What Do We Think About Climate Change

As suspected, I won my bet, Boston.

 

Friday, Jun 25, 2010 17:15 ET
Newspaper retracts "climategate" story, months too late

The Times of London published utterly untrue stories about the "climategate" emails; now they regret the error

By Alex Pareene

Remember "climategate"? Someone hacked and distributed emails from climate scientists from the University of East Anglia. (It was kind of like Weigelgate except the entire Earth is going to die in a fire.) Some of the scientists used words like 'trick" and "hide." Instant scandal: Global warming is made up! A British newspaper has finally gotten around to correcting the record.

It was obvious to anyone who actually bothered to read the stolen "climategate" emails that they didn't actually contain anything particularly scandalous, and they certainly didn't contain anything at all that remotely called into the question the legitimacy of years of science demonstrating the effect of human activity on climate change.

But once the name "climategate" was affixed to the trumped-up non-scandal and printed in large type in a major newspaper, it didn't matter what the emails said. Not a whit. Emails, scandal, "-gate" -- there must be something to this!

There wasn't. Amazingly, The Sunday Times of London has now effectively retracted its most damning stories on the manufactured outrage. Months too late, obviously.

Via a Newsweek post by Sharon Begley, enjoy this description of how the Times ended up viciously misquoting a climate scientist:

A version of our article that had been checked with Dr Lewis underwent significant late editing and so did not give a fair or accurate account of his views on these points. We apologise for this.

The best editing errors are the ones that end up making stories support a predetermined conclusion, right?

Anyway now that The Times has corrected the record, everyone will agree to do something about carbon emissions, right?

http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2010/06/25/climategate_retraction/index.html


Newspapers Retract 'Climategate' Claims, but Damage Still Done

Greg Rico / AP

A lie can get halfway around the world while the truth is still putting its boots on, as Mark Twain said (or “before the truth gets a chance to put its pants on,” in Winston Churchill’s version), and nowhere has that been more true than in "climategate." In that highly orchestrated, manufactured scandal, e-mails hacked from computers at the University of East Anglia’s climate-research group were spread around the Web by activists who deny that human activity is altering the world’s climate in a dangerous way, and spun so as to suggest that the scientists had been lying, cheating, and generally cooking the books.

But not only did British investigators clear the East Anglia scientist at the center of it all, Phil Jones, of scientific impropriety and dishonesty in April, an investigation at Penn State cleared PSU climatologist Michael Mann of “falsifying or suppressing data, intending to delete or conceal e-mails and information, and misusing privileged or confidential information” in February.

In perhaps the biggest backpedaling, The Sunday Times of London, which led the media pack in charging that IPCC reports were full of egregious (and probably intentional) errors, retracted its central claim—namely, that the IPCC statement that up to 40 percent of the Amazonian rainforest could be vulnerable to climate change was “unsubstantiated.” The Times also admitted that it had totally twisted the remarks of one forest expert to make it sound as if he agreed that the IPCC had screwed up, when he said no such thing.

http://www.newsweek.com/blogs/the-g...climategate-claims-but-damage-still-done.html

 

Gee, I wonder who leaned on them. Prince Big Ears, perhaps?

 

Sure, the Prince of Wales leaned on them. And he leaned on the German newspapers, too. It took him months to finally realize what they had printed, and then he had to fit the leaning on them into his busy schedule.

It's simple truth coming out, Hoyt. They're finally admitting they were trying to make a mountain out of a molehill--which anyone with a lick of common sense and the ability to read already knew.

 

What a load of road apples, Troy. The truth is out and all the back-pedaling won't change that. Climate change under any name you or Boston want to call it is still a total fraud, farce and sham. Only the sheeple, dull-witted betas raised with too much alcohol in their test tubes(reference Brave New World) are dim and gullible enough to swallow the load of rancid bilge.

 

Yes. The truth is out, and all the hysterical pandering to ignorance, paranoia and sullen envy of one's betters isn't going to make it go away--any more than evolution, spaceflight and a round Earth are going to go away.

Do you have any idea how silly you sound when you call the vast majority of well-educated, well-trained and experienced scientists in the world "sheeple, dull-witted betas raised with too much alcohol in their test tubes, dim and gullible," etc.?

 

As the guy with a bad cough said, "Hack, hack, hack."

 

its a conspiracy and fortunately Hoyt discovered it before they were able to complete the evil plan to destroy the world

 

As we watch, as we argue over this, the world is turning into South-Side Chicago. As we argue over carbon credits and "hide the decline", we are ushering in our demise. Funny thing is, Troy will get his pension at taxpayer expense, Bos will get his revenge on the US government for wrongdoing to his ancestors, and we'll all soon be gone.
Watch The Book of Eli with Denzel Washington - that's what a weak US will bode for our children (but with Sharia Law, of course). Thanks a lot

 

Amazongate: the missing evidence

“Amazongate” is one of the series of controversies which exploded round the IPCC last winter, when it was shown that some of the high-profile claims made in its 2007 report had been based on material produced by environmental activists and campaigning groups rather than on proper, peer-reviewed scientific evidence.

One of such controversies, reported in The Sunday Telegraph, was the IPCC’s much-publicised claim that climate change, leading to a reduction in rainfall, was threatening the survival of “up to 40 per cent” of the Amazon rainforest. The only source the IPCC could cite for this in its report was a document from the environmental advocacy group WWF. But last week The Sunday Times, in its prominent “correction” to its own story, conceded that the IPCC’s claim was “supported by peer-reviewed scientific evidence” after all. Not identified, however, was the nature of this peer-reviewed evidence. Where is it?

The story of “Amazon-gate” has unfolded through three stages. Step one was the passage in the IPCC report almost identical to one made in a non-peer-reviewed WWF paper of 2000 on forest fires in the Amazon. Specifically the IPCC stated that “up to 40 per cent of the Amazonian forests could react drastically to only a slight reduction in precipitation”. But the only source the WWF in turn had been able to cite to support this was a paper published in Nature in 1999, from a team led by Dr Daniel Nepstad, formerly employed by the WWF but now the “senior scientist” with another advocacy group closely linked to the WWF, the Woods Hole Research Center. Certainly Nepstad’s paper was peer-reviewed: however its subject was not climate change but the impact on the Amazon rainforest of “logging and fire”. It found that “logging companies in Amazonia kill or damage 10-40 per cent of the living biomass of forests”. This had nothing whatever to do with global warming but was cited as the origin of that “up to 40 per cent” figure later used by the WWF and the IPCC.

Step two, when all this was reported last January, was a disclaimer from the WWF, emphasising that its 2000 report did “not say that 40 per cent of the Amazon forest is at risk from climate change”. But it went on to say that the real source for its 2000 paper (which had been “mistakenly omitted”) was another paper, “Fire in the Amazon”. This was also written by Dr Nepstad, as head of yet another advocacy group linked to Woods Hole, the Amazon Environmental Research Institute. Although it was now being suggested that this paper should have been cited as the original source for the IPCC’s claim, it was not peer-reviewed. Thus the IPCC’s claim appears to rest both on non-peer-reviewed science and on studies not related to global warming at all.

So great was the IPCC’s embarrassment over these revelations that the story moved to a third stage. Various scientists, led by Dr Nepstad, suggested further studies which might justify the claim. But an exhaustive trawl through all the scientific literature on this subject by Dr Richard North (who was responsible for uncovering “Amazongate” in the first place), has been unable to find a single study which confirms the specific claim made by the IPCC’s 2007 report.

There are several studies based on computer models which attempt to estimate the possible impact of climate change on the Amazon rainforest, but none of these have so far supported that 40 per cent figure. Other researchers in turn have been highly critical of these models, suggesting that they are too crude to replicate the complex workings of the Amazonian climate system and that all observed evidence indicates that the forest is much more resilient to climate fluctuations than the alarmists would have us believe.

In other words there is a real mystery here. Nothing so far made public seems to justify an assertion that the IPCC’s specific claim is “supported by peer-reviewed scientific evidence”. In view of all the controversy this issue has aroused over several months, it might seem odd that, if such evidence exists, it hasn’t been produced before. Is it not now a matter of considerable public interest that we should be told what it is?"



Excerpted and edited (shortened and highlighted) from a Cristopher Booker article at:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/.../7856474/Amazongate-the-missing-evidence.html

 

What is this nonsense about my "pension at taxpayer expense," Mark? I've told you repeatedly: I don't work for the friggen government. I work for the Southern California Gas Company, not some city's water department. It's part of Sempra Energy, which is a publicly traded corporation--not a state agency.

There isn't a dime of government money in our pension fund, and there never will be; it's one of the strongest in the country. As a matter of fact, it's properly invested and has been self-sustaining for years; even the company hasn't needed to put anything into it.

I won't be getting a very big chunk of it anyway. I didn't start as a full-time regular employee until I was fifty years old, so when I retire I'll only have 16 years in. To make a full pension, I'd have to work for 35 years--not the 20 that cops, firefighters or some other public employees put in.

You have issues, Mark. Give your fevered imagination a rest, or at least go find someone else to resent for a while.

 

Amazongate

It is always advantageous to consider what action Dr R. North & Christopher Booker might take in view of Moonbat's gleeful, but premature delight.

I would therefore refer the AGWarmists to http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/ where they will see that Richard appears to be ready to take advantage of the UK's vicious libel laws.

The seven (so far) "Comments" pages expand the state of play. http://umbrellog.com/forum3/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1008361

WUWT also carries the story. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/06/27/booker-north-and-willis-on-the-ipcc-amazongate-affair/

Surprisingly, from the Guardian carried an article entitled "Libel laws explained"


* James Sturcke
* guardian.co.uk, Thursday 31 August 2006 12.03 BST
* Article history

"British libel laws were already complicated enough before the internet came along. Their aim is to balance the right of free speech against protection for the reputation of an individual from unjustified attack.

In law, a person is defamed if statements in a publication expose him to hatred or ridicule, cause him to be shunned, lower him in the estimation in the minds of "right-thinking" members of society or disparage him in his work.

Juries are told that the measuring stick of a libel being committed is whether any of this would affect how a "reasonable man" views the complainant.

There are defences in law for libel. The publisher could prove the statement to be true, it could be fair comment - so long as the opinion is based on true facts, is genuinely held and not influenced by malice - or it could be protected by privilege (reporting of comments made in parliament, courts and other official arenas are, generally speaking, protected from libel actions).

Since the 1998 Reynolds claim against Times Newspapers, it has become accepted that material published in the public interest is a further defence in libel proceedings.

The problem for anyone preparing to publish information which may be defamatory, is that the laws are very much open to interpretation. Different juries will have different views on what exactly influences a right-thinking man.

What is certain is that the legal costs of defending a libel action will be considerable, often running into hundreds of thousands of pounds. The loser almost always has to pay the costs of the winner, plus any damages awarded to the claimant.

In effect, fighting libel cases is an expensive game of chicken, which newspapers are often reluctant to enter into, even when they believe they have a strong case.

The emergence of the internet has further complicated the issue. Individuals now have a simple way of putting their writings online - with little or no review or vetting.

Over the past decade, forums and online chats have introduced a new genre of writing, that in effect provides a written record of raw, impulsive conversations where most participants have paid scant consideration to any legal implications.

Furthermore, internet postings can be read anywhere, bringing into question issues of jurisdiction. The internet has also been seen as a place where people can express themselves anonymously, although the rise of successful online child *********** and grooming prosecutions has raised awareness of the trail left by ISP addresses.

Finally, there have also been past doubts about who is the actual publisher of online information and what, if any, protection they should have from being sued. In print, the primary publisher is the newspaper and any libel action would normally be directed against the author or editor or both.

It is rare, though not unheard of, for the shop which sold the publication, known as the secondary publisher, also to have to pay out. The issue with online articles is whether the publisher is the person who runs the website, or the ISP which hosts it."

Watch this space!!

 

you are making mountains out of mole hills again G

any scientific organization lacking in funds and personnel yet dealing in hundreds in not thousands of works every year and subjected to one of the largest industry disinformation campaigns since the Tobacco scientists joined there teem, is bound to have a few chinks in the armor. It doesn't change the fact that we are burying our planet in trash and toxic chemicals or that it would be best if we put the brakes on unchecked corporate pollution or the whole sale slaughter of the oceans. The physical characteristics of the chemicals we are dumping into the atmosphere are well known and denying there existence or there origins is simply putting your head in the sand.

cheers
B

 

You notice that everything is a "gate" now, Boston? Climate gate, Amazon gate, Himalayan gate, Pickenurnose gate. The most trivial error or correction on the side of AGW is a full-blown conspiracy that should be riveting the entire world's attention. Meanwhile, we're flooded with misinformation, distortions and outright lies from the other side, and no one even blinks.

And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?

Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?

Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.

 

its all a conspiracy Troy, Hoyt discovered it a few posts ago so there's no sense trying to fool anyone any more, my daddy was in on it and my grand daddy was in on it. They knew way back when that eventually this thing would pay off big when great great grand daddy Boston invented this whole story about optical physics and greenhouses gasses.

I gotta admit its kinda a relief to come clean, faking all that scientific data for all those hundreds of years and constantly having to field all those phone calls from those thousands of scientists all asking how I wanted them to fudge the data so it would look just right for our big pay day to the politicians who of course are in on it to, well you get the picture I'm just relieved that its all been exposed and now the tens of thousands of scientists from various disciplines can stop deliberately coordinating there data through my secret organization before passing it on the the various institutions and publishing houses.

phew
what a relief to have that off my back !!!!!