ChamberGate, some points to ponder

BPSDB On April 29th a person using the twitter account “@septscelles”  released a large file to Barrett Brown that purportedly contained secret US Chamber of Commerce documents. ~ Muskegon Critic

If you hadn’t heard about this it’s because there’s nothing to hear. The data dump seems to contain nothing that wasn’t already publicly available and/or of no interest. “a big nothing-burger.”

That works for me since I want to talk about the context rather than the content, and now can do so without the distraction of what the hacked information may or may not mean. Call this a preemptive discussion for if and when there is some sort of “real” release of information from one of the Denier monoliths.

I think there are three important issues to consider:

1. The validity of the content;
2. Our response to the content;
3. Our response to the nature of the release.

The validity of the content

Of the US Chamber of Commerce release The Atlantic Wire reports:

“Suspicions? Well, yes–Brown has reason to believe the new cache of documents isn’t totally on the level. Recall that when Anonymous released a bunch of documents from the cyberintelligence group Team Themis, those files described various strategies for discrediting watchdog groups–including creating “false documents” and “fake insider personas.” So Septscelles may be a concerned citizen who values transparency, or, as another posting at AnonNews puts it, he or she may be trying to “discredit Anonymous through a campaign of misinformation.”

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“Hide the decline” … in Denier intelligence

OK, make that “Highlight the decline”

BPSDB Almost a year and a half after the CRUde Hack incident (“Climategate” to Fox News fans) the scientifically illiterate (aka climate change Deniers) are still obsessing on, and lying about this incident. I suppose that is what you do when you have no facts and don’t understand the science.

Renewed interest by the hard of thinking (aka #climategate) in this non-issue has led Greenman3610 to produce a new video: Unwinding “Hide the Decline”

Hat tip to DeSmog for the heads up. Added to Climate Denial Crock of the Week

My own discussion of Muller and his roadshow may be found at Richard Muller is a well bad tosser. Below is the bulleted version of the facts for the climate change Deniers who apparently can’t handle more than a couple of paragraphs of text or a few minutes of video:

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Richard Muller is a well bad tosser

BPSDB

Knowledge is a deadly friend
When no one sets the rules.

The fate of all mankind I see
Is in the hands of fools.

Let me begin by saying I have enormous respect for William M. Connolley (aka Stoat) and generally do not significantly disagree with him.

However, in his Apr 5th piece “Muller is rubbish” Stoat said “But he [Muller] isn’t a tosser.”

Stoat, you’re just plain wrong, Muller most definitely is a well bad tosser, a “denialist chumming complete bollocks.”

Short Prologue

(more documentation at bottom)

Richard Muller is a Berkeley physicist of some minor notoriety in climate change circles for being critical of “the Hockey Stick” (ie historical temperature reconstructions). By “critical” I mean calling it “phoney.”

Earlier this year the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature group began a project to re-examine the existing temperature data. The project drew criticism for, among other things:

• consisting exclusively of people with a poor track record for:

• discussing the science honestly.
• actually understanding the science.

being funded in part by Koch Industries.

On March 31 Muller testified before Congress and affirmed the high quality of the existing climate science which sent the climate change Deniers into a frenzy.

The Muller sideshow has been one I have been largely ignoring, but then a repeat commenter brought this video clip to my attention:

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Judith Curry’s disingenuous blame game

BPSDB Judith Curry’s latest post Polyclimate is actually about an interesting and important topic that deserves real discussion, but that is apparently not the real purpose of her post, and as a consequence not of this one either.

The topic in question is the clear, effective communication of climate change science, and I just want to draw to your attention Dr Curry’s attempt to further undermine it.

Dr Curry is actually quite a clever misinformer, so a single blog post is not sufficient to document all of the errors, misrepresentations  and cheap shots in the entire piece. Indeed may not even be sufficient to cover the introduction which attempts to frame the issue as being about flawed science. While masquerading as a serious discussion piece the fact is that a great deal of it is actually just juvenile swiftboating.

I suppose I should begin by thanking Dr Curry for the backhanded semi-compliment she gave in “it seems that few people read Greenfyre, but it is representative of the genre and more literate and entertaining than most“, but still note the typical gratuitous put down she felt obliged to insert. Moving right along:

“In short, the blame is being placed on “deniers,” the mainstream media, conservatives and libertarians, and tactics used by the environmental movement itself.  The science itself is a non-issue in this matter: the incontrovertability of the Tyndall gas effect has somehow been translated into high confidence knowledge of what is going on with the climate system and what should be done about it.”

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Potholer54 climate videos, new and some less so

BPSDB Regulars will know that I have been a huge fan of Potholer54 who has done some excellent climate science videos:

• • • 1. Climate Change — the scientific debate
    • 2. Climate Change — the objections
    • Climate Change — Those hacked e-mails
    • Climate Change — isn’t it natural?
    • Climate Change anatomy of a myth

I was not at all pleased with his fourth, “Climate Change — Gore vs. Durkin” where he looks at both “The Swindle” and “An Inconvenient Truth.” Potholer seems to have fallen into a trap of attempting to seem even handed, not favouring one side of the issue or the other, see ‘Very disappointing‘ for the discussion.

I found his most recent one also somewhat disappointing even though it is mostly pretty good.  “11. Climate Change — Hurricanes, atolls and coral” was also released as “Climate Change Are we all going to drown?”

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CRUde Hack smörgåsbord

BPSDB If you haven’t been following the CRU hack story, the Union of Concerned Scientists has a nice overview:

Debunking Misinformation About Stolen Climate Emails in the “Climategate” Manfuactured Controversy

The manufactured controversy over emails stolen from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit has generated a lot more heat than light over the past two weeks. The email content being quoted does not indicate that climate data and research have been compromised. Most importantly, nothing in the content of these stolen emails has any impact on our overall understanding that human activities are driving dangerous levels of global warming. Media reports and contrarian claims that they do are inaccurate. Read the rest

Are the CRU data “suspect”? An objective assessment.

Conclusion: There is no indication whatsoever of any problem with the CRU data. An independent study (by a molecular biologist it Italy, as it happens) came to the same conclusion using a somewhat different analysis. None of this should come as any surprise of course, since any serious errors would have been found and published already. Read the rest …

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Climate Crock Sacks Hack Attack

Climate Crock Sacks Hack Attack BPSDB

The collected videos of Peter Sinclair’s excellent series are archived at “Climate Denial Crock of the Week” .  You can also subscribe to Peter’s Youtube Channel at YouTube – greenman3610 and get them hot off the editor.

Kudos to Sinclair … his videos are obviously doing such a good job that the climate change Deniers apparently felt obliged to respond with “Hiding the “Hide the Decline,” featuring Greenman3610”

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Smacking the Hack Attack

Climate Denial Crock of the Week

BPSDB “Sharp eyed investigators began to apply to use a seldom used analytical technique, they actually read the email.“

Smacking the Hack Attack

See also Potholes54’s excellent video “Those hacked emails.” The collected videos of Peter Sinclair’s excellent “Climate Denial Crock of the Week” series.  You can subscribe to Peter’s Youtube Channel at YouTube – greenman3610 and get them hot off the editor.

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CRUde hack, why can’t Johnny Denier read?

BPSDB Potholer54 does a wonderful job of pointing out some of the most glaring contradictions and outright Denier stupidities in the claims being made about the CRU emails.

Share it … often!

This comment by MoellerPlesset2 at Slashdot is worth reading (and sharing) in it’s entirety:

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Fox News praises Jon Stewart for climategate coverage

BPSDB That’s right, Faux News thought Stewart’s coverage was just great, no irony or sarcasm at all.

The sad news is, Fox is right. The Daily Show earned that praise and deserves it, unfortunately.

Once again Stewart acted largely as an echo chamber for a climate story rather than as the insightful wit that cuts to the truth with clever juxtapositioning. Completely absent was Stewart’s trademark of letting a talking head crawl out on a limb, and then presenting some visual or commentary that exposes the lie.

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CRUde hack, and the bleat goes on

BPSDB The bleat goes on, the bleat goes on

Deniers keep pounding a rhythm to the brain

La de da de de, la de da de da

• Plimer sinks even lower
• Lost and tampered data
• $22 million FUD
• Jones steps down, data being released

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CRUde hack, meme and the “smoking” gun

BPSDB “While the administrative effort imposed by these legal moves can be burdensome, there was a much more sinister tactic available to the tobacco industry – baseless accusations of scientific fraud made against individual researchers.”

Tobacco, part 4: subpoenas and legal chill

.

• The meme
  
• Whistleblower
• The Code
• Official inquiries
  
• Ironic and illustrative
• Harassment & intimidation

Mark Lynas’ article “Leaked emails mark dangerous shift in climate denial strategy” noted: “Instead of targeting high-profile science communicators like Al Gore, climate deniers are now encouraging mistrust of those who collect and interpret global warming data.”

New to climate change Denial perhaps, but not to the anti-science Deniers, or many of the individual Deniers who are veteran tobacco lobbyists.

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CRUde Hack, everybody loves a charade

BPSDB

The view from

• the knowledgeable and informed
• the rational and sane
• the climate change Deniers

In keeping up with the theft and release of the emails from the Climate Research Unit I have collected a number of posts that did not fit into any of themes I have planned, but which are of interest regardless. It struck me that they do form a sort of survey of the story as it is seen from different perspectives, so I offer it as such.

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CRU hack, Paul Hudson … Time Lord!

Paul Hudon of BPSDB

• The BBC asks “What happened to global warming?” during the hottest decade in recorded history!
• What happened to global warming?
• The BBC should report climate change facts rather than political spin
• Hudson’s choice

says: “I was forwarded the chain of e-mails on the 12th October.”

Oh really? before 24 of them were even written?

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CRU hack, science, crime and ethics

The story so far: BPSDB

1. CRU research computer hacked, many emails copied, claims are made that they reveal broad scientific fraud;
2. Emails released, much sound and fury told by idiots, claims seem to be all innuendo and speculation;
3. More and more nothing as people search for something, anything of substance in the emails.

“I’m going to make sure he goes to jail!“

Does this statement reveal:

1. a corrupt prosecutor determined to subvert the legal system?
2. a prosecutor who has absolutely damning evidence against the accused?
3. a dedicated prosecutor talking about her commitment to successfully prosecute someone she sincerely believes to be guilty?

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CRU Hack, time to hit back … hard

BPSDB

So Solid CRU

– ride wid us

• The Frame
• Sun Tzu
• Habeas corpus

The story so far:

1. CRU research computer hacked, many emails copied, claims are made that they reveal broad scientific fraud;
2. Emails released, much sound and fury told by idiots, claims seem to be all innuendo and speculation;
3. More and more nothing as people search for something, anything of substance in the emails.

The climate change science community was caught off guard by this for obvious reasons. Initially most were quite understandably not willing to comment until they had at least seen the evidence. Now we have seen the evidence, or all that we know exists.

Aside: apparently what has been released is about 1/2 of the total copied from CRU. We do not know if what has been released is cherry picked and the remaining material fills in the blanks exhonorating everyone of any wrong doing, or if there is more to come. According to RealClimate, whatever is there, it will not be evidence of scientific malpractice such as tampering with data, and that’s good enough for me.*

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“Mike’s Nature trick … to hide the decline.”

BPSDB One of the supposedly most damning quotes from the CRU Hack “scandal” is:

“I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.”

Phil Jones

which the Deniers are citing as “proof positive” or data alteration , falsification, etc.

I suggested that, as with all of the other quotes, as they stood it didn’t actually say anything one way or another. Having worked in the sciences I said that to me it sounded like someone discussing a clever technique from the journal Nature for dealing with statistical noise or something of that sort.

Since then we learn that:

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Climate change Deniers hoax themselves … again.

BPSDB I’m going to go out on a short limb here, but frankly more and more it is sounding like the correct response to “Have you seen the emails?” is “Yeah, have you?”

I refer to the uproar about the hacked CRU site which I posted about a few hours ago.

For all the Sturm und Drang and Denier promises of “final coffin nails”, there doesn’t actually seem to be anything to the story.  Sure, some impolitic and not nice things got said, and it’s embarrassing for some, but that seems to be about it.

We have all been waiting for the boot, or a shoe, or even a slipper to drop, and so far not even a sock … there’s nothing there.  Nada, zilch, gar nichts, mei you. That’s it, there’s no story, go home … get a life.

But read on anyway.

I read the emails as someone who trained as a scientist, but has never had anything to do with climate as a research scientist. Thus I have a sense of the culture of the sciences, but without necessarily having any idea what specifics were being referred to with respect to particular papers and studies. Here is my take on it.

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