The Climate Change Science hasn’t changed, the scientists haven’t changed, and the Earth System hasn’t suddenly become healthier, so why did we need a review into e-mail traffic between researchers ? What was it all for ? Answer : to delay progress. Clue : follow the old revolutionaries, still trying to create a fuss.
The Independent Climate Change E-mail Review :-
“Sir Muir and the Review team held a press briefing at the Science Media Centre in London on 11 February 2010…”
Transcript of Sir Muir Rrussell’s opening remarks on 7 July 2010 :-
https://www.cce-review.org/pdf/MR%20Launch%20intro.pdf
“Good morning – good to see you all here again. A lot has happened since February! I hope you have enjoyed reading the fruits of our labours. Thanks first to Fiona Fox [Director of the Science Media Centre] and her team for hosting us this morning…”
Just who is Fiona Fox ? And what is the Science Media Centre ?
https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/pages/about/staff.htm
“Fiona Fox : Director : Fiona has a degree in Journalism and 15 years experience in media relations. She held the position of Senior Press Officer for the Equal Opportunities Commission for six years, followed by two years running the media operation at the National Council for One Parent Families. A total change of environment followed as Fiona became Head of Media at CAFOD, one of the UK’s leading aid agencies. She founded the Jubilee 2000 press group, which helped to force serious Third World issues onto the media and political agendas. Fiona is an experienced public speaker and a trained journalist, who has written extensively for newspapers and publications, authored several policy papers and contributed to books on humanitarian aid.”
What’s not to like ?
“‘Too many sceptics in BBC’s climate change reporting’ says ‘independent’ ‘expert’ : By James Delingpole : April 24th, 2010 : At last we know what’s wrong with the BBC’s reporting on Climate Change. It gives too much space to sceptics, according to a woman called Fiona Fox who directs something called the Science Media Centre. Fox – who has a degree in journalism (!) …was called as the independent expert witness on a brief BBC TV Newswatch investigation…Surprisingly, the investigation concluded that on the whole the BBC’s splendid team of 45 science, health and environment specialists do a marvellous job under difficult circumstances…Then there’s Fiona Fox’s outrageous claim that the way the BBC could really improve its science coverage is to have fewer sceptics. She says: “To have a sceptic or contrarian in every interview is really misleading the public.””
https://www.lrb.co.uk/v32/n13/jenny-turner/who-are-they
“George Monbiot, the Guardian columnist and anti-capitalist campaigner, started looking at the group [Living Marxism (LM)] closely in 1997, after some of them contributed to Against Nature, the notorious anti-Green television documentary; over the years he has called them ‘industry lobbyists’, ‘a bizarre and cultish network’, ‘an obscure and cranky sect’. ‘Invasion of the Entryists’, originally published in the Guardian in 2003 but better read in the extensively footnoted version on Monbiot.com, contains a nicely compressed digest of the author’s main objections to Living Marxism…Monbiot also follows Jonathan Matthews of Lobbywatch in reporting curious clusters of former LM contributors now working in public science education. For example, according to Monbiot the educational charity Sense about Science – a prominent supporter of Simon Singh in his recent dispute with the British Chiropractic Association – has a former LMer for a managing director, and another one as her deputy; the director of the Science Media Centre is Fiona Fox, a former LM contributor and younger sister of Claire Fox, the IoI’s [Institute of Ideas] head honcho. (‘Various people have brought allegations about my past involvement in politics to the attention of my current and former employers,’ FF [Fiona Fox] said when I asked her about this. ‘At every stage my employers have robustly defended me and my right to be judged on my ability to perform my job now rather than either my past or my family associations.’)…”
https://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7761
“Complaint about Science Media Centre and the LM group (16/4/2007) 1.Introduction to the submission…Below is an edited version of a submission made by the writer and investigative journalist, Andy Rowell, to the board of the Science Media Centre (SMC) at the suggestion of one of its board members. The submission raises concerns about the role of the SMC’s director, Fiona Fox, in the light not just of her long-term involvement with the climate-sceptical LM group but of the SMC’s lack of proactivity in combatting climate change denial – something that stands in marked contrast with the SMC’s record on a number of other issues, such as GM crops. Andy Rowell’s submission arose out of a talk he gave at a seminar organised by the Royal Society of Chemistry on The Science of Global Warming. On the panel with Rowell were Professor Keith Briffa of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, Professor John Mitchell – Chief Scientist at the Met Office, and Professor Colin Prentice of Bristol University…The LM group were not only behind the magazine LM (originally known as Living Marxism), but also its successor organisations: Spiked-online and the Institute of Ideas. Rowell also mentioned that this group included people working in a number of other organisations such as Sense About Science and the Science Media Centre. After the talk Rowell was approached by an SMC board member who asked him to justify his reference to the SMC, and this later lead on to the suggestion that he submit his concerns in writing to the SMC’s Board. This he did on behalf of SpinWatch – https://www.spinwatch.org, which monitors corporate PR and spin. Not for the first time, the SMC’s Board completely rejected the concerns about its director…”
https://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7748
“Interview with Monbiot on the LM group (11/4/2007) : 1. About the Monbiot interview : LobbyWatch has just published an incisive interview with George Monbiot about the LM network – a political group that engages in infiltration of media organisations and science-related lobby groups in order to promote its own agenda. Although the Monbiot interview took place some time ago, its publication now is particularly timely in the light of the enormous controversy following Channel 4’s recent broadcast of Martin Durkin’s documentary ‘The Great Global Warming Swindle’. This controversy has lead to considerable focus both on Durkin’s past record as a documentary film-maker and on his links to the LM network. Soon after ‘Swindle’ was broadcast, the editor of Spiked-online, the Internet-based successor to the magazine LM, published an admiring ‘interview’ with Durkin in which he claimed ‘the film poked some very big holes in the global warming consensus’. The Spiked article also denounced the ‘anti-LM conspiracy-mongering’ that had connected the LM group to Durkin. According to Spiked’s editor – Brendan O’Neill – this ‘conspiracy-mongering’ amounted to no more than the fact that, ‘a few people who contributed articles to LM appeared as talking heads on [Durkin’s previous documentary] Against Nature. That’s all.’…”
https://www.spinwatch.org/blogs-mainmenu-29/andy-rowell-mainmenu-30/4203-coincidence-or-conspiracy
A lot of public money has been shovelled into this “independent” review of the actions of Climate Change scientists at the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit. The results : Phil Jones and his colleagues are clean as a whistle, and come up smelling of roses. So how did we get sucked into this appalling waste of time ? And why ?
The Climategate yarn was spun by a spectrum of journalists, who even now do not realise they were hoodwinked by the Climate Change denier-sceptics.
For some unbeknownst reasons, Fred Pearce at The Guardian is still trying to keep the pseudo-scandal of Climategate alive :-
https://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jun/30/guardian-debate-climate-science-emails
Come on Fred ! Climategate is as dead as a proverbial extinct flightless bird. Drop it, won’t you ?
Can’t you see that countless people in the Media have had their heads spun on this ?
Climategate was a non-story, and yet it served the aims of the Climate Change denier-sceptics very well – as it has planted doubt in the public mind and wasted a lot of political and personal energy when we should all have been getting on with the real job : the Climate Change Science and its proper and effective communication.
Shame on the Media !
4 replies on “Climategate Review : Delaying Tactics”
Jo – you would like the “climategate” revelations to go away I am sure. But as Fred Pearce put it so well -“why was jones never asked about actually deleting emails when he wrote that he had?”
The Hockey Stick was damned as being “misleading” as it cobbled together two data sets and they told nobody and then used a “trick” to “hide the decline”.
“Climategate” is not dead. Fred Pearce is to be congratulated for actually looking at what is going on and from an objective view point states clearly that things are still not right.
Good things to come out of it are that Jones is demoted and can now no longer control information as he did in the past.
Second good thing is that everything now is going to be properly scrutinised and not taken as “gospel truth gov! – trust me! I am an advocate.”
Jo, climategate hasn’t gone away,…
[ NOTE FROM JOABBESS.COM : OH YES IT HAS. ]
…it will come back because there is clear evidence of illegal activities and scientific malfeasance…
[ NOTE FROM JOABBESS.COM : OH NO THERE ISN’T. ]
that hasn’t been investigated. Jones, Briffa et al, if they don’t know it now, will get to know that they are going to go down in history as scientists who manipulated the data to get the results.
[ NOTE FROM JOABBESS.COM : OH NO THEY WON’T. OH NO THEY DIDN’T. I HAVE READ A NUMBER OF WORKS BY PHIL JONES AND THEY ARE OF THE UTMOST RIGOUR AND ACCURACY. ]
They have been drawn into this folie a plusieurs by Mann, who also waits his entrance into the scientific hall of infamy.
[ NOTE FROM JOABBESS.COM : RATHER JUMPING THE GUN/SHARK, AREN’T YOU ? SEVERAL iNQUIRIES INTO MICHAEL MANN’S ACADEMIC WORK HAVE VINDICATED HIM. I SEE NO REASON TO THINK THAT HE MIGHT HAVE BEEN HIDING SOME UNPALATABLE MISDEEDS FROM US. ]
Think I’m wrong? Well I’ve got form, when Widgery excused the parachute regiment for Bloody Sunday, I forecast then, that the truth would out, and that no reasonable person could have taken it other than the British troops losing control of themselves, either through their commanders or through some reckless comrades.
[ NOTE FROM JOABBESS.COM : BRAVO. I TOO HAVE MADE PREDICTIONS THAT HAVE BEEN SPOT ON. FOR EXAMPLE, I EXPLAINED TO FRIENDS DURING EARLY 2003 THAT NO WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION WOULD BE FOUND IN IRAQ – BECAUSE THE ECONOMIC SANCTIONS HAD DESTROYED IRAQ’S CAPABILITIES TO ARM ITSELF. ]
Truth is immutable.
[ NOTE FROM JOABBESS.COM : SOMETIMES EXTRA EVIDENCE COMES OUR WAY TO ALTER THE COURSE OF KNOWLEDGE. ]
Oh and by the way I hold no brief for the murdering bustards in the PIRA, I would see them all in prison for the rest of their miserable lives, but unlike you and the rest of the alarmists I believe that justice should be blind whichever side your on.
[ NOTE FROM JOABBESS.COM : I BELIEVE THAT TRUE JUSTICE IS INDEED BLIND. THOSE WHO HAVE DISTORTED THE TRUTH GIVEN TO US BY THE CLIMATE CHANGE SCIENTISTS WILL HAVE THEIR COMEUPPANCE. ALREADY THERE ARE LEGAL RUMBLINGS OVER ALLEGATIONS OF PLAGIARISM AND MISQUOTING IN A REPORT BY A CERTAIN WEGMAN, IF YOU CARE TO LOOK IT UP. ]
Gerry
I too thought, in fact knew, there were no weapons of mass destruction. As for the rest, we shall see.
As for Wegman’s “plagiarism”, if it was plagiarism it occurred in the section of his report where he was describing the way paleoclimaology works, it didn’t occur in the body of the report where he tore Mann’s short-centerng (do you know what that is?) to shreds. As have all statisticians who have read the paper. He actually reference Bradley (a seemingly week fellow in thrall to a former student, Mann), six times in his preamble about paleoclimatology.
As for Phil Jones how about having a look at the papers where he is accused of scientific malfeasance rather than he chose for the “whitewashes’ to look at. I don’t know if he is guily of malfeasance, I do know he hasn’t been investigated for it though, and I do know, from his own words that he tried to delete emails to avoid complying with a FOI request. Why do you think he’d do that>
@geronimo
If it turns out that Wegman’s scholarship has been poor in one section of his report, will we be able to trust the rest ?
I think that question is going to resonate in many minds.
The statistician Professor David Hand is reported as having critiqued Professor Michael Mann’s work, but still accepts that temperatures have risen significantly :-
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7589897/Hockey-stick-graph-was-exaggerated.html
Professor David Hand was commenting on data from the 20th Century that is littered with known glitches in the temperature record due to things such as Global Dimming, the early 1970s North Atlantic “chill”, changes in the measurement of Sea Surface Temperatures and a string of volcanoes – in addition to the normal decadal variability resulting from the cycles of the large-scale oscillations of the oceans and the winds above them.
Work by Professor Phil Jones and others is being published identifying ways to separate Global Warming trends from other variability in the instrumental temperature data, and from what I’ve seen so far, the net result of this will be further verification of the Hockey Stick.