Solomon: Climategate U loses bid to stifle critic

James Delingpole has won a battle with the University of East Anglia, home of the Climate Research Unit that was the center of the "Climategate" controversy. The U of EA had filed a complaint against Delingpole with the Press Complaints Commission in the UK.

The University of East Anglia of Climategate fame – scene of the embarrassing emails that disgraced the global warming cause – has once again been embarrassed, this time through a failed attempt to silence one of the UK’s most brilliant – and biting – global warming sceptics.

Read the full article by Lawrence Solomon here.

Climategate Round II

Could Wikileaks bring us the next round of Climategate? Some iinteresting posts from the Guardian:

Close reading of the cables released by WikiLeaks reveals in excruciating detail the US tactics deployed to achieve its aim of overwhelming the opposition to the Copenhagen accord.

Well, we know that the Copenhagen thing didn't work out so well for the warmists, but it is interesting to learn of all the behind the scenes manipulation and intimidation that went into the effort.

Embassy dispatches show America used spying, threats and promises of aid to get support for Copenhagen accord [...]

Hidden behind the save-the-world rhetoric of the global climate change negotiations lies the mucky realpolitik: money and threats buy political support; spying and cyberwarfare are used to seek out leverage.

The US diplomatic cables reveal how the US seeks dirt on nations opposed to its approach to tackling global warming; how financial and other aid is used by countries to gain political backing; how distrust, broken promises and creative accounting dog negotiations; and how the US mounted a secret global diplomatic offensive to overwhelm opposition to the controversial "Copenhagen accord", the unofficial document that emerged from the ruins of the Copenhagen climate change summit in 2009.

Looks like they have lowered their expectations for Cancun.

Cancún climate talks doomed to fail, says EU president. Herman van Rompuy dismisses Copenhagen climate summit as 'incredible disaster' and expects Cancún to be no better. [...]

Van Rompuy said the Copenhagen climate change talks had been "an incredible disaster". Looking forward to the current negotiations in Cancún in Mexico, the European leader predicted that these would be a disaster too.

Wasting away in Margaritaville

To say that Rex Murphy has a way with words is to say that Michelangelo was pretty good with a paint brush. Rex offers his thoughts on the big climate party in Cancun.

Perhaps they know that this show of theirs is on its last legs, the jig is up, the great game is over. After the unsuccessful 2009 Copenhagen conference, they had to have realized that even Al Gore and all Al Gores’ grim little men would never be able to put the whole rickety, tendentious machine back together again. After Copenhagen, and especially after Climategate, even the true believers must have lost heart. Witness this year’s confabulation. Notice who’s not there?

Right. The world's leaders are conspicuously absent from this latest warmist gathering. The shine is off the apple. And this group of self-serving elites is becoming more and more irrelevant.

With my apologies to Jimmy Buffett:

Wasting away again in Margaritaville
Searching for a transfer of wealth
Some people claim that there's a carbon to blame
But I know... it's nobody's fault

Alarmists regroup: new strategy formulated

Climategate has taken such a toll on the global warming agenda that alarmists are taking a new tact. Academics urge radical new approach to climate change:

The UN process has failed, they argue, and a global approach concentrating on CO2 cuts will never work.

They urge instead the use of carbon tax revenue to develop technologies that can supply clean energy to everyone.

All this stems from a group of academics who have issued a paper, called the Hartwell Paper with this surprising admission (emphasis added):

The paper says that the outcome of December's UN climate summit, plus the "ClimateGate" affair and inaccuracies within the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2007 report, means "the legitimacy of the institutions of climate policy and science are no longer assured".

So, successfully tackling climate change initially means re-framing the issue.

In an article for the BBC's Green Room series, another of the authors, Mike Hulme, writes: "Climate change has been represented as a conventional environmental 'problem' that is capable of being 'solved'.

"It is neither of these. Yet this framing has locked the world into the rigid agenda that brought us to the dead end of Kyoto, with no evidence of any discernable acceleration of decarbonisation whatsoever."

They are advocating a new, non-United Nations approach towards "decarbonisation", which not surprisingly contains a "carbon tax" aimed at developing new "green" energy technologies while concentrating on short term reduction in carbon emissions.

Division in the ranks? Not all alarmists think this is such a good idea.

"The paper's focus away from CO2 is misguided, short-sighted and probably wrong," said Bill Hare from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany.

The alarmists can regroup and reframe the issue all they want. Their problem is their junk science has been revealed and they no longer enjoy the blind faith following of the public in general.

We have all become skeptics.

And we have no appetite to commit a major portion of our economy to try to solve a problem that no one can prove exists.

Hide the Decline II

It seems a certain Professor and key proponent of Mann-made Global Warming is displeased with the video "Hide the Decline" published online by Minnesotans for Global Warming. Via Anthony Watts:

Penn State University’s Michael Mann, one of the central figures in the Climategate scandal, has threatened legal action against Minnesotans for Global Warming (M4GW) over the group’s popular satirical YouTube video “Hide the Decline.” The No Cap-and-Trade Coalition, a group that includes M4GW, responded today at an event at the National Press Club, releasing Mann’s threatening letter and an updated version of the “Hide the Decline” video.

“We understand why Michael Mann is eager to silence public discussion of the hockey stick scandal,” said Jeff Davis of No Cap-and-Trade, “but truth is an absolute defense.”

In response, M4GW have released an updated - I think better - video, Hide the Decline II.

Hide The Decline II from No Cap And Trade Coalition on Vimeo.

Update: I've linked to this video at Vimeo, since the sheeple at YouTub have decided to take it down. It should work OK now.

Bernier cautions about climate science

Many of us have been disappointed with the Harper government's handling of the climate-change issue, with their stance on limiting carbon emissions and support for Copenhagen. Well, perhaps this is the first chink in the armour.

Canada's ex-foreign minister Maxime Bernier has written a letter to LaPresse in which challenges climate change science. Here's an English version via Norman Spector in the Globe & Mail

“Environmental groups in Copenhagen criticized our government for blocking an agreement … and again when Jim Prentice announced our targets at the end of January ... But with each passing week we see the wisdom of the government’s moderate position … since December, a debate has broken out in the media over the science of warming, a debate that had been stifled due to political correctness … the numerous errors by the IPCC add to alternative theories of warming that have been put forward over the years.

We now recognize that it’s possible to be a “skeptic,” or at least to keep an open mind about nearly all critical aspects of the warming theory. For example, while no one questions whether there has been warming, there is no consensus among scientists as to its degree.

Moreover, we realize that during the period of greatest concern about warming – the last decade – temperatures have stopped increasing! Meanwhile, the quantity of CO2 in the atmosphere, said to be the cause of warming according to the official theory, is still increasing. Some very serious scientists believe that we are under-estimating the influence of the sun and other factors that have nothing to do with carbon emissions.

Mojib Latif, a German researcher associated with the IPCC who essentially supports the warming theory, said last fall that temperatures may decline for two decades before warming resumes. No model predicted this. But the same models claim to predict the number of degrees of warming by the end of the century. And that’s only one of the “certainties” about which there is no consensus.

What is certain is that it would be irresponsible to spend billions of dollars and to impose unnecessarily stringent regulations to solve a problem whose gravity we still are not certain about. The alarmism that has characterized this debate is no longer appropriate. Canada is wise to be cautious.”

The original letter is here.

Climategate meets the Law

via Pajamas media:

Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) today asked the Obama administration to investigate what he called “the greatest scientific scandal of our generation” — the actions of climate scientists revealed by the Climategate Files, and the subsequent admissions by the editors of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report (AR4).

Senator Inhofe also called for former Vice President Al Gore to be called back to the Senate to testify.

“In [Gore's] science fiction movie, every assertion has been rebutted,” Inhofe said. He believes Vice President Gore should defend himself and his movie before Congress.

[...]

Senator Inhofe is asking the Department of Justice to investigate whether there has been research misconduct or criminal actions by the scientists involved, including Dr. Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University and Dr. James Hansen of Columbia University and the NASA Goddard Institute of Space Science.

Senator Inhofe's blog.

Challenging the EPA

The EPA isn't getting a free ride on its decision to regulate CO2. We reported earlier that Utah, Texas and Virginia had challenged the ruling. Now another big player, non-government this time, has waded into the fray:

The world’s largest private sector coal business, the Peabody Energy Company (PEC) has filed a mammoth 240-page “Petition for Reconsideration,” a full-blown legal challenge against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The petition must be answered and covers the entire body of leaked emails from ‘Climategate’ as well as those other ‘gate’ revelations including the frauds allegedly perpetrated under such sub-headings as ‘Himalayan Glaciers,’ ‘African Agricultural Production,’ ‘Amazon Rain Forests,’ ‘Melting Mountain Ice,’ ‘Netherlands Below Sea Level’ as well as those much-publicized abuses of the peer-review literature and so called ‘gray literature.’ These powerful litigants also draw attention to the proven criminal conduct by climate scientists in refusing to honor Freedom of Information law (FOIA) requests.

Peabody is, in effect, challenging the right of the current U.S. federal government to introduce cap and trade regulations by the ‘back door.’

via climategate.com

Update: There's more.

Industry groups, conservative think tanks, lawmakers and three states filed 16 court challenges to U.S. EPA's "endangerment" finding for greenhouse gases before yesterday's deadline, setting the stage for a legal battle over federal climate policies.

Update 2: John O'Sullivan offers general legal strategies for challenging what is fast being recognised as the greatest criminal fraud of all time.

Common law tells us that governments cannot impose climate regulations on their citizens by regarding similar facts differently on different occasions. This principle is known among legal practitioners as stare decisis (i.e. judges are obliged to obey the set-up precedents established by prior decisions). I’ve examined two of the recently filed climate skeptic petitions filed by U.S. corporations. In both there is the common argument that ‘arbitrary and capricious’ governmental climate-related decisions have been imposed upon the people. These EPA regulations, they argue, must be over turned because the science that underpins them has been proven to be fraudulent and significantly based on subjective elements. Thus, the basis of the EPA’s decision to determine that carbon dioxide is a pollutant is unlawful due to the ‘arbitrary and capricious’ components within the EPA’s fact finding process.

How Al Gore Wrecked Planet Earth

Walter Russell Mead asks...

How did the climate of carelessness at the IPCC develop — and why were warning voices from inside the movement ignored in the rush to get all the alarming but unverified predictions into print?

Global Warming: Meltdown

KUSI TV in San Diego has aired a special report Global Warming: Meltdown by weatherman John Coleman on the latest developments in Climategate and as a response to the critics of his previous special, Global Warming: The Other Side. Says Coleman:

The “Climategate” revelations that began in mid December have crescendoed into a series of almost daily embarrassments for the UN IPCC. This telecast covers as many of them as we can cram into an hour. The program can be viewed in segments. With the intro to each segment you will find links you may use to find more information on the topics covered. If this is the first time you are hearing about my efforts to debunk the bad science behind the global warming frenzy, you will find a wealth of information, videos and links to sites on the colemanscorner page of KUSI.com/weather/.

Here is the special in 9 video segments:



















Or view them directly at KUSI.

Virginia joins fight against EPA

Via Climategate.com:

This week, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli filed a petition that challenges the EPA’s recent finding that CO2 and other greenhouse gases contribute to alleged climate change.

Good for Virginia for standing up to the EPA.

Previous: Utah and Texas.

Inhofe: ‘CRISIS OF CONFIDENCE' IN THE IPCC

Senator James Inhofe's speech on climategate to the US Senate:

Mr. President, I rise today to highlight several recent media reports uncovering serious errors and possible fraud by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC.

I can already hear the question: just what is the IPCC? Many in this body may not be familiar with it. But I hope the Senate becomes more acquainted with it very soon, if only because of its sheer importance to the debate we're having on global warming and cap-and-trade legislation.

For now, you need to know just 3 things about the IPCC: (1) the Obama Administration calls it "the gold standard" of climate change science; (2) some say its reports on climate change represent the so-called "consensus" of scientific opinion about global warming; and (3) the IPCC and Al Gore were awarded the Nobel Prize in 2007 for "their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change..."

Put simply, what this means is that, in elite circles, the IPCC is a big deal. So when ABC News, the Economist, Time Magazine, and the Times of London-among many others-report that the IPCC's research contains embarrassing flaws, and that the IPCC chairman and scientists knew of the flaws, but published them anyway-well, you have the makings of a major scientific scandal.

Where to begin?

A good place is here.

Climategate: the final days

Climategate Rally at Penn State

The warmists may not like it, but the climate debate is not settled. Case in point, this demonstration on the campus of Penn State.


I love that picture of the two warmists holding their "global warming is real" sign in the snow. Click to watch the video.

The rally came on the heels of released results from an internal peer investigation earlier this week.

The committee decided that there is no substantial information to pursue an investigation into three of the four misconduct allegations against Dr. Mann.

Leading the local Young Americans for Freedom group requesting an external investigation, Samuel Settle told WJAC-TV Friday that he doubts the committee of peers could be unbiased.

“For the sake of the university, for the sake of his reputation, for the sake of our reputations as students and community members, we need to come out and make it clear to the university that this is not what we consider acceptable,” said Settle. “We ask; we demand an external investigation of this."

Bette Jackson believes that an independent probe into academic misconduct allegations is necessary.

"I know if I were Dr. Mann, I would want impartial people to take a thorough look at my career and make sure that there were no blemishes on it," said Jackson.

Coren on Ball

Michael Coren had an interesting interview with Canada's foremost climatologist, Dr. Timothy Ball:

“If people knew just how deep and dark this conspiracy is — yes, conspiracy — they’d be amazed,” he explains. “More and more academics are standing up to refute climate-change theories, but it’s still dangerous to do so. It can mean the end of a career, the targeting of someone by well-organized fanatics.”

There's more. Lots more, so be sure to follow the link above.

Perhaps things would be different if the Canadian media had been following the story of climategate. But they wouldn't want the Canadian public informed about what's been going on now, would they? That would be counter productive to the Agenda.

We'll just have to leave real news reporting up to the Brits and the Yanks. And the world wide web. I'm so glad that Al Gore invented the internet.

the Great Manmade Global Warming Hoax of the early 21st Century

Archy Cary at BigJournalism.com reflects on the mainstream media and their role in the now exposed climate change hoax.

Tomorrow’s researchers, examining the archives of the U.S. print media, will marvel at the willful negligence displayed by the MSM outlets, how they failed to apply critical thinking to the “scientific” claims of man-made global warming even as, one by one, those claims were discredited and peeled away like layers of an onion, until there was no onion left.

Impartial analysts will note how the British press most clearly exhibit to their former colonists what Freedom of the Press looks like while the American MSM, like migrating lemmings, silently trudged hip deep through the mounting pile of invalidated claims that screamed of the earth’s imminent death at the hands of man.

Some will ask, “What were they thinking?” The wise will answer, “They weren’t thinking. They were following.” And when the press follows it loses its independence of thought and, thereby, its freedom.

Now the Hoax is fully exposed, buck naked, picked clean. Clean as the wind-driven snow.

Yet, although its premise is dead, the carcass of thought that brought it this far will continue to walk. But it’ll be the walk of the zombie. Stiff, staggering, with flat eyes and muffled voice.

Its false prophets, led by Al Gore — a modern day P.T. Barnum — will continue to push their premise. But their disciples will melt away as the snow will eventually melt in D.C.

So, somewhere inside the Beltway today, a lone vender pushes his cart through the grayness of the day, hawking his now bad goods, calling out, “Carbon credits. Carbon credits. Get your carbon credits here. 90% off list price.”

Wendt: the Great Global Warming collapse

Even the Globe and Mail has taken notice. Margaret Wendt:

As the science scandals keep coming, the air has gone out of the climate-change movement...

But now, even leading scientists and environmental groups admit the IPCC is facing a crisis of credibility that makes the Climategate affair look like small change.

Mann investigation to continue

Charlie Martin via Pajamas Media:

When the Climategate story first broke, a lot of adherents of the skeptical view of anthropogenic climate change were mightily excited — proclaiming it the “end of the global warming hoax.” They have been disappointed because the breaking story wasn’t immediately followed by the resignation of everyone involved, the termination of all U.S. action on cap and trade, and tar and feathers for Al Gore.

This was a little unrealistic. There are a lot of vested interests involved, a lot of money that depends on the CO2-driven AGW narrative, a lot of people with wealth and reputations on the line. That’s a lot of inertia, and the narrative won’t change course quickly.

That doesn’t mean nothing is happening, however.

No, not at all. For one thing author of the hockey-stick graph, Professor Michael Mann will be subject to further investigation. Read more...

Update: the Penn State Report

Rex Murphy: So whatever happened to Copenhagen?

The folks predicting climate change apocalypse seem to have fallen curiously mute.

This is why the Copenhagen Conference for all its extravagant hype and buildup simply disappeared from the press and the public mind on the instant of its conclusion. Because, via Climategate, the world caught the first real glimpse of how politicized and manipulated this "greatest issue of our time" had been allowed to become. Saw as well how the sacred impartiality of science, and the great authority of peer review, had been suborned for something as political in its way as the average day's outing in Question Period.

I'm going to take this opportunity to plug Rex's book Canada and other matters of opinion.

It's an excellent read - I know, I'm currently about half way through it - of commentary on many subjects by Canada's foremost opinionator.

A cornucopia of comment from Canada’s most opinionated man — a man seen, read, and listened to by millions of Canadians each week.

Canada’s most distinctive commentator presents his fearless and thought-provoking views on a head-spinning range of subjects, from Dr. Johnson’s greatness to Bono’s gratingness, from doubts about Obama to utter belief in Don Cherry, from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s outstanding oeuvre to — well, Pamela Anderson.

The topics are as eclectic and wide ranging as the intelligence that put them together. The perspective is thoroughly Canadian, and so are many of the recurring topics and themes: of our domestic politics and our military involvements abroad, of our national identity, of human rights and human decency. You’ll find assessments of the reputations of Paul Martin, Conrad Black, Adrienne Clarkson, and Tim Hortons; tough but affectionate views of Newfoundland — of course — but also from Rex Murphy’s constant travels across Canada.

But all the world is here, in all its glory and folly. The hard-hitting attacks on politicians, celebrities, those who would ban smoking, and anyone who uses the expression “global warming denial” will have you cheering or tearing your hair out, depending. You will be informed, infuriated perhaps, but always fascinated.

You won't be disappointed.

"it’s clear to us a breach has occurred"

Scientists in the stolen e-mail scandal known as Climategate hid data according to Ben Webster and Jonathan Leake at the TimesOnLine.

The University of East Anglia breached the Freedom of Information Act by refusing to comply with requests for data concerning claims by its scientists that man-made emissions were causing global warming.

The Information Commissioner’s Office decided that UEA failed in its duties under the Act but said that it could not prosecute those involved because the complaint was made too late, The Times has learnt. The ICO is now seeking to change the law to allow prosecutions if a complaint is made more than six months after a breach.

So the UEA gets off on a technicality.

A spokesman for the ICO said: “The legislation prevents us from taking any action but from looking at the emails it’s clear to us a breach has occurred.” Breaches of the act are punishable by an unlimited fine.

But wait. It looks like the University had processes in place which would prevent the complaint process from proceeding in a timely manner.

Mr Holland said: “There is an apparent Catch-22 here. The prosecution has to be initiated within six months but you have to exhaust the university’s complaints procedure before the commission will look at your complaint. That process can take longer than six months.”

Very clever. The University's complaint procedure is designed to waste enough time so that prosecution under the FOI Act is not possible. Sounds like bureaucratic obstruction of justice to me.