Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Puzzled about the climate uproar? Wonder why anyone cares? Before you run off to devour caviar in Copenhagen …

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Here’s the clearest explanation of Climategate I have encountered, with charts showing how one can create global warming:

while reconstructions — as past temperature interpretations from proxy data are called – can differ greatly from one source to another, those generated by the CRU have often been accepted as the de facto temperatures of the past.

This is largely because the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) proclaims them to be.

Sound familiar?

I am not saying global warming or, anyway, climate change is not happening. Always has, always will. And some of it may be due to man. But, based on events at East Anglia, I just do not trust the people in charge of interpreting the data any more. For all I know, lots of other data has been fudged too.

If it were a bank, I would withdraw my savings immediately. Wouldn’t you? It’s no use the board of directors trying to tell me that only one branch is corrupt. Before, they told me all branches were honest.

The least useful thing I could hear is that man-caused global warming is “consensus science.” I’d expect to hear that if the scandal is widespread. Anyway, you will doubtless find Mark Sheppard’s explanation helpful. Also: In “Scientists Behaving Badly: A corrupt cabal of global warming alarmists are exposed by a massive document leak,” Steven F. Hayward for The Weekly Standard offers a basic outline of the scandal here.

Canada’s Rex Murphy, for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, is an honourable exception to a wearisome pile of legacy media sludge vendors, attempting to assure us mushrooms that there is nothing to see here instead of doing their job. Here’s Murphy:

Here is the transcript of his broadcast.

Murphy sees what the climate lobby doesn’t: The issues are trust, accountability, and transparency. Lines like

“Trust me, I’m an expert”, “You just fell off the turnip truck, whereas I am a famous scientist,” and “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain” have been heard before by all kinds of people in all kinds of situations – and those lines are wearing very thin indeed.

Why does it all matter? Why can’t we just be more ecological? But what does it mean to be more ecological? What if we are doing the wrong things? For example, the mascot for global warming in these parts is the polar bear on the vanishing ice flow. But the bear himself is not vanishing, rather increasing in numbers, perhaps due to more sources of food.

While we are here anyway, other comments and links:

Here is a window into legacy media reactions to the big Copenhagen climate change conference. Have a look at the spin reassuring us that nothing happened at East Anglia, which reporters will be encouraged to communicate to the public worldwide. Also spun by New Scientist (“Why there’s no sign of a conspiracy in hacked e-mails”, 04 December 2009), whose writer, Michael LePage demands,

Forget about the temperature records compiled by researchers such as those whose emails were hacked. Next spring, go out into your garden or the nearby countryside and note when the leaves unfold, when flowers bloom, when migrating birds arrive and so on. Compare your findings with historical records, where available, and you’ll probably find spring is coming days, even weeks earlier than a few decades ago.

Well, I have gardened in the same locale in Toronto, Canada, for twelve years, and I have noticed no significant change, except that recent cold snaps killed several of my Rose of Sharon trees. But I do not plan to make a theory of that. Rose of Sharon is doubtfully hardy in my zone anyway.

Britain’s Gordon Brown thinks that anyone who doubts climate change is a flat earther. The trouble is, the climate is always changing, but, given Climategate, who or what should we believe?

In “Hacked e-mails and journalistic tribalism, Curtis Brainerd for Columbia Journalism Review, notes (December 03, 2009),

The editorial board of the journal Nature, which has worked with some of the scientists involved in the e-mails, has argued that accusations of either scientific or procedural misconduct are irresponsible because they could delay legislative action on climate change. Perhaps. But there is more to be gained here by fleshing out the details of this controversy than by simply accepting that all is well.

Now is a good time for journalists to reassess their coverage of climate change, weed out any bias from their reporting strategies, do what they can to disentangle politics from science, and be more aggressive about covering what many scientists, business figures, policymakers, and activists think is the most important climate story of this still-new millennium. If the science stands up to the test, it will emerge even stronger than before.

Well, yes, exactly. Paying no attention to the man behind the curtain is just not human nature and is not helpful either.

Here’s a whistleblower report.

Here’s Pajamas Media, with many links.

“Climategate: Science Is Dying: Science is on the credibility bubble” says Daniel Henninger in Wall Street Journal (December 2, 2002):

Global warming enlisted the collective reputation of science. Because “science” said so, all the world was about to undertake a vast reordering of human behavior at almost unimaginable financial cost. Not every day does the work of scientists lead to galactic events simply called Kyoto or Copenhagen. At least not since the Manhattan Project.

What is happening at East Anglia is an epochal event. As the hard sciences—physics, biology, chemistry, electrical engineering—came to dominate intellectual life in the last century, some academics in the humanities devised the theory of postmodernism, which liberated them from their colleagues in the sciences. Postmodernism, a self-consciously “unprovable” theory, replaced formal structures with subjectivity. With the revelations of East Anglia, this slippery and variable intellectual world has crossed into the hard sciences. This has harsh implications for the credibility of science generally. Hard science, alongside medicine, was one of the few things left accorded automatic stature and respect by most untrained lay persons. But the average person reading accounts of the East Anglia emails will conclude that hard science has become just another faction, as politicized and “messy” as, say, gender studies.

Mark Steyn dismisses the “peer review” mantra (OC Register, November 27, 2009):

Here’s what Phil Jones of the CRU and his colleague Michael Mann of Penn State mean by “peer review”. When Climate Research published a paper dissenting from the Jones-Mann “consensus,” Jones demanded that the journal “rid itself of this troublesome editor,” and Mann advised that “we have to stop considering Climate Research as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers.”

So much for Climate Research. When Geophysical Research Letters also showed signs of wandering off the “consensus” reservation, Dr. Tom Wigley (“one of the world’s foremost experts on climate change”) suggested they get the goods on its editor, Jim Saiers, and go to his bosses at the American Geophysical Union to “get him ousted.” When another pair of troublesome dissenters emerge, Dr. Jones assured Dr. Mann, “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!”

Which, in essence, is what they did. The more frantically they talked up “peer review” as the only legitimate basis for criticism, the more assiduously they turned the process into what James Lewis calls the Chicago machine politics of international science. The headline in the Wall Street Journal Europe is unimproveable: “How To Forge A Consensus.” Pressuring publishers, firing editors, blacklisting scientists: That’s “peer review,” climate-style. The more their echo chamber shriveled, the more Mann and Jones insisted that they and only they represent the “peer-reviewed” “consensus.” And gullible types like Ed Begley Jr. and Andrew Revkin of the New York Times fell for it hook, line and tree-ring.

But those guys get a living from preaching eco-catastrophe. Millions of the rest of us might find our living endangered if governments were to take Copenhagen seriously, beyond the, doubtless, exceptional food.  And if this is all a big scam … pull up a window blind, somebody. We need transparency.

Comments
More evidence of conspiracy: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100019301/climategate-another-smoking-gun/ Isn't it odd that each time an error is found in the data or charts...that the error is found to indicate global warming in places (in time) where there weren't any? Flip a penny once and get heads..chance... twice heads..slight less chance... 10 or 20 heads in a row and I suspect an intelligent agency at work.JGuy
December 9, 2009
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Here's the globalization strategists and their plans for your family. Meeting in Copenhagen planning right now: “Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?” – Maurice Strong, founder of the UN Environment Programme “A massive campaign must be launched to de-develop the United States. De-development means bringing our economic system into line with the realities of ecology and the world resource situation.” – Paul Ehrlich, Professor of Population Studies “The only hope for the world is to make sure there is not another United States. We can’t let other countries have the same number of cars, the amount of industrialization, we have in the US. We have to stop these Third World countries right where they are.” – Michael Oppenheimer, Environmental Defense Fund “Global Sustainability requires the deliberate quest of poverty, reduced resource consumption and set levels of mortality control.” – Professor Maurice King “We must make this an insecure and inhospitable place for capitalists and their projects. We must reclaim the roads and plowed land, halt dam construction, tear down existing dams, free shackled rivers and return to wilderness millions of acres of presently settled land.” – David Foreman, co-founder of Earth First! “Complex technology of any sort is an assault on human dignity. It would be little short of disastrous for us to discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy, because of what we might do with it.” – Amory Lovins, Rocky Mountain Institute “The prospect of cheap fusion energy is the worst thing that could happen to the planet.” – Jeremy Rifkin, Greenhouse Crisis Foundation “Giving society cheap, abundant energy would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun.” – Prof Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University “Our insatiable drive to rummage deep beneath the surface of the earth is a willful expansion of our dysfunctional civilization into Nature.” – Al Gore, Earth in the Balance “The big threat to the planet is people: there are too many, doing too well economically and burning too much oil.” – Sir James Lovelock, BBC Interview “My three main goals would be to reduce human population to about 100 million worldwide, destroy the industrial infrastructure and see wilderness, with it’s full complement of species, returning throughout the world.” -Dave Foreman, co-founder of Earth First! “Current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class – involving high meat intake, use of fossil fuels, appliances, air-conditioning, and suburban housing – are not sustainable.” – Maurice Strong, Rio Earth Summit “All these dangers are caused by human intervention and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy, then, is humanity itself.” – Club of Rome, The First Global Revolution “Mankind is the most dangerous, destructive, selfish and unethical animal on the earth.” – Michael Fox, vice-president of The Humane Society “Humans on the Earth behave in some ways like a pathogenic micro-organism, or like the cells of a tumor.” – Sir James Lovelock, Healing Gaia “The Earth has cancer and the cancer is Man.” – Club of Rome, Mankind at the Turning Point “A cancer is an uncontrolled multiplication of cells, the population explosion is an uncontrolled multiplication of people. We must shift our efforts from the treatment of the symptoms to the cutting out of the cancer. The operation will demand many apparently brutal and heartless decisions.” – Prof. Paul Ehrlich, The Population Bomb “A reasonable estimate for an industrialized world society at the present North American material standard of living would be 1 billion. At the more frugal European standard of living, 2 to 3 billion would be possible.” – United Nations, Global Biodiversity Assessment “A total population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal.” – Ted Turner, founder of CNN and major UN donor “… the resultant ideal sustainable population is hence more than 500 million but less than one billion.” – Club of Rome, Goals for Mankind “One America burdens the earth much more than twenty Bangladeshes. This is a terrible thing to say in order to stabilize world population, we must eliminate 350,000 people per day. It is a horrible thing to say, but it’s just as bad not to say it.” – Jacques Cousteau, UNESCO Courier “If I were reincarnated I would wish to be returned to earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels.” – Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, patron of the World Wildlife Fund “I suspect that eradicating small pox was wrong. It played an important part in balancing ecosystems.” – John Davis, editor of Earth First! Journal “The extinction of the human species may not only be inevitable but a good thing.” – Christopher Manes, Earth First! “Childbearing should be a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license. All potential parents should be required to use contraceptive chemicals, the government issuing antidotes to citizens chosen for childbearing.” – David Brower, first Executive Director of the Sierra Club “In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill.” – Club of Rome, The First Global Revolution “We need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination… So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements and make little mention of any doubts… Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.” – Stephen Schneider, Stanford Professor of Climatology, lead author of many IPCC reports “Unless we announce disasters no one will listen.” – Sir John Houghton, first chairman of IPCC “It doesn’t matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true.” – Paul Watson, co-founder of Greenpeace “We’ve got to ride this global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic and environmental policy.” – Timothy Wirth, President of the UN Foundation “No matter if the science of global warming is all phony, climate change provides the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world.” -Christine Stewart, fmr Canadian Minister of the Environment “The climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity. It is also our greatest opportunity to lift Global Consciousness to a higher level.” – Al Gore, accepting the Nobel Peace Prize “The only way to get our society to truly change is to frighten people with the possibility of a catastrophe.” – emeritus professor Daniel Botkin “We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis.” – David Rockefeller, Club of Rome executive manager “Humanity is sitting on a time bomb. If the vast majority of the world’s scientists are right, we have just ten years to avert a major catastrophe that could send out entire planet’s climate system into a tail-spin of epic destruction involving extreme weather, floods, droughts, epidemics and killer heat waves beyond anything we have ever experienced – a catastrophe of our own making.” – Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth “By the end of this century, climate change will reduce the human population to a few breeding pairs surviving near the Arctic.” – Sir James Lovelock, Revenge of Gaia “Climate Change will result in a catastrophic, global seal level rise of seven meters. That’s bye-bye most of Bangladesh, Netherlands, Florida and would make London the new Atlantis.” – Greenpeace International “Climate change is real. Not only is it real, it’s here, and its effects are giving rise to a frighteningly new global phenomenon – the man-made natural disaster.” – Barack Obama, US Presidential Candidate “We are close to a time when all of humankind will envision a global agenda that encompasses a kind of Global Marshall Plan to address the causes of poverty and suffering and environmental destruction all over the earth.” – Al Gore, Earth in the Balance “In Nature organic growth proceeds according to a Master Plan, a Blueprint. Such a ‘master plan’ is missing from the process of growth and development of the world system. Now is the time to draw up a master plan for sustainable growth and world development based on global allocation of all resources and a new global economic system. Ten or twenty years from today it will probably be too late.” – Club of Rome, Mankind at the Turning Point “The concept of national sovereignty has been immutable, indeed a sacred principle of international relations. It is a principle which will yield only slowly and reluctantly to the new imperatives of global environmental cooperation.” – UN Commission on Global Governance report “Democracy is not a panacea. It cannot organize everything and it is unaware of its own limits. These facts must be faced squarely. Sacrilegious though this may sound, democracy is no longer well suited for the tasks ahead. The complexity and the technical nature of many of today’s problems do not always allow elected representatives to make competent decisions at the right time.” – Club of Rome, The First Global Revolution “In my view, after fifty years of service in the United National system, I perceive the utmost urgency and absolute necessity for proper Earth government. There is no shadow of a doubt that the present political and economic systems are no longer appropriate and will lead to the end of life evolution on this planet. We must therefore absolutely and urgently look for new ways.” – Dr. Robert Muller, UN Assistant Secretary General “Nations are in effect ceding portions of their sovereignty to the international community and beginning to create a new system of international environmental governance as a means of solving otherwise unmanageable crises.” – Lester Brown, WorldWatch Institute “A keen and anxious awareness is evolving to suggest that fundamental changes will have to take place in the world order and its power structures, in the distribution of wealth and income.” – Club of Rome, Mankind at the Turning Point “Adopting a central organizing principle means embarking on an all-out effort to use every policy and program, every law and institution, to halt the destruction of the environment.” – Al Gore, Earth in the Balance “Effective execution of Agenda 21 will require a profound reorientation of all human society, unlike anything the world has ever experienced – a major shift in the priorities of both governments and individuals and an unprecedented redeployment of human and financial resources. This shift will demand that a concern for the environmental consequences of every human action be integrated into individual and collective decision-making at every level.” – UN Agenda 21 “The earth is literally our mother, not only because we depend on her for nurture and shelter but even more because the human sepcies has been shaped by her in the womb of evolution. Our salvation depends upon our ability to create a religion of nature.” – Rene Dubos, board member Planetary Citizenslamarck
December 8, 2009
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For example, the mascot for global warming in these parts is the polar bear on the vanishing ice flow. But the bear himself is not vanishing, rather increasing in numbers, perhaps due to more sources of food.
Perhaps the 1973 ban on hunting polar bears is also a factor. Before the ban the big thing holding down polar bear populations was people shooting them, not a lack of food.waterbear
December 8, 2009
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