Politics

Climate Audit: McKitrick and Nierenberg 2010 Rebuts Another Team Article

Steve McIntyre exposes yet another damning example of how key members of the "climate science" community are dishonest brokers, at best.

As we saw in the CRU Emails, peer review for "climate science" is broken, and continues to be. Those of you who said the emails were taken out of context (even though plenty of proper context was provided), here you go. Context, and an apparent biased journal editor for the International Journal of Climatology, Andrew Comrie.

Essentially, an outside reviewer, and primary author of the paper being rebutted, was allowed to provide comments to the journal, but the paper's authors (McKittrick and Nierenberg) were not given the opportunity to reply, and their paper was rejected. They were forced to publish in another (non-climate) journal over which the "Hockey Team" had no control. According to McKittrick, none of the criticisms of the paper showed technical flaws, but merely dismissed the paper.

And, get this, Gavin Schmidt, the adversarial outside reviewer, asked McKittrick for his data and code, and McKittrick gave it to him. Why doesn't this happen in the opposite direction? There are STILL climate papers out there, which are used by the IPCC, that have no been replicated by anyone outside "the Team", and are therefore suspect and should not be considered for major policy decisions.

Remember Phil Jones' response to Bishop Hill when asked for data:

“Even if WMO agrees, I will still not pass on the data. We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it.”

Found this story on MSN about "Most memorable professional mistakes."

So I read through them, and didn't find them particularly memorable; wrong videotape in the VCR for a presentation, pron 800 number instead of the right customer number on promotional materials, stuff like that. I think Phil Jones and other members of the "Hockey Team" could add some zingers to the list.

Here are a few choice quotes from Michael Mann from the ClimateGate emails.

August 26, 2005: email 1125067952: He has engaged in some very nasty, and in my opinion unprofessional email exchanges with some close colleagues of mine who have established some fundamental undisclosed errors in work he co-published with von Storch.

Of course, all of Mann's email exchanges and postings at RealClimate are professional...

August 26, 2005: email 1125067952: There are some similarly problematic issues with Cubasch, who, like von Storch, … has engaged in inflammatory and personal public commentary. There is no room for that on any side of the debate.

Except when it's Mann himself accusing everyone who disagrees with him of being in the pocket of "big oil".

April 26, 2006: email 1146062963 : [Mike Mann referring to data requests from Steve McIntyre] I’m saddened to hear that this bozo is bothering you too, in addition to the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the National Science Foundation, the National Academy of Sciences, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and everyone else. Rest assured that I won’t ever respond to McIntyre should he ever contact me, but I will forward you any email he sends related to this. I assume Scott feels the same way…

Another totally professional comment by The Mann! Is "bozo" a climate science term?

May 12, 2006: email 1147435800: [Again, Mann referring to McIntyre] Personally, I don’t see why you should make any concessions for this moron.

Ditto...

In an interview for Investigatemagazine.com, Dr. Phil Jones of the UK Climate Research Unit (CRU), says the following:

“I’m not sure what we’re going to do. I’ll have to talk to other people here. In fact, we were changing all our passwords overnight and I can’t get to my email, as I’ve just changed my password. I’ve gone into the Climate Audit website because I can’t get into my own email.
“It’s completely illegal for somebody to hack into our system.”

Hey Dr. Phil, isn't it also completely illegal to destroy information which is the subject of an FOIA request, as you imply here, and here:

Email 555-5555):

At 09:41 AM 2/2/2005, Phil Jones wrote to Michael Mann :

Mike,
…
Just sent loads of station data to Scott. Make sure he documents everything better this time ! And don’t leave stuff lying around on ftp sites – you never know who is trawling them. The two MMs have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone. Does your similar act in the US force you to respond to enquiries within 20 days? – our does ! The UK works on precedents, so the first request will test it.

We also have a data protection act, which I will hide behind. Tom Wigley has sent me a worried email when he heard about it – thought people could ask him for his model code. He has retired officially from UEA so he can hide behind that. IPR should be relevant here, but I can see me getting into an argument with someone at UEA who’ll say we must adhere to it !

Here is a link to an excellent post at Bishop Hill's blog, which has a good, concise compilation of some of the more egregious emails from the CRU file reported previously.

I'll comment on some of them separately in coming days.

I'm sure everyone passing by here has heard of the recent CRU "hack" and release of email and data as reported at various blogs.

Some are over-reacting, in both directions, others are being prudently cautious, and yet others are trying to ignore it. A lot of questions remain to be answered, but what IS clear is that the emails appear to be legitimate.

Of course context is important, and I'm sure much of this is not taking that into account, or assuming a certain context. However, some of the more incriminating emails would be damning in any context.

What has been revealed is indeed a catastrophe, a catastrophe of elitist science and corruption of the peer-review process. At the very least, these "scientists" stand accused of hiding inconvenient results, gross hyperbole against other scientists, and probably outright fraud.

For what it's worth, I am willing to believe that CO2 might be a problem, but when we see incompetence and espionage such as these "scientists" have engaged in, it's difficult for me to take anything they say seriously ever again. They HAVE betrayed the public trust, and they don't seem to care. They have engaged in unethical practices made famous by "green" groups such as WWF, Greenpeace, Sierra Club, RAN, and others, by grossly overstating their case, manipulating results, and creating something that isn't there.

My hope out of all this, that one of the "elite" in these emails will step forward and tell the truth. But I'm not holding my breath.

Update: Just found this quote at the end of the "Rules of the Game" PDF included with the "hacked" file compilation:

“First they ignore you; then they laugh
at you; then they fight you; then you win.”
Mahatma Gandhi

'Contraception cheapest way to combat climate change'

This is old news. Many have exposed the Green Agenda for what it is, a means of population control/reduction, and de-industrialization of the West. This just proves the point so many of us have been making.

Greens don't want cheap, clean energy. They want fewer humans on the planet, but are incredibly unwilling to lead by example.

If you watch American television, you may often see the advertisements sponsored by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) where the actor Noah Wyle tells us that Polar Bears are on the edge of extinction.

Funny that, when I go to the WWF site about Polar Bears, one finds the following curious statement:

With 20-25,000 polar bears living in the wild, the species is not currently endangered, but its future is far from certain.

Hmm, so on one hand WWF tells us they're on the verge of extinction, then tells us that they're not even endangered, yet. Of course they go on to say that "global warming" will most likely cause Polar Bears to go extinct within 100 years. They provide no evidence for this, just gratuitous assertions.

We know that Polar Bears have been around as a distinct species (though there are some who argue they are a sub-species of Brown Bear) for about 200,000 years. Which means they've lived through at least one other interglacial period. Our knowledge of previous interglacials shows that, according to Ice Core analysis, most were warmer than the current Holocene interglacial. So, if Polar Bears have survived previous warmer interglacial times, and warmer periods within the current interglacial, why is it that this less warm time is going to wipe them out?

WWF also seems to ignore the fact that Polar Bears live perfectly well on land as well as ice.

I won't go into the fact there there has been no established direct or even indirect link between human industrial CO2 emissions and melting of Arctic sea ice (or retreating glaciers, melting ice sheets, etc). But apparently for WWF and many other political organizations, it's a foregone conclusion. They don't need to wait for actual evidence, apparently.

I often see posts by people on sites such as Watts Up With That which go something like this (this is an actual post):

stupidity, arrogance and ignorant nature of human being is destroying the planet and its environment. its a shame for this current civilization!

Yet the people who post such things are using computers, most likely driving cars, consuming things, just like all of us do. They don't see themselves as part of their perceived problem, and don't see why they should change their lifestyles.

They may justify their use of the oil infrastructure by saying things like "I use the computers at the public library" or "I use public transportation" or "I have solar panels".

All of these excuses miss the point, which is that reducing emissions a few percent won't make a bit of difference with respect to "global climate", and that feelgood measures like changing light bulbs are pretty meaningless.

Of course we know what many of the higher-up green leaders want, and that's a complete de-industrialization of the west, and to keep developing countries from developing. In short, a return to the Hunter/Gatherer lifestyle humans endured before the advent of civilization. They want life to be brutal and short, except for themselves, of course. You don't see any of these people leading by example.