So much about the Climategate scandal — i.e., the leaking (or hacking) of emails and other files from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia — has been published on the internet in the past two weeks that one risks information overload by trying to read everything. For about a week and a half, now, practically all of my web surfing has been in pursuit of information about the scandal. I found so many sites with information that, instead of including links to them in the other article I have on Nolan Chart today, I have decided to include them in this skeptical layman’s guide to Climategate and save people from having to search through thousands of Google listings.

If you’re into primary research, you’ll probably want to download the raw data file that was posted on the internet. This was originally posted on the RealClimate.org website, but was quickly taken down. It subsequently turned up on a Russian server. You can go to the file dropper website and download a zipped version of the files. Unzipped, they take up about 168 MB on your hard drive. The zipped file is about 62 MB. Read more »

By now, just about everybody who closely follows the news should have heard of “Climategate”, the leaking or hacking of emails and other files from the servers of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, the main center for climate research in the United Kingdom, and the main keeper of the faith (and the data) for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

I say “should have” because, so far, the establishment media in the United States have shown about as much interest in this scandal as they did in the ACORN scandal a few months back. Which is, to say, none.

This is no doubt because the files reveal what, to the media, must be a very inconvenient truth: namely that, since the late 1990s, some of the biggest names in climate science have engaged in fraud, deception, intimidation, harassment, coverup, and manipulation of the peer-review process in a determined effort to push their alarmist global warming agenda and destroy the careers of those who dare to question their conclusions or criticize their research methods. Had it not been for the so-called alternative media — the blogosphere, talk radio, Fox News, etc. — we would still be in the dark about this story. Read more »

Back in December 2004 the magazine Science published science historian Naomi Oreskes’ summary of an analysis of the abstracts of the peer-reviewed scientific studies dealing with climate change that had been published between 1993 and 2003. In the article, Oreskes reported that, of the 928 abstracts analyzed, fully 75 percent endorsed or accepted the hypothesis of anthropogenic — i.e. man-made — global warming while 25 percent dealt with methodological issues but took no position on the hypothesis itself Significantly, she said, none of the studies disputed the hypothesis.

This article was the origin of the oft-repeated assertion that there is a scientific “consensus” that global warming is caused by the activities of humans. It figured prominently in Al Gore’s fear-mongering propaganda film An Inconvenient Truth, and it was no doubt what was behind then President-elect Barack Obama’s bald assertion at last November’s global warming summit that “the science is beyond dispute”.

Oreskes’ finding begs credulity. Are we really to believe that, of 928 peer-reviewed studies, none — not even one — challenged the claim that global warming is caused by human activity? Such unanimity, if it exists, should set off alarm bells — not about global warming, but about what passes for scientific inquiry these days. Read more »