The People The Warmists Destroyed, Pt 74

David Bellamy, that avuncular botanist from my childhood who educated and campaigned, who championed the environment and celebrated the natural world with an infectious enthusiasm few could (indeed can) ever match, was destroyed by the people behind the AGW alarmism simply for being what they deemed to be a dangerous "sceptic." It seems he might finally be vindicated, at the age of 76, following the Climategate scandal. Perhaps there is a little justice in this world of ours after all. And perhaps ordinary people need finally to wake-up and be a little more choosy about which experts and what claims they decide to believe in future.

Dr Bellamy's comments in an interview he gave to the Telegraph recently are rather moving in that they give you some idea of just how much damage the alarmists have been prepared to cause in their ruthless pursuit of their goals, goals which increasingly appear to have been covertly political rather than purely scientific in nature.

I spent my 50th birthday in jail. We were protesting against the flooding of this amazing river in Tasmania. I was in solitary confinement in Hobart’s Risdon Prison and Rosemary was getting hounded by the press, who kept asking about me. She said, 'For the first time in my life I know exactly where he is.’

I’m sceptical about man-made climate change. There’s absolutely no proof that carbon dioxide will kill us all. It’s not a poison, it’s the most important gas in the world. Carbon dioxide is an airborne fertiliser. How can farmers grow increasing amounts of food without a rise in CO2?

I used to be very popular but most of the green people won’t even speak to me any more. When I was sacked from the Wildlife Trusts because of my views they didn’t tell me, I read about it in the paper.

We now have evidence of just how genuine environmental activists and scientists who, like David Bellamy, happen not to subscribe to the AGW narrative, were deliberately targeted and ruined by the powerful climate change lobby. This report, for instance, just published on the Australian news site Heraldsun.au, whose newshound Andrew Bolt is tackling the story head on (unlike the rest of the MSM), gives you a fair idea of the lengths to which "The Team" were/are prepared to go to silence their critics, particularly when they were/are fellow scientists.

Sunday, November 22, 2009 at 12:02am

This time we’ll focus on the sheer thuggery of the “The Team” - how this conspiracy of powerful alarmist scientists tried to drive sceptics and non-allies out of their jobs, and even succeeded.

Here’s three examples:

Example one is the email from Tom Wigley to IPCC author Timothy Carter about the Climate Research journal, then edited by sceptic Chris de Freitas:

PS Re CR, I do not know the best way to handle the specifics of the editoring. Hans von Storch is partly to blame—he encourages the publication of crap science ‘in order to stimulate debate’. One approach is to go direct to the publishers and point out the fact that their journal is perceived as being a medium for disseminating misinformation under the guise of refereed work. I use the word ‘perceived’ here, since whether it is true or not is not what the publishers care about -- it is how the journal is seen by the community that counts.I think we could get a large group of highly credentialed scientists to sign such a letter—50+ people.Note that I am copying this view only to Mike Hulme and Phil Jones. Mike’s idea to get editorial board members to resign will probably not work—must get rid of von Storch too, otherwise holes will eventually fill up with people like Legates, Balling, Lindzen, Michaels, Singer, etc. I have heard that the publishers are not happy with von Storch, so the above approach might remove that hurdle too.

Further emails from the team in its successful pursuit of de Freitas’ scalp:

#1047388489
This was the danger of always criticising the skeptics for not publishing in the “peer-reviewed literature”. Obviously, they found a solution to that–take over a journal! So what do we do about this? I think we have to stop considering “Climate Research” as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board…What do others think?

#1047390562
I will be emailing the journal to tell them I’m having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor…

It results from this journal having a number of editors. The responsible one for this is a well-known skeptic in NZ. He has let a few papers through by Michaels and Gray in the past. I’ve had words with Hans von Storch about this, but got nowhere. Another thing to discuss in Nice !

#1051156418

This second case gets to the crux of the matter. I suspect that deFreitas deliberately chose other referees who are members of the skeptics camp. I also suspect that he has done this on other occasions. How to deal with this is unclear, since there are a number of individuals with bona fide scientific credentials who could be used by an unscrupulous editor to ensure that ‘anti-greenhouse’ science can get through the peer review process (Legates, Balling, Lindzen, Baliunas, Soon, and so on)….

Example two is the blocking of papers by sceptics and the less-alarmed to the IPCC deliberations:

1089318616.txt

Phil
To: “Michael
Subject: HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL
Date: Thu Jul 8 16:30:16 2004

Mike,

[personal and extraneous chat snipped]

The other paper by MM is just garbage – as you knew. De Freitas again. Pielke is also losing all credibility as well by replying to the mad Finn as well – frequently as I see it.

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

Example three is the driving out of Professor James Saiers as editor of the Geophysical Research Letters journal, which under him had published a sceptical paper by sceptics Sallie Baliunas and Wille Soon.

Here’s Tom Wigley to Michael “Hockey Stick” Mann:

1106322460 txt

Proving bad behavior here is very difficult. If you think that Saiers is in the greenhouse skeptics camp, then, if we can find documentary evidence of this, we could go through official AGU channels to get him ousted.

Mann writes:

Hi Malcolm,

[snip]

I’m not sure that GRL can be seen as an honest broker in these debates anymore, and it is probably best to do an end run around GRL now where possible. They have published far too many deeply flawed contrarian papers in the past year or so. There is no possible excuse for them publishing all 3 Douglass papers and the Soon et al paper. These were all pure crap.

There appears to be a more fundamental problem w/ GRL now, unfortunately…

Mike

Mann again:

Thanks Tom,

Yeah, basically this is just a heads up to people that something might be up here. What a shame that would be. It’s one thing to lose “Climate Research”. We can’t afford to lose GRL. I think it would be useful if people begin to record their experiences w/ both Saiers and potentially Mackwell (I don’t know him–he would seem to be complicit w/what is going on here).

If there is a clear body of evidence that something is amiss, it could be taken through the proper channels. I don’t that the entire AGU hierarchy has yet been compromised!

[snip]

mike

Mann again:

Dear All,

Just a heads up. Apparently, the contrarians now have an “in” with GRL. This guy Saiers has a prior connection w/ the University of Virginia Dept. of Environmental Sciences that causes m some unease.

I think we now know how the various Douglass et al papers w/ Michaels and Singer, the Soon et al paper, and now this one have gotten published in GRL,

Mike

Saiers was soon gone.

And so was Bellamy. Pretty chilling stuff. I'll be following Andrew Bolt's blog with interest from now on. If you care about the truth, I recommend that you do too.

The hacked files can be downloaded here
.

A Little Light Reading: Climategate Titbits

Thanks to Bishops Hill for these. Sifting through about a 1000 emails, some very long, is a big job. Then again, collectively the blogosphere has a lot of eyes. I should add that I've been told it is necessary to be slightly cautious about these because the email hacks lack mail headers, the inclusion of which would have lent them greater forensic credibility and would have made them easier to authenticate. Some servers don't include mail headers, however, especially older ones, and since Phil Jones has already said that they seem genuine, then the lack of headers should not inspire too much concern.

• Phil Jones writes to University of Hull to try to stop sceptic Sonia Boehmer Christiansen using her Hull affiliation. Graham F Haughton of Hull University says its easier to push greenery there now SB-C has retired.(1256765544)
• Michael Mann discusses how to destroy a journal that has published sceptic papers.(1047388489)
• Tim Osborn discusses how data are truncated to stop an apparent cooling trend showing up in the results (0939154709). Analysis of impact here. Wow!
• Phil Jones describes the death of sceptic, John Daly, as "cheering news".
• Phil Jones encourages colleagues to delete information subject to FoI request.(1212063122)
• Phil Jones says he has use Mann's "Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series"...to hide the decline". Real Climate says "hiding" was an unfortunate turn of phrase.(0942777075)
• Letter to The Times from climate scientists was drafted with the help of Greenpeace.(0872202064)
• Mann thinks he will contact BBC's Richard Black to find out why another BBC journalist was allowed to publish a vaguely sceptical article.(1255352257)
• Kevin Trenberth says they can't account for the lack of recent warming and that it is a travesty that they can't.(1255352257)
• Tom Wigley says that Lindzen and Choi's paper is crap.(1257532857)
• Tom Wigley says that von Storch is partly to blame for sceptic papers getting published at Climate Research. Says he encourages the publication of crap science. Says they should tell publisher that the journal is being used for misinformation. Says that whether this is true or not doesn't matter. Says they need to get editorial board to resign. Says they need to get rid of von Storch too. (1051190249)
• Ben Santer says (presumably jokingly!) he's "tempted, very tempted, to beat the crap" out of sceptic Pat Michaels. (1255100876)
• Mann tells Jones that it would be nice to '"contain" the putative Medieval Warm Period'. (1054736277)
• Tom Wigley tells Jones that the land warming since 1980 has been twice the ocean warming and that this might be used by sceptics as evidence for urban heat islands.(1257546975)
• Tom Wigley say that Keith Briffa has got himself into a mess over the Yamal chronology (although also says it's insignificant. Wonders how Briffa explains McIntyre's sensitivity test on Yamal and how he explains the use of a less-well replicated chronology over a better one. Wonders if he can. Says data withholding issue is hot potato, since many "good" scientists condemn it.(1254756944)
• Briffa is funding Russian dendro Shiyatov, who asks him to send money to personal bank account so as to avoid tax, thereby retaining money for research.(0826209667)
• Kevin Trenberth says climatologists are nowhere near knowing where the energy goes or what the effect of clouds is. Says nowhere balancing the energy budget. Geoengineering is not possible.(1255523796)
• Mann discusses tactics for screening and delaying postings at Real Climate.(1139521913)
• Tom Wigley discusses how to deal with the advent of FoI law in UK. Jones says use IPR argument to hold onto code. Says data is covered by agreements with outsiders and that CRU will be "hiding behind them".(1106338806)
• Overpeck has no recollection of saying that he wanted to "get rid of the Medieval Warm Period". Thinks he may have been quoted out of context.(1206628118)
• Mann launches RealClimate to the scientific community.(1102687002)
• Santer complaining about FoI requests from McIntyre. Says he expects support of Lawrence Livermore Lab management. Jones says that once support staff at CRU realised the kind of people the scientists were dealing with they became very supportive. Says the VC [vice chancellor] knows what is going on (in one case).(1228330629)
• Rob Wilson concerned about upsetting Mann in a manuscript. Says he needs to word things diplomatically.(1140554230)
• Briffa says he is sick to death of Mann claiming his reconstruction is tropical because it has a few poorly temp sensitive tropical proxies. Says he should regress these against something else like the "increasing trend of self-opinionated verbiage" he produces. Ed Cook agrees with problems.(1024334440)
• Overpeck tells Team to write emails as if they would be made public. Discussion of what to do with McIntyre finding an error in Kaufman paper. Kaufman's admits error and wants to correct. Appears interested in Climate Audit findings.(1252164302)
• Jones calls Pielke Snr a prat.(1233249393)
• Santer says he will no longer publish in Royal Met Soc journals if they enforce intermediate data being made available. Jones has complained to head of Royal Met Soc about new editor of Weather [why?data?] and has threatened to resign from RMS.(1237496573)
• Reaction to McIntyre's 2005 paper in GRL. Mann has challenged GRL editor-in-chief over the publication. Mann is concerned about the connections of the paper's editor James Saiers with U Virginia [does he mean Pat Michaels?]. Tom Wigley says that if Saiers is a sceptic they should go through official GRL channels to get him ousted. (1106322460) [Note to readers - Saiers was subsequently ousted]
• Later on Mann refers to the leak at GRL being plugged.(1132094873)
• Jones says he's found a way around releasing AR4 review comments to David Holland.(1210367056)
• Wigley says Keenan's fraud accusation against Wang is correct. (1188557698)
• Jones calls for Wahl and Ammann to try to change the received date on their alleged refutation of McIntyre [presumably so it can get into AR4](1189722851)
• Mann tells Jones that he is on board and that they are working towards a common goal.(0926010576)
• Mann sends calibration residuals for MBH99 to Osborn. Says they are pretty red, and that they shouldn't be passed on to others, this being the kind of dirty laundry they don't want in the hands of those who might distort it.(1059664704)
• Prior to AR3 Briffa talks of pressure to produce a tidy picture of "apparent unprecedented warming in a thousand years or more in the proxy data". [This appears to be the politics leading the science] Briffa says it was just as warm a thousand years ago.(0938018124)
• Jones says that UK climate organisations are coordinating themselves to resist FoI. They got advice from the Information Commissioner [!](1219239172)
• Mann tells Revkin that McIntyre is not to be trusted.(1254259645)
• Revkin quotes von Storch as saying it is time to toss the Hockey Stick . This back in 2004.(1096382684)
• Funkhouser says he's pulled every trick up his sleeve to milk his Kyrgistan series. Doesn't think it's productive to juggle the chronology statistics any more than he has.(0843161829)
• Wigley discusses fixing an issue with sea surface temperatures in the context of making the results look both warmer but still plausible. (1254108338)
• Jones says he and Kevin will keep some papers out of the next IPCC report.(1089318616)
• Tom Wigley tells Mann that a figure Schmidt put together to refute Monckton is deceptive and that the match it shows of instrumental to model predictions is a fluke. Says there have been a number of dishonest presentations of model output by authors and IPCC.(1255553034)
• Grant Foster putting together a critical comment on a sceptic paper. Asks for help for names of possible reviewers. Jones replies with a list of people, telling Foster they know what to say about the paper and the comment without any prompting.(1249503274)
• David Parker discussing the possibility of changing the reference period for global temperature index. Thinks this shouldn't be done because it confuses people and because it will make things look less warm.(1105019698)
• Briffa discusses an sceptic article review with Ed Cook. Says that confidentially he needs to put together a case to reject it (1054756929)
• Ben Santer, referring to McIntyre says he hopes Mr "I'm not entirely there in the head" will not be at the AGU.(1233249393)
• Jones tells Mann that he is sending station data. Says that if McIntyre requests it under FoI he will delete it rather than hand it over. Says he will hide behind data protection laws. Says Rutherford screwed up big time by creating an FTP directory for Osborn. Says Wigley worried he will have to release his model code. Also discuss AR4 draft. Mann says paleoclimate chapter will be contentious but that the author team has the right personalities to deal with sceptics.(1107454306)

Not pretty - and pretty devastating for the alarmists and liars, frankly. And remember, this is only the beginning.

Via: Letters from a Tory

PS: Download the hacked Hadley documents here
and check them for yourselves. The reference numbers of the emails that provide evidence for the above allegations have been included.

Delingpole Rumbles The World's Press

James Delingpole's blogpost earlier today, in which he fisks the world's liberal and socialist press over the great Global Warming scandal, reveals something quite unsurprising but nevertheless fairly unnerving: all the reporting, in what I assume are unconnected news outlets, has been the same, even down to the language used. The only differences are not in message or in tone ("sceptics" cause trouble; silly deniers gleeful), but in syntax and the odd bit of vocabulary. It's symptomatic, really, of just how powerful the alarmists and liars have become: they have place men in newspapers and broadcast networks all over the world so that whenever something emerges that really might hurt them (like the truth), they can manage the media globally and immediately. They have the power to manipulate the world's press instantly - everywhere - with just an email and a phonecall.

So it seems that the only thing 'global' about climate change is the propaganda. And as such it makes Delingpole's final remarks all the more significant, doesn't it?

See what you think. Delingpole:

Here’s what the Times has had to say on the subject:

E-mails allegedly written by some of the world’s leading climate scientists have been stolen by hackers and published on websites run by climate change sceptics.

The sceptics claim that the e-mails are evidence that scientists manipulated data in order to strengthen their argument that human activities were causing global warming.

(Yep – definitely an improvement on their earlier, non-existent coverage; but not exactly pointing up the scandalousness of this scandal).

And the Independent:

(Yep. Nada).

And here’s how The New York Times (aka Pravda) reported it:

Hundreds of private e-mail messages and documents hacked from a computer server at a British university are causing a stir among global warming skeptics, who say they show that climate scientists conspired to overstate the case for a human influence on climate change.

(Yep. That’s right. It has only apparently caused a stir among ’skeptics’. Everyone else can rest easy. Nothing to see here.)

And here’s how the Guardian has reported it:

Hundreds of private emails and documents allegedly exchanged between some of the world’s leading climate scientists during the past 13 years have been stolen by hackers and leaked online, it emerged today.

The computer files were apparently accessed earlier this week from servers at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit, a world-renowned centre focused on the study of natural and anthropogenic climate change.

(Oh. I get it. It’s just a routine data-theft story, not a scandal. And a chance to remind us of the CRU’s integrity and respectability. And – see below – to get in a snarky, ‘let’s have a dig at the deniers’ quote from Greenpeace).

A spokesman for Greenpeace said: “If you looked through any organisation’s emails from the last 10 years you’d find something that would raise a few eyebrows. Contrary to what the sceptics claim, the Royal Society, the US National Academy of Sciences, Nasa and the world’s leading atmospheric scientists are not the agents of a clandestine global movement against the truth. This stuff might drive some web traffic, but so does David Icke.”

Here’s the Washington Post:

Hackers broke into the electronic files of one of the world’s foremost climate research centers this week and posted an array of e-mails in which prominent scientists engaged in a blunt discussion of global warming research and disparaged climate-change skeptics.

The skeptics have seized upon e-mails stolen from the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in Britain as evidence that scientific data have been rigged to make it appear as if humans are causing global warming. The researchers, however, say the e-mails have been taken out of context and merely reflect an honest exchange of ideas.

(Ah, so what the story is really about is ’skeptics’ causing trouble. Note how as high as the second par the researchers are allowed by the reporter to get in their insta-rebuttal, lest we get the impression that the scandal in any way reflects badly on them).

Here is the BBC:

E-mails reportedly from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU), including personal exchanges, appeared on the internet on Thursday.

A university spokesman confirmed the email system had been hacked and that information was taken and published without permission.

An investigation was underway and the police had been informed, he added.

(Ah yes, another routine data-theft story so dully reported – “the police had been informed, he added” – that you can’t even be bothered to reach the end to find out what information was stolen).

Meanwhile, the Climategate scandal (and I do apologise for calling it that, but that’s how the internet works: you need obvious, instantly memorable, event-specific search terms) continues to set the Blogosphere ablaze.

For links to all the latest updates on this, I recommend Marc Morano’s invaluable Climate Depot site.

And if you want to read those potentially incriminating emails in full, go to An Elegant Chaos org where they have all been posted in searchable form.

Like the Telegraph’s MPs’ expenses scandal, this is the gift that goes on giving. It won’t, unfortunately, derail Copenhagen (too many vested interests involved) or cause any of our many political parties to start talking sense on “Climate change”. But what it does demonstrate is the growing level of public scepticism towards Al Gore’s Anthropogenic Global Warming theory. That’s why, for example, this story is the single most read item on today’s Telegraph website.

What it also demonstrates – as my dear chum Dan Hannan so frequently and rightly argues – is the growing power of the Blogosphere and the decreasing relevance of the Mainstream Media (MSM).

This is not altogether the MSM’s fault. Partly it is just the way of things that more and more readers prefer their news and opinion served up in snappier, less reverent, more digestible and instant for.

But in the case of “Climate Change”, the MSM has been caught with its trousers down. The reason it has been so ill-equipped to report on this scandal is because almost all of its Environmental Correspondents and Environmental Editors are parti pris members of the Climate-Fear Promotion lobby. Most of their contacts (and information sources) work for biased lobby groups like Greenpeace and the WWF, or conspicuously pro-AGW government departments and Quangos such as the Carbon Trust. How can they bring themselves to report on skullduggery at Hadley Centre when the scientists involved are the very ones whose work they have done most to champion and whose pro-AGW views they share?

As Upton Sinclair once said:

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.”

So don’t expect this scandal to be written up in the MSM any time soon. But why would you want to anyway? It’s all here, where the free spirits and independent thinkers are, on the Blogosphere.

Seems us online little people are on our own, then. Good.

Leading Hadley Centre Climate Scientist Said: "Hide the Decline"

Hide the decline in global temperatures, that is.

I don't usually write about climate change because there's no future in it - at least that's what I used to think, until now. This astonishing revelation, made possible by braver souls than I, has changed my mind - forever.

From: Phil Jones
To: ray bradley ,mann@virginia.edu, mhughes@ltrr.arizona.edu
Subject: Diagram for WMO Statement
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 13:31:15 +0000
Cc: k.briffa@uea.ac.uk,t.osborn@uea.ac.uk

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) amd from
1961 for Keith's to hide the decline. Mike's series got the annual
land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land
N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999
for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for 1999 with
data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998.
Thanks for the comments, Ray.

Cheers
Phil

Phil Jones has admitted this is genuine.

Download the hacked Hadley documents here, start reading (it'll take you a while - there's 168MBs of explosive stuff) - and stop believing in AGW. Immediately.

I have.

Hat-tip: Old Holborn

Old Grinners, Part 2

As promised, part 2 of the list of superannuated troughers who've qualified (or nearly qualified) for their free bus passes, set to some appropriate music.



From outstanding YouTube channel and bottomless well of late 20th century musical and political nostalgia: ajs41

Part 1 is here.

(Borrowed) Quote of the Day

Letters from a Tory has picked up Dan Hannan's powerful comment on the recent imposition by secret committee of an over-promoted, over-gonged socialist/Labourist paper shuffler, "Baroness" Ashton, on the half a billion people who make-up the entirely undemocratic EU as some sort of "Foreign Minister". In spite of the fact that the BBC was desperately trying to play down the shocking anti-democratic gall of this appointment, proposing - laughably - that it, and the choice of a "boring" Belgian as the so-called EU President, represents the end of the road for EU federalism, the reality remains that, as Michael Portillo said yesterday on This Week to slimy Europhile Chris Huhne, the Eurozone is "not a democratic space". As Portillo went on, it is therefore "impossible to be anything other than Eurosceptic" since, I assume he meant, that that half billion people, including 65 million Britons, are being railroaded into some weird form of liberal/socialist paternalistic authoritarianism.

All these appointments, and the increases in central EU powers they embody, will achieve is to increase the frustration felt by literally hundreds of millions of people at what is rightly perceived as a further undermining not only of the sovereignty of nation states, but also of the principle of representative democracy itself. The EU's democratic deficit has just grown much larger - and, therefore, by the same token, has the threat to European peace in terms of social and political stability. Frustration, if left unassuaged, often boils over into fury. An awful lot of people don't like power grabs, especially surreptitious socialist ones, which is what this latest shameful episode amounts to. It's an insult to our intelligence, not to mention to the memory of hundreds of thousands of British soldiers who died fighting to protect British democracy from a foreign menace.

But, ultimately, to me that's all Ashton's appointment really represents: a bloody insult - and a deliberate one at that.

Dan Hannan:

“Everything about this process rubs our noses in how undemocratic the EU is. It’s not just the way Baroness Ashton was appointed; it’s her whole career. Lady Ashton is a lifelong quangocrat who has never once been elected to anything. She went from running a health authority to working at the National Council for One Parent Families to being a Labour life peer, to leading the Lords, all without facing the voters. She steered the Lisbon Treaty through the Upper House, cancelling the referendum on it that all three parties had promised. She was then appointed to the European Commission because Gordon Brown wanted to avoid a by-election. Now, she gets the top job as a kind of compensation to Labour over the rejection of Tony Blair. Every chapter in the story is a denial of the democratic principle.”

- Dan Hannan takes aim at Baroness Ashton, newly appointed EU foreign affairs supremo (full article HERE)

There's nothing more to add to that. What should follow is action.