The summit on so-called “climate change” kicked-off in Copenhagen despite damning evidence of fraud uncovered by computer hackers a short two weeks ago. The controversy involves 13-years worth of e-mail exchanges between members of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU), which has compiled climate data for use in computer models predicting Nostradamus-like end-of-the-world catastrophes, and like-minded climatologists around the world. Not to worry, the U.N. Environment Program director Achim Steiner tells us to pay no attention to the climate data manipulators behind the curtain:
“It doesn’t change anything in the…conclusions — it’s only one line of evidence out of dozens of lines of evidence. This is not ‘climategate’, it’s ‘hackergate.’ Let’s not forget the word ‘gate’ refers to a place where data was stolen by people who were paid to do so. So the media should direct its investigations into that.”
According to the Times of London, Britain’s Met Office (the National Weather Service of the United Kingdom), “will release temperature data from 1,000 weather stations around the world in an attempt to shore up public confidence in its statements about the dangers of climate change. The raw data will be impossible for any non-expert to interpret.” Gee, now we can play along by manipulating the data as well.
The New York Times assures us that evidence of scientific fraud shouldn’t stand in the way of equally fraudulent solutions to climate change:
“It is important that scientists behave professionally and openly. It is also important not to let one set of purloined e-mail messages undermine the science and the clear case for action, in Washington and in Copenhagen.”
An editorial in the journal Nature attempted to explain away an especially incriminating e-mail detailing one climatetologist’s “trick” to push data into conforming with his predetermined outcome:
“One e-mail talked of displaying the data using a ‘trick’ — slang for a clever (and legitimate) technique, but a word that denialists have used to accuse the researchers of fabricating their results. It is Nature’s policy to investigate such matters if there are substantive reasons for concern, but nothing we have seen so far in the e-mails qualifies.”
Or, to paraphrase that nihilistic wordsmith Bill Clinton, “it depends what your definition of the word ‘trick’ is.”
Deconstructing words and their definitions has been a trusted tool of social revolutionaries. Abortion was twisted into a woman’s “right to privacy,” tax hikes are re-defined as “investments,” and unsustainable entitlement programs are “cost-cutting reforms.” If words and their meanings are as transitory as, say, the weather, the public shouldn’t be blamed for its plummeting confidence in the ravings of global warming advocates. If nothing is true, how can we be certain of anything, including climate data?
-- Mr. Curmudgeon
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