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This weekly newsletter, focused on environmental issues, highlights relevant analysis done by the John Locke Foundation and other think tanks, as well as items in the news.

1. Climategate II: a summation to this point

During the last two weeks (see here and here) in this space we reported that thousands of new emails have been leaked from the alarmist community at Britain’s East Anglia University Climate Research Unit (CRU). This is the community of scientists whose views on global warming have dominated the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports. On the subject of global warming, they are the most influential scientists in the world. These new emails are proving to be a gold mine for those of us who have been suspicious of the IPCC process and the claims it has generated in the various IPCC reports.

Below is a series of quotes. They are all from leaked emails written by the top echelon of scientists in the IPCC process. They are collected from an article by Jim Lacey, Professor of Strategic Studies at the Marine Corps War College. It is an important article and should be read.

The two take-away conclusions from these quotes are (1) that the IPCC reports are not about the views of thousands of scientists but instead reflect a process that is tightly controlled by a few politically well-connected scientists who tolerate no dissent, and (2) that even these scientists had serious doubts about the science they were promulgating, but they have been unwilling to express those doubts publically because they didn’t want to jeopardize the broader political agenda.

Here’s what the top scientists in the global warming alarmist camp have been saying to each other in private.

  • "It seems that a few people have a very strong say, and no matter how much talking goes on beforehand, the big decisions are made at the eleventh hour by a select core group."
  • "I am not convinced that the ‘truth’ is always worth reaching if it is at the cost of damaged personal relationships."

  • "The trick may be to decide on the main message and use that to guide what’s included and what is left out."

  • "I also think the science is being manipulated to put a political spin on it, which for all our sakes might not be too clever in the long run."

  • "Observations do not show rising temperatures throughout the tropical troposphere unless you accept one single study and approach and discount a wealth of others. This is just downright dangerous. We need to communicate the uncertainty and be honest."

  • "The figure you sent is very deceptive . . . there have been a number of dishonest presentations of model results by individual authors and by IPCC [the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change]."

  • "I find myself in the strange position of being very skeptical of the quality of all present reconstructions, yet sounding like a pro greenhouse zealot here!"

  • "the basic problem is that all of the models are wrong." (Note: This quote is from Phil Jones, who was at the time the head scientist at the CRU.)

  • "I can’t overstate the HUGE amount of political interest in the project as a message that the Government can give on climate change to help them tell their story. They want the story to be a very strong one and don’t want to be made to look foolish."

  • "Having established scale and urgency, the political challenge is then to turn this from an argument about the cost of cutting emissions — bad politics — to one about the value of a stable climate — much better politics. . . . the most valuable thing to do is to tell the story about abrupt change as vividly as possible."

Of course, they were worried that these emails might eventually get out because of Freedom of Information Act requests.

  • "I’ve been told that IPCC is above national FOI [Freedom of Information] Acts. One way to cover yourself and all those working in AR5 would be to delete all emails at the end of the process." (Another message from Phil Jones to his colleagues.)

And suggesting that our own Department of Energy has been in on this fraud:

  • "Any work we have done in the past is done on the back of the research grants we get — and has to be well hidden. I’ve discussed this with the main funder (US Dept. of Energy) in the past and they are happy about not releasing the original station data."

As I concluded this discussion last week, stay tuned. I’m sure there will be more to come.

2. Locke Foundation sponsored wind power workshops in Wilmington and Carteret

On Monday and Tuesday of this week, the John Locke Foundation sponsored workshops on the science and economics of wind power in two coastal communities: Wilmington, on the campus of UNC-Wilmington, where there were over 100 people in attendance, and Morehead City, where the number was around 60.

At UNCW the program was met with protesters who, while disrupting the event by marching in front of the panel holding protest signs and asking irrelevant questions, were apparently unable to discover a single fact presented in the program that they could challenge.

The entire event can be viewed here.

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