Crash Post : Climategate Mk 2.

Posted by Pointman on November 22, 2011 · 35 Comments 

A new dump of what looks to be another batch of very candid emails between climate scientists has just been leaked onto the internet. At first glance, they appear to be what was left out of the original “selection of emails” referred to in the original climategate readme file.

You can download your copy of the zip archive (was) HERE. Get your copy while you can because there’s no guarantee it’ll be there for long. The file has been taken down. Can anyone who’s got a working link, please post it as a comment?

First question: Are they genuine?

Preliminary indications are that they are indeed genuine or someone has gone to a lot of trouble and done a hell of a lot of typing to plant a piece of disinformation into the blogosphere. As with the original climategate leak, their provenance can only be proved by the lack of denial between the parties emailing each other.

This is going to have to be a crash post and I will be adding to it as the story develops and I read through the release. Just hit F5 or refresh to pick up the latest developments.

The archive contains a readme.txt file which begins with the text –

/// FOIA 2011 — Background and Context ///

“Over 2.5 billion people live on less than $2 a day.”

“Every day nearly 16.000 children die from hunger and related causes.”

“One dollar can save a life” — the opposite must also be true.

“Poverty is a death sentence.”

“Nations must invest $37 trillion in energy technologies by 2030 to stabilize
greenhouse gas emissions at sustainable levels.”

Today’s decisions should be based on all the information we can get, not on
hiding the decline.

This archive contains some 5.000 emails picked from keyword searches.  A few
remarks and redactions are marked with triple brackets.

The rest, some 220.000, are encrypted for various reasons.  We are not planning
to publicly release the passphrase.

We could not read every one, but tried to cover the most relevant topics such
as…

I have put the entire readme file here.

The “Background and Context” section of the readme file is then followed by the leaker’s own selection of emails aggregated under the following section names and in the following sequence –

/// The IPCC Process ///

/// Communicating Climate Change ///

/// The Medieval Warm Period ///

/// The Settled Science ///

/// The Urban Heat Effect ///

/// Temperature Reconstructions ///

/// Science and Religion ///

/// Climate Models ///

/// The Cause ///

/// Freedom of Information ///

Some preliminary thoughts.

I’ve always considered that the readme text with the original climategate release showed a very precise usage of English. When it referred to a “selection of emails”, the obvious implication was that there were a lot more and given that they had complete access to the whole of the email server, I saw no reason why they’d not bagged the lot.

I’d second guessed that the “selection” was their insurance policy just in case CRU were ever imprudent enough to catch them and attempt to put them on trial. Patently, if the emails are genuine, I did a disservice to their motives, for which I apologise. They’ve been sifting through the emails for the best part of two years, patiently watching all the whitewash investigations grinding through their preordained pantomimes and biding their time.

Their timing is of course perfect.

Looking around the warmist sites, the spin is a tad slow in taking off; they’re just as nonplussed as the skeptics by this bombshell. Both the Guardian and BBC, in the form of Richard Black (you know, the other big BBC pundit of global warming, the one who wasn’t commenting in an undeclared COI fashion on the original climategate after accepting £15,000 grant from UEA) are both having a go at the “move along now, nothing here to see” line but even their heart isn’t in it. Poor devils really; all those years of earnest dedication undermined so brutally yet again. These so-called scientists give veniality a bad name.

There seems to be a growing conviction that the emails are genuine and but please bear in mind that it’ll take some time to put that statement beyond dispute.

With the best will in the world, it’s simply not possible to go through this quantity of emails in any short timescale, so as an alternative, I’m going to look at  the selection the leaker themselves chose and give my thoughts about them under the headings they themselves aggregated them under. Hit refresh every so often to catch the updates.

The IPCC Process

What’s being discussed here is the backroom process of rigging the IPCC report to contain only information that is conducive to their belief that the globe is warming. The attitudes displayed by the parties involved range from the fringe elements of the group who know “the big decisions are made at the eleventh hour by a select core group” to some pretty active plotting. Have a read and make your own mind up.

Communicating Climate Change

This is a bunch of so-called scientists doing nothing more than coming to a consensus on the spin. A selection of quotes ; “the important thing is to make sure they’re loosing the PR battle”, “I can’t overstate the HUGE amount of political interest”, “We don’t really want the bullshit and optimistic stuff that Michael has written”, “the most valuable thing to do is to tell the story about abrupt change as vividly as possible”, “In my experience, global warming freezing is already a bit of a public relations problem with the media”, “I agree with Nick that climate change might be a better labelling than global warming”. I could go on but I’m sure the quotes give you a good sense of the thing.

The Medieval Warm Period

The usual discussion about ways to minimise or localise it. One bright spark comes up with a bit of rename spin – “Medieval Climate Anomaly” or MCA. That obviously didn’t disappear it enough to be adopted into the spin.

The Settled Science

Various discussions but the really interesting thing is that what’s being discussed here are not inconsequential details but some of the backbone concepts of the area. They know they’re on extremely thin ice when it comes to any scientific certainty, despite what they’re saying in public. One of them even says “What if climate change appears to be just mainly a multidecadal natural fluctuation? They’ll kill us probably.” We won’t have to, these emails are their suicide note …

The Urban Heat Effect

Predictably, the discussion revolves around downplaying any such effect. Anyone consistently finding a UHI signature is not a fellow seeker after scientific truth but a “jerk” apparently. Getting an inside view of thuggery is never that tasteful.

Temperature Reconstructions

Lots of fun and games here. The Mann/Jones paper seems only fit for your lavatory, from some of the comments made here. McIntyre totally vindicated by this quote –  “The reconstructions clearly show a ‘hockey-stick’ trend. I guess this is precisely the phenomenon that Macintyre (sic) has been going on about.” However, knowing McIntyre was right, forced no withdrawal from them of the statistically laughable techniques used which would always produce a hockey stick.

Science and Religion

This is an interesting section for the leaker to add and I’ll not be commenting on it.

Climate Models

An area I know and love. Oh boy, you can feel reality biting into them when it comes to trying to model reality. They think it may take decades to be in a position to model anything significant but that’s just stage one withdrawal symptoms from the heroin dreams of models. It’s impossible to model complex non-linear systems on anything, even the almighty computer. We don’t even have anything approaching the math required for it, if such a thing exists. When you subtract the models from climate science, it’s kaputt. Nighty night and should I say goodnight Vienna …

The Cause

The “cause” referred to here is global warming. What a dreadful mindset for any man of science to have. Science and therefore truth subservient to the cause. Josef Mengele went down that path and he’d lots of company too. You perhaps begin to see why the leaker included the science and religion section.

Freedom of Information

Possibly the most conspiratorial discussions and also the ones most likely to put some people before a court of law. It’s all about dodging, hiding and deleting emails in order to shelter from FOIs. Prof. Jones himself – “Any work we have done in the past is done on the back of the research grants we get – and has to be well hidden.” I know the statute of limitations has run out in the UK but I can’t help wondering if the same applies in the States. Perhaps the Virginia AG Mr. Cuccinelli can advise us on that one?

Some closing thoughts.

It’s going to take some time to sift through such a quantity of emails but even at this early juncture, some effects of this second release of emails are obvious.

Twenty-four hours ago, global warming still had some remaining political support from the mainstream parties worldwide, although this had been severely tempered by the budgetary constraints of the global recession. All political support will now be running for cover. They are now friendless, political pariahs.

Certain important personages and some venerable scientific bodies went to bat for them and gave them a completely clean bill of health after supposedly “investigating” them. In the light of this second tsunami, they’ll not only have to think about whether they should do so again but also whether it’s better to cut climate science and these scientists adrift, to cauterise the wound for the greater good of the reputation of science as a whole. At this point, I strongly suspect they’ll go for the latter course or run the very real risk of going down with them.

The scientific establishment will not be the only ones obliged to think along those lines. The mainstream media, for so long their cheerleaders, faces a similar dilemma. Early indications, such as the BBC reporting on climategate 2 straight away, although in surprisingly neutral terms, doesn’t auger well for the “cause”, as Michael Mann calls it. I also note in the same television piece, we’d been subtly promoted back to skeptics from deniers, their usual appellation for us. The BBC of course, are currently having their own COI problems with environmental “reporting” but I do sense the beginnings of a slow disengagement from the cause.

For certain individuals, within both the scientific and media establishment, there is also a very personal calculation to be made at this moment. If they don’t dump the scientists, will they be dumped themselves? At this point, old-fashioned survival instinct tends to have a big say in how things will pan out.

This second release of emails will have absolutely no effect on the moneymen, since they had already cashed out of their positions in green sectors by the middle of last year. Unlike a lot of people involved in this mess, they know when to cut a loss, which is to say early.

Given the certain loss of political support and the probable loss of mainstream media support, the activists are all but finished. Yes, they’ll rally the alarmist blogosphere, when they’ve got over the shock, and do their best to mitigate the damage but this one is terminal.

Happy climategate everyone.

©Pointman

Related articles by Pointman :

Why climategate was not a computer hack

A profile of the climategate whistleblower.

Happy birthday climategate.

Click for a list of other articles.

Filed under Article · Tagged with CG2, Climategate, Climategate 2, Climategate II, FOIA