A tale of two stories about the deletion of e-mails from Phil Jones, leading climate 'scientist' from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia, UK.

Phil Jones, Dec 3, 2008: Hmmm...

How did relying on so-called Blue Dogs and political Moderates work out for us on health care so far?  Are we closer or further away from passing this monstrosity?

Senator Lieberman says he'll vote "No" on the health care bill if there is a public option attached.  Really?  Too bad he already voted "Yes".  Don't give me that crap about this just being a vote on procedure, etc.  A vote for this monstrosity at any stage of the 'debate' is a vote for passage.  You either disagree with something or you don't.  Lieberman will vote "No"?  Too late.

Here's another one.  A so-called 'Moderate' who 1) answers a question by not answering it, 2) Uses a faulty analogy to justify his support and 3) doesn't have a big problem with you going to jail if you don't come on board with government health care.  'Moderate'?

Senator Landrieu from Louisiana showed her 'moderation' by demonstrating to the entire country she is a $300M mattress back.

A Democrat 'Moderate' is a wolf in sheeps clothing.  For that matter, so is a Republican 'Moderate'. 

How 'Moderate' is Senator John McCain's stance on man-made global warming?  Does he support cap-and-trade or not?  Was he "for it before he was against it"?

How 'Moderate' is Senator Lindsey Graham's stance on immigration?  Does he support 'comprehensive immigration reform' or not?

'Moderates' are the kind of people who never know where they want to go for lunch or dinner.  Ask them where do they want to go, they say "I don't care."  But make a suggestion, then it's "I don't want that." 

Driver:  "Well, what are you in the mood for?" 

'Moderate':  "I don't care, you pick."

Driver:  "OK, we're going to eat at Joe's."

'Moderate':  "We can't go there!  Their stuff stinks!"

Driver:  "Then you tell me where to go!"

'Moderate':  "I don't know...what does everybody else want?"

Ticks me off...

From JunkScience.com:

It has become fairly obvious this archive was not "hacked" or "stolen" but rather is a file assembled by CRU staff in preparation for complying with a freedom of information request. Whether it was carelessly left in a publicly accessible portion of the CRU computer system or was "leaked" by staff believing the FOIA request was improperly rejected may never be known but is not really that important. What is important is that:

1. There was no "security breach" at CRU that "stole" these files
2. The files appear genuine and to have been prepared by CRU staff, not edited by malicious hackers
3. The information was accidentally or deliberately released by CRU staff
4. Selection criteria appears to be compliance with an or several FOIA request(s)

More:

The files appear to have been accumulat[ed] in preparation of a possible court-ordered FOIA release on a server to which the public had access. It is not "hacking" to access files that are publicly available. It may have been unwise/improper to store the file on a public server, but that is a different matter. There is no evidence that anything illegal occurred in the release of the files.

The hacking allegation, of course, was a terrific distraction device.

Here is video (a few days old) with some initial speculation about the e-mails as well as speculation this may have come from a whistle-blower.

While it is possible a hacker did indeed 'hack' the CRU, the CRU has offered no evidence of this.  There has been no corroboration that the CRU has involved the authorities in any investigation - other than an internal CRU review of security procedures.  It is also entirely possible these files were compiled as Mr. Malloy states above, which belies the media meme these files were "stolen" or obtained "illegally".

Andrew Revkin, global warming propagandist for the New York Times, appears to still be covering for the 'Climategate' scandal.  He is still reporting alarmist 'climate change' stories, while conveniently ignoring the scandal from the e-mails from East Anglia University, UK.

On Friday the New York Times‘ house global warming author Andy Revkin, reporting on the breaking (Revkin would prefer it be braking) global Climategate scandal, said repercussions “continue to unfold” and that “there’s much more to explore, of course.”

So what has Sherlock Andy, Warmth Detector focused on since then? Yesterday he noted a study on Antarctic ice loss that comes with “substantial uncertainty” and a “CO2toon,” and then he elevated from Reader Comments at his original post the views of University of Chicago climatologist Raymond Pierrehumbert, who bemoaned the CRU “cyber-attack.”

Mr. Revkin initially reported on the CRU incident last Friday, but has been silent since.  His initial reporting also wasn't in an objective form, defending the CRU scientists for what occurred.  Interestingly, Mr. Revkin is a subject himself in some of the e-mail exchanges - exchanges in which CRU scientist were speaking to an obvious supporter of their global warming alarmist viewpoint - while discussing avenues to suppress the 'skeptic' viewpoint in the press as a whole.  As Steve Milloy as JunkScience.com says, perhaps Mr. Revkin should recuse himself from any reporting on the CRU incident, being a party to it himsaelf

This however doesn't excuse the Times from doing ANY reporting on the CRU incident, nor the continued alarmist reporting of Mr. Revkin on other 'climate' issues.  Until such time as the full impact of the CRU document release and Mr. Revkin's part in it is know, Mr. Revkin should refrain from ANY climate reporting.  His obvious bias in favor of the warming viewpoint clouds any attempt at objective reporting and calls into question the source he uses for any of his climate stories

George Monbiot, one of the fiercest propagandists of the 'global warming' faith, realizes he may have been wrong (at least partially), should have been more skeptical (on climate 'science') as a journalist:

It’s no use pretending that this isn’t a major blow. The emails extracted by a hacker from the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia could scarcely be more damaging(1). I am now convinced that they are genuine, and I’m dismayed and deeply shaken by them.

Yes, the messages were obtained illegally. Yes, all of us say things in emails that would be excruciating if made public. Yes, some of the comments have been taken out of context. But there are some messages that require no spin to make them look bad. There appears to be evidence here of attempts to prevent scientific data from being released(2,3), and even to destroy material that was subject to a freedom of information request(4).

Worse still, some of the emails suggest efforts to prevent the publication of work by climate sceptics(5,6), or to keep it out of a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(7). I believe that the head of the unit, Phil Jones, should now resign. Some of the data discussed in the emails should be re-analysed.

This is hardly a complete "Road to Damascus" moment for Mr. Monbiot but at least there is an admission from a longtime alarmist that these e-mails show a trend of negative behavior and bad science.  Mr. Monbiot is also man enough to admit this is bad for the 'consensus' and there should be "re-analysation" of the data.

Perhaps Katie Couric could pen a neat little diddy (like this one) addressing how the American press has also been overzealous in their fearmongering for the 'global warming' alarmist camp?  Also still waiting for Andrew Revkin of the New York Times to show at least the same measure of fortitude as Mr. Monbiot.

You can try  to spin the e-mails away.  But can you spin away programming code/notes showing apparent purposeful manipulation of climate data to show the pre-determined, global warming alarmist viewpoint?

There’s a file of code also in the collection of emails and documents from CRU. A commenter named Neal on climate audit writes:

People are talking about the emails being smoking guns but I find the remarks in the code and the code more of a smoking gun. The code is so hacked around to give predetermined results that it shows the bias of the coder. In other words make the code ignore inconvenient data to show what I want it to show.

Here is an example of one of the 'code notes' implanted in the computer code:

Uses “corrected” MXD – but shouldn’t usually

; plot past 1960 because these will be artificially adjusted to look closer to

; the real temperatures.

Perhaps the computer code is now being taken out of context?

From Watts Up With That:

You can claim an email you wrote years ago isn’t accurate saying it was “taken out of context”,  but a programmer making notes in the code does so that he/she can document what the code is actually doing at that stage, so that anyone who looks at it later can figure out why this function doesn’t plot past 1960. In this case, it is not allowing all of the temperature data to be plotted. Growing season data (summer months when the new tree rings are formed) past 1960 is thrown out because “these will be artificially adjusted to look closer to the real temperatures”, which implies some post processing routine.

Spin that, spin it to the moon if you want. I’ll believe programmer notes over the word of somebody who stands to gain from suggesting there’s nothing “untowards” about it.

Either the data tells the story of nature or it does not. Data that has been “artificially adjusted to look closer to the real temperatures” is false data, yielding a false result.

BTW, you won't find ANY of this information in the New York Times.

More here (with images of the computer code sections).

The New York Times refuses to print ANY of the controversial 'Climategate' e-mails or documents relating to the Climate Research Unit from East Anglia University in Great Britain.  Why?

The documents appear to have been acquired illegally and contain all manner of private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye, so they won’t be posted here.

Funny.  I seem to recall the Times never had compunction about printing material "never intended for the public eye" when they released classified military information in regards to the War on Terror a few years back.  In fact, a Times executive editor characterized the illegal release thusly:  "one man's breach of security is another man's public relations."

Perhaps the Time's Andrew Revkin is 'hesitant' to release any of the CRU information since he himself is implicated? 

This goes beyond mere hypocrisy, crossing the line into full-blown complicity in hiding the truth. 

I submit that if scientists like James Hansen and those from the CRU, the IPCC and activists like Al Gore had been honest, measured and objective from the start on climate science issues, there would be no need for collusion of this magnitude to hide or exaggerate anything.  It isn't the so-called 'Deniers' who have made this story what it is.  It is the biased and un-objective hijacking of true science by political ideologues and activists which have caused the trouble.  No one can now know how objective any of the science related to climate is with revelations exposed like those in the CRU e-mails.

Once again, we see that the story isn't about the truth.  It's about hiding the truth and attacking those asking the questions.

Not one mention in this AP article of the newly discovered e-mails showing global warming scientists colluding to commit fraud.

Here is a link to an AP article just one day ago mentioning the e-mails.

The tone of the newest AP article is alarmist in the extreme.  The whole story reads with every global warming talking point available.  Yet no mention what so ever of the damning CRU e-mails from last Friday.  Those e-mails show a pattern of peer intimidation, scientific elitism, fraud, hiding climate data, deleting climate data to keep it from FOIA requests and other shay dealings with the UN IPCC.  The very IPCC (United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) these scientists state in their e-mails they must "jive the science with the politics, since they don't always converge" (paraphrase).

Is the AP attempting to begin a convenient 'ignoring' of these newest revelations?  Are they purposefully playing the alarmist card to take attention away from other, inconvenient information?  After all, if the CRU e-mails pan out, how can anyone seriously consider any of the global warming alarmism from the last decade to be taken seriously? 

It's obvious the CRU scientists have placed ideology and politics above science.  Is the AP now doing the same thing?

Now are they coming for your pap smear?

Guidelines for getting annual mammograms have been recommended to be changed.  Now the same thing seems to be happening for pap smears.

Ironically, both sets of recommendations are being justified by a reduction in the amount of breast and cervical cancer over the past few decades.  I say ironically because one of the reasons these rates of cancers has gone down is due to increased screening for them.  Now new guidelines recommend fewer tests and more time between tests.

A pap smear test saved my wife's life.  It didn't prevent her from getting cancer, but it allowed early detection of the cancer.  Subsequent pap smears and other cancer screening resulted in early detection of other incidences of cervical cancer as well as uterine cancer.  The early screenings, following then established guidelines, resulted in my wife's cancer being discovered and treated before it had time to metastasize,

I find the following paragraph utterly amazing:

For that reason, she said changing the screening interval will not mean more cervical cancers will be missed. She said most deaths from cervical cancer in the United States happen in people who are screened infrequently, or not at all.

Like, um, every three years as your new 'guidelines' suggest?

I have never known a doctor to 'over-treat'.  I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but in my experience (and I have a lot) doctors simply go for the most conservative treatment options first (naturally barring some mega-revelation like a huge cancerous tumor just discovered).  When I was diagnosed with malignant melanoma in 1998, my doctors first instinct wasn't to send me right off for radiation and start me on a chemotherapy regimen.  A surgical excision was enough.

When my wife's first pap smear came back showing some "abnormalities", the doctors first instinct wasn't to go right for the hysterectomy.  She had the cells 'burnt' off.  This happened a few times.  Only after this line of treatment didn't really work, and actual cancer showed up were other lines of treatment taken.

I don't know if I buy the whole 'over-treatment' line used to justify these new guidelines.  I also find it just a little suspicious that these guidelines come now with the emphasis on nationalizing health care and the discussions on rationing care, favoring cost over care, etc.  Talk of 'Death Panels' and rationing don't seem so hyperbolic with these kinds of recommendations.

I fear that these recommendations, if adopted, will result in a return to the increase in the incidences of cancer and resultant cancer deaths down the road. 

The world of the 'global warming' alarmist has been rocked by the release of hacked e-mails from one of the premier climate science 'laboratories' - the East Anglia Climate Research Unit (CRU).  The e-mails (if they are all eventually confirmed as genuine, most are and there has been no refutation from CRU on the rest) show a definite strategy of fraud, deception, intimidation and falsification of climate data to enhance the warmist view on global warming and the suppression of 'skeptic' opinion.

The biggest spin so far is that addressing the substance of the e-mails is irrelevant since they were obtained through possible illegal means.  Some of the principles of the e-mails have also proffered that some of the language in some of the e-mails was "taken out of context".  While this is probably the case with some of the e-mails/language, it is really hard to excuse all of the supposed revelations through this defense.

While the e-mails and other documentation may have been gathered through 'hacking' and there may some legal recourse for the 'aggrieved' parties from CRU, the method of gathering the e-mails is a separate issue.  The information is out there.  If, as the e-mails tend to show, there has indeed been collusion to bolster the alarmist position on global warming, this issue must be addressed by the parties involved.  We'll see what develops.

The following is a summary of some of the information (with appropriate references) analyzed so far.

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• Phil Jones writes to University of Hull to try to stop sceptic Sonia Boehmer Christiansen using her Hull affiliation. Graham F Haughton of Hull University says its easier to push greenery there now SB-C has retired.(1256765544)
• Michael Mann discusses how to destroy a journal that has published sceptic papers.(1047388489)
• Tim Osborn discusses how data are truncated to stop an apparent cooling trend showing up in the results (0939154709). Analysis of impact here. Wow!
• Phil Jones describes the death of sceptic, John Daly, as “cheering news”.(1075403821)
• Phil Jones encourages colleagues to delete information subject to FoI request.(1212063122)
• Phil Jones says he has use Mann’s “Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series”…to hide the decline”. Real Climate says “hiding” was an unfortunate turn of phrase.(0942777075)
• Letter to The Times from climate scientists was drafted with the help of Greenpeace.(0872202064)
• Mann thinks he will contact BBC’s Richard Black to find out why another BBC journalist was allowed to publish a vaguely sceptical article.(1255352257)
• Kevin Trenberth says they can’t account for the lack of recent warming and that it is a travesty that they can’t.(1255352257)
• Tom Wigley says that Lindzen and Choi’s paper is crap.(1257532857)
• Tom Wigley says that von Storch is partly to blame for sceptic papers getting published at Climate Research. Says he encourages the publication of crap science. Says they should tell publisher that the journal is being used for misinformation. Says that whether this is true or not doesn’t matter. Says they need to get editorial board to resign. Says they need to get rid of von Storch too. (1051190249)
• Ben Santer says (presumably jokingly!) he’s “tempted, very tempted, to beat the crap” out of sceptic Pat Michaels. (1255100876)
• Mann tells Jones that it would be nice to ‘”contain” the putative Medieval Warm Period’. (1054736277)
• Tom Wigley tells Jones that the land warming since 1980 has been twice the ocean warming and that this might be used by sceptics as evidence for urban heat islands.(1257546975)
• Tom Wigley say that Keith Briffa has got himself into a mess over the Yamal chronology (although also says it’s insignificant. Wonders how Briffa explains McIntyre’s sensitivity test on Yamal and how he explains the use of a less-well replicated chronology over a better one. Wonders if he can. Says data withholding issue is hot potato, since many “good” scientists condemn it.(1254756944)
• Briffa is funding Russian dendro Shiyatov, who asks him to send money to personal bank account so as to avoid tax, thereby retaining money for research.(0826209667)
• Kevin Trenberth says climatologists are nowhere near knowing where the energy goes or what the effect of clouds is. Says nowhere balancing the energy budget. Geoengineering is not possible.(1255523796)
• Mann discusses tactics for screening and delaying postings at Real Climate.(1139521913)
• Tom Wigley discusses how to deal with the advent of FoI law in UK. Jones says use IPR argument to hold onto code. Says data is covered by agreements with outsiders and that CRU will be “hiding behind them”.(1106338806)
• Overpeck has no recollection of saying that he wanted to “get rid of the Medieval Warm Period”. Thinks he may have been quoted out of context.(1206628118)
• Mann launches RealClimate to the scientific community.(1102687002)
• Santer complaining about FoI requests from McIntyre. Says he expects support of Lawrence Livermore Lab management. Jones says that once support staff at CRU realised the kind of people the scientists were dealing with they became very supportive. Says the VC [vice chancellor] knows what is going on (in one case).(1228330629)
• Rob Wilson concerned about upsetting Mann in a manuscript. Says he needs to word things diplomatically.(1140554230)
• Briffa says he is sick to death of Mann claiming his reconstruction is tropical because it has a few poorly temp sensitive tropical proxies. Says he should regress these against something else like the “increasing trend of self-opinionated verbiage” he produces. Ed Cook agrees with problems.(1024334440)
• Overpeck tells Team to write emails as if they would be made public. Discussion of what to do with McIntyre finding an error in Kaufman paper. Kaufman’s admits error and wants to correct. Appears interested in Climate Audit findings.(1252164302)
• Jones calls Pielke Snr a prat.(1233249393)
• Santer says he will no longer publish in Royal Met Soc journals if they enforce intermediate data being made available. Jones has complained to head of Royal Met Soc about new editor of Weather [why?data?] and has threatened to resign from RMS.(1237496573)
• Reaction to McIntyre’s 2005 paper in GRL. Mann has challenged GRL editor-in-chief over the publication. Mann is concerned about the connections of the paper’s editor James Saiers with U Virginia [does he mean Pat Michaels?]. Tom Wigley says that if Saiers is a sceptic they should go through official GRL channels to get him ousted. (1106322460) [Note to readers - Saiers was subsequently ousted]
• Later on Mann refers to the leak at GRL being plugged.(1132094873)
• Jones says he’s found a way around releasing AR4 review comments to David Holland.(1210367056)
• Wigley says Keenan’s fraud accusation against Wang is correct. (1188557698)
• Jones calls for Wahl and Ammann to try to change the received date on their alleged refutation of McIntyre [presumably so it can get into AR4](1189722851)
• Mann tells Jones that he is on board and that they are working towards a common goal.(0926010576)
• Mann sends calibration residuals for MBH99 to Osborn. Says they are pretty red, and that they shouldn’t be passed on to others, this being the kind of dirty laundry they don’t want in the hands of those who might distort it.(1059664704)
• Prior to AR3 Briffa talks of pressure to produce a tidy picture of “apparent unprecedented warming in a thousand years or more in the proxy data”. [This appears to be the politics leading the science] Briffa says it was just as warm a thousand years ago.(0938018124)
• Jones says that UK climate organisations are coordinating themselves to resist FoI. They got advice from the Information Commissioner [!](1219239172)
• Mann tells Revkin that McIntyre is not to be trusted.(1254259645)
• Revkin quotes von Storch as saying it is time to toss the Hockey Stick . This back in 2004.(1096382684)
• Funkhouser says he’s pulled every trick up his sleeve to milk his Kyrgistan series. Doesn’t think it’s productive to juggle the chronology statistics any more than he has.(0843161829)
• Wigley discusses fixing an issue with sea surface temperatures in the context of making the results look both warmer but still plausible. (1254108338)
• Jones says he and Kevin will keep some papers out of the next IPCC report.(1089318616)
• Tom Wigley tells Mann that a figure Schmidt put together to refute Monckton is deceptive and that the match it shows of instrumental to model predictions is a fluke. Says there have been a number of dishonest presentations of model output by authors and IPCC.(1255553034)
• Grant Foster putting together a critical comment on a sceptic paper. Asks for help for names of possible reviewers. Jones replies with a list of people, telling Foster they know what to say about the paper and the comment without any prompting.(1249503274)
• David Parker discussing the possibility of changing the reference period for global temperature index. Thinks this shouldn’t be done because it confuses people and because it will make things look less warm.(1105019698)
• Briffa discusses an sceptic article review with Ed Cook. Says that confidentially he needs to put together a case to reject it (1054756929)
• Ben Santer, referring to McIntyre says he hopes Mr “I’m not entirely there in the head” will not be at the AGU.(1233249393)
• Jones tells Mann that he is sending station data. Says that if McIntyre requests it under FoI he will delete it rather than hand it over. Says he will hide behind data protection laws. Says Rutherford screwed up big time by creating an FTP directory for Osborn. Says Wigley worried he will have to release his model code. Also discuss AR4 draft. Mann says paleoclimate chapter will be contentious but that the author team has the right personalities to deal with sceptics.(1107454306)
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These e-mails seem to show a clear trend of celebrating a climate skeptics death, wrong data and practices, fixing the data, deleting data, wrongdoing, hiding information, peer-reviewer interference, and shady financial practices.  Is it really possible that all of this is simply "taken out of context"?  Statements like "I tried hard to balance the needs of the science with the IPCC, which were not always the same." can hardly be taken out of context when you read the entire e-mail.

What is really interesting about this whole story is the mainstream media, who up until now haven't worried about presenting climate stories in a balanced manner, suddenly see a reason do do so with this particular story.  The Associated Press, the Washington Post in addition to the Wall Street Journal now see balance in a story which they never seemed to notice the need for it before.  Before revelations like those in these e-mails the "science was settled" and the "consensus" was overwhelming.  Now that it appears those assertions may have been bullshinola from the start, the need for 'balance' pops up. 

The big elephant in the room is - if this type of behavior was taking place at one lab (with an agenda), how many other labs around the world have been engaged in the same type of behavior over the years?  Let's face it, Michael Mann (the author of the famously debunked yet still sited 'Hockey Stick') is a professor here in the US, not the UK.  This could indeed be a 'smoking gun' of monumental proportions.

For more information, be sure to check out Climate Depot and Watts Up With That!

Real Climate is a pro-AGW (man-made global warming) outfit.

Earlier today, it was revealed a hacker 'hacked' a database at the CRU (East Anglia Climate Research Unit - sometimes referred to as the Hadley CRU) revealing e-mails and other data which could show these particular 'climate scientists' may have been conspiring to falsify climate data to fit pre-conceived, pro-AGW models and theory.

It should be stated that apparently one of the authors of these e-mails, Dr. Phil Jones has verified their authenticity.  Right now it is unknown if this isn't a complete fabrication or hoax, or if these e-mails are indeed evidence of at least some fraudulent activity and attempt at covering it up.  The fact that Dr. Jones has himself verified the e-mails, and that pro-AGW websites like Real Climate have begun to spin the revelations of from the e-mails tells me that they are probably accurate.

The initial spin is that these e-mails and other information was obtained and released illegally and this is the point which should be given attention - not the content of the material itself.

I would counter that if this situation were being played out in court, the issue of how the information was obtained would matter.  Though hacking and releasing purported 'private' information may be shady, in the context of the content of the material or the debate it is fostering on the Internet is irrelevant.

Yes, there are idiosyncracies between scientists.  They do things differently sometimes.  But in this case, analysis of just some of the released information shows that there may indeed be a coordinated effort to scew climate data, influence peer reviewers and scientific editors, and delete incriminating e-mails so they cannot be accessed through any type of FOIA request for verification by 'skeptics' or others.

"Sunshine is the best disinfectant" as the saying goes.  Real Climate should be more concerned about what could be questionable or even nefarious action by so-called climate scientists trusted with finding and disseminating the truth - as opposed to how the information was obtained.  If the hacking was indeed illegal, then let it be dealt with as the law allows.  But it does not excuse the possible unethical or even illegal activities of the subjects in the e-mails.

Science is supposed to be about the truth, not ideology.

I have always believed that the entire premise of the global warming alarmists has been shady from the start.  There is too much variability in the theory (not to mention the actual climate) itself to say otherwise.  When prestigious 'Warmists' like Al Gore get involved (especially considering their increasingly invested financial stake in implementing Warmist policy), let's just say that my hackles go up.  Then to hear supposed scientists say the 'science is settled' and be parroted by folks like Gore - "The time for debate is over." - let's just say I know the Warmists are full of crap.

The evidence of the supposed settled science is hardly settled at all.  Indeed, when the lynch-pin of the Warmists ideology - that CO2 drives higher global temps - isn't born out in ANY real-world scientific observation and that NONE of the doomsday predictions made about global warming over the last twenty-years come true, it can only be a matter of time before people catch on to the scam.

Today we learn that perhaps, just perhaps, data used to bolster the theory of anthropogenic warming (man-made global warming) may have been 'doctored' from the get go - or at least going back to 1999.

Is this some innocuous misunderstanding?  Perhaps evidence simply of incompetence at the Hadley CRU?  With e-mail communications (which have been verified by the originator as authentic) making statements about "hiding the decline", "removing the 1940's blip", "reducing the ocean blip" and where researchers themselves are bemoaning the lack of any warming - could it be anything other than an attempt at...fraud?

Read this statement:

The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.***

If you read the above paragraph, it states pretty overtly that the actual observed data don't jive with the theory.  This statement says that model predictions are wrong since they can't account for the lack of warming.  The models clearly show warming which isn't happening.  Any prudent scientist would take that as some kind of problem with the model.  After all, a model is simply a tool plugged in with theoretical data (or old data to establish a baseline).  In this case, the observed data don't jive with the models - so somehow it must be the "observing system" whchi is "innadequate".  WTF?! 

I'm no scientists, but isn't it supposed to work like that?  You come up with a hypothesis.  Perhaps you create a model to demonstrate your hypothesis.  Then you collect actual, real data (through observation or experimentation).  If the real data jives with your hypothesis - you may have something there.  Then you test it again and farm it out to the scientific community for further testing/verification.  If everything works out, you've proven your original hypothesis.  Then you bask in the light of scientific discovery.

If your real data doesn't jive with your hypothesis (or models), then you must assume there is a flaw with your original hypothesis - not the real data.  Not in this case.  This 'scientist' realizes the real data doesn't jive with the hypothetical model - so the real data must somehow be flawed.  Huh?  Talk about fanatical devotion to a pre-conceived notion. 

In this case, the 'scientist' is either fundamentally narcissistic or fanatically ideological.  Just as Al Gore still states CO2 drives global temperature increases - when the data clearly show it does not - this guy sees the real data shows no warming, yet can't accept that subversion of his pre-conceived notion of warming, so his solution is to blame the real data.

It will be interesting to see if there are any more revelations exposed in these e-mails and if any of it further strengthens the possibility that possible ideological beliefs contributed to the falsification of climate data used to spread the Warmist mantra. 

In a foreshadowing of what is to come under Obamacare, Britain's National Health Service (NHS) - the government-run health care system - has decided a drug which could extend the lives of liver cancer patients is just too expensive for purchase by government health care patients:

A drug that can prolong the lives of patients with advanced liver cancer has been rejected for use in the NHS in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Read the whole article.

For all the pontificating on the Left about how Americans need this, if the government gets control of health care it won't be about what Americans need (or want) anymore.  It will simply be about what the government will give you.  In that equation, your life won't matter, the quality of your life won't matter.  All that will matter - to the Government at least - is cost.

What is particularly revealing in this story is the nature of the drug.  It isn't a cure.  It is a drug which simply extends the life of the patient.  It allows people a few extra months with family and friends.  It allows for people to have some closure and to adequately prepare for the end.  It's about end-of-life care.

As has been argued, end-of-life care isn't a priority for the government.  The government makes a determination that your going to die anyway and the extra time isn't worth the government expense.  Your life will be reduced to a mathematical equation on a cost-benefit table.

That's what government run 'health-care' is all about.