Boulder is a Stoopid Place

Leading British scientists at the University of East Anglia, who were accused of manipulating climate change data – dubbed Climategate – have agreed to publish their figures in full.

A grandfather with a training in electrical engineering dating back more than 40 years emerged from the leaked emails as a leading climate sceptic trying to bring down the scientific establishment on global warming.

David Holland, who describes himself as a David taking on the Goliath that is the prevailing scientific consensus, is seeking prosecutions against some of Britain’s most eminent academics for allegedly holding back information in breach of disclosure laws.

He added: “These guys called climate scientists have not done any more physics or chemistry than I did. A lifetime in engineering gives you a very good antenna. It also cures people of any self belief they cannot be wrong. You clear up a lot of messes during a lifetime in engineering. I could be wrong on global warming – I know that – but the guys on the other side don’t believe they can ever be wrong.”

Controversial e-mails written by well-respected Boulder climate scientists that were posted online last week do not cast doubt on the researchers’ peer-reviewed papers on global warming, according to the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

A noted statistician, after reviewing the hockey stick paper and ensuing controversy, stated: “I am baffled by the claim that the incorrect method doesn’t matter because the answer is correct anyway. Method Wrong + Answer Correct = Bad Science.” (p. 10)

First, the cooling myth: The Associated Press administered a blind test to four independent statisticians, using global temperature data but not disclosing what the numbers represented. Asked to look for trends, the stat guys were unanimous: “The experts found no true temperature declines over time,” despite the fact that 1998 was a record temperature year.

Ulp! I am seriously close to giving up, again. The history of this is so complex that I can’t get far enough into it before by head hurts and I have to stop. Each parameter has a tortuous history of manual and semi-automated interventions that I simply cannot just go back to early versions and run the update prog. I could be throwing away all kinds of corrections – to lat/lons, to WMOs (yes!), and more. So what the hell can I do about all these duplicate stations?…

Politics is in many ways the bloodless — and sometimes not so bloodless — equivalent of war. Clausewitz believed politics and war fed into each other. It was an ongoing process, not a single event. That meant that actors were free to act on the flow of conflict as it went along. The hacking incident at the CRU will not end the Global Warming War, but it was part of it. The drive to control and tax human behavior will probably continue unabated. But so will resistance to it.

James Delingpole is probably also right in asserting that however dismissive the Global Warmists may publicly be of the CRU hack, the smoke of doubt has entered the temple. Even the European public is beginning to suspect that AGW really means “All Your Gold Belong to We”. The Telegraph’s Delingpole says, “if you own any shares in alternative energy companies I should start dumping them NOW.” Well maybe not now, but you might want to start thinking about diversifying your Green portfolio. Nuclear power, anybody?