As usual for the former useless wonder of a Vice-President, he lied. As was coined by Jon Stewart, it’s a shame that you’re being proven a liar by the very Internet you invented, Mr. Gore.
See for yourself. The e-mails are as recent as last month. And there are hundreds that range over the past 10 years. To say that they are 10 years old isn’t a mis-statement, a mistake or an overstatement. It’s a lie. I don’t want to descend into name-calling, but Anthony Watts is correct: Gore is a vacuous nimrod.
The second is this “press conference” in Copenhagen where Stephen Schneider is asked by skeptic and filmmaker Phelim McAleer what he thinks about the e-mails. (h/t Powerline). McAleer is approached first by Schneider’s assistant and asked to sit down and shut up–and then UN security shows up and tells him to turn the camera off or he’ll be removed. McAleer is a credentialed member of the press. I guess, simply, that UN warming alarmists aren’t interested in “inconvenient truths.”
Update: Tim Rutten in the L.A. Times writes what I ultimately think is an irresponsible article. I took the odd liberty (for me) of responding to him by e-mail with the following:
Mr Rutten:
First, thank you for your work. I believe in vigorous discussion and debate.
Your piece on climategate from every perspective seems to miss the point. You ask, “What would they have to gain?” of scientists conspiring on data. Well-first of all, we know that they did conspire on the data and that is a most important fact, no? Second, what they have to gain is simple: Government funding. The UN’s and now, by extension, the US has stated that AGW is a fact that needs to be dealt with. Of course, that’s a political opinion and not scientific fact. And the money that flows to scientists will flow to those who tow that particular party line.
The best scientists, including AGW proponent George Monbiot admit that there is no such thing as scientific consensus in the truest sense of that term.
As for your assertion that the other two bodies studying global warming have similar findings–you neglected to mention they also have been alluded to and mentioned in the e-mails. We also know that NASA had to completely retract its statements about 1998 being the warmest year on record. Faulty and flawed data led to that report and since then, it has been reported by NASA that the warmest year on record so far is 1934, during the Depression and during the “dust bowl.” The fact that articles still float around by AGW alarmists asserting otherwise is simply more anecdotal evidence of an apparent attempt to cover up inconvenient facts.
Finally, as a reporter, you must know that unfortunately, one must follow the money trail if one is to expose the truth. AGW alarmists say that skeptics are in the pockets of “big oil” whoever that may be. While this is demonstrably untrue, what is demonstrably true is that AGW alarmists almost to a person are those who wish to see more centralized government and less individual liberty. AGW alarmists tend not to like what they refer to as “corporate greed” but are perfectly content to allow government to grow, make decisions and force unpopular policies on people in the name of fear of a warming planet.
Yet, the released (“hacked”) e-mails reveal a scope of lying, manipulation, ignorance, dumping and “finesse” by supposed authorities on whom the world quite literally was relying to inform those who make policies that will result in increased taxation and limitations on liberty. It is apparent that they shared that information with other scientists and they sought to block those scientists who questioned their data even though now we know, their data was, in fact, wrong.
For you to defend such behavior and to suggest that we should “just accept global warming and its impacts” is at some level most disconcerting and unnerving. At very least, your journalist’s sense must be speaking to you somewhere telling you that it is quite possible that A) Warming may not be happening and B) if it is, it isn’t nearly as catastrophic as we have been led to believe.
If that journalist’s sense isn’t working, then I would suggest to you sir that it is you–and AGW alarmists whom you defend, who are operating entirely on faith and not on rational evidence.
One last point that I missed in your letter. Even if we accept the fact that there is some modicum of warming, there is absolutely NO evidence that the warming is due to human activity. Since we see fluxuations in the temperatures that have no relation to the ever increasing amounts of green house gasses in the atmosphere.
Obviously, the purpose of the scientists was to promote the fact that human activity was not just contributing, but responsible for catastrophic warming and that is the point they wanted to drive hime, not the science of it, the BLAME of it. That is the “motive” for the deception. There is simply no scientific corelation for human responsibility, regardless of the science of warming.
In fact, the overwhelming evidence of climate change one way or the other, is entirely due to Sun spots and solar flare activity. That is what they were hiding, that is the dirty secret.
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One last point that I missed in your letter. Even if we accept the fact that there is some modicum of warming, there is absolutely NO evidence that the warming is due to human activity. Since we see fluxuations in the temperatures that have no relation to the ever increasing amounts of green house gasses in the atmosphere.
Obviously, the purpose of the scientists was to promote the fact that human activity was not just contributing, but responsible for catastrophic warming and that is the point they wanted to drive hime, not the science of it, the BLAME of it. That is the “motive” for the deception. There is simply no scientific corelation for human responsibility, regardless of the science of warming.
In fact, the overwhelming evidence of climate change one way or the other, is entirely due to Sun spots and solar flare activity. That is what they were hiding, that is the dirty secret.