THIS PAGE HAS BEEN ACTIVATED AS THE NEW STATESMAN BLOG IS NOW CLOSED FOR COMMENTS
At 10am this morning, the New Statesman finally closed the Mark Lynas thread on their website after 1715 comments had been added over a period of five months. I don’t know whether this constitutes any kind of a record, but gratitude is certainly due to the editor of of the New Statesman for hosting the discussion so patiently and also for publishing articles from Dr David Whitehouse and Mark Lynas that have created so much interest.
This page is now live, and anyone who would like to continue the discussion here is welcome to do so. I have copied the most recent contributions at the New Statesman as the first comment for the sake of convenience. If you want to refer back to either of the original threads, then you can find them here:
Dr David Whitehouse’s article can be found here with all 1289 comments.
Mark Lynas’ attempted refutation can be found here with 1715 comments.
Welcome to Harmless Sky, and happy blogging.
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10,000 Responses to “Continuation of the New Statesman Whitehouse/Lynas blogs.”
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The Wall Street Journal
Hacked: Sensitive Documents Lifted from Hadley Climate Center
http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/2009/11/20/hacked-sensitive-documents-lifted-from-hadley-climate-center/
Brute: you ask if a fraudster/whistle-blower could be prosecuted. Well, yes. But that wouldn’t affect the validity or otherwise of the data and would only serve to draw yet more attention to it. So I doubt if it would happen.
It is quite apparent that someone-Fenton Communications?- has written a highly professional piece of Pr that is currently fronting the Real Climate report on this. One can only assume they are co-ordinating other responses as well.
Tonyb
TonyB:
You say (8353) “that someone – Fenton Communications? – has written a highly professional piece of PR that is currently fronting the Real Climate report on this”. I disagree: IMHO, whoever wrote this did a poor job of dealing with an admittedly challenging brief.
Consider a few key passages:
It may well be illegal: if the evidence was clear, a hacker could be prosecuted – see my 8352. But illegality doesn’t in any way affect the value or importance of the data revealed. And “unethical”? Was the Watergate break-in unethical?
Then it says:
That’s no more than the standard PeterM-type reaction: these ghastly deniers are interested only in conspiracy, “wicked” supporters, a “hoax” or left wing influence – not in dealing with the science. And I daresay there are some commentators on the blogosphere who fall into that category. But look at CA or WUWT: the vast majority of comments are about a basic question – what this correspondence appears to reveal about the way the warmists practice their science. I suggest the comment I quote at 8340 is a good example.
Then we have:
Again, the fact that the emails were stolen or personal has no relevance to the value or importance of material they contain. Suppose they’d been emails stolen from Exxon containing dubious attempts at undermining AGW? Would RC (or the MSM for that matter) be shy about commenting? Er … I think not. The “only response”? It may not like them, but RC is more aware than most that there have been innumerable powerful responses over the years. And “probably isn’t much to it”? Hmm … sounds a bit unsure of its ground.
Robin
I disagree. The RC frontpiece is a classic piece of PR which defuses the situation by expressing righteous indignation whilst giving out the message that the deniers are every bit as unethical and uninformed as ‘we’ have been calmly pointing out over the years.
Fenton are very slick and this is a good response given the time scale and damage limitation required.
Gavin seems uncomfortable in his role as moral arbiter though. Whether they can hold the line depends on what else comes out once people have had a good chance to really examine the material in detail.
Tonyb
As the Sunday papers are put together, news editors are going to have to decide whether ‘Emails Stolen from Climate Researchers’ makes a good story, or would it be better to go with ‘Climate Researchers in Leaked Emails Scandal’.
It will be interesting to see whether journalistic instinct triumphs over political correctness. I’d say it’s a toss-up.
TonyN,
I think the major news outlets will demonize the “act” of leaking the e-mails, paint CRU/Jones, et al as the “victims” and won’t print any of the contents of the E-mails.
I’ve been sending this story to everyone I know…..that’s the only way that the insidiousness of this cabal will ever be exposed.
Brute
On the RC site you cited (8346) a blogger named John Bunt has sent this very pertinent message (#73):
You are correct that the AGW crowd will respond with howls of illegal and immoral foul play, while the anti-AGW cloud will howl for the need for total transparency.
Who is right?
Whistleblowers are heroes in the eyes of some and scoundrels in the eyes of those who have been exposed, but I believe the post by Bunt puts it all in proper perspective.
Met Office and other publicly funded institutions must be totally transparent and open to scrutiny by those who pay their salaries, i.e. the taxpayers. Destroying (or “losing”) evidence or data is unacceptable.
Max
Max,
I joke around quite a bit. Sincerly, reading through these E-mails all day, I see a perversion of science.
I see a group of “scientists’ with a very large microphone at their disposal, twisting and distorting data to fit their philosophical agenda…….maliciously.
These are not gracious, respectable people. They are arrogant and self serving (in the context of their personal beliefs), men that are beneath contempt.
This has nothing to do with the “science” of “climate change”……these men are not scientists, they are propagandists for their personal causes.
Candidly, it makes me nauseous to read what these guys are up to.
Hopefully, their careers will be over very, very shortly.
Check out this comment from Anthony Watts’ site……
From: Phil Jones
To: “Michael E. Mann”
Subject: HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL
Date: Thu Jul 8 16:30:16 2004
I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!
Cheers
Phil
Don’t let anyone read this either,
Brute and Max
You will enjoy this site
http://www.anelegantchaos.org/cru/emails.php?page=38&pp=25
Tonyb
Brute
On the morality and consequences of whistle-blowing:
Sherron Watkins, the Enron executive who warned company founder, Ken Lay, of potential whistle-blowers in the company, eventually testified before US Congress and became known as the “Enron whistle-blower”, although she never “blew a whistle”. Time magazine named her a “person of the year 2002”.
Stanley Adams, an executive at Hoffmann-LaRoche, passed on company evidence of price fixing to the EU predecessor organization in 1973. He was arrested for industrial espionage by the Swiss government and spent six months in jail.
Katharine Teresa Gun, a translator for a British intelligence agency, leaked top-secret information to the press concerning activities of the USA leading to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Gun was charged with leaking official secrets, and after many people demanded that the case be dropped, the prosecution dropped the case. Among the protesters were Daniel Ellsberg, the US government official who leaked the “Pentagon Papers” (Bunt’s post) and US actor Sea Penn, who described her as “a hero of the human spirit”.
So one person’s hero (for whistle-blowing) is the next guy’s jailbird.
Max
Thanks Tobyb,
I skipped through a couple of the comments….wow, these people certainly travel a lot!
If we could get their travel records possibly we could calculate their personal carbon footprints and deduct it from their salaries?
Again, seriously, reading through these comments makes me ill. Somewhere in the back of my mind the “evil” Brute suspected that they sent skeevy E-mails like this back and forth……in my wildest imagination did I think that it was actually true.
Brute
Well, “trick” can have a few meanings. Apparently “climatologists” (and hookers) use this word for something other than the normal meaning.
I thought this blog exchange on RC was interesting (and funny, especially the visceral reaction by GS:
[How wrong can this blogger be in the eyes of “trickster” Gavin?]
Max
Brute and TonyB
Was Mann’s “trick” [to erase several hundred years of well-documented history and declare the MWP and LIA non-existent] “a good way to deal with a problem”? [RC definition of “trick”.]
Guess he and his co-authors (plus IPCC) thought so, until it was exposed as “something designed to fool or swindle” by McIntyre + McKitrick (plus the Wegman panel). [Dictionary definition of “trick”.]
[At any rate I do not believe it was the “hooker” definition, which I would call “screwee”, in the legal sense.]
I just love semantics.
Max
Brute
You commented on the amount of travel of the Hadley guys.
I’m sure TonyB is content knowing that his tax money helped pay for these guys to swan around at government expense.
Max
Max,
I see Gavin stammering on about this one over at Real Climate. I understand “trick” in the context of a “work around”…..I use the term “trick of the trade” all the time in reference to a shortcut that a more experience tradesman has shown me….an easier way of accomplishing the same job.
HIS problem is using “trick” in the same sentence as “adding real temperatures” and “hide the decline”. Gavin is backpeddling……he’s trying to defend the indefensible. Jones seems to have the good sense to keep his mouth shut and let his attorneys handle his credibility problem.
These guys have some serious problems with the release of this information…..serious problems.
Schmidt is attempting to defend himself.
“The lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client”………
Max,
Also, Peter Martin is conspicuously absent.
I share Brute’s moral outrage, but he doesn’t understand the British Way if he thinks Jones’ career is in any danger. There’ll be no slashed wrists on the towpath for Jones. Maybe a lowly CBE instead of a knighthood, and no Presidency of the Royal Society to top off his career. Bad as the electric chair, in British terms, but the science will continue unhindered.
I agree with TonyN that Sunday’s newspaper coverage will be an important sign. A decade ago this would have been worth four pages in any one of the Sunday heavies. But trashing establisment scientists serves no-one’s political agenda, so I don’t hold out much hope.
Neither the Independent nor the Times have covered this story, though it has two perennially sexy angles – computer hacking and climate science. But the science is complicated and the political implications are confusing. All parties have agreed to hand over arbitration of our future to an organisation, the IPCC, which has been shown to be corrupt. And anyway, we’ve just elected two new leaders, Mr Thing and Lady Whatsit, so they can deal with it.
Democracy was a nice idea, but let’s face it, it’s so 20th century. I’m learning Chinese, and encouraging my children and grandchildren to do the same.
Cheers everyone.
Brute
We have a society obsessed with sex, football and celebrity (preferably all at the same time)
All of these ingredients are absent from the emails. The Sunday heavyweight papers will be a guide as to how much of this has got into the main stream-I suspect not very much.
We have been lied to about immigration, the EU, Global warming, Expenses and numerous other subjects. When caught they ignore or deny. Will this be any different? I doubt it.
I suspect Copenhagen will continue with barely a pause, but a crack does now run through the temple of the Church of Climate Science. Whether anyone can bring it tumbling down is another matter.
Did you read my piece on Copenhagen?
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/11/05/invisible-elephants/
Tonyb
TonyB: you say (8355), “the RC frontpiece is a classic piece of PR which defuses the situation”. That would be true if it caused the blogosphere (and especially CA and WUWT) to have second thoughts and lay off the issue. But I see no sign of that happening.
No, I stick with my earlier comment that it does “a poor job of dealing with an admittedly challenging brief”. Look at my 8354 examples.
It sounds to me like a typically Establishment response to having been caught out – all that pious tut-tut stuff about ethics. Most revealing however is what it reveals about the criticism they (like PeterM) would like to be facing (“worldwide conspiracy”, “nefarious funding”, “hoax”, “socialist/communist/vegetarian overlords”, etc.) rather than the criticism they are facing: unprofessional use of data, poor scientific practice, ways of avoiding McIntyre’s and FOII requests, how best to influence the news and politicians, etc. That’s what concerns serious commentators, not “robust discussions”, impolite exchanges and criticisms of the media and Steve McIntyre as RC foolishly believes or would prefer to believe.
And I loved the comment that “The timing of this particular episode is probably not coincidental”. I suppose all the scare stories to which we are being subjected in the lead up to Copenhagen are a complete coincidence.
If these emails are genuine, I agree with Brute: “These guys have some serious problems with the release of this information”. The RC statement has done nothing to defuse that.
TonyB, I think your invisible elephants presentation was very good. Living close to the Heathrow area (extremely built-up and comprising huge swathes of concrete and tarmac) the temperature difference with surrounding areas is often very noticeable; colleagues driving in from the countryside see their cars’ temperature readings swiftly climb as soon as they get within the M25 – UHI at first hand.
Geoff, I like your comment about Mr Thing and Lady Whatsit (!) – although is “elected” really the right word?
Well, yesterday was interesting! Although there is perhaps no single killer blow to AGW to emerge (yet?) from within these files, I would agree with others here that (if what we’re seeing is the genuine, unadulterated article) the overall picture is that of a bunch of people doing whatever they can – nipping, tucking, massaging, manicuring, tweaking – to make sure that whatever science comes out the other end serves a certain agenda.
Something that James Delingpole wrote recently in his blog struck a chord:
“…despite what Professor Ian Plimer said in his Spectator lecture last week, this is a war we’re fighting. Plimer was talking about how the language of war had no place in science because it is simply a process of discovery, with one hypothesis being replaced by another. I’d agree with this if I thought science was the only factor in the global warming debate, but sadly it ain’t. It’s at least as much about politics, money, economics, horse-trading, personalities and perhaps above all about propaganda…”
Robin #8372
I also said;
“Whether they can hold the line depends on what else comes out once people have had a good chance to really examine the material in detail.”
The Real Climate PR piece was good in the context of an initial position. Time will tell if this blows over or not. See my #8371
Alex
Thanks for your kind comments about my article. We in Britain are currently being told the tragic rainfall event in Cumbria comprised a record-needless to say it was caused by Global Warming.
Unfortunate as it was, that is not so. The event was cauised by a stalled ‘rainfall conveyor’ a natural event.
Met office rainfall readings are taken over a specific 24 hour period 9am to 9pm-this event is uniquely taken from a random 24 hour period so has changed the rules.
We only had 160 rainfall gauges from 1865 when rainfall was first ‘officialy’ recorded, to day we have 6000 so we are much more likely to pick up events.
Who said it was a record? Chris Smith Chairman of the Environment Agency who by a strange coincidence (coincidence hah!) is also chair of the Advertising Standards Authority- the very people who vetted the complaints about the recent co2 advert we all got irritated about.
The record remains with Martinstown in 1955-we also have dozens of other ‘unofficial’ (but well documented) records that missed the paucity of rain gauges in the past.
Tonyb
This apology of an article is now open for comments
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/20/climate-sceptics-email-hacking