Shock revelation: top NZ climate scientist admits global conspiracy to warm planet

WORLD EXCLUSIVE!: Hot Topic can reveal that the days of the great climate science conspiracy are finally over. In an unprecedented display of public candour Dr Jim Salinger, New Zealand’s leading climate scientist, admitted in a letter to the NZ Herald this week that he’s been part of a conspiracy to mislead the public about global warming. Responding to a perceptive column by investigative reporter Jim Hopkins, he wrote (and this is the unedited version which names names — I had to hack into his email system to get it):

I was very upset to see that the doyen of climate science investigators, Jim Hopkins, has finally got to the truth of NZ’s con of the century. Yes – he has uncovered it – the Great Aotearoa Climate Conspiracy (GACC) of the 20th century! My fellow schemers over the years include E Kidson, Ben Garnier, Blair Fitzharris, Trevor Chinn, Kevin Trenberth, John Kidson, James Renwick, Brett Mullan, and Rob Muldoon. GACC operatives have secreted heaters and concentrated sunlight on the permanent snow and ice that once clothed Aotearoa. The Mackenzie hydro scheme generates power for the heaters under Mt Cook. We have been so successful that the ice volume has dripped from 100 cubic kilometres in the 1900s to 45 cubic kilometres by 2008. Thus we have convinced the good peoples of Aotearoa New Zealand that the climate is indeed warming.

And indeed, to demonstrate that we have been in control, we were planning to turn the Land of the Long White Cloud into a lot of hot air. But we have been exposed by the mighty pen of Hopkins! Wait until The Guardian’s George Monbiot learns of this. I will have to consider a career change – perhaps to becoming a columnist so that I can write whatever I want without worrying about the facts. Long live the truth!

It’s unclear how the GACC operation fits into the wider global conspiracy revealed in my earlier post about the hijacking of Monckton’s emails, but my research indicates that Salinger commands a senior position in the hierarchy: he has taken to signing his emails as “Climate operative 007″. Meanwhile, sources close to Lucy Lawless, who has been a close companion of Salinger in recent months, tell me she is now refusing to let him anywhere near her shower.

[Disclosure: the author is GACC operative 287(b): (b) denotes blogger. We all have badges to wear at meetings, there’s a secret handshake, and members of the NZ GACC are also obliged to wear smocks made from Emperor penguin hides. Details of the Aussie branch regalia are sketchy, but seem to involve doing strange things with Tasmanian marsupials.]

[Update: For an alternative view on the merits of Hopkins’ reporting, see this post at Editing the Herald.]

Mycroft Monckton makes mischief

MoncktonScrotum wiped his sweat-beaded brow and shut down Monckton’s computer. The laird, concerned that a decade’s worth of personal emails might be stolen by some Green-fingered socialist geek, had instructed his wrinkled retainer to install “something that the buggers won’t be able to crack” on his laptop, and Scrotum had been pleased to do so. Every time Monckton sent an email, a copy was now automatically forwarded to Climate Con headquarters, where the one they call Gavin would scan them for information. In special circumstances, CC operatives might be despatched to make the Laird’s life a little more difficult than he had foreseen, but the pompous peer’s missives were mainly forwarded around the CC elite to provide a little light relief. However, Scrotum hadn’t counted on Monckton’s evil twin getting in on the act.

Mycroft Monckton, the Laird’s younger brother by some 30 minutes, was a constant thorn in his sibling’s side. While Monckton the elder had been studying classics at Cambridge, Mycroft had skipped university to take up a career setting crosswords for The Times. There were rumours he occasionally took on “projects” for one of the more anonymous offices of the British state, but Mycroft always laughed when taxed with this suggestion, and was given to noting that military intelligence was an oxymoron whatever number might be attached. While Christopher struggled on Fleet Street, and touched his forelock to the Thatcher hem (”No Monckton will ever lick arse”, grandfather “Machine Gun” Monckton used to splutter over his port on one of those long damp Scottish Sundays when his overuse of an ancient Gatling gun had scared the deer into the next glen and winged a few servants, “but they’ll do just about anything else”), Mycroft seemed to make money without effort. Property or shares? He would never say…

Mycroft’s chief delight, in those heady days of Thatcher’s ascendance, was to feed his brother with absurd ideas to put before the PM. There was the matter of the outrigger second hull for the new Type 42 frigate, sketched on the back of a menu at L’Escargot, elaborated by Monckton the elder in a series of papers that made Margaret laugh so much she started calling him “my little Polynesian poppet”. Earned him a gruff bark or two from Dennis, but Monckton didn’t mind. At least she knew he was there.

Latterly, with his brother so deep into his climate efforts — “Got to save the world, you know, Mycroft. Those bloody socialist billionaires and crooked scientists will have us all in penury!” — Mycroft seemed to have been keeping a low profile. But this morning the Laird’s usual eruptive pre-breakfast bellow had been more of a hacking cough, and Scrotum had seldom seen the peer so pale, at least when raptors weren’t around.

“Scrotum.” It was a quiet summons this morning. “How did Mycroft get into my emails?” The laird looked quizzical, a face he normally kept for working on puzzle schemes.

Scrotum nearly fell backwards, his surprise entirely unfeigned.
“I, I, I, er, don’t know, your Lordship. I can’t imagine… What has he done?”

“It appears, you snivelling little wretch, that your security precautions are no better than those at the University of East Anglia. Mycroft must have hacked into my machine, obtained the short opinion piece I was working on for electronic distribution, and altered it. It’s out there on the interweb thingy, over my name, but it has been so deviously and fraudulently altered that it hides my real meaning. Indeed it reads like a parody of my thoughts.”

“May I see it, your Lordship?” Scrotum asked. Monckton gestured at his desk, where the laptop showed the pink portcullis with entwined tutu and pith helmet that was the peer’s favourite screensaver. Scrotum began to read…

 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.

This is beyond parody, Scrotum thought as he read. The laird’s willingness to find signs of global governance lurking everywhere had caused him trouble before. There was the sad affair in Sweden, when Monckton had attacked Abba for promoting world government based solely on a mishearing of the words of Dancing Queen. Rescuing him from the hordes of drunken blondes had been a challenge.

“In what way has this been altered, your Lordship?” Scrotum asked.

“He’s toned it down, of course. Taken out my reference to UN jackboots crushing the faces of the weak and defenceless rich. It’s a travesty. The Americans will think I’ve gone soft.”

Scrotum read on.

The tiny, close-knit clique of climate scientists who invented and now drive the “global warming” fraud — for fraud is what we now know it to be — tampered with temperature data so assiduously that, on the recent admission of one of them, land temperatures since 1980 have risen twice as fast as ocean temperatures.

“But your Lordship, are not land temperatures meant to warm faster than those of the ocean?”

“Precisely. Mycroft is trying to make it seem that I don’t know what I’m talking about.”

He doesn’t need to try very hard, then, thought Scrotum.

One of the thousands of emails recently circulated by a whistleblower at the University of East Anglia, where one of the world’s four global-temperature datasets is compiled, reveals that data were altered so as to prevent a recent decline in temperature from showing in the record. In fact, there has been no statistically significant “global warming” for 15 years — and there has been rapid and significant cooling for nine years.

Scrotum paused. He could never keep track of how long the world was supposed to have been cooling. Fifteen years seemed rather a long time, and “rapid cooling” for nine years a tad of an overstatement, perhaps it would be better to let this pass, but the peer was clearly incensed.

“You see, Scrotum, you see! Fifteen years! Ten years, eleven years, I have made both claims, but fifteen! This has Mycroft’s fingerprints all over it. He’s sabotaging my credibility.”

Scrotum had to turn aside to hide the grin that was creeping around the corners of his mouth.

Worse, these arrogant fraudsters — for fraudsters are what we now know them to be — have refused, for years and years and years, to reveal their data and their computer program listings. Now we know why: As a revealing 15,000-line document from the computer division at the Climate Research Unit shows, the programs and data are a hopeless, tangled mess. In effect, the global temperature trends have simply been made up.

“This section too, your lordship?”

“This too, Scrotum. Mycroft knows that I have to occasionally exaggerate to make my points — the threat of global climate conspiracy is so great that I have no option — but by putting these words into my mouth he makes me seem hippo, hippo…” He couldn’t get the word out. He was choking on it, turning red.

“Hypocritical, sir?” Scrotum offered gently.

“That too..”

Unfortunately, the British researchers have been acting closely in league with their U.S. counterparts who compile the other terrestrial temperature dataset — the GISS/NCDC dataset. That dataset too contains numerous biases intended artificially to inflate the natural warming of the 20th century.

“These are strong words, sir. Are they yours?”

“Yes, of course they are, but the original was in Latin.” Monckton looked peeved.

Finally, these huckstering snake-oil salesmen and “global warming” profiteers — for that is what they are — have written to each other encouraging the destruction of data that had been lawfully requested under the Freedom of Information Act in the UK by scientists who wanted to check whether their global temperature record had been properly compiled. And that procurement of data destruction, as they are about to find out to their cost, is a criminal offence. They are not merely bad scientists — they are crooks. And crooks who have perpetrated their crimes at the expense of British and U.S. taxpayers.

I am angry, and so should you be.

“What’s wrong with this section sir?”

“Nothing, nothing, just the subtle twisting of the style. He has removed my careful use of the Latin phrase cave canem, and the references to the data being conjured from their computers like the offerings before the oracle at Delphi.”

“Too straightforward then?” Scrotum asked.

“Not enough finesse, Scrotum. Finesse.”

What have the mainstream news media said about the Climategate affair? Remarkably little.

The few who have brought themselves to comment, through gritted teeth, have said that all of this is a storm in a teacup, and that their friends in the University of East Anglia and elsewhere in the climatological community are good people, really.

No, they’re not. They’re criminals.

Scrotum wondered if the laird had originally intended to libel the scientists of the world, or whether this was a Mycroft improvement, but the next section nearly made him choke.

With Professor Fred Singer, who founded the U.S. Satellite Weather Service, I have reported them to the UK’s Information Commissioner, with a request that he investigate their offences and, if thought fit, prosecute.

“Do you see that, Scrotum? He brings Singer into it. Fred’s a charming old buffer, a dab hand at the scientific sleight of hand, but even I wouldn’t use him as a reference. Too much tobacco money under the bridge to be taken seriously in the right circles – though the BBC seem happy enough to put him on. Just shows how standards have fallen there since the great days of the 1980s.” The laird’s eyes were beginning to glaze over.

But I won’t be holding my breath: In the police state that Britain has now sadly become, with supine news media largely owned and controlled by the government, the establishment tends to look after its own.

Police state! Scrotum could see Mycroft’s game. Hook the reader, lead them along, and then leave them gasping for breath. Would Rupert Murdoch take kindly to being portrayed as supine, his media an arm of government. And in a Britain where the Tannochbrae bobby had long since sold his bicycle and taken to riding around in a little white car, never to be seen unless it was closing time at the pub, it was clear that parody was spilling over into farce.

At our expense, and at the expense of the truth.

Scrotum closed the laptop. “Would your Lordship like me to check the security settings?”

“Check them! I want them quintuple checked, all security measures doubled, access to all but me denied. Use the usual password. And then see if you can sniff out how he did it.” Scrotum tugged his forelock and tried to look contrite.

The phone rang. Scrotum picked up the old-fashioned black Bakelite handset. “Tannochbrae Manor, Lord Monckton’s residence.”

“Has he worked it out?” Mycroft’s soft voice was unmistakeable.

“Yes,” Scrotum muttered. “He’s right here.” He covered the mouthpiece. “Your lordship, Mycroft is on the line. Do you wish to speak with him?”

Monckton snatched the phone. “Mycroft, what have you done? Are you trying to ruin me, make me a laughing stock, the butt of jokes around the American elite?”

Scrotum couldn’t hear the reply, but Monckton the elder turned a whiter shade of pale ale. He put the phone down in its cradle. “He’s got the lot, Scrotum. The whole bloody lot. All my email, all my research, the database of misleading references and the address of Fred Singer’s secret floating Kennebunkport lair. Everything. I am in his power…”

Scrotum tried to look serious, but knew his straight face would fail in moments. He took to clearing up the breakfast dishes — the untouched kidneys, black pudding and venison liver faggots gleamed in the morning sun, and all was right with the world.

Who writes Rodney’s rubbish?

rodenymorph.gifWho’s this supporting the NZ C”S”C’s idiotic attempt to cast doubt on the NZ temperature record? Why, it’s none other than Rodney Hide, leader of the ACT Party, and Minister of Local Government, Associate Minister of Commerce, Minister of Regulatory Reform and Parliamentary principal climate crank. Hide has written to climate change minister Nick Smith, demanding that the NIWA release the temperature data:

There is only one process that is appropriate for matters of science, and that is to release all data, together with a detailed account of what adjustments have been made, with an account of the reasons for doing so, and the computer codes that have been used to adjust and smooth the final published series, together with details of which measurements have been discarded. All the data and the relevant computer codes should be available for scientific scrutiny.

Free the NIWA code! What a rallying cry. It’s a pity that he thinks the likes of Treadgold constitute independent scientific scrutiny. Hide’s also been taking instructions on the CRU hack, and is seemingly happy to completely misrepresent what’s been going on. Apparently the emails:

…reveal a systematic attempt to manipulate the historical time series data, together with what appear to be arbitrary adjustments to the computer codes which produce the averaged and smoothed temperature data…

Er, no. That’s not true. The Herald does a far better job than the Minister of Local Government of covering the stolen emails and what they actually say. But perhaps Rodney gets his “facts” from somewhere else. So, in the spirit of his letter to Nick, here’s mine to Rodney.

Continue reading “Who writes Rodney’s rubbish?”

Don’t let a thief steal into your heart

Quite a fuss about stolen emails over the weekend. Let’s review the story so far. Person or persons unknown hack into servers at the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia and steal lots of emails and other documents [BBC 1, 2, Times, Bob Ward at The Guardian]. This is a criminal offence in the UK, the USA, New Zealand and many other jurisdictions. The criminals then release edited highlights of these documents and emails by putting them up on a Russian web server, and let the news out via what Nature calls “a relatively obscure climate-sceptic blog” (The Air Vent which may have been Andrew Bolt’s blog in Australia). Within a matter of hours, the usual suspects are out in force, screaming data manipulation, conspiracy to exclude climate sceptics from publishing, and fraudulent behaviour. Criminals are portrayed as whistleblowers, quotes are pulled out of private emails and taken out of context, and the end of climate science is proclaimed.

I’ve been reluctant to weigh in on this issue, because commenting on stolen and possibly edited documents strikes me as unethical. In a courtroom, improperly obtained evidence is not allowed to influence proceedings, and I would prefer to apply the same standard here. That hasn’t stopped the likes of Wishart (peer review is broken, climate science is dead), propagandist in chief Marc Morano (continuously updated “Climategate” coverage at his Climate Depot), or even now well out of the closet denialist, the NZ blogger sometimes known as Poneke (warming stopped in 1998 (yet again)). However…

Continue reading “Don’t let a thief steal into your heart”