Thread: Rigging a Climate 'Consensus'

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...ctions_opinion

The climatologists at the center of the leaked email and document scandal have taken the line that it is all much ado about nothing. Yes, the wording of their messages was unfortunate, but they insist this in no way undermines the underlying science. They're ignoring the damage they've done to public confidence in the arbiters of climate science.

"What they've done is search through stolen personal emails—confidential between colleagues who often speak in a language they understand and is often foreign to the outside world," Penn State's Michael Mann told Reuters Wednesday. Mr. Mann added that this has made "something innocent into something nefarious."

Phil Jones, director of the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit, from which the emails were lifted, is singing from the same climate hymnal. "My colleagues and I accept that some of the published emails do not read well. I regret any upset or confusion caused as a result. Some were clearly written in the heat of the moment, others use colloquialisms frequently used between close colleagues," he said this week.

We don't doubt that Mr. Jones would have phrased his emails differently if he expected them to end up in the newspaper. He's right that it doesn't look good that his May 2008 email to Mr. Mann regarding the U.N.'s Fourth Assessment Report said "Mike, Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4?" Mr. Mann says he didn't delete any such emails, but the point is that Mr. Jones wanted them hidden.

The furor over these documents is not about tone, colloquialisms or whether climatologists are nice people. The real issue is what the messages say about the way the much-ballyhooed scientific consensus on global warming was arrived at, and how a single view of warming and its causes is being enforced. The impression left by the correspondence among Messrs. Mann and Jones and others is that the climate-tracking game has been rigged from the start.

According to this privileged group, only those whose work has been published in select scientific journals, after having gone through the "peer-review" process, can be relied on to critique the science. And sure enough, any challenges from critics outside this clique are dismissed and disparaged.

This September, Mr. Mann told a New York Times reporter in one of the leaked emails that: "Those such as [Stephen] McIntyre who operate almost entirely outside of this system are not to be trusted." Mr. McIntyre is a retired Canadian businessman who checks the findings of climate scientists and often publishes the mistakes he finds on his Web site, Climateaudit.org. He holds the rare distinction of having forced Mr. Mann to publish a correction to one of his more famous papers.

As anonymous reviewers of choice for certain journals, Mr. Mann & Co. had considerable power to enforce the consensus, but it was not absolute, as they discovered in 2003. Mr. Mann noted in a March 2003 email, after the journal "Climate Research" published a paper not to Mr. Mann's liking, that "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!"

Mr. Mann went on to suggest that the journal itself be blackballed: "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." In other words, keep dissent out of the respected journals. When that fails, redefine what constitutes a respected journal to exclude any that publish inconvenient views.

A more thoughtful response to the emails comes from Mike Hulme, another climate scientist at the University of East Anglia, as reported by a New York Times blogger:

"This event might signal a crack that allows for processes of re-structuring scientific knowledge about climate change. It is possible that some areas of climate science has become sclerotic. It is possible that climate science has become too partisan, too centralized. The tribalism that some of the leaked emails display is something more usually associated with social organization within primitive cultures; it is not attractive when we find it at work inside science."

The response from the defenders of Mr. Mann and his circle has been that even if they did disparage doubters and exclude contrary points of view, theirs is still the best climate science. The proof for this is circular. It's the best, we're told, because it's the most-published and most-cited—in that same peer-reviewed literature. The public has every reason to ask why they felt the need to rig the game if their science is as indisputable as they claim.

Libs will hold on to this myth, like a welfare babe buys losing Lotto tickets. They'll trust the fraud, even if it breaks our economy. Despite their looking glaringly stupid in the process.

is this all playing out on the media talk shows?

Originally Posted by Magog

is this all playing out on the media talk shows?

Yes, but the MSM would rather speculate on Tiger Wood's domestic problems, and his wreck.

Originally Posted by LCOF

Libs will hold on to this myth, like a welfare babe buys losing Lotto tickets. They'll trust the fraud, even if it breaks our economy. Despite their looking glaringly stupid in the process.

They'll try to hold onto it, but soon the ridicule will rise to a crescendo. If there is one thing that an idea cannot withstand, it's ridicule.

I showed that 'Hide the Decline' video to my stepson, and he laughed is ass off. School teachers will soon stop bringing up the subject of global warming when their students snicker at them. Algore had to flee a book signing because 500 protesters outside were chanting that he's a liar.

It's the end of the road for the Holy Church of Global Warming.

Originally Posted by bripat

They'll try to hold onto it, but soon the ridicule will rise to a crescendo. If there is one thing that an idea cannot withstand, it's ridicule.

I showed that 'Hide the Decline' video to my stepson, and he laughed is ass off. School teachers will soon stop bringing up the subject of global warming when their students snicker at them. Algore had to flee a book signing because 500 protesters outside were chanting that he's a liar.

It's the end of the road for the Holy Church of Global Warming.

The sad part of this is, that a breaking story such as this has to be drug out kicking and screaming. On the very week this all unravels, Obama announces he will attend Copenhagen, to sell America out. And still the media acts as if this is the issue it was last week.

At the very least someone needs to make the point that this is true, and pure agenda ridden. That it is nothing more than distributing wealth. We have record unemployment save for the "Bogus Districts", yet the pretense of Obama's trip to Copenhagen is given statesmen status.

"What they've done is search through stolen personal emails—confidential between colleagues who often speak in a language they understand and is often foreign to the outside world," Penn State's Michael Mann told Reuters Wednesday. Mr. Mann added that this has made "something innocent into something nefarious."


This moron thinks that he is the only scientist on the planet. Slowly, but surely, he will be pushed to the edges of the herd, and consumed by the wolves.

They are working on some new scam right now..... Aliens attacking Earth...... Black Holes stealing our oxygen..... Methane causes brain damage.... Jenkem cures cancer.......

Originally Posted by percysunshine

"What they've done is search through stolen personal emails—confidential between colleagues who often speak in a language they understand and is often foreign to the outside world," Penn State's Michael Mann told Reuters Wednesday. Mr. Mann added that this has made "something innocent into something nefarious."


This moron thinks that he is the only scientist on the planet. Slowly, but surely, he will be pushed to the edges of the herd, and consumed by the wolves.

Now I guess we're all too stupid to comprehend.
Like the voters who are too stupid to know who they meant to vote for.
Liberals.