuts in Copenhagen next week. Wyatt Andrews, CBS News, Washington.

This week, diplomats from around the world are gathering in Copenhagen for the global climate change summit—an event that has been marked by controversy in the wake of the “climate-gate” scandal that has recently and rightly gained significant international media attention.

This scandal has provoked many questions that I believe deserve answers.  Among other things, it would seem that information relating to climate change research may have been held back from the public— and key decision-makers, too.  This could of course impact the appropriateness and effectiveness of policy that the US, and indeed world leaders, might pursue.  Before moving forward, given the potentially significant economic consequences associated with some of the steps under consideration, I personally think it is important to get a handle on all the facts, whether they be good, bad or ugly.

Unfortunately, Barbara Boxer and her colleagues in Congress who seek to pass major cap and trade legislation that analysis shows is a job killer take a different view—and have different questions they want answered.

Boxer, specifically, has been more concerned about legal issues surrounding how this information became publicly available than she has been in the information itself. I am not in any way arguing that criminal activity should be ignored. I believe an investigation as to how this information became public is warranted.  However, I think it is equally crucial that we also fully examine and consider the substance of information that has been brought to light already.

Ironically, Barbara Boxer has been happy to advocate for the publication of information relating to the climate change debate in the past.  In July of last year, she demanded the public release of internal EPA data on climate change which she said constituted “the strongest language I have ever seen or that you have ever seen” substantiating that man-made global warming was occurring and constituted a major threat. At the time she said such data “belongs in the hands of the American people.”  She also called on EPA officials to “release every document” related to an email at the center of the controversy, and blasted the Bush administration for “suppressing information.”

So, what is different here?  Well, mainly, the fact that at that time, the information in question supported her position on this issue.  Now that we’re talking about information that may not support that conclusion, she isn’t interested in making sure the facts are available to the American people.

In business and in my own life I try to make decisions and solve problems based on all of the available facts. Ultimately, an uninformed decision is likely to be a bad one, and that is why I find Barbara Boxer’s response to this situation so unacceptable.

We deserve better from our elected officials, just as we do scientists researching important matters affecting lives and our economy. We deserve to know the truth – and to know our representatives in Washington, DC, will prioritize that, even when it is politically inconvenient for them.

Is the Associated Press distributing a doctored photo that news organizations are now running in their Copenhagen coverage?

Founding Bloggers’ very own, Allan Sluis, is calling attention to an image that just might be the latest example of what has come to be know as “Fauxtography” – or – passing doctored images off as good faith representations of reality.

Below is a detailed examination of the image, beginning with the shot as it was displayed Monday, December 7th, on Foxnews.com (Fox link via SPQA.org):

And here is the image as seen without the cropping Fox News applied. It is from the Baltimore Sun, dated July 2009:

Oh those poor geese flying right through those rust colored smoke plumes! They might start dropping out of the sky at any moment!

But what if the truth is not as apocalyptic as the AP image appears to depict?

A number of things about this image look unusual to Allan, who is a professional photo retoucher and graphic illustrator with nearly 20 years experience pushing pixels.

Below is the image with arrows highlighting specific features which upon close examination look very suspect, calling into question the honesty of the presentation of this picture.

Allan’s observations:

There is ample reason to believe that this photograph supplied to news organizations by the Associated Press has been substantially color-enhanced, perhaps to convey a false impression of pollution coming from a smoke stack from a purported coal-fueled power plant in Kansas. Here is a detailed description of the evidence that the original photo was either a black-and-white image, or a color image which was converted to black-and-white, and then colorized for dramatic effect.

A1: Note this area of smoke rising directly from the smokestack is mysteriously missing any orange tone.

A2: Notice the unusual falloff of orange color in the background clouds (yes, those are clouds) just to the right of the smoke rising directly from the smokestack.

A3: A close examination reveals an unnaturally saturated hard color edge on that particular smoke lump.

B: Another unnatural saturation intensity increase to the left of the arrow. Note how rapid the orange tint fades in intensity on the left and the right of the arrow point.

C1, C2 & C3: These three arrows surround an area of sloppy retouching where the color tint was painted in too intense and abrupt to be convincing. Note how this color area pops substantially and quite suspiciously. This is also direct evidence that the retoucher is likely deliberately trying to blur the distinction between the actual smoke rising from the smokestack and the BACKGROUND CLOUDS deceptively conveying the impression that the entire area is choked with nasty orange pollution. This deceptive color continues right across the top of the smokestack and to the right going right over the background clouds.

D: Another area marked by the arrow point where the background clouds were not completely color tinted by the retoucher and the background gray is visibly missing orange tone.

Next, Allan began to reconstruct what he felt the original image might have looked like before it was allegedly enhanced, and in doing so, made a surprising discovery:

The evidence that this photo was originally a grayscale or black-and-white image was arrived at with a simple Photoshop process. We encourage other Photoshop enthusiasts and experts to recreate our work. (Here is the largest version of the image we could find)

1) Add a “Hue/Sat” adjustment layer directly above the original jpeg.

2) Drop the saturation percentage for both the Yellows and Reds Edit category down to zero.

Note how the image is now a perfectly even balance of the Red Green and Blue. This is easily viewable in the Info palette as you move the cursor over the image.

This is only possible if the original image is black-and-white or grayscale.

In a normal full-color image, there WILL be variances in the tone of the blues and greens. The desaturating of the Yellows and Reds would not touch the cooler colors. The other colors are not there.

This leads me to believe that this is a black and white image that has been colorized!

It is not possible to know if the camera original photograph is a black-and-white, but the evidence overwhelmingly indicates that the jpeg being distributed was colorized from a black-and-white image.

Here is what the image likely looked like before it was colorized:

We also in Hue/Sat discovered that the tone of the smokestack itself has been darkened substantially. A simple “Lightness” move in the same adjustment layer to the Master category readily shows this.

Below is how the image is displayed on the AP website where they are selling it to news organizations. Note the creation date. This dud has been out there for a while:

FILE – The Jan. 10, 2009 file photo shows a flock of geese flying past a smokestack at the Jeffery Energy Center coal power plant near Emmitt, Kan.. Sweeping legislation to curb the pollution linked to global warming and create a new energy-efficient economy is headed to an uncertain future in the Senate after squeaking through the House. The vote was a big win for President Barack Obama, who hailed House passage as a “historic action.” “It’s a bold and necessary step that holds the promise of creating new industries and millions of new jobs, decreasing our dangerous dependence on foreign oil and strictly limiting the release of pollutants that threaten the health of families and communities and the planet itself,” Obama said in a statement on Friday, June 26, 2009. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel, File)

---

Location	Emmitt, KANSAS, United States
Event	US Climate Bill
Creation Date	Saturday, January 10, 2009 4:10 PM
Submit Date	Saturday, June 27, 2009 8:19 AM
Special Instructions	JAN. 10, 2009 FILE PHOTO
Transmission Reference	FRA104
Image ID	090110050409
Image Resolution‡	3356 x 2465 – 786.68 KB
Byline Title	STF
Credit	ASSOCIATED PRESS
Person	Barack Obama
Photographer	Charlie Riedel
Category	International News
Source	AP

The AP image looks much more red than the images media outlets have published, leading us to wonder if even media outlets felt that the image was over the top in it’s “original” form, and dialed it back a bit.

Well AP….are we wrong???

Nobel Laureate Al Gore Wednesday called former Alaska governor Sarah Palin a "global warming denier."

Speaking with MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell, Gore also repeated his false claim about ClimateGate e-mail messages obtained from Britain's Climatic Research Unit: "the most recent one is like ten years ago."

As Andrew Bolt reported Wednesday at Australia's Herald Sun, the most recent e-mail message obtained from CRU was sent less than a month ago on November 12.

Unfortunately, much like his appearance on CNN earlier in the day, Gore was playing fast and loose with the facts.

Sadly, his MSNBC interviewer was similarly disinterested in challenging the former Vice President about his mistatements, and also never once asked him about his own financial interests in this matter (video embedded below the fold with partial transcript):

ANDREA MITCHELL, MSNBC: Earlier this morning I sat down with former Vice President Al Gore to talk about climate change, his new book, "Our Choice," and Sarah Palin. Today, in an op-ed in the Washington Post, Palin is escalating her attack on the Copenhagen Summit. Palin calls it junk science, and writes that "The agenda-driven policies being pushed in Copenhagen won't change the weather, but they would change our economy for the worse." I asked Al Gore to respond.

AL GORE: The global warming deniers persist in this era of unreality. After all, the entire North Polar ice cap, which has been there for most of the last 3 million years, is disappearing before our eyes. 40 percent's already gone. The rest is expected to go completely within the next decade. What do they think is causing this? The mountain glaciers in every region of the world are melting, many of them at an accelerated rate, threatening drinking supplies, drinking water supplies, and agricultural water supplies. We have these record storms, droughts, floods, fires, and tree deaths in the American west. Climate refugees beginning now, expected to rise to the hundreds of millions unless we take action. These effects are taking place all over the world exactly as predicted by the scientists who have warned for years that if we continue putting 90 million tons of global warming pollution into the atmosphere every day, the accumulation is going to trap lots more heat, raise temperatures, and cause all of these consequences that are already beginning.

MITCHELL: Well, one of the things that she has written recently on Facebook is that this is "Doomsday scare tactics, pushed by an environmental priesthood that makes the public feel like owning an SUV is a sin against the planet."

GORE: Well, the scientific community has worked very intensively for 20 years within this international process and they now say the evidence is unequivocal. 150 years ago this year was the discovery that CO2 traps heat. That is a principle in physics. It is not a question of debate. It is like gravity. It exists.

MITCHELL: If it is so unequivocal, I've got to ask you about the leaks of those e-mails. Even today Tom Friedman talks about them massaging the evidence. Why would they feel the need to hype the evidence if it is so unequivocal? Some scientists, I should say.

Gore: Yeah, I don't think they did. I haven't read all of the e-mails that were stolen there from -- the most recent one is like ten years ago. And what they have done is they have snatched a few phrases completely out of context. I will give you an example. One of the off-quoted phrases has to do with the scientists saying that a particular study isn't good science and shouldn't be included in the international report. Well, that was their view. They exchanged it privately. The study was included, fully aired, discussed, the weak points were analyzed. What -- the other points were analyzed. So it is an example of how these private exchanges had been blown out of proportion, taken out of context, and misrepresented.

MITCHELL: At the same time, there is an economic impact. It is harder to persuade a lot of people, lot of Americans, unemployed, facing the effects of this recession, that the up-front costs of doing something about global warming are worth it. No doubt that there are, you know, overwhelming economic benefits down the road. But how do you persuade people in the middle of a recession that this should be their immediate priority?

GORE: Well, for one thing, when the world went into the recession, interest rates were already so low that the only economic policy tools that governments had to try to stimulate the economy was to have stimulus spending. And the need to build new infrastructure to accommodate the shift away from imported oil on which we have a growing dangerous dependence pushed many countries including the U.S. to devote a substantial part of that stimulus to a green stimulus. Now we have the opportunity to create millions of good new jobs in making this transition. Just the retrofitting of homes, with better windows and lighting and insulation to save money on their energy bills and put millions of people to work in local communities in jobs that cannot be outsourced. Building the smart grids, building the solar, wind, geothermal renewable energy systems, planting trees. These are all job creators that help to stimulate the economy and produce sustainable growth.

MITCHELL: Even if they are net job creators nationally, there are going to be areas in the Rust Belt, Michigan let's say, where there is a net loss from the effects of doing something, of making a commitment and of spending billions of dollars to help poor countries adjust, the commitments that are being expected of the President and of the United States government at Copenhagen.

GORE: Well, I think the losses of jobs started a long time ago with the outsourcing to other countries for a variety of reasons, including the cheaper labor costs. It is not -- not because of the response to global warming. The response to global warming can bring jobs back. I will give you an example. There's this company called Cardinal Fasteners in Ohio that is very proud to have made the bolts for the Golden Gate bridge and the Statue of Liberty. And they had some hard times. Now they are -- hiring people back, making bolts for windmills, and these wind farm insulations. The governor of Michigan, Governor Granholm, is one of the most vigorous advocates of bringing jobs back into some of these Rust Belt areas that were hard hit years ago, but now see the hope for a renaissance, putting people to work building these new renewable energy insulations.

Stop the tape. Here's another instance of Gore playing fast and loose with the facts. 

On January 29, Cleveland.com reported: 

Cardinal Fastener & Specialty Co., the Bedford Heights bolt company that President Barack Obama spotlighted days before his inauguration as an example of a manufacturer able to grow by supplying parts to the wind turbine industry, has laid off about eight of its 65 workers. The layoffs came just two weeks after the company was able to hire two workers to help with expanding orders. President John Grabner said he cut 12 percent of the work force because orders have decreased significantly for the industrial products that still account for 80 percent of his business - bolts for bridges, large buildings and heavy-equipment makers like Caterpillar. "The wind business is good, but they have slowed down also," he said.  

A LexisNexis search identified no reports of Cardinal Fasteners hiring people since this layoff, although it did identify Gore making this same claim on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" over a month ago:

There's one example in Ohio, a company called Cardinal Fasteners. They're proud they made the bolts for the Golden Gate Bridge and for the Statue of Liberty. And they went through some tough times. Now they're hiring people back to make bolts for windmills. And we're seeing these jobs. 

But I digress:

MITCHELL: As you know in "Our choice," there is a real partisan divide when it comes to people's attitudes. The Pew poll that you cite says 75 percent of college educated Democrats believe humans are responsible. Only 19 percent of college-educated Republicans. How do you figure that?

GORE: It may be partly because the tendency for many people to follow their perceived political leaders and the leadership of the modern Republican Party has really gotten into a global warming denier posture that I think has influenced some people. But it should not be a political issue. It really is a moral issue. It speaks to the responsibility of the present generation to take steps to safeguard those generations yet to come. Because this has now reached the level where if we were not to act, the consequences already beginning at a low level are predicted to reach catastrophic levels unless we take steps to prevent it from happening.

MITCHELL: There's been, according to the Pew Research, a 20% drop in the number of people in the last year. Since 2008, 71% believed that humans contributed to global warming and now it is only 51%. Do you attribute to that to the economic hard times and people focusing inward?

GORE: Well, I think that result dove tails with the first one that you cited because when you look inside that study, virtually 100% of those who changed their opinion were conservative Republicans.

Stop the tape! Once again, Gore was playing fast and loose with the facts. Here's what Pew reported on October 22:

The decline in the belief in solid evidence of global warming has come across the political spectrum, but has been particularly pronounced among independents. Just 53% of independents now see solid evidence of global warming, compared with 75% who did so in April 2008. Republicans, who already were highly skeptical of the evidence of global warming, have become even more so: just 35% of Republicans now see solid evidence of rising global temperatures, down from 49% in 2008 and 62% in 2007. Fewer Democrats also express this view - 75% today compared with 83% last year. 

Honestly, how does Gore get away with making stuff up like this? But again, I digress:

GORE: And the -- this should be a bipartisan issue. It used to be. And the -- the extreme partisanship we have seen in recent years, I think has affected the way our country has responded to this. Now, beneath the surface, there have been a lot of Republicans, a lot of people that used to be skeptics actually moving towards an acceptance of this science and a determination to do something about it. Lindsey Graham, for example, from South Carolina, is one of those Republicans in the Senate who is now saying look, the evidence tells us we have really got to take action. A lot of -- in the faith based community. A lot of fundamentalist groups are now saying, you know, the earth is the Lord's and fullness thereof and we have an obligation to be good stewards of the planet. And -- so -- I see signs of optimism and hope, even though in an economic recession, naturally when you ask people to list their priorities, they are going to place a higher priority on the immediate economic situation. [...]

Later, Mitchell asked an astoundingly preposterous question for a so-called journalist:

MITCHELL: In "Our Choice," you cite some interesting psychological data. What is it about the way we think that makes it so difficult for people, for many people, obviously not everyone, to accept the facts as you see them?

What is it about the way we think that makes it so difficult for people, for many people, obviously not everyone, to accept the facts as you see them?

Maybe, Andrea, it's because WE are capable of thinking for ourselves and questioning whether what people are telling us is indeed how they see things and NOT facts.

One would think a journalist would know that.

Of course, one would also expect someone in the news industry to ask Gore about his financial interests in global warming.

Alas, Mitchell never did.

Nice job, Andrea. 

Sarah Palin isn't getting much of a break these days from anyone on the left end of the political spectrum.

In the Dec. 9 Washington Post, an op-ed appeared by the former Alaska governor, in which she called on President Barack Obama to boycott the current Copenhagen climate summit in the wake of the "Climategate" e-mail leak.

"Without trustworthy science and with so much at stake, Americans should be wary about what comes out of this politicized conference," Palin wrote. "The president should boycott Copenhagen."

The op-ed, specifically that paragraph, drew the ire of some prominent lefties, including The Daily Beast's Editor in Chief Tina Brown and Time magazine political columnist Joe Klein. Brown said Palin's call on Obama to boycott was "grandstanding" without basis on MSNBC's Dec. 9 broadcast of "Morning Joe."

"Isn't that the difference between a book tour and being president?" Brown said. "I mean, I know - here, here is Obama sort of actually trying to wrestle with the nitty-gritty problems of the world," Brown said. "And she is on a book tour, basically grandstanding, you know - free-associating policy initiatives and so forth. She has absolutely no requirement to -"

On Time's Web site in a post dated Dec. 9, Klein took a shot at Palin's call on Obama, implicitly dismissing the potential problems with the University of East Anglia climate data:

The Washington Post devotes valuable op-ed space today to Sarah Palin, who uses it to denounce "politicized science":

I've always believed that policy should be based on sound science, not politics.

Okay. But she's not denouncing the politicized, oil-drenched policies of the Bush Administration. She's joining the right-wing hysteria chorus, which has launched a new attack on the science of climate change based on some embarrassing and disgraceful emails written by scientists at the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit.

 "Morning Joe" co-anchor Mika Brzezinski, who reiterated this notion, questioned whether Palin's stance resulted from a truly heartfelt sentiment on the hoax of anthropogenic global warming, or a way to sell her book and exploit Obama's diminishing popularity.

"One final note on Sarah Palin," Brzezinski said. "And I wonder if you agree. This happened a little bit during the election, especially when she was out at rallies, really going negative - some of the things she was saying about her opponent, but I feel what she's got is this comfortable spot with this book and book tour, where she can capitalize on the anger that's out there about the current state of our economy and jobs."

There have been numerous ostentatiously pathetic efforts to distract from what ClimateGate has not “revealed”, but affirmed, in the principals’ own words, and this mewling is getting more pathetic by the attempt.

Sitting in the chair waiting to participate in a CNN program Monday night largely dedicated to the issue — or, rather, what proved to be an embarrassingly slanted effort at to diminishing it, in its language and approach though to the channel’s credit they at least let me and Steve McIntyre on — I listened to the program’s lead-in. It entailed childish language like that the program will have “scientists and skeptics” (good grief), but also a remarkably insistent emphasis — with nothing whatsoever to back the claim up — on the exposed material being “hacked emails” (with no mention of computer code, annotations, other documentation and the like contained in the exposed trove; now that’s some serious bias).

There also is nothing in the record to suggest a hacking. Indeed,  there is tremendous reason to suspect a whistleblower, tracing back the evolution of the demands for the information, the denials, and the information’s path into the public realm. Yet whichever it was changes nothing about the substance, all of which is found in documents subject to the UK’s freedom of information act.

Which raises the second, ultra-whiny complaint sniffing about “private emails”. Actually, in looking into this I have yet to see one private email. So far I have only found more than a thousand emails subject to the UK’s freedom of information act, discussing taxpayer funded projects and professional advocacy. Someone might volunteer some of these private emails. And computer code, annotations, etc.

Then comes the substance-free hand-wringing that the pre-Copenhagen timing of this involuntary compliance with the transparency laws — which could have been accomplished years earlier if only the hucksters weren’t hiding and destroying the evidence — gives cause to probably better just ignore it all because the wrong kind of people must be behind getting it out into the open. Oh.

Besides, the BBC  has admitted it had the material six weeks before others stumbled onto it, which, given the history of how UK whistleblowers work, also informs a conclusion that a whistleblower sought to get the material out in response to Phil Jones’s latest effort to avoid providing the raw data. That was to claim that he lost it (which doesn’t pass the red face test for several reasons not least of which is there are no “oh, snap!” emails indicating concern among these alarmists that they did look only to see they actually had lost the raw data they had been refusing access to for years on ever-changing bases).

But the most revealing tantrum comes to me today in an email explaining that the fraudster-funded DeSmogBlog wants to take the discussion in the following direction: the skeptics, and particularly the Competitive Enterprise Institute, had the information before saying anything about it. If so that would somehow indicate we have some involvement in whatever process it was — hacking, whistleblowing — that forced at least partial compliance with long-obstructed requests under the UK’s freedom of information act. Because apparently that would impact the importance of what the information affirms. Their evidence is that we were able to see right away what this material signified. It is that self-evident. but nothing is easy for the alarmists. Just as with climate that’s always changing, they are able to see nefariousness behind the simplest observation.

But they are confusing us with the BBC, having the information as of October 12 but also to having sat on it until after others had let the nasty kitten out of the bag, at which point the guy who had received it in early October said he was buys and would figure out what to say about it soon.

This is somewhat similar to CEI, if for about six weeks longer than we waited. Indeed, I’ve checked with my colleagues, and their experience was like mine. I received an email notifying me that the materials were posted on an obscure site, on Wednesday November 18. Then I received another the next day, and posted an item here saying to keep an eye on what develops.

All of which I really think is to say that the alarmists recognize full-well what threat these affirmations pose. The substance terrifies them. It is so damning that they’re flailing about to assign some miscreance to its emergence to tar it. Although as a matter of, well, substance, that would not do so. And they want to do everything they can to avoid addressing the substance. Because the substance dooms them.

Al Gore warned CNN viewers Wednesday about imminent planetary doom at the hands of his favorite bogeyman global warming just seconds before Kiran Chetry reported the "monster storm paralyzing travel in more than a dozen states" with "winter still two weeks away."

On "American Morning" to discuss issues surrounding the United Nations climate change conference taking place in Copenhagen, the former Vice President said, "All the mountain glaciers all over the world are melting, many of them at a greatly accelerated rate, threatening drinking water supplies."

Shortly after this ominous forecast, Chetry told viewers, "Winter still two weeks away, but snow plows are out from the plains to the Northeast. A monster storm paralyzing travel in more than a dozen states."

The Global Warmingist in Chief also downplayed the significance of the growing ClimateGate scandal as e-mail messages "from ten years ago out of context" that "the noise machine of the climate deniers" are blowing "out of proportion" to "fool some people into thinking they have substance" (videos in two parts embedded below the fold courtesy our friends at Story Balloon with full transcript):

JOHN ROBERTS, CNN ANCHOR: We're back with the Most News in the Morning.

A groundbreaking climate change summit underway in Copenhagen, Denmark. President Obama will be there next week.

KIRAN CHETRY, CNN ANCHOR: That's right. And in preparation he spoke with former Vice President Al Gore who's been sounding the alarm about global warming for decades. And this morning the former vice president and Nobel Peace prize winner joins us for an exclusive interview.

ROBERTS: He's also the author of "Our Choice." It's a new book, a plan to solve the climate crisis. Mr. Vice President, thanks for dropping by. It's always good to see you.

AL GORE, FORMER U.S. VICE PRESIDENT: Always a pleasure.

ROBERTS: We should let folks know too we're going to spend an extended amount of time on this because there's lots of questions to ask. First and foremost among them, I'm sure that you're familiar with what's being done, climate-gate, University of East Anglia, the Climatic Research Center, all of those e-mails that were hacked. We saw language like, trick, used, hide the decline, resistance to Freedom of Information Act requests. I wonder what your thoughts are about this. And on the surface at the very least, does it look suspicious?

GORE: Well, they took a few phrases out of context. These are private e-mails, more than ten years old, and they've tried to blow it up into something that is really not.

Just to pick one example, some of those exchanges you're talking about had to do with years ago whether or not a study that they thought was of poor quality and shouldn't belong in the scientific report should be excluded from the report. Well, they had exchanges back and forth, it ended up in the report.

ROBERTS: Right.

GORE: Fully analyzed and discussed. So if you take one little thing from ten years ago out of context and describe it inaccurately, then it becomes a controversy without any real substance.

ROBERTS: Some of them were from ten years but many of them were far more recent than that, some as recent as last year. You know, I talked with Professor Peter Liss, who is the interim director of the Climatic Research Unit. He thought that, in fact, this would have some sort of an impact on public opinion, that people who weren't sure or were skeptical might become more so. What do you think?

GORE: Well, that's a separate question. Is there any substantive reason to worry about them? No. Does the noise machine of the climate deniers blow them out of proportion and fool some people into thinking they have substance? Well, that's another -- that's another matter. And I don't know how to respond to that. Over time the scientific process whereby all these scientists pick over every detail openly and fully, that process works and that's the process they followed.

CHETRY: You know, it's interesting. In some parts of the book you talk about how it was harder to prove concrete or to have concrete examples several years ago, but as we've progressed in the years, it's gotten easier and easier to point to data suggesting this.

GORE: Yes.

CHETRY: Yet there were still people like Senator Inhofe who's going to this Copenhagen summit who says that it's the greatest hoax ever perpetuated. When we talk about public opinion, it's dropped a little bit in terms of whether or not global warming is caused by humans. In fact, we asked it last year. Fifty-four percent believed it. We asked it just last week and only 45 percent believe it.

Is it frustrating for you to think that perhaps less people believe humans are responsible for at least some of our climate change?

GORE: Well, again, if you put it in a longer context, 10, 12 years ago when the last of these big meetings took place, virtually no heads of state went out there. There was still a raging debate on points that have long since been settled. Now more than 70 heads of state are going to be in Copenhagen. They're close to getting a final agreement. It will probably be finalized next year after the political agreement that's expected next week.

But to the first part of your question, there's an air of unreality about the discussion of arcane points from e-mails from long ago. The north polar ice cap is melting before our very eyes. It's been the size of the continental United States for most of the last three million years, and now suddenly 40 percent of it is gone and the rest of it is expected to disappear within with five, 10, 15 years.

All the mountain glaciers all over the world are melting, many of them at a greatly accelerated rate, threatening drinking water supplies. We've had these record storms, record droughts, floods, giant fires, unprecedented all over the world. The evergreen trees of the American west are dying by the millions because the warming trend is making them vulnerable to pests that they could resist in the colder weather in which they evolved. Climate refugee flows are beginning and could reach the hundreds of millions, destabilizing political systems around the world. Sea levels are rising.

These changes are now beginning to unfold right in front of our eyes. The fact that they're distributed globally causes this problem to masquerade as an abstraction. It's not an abstraction for those who are being affected, nor would it be for our children and others who will be affected unless we take action now.

CHETRY: And it's interesting that you say it's not an abstraction. In your book "Our Choice," you also talk about what needs to be done. And moving forward, you say that you have to overcome change in the way we think, the cost of carbon and the political obstacles.

GORE: Yes.

CHETRY: Right now, one of the political obstacles in the way is this economy. A lot of people are out of work. A lot of people are saying we can't afford to do anything right now. What do you say to that?

GORE: Well, there's been an interesting consensus building around the world that actually one of the best ways to create millions of good new jobs and stimulate the economy is by investing in green infrastructure. When the world went into this global synchronized recession from which we're now thankfully beginning to emerge, interest rates were so low that economic policymakers couldn't use that tool so stimulus spending was the instrument of choice all around the world. And infrastructure spending was the favored option.

Many countries devoted even far, even larger percentages of that stimulus to building green infrastructure, in China, South Korea, et cetera. They see these industries as the key industries of the 21st century.

China will overtake the United States in wind next year, soon thereafter in solar. They're building the largest smart grid or super grid in the world. We have an opportunity to take these new jobs that are going to be created and plant them in local communities here in the United States and create millions of them. They can't be outsourced.

ROBERTS: Right. You know, in the book you lay out sort of a blueprint for how we can solve some of these problems. You talk about solar and wind, but that could only handle a percentage of things. You also talk about nuclear power, and the environmentalists pretty much put a bullet in any nuclear power development years ago.

Now they're coming out saying, well, this has to be a critical part of our infrastructure going forward. If they hadn't tried to kill nuclear power a couple of decades ago, how much further ahead would we be right now?

GORE: Just a brief part on the first part of your question, John, more sunlight falls on the surface of the earth in one hour than is necessary to provide the entire world's energy for a full year.

ROBERTS: But there are limitations with the technology.

GORE: Those limitations are yielding to dramatic improvements in the technology. But let me turn to your question about nuclear.

What really led to the stop -- almost a stop in nuclear power, was the cost. It's been going up 15 percent a year for 30 years. A $400 million reactor is now $4 billion reactor.

ROBERTS: But a lot of that cost was because of environmental regulation.

GORE: Well, I'll not sure that's actually the case. Some of it was. But the environmental regulations by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission have long since been redesigned to the industry's liking.

I'm not opposed to nuclear power, John. I don't believe that it was either the safety or environmental concerns that resulted in the primary obstacles that led to the industry coming to a standstill. It is the cost and where the global distribution of nuclear power plants is concerned. It is the demonstrated linkage between nuclear reactors and the threat of nuclear weapons proliferation. These cannot be placed by the tens of thousands around the world without putting nuclear weapons technology in the hands of people who we really do not think should have it.

CHETRY: Right.

ROBERTS: Let's leave it there for a second. I think we've got to take a break and we'll come back. We've got some viewers who have been selected over the last 24 hours. We'll put those to you right after the break.

GORE: Great.

ROBERTS: Thanks.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ROBERTS: Welcome back to the Most News in the Morning. We are back with our exclusive interview with former vice president and Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore.

CHETRY: That's right. And this morning, he's answering some of your questions. We let our viewers know that you would be here, and so there are a lot of people who want to ask you and find out a little bit more about this.

Tim Gibson wrote in, and he said with the revolution of scientists apparently, quote, "shifting data to suit the argument one way or another, how am I supposed to believe anyone one way or another?"

GORE: Well, the climate deniers tried to create the impression that that's what was in those stolen e-mails, but when you put them in context it's clear that's not what they were doing. This was an open process in which the studies that were being argued about actually were fully included and openly discussed and analyzed. So this was an example of people who don't want to do anything about the climate crisis taking things out of context and misrepresenting them.

ROBERTS: You know, he asked another question which was repeated by a lot of people as well. So, I think it's fair to give him two questions here. And that is, is there a natural cycle between ice age and warming? People keep arguing about, how much of this is just natural and how much of this does have a human component to it?

GORE: Yes, that's a great question. There are natural cycles related to the sun, related to the planet's orbit around the sun and so forth. But those natural cycles are now overwhelmed by the fact that we're putting 90 million tons every day of global warming pollution into this thin shell of atmosphere surrounding the planet.

The magnitude of the manmade changes has now overtaken and far surpassed the natural cycles. And many of the natural cycles actually are pointing in the opposite direction. The manmade global warming is now so pronounced that it is not only overwhelming in magnitude, but it is reversing what would otherwise be the effect from the natural cycles.

CHETRY: And that goes along with what David in Arizona asked you. He wants to know, please tell us what percentage of carbon dioxide is caused by human activity relative to other sources of carbon dioxide.

GORE: Well, the majority of it is caused by human activity, and a cutting-edge study now quantifies the different causes of global warming. About 43 percent or almost half is from CO2. Twenty-seven percent, a little more than a quarter, is from methane. Then there is black carbon, also referred to as soot, which in some areas of the world is a very, very pronounced cause. And then you have the nitrous oxides and carbon monoxide and so forth. But the largest single source is manmade CO2.

ROBERTS: Right. And Jim in Cleveland asks this question. He says, quote, "In a worst-case scenario, what's the soonest that the planet could reach critical mass if global warming persists at the current rates?"

People have talked about a level of, I think it's 350 parts per million as sort of the threshold here.

GORE: Yes.

ROBERTS: But he's wondering how much more carbon dioxide and how many more greenhouse gases can be pumped into the atmosphere before it reaches critical mass that no turning back point?

GORE: Well, in the view of many scientists, we have already reached critical mass if you define that phrase as reaching the point where there are going to be dramatic changes on the planet.

I mentioned earlier the north polar ice cap is disappearing right now. We're at 389 parts per million, almost 390, and some scientists, as you said, Kiran, say that 350 is probably the safe level we should shoot for.

They have already reached a kind of a compromise with the science in saying the best the political systems can imagine doing is stabilizing at 450, which is way higher than many scientists think is a safe level. But the danger is that we'll barrel through 450 and go way on up there, just making this an entirely different kind of planet from the one that had conditions that were conducive to the rise of human civilization.

CHETRY: Right. Which leads me to my question about what you hope comes out of this Copenhagen conference. I mean, even in the best-case scenario, we have the E.U. promising more than President Obama may promise.

GORE: Yes.

CHETRY: And he could still face a lot of pushback at home dealing with the wars and dealing with health care as well.

GORE: Yes.

CHETRY: I mean, how much is a political reality?

GORE: Well, I think this meeting, sometime toward the end of next week, we will probably see a political agreement among the heads of state gathered there, including President Obama, that will give instructions to the negotiators to fill in the details and get a binding treaty early next year. But in this political agreement they're shooting for, they will hope to also get specific commitments country by country to start the reductions process sooner than would start if we just waited for the treaty next year.

Now, this is where CNN's official transcript at its website ended. However, there was more:

ROBERTS: Former Vice President Gore, it's great to catch up with you again.

GORE: Thank you.

ROBERTS: Thanks so much for coming in.

GORE: My pleasure. Thanks for having me. Thank you, Kiran.

ROBERTS: Good to see you.

CHETRY: Thank you so much for answering the questions from our viewers as well. There's a lot of interest in this. Thanks a lot. Well, still ahead, it's three minutes past the hour. We have a look at the top stories right now. Winter still two weeks away, but snow plows are out from the plains to the Northeast. A monster storm paralyzing travel in more than a dozen states. Extremely dangerous, blizzard-like conditions and blizzard conditions themselves forecast for parts of the Midwest. Mix of rain, sleet, and heavy from New York all the way up to New England. 

Absolutely delicious. Yet, from what I can tell, CNN didn't include that in its 7AM ET transcript or its 8AM ET transcript. 

I wonder why.

Finally, Gore made so many false statements in this interview it's amazing. Potentially the most glaring was this exchange:

ROBERTS: Right. You know, in the book you lay out sort of a blueprint for how we can solve some of these problems. You talk about solar and wind, but that could only handle a percentage of things. You also talk about nuclear power, and the environmentalists pretty much put a bullet in any nuclear power development years ago.

Now they're coming out saying, well, this has to be a critical part of our infrastructure going forward. If they hadn't tried to kill nuclear power a couple of decades ago, how much further ahead would we be right now?

Great question, right? Here's Gore's pathetic answer:

GORE: Just a brief part on the first part of your question, John, more sunlight falls on the surface of the earth in one hour than is necessary to provide the entire world's energy for a full year.

ROBERTS: But there are limitations with the technology.

GORE: Those limitations are yielding to dramatic improvements in the technology. But let me turn to your question about nuclear.

What really led to the stop -- almost a stop in nuclear power, was the cost. It's been going up 15 percent a year for 30 years. A $400 million reactor is now $4 billion reactor.

ROBERTS: But a lot of that cost was because of environmental regulation.

GORE: Well, I'll not sure that's actually the case. Some of it was. But the environmental regulations by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission have long since been redesigned to the industry's liking.

I'm not opposed to nuclear power, John. I don't believe that it was either the safety or environmental concerns that resulted in the primary obstacles that led to the industry coming to a standstill. It is the cost and where the global distribution of nuclear power plants is concerned.

Can you imagine getting away with this? So, in Gore's view, the reason America moved away from nuclear power plants in the '70s and '80s was because of the cost?

That's absolute nonsense, and any thinking person knows this. 

Prior to the release of "The China Syndrome" and the accident at Three Mile Island, there were hundreds of licenses already granted for nuclear power plant construction around the country. However, after this incident in Pennsylvania and the release of Fonda's movie, the No Nukes movement gained steam, and no additional nuclear power plants were built here.

To suggest otherwise is an out and out lie, and Roberts shouldn't have let Gore get away with it.

Another astonishing falsehood occurred in the following exchange:

CHETRY: And that goes along with what David in Arizona asked you. He wants to know, please tell us what percentage of carbon dioxide is caused by human activity relative to other sources of carbon dioxide.

GORE: Well, the majority of it is caused by human activity, and a cutting-edge study now quantifies the different causes of global warming. About 43 percent or almost half is from CO2. Twenty-seven percent, a little more than a quarter, is from methane. Then there is black carbon, also referred to as soot, which in some areas of the world is a very, very pronounced cause. And then you have the nitrous oxides and carbon monoxide and so forth. But the largest single source is manmade CO2.

The majority of CO2 in the atmosphere is manmade? Nonsense.

In October 2000, the Department of Energy estimated that about 3 percent of the CO2 in the atmosphere was caused by man. 

After all, it is believed that the overwhelming majority of tropospheric CO2 existed before the year 1750 (288 parts per million).

In 2000, total tropospheric CO2 was 368 ppm. The increase was comprised of 68.5 ppm by natural causes, and only 11.9 ppm from man's activities, or about 3 percent.

As CO2 levels are currently at 385 ppm, saying the majority of atmospheric CO2 is manmade is nonsense.

Unfortunately, Chetry and Roberts let Gore get away with this falsehood as well.

Nice interview job, huh? 

 

CBS and NBC on Tuesday nightly eagerly pounced on the latest UN pronouncement about a warming world, without any regard for ClimateGate disclosures about manipulation of past data and without mentioning, as the AP noted, “the United States and Canada experienced cooler conditions than average.” CBS anchor Katie Couric announced: “At the world climate conference in Copenhagen today, scientists said this decade is on track to become the warmest since records were first kept back in 1850.”

NBC anchor Brian Williams touted “a big headline from that climate meeting going on in Copenhagen. The United Nations weather experts reported today this decade is on track to become the warmest since it started keeping records back in 1850. And 2009, they say, could rank among the top five warmest years ever.” He proceeded to set up a piece about Peru: “Anne Thompson shows us a place where they say the climate crisis is right there for all the world to see, in the form of glaciers melting and threatening the supply of fresh water.”

Couric recalled how “last night, Mark Phillips reported from the Maldives where rising seas could mean disaster, but there's a very different view in Greenland where melting glaciers could bring opportunity.”

But first, Phillips recounted more disaster in Greenland:

There's no mystery about the affect global warming is having on the great glaciers of Greenland. More ice breaking off and floating out to sea than has ever been observed before.... Greenland's most active glacier now sheds enough ice each year to cover Manhattan almost a mile deep. Space imagery of the glaciers shows how it's been shrinking back over the years, supporting the scientific consensus that the Greenland icecap is thinning. The melt water causing sea levels around the world to rise. Levels that are feared may rise another two feet or more this century by the most widely accepted estimates. These mountain-sized bergs have been called the best evidence of global warming on the planet....

Phillips, however, saw “a silver lining in the climate change cloud” in economic opportunity for the fishing-based land: “Mining companies are lining up to explore the rich deposits of gold, copper and iron-ore that are becoming more accessible as the ice recedes from the coastal regions.”

Thompson began her report on the Tuesday, December 8 NBC Nightly News:

Peru is a land of natural wonders. Its mystical Andes Mountains are home to most of the world's tropical glaciers. In the Cordillera Blanca, some three miles high, the 18,000-year-old glaciers are shrinking. Peruvian glaciologist Marco Zapata has spent three decades here, and he's stunned by the melt rate.

MARCO ZAPATA: The glaciers are depleting fast, so that means that the reserve of fresh water will disappear in the future.

THOMPSON: The most dramatic loss is visible in the Pastoruri glacier, now split in two. The shrinking of the Pastoruri Glacier has been fast and furious, losing 40 percent of its mass in just the last 13 years. The United Nations says the Andes glaciers could be gone by 2022, and with them their run-off. Climate change is to blame. The glaciers provide 85 percent of the fresh water for Peru's most populated area, and water generates 80 percent of the country's electricity. Peru's first environmental minister, Antonio Brack Egg, says the nation must take action now or risk water wars....

From the ever-awesome Angus McColloch:

If you go to Google today and search on the phrase "warmest decade" you will get a result set with thousands of breathless articles claiming that 2000 to 2009 is the warmest decade on record. This is on the cusp of an announcement from the UN climate talks in Copenhagen where world leaders are desperate to speed past Climategate and refocus the world's attention on their apocalyptic global warming agenda.

The media that couldn't bring themselves to report on the growing scandal surrounding falsified data is all on board with reporting this latest news. Yet it is clear that the Huffington Post, CBS News, the New York Times and others didn't even bother to check the data that was released from the the UK MET (UK Government Department of Climate and Weather Change). If they had they would have immediately discovered what I found, that the US csv (comma delimited) data dump from 1851 to 2009 is erroneous in its compilation. The January column for each year shows period information instead of temperature records and the latitude appears transposed as well. It appears that they incorrectly shifted the column headers when compling the dump. (Load the raw file into Excel and compare it with the UK csv data to see the erroneous data columns side by side. Data provided by the Guardian UK.) 

This data was provided as a means to "dampen the row over the hacked climate science emails".

The Met Office also released the raw data from around 1,500 global monitoring stations in an effort to satisfy critics who have demanded that researchers be more transparent with their data in the wake of the email hacking row at the University of East Anglia. (UK Guardian, Met Office figures confirm noughties as warmest decade in recorded history)

Don't jump to any conclusions that this is some sort of conspiracy or that the data itself is incorrect. That can not be surmised without extra information. It is just another indication of the desperation by a group of scientists, policy makers and scare mongers that are too sloppy to check their own facts and figures; even before releasing it to the whole world as proof to counter valid questions concerning the validity of their data.

With full unquestioning faith we are expected to buy into this sloppy sort of science as a foundation toward making public policy that will affect nations of the world's people for generations to come. If they can't even get the release of the simplest of data sets correct then what are we to wonder about what it is that they got wrong?

Since I fully expect them to fix this error (I would) you can find the originals that I downloaded here, UK, and here, US. Terry Trippany is The Watcher at Watcher of Weasels. You can follow us on Twitter. The image accompanying this article appeared in the UK Guardian article reporting on the announcement.

CNN made a real, day-long effort on Monday to address the climate-change debate as a debate, giving skeptics of manmade climate change a series of chances to match the leftist view, especially during its evening programming. CNN is also the only U.S. TV news outlet so far to send an anchor to the Climate Research Unit at the center of the ClimateGate controversy.

International correspondent Phil Black’s interview of Lord Christopher Monckton, a prominent skeptic of the theory of manmade global warming, ran four minutes into the 6 pm Eastern hour. The “passionate skeptic on climate change,” as Black referred to him, traveled to Copenhagen for the UN’s climate change summit, and is one of the few skeptics of the theory of manmade climate change in attendance. The CNN correspondent actually compared belief in the theory to a religion at the beginning of his report: “Copenhagen’s Bella Conference Center has become an international temple for thousands of true believers, people who have no doubt the planet is warming and humankind is to blame. But there are a few people here who do not believe.”

Black included four sound bites from Monckton in his report, and two from manmade climate change believers- Rajendra Pachauri from the IPCC and Alex Steffen of the website WorldChanging.com:           

MONCKTON: Most of the politicians don’t know any science-

BLACK: Lord Christopher Monckton is one of them. He’s a member of the British aristocracy and a passionate skeptic on climate change.

BLACK (on-camera): So you believe all of this is a colossal waste of time and money?

MONCKTON: There’s no need for it.

BLACK: None?

MONCKTON: None whatsoever.

BLACK: There are a lot of people here who disagree with you.

MONCKTON: Yes, but they haven’t studied the science, most of them-

BLACK (voice-over): Monckton says the planet is not getting hotter, its recent changes are natural, and there’s science to prove it. He’s among the skeptics who have been emboldened by the so-called ‘ClimateGate’ scandal. Monckton says e-mails hacked and leaked from an English university show climate scientists are fiddling with their figures and misleading the world.

MONCKTON: Those scientists have been fabricating, inventing, tampering with, altering, hiding, concealing and destroying data.

BLACK: The scientists who wrote the e-mails deny the allegations, but they have developed so much momentum they were addressed directly during the opening ceremony of the conference. Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, who leads the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, defended his organization against what he suspects is a direct attack.

DR. RAJENDRA PACHAURI, IPCC: The recent incident of stealing the e-mails of scientists at the University of East Anglia shows that some would go to the extent of carrying out illegal acts, perhaps in an attempt to discredit the IPCC. But the panel has a record of transparent and objective assessment stretching over 21 years, performed by tens of thousands of dedicated scientists from all corners of the globe.

BLACK: At this conference, Dr. Pachauri enjoys a clear majority of support among activists, analysts, delegates- well, pretty much everyone.

ALEX STEFFEN, EXECUTIVE EDITOR, WORLDCHANGIN.COM: It really has reached a point where climate skepticism has been pretty comprehensively debunked as a theory.

BLACK: Try telling that to Lord Christopher Monckton.

BLACK (on-camera): So what is your message to many thousands of people who have come here from around the world that surround us now?

MONCKTON: Go home, enjoy some quality time with your families- stop worrying about the climate.

Two hours later, Campbell Brown moderated two separate panel discussion segments with two climate change skeptics- Stephen McIntyre of the Climate Audit blog and Chris Horner, author of the book ‘Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud, and Deception to Keep You Misinformed;’ as well as Professor Michael Oppenheimer of Princeton University, a proponent of the theory of manmade climate change. Anchor John Roberts also participated in the first segment, which was part of special coverage on Brown’s program titled “Global Warming: Trick or Truth?” Other than the first segment at the beginning of the hour, this special coverage took up the 8 pm Eastern hour. A transcript of excerpts from the first segment:

BROWN: Stephen, let me start with you here. You’re personally attacked in some of these e-mails. You’re called everything from a ‘bozo’ to a ‘moron’ to ‘the Joe McCarthy of climate change.’ How do you characterize what’s going on with the e-mails? Do you think this is an attempt to shut down criticism?

MCINTYRE: Sure they are. In discussion of the ‘trick,’ let’s be quite frank about it: it was a trick. The tree ring records went down in the late part of the 20th century. Instead of disclosing that in the 2001 IPCC report, they didn’t show the decline. In another document, the 1999 World Meteorological Report- that is the subject of the e-mail in question- they simply substituted temperature information for the tree ring information to show the record going up when it went down. There’s nothing mathematically sophisticated about that.

BROWN: Let me go to Michael here. Michael- Professor, you were a recipient of some of the hacked e-mails in question. To a layperson, I mean- Stephen just gave us two examples there. To somebody like me who is not a scientist, it does look like these scientists cherry-picked certain bits of information to make the case.

OPPENHEIMER: There was no deception here. I mean, let’s step back. From a scientific point of view, before this episode occurred, we knew the earth was warming, sea level was rising, glaciers are melting, the sea ice is retreating, the ocean is becoming more acidic, all due to the build-up of the greenhouse gases. Nothing in this episode changes any of that. Even if you think that the British group was somehow cheating, which I don’t believe it was, you could throw them out, and there are three other groups, the Japanese group and two American groups, who’ve done analysis on the temperature data and reached the conclusion that Earth is warming and the warming is unique in climate history. So there’s nothing here that changes the picture....

BROWN: One of the critics you just mentioned is Chris Horner, and Chris, I know you’re not a scientist. You’re an attorney. You’re a longtime critic of this- a skeptic, and you have long argued that scientists are cooking the data. But, I mean, what’s the motive for that?...

HORNER: Well, I don’t argue that they’re cooking the data. I named these guys names and I described what they were doing, relying in great part on Stephen McIntyre’s terrific work, among others, in ‘Red Hot Lies.’ It’s out there, and now we know, in their own words, what they were doing. And why is- well, you know, we’d have to perform brain surgery on these people, but the fact is scientists are people too, and they’re subject to every human motivation, including tremendous amounts and increasing amounts of taxpayer funding, which increases with the alarm, as well as ideology, in the President’s chief science adviser’s case, an anti-population bent, and so on....

BROWN: But it’s beyond this group. I mean, you’re talking about other people who found very similar results.

HORNER: Let’s talk about the falsified results. That’s ‘ClimateGate.’ ‘It’s the fraud, stupid,’ to oversimplify it, and that’s what we’re talking about. We don’t have to keep changing the subject. It’s not about locker room talk between scientists. It’s the fraud. Stephen proved it. These people have admitted it.

BROWN: But Stephen, let me just go back to you, because I know you are a skeptic and you have raised questions. But you’re- and tell me if my read is not accurate- your criticism is a little more nuanced than that. I didn’t read you as saying fraud, but you tell me.

MCINTYRE: Yeah. You’re right, my criticism is a lot more nuanced than that. There’s no question that it’s warmer now than it was in the 19th century. The battleground issue is whether it’s warmer now than in the 11th century, and whether the data that we have enables you to say that with any degree of certainty. One of the e-mails in the ‘ClimateGate’ letters is from Keith Briffa [of the Climate Research Unit], who says it was his opinion that it was as warm a thousand years ago as it is today. That’s something he doesn’t say in the IPCC reports, and it’s disquieting to read that in this correspondence....

BROWN [to Oppenheimer]: And let me get a bottom line sort of account from you, in your view.

OPPENHEIMER: Let me make two points. Number one is to the point of a massive fraud- individual scientists are people- big news. They’re fallible. But if you accuse the scientific community of a fraud, you have to say that the 2,500 scientists that are part of the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change are part of a massive conspiracy. You have to say that the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, which looked at this specific issue several times, is part of a conspiracy. You have to say that the Bush administration, which conducted its own review of climate change, is part of a massive conspiracy. I’m sorry, I don’t buy that.

Later in the program, Brown featured another segment from Roberts with excerpts from his interview of Peter Liss, the interim director of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (other excerpts from the interview were played earlier in the day during American Morning’s slanted coverage of ClimateGate). Roberts also toured the CRU’s facilities with Liss. The CNN anchor is the only major TV news anchor based in the U.S. to travel to the university to report on the ClimateGate scandal.

Prepare for more panic talk about the end of the world as Dr. James Hansen, a leading global warming alarmist whose temperature data has come under question, launches a media tour for his new book out this week, 'Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity.'

Hansen is director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City and an adjunct professor at Columbia University's Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences.

One place I know he'll pop up this week is on the Late Show with David Letterman where he's scheduled to appear Thursday night as the second guest after actress Kate Hudson.

Letterman long ago drank the Kool-Aid:

Now here the other day I hear that the Senate, they were monkeying around, they had some kind of climate change bill and it just ran out of gas and it dropped dead. And people are all talking about, “okay we're going to change the emissions by 2035, by 2020.” That's too late. I mean, it's a hundred degrees now! In 2020, honest to God, what's it going to be?

“Facing a clock some say has ticked down to zero, today 192 nations came together to take on a potential global catastrophe,” a dire ABC reporter Bob Woodruff ominously intoned from Copenhagen on Monday’s World News with “Saving the Planet?” on screen.

Those attending the conference on climate change “where an official said today the clock has ticked down to zero and it's time to act,” NBC anchor Brian Williams warned, “say it's so late in the game, so much damage has been done, they fear they can already see how this ends.” Anne Thompson then declared: “This is about life or death -- 192 countries are here in Copenhagen to cut the carbon emissions changing the climate and threatening the very existence of some nations and their people.”

Echoing that theme, CBS’s Mark Phillips stood in water up to his neck and then became completely submerged to illustrate the feared impact of rising sea levels: “The Maldives have become the canary in the global warming coal mine.”

NBC and ABC raised “ClimateGate” in passing – without actually using the term – only to dismiss the revelations. “The man who leads the U.N. panel that blames human activity for climate change said the science is broad and consistent,” Thompson reassured NBC viewers. Woodruff applied the “denier” pejorative as he asserted “climate change deniers say these e-mails are proof humans aren't causing global warming,” but “U.S. officials say the evidence proves otherwise.”

Ending on an upbeat note, at least in the eyes of liberals, Woodruff contended “one thing the U.S. has in its favor here in Copenhagen is a new President with star power who is more willing to negotiate a climate treaty than his predecessor.”

On Monday’s CBS Evening News, Phillips set up his stunt of standing in rising levels of water:

No place in the Maldives is higher than 7 feet, ten inches above sea level. 80 percent of the land lies three feet or less above the waves. And sea levels are predicted to rise by as much as 23 inches this century according to the UN's climate change panel. Other, more recent studies using newer data have warned the world's oceans may rise even higher. Even the least bad scenario for sea level rise would have the place looking like this [standing in water]. Worst predictions would have the place looking like this [water up to his neck]. Or worst of all, like this [submerged].

(Monday’s NBC Nightly News used Bangladesh for its story on rising seas and ABC, on Sunday night, went to southern Louisiana to spread the same fear.)

Weekend roundup: “ABC and NBC Acknowledge 'ClimateGate,' But Remain Undeterred: 'Science is Solid'”

The MRC’s Brad Wilmouth corrected the closed-captioning against the video to provide transcripts of the Monday, December 7 stories on ABC and NBC:

ABC’s World News:

CHARLES GIBSON: Today’s announcement comes as delegates from around the world gather in Copenhagen for the largest global warming conference in history. It is a meeting that those concerned about global warming have pointed to for years, saying if anything is to be done, it will be done there. Bob Woodruff is in Copenhagen.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Welcome to Copenhagen.

BOB WOODRUFF: Facing a clock some say has ticked down to zero, today 192 nations came together to take on a potential global catastrophe.

CONNIE HEDEGAARD, UNITED NATIONS CONFERENCE OF PARTIES: This is our chance. If we miss this one, it could take years before we get a new and better one.

WOODRUFF: Delegates began hammering out the details of an agreement that would move away from fossil fuel pollution that is warming the planet. President Obama will offer a 17 percent cut in emissions by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050. Developing nations – including India and China – are proposing their own cuts. But they are not deep enough, scientists say.

RICHARD SOMERVILLE, SCRIPPS INSTITUTION OF OCEANOGRAPHY: There’s a limit on how much gases you can put in before Mother Nature shows you what the climate system will do. And Mother Nature bats last.

WOODRUFF: Another major issue, financing. The U.N. says poor nations need tens of billions of dollars every year to help adapt to everything from rising sea level to dying crops. Today, there was also an effort to derail the talks. Saudi Arabia claimed a series of stolen e-mails, in which climate scientists appear to fudge data, undermine the need to act on global warming. Climate change deniers say these e-mails are proof humans aren't causing global warming. U.S. officials say the evidence proves otherwise.

JONATHAN PERSHING, CHIEF U.S. NEGOTIATOR: The science is incredibly robust. And as we look forward, I worry much, much more about not acting urgently than I do about what will ultimately be a small blip.

WOODRUFF: One thing the U.S. has in its favor here in Copenhagen is a new President with star power who is more willing to negotiate a climate treaty than his predecessor. Delegates hope they will leave here with a firm blueprint to address climate change and the momentum to get there. Bob Woodruff, ABC News, Copenhagen.

NBC Nightly News:

BRIAN WILLIAMS, IN OPENING TEASER: On our broadcast tonight, the gathering storm about climate change at a global gathering where an official said today the clock has ticked down to zero and it's time to act.

...

WILLIAMS: Good evening. While some still insist the evidence just isn't convincing, others attending this week's global gathering on climate change say it's so late in the game, so much damage has been done, they fear they can already see how this ends. The leaders at this conference are making it clear it's going to take a lot more than changing a few light bulbs or driving hybrid cars. Today there was an urgency in their voices. It's where we begin tonight, our chief environmental affairs correspondent, Anne Thompson, in Copenhagen. Anne, good evening.
                        
ANNE THOMPSON: Good evening, Brian. This is about life or death – 192 countries are here in Copenhagen to cut the carbon emissions changing the climate and threatening the very existence of some nations and their people.

LEAH WICKHAM: I'm a long way from home today.

THOMPSON: Leah Wickham pleaded for her native Fiji, breaking down as she spoke about what rising sea levels could do to her children.

WICKHAM: It is my hope that their lifetimes will never be affected by devastating climate change.

THOMPSON: Her words accompanied by petitions from 10 million people demanding action. Over and over today, the U.N. conference delegates heard countries must reduce their carbon emissions, emissions that are warming the planet.

YVO DE BOER, U.N. FRAMEWORK CONVENTION ON CLIMATE CHANGE: The clock has ticked down to zero. After two years of negotiation, the time has come to deliver.

THOMPSON: The urgency slowed by a recent controversy over stolen e-mails. Skeptics insist the e-mails show some scientists manipulated climate data. Today, oil-rich Saudi Arabia – which is resisting carbon cuts – said the e-mails have shaken trust in the science of global warming. But the man who leads the U.N. panel that blames human activity for climate change said the science is broad and consistent.

RAJENDRA PACHAURI, INTERGOVERNMENTAL PANEL ON CLIMATE CHANGE: The evidence is now overwhelming that the world will benefit greatly from early action.

THOMPSON: And not by accident today, in Washington the Environmental Protection Agency ruled greenhouse gases threaten America's health and welfare.

LISA P. JACKSON, EPA ADMINISTRATOR: Starting next spring, large emitting facilities will be required to incorporate the best available methods for controlling greenhouse gas emissions when they plan to construct or expand operations.

THOMPSON: Yvo de Boer, the U.N.'s chief negotiator here in Copenhagen, says the toughest issue is building trust among major economies that all will truly reduce their carbon outputs.

DE BOER: I think it's critical for the United States to see that china is really stepping up to the mark and taking action. And, equally, I think it's critical for China to see that the United States is showing leadership.

THOMPSON: And the pressure is on. In less than two weeks, President Obama and 109 other heads of state will come here for the finale of this conference, raising the stakes even higher.

New York Times Public Editor Clark Hoyt took on the controversy over the "ClimateGate" emails leaked from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia in Britain: "Stolen E-Mail, Stoking the Climate Debate." The text box: "Some say The Times has played down an important story."

Predictably, Hoyt did not agree. Though his Sunday Week in Review column gave critics room to make points, the paper's public editor readily signed on to the possibly corrupted conventional wisdom that the science of global warming is settled and that the emails showing sciences behaving badly, while "a story," is not a "three-alarm story."

Never mind that the United Nations relied heavily on CRU's dubious, discredited data, most infamously the famous "hockey stick" graph showing drastically rising modern-day temperatures, to back up its alarmist claims about the dangers of human-caused climate change. Hoyt also ignored evidence that the scientists destroyed their raw data and were actively working to block Freedom of Information requests.

As world leaders prepare to meet tomorrow in Copenhagen to address global warming, skeptics are pointing to e-mail hacked from a computer server at a British university as evidence that the conference may be much ado about nothing. They say the e-mail messages show a conspiracy among scientists to overstate human influence on the climate -- and some accuse The Times of mishandling the story.

Although The Times was among the first to report on the e-mail, in a front-page article late last month, and has continued to write about the issue almost daily in the paper or on its Web site, readers have raised a variety of complaints:

Some say Andrew Revkin, the veteran environmental reporter who is covering what skeptics have dubbed "Climategate," has a conflict of interest because he wrote or is mentioned in some of the e-mail messages that the University of East Anglia says were stolen. Others wondered why The Times did not make the e-mail available on its Web site, and scoffed at an explanation by Revkin in a blog post that they contain "private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye." What about the Pentagon Papers? they asked.

Hoyt asked some of the right questions, but had weak answers:

Does Revkin have a conflict of interest, as Steven Milloy, the publisher of JunkScience.com, and others contended? Why didn't The Times put the e-mail on its Web site? And, most important, is The Times being cavalier about a story that could change our understanding of global warming? Or, as The Times's John Broder, who covers environmental issues in Washington, put it, "When does a story rise to three-alarm coverage?"

....

The biggest question is what the messages amount to -- an embarrassing revelation that scientists can be petty and defensive and even cheat around the edges, or a major scandal that undercuts the scientific premise for global warming. The former is a story. The latter is a huge story....So far, I think The Times has handled Climategate appropriately -- a story, not a three-alarm story.

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air rolled his eyes:

Hoyt argues that this qualified as a normal story, not the "three-alarm" variety. He reached that conclusion even though (a) the University of East Anglia CRU destroyed its raw data, discuss at length how to destroy evidence for a Freedom of Information request, and dishonestly hid numbers that contradicted their insistence that temperatures were constantly rising. Even Hoyt acknowledges the latter in his missive, even though the New York Times didn't bother to report on the first two aspects of the story....The entire Hoyt article is nothing more than a series of rationalizations in this vein....Rather than report that the UEA-CRU had destroyed its own data sets and conspired to block [Freedom of Information] requests, the Times chose to run stories about how the AGW debate was mainly "settled."

Near the end of the 2PM ET hour on MSNBC, anchor Contessa Brewer discussed the ClimateGate scandal only to claim there was no scandal in the emails that seemed to show climate scientists manipulating global warming data: “I mean is someone using differences in semantics to try and play up a controversy that’s not really there?”

Brewer spoke with Politico reporter Erica Lovely about the emails in which scientists referred to a “trick” to conceal evidence that contradicted predicted warming trends. Brewer explained: “...there’s a Penn State scientist Michael Mann....He says the word ‘trick’ doesn’t actually refer to any kind of deception, but to a very well-known accepted data technique.” Lovely saw nothing improper in concealing data: “They wanted to keep it out of some of the international reports that the United Nations would be looking at, you know, just to – to move the global talks forward.”

After Brewer suggested the use of the word “trick” as “just semantics,” Lovely agreed: “Sure....They’ll use language that maybe to us would look like, you know, something fishy is going on. But to them this is just everyday speak.” Lovely again defended their actions: “...they’ve been working so many decades trying to get some traction on the global warming science that they really can’t afford to have much detracting science get out.”

Having throughly dismissed the controversy, Brewer moved on to discuss the Copenhagen climate conference, asking Lovely: “Are you expecting some big work to be done in Copenhagen or is this still all going to be done behind the scenes, country by country?” Lovely enthusiastically praised the summit: “No, this is going to be huge in Copenhagen. We’ve got two weeks, we’ve got hundreds of nations together, thousands – tens of thousands of people attending.”

She was particularly excited about one special guest: “Not to mention that Obama is going to show up at the very last minute, kind of for the whiz bang finish. He’s really kind of the frosting on the cake as far as these deliberations go. And it’s really expected that if he shows up he’s basically signaling the United States is ready to move forward and it’s ready to lead the rest of the world to get some sort of solution.”

Brewer concluded the segment: “Well, and given the EPA’s declaration today, finally, that greenhouse gases are bad for you, at least we’re seeing movement on that front.”

On NBC’s Today on Monday, correspondent Anne Thompson similarly dismissed the ClimateGate scandal: “...some stolen e-mails that has skeptics, once again, questioning the whole idea of global warming....But does this controversy change the science? A team of explorers will present findings on Arctic ice melt in Copenhagen, findings that have nothing to do with the e-mails.”

Here is a full transcript of the MSNBC segment:

2:52PM

CONTESSA BREWER: In fewer than two hours, President Obama will meet with former Vice President Al Gore at the White House to talk about global warming, ahead of the President’s trip to Copenhagen’s summit next week. Meanwhile scandal has discolored the beginning of the U.N. climate change talks today. Some scientists saw their e-mails leaked to the media and they have stirred up debate over whether global warming’s been exaggerated for political purposes.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: It just confirmed what a lot of scientists thought, that things are not right. That there’s data being massaged, there’s complete obstruction.

BREWER: Erica Lovely’s a reporter for Politico, so what’s the scoop here? What was in those e-mails that was so controversial?

ERICA LOVELY: So basically these e-mails show that a number of different scientists working on this issue of global warming occasionally wanted to withhold some of the reports on climate change that didn’t really show the planet warming that quickly. They wanted to keep it out of some of the international reports that the United Nations would be looking at, you know, just to – to move the global talks forward. And the problem with this is, it makes the scientists look like they are – they’re not, you know, basically corresponding well with the research and the data that – that needs to move forward.

BREWER: But – but I mean isn’t some of this about semantics that scientists use. For instance, there’s a Penn State scientist Michael Mann, who’s defending the use of the phrase ‘Mike’s nature trick.’ He says the word ‘trick’ doesn’t actually refer to any kind of deception, but to a very well-known accepted data technique. Let me play it.

MICHAEL MANN: It was all clearly labeled in the paper. There was nothing secret about it. What the person meant was, it was a clever approach to the problem.

BREWER: I mean is someone using differences in semantics to try and play up a controversy that’s not really there?

LOVELY: Sure. I mean, this is the perfect piece of evidence for global cooling skeptics to use in these climate talks. And secondly, this is the kind of language that scientists just use from time to time. I mean, they’re just corresponding personally with each other. They’ll use different references. They’ll use language that maybe to us would look like, you know, something fishy is going on. But to them this is just everyday speak. You know, this is an issue that they’re concerned with. And largely they’ve been working so many decades trying to get some traction on the global warming science that they really can’t afford to have much detracting science get out. And this was definitely, obviously, a point of concern to them.

BREWER: Alright, are you expecting some big work to be done in Copenhagen or is this still all going to be done behind the scenes, country by country?

LOVELY: No, this is going to be huge in Copenhagen. We’ve got two weeks, we’ve got hundreds of nations together, thousands – tens of thousands of people attending. Not to mention that Obama is going to show up at the very last minute, kind of for the whiz bang finish. He’s really kind of the frosting on the cake as far as these deliberations go. And it’s really expected that if he shows up he’s basically signaling the United States is ready to move forward and it’s ready to lead the rest of the world to get some sort of solution.

BREWER: Well, and given the EPA’s declaration today, finally, that greenhouse gases are bad for you, at least we’re seeing movement on that front. Erica, thank you so much for joining us. Appreciate that.

LOVELY: Thank you.

Some climate alarmists are so invested in their beliefs and corresponding policy preferences that even a joke at their expense is grounds for disownment. New York Times reporter Andrew Revkin saw this trend first-hand when he cracked a joke about Copenhagen prostitutes, and was threatened with a "cutoff" by one of the world's leading alarmists.

"My lord. Copenhagen prostitutes push back on warnings about their services & offer free sex for cop15?  http://j.mp/cop15sex". So read a tweet from Revkin, which he published on the Times's Dot Earth blog. The University of Illinois's Michael Schlesinger sent a furious email to Revkin, calling his "unbelievable and unacceptable" joke "gutter reportage."

But an even more serious crime on Revkin's part was his audacity in relaying the words of others that criticize the close relationships between climate scientists and liberal advocacy groups:

This is the second time this week I have written you thereon, the first about giving space in your blog to the Pielkes.

The vibe that I am getting from here, there and everywhere is that your reportage is very worrisome to most climate scientists.

Of course, your blog is your blog.

But, I sense that you are about to experience the 'Big Cutoff' from those of us who believe we can no longer trust you, me included.

Revkin earned Schlesinger's scorn for linking to a blog post by Roger Pielke Jr. questioning the wisdom and soundness of scientists collaborating with the Center for American Progress--a far-left think tank with ties to the Obama administration--on pushing climate policy.

Revkin has traditionally toed the alarmist line on global warming, so Schlesinger must have been shocked to see that he was even considering contrarian views and, heaven forbid, making a joke at the expense of the Copenhagen summit.

Schlesinger is so invested in his own views on warming that the smallest slight against them must yield a dramatic split between him and the utterer of such impiety. It seems that Schlesinger's measure of 'trust' is an unwavering advocacy of his own scientific and political views. It so happens that Revkin's job--when performed dutifully--requires the exact opposite: a neutral analysis of every side of the discussion.

In the global warming debate, dissent can mean ostracism. When skeptical scientists insisted on publishing studies questioning the supposed "consensus" on global warming, the now-infamous staff at the East Anglia CRU conspired to boycott publications if they did not expunge their pages of such blasphemy.

Schlesinger's outrage is a symptom of the same disease; call it skepticitis--an extreme aversion to skepticism and dissent. The disease is very contagious within the scientific community, and may cause carriers to do extreme and irrational things, like fudge climate data and admonish journalists for doing their jobs. That Schlesinger threatened to cut ties with Revkin over such a minute transgression shows he is in the terminal stages of skepticitis.

Monday’s American Morning on CNN covered the ClimateGate scandal extensively, but slanted towards those who deny that the exposed e-mails amount to much. Anchor John Roberts let the interim director of the Climate Research Unit at the center of the controversy give his talking points without question. Out of the four segments on the scandal, two featured skeptics of the theory of manmade climate change.

Roberts, reporting live from the University of East Anglia, home to the CRU, led the 6 am Eastern hour with a preview of the program’s ClimateGate coverage: “I am in Norwich, England at the University of East Anglia and behind me here, this cylindrical building, is the Climatic Research Unit which finds itself at the epicenter of what’s being called ‘ClimateGate.’ Four thousand e-mails and documents were hacked out of the Climatic Research Unit’s server system...Some of those e-mails were looked at by skeptics, and are now being used to cast doubt on all of the science surrounding global warming. Skeptics claiming that some scientists were manipulating data to further their cause.”

Anchor Kiran Chetry subsequently explained that their coverage of the scandal was part of a “network-wide initiative, just trying to get to the bottom of it.” She then introduced the first report on ClimateGate from correspondent Jim Acosta, which focused on the political implications of the controversy, and featured two sound bites from congressional skeptics of the theory of manmade climate change, versus three from federal officials who support the theory.

ACOSTA: The controversy could not have come at a better time for Republicans. Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe has fought Democrats on climate change legislation for months.

SENATOR JAMES INHOFE (from Senate hearing): One cannot deny that the e- mails have raised fundamental questions, concerning, among other things, transparency and openness in science, especially taxpayer-funded science.

SENATOR BARBARA BOXER (from Senate hearing): You call it ‘ClimateGate,’ I call it ‘E-mail TheftGate.’

ACOSTA: Last week, Republicans fired off a letter to the EPA, demanding it delay new limits on greenhouse gas emissions until the agency can demonstrate the science underlying these regulatory decisions that’s not been compromised. The head of the EPA says the e-mails don’t affect the scientific consensus on global warming.

LISA JACKSON, EPA ADMINISTRATOR (from Senate hearing): I have not heard anything that causes me to believe that that overwhelming consensus, that climate change is happening and that man-made emissions are contributing to it, have changed.

ACOSTA: GOP leaders are warning President Obama to reject any new climate change agreements in Copenhagen.

SENATOR JOHN CORNYN (from Fox News Sunday): Well, we’re not a dictatorship. The President can promise whatever he wants. The Congress has a role. If there’s some proposed treaty, the Senate will vote on it.

ACOSTA: But in an era of green jobs, Democrats say denying global warming is not just bad science, it’s bad business.

SENATOR DICK DURBIN (from Fox News Sunday): If we ignore it, put our head in the sand, we’re going to find countries like China leapfrogging us, moving forward. That’s going to create jobs for China, but not for America.

Clips from Roberts’s interview of Professor Peter Liss, the interim head of the University of East Anglia’s CRU, immediately followed Acosta’s report. The anchor did not appear to press the professor on the scandal, and instead, let him give his points without question.

LISS (from taped interview): I don’t think it should influence things at all. Of course, I mean, I’m not a politician, but I can sort of see that it might have some impact. I hope it’s- I say small, or insignificant. But you’ve already seen people saying- well, this knocks the bottom out of the climate argument. I mean, I don’t think that’s true at all. But people will say that because it suits to say that.

ROBERTS: You said I hope it doesn’t have an influence, it shouldn’t have an influence- ‘I think it shouldn’t have an influence,’ but there’s every possibility that it very well could.

LISS: Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Well, you’ve heard various politicians and represented politicians making statements this week saying exactly that it will have an influence, as far as they’re concerned. We’ll have to wait and see whether the bulk of the nations are swayed by that....I think it’s very hard to be a denier. And in some sense, you might say it’s really up to the deniers to explain why it is when we’re pumping so much greenhouse gas into the atmosphere, why it wouldn’t have such an effect. I mean, scientists tend to be a bit on the defensive, but in fact, they shouldn’t be defensive because the evidence is very strong.

ROBERTS: You have no doubt.

LISS: I have no doubt.

At the bottom half of the hour, Chetry interviewed Peter Demenocal, a climate scientist at Columbia University who believes in manmade global warming (pictured above). The anchor did present some reasonable questions to her guest, as opposed to the earlier performance of her colleague with the CRU director. In her second question, Chetry asked, “How do you know that, given that...we’re studying and we’re collecting data in such a small number of years, in terms of how long the Earth has been around...how do you show that that’s not just a blip in our huge, huge long history?” The anchor later followed up on the scientific method issue: “Doing experiments and collecting data and all of that that goes into science, sometimes there are things that don’t fit in with your theory, or there are things that sort of you can’t quite explain- the red herring of your research. Is suppressing that, as critics claim, or perhaps trying to find a way to explain that away, something that is frowned upon, or is it, perhaps, something that happens?”

During the final segment, which began 13 minutes into the 7 am Eastern hour, Chetry moderated a panel discussion between Professor Alan Robock of Rutgers University, some of whose e-mails were revealed in the hacking at the CRU; and Edward Wegman, a professor of statistics and data sciences at George Mason University, who questions some of the methodology of the scientists who advance the theory of manmade climate change, but more or less thinks humans are the cause of global warming. As she did in the earlier segment, the anchor asked reasonable questions to both of her guests.

CHETRY: Professor Robock, let me start with you, because some of the e-mails that have been leaked actually contain a few e-mails you had sent to the person who is- Phil Jones, this climate researcher. And first of all, explain, in your opinion, what the controversy is, as we talk about, in one of the e-mails, using the term ‘trick.’

CHETRY: And it was having to do with- what, data that didn’t necessarily fit in with a certain theory?

CHETRY: And, Professor Wegman, let me ask you about this because you’ve had some criticisms a few years back about some of the methods- some of the models that were used in the climate change research, [Penn State’s Michael] Mann’s ‘hockey stick’ model which- you know, you probably have to be very deep in the study and science of climate change to know exactly what we’re talking about, but what did you think when you saw these e- mails?

CHETRY: So let me ask you about this, you’re talking about- to be clear, you’re talking about taking issue with the methods, not questioning the overall theory of global warming or climate change?

CHETRY: There’s a public poll that was just out saying that there’s a fraction of- maybe 25 percent of people that doubt what we’ve been saying about climate change. So if- you’re somebody who studies this and so is Professor Wegman. But let me start with you, Professor Robock- what is it that people should know and should sort of take away from this whole discussion about- not only climate change, but about how much human involvement is responsible for changes in our Earth?

"Well, NBC, ABC and CBS finally got around to reporting on ClimateGate" but it "wasn’t worth the wait," Media Research Center President and NewsBusters Publisher Brent Bozell said in a statement today. [Click here for the full press release]

"NBC and ABC’s reports were so biased, they left their audiences as ill-informed afterwards as they were before.  And CBS came about as close to blacking out their own coverage as possible," Bozell added, referring to how the network reported the story on a program blacked out in much of the country in favor of college football.

ABC finally reported on ClimateGate on Sunday.  But they provided no specifics from the reams of emails and data from East Anglia University that caused the scandal, and concluded their report with the flatly incorrect assertion: “The science is solid, according to a vast majority of researchers, with hotter temperatures, melting glaciers, and rising sea level providing the proof.” 

NBC reported on ClimateGate on both Friday and Sunday.  On Friday they fretted that the scandal may end up "giving politicians from coal and oil-producing states another reason to delay taking action to reduce emissions."  And on Sunday they assured viewers "the evidence is overwhelming that man is behind climate change." 

Neither ABC nor NBC noted that many of the "vast majority of researchers" to which they refer are at the heart of the ClimateGate data distortions and cover-up, and the "overwhelming" "evidence" they cite may very well have been tampered with by these researchers.

CBS did a decent report on Saturday, but aired it on a show they knew their college football coverage blackout would prevent most Americans from seeing.

"ClimateGate is a huge story that is only just beginning to unfold.... This is a story that cries out for an investigation, the networks haven’t even scratched the surface, and they’re now done with it.  So much for news from the broadcast 'news' networks," Bozell complained.

On Sunday, during the 6:00 p.m. hour and again during the 7:00 p.m. hour, CNN NewsRoom, hosted by Don Lemon, ran a report by correspondent Mary Snow on ClimateGate -- which was somewhat more balanced than the piece aired on November 25 -- though this report similarly did not quote any of the emails that suggest manipulation of data on global warming by scientists at the UK's University of East Anglia. But both times after Snow's report aired, Lemon followed up by talking with a guest or reporter who disputed the credibility of ClimateGate, without interviewing any global warming skeptics.

After Snow’s report aired during the 6:00 p.m. hour, Howard Gould of Equator International opined that "I don't see any importance" in the emails, and later asserted: "I think people are making a big deal out of nothing. I think it's the climate debunkers that are out there, it's their last ray of hope, and they're trying to cling on to something. But it's really, you know, I think it's a bit of a joke."

After Snow's report aired during the 7:00 p.m. hour, CNN international correspondent Phil Black brought up the timing of the email release and referred to the "broad consensus that the warming of the climate system is unequivocal." Black:

Don, many climate scientists believe those e-mails were deliberately hacked and leaked to try and destabilize the negotiations here. And they say those e-mails do nothing to discredit the work of thousands of climate scientists around the world...Some climate change skeptics are also traveling to this city to try and make their case. But they shouldn't expect a friendly reception because this conference is based on the scientific theory accepted by a broad consensus that the warming of the climate system is unequivocal.

On the bright side, before presenting the views of those who dispute ClimateGate, Snow’s report informed viewers of the investigation into whether climate data at the University of East Anglia was manipulated, and that "Phil Jones, the head of the university's climate research unit, has stepped down temporarily." Snow:

This U.N. probe is in addition to an investigation under way at the University of East Anglia which says it's looking to see if there's any evidence that scientific data was manipulated or suppressed. Phil Jones, the head of the university's climate research unit, has stepped down temporarily. Those who questioned the effects of human activity on climate change have seized on the e-mails, accusing scientists of conspiring to hide evidence and trying to destroy data. Among them, Republican Senator James Inhofe, who's called global warming a hoax.

Snow included only one soundbite of a global warming skeptic -- Republican Congressman John Shadegg of Arizona -- but she used soundbites of two scientists who dispute the significance of the ClimateGate scandal.

Below are transcripts of relevant portions of the 6:00 p.m. hour and the 7:00 p.m. hour of CNN NewsRoom from Sunday, December 6:

#From the 6:00 p.m. hour of CNN NewsRoom:

DON LEMON: Well, it’s an issue that is bringing more than 100 world leaders and 15,000 people to Denmark for a two-week summit starting tomorrow. It is global warming. There's wide agreement in many quarters on the issue, but it remains fiercely controversial in others. Why does it matter? Well, for starters, scientists say a warmer Earth has dangerous consequences – storms, droughts and rising sea levels. While they support cuts in greenhouse gases to reduce and even reverse the impact of global warming. But critics say that's foolish. Global warming – if it is happening – they say, is being exaggerated for political purposes. It's this sometimes bitter debate that awaits President Obama when he heads to Copenhagen for the U.N. Climate Summit on December 18th.

Well, the talks in Copenhagen open with a cloud of controversy hovering over the conference. It may be called "ClimateGate"– look for that term to be used a lot – a series of stolen e-mails that may cast some doubt on global warming research. Our Mary Snow has a report.

MARY SNOW: Two weeks after computers were hacked at the UK's University of East Anglia, and e-mails between climate scientists were posted on the Internet, the head of the U.N.'s climate science body told BBC Radio he wants an investigation.

AUDIO OF RAJENDRA PACHAURI, IPCC CHAIRMAN: We are certainly going to go into the whole lot, and then, as I said, we'll take a position on it. So we certainly don't want to brush anything under the carpet. We don't want to sweep it under the carpet. This is a serious issue, and we certainly will look into it in detail.

SNOW: This U.N. probe is in addition to an investigation under way at the University of East Anglia which says it's looking to see if there’s any evidence that scientific data was manipulated or suppressed. Phil Jones, the head of the university's climate research unit, has stepped down temporarily. Those who questioned the effects of human activity on climate change have seized on the e-mails, accusing scientists of conspiring to hide evidence and trying to destroy data. Among them, Republican Senator James Inhofe, who's called global warming a hoax. This week he called for hearings. No decisions yet. And the e-mails were raised at a House hearing this week.

REP. JOHN SHADEGG (R-AZ): Anyone who thinks that those e-mails are insignificant, that they don't damage the credibility of the entire movement, is naive.

SNOW: But at that hearing, a top government scientist said the e- mails do nothing to change the science.

JANE LUBCHENCO, NATIONAL OCEANIC AND ATMOSPHERIC ADMINISTRATION: E-mails really do nothing to undermine the very strong scientific consensus and the independent scientific analyses of thousands of scientists around the world that tell us that the earth is warming and that the warming is largely a result of human activity.

GAVIN SCHMIDT, NASA GODDARD INSTITUTE FOR SPACE STUDIES: These are the temperature records from the U.S.

SNOW: Gavin Schmidt is a leading climate scientist with NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. In the weeks since the e-mails were hacked and questions arose, he’s been putting large volumes of data links on the Web site RealClimate.org that demonstrates a consistent trajectory of a potentially dangerously warming climate.

SCHMIDT: So what we've done is we just said, you know, look, you're not aware of that data. But here is all the data that's already existing.

SNOW: His name appeared on those e-mails, and he says he has nothing to hide.

SCHMIDT: There’s nothing in these e-mails that's problematic, you know. Most of the stuff that has been talked about has been taken completely out of context, and there's a lot of nonsense that's being spoken.

SNOW: Debate over these e-mails comes as world leaders head to Copenhagen next week for the U.N. Climate Change Conference. As to what impact these might have? The UK's Energy and Climate Change Secretary is quoted by the BBC as saying the idea that they could derail the conference is in his words, nonsense. Mary Snow, CNN, New York.

LEMON: All right, Mary, so let's talk about all of this now with Howard Gould. He is the president of Equator Environmental, and he joins us from Stanford, Connecticut. Good to see you, Howard. So ClimateGate, ClimateGate, ClimateGate, what's the importance, if any, of these e-mails?

HOWARD GOULD, EQUATOR ENVIRONMENTAL: I mean, I don't see any importance. The fact is that there's going to be an investigation that's ongoing and going to looking to exactly what happens. I mean, I do think that a lot of this stuff was taken out of context. But I also think that let's just take all of it out of the picture, and you still look at all the other scientific institutions that are out there, and they all say the same thing. So it's, you know, I think people are making a big deal out of nothing. I think it's the climate debunkers that are out there, it's their last ray of hope, and they're trying to cling on to something. But it's really, you know, I think it's a bit of a joke.

LEMON: So you don't think it's suppression at all, as they claim, of any evidence about global warming?

GOULD: Oh, I mean, I'm not, I'm not saying that maybe certain scientists out there in their particular data sets might have done something at that university. I mean, that may well have occurred. I can't speak to that. But I, you know, my thought is that, okay, fine, let's just take all of that data that's come out of that university off the table, and look, I mean, you just heard yourself from the people over at NASA that look, look at the data. It's, you know, it says that climate change is occurring, and the globe is warming, and it is probably anthropogenic, or manmade.

#From the 7:00 p.m. hour of CNN NewsRoom, after Snow's report re-aired:

DON LEMON: And CNN has learned that officials at this week's climate conference in Copenhagen will not shy away from the controversy over the leaked e-mails. Let's go now to CNN's Phil Black who is in Copenhagen. Phil?

PHIL BLACK: Don, here in Copenhagen, just hours before the Climate Change Conference opens, United Nations officials admit that ClimateGate is already being discussed by delegates here. The U.N.'s climate change chief Yvo de Boer, says the issue of those e-mails from the University of East Anglia will be addressed directly in speeches during the opening ceremony. I asked Yvo de Boer what he makes of the allegations. And he said he believes there is a positive side to this scandal.

YVO DE BOER, UNFCCC EXECUTIVE SECRETARY: I actually think it's very good that what's, what has happened is being critically addressed in the media because this process has to be based on solid science. And if the quality and the integrity of the science is being called into question, then that needs to be examined.

BLACK: Don, many climate scientists believe those e-mails were deliberately hacked and leaked to try and destabilize the negotiations here. And they say those e-mails do nothing to discredit the work of thousands of climate scientists around the world, independent scientists whose work draws similar conclusions. Some climate change skeptics are also traveling to this city to try and make their case. But they shouldn't expect a friendly reception because this conference is based on the scientific theory accepted by a broad consensus that the warming of the climate system is unequivocal.

On Sunday, during the 6:00 p.m. hour and again during the 7:00 p.m. hour, CNN NewsRoom, hosted by Don Lemon, ran a report by correspondent Mary Snow on ClimateGate -- which was somewhat more balanced than the piece aired on November 25 -- though this report similarly did not quote any of the emails that suggest manipulation of data on global warming by scientists at the UK's University of East Anglia. But both times after Snow's report aired, Lemon followed up by talking with a guest or reporter who disputed the credibility of ClimateGate, without interviewing any global warming skeptics.

After Snow’s report aired during the 6:00 p.m. hour, Howard Gould of Equator International opined that "I don't see any importance" in the emails, and later asserted: "I think people are making a big deal out of nothing. I think it's the climate debunkers that are out there, it's their last ray of hope, and they're trying to cling on to something. But it's really, you know, I think it's a bit of a joke."

After Snow's report aired during the 7:00 p.m. hour, CNN international correspondent Phil Black brought up the timing of the email release and referred to the "broad consensus that the warming of the climate system is unequivocal." Black:

Don, many climate scientists believe those e-mails were deliberately hacked and leaked to try and destabilize the negotiations here. And they say those e-mails do nothing to discredit the work of thousands of climate scientists around the world...Some climate change skeptics are also traveling to this city to try and make their case. But they shouldn't expect a friendly reception because this conference is based on the scientific theory accepted by a broad consensus that the warming of the climate system is unequivocal.

On the bright side, before presenting the views of those who dispute ClimateGate, Snow’s report informed viewers of the investigation into whether climate data at the University of East Anglia was manipulated, and that "Phil Jones, the head of the university's climate research unit, has stepped down temporarily." Snow:

This U.N. probe is in addition to an investigation under way at the University of East Anglia which says it's looking to see if there's any evidence that scientific data was manipulated or suppressed. Phil Jones, the head of the university's climate research unit, has stepped down temporarily. Those who questioned the effects of human activity on climate change have seized on the e-mails, accusing scientists of conspiring to hide evidence and trying to destroy data. Among them, Republican Senator James Inhofe, who's called global warming a hoax.

Snow included only one soundbite of a global warming skeptic -- Republican Congressman John Shadegg of Arizona -- but she used soundbites of two scientists who dispute the significance of the ClimateGate scandal.

Below are transcripts of relevant portions of the 6:00 p.m. hour and the 7:00 p.m. hour of CNN NewsRoom from Sunday, December 6:

#From the 6:00 p.m. hour of CNN Newsroom:

DON LEMON: Well, it’s an issue that is bringing more than 100 world leaders and 15,000 people to Denmark for a two-week summit starting tomorrow. It is global warming. There's wide agreement in many quarters on the issue, but it remains fiercely controversial in others. Why does it matter? Well, for starters, scientists say a warmer Earth has dangerous consequences – storms, droughts and rising sea levels. While they support cuts in greenhouse gases to reduce and even reverse the impact of global warming. But critics say that's foolish. Global warming – if it is happening – they say, is being exaggerated for political purposes. It's this sometimes bitter debate that awaits President Obama when he heads to Copenhagen for the U.N. Climate Summit on December 18th.

Well, the talks in Copenhagen open with a cloud of controversy hovering over the conference. It may be called "ClimateGate"– look for that term to be used a lot – a series of stolen e-mails that may cast some doubt on global warming research. Our Mary Snow has a report.

MARY SNOW: Two weeks after computers were hacked at the UK's University of East Anglia, and e-mails between climate scientists were posted on the Internet, the head of the U.N.'s climate science body told BBC Radio he wants an investigation.

AUDIO OF RAJENDRA PACHAURI, IPCC CHAIRMAN: We are certainly going to go into the whole lot, and then, as I said, we'll take a position on it. So we certainly don't want to brush anything under the carpet. We don't want to sweep it under the carpet. This is a serious issue, and we certainly will look into it in detail.

SNOW: This U.N. probe is in addition to an investigation under way at the University of East Anglia which says it's looking to see if there’s any evidence that scientific data was manipulated or suppressed. Phil Jones, the head of the university's climate research unit, has stepped down temporarily. Those who questioned the effects of human activity on climate change have seized on the e-mails, accusing scientists of conspiring to hide evidence and trying to destroy data. Among them, Republican Senator James Inhofe, who's called global warming a hoax. This week he called for hearings. No decisions yet. And the e-mails were raised at a House hearing this week.

REP. JOHN SHADEGG (R-AZ): Anyone who thinks that those e-mails are insignificant, that they don't damage the credibility of the entire movement, is naive.

SNOW: But at that hearing, a top government scientist said the e- mails do nothing to change the science.

JANE LUBCHENCO, NATIONAL OCEANIC AND ATMOSPHERIC ADMINISTRATION: E-mails really do nothing to undermine the very strong scientific consensus and the independent scientific analyses of thousands of scientists around the world that tell us that the earth is warming and that the warming is largely a result of human activity.

GAVIN SCHMIDT, NASA GODDARD INSTITUTE FOR SPACE STUDIES: These are the temperature records from the U.S.

SNOW: Gavin Schmidt is a leading climate scientist with NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. In the weeks since the e-mails were hacked and questions arose, he’s been putting large volumes of data links on the Web site RealClimate.org that demonstrates a consistent trajectory of a potentially dangerously warming climate.

SCHMIDT: So what we've done is we just said, you know, look, you're not aware of that data. But here is all the data that's already existing.

SNOW: His name appeared on those e-mails, and he says he has nothing to hide.

SCHMIDT: There’s nothing in these e-mails that's problematic, you know. Most of the stuff that has been talked about has been taken completely out of context, and there's a lot of nonsense that's being spoken.

SNOW: Debate over these e-mails comes as world leaders head to Copenhagen next week for the U.N. Climate Change Conference. As to what impact these might have? The UK's Energy and Climate Change Secretary is quoted by the BBC as saying the idea that they could derail the conference is in his words, nonsense. Mary Snow, CNN, New York.

LEMON: All right, Mary, so let's talk about all of this now with Howard Gould. He is the president of Equator Environmental, and he joins us from Stanford, Connecticut. Good to see you, Howard. So ClimateGate, ClimateGate, ClimateGate, what's the importance, if any, of these e-mails?

HOWARD GOULD, EQUATOR ENVIRONMENTAL: I mean, I don't see any importance. The fact is that there's going to be an investigation that's ongoing and going to looking to exactly what happens. I mean, I do think that a lot of this stuff was taken out of context. But I also think that let's just take all of it out of the picture, and you still look at all the other scientific institutions that are out there, and they all say the same thing. So it's, you know, I think people are making a big deal out of nothing. I think it's the climate debunkers that are out there, it's their last ray of hope, and they're trying to cling on to something. But it's really, you know, I think it's a bit of a joke.

LEMON: So you don't think it's suppression at all, as they claim, of any evidence about global warming?

GOULD: Oh, I mean, I'm not, I'm not saying that maybe certain scientists out there in their particular data sets might have done something at that university. I mean, that may well have occurred. I can't speak to that. But I, you know, my thought is that, okay, fine, let's just take all of that data that's come out of that university off the table, and look, I mean, you just heard yourself from the people over at NASA that look, look at the data. It's, you know, it says that climate change is occurring, and the globe is warming, and it is probably anthropogenic, or manmade.

#From the 7:00 p.m. hour of CNN NewsRoom, after Snow's report re-aired:

DON LEMON: And CNN has learned that officials at this week's climate conference in Copenhagen will not shy away from the controversy over the leaked e-mails. Let's go now to CNN's Phil Black who is in Copenhagen. Phil?

PHIL BLACK: Don, here in Copenhagen, just hours before the Climate Change Conference opens, United Nations officials admit that ClimateGate is already being discussed by delegates here. The U.N.'s climate change chief Yvo de Boer, says the issue of those e-mails from the University of East Anglia will be addressed directly in speeches during the opening ceremony. I asked Yvo de Boer what he makes of the allegations. And he said he believes there is a positive side to this scandal.

YVO DE BOER, UNFCCC EXECUTIVE SECRETARY: I actually think it's very good that what's, what has happened is being critically addressed in the media because this process has to be based on solid science. And if the quality and the integrity of the science is being called into question, then that needs to be examined.

BLACK: Don, many climate scientists believe those e-mails were deliberately hacked and leaked to try and destabilize the negotiations here. And they say those e-mails do nothing to discredit the work of thousands of climate scientists around the world, independent scientists whose work draws similar conclusions. Some climate change skeptics are also traveling to this city to try and make their case. But they shouldn't expect a friendly reception because this conference is based on the scientific theory accepted by a broad consensus that the warming of the climate system is unequivocal.

More than two weeks after ClimateGate broke, ABC's World News finally got around to mentioning it on Sunday evening, but not to explore how the e-mails discredited leading scientists who insist mankind is causing global warming as, instead, ABC declared “the science is solid” and NBC assured viewers “the evidence is overwhelming that man is behind climate change.”

ABC reporter Clayton Sandell merely included, in a larger story about the Copenhagen conference, how “global warming naysayers are claiming that e-mails stolen from” East Anglia University “show climate scientists discussing how to fudge results to promote the idea that humans are altering the planet.” After failing to inform viewers of any specifics the e-mails revealed, Sandell, who didn't utter a syllable about them on Sunday's Good Morning America, concluded his World News piece:

The science is solid, according to a vast majority of researchers, with hotter temperatures, melting glaciers, and rising sea level providing the proof.

Over on the NBC Nightly News, following a shoddy Friday night story, Anne Thompson checked in from Copenhagen with a story on “cautious optimism that a political agreement can be reached on reducing carbon dioxide emissions,” before she repeated the usual hysteria about how “the Greenland ice sheet...is melting at an ever faster pace.” Only at the very end did Thompson raise “this scandal called ClimateGate,” offering the most-benign explanation of how “essentially, in those e-mails, some climate scientists seem to be suggesting that perhaps they're massaging the data.” But, she countered in citing the UN's Yvo de Boer:

When you look at the overall science and the fact that science from around the world has been reviewed by scientists around the world -- 2,500 by the UN -- he says the evidence is overwhelming that man is behind climate change.

"

On Friday, NBC reported on ClimateGate, the first morning or evening ABC, CBS or NBC news program do to so, but only to see the disclosures as a threat to the global warming alarmist agenda. The NB item, “NBC Nightly News Takes Up ClimateGate, But Frets It Could 'Delay Taking Action,'” recounted NBC brought up ClimateGate in only in the most cursory manner, while:

[C]orrespondent Anne Thompson, a long-time ally of the environmental left, despaired the e-mails may end up “giving politicians from coal and oil-producing states another reason to delay taking action to reduce emissions. The government's leading scientist told Congress there is no time to lose.”

NB post from Rich Noyes on Sandell's Sunday GMA coverage: “ABC Remains Silent on ClimateGate; Claims ‘Growing Scientific Evidence' Supports Warming Theory.” Back on November 29, ABC's This Week roundtable briefly discussed ClimateGate, but GMA has yet to mention the topic and the couple of vague sentences on the December 6 World News is all that newscast has offered.

So far, the only broadcast network story to adequately summarize the revelations in the e-mails came -- coincidentally? -- on a newscast nearly 75 percent of Americans couldn't see. A 4 PM EST Saturday college football game telecast by CBS Sports (Alabama v Florida) meant no CBS Evening News on any EST or CST station, and not even all MST and PST affiliates carried it. (Noel Sheppard post on the story)

On that widely-bumped newscast (which is posted on CBSNews.com), however, Kimberly Dozier relayed:

The e-mails seem to show that some of the world's top experts decided to exclude or manipulate some research that didn't help prove global warming exists. Nineteen ninety-eight was the hottest year since record keeping began. But the temperature went down the next year and it's only spiked a couple of times since.

An e-mail from 1999 shows scientists worked hard to demonstrate an upward trend. They talk of using a trick to hide the decline in global temperatures. It worked like this: when temperature readings gathered from studying tree rings showed what looked like a decline in temperatures from the 1980s to the present, the scientists added in measurements taken later by more modern instruments, which gave them the answer they wanted.

The MRC's Brad Wilmouth corrected the closed-captioning against the video to provide these transcripts of the stories on the Sunday, December 6 ABC and NBC evening newscasts:

ABC's World News:

DAN HARRIS: Tomorrow is the start of a huge global summit on what some people believe is the most important problem in the world, climate change. However, as this summit begins, climate change skeptics have been handed some real ammunition -- a scandal over leaked e-mails from key scientists. Clayton Sandell is at the summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, tonight.

CLAYTON SANDELL: Today, as delegates gathered here in Copenhagen, the U.N. climate chief put nations on notice, saying it's time to make real commitments to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

YVO DE BOER, U.N. FRAMEWORK CONVENTION ON CLIMATE CHANGE: Well, time is up. Over the next two weeks, governments have to deliver a strong and long-term response.
            
SANDELL: Wealthy nations like the U.S. and developing countries like China and India are pointing fingers over who should be working hardest to cut emissions. Making cuts is difficult and expensive, meaning higher energy costs for average citizens in the middle of a global recession.

JEFFREY SACHS, THE EARTH INSTITUTE: We may get indignant in the U.S., "Oh, why aren't China and India and so forth doing their things?" but the rest of the world is saying, "What are you talking about? When are you going to show some leadership?"
                        
SANDELL: This is the room where delegates from over 190 countries will gather on Monday. When President Obama comes here, he'll bring a proposal to cut U.S. emissions 17 percent by 2020, 83 percent by 2050. But the President faces new challenges in Copenhagen. Global warming naysayers are claiming that e-mails stolen from this research university show climate scientists discussing how to fudge results to promote the idea that humans are altering the planet. Today the U.N. admitted the scandal looks bad.

DE BOER: I actually think it's very good that what has happened is being critically addressed in the media because this, this process has to be based on solid science.

SANDELL: The science is solid, according to a vast majority of researchers, with hotter temperatures, melting glaciers, and rising sea level providing the proof. Clayton Sandell, ABC News, Copenhagen.

NBC Nightly News:

LESTER HOLT: Now to that big summit on climate change that begins tomorrow in Denmark. More than 190 nations will be represented, and President Obama himself will attend at the end of the 12-day conference. Our chief environmental affairs correspondent Anne Thompson is already in Copenhagen, and she joins us now with a preview. Anne?

ANNE THOMPSON: Good evening, Lester, from rainy Copenhagen where there is actually some cautious optimism that a political agreement can be reached on reducing carbon dioxide emissions. And the reason is, is because in the last few weeks three of the biggest emitters in the world -- the U.S., China and India -- have all put specific proposals on the table promising to reduce their carbon footprints. The world is gathering in Copenhagen -- 192 nations coming to the capital of Denmark, a leader in cutting the emissions fueling climate change. Over the last two decades, Denmark has slashed its carbon footprint by 13 percent while growing its economy by more than 45 percent. Over the next two weeks, the nations of the world will try to find common ground here on how to reduce global warming and make commitments to change their carbon-burning ways. Yvo de Boer is the U.N.'s climate chief, and will play a key role in the upcoming talks.

YVO DE BOER, U.N. FRAMEWORK CONVENTION ON CLIMATE CHANGE: We know that the Himalayan glaciers are disappearing and that tens of millions of people in India and China rely on those glaciers for their drinking water supply. So what we have is basically a pretty small window of opportunity to change all of that.

THOMPSON: One of the biggest changes is happening on the Greenland ice sheet. It is melting at an ever faster pace. Danish glaciologist J.P. Stephenson says changes in the atmosphere are changing the ice.

J.P. STEPHENSON, GLACIOLOGIST: This place where we are standing used to be about 45 feet higher 10 years ago.

THOMPSON: The ice is going into the ocean raising sea levels, and that could cause some very expensive problems for coastal cities in the U.S. A new report from the World Wildlife Fund and the Alliance Insurance Group says an increase of some two feet in sea level could cause $2.8 trillion of damage in Miami, $1.8 trillion in the New York-Newark area, and $753 billion in New Orleans. In other places the problem is not enough water. Arizona is in the 15th year of a drought. Conserving water is now second nature in Flagstaff, a city of 65,000 people.

PROFESSOR ABE SPRINGER, NORTHERN ARIZONA UNIVERSITY: Flagstaff has enough water to get it into the near future, but there are concerns about the supply out to the year 2050.

THOMPSON: And what are the concerns?

SPRINGER: To have enough water to supply potential anticipated future growth.

THOMPSON: Trying to balance the desire for economic growth around the world with the need to reduce emissions from the coal, gas and oil that helps fuel such growth is the challenge of Copenhagen.

Now, also under discussion here are those stolen e-mails from a British University that have made this scandal called ClimateGate. And, essentially, in those e-mails, some climate scientists seem to be suggesting that perhaps they're massaging the data. I spoke to Yvo de Boer about that. He said certainly the language in those e-mails looks bad. He's glad that both the U.N. and the university are investigating those e-mails, but he said when you look at the overall science and the fact that science from around the world has been reviewed by scientists around the world -- 2,500 by the U.N. -- he says the evidence is overwhelming that man is behind climate change.

British newspapers reported Sunday that the e-mail messages involved in the growing ClimateGate scandal may have been leaked to the world by the Russian secret service.

The alleged motive is to undermine any calls for carbon dioxide emissions cuts out of the upcoming climate change conference in Copenhagen:

Russia – one of the world’s largest producers and users of oil and gas – has a vested interest in opposing sweeping new agreements to cut emissions, which will be discussed by world leaders in Copenhagen tomorrow.

As reported by the Daily Mail:

Suspicions were growing last night that Russian security services were behind the leaking of the notorious British ‘Climategate’ emails which threaten to undermine tomorrow’s Copenhagen global warming summit.

An investigation by The Mail on Sunday has discovered that the explosive hacked emails from the University of East Anglia were leaked via a small web server in the formerly closed city of Tomsk in Siberia.

In reality, the Russian connection was first mentioned in a November 20 Nature article the day the e-mail messages came public (subscription required):

The University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU) in Norwich confirmed today that e-mails and documents dating from 1991 to 2009 were illegally copied and subsequently published on an anonymous Russian server.

A link to the Russian server first appeared on 19 November on a relatively obscure climate-sceptic blog. The server was shut down just hours later, but the stolen material had already been distributed elsewhere on the Internet.

One of the scientists involved in ClimateGate, NASA's Gavin Schmidt, confirmed this in a November 23 posting at the global warming alarmist blog RealClimate: 

At around 6.20am (EST) Nov 17th, somebody hacked into the RC server from an IP address associated with a computer somewhere in Turkey, disabled access from the legitimate users, and uploaded a file FOIA.zip to our server. They then created a draft post that would have been posted announcing the data to the world that was identical in content of the comment posted on The Air Vent later that day. They were intercepted before this could be posted on the blog. This archive appears to be identical to the one posted on the Russian server except for the name change.

Two weeks later, the Mail uncovered more:

Russia – one of the world’s largest producers and users of oil and gas – has a vested interest in opposing sweeping new agreements to cut emissions, which will be discussed by world leaders in Copenhagen tomorrow.

Russia believes current rules are stacked against it, and has threatened to pull the plug on Copenhagen without concessions to Kremlin concerns. 

The Mail on Sunday understands that the hundreds of hacked emails were released to the world via a tiny internet server in a red brick building in a snow-clad street in Tomsk.

The original internet link was quickly removed after the information spread from it like wildfire on to international websites.

A message written in English accompanied the leaked package of emails. It read: ‘We feel that climate science is too important to be kept under wraps.

'We hereby release a random selection of correspondence, code and documents. Hopefully it will give some insight into the science and the people behind it.’ [...]

Tomcity – the server – and Tomline, its parent company, were unavailable for comment yesterday.

The firm offers an internet security business to prevent hacking and bugs and the ‘compromising of confidential information’.

Other divisions of the firm are involved in laying the cable which provides high-speed internet access to companies in the Siberian city.

The server is believed to be used mainly by Tomsk State University, one of the leading academic institutions in Russia, and other scientific institutes.

Computer hackers in Tomsk have been used in the past by the Russian secret service (FSB) to shut websites which promote views disliked by Moscow.

The British Telegraph agreed:

So-called ‘patriot hackers’ from Tomsk have been used in the past by the Russian secret service, the FSB, to attack websites disliked by the Kremlin, such as the “denial of service” campaign launched against the Kavkaz-Tsentr website, over its reports about the war in Chechnya, in 2002. 

Is Russia behind this leak in order to thwart the climate change conference in Copenhagen?

Will American media get on the investigation train and start looking into these allegations?

Stay tuned. 

Over at the Weekly Standard, the always impressive Steven Hayward has a good summation of where we are in Climate Gate:

Slowly and mostly unnoticed by the major news media, the air has been going out of the global warming balloon. Global temperatures stopped rising a few years ago, much to the dismay of the climate campaigners. The U.N.’s upcoming Copenhagen conference–which was supposed to yield a binding greenhouse gas emissions reduction treaty as a successor to the failed Kyoto Protocol–collapsed weeks in advance and remains on life support pending Obama’s magical intervention. Cap and trade legislation is stalled on Capitol Hill. Recent opinion polls from Gallup, Pew, Rasmussen, ABC/Washington Post, and other pollsters all find a dramatic decline in public belief in human-caused global warming. The climate campaigners continue to insist this is because they have a “communications” problem, but after Al Gore’s Nobel Prize/Academy Award double play, millions of dollars in paid advertising, and the relentless doom-mongering from the media echo chamber and the political class, this excuse is preposterous. And now the climate campaign is having its Emperor’s New Clothes moment.

In mid-November a large cache of emails and technical documents from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia in Britain were made available on a number of Internet file-servers for download by the public–either the work of a hacker or a leak from a whistleblower on the inside. The emails–more than 1,000 of them–reveal a small cabal of scientists who, in the words of MIT’s Michael Schrage, engaged in “malice, mischief and Machiavellian maneuverings.” In an ironic twist, one of the frequent correspondents in this long e‑trail (University of Arizona scientist Jonathan Overpeck) warned several of his colleagues in September, “Please write all emails as though they will be made public.” Small wonder why. It’s being called Climategate, but more than one wit is calling them “the CRUtape Letters.”

As in the furor over Dan Rather’s fabricated documents about George W. Bush’s National Guard service back in 2004, bloggers have been swarming over the material and highlighting the bad faith, bad science, and possibly even criminal behavior (deleting material requested under Britain’s Freedom of Information Act and perhaps tax evasion) of a small group of highly influential climate scientists. As with Rathergate, diehard climate campaigners are repairing to the “fake but accurate” defense–what these scientists did may be unethical or deeply biased, they say, but the science is settled, don’t you know, so move along, nothing to see here. There are a few notable exceptions, such as Guardian columnist George Monbiot, who in the past has trafficked in the most extreme climate mongering: “It’s no use pretending that this isn’t a major blow,” Monbiot wrote in a November 23 column. “The emails extracted by a hacker from the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia could scarcely be more damaging. .  .  . I’m dismayed and deeply shaken by them. .  .  . I was too trusting of some of those who provided the evidence I championed. I would have been a better journalist if I had investigated their claims more closely.” Monbiot has joined a number of prominent climate scientists in demanding that the CRU figures resign their posts and be excluded from future climate science work. The head of the CRU, Phil Jones, announced last week that he will temporarily step down pending an investigation.

Hayward’s conclusion:

Climate change is a genuine phenomenon, and there is a nontrivial risk of major consequences in the future. Yet the hysteria of the global warming campaigners and their monomaniacal advocacy of absurdly expensive curbs on fossil fuel use have led to a political dead end that will become more apparent with the imminent collapse of the Kyoto-Copenhagen process. I have long expected that 20 or so years from now we will look back on the turn-of-the-millennium climate hysteria in the same way we look back now on the population bomb hysteria of the late 1960s and early 1970s–as a phenomenon whose magnitude and effects were vastly overestimated, and whose proposed solutions were wrongheaded and often genuinely evil (such as the forced sterilizations of thousands of Indian men in the 1970s, much of it funded by the Ford Foundation). Today the climate campaigners want to forcibly sterilize the world’s energy supply, and until recently they looked to be within an ace of doing so. But even before Climategate, the campaign was beginning to resemble a Broadway musical that had run too long, with sagging box office and declining enthusiasm from a dwindling audience. Someone needs to break the bad news to the players that it’s closing time for the climate horror show.

Read the whole article here.

CBS on Saturday finally covered the growing ClimateGate scandal, but did so when its "Evening News" program was going to be preempted by college football in most of the country.

With the SEC Championship game between the universities of Florida and Alabama starting at 4PM EST, few would see CBS's report on this controversy unless they read an article at the network's website.

There, the video of the segment was available with the surprising caption "Climate Change a Hoax?"

According to LexisNexis, anchor Jeff Glor teased the story before a commercial break, "Just ahead on tonight`s CBS EVENING NEWS -- did some scientists fudge the numbers to make climate change look worse than it is."

After the break, Glor introduced correspondent Kimberly Dozier who offered a surprisingly detailed report on the scandal (video embedded below the fold with transcript):

JEFF GLOR, ANCHOR: Just ahead on tonight`s CBS EVENING NEWS--did some scientists fudge the numbers to make climate change look worse than it is.

(ANNOUNCEMENTS)

JEFF GLOR: It was a change of plans for the President. Instead of attending the climate change summit in Copenhagen when it opens next week, he`ll arrive near the end on December 18th. That might mean a climate deal is within reach. But a series of leaked e-mails between climate scientists is casting a cloud over this meeting, as we hear now from Kimberly Dozier.

(Begin VT)

KIMBERLY DOZIER: Hundreds of world leaders of climate change experts are descending on Copenhagen to try to come up with a new pact to slow global warming. And thousands of protesters across Europe today were trying to send them a message. It`s time to stop talking and make a deal.

But reaching that deal has now been complicated by what`s been called Climate-Gate. A string of hacked private e-mails between global climate chain scientists in the U.S. and Europe, which have cast doubts on the very science this summit is based on.

The e-mails seem to show that some of the world`s top experts decided to exclude or manipulate some research that didn`t help prove global warming exists. Nineteen ninety-eight was the hottest year since recordkeeping began. But the temperature went down the next year and it`s only spiked a couple of times since.

An e-mail from 1999 shows scientists worked hard to demonstrate an upward trend. They talk of using a trick to hide the decline in global temperatures. It worked like this: when temperature readings gathered from studying tree range showed what looked like a decline in temperatures from the 1980s to the present, the scientists added in measurements taken later by more modern instruments, which gave them the answer they wanted. The scientists say the e-mails are being misinterpreted.

KEVIN TRENBERTH (National Center for Atmospheric Research): A lot of charges have been made that I think are-- are quiet unjustified, cherry- picking information and-- and not-- taking it quite out of context and-- and misrepresenting what it`s actually saying.

KIMBERLY DOZIER: Senator James Inhofe, a climate change skeptic, says the e-mails prove the global warming threat is exaggerated. He wants a congressional investigation.

SENATOR JAMES INHOFE (R-Oklahoma): We are relying upon that science for a bunch of stuff that we would be doing that would lose a lot of jobs and really affect Americans. I do believe an investigation would show that they are-- that they`ve clearly manipulated the data.

KIMBERLY DOZIER: The official U.S. position hasn`t changed--that climate change is real and needs to be addressed.

ROBERT GIBBS (White House Press Secretary): Climate change is happening. I don`t think that`s anything that is, quite frankly, among most people, in dispute anymore.

KIMBERLY DOZIER: Two major carbon producers, India and China, agree. They just announced they`ll set goals to lower their carbon emissions. Though the U.S. Congress hasn`t agreed on an American plan to lower emissions, President Obama`s visit to Copenhagen at the end of the meeting, instead of the beginning as originally planned, is being taken as a positive sign.

ACHIM STEINER (Director, UN Environment Programme): President Obama said he will come to Copenhagen if a deal is feasible, and I have always said, and we have in the United Nations said, that while nothing is guaranteed, the world is ready for a deal.

(End VT)

KIMBERLY DOZIER: But the leaked memos have given ammunition to critics of climate change, so climate change supporters fear Copenhagen may only produce the framework for an agreement that then will be passed on to next year. Jeff.

JEFF GLOR: All right, Kimberly Dozier from our Washington bureau tonight. Kimberly, thank you.

Once again, as a result of Saturday's college football game, few people in the country actually saw this report.

In fact, CBS's Phoenix affiliate didn't even list the "CBS Evening News" on its schedule Saturday. As it is in the Mountain Time Zone, this suggests the program was only aired on the West Coast, and was never intended to be seen east of the Pacific Time Zone.

The schedule for CBS's San Francisco affiliate shows "CBS Saturday Evening News" at 6:30.

Was the coverage of ClimateGate on a Saturday when it wouldn't be shown to the vast majority of the nation due to college football a way for CBS to report this story without actually doing so?

ABC’s Good Morning America maintained its blackout on ClimateGate this weekend, even as Sunday’s show carried a preview of this week’s climate summit in Copenhagen, Denmark. Reporter Clayton Sandell showcased two scientists, both of whom argued that the U.S. was failing to do enough to combat global warming, and seemed distressed that public faith in the claims of a human-caused catastrophe are on the decline in spite of “growing scientific evidence.”

Despite growing scientific evidence that humans are to blame for warming the planet — rising sea level, melting glaciers, more intense droughts — polls show the number of Americans who believe global warming is happening is at its lowest point in 12 years.

It should be noted that the Washington Post/ABC News poll Sandell cited was conducted between November 12 and 15, before the revelations of e-mails from Britain’s Climatic Research Unit which suggest conniving among left-wing scientists to manipulate data and silence critics.

Since the story broke November 20, ABC has failed to mention ClimateGate on either its morning or evening news programs, although it was mentioned during the roundtable on ABC’s This Week back on November 29. MRC President Brent Bozell on Friday sent a New York Times clipping about the scandal to ABC News headquarters (via an eco-friendly bicycle courier), in case the reason for their silence was simple ignorance.

The scientists ABC quoted both criticized the Obama administration from the left. Columbia’s Jeffrey Sachs argued that the rest of the world is rightly demanding U.S. leadership since we are “responsible for so much of the rise of greenhouse gases that have taken place.” And Richard Somerville of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography suggested Obama’s proposal to cut U.S. emissions by 83% by 2050 was “not enough.”

Somerville argued: “There's a limit on how much gases you can put in before Mother Nature shows you what the climate system will do. And Mother Nature bats last.”

Here’s a transcript of the December 6 Good Morning America segment that aired at about 8:08am ET:

NEWS ANCHOR JOHN BERMAN: What's being called the most important climate summit in a decade opens tomorrow in Denmark, where 192 countries will try to make a deal to fight climate change. ABC's Clayton Sandell is in Copenhagen. Good morning, Clayton.

CORRESPONDENT CLAYTON SANDELL: Good morning, John. This is the largest climate summit ever, 15,000 participants. But the world leaders and delegates coming together here in Copenhagen are still very much apart when it comes to how to tackle global warming.

They're coming from across the globe, including more than 100 world leaders. But it's the U.S. that is at the center of the storm.

PROFESSOR JEFFREY SACHS, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY: We may get indignant in the U.S., "Oh, why aren't China, India, and so forth, doing their things?" But the rest of the world is saying, "What are you talking about? [pictures of smokestacks] You're responsible for so much of the rise of greenhouse gases that have taken place 'til now. When are you going to show some leadership?"

SANDELL: On Friday, President Obama pushed back his arrival, saying he'd be more effective at the end of the conference, when most world leaders will be here. He's coming armed with a proposal to cut U.S. emissions 17% by 2020, 83% by 2050. But the U.S. can't do it alone.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: There can be no solution to this challenge without the efforts of both China and the United States.

SANDELL: China and India now say they will slow their rate of emissions, though total emissions will still increase. Scientists say the proposed cuts are not enough to keep Earth's climate from uncharted territory.

RICHARD SOMERVILLE, SCRIPPS INSTITUTION OF OCEANOGRAPHY: There's a limit on how much gases you can put in before Mother Nature shows you what the climate system will do. And Mother Nature bats last.

SANDELL: Another sticking point is over how much wealthy nations that pollute the most should pay to help poor nations adapt to a warming world.

Mr. Obama's toughest challenge may be at home. The Senate would have to ratify any climate treaty, and there's strong opposition, with many believing it would be a job-killer.

KAREN HARBERT, U.S. CHAMBER OF COMMERCE: Let's go do it in a way that is sensible, that allows us to be successful and that reduces greenhouse gas emissions, And there's a way to do it, and there's a way to actually harm the economy.

SANDELL: Then, there is the public. Despite growing scientific evidence that humans are to blame for warming the planet — rising sea level, melting glaciers, more intense droughts — polls show the number of Americans who believe global warming is happening is at its lowest point in 12 years.

Now, the President will be here on December 18 with other world leaders. But most experts say the talks here will only result in a political agreement, more of a blueprint to fight global warming and not a legally binding treaty. That may have to wait until the next major climate summit in Mexico at the end of 2010. John?

BERMAN: Thanks, Clayton. Clayton Sandell in Copenhagen.

America's media might not think the growing ClimateGate scandal is important, but Britain's Met Office believes it's serious enough to re-examine 160 years of temperature data:

The new analysis of the data will take three years, meaning that the Met Office will not be able to state with absolute confidence the extent of the warming trend until the end of 2012. 

For those unfamiliar, the Met Office is England's national weather service.

Maybe this revelation will convince our global warming-obsessed press that information in the e-mail messages obtained from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit is actually newsworthy.

As reported by the London Times Saturday (h/t Ed Morrissey):

The Met Office plans to re-examine 160 years of temperature data after admitting that public confidence in the science on man-made global warming has been shattered by leaked e-mails. [...]

The Met Office database is one of three main sources of temperature data analysis on which the UN’s main climate change science body relies for its assessment that global warming is a serious danger to the world. This assessment is the basis for next week’s climate change talks in Copenhagen aimed at cutting CO2 emissions.

With the Copenhagen summit just days from now, this announcement out of England is HUGE news, especially given how connected this Office is to the university at the heart of the scandal:

The Met Office works closely with the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU), which is being investigated after e-mails written by its director, Phil Jones, appeared to show an attempt to manipulate temperature data and block alternative scientific views.

The Met Office’s published data showing a warming trend draws heavily on CRU analysis. CRU supplied all the land temperature data to the Met Office, which added this to its own analysis of sea temperature data.

Also of consequence is how this Office is trying to get temperature data from all over the world re-examined:

Since the stolen e-mails were published, the chief executive of the Met Office has written to national meteorological offices in 188 countries asking their permission to release the raw data that they collected from their weather stations. [...]

The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change admitted yesterday that it needed to consider the full implications of the e-mails and whether they cast doubt on any of the evidence for man-made global warming.

This led Ed Morrissey to opine Saturday:

The Met Office is taking the correct approach.  The data on which they largely relied has not only been shown to have been corrupted by bias and corruption, it’s also been destroyed.  Knowing the UEA-CRU’s credibility as a scientific effort has been compromised, real scientists would insist on recreating the data set in a thoroughly testable and transparent process before proceeding to use any of the conclusions reached from the previous work to form any more recommendations for action.

In fact, the UN, the UK, and the rest of the world should be insisting on the same approach — if they were interested in science in the first place.  The UK’s efforts to quash the Met Office’s review, which is what scientists would demand in any other context, shows that the politicians aren’t terribly interested in whether AGW is scientifically supportable, or even true at all.  They want the power that AGW hysteria gives them to seize control of private-industry production and the choices available to people now.

Indeed. 

The Climatic Research Unit at the heart of the ClimateGate scandal sought funds from Shell Oil in the year 2000.

Other e-mail messages obtained from the University of East Anglia's computers also showed officials at the school's CRU solicited support from ExxonMobil and BP Amoco, although the nature of this support was not identified.

As climate alarmists and their media minions love to claim that global warming skeptics are all paid shills of Big Oil, it makes one wonder how the press will report these startling revelations discovered by Anthony Watts Friday:

From: "Mick Kelly" <m.kelly@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: m.hulme@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Subject: Shell
Date: Wed, 05 Jul 2000 13:31:00 +0100
Reply-to: m.kelly@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Cc: t.oriordan@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, t.o'riordan@xxxxxxxxx.xxx

Mike
Had a very good meeting with Shell yesterday. Only a minor part of the
agenda, but I expect they will accept an invitation to act as a strategic
partner and will contribute to a studentship fund though under certain
conditions. I now have to wait for the top-level soundings at their end
after the meeting to result in a response. We, however, have to discuss
asap what a strategic partnership means, what a studentship fund is, etc,
etc. By email? In person?
I hear that Shell's name came up at the TC meeting. I'm ccing this to Tim
who I think was involved in that discussion so all concerned know not to
make an independent approach at this stage without consulting me!
I'm talking to Shell International's climate change team but this approach
will do equally for the new foundation as it's only one step or so off
Shell's equivalent of a board level. I do know a little about the Fdn and
what kind of projects they are looking for. It could be relevant for the
new building, incidentally, though opinions are mixed as to whether it's
within the remit.
Regards
Mick
______________________________________________

Mick Kelly Climatic Research Unit
University of East Anglia Norwich NR4 7TJ
United Kingdom
Tel: 44-1603-592091 Fax: 44-1603-507784
Email: m.kelly@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Web: http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/tiempo/
______________________________________________

Earlier that same year, the recipient of this e-mail message, Mike Hulme, sent a message of his own concerning getting "support" from a number of entities (emphasis added):

From: Mike Hulme <m.hulme@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: Simon.Shackley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Subject: Re: industrial and commercial contacts
Date: Mon Jan 10 17:01:32 2000

Simon,

I have talked with Tim O'Riordan and others here today and Tim has a wealth of contacts he is prepared to help with. Four specific ones from Tim are:

- Charlotte Grezo, BP Fuel Options (possibly on the Assessment Panel. She is also on the ESRC Research Priorities Board), but someone Tim can easily talk with. There are others in BP Tim knows too.
- Richard Sykes, Head of Environment Division at Shell International
- Chris Laing, Managing Director, Laing Construction (also maybe someone at Bovis)
- ??, someone high-up in Unilever whose name escapes me.

And then Simon Gerrard here in our Risk Unit suggested the following personal contacts:

- ??, someone senior at AMEC Engineering in Yarmouth (involved with North Sea industry and wind energy)
- Richard Powell, Director of the East of England Development Board

You can add these to your list and I can ensure that Tim and Simon feed the right material through once finalised.

I will phone tomorrow re. the texts.

Cheers,

Mike

At 20:30 07/01/00 BST, you wrote:
>dear colleagues
>
>re: List of Industrial and Commercial Contacts to Elicit Support
>from for the Tyndall Centre
>
>This is the list so far. Our contact person is given in brackets
>afterwards. There is some discussion on whether we
>should restict ourselves to board level contacts - hence Dlugolecki
>is not board level but highly knowledgeable about climate change.
>I think people such as that, who are well known for their climate
>change interests, are worth writing to for support. There may be
>less value in writing to lesser known personnel at a non-board level.
>
>SPRU has offered to elicit support from their energy programme
>sponsors which will help beef things up. (Frans: is the Alsthom
>contact the same as Nick Jenkin's below? Also, do you have a BP
>Amoco contact? The name I've come up with is Paul Rutter, chief
>engineer, but he is not a personal contact]
>
>We could probably do with some more names from the financial sector.
>Does anyone know any investment bankers?
>
>Please send additional names as quickly as possible so we can
>finalise the list.
>
>I am sending a draft of the generic version of the letter eliciting
>support and the 2 page summary to Mike to look over. Then this can be
>used as a basis for letter writing by the Tyndall contact (the person
>in brackets).
>
>Mr Alan Wood CEO Siemens plc [Nick Jenkins]
>Mr Mike Hughes CE Midlands Electricity (Visiting Prof at UMIST) [Nick
>Jenkins]
>Mr Keith Taylor, Chairman and CEO of Esso UK (John
>Shepherd]
>Mr Brian Duckworth, Managing Director, Severn-Trent Water
>[Mike Hulme]
>Dr Jeremy Leggett, Director, Solar Century [Mike Hulme]
>Mr Brian Ford, Director of Quality, United Utilities plc [Simon
>Shackley]
>Dr Andrew Dlugolecki, CGU [Jean Palutikof]
>Dr Ted Ellis, VP Building Products, Pilkington plc [Simon Shackley]
>Mr Mervyn Pedalty, CEO, Cooperative Bank plc [Simon Shackley]
>
>
>Possibles:
>Mr John Loughhead, Technology Director ALSTOM [Nick Jenkins]
>Mr Edward Hyams, Managing Director Eastern Generation [Nick
>Jenkins]
>Dr David Parry, Director Power Technology Centre, Powergen
>[Nick Jenkins]
>Mike Townsend, Director, The Woodland Trust [Melvin
>Cannell]
>Mr Paul Rutter, BP Amoco [via Terry Lazenby, UMIST]
>
>With kind regards
>
>Simon Shackley 

Taking this a step further, Hulme has not been quiet about this growing scandal. On Wednesday, he published an op-ed at the Wall Street Journal:

I am a climate scientist who worked in the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia in the 1990s. I have been reflecting on the bigger lessons to be learned from the stolen emails, some of which were mine. One thing the episode has made clear is that it has become difficult to disentangle political arguments about climate policies from scientific arguments about the evidence for man-made climate change and the confidence placed in predictions of future change. The quality of both political debate and scientific practice suffers as a consequence. [...]

If we build the foundations of our climate-change policies so confidently and so single-mindedly on scientific claims about what the future holds and what therefore "has to be done," then science will inevitably become the field on which political battles are waged. The mantra becomes: Get the science right, reduce the scientific uncertainties, compel everyone to believe it. . . and we will have won. Not only is this an unrealistic view about how policy gets made, it also places much too great a burden on science, certainly on climate science with all of its struggles with complexity, contingency and uncertainty.

The events of the last few of weeks, involving stolen professional correspondence between a small number of leading climate scientists—so-called climategate—demonstrate my point. Both the theft itself and the alleged contents of some of the stolen emails reveal the strong polarization and intense antagonism now found in some areas of climate science.

Climate scientists, knowingly or not, become proxies for political battles. The consequence is that science, as a form of open and critical enquiry, deteriorates while the more appropriate forums for ideological battles are ignored. [...]

If climategate leads to greater openness and transparency in climate science, and makes it less partisan, it will have done a good thing. It will enable science to function in the effective way it must do in public policy deliberations: Not as the place where we import all of our legitimate disagreements, but one powerful way of offering insight about how the world works and the potential consequences of different policy choices. The important arguments about political beliefs and ethical values can then take place in open and free democracies, in those public spaces we have created for political argumentation.

Yes, but this can only happen if media will allow it. If the press only reports what buttresses their view of global warming, there can't really be "important arguments about political beliefs and ethical values" concerning any of this.

Fortunately, Hulme wasn't through unburdening his conscience, for on Friday he published an op-ed at Britain's Guardian:

In 1997, in the lead-up to Kyoto, I helped organise a statement by European climate scientists. We proclaimed "our belief that nations should agree to substantial control in the growth of emissions", endorsing the then EU position of a 15% cut by 2010. What we didn't do was explain the personal values and ethical judgments we each made in reaching this conclusion. By signing it "European climate scientists", the impression could easily be gained that our belief was a non-negotiable conclusion of our scientific work.

As we prepare for the Copenhagen summit, I am rather critical of my naivety 12 years ago. I would still like a world in which greenhouse gas emissions were falling, but it is important when making this argument in public to identify the various lines of reasoning I use to reach this position: scientific evidence, my political philosophy, my ideology of nature and my personal values.

The relationship between climate science, political and ethical judgments and advocacy has been a turbulent one ever since man-made climate change became a public policy issue. The intense political posturing over the last two weeks surrounding the theft from the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia of emails between a few of the world's more prominent climate scientists has further demonstrated this turbulence.

Yes it has, Mr. Hulme, and maybe you'll do the world a favor by contacting more representatives in the American press who are doing everything in their power to prevent our citizens from understanding how politicized this science is while also telling them how wrong they are to hide ClimateGate from the public. 

And maybe you'll also tell the world how much money you and your colleagues at UEA and CRU ended up obtaining from various oil companies.

A professor at the university in the middle of the ClimateGate scandal called global warming skeptic Marc Morano "an a**hole" on live television Friday.

This marvelously came moments after Andrew Watson, a professor at the University of East Anglia, told the BBC host moderating the discussion that the controversy surrounding e-mail messages obtained from his school's computers is "a real setback not because there's anything wrong with the science, but because the character assassination and the temperature of the debate which you can just see from our colleague in America is just obsuring the important issue."

Less than ten seconds after making this sanctimonious, holier than thou statement, Watson said as the interview came to a close, "What an a**hole" (video embedded below the fold):

Isn't it fascinating to see how quickly folks that complain about character assassination jump to using it themselves when they're losing a debate?

I guess such hypocrisy isn't exclusive to liberals on this side of the Pond.

Here's the entire debate for those interested (transcribed highlights available at Climate Depot):

Kudos to the BBC for this segment.

When will ABC, CBS, or NBC cover this story in this fashion?

Stay tuned.