Climategate Overview:
Those of us keeping abreast of the climate literature have known for quite
some time that the explanation for Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW)
relating to climate change, was far from the entire story, with almost all
dissenting opinion having been actively suppressed. But the full extent
of the problem was not made clear until November 19, 2009, when
approximately 160 megabytes
of data files and email correspondence was leaked from Britain's
government-funded University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit (CRU).
An initial review of this material revealed four damning facts:
- Current global temperature data was being actively manipulated in
order to conceal real-world temperature declines that did not
support the computerized climate models that were being used to
predict runaway global warming. Additionally, historical data
showing that during the Medieval Warm Period (900-1300 AD), the
earth had been warmer than what was seen today, thereby shattering
any causal connection between man made CO2 and
temperature rise.
- For quite some time, as is a normal part of any scientific
peer-review process, independent scientists and organizations had
been requesting the release of the raw temperature data used by
the CRU in determining its results. Nevertheless, the CRU had
continually refused to make their data available. (And now we
understand why!) Additional requests for the data were made under
the UK's Freedom of Information laws, and the scientists at the CRU
are seen discussing how to circumvent these laws, including
destroying correspondence and the temperature data itself, rather
than allow it to be seen by others.
- A review of the source code for the computerized models used to
predict the significant global temperature gains being reported,
showed that much of it was completely unintelligible to the
programmers charged with maintain it, and in some cases, these
programs could not be made to reproduce similar results previously
obtained by others using the same code base and data sets. This
code was in a constant state of manipulation in order to produce
predetermined results.
- The correspondence shows a small group of scientists frequently
discussing ways to subvert the normal scientific peer-review
process. This included having climate papers only be "reviewed"
by one another, or by people already fully committed to the belief
in AGW, stopping publication of any papers that were skeptical of
AGW, and working to remove editors from scientific journals that
were willing to publish any dissenting opinions.
Soon after the release of the CRU files, this event came to be known as
Climategate. However, none of this came as a real shock to a
group of skeptical scientists who had been questioning the AGW results
for some time, but had been effectively barred from publishing their
analyses in standard scientific journals and media outlets. In this way,
the general public had been manipulated through the presentation of an
unchallenged propagandist viewpoint, into supporting drastic government
interventionist policies in order to stave off the supposed pending crisis
to all of humanity.
