Climategate: Of thumbnails, big pictures and timing

In the first of a two-part series related to the dervishes being whipped up in Durban, the National Post‘s Peter Foster notes:

The moral climate

Climate change is a scientific issue, not a moral issue
This is the first of two parts. Tomorrow: In a “moral” science climate, skeptics are classed as ­“crackpots.”

The 17th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change that begins this week in Durban isn’t expected to see much progress in replacing Kyoto.

For those who believe that the Kyoto process is politically dangerous, economically destructive and based on dubious science, this is a good thing. Nevertheless, there is bound to be plenty of hand-wringing over the failure of rich countries to hand over more cash to poor ones as “compensation” for the climate catastrophe to come. This is one of the reasons why Al Gore and Archbishop Desmond Tutu maintain that climate change is a “moral issue.” The psychological roots and practical consequences of this claim have received much less attention than they deserve. [...]

Lord Andrew Turnbull, a former head of the British Civil Service, has become profoundly concerned about the corruption of climate science by moralism. “There is a strong alignment,” he told me, “between those who subscribe to anthropogenic global warming as the preponderant driver of climate change, and those whose view of the world is fundamentally anti-market and anti-capitalist. That climate change should have become part of the battle of political ideas is not surprising. What is profoundly shocking is the way large parts of the scientific community have allowed themselves to be co-opted into this movement.”

Lord Turnbull notes that the leaders of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the ­IPCC, the alleged fount of objective climate science, “have formed a tight-knit circle which seeks to portray their explanation of changing climate as the unique and correct one, while at the same time seeking to obstruct or suppress the views of those with other viewpoints.” He points out that large parts of the mainstream media “have trotted along uncritically behind the consensus.”

The recent release of a second round of hacked emails to and from the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia further confirms Lord Turnbull’s take. [emphasis added -hro]

Readers of this blog will not be surprised to learn that I cannot find anything in Lord Turnbull’s views, above, with which I might disagree. As self-condemning of the correspondents as this second “tranche” of emails is proving to be (at least in the eyes of those who have actually examined them), it is also not surprising that the handmaidens of Big Green (aka the so-called Mainstream Media) are choosing to either ignore this latest release, or to propagate the, well, unsustainable party-line that the emails have been “taken out of context” and/or that this release was deliberately timed to “disrupt” Durban.

These are the very same (and lame) excuses that were being touted two years ago: at that time, we were being given the same “out of context” nonsense as well as the trumped-up charge that somehow this was a scheme of the evil Big Oil funded “skeptics” to derail Copenhagen. As I had noted a few months ago, notwithstanding the multitude of “it’s worse than we thought and happening faster than we thought” articles churned out in the lead-up to Copenhagen, there was considerable evidence that the great expectations were not going to materialize. And they didn’t!

In the pre-Durban run-up, we have seen similar outpourings from the “it’s worse than we thought, and it’s happening faster than we thought” crowd; but this time, the expectations are – somewhat more realistically – very much on the low side.

In the intervening two years, we have seen some very poor excuses for “enquiries” conducted at both the University of East Anglia (home of major protagonist, Dr. Phil Jones, aka “Poor Phil”) and at Pennsylvania State University (home of another major protagonist, Dr. Michael Mann, aka Michael <how dare you question the validity of my hockey-stick> Mann).

There were approximately 1,000 emails released two years ago in the event that quickly came to be known as Climategate (now fondly referred to as Climategate 1.0 or CG1 for short), and approximately 5,000 emails on November 22 (now known as Climategate 2.0 or CG2 for short.) CG2 does contain a number of emails that were also found in CG1; CG2 also includes a “passphrase” protected zip file that contains considerably more data.

The tone of the explanatory notes from The Saint (as I prefer to call the leaker) is quite different:

FOI2009

We feel that climate science is, in the current situation, too important to be kept under wraps.

We hereby release a random selection of correspondence, code, and documents. Hopefully it will give some insight into the science and the people behind it.

This is a limited time offer, download now:

FOIA2011:

“Over 2.5 billion people live on less than $2 a day.”

“Every day nearly 16.000 children die from hunger and related causes.”

“One dollar can save a life” — the opposite must also be true.

“Poverty is a death sentence.”

“Nations must invest $37 trillion in energy technologies by 2030 to stabilize greenhouse gas emissions at sustainable levels.”

Today’s decisions should be based on all the information we can get, not on hiding the decline.

This archive contains some 5.000 emails picked from keyword searches. A few remarks and redactions are marked with triple brackets.

The rest, some 220.000, are encrypted for various reasons. We are not planning to publicly release the passphrase.

We could not read every one, but tried to cover the most relevant topics

It may (or may not) be significant that the smaller of the two releases is called “FOI2009″. FOI (Freedom of Information) is typically used in the U.K.; while FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) is an acronym more commonly used in the US. The Saint has used the pseudonym “RC” (linked to a never-proven alleged “upload” of a file named “foia.zip” on the RealClimate website). And The Saint has also used the pseudonym “FOIA” when alerting the skeptic blogosphere to the releases and providing the initial links for downloading the files.

It may (or may not) be significant, that after two years the Norfolk Constabulary have been unable to point the finger at anyone who might have copied the files from the UEA server. Yet, in their most recent uninformative statement, part of their excuse for the delay includes:

The enquiry team has, however, been determined and persistent in following all relevant lines of enquiry, some of which have been international in nature. [emphasis added -hro]

As for the “international nature” of the Norfolk Constabulary’s “enquiries”, it may (or may not) be significant that Michael Mann and his supporters are investing megabucks on running litigious interference in order to prevent disclosure in accordance with the provisions of the U.S. Freedom of Information Act. I wonder if the Norfolk Constabulary have anything to say about the alleged “log files” Gavin Schmidt told the NYT’s Andy Revkin circa July 6/2010 (in the only reference I’ve ever been able to find to the existence of any such log) he had sent to the “Norwich” police:

I was interviewed by Norwich police back in December and I sent them log files of the RC hack

In the same article, Revkin also reported:

I asked Schmidt whether a criminal investigation was ever conducted into the Real Climate hack. Here’s his reply:

It would have been up to us to report it, and I didn’t think it was worth it – If you recall, we were kind of busy. ;)

Setting aside the fact that this alleged hack for the purpose of uploading a file “into the enemy camp” prior to intended distribution elsewhere is devoid of credibility … Since this alleged RC “hack” occurred in the very early hours of Nov. 17, 2009 almost three days before any emails were actually released into the wild, couldn’t Schmidt have saved himself (and CRU) an awful lot of trouble by simply giving his good friend Andy a call and saying “Hey, Andy … have I got a scoop for you! Wait till I show you what those idiot contrarians have done … and I’ve got the logs to prove it. Here, let me show you.” Yet he didn’t do this – and the best he could drum-up (beginning on Nov. 20/2009) was an ever-changing story.

Am I the only one who sees something wrong with this picture (or, more to the point, non-picture … I’m sure the log traffic data would have made a wonderful graph!)?

What to make of all the above?! Well, in my view, CG1 could be considered a “thumbnail” in which we caught a glimpse of high profile climatologists in action. Amongst other concerns, there were hints of the utter arrogance of the protagonists and their “team members” – much of which has been displayed quite publicly (particularly by Michael Mann) in the last two years. CG2 shows us the “big picture” – and it is far from pretty. Both Jones and Mann reveal themselves to have begun a pattern of intellectual dishonesty and appalling bullying behaviours long before “global warming”, aka “climate change”, crossed the radar of many who are now much more attuned to their tactics (including yours truly).

CG2 provides much additional context for many of the more revealing emails in CG1 – and at least one from CG2 in which the writer probably depended on no one ever checking the context – as well as indications that during the various enquiries (very conveniently held behind closed doors), the protagonists and/or their defenders had been less than forthright. The general (you should pardon the expression) “consensus” in the skeptic blogosphere is that this latest release provides more evidence (as if any were needed) that the IPCC insiders were, indeed, very active in sidelining and denigrating those whose views differed from the “party line” – even if there were those in their own circles who had similar questions about their work.

Which makes one wonder if the InterAcademy Council’s continued silence (regarding the missing 180+ responses to the questionnaire on which they based their report on the IPCC’s Policies and Procedures) might be an indication that, in fact, the IPCC big picture is even worse than they would have us think (but that’s a post for another day!)

When he gave an interview to New Zealand’s Ian Wishart on Nov. 20, 2009, Jones said:

“It was a hacker. We were aware of this about three or four days ago that someone had hacked into our system and taken and copied loads of data files and emails.”

“Have you alerted police” [he was asked]

“Not yet. We were not aware of what had been taken.”

Jones says he was first tipped off to the security breach by colleagues at the website RealClimate.

“Real Climate were given information, but took it down off their site and told me they would send it across to me. They didn’t do that. I only found out it had been released five minutes ago.” [emphasis added -hro]

I’ll give Poor Phil the benefit of the doubt on this one. I suspect he really didn’t know (even though Gavin Schmidt had evidently known for about three days). But in November 2010, Nature‘s David Adam (who at that time seemed to know more about the source of the leak than the Norfolk Constabulary), reported that:

Jones and others connected to the CRU fear the hackers may be sitting on more stolen e-mails, but Jones feels confident the worst is behind him. “It really is not somewhere I would like to go through again. But having been through it once, I think I am a bit hardened to it.” [emphasis added -hro]

This would strongly suggest that (contrary to the impression that UEA attempted to convey during a recent press conference) that by November 2010, CRU/UEA had a very good idea what was contained in the files – or at least those that they could confirm came from their server(s).

Considering his responses at the recent press conference (asserting “context” with nothing to substantiate it) one would have to agree that Jones had, indeed, become “a bit hardened”. However, considering that they’ve had two full years to review the full “payload”, UEA’s Vice-Chancellor, Acton’s claim that:

The university hasn’t finished going through the 5000 e-mails, but “nothing so far leads me to believe it raises issues not raised 2 years ago,” UEA Vice-Chancellor Edward Acton said at a London press conference. “Different phrases, same issues.”

has a distinct ring of untruth to it. Although I suppose it’s possible that they’ve been too busy “redefining” all kinds of words – not the least of which is “context” – to pay much attention to the actual content.

Which brings us (almost!) to the matter of The Saint’s timing – both then and now. The blogger known as Pointman has two very well-worth reading eassays. In the first, which he wrote in December, 2010, he offers a repost of a profile of the whistleblower. The second, written a few days ago, includes his thoughts and questions regarding CG2.

I very much agree with most of Pointman’s … uh … points! With a few notable exceptions. In his profile essay, he makes the mistake of attributing to a BBC post by Paul Hudson an implication that Hudson had received CG1 sometime in October 2009. In his more recent essay, Pointman writes:

I said in the original profile that I thought FOIA started out being very innocent politically and I’d have to stick to that assessment. There’s simply no other credible explanation for trying to offer CG1 to a news organisation like the BBC that’s so chronically biased when it comes to anything to do with the environment.

However, this was an early surmise on the part of some in the skeptic blogosphere due to a misreading of Hudson’s Nov. 23/09 post:

I was forwarded the chain of e-mails on the 12th October, which are comments from some of the worlds leading climate scientists written as a direct result of my article ‘whatever happened to global warming’. The e-mails released on the internet as a result of CRU being hacked into are identical to the ones I was forwarded and read at the time and so, as far as l can see, they are authentic.

However, on Nov. 24/09, Hudson made a second post in which he was more specific:

As you may know, some of the e-mails that were released last week directly involved me and one of my previous blogs, ‘Whatever happened to global warming ?’

These took the form of complaints about its content, and I was copied in to them at the time. Complaints and criticisms of output are an every day part of life, and as such were nothing out of the ordinary. However I felt that seeing there was an ongoing debate as to the authenticity of the hacked e-mails, I was duty bound to point out that as I had read the original e-mails, then at least these were authentic, although of course I cannot vouch for the authenticity of the others. [emphasis added -hro]

Pointman’s hypothesis is that the currently encrypted files in CG2 contain the missing links (my words not his) to the high-level political connections. Although Pointman would not necessarily have known it at the time he wrote his post, a few of those would appear to have already surfaced – at least on the U.K. side of the pond. Bishop Hill has a very intriguing find with a series of emails full of, well, political intrigue. Strangely enough, CG2 also presents a much clearer picture of UEA’s Mike Hulme – whom I’ve always considered to be somewhat teflon-coated, and I’ve always wondered why the Muir Russell review made a conscious choice not to review any of his emails. But he does seem to have a number of friends in high places (including the BBC). But I digress …

Although Pointman does not mention it, my speculation is that at least some of the encrypted files will give considerable insight into the files that Mann is so desperately trying to keep hidden. Hence FOI2009 (U.K.), The Saint’s choice of nym (FOIA) and FOIA2011 (U.S.)

As for the timing, well, I’m inclined to think that The Saint had no illusions about “derailing” either Copenhagen or Durban. But he knew that all enviro-journalist hands would be on deck. Agendas for such meetings are set well in advance – there was no chance whatsoever that Climategate would have any impact on such proceedings. But I do believe that s/he recognizes that the general public is far smarter than politicians and media mavens give them credit for. And I further believe that the choice of “timing” was simply to get mentioned. Call it “stealth PR”, if you like … and more power to her/him! As journalist Fred Pearce wrote in early December 2009:

I have been speaking to a PR operator for one of the world’s leading environmental organizations. Most unusually, he didn’t want to be quoted. But his message is clear. The facts of the e-mails barely matter any more. It has always been hard to persuade the public that invisible gases could somehow warm the planet, and that they had to make sacrifices to prevent that from happening. It seemed, on the verge of Copenhagen, as if that might be about to be achieved.

But he says all that ended on Nov. 20. “The e-mails represented a seminal moment in the climate debate of the last five years, and it was a moment that broke decisively against us. I think the CRU leak is nothing less than catastrophic.”

And the view from here is that this could well turn out to be much, much worse than this un-named “PR operator” ever thought.

Of Climategate, constabularies and Copenhagen: coincidences worth considering (Part 1)

Update 09/18/2011 12:25 AM PDT: I had mistakenly attributed certain quotes below to a (possibly non-existent) publication called “Music World”. The correct name is “Music Week” – and I have now amended this post accordingly.
=======

“In PR-ing events, we like to create different moments that have [a] chance of being used by the media, creating several options for media to cover our clients [...]
[...]
In PR, we cannot always promote an event [...] but we can all see [an event] as a masterclass and apply the lessons across the board.

The Outside Organization, May 4, 2011

I doubt that in applying these lessons “across the board”, it would be too much of a stretch to conclude that – in their “very much in the background” handling of “reputation/crisis management” for a corporate client – the spinners at The Outside Organization (OO) would ‘create different storylines that have a chance of being used by the media‘, as they appear to have done in the aftermath of Climategate, in order to rescue the Norfolk based University of East Anglia (UEA)’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) who were mired in a bad press mess of their own making.

The university’s Climatic Research Unit wanted Outside to fire back some shots on the scientists’ behalf after leaked emails from the unit gave climate change skeptics ammunition and led to an avalanche of negative press about whether global warming was a real possibility.

“They came to us and said, ‘We have a huge problem – we are being completely knocked apart in the press,’” says (OO’s) Sam Bowen. “They needed someone with heavyweight contacts who could come in and sort things out, and next week there was a front-page story telling it from their side.”
[...]
The role of Neil Wallis, formerly editor of The People, deputy editor of The Sun and, most recently, executive editor of the News Of The World, is to lend heavy-hitting tabloid expertise, leading some jobs, following Edwards on others.

“Most of my career has been spent working at the top end of tabloid newspapers, so I know how they work and how they think,” says Wallis. “This is not that different, actually. You have very creative people, you have fastmoving situations, you have to think on your feet.”

Wallis led on the University of East Anglia “climategate” job, when Outside was drafted in[...]

Music World Week on The Outside Organization, Sept. 25, 2010

As I had noted previously, Wallis was wearing his OO hat at UEA/CRU at the same time as he was on contract to Scotland Yard as a “media consultant”. Not too long ago, it subsequently came to light that Wallis was rather chummy with an Andy Hayman.

Hayman has had a rather interesting career; although his recent performance at the U.K. Select Committee Hearing on the 2006 investigation that he and his underlings determined could be closed after finding only 2 guilty parties, certainly made me wonder how he succeeded in rising as high in the ranks as he did. In 2006, Hayman was ‘Metropolitan Police assistant commissioner and the the highest ranking officer responsible for counter-terrorism in the United Kingdom’. From 2002-2005, Hayman served as the Chief Constable of the Norfolk Constabulary.

The currrent Chief Constable of the Norfolk Constabulary is Phil Gormley; he was appointed to this position in January 2010. His bio on the force’s website indicates:

In 2004 he became Secretary of the Association of Chief Police Officer’s standing committee on Terrorism and Allied Matters (ACPO TAM). In this role he helped to shape the future of counter terrorism policing nationally.

From 2005 he led on the modernisation of Specialist Operations and took command of the MPS Special Branch, responsible for driving forward the merger of Special Branch and the Anti Terrorist Branch to form the new Counter Terrorism Command for the Metropolitan Police.

Hmmmm … Counter-terrorism at the Met? Looks like Gormley and Hayman might have been playing musical chairs! What a small world, eh? It must be sheer coincidence. But, in any event, I digress …

Hayman’s departure from the Metropolitan police was under a rather dark cloud and he subsequently turned up in the ranks of News International journalists, writing for the London Times and (on at least one occasion) producing an analysis for the U.K. “think tank”, Policy Exchange.

I’ve never been a believer in the conspiracy theory of history – nor do I have any skills in assessing probabilities; however, in light of Wallis’ involvement both with the Met and with CRU in their respective hours of need and his known ties to Hayman (and Hayman’s ties to the Norfolk Constabulary, to whom the UEA had reported the “data breach” in November 2009), there are some questions in my mind. Consider the following …

Prior to the circa Nov. 19, 2009 release of the emails in the public domain, despite all the run-up hype to Copenhagen, there were stories in the press indicating that many were anticipating failure. A few examples:

The Telegraph, Nov. 15, 2009

Copenhagen climate change agreement is impossible

World leaders have finally accepted that it will be impossible to come to a deal on climate change this year and have moved their attention to setting new dealines for a global agreement.

TIME Nov. 15, 2009

World Leaders Put Off a Climate Change Treaty

[...] some of the most significant diplomatic news coming out of APEC in Singapore was an agreement not to do something. Confirming doubts that had been growing for months, the world leaders in attendance at APEC — along with Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen — announced on Sunday morning that a legally binding deal on climate change would be impossible to achieve at the U.N. summit on global warming in Copenhagen next month. [emphasis added -hro]

UEA’s Mike Hulme in Ecologist (“Part of the Guardian Environment Network) Nov. 16, 2009

We shouldn’t expect a single Copenhagen treaty to solve things

Expectations for the Copenhagen climate negotiations have, sadly, been raised far too high. Voices – some sombre, some shrill – have told us it must be a deal ‘to save the planet’ and ‘to protect civilisation as we know it’. That it is ‘the last chance we have to tackle climate change’.

Such an atmosphere is not conducive to calm, considered and realistic negotiating. And it is a task made harder because in recent years so many issues troubling the world have been dumped into the climate change bucket: the loss of biodiversity, the gross inequity in patterns of development, loss of tropical forests, trade restrictions, violation of the rights of indigenous peoples, intellectual property rights, etc. The list seems to grow by the month. [emphasis added -hro]

Spiegel Online Nov. 17, 2009

Low Expectations for Climate Summit Can Copenhagen Still Be Saved?

A few short months ago, it seemed almost inconceivable that the UN Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen would end with anything less than a binding, legal agreement. The political pressure on the industrial states was too great, the expectations of their inhabitants too high.
[...]
Even before the summit starts on Dec. 7, the climate talks already look like they will be a failure – at least, if one considers what the original goal of the talks was. At the end of 2007, at a summit on the Indonesian island of Bali, the United Nations decided that a follow-up agreement to the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012, had to be reached within two years — and that its follow-up would be finalized in Copenhagen. [emphasis added -hro]

The emails hit the blogosphere on Nov. 19. Yet, there was no official word from UEA/CRU until Nov. 23. In this “CRU Update 1“, readers are told that at least some of the emails are “genuine”, that the police have been contacted, and that UEA will be:

“conducting a review, with external support, into the circumstances surrounding the theft and publication of this information and any issues emerging from it.”

This Nov. 23 “Update” also included a “Comment” from Phil Jones, in which he declared that, in effect, a trick is not a trick. The next day, UEA issued “CRU Update 2“.

CRU Update 2 was “released on November 24 at 3.30pm”:

The University of East Anglia has released the following press release and statements from Prof Trevor Davies, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research, Prof Phil Jones, head of the Climatic Research Unit, and from CRU.

In addition to “demonstrating” that decline is not decline, Phil Jones (or someone who put the words into his mouth for him) said:

In the frenzy of the past few days, the most vital issue is being overshadowed: we face enormous challenges ahead if we are to continue to live on this planet.

One has to wonder if it is a coincidence that this email correspondence has been stolen and published at this time. This may be a concerted attempt to put a question mark over the science of climate change in the run-up to the Copenhagen talks.

At 17:10 p.m. on Nov. 24, according to the Guardian, Jones said the same thing, more or less:

Professor Phil Jones, director of the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit, said that the past week had been “the worst few days of my professional life”. He added that since the emails were leaked he had received personal threats which have now been passed on to the police to investigate.
[...]
Jones said the timing of the theft suggested it was intended to cause maximum embarrassment ahead of the Copenhagen climate talks next month: “One has to wonder if it is a coincidence that this email correspondence has been stolen and published at this time. This may be a concerted attempt to put a question mark over the science of climate change in the run-up to the Copenhagen talks.”
[...]
Trevor Davies, the University of East Anglia’s pro-vice-chancellor with responsibility for research, rejected calls – including from the Guardian commentator George Monbiot – for Jones to resign: “We see no reason for Professor Jones to resign and, indeed, we would not accept his resignation. He is a valued and important scientist.”

Davies said the university had now decided to conduct an independent review which will “address the issue of data security, an assessment of how we responded to a deluge of Freedom of Information requests, and any other relevant issues which the independent reviewer advises should be addressed”.

Clearly, UEA/CRU were responding in their long-established pattern: let’s just keep our heads low and hope that this blows over – and nothing in the emails matters because, well, because we said so; so let’s get on with the important business of saving the planet.

If one wants to talk about “coincidence”, “Climategate” and Copenhagen, one cannot pretend (as Jones seems to have done) that news coverage (such as I had noted above) did not happen! Considering the timing, a far more logical speculation would be that Jones and his like-minded friends had decided to use Climategate as a very (coincidental but) convenient diversionary scapegoat for the failure they must have known Copenhagen would be.

About the only effect Climategate might have had on anything relating to Copenhagen is that it pushed the Nov. 24 ‘It’s worse than we thought, and happening faster than we thought’ non-IPCC (except for 14 of its 26 authors) “Copenhagen Diagnosis” press release off the front page (at the greenest of ‘em all Guardian, it didn’t even make it into the print edition).

But lack of logic (not to mention the lack of even a shred of evidence) did not prevent this Climategate-Copenhagen meme from getting some high-powered recycling in the days, weeks and even months that followed. In PR-speak, it would no doubt be a good storyline to feed to the media (and perhaps to the Norfolk Constabulary!)

On Nov. 29, IPCC Chair, Rajendra K. Pachauri – courtesy of the Guardian’s Observer – lectured the world (in his unique “non-policy-prescriptive” way, of course):

Western lifestyle unsustainable, says climate expert Rajendra Pachauri

Ahead of the Copenhagen summit, leading scientist and IPCC chair Rajendra Pachauri warns of radical charges and regulation if global disaster is to be avoided

Hotel guests should have their electricity monitored; hefty aviation taxes should be introduced to deter people from flying; and iced water in restaurants should be curtailed, the world’s leading climate scientist has told the Observer.

Rajendra Pachauri, the chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), warned that western society must undergo a radical value shift if the worst effects of climate change were to be avoided. A new value system of “sustainable consumption” was now urgently required, he said.

“Today we have reached the point where consumption and people’s desire to consume has grown out of proportion,” said Pachauri. “The reality is that our lifestyles are unsustainable.”

Oh, and on the same day Pachauri had some words of wisdom to impart (also via the Guardian) on the likely impact of the leaked emails on the IPCC:

Leaked emails won’t harm UN climate body, says chairman

Rajendra Pachauri says there is ‘virtually no possibility’ of a few scientists biasing IPCC’s advice, after UAE hacking breach

There is “virtually no possibility” of a few scientists biasing the advice given to governments by the UN’s top global warming body, its chair said today.

Rajendra Pachauri defended the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in the wake of apparent suggestions in emails between climate scientists at the University of East Anglia that they had prevented work they did not agree with from being included in the panel’s fourth assessment report, which was published in 2007.

[...]

Pachauri said the large number of contributors and rigorous peer review mechanism adopted by the IPCC meant that any bias would be rapidly uncovered.

“The processes in the IPCC are so robust, so inclusive, that even if an author or two has a particular bias it is completely unlikely that bias will find its way into the IPCC report,” he said.

“Every single comment that an expert reviewer provides has to be answered either by acceptance of the comment, or if it is not accepted, the reasons have to be clearly specified. So I think it is a very transparent, a very comprehensive process which insures that even if someone wants to leave out a piece of peer reviewed literature there is virtually no possibility of that happening.”

[...]

Some commentators, including the former chancellor Nigel Lawson and the environmental campaigner and Guardian writer George Monbiot, have called on Jones to resign but Pachauri said he did not agree. He said an independent inquiry into the emails would achieve little, but there should be a criminal investigation into how the emails came to light.

Pachauri said he doubted that trust in the IPCC would be damaged by the affair. “People who are aware of how the IPCC functions and are appreciative of the credibility that the IPCC has attained will probably not be swayed by an incident of this kind,” he said.

Clearly Pachauri had read very few (if any) of the emails, and no one seems to have fed him (or his interviewer) the Climategate-Copenhagen meme storyline.

But two days later, on Tues. Dec. 1, UEA released “CRU Update 3“. This Update was very brief (compared to Updates 1 and 2) – and very different in tone:

Professor Phil Jones has today announced that he will stand aside as Director of the Climatic Research Unit until the completion of an independent Review resulting from allegations following the hacking and publication of emails from the Unit.

Professor Jones said: “What is most important is that CRU continues its world leading research with as little interruption and diversion as possible. After a good deal of consideration I have decided that the best way to achieve this is by stepping aside from the Director’s role during the course of the independent review and am grateful to the University for agreeing to this. The Review process will have my full support.”

Vice-Chancellor Professor Edward Acton said: “I have accepted Professor Jones’s offer to stand aside during this period. It is an important step to ensure that CRU can continue to operate normally and the independent review can conduct its work into the allegations.

“We will announce details of the Independent Review, including its terms of reference, timescale and the chair, within days. I am delighted that Professor Peter Liss, FRS, CBE, will become acting director.”

Wow! What a difference a week of bad press makes! Clearly at this point OO’s Wallis and Bowen were on board. It is not difficult to imagine that their very first piece of advice would have been: “Get Jones out of the picture”. Then let’s ‘create different storylines that have a chance of being used by the media’.

No doubt the Climategate-Copenhagen meme would have been music (pun intended) to an OO man’s ears – although they appear to have, well, jazzed it up a bit.

UPDATE 08/17/2011 07:59 PM The date of the Ben Webster article immediately following was Dec. 7, not Dec. 4. I have now amended accordingly.

By December 4 7, Ben Webster at The Times (erstwhile home of Wallis’ buddy, Andy Hayman) had a very convenient article on offer. IPCC Vice Chair, Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, UNEP’s Achim Steiner & UNFCCC’s Yvo de Boer were all quoted, quite extensively:

Climate e-mails were hijacked ‘to sabotage summit’

UN officials have likened the theft of e-mails from university climate researchers to the Watergate scandal, after claiming computer hackers were probably paid by people intent on undermining the Copenhagen summit.

Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, a vice-chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said that the theft from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was not the work of amateur climate sceptics, but was a sophisticated and well-funded attempt to destroy public confidence in the science of man-made climate change. He said the fact that the e-mails were first uploaded to a sceptic website from a computer in Russia was an indication that the culprit was paid.

[...]

Achim Steiner, director of the UN Environment Programme, said that the theft of emails had echoes of Watergate — the burglary of the Democratic Party’s offices at the Watergate building in Washington DC in 1972.

“This is not ‘climategate’, it’s ‘hackergate’. Let’s not forget the word ‘gate’ refers to a place where data was stolen by people who were paid to do so. So the media should direct its investigations into that.”

Ironically, de Boer (who stepped down and moved on to greener pastures shortly after Copenhagen) was the most reasonable of this triumvirate:

[de Boer] said that the stolen e-mails looked “very bad” and were fuelling scepticism, but said the media scrutiny was not unwelcome. Mr de Boer said: “I think it’s very good that what is happening is being scrutinised in the media because this process has to be based on solid science. If quality and integrity is being questioned, that has to be examined.”

And less than a week later (Dec. 12), Seth Borenstein (never known for saying an unkind word about any alarmists, let alone a big name “climate scientist”) had a very shallow AP piece splattered across front pages of several newspapers.

It is difficult to imagine that UEA/CRU would not have been aware of these upcoming stories circa Dec. 1 (when Jones stepped down and they announced the “investigations”) if such stories had been in the works at the time they are presumed (at least by me!) to have called on the services of OO’s Wallis and Bowen. In the Music World Week piece, Bowen (the OO “strategy” guy) is quoted as saying:

“They needed someone with heavyweight contacts who could come in and sort things out, and next week there was a front-page story telling it from their side.”

Heavyweight contacts? Check.

Sort things out? Check.

Front-page story telling it from their side? Check.

(To be continued in Part 2)

UPDATE 08/17/2011 01:16 AM I am still working on Part 2; but just in case anyone at UEA should decide to take a leaf out of the pages of the U.K. Daily Mail, I’m appending links to pdfs of the CRU documents mentioned above (and or in my comment below)

CRU Update 1

CRU Update 2

Listing of CRU Statements

Apres la (Copenhagen CarbonFest) deluge, a Very Inconvenient Coldspell

Poor Al Gore (not to mention poor CBC – and David Suzuki, along with Bob McDonald, aka the Canadian High Priests of the Church of Settled Science)

I’m a Bridgeplayer, so – with your indulgence – I’d like to review the bidding (Note to fellow-Bridgeplayers: [Spoiler] Alert – this is a grand slam, doubled and redoubled, for all AGW “skeptics”; and a spectacular defeat for the IPCC sponsored “Hockey-Stick” Team)

First, a very brief summary of the pre-COP15 diagnosis bidding history to date:

Once upon a time, there were some “climate scientists” aka “global warming disaster advocates” who were determined to secure a magificent amount of government funding for their “research” – by selling their post-modernist “scientific” souls to the IPCC devil’s den mantra of “C02 is the primary cause of ‘global warming’”.

Now, a brief summary of the post-COP15 diagnosis:

Alas, to the very great (but to this day denied and … uh… well-hidden) dismay of the “climate scientists” – and their totally dedicated AGW believer acolytes – the Great Green Hope (aka Almighty Stopper of Global Warming, Obama) let them down:

The Great Green Presidential Accendant Promise, according to the Institution of Chemical Engineers:

US PRESIDENT ELECT Barack Obama has signalled a renewed respect for the integrity of the scientific process by nominating four renowned scientists that will help his administration formulate sound science and technology policy that will fight climate change, [...]

[...]

Obama says his science and technology team will work to slow global warming and create 21st century jobs through innovation: “Today more than ever before, science holds the key to our survival and our prosperity [...] Promoting science isn’t just about providing resources but protecting free and open enquiry, [ensuring] facts are never overturned by politics and ideology, and listening to what our scientists have to say especially when it’s inconvenient.”[emphases added -hro]

(Sorry about that … it’s the Lewis Caroll in me thinking that folks should “say what they mean and mean what they say”. I know, Obama said the above a mere year ago. Clearly, as usual, Obama did not say what he meant – nor, apparently, did he mean what he said)

But, as mentioned above, Obama did let them down. Even according to the “Obama-can-do-no-wrong” New York Times:

The final accord, a 12-paragraph document, was a statement of intention, not a binding pledge to begin taking action on global warming — a compromise seen to represent a flawed but essential step forward.

[...]

But many delegates of the 193 countries that had gathered here left Copenhagen in a sour mood, disappointed that the pact lacked so many elements they considered crucial, including firm targets for mid- or long-term reductions of greenhouse gas emissions and a deadline for concluding a binding treaty next year.

Even President Obama, a principal force behind the final deal, said the accord would take only a modest step toward healing the Earth’s fragile atmosphere.

Many participants also said that the chaos and contentiousness of the talks may signal the end of reliance on a process that for almost two decades had been viewed as the best approach to tackling global warming: the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and a series of 15 conventions following a 1992 climate summit meeting in Rio de Janeiro.
[...] [emphasis added -hro]

OMG, as if the blanket of (IPCC unpredicted?!) snow covering Copenhagen wasn’t bad enough, all those delegates in such a “sour mood” that the Great Green Hope, aka, “Mr. The time for talk is over“, had let them down.

Sidebar: “The time for talk is over” turns out to be one of Obama’s favourite rhetorical flourishes, which he had used during his first speech in Copenhagen. After his second speech, he fled snowbound Copenhagen for snowbound Washington. And speaking of the flight of The One … Anthony Watts invited readers to provide a caption for this photo by Doug Mills/The New York Times:

My humbly submitted contribution: “The time for talk is over: Blame Canada“

And speaking of “Blame Canada” ….Back to the “bidding”!

The National Post sponsored (Team Canada) Terence Corcoran bid “7 spades” on Dec. 18. Here’s a description of his “hand”:

My climategate email cameo

[...] This cameo walk-on role doesn’t amount to anything in the great 13-year epic chronology of science warfare found in the email cache, but it is still satisfying to be there — even more satisfying because my bit part appears in a small chain of emails that leads right up to one of the top dogs in Climategate, Phil Jones.
[...]
[one Kibbitzer noted:]

Congratulations Mr. Corcoran. Your work on this file puts you in the courageous ranks of journalists of Woodward and Bernstein.

So refreshing compared to the cowered and brainwashed parrots masquerading as journalists at the Globe, CBC or BBC… or CTV most of the time.

Michael “Hide the decline” Mann (representing the Hockey-Stick Team) “doubled” (no doubt on the strength of his very weak “clubs”) in an OpEd in the Washington Post:

E-mail furor doesn’t alter evidence for climate change

I cannot condone some things that colleagues of mine wrote or requested in the e-mails recently stolen from a climate research unit at a British university. But the messages do not undermine the scientific case that human-caused climate change is real.

[....]

[Miann mistakenly thought he was closing the bidding by falsely concluding:]

The scientific consensus regarding human-caused climate change is based on decades of work by thousands of scientists around the world. The National Academy of Sciences has concluded that the scientific case is clear. As world leaders work in Copenhagen to try to combat this problem, some critics are seeking to cloud the debate and confuse the public.

Perhaps Mann did not count the points in his hand very carefully. Or maybe, he had misread the bid of his silent partner, William Connelly – guardian of all things green at Wikipedia – who was in cahoots with the “Hockey-Stick” team.

You see, over at the National Post, on Dec. 19, Corcoran’s partner, Lawrence Solomon, “redoubled”, so to speak. Here’s a description of his hand:

Wikipedia’s climate doctor

How Wikipedia’s green doctor rewrote 5,428 climate articles

The Climategate Emails describe how a small band of climatologists cooked the books to make the last century seem dangerously warm.

The emails also describe how the band plotted to rewrite history as well as science, particularly by eliminating the Medieval Warm Period, a 400 year period that began around 1000 AD.

The Climategate Emails reveal something else, too: the enlistment of the most widely read source of information in the world — Wikipedia — in the wholesale rewriting of this history.

[...] [emphasis added -hro]

So, Team Canada’s Corcoran is Declarer, playing a Grand Slam, doubled and redoubled. On Saturday, he began:

A 2,000-page epic of science and skepticism

The context for all this, much of it conducted over the Internet between sometimes warring camps in Britain and the United States, is the greatest scientific research story ever told, an attempt to accomplish two main objectives under the auspices of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN agency set up in 1988 to orchestrate global reaction to the perceived threat of man-made global warming.

The 13-year email exchange, while often chaotic and disjointed, follows two main tracks that, in the end, must somehow converge. The first is to develop a convincing history of global temperature going back over thousands of years. The second is to develop models and scenarios that allow the scientists and the IPCC to forecast climate change to 2100 and beyond.

[...]

By my reading, the emails contain many disquieting revelations about the state of climate science and the process. Other readers, investigators, scientists and activists on all sides of the climate issue will of course make up their own minds on this. But as the email story unfolds over the years, it is clear that the history of climate and temperature change over the past 10,000 years remains mostly speculative and largely unknown. The emails also imply that, in part because the past is so unknown, any attempt at long-range forecasts is, at best, uncertain.

[...]

He’s playing his hand quite superbly (so be sure to read the whole article). And don’t miss Corcoran’s “finesse” against Mann:

Climategate: What’s the “trick” and what did it “hide”?

In a new famous email, Phil Jones, then head of the Climactic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, wrote on Nov. 16 to climate research colleagues in the United States and at his own CRU:

“Dear Ray, Mike and Malcolm,
Once Tim’s got a diagram here we’ll send that either later today or first thing tomorrow.
I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and (sic) from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline…”

What’s the trick and what did it hide? The man who knows most about this subject and who’s willing to talk about it is Steve McIntyre. In a recent positing, McIntyre outlined the trick and its place in the history of official climate science as fashioned by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Another good but more accessible explanation of the trick appeared in London’s Daily Mail, along with these graphs.

[...]

Five Green Commandments (Al Gore please take note!)

Victor Davis Hanson, whose writings are always worth reading, offers some advice to the Copenhagen CarbonFest participants … particularly the movers and shakers, via The Corner on National Review Online:

Five Green Commandments.

Given the disturbing news about the growing green business empire of Gore, Inc., the private jetting by grandees into Copenhagen to harangue us about our incorrect lifestyles, and the expansive estates of prominent green advocates, it seems that the movement is in need of a formal code of conduct to restore the reputation of climate-change advocacy. Here are five simple commandments that all prominent global-warming activists need to embrace after the blowback from Climategate and various disclosures about the big money involved in green advocacy:

(1) No green public advocate shall have personal business interests predicated on climate-change remedies.

(2) No green public advocate shall fly in a private jet.

(3) No green public advocate shall ride in a limousine.

(4) No green public advocate shall live in a mansion.

(5) Every green advocate shall limit transcontinental jet trips to one per year. [links added -hro]

Lord Monckton reports … and predicts Copenhagen outcome

Dr. Rajendra Pachauri is the chairman of the IPCC. Yesterday Pachauri gave an “eye opening” presentation in Copenhagen. Lord Monkton had a “seat among the dignitaries in the front row”.

Be sure to visit Watts Up With That for his view from there; in the meantime, here are some excerpts:

[...]
Would he use the bogus graph in his lecture? I had seen him do so when he received an honorary doctorate from the University of New South Wales. I watched and waited.

Sure enough, he used the bogus graph. I decided to wait until he had finished, and ask a question then.

Pachauri then produced the now wearisome list of lies, fibs, fabrications and exaggerations that comprise the entire case for alarm about “global warming”. He delivered it in a tired, unenthusiastic voice, knowing that a growing majority of the world’s peoples – particularly in those countries where comment is free – no longer believe a word the IPCC says.

They are right not to believe. Science is not a belief system. But here is what Pachauri invited the audience in Copenhagen to believe.

1. Pachauri asked us to believe that the IPCC’s documents were “peer-reviewed”. Then he revealed the truth by saying that it was the authors of the IPCC’s climate assessments who decided whether the reviewers’ comments were acceptable. That – whatever else it is – is not peer review.
[...]

18. Pachauri said we could all demonstrate our commitment to Saving The Planet by eating less meat. The Catholic Church has long extolled the virtues of mortification of the flesh: we generally ate fish on Fridays in the UK, until the European Common Fisheries Policy meant there were no more fish. But the notion that going vegan will make any measurable impact on global temperatures is simply fatuous.

It is time for Railroad Engineer Pachauri to get back to his signal-box. About the climate, as they say in New York’s Jewish quarter, he knows from nothing.

And for your viewing and listening pleasure, here is an interview in which Lord Monckton gives us his predictions of the finale we can expect to see on Saturday, assuming that Obama and other world leaders follow the “script”:

Chaotic Copenhagen: A truth slips out

I’ve never been one to subscribe to the “conspiracy theory of history”. Nor have I ever been particularly impressed with the works of the United Nations. As for “climate change” (formerly known as global warming), it seems to me that the “great expectations” of all who had blindly jumped onto the IPCC’s “CO2 causes global warming” bandwagon must be very unsettled by the revelations coming out of the “bleak house” called “Climategate”.

What the dickens is going on, they must be asking themselves … while watching the wobbly wheels fall off their wagon!

The US Heritage Foundation, an admittedly conservative “think-tank”, has two reporters blogging from Copenhagen. Here are some highlights from two of today’s entries:

Great news – Copenhagen is a disaster

“Collapsing in chaos” is a phrase the media is using to describe the Copenhagen climate conference, and that certainly is the feeling among many here at the Bella Center. Little has gone right, and indeed many registered participants were never even let in. The Danish minister in charge has resigned. Now, those of us who managed to make it in may get turned away for the crucial last two days Thursday and Friday.

U.N. Official Admits Copenhagen Conference “is Not a Climate Change Negotiation” .

Substantively, it looks as though little has been accomplished towards binding emissions targets to replace the expiring provisions in the existing Kyoto Protocol. The reason is simple – reducing carbon dioxide emissions is prohibitively expensive.

As the developed and developing worlds continue to spar here in Copenhagen over the terms of a comprehensive climate change treaty, a key United Nations official let the actual truth slip out as to what this conference is really about.

Janos Pasztor—the Director of U.N. secretary-general Ban Ki-moon’s Climate Change Support Team—was characterizing the nature of the talks between the rich and poor nations of the world when he said the following: “This is not a climate-change negotiation … It’s about something much more fundamental. It’s about economic strength.” The nations at the negotiation, he added, “just have to slug it out.” [emphases added -hro]

Even BC (Before Climategate) back in October, Pasztor was singing a slightly different tune:

Pasztor told a news conference “there is tremendous activity by governments in capitals and internationally to shape the outcome” of the climate change conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, in early December, which “is a good development” because political leadership is essential to make a deal.

But he indicated that Copenhagen most likely won’t produce a treaty, but instead will push governments as far as they can go on the content of an agreement.

Incidentally, even the Russians seem to be having some doubts regarding whether or not “the science is settled”.

One could take a rather (you should pardon the expression!) “skeptical” view of the Russians’ claim that:

Climategate has already affected Russia. On Tuesday, the Moscow-based Institute of Economic Analysis (IEA) issued a report claiming that the Hadley Center for Climate Change based at the headquarters of the British Meteorological Office in Exeter (Devon, England) had probably tampered with Russian-climate data.

To repeat, I do not subscribe to the “conspiracy theory of history”. But, it seems to me that if the CRU crew and their buddies around the world (who together succeeded in getting the “CO2 causes global warming” bandwagon rolling) expected the high level of funding for their “research” to continue after Copenhagen, the very last thing they should have been touting is that “the science is settled” (or too often heard words to that effect).

You see, if the outcome of the Copenhagen CarbonFest were to meet their wildest dreams, it would be “irresponsible” of the nations of the world to continue funding the CRUdites, wouldn’t it? More likely the response would be “thank you very much, your work is done here”.

So, with the CarbonFest in chaos – and the “real” agenda finally forging its way to the fore – a presumably non-binding “agreement” , rather than a binding “treaty”, appears to be in the works. This could keep the door open for continued funding of “climate science” research.

Perhaps in anticipation of this newly opened door, we now have the Russians stepping up to the (funding?!) plate, since it increasingly appears that the Hockey-stick Team has at least three strikes against them (and we’re still counting those strikes!)

Climategate: Scandal or “bloody miracle”?

James Delingpole, a longstanding AGW “skeptic”, has a very readable and oft-commented blog on the U.K. Telegraph site. His latest entry there begins:

Climategate: Al Gore spews the usual nonsense but this time no one believes him

Something truly remarkable happened at Copenhagen yesterday. Al Gore told yet another of his massive whoppers about ManBearPig. But this time no one believed him.

And speaking of “truly remarkable” … Delingpole also writes for the U.K. Spectator (although I find it remarkable that this is a page far less commented on, so I added my own, although it hasn’t appeared yet!) In an article posted on Dec. 9, Delingpole wrote about the state of the Climategate union, so to speak:

Watching the Climategate scandal explode …

It has been a weird, weird thing having a ringside seat at the messy unravelling of the greatest scientific scandal in the history of the world. The only experience in my life even vaguely similar was queuing outside the Wag club in the spring of 1988 watching all the straight people staring at us freaks, and thinking to myself: ‘God, just imagine how totally awesome it would be if this Acid House craze ever caught on.’

From a tiny germ of a story on a few specialist blogs, Climategate has gone über-viral in a way few of us sceptics could ever have dared hope. As I write, the name has clocked well over 30 million Google hits, which for me has been a bit like being a proud parent watching his singing, dancing little girl suddenly grow up to become Madonna — for ‘Climategate’ was sorta, kinda, partly my baby

[...]

Of course, the real stars of this story are two Canadians named Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick. One is a statistician, the other an economist, and if there’s one absolute certainty in this mucky, confused business it’s that McIntyre and McKitrick will one day be acclaimed as perhaps the most heroic and significant scientific double-act of our age.

[...]

At the beginning I called Climategate the biggest scientific scandal in the history of the world. And so it is, not so much because of what went on at the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, but because the repercussions are so huge. Until Climategate, our political masters were happy to present us, in the name of combating ‘climate change’, with a bill so enormous — $45 trillion — it threatens to wipe out the entire global economy. If Climategate succeeds in stopping this then it will no longer be a scandal. It will be a total bloody miracle. [links and emphasis added -hro]

Lord Monckton confuses AGW alarmist with … facts

Step right up, folks, and watch an observant/orthodox congregant of the Church of the Latter Day Feignts retreat to dutiful repetition of alarmist dogma (which, by definition, seems to preclude any independent thought on the part of adherents) whenever her beliefs are challenged by facts.

Hoist on their own carbon canard?

Unlike most mainstream media, Canada’s National Post has given considerable pre-Copenhagen coverage to what they call The Climate Question. This is not to say that they are now ignoring Copenhagen, because they’ve been running The Climate Question front and centre, so to speak.

For those who are not convinced that “the science is settled” (or even “solid” as one virtual friend – much to my disappointment – claimed in an E-mail I received today!) the Post’s five-part series, “Rethinking Green” which looks at “unexpected ways to help the environment”, might be of interest.

Today’s Front Page feature is headlined, “The 100 MILE Delusion” (superimposed on a deliciously ripe tomato!) Tagline (and conclusion) of story:

“Eat global, not local”
[...]
In part, farmer vendors charge more because they’ve been suddenly blessed with customers willing to pay more. But locally grown food, in many cases, is also more costly to produce, because Canadian labour and, often, land is worth more than in Brazil or China. Above all, though, local growing conditions for most foods are less productive than elsewhere. Every climate, obviously, has its strengths and weaknesses, and frequently, locally grown food is less efficiently produced than the imported stuff. Accounting for “food miles” — the key measure used by locavores (local produce eaters) — tells you how far food travels. It doesn’t tell you how much energy — and greenhouse gas emissions — went into growing it. When you add that in, and if your aim is to conserve fossil fuels and emissions, the best way is actually to skip the farmers’ market and eat global. [emphasis added -hro]

Don’t get me wrong, I do believe that “green is good” and I much prefer the taste of local produce. But as the studies cited in this article demonstrate, it would seem that the global warming alarmists who advocate slavish adherence to the “100 MILE Diet” have been hoist on their own carbon canard!

Catastrophe mongers’ lucrative game

Although you’d never know it by reading most of the mainstream media reports, Climategate has opened some otherwise closed doors for anthropogenic global warming (AGW) dissenting scientists.

Declan McCullagh’s “Taking Liberties” blog on cbs.com has several Climategate-related posts including one today in which he notes:

Physicists Stick to Warming Claim Post-ClimateGate

The professional association for physicists is facing internal pressure from some of its most distinguished members, who say the burgeoning ClimateGate scandal means the group should rescind its 2007 statement declaring that global warming represents a dire international emergency.

When CBSNews.com asked on Monday whether it will rethink the statement calling for immediate reductions in carbon dioxide emissions, the American Physical Society said it would not. APS spokeswoman Tawanda Johnson replied with a pre-ClimateGate announcement from November 10 reiterating support for the 2007 statement; neither APS president-elect Curtis Callan nor Johnson would answer other questions on the topic.

McCullagh notes that some APS dissenting physicists have circulated a petition regarding rescinding the statement. And he cites emails from some of the dissenters, including the following:

Hal Lewis of the University of California, Santa Barbara:

I think it behooves us to be careful about how we state the science. I know of nobody who denies that the Earth has been warming for thousands of years without our help (and specifically since the Little Ice Age a few hundred years ago), and is most likely to continue to do so in its own sweet time. The important question is how much warming does the future hold, is it good or bad, and if bad is it too much for normal adaptation to handle. The real answer to the first is that no one knows, the real answer to the second is more likely good than bad (people and plants die from cold, not warmth), and the answer to the third is almost certainly not. And nobody doubts that CO2 in the atmosphere has been increasing for the better part of a century, but the disobedient temperature seems not to care very much. And nobody denies that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, along with other gases like water vapor, but despite the claims of those who are profiting by this craze, no one knows whether the temperature affects the CO2 or vice versa. The weight of the evidence is the former.

So the tragedy is that the serious questions are quantitative, and it’s easy to fool people with slogans. If you say that the Earth is warming you are telling the truth, but not the whole truth, and if you say it is due to the burning of fossil fuels you are on thin ice. If you say that the Earth is warming and therefore catastrophe lies ahead, you are pulling an ordinary bait and switch scam. If you are a demagogue, of course, these distinctions don’t bother you — you have little interest in that quaint concept called truth.

So it isn’t simple, and the catastrophe mongers are playing a very lucrative game. [emphasis added -hro]

And in other news …

Canada’s National Post which (unlike most MSM) has been on the ball both BC and AC [Before Climategate and After Climategate], has a lead editorial in today’s edition:

Honk if you hate global warming

The spectacle at the world climate summit in Copenhagen leaves us wondering if there will be any consideration of the actual environment at the meeting. The lavish living by delegates and hangers-on, the over-the-top protests by enviro-crusaders, the threats by developing countries to pull out and the hollow promises from developed-world leaders — all occurring under the cloud of Climategate — make any practical, binding solutions on climate change unlikely, to say the least.

The first impression one receives of the summit is the sheer hypocrisy of it. Here are green campaigners who damn the rest of us for the size of our “carbon footprints” and challenge us each to reduce our carbon output by one tonne per year. Yet they themselves are flying in using a squadron of private jets, hiring a fleet of limousines and gorging themselves on expensive food flown in from around the world.

[...]

But wait …. there’s more …

As if Climategate wasn’t bad enough for the AGW cause, the U.K. Guardian reports that there’s now been a “leak” [h/t to Rob on WUWT]:

The so-called Danish text, a secret draft agreement worked on by a group of individuals known as “the circle of commitment” – but understood to include the UK, US and Denmark – has only been shown to a handful of countries since it was finalised this week.

[...]

The document was described last night by one senior diplomat as “a very dangerous document for developing countries. It is a fundamental reworking of the UN balance of obligations. It is to be superimposed without discussion on the talks”.

A confidential analysis of the text by developing countries also seen by the Guardian shows deep unease over details of the text.
[...]

“Circle of commitment”?! Oh, well … bottom line of Copenhagengate: the so-called “developing nations” are very unhappy campers. Which is really too bad, because the leaked document content keeps the focus far, far away from the underlying unkosher “meat” .

This “political agreement (hereinafter ‘the Copenhagen Agreement’), which will become effective immediately”, whose signing “parties” will agree to inter alia:

The Copenhagen Agreement

1. The Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (hereinafter “the Parties”) seek to further the implementation of the Convention in a manner that pursues its ultimate objective as stated in its Article 2, that recalls its provisions, and that is guided by the principles in Article 3.

I. A Shared Vision for Long-Term Cooperative Action

2. The Parties underline that climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our time and commit to a vigorous response through immediate ambitious national action and strengthened international cooperation with a view to limit global average temperature rise to a maximum of 2 degrees above pre-industrial  levels. The Parties are convinced of the need to address climate change bearing in mind that social and economic development and poverty eradication are the first and overriding priorities in developing countries. The Parties note that the largest share of historical global emissions of greenhouse gases originates in developed countries, and that per capita emissions in many developing countries are still relatively low. The Parties recognize the urgency of addressing the need for enhanced action on adaptation to climate change. They are equally convinced that moving to a low-emission economy is an opportunity to promote continued economic growth and sustainable development in all countries recognizing that gender equality is essential in achieving sustainable development. [emphasis mine -hro]

Notice the critical “2 degrees”, folks. This only appears twice more in the Agreement. CO2 (i.e. Carbon Dioxide, which the “science-is-settled” crowd tells us is the “primary” culprit of the dreaded Greenhouse Gases) is not even mentioned until one reaches the “Emissions outcomes expected, including baseline and timeframe” – contained in “Attachment B: National Mitigation Contributions”. Yet we find:

6 Carbon market(s)
2 Carbon stocks
1 Carbon offset (Attachment A, so perhaps it doesn’t count)

Sorry, no partridge in a pear tree.

On a page per document basis, this one has 13 (a rather unlucky number which will probably be longer – or shorter – when they’ve filled in the blanks). So, it’s kinda half-way between the 2 page “short, punchy statement” contained in the Communiqué and the 22 page Summary for Policymakers.

But the message of this “lucrative game” is very much still the same. And the foggy solution to the climate question steamroller just keeps rollin’ along.

Although I suppose that if this steamroller ever does come to a grinding halt, there will be some “revisionist scholars” (or even UN members/officials) who will, no doubt, find some way to blame the Jews and/or the State of Israel!

Stop the presses! CBC (constant purveyor of Al Gore’s myths, not to mention Suzuki’s contributions thereto) site has posted the following from producer Richard Handler (program is Ideas, which will evidently be broadcasting the recent Munk debate on this very issue, tomorrow night):

The four myths behind the climate change debate

This week much will be said about our warming planet, what with the gathering of heads of state and legions of scientists at the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen.

But I bet you won’t hear much of what Mike Hulme said recently: “If climate change didn’t exist, we’d have to invent it.”

Wait a minute … unless there’s more than one Mike Hulme in the field of “climate science”, it seems to me that he did give us the “fog of uncertainty” notwithstanding his 1997 contribution towards drumming up “support” for the pre-Kyoto EU Statement.