ClimateGate

Most folks dream of a white Christmas. No one, not even Elvis fans, want a blue one. But the Washington Post's Brian Palmer is fixated on how you can have a green one. Spoiler alert: He doesn't think trekking out to the local tree farm to fell your own tree is the way to go.

"Do you deserve a lump of carbon under your Christmas tree?" Palmer asked in his December 11 EcoLogic column. Apparently, the issue of tree farms during this holiday season is a point of contention within the environmentalist community.  Yes, the greenies can't give it a rest, not even for the holiday season.

The $82 billion auto bailout has been a Crony Socialist nightmare mess. We’re going to lose at least $30 billion on the deal.  And that’s only if the Barack Obama Administration’s math can be trusted - a dicey proposition at best.

The Administration eviscerated two hundred-plus years of bankruptcy law, throwing bond holders over the side to over-reward their United Auto Workers shock force buddies.

General Motors (GM) is cutting undisclosed deals with executives’ wives businesses.And on, and on, and on....Haven’t heard most or all of this?  Not surprising - the Jurassic Press ain’t reporting it.

On Thursday, over 40 hours after the Pacific Institute's Peter Gleick (pictured here) revealed that he stole documents from the Heartland Institute by posing as one of that organization's board members, Seth Borenstein at the Associated Press finally broke the ice and filed a related three-paragraph "this is boring, you don't need to read it" dispatch. Two hours later, the AP science writer extended it to 500-plus words, but kept the headline as uninformative as possible -- "Scientist admits taking, leaking think-tank papers."

The "clever" failure to describe Gleick as a "climate scientist" (which he is) will dissuade many of those who see the headline from clicking through or reading further. By contrast, the headline at Borenstein's report on February 16 after Gleick (whom Borenstein did not name) disseminated the documents was: "INFLUENCE GAME: Leaks show group's climate efforts." In his longer item, Borenstein (or is it now "Boring-stein," Seth?) posits the howler that what Gleick did "mirrors" the Climategate email revelations which occurred in late 2009 and 2011. In your dreams, pal. The initial item plus excerpts from the longer one are after the jump.

The "Doomsday Clock" has been with us since 1947. It is a symbolic construct of the now left-leaning Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a group which "was established in 1945 by scientists, engineers, and other experts who had created the atomic bomb as part of the Manhattan Project. They knew about the horrible effects of these new weapons and devoted themselves to warning the public about the consequences of using them."

Most people who know of it probably think that the clock's intent is to symbolize how close the world is to the disaster of nuclear war; that was indeed its sole focus for decades. However, the group just moved the clock from six minutes before midnight to five. Wait until you see why, as sympathetically reported on Tuesday by Doyle Rice at USA Today's Science Fair blog:

Imagine if it were discovered that free-market think tanks were caught vetting scripts of Fox News programs, intervening to prevent free-market sceptics from receiving air time, and consulted with the network about how it should alter its programing in a free-market direction. The howls of outrage would be loud, long and unrelenting from other news networks, the wire services, and leading U.S. newspapers.

What I have just described, and more, characterizes a decade-long relationship between the British Broadcasting Corporation and UK-based climate scientists at the University of East Anglia (UEA) -- except that the BBC is government-funded and disproportionately controls the flow of broadcast news in the UK. What the UK Daily Mail has revealed today as part of its ongoing review of the second set of Climategate emails released before Thanksgiving has caused Benny Peiser of the Global Warming Policy Foundation to write that the BBC is "in cahoots with Climategate scientists." What follows are excerpts from the David Rose's Daily Mail story (bolds are mine):

Almost exactly two years since damning email messages were released from Great Britain's University of East Anglia showing a pattern of deception and collusion between scientists involved in spreading the global warming myth, a new batch of such correspondence has emerged that seems destined to get as little press coverage as the original ClimateGate scandal did in November 2009.

James Delingpole reported in Britain's Telegraph Tuesday:

For years NewsBusters has informed readers of the tremendous financial ties to spreading the anthropogenic global warming myth.

On Sunday, coincidentally  the second anniversary of 2010's ClimateGate scandal, Britain's Daily Mail exposed the BBC's Roger Harrabin for having taken £15,000 from the very university at the heart the damning email messages demonstrating a nefarious collusion between the world's top climate alarmists:

On Wednesday, the Environmental Protection Agency's Inspector General issued a report on the agency's "compliance with established policy and procedures" in connection with its "Greenhouse Gases Endangerment Finding." This was the finding that "greenhouse gas," or "GHG" emissions, including carbon dioxide, are in essence forms of air pollution, endanger public health, and must therefore be regulated.

As would sadly be expected, what the IG actually found and what the Associated Press's Dina Cappiello reported about the IG's findings sharply differ. Here's what IG Arthur A. Elkins, Jr. wrote in his press statement:

For many years, conservatives have been claiming that Paul Krugman makes up economic data to support his political conclusions.

Proving the point, the New York Times columnist said Monday, "Nothing in the [ClimateGate email] correspondence suggested any kind of scientific impropriety," and in the truly damning message from Phil Jones, the former head of Britain's Climatic Research Unit, "it’s clear that he’s talking about making an effective graphical presentation, not about suppressing evidence":

The total inability of the far-left Fox News haters to conjure up any real controversy about the cable channel demonstrates just how reasonable and measured Fox's coverage generally is.

The latest Fox "scandal": DC bureau chief Bill Sammon told staff to refrain from pronouncing one side of the climate change debate unequivocally correct. That's right, Sammon's insistence that Fox not make definitive judgments on contentious political issues is a sign of Fox's unethical journalistic practices, the Fox haters bizarrely claim.

The occasion for the latest bout of anti-FNC bloviating was the leak of an email from Sammon, sent during the height of the so-called Climategate scandal. It read:

After the New York Times decided to host scores of sensitive U.S. diplomatic documents released by WikiLeaks, a number of pundits, myself included, alleged a serious double standard. A year prior, the Times had refused to publish leaked emails in the so-called ClimateGate scandal. Environmental blogger Andy Revkin had this to say at the time:

The documents appear to have been acquired illegally and contain all manner of private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye, so they won’t be posted here.

Revkin has owned up to this double standard - sort of - in an update to that post. Noticed by the Wall Street Journal's James Taranto, that update reads:

The New York Times has taken an admirable stand on the potentially-criminal release of diplomatic cables by the online "whistleblowers" at WikiLeaks. Said one Times reporter: "The documents appear to have been acquired illegally and contain all manner of private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye, so they won't be posted here."

Oh, wait. That wasn't in reference to the WikiLeaks documents. That was the Times's former environmental blogger Andy Revkin discussing the so-called ClimateGate emails. The Times has, in fact, posted a number of American diplomatic documents obtained illegally by WikiLeaks, and containing massive amounts of sensitive diplomatic communications.

And so we get another glimpse of the amazing depths of the Gray Lady's hypocrisy.

This would be really funny if it weren't for the fact that so many supposedly informed people, including our president and those who surround him, may actually buy into ideas being proposed at the United Nations-sponsored Cancun climate conference, and will relish the means by which they could be put into place.

At the UK Telegraph today, environment correspondent Louise Gray feeds us the following headline and sub-headline:

Cancun climate change summit: scientists call for rationing in developed world

Global warming is now such a serious threat to mankind that climate change experts are calling for Second World War-style rationing in rich countries to bring down carbon emissions.

From all appearances, such rationing would last at least two decades, during which there would be, by design, no economic growth. Zero, zip, nada.

Here are selected paragraphs from Gray's grouse (bolds and number tags are mine):

Appearing in studio on the November 20 edition of "Fox & Friends Saturday," NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell noted the one year anniversary of the ClimateGate scandal.

During one year of coverage, the three broadcast networks aired just 12 stories, an average of one per month, Bozell noted. What's more, the Media Research Center founder added, "when they do cover [ClimateGate], they dismiss" the gravity of the scandal or "use it as a way to buck up their original argument" about global warming.

For the full interview, check out the embedded video below the page break.

I owe Ottmar Edenhofer thanks for two things.

First, I am grateful that Edenhofer, a German economist who is "co-chair of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) Working Group III on Mitigation of Climate Change," has a last name on which searching is easy. I quickly determined that his name last name doesn't currently come up in searches at the Associated Press's main web site, the New York Times, the Washington Post, or the Los Angeles Times.

That's because he hasn't said or done anything newsworthy, right? Wrong. What's newsworthy is my second reason for thanking him. First covered at NewsBusters yesterday by Noel Sheppard, and described this evening in an Investors Business Daily editorial, Mr. Edenhofer has proffered the principal motivation behind the "climate change movement" -- redistribution of wealth (bolds are mine):

Nearly a year after leaked emails from the University of East Anglia revealed scientists manipulating data to embellish the case for anthropogenic global warming, journalists are finally starting to learn a few lessons. Unfortunately, few, if any, of those journalists are Americans.

Margot O'Neill of the Australian Broadcasting Company reported last week:

[A] key BBC news manager has declared that climate science "isn't quite a settled question"; and the BBC Trust is investigating the impartiality of science reporting including on climate change and including whether sceptical views are given due airing.

They're back, they have their media water-carriers in place, and the Obama administration is smack dab in the middle of it.

The United Nations is pushing for countries in the developed world to keep their "promise" to, in the worlds of Charles J. Hanley at the Associated Press,  "raise up to $100 billion a year in new money for poorer countries to cope with climate change and reduce their greenhouse gas emissions."

It's as if ClimateGate never happened (link is to NB's 120-plus posts on the topic). It's as if the IPCC and others associated with the scandal and the evidence-impaired claims of global warming -- er, climate change -- uh, make that climate disruption -- still have their reputations totally intact.

Here is how Bloomberg describes the U.N.'s request:

Editor's Note: For the list of NewsBusters T-shirt contest winners, skip to the end of this post. Click here to enter the contest.

It's time once again for "Five for Five," this time our list of the Top Five News Stories Broken or Advanced by NewsBusters.

We start with an honorable mention that just barely failed to make the cut, but is worth noting for its impact on the blogosphere, Noel Sheppard's August 1, 2009 post, "Obama Joker Poster Popping Up in Los Angeles."

As for our top five, they are blog posts that uncovered:

• The beginnings of ClimateGate ["Possible Conspiracy to Falsify Temperature Data Uncovered" from Nov. 20, 2009] 
• The early beginnings of the Tea Party movement ["CNBC's Santelli Explains His Anti-Obamanomics Call for Revolt" from February 19, 2009]

The Washington Post obituary for liberal climate scientist Stephen Schneider, a media favorite over the years to promote the allegedly ironclad certainty of global warming, replayed a very recent jeremiad against "Hitlerian lies" by conservatives in the wake of Climategate. But the Post's version of his remarks toned him down and excised his attacks on "gun-toting rightwingers" who are Limbaugh and Beck fans. T. Rees Shapiro reported:

His passionate views on the climate debate occasionally attracted vitriol from extremist groups. An FBI investigation recently found he was named on a neo-Nazi "death list," and Dr. Schneider said he received hundreds of hate e-mails a day.

"What do I do? Learn to shoot a magnum? Wear a bulletproof jacket?" Dr. Schneider said. "I have now had extra alarms fitted at my home, and my address is unlisted. I get scared that we're now in a new Weimar Republic where people are prepared to listen to what amounts to Hitlerian lies about climate scientists."

Surprise - a British panel ruled that the scandal known as ClimateGate that supposedly revealed the manipulation of certain data strengthen the case of manmade global warming was much ado about nothing. But, The New York Times in a July 7 story called these findings of an inquiry led by Muir Russell, a retired British civil servant and educator, "a sweeping exoneration" of the ClimateGate scientists in question. 

While there are still some serious and legitimate concerns to be raised about what ClimateGate reveal despite the findings, Bill Nye, the so-called "Science Guy" is celebrating and at the same time dismissing skeptics of Russell's findings. He explained why he thought this was important on CNN's July 7 broadcast of "Campbell Brown."

"Well, it's important to people like me," Nye said. "It's important to all the scientists. I think people who don't believe in climate change, who deny climate change, I don't think it's going to affect them very much at all because they're already committed to their - to their beliefs and this will be just one more brick in the great ziggurat of conspiracy for those people."

Parts of the U.S. establishment press have acknowledged "climate science" reality, six months late.

The fallout from ClimateGate (link is to the NewsBusters tag), the name eventually given to the scandal resulting from the unauthorized posting of over 1,000 emails and dozens of documents obtained from University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (CRU) in the UK, goes back a full six months to November of last year.

On November 20, Australia's Andrew Bolt crisply described the contents of the aforementioned items as providing substantial evidence of: "Conspiracy, collusion in exaggerating warming data, possibly illegal destruction of embarrassing information, organised resistance to disclosure, manipulation of data, private admissions of flaws in their public claims and much more."

Six long months later, as the American Thinker's Marc Sheppard observed, both the New York Times and Newsweek have recognized the fallout while still not conceding the argument. The Times does so in an article by Elisabeth Rosenthal about crumbling public support in Great Britain and elsewhere, while Newsweek's Stefan Thiel addresses "The backlash against climate science."

What a difference three years makes, says Sheppard:

Ken Cuccinelli, the conservative Attorney General of Virginia, came under attack on Friday night's All Things Considered on National Public Radio. This is one angle of Climategate the national media have noticed. But they pitch the battle as Cuccinelli vs. Science or Cuccinelli vs. Academic Freedom.

What's most infuriating is the notion that it's Cuccinelli who's "politicizing" science, and not Michael Mann's openly politicized e-mails explaining his data manipulations and plotting to censor his political opponents. Somehow, the Union of Concerned Scientists is painted as non-political. 

Host Michele Norris began: "The University of Virginia says it will fight a demand from the state's attorney general. He wants the school to turn over private e-mails and documents related to a former professor's climate research. The case has sparked a national debate over academic freedom."

If you try to sweep your problems under the rug, they'll go away, right? Michael Mann, a Penn State professor and a central figure in the Climategate scandal and best known for his "hockey stick graph" hopes so.

On Fox News Channel's April 28 broadcast of "Your World with Neil Cavuto," Elmer Beauregard of Minnesotans for Global Warming appeared to explain the reasoning behind a video that drew the ire Mann. The video mocked the Penn State professor's alleged attempt to cover up data from tree rings that would indicate there was no global warming.

"Well, I don't know if you remember, but last fall, Obama was pushing the no cap-and-trade to go through the Senate because he wanted to have something to bring to Copenhagen," Beauregard said. "And just then Climategate broke and the mainstream press really wasn't covering it, so the coalition got together and we tried to think of a way to kind of bring this into the forefront of the American public. And I said I could make a funny YouTube video. And so, I did it to the tune of ‘Draggin' the Line' by Tommy James and The Shondells and put it up on YouTube and it went viral. And then Rush [Limbaugh] played it on his show and it went supernova."

Original "Hide the Decline" Video Below Fold

In case you missed it, expressing dissent about an issue that has become more and more politicized could warrant a lawsuit - even if it's just satire.

Michael Mann, a Penn State professor and a central figure in the Climategate scandal, but is best known for his "hockey stick graph" doesn't like being criticized. He has threatened to sue the creators of a video that has gone viral on YouTube mocking him. The creators of the video are a group called Minnesotans for Global Warming.

The possibility of a suit was the topic on Fox News April 27 "America Live," hosted by Megyn Kelly. Kelly asked ClimateDepot.com executive editor Marc Morano if Mann would be able to prove that this so-called YouTube spoof wasn't true and therefore win his lawsuit.

The Pentagon rescinded the invitation of evangelist Franklin Graham to speak at its May 6 National Day of Prayer event because of complaints about his previous comments about Islam.

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation expressed its concern over Graham's involvement with the event in an April 19 letter sent to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. MRFF's complaint about Graham, the son of Rev. Billy Graham, focused on remarks he made after 9/11 in which he called Islam "wicked" and "evil" and his lack of apology for those words.

Col. Tom Collins, an Army spokesman, told ABC News on April 22, "This Army honors all faiths and tries to inculcate our soldiers and work force with an appreciation of all faiths and his past comments just were not appropriate for this venue."

For years the global warming alarmists' mantra has been "the science is settled." But a recent series of shocking disclosures about climate science has shaken the credibility of that claim.

The first scandal - ClimateGate - came Nov. 20, 2009, after someone leaked thousands of e-mails from a major climate science group: University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU). The e-mails were full of startling admissions like this one: "We can't account for the lack of warming at the moment."

Since then there has been an avalanche of admissions and disclosures spreading online through Web sites and foreign newspapers. The cumulative effect has impacted the truthworthiness of the climate science movement. Yet the networks haven't even adjusted their news coverage of the global warming issue to reflect the discoveries.

A day after Minnesotans For Global Warming pulled their "Hide the Decline" video from YouTube at the request of ClimateGate scientist Michael Mann, all versions of this global warming satire were apparently removed from the powerful website.

As NewsBusters reported Tuesday, M4GW received a threat from Mann's representatives stating that if the video was not taken down, he would sue.

After M4GW complied with Mann's request, the No Cap and Trade Coalition posted a new version of "Hide the Decline" on YouTube.

Unfortunately on Wednesday, this new version AND all related videos were removed from YouTube supposedly due to a copyright claim by JibJab Media, Inc.

According to M4GW's Elmer Beauregard, this makes no sense ("Hide the Decline II" video embedded below the fold courtesy Breitbart TV):