The Audacity of Hoaxers

Recently, the Associated Press (AP), being so concerned that support for manmade global warming (MGW) is waning; they actually went to statisticians to “rework” the temperature data. According to the AP, the Internet (and probably those early, freak snowstorms this fall) is causing many to fall from the MGW faith. No doubt, the snowstorms were manmade caused by the constant snow job of arrogant alarmists.

In the AP analysis, the 1°F drop measured in 2007 by four meteorological agencies including NOAA was only 0.1°F. Not only did they undo that big dip, they discovered that 2005 was warmer than 1998, previously the alarmists’ banner hottest year. Apparently, the AP is so climatically clever that they never felt the need to verify their “anal-ysis” with even one scientist.

For how the AP’s statisticians crunched the data, their article didn’t exactly specify. But they had the audacity to accuse MGW deniers of cherry picking, a technique used often by alarmists to produce their fear mongering result. Since the AP didn’t release their method, then it’s probably “Climate Rectally-oriented Alarmist Propaganda” or in one word C.R.A.P.

And, while the AP demonstrates that it’s superb at junk journalism, their real talent lies in fantastic fudging. Perhaps, NASA’s Head Honcho Hoaxer, Jim Hansen, should employ their skills. Recently, he got caught manipulating temperature statistics to get his “October 2008 hottest on record” result. But, busybody bloggers quickly bared his bumbling where he merely copied Russia’s September temperature data verbatim to October’s.

But the grand prize for the “Charlatanry of the Century” goes to (drum roll please) Professor Phil Jones, the head of the Climate Research Unit (CRU), and Professor Michael E. Mann at Pennsylvania State University. Recently, a hacker released their private e-mails and posted them on the Internet. This bombshell has exploded into what many have dubbed “Climategate.”

So, what’s the big deal? Jones and Mann were instrumental in perpetuating the MGW hoax. First, in their e-mails they admit to using tricks to not only hide cooling, but also misusing paleoclimatology, the scientific reconstruction of climate history. By claiming that past temperature variations were lower, they assert that only man can be causing the temperature increases of today.

A flimsy argument at best, but these hoaxers were downplaying past climate like the Medieval Warm Period (MWP), which may in fact have been warmer than today. The MWP was when the Viking settled Greenland. In 2003, Mann wrote, “It would be nice to try to ‘contain’ the putative ‘MWP,’ even if we don’t yet have a hemispheric mean reconstruction available that far back.”

Mann was instrumental is created the infamous hockey stick graph. Using tree rings, a proxy for temperature data, Mann eliminated not only the MWP, but also the Little Ice Age where the Vikings abandoned Greenland and London’s river, the Thymes, froze regularly during summer. Gotcha, actually twas winter it was.

Mann managed to create a temperature plot that showed nice, small variations before 1900, then a dramatic up tick starting in the 20th century. Now here’s where cherry picking is transformed into art form. Apparently, he whittled down the tree rings to just three. Out of thousands, that’s all that conformed to his hokey hockey stick.

However, tree rings are a poor temperature proxy because they don’t even match today’s climate. Still, Mann and Jones did every thing they could to avoid releasing their data even deleting it as well as not having their worthless work peer reviewed. For scientists, peer review is the mother’s milk of prominence and respectability.

In one e-mail, Jones wrote Mann concerning revealing data, “If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone” and, “We also have a data protection act, which I will hide behind.” When a scientist is afraid of freedom of information, he’s probably peddling fraud.

Jones then urged Mann to delete e-mails. One was about the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) controversial assessment report. Jones wrote, “Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re [the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report]?” Finally, Jones was right about something because these e-mails were eventually hacked.

Another CRU professor, Tim Osborn, discussed in e-mails how manipulating data can hide a cooling trend. Mann responded that these results should never be shown because why it’ll only support critics of MGW. And on several occasions these hoaxers discussed methods on preventing skeptical papers from being published.

So, what’s been the reaction of AP since Climategate’s revelation? Publish more in favor of MGW, of course. AP just released (Nov. 22) “Warming’s impacts sped up, worsened since Kyoto” complete with photo of a cute polar bear. Undoubtedly, the alarmists will persist in their “Keep Hoax Alive.”