Climategate

Climategate refers to the Global Warming Controversy, a theory which asserts that human activity causes dangerous increases in temperatures and thus climate change. On November 19, 2009, climate science was severely shaken by the release of a collection of email messages, together with a collection of data and data processing programs, that were hacked or revealed by a whistle blower from the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit (CRU) in the UK, one of the key centers of global warming research. These emails and text files have been the subject of intense debate, calling to question assumptions on anthropogenic (man-made) global warming; evidence revealed told the truth about man-made global warming: it's a hoax.

The scandal that the suffix –gate implies is the state of climate science over the past decade revealed by a thousand emails, documents, and computer code sets between various prominent scientists released following the leaked data from the Climate Research Unit. Climategate is said to have revealed the biggest scientific hoax in world history as the worst scandal of this generation.

Climategate scandal

Climate science was severely shaken by the release of a collection of email messages, together with a collection of data and data processing programs, that were hacked or revealed by a whistle blower from the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. The trustworthiness of the scientific community's global warming data pool was called into question, and it appeared to have worsened for global warming theorists after another revelation came about on November 29, with the publication of a report by The Sunday Times of London. It was reported that scientists at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit in the United Kingdom confessed to throwing out most of the raw temperature data on which the theory of global warming is founded.

On December 1, 2009, the director of the embattled Climatic Research Unit in the United Kingdom stepped down pending the investigation into allegations that he overstated the case for man-made climate change.

Three takeaways

Iain Murray at Pajamas Media pointed out three takeaways that people must know about Climategate.

1. First, the scientists discuss manipulating data to get their preferred results. The most prominently featured scientists are paleoclimatologists, who reconstruct historical temperatures and who were responsible for a series of reconstructions that seemed to show a sharp rise in temperatures well above historical variation in recent decades.

2. Secondly, scientists on several occasions discussed methods of subverting the scientific peer review process to ensure that skeptical papers had no access to publication. In 2003, Tom Wigley of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, complained that paleoclimatologist Hans von Storch was responsible for “the publication of crap science ‘in order to stimulate debate’” and that they “must get rid of von Storch” (1051190249) as an editor of the journal Climate Research (he indeed subsequently resigned).

3. Finally, the scientists worked to circumvent the Freedom of Information process of the United Kingdom.

Freedom of Information Act

The Freedom of Information Act explicitly forbids deletion of any material subject to a FOIA request. The penalty for such a criminal act is a fine of up to £5,000. Presumably being found guilty of such an act, or even suggesting it, would also bring about significant disciplinary procedures at any reputable university.

Themes

Climategate shows strong evidence of fraud, and may show smoking-gun proof of a cover-up by CRU scientists to exaggerate the existence, causation, and threat of global warming.

Hockey Stick Graph

In one e-mail dated November 1999, CRU chief P.D. Jones wrote to Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley, and Malcolm Hughes:

“

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.

”

Michael Mann's graph that 'hid the decline' was shaped like a hockey stick, and it portrayed temperatures as steadily declining since medieval times and then sharply rising in the last century and a half. Notably, his reconstruction fueled claims that 1998 and following years had the highest temperatures in 1,000 years. Once it became publicly known that man-made global warming is a hoax, as a direct result of the e-mail discussing a "trick" for adding data to each temperature series for the last 20 years, Climategate motivated the making of a video called, "Hide The Decline."

Critique of the Hockey Stick Reconstruction

• Corrections To The Mann et. al. (1998) Proxy Data Base And Northern Hemispheric Average Temperature Series by Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, Energy & Enviornment volume 14, 2003.
• The Decay of the Hockey Stick by Von Storch published on the journal Nature's blog, May 3, 2007.
• A Global Warming Bombshell by Richard A. Muller, Technology Review , Oct. 2004; calls into question famous graph by Michael Mann.
• Reconstructing Past Climate from Noisy Data by Hans von Storch, Eduardo Zorita, Julie M. Jones, Yegor Dimitriev, Fidel González-Rouco, Simon F. B. Tett, Science magazine, 22 October 2004.

Environmental agenda

From a June 11, 2008 press release of the University of East Anglia, the CRU, University of East Anglia, claimed they set the agenda on climate change with the statement, "The University of East Anglia, particularly its Climate Research Unit, is the only university to be included in a list of the key bodies that have set the environmental agenda in the UK over the past 30 years."

Moreover, James Randerson in the UK Guardian wrote an article that claimed, "Western Lifestyle Unsustainable, Says Climate Expert Rajendra Pachauri." The article was writing to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for the United Nations. Randerson referenced comments about global warming made by Mr. Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change at the United Nations who was also awarded a Nobel Prize along with Al Gore for his work. Randerson quoted Pachauri and argued, "Hotel guests should have their electricity monitored; hefty aviation taxes should be introduced to deter people from flying; and iced water in restaurants should be curtailed, the world's leading climate scientist has told the Observer."

Rush Limbaugh pointed out who is most responsible for the environmental agenda:

“

One man, Phil Jones — and his 150-year temperature record, which is a hoax and a fraud — is largely responsible for all of this. 'Western lifestyles unsustainable.' It is an attack on capitalism, it is an attack on freedom, and it is ongoing — and it's not just happening in the global warming movement. It's happening in the Obama health care movement. It's happening in the cap-and-trade movement. It's happening in the card check movement. It's happening in the amnesty-for-illegals movement. Everything the left does should be seen as an attack on freedom. That's how it should be understood.

”

Oil

According to Rush Limbaugh, another theme of the e-mails that have been released is how people at the Climate Research Unit were constantly trying to "shake down" the oil companies (ie. Exxon, Shell) for money and for partnerships. On this reoccurring theme, Limbaugh mentioned the following:

“

They talk about it openly, how they're constantly trying to shake down the oil companies. The only thing man-made about global warming is the theory behind it. What you are going to do with people who are even willing to lie about the weather?

”

Media coverage

In the wake of the Climategate scandal, a truly bizarre situation happened; the mainstream media stories about global warming pretended the uncovered documents never happened. As Climategate was totally ignored by most TV news outlets, Fox News appeared to be the only national news media in America interested in the growing Climategate scandal. Perhaps the MSM felt that by ignoring Climategate entirely that it would have just gone away. However, just as the case was during the Tea Party Movement, notably during the Tax Day Tea Party, bloggers and the readers of the global warming stories kept bringing up the inconvenient truth of Climategate by mentioning the scandal "over and over and over again."

Google

It was reported that, despite Climategate related pages being the most-read articles of the Telegraph’s entire online operation, mysteriously when attempting to search using Google – it doesn’t (or didn't) feature links related to Climategate. As James Delingpole noted, "Instead, the top-featured item is a blogger pushing Al Gore’s AGW agenda. Perhaps there’s nothing sinister in this. Perhaps some Google-savvy reader can enlighten me."

External links

• PJTV Climategate - Coverage
• Climategate (PJTV/Pajamas Media), on Facebook