Virginian Pilot Fudges the Facts

When I read the headline, E-Mails undermine ethics, not science I knew that the editors at the Virginian Pilot were still attending the Church of Warming™ and were going with the State Controlled Media™ story line, i.e. that the Climategate memos showed bad manners but not bad science.

As evidence, they cite the AP, who assigned six people to read the CRU memos and provide cover for this theory.

Examinations of the e-mails by dispassionate parties - including The Associated Press - have revealed scientists fed up with constant attacks by skeptics, a frustration that led to petty revenge or worse.

Unfortunately for the Warmers, the controversy has allowed actual scientist to examine some of the math behind the Warmer theorists and we find that the data and the scary reports predicting the heat death of the planet do not coincide.

So contrary to the Pilot's assertion:

That's not to suggest the scientists are without sin, but it's not the sin that skeptics would ascribe to them: ginning up data to support a political point of view.

... that's exactly what the Warmers have done.

At Powerline Adjusting the Data we find a report by computer scientist Charlie Martin (keep in mind that the entire global warming argument is built on computer models designed to "prove" that we are in an unprecedented warming period and that man, by burning fossil fuels, is to blame):

Climategate opened the floodgates, and the faux-scientific edifice of global warming is being swept away.

It is important to understand that none of the charts and graphs that purport to depict the Earth's climate ever show you raw data. None. Always, the data are adjusted; and always, the data for the late 20th century are adjusted upward. Computer scientist Charlie Martin cites an example:

The Climategate files forced the UK Meteorological Office to make at least part of their raw data available. One of the first was Willis Eschenbach, at Watts Up With That. Read the whole discussion and also Eschenbach's answer to a critique published in the Economist for the details, but here is the "money shot":

In this figure, the blue line is the raw data. The black line is the adjustments that had been applied to that data, and the red line is the result following the adjustments.

That's right--the purported warming is all in the way the data are adjusted. This happens over and over again. Are these adjustments based on science or politics? If you've read the East Anglia emails, as I have, the question answers itself. The global warming project is political to its core, and lacks any scientific integrity.

If the Pilot's editors had bothered to do their homework instead of swallowing the AP story they would have found this in the original essay by Charlie Martin

The Climategate emails, however, make up only five percent of the Climategate files. The other 95 percent, the programs and data and documents, are where the real story is hiding. That story has begun to come out, in several independent analyses of the data we have, using hints from the emails and from other files and raw data that is available from other sources.

Like an army in retreat, realizing perhaps that their initial fall-back position may not stop the opponents, the Pilot editors change the debate. It’s not the first time this was tried and by now it’s getting a little dog-eared, like Obama’s ever-ready excuse that whatever’s wrong is Bush’s fault. Note how Global Warming™ morphed into Climate Change™. As the Pilot’s editors realize that the science behind global warming is crumbling, we are now told the reason to abandon carbon based energy is for a cleaner environment.

Back to the Pilot editorial:

If man - and specifically his use of carbon-based fuel - is causing the planet to warm by releasing greenhouse gases that trap the heat of the sun, the alternative is to find fuels that don't have to be burned. Using nuclear power or renewable energy from the sun, wind or tides produces no greenhouse gases and so won't warm the planet.

But those same energy sources used wisely also emit no pollution - no mercury that causes brain damage; no smog that makes breathing difficult; no nitrogen that chokes the Chesapeake Bay; no arsenic, cadmium or lead.

Even if the planet isn't warming, reducing the amount of mercury, smog and nitrogen in the environment is a worthy goal. Perhaps it's even one everyone - skeptic and believer - can agree on.

It should be noted that the Pilot is two faced on these issues. It has editorialized against the mining of uranium here in Virginia (the source of fuel to run those nuclear plants), the positioning of wind farms, and you can be sure that if “tide power” is ever proposed they will support the concept but never the actual implementation. I know these people and can tell you what they are going to say before they say it.

Note the ultimate fall-back position:

Even if the planet isn't warming...

(“we have been force feeding you a scientific fraud, but never mind”). When the reasons change but the solution remains the same, you know you’re not being dealt with honestly.