Climategate Five Years On
   by Mark Steyn
December 2, 2014
    
    
	
      
	
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  Judith Curry's post on "The Legacy of Climategate"  reminds me that it's five years since the East Anglia emails were  revealed to the world. ("Climategate", by the way, is a coinage of my  old colleague James Delingpole. I preferred Warmergate, which was  perhaps too cute to catch on.) Dr Curry writes:Climategate lives on in the lawsuits than Michael Mann  has filed against CEI, National Review Online, Rand Simberg, and Mark  Steyn. For background, see these previous posts:
 
 The lawsuit is related to the 'fraudulent hockey stick' that was  illuminated by the Climategate emails. Climategate considerably  broadened public awareness of the hockey stick and the associated  controversies, making it an icon for concerns about climate science and  scientists.
 Indeed. My interminable lawsuit seems ever more like unfinished  business from Climategate. For one thing, Mann himself insists - ever  more fraudulently - that he was "exonerated" by the East Anglia  investigations. He wasn't. I was amused in court last Tuesday to hear  one of the judges correctly say that the defendants "take [the investigations] apart quite thoroughly in their reply brief".  Nonetheless, the "fraudulent hockey stick" remains the defining image  of the disturbing and unscientific behavior revealed by Climategate.  Half a decade later, the world has moved on, and so has the climate, and  Dr Mann is fighting for what's left of his relevance.
 At any rate, here's what I had to say in my syndicated column five  years ago. This piece is one of the "documents" Mann's lawyers  requested in discovery. Dunno why. You can Google it in five seconds. As  you'll see, I refer herein to "the fraud of Dr Mann's global-warming  'hockey stick' graph". He didn't sue that time:
 My favorite moment in the Climategate/Climaquiddick scandal currently  roiling the "climate change" racket was Stuart Varney's interview on  Fox News with the actor Ed Begley Jr. — star of the 1980s medical drama 
St. Elsewhere  but latterly better known, as is the fashion with members of the  thespian community, as an "activist." He's currently in a competition  with Bill Nye ("the Science Guy") to see who can have the lowest "carbon  footprint." Pistols at dawn would seem the quickest way of resolving  that one, but presumably you couldn't get a reality series out of it.  Anyway, Ed was relaxed about the mountain of documents recently leaked  from Britain's Climate Research Unit in which the world's leading  climate-change warm-mongers e-mail each other back and forth on how to  "hide the decline" and other interesting matters.
 Nothing to worry about, folks. "We'll go down the path and see what  happens in peer-reviewed studies," said Ed airily. "Those are the key  words here, Stuart. 'Peer-reviewed studies.'"
 Hang on. Could you say that again more slowly so I can write it down?  Not to worry. Ed said it every 12 seconds, as if it were the magic  charm that could make all the bad publicity go away. He wore an  open-necked shirt, and, although I don't have a 76" inch HDTV, I  wouldn't have been surprised to find a talismanic peer-reviewed amulet  nestling in his chest hair for additional protection. "If these  scientists have done something wrong, it will be found out and their  peers will determine it," insisted Ed. "Don't get your information from  me, folks, or any newscaster. Get it from people with Ph.D. after their  names. 'Peer-reviewed studies is the key words. And if it comes out in  peer-reviewed studies . . . "
 Got it: Pier-reviewed studies. You stand on the pier and you notice  the tide seems to be coming in a little higher than it used to and you  wonder if it's something to do with incandescent light bulbs killing the  polar bears? Is that how it works?
 No, no, 
peer-reviewed studies. "Peer-reviewed studies. Go to 
Science magazine, folks. Go to 
Nature," babbled Ed. "Read peer-reviewed studies. That's all you need to do. Don't get it from you or me."
 Look for the peer-reviewed label! And then just believe whatever it is they tell you!
 The trouble with outsourcing your marbles to the peer-reviewed set is  that, if you take away one single thing from the leaked documents, it's  that the global warm-mongers have wholly corrupted the "peer-review"  process. When it comes to promoting the impending ecopalypse, the  Climate Research Unit is the nerve-center of the operation. The  "science" of the CRU dominates the "science" behind the UN's IPCC, which  dominates the "science" behind the Congressional cap-and-trade  boondoggle, the upcoming Copenhagen shakindownen of the developed world,  and the now routine phenomenon of leaders of advanced, prosperous  societies talking like gibbering madmen escaped from the padded cell,  whether it's President Obama promising to end the rise of the oceans or  the Prince of Wales saying we only have 96 months left to save the  planet.
 But don't worry, it's all "peer-reviewed."
 Here's what Phil Jones of the CRU and his colleague Michael Mann of Penn State mean by "peer review." When 
Climate Research  published a paper dissenting from the Jones-Mann "consensus," Jones  demanded that the journal "rid itself of this troublesome editor," and  Mann advised that "we have to stop considering Climate Research as a  legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our  colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or  cite papers."
 So much for 
Climate Research. When 
Geophysical Research Letters  also showed signs of wandering off the "consensus" reservation, Dr. Tom  Wigley ("one of the world's foremost experts on climate change")  suggested they get the goods on its editor, Jim Saiers, and go to his  bosses at the American Geophysical Union to "get him ousted." When  another pair of troublesome dissenters emerge, Dr. Jones assured Dr.  Mann, "I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report.  Kevin and I will keep them out somehow — even if we have to redefine  what the peer-review literature is!"
 Which in essence is what they did. The more frantically they talked  up "peer review" as the only legitimate basis for criticism, the more  assiduously they turned the process into what James Lewis calls the  Chicago machine politics of international science. The headline in the 
Wall Street Journal Europe  is unimproveable: "How To Forge A Consensus." Pressuring publishers,  firing editors, blacklisting scientists: That's "peer review,"  climate-style.
 The more their echo chamber shriveled, the more Mann and Jones  insisted that they and only they represent the "peer-reviewed"  "consensus." And gullible types like Ed Begley Jr. and Andrew Revkin of  the 
New York Times fell for it hook, line, and tree-ring. The  e-mails of "Andy" (as his CRU chums fondly know him) are especially  pitiful. Confronted by serious questions from Stephen McIntyre, the  dogged Ontario retiree whose 
Climate Audit  website exposed the fraud of Dr. Mann's global-warming "hockey stick"  graph), "Andy" writes to Dr. Mann to say not to worry, he's going to  "cover" the story from a more oblique angle:
I'm going to blog on this as it relates to the value of  the peer review process and not on the merits of the mcintyre et al  attacks.
 peer review, for all its imperfections, is where the herky-jerky process of knowledge building happens, would you agree?
And, amazingly, Dr. Mann does! "Re, your point at the end — you've taken the words out of my mouth."
 And that's what Andrew Revkin did, week in, week out: He took the  words out of Michael Mann's mouth and served them up to impressionable  readers of the 
New York Times and opportunist politicians around  the world champing at the bit to inaugurate a vast global regulatory  body to confiscate trillions of dollars of your hard-earned wealth in  the cause of "saving the planet" from an imaginary crisis concocted by a  few dozen thuggish ideologues. If you fall for this after the  revelations of the last week, you're as big a dupe as Begley or Revkin.
 "
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" wondered Juvenal: Who watches  the watchmen? But the beauty of the climate-change tree-ring circus is  that you never need to ask "Who peer-reviews the peer-reviewers?" Mann  peer-reviewed Jones, and Jones peer-reviewed Mann, and anyone who  questioned their theories got exiled to the unwarmed wastes of Siberia.  The "consensus" warm-mongers could have declared it only counts as  "peer-reviewed" if it's published in 
Peer-Reviewed Studies  published by Mann & Jones Publishing Inc (Peermate of the Month: Al  Gore, reclining naked, draped in dead polar-bear fur, on a melting ice  floe), and Ed Begley Jr. and "Andy" Revkin would still have wandered out  glassy-eyed into the streets droning "Peer-reviewed studies. Cannot  question. Peer-reviewed studies. The science is settled . . . "
 Looking forward to Copenhagen, Herman Van Rumpoy, the new president  of the European Union and an eager proponent of the ecopalypse, says  2009 is "the first year of global governance." Global government, huh? I  wonder where you go to vote them out of office.
 Hey, but don't worry, it'll all be "peer-reviewed."
 
~from Steyn's syndicated column, November 28th 2009.
Climategate Five Years On :: SteynOnline