Our hopelessly compromised scientific establishment cannot be allowed to get away with the Climategate whitewash, says Christopher Booker.
The reason why even the Guardian's George Monbiot has expressed total shock and dismay at the picture revealed by the documents is that their authors are not just any old bunch of academics. Their importance cannot be overestimated, What we are looking at here is the small group of scientists who have for years been more influential in driving the worldwide alarm over global warming than any others, not least through the role they play at the heart of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Dr Jones is also a key part of the closely knit group of American and British scientists responsible for promoting that picture of world temperatures conveyed by Michael Mann's "hockey stick" graph which 10 years ago turned climate history on its head by showing that, after 1,000 years of decline, global temperatures have recently shot up to their highest level in recorded history.
Given star billing by the IPCC, not least for the way it appeared to eliminate the long-accepted Mediaeval Warm Period when temperatures were higher they are today, the graph became the central icon of the entire man-made global warming movement.
The third shocking revelation of these documents is the ruthless way in which these academics have been determined to silence any expert questioning of the findings they have arrived at by such dubious methods – not just by refusing to disclose their basic data but by discrediting and freezing out any scientific journal which dares to publish their critics' work. It seems they are prepared to stop at nothing to stifle scientific debate in this way, not least by ensuring that no dissenting research should find its way into the pages of IPCC reports.
Back in 2006, when the eminent US statistician Professor Edward Wegman produced an expert report for the US Congress vindicating Steve McIntyre's demolition of the "hockey stick", he excoriated the way in which this same "tightly knit group" of academics seemed only too keen to collaborate with each other and to "peer review" each other's papers in order to dominate the findings of those IPCC reports on which much of the future of the US and world economy may hang. In light of the latest revelations, it now seems even more evident that these men have been failing to uphold those principles which lie at the heart of genuine scientific enquiry and debate. Already one respected US climate scientist, Dr Eduardo Zorita, has called for Dr Mann and Dr Jones to be barred from any further participation in the IPCC. Even our own George Monbiot, horrified at finding how he has been betrayed by the supposed experts he has been revering and citing for so long, has called for Dr Jones to step down as head of the CRU.
Continue reading at the Guardian >>
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Climate Change Data Dumped
In a statement on its website, the CRU said: “We do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (quality controlled and homogenised) data.”
The CRU is the world’s leading centre for reconstructing past climate and temperatures. Climate change sceptics have long been keen to examine exactly how its data were compiled. That is now impossible.
Roger Pielke, professor of environmental studies at Colorado University, discovered data had been lost when he asked for original records. “The CRU is basically saying, ‘Trust us’. So much for settling questions and resolving debates with science,” he said.
Jones was not in charge of the CRU when the data were thrown away in the 1980s, a time when climate change was seen as a less pressing issue. The lost material was used to build the databases that have been his life’s work, showing how the world has warmed by 0.8C over the past 157 years.
He and his colleagues say this temperature rise is “unequivocally” linked to greenhouse gas emissions generated by humans. Their findings are one of the main pieces of evidence used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which says global warming is a threat to humanity.
Continue reading at the Times London >>
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See also:
Michael Crichton Annihilates Al Gore (phenomenal clip)
Leading Climate Scientists Caught In Global Fudging Fraud
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On point commentary from reader James H:
It's interesting that they plan on providing the "full data" as part of their so-called U-turn, because according to the article above, the raw temperature data was destroyed long ago and replaced with "enhanced" and "homogenised" versions of the old readings.
Of course, this is just the tip of the iceberg, as it were, because almost all of their data -- except over the last 150 years -- is derivative. That is, it depends on tree rings, ice cores, and the like. But these sorts of data have to be interpreted according to various assumptions about a multitude of different factors and conditions. Are the margins of error for each of these assumptions, which I would assume are quite significant, carried through all the calculations, including the results they get once these data have been plugged into their models? If so, the margin of error in the final result would likely overwhelm the very small absolute change in temperature that we see over the last 100 years or so (assuming the warming trend is correct and intact).
It's a house of cards, really. Not unlike the kinds of models developed by cosmologists. Depending on small changes to initial assumptions or small changes in the mathematical models, you can get wildly different results for what happened after the Big Bang, what the "shape" of the universe is now, and whether it will continue to expand forever or collapse again into a singularity. There are simply too many unknowns to ever "prove" much of anything. Fortunately, cosmologists and astrophysicists have not agitated for a UN program to fight Universal Expansion or whatever they might call it.