We finally got a discussion about the CRU emails on the BBC with Lord Lawson and UEA Professor Robert Watson appearing on the Today programme this morning. Listen here.
I, like Cassandra in the comments, was struck by the little qualifying statements made by Professor Watson:
“These scientists at the University of East Anglia are both honourable and world class. Their data is not being manipulated in any bad way whatsoever… these scientists are not manipulating or hiding anything… UEA work with the British Met Office and they’re absolutely beyond doubt that they have not manipulated the data in any negative sense…”
Depends what you mean by “bad” and “negative”, I guess. Fiddling the code, changing results, deleting emails, claiming to have lost data and threatening to destroy it rather than release it through FOI requests, getting those who disagree removed from prominent positions, refusing to include contradictory research in the IPCC report – just a brief list of the things done by these “honourable and world class” scientists. But not in a bad way.
Here’s a neat little quiz highlighting some of the honourable activities revealed by the emails.
I’m reminded of the words of comedian Dom Irrera:
“When people say to me, “Can I be honest with you?” No, please be as misleading and deceitful as possible, that’s all I’d expect from a lowlife scumbag like you. And I don’t mean that in a bad way.”
(Update – sorry, didn’t notice that David had already posted on this.)
Update 13.15. Tonight’s edition of Newsnight:
Susan Watts will be bringing us the latest on the story that the e-mail system of one of the world’s leading climate research units has been breached by hackers.
Watts, you may recall, is no stranger to the manipulation of information where climate change is concerned.
[Newsnight also has a film on “controversial” Polish MEP Michal Kaminski. How many BBC reports have there been on this one man? Where are the equivalent investigations into senior European politicians with “controversial” left-wing backgrounds (the new unelected European foreign minister, for example)?]
Update 16.15. Compare and contrast.
From Richard Black’s blog:
Update 2 – 0930 GMT Monday 23 November: We have now re-opened comments on this post. However, legal considerations mean that we will not publish comments quoting from e-mails purporting to be those stolen from the University of East Anglia, nor comments linking to other sites quoting from that material.
From this morning’s Today programme (emphasis added):
When the Sultan of the Gulf state of Oman was overthrown by his son in July 1970, the coup was painted as a family affair. But secret documents obtained by the BBC prove that the British government helped plan the revolt, partly to safeguard its interests there. The papers, which were released by mistake and have now been closed again to the public, are the subject of Radio 4’s Document programme. Mike Thomson reports on how the documents show that ministers ordered British officers seconded to the Sultan’s army to help oust him by force if the coup appeared to be failing.
CRU emails? No way!
State secrets? Meh.
Update 16.30. BBC weatherman Paul Hudson (whose article “What happened to global warming?” caused such a stir) is quite happy to link to the emails on his blog.
Update 18.20. Thanks to Guest in the comments for spotting once again that the BBC WHYS blog has bumped its post on climate change, making my updated link redundant as the earlier one. In its latest version the blog now asks:
So, is it hard to engage people in a debate over what to do about climate change simply because they believe that climate change is a conspiracy?
As anybody who has given more than cursory glance to the emails will know, it’s the people behind climate change alarmism who have been refusing “to engage people in debate”, preferring instead to hide and manipulate data while smearing those with opposing views.
Update 18.40. One more thing – the WHYS blog, like Paul Hudson but not Richard Black, does link to the emails. Rumours that the online editors are all away on a BBC course called “Arse and elbow – how to tell the difference” are unconfirmed at this point.
Thanks very much DB for highlighting Watsons unusual Freudian slip, I noticed it earlier and tried to remember the exact words but I can see it much better now.
Our Mr Watson seems to suggesting that forging/fiddling/faking the data is OK as long as the ultimate aim is worthy, the problem is that who decides what is a worthy aim and in fact begs the question is any final objective worth the means if those means include lying/cheating/fraud?
Once you travel down the road of ‘the ends justify the means’ you can never untaint yourself and your ultimate objectives, the very act of sacrificing truth and honour and trust to achieve a goal makes the entire endeavour worthless.
What is the point in B-BBC having multiple posts on the same topic? This morning B-BBC has dealt with the BBC treatment of the CRU revelations and the, closely related, Lawson/Watson interview on Today in three separate “live” posts. Other blogs update an original posting so that all the posts and all the comments are one place which facilitates an informed, even intelligent, discussion.
David and I were working on posts at the same time – occasional hazard of group blogging I guess. You’ll see that I do add many updates to my own blogs posts (I can’t update the blog posts of others) but there are times I feel it’s better to start a new one. Sorry if it sometimes gets a bit messy.
DB
Thanks for that but it only goes to show that “group blogs” require some kind of clearing system or maybe a “chief blogger” through which to route postings before they’re actually posted. I know (or think I know) that B-BBC is a labour of love for the posters involved and their labours are much appreciated – by me anyway.
Even so – and it might be perception rather than reality – since B-BBC’s makeover of some months ago it appears to me that 1. B-BBC’s mesage has been somewhat diluted by, among other things, different posters addressing the same instances of bias in separate postings; 2. the comments are fewer and contain more abuse and less analysis; and 3. responses from employees or fans of the BBC seek to obfuscate and disrupt rather than engage. Causality and correlation should not be confused and other things have happened both at the BBC and elsewhere in the blogging world which affect B-BBC. However, I think that the makeover has not been entirely successful since changes I have noticed since the makeover have been for the worse rather than the better.
I really do doubt this info was obtained by “hackers” ! If that were the case we would have gigabytes of email traffic including ones on who is going down to the coffee lounge , who fancies who and notifications of safety meetings and the like. Instead the emails are carefully filtered to the subject at hand. I would suspect what we have here is data gathered by the admin or IT dept as part of on FOI request with the rubbish filtered out. Perhaps the powers that be ordered the file destroyed and someone in IT/admin (or even aother academic) thought this was wrong and leaked the file.
However the story is playing out as several of us predicted on Friday. The BBC initially ignored it then when it wouldn’t die (I’m told it is in the Daily Mail today) gives us tiny pieces of the story spun in a certain way as damage limitation. Odds on tonights Newsnight will be about nasty hackers and saint like academics. The Beeb are using the same routine they used on the Parlimentary Expenses scandal but this time there are no Tories.
………….fully expect part of tonights item on Newsnight to be devoted the subject of “what can be done to prevent these hackers?” and “just how tough should the crackdown on them be?” or such like.
Lloyd
Are you a Newsnight producer ? If not you should be 🙂
We have to remember this isn’t a “good” whistleblower acting in the public interest this is an evil hacker probably in the paid employ of oil industry businessmen who kill kittens for fun.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cif-green/2009/nov/23/leaked-email-climate-change
The recent hacking of the servers of the University of East Anglia can only be understood within this landscape of competing appeals to public trust. The denial industry (and hordes of climate nerds) has trawled through these emails and found sentences which, when removed from context, support their storyline that climate science is being deliberately distorted and exaggerated for a mixed bag of self-interested and politicised ends.
But you could find anything in here. I looked and found lots of references to lunch and fun, 94 to hate, 31 to love. Generally, though, the emails are extremely focused, technical, and, dare I say it, really dull. As noted on realclimate.org, the emails contain “no evidence of any worldwide conspiracy, no mention of George Soros nefariously funding climate research, no grand plan to ‘get rid of the MWP’, no admission that global warming is a hoax, no evidence of the falsifying of data, and no ‘marching orders’ from our socialist/communist/vegetarian overlords.”
Well a moment’s searching got me this “….it would be nice to try to “contain” the putative “MWP” (email from M Mann to Phil Jones, rbradley, Tom Wigley, Tom Crowley, Keith Briffa, trenbert, Michael Oppenheimer, Jonathan Overpeck). They’re scattered about the globe; a worldwide conspiracy you might say.
the website called ‘realclimate’ is mentioned as an uncritical avenue to air certain attacks on other scientists, this site is also mentioned as a place where critics replying to planted information would be censored out.
The website called ‘realclimate’ just happens to be run by Gavin Shmidt and funnily enough he does run a tightly censored opperation, no dissent is allowed.
A quick look at the content of the emails actually reveals a great deal of detailed information, obviously when you look at the files you do have to open your eyes and more importantly open your mind, to some people all the evidence in the world would not be enough to convince a true believer of anything.
I suppose fanatical believers find evidence that contradicts the fanatics belief system impossible to allow, well thats OK because the fanatics are the tiny minority and its the undecided majority that need to be shown this evidence, once they provided with enough proof they will start to walk away from the AAM fraud and that is happening right now, bit by bit and revelation by revelation the tide of lies and fraud is being refuted by brave and tireless people like Steve McIntyre and Anthony Watts.
In fact it would be very interesting to find out more about the ‘realclimate’ website, coud it in fact be a poodle site of a group of scientists to spread attacks on other sites and scientists, could it be that the peddlers of the AAM narrative need an arms length outlet where they can air their trash science and smears without being directly contradicted?
Richard Black, commenting in his own blog, seems a little put out that anyone could question the BBC’s motives on this issue.
Perhaps slightly off topic. but susan watts is not exactly a powerhouse when it comes to science. when talking about the large hadron collider the other day she repeatedly made the mistake of confusing an ion with an atom. perhaps that may seem nit picking to a non scientist. but it is an awful mistake for someone who calls themselves a science correspondent to make !!!!
Is that the machine at CERN that almost blew up a couple of years ago because the scientists had gotten their maths calculations wrong?
Who knew scientist were not infallible?
RealClimate is actually run by Fenton Communications which has an interesting reputation and is probably not doing this probono. I wonder who pays for the RealClimate activity. Dr Schmidt is after a full time employee of GISS
FENTON — just a note that this US propaganda PR outfit is an integral cog in the vast leftist conspiracy that covers the media, leftidemia, hollywood and Democrats.
The ‘realclimate’ website and its funding/editorial methods should be examined in detail, it should be noted that the New York offices of GISS just happen to be on the same floor of the same office building as the ‘realclimate’ website office, isnt that convenient if GISS wanted to publish an arms length diatribe against an enemy/sceptic? they could just pop next door and hand over inside information and exchange smear ideas with no incriminating email correspondence just in case some denier asked for details under the US version of the FOI.
Dig a little underneath the facade and you find a cosy little cabal of well funded fraudsters engaging in dubious practices.
‘Their data is not being manipulated…’
Uh, shouldn’t that be ‘their data are not being manipulated’, professor? I guess that’s why you’re some Ecofag at some polytechnic nobody’s ever heard of or cares about, and not a prestigious university.
p.s. Get a haircut, asshole. You look like a goddamn hippy.
Wrong Watson, Asuka.
Oops. Thanks for the correction.
I listened to the `discussion’ – the choice of Lawson was crafty – he said he was `open minded’ about the science – they should have had one of the many scientists who absolutely refute global warming hysteria dressed up as science. As someone said, its the best science that politics can produce!
As DB said, the politechnic lecturer (Sorry `Professor’) got the lion’s share of the time!
Having been kindly introduced to the Word Have Your Say blog site (already moved once) by a main poster here, I’d say the BBC is so busy trying to cover things up whilst digging deeper, they have totally lost the plot.
Not only are threads going up and down like a yo-yo (for legal reason, selectively watertight thingy or whatever),
http://worldhaveyoursay.wordpress.com/2009/11/20/are-you-selfish-or-are-we-bad-journalists/
http://worldhaveyoursay.wordpress.com/2009/11/23/are-you-selfish-or-are-we-bad-journalists/
… we now have this nifty piece of objective editorial (until it, and the comments to it also ‘vanish’. The BBC would make the guys touching up the May Day parade pictures in the 50’s seem like rank amateurs):
http://worldhaveyoursay.wordpress.com/2009/11/23/on-air-are-climate-chnage-deniers-the-greatest-threat-to-our-planet/
They are already in a very big credibility hole, and seem intent on keeping on digging. No wonder the whole sorry lot seem to have jumped on the first flight to Copenhagen to get back into the warm bosom of their tribal chums.
Note that the ‘illegal so we can’t print it’ narrative is being pushed hard by the warmists and being repeated without question by the BBC/Guardian/NYT. Yet it seems less and less likely that it was hackers. More likely a matter of a whistleblower or sheer incompetence:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/23/the-crutape-letters%C2%AE-an-alternate-explanation/
&
http://camirror.wordpress.com/2009/11/21/uk-whistleblower-legislation/#more-15
Also what is “climate change” exactly? The climate constantly changes, find me one sceptic who disagrees with this. So, when the BBC talks about climate change what do they mean exactly?
I agree – hacking seems less likely than other possibilites. And it is indeed intersting that the BBC correspondents closest to CRU crew are the ones buying time by clinging to the illegality defence.
Funny how the Beeboids weren’t so coy about questionably obtained emails when they are the ones doing it.
In emails obtained by the BBC, officers in one district were told small-sized body armour supplies were “exhausted”
“If you are in possession of small armour and are on duties in the district where armour is not required, return it,” officers were told.
The PSNI said the safety of all police officers was “of paramount importance”.
Another email said there was no concealed armour in stock.
😀
‘when the BBC talks about climate change what do they mean exactly?’
It means that they have fully bought in to the notion that asking legitimate questions can be labelled as ‘denial’ and dismissed or misrepresented accordingly.
Possibly understandable tactics by certain fervent advocacy groups, but hardly legitimate balance or objectivity by a uniquely funded national propaganda machine.
Something you won’t hear from the BBC:
Viscount Monckton on Global WarmingGate: “They Are Criminals”
Most important in all this is something we used to bring up here when debating with BBC Science Correspondent Dr. David Gregory: that the most dangerous thing of all with this Warmism is the political destruction that’s behind the movement.
Monckton states the problem right from the beginning:
This is what they did — these climate “scientists” on whose unsupported word the world’s classe politique proposes to set up an unelected global government this December in Copenhagen, with vast and unprecedented powers to control all formerly free markets, to tax wealthy nations and all of their financial transactions, to regulate the economic and environmental affairs of all nations, and to confiscate and extinguish all patent and intellectual property rights.
That’s what’s really going on here. They want us to to go back to being subsistence farmers, with the “carbon footprint” of a tiny African village, while the elite sit around congratulating themselves in their ivory towers, luxuriating in all the trappings that they would deny the rest of us.
Inhofe Says He Will Call for Investigation on “Climategate”
I don’t know how influential this chap is in the US but I hope he does get his investigation
the cat is out of the bag mr watson….its not going back in…..the truth is unravelling…the lies no longer hidden and covered up….this is when the bbc start shilling for the elite and their agenda
Apart from Lord Lawson – I haven’t heard any of our politicians calling for an investigation – seems like they still have a touch of democracy in the US.
Who makes money, gains admiration or power when they haven’t got a clue? The IPCC was not set up to find nothing conclusive (unless they want to be yesterday’s news) and that after millions/billions spent they don’t have a clue what the climate is up to. Would a climate scientist have a job if s/he turned round and said “we’ve spent two million on this tea leaf research project and I haven’t the foggiest notion what the climate is doing”? Something has to be found. The biggest forcing effect for man could well be that something, anything has to be found or the money stops, the kids cannot have a good Christmas, and the Mercedes has to be traded in for a Lada etc. Maybe no-one on this planet has a clue and the global climate is taunting us because it has ADHD. Just some thoughts of the moment… BTW I have two City and Guilds so I know what I’m on about.