The One & Only Global Warming Thread, Part 9 (-gates unlimited edition)

[wishbone]

Originally Posted by movielib

Climategate has changed some things but the old guard is hanging on, even if only by their fingers. It's time to step on those fingers (figuratively) and make them let go.

Or kick them in the head -- not figuratively.

[orangecrush]

Originally Posted by movielib

Except that the article cites sources that tend to make one think predictions of bad weather was the reason (or at least a significant factor).

Could be. Insurance companies are the most evil of all the profitable companies I am told (at least when health care is being discussed).

[movielib]

Marc Morano speech on receiving a well-deserved award from Accuracy in Media.

[movielib]

Gore "too busy" to talk to Fox News.

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/...ds-to-foxnews/

Updated February 26, 2010
"Extremely Overbooked" Gore Too Busy to Talk?

Former Vice President Al Gore has finally responded to FoxNews.com's requests for an interview.

After repeatedly asking for an interview to address Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe's request for former Vice President Al Gore to testify on global warming, FoxNews.com finally heard from Gore's office.

Here's the response we received, verbatim:

"Thank you for your kind request. Unfortunately, Mr. Gore's schedule is extremely overbooked and we're unable to offer any availability. It's very difficult to decline invitations such as yours, but it's an unfortunate inevitability of the growing influence of the climate crisis message and the demand on Mr. Gore's time. We do apologize, but thanks for your interest."

That's odd since he's been hiding in his Tennessee groundhog burrow mansion almost the entire time since Copenhagen except for a short trip to the Apple annual stockholders meeting (he's on the Board of Directors) where he got lots of boos and one or two other tentative tactical forays such as a book signing.

What a joke the Goracle has become.

"the growing influence of the climate crisis message"

[TheBigDave]

Obama admits: "We Can't Control Nature"

[movielib]

Brilliant dismantling of Al Gore's demented op-ed in the New York Times.

http://althouse.blogspot.com/2010/02...-back-and.html

Al Gore would like you to lie back and accept what the government decides is good for you.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
[Ann Althouse]

The other day I said:

I see the analogy between global warming and the weapons of mass destruction used to justify the Iraq war. Those who planned the war believed there were other good reasons to go to war with Iraq, but they made a decision to use weapons of mass destruction as the reason to go to war, because they thought people could understand this reason and unite behind the war effort. But then, when the WMD were not found, the war looked like a big mistake.

... [P]eople [who] support the policies that are supposed to deal with global warming [may have] other reasons they have for wanting those policies [but may] rely on the global warming prediction rather than those other reasons....

Now, here comes big Al Gore with a huge op-ed in the NYT that begins with a fat juicy piece of evidence that I was right:

It would be an enormous relief if the recent attacks on the science of global warming actually indicated that we do not face an unimaginable calamity requiring large-scale, preventive measures to protect human civilization as we know it.

Of course, we would still need to deal with the national security risks of our growing dependence on a global oil market dominated by dwindling reserves in the most unstable region of the world, and the economic risks of sending hundreds of billions of dollars a year overseas in return for that oil. And we would still trail China in the race to develop smart grids, fast trains, solar power, wind, geothermal and other renewable sources of energy — the most important sources of new jobs in the 21st century.

He wants the policies that are sold under the name "global warming" whether the prediction of global warming is right or wrong.

[T]he crisis is still growing because we are continuing to dump 90 million tons of global-warming pollution every 24 hours into the atmosphere — as if it were an open sewer....

The "pollution" is carbon dioxide, which is what flows out of our noses and mouths when we exhale. Do you think of your breathing passages as spewing shit? There's nothing dirty or toxic about carbon dioxide. The problem has only to do with the greenhouse effect. But isn't it so much more effective — i.e., scarier — to make people think we're still talking about filth?

What do you make of these meanderings about capitalism and socialism?

The decisive victory of democratic capitalism over communism in the 1990s led to a period of philosophical dominance for market economics worldwide and the illusion of a unipolar world. It also led, in the United States, to a hubristic “bubble” of market fundamentalism that encouraged opponents of regulatory constraints to mount an aggressive effort to shift the internal boundary between the democracy sphere and the market sphere.

When someone writes like that, I get suspicious. I want to rewrite it in plain English: After the fall of communism, people placed more trust in the market and were wary of government-dictated solutions.

Over time, markets would most efficiently solve most problems, they argued. Laws and regulations interfering with the operations of the market carried a faint odor of the discredited statist adversary we had just defeated.

Yeah, that's what was already in my translation of your previous windbaggage. Maybe this piece is just padded. Maybe it's a devious plot to bore us into submission.

This period of market triumphalism coincided with confirmation by scientists that earlier fears about global warming had been grossly understated.

Oh? Just a coincidence? Al Gore has unwittingly tweaked my suspicion that the scientists are politicos.

Not only did the fall of communism make the work of the government regulator much more difficult, according to Al, the mainstream media also became less supportive:

Simultaneously, changes in America’s political system — including the replacement of newspapers and magazines by television as the dominant medium of communication — conferred powerful advantages on wealthy advocates of unrestrained markets and weakened advocates of legal and regulatory reforms. Some news media organizations now present showmen masquerading as political thinkers who package hatred and divisiveness as entertainment.

Quick: Name a showman masquerading as political thinker. You said "Al Gore," right?

And what is this "hatred and divisiveness"? It's just criticism and debate. Al Gore is distressed that the media don't propagandize for government regulation as they did back in the good old days of communism.

And as in times past, that has proved to be a potent drug in the veins of the body politic. Their most consistent theme is to label as “socialist” any proposal to reform exploitive behavior in the marketplace.

As in what "times past"? Is the lively public debate of today somehow akin to the racial bigotry that stalled civil rights legislation? Because worrying about socialism isn't expressed as hatred. Really, Gore seems to expect people to lie back and accept whatever the government decides is good for us.

From the standpoint of governance, what is at stake is our ability to use the rule of law as an instrument of human redemption.

What?! I knew this was religion! We're supposed to believe. And please don't use "rule of law" as a synonym for government regulation.

Later this week, Senators John Kerry, Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman are expected to present for consideration similar cap-and-trade legislation.

And we should just lie back and take it.

I search in vain for the part of the article where Al Gore notes his personal financial interest in this regulation. So, supplemental reading: "Gore’s Dual Role: Advocate and Investor."

Critics, mostly on the political right and among global warming skeptics, say Mr. Gore is poised to become the world’s first “carbon billionaire,” profiteering from government policies he supports that would direct billions of dollars to the business ventures he has invested in.

Representative Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, asserted at a hearing this year that Mr. Gore stood to benefit personally from the energy and climate policies he was urging Congress to adopt.

Mr. Gore says that he is simply putting his money where his mouth is.

The mouth, is, as noted, a sewer.

“Do you think there is something wrong with being active in business in this country?” Mr. Gore said. “I am proud of it. I am proud of it.”

So the market is great... when it's making you a billionaire.

The writer is Ann Althouse, a law professor at the University of Wisconsin in my town. She probably isn't very popular here in the People's Republic.

[movielib]

The Unbearable Uselessness of Reviewing the Temperature Record:

http://climaterealists.com/index.php...s+News+Blog%29

Jeremy Clarkson
Sunday, February 28th 2010, 12:51 PM EST
A Total Waste Of Hot Air

For the past 20 years or so, we have been bombarded with an endless series of stories about climate change and how, if we don't unplug our television sets at night, out grandchildren will be burned to a crisp in 1,000-degree summers.

But despite the onslaught fewer then half the population ever believed in man-made global warming.

And now, following revelations that much of the "research" was made up, the number of believers has fallen to just 26 per cent.

You'd imagine then, it would be time for the scientist to shut up shop and work on something a bit more important - like - space travel, or a cure for the cold.

But no, an international group of experts has been employed - at our expense - to spend the next three years analysing temperature records over the past 150 years to see what's what.

What's the point of that? The Met Office says they will ultimately conclude that man is causing global warming and we'll be back to square one.

There's another point, though. The planet is 4,500 million years old. So looking at its health for the past 150 years is pointless.

You may as well try to work out how well a 45-year-old man is by examining his behavioral patterns over the last two seconds.

This review is "necessary," of course, because CRU and the Met Office have so thoroughly botched the job of keeping the temperature records of the last 150 years, "losing" raw data and cooking the books (aka, "adjusting"). And, as the article says, after it's all over does anyone believe they will give up the "C" or tone down the "A" in CAGW?

The deception continues, it just costs even more now.

[movielib]

Another article pointing out the extreme bias of Wikipedia regarding global warming. Very long and very thorough. Spoilerized for space.

http://www.philosophical-investigati...Climate_Change

Spoiler:

Climate Change: How Wikipedia spreads the message

How has the World's largest encyclopaedia been covering the Climate Change debate?


A typical Wikipedia 'smorgasbord' of pseudo-facts. The alarming red hot globe, for example, is based not so much on temperature data but computer 'filling in' of data - notably in the Arctic and Antarctic regions. This technique is so obviously unsatisfactory that no reputable climate statisticians accept it. (See notes)

A Philosophical Investigation
by Martin Cohen
February 23 2010

Put 'Global Warming' into Google, let alone Wikipedia, and you will be offered, as 'settled fact', the following:

Global warming is the increase in the average temperature of Earth's near-surface air and oceans since the mid-20th century and its projected continuation.... An increase in global temperature will cause sea levels to rise and will change the amount and pattern of precipitation, probably including expansion of subtropical deserts.[8]… Other likely effects include changes in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, species extinctions, and changes in agricultural yields. Warming and related changes will vary from region to region around the globe, though the nature of these regional variations are uncertain.

That is because you will be directed to 'Wikipedia'1. The Wikipedia page goes on to predict glacial retreat, Arctic shrinkage including long-term shrinkage of Greenland ice sheet[61] Ocean acidification will lead to the extinction of between 18% to 35% of animal and plant species by 2050. Horrifying predictions of temperature rises are given in graphics, with a note that not all effects of global warming are accurately predicted by the climate models used by the IPCC. Ah ha! a small concession to the sceptics? Not at all, the encyclopaedia merely wants us to worry more because, "For example, observed Arctic shrinkage has been faster than that predicted."

This is, of course, the 'full throttle' version of the theory of man-made global warming, as advanced by certain scientists and green groups. (Apart from the highly politicised IPCC summaries written by activists including government representatives with the aim of directing political policies, the sources are variously, RealClimate.org, James Hansen at the Goddard Institute, and so on. That is three names for essentially the same outfit.)

In general, Wikipedia reprints the IPCC notes for policy makers, produced by it political steering committees, as a kind of holy writ. Actually, to say something is the 'view of the IPCC' is a shorthand, because many of the past and present authors of the IPCC reports do NOT agree with particular claims. Naturally, given their origins, the reports consist of endless weasel words and hair-splitting distinctions between degrees of plausibility. 'Very likely' to happen, 'quite likely', 'likely'. None of these complications bog down Wikipedia, where the science is all very straightforward and unremittingly alarmist. To confirm its accuracy, the Global Warming page boasts a gold star meaning it has been approved by the Wikipedia system as one of the best, the most objective and the most encyclopaedic.

Well down the page, long after most people have stopped reading, below the scary graphs and charts, is the heading "Debate and skepticism". But this debate is confined to 'how to combat Global Warming' and calculating the benefits of limiting industrial emissions of greenhouse gases against costs. "Using economic incentives, alternative and renewable energy have been promoted to reduce emissions while building infrastructure", the encyclopaedia explains.

But keep on reading, and there we are, at the very bottom of the page XXX words and 122 learned footnotes later, comes a dissenting note! "Some global warming skeptics in the science or political communities dispute all or some of the global warming scientific consensus, questioning whether global warming is actually occurring, whether human activity has contributed significantly to the warming, and the magnitude of the threat posed by global warming."

That's all it says on the main page, but now - if we are curious, we might follow the link to see what these skeptics are saying.

The 'Climate Skeptics' page starts neutrally enough:

"Climate Skeptics include many leading researchers and scientists, such as Professor Bob Carter of James Cook University and Dr David Bellamy and then, under the heading "View of prominent sceptics" offers short quotes to show the sort of things at issue:

[From Climate Skeptics page]

"Former UN Scientist Dr. Paul Reiter of the Pasteur Institute in Paris (who resigned from UN IPCC in protest): “As far as the science being ‘settled,’ I think that is an obscenity. The fact is the science is being distorted by people who are not scientists.”

UN IPCC scientist Vincent Gray of New Zealand: “This conference demonstrates that the [scientific] debate is not over. The climate is not being influenced by carbon dioxide.

Climate researcher Dr. Craig Loehle, formerly of the Department of Energy Laboratories and currently with the National Council for Air and Stream Improvements, has published more than 100 peer-reviewed scientific papers: “The 2000-year temperature trend is not flat, so a warming period is not unprecedented. … a 1500-year temperature cycle as proposed by [Atmospheric physicist Fred] Singer and Dennis Avery is consistent with Loehle climate reconstruction… a 1500-year cycle implies that recent warming is part of natural trend.”

Hurricane expert and Meteorologist Dr. William Gray: “There are lot’s of skeptics out there, all over the U.S. and the rest of the world. Global warming has been over-hyped tremendously; most of the climate change we have seen is largely natural. I think we are brainwashing our children terribly.”

UK Astrophysicist Piers Corbyn: “There is no evidence that CO2 has ever driven or will ever drive world temperatures and climate change. The consequence of that is that worrying about CO2 is irrelevant. Our prediction is world temperatures will continue to decline until 2014 and probably continue to decline after that.”

Meteorologist Art Horn: “There are thousands of scientists around the world who believe that this issue is not settled. The climate is not being influenced by carbon dioxide.”

Climate statistician Dr. William M. Briggs, who serves on the American Meteorological Society's Probability and Statistics Committee and is an Associate Editor of Monthly Weather Review: “It is my belief that the strident and frequent claims of catastrophes caused by man-made global warming are stated with a degree of confidence not warranted by the data."

This splendidly neutral page then concludes with some longer sceptical accounts including that of Professor John David Lewis of Duke University, USA, reporting that he has challenged many of the claims made by proponents of man-made climate change theory, in an article in the politically neutral journal Social Philosophy and Policy (Volume 26 No. 2 Summer 2009), saying: 'Those predicting environmental disasters today focus on particular issues in order to magnify the gravity of their general claims, and they push those issues until challenges make them untenable. Rhetorical skill and not logical argument has become the standard of success.'

Then there is that review article, published in the Times Higher on the 03 December 2008, Professor Gwyn Prins, the director of the Mackinder Programme for the Study of Long Wave Events at the London School of Economics, which says that the 'principle product of recent science is to confirm that we know less, less conclusively - not more, more conclusively - about the greatest open systems on the planet'.

And finally, Professor Mike Hulme's, a 'climate scientist' at the University of East Anglia's centre for such research, offered a comprehensive defence of scepticism in the December Wall Street Journal noting: "Science never writes closed textbooks. It does not offer us a holy scripture, infallible and complete."

What a fine summary, if I might say so myself! So 'Wikipedia' gives us (as the old legal refrain goes) the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, no?

No, no, and no! This 'sceptical page', was one I knocked up as little test to see if complaints about climate change bias on the the 'open-to-all encyclopaedia were justified. Once posted, it lasted exactly one minute. No you read that right - one minute! I finished writing the page at 22:34, on the 6 February., At 22:35, 6 February 2010, an editor operating under the usual stupid (but effective in terms of the propaganda function of WIkipedia) pseudonym, MuffledThud, added the template 'Requesting speedy deletion (CSD A10). (TW))'. And that was that! No more nasty Skepticism on Wikipedia!

Now I am more a little bit more cognoscenti of WP than perhaps most users, so I attempted to defend my page four minutes later - that is before the page could be 'formally' deleted. This required pasting the gnome-like WIkipedia formula : ({{hangon}}). Did that save my page? Well, yes and no. This time the page stayed there for half an hour. But then at 23:09, 6 February 2010 Tony Sidaway 'a system operator', that is to say a Wikipedia editor who has been given extra powers over most of the rest, removed the page and replaced it with an electronic alias pointing at the 'Global Warming page', which as we have seen, covers the sceptical angle very thoroughly with all of that final, er,… one sentence. As a system operator, Tony leaves a short note on the strategy. "Redirect as per Global warming skeptic, stable for over two years", in the so-called 'page history'. Later on, someone thought it safer to make the redirect 'permanent' and to to make challenging it a 'ban able offence'.

So why is it impossible to place on Wikipedia, just for the record, some of the 'other views', 'dissenting voices' if you wish, including as they certainly do, many distinguished scientists, professors and IPCC authors? After all, Wikipedia has room for another 3 million articles including ones on 'Fart Lighting' and 'Nipple clamps' (the encyclopaedia's origins start with a rather sordid 'web-portal' called Bomis) and lengthy accounts of what its editors have done that day. But indeed, it is not possible. Not only Tony Siddaway but a whole group of editors patrol the encyclopaedia immediately removing any views not consonant with their uncompromising thesis.

Instead of the full range of views, as even those IPCC reports give a nod to, there is only one only page describing other views is headed unprepossessingly:

List of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming

Great title guys! Makes you want to read on! Mind you, there is a rather off-putting opening disclaimer:

"This article lists living and deceased scientists who have made statements that conflict with the mainstream assessment of global warming as summarised by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and other scientific bodies."

That's just for starters. Read the first half page of background briefing next!
Climate scientists agree that the global average surface temperature has risen over the last century. The scientific consensus was summarised in the 2001 Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The main conclusions relating directly to past and ongoing global warming were as follows:
[indent]1. The global average surface temperature has risen 0.6 ± 0.2 °C since the late 19th century, and 0.17 °C per decade in the last 30 years.[1]

2. "There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities", in particular emissions of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane.[2]

3. If greenhouse gas emissions continue the warming will also continue, with temperatures projected to increase by 1.4 °C to 5.8 °C between 1990 and 2100. Accompanying this temperature increase will be increases in some types of extreme weather and a projected sea level rise of 9 cm to 88 cm, excluding "uncertainty relating to ice dynamical changes in the West Antarctic ice sheet". On balance the impacts of global warming will be significantly negative, especially for larger values of warming.[3]

Those listed here have, since the Third Assessment Report of the IPCC, made statements that conflict with at least one of these principal conclusions. Inclusion is based on specific, attributable statements in the individual's own words, and not on listings in petitions or surveys. In February 2007, the IPCC released a summary of a Fourth Assessment Report, which contains similar conclusions to the Third. For the purpose of this list, a scientist is defined as a person who published at least one peer-reviewed article during their lifetime in the broadly-construed area of natural sciences.[/indent[

Are you still interested? Well, don't be. None of the views summarised here are presented in a way to make any useful point. Add to which, there are apparently just three people, who as the page puts it, think that "Global warming is not occurring or has ceased".

All right, let's have 'em!

Timothy F. Ball, former Professor of Geography, University of Winnipeg: " who sceptically observes: "There's been warming, no question. I've never debated that; never disputed that. The dispute is, what is the cause." but then disputes himself by saying "The temperature hasn't gone up. ... But the mood of the world has changed: It has heated up to this belief in global warming." (August 2006)[6]

Robert M. Carter, geologist, researcher at the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University in Australia who is allowed, graciously, to say "the accepted global average temperature statistics used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change show that no ground-based warming has occurred since 1998 ... there is every doubt whether any global warming at all is occurring at the moment, let alone human-caused warming."[8]

and finally

Vincent R. Gray, coal chemist, who thinks that:""The two main 'scientific' claims of the IPCC are the claim that 'the globe is warming' and 'Increases in carbon dioxide emissions are responsible'. Evidence for both of these claims is fatally flawed."[9]"

That's the main business over - very quickly. But space is tight on those Wikipedia servers - send more money please! Next are two slightly longer sections note those who think the "Accuracy of IPCC climate projections is questionable" or that "Global warming is primarily caused by natural processes" or (contrariwise, the duffers!) that "Cause of global warming is unknown", before the page finishes with a section called, hilariously and in full: "Now deceased", thus rounding up the other sceptics.

And although the page offers at the top:"This is an incomplete list, which may never be able to satisfy certain standards for completion. You can help by expanding it with reliably sourced additions."- it also has a silver padlock signifying that editing is not open to most users at all.

However, it is in the safe hands of a 'user-group' called the 'Climate Change Task-force', who have special powers to stop articles presenting views that they do not agree with. Or as a notice puts it on their 'home page':

"A decision by the Wikipedia community has placed articles relating to climate change under article probation. Editors making disruptive edits may be blocked temporarily from editing the encyclopaedia, or subject to other administrative remedies, according to standards that may be higher than elsewhere on Wikipedia. Please see Wikipedia:General sanctions/Climate change probation for full information and to review the decision."

By 'higher standards' they mean 'lower standards', but then this is Wikipedia and people can barely write. The point though is clear, as Lawrence Solomon has described in his articles over at the Financial Post on Wikipedia, of which more in a moment. Wikipedia is open to everyone to edit, but only if they either write drivel (as most pages there are) or stick to the political line. In the case of 'Climate Change' the line is that there is not only no scientific debate left to be had, but no political debate either.

The 'lower/ higher standards' mean that people who have been given extra administrative powers on the encyclopaedia, 'system operators', such as the ability to an other users or to 'protect pages' (which means prevent people editing them) - are formally granted dispensation to use these administrative powers on pages they also edit - and thus promote their own views. The 'Chinese Wall' that supposedly exists to stop administrators abusing their powers in content debates has been torn down for articles on 'climate change'.

Take William Connolley, for example, a little known Greenie who has however some special role in the Wikipedia elite. He has banned more contributors than most websites have readers!

Here's what the climate sceptic commentator, Lawrence Solomon, says about him, in an article posted on the Financial Post website on Saturday, May 03, 2008

"Connolley is a big shot on Wikipedia, which honours him with an extensive biography, an honour Wikipedia did not see fit to bestow on his boss at the British Antarctic Survey. Or on his boss's's boss, or on his boss's boss's boss, or on his boss's boss's boss's boss, none of whose opinions seemingly count for much, despite their impressive accomplishments. William Connolley's opinions, in contrast, count for a great deal at Wikipedia, even though some might not think them particularly worthy of note."

[From the Financial Post article 2]

Connolley is … an administrator with unusual editorial clout. Using that clout, this 40-something scientist of minor relevance gets to tear down scientists of great accomplishment. Because Wikipedia has become the single biggest reference source in the world, and global warming is one of the most sought-after subjects, the ability to control information on Wikipedia by taking down authoritative scientists is no trifling matter.

One such scientist is Fred Singer, the First Director of the U.S. National Weather Satellite Service, the recipient of a White House commendation for his early design of space satellites; the recipient of a NASA commendation for research on particle clouds — in short, a scientist with dazzling achievements who is everything Connolley is not. Under Connolley's supervision, Singer is relentlessly smeared, and has been for years, as a kook who believes in Martians and a hack in the pay of the oil industry. When a smear is inadequate, or when a fair-minded Wikipedian tries to correct a smear, Connolley and his cohorts are there to widen the smear or remove the correction, often rebuking the Wikipedian in the process.

Lawrence Solomon adds, "Wikipedia is full of rules that editors are supposed to follow, as well as a code of civility. Those rules and codes don't apply to Connolley, or to those he favours."

Indeed they don't. Here are some of the occasions that William Connolley has used his administrative powers to block other users he disagreed with just on the Climate Change topic. (A page called BLOCK#Disputes records such minutiae for each administrator.)

It's long, but sums up exactly the travesty of editing on the 'Encyclopaedia anyone can edit'. Remember too that, supposedly, 'blocks' are a tool there only for neutral 'uninvolved' administrators to stop 'vandals'.

WILLIAM THE GREEN'S BUSY MONTH

1. In an edit war with User:Chris_Chittleborough on Hockey stick controversy William blocks Chris. Another 'administrator', nicknamed Chaser later says:"Will...you can't block users you're in disputes with. The policy is unambiguous and ArbCom [the Wikipedian cabal of the most powerful administrators] has indicated the same thing. This is the kind of thing that people get de-sysopped for." [Hop off, Chaser!]

2. In an edit war with User:Lapsed Pacifist on the page Shell to Sea[22], William blocks Lapsed for the reason "repeated re-insertion of unsourced material"

3. In an edit war with User:Jaymes2 on Global warming William blocks Jaymes2 for the reason, "repeated insertion of tripe"

4. In an edit war on Global Warming with User:Sterculius William blocks Sterculius for "Tendentious edits at GW"

5. In an edit war with User:Wedjj on Global Warming William blocks Wedjj for 8 hours, reason: "disruptive editing"

6. In an edit war with User:Supergreenred over Global Warming, William blocks User:Supergreenred

7. In an edit war with User:Britcom on List of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming and Global Warming William temporarily blocks Britcom, reason for 'incivility'. Brit says: "Don't be a hypocrite WC"

8. In the same edit war with User:Britcom on List of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming and Global Warming William blocks Britcom for 24 hours reason: Incivility

9. In an edit war with User:Wikzilla at Global warming William personally blocks Wikzilla twice for Three-revert rule violations.

10. In an edit war with User:ConfuciusOrnis at Climate change denial William blocks User:ConfuciusOrnis twice. William is chastised by admin User:FeloniousMonk for William abusing his administrative powers.

11. In an edit war with user:207.237.232.228 on Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change William blocks 'anon' for three hours.

12. With User: DHeyward on Global Warming William blocks DHeyward, length: 8 hours, reason: "violation of 1RR on GW; in civil edit summaries"

13. In an edit war with User:Lapsed Pacifist on the page Shell to Sea William blocks Lapsed for 3 hours giving the reason as "incivility" for this edit[26]

14. For comments on List of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming which William actively edits, William blocks 65.12.145.148 for incivility for this comment "A great read for all you cool aid drinkers."

15. William blocks User:HalfDome for incivility because of comments on the page Image talk:2000 Year Temperature Comparison.png, a page which he actively edits.

16. William again blocks User:HalfDome for incivility because of comments on the page Image talk:2000 Year Temperature Comparison.png.

17. William blocks User:Jepp for comments on List of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming, an article William actively edits. Reason: "Inserting false information: incivility"

18. William blocks User:71.211.241.40 for comments on Global warming controversy.

19. William blocks User:Juanfermin for edits on the page List of scientists opposing global warming consensus, an article William edits regularly.

20. William blocks User:UBeR for comments on The Great Global Warming Swindle.

21. William blocks User:Peterlewis for comments on Historical climatology, an article William edits regularly.

22. William blocks User:69.19.14.31 for incivility on Global warming, an article William edits regularly.

23. William blocks User:Likwidshoe for incivility on IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, an article William edits regularly.

24. William blocks User:Kismatraval for "spam" on Global warming, an article William edits regularly.

25. William blocks User:69.19.14.29 for this comment "One thing is clear: this Wikipedia article and its fanatical guardians are a perfect example of how and why Wikipedia cannot be considered as a reliable source of knowledge."

26. William blocks User:Grimerking for 3rr on Global warming, an article William edits regularly.

27. William blocks User: Dick Wayne for posting youtube link on The Great Global Warming Swindle, an article William edits regularly.

28. William blocks User: DonaldDuck07 for "incivility" for comments on List of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming, an article William actively edits.

29. William blocks User:Rotten for "incivility" for comments on The Great Global Warming Swindle, an article William actively edits.

30. William blocks User:219.64.26.28 for comments on Scientific opinion on climate change,

There's more, but that's enough to be going on with. The point is this:

At Wikipedia, according to the bland and hypocritical publicity for the site, "anyone can edit a page" - jump right in, and edit my page, says Jimmy Wales, founder, et cetera et cetera, used to claim . And its central to the methodology of the integrity of the content that all editors are equal. Over time, the good edits are supposed to cancel out the bad edits. Is that true? Will they? No one will ever know, because in fact hardly anyone is even able to edit the 'Climate Change' or other controversial pages, and those who manage to, are immediately banned if they disagree with the 'super-editors' managing the content there.
Executive summary:

Wikipedia is not neutral, it is dangerous propaganda delivered by anonymous non-entities.

Does it matter though, what Wikipedia days? After all, we have the BBC and The Guardian newspaper all saying exactly the same thing in a more authoritative way. But indeed it does matter. The Guardian's environment writers use Wikipedia as a source for their stories, as its website editor, James Randerson, confirmed to me by telephone, volunteering (with endearing frankness) its use there as a supply of facts and sources, along with other details. I asked him, as the environment section's web specialist, if he was aware of the controversies surrounding the online encyclopaedia's coverage of Climate Change, specifically, that it was heavily skewed to one side of the debate? No, he said, he was not aware of that. And nor was The Guardian concerned either. As for the BBC, I have had dealings in the past with TV researchers, and rarely is there a group less inclined to look further than a convenient, ten minute source like Wikipedia. Certainly, later on, they will talk properly to experts, but the initial research will come straight off the net, and so will skew that selection of who they speak to.

Does it matter? After all facts are facts, aren't they. But facts are not facts. Facts are versions of reality put forward by people with agendas. For example, the frightening temperature increases the page records, uses as its source the Goddard Institute of Space Studies, which is run by James Hansen, the 'big spider' at the centre of the Global Warming web who has such an 'extreme' position the matter that he has fallen out with most of the others in the pro-camp. Quoting them is like quoting Liverpool Supporters Club on 'who are the greatest' football team. Or maybe like using George Monbiot's vegetable patch as a marker for global climate change.

Look at the details too- (in the small print) the 'record temperatures' result from spikes in measurements in the Arctic and 'parts' of the Antarctic - data sources that are considered so poor that the Met Office and other climate centres do not incorporate at all into their models. But the Goddard not only uses theses dubious statistics, as they say themselves, they then mathematically extrapolate them 'over the entire land mass' - obtaining many more record high temperatures!

Well, what about using it to check sources, though? A quote is a quote isn't it? Not at WP. Nothing you read there is suitable for reproducing in a 'serious' newspaper - if you might lazily get away with it in a student essay or a top secret dossier for the British government on Iraqi nuclear weapons! Take the view attributed to Benny Peisner, about how he had been wrong to deny that there was a consensus amongst scientists on Global Warming as a settled fact. That's what it says he said on WP! But when Lawrence Solomon checked directly with Peiser, he found that he had said no such thing. The Wikipedia page had misunderstood or distorted his comments. Lawrence Solomon tried to correct the point, but a moment later, it was 'reverted' by 'Tabletop', who offered the explanation: "Note that Peiser has retracted this critique and admits that he was wrong".

Despite this, it's not just The Guardian (a paper I used to occasionally write articles on Computers and Education for) uncritically regurgitating Wikipedia. All over the word, journalists are writing stories about global warming using the same strategy.

A Day in the Life of an Environment Editor
10.00 Arrive at desk, switch computer on and have coffee

11.00 am Editorial meeting. Boss says write something (groans all round) about Global Warming.

12.00 Lunch

2.30 pm Look at Wikipedia

3.00 pm Ring or email someone mentioned there for comments

4.00 Tea and organic chocky biscuits

5.00 File 1000 words using WP and my vegetable patch as sources.

That's why Wikipedia's influence is greater than you might think, if you imagine it is just net-nerds who read Wikipedia you may be deluding yourself. Quite possibly you get a compulsory dose of it every morning in regurgitated form in your newspaper and watch it every evening on TV.

Only a few media organisations have the 'resources' to do any 'research' into these matters - one's like the New York Times, which is a fervent backer of the cause, could it be in the interests of both the Democratic party and the Carbon Traders of Wall Street? - and the BBC. But the BBC held a meeting at which several climate experts were invited to see if there were any doubts or controversies about the climate change science, and these experts said certainly not! So the BBC has no worries. However, just to be on the safe side, it has officially designated the names of the experts it consulted a 'secret'. Like the temperature readings used by the University of East Anglia to arrive at the conclusion that the world is overheating, these sources can never be revealed.

Now the 'science of global warming', which is to say, the notion that man-made CO2 has caused, and is set increasingly to do so, the planet to warm slightly, is certainly not all the 'sceptical way' either. But let's not get hung up on that. For any number of reasons, the world 'could be' warming up, just as the theory insists. If it is, we need a rational discussion of both the effects, the implications and possible mitigation strategies.

None of these can start without a full and open exchange of views and evidence. Wikipedia has systematically distorted both - and it continues to do so.

Here there are no controversies about inaccurate temperature records, manipulated temperature graphs, melting glaciers, african famines, dehydrating rain-forests, or 'complete lists of greenhouse gases' that miss out the one that causes 90 % of the greenhouse effect - water vapour*.

Yet even giving the lobby its man-made global warming:

• if temperature records are inaccurate, then remedial activities will be directed to the wrong regions

• if glaciers are not really melting then emergency action to provide replacement fresh water supplies to a billion people in Asia is, to say the least, not necessary

• if the rain-forests are not really dehydrating then it is still worth preserving the rain-forests, rather than converting them to 'biofuels', as is the current policy

• if water vapour accounts for virtually all the greenhouse effect, then the economic value and utility of capturing other gases is functionally nil...

One could go on - but why bother? There is no debate, only propaganda. Whether Wikipedia is as we are asked to believe, just a rudderless ship being tossed here and there on the tides of prevailing opinion, I personally doubt. The bias is careful, subtle and very, very thorough. It involves wholesale abuse of the supposed principles of the site - the right of 'everyone' to edit pages and the expulsion of those who make changes that are 'off message' (like my new page on sceptical views).

Let's leave the last word to Jimmy Wales, nominally at least, the benign dictator controlling the world's most consulted encyclopaedia. I asked him (by email) if anything about the coverage of Climate Change there had worried him, given that it was not neutral at all, and was generated in ways contrary to his claimed principle that 'all editors are equal'. In a characteristically unreflective reply, he wrote:

"There exists a long line of people who, when their extremist agenda is not accepted into Wikipedia, accuse the community of bias."

Jimmy Wales, 15 Febuary 2010

Jimmy may or may not be worried about the goings on at Wikipedia. But the rest of us should be.

Notes

About those frightening images... The 'source' is the Goddard Institute, and Gavin Schmidt, editor of realclimate.org (set up by the PR company that Al Gore's environmental advisor was a staffer for). Does Wikipedia note that Gavin Schmidt and Michael Mann - of the now discredited 'hockey stick' graph are both colleagues and chums? Or that the Goddard is run by James Hansen, one of Global Warming Theories' founding fathers, so to speak, who has such an 'extreme' position the matter that he has fallen out with most of the others in the pro-camp. Quoting them is like quoting Liverpool Supporters Club on 'who are the greatest' football team. Or maybe like using George Monbiot's vegetable patch as a marker for global climate change. Look at the small print too- Gavin and co admit that their 'record temperatures' result from spikes in measurements in the Arctic and 'parts' of the Antarctic - data sources that are considered so poor that the Met Office and other climate centrers do not incorporate at all into their models. But the Goddard not only uses these dubious statistics, as they say themselves, they then mathematically extrapolate them 'over the entire land mass' - obtaining many more record high temperatures!)]]

1. Quotes from Wikipedia pages are from versions downloaded on 16 February 2010. The numbers in square brackets are left in to indicate the WIkipedia footnote gobbledegook.

2. Lawrence Solomon,evidently confused by WIkipedia's jargon, makes some large over-estimates of the influence of Connolley. I'm grateful to the Wikipedia Review for additional details on William Connolley's activities.

2. For those who are interested, the temperature records for the Siberia and China have been shown to have been deliberately falsified, while a much-quoted temperature-survey supposedly demonstrating only as small 'urban heat' effect contained key assertions that were impossible -that is, were flat lies. The key temperature graph of the IPCC report the so-called Hockey Stick graph, was inserted 3 times prominently by its inventor in one IPCC report, but then having been extensively discredited - notably for having 'ironed out' all evidence of past changes in temperature, not included at all in the next.The IPCC claim that all the ice in the Himalayas would have melted by 2035 was discredited when it was pointed out that it came from just one scientist, linked to the IPCC's chief, who had no evidence to back it up, and instead a personal interest in the advancing of the claim. The IPCC predictions of massive crop failure in Sub-Saharan Africa and the disappearance of the rainforests due to lack of rain followed the same pattern - one 'partisan' source, not peer-reviewed. Indeed, when spotted, they were flatly rejected by relevant specialists. But that debate has been suppressed - up to now!

I know this may seem like overkill as Wiki has long been discredited as a source for information on global warming. But not everyone knows this and this is one of the best critiques I've read.

[movielib]

Great news! A valid Hockey Stick graph has been found! Long elusive, plagued by cherry picking and Mannipulated statistics, it can now be stated conclusively that the real truth has been unearthed by dedicated, tireless workers reverse engineering all the heretofore deliberately obscured data, source code and statistical "tricks" previously relied on.

http://pajamasmedia.com/zombie/2010/...y-stick-graph/

February 25th, 2010 12:55 pm
New Global Warming Data Reveals Accurate “Hockey Stick” Graph

The data underlying the famous “hockey stick” global warming graph has finally been found after having earlier been misplaced by leading climate researchers. The newly recovered data confirms the accuracy of the abrupt upward turn in readings characteristic of the “hockey stick” shape found in many global warming projections.

Up until now, however, the data on which the controversial graph had been based was presumed to be lost, so it was not known exactly which aspects of global warming the chart illustrated. Now that the data has been recovered, scientists can state with complete certainty that this updated chart accurately chronicles the past and future trajectory of the global warming crisis.

Enjoy!

[movielib]

There has been no historic link between hurricanes and global warming says new study by researchers on both sides.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle7044158.ece

February 28, 2010
UN's climate link to hurricanes in doubt
Jonathan Leake, Environment Editor

Research by hurricane scientists may force the UN’s climate panel to reconsider its claims that greenhouse gas emissions have caused an increase in the number of tropical storms.

The benchmark report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said that a worldwide increase in hurricane-force storms since 1970 was probably linked to global warming.

It followed some of the most damaging storms in history such as Hurricane Katrina, which hit New Orleans and Hurricane Dennis which hit Cuba, both in 2005.

The IPCC added that humanity could expect a big increase in such storms over the 21st century unless greenhouse gas emissions were controlled.

The warning helped turn hurricanes into one of the most iconic threats of global warming, with politicians including Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, and Al Gore citing them as a growing threat to humanity.

The cover of Gore’s newest book, Our Choice, even depicts an artist's impression of a world beset by a series of huge super-hurricanes as a warning of what might happen if carbon emissions continue to rise.

However, the latest research, just published in Nature Geoscience, paints a very different picture.

It suggests that the rise in hurricane frequency since 1995 was just part of a natural cycle, and that several similar previous increases have been recorded, each followed by a decline.

Looking to the future, it also draws on computer modelling to predict that the most likely impact of global warming will be to decrease the frequency of tropical storms, by up to 34% by 2100.

It does, however, suggest that when tropical storms do occur they could get slightly stronger, with average windspeeds rising by 2-11% by 2100. A storm is termed a hurricane when wind speeds exceed 74mph, but most are much stronger. A category 4 or 5 hurricane such as Katrina generates speeds in excess of 150mph.

“We have come to substantially different conclusions from the IPCC,” said Chris Landsea, a lead scientist at the American government’s National Hurricane Center, who co-authored the report.

He added: ”There are a lot of legitimate concerns about climate change but, in my opinion, hurricanes are not among them. We are looking at a decrease in frequency and a small increase in severity.” Landsea said he regarded the use of hurricane icons on the cover of Gore's book as "misleading"

Although the new report appears to criticise the IPCC it could mark a new start, showing that the beleagured body can recognise its mistakes and correct them as mistakes or new science emerge.

The Nature Geosciences study was actually commissioned by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), a UN agency which helps oversee the IPCC, in an attempt to resolve the bitter scientific row that had emerged over the relationship between global warming and tropical storms.

That row dates back to the hurricane season of 2004 when four major hurricanes hit north and central America.

It prompted senior IPCC scientists to give a press conference at Harvard University warning that global warming would cause many more such storms.

The claims attracted worldwide attention but Landsea pointed out there was no science so substantiate them and was so angry that he resigned his post as a senior IPCC author in January 2005, issuing a letter accusing the IPCC of having become “politicised”.

He added in the letter : “All previous and current research in the area of hurricane variability has shown no reliable, long-term trend up in the frequency or intensity of tropical cyclones.”

The following year seemed to have proved him wrong when North and Central America were hit by a series of tropical storms plus seven major hurricanes, including Katrina, which devastated New Orleans.

However he and other researchers have spent the years since then gathering historical evidence showing that hurricane frequency and intensity vary according to an entirely natural cycle, each lasting around 50-80 years.

The last such surge began around 1925 and lasted until about 1955. Conversely there were declines in frequency between both 1910-1925 and from 1955-1995.

Such findings have generated continuing tension among storm researchers and criticism of the IPCC’s stance, so the WMO brought together 10 leading scientists from all sides of the argument to try to resolve it.

Led by Thomas Knutson, a renowned hurricane researcher at Princeton University, the group also included Landsea and Kerry Emanuel, professor of meteorology at MIT. Kerry was a leading proponent of the idea that global warming meant more severe hurricanes.

Julian Heming, an expert in tropical storms at the Met Office, said: “Several of the authors have clashed in the past so the fact that they have co-authored this paper shows they have been prepared to adjust their stance on the basis of the recent research. ”

The IPCC’s reaction to the paper is uncertain but the organisation has confirmed it is reviewing several recent questions raised over its research and considering corrections where appropriate. One senior IPCC scientist, Professor Chris Field, has said he wants the IPCC to bring in new systems for checking and correcting its reports as important mistakes and new findings emerge.

Last Friday environment and climate ministers meeting in Bali also ordered a separate independent review of the IPCC’s leadership under Dr Rajendra Pachauri.

It followed articles in The Sunday Times highlighting the IPCC’s false claim that climate change could melt most Himalayan glaciers by 2035.

The ministers — led by Hilary Benn, the Environment Secretary, and his counterparts from Germany, Norway, Algeria and Antigua and Barbuda — said they were not questioning the basic science behind global warming.

Instead, they were concerned with the “aggressive” way in which Dr Pachauri had responded to criticism, including denouncing Indian research suggesting that the glaciers were not melting so rapidly as “voodoo science”.

A spokesman for Gore said the cover of Our Choice was not a scientific diagram but "an artist's rendering of an earth where unchecked global warming has wreaked havoc."

The predicted possible small uptick in hurricane force has been reported by skeptic Landsea in at least one of his previous studies. He said it would amount to very little.

This study, with those on both sides, including Emannuel who has previously sided with the hurricane alarmists, should put to rest, at least for now, the hurricane/warming link. You know it won't.

(I don't trust the computer modeling for the future but logic dictates that, since global warming is supposed to warm the colder areas of the earth more than the tropics and storms mostly feed off temperature differences, storms would decrease (if such global warming even happened). Landsea and many others have also said that in the past.)

[movielib]

The Royal Society of Chemistry in Britain weighs in with another condemnation of UEA.

http://www.climategate.com/royal-soc...CLIMATEGATE%29

Royal Society of Chemistry backs 36,000 physicists in condemning Climategate

by John O'Sullivan on March 1, 2010

Today, the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) announced to the Parliamentary Select Committee investigating the Climategate scandal that it is not letting Climategate fraudsters off the hook. The RSC has unequivocally stated:

“scientific information should be made available on request as outlined in the Freedom of Information Act.”

The RSC now stands shoulder to shoulder with the 36,000 strong Institute of Physics in speaking out against the cover up and destruction of data by unethical and criminal climate researchers at the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit.

With these public statements on the conduct of climate scientists from other scientists, we are seeing a monumental groundswell of scientific opinion against the crooked methods of advocates of global warming theory such as disgraced CRU Professor Phil Jones.

In a thinly veiled rebuke the RSC, an organisation that represents 42,000 chemistry scientists, unequivocally agrees with skeptics that scientific data must be made available to the public and be open to scrutiny. They argue that the benefit for the status of science outweighs the perceived risks. To this end the Society has urged the Parliamentary Select Committee to clarify,

“the severity of the acts carried out by those scientists at the CRU involved, i.e. whether it was a misguided protection of their work or a malicious misrepresentation of data.”

We applaud both the Royal Society of Chemistry and the Institute of Physics for making such a valiant stand for the integrity of the scientific method. We are particularly heartened to see that both institutions have taken the view contrary to the politicisation of science, so that such announcements will be of great comfort to climate skeptics so hotly opposed to the skewed advocacy among left-wing environmentalists now popularly referred to as ‘post-normal science.’

A full transcript of the RSC submission may be found here, and are shown below:

Memorandum submitted by the Royal Society of Chemistry (CRU 42)

Summary

- It is essential that the public and all non-specialists remain truly confident in the scientific method to provide a sound scientific evidence-base on which strong decisions can be made. Correspondingly, it is in the interest of scientists and the public that society as a whole has an understanding and an appreciation of science.

- Access to reliable, up-to-date information is vital to advancing research and enabling the discovery or development of solutions to global issues. Sharing information is especially important in multi-disciplinary research, where progress is very much dependent on willing and effective communication between different speciality areas.

- The RSC firmly believes that the benefits of scientific data being made available and thus open to scrutiny outweigh the perceived risks. To this end, scientific information should be made available on request as outlined in the Freedom of Information Act.

Submission

1. The Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) welcomes the opportunity to submit formal written evidence to the consultation on the disclosure of climate change data from the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia.

2. The RSC is the UK Professional Body for chemical scientists and an international Learned Society for advancing the chemical sciences. Supported by a network of over 46,000 members worldwide and an internationally acclaimed publishing business, our activities span education and training, conferences and science policy, and the promotion of the chemical sciences to the public.

3. The document has been written from the perspective of the Royal Society of Chemistry. It is noteworthy that the University of East Anglia is a member of the RSC Partnership Scheme, however this in no way constitutes a conflict of interest. The RSC’s Royal Charter obliges it “to serve the public interest” by acting in an independent advisory capacity, and we would therefore be very happy for this submission to be put into the public domain.

- What are the implications of the disclosures for the integrity of scientific research?

4. The apparent resistance of researchers from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA) to disclose research data has been widely portrayed as an indication of a lack of integrity in scientific research. The true nature of science dictates that research is transparent and robust enough to survive scrutiny. A lack of willingness to disseminate scientific information may infer that the scientific results or methods used are not robust enough to face scrutiny, even if this conjecture is not well-founded. This has far-reaching consequences for the reputation of science as a whole, with the ability to undermine the public’s confidence in science.

5. It is essential that the public and all non-specialists remain truly confident in the scientific method to provide a sound scientific evidence-base on which strong decisions can be made. Correspondingly, it is in the interest of scientists and the public that society as a whole has an understanding and an appreciation of science. The RSC strongly supports the dissemination of chemical knowledge to foster and encourage the growth and application of the chemical sciences, as stated in its Royal Charter. This includes the dissemination of scientific knowledge as a means to advance public understanding and the learning of science.

6. The dissemination of scientific information is central to progressing scientific developments, as it is based on a sound knowledge of preceding research.[1] Access to reliable, up-to-date information is vital to advancing research and enabling the discovery or development of solutions to global issues. Sharing information is especially important in multi-disciplinary research, where progress is very much dependent on willing and effective communication between different speciality areas.

7. It is also imperative that scientific information is made available to the wider community for scrutiny: the validity and essence of research relies upon its ability to stand up to review. In fact, advances in science frequently occur when the prevailing view is challenged by informed scepticism, this is fundamental to the scientific method and should be encouraged, even if controversial. The RSC firmly believes that the benefits of scientific data being made available and thus open to scrutiny outweigh the perceived risks. To this end, scientific information should be made available on request as outlined in the Freedom of Information Act. Furthermore, research needs to be presented in an accurate and reliable manner in the correct context in order to optimise this process. It may also be necessary to incorporate an independent auditing system into peer review with the ability to demand access to raw data sets to ensure best practices are being adhered to.

8. With the increased use of electronic media, access to information is widespread for scientists and the public alike. While this is a great benefit to society, the quality and validity of information available raises complex problems as valid scientific information and general opinion are presented side by side. The inability to decipher which information is legitimate, results in confusion, misinterpretation and may lead to mistrust of ’science’. There needs to be a clearer understanding in the public domain of what constitutes a reliable source, including an appreciation for the process that is used for disseminating research and the advantages of peer review.

9. The peer review system is central to the credibility of science: its purpose to prevent the dissemination of unwarranted claims and unacceptable interpretations. Formally published scientific research is subject to this authoritative process whereby a community of qualified, impartial experts examine the information and possess the ability to prevent publication. Authors generally protect their data until it has been peer-reviewed and published in a formal publication due to the competitive nature of research.

10. The issue of misinformation in the public domain must also be tackled. Just as the scientific community must be open with regard to their evidence base, those who disagree must also provide a clear and verifiable backing for their argument, if they wish their opinions to be given weight. When disagreements occur, the validity of the analysis must be established before credence can be given to any opinion. Increased understanding of the process of scientific research, firstly in the government, but also within the media and general public, is vital in order to foster a more open sharing of information.

11. Support from the scientific community is needed to provide context and to explain the process by which conclusions are reached. Encouraging scientists to openly engage with the public can only be achieved if researchers are given the necessary backing in the face of any unfounded arguments against their work. This support must come from the highest levels, sending out a strong message on the importance of scientific methodology and research and promoting open sharing of information between scientists and the wider community.

- Are the terms of reference and scope of the Independent Review announced on 3 December 2009 by UEA adequate?

12. The terms of reference and scope of the independent review are adequate, although some wider reaching aspects must also be examined. The effect on other researchers working in this area such as independent researchers, as well as those collaborating with CRU, should be explored. The impact of this incident on the public perception of the CRU and UEA as a whole should also be considered as a measuring stick for the implications of such actions in the public domain. The manner in which the findings from the items set out are interpreted and applied will determine their value.

13. As has been set out in the review, it is necessary to investigate the email exchanges which were discovered along with other relevant CRU information to establish whether data have been manipulated or suppressed. This is, not only needed in order to identify any unacceptable behaviour, but also to verify the results which have been published. This is vital in clarifying the severity of the acts carried out by those scientists at the CRU involved, i.e. whether it was a misguided protection of their work or a malicious misrepresentation of data.

14. The review of practices surrounding CRU’s use of peer review and dissemination of data should be used to shed light on how these comply with established best scientific practice. Any failings in this area should be examined in the context of the research methods used and any deviations should be assigned either to the individual researchers or to inadequate updating of the best practice to suit research in the digital age.[2] This will beget more valuable information on the motivation and the reasoning behind the conduct of researchers at CRU.

15. Research institutions should review established protocols regarding the management of, and access to, research data to ensure that they remain up to date and clear. This process must be developed in collaboration with researchers so that its importance can be understood. The current practices in CRU and UEA must be examined to ensure the unit and the institution fulfil public regulations and that they offer support to researchers to ensure compliance.

16. The review of the security issues surrounding the release of information is an important internal issue for CRU and UEA. Furthermore, the RSC supports investigations into the highly irregular manner in which information was obtained from the researchers.

· How independent are the other two international data sets?

17. From the information available, the RSC cannot comment on this issue.

Large science organizations in Britain are very much concerned about the shenanigans of CRU/UEA. They obviously don't want to be caught in a general backlash against science. In other words, honorable scientists do not want to be taken down by the dishonorable.

[movielib]

Phil Jones testifies:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...#ixzz0gxGJ6K2M

Head of 'Climategate' research unit admits he hid data - because it was 'standard practice'
By David Derbyshire
Last updated at 11:54 PM on 01st March 2010

Scientists at the heart of the Climategate row were yesterday accused by a leading academic body of undermining science's credibility.

The Institute of Physics said 'worrying implications' had been raised after it was revealed the University of East Anglia had manipulated data on global warming.

The rebuke - the strongest yet from the scientific community - came as Professor Phil Jones, the researcher at the heart of the scandal, told MPs he had written 'some pretty awful emails' - but denied trying to suppress data.

The Climategate row, which was first revealed by the Daily Mail in November, was triggered when a hacker stole hundreds of emails sent from East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit. [Note by movielib: of course, it has not been established that it was a "theft" or "hack"]

They revealed scientists plotting how to avoid responding to Freedom of Information requests from climate change sceptics.

Some even appeared to show the researchers discussing how to manipulate raw data from tree rings about historical temperatures.

In one, Professor Jones talks about using a 'trick' to massage figures and 'hide the decline'.

Giving evidence to a Science and Technology Committee inquiry, the Institute of Physics said: 'Unless the disclosed emails are proved to be forgeries or adaptations, worrying implications arise for the integrity of scientific research and for the credibility of the scientific method.

'The principle that scientists should be willing to expose their results to independent testing and replication by others, which requires the open exchange of data, procedures and materials, is vital.'

Last month, the Information Commissioner ruled the CRU had broken Freedom of Information rules by refusing to hand over raw data.

But yesterday Professor Jones - in his first public appearance since the scandal broke - denied manipulating the figures.

Looking pale and clasping his shaking hands in front of him, he told MPs: 'I have obviously written some pretty awful emails.'

He admitted withholding data about global temperatures but said the information was publicly available from American websites.

And he claimed it was not 'standard practice' to release data and computer models so other scientists could check and challenge research.

'I don't think there is anything in those emails that really supports any view that I, or the CRU, have been trying to pervert the peer review process in any way,' he said.

Professor Jones, who was forced to stand down as head of the CRU last year, also insisted the scientific findings on climate change were robust.

The scientist at the heart of the 'Climategate' row over global warming hid data 'because it was standard practice', it emerged today.

Professor Phil Jones, director of the University of East Anglia's prestigious climatic research unit, today admitted to MPs that the centre withheld raw station data about global temperatures from around the world.

The world-renowned research unit has been under fire since private emails, which sceptics claimed showed evidence of scientists manipulating climate data, were hacked from the university's server and posted online.

Now, an independent probe is examining allegations stemming from the emails that scientists hid, manipulated or deleted data to exaggerate the case for man-made global warming.

Prof Jones today said it was not 'standard practice' in climate science to release data and methodology for scientific findings so that other scientists could check and challenge the research.

He also said the scientific journals which had published his papers had never asked to see it.

Appearing before the committee's hearing into the disclosure of data from the CRU alongside Prof Jones, the university's vice chancellor Prof Edward Acton said he had not seen any evidence of flaws in the overall science of climate change - but said he was planning this week to announce the chair of a second independent inquiry, which will look into the science produced at CRU.

Challenged about one email in which he tells a sceptic he does not want to give him data because it will be misused, Prof Jones admitted: 'I have obviously written some pretty awful emails'.

But Prof Jones insisted the scientific findings on climate change were robust and verifiable.

And he said 80 per cent of the raw data used to create a series of average global temperatures showing that the world was getting warmer, along with methodology from the Met Office - but not CRU - on how the average temperatures were calculated, had been released.

According to the University of East Anglia (UEA) much of the data could not have been released without the permission of the countries which generated the information - and that while the majority had now allowed the figures to be released, a handful had refused to let CRU publish it.

Prof Jones said a 'deluge' of Freedom of Information requests last July had prompted the unit - which has only three full time staff - to try and get more of the data released.

The circumstances surrounding the emails are also the subject of an inquiry commissioned by the university, and separately by Norfolk police.

"it was not 'standard practice' in climate science to release data and methodology for scientific findings so that other scientists could check and challenge the research. That is like saying climate science isn't science.

Of course he defended the overall supposed solid evidence for CAGW.

Just a note from me: I am reading The Hockey Stick Illusion by A W Montford (aka blogger "Bishop Hill") who meticulously reconstructs the story of the Hockey Stick. This, I suspect, will long be the definitive treatment. There is so much in here I can hardly believe it all myself. It is, to paraphrase the alarmists, much worse than I thought. I will write a post on it when I've finished.

[movielib]

The Royal Statistical Society piles on:

http://www.publications.parliament.u...ata/uc4702.htm

Memorandum submitted by the Royal Statistical Society (CRU 47)

1. The Royal Statistical Society (RSS) is the UK's only professional and learned society devoted to the interests of statistics and statisticians. Founded in 1834 it is also one of the most influential and prestigious statistical societies in the world. The Society has members in over 50 countries worldwide and is active in a wide range of areas both directly and indirectly pertaining to the study and application of statistics. It aims to promote public understanding of statistics and provide professional support to users of statistics and to statisticians.

2. The Society welcomes this opportunity to submit evidence to the Science and Technology committee on the disclosure of climate data from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia inquiry.

3. The Society's response relates to the first of the questions on which the committee invites submissions: "What are the implications of the disclosures for the integrity of scientific research?"

4. The RSS believes that the debate on global warming is best served by having the models used and the data on which they are based in the public domain. Where such information is publicly available it is possible independently to verify results. The ability to verify models using publicly available data is regarded as being of much greater importance than the specific content of email exchanges between researchers.

5. The position of the RSS regarding public dissemination of scientific data is that where the results of scientific analyses have been published or are otherwise in the public domain, the raw data, and associated meta-data, used for these analyses should, within reason, also be made available.

6. The qualification, within reason, is important because there are some cases where preservation of confidentiality is required to protect the rights of individuals to privacy. There are also occasions where the need to protect sensitive areas means that publication of all details is inappropriate. An example would be the exact locations of rare breeding species. Similarly, there are other occasions where overriding commercial interests may suggest that publication is inappropriate.

7. However, it is the view of the RSS that such commercial interest will only justifiably be invoked infrequently. An analogy with the common approach to patents is appropriate here. Companies may choose to keep their research secret and not patent it. However, if a patent is sought, the details of the invention must be revealed. Analogously, in the field of drug development, a pharmaceutical company is reimbursed not just because of the molecules it has discovered but also because of the knowledge it has acquired regarding the effects of those molecules. It cannot justifiably seek reimbursement for that knowledge and not make it available. Hence, by the point at which it seeks a commercial return, the data on efficacy and safety should be in the public domain.

8. It is also clearly unreasonable to require that any given scientist having published some research is then condemned to answer each and every question that might possibly arise from it.. For example, requests under the Freedom of Information act or the Environmental Information Regulations could overwhelm small groups of scientists. To avoid this it is best if data are stored in data centres that are professionally run and properly funded.

9. More widely, the basic case for publication of data includes that science progresses as an ongoing debate and not by a series of authoritative and oracular pronouncements and that the quality of that debate is best served by ensuring that all parties have access to the facts. It is well understood, for example, that peer review cannot guarantee that what is published is 'correct'. The best guarantor of scientific quality is that others are able to examine in detail the arguments that have been used and not just their published conclusions. It is important that experiments and calculations can be repeated to verify their conclusions. If data, or the methods used, are withheld, it is impossible to do this.

10. The RSS believes that a crucial step in improving the quality of the debate on global warming will be to place the data, the analysis methods and the models in the public domain.
______

Royal Statistical Society

February 2010

What a concept. Publish everything so studies can be replicated. They should give that a try in (climate) science.

This is particularly significant because the discipline most abused by the alarmists undoubtedly has been statistics. More than anything else, it's the basis of the whole Hockey Stick fraud (and it is a fraud; see the above mentioned book by A W Montford).

[movielib]

He could now add the Royal Society of Chemistry and the Royal Statistical Society. Wow.

[movielib]

[movielib]

Could this "documentary" be worse than Gore's?

http://www.etaiwannews.com/etn/news_...Society_TAIWAN

Taiwan climate movie under fire for mistakes
Taiwan News, Staff Writer
2010-03-02 06:38 PM

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – Environmentalists are criticizing the climate change documentary “Plus or Minus 2 Degrees Celsius” by media personality Sisy Chen for its mistakes, reports said Tuesday.

The movie, a more Taiwan-centered counterpart to efforts like former United States Vice President Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth,” contained inaccuracies that made it unsuitable to show at schools, critics said.

Its premiere was attended by government leaders and by top business people.

One of the mistakes was that the movie insisted the melting North Pole would provoke a rise in the ocean level, while in fact only the melting of the South Pole could cause such a change, experts said.

National Taiwan University atmospheric sciences professor Gloria Hsu and other academics and environmentalists who watched the movie not only found that a lot of footage came from public television, but also that so much content was wrong or avoided the facts that it subtracted from the value of the whole movie.

Hsu said that even the title was misleading, since a drop in temperatures of 2 degrees Celsius was unlikely to cause any problems. [Note by movielib: It would be worse than a 2ºC rise although neither would be that bad and neither is going to happen in the 21st century.]

She also said that Taiwan was the 12th most densely populated area in the world, and not the second, as the movie claimed. In Asia alone, territories like Hong Kong and Macau and countries like Singapore and Bangla Desh rated higher than Taiwan, she said.

Hsu also doubted the claim that Taiwan was being eroded at a rate of 2 percent a year. At this pace, the island would disappear within 50 years, she said, while Taiwan would not have been able to survive for at least 400 years and to have had aboriginals living here for more than 2,000 years.

The movie was also guilty of simplification by claiming that precipitation would double each time temperatures rose by 1 degree Celsius, Hsu said.

The Ministry of Education said that a thorough process was necessary before outside movies could be accepted as teaching materials.

Chen defended her documentary by saying the data all came from scientific bodies, and her main aim was to persuade the public to stop global warming by changing its behavior.

Some of the accuracy problems might have occurred during postproduction, she said, with some figures being simplified for easier understanding.

As to the North Pole melting, Chen said that the report was based on the threat posed to Greenland. The issue had been researched for seven years, though she said it was possible that her movie could be more careful with its science.

However, not a single statistic in the movie had been invented by its makers, Chen said, adding that academics at the Academia Sinica and National Taiwan University were responsible for providing the facts.

The title “Plus or Minus 2 Degrees Celsius” had been designed to put across the idea that everyone should make an effort to stop global warming by bringing down temperatures, Chen said.

Environmental groups said they would turn up at the Presidential Office Wednesday to demand President Ma Ying-jeou call a national convention on climate change.

Get the Best Documentary Oscar and Nobel Peace Prize ready.

[movielib]

Al and other alarmists still in the floor mat stage. An imperfect but interesting analogy.

http://bigjournalism.com/pmcaleer/20...r-mat-al-gore/

‘The Acceleration of Disbelief,’ Starring ‘Floor Mat’ Al Gore
Posted by Phelim McAleer
Mar 2nd 2010 at 7:25 am

It has been fascinating to observe how a multinational corporation that is so popular and trusted can be so flatfooted and incapable of responding to a crisis.

Like many of these crises it started small. The corporation seemed invincible and underwent major growth. Some worried the growth was too fast and retained doubts about the science and the technology. However, these warnings were on the fringe and were easily ignored…

… until three months ago, when the corporation suddenly found itself at the center of crisis after crisis, its science and technology revealed to be hopelessly flawed, shoddy even.

Inside the corporation denial took over, but eventually it became clear the problem was structural. In a rush for profits and market dominance, executives had ignored procedures, falsified data, and then covered up or tried to minimize their falsifications.

Compounding the problem — the head of the corporation remained silent until he was forced to respond to the concerns of the American people:

And so, this past Sunday, Al Gore finally emerged from hiding to do damage control of the deluge of scientific scandals, which had shattered public confidence in the Global Warming industry.

But unlike the President of Toyota, Mr. Gore offered no apologies or explanations.

Instead in a lengthy op/ed for the New York Times the former vice president either completely misrepresented or downplayed the unethical and illegal behavior of some of the most prominent climate scientists.

At the start Toyota tried a similar approach. They blamed a rogue floor mat for crashes that may have killed dozens, but eventually admitted the problems are deeper than a dodgy floor covering.

Last week, Toyota’s president apologized, took personal responsibility, and announced an overhaul of their entire way of working. Everything is being changed, he said.

The Global Warming industry has suffered a similar crisis. A series of scandals now means the public no longer trusts its product.

But it seems that Al Gore and his Global Warming executives are still at the “blaming the floor mat” stage.

And just like Toyota — they have a lot at stake. Carbon Trading is now a $300 billion industry. On a personal level Mr. Gore, as even the New York Times has noted, is “a businessman [who] is an investor in alternative energy companies.”

1935-five_racketeers-eunice_wilson01

The public, and Mr. Gore’s investors, probably started to get really nervous when climate science faced its first scandal this past November when e-mails were leaked from UK’s Climate Research Unit’s (CRU). The scandal became known as Climategate.

The e-mails leaked from the CRU showed Professor Phil Jones, one of the world’s most quoted Global Warming scientists, boasting about using a “trick to hide the decline” in temperatures whilst scientists publicly claimed no such Global Cooling existed. [Note by movielib: not really what "hide the decline" means.]

Professor Jones even encouraged colleagues to delete data to stop skeptical scientists from undermining their very profitable Global Warming theory. The UK Information commissioner has since announced he broke the law by doing so.

Not satisfied they’d protected all their assets, climate scientists tried to rig the peer review process so that skeptical scientists would not be published.

But in a classic “floor mat defense” Mr. Gore says the crisis has arisen because scientists “may not have adequately followed the requirements of the British Freedom of Information law.”

Mr. Gore again uses a floor mat defense when downplaying the errors of the 2007 report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Until recently the IPCC’s reports were seen as flawless, heavily peer reviewed, scientific distillations of the world’s top climate scientists.

Now, it has emerged the 2007 report is littered with significant errors while using dubious sources to make alarmist claims.

The IPCC admits the Himalayan Glaciers are not melting away any time soon, most of Holland will not flood and the Amazon rainforest is not in danger from Global Warming.

It is not surprising the IPCC got so much so wrong due to basing many of their “findings” on claims by environmental activist groups, casual conversations by scientists with journalists, and even anecdotes from mountaineering magazines.

But Floor Mat Al tries to pretend these IPCC retractions have never happened, ignoring some errors and labeling others as “overestimates” or “partially flawed”.

Similarly, according to Mr. Gore, the recent snowstorms are not proof of the flaws in the Global Warming theory, but are in fact proof that Global Warming exists.

It’s as if Toyota executives tried to claim that a sticking accelerator is not a sign of technology gone wrong, but actually a deliberate design initiative, and a sign that they are ahead of their time.

And so it is for Mr Gore — “the Floor Mat did it” and it is climate alarmism as usual.

Or as he put it in the New York Times op/ed, “[We] face an unimaginable calamity requiring large-scale, preventive measures to protect human civilization as we know it.”

Duerer-apocalypse

There is an unimaginable calamity facing millions. If Floor Mat Al gets his way millions, particularly those who can least afford it, will face increased energy costs. These man-made price increases will drive jobs out of America during one of the worst recessions in living memory, and be a death sentence for hundreds of millions in the developing world.

Toyota will likely emerge from their scandal a better company because they have, eventually, admitted their problems and dealt with them in an open and transparent way. They say they will put safeguards in place to make sure these problems will not occur again.

Climate alarmists, such as Al Gore, have shown no such awareness or humility. For him it is business as usual.

But it remains to be seen if the business of Climate Alarmism will survive.

It is certainly true that the alarmists have not gotten it (or get it but don't care). They still will not fess up to their exaggerations, Mannipulations and downright lies. They still claim it's only about a little rudeness or something by them, not at all about their crumbling science although they claim it's as strong as ever (which it never was).

[kvrdave]

There is no money in Gore giving up.

[movielib]

Gore and the IPCC aren't the only ones factually challenged.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/0...pr/#more-16928

A question to the USGS and NPR
3 03 2010

Which of these states is closest to 20,000 square kilometers in area?



WUWT reader “DC” points us to this Gore-esque pronouncement from a USGS scientist about “Antarctic ice loss”.

Jane Ferrigno of the U.S. Geological Survey in a National Public Radio interview
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...ryId=124178690

Ms. FERRIGNO: The fact that the ice shelves are changing on the peninsula is a significant signal that global change, climate warming, is affecting the ice cover of Antarctica. It’s affecting first the area that’s towards the north, that’s slightly warmer, but the effect of the warming has traveled from the northern part of the peninsula to the southern part of the peninsula, where it’s colder.

…

“RAZ: Give us a sense of how much ice [on the Antarctic peninsula] has been lost over the past, say, 10 years.

Ms. FERRIGNO: I think I’ll go back 20 years, and in the last 20 years, I would say at least 20,000 square kilometers of ice has been lost, and that’s comparable to an area somewhere between the state of Texas and the state of Alaska.

RAZ: So about the size of the state of Texas in terms of ice has been lost in the past 20 years. ”

It gets better.

Ms. FERRIGNO: Well, this is a fairly small amount of ice when you consider the whole Antarctic continent consists of about 13 million square kilometers of ice.

RAZ: I mean, it sounds so dramatic, the size of Texas, right?

(Soundbite of laughter)

Ms. FERRIGNO: It is. It is very dramatic, and it is larger than the size of Texas, but when you consider the entire Antarctic ice sheet, it’s still a fairly minimal amount. But the thing that we’re really interested in seeing is that this is a sort of a red flag because if the warming continues, if the retreat continues, if the amount of ice on the continent starts to flow into the water, then there will be substantial impact to the sea level.

RAZ: That’s Jane Ferrigno. She is a scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey.

Jane Ferrigno, thanks for coming in.

Ms. FERRIGNO: Thank you.

Ms. Ferrigno might do well to have a look at this map of the USA and Antarctica compared at Texas A&M University’s Polar Science program to get a sense of scale.

So an area 1/35 of the size of Texas is between Texas and Alaska in size. Good one.

So losing ice the area of New Jersey instead. No big deal, lots of people probably wouldn't mind losing New Jersey itself.

[movielib]

What a joke. Gore being awarded honorary degree.

http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2010/fe...norary-degree/

UT to give Gore honorary degree
By Chloe White Kennedy
Posted February 27, 2010 at midnight

MARTIN, Tenn. - Former vice president and Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore will receive an honorary doctoral degree from the University of Tennessee.

The degree - an Honorary Doctor of Laws and Humane Letters in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology - will be given to Gore at the spring commencement exercises of the College of Arts and Sciences on May 14, where he will be the featured speaker.

"Vice President Gore's career has been marked by visionary leadership, and his work has quite literally changed our planet for the better," UT Knoxville Chancellor Jimmy G. Cheek said in a statement. "He is among the most accomplished and respected Tennesseans in history, and it is fitting that he should be honored by the flagship education institution of his home state."

University trustees approved the award Friday while meeting at the UT Martin campus. The proposal previously was approved by the UT Board of Trustees Academic Affairs and Student Success Committee.

Entertainer and philanthropist Dolly Parton and former Sen. Howard H. Baker Jr. are the only other recipients of honorary degrees from UT Knoxville.

"Honorary Doctor of Laws and Humane Letters in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology." Well, you can't parody a parody.

There's a poll on the site of whether Gore should be awarded this degree. It's running 6:1 against the old fraudster. The comments are even better.

[crazyronin]

Originally Posted by movielib

What a joke. Gore being awarded honorary degree.

http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2010/fe...norary-degree/


"Honorary Doctor of Laws and Humane Letters in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology." Well, you can't parody a parody.

There's a poll on the site of whether Gore should be awarded this degree. It's running 6:1 against the old fraudster. The comments are even better.

10:1 against now.

[movielib]

See Post #772 in the last thread:

http://forum.dvdtalk.com/politics-wo...ml#post9998855

The Resilient Earth has posted an article about the Skeptical Inquirer's editor's hissy fit about subscription cancellations.

http://theresilientearth.com/?q=cont...ndrick-frazier

Crank of the Week - March 1, 2010 - Kendrick Frazier
Submitted by admin on Wed, 03/03/2010 - 11:03

Kendrick Frazier, long time editor of the Skeptical Inquirer magazine, has been caught whining on the Inquirer's Facebook page about people canceling their subscriptions. The motivation for the canceled subscriptions is SI's un-skeptical view of anthropogenic global warming. Under Frazier's leadership the “Magazine for Science and Reason” has been sucking up to the climate change mongering American Association for the Advancement of Science and acting as a cheering section for AGW.

According to his Center For Inquiry (CFI) on-line bio, Kendrick Frazier has been the editor of Skeptical Inquirer magazine for over 30 years. He is a member of the National Association of Science Writers and the American Geophysical Union. Unfortunately for the reputation of the Skeptical Inquirer, Frazier has led that formerly respectable magazine into welcoming arms of the AGW true believers.

In 2005, Frazier was made a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) for “distinguished contributions to the public understanding of science through writing for and editing popular science magazines that emphasize science news and scientific reasoning and methods.” The AAAS, publisher of the journal Science, has been a vocal supporter of all things climate change for years. Being made a Fellow was just the payoff to a fellow climate change alarmist for subverting the magazine he edits. Much cheaper than thirty pieces of silver.

Needless to say, a number of people who are themselves skeptics have a real problem with the blind eye Frazier has turned toward the question of climate change. This blog has previously addressed SI's betrayal of real skepticism in “Skeptical Inquirer Abandons Reason, Embraces Global Warming.” Now, a letter from a SI subscriber canceling his subscription has evoked a tirade from Editor Frazier. Here is part of the former subscriber's letter:

I find that your treatment of man-made global warming is one of advocacy, not skepticism. CSI has had the opportunity to study the fanatical religion of AGW and the trials and tribulations of its skeptics, but it has failed. I truly can't understand your position on this topic. Climate science has been corrupted by funding conflicts of interest and political ideology, yet articles in Skeptical Enquirer refer to honest and sincere skeptics as "deniers". Can you explain your publication's bias in this matter?

And what was the reply to this earnest and reasonable request for an explanation? How did the supposedly skeptical and learned Ken Frazier respond? Here are the full contents of his online rejoinder:

This is the third SI reader who has canceled his (it's always a male) subscription over our climate change pieces in the current SI (not to mention the at least six who did so after our first round of articles several years ago). Boy, they don't want to hear anything they disagree with, do they.

It is clear the anti-GW science crowd have their minds made up, and nothing anyone is going to say, no appeal to scientific evidence, no attempt to place things into an accurate context, no attempt to point out that many media and blog portrayals are not always fully accurate, no facts, no explanations, no attempts to show they themselves are being manipulated, nothing is ever going to change their minds. Very much like the evolution/creationist controversy, except that these are some of our longtime readers.

They do not want to engage forthrightly with factual, science-based statements or arguments. They only want their own views reinforced. There is no attempt at open-minded discussion or even fair argument. Just a determination to maintain their ideological purity and not have it be contaminated with any scientific information and perspective that doesn't support their presuppositions. They want to draw a don't-tell-me-anything-I-don't-want-to-hear cocoon around themselves. Unfortunately, that cocoon is growing ever larger. And they know they are punishing us, because, even more than most publications, which have advertising, we depend mostly on subscription revenue.

Guess we should just go along with the crowd, the lynch mob. Hop on the bandwagon. Slam those damned ignorant climatologists coming up with all that nonsense about changing climate and a warming planet. Who needs science anyway?

Kendrick Frazier
Editor, Skeptical Inquirer: The Magazine for Science and Reason
February 22, 2010

“Join the lynch mob” and “slam those damned ignorant climatologists,” what a thoughtful, well reasoned response to his reader's request for an explanation of his magazine's pro-AGW bias. Ken even notes that SI is losing longtime readers and that the magazine is highly dependent on subscriptions to survive. A rational man would have made a polite and reasoned response to a letter from a valued subscriber, not liken him to a creationist or a member of a lynch mob. Clearly it is Frasier who suffers from don't-tell-me-anything-I-don't-want-to-hear syndrome. So, for showing your lack of skepticism, irrational intolerance of others and atrociously bad manners this Crank of the Week is all yours: Kendrick Frazier, Skeptical Inquirer Editor.

If I hadn't canceled after the last issue I sure would now. A pox on you, Mr Frazier.

[movielib]

Originally Posted by crazyronin

10:1 against now.

Almost 20:1 now (Note: their percentages are a bit off from the vote numbers).

Edit: The vote's changing so fast now it's more than 20:1. Meanwhile the paper wrote an editorial about how Gore is so very deserving of such an honor and that we antiGorians should get over it! Sorry, but when a person is as egregious a liar and charlatan as Al Gore, we will not just "get over it."

Edit: As of about 7:00am CST, 3-4-10, it's 26:1.

Edit: As of about 8:00 CST it's passed 30:1

Edit: As of about 10:30 CST it's "down" to 18:1. Of course the raw number difference keeps increasing. It doesn't take much to increase the percentage of small numbers.

[movielib]

Monty Python and the Holy CAGW Scare

[movielib]

Joanne Nova in Australia comments on Phil Jones' testimony and the absence of Steve McIntyre.

http://joannenova.com.au/2010/03/the...-things-right/

The slow road to… getting things right
March 4, 2010

I watched part of the UK Parliamentary Committee Panel investigations with Phil Jones, and my main thought was ferrgoodnesssake! The nation of the Magna Carta, Newton, and the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution: Can’t the UK empire just fly Steven McIntyre in, and sit these two men down in the same room at the same time? You know, ask questions of one then the other, drilling down with no tea-and-cakes breaks, till they sort out each item on a prearranged list?

Billions of lives depend on figuring out whether CO2 matters, and trillions of dollars rest on the scientific output of East Anglia CRU. If it’s so important, why don’t the UK Government get serious? Or for that matter, why doesn’t the IPCC volunteer to arrange this, all televised and restore its credibility; show they are take “unscientific behaviour” seriously?) Note that I’m not suggesting that the panel members aren’t serious, only that they have a long learning curve in this incredibly detailed saga, and McIntyre could save everyone some time.

Steven McIntyre has written an excellent submission (worth reading). That will have to do…

I did like that the dialogue was so civilized (that’s such a rare thing), but it seemed like the slow road to real answers. I guess this is a big new (albeit supranormal “parliamentary”) step on the road where science “gets it right in the long run”.

In Short:

Prof Jones admitted he had withheld data and sent some “pretty awful” emails, and he insisted it was “standard practice” to refuse certain information to other scientists. He also explained that none of the climate scientists reviewing his papers had ever asked for the data. There you have it: what we always knew, that peer review boils down to two anonymous, unpaid “peers” who have barely any vested interest in finding flaws.

Awkwardly for Jones, Steven Mosher points out on WattsUP that, Professor Jones was quite happy to share data with Steven McIntyre in 2002, before he realized that McIntyre was a step ahead and moving on a different path. After that, suddenly there were “confidentiality agreements” to worry about, (though those agreements apparently only applied selectively, since he sent that confidential information to Webster and Rutherford).

The net effect of Phil Jones “Standard Practice” for data requests was:

1. Violate the confidentiality if they are Pro-AGW.

2. Violate the tenets of science if they are Skeptic (hide that information).

[Video of Jones' testimony at the site]

Of course the slightest common sense would tell them that McIntyre should have been heard from with testimony under questions, not just with a written submission. But at least they did that, which the Penn State Mann investigation didn't.