Monday, November 23, 2009

Global Warming alarmists spin like a top on embarrassing revelations

If you ever wanted to see spinning at its finest, get a load of the response from Real Climate on the embarrassing revelations now coming out on the web from private e-mails from the Climate Research Unit of the School of Environmental Sciences of the University of East Anglia, an allegedly reputable center for climate research and one of the bastions of Global Warming alarmism. The e-mails were made public after the files were allegedly hacked from a Russian web server, although it is apparently not clear whether they were hacked or released from someone within the community. In any case, the authenticity of the e-mails has apparently been acknowledged.

Here is one assessment from Investigate Magazine:

As the fallout from CRUHACK grows, the biggest story is not actually whether data was manipulated in individual cases, although in my view that's bad. And it's not that global warming scientists were so arrogant in 2004 as to mock the death of an opponent, although that too is bad.

It's not that some of these scientists were sitting on taxpayer-sourced slush funds worth tens of millions of dollars each, for an industry total of somewhere close to US$100 billion, whilst their supporters raised merry-hell about Exxon sponsoring skeptic research to the tune of a few million, although this too is massively hypocritical.

It's not that the scientists show signs of being political activists, and even helping promote a global governance agenda.

No, in my view the biggest scandal to erupt from CRUHACK is the death of peer-reviewed climate science.

We now all know – the entire industrialized world – that while global warming scientists and their supporters were publicly ridiculing skeptic's arguments as "not peer reviewed" because – by implication – the arguments were not good enough, that in fact some of the top scientific advisors to the UN IPCC were conspiring (and that is the right word) to sabotage any attempt by other scientists to publish peer reviewed papers challenging global warming.

And what these e-mails reveal? Well, according the Real Climate, some of whose participants apparently wrote some of the revealing e-mails, nothing important. That is, unless you consider comments that seem to indicate intentions to mislead the public on Global Warming, doctoring data to help their cause, and support for suppressing article submissions to peer-reviewed journals that disagree with politically correct positions on the issue.

Here is a comment from one of the e-mails, referring to several papers from people who have the nerve to disagree with the Approved Opinions:

K and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is !

So, how do we explain that? Here is "Gavin" at Real Climate giving it the ol' college try:

Bad papers clutter up assessment reports and if they don't stand up as science, they shouldn't be included. No-one can 'redefine' what the peer-reviewed literature is.

If the papers are really "bad" (likely translation: "disagree with us"), then why would a "redefinition" of the peer-review process be necessary? And even if they can't actually do it, are we supposed to be comfortable with the fact that Global Warming scientists would like to?

As Investigate Magazine further points out:

The next global warming believer who raises "peer review" as a defence of global warming deserves to be metaphorically tarred and feathered and laughed at for the rest of his or her natural life.

The Wegman report to the US Congress found unhealthy links between the IPCC's scientific advisors. The CRUHACK emails now prove that festering scientific corruption beyond reasonable doubt.

The integrity of climate science died this weekend. It will never be the same.

Looks like some people have some splainin' to do.

1 comment:

Lee said...

Ouch! Does it make you wonder whether the same sort of "science" rules in other scientific areas as well?