Reader MMLJ left a comment about this article on the last thread. I doubt this post will generate much disagreement here but John Quiggen’s blog has attempted to place the blame for climategate on Steve McIntyre while simultaneously claiming nothing was done wrong. I would have commented there but he closed his comment section for some reason. Of course his arguments are silly, but it shows just how far people are willing to go to cover up the corruption and save their global warming baby. Click his title below for a link to the whole article —
Looking over the evidence that is now available, I think there is enough to point to Steven McIntyre as the person, along with the actual hacker or leaker, who bears primary moral responsibility for the crime.
It is always the left who is so ready to blame others people for their actions. It’s like in the US when someone steals your car or gun and uses it in a crime, there is a push to blame the owner of the car or gun – especially when the criminal gets away. News flash John, Steve can no more control these outside people than you can turn back time and make Climategate go away.
24 July 2009: McIntyre organizes a spam FOI campaign against CRU, asking his supporters to send requests nominating five countries whose data they wanted of the form:
<b>I hereby make a EIR/FOI request in respect to any confidentiality agreements)restricting transmission of CRUTEM data to non-academics involing(sic) the following countries: [insert 5 or so countries that are different from ones already requested]</b>
(unsurprisingly, his supporters ignored the request to stick to new countries, and sent multiples of the same request)
Again, the point is that skeptics were being lied to about confidentiality and everyone knew it. Our only chance to get the data actually used was to narrow down countries that were alleged to not allow their thermometer data to be used, request the rest, and get that “top secret” temperature information another way.
I did not participate in the FOI’s but note SteveM wasn’t able to keep the readers from making requests for everything or doubling up on the same countries. Again, just how can one person control another’s actions so completely? Sure he made the requests, after every other FOI had been illegally blocked but what else can you do?
25 July 2009: The next day McIntyre announced that he had got a mass of CRU data, essentially all that sought in the harassment campaign, from “a mole”. Note that this may be true or may be misdirection to protect external hackers. In any case, it is clear that his harassment campaign was going hand in hand with attempts to gain unauthorised access to CRU computers, and did not stop when its supposed goal was realised.
Now this was completely bogus, in retrospect, I’m guessing SteveM may not have wanted to run the ‘mole’ thread but the ‘mole’ was a public FTP server where a copy of the ‘top-secret’ temperature data had been accidentally placed. Why would John assume Steve was attempting to gain unauthorized access? Well we know the answer to that but one thing CA has found many times is that the public servers of the data are often changed quietly to cover problems and quite often, unusual information is revealed. In this case an old copy of the complete ultra-confidential temperature dataset for CRU. The ‘mole’ post was a complete tease to the guys at CRU, who were simultaneously claiming they could not release the up-to-date temp data. John is way over the top again, a common trait these days on the advocate side of blogland.
Over the next few months, CRU started preparing a response to McIntyre which resulted in the creation of a file called FOIA.zip.
They had only a very short window to respond by law, legally, as I understand it, it could not have been done over months. Currently, the standard amongst IT guys in blogland is that the compilation was done by someone with IT skills.
John then repeats this sophistic goop:
Having received the stolen emails, McIntyre played a prominent role in disseminating dishonest and misleading claims about their contents, focusing on the phrases “trick” and “hide the decline” which were used to suggest a conspiracy to commit scientific fraud. In fact, as the U Penn investigation found, these claims were baseless. “Trick” referred to a clever way of combining data, and the “decline” was not a decline in global temperatures but a well-known problematic feature of tree ring data.
U Penn’s ruling was also a demonstration of the corruption and confirmation bias in government climate science. As primary beneficiaries of Mann’s work in the form of grants, it would have been very expensive for U Penn to slam Michael for his systematic participation in the distortions of peer review, elimination and exaggeration of data. The investigation was the same thing as asking a bank robbers partner if the robber with the bag of money in his hand had done anything wrong. Guh nope, nothing to see here.
For about the millionth time, trick referred to ‘chopping’ off tree data and replacing it with temperature data such that the rest of the ancient historic data could be claimed to be temperature – all cooler than today. The modern stuff, which is used in paleoclimatology to confirm that trees are temp, looked as much like temperature as I look like Jennifer Anniston. The obvious conclusion in comparing plots is, I am not Jennifer Anniston and this set of tree data is NOT temperature. That is, unless you use a ‘trick’ to ‘hide the decline’, or in my case photoshop, in which case non-informed people would rightfully assume that they are actually looking at a temperature plot. Of course then to finish the trick, the key is to inform nobody else of the trick — which they did.
BTW, I’ve seen no major media cover Mick Kelly’s discussion of the elimination of graph endpoints for presentations to ‘actually hide the decline’ in temperature data. Ironically, the trick is very similar to the Jones trick. Climategate emails are not about one event, but a culture and number of events.
What made the hide the decline event so powerful was that the public can get it – in a single sound byte. In my opinion, there were worse things going on with peer review, FOI, IPCC reports, and other data. It doesn’t matter though, the advocates will continue to focus on the use of the word trick, they will continue saying lie after lie, using things like the U Penn investigation and the UK investigation, which has already been caught stacking the deck with key personnel, to support their false arguments.
Some in the public will buy it, many of the scientists will try to buy it, they already are. But those scientists in the field who defend the actions of this group are charlatans and tricksters, they are false in every way and will be marked in the eyes of other scientists in other fields. Spreading disinformation is their hidden objective, each to drive their intended outcome. When you claim to be honest, yet cannot present data which goes against your conclusions, you are an advocate of disinformation.
I’m shocked by the silence of the climate community. I’m absolutely stunned that we don’t see a full scale rejection of everything these people did. Instead we get Gerry North and Gavin Schmidt making up sophistry to twist corruption into something it’s not, why aren’t his peers slamming him and the RC group? Close friends not destroying each other isn’t unreasonable, but not everyone is a close personal friend. Is climate science so empty of character that people will not speak out on the truth? Is there so much fear of the power of these individuals or the loss of money that they cannot speak out? Are they just believers in a higher calling?
Those who support what these people did are the people science can never believe, those who do not openly reject what they did had better be Phil Jone’s wife or they are advocates for a hidden cause. The current silence in the climate community has reinforced my suspicion is that many of them are equally dirty from their own work and contain their own laundry list of hide the declines.
For example, after PNAS investigation of the hockey sticks, if North isn’t guilty of something I’d be shocked.
the Air Vent 
Jeff;
This was a valuable exposition of the issues.
I saw this thing over at WUWT, but I had forgotten about the whole ‘mole’ ruse.
Thanks for the clarity.
RR
#1, thanks. It’s like people are trying to rewrite history.
As a non scientist equipped only with common sense (or as I prefer to call it – BS meter )I’ve noticed that every day we have more and more evidence confirming that IQ of some of the “climate scientist” is within the range of max and min temperatures on the equator
The only person morally responsible for the CRU hack was Phil “this is cheering news” Jones and his blatent disregard for scientific process and the rule of law.
As usual, it projection. This is likely to be the way Quiggen would act, so he assumes his opponents do too. Judging by past actions, Steve M probably will offer the guy a guest post on CA to prove his claims.
Mr Pete, Don Wagner and several others made mincemeat of Prof. Quiggin in the comments. Go read ’em. Hint, hint, I was there.
===================
Germane questions. But who knows? Real answers would require looking into the hearts of strangers. Which is hard to do, unless you’re Joseph Conrad and the stranger is Lord Jim. One suspects that the individuals themselves no longer know, if they ever did.
When science is on the rails, the motive of the investigator is less important than his or her conduct with respect to the investigation. Ideally, that conduct is always ethical, and we can move to issues on the methods and findings like perceptiveness, completeness, statistical rigor, concordance with earlier work, and importance.
So the main thing is to recognize where derailments have occurred, then fix the science.
The piece by Quiggin, and also recently the shrill denunciation of climate skeptics by the Australian ABC’s science journalist Robyn Williams, all seems to indicate that the true believers have realized that they cannot sell it on ‘the science’. The real science is too complex and has too many holes in it for an easy sell to the public. They are thus going into full political lockdown mode.
Recently I moved to a country town which I hoped would be quiet. As ill-luck and poor planning on my part however would have it, the local school decided to erect a substantial wind turbine (approx 130 feet high) on virtually the day I moved in. The noise emanating from the machine is not too bad when the wind is blowing, but the eco-fanatics at the school insist on motoring the turbine on calm days, so you can hear it grind away continuously under power for about the distance of a mile. It appears that after they have worked up some credit during a windy period, they then burn it off for several days afterwards in some sort of bizarre attempt to delude the students that the turbine is actually working when it isn’t. It must cost them (or rather the taxpayer) a fortune.
This is the sort of desperate situation the believers now find themselves in. When all else fails, reassert to the group the righteousness of the cause no matter how absurd it looks to outsiders.
Well right away I have to acknowledge that I don’t buy conspiracy theories. Anything that involves people keeping absolute secrets for long periods of time will fail. People are just to social – at least one person in the group will have an agenda different enough than the others so it is attractive to spread the “real” story.
The “team” – as you call the folks in the emails – hasn’t cracked over many months of incredibly high pressure. So the options I see are:
1) This is a conspiracy
2) They believe the story they are telling.
I’ve ruled out 1, which leaves 2. So they either believe a true story, a false story, or a true/false story.
I strongly suspect the latter is true. I think the basic story they are telling is true (the earth is warming due to man-made causes). I think some of them are guilty of excess in service of telling that true story (and that is obviously not science – witness the problematic hockey stick).
With all the commotion surrounding the emails – other than Jones’ FOI stonewalling, very little evidence of wrong doing has come to light. Yes, if you ALREADY think climate change is a crock you got all the evidence you need. But you are as guilty of seeing what you want to see as those that claim, as the blogger Jeff is talking about, that the emails prove nothing.
I personally never need to see “trick” or “hide the decline” again. I’ve never seen people so desperate to make something out of nothing (funny that could be taken either way).
This blog does a fantastic job of searching for the truth and doing at least original re-analysis – and even original, interesting work and I am happy to learn from (and I do appreciate) the hard work.
But just as RC goes to far in not allowing legitimate questions through in comments (and Jeff is obviously cut from a finer moral cloth – witness this critical post and many others from me and others) – this blog has a STRONG “those guys are crooks” bias.
I realize you are calling it as you see it. For me, I will take a skeptical view of what the various investigations reveal – and more imporantly what continued scientific discovery and analysis reveals, and continue to read and learn as much as I can.
BTW – what would convince you that climate change is happening, and it is manmade, and that we should take action to stop it?
“Actually thoughtful”
Go over to icecap and read Six myths about “deniers” I believe that about sums up where skeptics are at.
Actually Thoughtful:
I am fully prepared to believe that most climate scientists are trying to be genuinely objective. However, just as there are vested interests for the fossil fuel industry, there are vested interests for the environmental industry. There are also groups of scientists who are committed to the fossil fuel industry and to environmental industry. Human nature ensures that those scientists will interpret ambiguous facts in ways that support their preconceptions. Given the predispositions of academic scientists the overall consequences are unfortunately to minimize the inherent uncertainties and to push conclusions in a predictable direction.
#9 Actually Thoughtful –
I thought that was what everyone was saying all along. There is a kernel of truth, but they put so much icing on the cake as to make it a fabrication.
BTW – what would convince you that climate change is happening, and it is manmade, and that we should take action to stop it?
Again, this is not a denialist site. I’ve stated so many times my belief in the core mechanism of heat increase by CO2 it’s not funny anymore.
Climate change is happening, a fraction of it is manmade but nobody knows how much. People who claim they do know are confused or dishonest, the science isn’t good enough to know. At this point, nothing that has happened is dangerous and any claims of impacts from climate change have been false.
As far as what to do, there are still questions to be answered. For instance the residence time of CO2. If it is as long as the IPCC says, the total emission of CO2 must be stopped. If it’s as short as I suspect from the data, we have a problem which will not continue to get worse and worse but rather level off with at some point with emissions – we don’t know. As an engineer, I can tell you that we don’t have a method for stopping emissions and won’t any time soon. The best method to stop emissions is new technology, the best way to create new technology is to have a prosperous society. Therefore if the IPCC is right, minimal total tonnage released is the goal, the best thing we can do is open the oil/coal floodgates and make sure that energy is dirt cheap to spur the technological developments which are required. Of course that’s the opposite of the way an environmentalist is used to thinking and all proposed solutions are for limitation, which may in fact be the opposite of the solution.
Since nobody really knows how fast CO2 is being absorbed or where it really goes, I think the IPCC should adopt a shorter timeframe for it’s “official” re-absorption as it allows their leftist policies of limitation through theft of our money and government dictation to make sense.
Please pay attention to the point that there really is nothing we can do about CO2 output. No matter what you decide is right, output will continue and continue to rise. Until a replacement technology is developed and implemented. we don’t have a choice in the matter.
Michael Mann is at Penn State University, not U Penn. The inquiry was at Penn State as well. I think the original mistake came from John Quiggin.
By his own logic, if someone kills another person with a plank of wood, the man who planted the pine tree to make the timber is responsible???? I cannot believe someone with such poor reasonning skills can be associated with science – Has science really fallen that far from the apple, that people like this represent science!?! Were are all doomed…
My take on it – CRU are responsible, they witheld code that according to good scientific practice should be available, they then ignored FOI requests whilst putting the data ready to go on a public server whilst knowing they had lost data before that way. They are responsible for their own downfall, Kharma baby, Kharma!
Had they had been open in the first place and gave McIntryre the code he wanted none of this would have happened in the first place!
Remember Eric Steig’s antarctic emulation? I saw it today at a putative science blog
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Watts-Up-With-Thats-continued-ignorance-regarding-Antarctic-sea-ice.html
I was going to rip this sniveling little conman a new one, but then I discovered he had gone full realclimate commando about who does and doesn’t get to comment on his website.
Hah! Good post, Jeff. The “mole” thing had come up and now, because of the Quiggen crud getting way over amped, it was timely to have a review.
Steve McIntyre’s mole post was one of his jokes. One aspect of humor is the appreciation of irony and that joke is a good one. The “mole” was Phil Jones. They constantly criticized each other for leaving data around so the ‘skeptics’ wouldn’t get it. And Scott Rutherford got in trouble from Mann for leaving data on an open FTP server. I would have loved to be the fly on the wall when Mann realized that Scott really screwed up. They are emailing passwords to each other where, apparently, any insider has access while they are traveling. Collaborators are getting free access through home PC IP unblocking to get around the UEA security measures.
No nefarious activity was required. They were clown-school and all it took was a whistleblower.
Jeff I think we need a “I believe in radiative physics logo” or something.
Actually thoughful: read my stuff on noble cause corruption. Of course they believed in what they were saying.
As for stopping AGW, the only thing stopping us from local action ( mitigate and adapt) is the desire on the part of
some to sign some grand global treaty.
Actually Thoughtful:
“I personally never need to see “trick” or “hide the decline” again. I’ve never seen people so desperate to make something out of nothing (funny that could be taken either way).”
Based on that remark, I question whether you really understand this issue. The “hockey stick” graphs are junk science, regardless of whether the Earth is going to boil due to SUVs. And the hockey sticks were the most important “demonstration” of an impending calamity. There ain’t much left, when you look into the details. All a bunch of loose correlations with conclusions that use the words “may be,” “might possibly be,” etc. Even pseudo-science-like statements, like: “there is a 90% probability that mankind is causing this….”
#19 – Mosh,
I think the problem ia hard targets for emission reductions which have no connection to the available technology or rational economics. If someone insists on hard targets they have to insist on an international treaty because hard targets in one country would simply cause production to shift to other places. Of course, real politik in the UN process means a treaty would not stop that from happening either but that is generally forgotten by advocates.
Good Lord, reading the comments from the “regulars” at his blogpost is like wading into a swamp. They behave the same way that the CRU-crew do. <that was poetical!< No wonder he feels the way he does surrounded by such groupthink.
The Global Warming debate is unreal, people are really off their rockers.
Some observations:
1. The globe is warming (and has been since the last ice age) and nobody can say what extent of the warming is human induced and why.
2. The solutions proposed by the proponents of AGW are heinous (Cap & Trade, Global regulation)
3. The “science” is on shaky ground due to the science/scientists, brought to the light of day only by the CRU emails.
4. The “scientists” are not interested in much outside of #2 and appear to make the facts fit the theory rather than vice versa.
5. AGW blogs rarely allow posting by anyone who disagrees with them.
6. The Sceptic blogs rarely remove posting that disagrees with them.
Have a nice day, I’m going to make some sushi.
“BTW – what would convince you that climate change is happening, and it is manmade, and that we should take action to stop it?”
That’s easy! EVIDENCE. E-V-I-D-E-N-C-E. Evidence that anything is happening which requires dramatic intervention.
The earth has been warming, for whatever reason, for 200 years (give or take). Plot human prosperity versus temperature. Where is the catastrophe? Show me the dead bodies. You know, the ones that drowned fleeing rising seas. The ones killed by melting glaciers. The ones starved by falling farm production.
Show me evidence – not computer model – that a warming world is endangering humanity. Then, and only then, can we discuss which portion of that warming is anthropogenic. Then we can compare those dangers to the benefits from (CO2 producing) readily available affordable energy. And only after that can we discuss policy solutions.
Just plot temperature versus human prosperity.
JAE said
March 15, 2010 at 4:41 pm
If you’ve noticed any of his other “thoughtful” posts you would quickly realize that no, he does not understand this issue. This is, of course, in spite of it being explained repeatedly, almost ad nauseum.
Mark
Actually Thoughtful said:
“Well right away I have to acknowledge that I don’t buy conspiracy theories. Anything that involves people keeping absolute secrets for long periods of time will fail. People are just to[o] social – at least one person in the group will have an agenda different enough than the others so it is attractive to spread the ‘real’ story.”
This is like saying you don’t believe in elephants, or rain storms, or apple pies! Conspiracies happen, have happened, are known to happen, have been proved to happen to the satisfaction of all sentient beings. And those involved keep secrets – real doozies – for quite a long time. Some, of course, fail but by no means all invariably do so, else why would anyone bother with them. Some indeed succeed spectacularly. Or have you explosive new evidence that Abe Lincoln died of apoplexy and Julius Caesar in the midst of one of his epileptic fits? In our own era the July Plot didn’t fail as a conspiracy – and it was in the works in some form or other for years with the Gestapo on the prowl – but rather Hitler survived the successful detonation.
I pass over the other numerous coups d’état of the twentieth century all over the world which were known beforehand to the dogs in the street, yet news of which never filtered through to the Presidential Palace where the Father of the People was ensconced serenely on his solid gold throne torturing small furry animals as the doors burst open…
“I’m shocked by the silence of the climate community. I’m absolutely stunned. Is climate science so empty of character that people will not speak out on the truth?”
So am I, the silence is deafening.
Rumour has it that Rob Wilson (http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~rjsw/cv/cv.html)is a
“sensible” dendro. yet I haven’t heard so much as a squeak from him since “Climategate”.
Tell us it ain’t true, Rob!
#6 Kim
I read the comments at Quiggen’s site. It was like blitzkrieg. They didn’t know what hit them. Mr. Pete was particularly effective as he stuck closer to the site’s rules than the regulars and still ran circles around them. Meantime you rattled them and kept them off balance. Talk about clueless… your “word-to-the-wise” mole “hints” were hilarious. I try to spend my time at serious sites. This was my first real experience with naiveté on parade. I mean is this guy (Quiggen) serious?
You know, it struck me, as I read through the comments, that at Jonestown at least some of the people had to be forced to drink the kool-aid. 😉
Jeff,
This was a great post but I’m afraid it would have been pearls before swine on Quiggen’s blog. You’ve convincingly set the record straight but there wasn’t a lot of intellectual horsepower over there to see it. The acolytes before the high priest and all…
Cheers
Thanks, Steve E. As you can tell, we had some fun over there. I have it on reliable evidence that the good Professor has had his carpets sent out for cleaning.
=================
Please pay attention to the point that there really is nothing we can do about CO2 output. No matter what you decide is right, output will continue and continue to rise. Until a replacement technology is developed and implemented. we don’t have a choice in the matter.
China and India are not paying attention to Climate hysteria. And those places are where most of the rate of change of CO2 emissions are coming from.
Personally I like Polywell Fusion. IF it works we will know in about two years or so. But at this point the science and engineering are not settled. Fortunately the research cost is only in the tens of millions so it is cheap to find out.
ITER is so expensive (getting more so as the management has failed) and so far away (a three year addition to the schedule in just the last year) that it may never prove out if some of the small fusion experiments work out. It was never designed to produce ECONOMICAL fusion and so is more or less a make work program for physicists and engineers.
In addition there are serious doubts that it will ever be able to breed sufficient tritium for a viable power system. The theoretical calculation is that it can breed 10% more fuel than it uses. However, engineering wise that is a very slim margin. There are always losses. And the breeding problem is true of any device that has to use tritium as fuel.
If you want to study the science of all this a good place to start is the sidebar at “IEC Fusion Technology”. Just Google it.
Polywell can probably make commercial fusion with Deuterium (relatively plentiful and easy to get) and may be able to use Boron 11 and Hydrogen both of which are abundant enough so that we have at least a 10,00 year and possibly a 100,00 year supply in the ground and probably millions of years worth in the oceans. In any case long enough to figure out what to do next.
RE TIm
Not talking about hard targets.
here is a book you all should read.
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/presssite/metadata.epl?isbn=9781878220974
https://secure.ametsoc.org/amsbookstore/viewProductInfo.cfm?productID=45
Jeff #14
This is a key point, and one I intend to educate myself on and share what I find.
#33 That’s good news. While you do, consider that if the IPCC is right and several thousand years are required to absorb CO2, any emission is a problem. I really doubt that is the case but rather think it was invented in an ill decided attempt to rush the change. Seriously though, there are no technologies which can stop it. Nuclear fission is the closest but there are no batteries which will work for cars and the expense is high.
dribble,
The school is probably running the turbine on windless days for a good reason. If it is a good size turbine the weight of the blades would warp the shaft if left sitting in one position. They take unmetered electricity from the grid to turn it. That is one of the hidden costs of wind power which is never figured into calculations.
The link below has a few more.
http://www.aweo.org/windconsumption.html
This post is a bit late, but I’ve been busy
Quiggles (aka Quiggen) of “Quiggles Flies Again” fame, writes a spasmodic column in the Aus Financial Review (perhaps Aus’ least worse daily newspaper). Generally he rants against a capitalist economy and rants for a command economy – very easy to predict and very, very easy to ignore. Occasionally there is a rant against “deniers” but these rants are always innocent of any scientific detail
His few efforts that genuinely afford me amusement are directed towards reviewing “Science Fiction” books – he claims a passion for this genre. His lack of scientific knowledge and innocence of any straightforward logic produce truly wondrous reviews. The one that made me roll on the floor with helpless laughter was of the Michael Crighton book “State of Fear”, wherein Quiggles opined that the geologist (glaciologist) involved in the 1st chapter is the character trying to “bend” data while the CEO of the NGO (like, say, Greenpeace) was trying to keep him honest. This 180 degree misrepresentation of just a fiction book says it all about Quiggles
It’s victimology. You are never responsible for what happens if you’re classified as a victim, regardless of whether you’re victimhood has anything to do with the event in question. You were poor, therefore you’re raping someone isn’t your fault. You conspire to violate the FOIA laws but that’s ok because you were inundated with FOIA requests after you already had broken the law,
hey – what we need is evidence that the temperature pattern is changing in the upward direction.
The rise since 1976 is EXACTLY matched in degrees and time, with the rises from 1911 to 1943 and in the late 19th century.
Until such evidence is forthcoming, then there can be no discernable evidence that the rising CO2 level is causing a discernable extra rise in temperature.
We need to wait for five to ten years to see if past trends continue, which would see a gentle decline in average temperatures. That would be caused by the next cyclic downturn overcoming the secular long term rising trend. (Until recently both these trend patterns have been pushing temperatures up).
While we wait we should be studying the value of the benefits of added CO2 in terms of increasing food production.
In future, that would be lost if China, India, Russia et al reduced their CO2 output. Ha Ha ha.
# 35
I have just started to read that paper you cite.
FANTASTIC !!!!!!!!
I always cite the recent Spainish study but this one really sticks a fork in the wind power fantasy !!
Bob Koss: “The school is probably running the turbine on windless days for a good reason. If it is a good size turbine the weight of the blades would warp the shaft if left sitting in one position.”
This is not the case in this instance as the turbine also spends considerable time completely stopped. The usual pattern is for the turbine to keep rotating steadily at full speed for three days after the end of a windy period of several days. After this the turbine stops and generally sits there doing nothing for several days until the next windy period.
It is possible that the turbine may be capable of steady full speed rotation under very light breezes, but this does not seem to happen during other lengthy periods when it is generally stopped. The whole thing looks highly suspicious and I really could not believe it was happening the first time it occurred. However given the moral righteousness and taxpayers money the eco-fantasists at the school must have invested in the project, nothing would surprise me.
#13 Jeff
I tend to think higher prices would spur technological development. Necessity being the mother of invention and all that. Not to say a free market isn’t always looking for better and cheaper, but in practice, markets often aren’t free and certainly subject to inertia.
He states that as a fact. Does he have inside information that this is the case? I have not seen anywhere where CRU has admitted that they created the FOIA file.
I have a degree to the Pennsylvania State University, the same institution which investigated their employee, Michael Mann. The University of Pennsylvania is in Philadelphia and has nothing to do with Michael Mann’s employment, although it does run the world’s finest Relay Carnival every Spring.
Do not want to waste my time digging further into this professor’s ramblings but it does bring home that one can act (or be) the part of a nut job and with little or no repercussions in academia.
Why should I have to read another bullshit AGW believing blog entry that will continue the same wave of alarmist stupidity that all the other have shown to be for 20 years?
When you catch someone making up scientific results, it is not supposed to be considered immoral, it is supposed to be considered a positive contribution to society.
When in catching someone making up scientific results, you indirectly motivate others to find and disclose even more scientific malpractise by the same individuals, that is supposed to considered a positive contribution to society.
When you attack those providing a positive contribution to society because you want to defend those committing scientific malpractise due to your personal belief system, you are making a negative contribution to society. You are acting like an accomplice.
When you defend the climategate emailers, you either have not actually read the emails, or you are acting as an accomplice.
[I think many of the defenders could not bring themselves to actually read the emails and Quiggen is probably one of the many. The emails and the science which led to them cannot be defended by anyone who wants to provide a positive contribution to society].
Thank you jeff for this post,
I just was there and was to reply and saw the close.
I think he did it because he was badly loosing the debate.
It looks to me like a bait n switch, try to get peps to think
it is all about us( skeptics ) criminally intent rather than find the truth!
I don’t know if you have seen this or not but three times this last week I have seen a .05-.1C temp. sig. in the latest rounds of post….. it may indeed be that a doubling of CO2 results in that much warming, but not to scary. I think that is the number you and roman have also seen in your work with Antarctic and so forth.
TX
Tim L