How Did The Global Warming Scam Survive ‘Climategate’?

In 2009, a whistleblower released emails showing how climate academia was manipulating/destroying data, and blocking publication of articles which didn’t support their anthropogenic global warming agenda.

“Our hopelessly compromised scientific establishment cannot be allowed to get away with the Climategate whitewash,” wrote reporter Christopher Booker for the telegraph.co.uk back in November, 2009.

Even The Guardian’s George Monbiot expressed total shock and dismay at the picture revealed by the hacked emails, as their authors are not just any old bunch of academics.

“Their importance cannot be overestimated,” continued Brooker.

“What we are looking at here is the small group of scientists who have for years been more influential in driving the worldwide alarm over global warming than any others, not least through the role they play at the heart of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).”

Professor Philip Jones was the director of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) from 1998 to 2016 — during this time, Jones was in charge of the two key sets of data used by the IPCC to draw up its reports.

Through its link to the Hadley Centre, part of the UK Met Office, which selects most of the IPCC’s key scientific contributors, Jones’ global temperature record was, and remains, the most important on which the IPCC and governments rely when making policy decisions — not least for their predictions that the world will warm to catastrophic levels unless trillions of dollars are spent to avert it.

Jones is also a key part of the closely knit group of American and British scientists responsible for promoting that picture of world temperatures conveyed by Michael Mann’s “hockey stick” graph, which turned climate history on its head by claiming that, after 1,000 years of decline, global temperatures recently shot up to their highest level in recorded history:

Mann’s “hockey stick” was the basis for the IPCC’s conclusion that “there is discernible human impact on climate.” However, and in a first step toward restoring the rigor of science in the global climate debate, a committee of the National Academy of Sciences back in 2006 presented the results of its directed study of the science behind the infamous graph.

The Academy’s report identified the failure of the hockey stick to model climate beyond the past 400 years, as evidenced by its inability to reflect the medieval climate optimum (MCO).

The optimum has been extensively documented by recorded human history and proxies, but cannot be explained by computer models based on equations that assume that greenhouse gases dominate climate change. These same models predict massive increases in Earth’s atmospheric temperature because of the additions of a small percentage of human-derived carbon dioxide.

The IPCC needed to remove the MCO from the historical record books because the period blew apart their global warming theory: any forcing other than CO2 able to cause terrestrial warming is an inconvenient spanner in the works, and so, with the help of Mann, the panel completely erased every one of them from history in one clean swipe.

This was a brazen plan, particularly given the extensive data, records and proxies out there demonstrating that the MCO did indeed occur. These same natural records also prove the existence of the cyclic and preceding Roman-era warm event, and the very same data, records and proxies are on show again today during our modern warming event.

Climate, it turns out, is driven mainly by the Sun and the impact solar activity has on the oceans. Ironically, it is the IPCC that are the true climate deniers.

Below are a few of the ‘hacked’ exchanges between Philip Jones and Michael Mann between 1999 and 2008 (courtesy of The Guardian):

1) CONFLICT OF INTEREST

From: Phil Jones <p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: “Michael E. Mann” <mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Date: Wed Mar 31 09:09:04 2004

Mike,
… Recently rejected two papers (one for JGR and for GRL) from people saying CRU has it wrong over Siberia. Went to town in both reviews, hopefully successfully. If either appears I will be very surprised, but you never know with GRL.
Cheers
Phil

Jones did not specify which papers he had rejected. But one appears to have been by Lars Kamel, which claimed to have found much less warming in Siberia than Jones.

It was a rare example of someone trying to replicate Jones’ analysis — one of the key ways in which science validates itself. So on the face of it, there was good reason to publish, even if flaws needed correcting. But the paper was rejected by Geophysical Research Letters, partly it seems because Jones “went to town”.

This raises important questions about conflict of interest in scientific peer review, and how Jones wielded his power as a reviewer.

2) BIASING THE IPCC ASSESSMENT

From: Phil Jones <p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: “Michael E. Mann” <mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL
Date: Thu Jul 8 16:30:16 2004

Mike,
… I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is !
Cheers
Phil


Jones is writing about two new papers. One, from two known skeptics Ross McKitrick and Pat Michaels, claimed to show a correlation between the geographical patterns of warming and of industrialization, suggesting that local urbanization rather than the global influence of greenhouse gases were often key in warming on land.

Jones evidently wanted to use his position as a lead author to keep the paper out of the IPCC report. In the event, the paper was not mentioned in early chapter drafts, but was added to a final version, where its findings were dismissed as “not statistically significant”.

Critics say that by keeping it out of early drafts, Jones prevented reviewers scrutinizing his conclusion.

3) REWRITING THE RULES OF FREEDOM OF INFORMATION

From: Phil Jones <p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: santer1@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, Tom Wigley <wigley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Date: Wed Dec 3 13:57:09 2008

Ben,
When the FOI requests began here, the FOI person said we had to abide by the requests. It took a couple of half hour sessions – one at a screen, to convince them otherwise showing them what CA [ClimateAudit] was all about. Once they became aware of the types of people we were dealing with, everyone at UEA (in the registry and in the Environmental Sciences school – the head of school and a few others) became very supportive. I’ve got to know the FOI person quite well and the Chief Librarian – who deals with appeals…
Cheers
Phil

Climate Audit is the web site run by Steve McIntyre, a Canadian mathematician peppering Jones with requests for his data. There is no legal basis for rejecting FOI requests on the basis of the “types of people” they are.

The records show that the university turned down most FOI requests, from McIntyre and others, for CRU data. Of 105 requests concerning CRU submitted up to December 2009, the university had by late January 2010, acceded in full to only 10.

4) DELETING THE EVIDENCE

Phillip Jones wrote to Michael Mann in 2008:

Mike,
Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith will do likewise… Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t have his new email address. We will be getting Caspar to do likewise…
Cheers
Phil

British skeptic David Holland had recently asked CRU for all emails sent and received by its tree-ring specialist Keith Briffa about the recently published IPCC report, of which Briffa was a lead author.

Briffa had been in correspondence with Mann and two American researchers, Gene Wahl and Caspar Ammann, who had a forthcoming paper defending Mann’s controversial “hockey stick” graph.

This secret correspondence was outside the IPCC’s formal review process and seemed to break its rules.

Clearly, CRU people wanted to hide this correspondence from FOI requests. This email persuaded the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office that the university was “acting so as to prevent intentionally the disclosure of requested information”, and thus requests were “not dealt with as they should have been under the legislation”.

‘Climategate’ runs a lot deeper than the four emails and two scientists shown above.

The scale is actually jaw-dropping, and the email hack should have been enough to take the AGW scam down.

Here are two additional emails (highlighting courtesy of Tony Heller):

These revelations suggest that fraud, lies and cover-ups are the backbone of the ‘global warming theory’.

The fact that the scam is still going, and moreover has actually gained traction in recent years is a testament to the powerful actors at play–namely their ability to propagandize and forged an alternate reality through their *CCN coalition media outlets*.

The trusting masses have been duped into believing that the world is actually ending.

Our youth, in particular, have been entirely corrupted, transformed into a parroting mob of useless idiots devoid of ANY understanding of the topic at hand. The boredom of teendom has been handed a phony purpose, ‘To fight the threat posed by rising carbon dioxide emissions’ — and in future years, when these entitled children come of age, and a handful of them inevitably win elected office, I can only imagine the devastating, economy-wrecking, poverty-inducing policies they will keenly implement.

Globalization, socialism, population control and a redistribution of wealth/power appear to be the end goals here, with, and as is always the case, ‘fear’ being used as the driver. The developed masses have been duped into believing that 1) the end is nigh, but that 2) disaster can be avoided so long as they relinquish all prosperity and freedoms. This is evil. This is genius. Hats off.

*Covering Climate Now (CCN) coalition media outlets boast a 2+ billion audience. Some 500 MSM publications have now signed the ‘CCN pledge’ that demands that they, 1) forward ‘catastrophism’, and 2) actively rebut/censor any and all ‘global boiling’ skepticism.

Further reading:

Climate Scientists Seek To Destroy ‘Inconvenient’ Research Paper

Calling Out The Climate Scam: A Princeton Professor, An MIT Scientist, And A Nobel Prize-Winning Physicist…

Dr Judith Curry: “It’s A Manufactured Consensus”; U.S. Burn Acreage Fourth-Lowest On Record (Since 1926); UT And CO Still Have Snow; + Barrier Reef Holding On To Record Coral Gains

What They Won’t Tell You: CO2 Emissions Are Declining