"Climategate" a Deliberate Fraud; Newspapers Retract Attempt to Smear Scientists

[Andy9o8 3]

http://www.newsweek.com/blogs/the-gaggle/2010/06/25/newspapers-retract-climategate-claims-but-damage-still-done.html

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Newspapers Retract 'Climategate' Claims, but Damage Still Done

A lie can get halfway around the world while the truth is still putting its boots on, as Mark Twain said (or “before the truth gets a chance to put its pants on,” in Winston Churchill’s version), and nowhere has that been more true than in "climategate." In that highly orchestrated, manufactured scandal, e-mails hacked from computers at the University of East Anglia’s climate-research group were spread around the Web by activists who deny that human activity is altering the world’s climate in a dangerous way, and spun so as to suggest that the scientists had been lying, cheating, and generally cooking the books.

But not only did British investigators clear the East Anglia scientist at the center of it all, Phil Jones, of scientific impropriety and dishonesty in April, an investigation at Penn State cleared PSU climatologist Michael Mann of “falsifying or suppressing data, intending to delete or conceal e-mails and information, and misusing privileged or confidential information” in February. In perhaps the biggest backpedaling, The Sunday Times of London, which led the media pack in charging that IPCC reports were full of egregious (and probably intentional) errors, retracted its central claim—namely, that the IPCC statement that up to 40 percent of the Amazonian rainforest could be vulnerable to climate change was “unsubstantiated.” The Times also admitted that it had totally twisted the remarks of one forest expert to make it sound as if he agreed that the IPCC had screwed up, when he said no such thing.
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In another retraction you never heard of, a paper in Frankfurt took back (apologies; the article is available only in German) its reporting that the IPCC had erred in its assessment of climate impacts in Africa.

The Times's criticism of the IPCC—look, its reports are full of mistakes and shoddy scholarship!—was widely picked up at the time it ran, and has been an important factor in turning British public opinion sharply against the established science of climate change. Don’t expect the recent retractions and exonerations to change that. One of the strongest, most-repeated findings in the psychology of belief is that once people have been told X, especially if X is shocking, if they are later told, “No, we were wrong about X,” most people still believe X. As Twain and Churchill knew, sometimes the truth never catches up with the lie, let alone overtakes it. As I wrote last summer in a story about why people believe lies even when they’re later told the truth, sometimes people’s mental processes simply go off the rails.

[masterrig 1]

We may or may not ever, learn the 'truth' about our climate. I've done some searching on the subject and I found that a Canadian and former UN employee, now living in seclusion in China, came-up with the idea of 'Global Warming'. He saw it as a means of making billions. GE and Al Gore, jumped on the band wagon. The original idea was to get people 'concerned' about the vanishing rain forests and that this was the cause of 'Global Warming'. From there, just about everything, including ruminants, was being blamed for our climate problems. The end result was, a few were getting filthy rich due to public fears of the earth burning-up. Even our government was going to collect taxes on cattle because of their flatulance. Looks like the scheme has worked. Who really knows. Just don't forget your sun screen!


Chuck

[tkhayes 348]

the volume and mass of our 'atmosphere' is easily calculated by relatively smart people around the world. It is a thin layer on top of a thin crust on top of a ball of mostly molten metals.

The volume and mass of crap that we are dumping into that atmosphere is also easily calculated. And it is a tremendous amount.

Given that we die/get sick/have major medical issues/etc from parts-per-million inhabitants/toxins in our body and we know the effects of parts-per-million inhabitants/toxins on biological systems in general - to say that we can continue to dump all this crap into our atmosphere forever and NOT affect our environment in a negative way is simply fool's talk.

call it what you want - climate change, global warming, whatever. to deny it and not act before it is too late is simply burying our heads in the sand.

[winsor 236]

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the volume and mass of our 'atmosphere' is easily calculated by relatively smart people around the world. It is a thin layer on top of a thin crust on top of a ball of mostly molten metals.

The volume and mass of crap that we are dumping into that atmosphere is also easily calculated. And it is a tremendous amount.

Given that we die/get sick/have major medical issues/etc from parts-per-million inhabitants/toxins in our body and we know the effects of parts-per-million inhabitants/toxins on biological systems in general - to say that we can continue to dump all this crap into our atmosphere forever and NOT affect our environment in a negative way is simply fool's talk.

call it what you want - climate change, global warming, whatever. to deny it and not act before it is too late is simply burying our heads in the sand.

Since "denier" has become synonymous with "heretic," I will try to work from the positive.

My concern with the models related to AGW is the religious fervor they engender - both pro and con.

Something I concluded half a century ago, and of which I have become more convinced as time goes on, is that the truth will withstand any scrutiny. It is only the patently false models that must be protected from scrutiny lest they evaporate as the morning dew.

WRT the Heat Transfer models at hand (it is most certainly NOT a "Thermodynamics" problem), one needs to consider all inputs to the system and compare their relative influence. Anyone who has worked the analysis of a few thousand Heat Transfer systems would consider it naive to look at one mechanism, leap to the conclusion that it was the prevailing consideration and discount any and all competing mechanisms as unimportant.

Sure, our activities on this planet have macroscopic effects on the material and energy balances of the ecosystem - that is rather a given. I do, however, draw the line at self-aggrandizing nitwits that pick on one factor and conclude they have found the Holy Grail of Saving the Planet (tm).

"Yea, verily, they who Deny the Inconvenient Truth are Blasphemers, and surely shall they be Smitten!"

Get a life.

Any proof worth its salt is a Proof by Contradiction or a Challenge to Fail. That is rather the gold standard, and one that is scrupulously avoided by the AGW faithful. I do not claim these glassy-eyed believers are wrong, but I will state that it does not matter much either way once someone reaches this level of religious fervor.

In the general scheme of things, our problem is population. Given the massive extent to which we have overshot a sustainable population, AGW is a non-starter by comparison. The AGW people are about as enlightened as those who would rearrange the deck furniture on the Titanic after hitting the iceberg - even if your efforts result in an improvement in the short term, it does not make any noticeable difference in the long run.

Granting the AGW is real (to some extent, at least), compared to overpopulation it is about as significant as acne is to cancer. Dismissing AGW zealots is like throwing a Clearasil representative out of the Oncology ward: "Do you DENY that that poor fellow has a ZIT? You are only trying to RUIN his LIFE by making him a SOCIAL OUTCAST, his face MARRED FOREVER by the SCOURGE of ACNE! Oh, the horror!"

"Whatever, dude, he just got a nasty dose of Chemo and is due for radiation therapy. Hit the bricks."

AGW is a classic example of how you can be right after a fashion and still be full of shit in the grand scheme of things.


BSBD,

Winsor

[hwt 0]

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But not only did British investigators clear the East Anglia scientist at the center of it all, Phil Jones, of scientific impropriety and dishonesty in April,

________________________________________
Andrew Miller was put in charge of investigating the e-mails ... here is a statement from his web site... At a recent Parliamentary event MP for Ellesmere Port and Neston, Andrew Miller, demonstrated his support for action to tackle climate change.

[kallend 2,184]

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But not only did British investigators clear the East Anglia scientist at the center of it all, Phil Jones, of scientific impropriety and dishonesty in April,

________________________________________
Andrew Miller was put in charge of investigating the e-mails ... here is a statement from his web site... At a recent Parliamentary event MP for Ellesmere Port and Neston, Andrew Miller, demonstrated his support for action to tackle climate change.

"As Twain and Churchill knew, sometimes the truth never catches up with the lie, let alone overtakes it. As I wrote last summer in a story about why people believe lies even when they’re later told the truth, sometimes people’s mental processes simply go off the rails."

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[billvon 3,132]

> I've done some searching on the subject and I found that a Canadian
>and former UN employee, now living in seclusion in China, came-up with
>the idea of 'Global Warming'.

Svante Arrhenius first "came up with the idea" of anthropogenic global warming in 1896. He calculated the effects of doubling the CO2 in our atmosphere and concluded it would raise average temperatures 4 to 6 degrees C. Since CO2 production was pretty low compared to today, he thought it would take thousands of years to see such a doubling. (He was Swedish and was not a UN employee.)

[masterrig 1]

Thanks, Bill! Obniously, I didn't dig deep enough. To think, we thought this was something 'new'.


Chuck