GayPatriot

The Internet home for American gay conservatives.

Ma’am Tries to Change Climategate Narrative

by

It’s one thing to arrive on the platform after the train has left the station.  It’s quote another to want to change its direction once it’s left.  But that’s what ol’ Ma’am Boxer is trying to do.

With two of the leading scientists behind the theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) either under investigation or stepping down (while under investigation) and the Australian Senate rejecting “Labour party Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s carbon emissions bill by a vote of 41-33“, the debate on global warming has shifted, yet Mrs. Boxer, the chairman of the Senate committee which considers climate issues, its Environment and Public Works Committee, acts as if little has changed in the past two weeks.  She finds the real problem is the stolen e-mails, not the doctored data on which she has based her complex cap and trade bill:  ““You call it ‘Climategate’,” the Democrat inveighed, “I call it ‘E-mail-theft-gate'”.

And on she blustered, “”Whatever it is, the main issue is, Are we facing global warming or are we not?”  No, Ma’am, that’s not the main issue, the main issue is whether if there is global warming, it is caused by human activity.  And the temperatures these past ten years don’t show much of a warming trend.

She does want to investigate the hacking.  And is right to do so.  But, try as she may, by making that the focus on her inquiry, she blinds herself to the reality of the climate science.  With each passing day evidence drips out showing calling into question the AGW theory.  The original data have been destroyed.  Other raw data haven’t been released.  AGW proponents have attempted to suppress the work of skeptics while trying to intimidate and/or discredit them and the journals where they publish their findings.

The hacked e-mails are just the tip of the proverbial iceberg which doesn’t seem to be melting, but solidifying.  And the e-mails only help bring to light information that was already out there, but which folk like Mrs. Boxer have been ignoring.  And they help confirm theories that skeptics of global warming have been putting forward.
But, Ma’am will have none of this.  Whistleblowers are only allowed to confirm her theories.  When they help uncover evidence which calls hers into question, well, they must be investigated.  Yet, as David Harsanyi reports, in the past, she has been quick to praise whisteblowers:

But could this possibly be the same Boxer who once sponsored the The Military Whistleblower Protection Act.

The same Environment and Public Works Committee Chair Barbara Boxer who held hearings over a Environmental Protection Agency whistleblower who claimed the Bush administration had an unwillingness to address greenhouse-gas emissions.

The same Boxer who believes in whisteblowing on defense contractors and for nurses?

Many of those seem like reasonable protections. How about protecting the people who exposed potential scientific fraud funded by government?

Well, not when that fraud helps serves the narrative she wants to tell.  Last year, she accused the Bush Administration of a “Cover Up” on Global Warming and demanding the EPA “release every document” related to the controversy.  Now, she wants to investigate the release of e-mails which show a cover up of even greater magnitude.

Perhaps, she should welcome these e-mails.  They help us realize that anthropogenic global warming is not nearly as significant as some had feared, thus radical legislation of the type she has proposed is not necessary.  Such legislation would impose countless costs and regulatory burdens on businesses, large and small alike.  Those burdens would make it difficult for them to expand and grow, meaning fewer jobs for Californians, the people she was elected to represent.

Without this bill then, there will be a better chance for economic recovery in the Golden State.  So, it’s strange that Mrs. Boxer would want to change the narrative on the East Anglia e-mails.  Because, as the Australian Senate understood, the current narrative suggests that additional burdens on business aren’t necessary to prevent global warming.   And Mrs. Boxer could help her constituents by opposing such burdens.

She, more a partisan demagogue than a California representative, she seems hellbent on increasing government regulation.  And putting more and more of her fellow citizens out of work.

Comments

  2. “, the main issue is whether if there is global warming, it is caused by human activity. And the temperatures these past ten years don’t show much of a warming trend.”

    Your second sentence here seems to indicate that Boxer is right – the primary issue that people like you are still disputing is not whether humans are causing the warming, it is whether there is warming at all.

    “With each passing day evidence drips out showing calling into question the AGW theory”

    How so? It seems to me that the noise that is being made, the charges being hurled are about whether there was an attempt to “hide the decline” – whether the record of temperature changes has been played with – i.e. whether there has been any warming or not – not whether an accepted warming is caused by humans or not. What are the specific points you see that have been raised in this dispute that undermine the question of whether humans have caused a warming, rather than whether or not there is a warming?

    “The original data have been destroyed. ”

    Actually that is not true. CRU apparantly dumped their copies of the raw data, back in the 80s (i.e. it was not done by any of the people who are there now) – but that raw data still exists in all the places where CRU gathered it from.

    If someone wants to reproduce their work, the fact that their copies of the raw data were dumped will make it much harder – the data now would have to be reassembled. But it is not “destroyed”.

    “AGW proponents have attempted to suppress the work of skeptics…”

    The peer review process is, by its nature, a process by which the scientific community filters out junk science. Whenever a bad paper is rejected for publication, one could make the specious argument that the work is being “suppressed”. Thats the whole point. Before you make the claim that the CRU folks were doing something nefarious, you need to establish, beyond any doubt, that the papers they rejected were somehow worthy of publication. The fact that the papers pushed a point that you hope is true does not qualify the papers as of any value.

  4. Before you make the claim that the CRU folks were doing something nefarious, you need to establish, beyond any doubt, that the papers they rejected were somehow worthy of publication. The fact that the papers pushed a point that you hope is true does not qualify the papers as of any value.

    or

    Before you make the claim that the CRU folks were doing something nefarious virtuous, you need to establish, beyond any doubt, that the papers they rejected were somehow worthy of publication nefarious. The fact that the published papers pushed a point that you hope is true does not qualify the papers as of any value.

    Does that work for you?

  5. To every Tano spin spin spin.

    Tano, they’ve admitted their data was destroyed. They’ve admitted that all that’s left is doctored data. They’ve admitted that they apparently were modifying their own data [a href=http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NzI4MDMzMmQ1MGUyZDQzZDQwNDM3MzFkYjJjZDI1ZDk=]without knowing they were doing it[/a].

    They’ve conceeded they’d not allow dissenting papers to be ‘peer reviewed’. They’ve conceeded they can’t explain the recent cooling and that they should cook the books to hide it.

    Continue to spin. You’re being proven wrong. Like you were on Honduras, your record of being wrong is incredible.

    And again, I’ll ask the simple question you’re afraid to answer. Do you eat meat?

  6. Dan,
    did you get a chance to look through these links? Once nice thing about Charles Johnson is he does an excellent job at highlighting the hysteria and anti-science antics of the right

    http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/35233_Did_Climate_Scientists_Destroy_Data_A-_No.

    http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/35253_The_Comment_That_Killed_Global_Warming_(Not)

    http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/35258_The_Climategate_Criminal_Conspiracy

    A nice little quote:
    “Think of all the e-mails you have written over the past 10 years. Now imagine that someone criminally breaks into your e-mail account and downloads all of them, handpicks a few and posts them on the internet to cast you in a particular light. We could all be shown to be saints or sinners or anything in between.”

    This is especially true because none of you even listen to the explanitions these scientists have given. Instead you simply hyperventalte and cherry pick more and more.

  7. So, Senator Dingbat really thinks Americans are less angry that trillions of their dollars would be wasted and their lifestyles degraded for the sake of lie, than they are at the whistleblower who exposed the lie.

  9. “how do you get gillie to pop out when a little pressure is applied to you”

    Because your “pressure” is so easily deflated.

    Its like playing baseball with my nephew. He is always amazed how far I can hit a tennis ball. I tell him, when you pitch it so slow its easy to hit it out of the park

  10. gillie,

    Little Green Charles Johnson has gone around the bend. He has turned to drinking vinegar and spewing bile. If you find that refreshing, be sure to ask for my share while you are over there basking in pettiness.

    Every day Little Green Charles Johnson takes on more of a Mike Nifong and the Duke mob of rapers persona. You really should develop an instinct for thinking independently rather than promote links that point to dust bunnies under your own bed.

  11. “Little Green Charles Johnson has gone around the bend”

    He has always been around the bend. Nevertheless he has been able to compile quite a bit of data that thoroughly debunks much of the specious claims thrown out by the anti-science right.

    I highly recomend that you go to the links and look through them. Hopefully it will cause you to rethink your strong sceptisism.

  14. It will be interesting to see how Ma’am plays this in her re-election ads. Will she put her advocacy of Cap and Trade front and center in her campaign advertising, or will she play it down, or maybe leave it out entirely. If she doesn’t campaign on this issue, it will be a strong indication that the jig is up.

  18. ”“You call it ‘Climategate’,” the Democrat inveighed, “I call it ‘E-mail-theft-gate’”.

    Tactical blunder: according to Lakoff, using the term “Climategate,” even while trying to change the frame (albeit clumsily as sonicfrog noted), she reinforced the “Climategate” frame.

  19. “Gillie has neither the interest nor the ability to think independently; that’s why he’s a left liberal.”

    Have you put the time to read the facts? Or do you only get your info from Drudge?
    Here is a great example of how the “sceptics” lie and cherry pick inorder to try and incubate your “fraud” story:
    http://hot-topic.co.nz/nz-sceptics-lie-about-temp-records-try-to-smear-top-scientist/

    Read it! Afterwords you will see that many on the right have succumbed to the anti-science hysteria. Hopefully after reading more about what actually happened you can pull out of it.

  21. Paul Hudson would like to disagree with your link, gillie.

    Oh by the way. We’ve fixed the ozone hole congratulations!

    All this with an admitted lack of warming

    but hey gillie, you keep saying to trust the scientists. I’m just quoting their own words.

    Then again Michael Mann makes quite a bit from his fraud.

    But some of us knew the hockey stick was a fraud in 2004.

    And here’s 450 more reasons to doubt global warming. All peer reviewed, despite efforts to stop it.

  22. The issue in the Australian Senate is as much: “If global warming IS anthropogenic, is an ETS the appropriate means with which to mitigate it?” The answer, in the Senate’s opinion, was no.

    The Government, in the meantime, continues to confuse or conflate belief in the solution with belief in the problem, an ideology which makes it unable (or reflects its unwillingness) to deal with its critics.

    For the record, I think it’s all crap – but there are other, legitimate and worthwhile reasons to do things (e.g. build and/or develop non-fossil energy sources) which would fix matters.

  23. OK. Now, to tano and gille. Yes, Dan may not be up on this story as much as others, but, as evidenced by the use of the RealClimate-ish talking points, both of you are obvious novices when it comes to the issues being discussed here.

    I’ve been closely following the climate debate since 1992 when I saw Carl Sagan at a presentation here in Fresno. I loved that guy and will always admire him rgeatly. But I had issues with his comparison and correlation of Venus and Earth, CO2 and global warming in his presentation. Too many differences to be use as comparative gauge, e.g. Venus is closer to sun, pure CO2 and sulfur dioxide atmosphere etc.. It’s just not a good comparison. But, around that time, the Venus = Earth scenario was used over and over in the news to show how damned we are if we stay on the same course. The implication was clear – If we don’t stop emitting CO2, we’ll end up like Venus. This is what alerted me to the use of scare tactics to sway public opinion on this topic. Since then, it has been quite clear that some in the climate science community have been exaggerating the certainty and “consensus” on the cause of the current warming trend.

    A reminder to all that in science, the term theory is not used in the same way that you see in a mystery novel or a board game – I have a theory that Professor Green murdered Mr. Body in the Conservatory with a lead pipe! A scientific theory is a hypothesis that has the wight of research and evidence behind it. However, just because something is an accepted theory, does not mean that it is no longer challenge-able, in fact, the scientific process demands that all theories be constantly challenged. to this day, the theory of special relativity, a theory that is clearly accepted by most, if not all physicist, i.e. consensus, is to this constantly being attacked in the physics community to find holes and instances where it breaks down.

    Now, on to the subject of peer-review. That is not the end-all-and-be-all to science. Once you have something peer reviewed, that doesn’t convert a scientific theory into scientific law. Peer review is just one step. The scientific method clearly DEMANDS that a paper, even one that has been peer reviewed, be continually challenged. Here is where the breakdown in climate science occurred. In order for someone to challenge a scientific theory, ALL information and methodologies that were used to confirm the hypothesis and this elevate it to theory MUST be available to all comers in order to ensure the faithful reproduction of all experiments that led to the confirmation of the hypothesis. This didn’t happen in climate science. The lead scientists in the field, Michael Mann, Phil Jones, Keith Briffa et al. not only prevented anyone who didn’t pass the smell test of correct thought on climate from getting the data, but they set up a firewall hindering anyone that didn’t already agree with their conclusions and didn’t use their unusual methodologies to participate in the peer review process. And if they did manage to get a question through that did not lean toward the party line, they were marginalized by the core group. Scientist who peruses alternate theories of the causes of the current warming trend other than the CO2 absolutism of “The Team” (as the key players are nicknamed), even if they are published in peer review publications, are either dismissed as “shills for Big Oil” – see Patric Michaels, or almost completely ignored, as is the case with Rodger Peilke Sr.

    Further, one of the big criticisms of this field of science is the way climate scientists have been butchering statistics and computer code methodologies in many of studies held up to show the “unprecedented” warming, as laid out by Steve McIntyre and Anthony Watts. You may not think much of them, but they are trying to do the work that should have been done within the climate science community. None of the lead scientist of “The Team” are statisticians or professional coders, nor are any of the peer reviewers most often relied upon when papers are under review. Statistics is as much a part of the scientific equation here as the physics of CO2 in the atmosphere. There is a simple saying in the computer / IT world that sums up the role computers play in any data processing – garbage in / garbage out. How can peer review find and correct these shortcomings if none of the peer reviewers are qualified and experienced enough in these fields of research to spot them? And by withholding the data for more than thirty years, Phil Jones et. al. have ensured that the faulty statistical methodologies and code passed down in generations of re-replicated works by Rutherford, Esper, and others, and now confirmed by many independent coders (thanks to the leaks Hadley / CRU data), will lead to questions of the viability and reproducibility, undermining the confidence in foundation on which “The Team” and the IPCC has based their conclusions of impending disaster.

    It is quite clear that many of the peer review papers rejected or dismissed by “The Team” should not have been. Here is an example of one paper that got through the peer review process, fair and square, yet was wrongfully dissed my non other than Michael Mann.

    It’s also clear that some of the mechanism that are relied upon in the climate models don’t work the way they are calculated to. Ever heard of the Thermohaline? It’s better known as the “conveyor belt” of ocean currents that carries cold water under the worlds oceans. Well, this just came out the other day, saying that we should all be scared because there is evidence that the climate can go into a deep freeze very rapidly, as it did not “The Day After Tomorrow”. The key is the disturbance of the thermohaline due to a sudden influx of cold water that can occur if a glacial dam breaks, allowing billions of gallons of water to suddenly flow to the ocean. But it doesn’t take into account that our understanding of the way the Thermohaline may be actually operating. So the pres got a good scary headline, yet the science behind it isn’t by any means set in stone. I’m not saying the results wouldn’t ultimately be the same as described in this paper, but it just isn’t as certain as it would have been a year ago, before scientists discovered the may not work the way we thought. In an odd way, this is an example of how science should work. It’s fluid.

    This is perhaps the big mistake by “The Team” and the warmists. Due to concerns over the possible damage they projected, based on their climate models, they decided to portray the science as settled, then did whatever they could to try and project that chimera. Problem is, that as soon as you prevent others from confirming your results, you stray from the basis of scientific confirmation, and stray into the political realm.

    PS. Though I am a skeptic on some of the science behind (sometimes spelled with a “c”, rather than a “k”), I’m not one that dismisses the theory that CO2 can influence warming. That said, one of the problems I have always had with global warming and the CO2 link, is that, as a guy who was a geology student, there has never been a clear-cut causal link between high CO2 and higher temps. Yes, there are periods where the CO2 and temps have been higher, but there is also many periods in Earths history where that link just doesn’t exist – 450 mil and 360 -248 million years ago where the causal link between CO2 and Temp rise and fall completely break down, and the current theory of CO2 and warming simply does not work.

  25. A good post on an important matter, Dan. But please let me a few criticisms.

    First,

    With two of the leading scientists behind the theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming…

    This should be changed to: With two of the leading scientists behind the hypothesis of Anthropogenic Global Warming…

    While laymen and scientists alike often interchange these two terms, this is abominable bad usage. There is a very big difference between a real scientific theory and a hypothesis.

    Second, this paragraph

    And on she blustered, “”Whatever it is, the main issue is, Are we facing global warming or are we not?” No, Ma’am, that’s not the main issue, the main issue is whether if there is global warming, it is caused by human activity. And the temperatures these past ten years don’t show much of a warming trend.

    comes off as a bit confused. It is a bit odd to assert that the reality of global warming per se isn’t the main issue and then end by noting that the last decade showed no warming. Anyway, the real main issue in ClimateGate is what is happening to climate science.

    My third criticism (and this is the last one, I promise) is to this:

    [Boxer] does want to investigate the hacking. And is right to do so.

    But why is she right to want to investigate the hacking? It occurred in another country — and one with a perfectly competent government. With the scientific and public policy issues reaching the United States, Congress has plenty to investigate without worrying about a bit of computer hacking in England.

  26. Now that I’ve made my criticisms of Dan’s post, let me say that Barbara Boxer’s response to this affair is just one more bit of evidence as to what a complete waste of skin she is. If the woman had any shame at all she wouldn’t be able to leave her house without putting a paper bag over her head!

    If the people of California don’t unelect this bitch, California she be forced out of the Union. (And yes, I’m serious.)

  27. Tano,

    Your comment (#3) is quite interesting.

    I agree there is a problem with Dan’s third paragraph. See my comment #26 above.

    CRU apparantly dumped their copies of the raw data, back in the 80s (i.e. it was not done by any of the people who are there now) – but that raw data still exists in all the places where CRU gathered it from.

    I am willing to take your word on this. (Yet it would have been nice if you had provided links to your sources.) This still impresses me as bad practice on the CRU’s part.

    The peer review process is, by its nature, a process by which the scientific community filters out junk science. Whenever a bad paper is rejected for publication, one could make the specious argument that the work is being “suppressed”.

    The peer review process is, by its very nature, also a process by which groupthink can be maintained in the scientific community. This is simply the nature of the beast. So when a paper is rejected for publication, any claim that it is being suppressed may be specious, or it may be correct.

    When Albert Einstein’s papers on special relativity and the photoelectric effect were published there was no such thing as peer review. Given how outside the mainstream of scientific thought his paper’s were, how likely were they to have survived a peer review process? If you think I’m making to much of this, just note that Einstein’s understanding of gravitation had been empirically vindicated, yet the Noble Prize committee refused to mention it in his award. It was just too radical.

    In any event, Tano, your defense of peer review is a piss-poor response to Dan’s noting — truthfully — that the folks at CRU did their best to make it impossible for any AGW skeptic to even get a chance at publication in a peer reviewed journal.

    Hmmm. Your honesty does not bear scrutiny, Tano. Perhaps I should change my mind about taking you word on the original data.

  29. gillie,

    Looking at your comments here, I have to ask

    Are you for real?

    Seriously. Do you honestly think that Charles Johnson’s going on and on about how “stupid” ClimateGate is going to convince people that we didn’t read in the CRU e-mails what we actually read?

    It doesn’t matter if the global warming zealots at Hot Topic are right about the skeptics they criticize, nor does it matter about that bit of computer code. Attempt were made to suppress the work of other scientists. Doctored graphs were published. IT ACTUALLY HAPPENED GILLIE!

    Here we have real evidence of the bad behavior on the par of those leading the charge that AGW, those whose opinion has been driving the behavior of governments and popular media, and all you can say is some ‘AGW skeptics have behaved badly too’? That’s your defense of AGW and its proponents? My god, you’re pathetic.

  31. gillie has won me over. I am going to see if Little Green Charles Johnson will join my wife and me in a menage a trois. Of course he will have to promise to leave his expurgated version of the Gideon Bible at home and agree to castrate my pit bull with his bare teeth.

  32. Nice to see you posting again CLDave.

    And now that I’m home, gillie’s LGF link made me laugh harder. “People are saying that they sent all these emails to the BBC! They only sent one! That debunks everything!”

    So let me see, gillie posts a link that confirms that the BBC received an email and didn’t do any following up, yet somehow this debunks the arguement?

  33. CLD,

    “Attempt were made to suppress the work of other scientists.”

    Its called the peer review process. You need to convince your peers that your work meets the minimal standard for publication. Thats how science works.

    ” Doctored graphs were published.”

    Horsecrap. The “doctoring” was to add REAL TEMPERATURE DATA, from thermometers, to replace proxy data – inferred from tree rings – data that the “doctorers” had long argued – in print – was unreliable, and had demonstrated so.

  35. “Here we have real evidence of the bad behavior on the par of those leading the charge that AGW, those whose opinion has been driving the behavior of governments and popular media, and all you can say is some ‘AGW skeptics have behaved badly too’? That’s your defense of AGW and its proponents? My god, you’re pathetic.”

    Know whats “pathetic” CLD?
    Taking one post about the actions of AGW skeptics while ignoring ALL the others and then saying “that is all I can say”

    I have given you many links that clearly show what they did, why they did it and the science behind it.

    And of course, you have no response to that other than ripping LGF…

  36. “Attempt were made to suppress the work of other scientists.”

    Its called the peer review process. You need to convince your peers that your work meets the minimal standard for publication. Thats how science works.

    What you don’t seem to get is that these scientists may have interfered with the peer review process, acting as gatekeeper to keep other valid scientific papers out of print. That IS HOT how science is supposed to work.

  39. Sonic,
    “acting as gatekeeper to keep other valid scientific papers out of print.”

    The peer review process IS a gatekeeper function. THat is the whole point of it – to keep out bad science. Otherwise the line would go straight from the scientist writing the paper to the publisher who prints it. The only thing that peer review does is say NO to the work that is not up to snuff (actually it does more in the sense that suggestions are made through the process to improve the papers that end up being published).

    What it comes down to of course is your assertion, your assumption, that the papers that were rejected deserved to be published. I wonder how you can simply assume that, given that (I bet) you havent read them yourself, nor would you be qualified to judge their quality if you did. I am sensing that you simply assume that whatever the GW advocates did must have been bad, and whatever someone who is a skeptic has done, must be good and valuable. And if thats the case, then there is no reason to even discuss the point, because you seem committed to your position a priori.

  40. Yes, it is a gate-keeping function, but not in the way it is being used. Did you read my write up on this topic? Mann et al clearly bullied the publishers into submission over a paper that in of itself was not flawed, yet Mann’s rebuttal of it was.

    Tano, on your last comment, you are dead wrong. Yes I have read some of the papers that were originally rejected. I know you’ve read this blog for a while, and you must have noticed that I am (A) not one that tows a party line, and (B) when I state something, I put full weight of research behind it. I have even admitted when I’m wrong. I do not believe, as others have stated here, that Climategate disproves AWG. What it does show is that the bullet proof consensus has only appeared bullet proof by a rigged process that cannot be considered unbiased… no, that is not the right word, scientifically objective peer review process.

    You don’t need to take my word for it. Please read very carefully this post from climate scientist Judith Curry, or Richard Lindzen, or this from hurricane researcher and fellow computer modeler Vincent Gray. These are real scientist, working in the field, who have between them had many papers subjected to peer review and see the same problems that I do.

    You say this:

    I am sensing that you simply assume that whatever the GW advocates did must have been bad, and whatever someone who is a skeptic has done, must be good and valuable. And if thats the case, then there is no reason to even discuss the point, because you seem committed to your position a priori.

    This seems to be the inverse. Again, I’m not coming to this as a novice. Though I didn’t finish my geology degree (calc killed me), I do have some base in scientific studies. You seem to buy every utterance by the GW advocates, even when the e-mails suggest otherwise. Jones says that they would destroy data in e-mails, and now that data is conveniently missing. The e-mails do not in any way corroborate the current story that the data in question went missing in the eighties, which surely would have been mentioned at some point in the battle over releasing data via FOI requests. There is NO MENTION that they don’t have the data, but there is Jones writing that others on the Team also delete e-mails and other documentation, which is quite illegal when facing a FOI request. Notice Gavin and others won’t touch that subject. Yet if a private company, such as Microsoft, or, lets say Haliburton, were shown to have executive doing the same thing and hiding info from FOI requests, both of us would be screaming bloody murder!

    When Gavin Schmidt at RealClimate says that they never hid the decline, that this fact was already out there, he’s telling only a half truth. When it was mentioned at all, the divergence was downplayed. And the severity of the divergence was NEVER brought to the public fore. Here is a reconstruction of the decline in question. It has NEVER been shown by Schmidt, or Briffa, or Mann, or by anyone else to the general public when the IPCC reports were created and packaged for general consumption. Go to almost every AWG site, and you will NEVER see this presented, because they rely on the IPCC report, and by excluding this info from the main report they bury the divergence problem from the public. Why? Because if the divergence is happening now during the current warming, if the divergence is related to a rapidly warming climate, and if this current divergence cannot be explained, then how can the climate scientist argue against the premise that warming in the past didn’t produce the same temperature / proxy divergence in the past? This is one of the most important aspects of the valid criticisms of the way the climate science community has literally shut down debate on this subject. You instinctively want to shout right about now that there are no proxies that show other periods of warming. In which case you would be quite incorrect. Again, see Soon /Baliunas 2003. And note my criticism of Mann’s debunking of that paper.

    Again. None of this proves that AWG is a hoax. What it does show is that the Wegman report was accurate in describing the situation that too few in the scientific field of climate research had acquired too much influence on the peer review process and the inner-workings of the science as a whole.

  41. Nice to see you posting again CLDave.

    Thank you, Livewire. I hope my posts on this thread continue to earn your admiration.

    So let me see, gillie posts a link that confirms that the BBC received an email and didn’t do any following up, yet somehow this debunks the arguement?

    Yes, Livewire, that’s how it works. Any report of bad or foolish behavior by AGW skeptics — even if it isn’t really all that bad or foolish — is supposed to nullify any and all points they raise. Meanwhile, any report of bad or foolish behavior by AGW proponents — no matter how truly bad or foolish the behavior was — is to be ignored or explained away.

    This sort of nonsense goes on in politically charged arguments all the time. The global warming debate is just following the typical pattern.

  42. Tano at #34:

    Its called the peer review process. You need to convince your peers that your work meets the minimal standard for publication. Thats how science works.

    Or doesn’t work, as the case may be.

    I’m a chemist, Tano, so I don’t need you telling me how science is supposed to work. Peer review is a relatively new thing in the world of science. For a long time scientists got along quite well without it. And as for the process itself, I wrote:

    The peer review process is, by its very nature, also a process by which groupthink can be maintained in the scientific community. This is simply the nature of the beast. So when a paper is rejected for publication, any claim that it is being suppressed may be specious, or it may be correct.

    When Albert Einstein’s papers on special relativity and the photoelectric effect were published there was no such thing as peer review. Given how outside the mainstream of scientific thought his paper’s were, how likely were they to have survived a peer review process? If you think I’m making [too] much of this, just note that Einstein’s understanding of gravitation had been empirically vindicated, yet the Noble Prize committee refused to mention it in his award. It was just too radical.

    Do you care to respond to this, Tano? Or are you just going to continue blustering about peer review?

    (Seriously, Tano, if you want to defend the process of peer review again then address these points. Otherwise shut up about it. We don’t need to listen to a damn broken record.)

    Perhaps you want to sound like some noble defender of the sciences so the discussion here will be distracted from the attempts of the folks at CRU to keep papers opposed to their pet hypothesis from being published.

    Are you denying that Phil Jones wrote this to Michael Mann:

    The other paper by MM is just garbage – as you knew. De Freitas again. Pielke is also losing all credibility as well by replying to the mad Finn as well – frequently as I see it. 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 ! [emphasis added]

    Come off it, Tano. Anyone can see the game you’re playing here.

    Horsecrap. The “doctoring” was to add REAL TEMPERATURE DATA, from thermometers, to replace proxy data – inferred from tree rings – data that the “doctorers” had long argued – in print – was unreliable, and had demonstrated so.

    The horse crap being peddled here is coming from you, Tano. The graph didn’t say it was two kinds of data — that’s doctoring right there. When this was first called into question by John Finn at RealClimate.org:

    Whatever the reason for the divergence, it would seem to suggest that the practice of grafting the thermometer record onto a proxy temperature record – as I believe was done in the case of the ‘hockey stick’ – is dubious to say the least

    Mann’s response was:

    No researchers in this field have ever, to our knowledge, “grafted the thermometer record onto” any reconstrution.

    Of course the replacement had to be denied: because it’s dishonest practice.

    The proxy data was replaced because it showed a recent decline in temps — Mr. Jones admitted as much:

    “I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.”

    (e-mail from Phil Jones to Raymond Bradley, Michael Mann, and Malcolm Hughes of 16 Nov 1999)

    And if the proxy data is unreliable to begin with, what good is it to compare it with real temp data or anything else? Honestly, Tano, did you realize you’d skewered you’re own point?

    Now, Tano, you can grow up and actually defend your assertions about peer review and its use in this case, and you can attempt a real defense of the behavior of Phil Jones and his colleagues, or you can just go away. Your choice.

  43. gillie at #36:

    Know whats “pathetic” CLD?
    Taking one post about the actions of AGW skeptics while ignoring ALL the others and then saying “that is all I can say”

    Hmmm. When I made my comment you had posted 5 of your own, with 3 being substantive ones containing links. I mentioned two of those three. I don’t see where you have cause for complaint.

    I summed up your comments in my reply to Livewire at #42:

    Any report of bad or foolish behavior by AGW skeptics — even if it isn’t really all that bad or foolish — is supposed to nullify any and all points they raise. Meanwhile, any report of bad or foolish behavior by AGW proponents — no matter how truly bad or foolish the behavior was — is to be ignored or explained away.

    I’m perfectly willing to accept the reports at hot topic and LGF. But they prove nothing about AGW skeptics in general, yet alone universally.

    With the entire “ClimateGate” affair, we have the CRU, on of the world’s leading climate science centers, and home of some of the world’s foremost AGW proponents, caught engaging in all sorts of dubious scientific practice. Yet this didn’t seem to bother you at all. All you could do is say ‘global warming skeptics got some facts wrong in reporting the CRU story,’ and ‘some skeptics in New Zealand were naughty.’

    Honestly! You think misreporting one e-mail given to the BBC as several is the equivalent of Tom Wrigley writing this to Micheal Mann?

    If you think that Saiers is in the greenhouse skeptics camp, then, if we can find documentary evidence of this, we could go through official AGU channels to get him ousted.

    Whether or not too much has been made of the comment “Apply a VERY ARTIFICAL correction for decline!!” appearing in some computer code is ridiculously insignificant compared to this, and to the basic dishonesty of the graph in the first place. (See my comment #43 above.)

    And frankly, as far as Charles Johnson’s whole attitude is concerned, his post calling this bit of whistleblowing “a criminal attempt to sabotage the Copenhagen climate summit” is idiotic in the extreme. Forget that the CRU folks evaded FOI requests and destroyed requested documents — which is a crime under British law. Don’t worry about how honest the AGW proponents are. All that matters is letting the Copenhagen summit go on without a hiccup. My god!

    What is really criminal (besides the actual lawbreaking the scientists did to evade FOI requests) is the high-jacking of science and public policy to favor a pet hypothesis. And bloggers like Johnson are complicit in the crime.

    Now your hot topic link was a much better, more serious one. But do you really think any group of AGW skeptics in New Zealand has the clout the CRU has (or had)?

    We haven’t had the news media, the entertainment media, governments, and the UN all telling us that the Earth is cooling, or that we can pour carbon dioxide into the atmosphere forever at even 1,000 times the rate we have and temps will never change. What we have had shouted at us is that the industrial revolution is heating the globe and is about to warm it up to the level of the Jurassic. Whether or not there has been any good science behind this claim is what this affair is about.

    You can further the usual pattern of ‘your side is as bad as mine’ all you want, gillie. But that’s pathetic. So I said so.

  44. CLD,

    Thank you for showing how you can be a supporter of the belief in GW and yet question how they’re showing it.

    I’d add, that Michael Mann denied knowing anyone doctored the data, yet it’s called ‘Mike [Mann]’s trick”!

    So apparently you have to accept that Michael Mann altered data, then used the memory-flashy-thing from Men In Black to remove the memory.

  45. CLD, when you say you’re a “chemist”, you mean that in the classical sense right???? 🙂

    Anyway, that you for buttressing my point about peer review. In concept, it may sound like a good idea, but the establishment of any scientific industry will always want to keep out those papers that it doesn’t agree with. Ultimately, the old way of doing things may be better, especially now that response to errors can be so swift thanks to the internet.