Understanding the Firght Over Climate Data

The CRU e-mails are a major scandal. But the global warming crowd is playing it as a non-event, a theft, and nothing more. They want public attention to go elsewhere.

Here is a good article looking at what the fight over fudged data is all about. This comes from a right wing web-based magazine. I dislike right wing nuts, but I'm willing to read stuff on the right if it makes sense and is honest. This article passes the test.

Here are some bits from Marc Sheppard's article 'Understanding Climategate's Hidden Decline' in the American Thinker:

Close followers of the Climategate controversy know that much of the mêlée surrounds an email in which Climate Research Unit (CRU) chief Phil Jones wrote about using “Mike’s Nature Trick” (MNT) to “hide the decline.” And yet, 17 days and thousands of almost exclusively on-line op-eds into this scandal, it still seems very few understand exactly which “decline” was being hidden, what “trick” was used to do so, and why Jones’s words have become the slogan for the greatest scientific fraud in history.

...contrary to what you’ve likely read elsewhere in the blogosphere or heard from the few policymakers and pundits actually addressing the issue, it was not the temperature decline the planet has been experiencing since 1998 that Jones and friends conspired to hide. Certainly, the simple fact that the email was sent in November of 1999 should have allayed any such confusion.

In fact, the decline Jones so urgently sought to hide was not one of measured temperatures at all, but rather figures infinitely more important to climate alarmists – those determined by proxy reconstructions. As this scandal has attracted new readers to the subject, I ask climate savvy readers to indulge me while I briefly explain climate proxies, as they are an essential ingredient of this contemptible conspiracy.

Go read the whole article it is well worth your time.

It is important to realize that the fight is not over measured temperatures going up. Pretty well everybody agrees that the measured data show warming since the 19th century (there are quibbles over the quality of the measurements due to bad instrument siting and urban heat islands, but those are minor compared to the real issues).

The fight is over whether that warming is "anthropogentric", i.e. caused by human activities. Hiding previous warm spells makes the current warm period seem suspicious and makes it easier to attach to the growth of industry since the early 19th century. The fight is also over the complexity of climate dynamics. So presenting a "hockey stick" interpretation of temperature makes everything so simple: "My God we have runaway global warming!"

Issues like how that data is constructed, how reliable measurements are, whether the current measurements are unique, what goes into cycles of global warming, the quality and validity of computer-based climate models, and even the fundamental elements that go into the dynamics of climate change (CO2, greenhouse gases, water vapour, clouds, solar irradiation, cosmic rays, etc.) are all swept under the carpet because "the science is decided".

The only thing decided is that a cabal of fanatics hijacked the climate science community and took control of a big coffer of government funds to make sure that they and their buddies set the agenda. These co-conspirators in a global warming fanaticism became masters of fraud and bullying.

This debate has real economic repercussions. As Sheppard points out:

Tomorrow, over 20,000 delegates from 193 nations will gather in Copenhagen to craft an agreement which would not only force American power consumption to levels equal to those of about 1910, but would also have us pay reparations for an imaginary “climate debt” we’ve accumulated by building the world’s greatest economy of all time. That debt is based on the amount of CO2 our financial growth has purportedly pumped into the atmosphere, which, according to the conclusions of the IPCC, based largely upon reports from the CRU, has selfishly imperiled the planet by inducing climate change.

I have no love for the oil/coal companies. I have no love for the rich who own these resources and profit from them. My concern is that a fanatical ideological group is using fraud to advance its political agenda which will force money out of the hands of some to pay "reparations" for a "climate crime" which is in fact fraudulent. I'm on the side of the little guy who will be fraudulently forced to pay a carbon tax or put up with higher costs because of carbon cap & trade schemes.

I'm all for funding scientific and technological research and to provide incentives for new energy sources. But I'm dead set against the political machinations of a self-appointed few global warming fraudsters who are using deceit to advance their political agenda. It happens that on this issue I line up with some right wing nuts. But as the umpire says "I call 'em as I see 'em." I don't "interpret" the world through political filters the way the global warming fraudsters have done.