176 Climategate: rigged data. Carbon trading akin to Oil trade, a bonanza for Wall St

Climategate: rigged data. Carbon trading akin to Oil trade, a bonanza for Wall St

I'm in two minds about the Climate Change issue. The Greens do "cook the books", and dissidents like Professor David Bellamy have been sidelined even by the BBC. But we must consume less, return to simple living, and waste less.

(1) There is room also for the ugly Modern art that people hate
(2) Clintons' daughter Chelsea to wed Jewish boyfriend (a "member of the tribe" - Haaretz)
(3) WALL STREET JOURNAL: Climategate: Follow the Money
(4) Fixing the Climate Data around the Policy - Chossudovsky
(5) Ian Plimer: “If you have to argue your science by using fraud, your science is not valid”

(1) There is room also for the ugly Modern art that people hate

From: mary <humdrum2@libero.it> To: peter.myers@mailstar.net, joe fallisi <flespa@tiscali.it>, israel shamir <ishamir@013.net.il> Date: 01.12.2009 05:11 AM

Ok, great, interesting debate and thank you! Now, the problem is.... "modern art is ugly, without spirit and it hails the death of civilisation."

I don't think anyone will disagree (nor did I) that in comparison with antique art, CA is generally aesthetically unsatisfying and we can give it a value judgment of ugly because it does not fit in with the canons of beauty that have been passed along from generation to generation in the West. (This is why my specialisation is restoration of art from the 12th to the 19th century, it's where my personal taste resides and what I understand the most). But this opens up a few questions, that were hinted at before: Western civilisation is so violent, so determined to dominate and crush all that it considers lesser, (anything that it isn't) so, why is it a goal of those who want to fight zionism and imperialism to "defend" its values? Are we really instead supposed to turn back the values of the West to make them fit with the beauty of the past? Is that possible? Are the values of the West our banner in art or are they supposed to extend towards things like architecture in Switzerland? (And we know that it's not an issue of architecture, but when we get a hegemonic push to get back to tradition, what are we really pushing?)

Second point: art that is classified formally as "primitive", "pre-Colombian" and "traditional indigenous art" - (then classified geographically) which often is still contemporary art in may places, I can attest that I used to deal three young Haitian artists, and their work was exquisitely beautiful, but resembled Early American Art and the buyers often were the same, although the content was diametrically opposed. What is called Primitive art also has absolutely no connections to Western canons of beauty in many cases (is often seen as very ugly and "primitive" has assumed naturally a Darwinian meaning), but it is often far more spiritual, which seems to be the value that Shamir elevates in his essay. I don't know why spirituality must be the measure of goodness, because there are many human values, spirituality is just one (and as I said, if the container is empty, it is possible that the content also is empty, so why look for something that you cannot find there?), but it is indeed true that the patrons of the arts in Europe were those who had the money and power, and that was the Church and the monarchies, (who justified their power as being directly approved of by God himself, thus prohibiting common people from in any way rebelling against the oppression that these power institutions had imposed on them economically and socially). Only in parts of Flanders was there important "secular" art such as Vermeer and the schools of still life. I doubt that often it was spirit that drove the artists to paint what they did, because they basically painted what they were commissioned to do, and it was very often a commission by the Church, and very often work of a workshop where the artist himself didn't participate too much. I have seen just as many really ugly and banal paintings in Churches as I've seen masterpieces... the content sometimes is not enough to carry the form (and the opposite of course is true). But we "recognise it" as meaningful because we are familiar with the iconography, and it is used in ritual. In my own workshop, sometimes older women come in and kneel down and pray in front of a life-size crucifix I am restoring, while I, to do my work, can only see it as wood, paint and stucco, this is the experience of the artist, restorer... we are not having spiritual communion while we work, we are working with material, form, dimension. The content is something that the spectator brings to the piece.

I've got "museum-quality" African art, and I even set up an exhibition of my collection and two other collections, things that I consider extremely beautiful, representative of some of the best examples of the principle tribal pieces, and I know that it also is deeply spiritual, as some of the pieces were for ritual use and from what is known as "secret societies", and therefore, attached to deep human spirituality. Oddly enough, these same kinds of works were an inspiration to the European artists who "dis-assembled" the figure, the moderns of Cubism, Futurism and Expressionism, therefore, responsible for the rupture with the traditional world of European art as a closed and self-renewing cycle based on traditional power structures and aesthetic canons. I can imagine the rupture that took place in the shift from the Academies to Impressionism, seeing the aesthetic breakdown for emphasis on the ephemeral and sensorial, because I saw a similar reaction to the exhibition of African art in my city. The Italians, who were not the elite museum-going public of Milan, but the average provincial Italian who takes the Sunday stroll and pops in at the exhibition hall located in the most important botanical garden of my city, therefore, a standard slice of the general public, who signed the guestbook were divided into two categories: those who wrote comments like "this stuff is ugly and scary, my 10 year old could do better" and "would like to know the story behind every piece, I didn't understand a thing". What interested me, was the spectator's reaction, which was an interior reaction-interaction. This is what art is supposed to do, to shake one out of passivity and involve them in some way. Would prefer everyone involved in things understanding the point of view of the piece of art, not necessarily agreeing with it, (why should they be required to?) nor even liking it, but experiencing it as the message someone is sending out about their own experience and a second individual coming into contact with that inner world. When I set up an exhibition of Russian icons (Shamir would have liked that one), the guestbook was not so interesting. People see this work as closer to their experience and they are more passive. An exhibit of an Art Nouveau artist was aesthetically pleasing to one and all, because we are used to it in advertising and nice pubs and bars have lots of these posters hanging up, as well as lots of attractive apartments. Everyone loved it, naturally, and no one seemed to have been exposed to something outside their prior experience. My point is, people generally like what they are used to, close to, understand, etc. and they are disturbed by what they feel is alien to them. If we are going to change the West into being less violent, less determined to wipe out non-Westerners, perhaps we have to see the nakedness of the emperor. So the West is ugly... yes, it is ugly! There are beautiful things in there, but not all beautiful things have meaningful content and not all ugly things are empty of content.

My initial point remains: the world is a big enough place, and there is room also for the ugly art that people hate. No one is forced to see it, buy it, make it, although I do agree with the point made by someone that the problem with today's art is that it is personality-obsessed, but this is because the system of diffusion has changed, it is a media diffusion, not one of a rich noble going to an important auction house and buying something to stick in his castle. Today's artist exists as a "personality" and thus in a temporal-mediatic setting that is available to be accessed by anyone and for free. That today's artists are involved in this system is true, but it was no less true that yesterday's artists were also involved in a system and not outside of it. If that system is Jewish may or may not be important, I still do not see why one is forced to participate in the art market, because the majority of the world's people are totally outside of that. My view is that art is a market, who generally is involved in market are the economic elite and in many cases, those people have been Jews. And so? Let those who buy and sell art buy and sell. let them run their market and the sheep will pay a million dollars for a piece of crap! It's their money to burn, not mine. (and I will hear the argument about public funding of art... where???? Certainly NOT in Italy!!!!) No one is really exposed to this work except for those who wish to be. I don't think it is changing the values in the West, when the West is in the pits enough on its own through the arms and pharmaceuticals markets, which are far more dangerous and affect billions.
mary

Reply (Peter M.):

You're overlooking the Totalitarian aspect: Modern "Concept" Art is not content to co-exist with beautiful, uplifting or spiritually inspiring Art. It drives the latter out. Dissidents are sacked or ostracized.

Your description of the Art of Western Civilization as violent, domineering and determined to crush applies to Modern "Concept" Art.

I don't have any of that domineering Art of either kind (Western Imperial, or Modern Ugly). But I do have paintings by ordinary people - Australian landscape including a bark painting. A painting of the goddess Ishtar by Gillian Mann; Landscape wall hangings from China (in which tiny houses are hidden amongst the forests & mountains); papyrii from Egypt depicting Queen Nefertari and the Goddess Isis, dancers et al; carved elephants from India, plus Shiva with four arms. Plus a genuine Stone Axe from the highlands of Papua New Guinea. Nothing terribly Imperial, but nothing Ugly either.

Rejecting Concept Art is not a matter of upholding European Empire, but of depicting the Beauty there is in this world. Folk art and Primitive Art uphold that Beauty too; only Modern Art is unworthy.

(2) Clintons' daughter Chelsea to wed Jewish boyfriend (a "member of the tribe" - Haaretz)

From: ReporterNotebook <RePorterNoteBook@Gmail.com>  Date: 01.12.2009 12:07 AM

Chelsea Clinton to wed Jewish boyfriend
NOV. 30, 2009

http://jta.org/news/article/2009/11/30/1009446/chelsea-clinton-to-marry-jewish-boyfriend

WASHINGTON (JTA) -- Chelsea Clinton is engaged to marry her Jewish boyfriend of two years.

Clinton, 29, the only daughter of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and former President Bill Clinton, became engaged over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend to investment banker Marc Mezvinsky, 31.

Mezvinsky, who works for Goldman Sachs, is the son of former U.S. Reps. Ed Mezvinsky (D-Iowa) and Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinksy (D-Pa.). The elder Mezvinsky recently served a prison term for swindling $10 million from investors in a series of Nigerian e-mail scams. He was released in 2008. ... ==

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1131963.html

Last update - 09:19 01/12/2009 

It's official - Chelsea Clinton to wed Jewish boyfriend

By Haaretz Service and The Associated Press

Chelsea Clinton, the daughter of America's most powerful political couple will soon wed a "member of the tribe," according to various media reports.

Clinton is set to marry her Jewish boyfriend Marc Mezvinsky, ABC News reported on Monday.

Clinton, the daughter of former President Bill Clinton and current Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, met Mezvinsky when both were teenagers in Washington, according to reports. They also both attended Stanford University in California. ...

(3) WALL STREET JOURNAL: Climategate: Follow the Money

From: ReporterNotebook <RePorterNoteBook@Gmail.com> Date: 01.12.2009 12:04 AM

Climategate: Follow the Money

Climate change researchers must believe in the reality of global warming just as a priest must believe in the existence of God.

By BRET STEPHENS

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703939404574566124250205490.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_sections_opinion

Last year, ExxonMobil donated $7 million to a grab-bag of public policy institutes, including the Aspen Institute, the Asia Society and Transparency International. It also gave a combined $125,000 to the Heritage Institute and the National Center for Policy Analysis, two conservative think tanks that have offered dissenting views on what until recently was called—without irony—the climate change "consensus."

To read some of the press accounts of these gifts—amounting to about 0.0027% of Exxon's 2008 profits of $45 billion—you might think you'd hit upon the scandal of the age. But thanks to what now goes by the name of climategate, it turns out the real scandal lies elsewhere.

Climategate, as readers of these pages know, concerns some of the world's leading climate scientists working in tandem to block freedom of information requests, blackball dissenting scientists, manipulate the peer-review process, and obscure, destroy or massage inconvenient temperature data—facts that were laid bare by last week's disclosure of thousands of emails from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit, or CRU.

But the deeper question is why the scientists behaved this way to begin with, especially since the science behind man-made global warming is said to be firmly settled. To answer the question, it helps to turn the alarmists' follow-the-money methods right back at them.

Consider the case of Phil Jones, the director of the CRU and the man at the heart of climategate. According to one of the documents hacked from his center, between 2000 and 2006 Mr. Jones was the recipient (or co-recipient) of some $19 million worth of research grants, a sixfold increase over what he'd been awarded in the 1990s.

Why did the money pour in so quickly? Because the climate alarm kept ringing so loudly: The louder the alarm, the greater the sums. And who better to ring it than people like Mr. Jones, one of its likeliest beneficiaries?

Thus, the European Commission's most recent appropriation for climate research comes to nearly $3 billion, and that's not counting funds from the EU's member governments. In the U.S., the House intends to spend $1.3 billion on NASA's climate efforts, $400 million on NOAA's, and another $300 million for the National Science Foundation. The states also have a piece of the action, with California—apparently not feeling bankrupt enough—devoting $600 million to their own climate initiative. In Australia, alarmists have their own Department of Climate Change at their funding disposal.

And all this is only a fraction of the $94 billion that HSBC Bank estimates has been spent globally this year on what it calls "green stimulus"—largely ethanol and other alternative energy schemes—of the kind from which Al Gore and his partners at Kleiner Perkins hope to profit handsomely.

Supply, as we know, creates its own demand. So for every additional billion in government-funded grants (or the tens of millions supplied by foundations like the Pew Charitable Trusts), universities, research institutes, advocacy groups and their various spin-offs and dependents have emerged from the woodwork to receive them.

Today these groups form a kind of ecosystem of their own. They include not just old standbys like the Sierra Club or Greenpeace, but also Ozone Action, Clean Air Cool Planet, Americans for Equitable Climate Change Solutions, the Alternative Energy Resources Association, the California Climate Action Registry and so on and on. All of them have been on the receiving end of climate change-related funding, so all of them must believe in the reality (and catastrophic imminence) of global warming just as a priest must believe in the existence of God.

None of these outfits are per se corrupt, in the sense that the monies they get are spent on something other than their intended purposes. But they depend on an inherently corrupting premise, namely that the hypothesis on which their livelihood depends has in fact been proved. Absent that proof, everything they represent—including the thousands of jobs they provide—vanishes. This is what's known as a vested interest, and vested interests are an enemy of sound science.

Which brings us back to the climategate scientists, the keepers of the keys to the global warming cathedral. In one of the more telling disclosures from last week, a computer programmer writes of the CRU's temperature database: "I am very sorry to report that the rest of the databases seems to be in nearly as poor a state as Australia was. ... Aarrggghhh! There truly is no end in sight. ... We can have a proper result, but only by including a load of garbage!"

This is not the sound of settled science, but of a cracking empirical foundation. And however many billion-dollar edifices may be built on it, sooner or later it is bound to crumble.

Write to bstephens@wsj.com

(4) Fixing the Climate Data around the Policy - Chossudovsky

From: John Cameron <blackheathbooks@internode.on.net>  Date:  02.12.2009 03:13 AM

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16339

Global Warming: "Fixing the Climate Data around the Policy"

by Michel Chossudovsky

Global Research, November 30, 2009

More than 15,000 people will be gathering in Copenhagen for COP 15: the 15th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Official delegations from 192 nations will mingle with the representatives of  major multinational corporations, including Royal Dutch Shell, British Petroleum, The representatives of environmental and civil society organizations will also be in attendance. Parties & Observers

Heads of state and heads of government are slated to be in appearance in the later part of the Summit event. (See The essentials in Copenhagen - COP15 United Nations Climate Change Conference Copenhagen 2009)

It is worth noting that key decisions and orientations on COP15 had already been wrapped up at the World Business Summit on Climate Change (WBSCC) held in May in Copenhagen, six months ahead of COP15.

The WBSCC brought together some of the World's most prominent business executives and World leaders including Al Gore and UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon. (The World Business Summit on Climate Change, includes webcast)

The results of these high level consultations were forwarded to the Danish government as well as to the governments of participating member states. A so-called summary report for policymakers was drafted by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, on behalf the corporate executives participating in the event. This report has very little to do with environmental protection. It largely consists in a profit driven agenda, which uses the global warming consensus as a justification. (For details see Climate Council: The World Business Summit on Climate Change)

    "The underlying ambition of the Summit was to address the twin challenges of climate change and the economic crisis. Participants at the Summit considered how these risks can be turned into opportunity if business and governments work together, and what policies, incentives, and investments will most effectively stimulate low-carbon growth." (Copenhagen Climate Council)

The agenda of the Copenhagen Climate Summit (7-18 December 2009), is upheld both by the governments, the business executives and the NGO community as "one of the most significant gatherings in history. It is being called the most complex and vital agreement the world has ever seen."

CO2 emissions are heralded as the single and most important threat to the future of humanity. 

The focus of the Summit is on strictly environmental issues. No mention of the word "war" --i.e. the US-NATO led war and its devastating environmental consequences.  

No mention of the pre-emptive use of nuclear weapons as an instrument of "peacemaking". 

No mention, as part of an environmental debate, of the radioactive fallout resulting from the Pentagon's humanitarian nuclear bombs. Tactical nuclear weapons, according to scientific opinion commissioned by the Pentagon are "safe for the surrounding civilian population".

No mention of "weather warfare" or "environmental modification techniques" (ENMOD) and climatic warfare.

No mention in the debate on climate change of the US Air Force 2025 project entitled "Owning the Weather" for military use. (See FAS, AF2025 v3c15-1 | Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning... | (Ch 1) see also SPACE.com -- U.S. Military Wants to Own the Weather)

Despite a vast body of scientific knowledge, the issue of deliberate climatic manipulations for military use is no longer part of the UN agenda on climate change. It was, however, part of the agenda of the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. (See Michel Chossudovsky, Environmental Warfare and Climate Change, Global Research, 27 November 2005, See also Michel Chossudovsky,  Weather Warfare: Beware the US military’s experiments with climatic warfare, The Ecologist, December 2007 )

CO2 is the logo, which describes the Worldwide crisis. No other variable is contemplated.

Moreover, no meaningful anti-pollution clean air policy directed against CO2 emissions can be formulated as an objective in its own right, because the reduction of CO2 emissions is subordinate to the Global Warming consensus.

The words "poverty", "unemployment" and "disease" resulting from a global economic depression are not a matter of emphasis because authoritative financial sources state unequivocally: "the economic recession is over".

And the war in the Middle East and Central Asia is not a war but "a humanitarian operation directed against terrorists and rogue states."

The Real Crisis

The Copenhagen Summit not only serves powerful corporate interests, which have a stake in the global multibillion dollar carbon trading scheme, it also serves to divert public attention from the devastation resulting from the "real crisis" underlying the process of economic globalization and a profit driven war without borders, which the Pentagon calls "the long war". 

We are at the crossroads of the most serious crisis in modern history. War and economic depression constitute the real crisis, yet both the governments and the media have focused their attention on the environmental devastation resulting from CO2 emissions, which is upheld as the greatest threat to humanity. 

The Multibillion Dollar Carbon Trading System

The carbon trading system is a multibillion money-making bonanza for the financial establishment. The stakes are extremely high and the various lobby groups on behalf of Wall Street have already positioned themselves.

According to a recent report, "the carbon market could become double the size of the vast oil market, according to the new breed of City players who trade greenhouse gas emissions through the EU's emissions trading scheme...  The speed of that growth will depend on whether the Copenhagen summit gives a go-ahead for a low-carbon economy, but Ager says whatever happens schemes such as the ETS will expand around the globe." (Terry Macalister, Carbon trading could be worth twice that of oil in next decade, The Guardian, 28 November 2009)

The large financial conglomerates, involved in derivative trade, including JP Morgan Chase, Bank America Merrill Lynch, Barclay's, Citi Bank, Nomura, Société Générale, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs are actively involved in carbon trading.( FACTBOX: Investment banks in carbon trading | Reuters, 14 September 2009)

The legitimacy of the carbon trading system rests on the legitimacy of the Global Warming Consensus, which views CO2 emissions as the single threat to the environment. And for Wall Street the carbon trading system is a convenient and secure money-making safety-net, allowing for the transfer of billions of dollars into the pockets of a handful of conglomerates.

    "Every major financial house in New York and London has set up carbon trading operations. Very big numbers are dancing in their heads, and they need them to replace the "wealth" that evaporated in the housing bust. Louis Redshaw, head of environmental markets at Barclays Capital, told the New York Times, "Carbon will be the world's biggest market over all." Barclays thinks the current $60 billion carbon market could grow to $1 trillion within a decade. Four years ago Redshaw, a former electricity trader, couldn't get anyone to talk to him about carbon." (Mark Braly, The Multibillion Dollar Carbon Trading, RenewableEnergyWorld.com, 5 March 2008)

The Global Warming Data Base

Is the Global Warming Consensus based on reliable data?

There are indications that both the concepts and the data on temperature and greenhouse gas emissions including CO2 have been adjusted and shaped to fit the agenda of the UN Panel on Climate Change.

For several years, the claims of the UN Panel on Climate Change (UNPCC) including the data base have been questioned. (See Global Research's Climate Change Dossier: Archive of more than 100 articles)

Critical analysis of the climate change consensus has been conveyed in reports by several prominent scientists.

There has been, in this regard, a persistent attempt to silence the critics as conveyed in the writings of MIT meteorologist Richard S. Lindzen (See  Richard Lindzen, Climate of Fear: Global-warming alarmists intimidate dissenting scientists into silence., Global Research, 7 April 2007)

    Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their grant funds disappear, their work derided, and themselves libelled as industry stooges, scientific hacks or worse. Consequently, lies about climate change gain credence even when they fly in the face of the science that supposedly is their basis. (Ibid)

ClimateGate and the Emails' Scandal

In November 2009, barely a few weeks before the inauguration of the Copenhagen Summit, a vast data bank of over 3000 email exchanges between key Climate Change scientists and researchers was revealed.

While the emails do not prove that the entire data base was falsified, they nonetheless point to scientific dishonesty and deceit on the part of several prominent scientists who are directly linked to the UNPCC.

The emails suggest that the data was shaped, with a view to supporting a predetermined policy agenda. "Fixing the climate data to fit the policy" is the modus operandi as revealed in the email messages of top scientists, directly linked to the work of the UN Panel on Climate Change?

The British media has acknowledged that the scientists were intent upon manipulating the data on Climate Change as well as excluding the critics:

    [the comments below the quotes are by The Telegraph].

    From: Phil Jones. To: Many. Nov 16, 1999
    "I've just completed Mike's Nature [the science journal] trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie, from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline."

    Critics cite this as evidence that data was manipulated to mask the fact that global temperatures are falling. Prof Jones claims the meaning of "trick" has been misinterpreted

    From Phil Jones To: Michael Mann (Pennsylvania State University). July 8, 2004
    "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!"

    The IPCC is the UN body charged with monitoring climate change. The scientists did not want it to consider studies that challenge the view that global warming is genuine and man-made.

    From: Kevin Trenberth (US National Center for Atmospheric Research). To: Michael Mann. Oct 12, 2009
    "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't... Our observing system is inadequate"

    Prof Trenberth appears to accept a key argument of global warming sceptics - that there is no evidence temperatures have increased over the past 10 years.

    From: Phil Jones. To: Many. March 11, 2003
    “I will be emailing the journal to tell them I’m having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor.”

    Prof Jones appears to be lobbying for the dismissal of the editor of Climate Research, a scientific journal that published papers downplaying climate change.

    From Phil Jones. To: Michael Mann. Date: May 29, 2008
    "Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith will do likewise."

    Climate change sceptics tried to use Freedom of Information laws to obtain raw climate data submitted to an IPCC report known as AR4. The scientists did not want their email exchanges about the data to be made public.

    From: Michael Mann. To: Phil Jones and Gabi Hegerl (University of Edinburgh). Date: Aug 10, 2004
    "Phil and I are likely to have to respond to more crap criticisms from the idiots in the near future."

    The scientists make no attempt to hide their disdain for climate change sceptics who request more information about their work

    (University of East Anglia emails: the most contentious quotes - Telegraph, 23 November 2009).

The complete list of contentious emails can be consulted at Alleged CRU Emails - Searchable published by eastangliaemails.com:

What is significant is that the authors of the emails are directly involved in the UN Panel on Climate Change:

    "[They are] 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, the CRU's director, is 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, his global temperature record is the most important of the four sets of temperature data on which the IPCC and governments rely – not least for their predictions that the world will warm to catastrophic levels unless trillions of dollars are spent to avert it.

    Dr 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 10 years ago turned climate history on its head by showing that, after 1,000 years of decline, global temperatures have recently shot up to their highest level in recorded history. (Prof. Christopher Booker, Climate Change: This is the Worst Scientific Scandal of our Generation, The Telegraph, 28 November 2009)

One of the contentious emails by Dr Jones (published by  eastangliaemails.com) points to the deliberate manipulation of the data:

    Dear Ray, Mike and Malcolm,
    Once Tim's got a diagram here we'll send that either later today or
    first thing tomorrow.
    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. Mike's series got the annual
    land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land
    N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999
    for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for 1999 with
    data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998.
    Thanks for the comments, Ray.

    Cheers
    Phil

    Prof. Phil Jones
    Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 xxx xxxx xxxx
    School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 xxx xxxx xxxx
    University of East Anglia
    Norwich Email p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
    NR4 7TJ
    UK

Source: Alleged CRU Emails - Searchable published by eastangliaemails.com

US Congressional Probe

Barely two weeks before the inauguration of the Copenhagen Summit, the US Congress is now probing into "the Global Warming Emails":

    "U.S. congress has begun investigating climate scientists whose emails and documents were hacked into to see if their global warming theories have misrepresented the truth behind the cause of climate change.

    Investigators have begun "studying" the 1,079 e-mails and over 3,800 documents that hackers stole last week from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at East Anglia University in the U.K, Rep. Darrel Issa from California told the Wall Street Journal.

    Some of the leaked e-mails and files - which were posted on sites like www.Wikileaks.org  and www.EastAngliaEmails.com - show growing tensions between scientists and skeptics. Others are mundane announcements of upcoming conferences or research trips.

    According to his website, Rep. James Inhofe from Oklahoma said on Monday the leaked correspondence suggested researchers "cooked the science to make this thing look as if the science was settled, when all the time of course we knew it was not."

    The White House Science Adviser John Holdren has also come under investigation, after one of his emails written in 2003 to Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University, was hacked.

    "I'm happy to stand by my contribution to this exchange. I think anybody who reads what I wrote in its entirety will find it a serious and balanced treatment of the question of 'burden of proof' in situations where science germane to public policy is in dispute," Holdren said.

    Meanwhile, The University of East Anglia said it will cooperate with police and proceed with its own internal investigation. The University posted a statement calling the disclosure "mischievous" and saying it is aiding the police in an investigation.

    The statement also quotes Jones, CRU's director, explaining his November 1999 e-mail, which said: "I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (i.e. from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline."

    Jones said that the word trick was used "colloquially as in a clever thing to do" and that it "is ludicrous to suggest that it refers to anything untoward."

    The leaked data comes just two weeks before the U.N. climate conference in Copenhagen will begin on Dec. 7 -18, when 192 nations will meet to discuss a solution on how to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases worldwide. (International Business Times, November 24, 2009)

Meanwhile, the "international community" (supported by the mainstream media) has launched a counteroffensive, accusing the critics of waging a smear campaign:

    The chairman of the IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri, stood by his panel’s 2007 findings last week. That study is the foundation for a global climate response, including carbon emission targets proposed this week by both the US and China.

    So far, climate scientists say nothing in the leaked emails [that] takes away from the fact that the climate change evidence is solid. In fact, a new study in the journal Science shows the polar ice cap melting is happening at a faster rate than predicted just a few years ago.

    In a teleconference call with reporters this week, one of the scientists whose emails were leaked, Pennsylvania State University paleoclimatologist Michael Mann, said that “regardless of how cherry-picked” the emails are, there is “absolutely nothing in any of the emails that calls into the question the deep level of consensus of climate change.”

    ...     This is a “smear campaign to distract the public,” added Mann, a coauthor of the Copenhagen Diagnosis, the report on climate change released this week ahead of the Copenhagen. “Those opposed to climate action, simply don’t have the science on their side,” he added.

    Professor Trevor Davies of the East Anglia CRU called the stolen data the latest example of a campaign intended “to distract from reasoned debate” about global climate change ahead of the Copenhagen summit. (As Copenhagen summit nears, ‘Climategate’ dogs global warming debate | csmonitor.com, Christian Science Monitor, 28 November 2009, emphasis added)

But what is significant in this counteroffensive, is that the authenticity of the emails has not been challenged by the IPCC scientists.

The scientists are not saying "we did not do it". What they are saying is that the Global Warming Consensus holds irrespective of their actions to selectively manipulate the data as well as exclude the critics from the scientific debate on climate change.

What is the Stance of the Civil Society and Environmentalist Organizations

Civil society organisations are currently mobilizing with a view to pressuring the official governmental delegations:

     "Two years ago, at a previous UN climate conference in Bali, all UN governments agreed on a timetable that would ensure a strong climate deal by the time of the Copenhagen conference. The implications of not achieving this goal are massive, and nearly unthinkable. Turn to our great partners film – the Age of Stupid – if you need to be convinced why.

    The meeting – which should include major heads of state for the last three days, will attempt to reach a massively complex agreement on cutting carbon, providing finance for mitigation and adaptation, and supporting technology transfer from the North to the South.

    This is a major milestone in history, and one where civil society must speak with one voice in calling for a fair, ambitious and binding deal. We are ready, but we need to let the leaders know the world is ready too. Are you? (COP-15 Copenhagen Climate Conference | TckTckTck)

Where do civil society activists stand in relation to the climate change email scandal?

Will these civil society organizations, many of which are funded by major foundations and governments, continue to unreservedly endorse the Global Warming consensus?

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and Greenpeace are among several key civil society organizations which are pushing the Copenhagen agenda. Their position is unchanged.

Environmentalist organizations are demanding a reduction in CO2 emissions, not as a means to tackling polution, but as an instrument to reverse the process of global warming. For many of these organizations, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is the "bible". It cannot be challenged even if the climate data base which supports the Global Warming Consensus turns out to be questionable or contentious. 

While the mainstream NGO lobby groups including Greenpeace and WWF continue to support the consensus, there is a small and growing movement which challenges the legitimacy of  the Copenhagen CO15 Summit agenda, while also accusing the UNPCC of manipulating the data. This manipulation of the data also serves the profit driven carbon trading scheme.  

The Alternative Summit: KlimaForum09

The NGOs will be meeting in a parallel alternative summit, KlimaForum09. More than 10,000 people a day are expected to attend the sessions of KlimatForum09

Major international NGOs and environmentalist groups will be in attendance including Friends of the Earth, Campaign against Climate Change among others.

Klimaforum09 is to finalize a draft declaration which "will put forth a vision of a more socially just world society, [while]  emphasizing  the need to create substantial changes in the social and economic structures of society in order to meet the challenges of global warming and food sovereignty." (See  Declaration · Klimaforum09)

While there is fierce opposition to the multibillion carbon trading system within the NGO community, the Alternative Summit will not challenge the Global Warming consensus and its underlying data base. (All events · Klimaforum09).

While critical and active voices will emerge from within the various sessions of the Alternative Forum, the organizational envelope of KlimaForum09 remains compliant to the official agenda. In many regards, the rhetoric of the KlimaForum09's Danish organizers ties in with that of the host government of the offical Summit, which coincidentally also funds the Alternative Summit. (Political Platform · Klimaforum09"). What this means is that the boundaries of dissent within the Alternative Summit have been carefully defined.

There can be no real activism unless the falsehoods and manipulations underlying the activities of the UNPCC, including the data base and the multibillion profit driven carbon trading scheme, are fully revealed, debated and understood.

(5) Ian Plimer: “If you have to argue your science by using fraud, your science is not valid”

http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/143573/Climate-change-fraud-

CLIMATE CHANGE 'FRAUD'

Wednesday December 2,2009

By John Ingham

THE scientific consensus that mankind has caused climate change was rocked yesterday as a leading academic called it a “load of hot air underpinned by fraud”.

Professor Ian Plimer condemned the climate change lobby as “climate comrades” keeping the “gravy train” going.

In a controversial talk just days before the start of a climate summit attended by world leaders in Copenhagen, Prof Plimer said Governments were treating the public like “fools” and using climate change to increase taxes.

He said carbon dioxide has had no impact on temperature and that recent warming was part of the natural cycle of climate stretching over billions of years.

Prof Plimer told a London audience: “Climates always change. They always have and they always will. They are driven by a number of factors that are random and cyclical.”

His comments came days after a scandal in climate-change research emerged through the leak of emails from the world-leading research unit at the University of East Anglia. They appeared to show that scientists had been massaging data to prove that global warming was taking place

The Climate Research Unit also admitted getting rid of much of its raw climate data, which means other scientists cannot check the subsequent research. Last night the head of the CRU, Professor Phil Jones, said he would stand down while an independent review took place.

Professor Plimer said climate change was caused by natural events such as volcanic eruptions, the shifting of the Earth’s orbit and cosmic radiation. He said: “Carbon dioxide levels have been up to 1,000 times higher in the past. CO2 cannot be driving global warming now.

“In the past we have had rapid and significant climate change with temperature changes greater than anything we are measuring today. They are driven by processes that have been going on since the beginning of time.”

He cited periods of warming during the Roman Empire and in the Middle Ages – when Vikings grew crops on Greenland – and cooler phases such as the Dark Ages and the Little Ice Age from 1300 to 1850. ...

But Professor Plimer, of Adelaide and Melbourne Universities, said that to stop climate change Governments should find ways to prevent changes to the Earth’s orbit and ocean currents and avoid explosions of supernovae in space. Of the saga of the leaked emails, he said: “If you have to argue your science by using fraud, your science is not valid.”

The CRU’s Professor Jones has admitted some of the emails may have had “poorly chosen words” and were sent in the “heat of the moment”. But he has categorically denied manipulating data and said he stood by the science. And yesterday he dismissed suggestions of a conspiracy to alter evidence to support a theory of man-made global warming as “complete rubbish”.

But mining geology professor Plimer said there was a huge momentum behind the climate-change lobby.

He suggested many scientists had a vested interest in promoting climate change because it helped secure more funding for research. He said: “The climate comrades are trying to keep the gravy train going. Governments are also keen on putting their hands as deep as possible into our pockets.

“The average person has been talked down to. He has been treated like a fool. Yet the average person has common sense.”