Global Warming Skeptics Find “Proof” of Climate Change “Lies” in Stolen Climate Research Emails
God bless climate change skeptics and their never-ending quest to prove that global warming is just a big scam.
Today, we get news that servers at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit have been hacked and scintillating emails have been released. Officials at the university have confirmed to a New Zealand publication that the leaked emails are legitimate.
Anthropogenic Global Warming skeptics are drooling over the content of the purloined missives which, they claim, indicates that the numbers have been manipulated to make climate change look real (the operating assumption of skeptics being, of course, that climate change is false). The research center is a leading authority on climate change.
An email from 1999 in which the head of the research unit, Phil Jones, writes that he will perform “the trick of adding in the real temps for each series for the past 20 years… to hide the decline” has drawn a lot of attention.
Is this proof that climate change is just a scam?
First of all, we have no idea what this email is referring to. Jones himself said he has no memory of what “hide the decline” means and it’s reasonable to believe him given that he’s probably dashed off, say, 10,000 emails since then.
RealClimate has some thoughts on what these selective phrases, and the use of the word “trick”, could mean here.
Next, it’s probably not worth even saying, given the fervor of climate skeptics, that the University of East Anglia isn’t the sole authority on climate change and nor would it be the sole repository of proof of the conspiracy.
There are one or two other scientists who have done research on this question.
Undeterred by these obvious facts, James Delingpoole Delingpole, an angry looking young man who blogs for the Telegraph, wonders if we’re seeing “the final nail in the coffin of ‘Anthropogenic Global Warming.’” He notes the various sins of the climate scientists including cutting people they don’t like, including a climate skeptic, out of the peer review process.
And what a lead!
If you own any shares in alternative energy companies I should start dumping them NOW.
Thanks for the advice, James. We’ll wait a bit.
Well, I am a strong believer in stopping pollution and always will be. But when the very science we base our claims on is brought into question, i think it’s time to put the breaks on the juggernaut and call time-out.
How on earth the author of this article can dismiss such apparently damning evidence against the Climate Change movement before the entire story has had a chance to unravel is beyond me.
You risk losing all credibility if you persist in not even considering people’s doubts, especially in the face of such “evidence” to support the claims of the deniers.
Very poor article which makes you come across as blindly evangelical in your own “beliefs”.
Welcome David,
The core of my argument is that the University of East Anglia is not the sole repository of all global warming information. Even if these emails revealed that everything these scientists have ever published is a lie, it would surely make waves but it wouldn’t change the scientific consensus on global warming.
How can you say that the science has been “brought into question” by a few megabytes of leaked emails from 1999?
I would add that our site takes as a starting point that global warming has a strong scientific basis. Investment in green energy and clean technology generally flows from that assumption.
Matt
Matt,
Thanks for the reply. No, UEA is not the central repository, but it has contributed greatly to the catalogue of research used to push the idea and understanding of the effects of climate change.
Much of this research is used to persuade the public to make what amounts to quite large lifestyle changes, both now and more so in the years to come. This scandal may not raise a question over CC-science among scientists (evidently, it appears from the emails that differing views are simply “deleted”) but it WILL raise very big questions for those among the general non-scientific public, which to a large degree are already sceptical.
You cannot successfully make drastic changes in society if the public do not believe in the basis and reasons for those changes. If you do it without consent, the movement will be seen as an illegitimate dictatorial technocracy (which I fear this CC movement is gradually becoming) and ultimately fail in its mission.
David,
A thoughtful response.
I would agree that the general public’s faith in climate change science may be shaken by this incident (though, as you pointed out, it’s still early to tell what effect the emails will have). I would still argue that nothing that’s been revealed so far SHOULD shake anyone’s faith in the climate science.
What these emails have shown is the proverbial sausage being made: people talking about methodology, how they dislike other people in the field — stuff like that.
I think your description of the “illegitimate dictatorial technocracy” is over the top. This process of passing climate change legislation, to take the example of the United States, has been nothing if not democratic.
The decline refers to the decline in tree ring proxy signals after circa 1960. This decline would indicate the tree rings were a garbage proxy of temperature. The Mike trick was to do a little surgery on the graph until it worked.
In literally any other academic discipline this would be cause for the most severe academic sanctions, as it is usually called “academic fraud”.
I have lived in the same place in Africa for 42 years and yet I am unable to discern any real change in the climate here.
It varies from year to year, from season to season but it doesn’t feel to have shifted off in any particular direction. Not hotter or colder, wetter or drier.
Why si that?
Well we must all assume that Phil Jones thinks we are as stupid as you think we are, if you can’t work out what “hide the decline” means. The rest of the details released so far further show the true level of the lies we are being told. It is the start of the end, wind turbines that need so much back up they do next to nothing to save CO2, politicians and scientists lying to the public. All the self interested big business bleeding the public dry as the “save the world” supported as ever by the sandal and lentil brigade. Its enough to make you want to emigrate to Holland, land of the windmill, where children ask, “why is the wind turbine no moving” and the parents tell them its because they can no longer afford the electricity to make them go round. Even if there is man made climate change, nothing that is being done will make any difference, when government think that if you pay to polute its ok, if you are rich do as you please, if you are poor stop moaning and have that 140 meter turbine in your garden you bloody nimby.
I think most people with an ounze of common sense can see what’s going on here.The AGW lobby have cried wolf far too often.They can’t explain the present cooling period and they’re seriously rattled.Trouble is there’s too much at stake for the eco fascist bullies to back down now.The MSM in particular the BBC cannot be trusted to report the truth on this.The only way is to trawl the blogosphere and make your own mind up. AGW is now a religion and we all know about that don’t we.Intolerance is the word that comes to mind.
See, here you all go twisting reality… the debate is NOT about climate change, it’s about MAN MADE CLIMATE CHANGE.
It’s just a fact that there IS climate change, the Earth’s temp has fluctuated since before we even “arrived” here, and it’s a known fact that the planet is in a “cooling phase” right now, not a warming phase, esp. not one due to elevated carbon activity.
In-fact, this is where the argument gets really interesting and why people become so argumentative towards the so-called “greenies”.
What is the basis for life? Carbon. What do plants breathe? Carbon dioxide. What do plants emit as a by-product of photosynthesis? Oxygen. When have the largest explosions of growth of life (in all forms) happened? During carbon-rich times on Earth.
Very basic questions that all of us, at least I thought all of us, learned as children, yet still stand true today and have been proven 100 ways from Sunday. Yet you neglect to be able to disprove so you just ignore and go on with your mantra that the planet is “heating” and the ice caps are melting.
It’s all bunk! And simply saying that you have no idea what —the trick of adding in the real temps for each series for the past 20 years… to hide the decline— come on people, have you been brain-washed THAT much?? It’s right there in electronic print!
Get your heads out of your rear-ends! You think Al Gore and those few “experts” won’t fight for the lie they are spouting? They have already made BILLIONS of $ off of it, and stand to make hundreds of trillions of $ from it if it continues. Would you lie about and fight to the death for trillions of $?? If you say no, you’re a liar, because I know I certainly would.
I have no problems with cleaner air, but ti lie about it and MANDATE it upon people AND make trillions of $ off of it… absolutely WRONG! If you REALLY care about the planet THAT much, make it a mandate that NOBODY can profit from it, rather the money collected globally goes into a world fund to clean up the planet rather than allow credits to be purchased to allow certain companies or people to pollute more than another, it’s all BS and the fact that people don’t see through it like glass is insane!
by the way, that post is not to any one particular person on here, so don’t take the “you” reference personally.
Here we go with the “anyone can see that my argument is right,” talk.
Just a quick note — the post clearly points out that we are talking about Anthropogenic Climate Change. There is no distortion here.
Sorry being thoughtful is hard when one side won’t listen to debate,,um um um I think it’s called Dictatorial Technocracy
MAtt,
There’s no “anyone can see MY argument is right” talk, it’s not MY argument, these are just facts, you can research them all day long, go ahead, try to disprove them. You OBVIOUSLY haven’t read the “Climategate” emails & letters, I have, in VERY SPECIFIC ways they admit to lying about all the data, fudging it when it doesn’t say what they want it to, etc… all to fit their agenda.
If that doesn’t make you at least very suspicious, you’re LOST, a drone, a robot.
You still can’t attribute for the facts that I stated in my previous post.
Thanks!
I started recycling in the late 80s because I am somewhat of an outdoorsman and believe that if we can avoid putting garbage into the environment we will leave something better for our kids and our kids, kids. With that said I have a big problem with this argument being decided by consensus. I thought science was decided buy research and fact finding through historical data and known factors not a consensus where one side bullies and guilt the other into agreeing with their “theory”. Furthermore how can me giving money to some entity correct climate change if I am still effectively producing the same amount of pollutants. To me and this is just my opinion, this is all about a re-distribution of wealth and we should all thread lightly on this matter.
Mic,
I’m with you, I have taken care of the environment since I was a kid, by my own accord, and I hate flagrant polluters, I love clean air, streets, yards, parks, etc…
And you’re correct, this is a means to redistribute wealth. Al Gore has already made over $90M in the past year and he has his hands in EVERY company that’s considered “green friendly”. The guy who invented the internet, now the guy who created a false sense of fear to gain more money… who never shows up to hearings and won’t answer any questions or facts that dispute what he says.
Last time i checked, he was a defunct and worthless vice president, when did he become a climatologist? I mean, there are thousands upon thousands of genius climatologists out there who know this stuff inside and out and provide absolute proof that man-made global warming is a farce, and yet Al Gore supposedly knows better than all of them??
Hi all,
I love our planet and am worried what I read everyday regarding climate.
But i’m more worried that the big boys are all in on this together and are probably behind HAARP http://www.haarp.alaska.edu/ etc and controlling the weather to benefit themselves.
Look what the chinese did in korea, seeding clouds to make snow.
does’nt it make you wonder!!!!
Hi all,
Im worried about our planet and what I read everyday about climate change.
But what i’m more worried about is when you really start trawling through all available information, it seems the ‘big boys’ are out there controlling us.
look at HAARP and what they are doing with Tesla technology,
look at the chinese controlling the weather(snow in korea).
I’m starting to think the ‘big boys’ are already controlling our weather(well they’ve been trying since the 50’s) and lining their big fat pockets.
I need a lot more convincing of this man made climate change
Can I get my Gore Lied bumper-sticker now?
I love watching the climate change racketeers trying to spin to protect their sinking ship. Public support/belief in man-made global warming was already slipping before this direct evidence of how the alarmists manipulate the data. Now, hopefully people will wake up, but probably not.
And I love how they all immediately throw East Anglia under the bus…”they’re not the sole repository of global warming information”…is that your main argument Matt? Weren’t they THE key advisors on the IPCC climate bible before all this flap? Ahhh, how quickly things change…a few emails about deleting files, manipulating data to “hide the decline” and they’re not a key oracle on climate change any longer?
Keep trying to hold up a fig leaf to cover the Emperor’s new (global warming) clothes….but if the Emperor is Al Gore I hope it’s a giant fig leaf!
But don’t worry alarmists, in all likelyhood this will do nothing to stop the man-made climate change madness….too many people would be out of a job if the scam ended. It’s just like the millions of tax preparers, tax attorneys, and other folks who support a giant, complicated tax code who rule out the possbility of us implementing a simple flat tax or other system that any fool could figure out oh his own. The impact on unemployment would be unacceptable. The climate change racket seems the same to me. So we’ll keep useless, feel-good, “green” jobs, or as I like to say, “triple the people to supply 80% of the power”.
And besides, the Chinese would be mad if the scam ended since they stand to make billions in carbon offset credits, and we need to keep them happy so they’ll hold our outrageous debt in the US. So don’t fret about man-made climate change…it’s here to stay, mandated by politicians (and ex-politicians) who are on your side (regardless of waning public support) and who are probably on the Board of Directors of most of the green companies, skimming off a percentage of those billions going to China.
http://www.breadwithcircus.com/#120209
Found this podcast about how the “truth” movement is leading the charge for the denial movement
oh my – seems the leaked files have totally undermined the views of this website – im sure you will all get over your devotion to a cause that has been force fed and brainwashed into you. idiots.
Yeah Steve, we’re folding up our operation and joining the Heritage Foundation.
I see these guys tall a good talk but failed to walk the walk. According to Al Gore the Californian coastline will be under water in less than 5 years now based on his hockey stick graph; yet still bought beachfront property in San Fran.
An even bigger conundrum would be after stating flying was one of the worse things to do if you are trying to reduce your environmental footprint did the attendees at Copenhagen show up in over 140 private jets and 1200 limousines and only 5 electric or hybrid vehicles. Why why why?
One would think that if the world was at an end as they have you believe that they themselves would be willing to make a small sacrifice and maybe “jet pool” or at leas use a sailing ship to get to their numerous speaking engagements…. Oh wait that would be “inconvenient”, and that my friends; that’s the Inconvenient Truth.
Mattwvd said,
“How can you say that the science has been “brought into question” by a few megabytes of leaked emails from 1999?”……the non-science of anthropogenic climate change has been brought into question time and time again yet these so called Scientists do not want to debate the “science” as there is none. Matt, it was more than a few megabytes…..it was over 1,100 dodgy deceitful emails. Doesn’ this strike you as a bit odd?
Where can I find this many emails of the opponents of this myth of man made climate change stating cover ups and lies?
Co2 is not a pollutant. Do you see smoke and ash when you exhale?
I agree with all of you. I have been taught that I am a mere guardian of resources entrusted to me, and should look after those very resources so that generations to come can use it. I do it at no cost to anyone, if anything, I contribute quite a bit by keeping the gardens green(my area has not been attacked yet by the developers who are given carte blache to plant concrete jungles and remove our ability to plant and grow our own food resources), making sure that I do not buy products with heaps of packaging, live off the earth, and have a compost heap.
Ironically, like you have stated, Al Gore, stayed on the gravy train and benefitted hugely to the tune of $90 million, and he gets media cover galore!!All the others who are sitting around the table, have all gained millions through wrecking our planet by their irresponsible behaviour.
Why should the rest of us be forced to pay and feed into the greed of those around the climate change table?
Remind me how the last revolution started?
Those who believe that mankind has the ability to affect climate change think WAY too much of themselves. Al Gore should be arrested and prosecuted for fraud and the UN should be disbanded. The UN building itself needs to be torn down because it is so full of toxic waste it could never be renovated to something useful.
I’m proud to be a climate change denier. It was never anything but a moneymaking fraud that has been hurting poor people all over the globe.
Hopefully, one day, a class action lawsuit will be filed and those that perpetuated this lie will be forced to PAY FOR IT.
In the meantime – I just emptied 100 aerosol cans straight into the sky – and I will continue to do so every day until it stops snowing world wide….and there is nothing anyone can do to stop me.
How do thy know the climate is not suppose to change? They tell me that where I live 1000s of years ago the land was covered with ice you can even see where the glaciers carved out rivers and canyons. Ya know today was a awufull nice day. Who caused this warming?
Veritas,
“Those who believe that mankind has the ability to affect climate change think WAY too much of themselves. Al Gore should be arrested and prosecuted for fraud and the UN should be disbanded. The UN building itself needs to be torn down because it is so full of toxic waste it could never be renovated to something useful”……….I agree Veritas – arrest Al Gore.
Lord Monckton has said, “Shut down the UN, arrest Al Gore”. I couldn’t agree more!
Nice to know Rajendra is now in court for misappropriation of funds. The IPCC crew also need to be locked up for good.
Matt, who’s hijacked your site? Where did all these deniers come from? I’m not a scientist but as a concerned citizen I’ve been following the climate change story since the 80s. I’m squarely with the mainstream climate science on this: man-made climate is for real. Given the weight and quality of evidence (largest peer reviewed scientific project in history), trying to argue otherwise is like still trying to deny a strong link between smoking and cancer/heart disease. Indeed, one of the lead sceptics, MIT’s Richard Lindzen, still does (check it out). My background is in journalism — I’m a copy editor on the Op-Ed pages for an English-language newspaper in Asia, and I spent more than 7 years in public relations/public affairs with a large semi-government body. However, it doesn’t take that sort of experience to smell a shameless, well-co-ordinated disinformation campaign at work here (using the same PR boilerplates of big tobacco: deny, if that doesn’t work, ridicule the real science, and if that fails, obfuscate. And all time nit pick, exaggerate so-called scandals like illegally stolen emails out of all proportion). That’s the big story for me at present, how the largest, most urgent global public interest issues has been hijacked by the oil and coal funded gravy train. If it weren’t for their money, these charlatans wouldn’t be seing the light of day. As Paul Krugman said at the time Republican senators were blocking climate change bill, these sorts of people are committing a form of treason against the planet. Anyway, keep up the good work with your site. Chris
Chris,
I don’t know where they all come from. But they’re all in agreement: anyone with a 1st Grade (or is it kindergarten?) education would agree with everything they say.
Thanks for posting.
Matt
How is CO2 a pollutant?
We breath out CO2, plants absorb it in addition to sunlight to produce food, we eat the food and turn it back into CO2, it is a part of the natural cycle and the more CO2, the more people that can live happy lives.
There is no evidence that CO2 causes more warming that Water Vapor, which is responsible for most, if not all of the surface temperature of earth.