Quick Fact: Varney claims apparently hacked CRU emails suggest that "scientists are fudging data to make their case for global warming"
Fox News' Stuart Varney touted the emails that were apparently stolen from the UK's Climate Research Unit (CRU), claiming the emails suggested that "scientists are fudging data to make their case for global warming." Varney distorted statements from two of the emails and took them out of context to claim that one showed that "evidence isn't really there" for global warming and the other suggested scientists were "deliberately changing the data to suit your way."
Please upgrade your flash player. The video for this item requires a newer version of Flash Player. If you are unable to install flash you can download a QuickTime version of the video.
From the November 24 broadcast of Fox News' Your World with Neil Cavuto:
VARNEY: Climategate set to break wide open. New developments today involving those hacked emails from Britain suggesting scientists are fudging data to make their case for global warming. Republican Senator James Inhofe is calling for a full investigation. And he joins me now by phone from Oklahoma.
Senator, you've seen these emails at length. Do you believe that the climate scientists are trying to conceal evidence that works against global warming?
[...]
VARNEY: Well Senator, I know you've seen the emails, but for the benefit of our viewers who haven't, I'm just going to read brief excerpts from three of them. Here's the first, number one, says, look, "We can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't."
Well that's self explanatory. That's really suggesting that the evidence isn't there. We don't know what's going on with this.
[...]
VARNEY: Number three, a little bit more complex, but listen to this. "I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (IE, from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith to hide the decline."
That seems like deliberately changing the data to suit your way.
Fact: Trenberth's email references his article on an "incomplete explanation" of short-term climate variations, which maintained that "global warming is continuing"
In the email in which he wrote, "We can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't," Kevin Trenberth, a climatologist for the National Center for Atmospheric Research, was referring to his article in which, as Wired's Threat Level blog reported, Trenberth discussed how "global warming is continuing, despite random temperature variations that would seem to suggest otherwise." Indeed, his article covered what Trenberth described as an "incomplete explanation" of short-term climate variations, while maintaining "that global warming is unequivocally happening."
Fact: Jones' email Varney read was distorted, "pulled out of context"
As RealClimate.org explained, the "trick" that Phil Jones, head of the CRU, referred to in his email referenced a method for making the "context of the recent warming ... clear" and isn't "problematic ... at all." RealClimate.org also explained that Jones' mention of "hiding the decline" refers to a method that is "completely appropriate." RealClimate.org wrote that Jones' email would be an "example" of "cherry-picked and poorly-worded 'gotcha' phrases" that would be "pulled out of context."
Fact: NASA scientist: Emails do not show that "global warming is a hoax"
NASA's Gavin Schmidt: Critics "are using language used in science and interpreting it in a completely different way." Wired's Threat Level blog reported on November 20 that Gavin Schmidt, a climate scientist at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said: "There's nothing in the e-mails that shows that global warming is a hoax. ... There's no funding by nefarious groups. There's no politics in any of these things; nobody from the [United Nations] telling people what to do. There's nothing hidden, no manipulation. It's just scientists talking about science, and they're talking relatively openly as people in private e-mails generally are freer with their thoughts than they would be in a public forum. The few quotes that are being pulled out [are out] of context. People are using language used in science and interpreting it in a completely different way." Schmidt is a contributor to the Real Climate blog, which has stated that some of the stolen CRU emails "involve people" at Real Climate.
What do you suppose is more likely, a conspiracy involving thousands of scientists in order to protect a handful of grants and honorariums, or a conspiracy involving a handful of energy consortiums in order to protect millions in profits?
Question number 2: who are you working for?
BTW one of the largest investors in alternative engery is the "energy companies" DUH! They aren't stupid....
The money is overwhelmingly on the side of the naysayers. Even the scientists who support the coal companies, shale oil companies, and NatGas companies will earn a lot more money debunking climate change than the thousands of scientists who support it will. If profit was their motive, they would be fools to continue to support climate change. Their motive is obviously not profit - so what is it?
I would contend that their motive is twofold: science and survival.
Want to know who the bad guys are? Follow the money. If you want to point to Al Gore's money, that's cool. Do that. But his profits are dwarfed by those of the energy consortiums.
And it is true that they have invested in alternative energy, but a) the lions share of their alternative energy investment is in natgas, not renewable and green energy sources, and b) it is purely a defensive position.
But, let's just assume that there is no global climate change. When will we run out of fossil fuels? At what point does the continued deforestation of the equatorial rainforests and the increased production of CO2 equal toxic levels of CO2 in our environment (assuming you understand that plants are required to convert CO2 to O2, and that CO2 is toxic to animals)? How much more expensive will the conversion to green energy be ten years from now? 20 years?
The position against green energy is indefensible, no matter how you look at it.
That must be the same world where Sarah Palin in president and Ann Coulter is Sec of State ...
Forget you, Bush could not lick Gore's boots in a century, if he tried.
And that is my opinion. Thank you.
It's also obvious from the emails that these researchers had a non-scientific agenda.
Their agenda was nothing but scientific.
Yeah, but of course believing it is just a great big conspiracy certainly does make those melting ice caps, rising sea levels and water temps all just go away.
Our evil plans to hold the world hostage under the false pretense of global warming has been foiled by some hacker!
We must regroup with the other evil climatologists at the secret lair!
" 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. "
These guys are hiding data. Who would trust someone that thinks like this? If the programs and all the data that they are using isn't public, then I don't believe them and all the energy companies and conservatives and skeptics and rational people in the world should also not believe them.
Publish all program source code and all input data or cease to speak of man made global warming.
Not me. I'll go with the thousands of scientists who did the right thing.
"Publish all program source code and all input data"
Who would read and critique it? It couldn't be a denier because they behave far more non-scientifically than the worst offenders in the emails.
The CRU data was fully supported by data obtained by other bodies independently. This makes it clear that their data is almost certainly accurate.
The denialists are reading into these emails only what they want to find, not what's really there. What's really there is a group of scientists working hard to get their data and conclusions right, and resentful of those they see as dishonestly attacking them.
They used to be able to get away with that crap. They can't anymore. You'd think they'd know that.
Most people here don't understand. They are emotionally invested in the masochism of man-made global warming and it's implications, much like some people identify themselves through their favorite football team. They are so intellectually gone that they don't even believe their own eyes or ears anymore. MMfA provides them with weak and lame excuses for Jones et al. (see above) and that's all these poor people need to convince themselves that we all haven't been scammed.
Good luck, buddy.
You seem emotionally invested in the masochism of climate change denial - so much so that you are willing to risk the future of our planet on it. You are so intellectually vacant that you will allow a few missives taken out of context to convince you of a vast conspiracy initiated by the overwhelming majority of scientific experts in an effort to be grossly underpaid.
It somehow makes more sense to you that these thousands of scientists are engaging in a conspiracy rather than the far more rational explanation that a handful of profiteers are doing it with the intention of protecting their profits.
And you will allow your prejudices to negate the grade school level science that tells us that CO2 is a poison, that plants convert CO2 to O2, and that we have desroyed millions of acres of vegetative life in our equatorial rainforests. You will allow these profiteers to continue to poison our environment while putting our national security at risk through continued dependence on foreign oil - all for the right to burn off the dwindling supply of fossil fuels.
You risk the future of our country and our world so that other people can stay wealthy. So, who is the fool, here?
I think I've just proven that climate itself doesn't exist.
Sounds scientific, doesn't it?
Speaking truth to/about progressives with a shout out to those poor polar bears dying by the millions who, if only they had socialized medical care too, and to the eco-facists who are also now.....just whistling past the graveyard.
I realize you're probably well-meaning, but you have to realize what "man-made global warming" is going to be used to justify. Maybe if the debate, in fact, was over, I'd be all for releasing a string of bioweapons that would wipe out 80-99% of the Earth's population...as advocated and articulated by Ted Turner, Prince Phillip, Eric Pianka et al.
Look into the transhumanists, however, and their goals along these lines have nothing to do with saving the Earth. It's about this Satanic idea of deification through destruction and death.
Carry on.