“The rise of the techno-skeptic blogosphere (pioneered by Steve McIntyre) challenged traditional notions of expertise, i.e. credentials and sanctity of journal publications, through the Climate Audit’s blog deconstruction for multiple publications, particularly involving paleo representatives. “–Judith Curry.
By Robert Bradley Jr. — November 22, 2022
“Without a doubt, these emails are shameful and a public relations disaster for science.” – Andrew Dessler, “Climate E-Mails eclipse the debateDecember 10, 2009.
It has been 12 years since the outbreak of the intellectual scandal named climate gate. Every anniversary inspires recollections and recalls striking quotes. These quotes tell themselves; Climate alerters’ efforts to analyze words and meanings distract from what is being said in real-time private conversations.
And the scandal got worse after the truth when, follow for Paul Stephens, “virtually the entire climate science community has been trying to pretend that nothing is wrong.” The vindication of the relevant educational institutions and scientific institutions – also a blow to academia and standards. Standards of impartiality, objectivity, and transparency have been sacrificed for a politically correct account of the qualitative association between CO2 forcing and temperature (see Fig. Wiki).
By Fred Pearce Climate records: The battle for the truth about global warming (2010) is a rare mainstream look at the scandal. Michael Mann is a bad actor, even though he I-am-victim take his account, The Hockey Stick and the Climate War (2012). [1]
Story:
On November 19, 2009, a whistleblower or hacker downloaded more than 1,000 documents and e-mails from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UK). Posted on a Russian server, the documents were soon accessed by websites around the world to trigger the exposure.
These e-mails were part of a secret communication between leading climate scientists in the UK, USA and other countries over a period of 15 years. The participating scientists developed the “Hockey Stick” global temperature curve and surface temperature datasets, and wrote/edited the Council’s physical science assessment reports. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
branded “Climate Gate” by British commentator James Delingpole, emails have provided details of practices ranging from poor professionalism to fraudulent science. Trends, data manipulation, freedom of information evasion and attempts to sabotage the peer review process have been detected.
Here are some more prominent quotes.
Controversy over man-made warming
“I know there is pressure to present a nice neat story regarding ‘obvious warming not seen in a thousand years or more in proxy data’ but in reality the situation is not that simple. so.”
-Doctor. Keith Briffa, Climate Research Unit, released Climategate e-mail, September 22, 1999.
“Keith [Briffa] series…different largely in the exact opposite direction from Phil’s [Jones] made from us. This is a problem we’ve all recognized (everyone in the room at IPCC agrees that this is a problem and potentially distracting/distracting from our reasonable consensus view). want to show with Jones and associates and Mann and all the lines).
-Doctor. Michael Mann, IPCC Lead Author, Climategate e-mail disclosure, September 22, 1999.
“…it would be nice to try to ‘contain’ the hypothetical ‘MWP’ [Medieval Warm Period]…”
-Doctor. Michael Mann, IPCC Lead Author, Climategate e-mail disclosure, June 4, 2003
“By the way, when is Tom C [Crowley] will officially publish his reconstruction of about 1500 years??? It will help the cause that can consider that reconstruction as confirmation of Mann and Jones, etc.
-Doctor. Michael Mann, IPCC Lead Author, Climategate e-mail disclosure, August 3, 2004.
“I gave up Judith Curry a while ago. I don’t know what she thinks she’s doing, but it doesn’t help her career or her professional reputation.”
-Doctor. Michael Mann, IPCC Lead Author, Climategate e-mail disclosure, May 30, 2008
“Well, I have my own article on where the hell the earth is warming… The fact is we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it’s a farce that we don’t. can do.”
-Doctor. Kevin Trenberth, IPCC Lead Author, Climategate e-mail disclosure, October 12, 2009.
Temperature data manipulation
“I just finished Mike’s [Mann] The natural trick of adding real time to each series for the last 20 years (i.e. 1981 onward) and from 1961 to Keith’s [Briffa] to hide the decline.”
-Doctor. Phil Jones, Director of the Climate Research Unit, released Climategate e-mail, November 16, 1999.
“Also, we applied a completely artificial adjustment to the post-1960 data, so they look closer to the observed temperatures than the actual tree ring data…”
-Doctor. Tim Osborn, Climate Research Unit, released Climategate e-mail, December 20, 2006.
“If you look at the attached piece of land, you will see that the plot also shows the warming blip of the 1940s (as I’m sure you know). So if we could reduce the ocean blob to, say, 0.15 degrees Celsius, that would make sense for the global mean—but we still have to account for the blob land…”.
-Doctor. Tom Wigley, University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, on regulating global temperature data, disclosed Climategate’s e-mail to Phil Jones, September 28, 2008.
“As a result, we do not keep the original raw data, but only the value-added data (i.e., data that is quality controlled and consistent).”
—The website of the Climate Research Unit, the world’s leading provider of global temperature data, admits that it was unable to produce the original thermometer data, 2011.
Data destruction; Avoid Freedom of Information (FOI)
“We have about 25 years of investment in the work. Why should I give you the data, when your aim is to try to figure out something is wrong with it.”
-Doctor. Phil Jones, Director of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, emailed Warwick Hughes, 2004.
“I’m having trouble with a few people revealing CRU station temperature data. Don’t either of the three tell anyone that the UK has a Freedom of Information Act.”
-Doctor. Phil Jones, Director of the Climate Research Unit, Climategate e-mail disclosure, February 21, 2005.
“Mike [Mann]can you delete any e-mails you may have had with Keith [Trenberth] AR4 again? Keith would do the same…. Can you also e-mail Gene and ask him to do the same? I don’t have his e-mail address…. We will ask Caspar to do the same.”
-Doctor. Phil Jones, Director of the Climate Research Unit, Climategate e-mail disclosure, May 29, 2008.
“You may want to check with the IPCC Bureau. I am told that the IPCC is above the national FOI Act. A way to protect yourself and everyone who works in AR5 [the upcoming IPCC Fifth Assessment Report] would be to delete all e-mails at the end of the process. Hard to do, because not everyone will remember it.”
-Doctor. Phil Jones, Director of the Climate Research Unit, on dodging Freedom of Information requirements, released Climategate e-mail, May 12, 2009.
Overthrow the peer review process
“I did not see either of these articles included in the IPCC follow-up report. Kevin [Trenberth] and I’ll get rid of them somehow, even if we have to redefine what a peer-reviewed document is!”
—Phil Jones, Climate Research Unit Director, Climategate e-mail disclosure, July 8, 2004.
Appendix: Implications
Climate scientist Judith Curry has reassessed her thinking on the state of climate science in response to the scandal. “The climate gate was a turning point,” she recalls, when “the statements from the IPCC were no longer enough.” Curry explain:
Institutionally, Climategate triggered the formation of the Global Warming Policy Fund (GWPF), which has become quite influential in UK climate policy and to some extent all around the world.
She added:
The world of climate skeptic blogs has grown and expanded, largely enabled by Climategate (Climate Etc. largely enabled by Climategate). While much of the ‘warm’ blogging world has waned (especially RealClimate), with the exception of Skeptical Science. It seems that most of the ‘action’ of the enthusiast has moved to twitter, while the skeptics prefer the blogging world.
The rise of the techno-skeptic blogosphere (pioneered by Steve McIntyre) challenged traditional notions of expertise, i.e. credentials and sanctity of journal publications, through the Climate Audit’s blog deconstruction for multiple publications, particularly involving paleo representatives. While the techno-skeptic blogosphere seems to have provided the impetus for the Climategate ‘hack’, the techno-skeptic blogosphere has thrived and many of these sites are covered by the media. and decision-makers from many different groups follow.
Today, the Internet is the primary check against the excesses of the politicized UN/IPCC process. Canceled and ignored as much as possible, the blogosphere is fueling the real-time climate science debate against the Malthusian establishment.
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[1] “Words and phrases have been culled from thousands of emails, removed from their original context, and strung together in ways designed to be malicious against me, my colleagues, and the research itself. save the climate,” Mann said on the opening page.
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WUWT readers unfamiliar with our viewable Climategate story Historical archive articles on the topic here.
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