Monbiot: ‘No one has been as badly let down by the revelations in these emails as those of us who have championed the science’
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‘Total trainwreck’: Phil Jones has ‘disappeared off the face of the Earth’
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Monbiot: ClimateGate ‘inflicting continuing damage to climate science’
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The New ‘Deniers’: UK Greenie George Monbiot: ‘Most of the environmentalists I know have gone into denial’ — ‘Pretending the climate email leak isn’t a crisis won’t make it go away’
Selected excerpts of George Monbiot’s November 25, 2009 article in the UK Guardian are reproduced below.
George Monbiot Excerpt: I have seldom felt so alone. Confronted with crisis, most of the environmentalists I know have gone into denial. The emails hacked from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, they say, are a storm in a tea cup, no big deal, exaggerated out of all recognition. It is true that climate change deniers have made wild claims which the material can’t possibly support (the end of global warming, the death of climate science). But it is also true that the emails are very damaging. The response of the greens and most of the scientists I know is profoundly ironic, as we spend so much of our time confronting other people’s denial. Pretending that this isn’t a real crisis isn’t going to make it go away. Nor is an attempt to justify the emails with technicalities. We’ll be able to get past this only by grasping reality, apologising where appropriate and demonstrating that it cannot happen again. […]
One of the most damaging emails was sent by the head of the climatic research unit, Phil Jones. He wrote “I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!” […] Even so, his message looks awful. It gives the impression of confirming a potent meme circulated by those who campaign against taking action on climate change: that the IPCC process is biased. However good the detailed explanations may be, most people aren’t going to follow or understand them. Jones’s statement, on the other hand, is stark and easy to grasp. […]
If you take the wording literally, in one case he appears to be suggesting that emails subject to a request be deleted, which means that he seems to be advocating potentially criminal activity. Even if no other message had been hacked, this would be sufficient to ensure his resignation as head of the unit. I feel desperately sorry for …
‘You should be angry. Very angry’ says Aussie Geologist Plimer on ClimateGate: ‘This behavior is that of criminals and all the data from UK Hadley Centre and US NASA GISS must now be rejected
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Reality Check: Only 60 UN experts ‘explicitly supported the claim made by the IPCC that global warming represents a threat to the planet’
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Move right along, nothing to see here: Obama climate czar Browner says hacked e-mails don’t change anything
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More Woes: Climatologist Pielke Sr.: ‘An Erroneous Statement Made By Phil Jones To The Media’ — If quoted correctly, ‘Jones is continuing to feed misleading information to the public’
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CRU’s Source Code: Climategate Uncovered
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Climate Fear Promoters Dismiss ClimateGate: ‘Wingnuts take some lines out of context, claim they show a cover-up, cry conspiracy’
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