An “Inconvenient Truth:” Climate Change and Scientific Fraud

On October 29, I posted a blog entry entitled, Natural Law, Moral Imperative, and Public Policy: Copenhagen Looms Near. It included a 90 minute lecture given by noted Anthropogenic Climate Change skeptic, Lord Christopher Monckton, in which he details how long-known data has always questioned the predictions of so-called climate change computer models, how climate organizations, like the IPCC and CRU, have been caught doctoring public reports supporting the notion of climate change, and how recent scientific observations, specifically addressing the question of climate change, utterly disprove the theories concocted by politically motivated scientists and organizations, and propped up by magical computer models. In this latter regard, I noted a recent paper by German scientists Gerlich and Tscheuschner, Falsification of the Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects within the Frame of Physics, which concludes: “the derivation of statements on the CO2 induced anthropogenic global warming out of the computer simulations lies outside any science” (pp. 90-91). Science – that is, real science, or the process of hypothesis testing through direct observation of phenomena, rather than the make-believe science of supporting one's assumptions (or “scientific models”) by programming a computer to produce the desired answers – has, as recently as this Summer, not only proven that anthropogenic climate change models are false, and that the fabled "hockey-stick" graph showing dramatic temperature increases is a fabrication, but that the so-called "Greenhouse Effect" does not exist, the results of recent research by Lindzen & Choi (MIT) showing that heat is not trapped in the atmosphere but radiated out. Kirsten E. Lombard, in a review of Glenn Beck's October 20 interview with Lord Monckton, summarzes Lindzen's work from this interview, as follows:

Richard Lindzen of MIT, the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Planetary and Atmospheric Sciences, has in the last two months, released a salient (understatement of the year) study on climate feedbacks. Simple in concept but meticulous in execution, Lindzen's study measures the escape of outgoing radiation into space.

Al Gore and those with whom the former vice president aligns himself claim, of course, that such radiation becomes trapped within the earth's atmosphere, leading to precipitous and disastrous warming. Yet Lindzen's study finds quite the opposite: such radiation has continued escaping out into space at rates that would seem finally to put an end the global warming scare. Results indicate, in fact, that the effects of CO2 on temperature over the course of the next century will remain well below 2° F, possibly as low as 1° F. These projections amount to less than one sixth of what the U.N. claims and are, quite simply, negligible.

Better still, where all previous projections were based solely on computer modeling – much of it wildly biased – Lindzen's projections are based on hard data accumulated over the course of 20 years. Monckton had actually published a paper last year that arrived at the same conclusions from a theoretical perspective. Now Lindzen's rigorously conducted science backs him up.

Lindzen and Monckton aren't the only ones standing against the Anthropogenic Climate Change crowd: nearly 32,000 professional American scientists have signed a petition urging the US government to reject treaties such as Kioto and Copenhagen, stating,

There is no convincing evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the forseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth."

That's 32,000 professional American scientists, and counting.

How interesting it is, then, that late last week, mere weeks before the U.N. Climate Change Conference was set to begin in Copenhagen (on Dec. 7), “hackers” were able to gain access to UK government systems and “find” a store of emails and documents authored by very prominent climatologists from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU), which go back approximately 15 years and clearly detail scientific fraud, not only by calculated and systematic manipulation of data, but scheming to prevent other researchers, with competing conclusions, from publishing their findings. Andrew Bolt, journalist for Melbourne's Herald Sun, reports on Nov. 20:

So the 1079 emails and 72 documents seem indeed evidence of a scandal involving most of the most prominent scientists pushing the man-made warming theory - a scandal that is one of the greatest in modern science. I’ve been adding some of the most astonishing in updates below - emails suggesting conspiracy, collusion in exaggerating warming data, possibly illegal destruction of embarrassing information, organised resistance to disclosure, manipulation of data, private admissions of flaws in their public claims and much more. If it is as it now seems, never again will “peer review” be used to shout down sceptics.

On November 24, a Washington Times editorial comments:

Repeatedly throughout the e-mails that have been made public, proponents of global-warming theories refer to data that has been hidden or destroyed. Only e-mails from Mr. Jones' institution [University of East Anglia (UEA)] have been made public, and with his obvious approach to deleting sensitive files, it's difficult to determine exactly how much more information has been lost that could be damaging to the global-warming theocracy and its doomsday forecasts... [T]hese e-mails were covered by Britain's Freedom of Information Act and should have been released [without having to be hacked]. The content of these e-mails raises extremely serious questions that could end the academic careers of many prominent professors. Academics who have purposely hidden data, destroyed information and doctored their results have committed scientific fraud. We can only hope respected academic institutions such as Pennsylvania State University [Professor Micheal E. Mann], the University of Arizona [Professor Malcom K. Hughes] and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst [Professor Raymond S Bradley] conduct proper investigative inquiries.

“A scandal that is one of the greatest in modern science,” exclaims Mr. Bolt. Indeed. Piltdown Man, while disenfranchising two or three generations of school children, surely did not have the political and economic implications of Climategate. Recently, it was discovered that Professor Reiner Protsch von Zieten, a German anthropologist, was forced to retire from his university in Frankfurt “because of numerous 'falsehoods and manipulations' ...his deceptions may mean an entire tranche of the history of man's development will have to be rewritten.” But again, a few academically disenfranchised students, some republishing costs, and a little egg-on-face for his former employer, are nothing compared to the commercial and political interests already fully vested in the outcome of Copenhagen. Some folks are already warning investors to dump alternative energy stocks. Of course, there still are all the poor little school children who've been lied to and deliberately frightened for the past two decades – but who cares whether they will have sufficient knowledge to function as productive citizens, the vulnerable emotions of helpless and ignorant children are too politically useful to worry about truth and integrity.

Interestingly, the Copenhagen Treaty was DOA anyway – for political reasons. On November 17, Der Spiegel reports:

At the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Singapore [on November 15], 17 heads of states and government -- including ones from China, Russia and the US -- destroyed all hopes of setting internationally binding climate targets in Copenhagen. Even the agreement to halve carbon dioxide emissions by 2050 that was agreed upon in L'Aquila has been sidelined. Now, the only possible result of the Copenhagen talks will be a "politically binding agreement." According to the latest plan for the summit, a formal, legal agreement would then be reached at a later stage [ostensibly, Bonn in 2010].

Copenhagen is a failure now on both scientific and political grounds. Bone fide science debunks claims of anthropogenic climate change. Highly respected scientists, advocates of anthropogenic climate change, have been caught in the global fraud of the century. And the politicians can't seem to agree anyway (and why should they agree? Disagreement is better for their careers – it is always much more theatrical, enhances the perception that they are conscientious problem solvers, and provides additional opportunities for them to be seen and heard by their adoring public.).

Nevertheless, in the US, issues of scientific fraud are being taken seriously. Senator Inhofe (R – OK), who has always been suspicious of climate alarmism and a skeptic of anthropogenic climate change, will be pushing for full Senate investigation into the extent of this fraud.



On November 18, Inhofe spoke at a press conference regarding the lack of science behind anthropogenic climate change (above), claiming vindication of his skepticism on scientific grounds, and offers a pretty good history of his anti-alarmist skepticism and consistent leadership on this issue.





On November 23, three days after the CRU fraud was made public, Inhofe says he will call for an investigation into Climategate (above).





And then, just yesterday, reiterating his promise to call for investigation into Climategate, Inhofe relates (above) how he had been approached by many prominent US scientists over the years who expressed concern that they had not been allowed proper input into climate studies or to publish their research, some even having left the IPCC over the treatment they had received. Fraud apparently extends beyond the CRU.


Finally, Chris Horner (another well-known global warming skeptic) was interviewed by Fox News, along with a global warming advocate. Mr. Horner's comments are worth paying attention to.

Q: Do these emails substantiate what you have been saying for years?
A: That's precisely what they are. They are miscast as revelations when in fact they are all affirmations. None out of context, all posted in full context, including entire email threads, affirming the specifics of the actions that we have been describing, including ...falsifying the data of the entire premise for the IPCC's process, the Kioto Treaty, the Kioto II Treaty, Cap & Trade, EPA's actions, and so on, all of which, from the US perspective, must be stayed until the truth is out. We do need an investigation ...in fact, they are affirming everything that a lot of people, including many many scientists, including some in the refereed literature had been [pointing out], for some time, has been going on...

Let me clarify what these are. This isn't information ...that somehow was just sprung now. In fact, it's just as likely to have come from a whistle-blower, someone from inside with a conscience. All of this information is subject to the UK's Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). All of it has been under request for years. The most recent request, after they had run out of reasons, was [denied with the statement], “We lost the data.” Well, that's implausible beyond belief, and also would cause a stay in the process until they found [it]. So someone has forced cooperation with UK's FOIA by revealing this, what, 12 to 13 year string of evidence of seeking to, not keep people out of conferences, but out of refereed literature, and of seeking to falsify their own results. Not just random marginal results, either, but the premise – the hockey stick. They talked about hiding the decline in temperature of the last half of the last century. That's not what other people are just saying, “Yes, I found that too.” Other people are echoing significant data. They are disagreeing [with their own premise] in their own words, and they can't deny it any more.

We need an investigation... The emails prove that they broke the law, they describe how to break the law. They also engaged in fraud.

Q: Is it possible that more information will come out to exonerate these scientists?
A: ...[T]he bottom line is, would we have heard a defense if a real one existed? Yes, we would have heard it by now. Instead, what we have seen are statements like, “Using the word 'trick' is acutally a very common application in science,” although this is the first we've ever heard of it, and “Hiding the decline is just really describing something else.” The plain meaning is described as the implausible, and the implausible is described as the reasonable meaning. If that's your first, best, and apparently last defense, these people have been caught with their pants at their ankles, and another 100mb of data are coming. A real investigation ...shall ensure now, and all processes should be stayed: Kioto II, Cap & Trade, EPA regulatory push, all of the energy rationing and tax schemes premised precisely on research proven falsified in this material, must be stayed.

Somebody with a conscience, indeed. No random hacker is going to break into a system and simply discover a store of approximately 1100 documents detailing a pattern of scientific fraud over the past 13 years – especially regarding such high profile research. Someone was most definitely collecting this information. The hacker had to have known what he was looking for, where to find it, and how to anonymously post it under the title "FOIA" for the world to discover.

To stay on top of this as it develops, frequently visit Climate Depot. They are maintaining a running list of news stories covering Climategate.


I close by quoting again from last month's review of Lord Monckton's presentation:

lack of fidelity to truth is necessarily followed by fundamental immorality – which reasonably follows given that questions are asked, and answers are sought, for the sake of guidance in our thoughts and deeds. False foundation for thinking and acting naturally results in wrong thinking and acting. Governments and large organizations cannot act ethically by deliberately mis-handling the truth – immorality on a grand scale is the tragic result.

Heralded by its organizers as a significant step toward Global Governance, Copenhagen was to be the beginning of a legally-binding realignment of world powers. A realignment founded on falsehood and deceit on a grand scale, it would have created a new global governing body, overtly requiring that members hand over their sovereignty as independent nations, for the purpose of transferring capital between these member nations based on carbon usage, subject to international enforcement. That's (1) a new government (2) with enforcement powers (a military, or access to internal economic controls for punitive purposes, perhaps), that (3) manages the flow of capital between member nations on the basis of factors directly related to a nation's economic success (production/transportation of goods and services). What manner of immorality, illiberality and exploitation could descend from such an arrangement, hopefully we'll never have to find out. President Obama, however, despite the November 17 report from Der Spiegel, cited above, just today offered his assurances that, as a result of his recent political gallivant, he has been successful moving sentiment in China and India toward a positive stature regarding the Copenhagen Treaty. We'll see...




Some links:

• Capping Emissions, Trading On The Future: The West's goals in Copenhagen are tantamount to suicide.


• Nature will decide Earth's future:"AS the core samples from deep underground pass through the logging sensor before me, the rhythmic pattern of ancient climate change is clearly displayed. Friendly, brown sands for the warm interglacial periods and hostile, sterile grey clays for the cold glaciations. And for more than 90 per cent of recent geological time the Earth has been colder than today."


• The Smoking Gun At Darwin Zero: "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."


• The warming theory is falling to bits: "Recent results published by top scientists cast doubt on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s theory about the link between atmospheric carbon dioxide and global warming…"


• Pressure Mounts From Inside: Disband IPCC? Scientist from U. of East Anglia Suggests 'UN IPCC has run its course...politicizes climate science...authoritarian, exclusive form of knowledge production' -- ClimateGate reveals science has become 'too partisan, too centralized...more usually associated with social organization within primitive cultures'


• News Busters: Obama is going 'to Copenhagen not in spite of these e-mails but because of these e-mails. He's in full panic mode'


• Climategate e-mails sweep America, may scuttle Barack Obama's Cap and Trade laws


• Climatology, Junk Science, and Congress: Climategate Scientist Phil Jones Provided Data to the US Congress


• WSJ: Rigging a Climate 'Consensus' ...About those emails and 'peer review.'


• UK Scientist Piers Corbyn speaks: 'Case for climate fears is blown to smithereens...whole theory should be destroyed and discarded and UN conference should be closed' -- 'We should end this anti-scientific nonsense now' -- UN's 'Copenhagen jamboree is a scandal and it must be stopped'


• UN scientists turn on each other: UN Scientist Declares Climategate colleagues Mann, Jones and Rahmstorf 'should be barred from the IPCC process' -- They are 'not credible any more'


• New Zealand Climategate: the scandal spreads, the plot thickens, the shame deepens…


• New Zealand: Government agency accused of 'cooking the books to create a warming trend where none exists'


• Uh, oh – raw data in New Zealand tells a different story than the “official” one.


• Climategate: Alarmism Is Underpinned by Fraud


• Numbers racket: 4,000 Scientists did not endorse IPCC report, only 60 did


• Big bucks riding on data: Leaked e-mails cast doubt on global-warming strategy


• New Peer-Reviewed Research: Atlantic Ocean Was 2.7°C Warmer During Roman Warm Period, 2.2°C Warmer During MWP


• What Is — and What Isn’t — Evidence of Global Warming: Scientist: 'Climategate has everybody rethinking global warming... is the evidence for catastrophic climate change weaker than previously thought? Actually, the evidence was never even evidence'


• Green totalitarianism: Which is the more terrifying and devastating: if people are bent and deliberately try to deceive others, or if they are so much in thrall to an ideology that they genuinely have lost the power to think objectively and rationally? I think that the terrible history of mankind provides the answer to that question. Nixon was a crook. But what we are dealing with here is the totalitarian personality. One thing is now absolutely clear for all to see about the anthropogenic global warming scam: science this is not.


• The Skeptics Are Vindicated: "We have been given the materials with which to obtain an insight into how all modern science works when vast amounts of public funding is at stake and when the vested interests associated with various 'progressive' causes require a particular scientific result."


• Three Things You Absolutely Must Know About Climategate: (1) the scientists discuss manipulating data to get their preferred results, (2) scientists on several occasions discussed methods of subverting the scientific peer review process to ensure that skeptical papers had no access to publication, (3) the scientists worked to circumvent the Freedom of Information process of the United Kingdom


• "Climate Gate" Development: CEI Files Notice of Intent to Sue NASA


• Old Consensus: There Is "Unprecedented" Global Warming; New Consensus: UN-IPCC Climate Scientists Are Unprecedented Liars


• The Death Blow to Climate Science


• Climate Cuttings: Lengthy and growing blog post of cuttings from Climategate emails...

EU President: "2009 to be First Year of Global Governance" -->

<-- Natural Law, Moral Imperative, and Public Policy: Copenhagen Looms Near