Saturday
My Climategate pieces here have been of two sorts. There have been the big set-piece pieces where I at least try to say vaguely original things about it all, which given my life experiences tends to mean what sort of argument this is, how it is going and how it seems likely to go on going. And, there have been little bits like this one which basically just say: be sure not to miss this.
So anyway, be sure not to miss this, which is a report, from one of Bishop Hill's readers, of a tactical discussion by a bunch of climate alarmist journalists, thinking aloud about how to handle the situation now that the general public has started smelling rats all over the place, rats which they helped to bury, but which those mad bloggers have been digging up. How to bury all the rats now?
Typical quote:
I used to think sceptics were bad and mad but now the bad people (lobbyists for fossil fuel industries) had gone, leaving only the mad. We published a string of articles in late Jan, early Feb showing that people had misinterpreted the emails as casting doubt on CC.
We as in the Guardian. And that worked really well, didn't it?
Oh well, at least they are finally getting that we sceptics say what we say because we actually believe it, rather than merely because we have been paid to say it. That's something. Next thing you know, they may even be admitting that some of their fellow climate alarmists are only still climate alarmists because someone is paying them, and that many more who would like to be sceptical are staying mum for similarly economic reasons.
Don't miss the comments, which say everything that the good Bishop himself didn't feel the need to say.
LATER: Bishop Hill now has a Tip Jar. The Bishop has a wife and three children, and I am guessing that even a quite small amount of cash that has been earned directly from his blogging efforts would make him an even more potent force in the Climategate debate. If the commenter who says Big Oil might be about to switch sides in this argument, again, is right, then how about a little oil money in the Bishop's collecting plate?
Of course, if the tide of opinion continues to turn then there may well be a return to the fray from all those bad oil companies that enable us to live comfortably.
Posted by Pat at February 27, 2010 06:21 PM
Scientist are riding a fabulous gravy train (research grants, stardom etc) by perpetuating man made climate change so their motive to be mendacious is as strong if not stronger than the cynics. If they are being economically with the truth the cost to the rest of us could be horrendous.
Posted by Antisthenes at February 27, 2010 06:30 PM
This is wonderful! It is like Hitler in his bunker moving imaginary armies. The Red Army is beating its way towards his door, and he can't respond effectively because he won't accept what is happening.
Long may the media idiots remain in a state of willful denial! By the time they are willing to acknowledge what is happening, the Alarmists will be about as meaningful as the Flat Earth Society.
Posted by Alice at February 28, 2010 01:37 AM
I quite like climate change fanatics. I live in an age which is so close historically to demented ideas like communism and national socialism, both of which cost millions of lives.
And it isn't so long ago that slavery was acceptable and people thought that women shouldn't have the vote.
I'm pleased that educated middle class western nutters these days are restricted to quasi-religious apocalyptic rubbish about global warming.
At this rate the world will continue to become a better place.
Posted by pete at February 28, 2010 02:08 AM
They still don't get it do they, that they have been rumbled and game is up? They actually had a serious discussion about thinking up a new term of abuse for people who disagree with them.
Meanwhile Al Gore is trying to claim that Climate Change is the cause of all the blizzards, presumably he just forgot to mention blizzards in his film.
Posted by Stonyground at February 28, 2010 10:09 AM
Nice to see that Statist rag Financial Times in bed so clearely. Maybe that will open some eyes.
Posted by lucklucky at February 28, 2010 11:22 AM
The Guardian is full of mad people. The way they are going with their obsession with their climate apocalypse they'lll soon be advocating that non-believers are detained Soviet style in psychiatric hospitals.
No wonder the Guardian has so few subscribers if it rants and raves about how mad people are if they dare to disagree with them.
Posted by pete at February 28, 2010 05:13 PM
Actually the Guardian has been quite good, as in: not completely bad. What I had in mind was exactly that, that the plan to just denounce the insane deniers as insane deniers came up against a wall of hostile comment from, well, Guardian readers. And they started included some serious sanity in their product, in among the ravings of people like the one reported on here.
The role of comments in Climategate deserves a posting all to itself.
Posted by Brian Micklethwait at February 28, 2010 05:28 PM
Why won't somebody in the US take proceedings against these people or some of them? I thought the US was people driven rather than our stuffiness in the UK where the CPS can discontinue prosecutions.
I am sure many grand juries will return a true bill and send the matter on for trial and some petty juries will convict and then the judge will have to sentence.
Get on with it land of the free!
Posted by andrew99 at February 28, 2010 09:44 PM
Why won't somebody in the US take proceedings against these people or some of them? I thought the US was people driven rather than our stuffiness in the UK where the CPS can discontinue prosecutions.
I am sure many grand juries will return a true bill and send the matter on for trial and some petty juries will convict and then the judge will have to sentence.
Get on with it land of the free!
Posted by andrew99 at February 28, 2010 09:45 PM
These people are clearly mad:
Burt Rutan, Freeman Dyson, Richard Lindzen and Ray Kurzweil.
A journalist said so.
Posted by chip at March 1, 2010 01:38 AM
One of the best comments from BH's post:
An incredible example of groupthink, in fact I almost feel sorry for them, they are all quite clearly clueless apart from, amazingly to me, the Sun reporter Ben Jackson. He seemed the only one who has the measure of what is going on - the anecdote of the taxi driver talking about the medieval warm period must indicate more of the truth then the others would be willing to consider.
It doesn't surprise me at all that a taxi driver would discuss scientific arguments more than a journalist.
Posted by Rob Fisher at March 1, 2010 12:50 PM
Why won't somebody in the US take proceedings against these people or some of them? I thought the US was people driven rather than our stuffiness in the UK where the CPS can discontinue prosecutions.
It's already starting to happen:
http://blog.heritage.org/2009/12/11/inhofe-calls-for-independent-investigation-of-ipcc/
However, keep in mind that government moves slowly, as it should.
Also, I think the US public, in general, has been far less accommodating of the whole AGW scenario than much of Europe, so maybe one reason the ire hasn't risen so swiftly is because we didn't believe it to begin with. Of course, our media and politicians didn't share in that skepticism (and many of my friends and neighbors bought it), but I think the relative percentage was lower here.
Posted by MichaelV at March 1, 2010 05:34 PM
I am sure many grand juries will return a true bill and send the matter on for trial and some petty juries will convict and then the judge will have to sentence.
What US laws have been broken?
Posted by Sunfish at March 1, 2010 08:52 PM
Dont you have "Obtaining pecuniary advantage by deception" in the States then Sunfish?
Posted by RAB at March 1, 2010 11:54 PM
It's not a problem of 'standing.' "Standing" doesn't mean much in the criminal law context, which is where I assume we are based upon the comments about grand jury involvement.
The problems I can see are...
..okay, first, jurisdiction. Where did the alleged crime take place?
And once we figure that part out, I looked through my state's criminal code this morning while I was sitting around county court having my Sunday wasted by a traffic defendant. Title 18 article 5 (the portion of the Colorado Revised Statutes containing frauds) did not have anything readily-applicable to the University of East Anglia, even apart from the difficulty of applying a US law to a UK entity.
And then there's a follow-up problem. Applying the standards of truthfulness required for, say, product advertising, to discussions of public policy in the media would raise (IMHO) Constitutional issues. Requiring honesty in a discussion like this would be the end of political campaign ads and network television news.
Which would in turn open a door to allowing enforcement authorities to go after people in partisan discussions with whom they disagree. Remember the outrage a year or two ago about the St. Louis, MO, DA's office going after people for criminal libel for saying mean things about Barry the Kenyan?
About the only things I can find in my own state's laws that would apply are "abuse of public records"[1] and "official misconduct"[2], both misdemeanors. And even these possibilities, I raise only to dismiss.
Not everything has a remedy in the criminal law, and I'm damn sure that not everything should.
[1] Which would require that the UEA CRU records be "public," and here they probably wouldn't be.
[2] ..assuming that a CRU hack is a "public official," which is at best a huge stretch.
Posted by Sunfish at March 2, 2010 09:05 PM
How many times have I said now that you are the smartest police officer I have come across in a long while, Sunfish.
Most of our Plod are struggling with the words, shoelaces and tie, let alone understanding the Criminal Code.
Look it's simple. Go for the biggie. Has Big Al sold any of his books, Inconvenient Truth in Colerado? Did he rely on any of the data from the Mann Hockey Stick, the CRU and IPCC reports in writing it? Did he make any money out of it?
If yes to the above, then all the material is open to supeona, even the hacked emails.
Guilty of Fraud M'lud
Take him down...
Posted by RAB at March 2, 2010 09:59 PM
