Climategate is becoming a major scandal that is destroying the credibility of some of the world’s leading proponents that the Earth is getting warmer because of human activities and that this warming will lead to catastrophe.
The story started a little more than a week ago when damaging emails and other documents were leaked from a computer at the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, one of the leading centers for the study of global warming.
Some of the stories that have emerged over the past few days include attempts to “hide the decline” in temperatures despite increasing CO2 levels, evidence of manipulating data to make it fit the global warming agenda, requests to destroy emails to avoid Freedom of Information inquiries and intimidation of scientific journals to get them to stop publishing papers skeptical of global warming orthodoxy. I’ll be covering some of these stories in future articles.
Don’t expect to learn much about Climategate from mainstream news outlets though. They collectively have their head in the sand when it comes to Climategate and will go to great lengths to hide the decline in temperatures that is contradicting global warming models. 
IBD Editorials reports: “New York Times environmental reporter Andrew Revkin, who’s more global warming lobbyist than reporter, quoted — sparsely — from the e-mails, but declared that he would not post these texts on his ‘Dot Earth’ blog on the Times Web site: ‘The documents appear to have been acquired illegally and contain all manner of private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye, so they won’t be posted here.’” That’s rather strange new religion from a paper that during the Bush years had no problem releasing classified information that could damage the US and endangers Americans fighting abroad.
Instead, the “mainstream” media’s focus is on the global warming summit that will start in a little more than a week in Copenhagen and whether the last-minute announcement that President Obama will attend increases the chance for a major agreement to curb CO2 emissions.
Six weeks ago, when given an opportunity to cover Climategate, the mainstream media punted. The BBC received the leaked documents in October, but did not publish anything about them. Paul Hudson, a weather presenter and a climate change expert says that the documents where sent to him after he published a blog entry titled “Whatever Happened to Global Warming?”
Despite the attempts of major media outlets to ignore the issue, information about what the leaked documents contain is widely available. Anyone can now sift through the actual documents leaked. There are at least two sites that provide the ability to search through the documents: Pajamas Media and the Competitive Enterprise Institute have set up the Climategate Document Database . Eastangliaemails.com also provides access to the leaked information.
Given the availability of the information and how many people worldwide are analyzing the data, voices are appearing that recognize the serious impact of Climategate.
For example, a leading advocate of global warming and author of books on the subject, George Monbiot, has accepted that Climategate is a major blow to his cause, has apologized for not being a better journalist and has called for the resignation of the head of the CRU. More on this here.
Scientist have also commented on the seriousness of Climategate. From IBD Editorials:
The misconduct exposed by the e-mails is so apparent that one scientist, Tim Ball, said it marked “the death blow to climate science.” Another, Patrick Michaels, told the New York Times: “This is not a smoking gun; this is a mushroom cloud.”
Others are calling for an end to the attempts to reach global agreements on controlling CO2 at the Copenhagen global warming summit next month:
UK astrophysicist Piers Corbyn, of the long range solar forecast group Weather Action, declared that the ClimateGate revelations have rendered man-made global warming fears “false.”
“The case is blown to smithereens and this whole theory should be destroyed and discarded and Copenhagen conference should be closed,” Corbyn said in a contentious on air television exchange with an environmental activist with Russia’s WWF. The live TV debate with Corbyn appeared on Moscow’s RT TV on November 25, 2009.
…
“We should end this anti-scientific nonsense now,” Corbyn said.
…
The upcoming UN global warming summit in Copenhagen is a “complete waste of time,” according to Corbyn.
Unfortunately, the Copenhagen summit will proceed and the best hope is that no significant agreement will be reached.
{ 2 trackbacks }