Climategate

Surprise, Surprise, scientists are disagreeing on the severity, causes, and eventual outcome of what's now called "climate change", or even if it exists at all. The idea of “Global Warming” seems to be based on our apparent global climatic change, a lot of junk science, the wistful thinking of the far left gloom and doom set, and research data modified to produce the desired outcome. There’s hardly any agreement among scientists with some knowledge of global warming, or of humanity's possible role in producing it, but you wouldn't know that if you listen to the Obama administration. As the Climate-gate controversy continues to grow amid numerous charges of manipulating data and suppressing research by opposition scientists who challenge the theory, there is one often repeated “defense”, in that other data-sets all show the same thing. "I think everybody is clear on the science. I think scientists are clear on the science ... I think that this notion that there's some debate . . . on the science is kind of silly," claims Obama’s Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, when asked about the president's response to the University of East Anglia dataset that’s being questioned. In fact, Mr. Gibbs seems to be mostly angry with the hackers who exposed the scandal, but not at the scientists who falsified the data his statements hinge on! Despite the ongoing scandal, Britain's National Weather Service claims: "we remain completely confident in the data. The three independent data sets show a strong correlation is highlighting an increase in global temperatures."

The three most relied-on data series used by the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment report came from the University of East Anglia, NASA, and the British Met Office. Even better, the Met Office apparently depends on the other two organizations to provide the hard research date they use, which is kept a deep dark secret from everybody else. Why are global warming advocates so secretive about their data? So far, the spotlight has been on the University of East Anglia and its refusal to release their surface temperature data, by far the most comprehensive long-term worldwide surface data available. Unfortunately, the problem of secretiveness is hardly limited to the UEA. Queens University in Belfast has amassed one of the longest-running data collections on tree rings, spanning 7000 years and covering 1,500 sites around the world. How much a tree grows each season can tell us a lot about temperatures and other climate related variables. You would expect that institute to be proud of all this data they have so diligently created, and expect them to share the data with anyone who is interested. Not so apparently, as some scholars have been trying for two-and-a-half years through the UK's Freedom of Information Acts to force Queen's University to release the data, all to no avail. Even NASA, which has been caught in other embarrassing “mistakes” regarding climate research, refuses to release its data so that others can figure out past temperature estimate inconsistencies. All that researchers really wanted from both Queen’s University and NASA, was the temperature data used in numerous papers that global warming advocates had already published. One of the most disturbing elements of the ongoing scandal suggests an worldwide organized effort to avoid sharing scientific data with critics. It is not clear if any data was destroyed, but at least two U.S. researchers have denied that suggestion.

The purloined e-mails show that several mainstream scientists repeatedly suggested keeping their research materials away from opponents who sought it under American and British public records law. That raises a science ethics question because free access to information is important to other scientists who can repeat experiments as a part of the scientific method. "I believe none of us should submit to these 'requests,'" declared the university's Keith Briffa. The center's chief, Phil Jones, wrote: "Data is covered by all the agreements we sign with people, so I will be hiding behind them." When one skeptic kept filing FOI requests, Jones told another scientist, Michael Mann: "You can delete this attachment if you want. Keep this quiet also, but this is the person who is putting FOI requests for all e-mails Keith (Briffa) and Tim (Osborn) have written."

NASA faces a particularly embarrassing situation. Steve McIntyre, who runs ClimateAudit.org pointed out in 2007 that thru serious math errors in NASA’s published work, 1998 was not the warmest year on record, 1934 was. And the third hottest year was 1921, not 2006. Instead of the 10 hottest years occurring since 1990, six of the 10 had occurred before 1940. NASA finally released the corrected temperature estimates, but later recalculated yet again and somehow 1934 is again reported to be cooler than either 1998 or 2006. As with all these “errors”, how many more might be lurking in other estimates made at these institutions? On the other hand, perhaps the latest NASA revision was a merely a statistical "adjustment," similar to what apparently happened at East Anglia. Nobody outside a small group at NASA knows, but given the leftist political advocacy of James Hansen, NASA’s top climatologist, we might be somewhat suspicious. OK, so they’re “adjusting” scientific data to fit a set of predetermined conclusions. In my rather crude and un-scientific manner, I’d call that “cooking the books”, and if ‘ya do that at home the IRS gets really upset!

So why all the insistence on human caused global warming, to the extent of apparently falsifying research data? We could make a real good “conspiracy theory” out of this one! Socialist political theory demands the existence of a “one world” planet wide government to be successful. (So does the UN, but that’s a different theory.) This means that more and more government control of the world’s population is required, which is exactly what the Copenhagen accord is all about. In the guise of handling the “global warming” problem, government can control our energy usage (coal, oil, gas, nuclear energy, and probably firewood as well), to the extent of regulating us back to a medieval sustenance type economy, where we can all share equally in the soon to be nonexistent wealth... with of course our socialist leaders being the Lord of the Manor and getting the lions share.

What does this have to do with falsifying scientific data? Well, most scientific research survives on government grants, and it’s always best to keep your employer happy if you like your comfortable high-paying job…