ClimateGate Denial

by Christopher C. Horner

There have been numerous ostentatiously pathetic efforts to distract from what ClimateGate has not “revealed”, but affirmed, in the principals’ own words, and this mewling is getting more pathetic by the attempt.

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Sitting in the chair waiting to participate in a CNN program Monday night largely dedicated to the issue — or, rather, what proved to be an embarrassingly slanted effort at to diminishing it, in its language and approach though to the channel’s credit they at least let me and Steve McIntyre on — I listened to the program’s lead-in. It entailed childish language like that the program will have “scientists and skeptics” (good grief), but also a remarkably insistent emphasis — with nothing whatsoever to back the claim up — on the exposed material being “hacked emails” (with no mention of computer code, annotations, other documentation and the like contained in the exposed trove; now that’s some serious bias).

There also is nothing in the record to suggest a hacking. Indeed,  there is tremendous reason to suspect a whistleblower, tracing back the evolution of the demands for the information, the denials, and the information’s path into the public realm. Yet whichever it was changes nothing about the substance, all of which is found in documents subject to the UK’s freedom of information act.

Which raises the second, ultra-whiny complaint sniffing about “private emails”. Actually, in looking into this I have yet to see one private email. So far I have only found more than a thousand emails subject to the UK’s freedom of information act, discussing taxpayer funded projects and professional advocacy. Someone might volunteer some of these private emails. And computer code, annotations, etc.

Then comes the substance-free hand-wringing that the pre-Copenhagen timing of this involuntary compliance with the transparency laws — which could have been accomplished years earlier if only the hucksters weren’t hiding and destroying the evidence — gives cause to probably better just ignore it all because the wrong kind of people must be behind getting it out into the open. Oh.

Besides, the BBC  has admitted it had the material six weeks before others stumbled onto it, which, given the history of how UK whistleblowers work, also informs a conclusion that a whistleblower sought to get the material out in response to Phil Jones’s latest effort to avoid providing the raw data. That was to claim that he lost it (which doesn’t pass the red face test for several reasons not least of which is there are no “oh, snap!” emails indicating concern among these alarmists that they did look only to see they actually had lost the raw data they had been refusing access to for years on ever-changing bases).

But the most revealing tantrum comes to me today in an email explaining that the fraudster-funded DeSmogBlog wants to take the discussion in the following direction: the skeptics, and particularly the Competitive Enterprise Institute, had the information before saying anything about it. If so that would somehow indicate we have some involvement in whatever process it was — hacking, whistleblowing — that forced at least partial compliance with long-obstructed requests under the UK’s freedom of information act. Because apparently that would impact the importance of what the information affirms. Their evidence is that we were able to see right away what this material signified. It is that self-evident. but nothing is easy for the alarmists. Just as with climate that’s always changing, they are able to see nefariousness behind the simplest observation.

But they are confusing us with the BBC, having the information as of October 12 but also to having sat on it until after others had let the nasty kitten out of the bag, at which point the guy who had received it in early October said he was buys and would figure out what to say about it soon.

This is somewhat similar to CEI, if for about six weeks longer than we waited. Indeed, I’ve checked with my colleagues, and their experience was like mine. I received an email notifying me that the materials were posted on an obscure site, on Wednesday November 18. Then I received another the next day, and posted an item here saying to keep an eye on what develops.

All of which I really think is to say that the alarmists recognize full-well what threat these affirmations pose. The substance terrifies them. It is so damning that they’re flailing about to assign some miscreance to its emergence to tar it. Although as a matter of, well, substance, that would not do so. And they want to do everything they can to avoid addressing the substance. Because the substance dooms them.


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Posted Dec 9th 2009 at 12:59 pm in Environment, Media Criticism, News, Politics | 61 Comments