Note: An old English expression:
"Is it true, or did you hear it on the BBC?
Ye Editor
"One of the most embarrassing moments for climate alarmism came when leaked emails from the University of East Anglia’s premier Climate Research Unit revealed intellectual partisanship, shabby practices and outright manipulation of data,
culminating in Phil Jones’ infamous reference to using “Mike’s nature trick” of mixing different data types “to hide the decline”.
... Did we say shabby? ...
The BBC is doing a documentary about Jones’ heroism in the service of a higher truth.
To which Dave Burton of sealevel.info responds by suggesting they make it the start of a series, whose next instalment could celebrate Charles Dawson, perpetrator of the “Piltdown Man” hoax.
The language used by the BBC and its collaborators is remarkable for its fawning quality and its defensiveness.
Writer Owen Sheers, for instance, says “The events that came to be known as ClimateGate were a powerful coalescence of forces that have since shaped much of our last decade.
However, this is also a story about the people caught at the eye of a new kind of storm, and how in the end despite attack from all sides, the integrity and truth of their important work won through.”
And Jason Watkins, in the lead role, says “It is a privilege to play the brilliant scientist, Phil Jones, whose own private world was so threatened from outside and whose research and efforts have been so vital globally in combating the effects of climate change.”
... The BBC itself, in a news story about its own excellence, said “An independent inquiry was held after the false claims circulated that the unit’s scientists had manipulated data to exaggerate evidence of human-induced climate change.
The claims that the unit acted dishonestly were dismissed, but the scientists were criticised for a lack of openness.” ...
... After all the investigation did conclude that Jones’ handling of the data was “misleading.”
All these years later there are lots of myths still kicking around.
The Wikipedia article on the “Climatic Research Unit documents” unsurprisingly offers up its share: “Climate change deniers gained wide publicity for allegations that the hacked e-mails showed climate scientists colluded in manipulating data, withheld scientific information, and tried to prevent dissenting scientific papers from being published in peer reviewed journals.
Academics and climate change researchers said that nothing in the emails proved wrongdoing, and dismissed the allegations.
Independent reports said that the e-mails did not affect evidence that man made global warming is a real threat, and e-mails were being misrepresented to support unfounded claims of scientific misconduct,
but there were disturbing suggestions that scientists had avoided sharing scientific data with sceptical critics.”
... “The Information Commissioner’s Office stated that ‘the prima facie evidence from the published e-mails indicate an attempt to defeat disclosure by deleting information.
It is hard to imagine more cogent prima facie evidence. ...
The fact that the elements of a [FOIA] section 77 offence may have been found here, but cannot be acted on because of the elapsed time, is a very serious matter.’”
But who really cares when motives are pure?
“Precisely six committees investigated the allegations and published reports, finding no evidence of fraud or scientific misconduct.
The scientific consensus that global warming is occurring as a result of human activity remained unchanged by the end of the investigations.”
We need hardly expand on what the consequences would have been if prominent skeptics had been caught exchanging emails about using a data-manipulation “trick” to “hide” a devastating factual result.
Even Jones eventually allowed that “Some of the emails probably had poorly chosen words and were sent in the heat of the moment, when I was frustrated.
I do regret sending some of them.”
Probably poorly chosen words?
What’s the alternative?
... It’s accurate words about poorly chosen actions.
Meanwhile predictably Michael Mann went on the legal warpath: “I’m not going to comment on the content of illegally obtained emails.
However, I will say this: both their theft and, I believe, any reproduction of the emails that were obtained on public websites, etc, constitutes serious criminal activity.
I’m hoping the perpetrators and their facilitators will be tracked down and prosecuted to the fullest extent the law allows.”
They weren’t.
Perhaps because to any sensible person it was clear that the matter was just too awkward to claim vindication.
The smoking gun was “I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie, from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.”
And it would cheapen them and us to delve into the gyrations used to maintain that “trick” didn’t mean “trick” but “clever sophisticated honourable technique common among scientists with no sort of agenda”.
... That Phil Jones and others got carried away, and got caught, does not prove that they are bad people or that man-made global warming is not real.
But the willingness of a government broadcaster, and many of their colleagues, to make them heroes for doing so,
and deny that the episode is in any way embarrassing,
does prove that if there was misconduct,
and if the whole scare was a mistake, they would not tell us."