All ClimateGate, All the Time
* Here is George Monbiot’s yes-it’s-embarrassing-but-the-deniers-are-still-idiots op ed. (BTW if you don’t know Monbiot, he is a leftist with a purple heart. Seriously, he has street cred. The most I ever did was write internet articles critical of Dick Cheney.)
* That HARRY_READ_ME file is actually more damning than the excerpts I previously linked to. Check out this version. Note in particular the numerous references to “avoid the decline,” and not just post-1960 but in the 1940s as well. That wasn’t a one-off comment in someone’s email. You cannot look at this thing and tell me, “These are some unfortunate phrases taken out of context. There was no ‘trickery’ involved.” And again, let’s recall that the standard line coming from the establishment on climate science has been, “This is complicated stuff. You need to trust us that these fringe guys are making mountains out of molehills. The science is settled, we understand these issues very well, we have high confidence in our models on the important issues that the skeptics attack.” Really?
* So as to be balanced, here’s more of the RealClimate guys’ response. Some of the comments are funny. I could be mistaken, but I think Gavin is letting more critical stuff through than he used to, for obvious reasons.
I am obviously biased and am surely not giving Gavin et al.’s explanations a totally fair shake. But it seems clear to me that Gavin is downplaying the things uncovered in the CRU leak. For a different example, try this. At Comment #51 in the thread I link above, Silke posts a link to that Eduardo Zorita who explained why he thoughts Jones et al. should be barred from the IPCC process. (Just skim the link if you didn’t read it when I posted it here before.) So in response to that, Gavin says:
Response: Unfortunately, this episode is being seen as an opportunity by some to imbue their personal and professional conflicts with particular researchers with a greater importance than they have. I am not going to comment on the history of tension between certain people, nor doubt the sincerity of people’s clearly deeply held views. But talk of blacklisting scientists from assessment bodies is, at best, foolish. These panels require a full spectrum of the community to take part in order to constructively come up with language that all can accept. Excluding people because they have criticised your work in the past (and vice versa) is not the way to go. Lindzen took part in the 2001 IPCC and the NAS 2002, John Christy was on the CCSP panel on tropsohperic trends – excluding them because of a history of disagreements or perceived personal failings would have been a mistake. The same goes for the scientists mentioned in the above link – especially since one of them at least has no apparent connection to any of the issues raised by these emails. This is not a topic for further discussion. Sorry. – gavin
Really? Zorita was merely saying, “Jones and Mann criticized my work in the past, so I think they should be barred from the IPCC process”? C’mon. If Gavin thinks someone leveling charges of “conspiracies, “bullying,” and “intimidation,” in order to “convey a distorted picture” of the hockey-stick graph, is merely complaining of criticism, then he should stop commenting on this controversy because he obviously doesn’t understand the charges. I’m not saying Zorita is necessarily right, but it’s nonsense to dismiss his claims as whining from someone whose work was criticized by other academics.
