Understanding Climategate's Hidden Decline

American Thinker ^ | December 06, 2009 | Marc Sheppard

[neverdem]

Close followers of the Climategate controversy know that much of the mêlée surrounds an email in which Climate Research Unit (CRU) chief Phil Jones wrote about using “Mike’s Nature Trick” (MNT) to “hide the decline.”  And yet, 17 days and thousands of almost exclusively on-line op-eds into this scandal, it still seems very few understand exactly which “decline” was being hidden, what “trick” was used to do so, and why Jones’s words have become the slogan for the greatest scientific fraud in history.

As the mainstream media move from abject denial to dismissive whitewashing, CRU co-conspirators move to Copenhagen for tomorrow’s UN climate meeting, intent on changing the world as we know it based primarily on their now exposed trickery.  Add yesterday’s announcement of a UN investigation into the matter, which will no doubt be no less corrupt than those being investigated, and public awareness of how and why that trick was performed is now more vital than ever.

So please allow me to explain in what I hope are easily digestible terms.

First and foremost -- contrary to what you’ve likely read elsewhere in the blogosphere or heard from the few policymakers and pundits actually addressing the issue, it was not the temperature decline the planet has been experiencing since 1998 that Jones and friends conspired to hide. Certainly, the simple fact that the email was sent in November of 1999 should have allayed any such confusion.

In fact, the 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...

[knarf]

I think this is a great opportunity for Interpol to surround the place and take each international criminal out, one by one.

[Republic_of_Secession.]

This scandal just gets worse. ICC hearing should follow.

[JasonC]

Great article, thanks for posting it...

[Dallas59]

The couldn’t call it a “communist” revolution. The had to call it “Climate Change”.

[Texas Jack]

Right on!

I remember reading somewhere how Marx responded when asked how to assimilate societies that had a large middle-class and no ruling class into his communist model, and he responded to the effect, "We'll use the environment. After all, nothing can be done about the weather."

[The Comedian]

"Science, schmience, we are entitled to complete control!"

Frowning takes 68 muscles.
Smiling takes 6.
Pulling this trigger takes 2.
I'm lazy.

[steelyourfaith]

 

Beam me to Planet Gore !

[DollyCali]

please add me to your Hoax ping list? thanks dolly

[The Raven]

But how many who believed in AGW before Climategate have changed their minds? Zero? It fits so well into the other “religions” - anti-capitalism and especially anti Americanism that I'm afraid the CRU crowd were just given the task of coming up with the story line. They had economical “hockey sticks” drawn back in the early days of communism. Those same people look at the devastations in Cuba and North Korea and find excuses to hide the decline.

[Carry_Okie]

Good summary, thank you.

If I had a criticism, the author presumes the reader understands the massive historic data supporting the MWP followed by the LIA. I didn't see it, but it should have been there at least by reference.

[wastoute]

I think there is a new International Court that the libtards set up to try criminals who take their efforts out on an international scale, isn’t there? Maybe we should have these folks tried for their crimes in this court. After all, they tried to run the biggest scam in history and the biggest hoax in science. If this hasn’t been a crime then there just isn’t such a thing anymore.

[Mrs. Don-o]

This is a splendid, understandable summary. When I get back from Church I’ll ping it around.

[RoadTest]

“very few understand “

That’s because knowledge of this scandal is not being propagated by the media. The number of people who even know about it is small.

[LS]

This column is devastating in explaining things in everyday English. Because if it's intricate connections to the UN, liberalism, the "scientific establishment," and even NASA, Climategate threatens to unravel liberalism like nothing else in our lifetime---certainly more significant than Clinton's erections.

What this may do is to reverse the post-1946 paradigm in which scientists and doctors were de fact "objective" and therefore "trustworthy."

[Presbyterian Reporter]

Sheppard got closer to writing a Climategate for Dummies here. His commentary still needs a bit of rewriting to make it clear for the average Joe.

I congratulate him on the work done here. If FReepers find other well written explanations of the deceit that was rampant at CRU, please post them.

Too much of this global warming data causes most people’s eyes to glaze over.

[dearolddad]

Great article, thanks for posting it...

For a real eye opener regarding the data (junk) on temperature collection methods go to SurfaceStations.org

[Apple Blossom]

Worth reading.

[bmwcyle]

ping

[danielmryan]

I broached the same point about the inaccuracies of the dendrochronology technique in this article, but I have to hand it to Mr. Sheppard: he was much more thorough than I had been. Kudos to him.