Serious criminal activity at the University of East Anglia´s Climatic Research Unit

[dilute micro]

which data's been rigged?

whatever data they were talking about.

 

[paolo]

The Economist, December 4th:

"The inquiries into the “climategate” e-mails and files may find that some of the researchers fell short of the standards of their calling, or that some of the science in question does not stand up as well as its authors would wish. To think that all action on climate change should cease pending such inquiries, though, is foolish, cynical or both."

 

[Falcon]

"To think that all action on climate change should cease pending such inquiries, though, is foolish, cynical or both."

Action should not. The process by which billions in tax payers money is disbursed by uninformed purchasers of services in government agencies to craven snake oil outfits to manufacture advice to the effect that both expansion of the government agency and further sums of money for research are vital, should.

Regrettably, at present to eliminate such action *is* to eliminate almost all action. This is a statement about the parasites and their foolish sponsors engaged in the action, not the action itself.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Still not seeing anything derived from the hacked e-mails that calls any of the science into question.

Anyone care to try to show us something in those e-mails which demonstrates that the world isn't getting warmer and or that greenhouse gasses aren't mainly responsible?

Can you even show anything in them that demonstrably calls those facts into question?

Just looks like a bunch of mud-slinging by PR agencies, far-right front groups and lizard fanciers to me.

 

[ymu]

I think there's a good chance that the e-mails theft will backfire. Thousands and thousands of e-mails and all they can come up with is:

1. Suggestions about subverting a FOIA request that were never acted on
2. Bitching about others in the field
3. The "trick" to "hide the decline" e-mail, mentioned with increasing desperation by journalists who can't find anything else to report on.

Morons who never wanted to believe in AGW are creaming their pants, but everyone else is going "is that it?". It's managed to highlight exactly how weak the denialist case is, IMO.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

I think there's a good chance that the e-mails theft will backfire. Thousands and thousands of e-mails and all they can come up with is:

1. Suggestions about subverting a FOIA request that were never acted on
2. Bitching about others in the field
3. The "trick" to "hide the decline" e-mail, mentioned with increasing desperation by journalists who can't find anything else to report on.

Morons who never wanted to believe in AGW are creaming their pants, but everyone else is going "is that it?". It's managed to highlight exactly how weak the denialist case is, IMO.

Well, sort of. The problem is that this is really aimed at the soundbite crowd, i.e. the majority of people who aren't going to bother looking into any of the details themselves. The same people that 'The Great Global Warming Swindle' was aimed at. Almost nothing the collection of shuffling old bribed sots, obvious loonies and sinister Exxon PR droids in that programme had to say was true. It's still had a huge impact on the proportion of people in the UK who had doubts about the science since it was shown, because the majority of people aren't going to do the half an hour of checking via Google required to expose cynical PR stunts like this for what they are.

 

[Falcon]

I think there's a good chance that the e-mails theft will backfire. Thousands and thousands of e-mails and all they can come up with is:

It does rather beg the question about what "they" could come up with if they didn't have the evidence pertaining to denied freedom of information requests destroyed and were forced into hacking to find out what was going on. And I can imagine there is a fair amount of "tidying up" going on around the patch now, so I guess the chances of "coming up" with anything else by force (the only technique apparently that is possible with the dissembling scientists) are diminishing.

But I think Bernie is overlooking a broad swathe of intelligent people who's hitherto good natured puzzlement has been spurred by this into a much more critical mode of thinking, and are alarmed to discover after some research just how much dissent there is in the scientific community that is both present and suppressed. Apparently the strongest defence the "pro" camp has is that we are the unconscious stooges of a malign coalition. Pretty weak stuff.

 

[ymu]

There's always dissent within the scientific community. Science doesn't get very far without it. We'd all just be sitting around congratulating ourselves on knowing everything there is to know. Einstein's Theory of Relativity took over from Newtonian Mechanics, and he went to his death refusing to believe that Quantum Mechanics could be right - but you don't find anyone publishing Einstein's quote about God not playing dice as proof that none of those theories are true.

There's an attempt to read into these e-mails something that just is not there - or at least not in any of the concrete examples I've seen quoted. Give me chapter and verse and I'll listen. Where is the smoking gun?

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Yep, I'd like to see the smoking gun here too. From what I have seen the most damaging thing is Prof Jones' witless response to McIntyre's FOI requests. If you look into that just a little bit though, it quickly becomes fairly obvious that McIntyre and his crew were using FOI requests as a kind of 'denial of service' attack on the climate research units in question. 50 FOI requests a week ffs?

 

[laptop]

Deniergate: Turning the tables on climate sceptics

 

[MikeMcc]

Seems like the US DoE have just imposed some legal notice to preserve documentation for the investigation. It's appearing on the usual web-sites and the deniers are crowing.

http://climateaudit.org/2009/12/15/doe-sends-a-“litigation-hold-notice”-regarding-cru-to-employees/