Tag Archives: Michael Mann

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. 

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? 

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.

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!

The American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (the Stimulus Bill) has been such an epic failure, that even the mainstream media has started to notice. The White House has tacitly acknowledged this and recently announced that it would no longer ‘count’ jobs ‘created or saved’ by the Stimulus. The basic problem is that the bulk of the spending went to programs or projects that have nothing to do with economic growth.

The latest example of this is a $500,000 grant to Michael Mann, Professor at Penn State University and unintended c0-star of the ClimateGate e-mail scandal. The leaked e-mails revealed collaboration among scientists to stifle dissenting views on the extent of man-made global warming.

Mann is also the creator of the “Hockey Stick” graph, which purported to show a sharp increase in recent temperatures. That work has been thoroughly discredited by researcher Stephen McIntyre. Yet, in June 2009, the National Science Foundation awarded Mann a three-year $500,000 to further study the climate’s response to human activity. According to the grant award:

The broader impacts involve supporting postdoctoral scholars and graduate students and contributing to the understanding of abrupt climate change.

So, the research is supposed to give us a better ‘understanding of abrupt climate change.’ Mind you, the research isn’t to determine whether there is abrupt climate change occurring. Given that Mann is known for using “tricks” to finesse his data, the National Science Foundation will not be pleased with the results.

Actually, this particular grant is special, even by the low-bar set by other spending. Most of the Stimulus funds are simply wasted with no real impact on the overall economy. However, Mann’s “research” will presumably be used to further justify cap-and-trade legislation or other draconian regulatory actions. Either of these will have a very negative impact on the economy, retarding growth for years to come.

We may be paying for this $500,000 for a very long time.

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. 

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.

From the ever-awesome Angus McColloch:

Believe it or not, the UN just whined that climategate is the Russian’s fault. It appears that the United Nation’s position is that the obvious cover-up of the false doctrine that is global warming perpetrated by global warming “scientists” is not the fault of the lying scientists, but that of the assumed “paid” Russian hacker that hacked the globaloney scientist’s emails and exposed the cover-up to the world. Convoluted reasoning, no?

Remember when you were a child and your Mother discovered through hearing about it from the neighbors that you were doing something you weren’t supposed to be doing? Remember how instead of taking responsibility for your actions you cried that it wasn’t right that someone narced on you? Well, that is the same sort of childish, facile reasoning that the UN has employed to explain away this climaegate scandal.

Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, a vice-chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), recently said that the hacked emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) were obtained and hyped by Russia in order to “destroy public confidence” in the “science” of man-made global warming… or is it now “climate change”? It’s hard to keep up with their constant name changing as they look for more sellable rhetoric.

Just like that kid that’s mad at getting caught but can’t see that he is at fault in the first place, the UN is now trying to get everyone to consider this as “hackergate” instead of climategate. Various UN folks are in essence telling us not to look “here,” but to instead look “over there.”

A few quotes:

“This is not ‘climategate’ it’s ‘hackergate’. Let’s not forget the word ‘gate’ refers to a place where data was stolen by people who were paid to do so. So the media should direct its investigations into that.” — Achim Steiner, director of the UN Environment Program

“We are spending a lot of useless time discussing this rather than spending time preparing information for the negotiators.” — Jean-Pascal van Ypersele

Yes, like a bad magician telling us to look at his right hand while his left hand is fishing around in his pocket for the “magic” card, the UN is trying desperately to make us forget about the actual contents of the emails while continuing to parlay its particular brand of economy-killing “magic” with its IPCC climate policies.

Skepticism against global warming is growing. Fortunately, it seems that the UN and these “climate change” salesmen are now fighting a rearguard action to try and keep their big government, nanny state plans rolling forward. The sad truth is that all their nanny state styled, economically inviable policies are little different than the sort of anti-capitalist (read anti-American) policies that have been pushed by the UN since it first met.

It’s all just another effort to eliminate local control and custom and vest all power in a central, singular body. And that goal is the most tyrannical idea of them all. Without custom, the unitary state without question devolves into tyranny. Without these intermediary institutions, these strong and voluntary associations outside of governmental control, there is no way to maintain civil liberty. But with them in place there is no way for far off masters to fully control the people. The UN and other nanny staters, therefore, must destroy these institutions.

For its part, the UN would see these local interests and even local governments squelched leaving itself as the arbiter of man’s relations, his education, his field of work, even his very soul. And the policies of “carbon trading” and the other prescriptions emanating from the global warming true believers are intended to do just that.

But people are starting to wake up. India has let it be known that it rejects Danish climate proposals. Australia has had a major party shake up over the issue with the result that its own cap and tax plan has arrived still born. And a recent Rasmussen poll found that more Americans than ever are skeptical about the science behind global warming. Cracks are appearing in the credibility of global warming.

So it’s no wonder that the UN is trying to make this into “hackergate” instead of “climategate.” Just as the refrain from the “well informed” during the Cold War was that an inordinate fear of communism, a red scare, was discreditable — even as they lost that fight when communism fell — now the same sorts of people are trying to substitute the old red arguments with green ones. And in a similar vein these folks are trying to discredit skeptics of their green policies. So, green is the new red, indeed. Let us strive to defeat these attempts as well.

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.

As the USS Obama Administration slowly starts to settle into the waves, future historians will be kept busy searching for the source of the iceberg that holed it below the waterline on its maiden voyage to the land of Hope and Change.  Was it the non-stimulating “stimulus”?  The ludicrous Nobel Peace Prize?  The decision to try the Sept. 11^th plotters in lower Manhattan?  The Afghanistan speech at West Point this week, splitting the difference between surging and surrendering as the photo-op cadets nodded off in the background?  It’s a tough call, and the first year’s not even over yet.

But this administration is more than simply its swivel-headed Fearless Leader, ping-ponging between his teleprompters as the law of diminishing returns exerts its iron grip on his poll numbers.  It’s also the executive officers, the governing party’s top senators and congressmen, the palace courtiers who enforce discipline among the spear-carriers as they split up the swag.  In this, the Obama Administration is especially blessed, featuring both the frozen rictus of Anunciata d’Alesandro Pelosi as the speaker of the house and Harry “the Horse” Reid, an innocent Mormon virgin wandering among the fleshpots and real-estate deals of Las Vegas, as the Senate majority leader.  The Right is, indeed, fortunate in its enemies.

Still, the prize for the dumbest Democrat currently extorting a salary from the taxpayer (check out what her staff costs you here) remains where it long has been, in the grip of Barbara “Call Me Senator” Boxer, née Levy, the pride of Brooklyn and, latterly, of Marin County, Calif., and former relation-by-marriage to Hillary Rodham Clinton during the brief marriage between her daughter, Nicole, and Hillary’s sterling brother, Tony.  Tony Rodham, you may recall, is a former prison guard and repo man who managed to get himself into hot water over a hazelnut deal in the republic of Georgia, got caught up in Pardongate, was assaulted in flagranteby a man who claimed Tony was boinking his girlfriend, got caught up in bankruptcy court and battled his ex over child-support payments.

Standing not quite five feet tall, Boxer has consistently distinguished herself in the discharge of her duties, including trying to prevent the certification of Ohio’s electoral votes during the 2000 election, attacking Condoleezza Rice during her confirmation hearings, racially patronizing Harry Alford of the Black Chamber of Commerce, and dressing down my namesake, Brig. General Michael Walsh, for an act of what she considered lèse majesté. The general had to bite his tongue, but the righteous contempt with which Alford treats the senator’s plantation racism was one of the feel-good stories of the year.

Not for nothing has she earned the people’s choice award as America’s Stupidest Senator and against some stiff competition. Now, the Terror of Tiny Town has stepped into the steaming pile of Climategate, the recent revelations via leaked/hacked emails and other documents from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.  But is “Don’t Call Me Ma’am” Boxer upset that a scheme designed to siphon trillions of dollars away from the western economies, reduce their standard of living to Third World levels and enrich crackpot global-warming enthusiasts like Albert Arnold Gore, Jr.?  Of course not.  What’s got Barb’s panties in a bunch is “E-mail-theft-gate.”  ”You call it ‘Climategate’; I call it ‘E-mail-theft-gate.  Whatever it is, the main issue is, Are we facing global warming or are we not… This is a crime.”

Her agita comes as no surprise.  Gangsters always get antsy when threatened with exposure of their rackets, and Climate Fraud is a hell of a racket, a grand bargain among greedy science whores, malevolent government officials and a supine but protective media – Americans who get their news from The New York Times or the networks basically have no idea what we’re talking about here – who are all in this together.  As Mark Steyn noted Wednesday over at NRO:

Whatever your views on the merits, if you’re an “environmental journalist” this ought to be news. The reviled “skeptics” and “deniers” have forced Prof. Phil Jones in East Anglia to step down “temporarily” and prompted Penn State to investigate Prof. Michael Mann. Yet you’d have no idea of what the story was about from reading the AP reports in the average American monodaily…  As Jonah [Goldberg] has said, this is not just a science scandal but a journalism scandal — worldwide.

With the Copenhagen Climate Conference coming up, the ruinous Waxman-Markey bill rattling around Capitol Hill, and the investigation into climate data-manipulation starting to head to these shores, the Democrats are heavily invested in “hiding the decline,” so naturally they’re changing the subject. Leaving aside for the moment the sheer counterintuitive insanity (did I mention Al Gore?) of carbon-constraining a civilization of carbon-based life forms, it’s awfully convenient for the Left to discover its High Dudgeon about leaks right about now.  For leaking, in all probability, is what we’re dealing with here: an insider who, faced with the specter of Copenhagen, decided to go public, rather than some crazed right-wing “denier” brazenly hacking into the system.  Indeed, the BBC had the files a month before they were posted on a handy Russian server – but naturally suppressed them.

Leaks are as old as the republic, and one man’s leaker is another man’s heroic whistle-blower.  And, in the end, it all comes down to one’s interpretation of the First Amendment.  The leak of the Pentagon Papers by a disaffected Daniel Ellsberg not only set the gold standard, but the subsequent Supreme Court decision, a 6-3 ruling in favor of The New York Times, which had published the purloined material, also firmly established the First Amendment principle of no prior restraint on publication.

Closer to our time, there was the 1996 cell phone call between embattled Speaker Newt Gingrich and some of his supporters strategizing about how to handle various ethics charges brought against him by the Democrats, which was intercepted and taped by a pair of Democratic activists, John and Alice Martin, who just so happened to be driving around in their car that day, monitoring the police scanner.  They leaked the tape to radical left-wing congressman “Baghdad” Jim McDermott, who helpfully passed it over to reporters.  Sued by John Boehner (R-Ohio), one of the phone call’s participants, for invasion of privacy, McDermott stonewalled for five years before finally admitting he was the source of the press leak. The case went to the Supreme Court, which remanded it because it had already decided, in a similar case, that the principle of no prior restraint also applied to the airwaves, no matter how the tape was obtained.  ”A stranger’s illegal conduct does not suffice to remove the First Amendment shield from speech about a matter of public concern,” wrote Justice John Paul Stevens.

So nothing is likely to come from Barbara “I’m Not a Madam, I’m a Senator” Boxer’s idle threat to get to the bottom of “E-mail-theft-gate.”  Like the rest of the Democrats, she has too much invested in the scam, and with electoral disaster looming for Obama and the Democrats next year, she’s and the rest of the executive officers are going full speed ahead with their radical agenda, and damn the icebergs dead ahead.

It's been nearly two weeks since a scandal shook many people's faith in the scientists behind global warming alarmism. The scandal forced the University of East Anglia (UK) to divulge that it threw away raw temperature data and prompted the temporary resignation of Phil Jones of the university's Climate Research Unit.

Despite that resignation and calls by a U.S. senator to investigate the matter, ABC, CBS and NBC morning and evening news programming has remained silent - not mentioning a word about the scandal since it broke on Nov. 20, even as world leaders including President Barack Obama prepare to meet in Copenhagen, Denmark next week to promote a pact to reduce greenhouse gases.

MRC's President Brent Bozell called the networks' silence a "cover-up" Dec. 2.

Other news outlets, including The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN and Associated Press have deemed ClimateGate worthy of reporting, but the networks were too busy reporting on celebrity car accidents and the killer whale that ate a great white shark. Instead of airing a broadcast news segment that might inform the public about the science scandal, both ABC and CBS relegated the story to their Web sites. There was one mention of the scandal on ABC's Sunday talk show: "This Week with George Stephanopoulos."

The ClimateGate scandal, as it is being called, has the hallmarks of a major news story: private emails purporting to show unethical or illegal behavior supplied by a hacker or whistleblower, high profile scientists like James Hansen and Michael Mann, and a potential conspiracy to distort science for political gain. But the networks haven't bothered with the story.

Patrick J. Michaels, a climatologist and BMI adviser, said Nov. 20 of the leaked e-mails and documents: "This isn't a smoking gun, it's a mushroom cloud."

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs responded to a question about ClimateGate by insisting that "global warming is happening" and that for most people it isn't really a question anymore. That is the same message viewers get from the network news about climate change.

An examination of morning and evening news programs on ABC, CBS and NBC since Nov. 20 yielded zero mentions of the scandal, even in the Nov. 25 reports about Obama going to Copenhagen to discuss the need for emissions reductions. But during the same time period, the networks reported on pro-golfer Tiger Woods' "minor" car accident at least 37 times. They also found time to report on an orphaned Moose and the meal selection at the president's State Dinner.

ClimateGate began after someone (hacker or whistleblower) attacked servers of University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU) and made thousands of e-mails  and documents public. Those e-mails appear to show a conspiracy to falsify temperature data, a willingness to destroy information rather than release it under Freedom of Information (FOI) law and the intimidation of publications willing to publish skeptical articles.

CRU's director Phil Jones admitted real CRU e-mails had been stolen when he told New Zealand's Investigate magazine, "It was a hacker. We were aware of this about three or four days ago that someone had hacked into our system and taken and copied loads of data files and emails." Others argue a whistleblower was responsible for the breach.

One of those alleged e-mails was from Jones to Michael Mann (famous for his hockey stick graph of global warming) and two others appeared to indicate manipulation of scientific data.

Jones wrote: "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) amd [Sic] from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline."

Jones, who contributed to a chapter of the U.N.'s IPCC report, claims the term "trick" was used "colloquially as in a clever thing to do." Myron Ebell, Director of Global Warming Policy for the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), supplied his own view of what Jones and Mann meant by hiding the decline.

Ebell wrote in the National Post: "What is the clever method that Prof. Jones learned from Prof. Mann? I think he is referring to the way Prof. Mann constructed his celebrated hockey stick graph. His proxy records showed flat temperatures for the past 1,000 years, including the past century. But everyone knows that temperatures have gone up rapidly in the past few decades ... So what Prof. Mann did was splice the last few decades of surface temperature records onto his proxy record. Voila! - the hockey stick."

The alleged e-mails were enough to force Jones' temporary resignation. On Dec. 1, Associated Press reported that Jones is "stepping down pending an investigation into allegations that he overstated the case for man-made climate change."

Other leaked e-mails asked people to delete e-mails and one said that if information was requested using FOI, it would be deleted rather than turned over:

Alleged e-mail from Jones to Mann Feb. 2, 2005:

"The two MMs have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I'll delete the file rather than send to anyone. Does your similar act in the US force you to respond to enquiries within 20 days? - our does !  The UK works on precedents, so the first request will test it. We also have a data protection act, which I will hide behind."

In Britain, it is a crime to delete information requested under FOI.

You can read the Business & Media Institute's entire assessment of the ClimateGate scandal and the networks' refusal to report it on the BMI Web site.

By now you’ve likely forgotten the name of Josh Steiner, the Bill Clinton aide who feebly testified that he had lied to his own diary when recording events of the time. But you haven’t forgotten the pitifulness of the spectacle. I suggest we may have just passed that one in ClimateGate, with the following passage from John Tierney’s column in the New York Times, discussing “Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd [sic] from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline”:

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

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

Dr. Mann now tells me that he was unaware, when he wrote the response, that such grafting had in fact been done in the earlier cover chart, and I take him at his word.”

But wasn’t it “Mike’s trick” to do this that is being discussed here, grasped and described as such by CRU’s Phil Jones as having been performed on Mike’s graph, by Mike? So, his defense is that no one had told him that that’s what he was doing?

These guys really need to call for a RealInvestigation to get the the bottom of their actions, as the more they stumble around the worse they’re making themselves look.

I imagine the folks at the Washington Post thought they were being fair and balanced Tuesday when they published two letters to the editor that were skeptical of man's role in global warming as compared to one that supported Nobel Laureate Al Gore's view of the world.

The only problem is that one letter was penned by someone very important to the Global Warmingist-in-Chief and the entire climate movement: Pennsylvania State University professor and creator of the infamous Hockey Stick graph Michael Mann.

The editorial staff also included a link to the world's foremost global warming advocacy website RealClimate so that folks could really get bombarded with viewpoints exclusively on one side of this highly-controversial:

There is a very robust consensus among the world's scientists that humans are altering the Earth's climate. Climate change is already disrupting our global environment, and further increases in greenhouse gas emissions will lead to increasingly greater disruption. The world's governments are at the cusp of a crucial conference on the issue that is to occur in Copenhagen.

Unfortunately some have engaged in a smear campaign to distract the public and forestall progress. As reported by The Post, they have stolen thousands of scientists' personal e-mails, including some of mine, and have mined the e-mails for words or phrases whose meaning can easily be distorted. For people interested in what scientists and the science are actually saying, http://RealClimate.org is hosting a conversation on what the context of these e-mails really is.

Michael E. Mann, Boalsburg, Pa.

The writer is director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University.

Think that's balanced out by two letters from skeptical laymen nobody's ever heard?

No, I don't either. 

On the other hand, the editors could have offset Mann's letter by adding a note to his gratuitous bioline that he's being investigated by his University as a result of his involvement in ClimateGate -- but that might have been what kids these days call "too much information!"

Readers should also review Christine Hall's piece on this subject.

As a result of the growing ClimateGate scandal, Penn State University is investigating Michael Mann, its high-profile professor on the sending and receiving end of controversial e-mail messages recently obtained from a British Climate Research Unit.

Mann, as one of the originators of the infamous Hockey Stick graph, is the climatologist at the very heart of the global warming myth.

As the creator of "Mike's Nature trick," a particularly damning phrase used in one of the e-mail messages in question, Mann is also a key figure in ClimateGate. 

Given his importance to the climate movement and all those involved including Nobel Laureate Al Gore, President Obama, and Congressional Democrats desperately trying to enact cap and trade legislation, it will be very interesting to see how this press release from Penn State gets reported in the coming days (h/t Anthony Watts via Marc Morano):

Professor Michael Mann is a highly regarded member of the Penn State faculty conducting research on climate change. Professor Mann's research papers have been published in well respected peer-reviewed scientific journals. In November 2005, Representative Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY) requested that the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) convene a panel of independent experts to investigate Professor Mann's seminal 1999 reconstruction of the global surface temperature over the past 1,000 years. The resulting 2006 report of the NAS panel (http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11676) concluded that Mann's results were sound and has been subsequently supported by an array of evidence that includes additional large-scale surface temperature reconstructions.

In recent days a lengthy file of emails has been made public. Some of the questions raised through those emails may have been addressed already by the NAS investigation but others may not have been considered. The University is looking into this matter further, following a well defined policy used in such cases. No public discussion of the matter will occur while the University is reviewing the concerns that have been raised.

Here are a couple of key e-mail messages involving Mann:

From: Phil Jones
To: ray bradley ,mann@xxxxx.xxx, mhughes@xxxx.xxx
Subject: Diagram for WMO Statement
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 13:31:15 +0000
Cc: k.briffa@xxx.xx.xx,t.osborn@xxxx.xxx

Dear Ray, Mike and Malcolm,

Once Tim’s got a diagram here we’ll send that either later today or
first thing tomorrow.

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) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline. Mike’s series got the annual land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999 for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for 1999 with data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998.

Thanks for the comments, Ray.

Cheers
Phil

Prof. Phil Jones
Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 (0) xxxxx
School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 (0) xxxx
University of East Anglia
Norwich Email p.jones@xxxx.xxx
NR4 7TJ
UK

And (via Tom Nelson, emphasis his):

From: "Michael E. Mann" ,,,Subject: RE: IPCC revisions Date: Wed, 22 Sep 1999 12:35:24 -0400
...
Walked into this hornet's nest this morning! Keith and Phil have both raised some very good points. And I should point out that Chris, through no fault of his own, but probably through ME not conveying my thoughts very clearly to the others, definitely overstates any singular confidence I have in my own (Mann et al) series.
...I had been using the entire 20th century, but in the case of Keith's, we need to align the first half of the 20th century w/ the corresponding mean values of the other series, due to the late 20th century decline.

So if Chris and Tom (?) are ok with this, I would be happy to add Keith's series. That having been said, it does raise a conundrum: We demonstrate (through comparining an exatropical averaging of our nothern hemisphere patterns with Phil's more extratropical series) that the major discrepancies between Phil's and our series can be explained in terms of spatial sampling/latitudinal emphasis (seasonality seems to be secondary here, but probably explains much of the residual differences). But that explanation certainly can't rectify why Keith's series, which has similar seasonality *and* latitudinal emphasis to Phil's series, differs in large part in exactly the opposite direction that Phil's does from ours. This is the problem we all picked up on (everyone in the room at IPCC was in agreement that this was a problem and a potential distraction/detraction from the reasonably concensus viewpoint we'd like to show w/ the Jones et al and Mann et al series.

So, if we show Keith's series in this plot, we have to comment that "something else" is responsible for the discrepancies in this case. Perhaps Keith can help us out a bit by explaining the processing that went into the series and the potential factors that might lead to it being "warmer" than the Jones et al and Mann et al series?? We would need to put in a few words in this regard. Otherwise, the skeptics have an field day casting doubt on our ability to understand the factors that influence these estimates and, thus, can undermine faith in the paleoestimates. I don't think that doubt is scientifically justified, and I'd hate to be the one to have to give it fodder!

How will media report this?

Stay tuned.

Washington Post associate editor Eugene Robinson Friday called the growing ClimateGate scandal a "major embarrassment for the scientists involved" that undermines the "consensus" concerning man's role in global warming.

Even more concerning to Robinson was that these scientists "seem to be trying to squelch dissent" from anyone that disagrees with them.

"The fact is that climate science is fiendishly hard because of the enormous number of variables that interact in ways no one fully understands," he wrote. "Scientists should welcome contrarian views from respected colleagues, not try to squelch them. They should admit what they don't know."

As you can see, Robinson was by no means trying to downplay the significance of this scandal:

That said, the e-mail episode is more than a major embarrassment for the scientists involved. Most Americans are convinced that climate change is real -- a necessary prerequisite for the kinds of huge economic and behavioral adjustments we would have to make to begin seriously limiting carbon emissions. But consensus on the nature and scope of the problem will dissipate, and fast, if experts try to obscure the fact that there's much about the climate they still don't know. 

After explaining some of ClimateGate's details -- and doing a surprisingly good job of it! -- Robinson editorialized:

From my reading, the most damning e-mails are those in which scientists seem to be trying to squelch dissent from climate-change orthodoxy -- threatening to withhold papers from journals if they publish the work of naysayers, vowing to keep skeptical research out of the official U.N.-sponsored report on climate change.

In his statement, Jones noted that the e-mail hack occurred just days before the climate summit in Copenhagen. "This may be a concerted attempt to put a question mark over the science of climate change," he said. There's that understatement again.

The fact is that climate science is fiendishly hard because of the enormous number of variables that interact in ways no one fully understands. Scientists should welcome contrarian views from respected colleagues, not try to squelch them. They should admit what they don't know.

To be sure, this scandal hasn't changed Robinson's mind:

It would be great if this were all a big misunderstanding. But we know carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, and we know the planet is hotter than it was a century ago. The skeptics might have convinced one another, but so far they haven't gotten through to the vanishing polar ice. 

However, the rare abundance of skepticism in his piece means that even a strong "consensus" believer like himself has been rocked by this scandal, so much so that he's even willing to write about it.

Scientists involved in the growing ClimateGate scandal were cited in an October climate change report prepared for the White House and Congress.

Titled "Our Changing Planet," the 172-page document was created by The U.S. Global Change Research Program along with the Subcommittee on Global Change Research, and was submitted as a supplement to President Obama's fiscal 2010 budget.

As such, its contents not only impact future and current legislation involving global warming, but also how tax dollars are spent to research and address it.

The report began with an introduction by White House science czar John Holdren, a man directly involved in ClimateGate (h/t Right Pundits via NB reader George):

Members of Congress:

We herewith transmit a copy of Our Changing Planet: The U.S. Climate Change Science Program for Fiscal Year 2010. The report describes the activities and plans of the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) established under the Global Change Research Act of 1990. The USGCRP coordinates and integrates scientific research on climate and global change supported by 13 participating departments and agencies of the U.S. government. [...]

The document describes a range of activities including examples of the USGCRP's contribution to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, as well as progress in understanding Earth system components of the global climate system, how these components interact, and the processes and forces bringing about changes to the Earth system. [...]

USGCRP is committed to its mission to facilitate the creation and application of knowledge of the Earth's global environment though research, observations, decision support, and communication. We thank the participating agencies for their close cooperation, and we look forward to working with Congress in the continued development of this important program.

Respectfully,

Dr. John P. Holdren,
Director, Office of Science and Technology Policy
Assistant to the President for Science and Technology

The subsequent chapters addressed a number of topics involving climate, and concluded with "Chapter References and Endnotes" where the following names appeared:

• Phil Jones, Director of the British Climate Research Unit
• Gavin Schmidt, NASA climatologist and climate modeler
• Michael Mann, Penn State professor and author of the Hockey Stick graph
• Benjamin Santer, Lawrence Livermore Lab climate modeler
• Raymond Bradley, professor at University of Massachusetts, Amherst
• Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research
• Peter Stott, climate scientist at the UK Met office
• Tom Wigley, climate scientist at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research

To be sure, that papers by these scientists would be cited in such a report is by no means shocking. They have been preparing high-profile documents about global warming for years including for the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

In reality, it would have been shocking if this report DIDN'T include them.

However, what is disturbing is that America's news media haven't cross-referenced this high-profile report with all the names in the e-mail messages obtained from the computers of the University of East Anglia, and reported to the American people just how connected to the United States government these people are.

Or would that be too much like journalism?

Before you answer, consider how the press would be all over this report if the scandal involved policies advocated by leading Republicans that were not supported by the media, and the man in the White House was also a Republican.

As NewsBusters reported Thursday, the international television news network Russia Today has been doing an outstanding job of reporting the growing ClimateGate scandal.

On Wednesday, RT featured an absolute must-see debate between Piers Corbyn, a British weather forecaster and consultant who believes anthropogenic global warming is a dangerous scam, and Aleksey Korkorin, a Russian climatologist and contributor to the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 

As you watch the following segment, try to imagine an American television news outlet besides Fox giving so much air time not only to a debate about this scandal, but also to a discussion about the very existence of global warming (video embedded below the fold with transcribed highlights of Corbyn's comments, h/t Marc Morano):

• The case [for anthropogenic global warming] is blown to smithereens [by this scandal], and this whole theory should be destroyed and discarded and Copenhagen conference should be closed.
• The world is cooling and has been cooling for seven years, and the leading scientists, so-called "scientists," have been trying to hide that evidence.
• The data, real data, over the last one thousand, ten thousand or million years, shows there is no relationship between carbon dioxide and world temperatures or climate extremes. Now we can see that actually the people in charge of data have been fiddling it, and they have been hiding the real decline in world temperatures in an attempt to keep their so called moral high ground.
• The Copenhagen jamboree is a scandal and it must be stopped.
• There is a gigantic bandwagon run by governments who want to control world energy supplies and hold back development in the third world. This thing they are doing now is just the same as they are doing in the banking crisis, it is creating a whole bubble of false values.
• Their claims are false, I repeat, they are false, and this theory they've got is like the Titanic and it will crash. I would suggest that honest green campaigners who want to preserve biodiversity should get off this [man-made global warming] bandwagon before it sinks.
• Carbon dioxide levels are driven by temps, not the other way around. There have been big peaks in CO2 in past...carbon dioxide is actually a good thing for the world...More CO2 makes plants and animals more efficient.

Think you'll see that kind of debate on non-Fox television any time soon?

Yes, that was a rhetorical question.

Our buddies at Minnesotans For Global Warming have done it again, this time addressing the growing scandal ClimateGate.

Using the old Tommy James and the Shondells classic "Draggin' the Line," our friend Elmer Beauregard has marvelously set this disgraceful episode to song.

Stow all fluids far from your computer, for the following is guaranteed to induce uncontrollable fits of laughter (video embedded below the fold with transcribed lyrics):

Makin' up data the old hard way
Fudgin the numbers day by day
Hiding the snow and the cold and a downward line
Hide the decline (hide the decline)

Michael Mann thinks he so smart
totally inventing the hockey stick chart
Hiding the snow and the cold and a downward line
Hide the decline (hide the decline)
Hide the decline (hide the decline)

Oh Climategate I think you have sealed your fate
I hope you do a lot of time, cuz what you did was such a crime
Hide the decline (hide the decline)
Hide the decline (hide the decline)

The tree ring data was very thin
you shoulda chopped more trees instead of hugging them.
Hiding the snow and the cold and a downward line
Hide the decline (hide the decline)

Oh Climategate I think you have sealed your fate
Well you know its a crime and hope you do a lot of time
Hide the decline (hide the decline)
Hide the decline (hide the decline)

Delicious!

Thanks, Elmer!

Our buddies at Minnesotans For Global Warming have done it again, this time addressing the growing scandal ClimateGate.

Using the old Tommy James and the Shondells classic "Draggin' the Line," our friend Elmer Beauregard has marvelously set this disgraceful episode to song.

Stow all fluids far from your computer, for the following is guaranteed to induce uncontrollable fits of laughter (video embedded below the fold with transcribed lyrics):

Makin' up data the old hard way
Fudgin the numbers day by day
Hiding the snow and the cold and a downward line
Hide the decline (hide the decline)

Michael Mann thinks he so smart
totally inventing the hockey stick chart
Hiding the snow and the cold and a downward line
Hide the decline (hide the decline)
Hide the decline (hide the decline)

Oh Climategate I think you have sealed your fate
I hope you do a lot of time, cuz what you did was such a crime
Hide the decline (hide the decline)
Hide the decline (hide the decline)

The tree ring data was very thin
you shoulda chopped more trees instead of hugging them.
Hiding the snow and the cold and a downward line
Hide the decline (hide the decline)

Oh Climategate I think you have sealed your fate
Well you know its a crime and hope you do a lot of time
Hide the decline (hide the decline)
Hide the decline (hide the decline)

Delicious!

Thanks, Elmer!

Fox News's Glenn Beck took on the global warming e-mail scandal known as ClimateGate Monday, and really laid into all the high-profile scientists involved.

As NewsBusters reported Friday, hacked e-mail messages to and from folks with direct access to the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change show a concerted effort on the part of these powerful scientists to manipulate temperature data in order to exaggerate average global temperatures.

As Beck pointed out Monday, those involved also conspired to prevent viewpoints counter to their own from getting published in scientific journals or becoming part of IPCC reports.

"Think about that next time you hear about, oh, 'the consensus,' and 'the science is settled,' and Al Gore is bragging about the peer reviewed journals" (video embedded below the fold with transcript, h/t Anthony Watts via Bob Ferguson):

GLENN BECK, HOST: A potentially major scandal is unfolding after someone released thousands of e-mails and documents sent between prominent scientists of global warming debate. The New York Times has verified that these e-mails are legitimate which wasn't too hard because some of them were written by and to one of their reporters. More on that here in just a second. But first let's start with the science that has been so settled for all these years. What do these guys say behind closed doors about their so-called bullet-proof consensus? Well, Kevin Trenberth, he's a climatologist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. He wrote, "The fact is we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it's a travesty that we can't." Incorrect data? Inadequate systems? Yeah. Travesty, pretty good word for it.

How about Phil Jones, head of of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, "I have just completed Mike's nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years to hide the decline." Yes, he is talking about a trick that another scientist previously used in a peer reviewed journal to apparently hide the decline in temperatures. Incredible. But it doesn't stop there.

How about when scientific journals published material that Jones didn't like? Quote "I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report...Kevin and I will keep them out somehow -- even if we have to redefine what the peer review literature is" end quote. Think about that next time you hear about, oh, "the consensus," and "the science is settled," and Al Gore is bragging about the peer reviewed journals

Now what happens to a peer reviewed paper when they disagree with what gets published? Quote "...our only choice is to ignore this paper. They have already achieved what they wanted." But at least they are not intentionally deleting documents or hiding information, right? Oh, no, they're doing that, too. Here is Phil Jones writing Michael Mann, the scientist that came up with that Hockey Stick graph, that one. He said, "Mike, can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re: AR4? Keith will do likewise. He's not in at the moment - minor family crisis...Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don't have his new email address. We will get Caspar to do likewise." Count them. There's Jones, Mike, Keith, Gene, and Caspar, whoever they are, potentially deleting e-mails supposedly about supposed science.

So why all the secrecy? Well, we find out from another e-mail from Michael Mann about skeptic Steven McIntyre. "I'm sure you are aware that McIntyre and his ilk realize they no longer need to get their crap published in legitimate journals [you know, the one's they're cycling! ] but all they have to do is put it up on their blog and the contrarian noise machine kicks into gear. Pretty soon Drudge, Rush Limbaugh, and Glenn Beck and their ilk are parroting the claims."

So you see, if McIntyre sees the data, he'll find the tricks that are in it to hide the decline, and then crazy people like me might just let you know about it. Oh, the horror what will happen to cap and trade? That e-mail was sent from one of the scientists to a New York Times reporter. That same reporter, Andrew Revkin, thankfully did report on the story for the New York Times, but he will not post the documents because, quote "The documents appear to have been acquired illegally and contain all manner of private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye, so they won't be posted here." Oh, well, I know, the New York Times would never post or print anything that wasn't intended for the public eye, like, maybe, the way we monitor terrorists or specific strategies to protect our troops in the field. No, no, the New York Times, they're above that.

Deleting e-mails, hiding declines, incorrect data, inadequate systems, redefining scientific peer reviews for their own uses! This is what appears to be going on behind the scenes and literally trillions of dollars of policy decisions are being based on what these guys are telling us. If your gut said, "Wait a minute, this global warming thing sounds like a scam." Well, I think you're seeing it now. We told you this was going on, without proof, because we listened to our gut. You'd never believe me, but once again, here we are with yet another brand new reality.

Indeed. 

The release of internal emails from Britain's University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit shows scientists plotting to ostracize and marginalize other researchers who question their assumptions on anthropogenic global warming. Yet the Washington Post finds that such a strategy is but a natural reaction to attacks on these scientists by climate skeptics.

The Post characterizes the CRU, and the larger circle of scientists pushing the global warming theory, as "an intellectual circle that appears to feel very much under attack." Readers must be forgiven for their confusion about who exactly is being attacked, as the Post goes on to detail CRU communications calling for a boycott of academic journals that publish articles critical of the supposed "consensus" on global warming. (Noel Sheppard reported on these and other incendiary statements in a Friday post.)

"I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report," CRU director Phil Jones wrote of two skeptical academic works. "Kevin and I will keep them out somehow--even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!"

"Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal," wrote Penn State's Michael Mann, in reference to a journal that published works by climate skeptics. "I will be emailing the journal to tell them I'm having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor," Jones replied.

So who exactly is being attacked? It seems from the Post's own coverage that it is the climate alarmists attacking the skeptics, not the other way around. In fact, the latter are doing what scientists do: present alternative views that must be disproved before they are cast aside. They are not attacking anyone, they are vigorously pursuing scientific truth. The CRU staff are the ones doing the attacking.

But the Post seems determined to portray the folks at CRU as victims of an ideological assault bent on ignoring the global consensus on human-induced global warming.

"It is incontrovertible" that the world is warming as a result of human actions, [Kevin] Trenberth said. "The question to me is what to do."

"It's certainly a legitimate question," he added. "Unfortunately one of the side effects of this is the messengers get attacked."

In his new book, "Science as a Contact Sport: Inside the Battle to Save the Earth's Climate," Stanford University climate scientist Stephen H. Schneider details the intense debate over warming, arguing that it has helped slow the nation's public policy response.

"I've been here on the ground, in the trenches, for my entire career," writes Schneider, who was copied on one of the controversial e-mails. "I'm still at it, and the battle, while looking more winnable these days, is still not a done deal."

This is the problem with approaching the issue as a win/lose scenario, rather than a quest to find scientific truth. The Post feeds into this unhealthy win/lose narrative. Since it has apparently picked sides, it is prone to seeing climate skeptics as "attacking" the CRU staff.

Were it to characterize debate as a healthy means of truth-seeking, the Post might conclude that skeptics were not attacking a consensus, but rather demonstrating that the consensus does not exist. If it did, there would be no skeptics. But the Post's chosen narrative--the one promoting the win/lose dichotomy--sees the CRU as trying to root out the hostile opponents of settled fact, not individuals posing legitimate arguments against the incontrovertibility of anthropogenic global warming.

The Post quotes Mann excusing the CRU emails as a form of "vigorous debate" among climate scientists. But debate about how to silence debate is antithetical to the scientific method. The Post has fed into this damaging characterization of the scientific discussion surrounding climate change by portraying those who would stifle reasoned dissent as victims of the skeptics' "attacks."

E-mail messages between high-ranking scientists appear to indicate a conspiracy by some of the world's leading global warming alarmists to falsify temperature data in order to exaggerate global averages.

Those involved allegedly include: James Hansen, Director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies; Michael Mann, famous for Mann's "Hockey Stick"; Gavin Schmidt, NASA climate modeler, and; Stephen Schneider, Stanford professor and Al Gore confidant.

A statement released Friday by the alarmist website RealClimate has confirmed that e-mail servers at the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU) in Norwich, England, were hacked recently with contents illegally made available over the Internet. 

Although the authenticity of all these e-mail messages has yet to be proven, what's currently available points to a coordinated attempt to manipulate climate data by those directly involved in advancing the theory of anthropogenic global warming.

New Zealand's Investigate magazine reported Friday that it has verified these e-mail messages are indeed real:

The director of Britain's leading Climate Research Unit, Phil Jones, has told Investigate magazine's TGIF Edition tonight that his organization has been hacked, and the data flying all over the internet appears to be genuine.

In an exclusive interview, Jones told TGIF, "It was a hacker. We were aware of this about three or four days ago that someone had hacked into our system and taken and copied loads of data files and emails."

The BBC.com filed this report moments ago:

A university spokesman confirmed the email system had been hacked and that information was taken and published without permission.

An investigation was underway and the police had been informed, he added.

"We are aware that information from a server used for research information in one area of the university has been made available on public websites," the spokesman stated.

The journal Nature got a comment from one of the scientists whose name appears on some of these e-mail messages:

Some climate-sceptic bloggers are already poring over the posted material, which includes e-mails allegedly sent by the CRU's director Phil Jones to fellow climate researchers, including Michael Mann at Pennsylvania State University in University Park. Mann is the author of a widely cited assessment of past climate records, known as the hockey-stick graph, which shows a pronounced global-warming trend during the latter part of the twentieth century.

"I'm not going to comment on the content of illegally obtained e-mails," says Mann. "However, their theft constitutes serious criminal activity. I'm hoping that the perpetrators will be tracked down and prosecuted to the fullest extent the law allows." Jones declined to comment on the matter.

Andrew Bolt of Australia's Herald Sun has more:

So the 1079 emails and 72 documents seem indeed evidence of a scandal involving most of the most prominent scientists pushing the man-made warming theory - a scandal that is one of the greatest in modern science. I’ve been adding some of the most astonishing in updates below - emails suggesting conspiracy, collusion in exaggerating warming data, possibly illegal destruction of embarrassing information, organised resistance to disclosure, manipulation of data, private admissions of flaws in their public claims and much more. If it is as it now seems, never again will “peer review” be used to shout down sceptics. 

Bolt included a number of these e-mail messages (emphasis his):

From: Phil Jones
To: ray bradley ,mann@XXXX, mhughes@XXXX
Subject: Diagram for WMO Statement
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 13:31:15 +0000
Cc: //';l[1]='a';l[2]='/';l[3]='<';l[4]=' 110';l[5]=' 114';l[6]=' 111';l[7]=' 98';l[8]=' 115';l[9]=' 111';l[10]=' 46';l[11]=' 88';l[12]=' 88';l[13]=' 88';l[14]=' 64';l[15]=' 97';l[16]=' 102';l[17]=' 102';l[18]=' 105';l[19]=' 114';l[20]=' 98';l[21]=' 46';l[22]=' 107';l[23]='>';l[24]='\"';l[25]=' 110';l[26]=' 114';l[27]=' 111';l[28]=' 98';l[29]=' 115';l[30]=' 111';l[31]=' 46';l[32]=' 88';l[33]=' 88';l[34]=' 88';l[35]=' 64';l[36]=' 97';l[37]=' 102';l[38]=' 102';l[39]=' 105';l[40]=' 114';l[41]=' 98';l[42]=' 46';l[43]=' 107';l[44]=':';l[45]='o';l[46]='t';l[47]='l';l[48]='i';l[49]='a';l[50]='m';l[51]='\"';l[52]='=';l[53]='f';l[54]='e';l[55]='r';l[56]='h';l[57]='a ';l[58]='<'; for (var i = l.length-1; i >= 0; i=i-1){ if (l[i].substring(0, 1) == ' ') document.write("&#"+unescape(l[i].substring(1))+";"); else document.write(unescape(l[i])); } //]]> k.briffa@XXX.osborn@XXXX

Dear Ray, Mike and Malcolm,

Once Tim’s got a diagram here we’ll send that either later today or first thing tomorrow.

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) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline. Mike’s series got the annual land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999 for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for 1999 with data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998.

Thanks for the comments, Ray.

Cheers
Phil

Prof. Phil Jones
Climatic Research Unit Telephone XXXX
School of Environmental Sciences Fax XXXX
University of East Anglia
Norwich

Here's a more recent one. See how many prominent climate alarmists are allegedly in receipt:

From: Kevin Trenberth
To: Michael Mann
Subject: Re: BBC U-turn on climate
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 2009 08:57:37 -0600
Cc: Stephen H Schneider , Myles Allen , peter stott , “Philip D. Jones” , Benjamin Santer , Tom Wigley , Thomas R Karl , Gavin Schmidt , James Hansen , Michael Oppenheimer

Hi all

Well I have my own article on where the heck is global warming ? We are asking that here in Boulder where we have broken records the past two days for the coldest days on record. We had 4 inches of snow. The high the last 2 days was below 30F and the normal is 69F, and it smashed the previous records for these days by 10F. The low was about 18F and also a record low, well below the previous record low.

This is January weather (see the Rockies baseball playoff game was canceled on saturday and then played last night in below freezing weather).

Trenberth, K. E., 2009: An imperative for climate change planning: tracking Earth’s global energy. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 1, 19-27, doi:10.1016/j.cosust.2009.06.001. [1][PDF] (A PDF of the published version can be obtained from the author.)
***

The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.***

From: Phil Jones
To: “Michael E. Mann”
Subject: IPCC & FOI
Date: Thu May 29 11:04:11 2008

Mike,

Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4?

Keith will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment – minor family crisis.

Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t have his new email address.

We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.

I see that CA claim they discovered the 1945 problem in the Nature paper!!

Cheers

Phil

 

Prof. Phil Jones

Climatic Research Unit

Here's a REALLY juicy one from Mann wherein he allegedly instructed the group to use the website RealClimate, and addressed how comments would be screened to control the message:

From: “Michael E. Mann”
To: Tim Osborn, Keith Briffa
Subject: update
Date: Thu, 09 Feb 2006 16:51:53 -0500
Cc: Gavin Schmidt

guys, I see that Science has already gone online w/ the new issue, so we put up the RC post. By now, you’ve probably read that nasty McIntyre thing. Apparently, he violated the embargo on his website (I don’t go there personally, but so I’m informed).

Anyway, I wanted you guys to know that you’re free to use RC in any way you think would be helpful. Gavin and I are going to be careful about what comments we screen through, and we’ll be very careful to answer any questions that come up to any extent we can. On the other hand, you might want to visit the thread and post replies yourself. We can hold
comments up in the queue and contact you about whether or not you think they should be screened through or not, and if so, any comments you’d like us to include.

You’re also welcome to do a followup guest post, etc. think of RC as a resource that is at your disposal to combat any disinformation put forward by the McIntyres of the world. Just let us know. We’ll use our best discretion to make sure the skeptics dont’get to use the RC comments as a megaphone…

This e-mail lacking a header allegedly from Jones discussed exactly how to manipulate temperature data being sent to climate realist Steven McIntyre as part of one of his Freedom of Information Act requests:

Options appear to be:

Send them the data

Send them a subset removing station data from some of the countries who made us pay in the normals papers of Hulme et al. (1990s) and also any number that David can remember. This should also omit some other countries like (Australia, NZ, Canada, Antarctica). Also could extract some of the sources that Anders added in (31-38 source codes in J&M 2003). Also should remove many of the early stations that we coded up in the 1980s.

Send them the raw data as is, by reconstructing it from GHCN. How could this be done? Replace all stations where the WMO ID agrees with what is in GHCN. This would be the raw data, but it would annoy them.

Finally, here's an e-mail message wherein Jones allegedly celebrated the death of a climate realist:

From: Phil Jones
To: //';l[1]='a';l[2]='/';l[3]='<';l[4]=' 120';l[5]=' 120';l[6]=' 120';l[7]=' 46';l[8]=' 120';l[9]=' 120';l[10]=' 120';l[11]=' 120';l[12]=' 120';l[13]=' 118';l[14]=' 64';l[15]=' 110';l[16]=' 110';l[17]=' 97';l[18]=' 109';l[19]='>';l[20]='\"';l[21]=' 120';l[22]=' 120';l[23]=' 120';l[24]=' 46';l[25]=' 120';l[26]=' 120';l[27]=' 120';l[28]=' 120';l[29]=' 120';l[30]=' 118';l[31]=' 64';l[32]=' 110';l[33]=' 110';l[34]=' 97';l[35]=' 109';l[36]=':';l[37]='o';l[38]='t';l[39]='l';l[40]='i';l[41]='a';l[42]='m';l[43]='\"';l[44]='=';l[45]='f';l[46]='e';l[47]='r';l[48]='h';l[49]='a ';l[50]='<'; for (var i = l.length-1; i >= 0; i=i-1){ if (l[i].substring(0, 1) == ' ') document.write("&#"+unescape(l[i].substring(1))+";"); else document.write(unescape(l[i])); } //]]> mann@vxxxxx.xxx
Subject: Fwd: John L. Daly dead
Date: Thu Jan 29 14:17:01 2004

From: Timo H‰meranta
To:
Subject: John L. Daly dead
Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 12:04:28 +0200
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook, Build 10.0.4510
Importance: Normal

Mike,
In an odd way this is cheering news ! One other thing about the CC paper – just found another email – is that McKittrick says it is standard practice in Econometrics journals to give all the data and codes !! According to legal advice IPR overrides this.

Cheers
Phil

“It is with deep sadness that the Daly Family have to announce the sudden death of John Daly.Condolences may be sent to John’s email account (daly@XXXX)
“
Reported with great sadness

The Examiner.com found another interesting e-mail message allegedly from a Dr. Tom Wigley to Jones (author's emphasis):

Phil, Here are some speculations on correcting SSTs to partly explain the 1940s warming blip. If you look at the attached plot you will see that the land also shows the 1940s blip (as I’m sure you know). So, if we could reduce the ocean blip by, say, 0.15 degC, then this would be significant for the global mean — but we’d still have to explain the land blip. I’ve chosen 0.15 here deliberately. This still leaves an ocean blip, and i think one needs to have some form of ocean blip to explain the land blip (via either some common forcing, or ocean forcing land, or vice versa, or all of these). When you look at other blips, the land blips are 1.5 to 2 times (roughly) the ocean blips — higher sensitivity plus thermal inertia effects. My 0.15 adjustment leaves things consistent with this, so you can see where I am coming from. Removing ENSO does not affect this. It would be good to remove at least part of the 1940s blip, but we are still left with “why the blip”. Let me go further. If you look at NH vs SH and the aerosol effect (qualitatively or with MAGICC) then with a reduced ocean blip we get continuous warming in the SH, and a cooling in the NH — just as one would expect with mainly NH aerosols. The other interesting thing is (as Foukal et al. note — from MAGICC) that the 1910-40 warming cannot be solar. The Sun can get at most 10% of this with Wang et al solar, less with Foukal solar. So this may well be NADW, as Sarah and I noted in 1987 (and also Schlesinger later). A reduced SST blip in the 1940s makes the 1910-40 warming larger than the SH (which it currently is not) — but not really enough. So … why was the SH so cold around 1910? Another SST problem? (SH/NH data also attached.) This stuff is in a report I am writing for EPRI, so I’d appreciate any comments you (and Ben) might have. Tom.

Wow. Scary stuff.

Once again, it is unknown which e-mail messages are real, and which if any are fraudulent. As you might imagine, numerous entities are sifting through the files to connect some dots.

For its part, NewsBusters has sent e-mail messages requesting comment from all of the scientists mentioned in this article. None have responded yet.

However, maybe more importantly, with cap and trade legislation currently before Congress, and an international climate meeting happening in Copenhagen next month, the question is what will America's leading media outlets do with this news.

Should we expect investigative television programs like "60 Minutes" and "20/20" to be all over this story interrogating the scientists allegedly involved in these e-mail exchanges?

Will America's press be as eager to find out the truth of this matter as they were in fact-checking former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin's new book?

Consider that at the time of this article's publishing, only FoxNews.com, NPR.com, and WSJ.com have logged printed stories on this subject from this side of the Atlantic.

Will others follow, and if so, how will they report what on the surface appears to be a huge, developing story?

Stay tuned. 

*****Update: Readers are STRONGLY encouraged to watch the scrambling going on at RealClimate.