ClimateGate 2: Another Torpedo to 'the Cause'

Perhaps no single event - not even snow in New Orleans or Las Vegas - so torpedoed Al Gore's global warming, er climate change movement than the hundreds of thousands of emails that were released about this time two years ago, just as the Copenhagen climate summit was set to begin (it was unseasonably cold there at the time, as I remember). It looks like the sinking ship that is the climate change movement has just taken another significant hit, on the eve of this year's climate summit, in Durban, South Africa.

Perhaps the two most recognizable names that popped up in the emails released two years ago were Dr. Phil Jones of East Anglia University and Michael Mann of Penn State University (yeah, that Penn State). Their names pop up in these emails as well.

Via The Guardian:

A fresh tranche of private emails exchanged between leading climate scientists throughout the last decade was released online on Tuesday. The unauthorised publication is an apparent attempt to repeat the impact of a similar release of emails on the eve of the Copenhagen climate summit in late 2009. 

The initial email dump was apparently timed to disrupt the Copenhagen climate talks. It prompted three official inquiries in the UK and two in the US into the working practices of climate scientists. Although these were critical of the scientists' handling of Freedom of Information Act requests and lack of openness they did not find fault with the climate change science they had produced. 

Norfolk police have said the new set of emails is "of interest" to their investigation to find the perpetrator of the initial email release who has not yet been identified. 

The emails appear to be genuine, but the University of East Anglia said the "sheer volume of material" meant it was not yet able to confirm that they were. One of the emailers, the climate scientist Prof Michael Mann, has confirmed that he believes they are his messages. The lack of any emails post-dating the 2009 release suggests that they were obtained at the same time, but held back. Their release now suggests they are intended to cause maximum impact before the upcoming climate summit in Durban which starts on Monday.

The website Watts Up with That is running a constantly updated thread. You can check that HERE. One of the more interesting things posted there are some excerpts from Mann's emails in which the pseudo-scientist from Penn State refers quite often to 'the cause.' Here are some of them:

Mann: By the way, when is Tom C going to formally publish his roughly 1500 year reconstruction??? It would help the cause to be able to refer to that reconstruction as confirming Mann and Jones, etc. 

Mann: They will (see below) allow us to provide some discussion of the synthetic example, referring to the J. Cimate paper (which should be finally accepted upon submission of the revised final draft), so that should help the cause a bit.

Mann: I gave up on Judith Curry a while ago. I don’t know what she think’s she’s doing, but its not helping the cause

Isn't it interesting that as common-thinking people knew it was about "the cause" all along, Al Gore's minions demonized - and continue to do so - those clear-thinking people as climate skeptics?

Read More at WUWT

Climate Depot has also posted a bunch of damning excerpts:

Michael Mann, 2006: "we certainly don’t know the GLOBAL mean temperature anomaly very well, and nobody has ever claimed we do" 

Mike, The Figure you sent is very deceptive [...] there have been a number of dishonest presentations of model results by individual authors and by IPCC [...] 

Jones: 'I wasted a part of a day deleting numerous emails and exchanges with almost all the skeptics. So I have virtually nothing. I even deleted the email that I inadvertently sent'

This is a ton of material and for those who don't have time to go through it, just know that this may put the entire climate change movement down for the count.

BBC is still running interference but at least they're reporting on this story quickly, which is more than can be said about them in 2009.