Well, I saw that on google news yesterday. Grabbed the file last night (thanks for the torrent BTW). The only thing being that it is a really huge file, so I have to wonder how anyone has found anything useful from it so quickly.

I did read on a few of the anti-warming blogs some pull quotes that are supposed to be in there. Since this file is fairly new, I really think that anything either for or against needs to be taken with a grain of salt.

In any case, let's just say for shits and giggles that everything that anyone claims is in there really is. What does that leave us with? Ignoring the possibility of some of the emails being forgeries, I have to wonder if any of it really means all that much.

One thought that occurs to me is that scientists are human and subject to the normal range of behaviors. Consider Galileo as the example. One reading of his story could easily be that he was censured for basically being an ass. However, today, nobody really questions that he was an ass who happened to be right.

Another thing goes to the size of the work. Even if there is material in there for quote mining, this does not change the fact that there is quite a bit of material there and finding little bits here and there is probably not the smoking gun of having been lied to by the scientific community.

Come on, this is science and fairly close to the cutting edge at that. In that realm, scientists are often mistaken about lots of stuff. Hence the reason for peer review. In layman's terms, peer review amounts to scientists asking each other to look at their work and basically asking the question “Does this look right to you?”.

Could the scientific community be wrong about global warming? I suppose so but given the volume of data that now exists, the odds are that what errors are still not discovered are in the details rather than the overall picture. Honestly, I doubt that a full reversal of the current paradigm in in the offing here. Will some of the details in the current literature be reversed? I would be quite surprised if that did not happen. Even so, one cannot really deny that the north polar ice cap is quite a bit smaller than it used to be.

It is indeed sad that global warming has turned into a political agenda.... I don't accept that we cannot prevent it (if it is indeed happening) without lowering standards of living etc. Really we just need a new clean power source to replace oil (we will need a new power source at some point anyway) then a large part of the battle has been won.

Im happy that south africa basically said screw you our development goals come first, after that we shall worry about climate change. After all even if global warming is happening (i think it is likely, maybe not exactly as it currently is thought to be... I don't know) it is first world countries that have had the benefit of developing already... we have not. Us conforming to the climate change goals will prevent us from developing at this point in time... maintaining a the current balance of power. This is unacceptable to me. 

Thanks for responding: You will all reveive carbon allowances.

I feel obligated to respond in this topic due to my backing of theories and hypothesis' on global warming. I'm disgusted that people who would call themselves scientists would even consider falsifying information. I say good job to whoever released this information, regardless of the inevitable backlash against any real science which supports the global warming scenario. Talk about a step backwards.

Since I can see that this discussion was over before it began. In my opinion because you're a bunch of naive environmentalists who like to sit around lamenting about how there are "too many people" never realizing that you are one of those people and that the policy-making environmentalists are operating based on an ideology of opposition to the existence of humans, industrial society, economic growth, and technological advancement of any kind particularly energy technology, because as the science czar of the US John Holdren said clean-burning, non-polluting, hydrogen-using bulldozers still could knock down trees or build housing developments on farmland, I'll make my final comments and leave it at that.

  If you want to support a bunch of people attempting to cut off access to any resources and technology that could meet current energy needs even after you find out that they are lying and manipulating the peer review process because you get moist thinking about "saving the earth" from the wicked humans, consider what Charles Percy Snow said in his lecture "The Two Cultures":

To be honest I don't believe you. I don't believe you read the emails or computer code but I want people to see that they can respond with similar apologetics if they want and I won't go for their throats. So thanks for the reply.

I wasn't talking about the people who did reply. At least you guys put on your uniforms and got ready to play. I was talking about all the phonies who like to stroke their pet causes on these boards that they care about so much, but now I can see that one of those causes isn't scientific integrity so why should anyone really gives a shit what they have to say.

It's nice to see you'll go on record in favor of global implementation of forced abortion, sterilization and state sponsored kidnapping. I don't imagine paradise could be far away if only we could have that imposed on everyone.

Why isn't industrialization a fitting approach? That reduces birth rates and raises living standards and longevity. You see you don't don't want to oppress the earth but you want to oppress the people on it.

  Industrialization=more people, more buildings, more shit.  Next question ?

You can talk about inviting four families to live with me that's great great that's hyperbole. My question is in what fantasy world is everyone going to willingly sign up for your extinction agenda?

   My concerns are not based upon a fantasy world but the real world.  Overpopulation is not something that only exists within a sci-fi novel.  By all means, pass out free fertility drugs to every adolescent female if that furthers your goals.

I didn't say there are no population problems. I asked a simple question. Will everyone go along willingly with your culling of the human race?

  How could I possibly know that ?  If you have some way of projecting an accurate estimate, I'm all ears.    How many people around the world willingly advocate that their governments should be a western style democracy ?  All of them ? 

Considering that some people have children when not only does there seem to be no reason but it's actually appears to be detrimental in many ways I think it's safe to assume that some people will not go along willingly. So it's necessarily authoritarian.

Industrialization on the other hand doesn't necessarily require western style democracy and if somebody doesn't like it nothing is stopping them from living in the damn woods.  

  I have yet to discover any form of government, from the ancient past to the modern era, that at some point does not draw the line in relation to some behavior.  Go smoke a cigarette in a no smoking zone. Then claim that you rights as a smoker have been violated.  There are other examples of "authoritarian" government that I could cite but this is a message board and I'm not writing my doctoral thesis.

    You mean industrialized, like China ?   who by the way practices state enforced birth control.

  No need.  This is becoming boring and repetitive, you have the last word, and hence the de facto victory.  I have been vanquished.

  Cheers.

OK, if that side line is done, may we get back to climate change?

Personally, I try my best to be a skeptic on the matter but I fail to see how one can assert that climate does not change on the scale of decades. It does and the data is there. What bugs me is the general hijacking of science to further a political agenda.

A good question to ask might be on whom should the blame be placed for whatever is going on. Honestly, the environment nazis want to place the blame squarely on the evil industrialists. However, there is an elephant in the room on that one.

Let me peel back to the late 70's to show what I mean. The recent massive increase in the price of oil, coupled with a coal miner's strike in England led to the undeniable fact that the industrialists were, at that point, on the fast track to converting the whole world to run on nuclear power. Need I point out that nuclear power has no carbon load?

Then we had the accident at Three Mile Island. As a result, 51 orders for nuclear reactors in the US alone were canceled and no new reactors have been ordered since. Not too long after that, the world had to deal with the much larger disaster at Chernobyl.

As it happens, both accidents could have been easily prevented. TMI was caused largely by violations of well established safety rules that never should have happened. Chernobyl was caused by errors on a much larger scale. Pretty much letting Benny Hill run the reactor would have been safer there.

Anyway, the greenpeace/environmental nonsense went into overdrive and the nuclear industry suffered a mighty penalty. Had the force of reason dominated after those accidents, we would have a much larger nuclear industry today and a much smaller national carbon footprint.

That is what the evil industrialists wanted to happen. The environment nazi basically forced them to remain on fossil fuel when they wanted different things to happen. Assembling the data this way, it is not too difficult to argue that the very people who are on about the environment today are the successors to the environment people who caused the situation to come about in the first place.

There are some things that conservatives are more likely to believe than liberals, and vice versa. If I said that polar bears are not dying out, I'd have half a dozen liberals in here asking me why I want to kill the poor polar bears even though there are more polar bears now than there ever were.

I'm a leftist but I don't buy these fake environmental crusades for one second because I read the books and literature that these fuckers put out and I know it hasn't a thing to do with the climate, or polar bears, and it definitely doesn't have anything to do with the welfare of human beings who come dead last in the hierarchy of consideration here and are seen on the whole as an environmental liability.

The Discovery institute and what they believe has nothing to do with Phil Jones writing that he will keep counter evidence out of official reports even if he has to redefine the peer-review process, and destroying information in freedom of information act requests.

The absurdity of that is so clear and obvious that other scientists including the IPCC's Eduardo Zorita have demanded that Jones and company be barred from the panel because "the scientific assessments in which they may take part are not credible anymore." and further stating "I feel myself entitled to read how some researchers tried to influence reviewers to scupper the publication of our work on the 'hockey stick graph' or to read how some IPCC authors tried to exclude this work from the IPCC Report on very dubious reasons." But I guess even the scientists you put your faith in can fall for a "hoax" huh?

http://coast.gkss.de/staff/zorita/myview.html

Kevin reduce the population by 80% Brown. I didn't think you'd have the nerve to show your face around here. The absurdity of people who believe in the apocalyptic destruction of earth and espouse no less than the destruction of all its industrial societies and 8 out of 10 of its inhabitants calling people who are skeptical of their insane and completely made up predictions "idiots" is farcical.

Even if we didn't know that these characters were deleting data in FOIA requests, having people ousted, and manipulating the peer-review process they would still be predicting the end of the world which is completely stupid.

But you made a lot of accusations and I think they should be taken seriously. When did I claim to understand climate science (other than the fact that people like you would pay absolutely no attention to it at all unless they predicted catastrophe)? When did I claim it's suddenly all "just a hoax"? What did I lie about?

I posted information for people to read and make up their own minds. Maybe you're just angry that the majority of people don't believe in your fables about planetary destruction anymore.

I'm curious what the geologists have to say.  Discovery told me two weeks ago that, regardless of the effects of human waste, we're set to enter another ice age within a few thousand years. 

But the way I see it, it's obvious that waste will have SOME effect.  (It is political agendas that have blown this over the top or claimed it a hoax)  Look at the time of the dinosaurs.  Shitload of CO2 in the atmosphere, higher global temperatures, more lush vegetation, and of course large animals.  I think I speak for all of us when I say that we don't want to cause future humans to be subjected to raptor attacks.  That would be horrible.

 So, hold-up, Mr. Frankenfood:

You can't name any particular individual who has committed fraud, and in fact have no evidence of fraud at all. Is that correct?

Source: Wikipedia article on Polar Bears.

So... 25,000 is more than 40,000? 

...Who, again, was the person who originally started making claims about how many polar bears there are today vs how many there have ever been in the past? 

Sure wasn't me.

So, you it's alright for you to just make shit up, but estimates derived by experts in the field are just rubbish, right?

That's kind of an interesting admission, though. I mean, all practical science is based on best estimates - so is all science just garbage in your mind? 

Sure.

Hacking the CRU database was a criminal act and a waste of time. I hope the motherfucker who did it serves time in prison. 

I think that is interpreted and taken out of context of a political agenda. Things are pointing hand and waving to say things like 'use this data internally, but do not let go in the wrong hands,' and noting that not all the image so it could be used as a political tool. Basically, e-mails to prevent what we are doing now happen.