Climategate Update 11: Finally an AGW Concensus, "Hockey Stick" Mann Attacks Jones, Gore Goes To Ground

Finally! We now have a real consensus as to anthropogenic global warming (AGW). The consensus among Americans is that AGW is not settled science and the AGW crowd has been committing fraud. This from Rasmussen:

Most Americans (52%) believe that there continues to be significant disagreement within the scientific community over global warming. . . .

Fifty-nine percent (59%) of Americans say it’s at least somewhat likely that some scientists have falsified research data to support their own theories and beliefs about global warming. Thirty-five percent (35%) say it’s Very Likely. Just 26% say it’s not very or not at all likely that some scientists falsified data.

The real cannibalism begins. Michael Mann, he of "hockey stick" infamy and one of the climate scientists at the very heart of the AGW scandal, threw his colleague Dr. Phil Jones, the former head of East Anglia CRU, under the bus yesterday. Appearing on the BBC (Britain's ideological equivalent of MS-NBC) Mann was questioned about the CRU e-mails on a BBC show:

. . . Speaking to BBC Radio 4's The World Tonight, Prof Mann said: "I can't put myself in the mind of the person who wrote that email and sent it. I in no way endorse what was in that email."

Prof Mann also said he could not "justify" a request from Prof Jones that he should delete some of his own emails to prevent them from being seen by outsiders.

"I can't justify the action, I can only speculate that he was feeling so under attack that he made some poor decisions frankly and I think that's clear."

Prof Mann then argued however that there was "absolutely no evidence" that he too had manipulated data, while he also said "I don't believe that any of my colleagues have done that". . . .

CBS News, is beginning to take rather a jaundiced view of the AGW deniers. By "deniers," I don't mean those who question AGW, but rather those who deny that the CRU e-mails and data don't call into question the validity of AGW. And in particular, the author takes on the Democrats in Congress.

If you're a U.S. politician calling for expensive new laws relating to global warming, you know you're in trouble when Jon Stewart lampoons the scientists whose embarrassing e-mail messages were disclosed in what's being called "ClimateGate." [see Climate Update 9 below]

But Democrats put a brave face on it on Wednesday, with Massachusetts Rep. Ed Markey saying that the leaked files and allegations of scientific misconduct should not stand in the way of the U.S. Congress swiftly enacting cap and trade legislation to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. . . .

Markey, the head of a House global warming committee, said during a hearing that his Republican colleagues "sit over here using a couple of e-mails to (tell us) how to deal with a catastrophic threat to our planet." And: "There is no alternative theory that the minority is proposing, other than that we know has been funded by the oil, by the coal industries that want to continue business as usual."

That's a bit of an overstatement. The leak includes over 1,000 e-mail messages, and another 2,500 or so computer files, many of which are still being analyzed. And the burden of proof should properly be on anyone -- even a House committee chairman -- proposing new taxes and extensive regulations, especially when climate science is anything but settled. . . .

Read the entire post here. Now if we can just get these stories on the front burner of our MSM . . .
The Goreacle had scheduled a meet and greet on Dec. 16 in Copenhagen to promote has new book, Our Choices. He has now pulled out of the event for unspecified reasons.

Lastly, the best tongue-in-cheek opinion piece on the Climategate scandal comes from the Boston Globe's Jeff Jacoby in his article "Climategate, Dissent On Ice"

Richard Nixon said he wasn’t a crook. O.J. Simpson said he didn’t kill his wife. The scientists who run the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia say they are “committed to scientific integrity . . .and . . . respectful and informed debate’’ with climate-change skeptics.

But as Nixon and Simpson eventually discovered, truth has a way of undoing even the most determined stonewall. Now it is the turn of the CRU’s climate scientists - especially its director, Phil Jones - to learn that lesson.

The CRU, a highly influential source of data on global warming, is home to some of the foremost proponents of the scientific “consensus’’ that climate change is a looming man-made disaster to be reversed at all costs. It is also at the center of “Climategate,’’ the international furor triggered when thousands of e-mails and documents were hacked from CRU computers and released over the Internet last month.

Assuming the e-mails are genuine, they are nothing short of scandalous. They reveal celebrated climate scientists apparently conspiring to corrupt the peer-review process, to suppress or finesse temperature data at odds with global-warming alarmism, to silence or discredit climate experts who criticize their work, and to hide or eliminate the raw data on which their own much-trumpeted claims have been based. , , ,

There is much more. Read the entire article.

Prior Posts:

Climategate and Surrealism
More Climategate Fallout
Climategate Update 3
Climategate Update 4: CRU Records Worthless
Climategate Update 5: IPCC's Chairman Mao
Climategate Update 6: Climategate In Video
UNEP, Green Religion & Global Governance
Climate Update 7: IPCC's Chairman Mao Plays The Obama Card, Peer Review Analyzed, Scientific Method Explained For Paul Krugman
Climategate Update 8: The NYT Reports
Climategate Update 9: CRU Head Phil Jones Steps Down During Investigation, An MIT Prof Explains The Holes In AGW Theory, And Climate Fraud Is Everywhere
Climategate Update 10: Climategate Reverberates From The UK To Down Under