The Failure And Betrayal Of The Mainstream Media

I'm referring to ClimateGate and the myth of Man-Caused global warming and climate change. The mainstream media, in this case The New York Times (but also NBC, MSNBC, ABC, CNN, Newsweek, etc.) have betrayed us by not questioning and challenging the blatant agenda-driven and grossly exaggerated claims of global warming alarmists like Al Gore and Jim Hansen. I think the following article is worth sharing with everyone who believes in integrity, truth and freedom. As I have said here many times, this is serious business folks.
Peter

Treason Is A Matter Of Dates

FROM-The American Interest Online

Walter Russel Mead

This observation, famously made by Talleyrand at the Congress of Vienna as the powers debated the fate of the turncoat King of Saxony, reminded the crowned heads of Europe that all of them had at one time or another worked with Napoleon. Talleyrand himself had served the emperor as foreign minister and trusted ally before switching to the other side as Napoleon’s power waned — and his megalomania grew.

These days, it’s The New York Times that is redefining treason. Three weeks ago, anyone who pointed at the lack of public confidence in climate science was aiding and abetting those horrible climate ‘deniers.’ Treason against Planet Earth! You had to be some kind of dread ‘right wing blogger’ or talk radio host to point out that blunders and arrogance had undermined the credibility of climate scientists and ended any short term chance of serious global agreement on urgent measures to stop global warming.

But a story this morning by John Broder gently lets Times readers know that something has gone badly wrong.

WASHINGTON — For months, climate scientists have taken a vicious beating in the media and on the Internet, accused of hiding data, covering up errors and suppressing alternate views. Their response until now has been largely to assert the legitimacy of the vast body of climate science and to mock their critics as cranks and know-nothings.

But the volume of criticism and the depth of doubt have only grown, and many scientists now realize they are facing a crisis of public confidence and have to fight back. Tentatively and grudgingly, they are beginning to engage their critics, admit mistakes, open up their data and reshape the way they conduct their work

.

Admit mistakes? Open up their data? Change the way the work? You mean there was something wrong with the way climate science was operating last year? Is the Times telling us that the climate scientists–on the basis of whose work the whole world is debating complex and far-reaching changes in its economic structure and political governance–were using slipshod and careless procedures that need to be fixed?

Gosh, one has to ask, if these terrible things were going on for such a long time, why didn’t the New York Times notice this earlier on? Why didn’t the New York Times break this important story back when it was news, rather than lamely sweeping up at the end of the parade? Could it be that a climate of politically-correct group-think inhibited the editors and reporters at the country’s newspaper of record from recognizing a one of the major stories of the decade? Could the environmental writers at the Times be just a teensy bit too close to their sources?

The Times seems to have forgotten the most important aspect of the news business. For years now ’skeptic’ has been a dirty word at the Times when the subject of climate change comes up. Excuse me, but reporters are supposed to be skeptics. They are supposed to be cynical, hard bitten people who trust their mothers — but cut the cards. They are supposed to think that scientists are probably too much in love with their data, that issue advocates have hidden agendas, that high-toned rhetoric is often a cover for naked self interest, that bloviating politicians have cynical motives and that heroes, even Nobel Prize laureates, have feet of clay. That is their job; it is why we respect them and why we pay attention to what they write.

Reporters are not supposed to be wide-eyed gee-whiz college kids believing everything they hear and using the news columns of the paper to promote a social agenda. They are wet blankets, not cheerleaders, Eeyores, not Piglets and they can safely leave all the advocacy and flag-waving to the editorial writers and the op-ed pages.

This is not just a question of liberal bias. The same wide-eyed gee-whiz culture shaped much of the reporting on the run-up to the Iraq War. Maybe the word we are looking for when trying to describe what’s wrong with the mainstream press isn’t ‘liberal’ — maybe the term is something like ‘credulous’ or ‘naive.’ The gradual substitution of ‘professional journalists’ for the old hard boiled hacks may have given us a generation of journalists who are used to trusting reputable authority. They honestly think that people with good credentials and good manners don’t lie.

Today’s journalists are much too well-bred and well-connected to stand there in the crowd shouting “The emperor has no clothes!” They’ve worked with the tailors, they have had long background interviews with the tailors, they’ve been present for some of the fittings. Of course the emperor’s new clothes are fantastic; only those rude and uncouth ‘clothing deniers’ still have any doubts.

Meanwhile, over on the aforementioned op-ed pages, our old friend Al Gore is still crying a river of denial, blaming everyone but himself for the abject failure of the world to accept his views without checking the facts for themselves. If the New York Times and its peers had come at this story with more skepticism and rigor from the beginning, climate scientists would have realized long ago that if they hope to convince a skeptical world they need to be ultra-careful, ultra-cautious and even ultra-conservative in their public statements and recommendations. They would have understood long ago that because their science is important, they have to do it more carefully and more publicly than other people. That may be harsh and it may be ‘unfair’ in some sense, but when you are dealing with the interests of billions of people you have to expect a little bit of scrutiny — though not, apparently, from the New York Times.

The very idea that critics would have to use the Freedom of Information Act to pry back-up data from a scientist on a matter of great public importance is insane. That data should have been out there years ago, without anyone having to ask. If it’s considered ‘normal’ in climate science for researchers to keep their raw data under lock and key, and refuse to subject it to skeptical and hostile review, then climate science isn’t science.

The Times and its peers in the mainstream press need to ask themselves why something this obvious, this important, this newsworthy passed them by. If they don’t figure that out and make some wrenching changes, they will continue to watch helplessly as their credibility and readership inexorably shrink.

The meltdown that worries me most in this whole dismal story isn’t the meltdown of the Himalayan glaciers. It’s the evident meltdown of basic journalistic standards among a whole generation of reporters and editors that keeps me up late at night; I don’t just worry about what they missed on this story, or on the Iraq story–I wonder what else they are missing every day.

John Broder’s story this morning is good as far as it goes, but it looks more and more as if our greatest newspaper has been so wholly conquered by the spirit of enlightened upper-middle-class progressivism that it has lost the ability to view its own assumptions with the necessary skepticism. That is terrible news; the world is changing rapidly in ways that simply don’t fit the thought templates that upper-middle-class baby boomers developed over the last twenty years. Increasingly, the mental map that shapes the way the Times looks at the world simply fails to match what is happening out there, yet the Times seems less able than ever to see that.

Before you can report an inconvenient truth you have to be able to recognize it; this is the test that the Times‘ coverage of the ‘climategate’ story has failed.

Not Evil Just Wrong: The True Cost of Global Warming Hysteria

This new film about the hoax that is behind the man-caused global warming fiasco will be interesting to see. Of course Al Gore's true believers will do everything they can to squash it, discredit it or somehow ban it altogether.
Peter





An Inconvenient Film
Written by Peter Foster, National Post
Saturday, 11 April 2009

Al Gore is about to feature in a new movie, but he’s not going to like it very much. Titled Not Evil Just Wrong: The True Cost of Global Warming Hysteria, the film presents a devastating account of the shaky foundations and hefty price of Mr. Gore’s brand of self-interested and hypocritical alarmism.



Created by the Irish film making duo of Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney — who made another excellent documentary about the “dark side of environmentalism” called Mine Your Own Business — Not Evil provides the perfect rebuttal to Mr. Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth.

Despite being chock-a-block with inaccuracies and misrepresentations, Mr. Gore’s movie has frightened schoolchildren all over the world, driven the public policy debate, and garnered both an Academy Award and a Nobel Peace Prize for its star.

Not Evil — which is due to be released later this year — will appear at a crucial time. The world’s crisis-beset nations are due to meet in Copenhagen in November to concoct a new policy straitjacket to succeed the meddlesome but utterly failed Kyoto Accord. If global warming's U.N.-based ringmasters have their way, this will lead to a slashing of industrial production in developed countries and to a huge extension of boondoggle redistributionist schemes to fund “green” technologies in developing countries.

Such policy represents a triple threat: it will destroy economic activity; it will cripple trade; and it will hurt the poorest the most. Nevertheless, President Obama appears to be on-board this ship of fools, having bought into the notion that there are net “green jobs” to be had from a massive increase in taxation and regulation of industrial activity.

The impact on Canada could be horrendous, and not merely on the oil sands, which have been targeted by environmental non-governmental organizations. This week, Environment Minister Jim Prentice admitted that Canada could be forced to adopt more draconian regulation if it is not to be hit by threatened U.S. carbon tariffs.

The truly astonishing feature of this policy fandango is that it will have little or no effect on the climate, the science of which is still only dimly understood. However, alarmists such as Mr. Gore have successfully sold the notion that the science is “settled.” This is just one of the claims to which Not Evil Just Wrong puts the lie.

Alternating credible skeptics with arresting imagery, the film makes clear that the science, far from being settled, has been comprehensively misrepresented by the likes of NASA’s James Hansen, who is to Al Gore and climatology what Trofim Lysenko was to Joseph Stalin and agronomy.

There is a wonderful scene of Mr. Hansen becoming almost discombobulated at the very mention of Stephen McIntyre, the maverick Canadian who, with the help of Guelph economist Ross McKitrick, took on the UN climate change establishment over the so-called “hockey stick” temperature graph, and won. Mr. Hansen claims that paying attention to such inconvenient truths amounts to just “clouding the issue.”

The film dramatically outlines the dreadful damage already done by environmental hysteria, in particular the millions of unnecessary deaths caused by the campaign against DDT. That campaign started with Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, which was at the root of the modern environmental movement in every sense. Despite the World Health Organization’s lifting of the DDT ban, Al Gore remains devoted to Ms. Carson’s memory. And methods. As Patrick Moore, one of the founders of Greenpeace but now a skeptic, points out, radical environmentalists “care more about fish eggs than they do about children.” Meanwhile kids are shown fretting about about imminent global inundation and the deaths of polar bears.

Just as Mine Your Own Business showed how opposition to mining in developing countries comes often not from the “grassroots” but from well-funded multinational NGOs with as little concern for local employment as they have for truth, so Not Evil Just Wrong further demonstrates environmentalists’ disregard for humanity, and in particular the poor.

Perhaps the most memorable scene in Mine Your Own Business was that of the WWF’s local representative in Madagascar, Mark Fenn, who was leading opposition to a development by Rio Tinto. The appalling Mr. Fenn, who owned a $35,000 catamaran and was building a local luxury home, claimed that poor people were happier, and that if the locals had more money they would “just spend it.”

The film makers have come up with similar buffoons for their new movie, including a Bible-thumping environmentalist in Uganda who opposes using DDT and claims that the U.S. never experienced malaria and Hollywood actor Ed Begley, who suggests that Fijians are “happy with nothing.”

Not Evil Just Wrong which will be released later this year —is an important film that deserves the widest possible distribution, both in theatres and schools. The only quibble that I have with it is that its title might be too generous to those it exposes.

(To find out more about the movie and the fundraising campaign to help its distribution visit its website: noteviljustwrong.com).
Source

The Great Global Warming Hoax: Who Is To Blame?

Everyone with any interest in global warming and so-called climate change, and the monumental and costly efforts being taken to "control" these phenomena, should read the following comments very carefully. I don't think it is an exaggeration to state that the myth of man-caused global warming is the biggest hoax of all time.
Peter

On The Hijacking of the American Meteorological Society (AMS)
Below is the introduction to a paper being circulated by Bill Gray, Professor Emeritus, Colorado State University and AMS Fellow, Charney Award recipient, and a member of AMS for over 50-years. The full paper can be obtained from Prof. Gray: Gray@Atmos.ColoState.Edu

I am appalled at the selection of James Hansen as this year's recipient of the AMS's highest award - the Rossby Research Medal. James Hansen has not been trained as a meteorologist. His formal education has been in astronomy. His long records of faulty global climate predictions and alarmist public pronouncements have become increasingly hollow and at odds with reality. Hansen has exploited the general public's lack of knowledge of how the globe's climate system functions for his own benefit. His global warming predictions, going back to 1988 are not being verified. Why have we allowed him go on for all these years with his faulty and alarmist prognostications? And why would the AMS give him its highest award?

By presenting Hansen with its highest award, the AMS implies it agrees with his faulty global temperature projections and irresponsible alarmist rhetoric. This award, in combination with other recent AMS awards going to known CO2 warming advocates, is an insult to a large number of AMS members who do not believe that humans are causing a significant amount of the global temperature increase. These awards diminish the AMS's sterling reputation for scientific objectivity.

Hansen previously studied the run-away greenhouse warming of Venus. He appears to think that man's emittance of CO2 gases, if unchecked, will eventually cause the Earth to follow a similar fate. Hansen's arrogance and gall over the reality of his model results is breathtaking. He has recently warned President Obama that our country has only 4 years left to act on reducing CO2 gases before the globe will reach a point of irretrievable and disastrous human-caused warming. How does he know what thousands of us who have spent long careers in meteorology-climatology do not know?

Hansen's predictions of global warming made before the Senate in 1988 are turning out to be very much less than he had projected. He cannot explain why there has been no significant global warming over the last 10 years and why there has been a weak global cooling between 2001 and 2008. Hansen and his legion of environmental-political supporters (with no meteorological-climate background) have done monumental damage to an open and honest discussion of the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) question.

He and his fellow collaborators (and their media sycophantic followers) are responsible for the brainwashing of a large segment of the American public about a grossly exaggerated human-induced warming threat that does not exist. Most of the global warming we have observed is of natural origin and due to multi-decadal and multi-century changes in the globe's deep ocean circulation resulting from salinity variations (see the Appendix for scientific discussion). These changes are not associated with CO2 increases.

Hansen has little experience in practical meteorology. He apparently does not realize that the strongly chaotic nature of the atmosphere-ocean climate system does not allow for skillful initial value numerical climate prediction. Hansen's modeling efforts are badly flawed in the following ways: His upper tropospheric water vapor feedback loop is grossly wrong. He assumes that increases in atmospheric CO2 will cause large upper-tropospheric water vapor increases which are very unrealistic. Most of his model warming follows from his invalid water vapor assumptions.

His handlings of rainfall processes are, as with the other global climate modelers, quite inadequate. He lacks an understanding and treatment of the fundamental role of the deep ocean circulation (i.e. Meridional Overturning Circulation - MOC) and how the changing ocean circulation (driven by salinity variations) can bring about wind, rainfall, and surface temperature changes independent of radiation and greenhouse gas changes. He does not have these ocean processes properly incorporated in his model.

He assumes the physics of global warming is entirely a product of radiation changes and radiation feedback processes. This is a major deficiency.

Hansen's Free Ride.
It is surprising that Hansen has been able to get away with his unrealistic modeling efforts for so long. One explanation is that he has received strong support from Senator/Vice President Al Gore who for over three decades has attempted to make political capital out of increasing CO2 measurements.

Another reason is the many environmental and political groups (including the mainstream media) who are eager to use Hansen's modeling results as justification to push their own special interests that are able to fly under the global warming banner.

A third explanation is that he has not been challenged by his peer climate modeling groups who apparently have seen possibilities for research grant support and publicity gains by following Hansen's lead.

Yet another reason has been the luck of his propitious timing. His 1988 Senate testimony occurred after there had been global warming since the mid-1970s and we were experiencing a hot summer. And the global warming that occurred over the next 10 years (to 1998) gave an undeserved justification to his CO2 warming claims. Had Hansen given his Senate testimony in the 1970s or today (since we have seen weak global cooling since 2001) his alarmist rhetoric would have been taken much less seriously.

I anticipate that we are going to experience a modest naturally-driven global cooling over the next 15-20 years. This will be similar to the weak global cooling that occurred between the early-1940s and the mid-1970s. It is to be noted that CO2 amounts were also rising during this earlier cooling period which was opposite to the assumed CO2 temperature relationship.

Old News: Al Gore Is Wrong, There Is No "Consensus"

Dr. William Gray is a respected, renowned hurricane forecaster and college professor. His opinion about the cause of global warming, or climate change, computer models, water vapor and the leading proponent of the myth of man-caused global warming is well-worth considering. Search this blog and you'll find other statements by Dr. Gray. At the very least, this shows there is no "consensus" on global warming......and the "debate" is certainly not over.
Peter

Famed Hurricane Forecaster William Gray Predicts Global Cooling in 10 Years
Expert states ocean cycles will have a more profound effect on climate than CO2; criticizes James Hansen's climate models.

By Jeff Poor Business & Media Institute 3/4/2008 11:47:32 AM
It turns out Al Gore was wrong. The scientists aren’t all in agreement on global warming; thus there is no “consensus.”

Prominent hurricane forecaster Dr. William M. Gray, a professor at Colorado State University, told the audience at the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change on March 4 in New York that a natural cycle of ocean water temperatures related to the salinity (the amount of salt) in ocean water was responsible for some global warming that has taken place. However, he said that same cycle means a period of cooling would begin within 10 years.

“We should begin to see cooling coming on,” Gray said. “I’m willing to make a big financial bet on it. In 10 years, I expect the globe to be somewhat cooler than it is now, because this ocean effect will dominate over the human-induced CO2 effect and I believe the solar effect and the land-use effect. I think this is likely bigger.”

Gray, 79, wasn’t sure if he’d be around to see his prediction come true.

“I may not be around by that time,” Gray said. “But, I’ve asked some of my students to put dandelions on my grave if that happens.”

Gray criticized NASA scientist and global warming alarmist James Hansen, calling him “the most egregious abuser” of data. According to Gray, Hansen’s alarmism is exaggerated because the models he uses to predict the increase in global warming count on too much water vapor in the atmosphere.

“[S]o he puts that much vapor in his model and of course he gets this,” Gray said. “He must get upper troposphere where the temperature is seven degrees warmer for a doubl[ing of] CO2. Well, the reason he got that was – why this upper-level warming was there – was he put too much water vapor in the model.”

At the same conference March 3, the founder of The Weather Channel advocated suing carbon traders, including former Vice President Al Gore, to expose what he called “the fraud of global warming.”

NASA, Jim Hansen, And The Politicization Of Science

This information reveals nothing new, but the subject of scientific credibility in the continuing debate over the causes of global warming and climate change, keep surfacing. This warrants a revisit to sad exposure of the underhanded behavior of NASA's top climate scientist, Jim Hansen. This is information worth keeping.
Peter

Source:

NASA, James Hansen, and the Politicization of Science
Michael Asher (Blog) - September 26, 2007 11:04 AM
New issues swirl around controversial NASA branch NASA's primary climate monitoring agency is the Goddard Institute of Space Studies. Operating out of a small office at Columbia University, GISS is run by Dr. James Hansen. Official NASA climate statements come through GISS ... which means they must get by Hansen.

Many other scientists and agencies make climate predictions, but Hansen's top the list for scare factor, predicting consequences considerably more dire than his colleagues. Hansen specializes in climate "modeling" -- attempting to predict future events based on computer simulations. In 1971, Hansen wrote his first climate model, which showed the world was about to experience severe global cooling. NASA colleagues used it to warn the world that immediate action was needed to prevent catastrophe.

Most research papers are rather dry reading, written to be as unemotional as possible. Not so with Hansen's reports, whose works scream alarmism even in their titles: "Climate Catastrophe," "Can We Defuse the Global Warming Time Bomb," and "The Threat to the Planet." Hansen was most recently in the news when an amateur blogger discovered an error in his climate data, a mistake Hansen later discounted as unimportant to the "big picture" of compelling public action on climate change.

But who is James Hansen? Is he an impartial researcher seeking scientific truth? Or a political activist with an axe to grind? In 2006, Hansen accused the Bush Administration of attempting to censor him. The issue stemmed from an email sent by a 23-year old NASA public affairs intern. It warned Hansen over repeated violations of NASA's official press policy, which requires the agency be notified prior to interviews. Hansen claimed he was being "silenced," despite delivering over 1,400 interviews in recent years, including 15 the very month he made the claim.

While he admits to violating the NASA press policy, Hansen states he had a "constitutional right" to grant interviews. Hansen then began a barrage of public appearances on TV, radio and in lecture halls decrying the politicization of climate science. Turns out he was right. Science was being politicized. By him.

A report revealed just this week, shows the 'Open Society Institute' funded Hansen to the tune of $720,000, carefully orchestrating his entire media campaign. OSI, a political group which spent $74 million in 2006 to "shape public policy," is funded by billionaire George Soros, the largest backer of Kerry's 2004 Presidential Campaign. Soros, who once declared that "removing Bush from office was the "central focus" of his life, has also given tens of millions of dollars to MoveOn.Org and other political action groups. Certainly Soros has a right to spend his own money. But NASA officials have a responsibility to accurate, unbiased, nonpartisan science.

For Hansen to secretly receive a large check from Soros, then begin making unsubstantiated claims about administrative influence on climate science is more than suspicious -- it's a clear conflict of interest. But the issues don't stop here. Hansen received an earlier $250,000 grant from the Heinz Foundation, an organization run by Kerry's wife, which he followed by publicly endorsing Kerry. Hansen also acted as a paid consultant to Gore during the making of his global-warming film, "An Inconvenient Truth," and even personally promoted the film during an NYC event.

After the the GISS data error was revealed, Hansen finally agreed to make public the method he uses to generate "official" temperature records from the actual readings. That process has been revealed to be thousands of lines of source code, containing hundreds of arbitrary "bias" adjustments to individual sites, tossing out many readings entirely, and raising (or lowering) the actual values for others, sometimes by several degrees. Many areas with weak or no rising temperature trends are therefore given, after adjustment, a much sharper trend. A full audit of the Hansen code is currently underway, but it seems clear that Hansen has more explaining to do.

George Deutsch, the NASA intern who resigned over the censorship fallout, said he was initially warned about Hansen when starting the job, "People said ... you gotta watch that guy. He is a loose cannon; he is kind of crazy. He is difficult to work with; he is an alarmist; he exaggerates.'" Hansen's office did not return a request from DailyTech for an interview for this article.

Jim Hansen Wins Award....

NASA's Jim Hansen is tempting fate by continually venturing out onto thinner, and thinner ice. The charade he has been putting on about man-caused global warming is falling apart around him. Read the following article by Cliff Ollier of The University of Western Australia about how glaciers really behave and you'll understand just how misleading Jim Hansen has been.
Peter

The Biggest Whopper of 2007
Julie Walsh, CEIJanuary 2, 2008
Among the candidates for the biggest cock-and-bull story in 2007 must be NASA’s James Hansen with his work of creative genius on Greenland’s and Antarctica’s ice sheets and his wannabes, who subsequently copied his imaginative tour de force.
Even the facts are no match for James Hansen and his incredible modeling machine! Though Greenland’s and Antarctica’s ice rests in deep bowls, Hansen declares them inclined planes. Then despite ice cores that show little to no movement for the past 400,000 years (including the warm periods), he shamelessly states that these gigantic ice sheets are slip, slidin’ away and the world will be flooded.
The idea of “meltwater lakes on the surface finding their way down through cracks in the ice and lubricating the bottom of the glacier is not compatible with accumulation of undisturbed snow layers. It might conceivably work on valley glaciers but it tells us nothing of the ‘collapse’ of ice sheets,” according to Cliff Ollier, School of Earth and Geographical Science at the University of Western Australia, “Indeed ‘collapse’ is impossible.”
Alarmists have to be thrilled with the successfulness of Hansen’s 2007 con—without this lie there is no catastrophic flooding, and all they are left with is the IPCC’s non-eventful one-foot-in-a-century sea level rise.
I wonder if Hansen’s modeler can also make Everlasting Gobstoppers!

Al Gore and Jim Hansen of NASA Start New Business

When the truth comes out about how NASA has doctored the temperature data used to support the global warming myth, Al Gore and Jim Hansen will be forced into this new line of business. They will be selling paddles to all the global warming true believers who have followed them up their creek. It is rather fitting, don't you think?

Peter

The Law and Jim Hansen's (NASA) Temperature Data

It seems Jim Hansen of NASA and his manipulated temperature data would not be recognized in a court of law in the United States. It seems this means the theory that man is causing global warming is invalid, and any laws, or legal actions based upon it must be negated. Any lawyers out there who can comment on this?
Peter


from: http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1891#more-1891

Will Richardson says:
August 11th, 2007 at 7:17 pm
Re: 2&3 Bigcitylib.
No. The point is that substantial and material adjustments are being made to the temperature “record” relied on by climate scientists, the adjustments support the hypothesis of AGW, and the adjuster (Jim Hansen of NASA) refuses to disclose the data and calculations which he assures the public justify his adjustments.

In law, this would not be allowed. Let me quote from Florida Rule of Evidence 90.705 (actually Section 90.705, Florida Statutes):
90.705 Disclosure of facts or data underlying expert opinion.–
(1) Unless otherwise required by the court, an expert may testify in terms of opinion or inferences and give reasons without prior disclosure of the underlying facts or data. On cross-examination the expert shall be required to specify the facts or data.
(2) Prior to the witness giving the opinion, a party against whom the opinion or inference is offered may conduct a voir dire examination of the witness directed to the underlying facts or data for the witness’s opinion. If the party establishes prima facie evidence that the expert does not have a sufficient basis for the opinion, the opinions and inferences of the expert are inadmissible unless the party offering the testimony establishes the underlying facts or data.

The Federal Rule is similar. In other words, Hansen’s “adjusted” temperature “record” would be inadmissible in a court of law almost anywhere in the United States, as would any evidence based on his temperature “record”.

Jim Hansen, NASA Temperature Data, and Lies

I have to post this dialogue and save it for posterity because I have a feeling it will be important. I'm somewhat involved in a personal way, so it warrants my saving it. The debate over global warming is not "over", as many people want us to believe. Perhaps it is just beginning.
Peter

from: http://boards.msn.com/MSNBCboards/thread.aspx?threadid=388913&boardsparam=page%3D44


GCB Stokes
Message #52209/26/07 12:36 AM
Sky Hunter,

"So are you getting paid to post Marc Morano's disingenuous garbage he calls the
Senate EPW blog all over this forum?"

Classic pro-warming, you've been train very well. I'm sure Al Gore and Big Dad Jim and very proud.

"Is Steve McIntyre slipping you a little extra to cut and paste his lies onto
these threads?"

For some as smart as you, that's a really stupid statement and it put you in the same class as Rabid Roy. Tell us, just what is he lying about? Fact is Sky Hunter, his "lies" exposed Hansen's flawed data and method. Hansen has been forced to change them because Steve McIntrye was not lying, he was right. Have you seen Hansen changing things on the NASA Web Site? It's hard keeping up, but if you check in daily, you can see it yourself, and you won't have to read it from Steve McIntyre.

"All this effort to discredit Hansen and then you guys scream fouls whenever
someone questions the credibility of bloggers that are not even scientists, Like
Moarano, who is a political hack, and McIntyre, who is an advocate for the
mining industry."

Hansen is the political hack, the whiny little candy a$$ would call Al Gore to report on what the others at NASA were doing and saying. He would set with people and ask them questions pertaining to their research, and he would gain their trust. Then when he had the information, he would run into his office and call Al Gore on his cell phone and rat people out, "Al guess what! This person did this, and he saying that and put this and that into his research, you got to stop him Al, you got to do something!" He even pasted Al Gore notes the night before he gave his testimony at the Senate Hearings in 1998, on what to ask and how to ask it, when it was his turn to question him in the hearing. Give me a break Sky Hunter, you don't know the first thing about what your talking about here, you only know what you hear in the warming cycle. And your being a hypocrite.

"I am terribly disappointed in both you and GeoPeter
for a total lack of original thinking on this issue of late. Posting the climate
deniers talking points is what I would expect from lesser intellects."

This is not attempt at original thinking, it an informative threat, and I'm
posting the updates and posting/reporting what the liberal news media and
Al Gore lovers won't in order to protect Al Gore and his trained pet rat
James Hansen

.

GCB Stokes
Message #52309/26/07 12:37 AM

"All this effort to discredit Hansen and then you guys scream fouls whenever
someone questions the credibility of bloggers that are not even scientists, Like
Moarano, who is a political hack, and McIntyre, who is an advocate for the
mining industry."

Hansen has discredited himself way back, form his flip-flop from raving about the new ice age coming within 50 years and we must act now before it too late, and then not 10 years later started raving about global warming and we must act now before it too late. And his numbers, data and methods speak for themselves. I don't have to discredit him, he's doing a fine job of that on his own. Advocate of the mining industry? Oh, you mean his an advocate of Al Gore's mining industry with that zinc mine of his?

"I can refute every single example you have posted, most are just Morano
misrepresenting the studies. But for instance the Joseph D'Alio is an example of
distorting the facts beyond recognition."

I'm sure in you mind you can. That's interesting Sky Hunter, because many of the climate researchers from NASA, NOAA and Met Office can't. Perhaps I'll put in the good word and get you a job, and you can get in there and tell them how things are to be done.

"What he is doing is dishonest and he knows it. So here you have another proven
liar and yet you are willing to trust him because he is on your side of the
argument."

Sky Hunter, don't take me for a fool, and don't think I don't run things past my people on these matters. And the fact is, McIntyre has expose errors and flaws, Hansen had to concede to this fact, and had to make the corrections and now has change his method. Some, of the studies reported my Morano have some question, just as the warming studies and Hansen's claims, other many don't. And they are based on peer-review research and just because Morano report them, does not change the fact, like him or not. If things are really as bad as you say, then the global warming thread has even less to stand on, being that some much garbage gets through the peer-review process.

"The simple truthis that atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations are
increasing as a result of human activity, and this increase in greenhouse gases,
particularly CO2 is causing an increase in radiative forcing, and as a result
the planet is warming. All the tricky arguments and lies told by the right wing
media and industry funded deniers does not change the physics. The Earth is
warming, and human activity is the cause."

I hate to break the news to you, but there many people, researchers including some of the world's best climate researchers who are vastly more knowable then you who disagree. And that list is growing.



GCB Stokes
Message #52409/26/07 12:38 AM

"Well I think that is your problem, you see this as a political issue, not a
science issue, so you are willing to believe people who support your
confirmation bias, even though as a trained scientist, you should know
better."

Yeah, that coming from a Hansen fan, that sure gives you a whole lot of creditability! Don't you think he should know better.

"I guess perhaps I gave you guys more credit for objective thinking than was
deserved."

The feeling is mutual, Sky Hunter.

Like it or not, the science is far from settled, and there are many researchers from around the world who agree, people you could not put a patch on the A$$ of. Including those who run the models.

And one more thing.

"I know he is only a meteorologist, but even a meteorologist knows that this is
not a logical argument, since isotopic fractionation of the carbon atom proves
that the additional CO2 in the atmosphere is from fossil sources."

Now that was stupid, and I'll give you some breaking news Sky Hunter. The overwhelming majority of climate researchers, include more then 75 percent of the climate modellers are just that, "only meteorologist." I really did take you for someone who knew what they were talking about, this prove that wrong. Fact be known, Hansen is not even a meteorologist, or an atmospheric researcher at all for that matter. Hansen was trained in "physics" and "astronomy." And it shows in his work.

I don't know what came over you, maybe you had some bad beans or something. Or perhaps you feel like the kid who was just told there really is no Santa, but here are the facts as science know them:

Global Warming is a radical theory proposed by a few scientists several decades ago. This theory was captured by environmentalist, antihuman ideologists and politicians and elevated into the status of a fear based religious belief. In science, theories are grounded by the evidence that supports the theory. Even though the Global Warming Theory has been under the microscope for the past few decades and even though billions of dollars have been thrown into research on this subject, the work has not been able to accumulate a strong foundation of data supporting this theory. On the contrary, the analysis by hundreds of top scientist indicates the evidence has been building up over the past few years to reject this theory. And all the temper tantrums in the world won't change the facts.



Massagatto
Message #52509/26/07 12:46 AM
Thank You, GCB, for cramming sense into Sky Hunter's empty head. I really could not abide his attack so I reprinted your posts. Instead of adhominem attacks by SKy Hunter, I would like to see him take each of your posts one by one and rebut them. I am sure he could never do that. Therefore, he descended into an adhominem attack. But you hit him right on the nose...Bravo!!!!

Message #526
This message may contain profanity and has been hidden.
Show message Edit settings
GCB Stokes
Message #52609/26/07 01:39 AM
Massagatto,
I really don't like having to do things like this, and having to deal with some of the want-a-be's out on this message board is one thing, but I really didn't expect Shy Hunter to go all hysterical and going into an Al Gore automated attack mode as some may true believes do. They don't like what their hearing and things don't go there way, and faced with facts contrary to their beliefs and all they have been conditioned to accept and it hurts. So, they attack and insult even people who called them a friend.

Some of the **** he was saying was absurd. I work with climate researchers, some of whom are IPCC contributors, one was a lead authors, and three are considered some of the very best in there field. And the guy I'm working with tonight, is a pro-warming researcher and he read over the reports that I posted, some he disagrees with, some he and other's don't have an answer for. He concedes that he believes in his models, but accepts their flaws, and there are opposing views that nobody can explain away. And what Sky Hunter said about McIntyre, was ludicrous. And when he read Sky Hunter's post, he laughed and said, "McIntrye sure knows enough to make an A$$ out of Hansen before the whole world. Let's hear him refute that fact!" And the part were he can refute everyone one of the studies, he just shook his and rolled his eye and said, "I can't wait for his reply and for him to refute each of those studies. Then I'll take them into work and give some pointers to all of the armatures." I guess Sky Hunter was a little full of himself tonight, or he was just acting hysterical, but that was a ridiculous statement as if he mastered these professional researchers and their peer-reviewed research. I could see if these guy wrote papers without supporting data or some other silly B.S. researchers put out there, but that's not the case here, at all.

And the fact is, this thread is a report of a researchers findings, the very findings that made Hansen concede flawed data, and forced him to even change his method along with some dirty tricks. I'm reporting findings that were proven correct, along with peer-review research. It's too bad he doesn't get so worked up over the ridiculous B.S. some of these guys post in support of his warming beliefs. Such as when CuriousPete, after getting a Peterson Field Guide and did some googling, and today tried playing ornithologist with me over some unsupported global warming hysteria regarding birds. I did my best not to insult him, even after he got all cocky. And after dealing with this ****, then SkyHunter had his spell, and I was just not in the mood for it, and I got the impression he thought he was talking to one of his fans who doesn't know any better or something. But he's not dealing with an idiot here, or some fool who doesn't know the difference between the hole in their backside and a gopher hole and try to play scientist on the message board.

I'm just upset/pi$$ed off, and I'm sure GeoPeter will tell me, "Your a trained researcher, don't conduct yourself in this manner!" And he'll be right of course. I guess people just got on my last nerve and I said things I should not have, and I'll feel bad about it later.
Well, I'm home now and need to take a hot shower, and then get into bed. Take care

Jim Hansen Claiming Censorship......

Here is a CBS article about Jim Hansen and how he claims he has been censored by the Bush Administration. He sure has been doing a lot of speaking out and consulting for "documentaries" about global warming by people like Al Gore and Tom Brokaw. That doesn't look and sound like censorship to me. It is now looking like he is the one playing games with NASA temperature data.
Peter

from: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/03/17/60minutes/main1415985.shtml

Rewriting The Science
Scientist Says Politicians Edit Global Warming Research

Quote
"In my more than three decades in the government I've never witnessed such restrictions on the ability of scientists to communicate with the public."
James Hansen

(CBS) This story originally aired on March 19, 2006.
As a government scientist, James Hansen is taking a risk. He says there are things the White House doesn't want you to hear but he's going to say them anyway. Hansen is arguably the world's leading researcher on global warming. He's the head of NASA's top institute studying the climate. But as correspondent Scott Pelley first reported last spring, this imminent scientist says that the Bush administration is restricting who he can talk to and editing what he can say. Politicians, he says, are rewriting the science. But he didn't hold back speaking to Pelley, telling 60 Minutes what he knows.

Asked if he believes the administration is censoring what he can say to the public, Hansen says: "Or they're censoring whether or not I can say it. I mean, I say what I believe if I'm allowed to say it." What James Hansen believes is that global warming is accelerating. He points to the melting arctic and to Antarctica, where new data show massive losses of ice to the sea. Is it fair to say at this point that humans control the climate? Is that possible? "There's no doubt about that, says Hansen. "The natural changes, the speed of the natural changes is now dwarfed by the changes that humans are making to the atmosphere and to the surface."

Those human changes, he says, are driven by burning fossil fuels that pump out greenhouse gases like CO2, carbon dioxide. Hansen has a theory that man has just 10 years to reduce greenhouse gases before global warming reaches what he calls a tipping point and becomes unstoppable. He says the White House is blocking that message. "In my more than three decades in the government I've never witnessed such restrictions on the ability of scientists to communicate with the public," says Hansen. Restrictions like an e-mail Hansen's institute received from NASA in 2004. "… there is a new review process … ," the e-mail read. "The White House (is) now reviewing all climate related press releases," it continued.

Why the scrutiny of Hansen's work? Well, his Goddard Institute for Space Studies is the source of respected but sobering research on warming. It recently announced 2005 was the warmest year on record. Hansen started at NASA more than 30 years ago, spending nearly all that time studying the earth. How important is his work? 60 Minutes asked someone at the top, Ralph Cicerone, president of the nation’s leading institute of science, the National Academy of Sciences. "I can't think of anybody who I would say is better than Hansen. You might argue that there's two or three others as good, but nobody better," says Cicerone. And Cicerone, who’s an atmospheric chemist, said the same thing every leading scientist told 60 Minutes. "Climate change is really happening," says Cicerone. Asked what is causing the changes, Cicernone says it's greenhouse gases: "Carbon dioxide and methane, and chlorofluorocarbons and a couple of others, which are all — the increases in their concentrations in the air are due to human activities. It's that simple."

But if it is that simple, why do some climate science reports look like they have been heavily edited at the White House? With science labeled "not sufficiently reliable." It’s a tone of scientific uncertainty the president set in his first months in office after he pulled out of a global treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. "We do not know how much our climate could, or will change in the future," President Bush said in 2001, speaking in the Rose Garden of the White House. "We do not know how fast change will occur, or even how some of our actions could impact it."

(continued here: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/03/17/60minutes/main1415985.shtml

Jim Hansen, Global Warming Guru or Fallen Saint?

Here is an article worth reading and saving.......I'll just post a portion of it.
Peter


from: http://www.boston.com/news/science/articles/2006/02/05/too_hot_to_handle/


Too hot to handle
Recent efforts to censor Jim Hansen, NASA's top climate scientist, are only the latest. As his message grows more urgent, we ignore him at our peril.
By Bill McKibben February 5, 2006
JIM HANSEN, the director of NASA'S Goddard Institute for Space Studies, is a dangerous man. Not a brash man or a rebel-I remember interviewing him many years ago, and when I asked him what he did to relax, he replied, ''mow my lawn." He's spent his whole career on the NASA payroll, but never looked up at the beckoning stars, at least professionally. Instead, from a floor of offices above Tom's Diner, of ''Seinfeld" fame, on New York's Upper West Side, he's fixed an unwavering gaze on our home planet and the narrow envelope of atmosphere that surrounds it.

It's in that process that he's acquired the data, including one of the most comprehensive and accurate temperature records for the entire globe, that makes him so unsafe-data he's repeatedly tried to spread to the world, but always against resistance, mostly from politicians but also from scientists.

(continued in the original article linked to above)