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Pretending the climate email leak isn't a crisis won't make it go away
Guardian UK ^ | november 25, 2009 | George monbiot

Posted on 11/26/2009 2:54:00 PM PST by opentalk

Climate sceptics have lied, obscured and cheated for years. That's why we climate rationalists must uphold the highest standards of science.

I have seldom felt so alone. Confronted with crisis, most of the environmentalists I know have gone into denial. The emails hacked from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, they say, are a storm in a tea cup, no big deal, exaggerated out of all recognition. It is true that climate change deniers have made wild claims which the material can't possibly support (the end of global warming, the death of climate science). But it is also true that the emails are very damaging.

The response of the greens and most of the scientists I know is profoundly ironic, as we spend so much of our time confronting other people's denial. Pretending that this isn't a real crisis isn't going to make it go away. Nor is an attempt to justify the emails with technicalities. We'll be able to get past this only by grasping reality, apologising where appropriate and demonstrating that it cannot happen again.

It is true that much of what has been revealed could be explained as the usual cut and thrust of the peer review process, exacerbated by the extraordinary pressure the scientists were facing from a denial industry determined to crush them. One of the most damaging emails was sent by the head of the climatic research unit, Phil Jones. He wrote "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!"

(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Front Page News; Government; United Kingdom
KEYWORDS: climategate; fraud; georgemonbiot; globalcooling; globalwarming; globalwarminghoax; hadleycru; peerreview
This article is on Drudge.
1 posted on 11/26/2009 2:54:00 PM PST by opentalk
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To: opentalk

Barking moonbat trying to save his career by opining he was wronged, wronged I tell you.

The only lies, cover-up and deceit has come from the alarmist and their irrational goals and plans.

Journalism isn’t boot licking, I think he forgot that part.


2 posted on 11/26/2009 3:07:14 PM PST by Tarpon (To destroy the people's liberties, you poison their morals ...)
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To: opentalk

Climate sceptics have lied, obscured and cheated for years.


Of course this is how this has to start out.......


3 posted on 11/26/2009 3:08:10 PM PST by CommieCutter ("You wanted the presidency, you got it, now FIX THE DAMN ECONOMY!!!!" ----YankeeReb)
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To: opentalk
One of the biggest proponents of AGW is demanding the resignation of another. One would think that would be news somehow. To all you execs at the dinosaur networks: Ha Ha. Your bias and lack of integrity has you in a box again. Six days have now passed since this story, that is big by any standard, has broken. It's burning up the internet and is starting to spread.

Yet here you are yet once again. Watching a big story unfold, covered almost exclusively by Fox (and not at all excessively by them), the British press and blogs. When will you be able to convince Rahm Emanauel that you can’t hold out any longer, and get his permission enter into the next phase of the strategy: apologetics for the busted scientists and assertions that this doesn’t change anything in the debate.

4 posted on 11/26/2009 3:15:31 PM PST by Minn (Here is a realistic picture of the prophet: ----> ([: {()
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To: Minn

Look at who one of the biggest global warming moneymakers is. Jeffery Imelt and GE. He’s so heavily invested in the global warming hoax, its failure will bring him financial devastation.

So be it.


5 posted on 11/26/2009 3:36:21 PM PST by cripplecreek (Seniors, the new shovel ready project under socialized medicine.)
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To: 444Flyer; sushiman; Nachum

ping


6 posted on 11/26/2009 3:38:30 PM PST by Dubya-M-DeesWent2SyriaStupid!
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To: opentalk

Lots of whining in this article, but he does get around to a reasonable final conclusion:

“No one has been as badly let down by the revelations in these emails as those of us who have championed the science. We should be the first to demand that it is unimpeachable, not the last.”

Indeed, if that had been your demand all along...Climate Change would not even exist. Climate science would have survived, but all the alarmism would have faded as background noise.


7 posted on 11/26/2009 3:54:27 PM PST by EBH (it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new Government)
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To: cripplecreek

If GE goes the way of Dubai will anyone cry?


8 posted on 11/26/2009 3:56:35 PM PST by Melchior
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To: Melchior
If GE goes the way of Dubai will anyone cry?

Too stupid to fail?

Sadly I fear that the defense will be that we can't allow these companies to fail despite being heavily invested and a global scam.
9 posted on 11/26/2009 4:05:20 PM PST by cripplecreek (Seniors, the new shovel ready project under socialized medicine.)
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To: opentalk
Climate sceptics have lied, obscured and cheated for years

And yet it was the truth. LOL.

10 posted on 11/26/2009 4:15:07 PM PST by Kay Syrah
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To: opentalk

bump


11 posted on 11/26/2009 4:51:27 PM PST by VOA
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To: opentalk
Other headlines from Drudge: "UK: Pretending the climate email leak isn't a crisis won't make it go away... US: Impression left by emails is that global warming game has been rigged from start... AUSTRALIA: Five MPs lead the way by resigning in disgust over carbon tax... NEW ZEALAND: Climate Science Coalition caught lying about temp trends... RUSSIA: Что скрывают ученые о глобальном потеплении?... ...ONWARD COPENHAGEN!" from http://www.drudgereport.com/?/ I love Drudge's last line: "...ONWARD COPENHAGEN! " Drudge presented the truth with humor. With all that's going on, why is Obama wasting time on the MAN-MADE Global warming hoax. Maybe it's a good way to use it as an excuse to TAX Americans (Cap and Trade, etc.) to pay for his radical agendas.
12 posted on 11/26/2009 5:23:06 PM PST by Sun (Pray that God sends us good leaders. Please say a prayer now.)
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To: Sun

I think he wanted to be the leader of the UN, which is pushing this global power grab.


13 posted on 11/26/2009 5:27:45 PM PST by opentalk
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To: opentalk

“I think he wanted to be the leader of the UN, which is pushing this global power grab.”

That might be it, as well as taxing us heavily on energy to make money for his other sinister agendas.


14 posted on 11/26/2009 5:35:26 PM PST by Sun (Pray that God sends us good leaders. Please say a prayer now.)
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To: opentalk
The following is plagiarism:

Mister Gore, open the floodgates!
Mister Gore, tear down this fraud!

15 posted on 11/26/2009 6:28:15 PM PST by CutePuppy (If you don't ask the right questions you may not get the right answers)
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To: AdmSmith; Berosus; bigheadfred; Convert from ECUSA; dervish; Ernest_at_the_Beach; Fred Nerks; ...

:’)


16 posted on 11/26/2009 10:41:59 PM PST by SunkenCiv (https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/__Since Jan 3, 2004__Profile updated Monday, January 12, 2009)
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To: Tarpon

One of the biggest problems and issues in the AGW “debate” with journalists is that they keep flying this canard of “consensus” among scientists.

Let’s back up for a moment and nail down some broad generalizations of facts:

1. Most journalists have a liberal arts background - in writing, political science, etc. A very few have backgrounds in economics, but that’s not a real science, dismal or otherwise.

2. As liberal arts majors, they’re used to “consensus” being important in most of the areas of public life that they cover. For example, jury trials are about consensus. Votes in legislative bodies are about rough consensus and horse-trading. Public opinion polls, voting, etc — all about some level of consensus.

3. So the mistake that liberal arts majors make is in extending this thought process to science.

And here, they run off the tracks and into a ditch. In science, “consensus” doesn’t count for crap. Most all scientific progress in the last four hundred years comes, as a matter of hard fact, not from a “consensus,” but from one or two people out there on the fringe, doing something that tests or blows up the prevailing consensus of the day. I could rattle off a few dozen examples if people are interested, but take my word for it: real scientific advances do not happen as a result of large mobs of researchers the world over coming to some sort of agreement about “the way things work.” And this climatology field isn’t any different.

Get 100 physics jocks together in a room. Pay them all $1 million each to say “there is no gravity.” OK, so they all agree: “there is no gravity.”

And then you decide to take a step off the third floor balcony. You fall and break a leg. (or two). What happened?

The physical world doesn’t give a rat’s ass about “consensus.” Period.

The errors of “science journalism” in the last 20+ years is that a) the journalists don’t know the scientific method, and b) they failed to hold fashionable AGW climatology to a standard of the scientific method, which required of these statistical computer models a level of predictive skill to confirm their hypothesis. The AGW climate models have been shown in the last 10 years to have little to no predictive skill, and the regional large-scale weather modeling the AGW proponents have been issuing (eg, the number of hurricanes in the Atlantic in seasons since 2005) have been spectacular failures.

This is also why I have great sport making fun of economists. Many here on FR now love to poke fun at the “consensus expectations” of economists on various macro-economic indicators when the numbers come in “unexpected” above or below “consensus.” The reason why these numbers are falling wide of the “consensus” estimates is for the same reason that the AGW frauds are now being exposed: the econometric models aren’t science, they don’t pass the test of predictive skill, and economists continue to cling to their politically-based theories of how the economy works, numbers to the contrary.

Ergo, economics is not a science, dismal or otherwise. It is just political mental masturbation with numbers.

And now in the CRU, NZ and other eruptions, we see climatology is in a very real danger of being put in the same penalty box as economics: mathematical-based pseudo-scientific drivel.


17 posted on 11/26/2009 10:47:52 PM PST by NVDave
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To: opentalk; rlmorel; Nervous Tick; 4horses+amule; WL-law; Fractal Trader; Beowulf; ...
 


Beam me to Planet Gore !

18 posted on 11/27/2009 6:10:58 AM PST by steelyourfaith (Time to prosecute Al Gore now that fellow scam artist Bernie Madoff is in stir.)
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To: opentalk
The tide has turned.... we now have Musical Youtube parodies going...here is one:

The 12 Days Of Global Warming

19 posted on 11/27/2009 1:24:53 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach ( Support Geert Wilders)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach
This is good, consider posting video on a thread. The car companies , when you think about it, really doesn't make sense. So many jobs lost. We have some of the best pollution control laws.

By driving jobs to Mexico and China the result is increased pollution, they do not have the same pollution control requirements.

20 posted on 11/27/2009 1:55:24 PM PST by opentalk
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