What Climategate? (updated 6dec2009)

George Rebane

Just returned from a few days at California’s parallel universe by the sea.  No mention of Climategate there.  But the real noteworthy thing is that almost all the major broadcast networks are ignoring Climategate as the news it is per se (here)  It doesn’t matter whether you believe in the hacked CRU emails and the fraudulent ‘science’.  The fact that it is causing such a fuss around the world with important people suspended, and others demanding the return of Al Gore’s Oscar, and members of Congress calling for an investigation, a gazillion hits on Google, and Google suppressing ‘climategate’, Australia rejecting cap and trade, and on and on.  You’d think that this would be by and of itself news.  But no, their lips are sealed (by whom?).

Now, most of us have dearly beloved leftwing friends who have always denied that the media have more than just a tilt to port.  What are they telling us now, when the MSM will not even mention the news about the news?

Meanwhile, more outrage and global warming related scandals continue to boil to the surface.  Is this how news will be managed after America is “fundamentally transformed” as promised?

[6jan09 update]  CBS has broken the Climategate story.  See NC Media Watch here.

Comments

[Russ Steele]

Barbara Boxer is calling for criminal investigations into the hacked/leaked e-mails. If Boxer’s fantasy comes to pass and there are criminal charges pressed, how, pray tell, will Big Media report on it, since their readers presumably know nothing about the scandal.

[Anna Haynes]

George, let me know when you're prepared to stand behind your writing, and I'll dig into this. (explanation)

Otherwise, factchecking your writing stays in the "low priority" queue.

[Mikey McD]

I am shocked that Anna knows how to use the copy/paste feature- impressive. George, can you provide Anna with the following list of scientists to aid her "factchecking"? Thanks- http://www.cato.org/special/climatechange/cato_climate.pdf

[Steven Frisch]

Funny I just did a Google search on Climategate and found 30,200,000 references, just using that manufactured term.

In the last week I have heard the story extensively covered on CNN, MSNBC, CBS, NBC, ABC, PBS, NPR, BBC and PR (that's Pacifica Radio:)

There have been major articles in every major newspaper, including the London Times, Telegraph, WSJ, NYT, WP and about 3,000 others, (using my Lexus/Nexus search where I could get much more accuracy).

Numerous respected climate scientists have called for a complete review of the data related to the stolen e-mails and have supported a review of whether or not data sets were tampered with in any way.

So George......I think the media is actually a collection of centrist institutions, but what you are saying about them not covering "climategate" is a bold faced lie, that will only resonate with your bogging cult.

[George Rebane]

Steve, to disprove my "almost all" claim, could you please provide a link or two to the Climategate stories you heard last week? My concern is mainly with the first five you listed that constitute the claimed centrist MSM. Europe has covered this extensively, and the 'public media' gave up their centrist imprimatur decades ago and have never been considered MSM.

http://mrc.org/press/releases/2009/20091204124643.aspx

Not sure what your point was about Google references, since that was also my point. "gazillion" includes 30,200,000.

[Russ Steele]

Steve,

You should look a the dates on those stories. It was fourteen days old before CBS posted a story on the web. It was not presented on the evening news. The first CBS evening news story on Climate Gate here yesterday, that was 18 days before it got national attention. The story broke on the 18th of November 2009. It went viral on the Internet a few days latter, but the MSM continued to ignore it. So, check the dates on those stories.

[ateeq ahmad]

Dr. Rebane,

You are my Guru, school me on this. What is the motivation behind falsely claiming climate change? I mean, it's help no one in the short term and hurts everybody in the long-term if this is a natural process of heating and cooling, regardless of human intervention.

To your point though, I also think that suppressing dissent on data about climate change is the best way to destroy scientific pursuit. It is important that all hypothesis be considered to get to the facts. I vehemently disagree that the media is somehow biased and has got into a groupthink mode. Why would i need to doubt this BBC article

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8376286.stm

My everlasting Respect and love!!
ateeq

[George Rebane]

Good to hear from you Ateeq my friend. If you restrict your concerns only to climate change and the reproducible science behind it, then your question is on the mark. However, as these pages have argued (along with many other commentators), climate change happens to be the perfect storm upon which to base the final and successful move to a global collective government.

This is why leftwing governments have bought and paid for the 'scientific' research and prescribed ('debate is over') conclusions. Were this an honest investigation, governments would all be calling for a halt to the headlong rush to economic ruin, at least until Climategate is resolved. Instead, they ignore it and attempt to speed things up even more - keep an eye on Copenhagen.

With regard to the MSM, there is too much published research and mea culpas for me to try to dissuade you that MSM and 'public sponsored' media are leftwing news outlets. Even the beloved Beeb was co-opted over twenty years ago. Just for openers, one would have to explain away the fourteen day silence by the formerly big three American outlets (see link in my post).

For a more ongoing and in-depth presentation of my arguments for the real basis for promoting AGW, regardless of the science behind it, please see the related posts in the Our Country category of RR.

[Dixon Cruickshank]

I want to call everyones attention to some quotes froma recent article - especially Steve

Yet, Arctic sea ice continues to dwindle—as do glaciers across the globe; average temperatures have increased by 0.7 degree Celsius in the past century and the last decade is the warmest in the instrumental record; spring has sprung forward, affecting everything from flower blossoms to animal migrations; and the concentrations of atmospheric greenhouse gases continue to rise, reaching 387 parts per million in 2009, a rise of 30 percent since 1750.
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In fact, nothing in the stolen e-mails or computer code undermines in any way the scientific consensus—which exists among scientific publications as well as scientists—that climate change is happening and humans are the cause.
LMAO
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HUH?

"Most of the data have been freely available for decades," Oppenheimer added. "There's been plenty of opportunity for people to reach a different conclusion."
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And scientists have become more open as well over the course of the past decade. (Many of the e-mails are from the 1990s.) "

Your kidding right
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The stolen e-mails may ultimately provide a sociological window into the workings of the scientific community. "This is a record of how science is actually done,"

Can't doubt this for a minute, thats the point of Climategate
----------------------------------------------------
This just a few excepts, the names for the quotes I purposely left off for effect. I will post the link to the full article below, WARNING- should be read after recently eating food

This was posted on Dec 4, 2009 in what I guess is purported to be some scientific mag or internet site. Sure sounds kinda iffy in the sphere of independent journlism from a scientific site - Steve sure would like a comment, is your outfit?
Before you reply please wipe your nose, there's something on it.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=scientists-respond-to-climategate-controversy

Thanks, I know its long

[Russ Steele]

It appears that yesterday was the first time the Washington Post carried the Climategate story on the front page. The San Francisco Chronicle buried the Climategate story on page A-9 in the Sunday Edition.

[George Rebane]

Thanks Russ for keeping us updated on this "collection of centrist institutions".

[Steve Frisch]

News Flash--George Rebane and Russ Steele
are dupes of the Russian intelligence agency.

Read the breaking news in the London Telegraph
about how the "Climategate" hack was engineered
by agents of the former Soviet Union (Communists)
to discredit legitimate science.

Read all about It!!!

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/was-russian-secret-service-behind-leak-of-climatechange-emails-1835502.html

[Dixon Cruickshank]

Is that you Anna in a Steve Frisch costume??

[Steven Frisch]

Come on you guys have to agree that its funny.

[George Rebane]

You're right Steve, it is funny if the Russians sponsored the hack. Am not sure how you meant the "dupes" appellation, since the emailing professors have not denied their emails. If this hack was state sponsored, I wish it would have been sponsored by our NSA, instead of the Russians. That would have showed that the Obama administration was serious about assessing the science behind climate change.

[Russ Steele]

Sorry Steve, you have jumped the shark again. Climategate was an inside job according to Lance Levsen, Network Analyst, writing the Small Dead Animals and posted on WUWT. Here are the conclusion of Levsen's analysis:

Conclusion
I suggest that it isn’t feasible for the emails in their tightly ordered format to have been kept at the departmental level or on the workstations of the parties. I suggest that the contents of
./documents didn’t originate from a single monolithic share, but from a compendium of various sources. For the hacker to have collected all of this information s/he would have required extraordinary capabilities. The hacker would have to crack an Administrative file server to get to the emails and crack numerous workstations, desktops, and servers to get the documents. The hacker would have to map the complete UEA network to find out who was at what station and what services that station offered. S/he would have had to develop or implement exploits for each machine and operating system without knowing beforehand whether there was anything good on the machine worth collecting.

The only reasonable explanation for the archive being in this state is that the FOI Officer at the University was practising due diligence. The UEA was collecting data that couldn’t be sheltered and they created FOIA2009.zip.

It is most likely that the FOI Officer at the University put it on an anonymous ftp server or that it resided on a shared folder that many people had access to and some curious individual looked at it.

If as some say, this was a targeted crack, then the cracker would have had to have back-doors and access to every machine at UEA and not just the CRU. It simply isn’t reasonable for the FOI Officer to have kept the collection on a CRU system where CRU people had access, but rather used a UEA system.

Occam’s razor concludes that “the simplest explanation or strategy tends to be the best one”. The simplest explanation in this case is that someone at UEA found it and released it to the wild and the release of FOIA2009.zip wasn’t because of some hacker, but because of a leak from UEA by a person with scruples.

If it was the Russian's they had more than average skills and had to hack in to multiple computers. They are good, but not that good. OK Steve, let's hear your explanation?

[Dixon Cruickshank]

Steve no comments on your rag for interviewing Schmit and Mann only on this issue that you guys just published. And you want insight as to the media bias, you were kidding right,

By the way I bet George has one of those Maserati's with the machine guns behind the parking lights and spews oil out the back on demand for the trailing progressives.

[Steven Frisch]

Ok so you guys do prove it....conservatives have no sense of humor.

[Sense of Humor]

George Bush, Queen Elizabeth, and Vladimir Putin all die and go to hell. While there, they spy a red phone and ask what the phone is for. The devil tells them it is for calling back to Earth. Putin asks to call Russia and talks for 5 minutes. When he was finished the devil informs him that the cost is a million dollars, so Putin writes him a check.

Next Queen Elizabeth calls England and talks for 30 minutes. When she was finished the devil informs her that cost is 6 million dollars, so Queen Elizabeth writes him a check. Finally George Bush gets his turn and talks for 4 hours. When he was finished the devil informed him that there would be no charge for the call and feel free to call the USA anytime.

When Putin hears this he goes ballistic and asks the devil why Bush got to call the USA free. The devil replied, "Since Obama became president of the USA , the country has gone to hell, so it's a local call."

[Dixon Cruickshank]

I got it Steve and mentioned not to drive in front of or behind George 007 Rebane, he has you covered coming and going. The last post is funny also though, probably funnier - just say'in

He may have one, damn sure would be fun on low traffic mountain roads - ye haaa