What would climate change alarmists do if people were actually told that there is no general theory of AGW; and the word "consensus" is a wildly inaccurate characterization of support for any of a number of climate studies.

http://www.anelegantchaos.org/cru/emails.php?eid=735

"Consensus: I would tend to avoid the word 'consensus', since it is not a well defined concept. Depending on the meaning of consensus, each would agree with it to a certain degree. I would prefer to refer to a particular IPCC conclusion, or something similar. I think this review of the literature is very well written and informative, but I am not sure that each one of us will agree with each one of the concussions of each of the papers."

The emails explicitly refer to forgery of data and the hiding of data in direct violation of the Freedom of Information Act.

"Hide the decline" means they know the earth is cooling but want to "hide" it.

This is, quite literally, with not one shred of irony or subtlety, the very definition of conspiracy.

10 years ago I wrote a paper for my Geology professor outlining a clear cause for much of the rise in global temperatures. It was a clearly defined occurrence based on a regular cyclic spike. I had very pertinent data to back my theory based on piles of research from across the global and centuries.

My Professor gave me an outright "F" and informed me that I was deluded and foolish. He stated to believe that a large portion of global temperature rising being based on a expected cycle was preposterous. When I argued that my theories were as sound, and in most cases, more detailed that some of the climatologists he yelled at me in front of the class.

I found that most of the doomsayers and scientists, like my professor, to be socialist nuts and anarchists. Discussions were not something that occurred, a general distaste for global enterprise and democracy was typically the immediate spillover from any "discussion" on the warming theories.

I am in no way surprised that data is being "skewed" to continue their end of the world anarchists views. I feel that honestly, NONE of these climatologists really know how our impact will be felt. The climate is such an immense organism, and the territory so new, it is all conjecture. I certainly feel it is wonderful to continue forward to lessen our footprint, but take out the hatred towards folks who aren't yet willing to live in trees in a government free society.

What a wonderful day for humanity !

The hoax is over, the kids can go back to playing and stop worrying about the polar bears and the criminals who brought this scam upon the world will now be put on trial. The “green” movement was hijacked by social progressives and used as a weapon to scare the world into their “vision” of behavior and tax us into oblivion. Now it is over and the revolt back to common sense is on !!! Yeah !!!

Not only arescience issues, that are LEGAL issues.

Did (or are) Mann and three other Americans help scientists in the U.K. break the law by destroying emails require under the U.K. Freedom of Information Law?

Here is the sequence of emails[ I appolgize if it 'double spaces everthing']:


Cast of Caracter:

Phil Jones, Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia
Michael Mann, Penn State
Ray Bradley, U. Mass
Caspar Ammann, NCAR
Tim Osborn, Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia
David Palmer, Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia
Gene Wahl, NOAA

From: Phil Jones p.jones@xxx

To: "Michael E. Mann" mann@xxx, "raymond s. bradley" rbradley@xxxx

Subject: A couple of things
Date: Fri May 9 09:53:41 2008
Cc: "Caspar Ammann" ammann@xxxx

Mike, Ray, Caspar,

……

2. You can delete this attachment if you want. Keep this quiet also, but this is the person who is putting in FOI requests for all emails Keith and Tim have written and received re Ch 6 of AR4. We think we've found a way around this.

………………………………………………

From: Phil Jones p.jones@xxx
To: t.osborn@uea.ac.uk,"Palmer Dave Mr (LIB)" David.Palmer@xxxx

Subject: Re: FW: Your Ref: FOI_08-23 - IPCC, 2007 WGI Chapter 6 Assessment Process [FOI_08-23]

Date: Wed, 28 May 2008 17:13:35 +0100

Cc: "Briffa Keith Prof " k.briffa@xxxx, "Mcgarvie Michael Mr " m.mcgarvie@xxx

Dave,

Although requests (1) and (2) are for the IPCC, so irrelevant to UEA, Keith (or you Dave) could say that for (1) Keith didn't get any additional comments in the drafts other than those supplied by IPCC. On (2) Keith should say that he didn't get any papers through the IPCC process.either.

I was doing a different chapter from Keith and I didn't get any. What we did get were papers sent to us directly - so not through IPCC, asking us to refer to them in the IPCC chapters. If only Holland knew how the process really worked!! Every faculty member in ENV and all the post docs and most PhDs do, but seemingly not Holland.

So the answers to both (1) and (2) should be directed to IPCC, but Keith should say that he didn't get anything extra that wasn't in the IPCC comments.

As for (3) Tim has asked Caspar, but Caspar is one of the worse responders to emails known. I doubt either he emailed Keith or Keith emailed him related to IPCC.

…………………………………………….

From: Phil Jones p.jones@x
To: "Michael E. Mann" mann@xxx
Subject: IPCC & FOI
Date: Thu May 29 11:04:11 2008

Mike,

Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith will do likewise. He's not in at the moment - minor family crisis.

Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don't

have his new email address.

We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.

I see that CA claim they discovered the 1945 problem in the Nature paper!!

Cheers

Phil

…………

From: Michael Mann mann@xxx
To: Phil Jones p.jones@xx
Subject: Re: IPCC & FOI

Date: Thu, 29 May 2008 08:12:02 -0400

Reply-to: mann@psu.edu

Hi Phil,

laughable that CA would claim to have discovered the problem. They would have run off to the Wall Street Journal for an exclusive were that to have been true.

I'll contact Gene about this ASAP. His new email is: generwahl@xxx

talk to you later,

mike

.....................

Micahel Mannacted on the request to destroy the FOI emails!!!!

I love the usage of the word "deniers". It is designed to illicit the same response as holocaust deniers.
Climate change is a straight forward, natural thing IMO. The data shows the last 10 years have reduced in temp while co2 goes up. Man made climate change, IMO is a different beast. I do not believe it exists.
To be honest I think it falls into the same bracket of religions. IE Man in his arrogance thinks he's so important he requires to have been "created" rather than just evolved like every other animal on the planet. He now wants to believe we can alter this planet like that. If anything is likely to destroy the planet, it's mans self importance.

I had a similar experience to Chris R. It is no longer required in science to prove a hpothesis or theory if you are on the politically correct side of the proposition. Any attempt to deviate will be met with bitter recriminations. If only the main stream media would take a close look at the junk that is being peddled as scientific fact. The masses are being duped daily particulary by those who have a financial stake in the products and services that have been spawned by the climate change alarmists,

Brilliant journalistic analysis of the evidence Jay. I love the moral equivalency stance you take, disregarding evidence which you obviously haven't bothered to investigate.

This issue is not the pettiness or the derision, or the cru glee at the death of another human being who disagreed with them, rather it is their willful destruction of data "supporting" their thesis and their refusal to submit their data for "true" peer review.

No one copyrights the distance to the sun, or the chemical element chart. Why would temperature readings be subject to copyright and only available to a select few "special" people? Especially when those data sets are gained due to public funding.

I guess as a financial columnist you'd be more than happy for Ford Motor Company to deny you access to their quarterly report data because "you aren't smart enough to understand them", or aren't recognized as a "real financial analyist".

Naturally I expect my words to fall on deaf ears as it were, because facts are of no import to your way of understanding.

Science is never absolute. Of course, that does not mean it is not meaningful. However, the fact that there is still dispute about details just shows that scientists continue to refine what they know.

In the public sphere, we need to make decisions even without perfect knowledge. It's a question of risk management more than science. For an excellent presentation from this perspective, I recommend this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mF_anaVcCXg

Amen brothers. What a load of crap this article is. Did you get paid for this sir? I would suggest you did not earn your salary. In sum - "facts aren't important if it bolsters my global socialist agenda". No, no, we shouldn't worry our pretty heads about the largest tax increases in the history of the world. We're not smart enough to know what's good for us. Geez, we defeat and discredit communism around the world, only to have them rise up again in our own country.

America will never be able to use US natural resources like coal produced energy while deluded environmentalists with no data to back their fantasy are listened to!

Why keep arguing about carbon foot prints while we continue to send billions to the middle east when American dollars could be kept at home while providing thousands of jobs.

The environmentalists have created a religion to supposedly save the planet, but negate the fact that their philosophies are destroying our economy - so what then, will be saved? The bible mentions GOG as one of the great deceivers at the end of the world - I am tired of bowing to the God Of Global-warming, the new dictator in US policy!

Too bad there are no e-mails from the Vikings as they saw their farms in Greenland overrun by glaciers. I wonder who them blamed for that climate change?

I started to download climate data and plot it myself when I began to suspect that published charts were being creatively smoothed. It is amazing that anyone could claim that it has not been cooling since some time before 2004. Download the data yourself. I generally use HadCRUT data because it is from folks on the AGW side of the argument. You can look at the unsmoothed data and see the cooling trend. Or you can do a 13-month centered moving average and see it more clearly.

If you don't like the cooling then you can hide it by using a 10-year trailing average which Excel has as a standard. Be very suspicious of any charts that have been smoothed. Especially be suspicious of charts there they don't say how they were smoothed or don't also show the original unsmoothed plot. If anyone wants to download data and plot it themselves, I will try to show you how. My email is cbrtxus@yahoo.com. No spam please.

"To put this in a fair light, we should have somebody hack the deniers' emails. Of course their correspondence would show only honest and faithful guidance by the data, wherever it might lead, and dignified respect for their opponents"

Hahaha! Nice one, you so called "journalist". Hey, never mind that the alarmist are now proven to falsify data and conspiring to delete emails subject to FOI request. Lets just ignore all of this and just state (with no proof) that the sceptics are guilty of the same.

This marks the end of the myth!!

Excellent point, Mr. Vire.

The supposed beauty of Science is that the interpretation of the laws of nature are not subject to political ideology. If Climate Scientists have been cooking the books It does not matter one bit what so called deniers of Man Made Global Warming think, do or say. The burden of proof is on those claiming the data means something other than what it indicates.

"Trying to draw any conclusion from imperfect data often produces a sales job from those pushing one course of action or another. But that doesn't change reality."
------------------------------------
Uh, yes it does.

It means the "reality' everyone presupposes really doesn't exist.

The "smoking gun" graphic for global warming is:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Holocene_Temperature_Variations.png

The graphic has extensive references.

It shows that variance and uncertainty is so large that no one knows what mankind's influence is on temperature, if any.

I know it is a lot easier to go with the flow (aka the Asch psychology experiment), gloss over anomolous data not in agreement with AGW (like about everything now), and seek to find "common ground" and a "voice of reason".

But that is marriage counseling, not science.

And scientists are not supposed to bemoan data that doesn't support their pet theory. That is a clue the theory is wrong.

That is the reason the FDA doesn't accept drug research data not "double-blind". The incentive for scientists to cheat is overwhelming when they want to achieve an expected result.

One question you need to ask, as an establishment journalist, is why climate scientists can fit ALL data to AGW. No theory explains all the data, yet AGW can explain away all sorts of odd stuff.

Mr. Hancock: I'm afraid you are in something of denial yourself. These emails can't be laughed off or downplayed. How much of the "scientific consensus" you cite is based on downstream analyses dependent on the CRU's widely-cited, falsified data? How can we be certain that the intense peer pressure to produce the "correct" data on climate change was limited to Anglia? As the old saying goes, even a stopped clock is write twice a day, and this may be Pat Michael's time.

As an engineer and a Prius-driving environmentalist, I have always had an uneasy relationship with AGW and climate change. I think that the effects of the movement are very positive: development of renewable energy sources, reduction of pollution from hydrocarbon-based sources, increased energy conservation, and a general "warming", in the metaphorical sense, to green issues. But I also know that many of the ever-changing mathematical models cited by most AGW advocates are flawed at best, and junk science at worst. Anyone can build a system that predicts the past, or one that predicts the future about as well as probability theory.

The danger of environmentalists putting all their eggs in the CO2 basket is that if AGW becomes discredited (as I suspect it will), the many positive steps that we have taken over the past two decades to make our planet more green might be discredited along with them. There are very good economic, scientific, political, and moral reasons supporting the drive to clean, renewable energy. It's time we made our case on those sound arguments, and not on a dubious consensus that, if we are being honest, is much more political than it is scientific, as these emails depressingly illustrate.

Thanks to oracle2world for being the voice of reason. I think it may be the only reasonable post I read here. The article at the top is certainly the only bit of reasonable journalism about this subject I've read so far.
If we can set aside the FOX News effect and look at a complete picture, we might actually learn something. The hyperbolic claims and insults are counter productive. Whether you have your head in the sand or in the clouds -- if you're shouting it's a tirade not a debate.
I'd like to see the data in question and consider it in perspective with other well documented data. Science is a human endevour and as a result is never perfect. The main thing that makes it functional is the application of reason. One must look at the data and consider it with an open mind. Science works by peer-review, which can be flawed but when it's done right it can and does lead to well documented factual information. From there you have to separate fact from interpretation. To seize on one fact that supports a preferred case is not science.
I wonder how many people who are carrying this new banner claiming the death of global warming have read the original article in question or any other data source on the subject. Headlines are a dangerous form of "knowledge" for anyone to grab and hold as truth.
One of the scientists I hold in very high regard, JC Griffiths, offered me this warning when I was a young graduate student in geology -- "Beware of Juggernauts!"

"Consensus" is not relevant to science. It is only useful in demonstrating power in society and politics.

Great moments in "scientific consensus" would be the reticence of Kopernik and the condemnation of Galilei.

Wow, I thoughht we had some shockign journalistic bias over the pond but your Mr Hancock really doesn't like facts does he? I guess he's one of those for whom AGW is a "belief" system rather than anything scientific.

Good use of holocaustr style language, at least we know you are at the fascist end of the green spectrum, when faced with cold facts you don't like its back to insults and inflammatory language. I'm a little disappointed you haven't called for the death penalty for those who do not subscribe to your religion. Many of your co-fraudsters have.

"there is scientific concensus" - the one where those in favour are busy deleting evidence of their fraud and lies. I think you meant scientific conspiracy, but hey, why let the facts get in the way of a good story.

Matt,

Good comments. I think what is pretty clear is that the peer review has been significantly hampered by the AGW scientists. Mann, and all others, need to come clean immediately with ALL DATA.

"There is a scientific consensus that humans are changing the planet's climate. "

Really? where? who?

I see plenty of comments from scientists all over the web who don't agree with that statement. when applied to CO2 AGW.

Jay,

On what do you base YOUR belief in the Global Warming theory? I assume you have not been conducting your own experiments so in whose opinion have you placed your trust?

Hi Dan: Fair question. I have been writing about the greenhouse effect since the mid-1980s, including coverage of Pat Michaels before he became famous. I won't cite the IPCC report and others since you or others will just claim liberals cooked the books. But I think even if we stipulate a few things that everybody can agree on, the case for responding to climate change is solid and urgent.

The global warming 'theory' is not much in dispute. Nobody argues that CO2 levels aren't increasing. Nobody of any repute argues that mankind isn't responsible for CO2 increases. And even the climate-change skeptics -- Michaels, the Idsos etc -- agree that the physics of increasing atmospheric CO2 are straightforward -- more CO2 and other greenhouses gases will cause the planet to heat up, absent other factors. So it becomes an argument about the rate of warming, what the models predict, whether or not ameliorative factors like cloud cover will counteract the greenhouse effect, etc.

In other words, it becomes an argument about how much risk we face and what to do about it. The skeptics admit there is risk, although they downplay it. But however uncertain, the risk is planetary in scale. Given the implications -- we're fiddling with the equilibrium of the atmosphere that gives us life -- to do nothing in response is crazy.

Let's for the sake of argument disbar all temperature time-series over the last century that purport to show rising global temperatures. The worldwide retreat of the glaciers, which anybody can see (just go to Glacier National Park, which will someday belie its name), ought to be enough to convince people that something different and a little scary is going on. -- Jay

Jay,

You have advanced an interesting hypothesis. Now for the next step where the science is completely unsettled

(1) Do increased levels of CO2 induce higher global temperatures or do higher global temperatures induce higher levels of CO2?

(2) How sensitive is the climate to changes in CO2 levels? Why should we care if CO2 levels double or even increase tenfold if the earth adapts and life goes on?

(3) What are the real consequences of higher or lower global temperatures? Historical evidences suggest that global cooling would have much more severe consequences than global warming. Is there an optimal global temperature?

(4) Can geo-engineering influence climatic change and to what degree?

Research into these questions and many others with an open mind is what science is supposed to be about. Concluding the state must impose a remedy that lacks any scientific merit (good intentions do not count) is what politics is all about.

Jay,

Nice way to soft-pedal the shocking revelations from these emails. Kudos, too, on using the language of the AGW True Believers ("deniers") in referring to those who haven't foresworn the scepticism that all real scientists should embrace.

It's pretty classic how you coin the phrase "climate change deniers" in an attempt to portray them as holocaust deniers.

Also, there is no need to hack the "climate change deniers" emails because their actions are done in the light, not in the cover of darkness and secrecy.

I wonder if Tribune Publishing benefits from pushing the climate change hysteria? Pretty funny how the terms shifted from "Global Warming" to "Climate Change" because the global mean temperature is now falling.

Anyone with critical thinking skills can cut through this type of low level propaganda.

Ok - I'm a "denier". Further, I'll stipulate that the earth IS getting warmer AND man made CO2 is the cause.

All I ask is the raw data and method of analysis be made public.

That's a fair deal, no?

Saw an interesting presentation on the migration patterns of indian tribes in the American South-West because of climate change. They moved when the land could no longer suport their aggrarian life-stye to more temperant climates. Doubt CO2 had much of an impact

>>There is a scientific consensus that humans are changing the planet's climate.

There is NO such consensus! The science that shows that there is the man-made climate change is at the very least unproven even to a modest degree. Furthermore, abusing the peer review and suppressing the independent review of the data is not how scientific consensus is supposed to be established. What has become very clear now is that there is NO definite answer concerning very major aspects of the global warming/climate change. Furthermore, the combined efforts of engaged politicians and unscrupulous scientists have made it very difficult to reliably establish the scientific truth because now it seems it would be very difficult to trust the validity of the data used in the literature over the whole decade.

I am a scientist myself, and I know very well how science works. Abuse of the peer review system by various special interests is becoming more and more common in all fields of science, not only the climate change. This and the need to publish, in high impact journals, etc, cause honest scientists to not publish negative findings or findings that contradict the general view, and dishonest scientists to doctor their data and fraudulently get them through the "peer review". The consensus you talk about is produced not by the established scientific truth but by one group of scientists with an agenda monopolizing high-impact journals and preventing those who do not support their view from reporting their findings with the same level of visibility. The e-mails show just that. They also show that the the people in question obtained in some ways exclusive access to very important climate data and did not want either to share them or to submit them to independent review. This is not how a real scientific consensus is achieved. This is the same type of consensus that existed in Stalin's version of democracy, when you either voted for the communists or were sent to Gulag. 99% of the population voted for the communists, surprise! Stalin was probably very proud of his consensus. Should we?

What's truly sad about this article from a non-scientific author is his apology for the climate scientists actions. Most engineers and scientists stay out of the political realm because they choose to work in the realm of theory, fact and scientific method. We tend to take much more seriously another scientist's integrity than apparently a career journalist does. I guess that shouldn't be a surprise.

Hi Seattle. Career journalist! Ouch. To the contrary, I take scientific integrity very seriously. But whatever breach of propriety may be indicated by the EAU hack, it's ludicrous to suggest that the relevant data series are more than tiny piece of the evidence for global warming. That's the main point to be made in this revelation. -- Jay

do you get paid to write? this article was pathetic. did you not read any of the emails? of course this is a conspiracy.

Jay, are you feeling like you have no credibility with your readers?

I've read through these comments and it doesn't seem you have a whole lot of high-fives going on. It could be that the masses are simply unintellegent as we are always accused of or that you and those of your political persuasion have really been duped and you're too emotionally vested in your position to change.

Not many of us would care about the elitist arrogance of academia but our economy is being destroyed and our nation in grave jepordy because of the insane policies born of this hoax. We in the US have more energy than any other nation on earth. We could ilimate EVERY drop of forign oil, create tens or hundreds of thousands of jobs, and reduce/stabilize the cost of energy which just might be enough to save our economy and the dollar.

Believe what you like, but I don't want my children to grow up in a nation without its own currency because our economy/dollar was destroyed at the hands of environmentalists.

This hoax is dangerous. ironically its as or more dangerous than the proposed risks of global warming.

WAKE UP!! Follow the money and it goes to GOVERNMENT. not any oil company.

A Hoax perpetrating a Fraud based on a Lie to Establish Control over the unknowing.

Using data to proof a result is surely the wrong way to go around an experiment. The fact is that the we have had ice ages and raging hot deserts in the UK in the last 20,000 years or so and if the temperature can move like that on its own presumably due to the trajectory that the earth takes around the moon then it is just natural for the planet to experience the warming up and cooling down and climate change.

That's perfect that we can take the mortgage loans moreover, that opens completely new chances.