Washington Post : E-mails Don't Prove Warming is a Fraud

Washington Post via RealClearPolitics ^ | 11/27/2009 | Eugene Robinson

[SeekAndFind]

WASHINGTON -- Stop hyperventilating, all you climate change deniers. The purloined e-mail correspondence published by skeptics last week -- portraying some leading climate researchers as petty, vindictive and tremendously eager to make their data fit accepted theories -- does not prove that global warming is a fraud.

If I'm wrong, somebody ought to tell the polar ice caps that they're free to stop melting.

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.

Here's what happened: Someone hacked into the servers at one of the leading academic centers in the field -- the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England -- and filched a trove of e-mails and documents, which have been posted on numerous Web sites maintained by climate skeptics.

Phil Jones, the head of the Climatic Research Unit, released a statement Wednesday saying, "My colleagues and I accept that some of the published e-mails do not read well." That would be an example of British understatement.

In one message sent to a long list of colleagues, Jones speaks of having completed a "trick" with recent temperature data to "hide the decline." The word "trick" is hardly a smoking gun -- scientists use it to refer to clever but perfectly legitimate ways of handling data. But the "hide the decline" part refers to a real issue among climate researchers called the "divergence problem."

[Rocky]

Reminiscent of Dan Rather, defending the forged documents after the forgery was revealed. Just keep telling the lie, and hope the truth goes away.

Fake, but accurate.

[Just A Nobody]

Soon, the defenders of the fraud will be telling us that we cannot produce the IBM Selectric the original emails were typed on. Thus, case closed.

Much like saying we cannot produce the original birth certificate proving Barry was born in Kenya.

[TomGuy]

The climate is controlled by many natural forces such as the sun, and man has little to do with it.

And the space Earth is traveling through is not of a constant temperature. Last year there were several articles noting how the surface temps of many planets in our solar system had increased slightly.

[freestyle]

These “Hot Sun Deniers” make me laugh.

[tobyhill]

“Most Americans are convinced that climate change is real”

I’m convinced, it’s called SEASONS.

[Sherman Logan]

The frauds committed by these guys in the service of AGW neither proves nor disproves the validity of their cause.

Any more than the frauds who perpetrated the “Piltdown Man” in order to “prove” evolution did.

A scientific theory is true whether only one person believes it or it is unanimous. It is also false on the same basis.

Although anybody who has participated in the frauds to date should certainly have any future work looked at by a jaundiced eye.

[PGalt]

IPCC = Individual Propagandists for Climate Criminals

[Old Retired Army Guy]

If anyone has followed Eugene Robinson they know he’s a left wing liberal who embraces the climate change philosophy. What he writes here is totally predictable. He appears regularly on Morning Joe and is an Obama cheer leader.

[SteamShovel]

E-mails Don't Prove Warming is a Fraud

Warming hasn't been proven either.

[BuffaloJack]

Stage 1: Denial

[agere_contra]

We know that the earth was as warm or warmer in the Medieval Warm Period because of dendrochronology.

Flawed as dendrochronology is (especially if you try to use strip-bark trees) wood-growth does vary by temperature.

The Senate Reconstructions of climate temperature (below) are dendrochonological reconstructions and show that the Medieval Warm Period was as warm or warmer then the present. At a time when the heaviest industry was Cathedral-Building.

You will note a broad 1000 year sinusoidal curve. This appears to repeat back through history to such global maxima such as the Roman Warm Period and the Minoan Warm Period.

The dendrochonology is backed up by historical details: the people living during the Medieval Warm Period did record a reduction in glaciers in the sense that Greenland was colonized by Eric the Red in about 958 AD. The name “Greenland” wasn’t ironical: the Vikings colonized the southern area of Greenland for about a hundred or so years before the growing cold after the MWP forced them to quit it.

The people living during the MWP didn’t record the melting of the ice caps. But FReepers may recall stories of opened sea passages navigated in the MWP period and marked on old maps/navigational rutters. If these stories are true then they point to more warming than we’ve observed.

You may remember that we’ve had various media stories over the last two years about ships being marooned by ice: they had apparently navigated into Arctic pack-ice under the impression that the way would be clear due to Anthropogenic Global Warming. Which I have to admit made me smile.

There are other warming indicators outside of the dendrochronological (tree-ring) record: for instance we have the bones of English people living in about 1000 AD. They apparently show a ~ 6ft 2 median height for the men. Good growth heights are typically a sign of a good diet due to good weather/good growing seasons - or perhaps of good trade caused by easy sea-crossings. The average Human growth height during the MWP seems to have been higher than during any other period in English History up until modern times.

I am also told that there are also many old road- and village names in the North of England from about 1000 AD that are redolent of viniculture. I can’t give you examples: I haven’t had a chance to check this out. I would probably have to check the Domesday book. I can say that during the previous warming period to the MWP – the so-called Roman Warming period, red grapes appear to have been grown in England. Viniculture is heavily reliant on degrees of heat, so this seems to be another corroborating detail about the ~1000 year periodicity of warming periods.

Hope this was helpful

[Kowdawg]

Washington Post : E-mails Don't Prove Warming is a Fraud

Well maybe not, but then again AGW can't be proven either.

How about: A broad consensus of distinguished Americans agree that scientific consensus about AGW is a hoax.

There, that should make the WP happy.

[faucetman]

Check out this site, great info.
http://www.friendsofscience.org/index.php?id=458

This particular graph shows 11 computer models vs 1 from ACTUAL DATA. Hmmmmmmmmmmm which one shall I believe? The GUESSES or the FACTS?

[musicman]

"Just maybe GW isn’t a fraud. What is a fraud is the” science” that it is built upon."

[SERKIT]

Just because someone writes an article doesn’t mean they are a reporter. How about starting by factually reporting how the emails were exposed - certainly not “purloined” - a cute turn of phrase, but does not fit. The only “denier” seen here is the reporter who denies that intentional and widespread fraud has been perpetrated by those who call themselves scientists.

[skully]

The purloined e-mail correspondence published by skeptics last week — portraying some leading climate researchers as petty, vindictive and tremendously eager to make their data fit accepted theories — does not prove that global warming is a fraud.

Hey Eugene maybe the e-mails alone don't prove the fraud that is Global Warming; but the FORTRAN and IDL programming code the “hackers” released sure as hell does. Not only do the programmers make this pretty obvious in the logic, but they pretty much explain in it comments throughout the program. In one such comment the programmer explains that certain temperature data after 1960 was to be given less weight, because it undermined the tree ring theory; which was supposed to be the “proof” of a warming globe.

[mo]

the Post has become an accomplice to fraud...and the MSM STILL does’nt get it!!

[sausageseller]

I was going to comment to the Post that this was one of the most ignorant editorials I had read recently. But then I noticed it was from Eugene Robinson.

A response is not worth the effort.

Just read through all the comments. Eugene and the few GW sycophants were throughly trashed.

[freekitty]

Sorry guys, you got caught with yout pants down.

[Secret Agent Man]

And just because you read something in the newspaper doesn't make it right, or objective, either.

For the whole series of Zero artwork, go here:

"Flickr Archive of Zero Artwork"

[arbooz]

[VeniVidiVici]

[DuncanWaring]

The width of tree rings correlates well with observed temperature readings, and extrapolating that correlation into the past yields the familiar "hockey stick" graph -- fairly level temperatures for eons,

Totally ignoring the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age.

It's warmer now than it was 100 years ago.

And it was warmer 100 years ago than it was 200 years ago.

That's why we're no longer in the Little Ice Age.

[raisetheroof]

The purloined e-mail correspondence ... does not prove that global warming is a fraud.

If I'm wrong, somebody ought to tell the polar ice caps that they're free to stop melting.

I can imagine a Eugene Robinson counterpart about 400 years ago saying, "Galileo does not prove that an earth-centric universe is a fraud. If I'm wrong, somebody ought to tell the sun to stop orbiting the earth."

[MozarkDawg]

The evidence found in the suppressed emails, the documented attempt at changing data to fit an outcome, collusion, etc., etc., etc., only demonstrates that truth is indeed inconvenient.

[expatpat]

The Arctic ice has stopped melting....

[jpsb]

I find it rather curious that the retreating glaciers reveal human settlements. Greenland is particularly interesting in that the settlers were Viking. Now as we all know Viking were active explorers from about 800AD to about 1200AD. I am pretty sure 800AD was less then 2,000 years ago. And some of the Greenland settlements have been dated to around 1200AD to 1400AD. Again I am pretty sure that is less then 1,000 years ago. So that would seem to indicate that Greenland was a lot warmer say 1,000 years ago then it is today. However when I look at AGW charts I don't see this warm period know as the Medeval Warm Period(MEP). I also do not see the warm period documented by Romans growing grapes for wine in England 200ADish. This is what I see

Hmmm, wonder how those really smart Romans were growing grapes in an England that is colder then today? Hmmm, wonder how those determined Viking build settlements under the ice in Greenland? Or could it be perhaps that the graph is pure Bull Sh*t? Hmmm, you make the call, either the graph is pure Bull Sh*t or the Viking built settlements under a half mile of ice. What say you oh wise one?

[mo]

“....that Al Gore will be the first carbon credit billionaire if Crap and Trade passes.”

I would think anybody foolish enough to have bought “carbon credits” could have a case for fraud...and that anybody who has dealt with the exchanges trading them likewise might have a claim against those exchanges.

[ravenwolf]

I imagine the climate doe,s change and in fact changing all of the time even before man was ever on this planet.

But the global warming advocates are frauds and are working for the global socialist elite who wants control of this planet.

So naturally they do every thing they can to make it look like man made climate change so that the people of the world will support thier hoax.

Thet have to have our money so they can promote the man made global warming fraud.

Then they will take our freedom in the name of saving the planet.

[flowerplough]

RE: Polar Ice Caps

Global warming trek ‘makes it less than half way’ to North Pole due to temps dropping below -40C! – UK Guardian – May 13, 2009 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/5320251/Arctic-expedition-to-measure-Arctic-ice-makes-it-less-than-half-way-to-North-Pole.html

Excerpt: The team of four trekked more than 269 miles for 73 days but were unable to make it to the North Pole because of extreme weather, with temperatures dropping below -40 degrees Celsius. The Catlin Arctic Survey, the first Polar expedition to monitor the affects of climate change on sea ice, was also unable to measure the ice using state-of-the art equipment because of the freezing conditions.

Adventures in Arctic Kayaking – Update: we’re stuck
3/09/2008 http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/09/03/adventures-in-arctic-kayaking/
UPDATE: kayakers already “stuck” in ice at 80.52397 degrees N

“We’re stuck”

I have slept poorly. The floating ice, while thin, is so prevalent that, throughout the night, it grinds noisily against the side of the boat in a slightly alarming fashion – imagine someone scraping their nails across an old-fashioned blackboard.The then begins earlier than normal and, unusually, I am not woken by Robbie bounding into my room. Instead the ship’s engine roars to life earlier than normal – at around 5.30 – and the MV ‘Havsel’ begins to judder ominously. I clamber out of bed and scramble up to the bridge – all the ship’s crew are there, and they look serious. I look outside and I can see why. The sea is almost entirely congested with ice floes – I would estimate 80% plus of the sea is covered by them. There is a real risk that we could get stuck up here. We have drifted in the night into a much icier area than where we stopped last night. I wake up the team, and everyone groggily makes their way to the bridge. There’s a mixed reaction in the team to the prospect of getting stuck up here.

See the location on Google Maps, 80.52397, 12.21224

After awaking to find their vessel frozen in ice the team are steaming around looking for a path that’s navigable by kayak.
No paddling today.

At about 69 miles per degree of latitude, it would seem that they’re still 600+ miles from the North Pole.

(Additional comment:

Bill Illis (14:51:40) :

Look at the compare images from Cryosphere for Sept. 5, 1979 versus Sept. 5 2008.

The expedition could have travelled at least 300 miles farther north 29 years ago.

http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=09&fd=05&fy=1979&sm=09&sd=05&sy=2008)

[aruanan]

The graph is what they get after they get rid of all the troublesome data.

Go HERE for the following:

Medieval Warm Period Record of the Week

Was there a Medieval Warm Period? YES, according to data published by 768 individual scientists from 454 separate research institutions in 42 different countries ... and counting! This issue's Medieval Warm Period Record of the Week comes from Outer Hebrides, Scotland. To access the entire Medieval Warm Period Project's database, click here.

[Liberty Valance]

"...scientists use it to refer to clever but perfectly legitimate ways of handling data."

...he said with a cleverly posed straight face...

[Interesting Times]

Liars lie. It’s who they are.

[Nuc1]

Poor Wa Po. Arctic and Antarctic ice isn’t vanishing. The globe isn’t warming. What is a good liberal to do? LIE. Yep that’s the ticket.

[agere_contra]

Thank you for posting that superb resource.

[Minn]

The purloined e-mail correspondence published by skeptics last week -- portraying some leading climate researchers as petty, vindictive and tremendously eager to make their data fit accepted theories -- does not prove that global warming is a fraud.

Perhaps. But reaching this point where you and other stooges are so much on the defensive, that you're forced mention the possibility of fraud to half hardheartedly deny it (who's the denier now?), is a huge step in the right direction for the good guys. No?

[nutmeg]

LOL, great post (below), capt. norm!

The author:

"I can't hear you LA LA LA!"

[Minn]

The frauds committed by these guys in the service of AGW neither proves nor disproves the validity of their cause.

Maybe not, but it changes the odds on the validity, doesn't it?

Although anybody who has participated in the frauds to date should certainly have any future work looked at by a jaundiced eye.

And all past work; and any work that relied on that past work; which cascades to just about everything these people have been expecting us to believe.

[Scanian]

This guy has always been a moron but he is trying to outdo himself this time.

[indylindy]

Since nobody out there is God, including you, taking money out of peoples pockets so that certain One World elitists can pretend they will save the planet by taxing people, is pure hogwash.

This planet may go down someday, but money ain’t going to save it.

[ETL]

Why You Should Be Hot and Bothered About 'Climate-gate'
FoxNews.com ^ | November 24, 2009 | John Lott

Computer hackers have obtained 160 megabytes of e-mails from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in England. These e-mails, which have now been confirmed as real, involved many researchers across the globe with ideologically similar advocates around the world. They were brazenly discussing the destruction and hiding of data that did not support global warming claims. The academics here also worked closely with the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Professor Phil Jones, the head of the Climate Research Unit, and Professor Michael Mann at Pennsylvania State University, who has been an important scientist in the climate debate, have come under particular scrutiny.

Among his e-mails, Professor Jones talks to Professor Mann about the "trick of adding in the real temps to each series...to hide the decline [in temperature]."..."

Another professor at the Climate Research Unit, Tim Osborn, discusses in e-mails how truncating a data series can hide a cooling trend that would otherwise be seen in the results. Professor Mann sent Professor Osborn an e-mail saying that the results he is sending shouldn't be shown to others because the results support critics of global warming. Time after time the discussions refer to hiding or destroying data. ..."

Lots more at link...

(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...

[daler]

I now feel fully free to literally laugh in the face of any "climate change" advocate I encounter.

And that's all I'll do.

After all, the debate is now over (to paraphrase Algore).

[arasina]

The global warming scam is operated using the same principles as the subprime mortgages scheme. Come up with an idea to make money from something that essentially doesn’t exist then manipulate the numbers to either scare or entice. Same ol’ bottle of snake oil that keeps getting sold, over and over again.

[BuffaloJack]

The emails may not prove global warming is a fraus, but they do prove that all the global warming supporters are.

[Caipirabob]

Washington Post : E-mails Don't Prove Warming is a Fraud

I agree. The SCIENCE does.

The emails prove it was a conspiracy to promote fraud.

They should all be tried and convicted for the crimes they have perpetuated against all humanity.

[ETL]

Re: Washington Post: "E-mails Don't Prove Warming is a Fraud"

I agree. The SCIENCE does.

Exactly.

There is no evidence that CO2 has ever caused significant warming on Earth when the concentrations were within 10-15 times of what they are today. Water vapor is, by far, the most important greenhouse gas in the Earth system. Water vapor accounts for about 95% of the greenhouse effect on Earth. Earth's temperature variations are much better correlated with the Sun's solar activity/sunspot cycle than with CO2 changes.-etl

THE ACQUITTAL OF CARBON DIOXIDE
by Jeffrey A. Glassman, PhD

ABSTRACT:

"Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere [historically] is the product of oceanic respiration due to the well-known but under-appreciated solubility pump. Carbon dioxide rises out of warm ocean waters where it is added to the atmosphere. There it is mixed with residual and accidental CO2, and circulated, to be absorbed into the sink of the cold ocean waters. Next the thermohaline circulation carries the CO2-rich sea water deep into the ocean. A millennium later it appears at the surface in warm waters, saturated by lower pressure and higher temperature, to be exhausted back into the atmosphere. Throughout the past 420 millennia, comprising four interglacial periods, the Vostok record of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration is imprinted with, and fully characterized by, the physics of the solubility of CO2 in water, along with the lag in the deep ocean circulation.

Notwithstanding that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, atmospheric carbon dioxide has neither caused nor amplified global temperature increases. Increased carbon dioxide has been an effect of global warming, not a cause. Technically, carbon dioxide is a lagging proxy for ocean temperatures. When global temperature, and along with it, ocean temperature rises, the physics of solubility causes atmospheric CO2 to increase.

If increases in carbon dioxide, or any other greenhouse gas, could have in turn raised global temperatures, the positive feedback would have been catastrophic. While the conditions for such a catastrophe were present in the Vostok record from natural causes, the runaway event did not occur. Carbon dioxide does not accumulate in the atmosphere."

http://www.rocketscientistsjournal.com/2006/10/co2_acquittal.html
_______________________________________________________________

The graph above represents temperature and CO2 levels over the past 400,000 years. It is the same exact data Al Gore and the rest of the man-made global warmers refer to. The blue line is temps, the red, CO2 levels. The deep valleys represent 4 separate glaciation/ice-age periods. Look carefully at this historical relationship between temps and CO2 levels (the present is on the right hand side of the graph) and keep in mind that Gore claims this data is the 'proof' that CO2 has warmed the earth in the past. But does the data indeed show this? Nope. In fact, rising CO2 levels all throughout this 400,000-year period actually *followed* temperature increases -lagging behind by an average of 800 years! So it couldn't have been CO2 that got Earth out of these past glaciations. Yet Gore continually and dishonestly claims otherwise. Furthermore, the subsequent CO2 level increases due to dissolved CO2 being released from warming oceans, never did lead to additional warming, the so-called "run-away greenhouse effect" that Al Gore and his friends keep warning us about. In short, there is little if any evidence that CO2 had ever led to increased warming, at least not when the levels were within 10-15 times of what they are today. -etl
_______________________________________________________________

"The above chart shows the range of global temperature through the last 500 million years. There is no statistical correlation between the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere through the last 500 million years and the temperature record in this interval. In fact, one of the highest levels of carbon dioxide concentration occurred during a major ice age that occurred about 450 million years ago [Myr]. Carbon dioxide concentrations at that time were about 15 times higher than at present." [also see 180 million years ago, same thing happened]:
http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=010405M
_______________________________________________________________

So, greenhouse [effect] is all about carbon dioxide, right?

Wrong. The most important players on the greenhouse stage are water vapor and clouds [clouds of course aren't gas, but high level ones do act to trap heat from escaping, while low-lying cumulus clouds tend to reflect sunlight and thereby help cool the planet -etl]. Carbon dioxide has been increased to about 0.038% of the atmosphere (possibly from about 0.028% pre-Industrial Revolution) while water in its various forms ranges from 0% to 4% of the atmosphere and its properties vary by what form it is in and even at what altitude it is found in the atmosphere.

In simple terms the bulk of Earth's greenhouse effect is due to water vapor by virtue of its abundance. Water accounts for about 90% of the Earth's greenhouse effect -- perhaps 70% is due to water vapor and about 20% due to clouds (mostly water droplets), some estimates put water as high as 95% of Earth's total tropospheric greenhouse effect (e.g., Freidenreich and Ramaswamy, 'Solar Radiation Absorption by Carbon Dioxide, Overlap with Water, and a Parameterization for General Circulation Models,' Journal of Geophysical Research 98 (1993):7255-7264).

The remaining portion comes from carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, methane, ozone and miscellaneous other 'minor greenhouse gases.' As an example of the relative importance of water it should be noted that changes in the relative humidity on the order of 1.3-4% are equivalent to the effect of doubling CO2.

http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/
_______________________________________________________________

Water Vapor Rules the Greenhouse System

Water vapor constitutes Earth's most significant greenhouse gas, accounting for about 95% of Earth's greenhouse effect (4). Interestingly, many 'facts and figures' regarding global warming completely ignore the powerful effects of water vapor in the greenhouse system, carelessly (perhaps, deliberately) overstating human impacts as much as 20-fold.

Water vapor is 99.999% of natural origin. Other atmospheric greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), and miscellaneous other gases (CFC's, etc.), are also mostly of natural origin (except for the latter, which is mostly anthropogenic).

Human activities contribute slightly to greenhouse gas concentrations through farming, manufacturing, power generation, and transportation. However, these emissions are so dwarfed in comparison to emissions from natural sources we can do nothing about, that even the most costly efforts to limit human emissions would have a very small-- perhaps undetectable-- effect on global climate.

http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html
_______________________________________________________________

Water Vapor Confirmed As Major Player In Climate Change

ScienceDaily (Nov. 18, 2008) — Water vapor is known to be Earth's most abundant greenhouse gas, but the extent of its contribution to global warming has been debated. Using recent NASA satellite data, researchers have estimated more precisely than ever the heat-trapping effect of water in the air, validating the role of the gas as a critical component of climate change.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/11/081117193013.htm

[chris_bdba]

OMG they are seriously disturbed if they don’t think that admitting faking data to reach a predetermened destination still makes it valid. How stupid do you have to be to still think “fake but acurate”.They need deprogrammed I guess?

[kcvl]

Robinson is a member of the National Association of Black Journalists.

Robinson appears frequently on MSNBC as a political analyst on shows such as Countdown with Keith Olbermann, The Rachel Maddow Show and Hardball with Chris Matthews.

Robinson is a distant cousin of First Lady, Michelle Obama

[norwaypinesavage]

"Well, what about the polar ice caps and Mt. Kilimanjaro’s vanishing snow ?"

The polar ice caps are GAINING ice. They are at the highest ever measured by satellites. The glaciers on Mt. Kilimanjaro are ABOVE the prema frost line. They never melt. They are receding since they happen to be getting less snowfall; the ice is sublimating, not melting.

[spodefly]

Forget the emails! Don't let them sidetrack this as if it was just about emails.

The emails are only a part of the story.

The comments in the code released along with the emails show the manipulation of data and numbers to fit the hoped for results.

The emails showed these "scientists" to be petty, venal, and self-serving. The code shows that data and numbers were manipulated.