Saturday, November 21, 2009

Headlines Saturday 21st November 2009


Hackers break into servers of a major British climate change research facility and purportedly uncover e-mails urging scientists to 'hide the decline' of temperatures, manipulate data and silence skeptics.

Terror or Crime? Poll Shows Americans Divided
Fox News Poll: Americans have differing views on shooting massacre at Fort Hood, Texas — including whether it should be called an act of terrorism

Religious Battle Over Health Bill
White House in dispute with Catholic bishops over abortion funding in Obama's health care overhaul

'Sarah Rules' Not Uniform at Bases
In a 'Tale of Two Forts,' Palin's 'Rogue' tour encounters dueling guidelines — to speak, or not to speak?


The first particle has been sent for a test lap around the $6.3 billion Large Hadron Collider, or so-called "God Machine", which was finally restarted this morning after a 14-month layoff / AFP

I had sex with Premier - barmaid
WOMAN claims she had sex with South Australian Premier Mike Rann in his Parliament office.

Twins' mum wants girls raised as Aussies
THE mother of Krishna and Trishna has spoken of her joy that the twins are now separated.

Author's husband faces teen sex charges
HUSBAND of children's author Mem Fox charged with sex offences against teenage boy.

One killed in Miley Cyrus tour bus crash
AT least one person was killed when a tour bus supporting teen pop star Miley Cyrus overturned.


AN art collector has found a tooth, thumb and finger of Italian scientist Galileo Galilei which had been handed down through generations / AFP

Death stalks suburb as woman murdered
MURDER of 72-year-old woman in her home is the latest to rock usually peaceful suburb.

Fatal crash leaves town in mourning
THE dreams of a promising rugby league career died with a teenage boy and his young cousin, killed instantly in an horrific car accident at Kempsey.
=== Journalists Corner ===

'Fox News Reporting: Pirates of the 21st Century'
Somali pirates hijack boats, loot ships, and have kidnapped over 200 innocent people! Who is training and funding these violent groups? Our team goes around the globe to investigate!
===

Sarah Palin Part Two!
Was the media's portrayal of Palin fair? Find out in Bill's hard-hitting interview.
===
'Huckbee' Exclusive!
Was justice served in the murder trial of Anne Pressly? The anchorwoman's parents speak out.
===
Health Care Battle!
As the battle over health care comes to a head, we break down everything you need to know about the bill.
===

Two Most Powerful Senators (Today)
Two women may be the most important United States Senators right now! Senator Blanche Lincoln (Dem/Ark) and Senator Mary Landrieu (Dem/La). These are the two women whoe Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid are trying to schmooze -- no doubt offering them lots of things for their districts to get their votes. He needs their votes [...]
=== Comments ===
'Factor' Debut: Sarah Palin Sits Down With Bill O'Reilly for First Time

This is a RUSH transcript from "The O'Reilly Factor," November 19, 2009. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

Watch "The O'Reilly Factor" weeknights at 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. ET!

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BILL O'REILLY, HOST: Let's begin this interview with a phone call you actually made to me to my house in late October 2008. We had been trying to get you on "The Factor" for months. Do you remember that?

Click here to watch part 1 of Bill O'Reilly's interview with Sarah Palin!

SARAH PALIN, FORMER GOVERNOR OF ALASKA: I do. Shhh, that was part of that going rogue stuff nobody was supposed to know about in the campaign.

O'REILLY: So you were going rogue, calling O'Reilly at home. I don't know how you got my home number. But you basically said to me "I want to do the show," but why didn't you do it?

PALIN: Whatever the logistics were that weren't working out, we ended up not doing the show, unfortunately. But yeah, reaching out to you and to others who I believed would report fairly, objectively on the campaign. I wanted to talk to you guys.

O'REILLY: We couldn't figure it out because obviously "The Factor's" the biggest cable program with the most people watching. We certainly were fair to you. Would you say we were fair to you?

PALIN: Very fair.

O'REILLY: OK. So why couldn't we get you? And we had trouble getting Senator McCain on the program. I didn't get it.

PALIN: The media strategy was a bit perplexing for at least those on the vice presidential side of the ticket, and not really understanding where we were going there with the relationships with the media. It was just an indication of maybe some things in our campaign being out of touch with the normal everyday average American who wanted to truly connect with the candidate. But very glad to get to be here today.

O'REILLY: OK. But you wanted to be on the program. You wanted to be on "The Factor" during the campaign. You told me you did, and I believed you. And why would you bother taking time out of your busy schedule to call me if that weren't the case?

PALIN: It would be fair to the electorate had we reached out and had more of a connection via different media personalities.

O'REILLY: It's fair to say that you were over-controlled by the McCain people?

PALIN: They were the experts. They had run national campaigns before, and, of course, I had never been a participant in anything larger than a state campaign. So obviously, having to put a lot of faith in their strategy and not having a whole lot of say in things like the media rollout.

O'REILLY: Should you have said, "Look, I'm doing O'Reilly. I don't care what you say"?

PALIN: Oh, as you can tell in the book though, those times that I was more assertive were the times that, you know, we were called "going rogue" and then that being leaked to the press, which was unfortunate. But at this point, of course, it's water under the bridge though. It is — there were mistakes being made in the campaign. I made mistakes in the campaign.

O'REILLY: Everybody does.

PALIN: I acknowledge that, and I think more of a concern has been not within the campaign the mistakes that were made, not being able to react to the circumstances that those mistakes created in a real positive and professional and helpful way for John McCain.

O'REILLY: All right. Let's talk about the senator. Was he accessible to you? Could you pick up the phone and get him on the phone?

PALIN: Absolutely. He still is, and I have great respect for him.

O'REILLY: Did you tell him, "Hey, I'm having trouble with some of your people"? Did you tell him that?

PALIN: I never bad-mouthed any of the operatives.

O'REILLY: Why not?

PALIN: I had faith that Senator McCain was working with those operatives regarding…

O'REILLY: Whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait, wait, wait. You're frustrated and you're not seeing their vision?

PALIN: Yeah, yeah.

O'REILLY: Don't you think you should have gone to the presidential candidate and said, "Hey, they're mismanaging me. You got to let me loose"?

PALIN: Not necessarily.

O'REILLY: No?

PALIN: Not burdening the candidate who was out there every day putting it on the line for voters to understand what it was that our ticket had to offer. Not wanting to burden him with the internal operatives.

O'REILLY: So you didn't want to put more pressure on him?

PALIN: Absolutely not.

O'REILLY: See, I would have done that.

PALIN: Well, again, hindsight. But no, I think it was obvious to everyone within the campaign that things weren't quite going well.

O'REILLY: You guys could have won the election, I think.

PALIN: Well…

O'REILLY: Looking from a — look, the press was against you. We all know that. Bush had a lot of trouble, and that hurt the Republican ticket. We all know that. But it was close. John McCain — did he ever scold you, by the way…

PALIN: No.

O'REILLY: ...after the Couric interview and the Gibson interview? Did he call you and say, "Hey, Sarah, you got to elevate your game"?

PALIN: John McCain was nothing but positive, encouraging and supportive.

O'REILLY: So he never had any contention between you?

PALIN: Not an ounce of contention. No.

O'REILLY: All right. The two signature moments that got you in trouble, with all due respect, governor, were the Gibson interview when he looked down at you with his nose — on the glasses on the nose and said:

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHARLES GIBSON, ABC NEWS: Do you agree with the Bush doctrine?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O'REILLY: When I heard that I went, "What Bush doctrine?"

PALIN: Everybody said that. So did I.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PALIN: In what respect, Charlie?

GIBSON: Well, what do you interpret it to be?

PALIN: His world view?

GIBSON: No, the Bush doctrine enunciated in September of 2002 before the Iraq war.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O'REILLY: Do you think that Gibson did that to demean you, to make you look stupid?

PALIN: Those are the gotcha techniques that some in — what some people call mainstream, others call now the "lamestream" media, who want to participate in a tactic like that.

O'REILLY: But he's not like that. Gibson's not like that.

PALIN: Had he explained a little bit more the context of the questions he was asking, probably could have answered it.

O'REILLY: Now that was a signature moment there, and it hurt Gibson because a lot of women said that's not fair. Katie Couric's a different story. Now, Katie Couric asked you an easy question and you booted it, governor.

PALIN: I sure did.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KATIE COURIC, CBS NEWS: What newspapers and magazines did you regularly read before you were tapped for this to stay informed and to understand the world?

PALIN: I've read most of them. Again, with a great appreciates for the press, for the media.

COURIC: Like what ones specifically? I'm curious.

PALIN: All of them.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O'REILLY: Why did you boot it? I mean, if somebody asks what do you read? I say I read the, you know, New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post. I can reel them off in my sleep. You couldn't do it?

PALIN: Well, of course I could. Of course, I could.

O'REILLY: Why didn't you?

PALIN: It's ridiculous to suggest that or to say that I couldn't tell people what I read, because by that point already it was relatively early in that multi-segmented interview with Katie Couric, it was quite obvious that it was going to be a bit of an annoying interview with the badgering of the questions. It seemed to me that she didn't know anything about Alaska, about my job as governor, about my accomplishments as a mayor or a governor, my record. And a question like that though, yeah, I booted it. I screwed up. I should have been more patient and more gracious in my answer. It seemed to me that the question was more along the lines of do you read? How do you stay in touch with the real world?

O'REILLY: So you thought it was condescending. So that was your inexperience that led to that exchange with Couric. You were frustrated.

PALIN: It was my inexperience in having to deal with a badgering, condescending line of questioning.

O'REILLY: Right.

PALIN: It had no reflection at all on my inexperience in terms of administrative record or accomplishment…

O'REILLY: No, it's just handling the media.

PALIN: …or vision for America. Yeah, and, you know what? So what? So I wasn't…

O'REILLY: It hurt you though.

PALIN: …so I wasn't doing the right thing to ingratiate myself with liberal media personalities to make them like me. So what? I think if most normal Americans were put in the same position that I was there, they'd probably look at her and have that proverbial eye roll and say, "Are you kidding me?"

O'REILLY: If they knew…

PALIN: "Are you suggesting that I don't read?"

O'REILLY: If they had known, that led, in my opinion, to the McCain people, Steve Schmidt and the other guys saying, you know, we can't trust her out there because she booted that, and that's where you lost credibility among them. I understand what you're saying. Although Katie Couric, and I spoke to her a couple days ago, says she wasn't out to get you, clearly in your book, you feel that Katie Couric was out to get you.

PALIN: I let the transcript speak for itself, and readers will decide for themselves if she had any kind of bias or nonobjective mission there.

O'REILLY: Yeah, but you think she was out to get you. It's different than Gibson.

PALIN: I think that she was out to get, if you will, anyone who didn't believe in her perspective. It's not like she was going to get in there and be, I think, unbiased, objective and fair.

O'REILLY: Interesting.

PALIN: But it is my bad. It is my mistake, and it was my inexperience in dealing with the media elite in my response, a very annoyed response to a very annoying question.

O'REILLY: Your bad.

PALIN: Bad, that's my bad. My mistake.

(LAUGHTER)

(END VIDEOTAPE)

O'REILLY: I love those slang expressions. Now up next, was the governor surprised by the media attacks after her speech at the Republican Convention? Right back with the second part of the Sarah Palin interview.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'REILLY: Continuing now with our lead story, a conversation with Sarah Palin. Her new book "Going Rogue" will debut at No. 1, and it'll be a huge best-seller for Harper Collins. That's because Governor Palin has millions of admirers, despite the unprecedented media assault.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

O'REILLY: I was in Minneapolis, as you probably know, watching your speech when you were nominated. And it was, you know, obviously lights out speech.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PALIN: You know they say the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull? Lipstick.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O'REILLY: Did you know after you gave that speech that the media was going to hammer you? Did you have any idea that they were going to come after you the way they have?

Click here to watch part 2 of Bill O'Reilly's interview with Sarah Palin!

PALIN: You know what I thought they were going to come after me for? Getting a "D" in a college course 22 years ago. That was the big controversy in my little world. That was the skeleton in my closet. Crap. Once the media finds that out…

O'REILLY: You didn't know…

PALIN: ...then it's going to be a…

O'REILLY: Right. So you didn't know they were going to come after you?

PALIN: No, and neither did the campaign. Had the campaign known, then they would have had, practically speaking, things like a binder full of information about me.

O'REILLY: Can I say something bold and fresh?

PALIN: Please.

O'REILLY: You should have known. You are a pro-life woman, a pro-gun woman. You didn't think the elite media in New York and D.C. was going to put a target on your forehead?

PALIN: Not to the extent that they did. No, I didn't anticipate that, and evidently those running the campaign didn't anticipate it either. But you know, they did what they did. But I'm here where I am today, meaning we plowed through a lot of that stuff that they threw our way, a lot of the darts and the arrows thrown our way. I'm still standing and I'm here with Bill O'Reilly. I think that's a bit of a victory.

O'REILLY: Well, I don't know about that. OK. So you and the campaign were unprepared for the vitriol. See, I knew, when I watched you on that stage, I said here's a regular person, which I think you are. I don't know you that well, but I think you're a regular person. Here's a regular person now could be vice president of the United States. Those pinheads back in New York and D.C., they're not going to go for you primarily because of the pro-life stuff.

PALIN: How would we have known though, that the — to the extent that it would have been made manifest their disdain for the normal American? And I am a normal American. And when it comes to my pro-life views, there are more Americans today saying that they understand the sanctity of life and that they are pro-life than they are pro-abortion for the first time in decades, I believe it is.

O'REILLY: OK. The latest poll has you with a 23 percent favorable, 37 percent don't know. You do the math, OK, and you're up at 60 percent of people who could like you. You are the biggest threat because you are a star, media star, whereas you're the only Republican. There aren't any other Republicans who are media stars but you. Now, that's why they're attacking you so vehemently. Do you know that?

PALIN: I don't know why they're attacking me.

O'REILLY: That's the reason. You're a threat.

PALIN: Well, OK, whatever. I do know though that you are spot on when you say perhaps they fear what you're suggesting is a voice being heard that's coming from the heartland of America. And I say that figuratively and literally.

O'REILLY: You're a populist.

PALIN: A populist, yes.

O'REILLY: Do you know what they're calling you now?

PALIN: No.

O'REILLY: Evita.

PALIN: Well.

O'REILLY: Eva Peron.

PALIN: Uh-huh.

O'REILLY: That's who they're calling you now.

PALIN: Well, I don't know, but the liberal media's going to do what they do. And more Americans though are getting disgusted with what they are doing.

O'REILLY: I agree.

PALIN: And not just because of any kind of personal or political attack on me. They're just saying you know what? Enough is enough. There is no longer — there is no longer a mainstream media that can be trusted to be objective and fair and balanced.

O'REILLY: I agree.

PALIN: People are getting their information…

O'REILLY: That's why Fox does so well.

PALIN: Exactly.

O'REILLY: What was the worst personal attack on you?

PALIN: I think the attacks that had to do with suggestions that Trig should never have been allowed to be born, of course…

O'REILLY: That a Down syndrome baby should have been aborted.

PALIN: Yes, that was pretty hurtful, pretty harmful. But the personal attacks there, too. You know, that's something that we've dealt with, and we plowed through it and we moved on.

O'REILLY: Yes, it's hurtful.

PALIN: There were some practical things, though, that took place within the campaign that I wrote about in the book, that were extremely disconcerting and disruptive in the campaign, like my personal e-mails being hacked into and then being broadcast via media outlets that…

O'REILLY: Lucky you didn't say anything scandalous.

PALIN: Well, I know. They were looking for it though.

O'REILLY: Yeah, they were pretty mundane.

PALIN: I mean, it was like a modern time break-in of a campaign headquarters because electronically, that is my campaign headquarter.

O'REILLY: That's right. That's Watergate light.

PALIN: Yeah.

O'REILLY: David Letterman, were you really mad that he made those jokes?

PALIN: I reacted — again, my reaction to a reporter who asked me about the joke that he made about…

O'REILLY: But in hindsight?

PALIN: ...about my 14-year-old daughter being impregnated by a baseball player. And my reaction was, oh, I thought it was atrocious. It wasn't funny. And then from there, I think the spin kind of was that I was absolutely outraged. It gave me an opportunity to say that that kind of humor is pretty outrageous.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PALIN: It was a degrading comment about a young woman, and I would hope that people really start really rising up and deciding it's not acceptable.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O'REILLY: If Letterman invited you on to plug the book, would you go?

PALIN: No.

O'REILLY: No?

PALIN: I don't think I would want to boost his ratings and participate in that, no.

O'REILLY: OK. Interesting. Oprah asked you about Levi Johnston.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OPRAH WINFREY: Will he be invited to Thanksgiving dinner?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O'REILLY: Why do you — I wouldn't answer questions about him if I were you.

PALIN: Because you guys ask. And I don't know, give me advice. How do you pivot away from questions about a character who is saying things that aren't necessarily true…

O'REILLY: Right.

PALIN: …and certainly aren't very nice about, again, one of my children and my family?

O'REILLY: I would just say he is the father of my grandchild, and I want a very loving relationship in our family, but I'm not going to say anything more.

PALIN: I will say that, but at the same time, after a year of getting clobbered by the media, capitalizing on people who will make things up, there does come a time in any mama's heart and gut where they're going to say no, no, no. You're picking on my kids. You're picking on my family. I'm going to set the record straight. My guttural instinct is kind of like a mama grizzly bear. You're touching my cubs, you're touching my kids. I'm going to respond and I'm going to set the record straight.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O'REILLY: Now tomorrow, the governor sets the record straight on policy, Iran, Afghanistan, health care. A challenging interview, Friday night.
===
IT’S RAINING BEARS! HALLELUJAH!
Tim Blair
Poley bears fall from the sky due to global warming:

An interesting insurance process awaits the owner of that Cadillac ("bear fell on it"). Ed Gillespie wonders if this latest insanity might leave viewers feeling manipulated by propaganda, although other reactions are also likely.
===
BRING ON THE DESTRUCTION
Tim Blair
Climate Research Unit director Phil Jones – alleged author of that “hide the decline” email – expresses another (alleged) opinion:
If anything, I would like to see the climate change happen, so the science could be proved right, regardless of the consequences.
Of course, if change doesn’t happen, it won’t prove that science was wrong. It’ll prove that certain scientists were. As Ed Morrissey notes:
Here we have scientists who cling to the theory so tightly that they reject the data. That’s not science; it’s religious belief.
UPDATE. Jules Crittenden rounds up the warmal gloating. Booyah!
===
SCIENTISTS ARE HUMANS
Tim Blair
Warmenist James Hrynyshyn tries to spin the CRU out of trouble ("All we learn is that scientists are humans after all"). His commenters aren’t buying it. And BBC environment analyst Roger Harrabin wants us to feel sorry for his warmy friends:
My contacts at the CRU tell me the e-mails are being taken out of context and insist they are part of the normal hurly-burly of conversations between scientists working on some of the most complicated questions of our times.

They ask how many of us would feel completely comfortable if our own inboxes were emptied out for the world to see.
One small issue with that: most peoples’ inboxes don’t concern the multi-billion dollar restructuring of international economies to counter predicted climate change. Harrabin’s contacts at the CRU are quite literally seeking to change our world, yet they whine about us looking through mere email. At the NYT, Andrew Revkin clings to religion:
The evidence pointing to a growing human contribution to global warming is so broad and deep that the hacked material is unlikely to erode the overall argument.
It’s true but fake, in other words. Pejman Yousefzadeh sums up:
We know this: The language used in many of the e-mails is offensive, crude, disparaging towards climate skeptics (including a disgusting statement made in the aftermath of the death of one global warming skeptic), and against the spirit of scientific inquiry on multiple levels. If these scientists had the doubts they appear to have had concerning global warming, they should have gone public with those doubts. That way, they would have lost neither their integrity, nor their ability to state that the weight of the evidence supports the theory of anthropogenic global warming. Instead, they engaged in . . . this.
Search the emails here.
===
HOT POLL
Tim Blair
Take a stand on the Great Warmening Hackorama! Are those emails and documents real or fake? Your call:
Poll: Rate the Hack
UPDATE. RealClimate’s hacks respond to the hacking:
Since emails are normally intended to be private, people writing them are, shall we say, somewhat freer in expressing themselves than they would in a public statement.
They certainly are.
More interesting is what is not contained in the emails.
Non-existent claims are always more interesting to people who are keen to dodge an issue. Bring on the strawmen:
There is no evidence of any worldwide conspiracy, no mention of George Soros nefariously funding climate research, no grand plan to ‘get rid of the MWP’, no admission that global warming is a hoax, no evidence of the falsifying of data, and no ‘marching orders’ from our socialist/communist/vegetarian overlords.
You get the feeling that this comes as something of a relief.
Instead, there is a peek into how scientists actually interact and the conflicts show that the community is a far cry from the monolith that is sometimes imagined.
Or the monolith-like consensus that is routinely presented … by the “community”. These boys ain’t happy.

UPDATE II. James Delingpole:
If you own any shares in alternative energy companies I should start dumping them NOW. The conspiracy behind the Anthropogenic Global Warming myth (aka AGW; aka ManBearPig) has been suddenly, brutally and quite deliciously exposed …
UPDATE III. Nic in comments: “After the leaking of the emails, exactly who are the deniers now?”
===
AUSTRALIANS AFRAID
Tim Blair
Our Prime Minister is an idiot, as Clive Hamilton reports:
Kevin Rudd says the heatwave is attributable to global warming. Good that he is willing to call it.
Global warming evidently thinks locally. It failed to do so in the US during October, however (via Roger B.). And in Canada, reader Erik F. observes that “Whistler is having the global warmiest November ever! Exactly as the experts and their infallible models predicted." Meanwhile, Hamilton has launched his political career behind a truly mighty slogan – “Like many Australians, I’m afraid”.

Higgins Campaign Launch - Speech by Dr. Clive Hamilton from Clive Hamilton on Vimeo.


Higgins Campaign Launch - Speech by Dr. Clive Hamilton from Clive Hamilton on Vimeo.
===
AIM ACHIEVED
Tim Blair
Starving-for-Gaia white boy Paul Connor puts in his best performance yet:

Incredibly, the planet is obviously listening to Australia’s Slimming Shady:
Global warming appears to have stalled. Climatologists are puzzled as to why average global temperatures have stopped rising over the last 10 years. Some attribute the trend to a lack of sunspots, while others explain it through ocean currents …

(Mojib) Latif, one of Germany’s best-known climatologists, says that the temperature curve has reached a plateau. “There can be no argument about that,” he says. “We have to face that fact.”
Dial a pizza, Paul. And ask for extra yo; you’ve earned it.
===
DIVERSITY INCLUDES STUPID
Tim Blair
Fort Hood murderer Major Nidal Malik Hasan is the giving type:
Investigators also found that Hasan donated $20,000 to $30,000 a year to overseas Islamic “charities.” As an Army major, his yearly salary, including housing and food allowances, was approximately $92,000. A number of Islamic charities have been identified by U.S. authorities as conduits to terror groups.
Put aside his “charity” work and marvel instead at Hasan’s career success, achieved despite notable uselessness:
One of Hasan’s commanding officers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Lieutenant Colonel Melanie Guerrero, told investigators she had considered failing him as an intern but “decided to allow him to pass since he was going into psychiatry and would not be doing any real patient care.”
Just consider that for a second. OK.
Guerrero told ABC News his performance problems stemmed from his lack of competence in the intensive care unit, including problems with recommending the proper medications or coming up with the right kind of patient treatment plan.
If Hasan beats his murder rap, he’s due for a promotion.
===
Spot the real champion
Andrew Bolt
Against Thierry Henry - who delberately handled the ball to give France a cheat’s victory over Ireland - there’s Paolo Di Canio. Choose which is the greater sportsman.
===
How to search inside the warmist conspiracy
Andrew Bolt
Want to check the emails of this astonishing global warming conspiracy? Find out what your favorite alarmist was truly up to by using this handy search function: http://www.anelegantchaos.org/cru/emails.php?eid=154

Feel free to post results to me right here. Tens of thousands of readers around the world would like to share what you find.

UPDATE

The searchable link was created by reader anelegantchaos, who contributes in comments below. Please thank him.

UPDATE 2

A brilliant quick summary of what’s been discovered so far by Bishop Hill. It’s astonishing: massaging of data, hounding out of sceptical editors, fudging of figures, collusion, tax avoidance, possible criminal destruction of data under FOI request, refusal to submit data to examination, gloating over a sceptic’s death, admissions of using “tricks” to massage graphs, private admissions of doubts in the warming theory they actually preach ....

UPDATE 3

The New York Times covers the leak, and rushes - very prematurely - to assure readers that the evidence for man-made warming is so strong that this shouldn’t matter. The piece is poor, but, for the NYT, still some kind of admission of dirty deeds done.

UPDATE 4

A straight but too-brief report from The Times. I suspect this is a story that newspapers should not entrust to their environment reports. The Daily Mail goes in harder, more like a real newspaper, focussing on the refusal to release data and the alleged massaging of data. The Washington Post’s report discusses collusion and dirty tricks.
===
The warmist conspiracy: the emails that most damn Jones
Andrew Bolt
These are the emails that should have Professor Phil Jones most worried about his future.

Jones, head of the CRU unit whose emails were leaked, has been under most fire so far over one email in particular in which he boasted of using a ‘“trick" to “hide the decline” that would have otherwise spoiled his graph showing temperatures soaring ever-upward.

But far more serious - at least in a legal sense - may be his apparent boasting of destroying data to stop sceptics from checking this alarmist work. If, as some emails suggest, he destroyed it to thwart FOI requests from Professor Ross McKitrick and Steve McIntyre, who’d already exposed as fake the Michael Mann “hockey stick”, Jones, one of the most active of the IPCC lead authors, could even face criminal charges.

(Note: in saying that, I should add that these emails may simply be poorly worded, out of context or even altered by the whistleblower who leaked them. Jones may also not knowingly have done anything wrong, and there is no proof that he did anything against the law. UPDATE: Several updates on Jones below, including his “selfish” wish to see global warming “regardless of the consequences” just to be proved right.)

Whether laws were broken or not, the emails prove beyond doubt how resistant Jones and his colleagues were to having their work properly scrutinised by anyone not of their “team”. No wonder, perhaps, when the documents reveal Jones has so far attracted $25 million in grants.)

The most damning emails on this point are the following, starting with 1107454306.txt, in which Jones refers to MM - McIntyre and McKitrick (bold added):
At 09:41 AM 2/2/2005, Phil Jones wrote:

Mike, I presume congratulations are in order - so congrats etc !

Just sent loads of station data to Scott. Make sure he documents everything better this time ! And don’t leave stuff lying around on ftp sites - you never know who is trawling them. The two MMs have been after the CRU station data for years. 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. Does your similar act in the US force you to respond to enquiries within 20 days? - our does ! The UK works on precedents, so the first request will test it.We also have a data protection act, which I will hide behind. Tom Wigley has sent me a worried email when he heard about it - thought people could ask him for his model code. He has retired officially from UEA so he can hide behind that. IPR should be relevant here, but I can see me getting into an argument with someone at UEA who’ll say we must adhere to it !
Jones admits he was warned by his own university against deleting data subjected to an FOI request from McIntyre - or anyone:
From: Phil Jones

To: santer1@XXXX

Subject: Re: A quick question

Date: Wed Dec 10 10:14:10 2008

Ben,

Haven’t got a reply from the FOI person here at UEA. So I’m not entirely confident the numbers are correct. One way of checking would be to look on CA, but I’m not doing that. I did get an email from the FOI person here early yesterday to tell me I shouldn’t be deleting emails - unless this was ‘normal’ deleting to keep emails manageable! McIntyre hasn’t paid his £10, so nothing looks likely to happen re his Data Protection Act email.

Anyway requests have been of three types - observational data, paleo data and who made IPCC changes and why. Keith has got all the latter - and there have been at least 4. We made Susan aware of these - all came from David Holland. According to the FOI Commissioner’s Office, IPCC is an international organization, so is above any national FOI. Even if UEA holds anything about IPCC, we are not obliged to pass it on, unless it has anything to do with our core business - and it doesn’t! I’m sounding like Sir Humphrey here!
Makes you wonder very strongly what Jones is trying to hide, doesn’t it? Also makes you laugh all over again at his claim once that the data being sought had, sadly, been ... um, lost.

In1212063122.txtm, Jones urges another colleague, Michael “Hockey Stick”, Mann, to join in the deleting - at least of emails about the IPCC’s controversial ARA report on man-made warming which Jones co-authored, and which claimed warming was “unequivocal” and “most likely” caused by humans:
From: Phil Jones To: “Michael E. Mann”
Subject: IPCC & FOI
Date: Thu May 29 11:04:11 2008

Mike,

Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4?

Keith will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment - minor family crisis.

Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t have his new email address.

We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.

I see that CA claim they discovered the 1945 problem in the Nature paper!!

Cheers

Phil:
For years Jones has made clear his determination to keep crucial data from the eyes of sceptics:
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Do try this at home, instead, if you must
Andrew Bolt
Nothing to do with his Parliamentary duties, of course, other than that the sex involved one of Parliament’s barmaids in his Parliamentary office:
A FORMER Parliament House barmaid has gone public with claims of a sexual relationship with South Australian Premier Mike Rann.

In a paid interview with the Seven Network’s Sunday Night program, to be aired tomorrow night, Michelle Chantelois said she had sex with Mr Rann in his Parliament House office on several occasions when parliament was sitting.. A spokesman for the Premier last night flatly rejected the claims of a sexual relationship, adding Mr Rann was very concerned for his family.
What, then or now?
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The incredible shrinking president
Andrew Bolt
No hope and no change but for the worse:
Gallup Daily tracking from Nov. 17-19 shows President Barack Obama’s job approval slipping to 49% for the first time in his presidency. Among post-World War II presidents, only Gerald Ford, Bill Clinton, and Ronald Reagan dropped below the symbolic majority approval level faster than Obama did.
Really, a man’s first job shouldn’t be the presidency of the United States.

UPDATE

MSNBC gives shoppers the third degree for daring to buy a book by Sarah Palin:

Did MSNBC force buyers of Barack Obama’s books to sit a test on constitutional law and political history, and inform them that the author was bitter and conflicted?
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Checking sick Rudd’s temperature
Andrew Bolt
The Australian reports on an another disgraceful fraud on the public:
KEVIN Rudd has seized on high temperatures across southeast Australia this week as proof of climate change and the need for the opposition to back his proposed carbon emissions trading system.,,,

“I presume the interjecting members over there - the climate change sceptics up the back and the absolute deniers in the centre over there - would say all of these are merely unhappy coincidences,” Mr Rudd said.
In fact, says Associate Professor Stewart Franks in his latest research, recent high temperatures in some states are caused not by global warming, but the failure of rains - which lower temperatures throgh evaporation of ground moisture.

Even then, most states recorded their highest temperatures between 1972 and 1939 - and even the more recent records come only after ruling out as possibily inaccurate still higher temperatures recorded in the 19th century:
South Australia’s highest temperature was recorded in 1960.

New South Wales’ highest temperature was recorded in 1939

Victoria’s highest temperature was recorded in 2009 , but only after the Bureau of Meteorology suggested the record long held to be set in Mildura in 1896 was “likely” a bit lower.

Western Australia’s highest temperature was recorded in 2008 , but only after researchers cast doubt on the reliability of the highest recorded temperature - in 1889.

Queensland’s highest temperature was recorded in 1972.

Northern Territory’s highest temperature was recorded in 1960.

Tasmania’s highest temperature was recorded in 2009.
Hot here, yes, but in the rest of the world this year there has been record cold in the US, record snows in China, record early start to Europe’s ski season and record cold in New Zealand.

Which shows what a fraud - or a lie - it is to claim that the weather at any one spot is proof of the temperature of the globe.

If you really want to know if global warming is happening, then you must measure the temperature of the globe - and that shows unequivocally that it stopped warming almost a decade ago:
“At present, however, the warming is taking a break,” confirms meteorologist Mojib Latif of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences in the northern German city of Kiel. Latif, one of Germany’s best-known climatologists, says that the temperature curve has reached a plateau. “There can be no argument about that,” he says. “We have to face that fact.” ,,,

“It cannot be denied that this is one of the hottest issues in the scientific community,” says Jochem Marotzke, director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg. “We don’t really know why this stagnation is taking place at this point.”
See for yourself:

And in all this we have not even discussed what Kevin Rudd falsely takes for granted - that any warming until 2001 was indeed caused by man.

In summary: Rudd lies again. He is indeed the leader of the most deceitful government in my memory.

UPDATE

Laurie Oakes proves the even the most senior journalists deal not in truth but perception:
Whether or not global warming is responsible for our current weather hardly matters. In politics, as everyone knows, perceptions are everything…

It’s not hard to imagine the response Minchin would have got if he’d tried to sell his “no need for action” line to mothers of young children in Adelaide as the temperature hit 42C the other day.
Do you know to whom the truth about global warming’s role should matter, Laurie? To you and anyone else dealing with the wisdom of crippling an economy on a mad plan that cannot stop a warming that may well have stopped already.

If you’re not interested in the truth, then do not speak at all. And do not try to hound out of Parliament the few who still dare to speak for evidence and for reason.
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The global warmist conspiracy - and the Australian link
Andrew Bolt
The leaked emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit indicate an astonishing conspiracy of the world’s leading warmist scientists, involving collusion, rigged evidence, suppression of dissent, the possibly illegal destruction of evidence under FOI request, and the smearing of sceptical scientists.

(To the BBC, however, it’s just about naughty hackers - not whistleblowers. To the Guardian, it’s about poor scientists being frustrated by the “intense scrutiny”, with the celebration of the death of mild-mannered sceptic John Daly being scientists ”reacting badly to the personal attacks [from sceptics]”.)

I’ve published some of the most extraordinary of the emails so far, but now there’s also an Australian link which shows just how closely activists and these scientists, as well as possibly the CSIRO, worked together to present the most alarmist scenarios. Here’s the 0933255789.txt, from Adam Markham, head of the Clean Cool Air Planet, which sells global warming “solutions”, to Mike Hulme, Professor of Climate Change at the University of East Anglia and founding director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, who actually seems to have had second thoughts about the “consensus” in the decade since he received this email :
From: Adam Markham
To: m.hulme@XXXX, n.sheard@XXXX
Subject: WWF Australia
Date: Thu, 29 Jul 1999 09:43:09 -0400
Cc: mrae@XXXX

Hi Mike,

I’m sure you will get some comments direct from Mike Rae in WWF Australia, but I wanted to pass on the gist of what they’ve said to me so far.

They are worried that this may present a slightly more conservative approach to the risks than they are hearing from CSIRO. In particular, they would like to see the section on variability and extreme events beefed up if possible. They regard an increased likelihood of even 50% of drought or extreme weather as a significant risk. Drought is also a particularly important issue for Australia, as are tropical storms.

I guess the bottom line is that if they are going to go with a big public splash on this they need something that will get good support from CSIRO scientists (who will certainly be asked to comment by the press).

One paper they referred me to, which you probably know well is: “The Question of Significance” by Barrie in Nature Vol 397, 25 Feb 1999, p 657

Let me know what you think. Adam
Again. while it seems that many of the emails (download here) are genuine, it may still be possible that among them are fakes inserted to discredit sceptics. Unlikely now, but bear that in mind. For more on this apparent scandal, go to Watts Up With That, Climate Audit and Lucia’s The Blackboard.

Meanwhile, the head of the Climatic Research Unit, Phil Jones, confirms the emails were hacked from his centre and appear to be genuine. He was asked about the now infamous email he wrote in which he’d boasted he’d tried to “hide the decline” in temperatures through a statistical “trick” he’d learned from Michael Mann, author of the now discredited “hockey stick”:
TGIF asked Jones about the controversial email discussing hiding “the decline”, and Jones explained he was not trying to mislead.

“No, that’s completely wrong. In the sense that they’re talking about two different things here. They’re talking about the instrumental data which is unaltered – but they’re talking about proxy data going further back in time, a thousand years, and it’s just about how you add on the last few years, because when you get proxy data you sample things like tree rings and ice cores, and they don’t always have the last few years. So one way is to add on the instrumental data for the last few years.”

Jones told TGIF he had no idea what me meant by using the words “hide the decline”.

“That was an email from ten years ago. Can you remember the exact context of what you wrote ten years ago?”
Against that, here’s another Jones email in which the CRU boss actually hopes the world is warming disastrously - against his colleagues’ real predictions:
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Pope Rudd claims Galileo was no sceptic
Andrew Bolt
Australian Climate Madness asks how Kevin Rudd could be so stupid as to cite Galileo as evidence of the evil of scepticism. Here’s Rudd:
I’m constantly stunned. It’s as if we’re back into the trial of Galileo or something and they’re simply arguing somehow that the science is fiction and that they alone in their own prejudiced universe occupy fact. “I mean, we are back almost in a medieval court.
With Rudd, of course, as the heretic-damning Pope.

Meanwhile, Pope Rudd may have to cut the funding of another sceptic, Associate Professor Stewart Franks, whose new study finds that the warming in Australia is caused not by global warming, but by drought:

Drought causes higher temperatures, because there’s less evaporation going on to cool the land.
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Wong saves half a million houses in a week
Andrew Bolt
Kevin Rudd on November 7 predicts property losses by 2100, thanks to unchecked global warming:
Storm surges and rising sea levels – putting at risk over 700,000 homes and businesses around our coastlines…
Penny Wong on November 14 predicts property losses by 2100, thanks to unchecked global warming:
Almost 250,000 homes, now worth up to $63 billion, will be “at risk of inundation” by the end of the century, under “worst-case but plausible” predictions of rising sea levels.
Hey, how did more than 450,000 properties manage to get saved from rising seas in just one week? Are Rudd and Wong simply pulling figures out of thin air, or are the seas not rising so fast any more?

I kind of opt for the “l” word again, and repeat: this is the most dishonest government in my memory.
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EU president wants Copenhagen to give us “global management”
Andrew Bolt
Sure, this talk of the warmists at Copenhagen planning a new “world government” is crazy. I just wish the warmists wouldn’t talk of it themselves. Take the new and first president of the European Union, Herman Van Rompuy:

The Climate Conference in Copenhagen is another step forward towards the global management of our planet…

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