Posts Tagged ‘global warming email fraud’

Q: How irrelevant is Sarah Palin?

Posted: December 9, 2009 by datechguy in opinion/news
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A: She is so irrelevant that the Washington Post gave her op/ed space today on Climategate and Copenhagen:

The e-mails reveal that leading climate “experts” deliberately destroyed records, manipulated data to “hide the decline” in global temperatures, and tried to silence their critics by preventing them from publishing in peer-reviewed journals. What’s more, the documents show that there was no real consensus even within the CRU crowd. Some scientists had strong doubts about the accuracy of estimates of temperatures from centuries ago, estimates used to back claims that more recent temperatures are rising at an alarming rate.

It’s actually even worse than that if you look at the Volokh Conspiracy (one of the best blogs that I don’t regularly read or link to. I have no explanation for that) it links to another damning post on the subject:

Yikes again, double yikes! What on earth justifies that adjustment? How can they do that? We have five different records covering Darwin from 1941 on. They all agree almost exactly. Why adjust them at all? They’ve just added a huge artificial totally imaginary trend to the last half of the raw data! Now it looks like the IPCC diagram in Figure 1, all right … but a six degree per century trend? And in the shape of a regular stepped pyramid climbing to heaven? What’s up with that?

Those, dear friends, are the clumsy fingerprints of someone messing with the data Egyptian style … they are indisputable evidence that the “homogenized” data has been changed to fit someone’s preconceptions about whether the earth is warming.

One thing is clear from this. People who say that “Climategate was only about scientists behaving badly, but the data is OK” are wrong. At least one part of the data is bad, too. The Smoking Gun for that statement is at Darwin Zero.

So once again, I’m left with an unsolved mystery. How and why did the GHCN “adjust” Darwin’s historical temperature to show radical warming? Why did they adjust it stepwise? Do Phil Jones and the CRU folks use the “adjusted” or the raw GHCN dataset? My guess is the adjusted one since it shows warming, but of course we still don’t know … because despite all of this, the CRU still hasn’t released the list of data that they actually use, just the station list.

It is a crime against science that stuff like this is going on and data continues to be held back. Volokh reminds us we have seen this before:

Turning declines in raw data into rises in one’s tables is one of the things that led to Michael Bellesiles’s resignation from Emory in the Arming America scandal.

You might remember that Bellesiles and his book Arming America was was hailed and lionized when it was released but when the facts came out he lost his Bancroft prize and his university position over his phony data. This was under a decade ago yet people forget.

Back to the Palin Op-ed she brings up a second oft ignored point:

In his inaugural address, President Obama declared his intention to “restore science to its rightful place.” But instead of staying home from Copenhagen and sending a message that the United States will not be a party to fraudulent scientific practices, the president has upped the ante. He plans to fly in at the climax of the conference in hopes of sealing a “deal.” Whatever deal he gets, it will be no deal for the American people. What Obama really hopes to bring home from Copenhagen is more pressure to pass the Democrats’ cap-and-tax proposal. This is a political move. The last thing America needs is misguided legislation that will raise taxes and cost jobs — particularly when the push for such legislation rests on agenda-driven science.

Why is this being done? Powerline has some answers:

That’s right: the Godfather of the Democratic Party, who exerts his enormous political influence to prevent American oil companies from developing our own petroleum resources in the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere, has placed his biggest bet–not on the United States, but on Brazil. If Exxon Mobil can’t compete in the Caribbean with Petrobras, the value of Soros’s Petrobras investment will skyrocket. That’s the sort of thievery that lies behind the Democratic Party’s deliberate hobbling of the American economy.

He links to this Washington Post article on the subject:

“It’s going to change the role of Brazil in the geopolitics of oil,” Petrobras’s president, José Sergio Gabrielli, said in an interview at the company’s headquarters in Rio de Janeiro. “We are going to become a much bigger producer.”

Petrobras estimates that production in Brazil could reach 3.9 million barrels by 2020, up from more than 2 million a day now. Proven oil reserves would rise from 14.4 billion barrels to more than 30 billion barrels, according to government estimates, putting Brazil in the same league as such major oil exporters as Qatar, Canada, Kazakhstan and Nigeria.

4000 high paying jobs and more production. Our democratic party ties our hands while their patron gets rich from it. How nice would it be if those jobs were here?

Yup good thing we didn’t vote for that irreverent Palin

Never forget elections have consequences, we did this to ourselves.

Update: Apparently left has gone nuts over the idea of the Wa post running this oped. the funniest line is this one:

Fred Hiatt Wants The Washington Post to Go Out of Business

What other explanation could there be for deciding that he wants to run an op-ed by Sarah Palin about how Obama should “boycott” the Copenhagen conference?

After all who wants to hear what Sarah Palin has to say. It’s not like she sold a million books over a couple of weeks or is being greeted by crowds and lines wherever she goes. Why would a business that makes it’s profit based on issue sales or eyeballs have any interest in someone like her.

If I thought he actually believed it then this would be a jump the shark moment for Matt Yglesias

God are they afraid of her.

Update 2: Fred Sargent doesn’t like Sarah Palin but he gets full marks for not denying reality.

To be clear, I’m not defending the decision to run the piece. I wouldn’t have run it. I’m just pointing out the undeniable fact that the woman’s name gets people clicking. Until people stop clicking, Palin and her views will continue to get attention.

It’s a start.

Ah what would we do without the independence of the media

Posted: December 7, 2009 by datechguy in internet/free speech, opinion/news
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I think that within 4 years a lot of the newspapers involved in this nonsense will wish they had answered in the way a single US paper did:

“To the German Commander, “Nuts!” The American Commander.”

Oh sorry that was the answer of a different American who found himself isolated and surrounded by those against him. The US paper’s answer was slightly different:

“This is an outrageous attempt to orchestrate media pressure. Go to hell.”

Like the advancing Germans the newspapers know they had only a limited time to win their war before events overwhelmed them. Like general McAuliffe time and events will prove this newspaper right,

The presidents late arrival in Copenhagen…

Posted: December 6, 2009 by datechguy in opinion/news
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Means exactly the opposite that this guy thinks:

The first week of every COP meeting consists of posturing, speeches, protests, and NGO reports. Everything of significance to the treaty is announced late in the meetings, often on the last day, after a flurry of last-minute negotiations. Coming to Copenhagen at the climax of the talks, specifically to push negotiations “over the top,” as the White House statement says, is a risky move for Obama. He’s got skin in the game now; he’ll look foolish if he rides in at the last minute and fails to broker an agreement.

If he’s willing to stick his neck out like this, Obama must be pretty confident that he can get a deal. There have been signs of momentum for weeks now. The much-discussed deal with China was just one in a raft of commitments from the developing countries, including India and Brazil. Movement from the developing world has undercut one of U.S. conservatives’ principal arguments for inaction. Over 65 world leaders have pledged to attend.

Au contrare, The president’s delay signifies exactly the opposite.

Right now the Climategate scandal is still in the “discovery” phase. No matter how much the left wants to paint it as watergate, it is more aken to the Pentagon Papers. Support for the religion of Global warming has dropped like a rock. What more might come in over the course of those 9 extra days?

The delay gives him several advantages:

1. He is able to react to new news with either better prepared spin or rightous indignation depending on what is revealed.

2. When no significant deal occurs (almost certainly) he can make the case that he tried but couldn’t manage to make a last minute win, he just didn’t have the time, particularly since he had to devote so much attention to pressing domestic issues.

3. If some kind of significant deal does come out of it (very unlikely) he can take credit by his last minute arrival being just enough to save the day.

This is purely political, he knows that in 2012 he isn’t going to have to worry about the left. For all their talk they are not going to vote republican nor are they willing or able to counter the race card that will be played against them if they refuse to support or turn out for him.

This is strictly face saving, enough of a presence to take credit if it is due while little enough to avoid blame.

Of course I could be totally wrong and he might still have the Olympic hubris that he did before, but with his polls below 50% I doubt it. I can’t believe he could be that foolish, but you never know.

Update and for those of you who are pooh poohing this scandal consider the following:

The Met Office plans to re-examine 160 years of temperature data after admitting that public confidence in the science on man-made global warming has been shattered by leaked e-mails.

and the polls in charge of all the money that will be taxed and spent over this nonsense are not happy:

The Government is attempting to stop the Met Office from carrying out the re-examination, arguing that it would be seized upon by climate change sceptics.

Quieting skeptics is more important than seeking fact it seems. Especially now that the US’ own point man before congress made an inadvertent admission:

But when asked about some of his own extreme statements and predictions, Holdren replied that scientific research had moved on from the latest UN assessment report in 2007. The most up-to-date scientific research was contained in a report written by some of the world’s leading climate scientists and released last summer. Holdren mentioned and referred to this report, Copenhagen Diagnosis, several times during the course of the hearing.

I remember when Copenhagen Diagnosis came out because nearly every major paper ran a story on it. Global warming is happening even faster than predicted, the impacts are even worse than feared, and that sort of thing. I also remembered that the authors of Copenhagen Diagnosis included many of the usual conmen who are at the center of the alarmist scare. So I asked my CEI colleague Julie Walsh to compare the list of authors of Copenhagen Diagnosis with the scientists involved in Climategate.

I’m sure it will come as a shock that the two groups largely overlap. The “small group of scientists” up to their necks in Climategate include 12 of the 26 esteemed scientists who wrote the Copenhagen Diagnosis. Who would have ever guessed that forty-six percent of the authors of Copenhagen Diagnosis belong to the Climategate gang? Small world, isn’t it?

We can’t wait, we can’t wait! How different does this sound than a used car salesman struggling to keep a buyer who spotting something odd under the hood on the lot?

Update 2: Roger Simon tosses a piece of reality on the subject as well.

I guess Jon Stewart was right …

Posted: December 3, 2009 by datechguy in internet/free speech, opinion/news
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…Al Gore defeated by the very internet he invented:

Berlingske Media må med beklagelse meddele, at Al Gore har aflyst sit arrangement. De over 3.000 læsere, der har købt billet, får pengene retur.

For those of you who don’t speak Danish Don Surber has a translation:

Berlingske regret to announce that Al Gore has canceled his event. The more than 3,000 readers who bought a ticket, get money back.

Al Gore has this morning told Berlingske Media’s great annoyance has canceled his planned major climate talks for Danes 16th December 1 Tap in the old Carlsberg because, under the title “Climate Conclusion”.

Cancellation comes with regard to unforeseen changes in Al Gore’s program for the climate summit, COP 15.

If Gore who is rightly considered the single most expert pol on the subject is running scared from uncomfortable defending his Global Warming stance in the face of the scandal then what chance to other pols have?

The fall of house of cards can’t be far behind.

Via Prison Planet where I found it first. Can’t find an English language paper with it yet.

Update: Newsbusters and Nicedeb have it now.

Update 2: the Washington times has it now as does Memeorandum., would have had it sooner but cooked dinner and spent the last 100 minutes on the phone with a charming Catholic lady.

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