Posted by
reasonmclucus on Monday, November 23, 2009 8:54:51 PM
The blogosphere is abuzz with news of the latest global warming
scandal. A latter day "
Daniel Ellsberg"
has released the climate equivalent of the
Pentagon Papers
onto the web.
In 1971 former Defense Department employee Daniel Ellsberg turned
over a large collection of Pentagon Vietnam War related
documents to the New York Times. Recently an unknown
whistler blower released 61 megabytes of documents along with
emails
involving
communications between
Professor Phil Jones,
Director of the
Climate Research
Unit at the
University of
East Anglia, and various other scientists who support the claim
that humans can raise air temperatures by increasing the
amount of the magical atmospheric gas carbon dioxide
(CO2).
Some of the old media are reporting this scandal, but most seem to be
ignoring it.
John Delingpole on the
London Telegraph site suggests: "The Global
Warming myth (aka AGW; aka ManBearPig) has been suddenly, brutally and
quite deliciously exposed after
a
hacker broke into the computers at the University of East Anglia’s
Climate Research Unit (aka Hadley CRU) and released 61 megabytes of
confidential files onto the internet. (Hat tip:
Watts
Up With That)"
Andrew Bolt of the
Herald
Sun suggests "the 1079 emails and 72 documents seem indeed
evidence of a scandal involving most of the
most prominent scientists
pushing the man-made warming theory - a scandal that is one of the
greatest in modern science. I’ve been adding some of the most
astonishing in updates below - emails suggesting conspiracy, collusion
in exaggerating warming data, possibly illegal destruction of
embarrassing information, organized resistance to disclosure,
manipulation of data, private admissions of flaws in their public
claims and much more. If it is as it now seems, never again will “peer
review” be used to shout down skeptics."
Marc
Sheppard points out the hypocrisy of Jones, et.al. criticizing the
funding of their opponents.
Of the two documents that mention funding for global
warming claims it's "the second
document (potential-funding.doc)
that tells the more compelling tale. In addition to four
government
sources of potential CRU funding, it lists an equal number of “energy
agencies” they might put the bite on. Three -- the Carbon Trust,
the Northern Energy Initiative and the Energy Saving Trust --
are UK-based
consultancy and funding specialists promoting “new energy” technologies
with the goal of reducing carbon dioxide emissions. The fourth --
Renewables North West -- is an American company promoting the
expansion
of solar, wind and geothermal energy in the Pacific Northwest."
Bishop
Hill has an index of many of the emails for those interested in
further reading. There is also a
searchable database.
These revelations aren't the first that question claims about
global warming. Lawrence Solomon reported that the
Enron
Corporation pushed global warming claims in the 1990's
because of a desire to profit from trading carbon credits.
Enron also felt it would benefit from encouraging use of its
natural gas holdings over coal and petroleum. Former Enron
official Jeff Shields has been associated with
Renewables North West.
Will the old media continue to ignore evidence that
global warming is a fraud, or will they decide to expose it like they
did Watergate and other past scandals? Have old media
reporters been ignoring the scandal because they are being paid to, or
are they just too lazy to investigate claims of fraud?