More about the CRU leak – how big arguments are won and lost and how the mainstream media are already responding

I want to say more about this massive story. And yes, the general opinion now seems to be that this was not a hack, but rather an inside leak.

First point, this is indeed massive. As Devil’s Kitchen in particular has been repeating, both in comments here and at his own blog, this is not just a few maverick scientists gone bad, off the edge of the central enterprise. The idea that a few little scientific baddies can be sacked, thereby allowing the main, big, uncorrupted fleet of Global Warmist truth seekers to sail on with their dignity unsullied, is delusional. These guys, the so-called “Hockey Team”, are at the very centre of the whole AGW-based global taxation, global command-and-control system that we are about to be severely threatened with at the forthcoming Copenhagen Conference. That process has slowed at bit recently, but it is still very much still in motion. This drama is now being described by blogger after blogger, and by blog commenter after blog commenter, as “the biggest scientific fraud in history”.

Indeed. Said DK, commenting here on that earlier piece of mine:

The point is that this relatively small group of “scientists” control the entirety of the alarmist agenda.

That is why this is significant.

These people control the scientific arm of the IPCC, all of the major journals, etc. and the emails show that they have actively conspired to prevent any view other than theirs from being put across.

Exactly. A major exercise in World Government, no less, is being made to look like the dodgy little racket that it has long been believed to be by the few critics who have been scrutinising it carefully, and suspected of being by many more, me included. The great horde of politicians and bureaucrats and lobbyists and ecofascists (basically an entire generation of politicians and political activists) are being made to look like credulous idiots.

With every hour that passes without a coherent argument emerging from the Hockey Team to the effect that these emails – any of these emails – are fake, then their genuineness looks that much more real. And now, the process has already begun of analysing other material that has been leaked too, which looks now like being even more significant. As I said in my earlier piece here, all the anti-AGW bloggers I read during the first hours when the story broke began their reactions by saying “This stuff could be fake and it could certainly include fake stuff.” Indeed. But as the hours and days of stunned silence or stuttering evasion go by, from the skewered scientists and their bewildered allies in the media, the chances of any of these emails or any of this other stuff being bogus is becoming vanishingly small, to the point where if it is eventually claimed that some of it is faked, the response will probably be either: you forgot about that; or: you’re lying. Again.

Many scientists, commenting in recent days on blog postings, have been declaring themselves baffled. Why all the fuss? Is it some kind of big scandal that scientists are – shock – human? They sometimes use less than noble methods in their fights with one another, making their own opinions seems more solidly justified than they really are, their own data seem more precisely in accordance with their theories than they perhaps should, or would in a morally perfect world. And especially in what they thought were private emails to one another. So? That’s science. It’s a tough old world, and sometimes, yes, they do fight a bit dirty. As do we all. So, why this huge blogo-fuss about pretty nearly damn all?

Why the fuss is because of the vast, globe-spanning policy conclusions that have been plucked from these in themselves rather minor deceptions. The fraud revealed isn’t just in the fiddling of some numbers. There is also the faking of that precious scientific consensus that has so dominated public and official thinking about climate and climate policy during the last decade. The world is being sold a gigantic economic and political upheaval, backed by the claim that all this scientific rough-and-tumble, this slightly dodgy infighting, was in fact a blandly uniform scientific consensus. And the “scientists” (who more and more now look like politicos who have barged their way into science) are the engineers of this political fraud, not just the contrivers of the scientific opinions around which they have assembled their bogus consensus. One of the more feeble responses that have so far been put forward by The Green Mob is that these emails were stolen, so it’s wrong to talk about them. But this is not a private matter in any meaningful sense. This is not people being filmed doing weird things to one another in their own bed, in their own property. This is public policy of the most public sort. The vast wealth that The Green Global Government is trying to transfer from those creating it to those wanting to gobble it up (many of the gobblers being themselves), is taxed wealth. The money paying for this corrupted climate “research” is tax money. The issues at stake are matters of earth-shaping public policy. Millions upon millions will be tipped into impoverishment by these grand plans. If that isn’t a “public interest” defence for the leaker or hacker or whatever, then I don’t know what is.

And actually, who is seriously arguing anything to the contrary? This “private email” argument is not a real argument. It is a first stunned reaction, the first groping for an excuse by people who feel that they ought to say something, but can’t think of anything remotely relevant that they can say that won’t make them look like total prunes. And it only persists, still, as a diversion, from the fact, still, that the Green Mob, still, has no serious explanations to offer.

Said RealClimate (i.e. the little gang of skewered Hockey Teamers themselves), when the story broke at the end of last week:

As people are also no doubt aware the breaking into of computers and releasing private information is illegal, and regardless of how they were obtained, posting private correspondence without permission is unethical. We therefore aren’t going to post any of the emails here.

Pompous asses. “As people are also no doubt aware …” sounds like an MP trying to bluster his way out of explaining why he was fiddling his expenses. All that such evasions do is reveal that the Hockey Team is indeed severely embarrassed by these revelations. The above quote translates as: “We aren’t going to reply to any of the interpretations of the various emails, interpretations that make us look like a small pack of corrupt and manipulative and bullying liars, because …. because … … because … … … aaaaargh!!!” This is the old “we aren’t going to dignify this argument with an answer” answer, which of course is no answer at all. They may now be saying “Private emails” but what they are thinking is: “Oh shit what can we say now? Shit, shit sh-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-t!!!!!!”

Getting back to the matter of why this is all so important, these revelations will echo around the world not only because they are part of an absolutely gigantic global story, but also because of the peculiar nature of the Global Warming debate.

Basically, the Global Warming debate has been a gigantic exercise in argument from authority. In debates like this one the great mass of onlookers are being told that they must take some particular judgement on trust, because the experts are all agreed about it. The science is settled. All the scientists agree. Who are you to criticise? What do you know about climate science? Who indeed? What indeed?

What this means is that, on both sides of this argument, there are enormous numbers of people whose basic attitude is either: “Well, the scientists say blah blah. And it certainly feels like the world is getting dirtier, and I’ve never liked capitalists. So, I’ve got to go with the scientists. But, what do I know?”; or, there are people like me who, for ideological reasons, oppose Green World Governmentalism, who have been saying: “Well it looks like a racket, and it smells like a racket, and it probably is a racket, but … what do I know?”

This is not an argument like the one about The State versus the Free Market, where most of the many, many people who have made up their minds have done so for reasons that they fully understand, or at the very least think they do. I don’t need any expert to tell me, with arguments I can’t follow, that the free market enriches poor people while statism impoverishes them. I know this and I know why. Contrariwise, devotees of, say, state medicine don’t need any expert to tell them in the medical or economic equivalent of Sanskrit that the poor need medical care and that it mustn’t be too expensive. The average punter in the State-v-Free-Market argument argues from facts, or things he thinks are facts, facts which he entirely understands or thinks he does.

Which is why some new revelation, say about the venality or incompetence or just plain evilness of hedge fund or state hospital managers doesn’t do much to change people’s opinions about The-State-versus-the-Free-Market. On the one hand: I think that the free market enriches poor people. Now you tell me that this banker is a crook. As Perry de Havilland would say: “And your point is?” I still think that the free market enriches poor people. Send crooked bankers to jail and make the market work even better, is what I say. On the other hand, confront a supporter of state medicine with the news that this or that state hospital is a dirty and corrupt mess. Well then, says he, it should get more money. Blame the skinflint capitalist team. Like I say, no particular news item or stunning revelation will do much to change opinions on either side of a debate like that.

That’s a slight oversimplification. After all, if no minds could be changed in this argument, why would either side bother? And we certainly do both bother. But one reason why we bother is because we can. We all know our own arguments and are confident about them, and have no trouble expressing them. Indeed, expressing such arguments is, for both sides, to operate in the comfort zone. Which is my point here.

The Global Warming debate is the almost complete opposite of the above kind of argument. It is a discomfort zone for almost all parties, including for other non-climate scientists and including even for many climate scientists. Here, an enormous inverted pyramid of public policy and public opinion balances on a tiny clutch of alleged and allegedly agreed about data, which almost everyone is either taking or trust, or choosing to doubt for similarly second- or third-hand reasons. The overwhelming majority of us onlookers to the central arguments, which includes the overwhelming majority of those active on both sides of this debate, like the politicians whose underlings are now sorting out travelling arrangements to that Copenhagen Conference, demonstrators outside in the street denouncing capitalism, bloggers (like me) who over the last few years have been, cautiously but with growing confidence, linking to climate-sceptic blog postings and articles, and other scientists or semi-scientists critical of that alleged consensus, do not, in a severely literal sense of the phrase, know what they are talking about. We are all just making more or less informed guesses about what the truth of this matter is. We are making a judgement, as best we feel we can, and often in the light of what we want to believe (i.e. because of what we really do believe in that State-versus-the-Free-Market argument), in the thick of an Argument From Authority.

This is why these revelations will, in fact, have huge consequences, in terms of the balance of this debate, far more so than pessimistic allies of mine are now saying. Such allies have, like me, spent their lives arguing for the free market, but have typically felt like they were banging their heads against a brick wall, and they have concluded from this baleful experience that facts never matter, in any argument. Oh yes they do. If the entire argument for Green World Government balances on top of the public claims of a tiny few scientists, whose actual arguments are understood by hardly anybody, but if first emails and now other revelations show those scientists in a quite new and very bad light, not as selfless servants of truth and virtue, but as liars, cheats, frauds, manipulators and bullies, then that will most certainly change things, big time.

In two very huge ways. The pro Green World Government team will lose a lot of support from the baffled onlooker demographic and the anti Green World Government team (mine) will gain a lot of support from that same demographic.

What I mean by this is not a huge roar of people saying, very loudly: “I used to believe in Green World Government, but now, by Jove, because of these dastardly emails, I believe the opposite!” No, arguments are not won and lost like that. There is no surrender ceremony on the media equivalent of the deck of an aircraft carrier, where intellectual swords are solemnly surrendered. Arguments are won and lost when the losers go quiet, or change the subject. Arguments are won and lost when the Useful Idiot part of a winning team decides that it feels just that bit too idiotic, and it wanders off into other forms of idiocy. Arguments are won and lost when the leaders of a formerly-winning team lose that vital bit of confidence, in their own rightness, and, even more, in their ability to go on winning. (Talking of surrender ceremonies, how about this? Maybe I wrote too soon. On the other hand all that is actually being surrendered is a small emplacement. The battle, never mind the war, continues.)

On my side, meanwhile, the situation is now similarly transformed. Do you seriously think that I would have written, now, and in this confidently critical manner about the evilness of Green World Government, had it not been for these recent revelations? Which, by the way, I have almost entirely not even read, yet. On my side of this argument, people like me, who have suspected fraud but not been very sure, until now, are being energised into eloquence.

Above all, those who care to do it can now trawl through a ton of stuff, looking for bits of buried treasure. Forget Bishop Hill (rapidly now becoming a global media star on the back of one stellar blog posting (still expanding by the way) and a forthcoming book which has not even yet been completed) and Devil’s Kitchen – well, don’t, but you get my drift. Consider only, just as a for instance, this guy. Is he a fully paid-up, fully qualified climate scientist? I doubt it. Is his a big traffic blog? Not judging by the number of comments he now gets. But it soon might be, for as long as he keeps on shoving up particularly tasty emails that he has found, together with his critical explanations of what they mean and what skullduggery they reveal. Multiply him by a thousand, and you get what is now happening in the blogosphere, world-wide.

To put the same point another way, one of the early self-deceptions launched upon the world in the last few days by the oh-shit-what-do-we-say-now? Hockey Team supporter tendency has been to spin this as “the deniers are all in a frenzy”, the implication being that normal people need not bother their silly little useful idiot heads about it all. Well, yes, us “deniers” are indeed “in a frenzy”. But do those pointing this out in this particular (and particularly offensive) way really think that this doesn’t count for anything? This is like saying: “Well, yes, this latest war crime of ours is indeed mustering an enormous and enraged army against us which previously had hardly existed, but this won’t affect the result of the war.” Oh yes it will.

Finally, some points about the mainstream media. These august personages have already begun to respond to what is quite clearly an enormous, global story. Yes, the mainstream media are taking several days to get into their stride on this one, but that’s the mainstream media for you. Their wheels grind slowly. It is also taking them several days because in many cases they have their own environmental correspondents and environmentalist opinion-mongers, who are themselves a big part of this huge story and not in a good way, to shove out of the way. But even now, new brains are being gathered together and applied to the job in hand, fresh and hitherto blank minds. Why? Because there is now this huge treasure trove of material. There are now all these lovely emails, and lovely data, plus a world full of unpaid bloggers helpfully telling these new and fresh minds everything they need to know, if, like me, they can’t be bothered to do this job themselves.

Remember when we all wondered whether the mainstream media would ever get around to asking serious questions about MPs and their fraudulent expenses claims? Well, the lobby correspondents never really did. But the lobby correspondents were just trampled into the mud by the stampede of Joe Soap journalists with no sources to protect, but with a vast treasure trove of information just handed over by Parliament, before Parliament realised what a Pandora’s Box they had allowed to come open, to get to work on. This will be just like that.

As I say, this process has already begun. Last night on Channel 4 news, a long-gray-haired scientist type was interviewed by the young chap in a suit fronting the show. All that Professor Long-Gray-Hair could think of to say was that if his good friend Phil Jones had done what his good friend Phil Jones is now being accused all over the planet of having done, well, er, that would be very silly – scientist, tampering with evidence, reputation, most precious resource, blah blah – therefore Phil Jones, er, can’t have done it. In other words, Professor Long-Gray-Hair was himself resorting to the Argument From Authority. Scientists just don’t do that sort of thing! Not one shred of an argument was heard from Professor Long-Gray-Hair to the effect that, if you study the actual evidence, you will find that Phil Jones did not in fact do what he is accused of. I know about his observations and experiments, I’ve looked at the data, I know this guy, he does not lie, he does not cheat, it all adds up. Nothing like that. Not one shred of expertise was presented, in a form that might have exonerated Phil Jones. Had Professor Long-Gray-Hair simply broken down in tears and cried: “I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know it’s all too horrible to think about … waaaaaargh!!!”, he could not have made a worse impression. Mr Young Chap In Suit will now be telling his family and friends that he got no answers at all from Professor Long-Gray-Hair and that it smells and that this could be a Big Story.

Then I watched Newsnight, the big BBC nightly show. A mixed picture, with lots of attempted damage limitation, as you would expect from the BBC. On the one hand, Jeremy Paxman was trying to say that there were only a couple of emails that reflected only a bit badly on the Hockey Team, when in fact there is a lot more stuff than that. And they had a guy from East Anglia University wanting a fully independent inquiry into everything, including how the stuff was “illegally hacked”, like that’s the biggest question now. But, they did have Fred Singer saying that what the Hockey Team have done has been very, very bad – hurtful to “all of us”, and a “tragedy”. (Like this badness just happened to them. Already, the face-saving retreat is being prepared for the Hockey Team bastards.)

They also had another climate expert explaining that the global climate is very hard to model on a computer, as if we didn’t know. What he wanted us to conclude from this was that therefore the rest of us should leave this immensely difficult task to experts such as his expert self, and not query the results that he and his friends now, still, proclaim. But another way of hearing what he said was that actually he cannot tell from his computer models what the climate will do in the future, what with the climate being such a uniquely complicated thing and so uniquely difficult to slap onto a computer. By trying to muddy the waters of what his Hockey Team mates have been getting up to, he also muddied the waters of what they have all been saying. At one moment this expert was telling us that the first decade of the twenty first century has indeed been rather cool, as all these people are now finally admitting. But then he was saying that the “underlying trend” was still in the direction of things getting hotter, because, if I understood his argument (for want of a better word) correctly, the models all say so. He illustrated his opinions with different coloured sea shells. I don’t think it was just me hearing a distinct whiff of medieval theology there, all logic but no demonstrable correspondence to reality. This guy certainly wouldn’t have made anyone more convinced that the world is getting warmer if they were not convinced already.

But, and here’s my point, ignoring this argument the BBC absolutely was not. If you think, as I do, that prolonged and serious scrutiny of the claims made by climate scientists will show that, at the very least, there is quite a bit of disagreement between these scientists, and a very great deal of uncertainty about their conclusions, and a great deal of further room for disagreement about what policies, if any, should follow from these great clouds of scientific uncertainty, then the more the media look at this ruckus the better, however misleading their early efforts might be, or try to be. In the old days, the pattern was: something dramatic happens, and the Media showed and printed more-or-less (depending on how they already felt about whatever it was) misleading stories, or did not show or print anything (if they did not feel inclined), and the rest of us had to make what we could of that. Now, when the now old-school media show and print their stories, us bloggers can immediately get to work on them, just as I did in the previous paragraph, and anyone who wants to can dig deeper. If the old-school media don’t now show a dramatic story, the rest of us tell it to each other instead, and the old-school media just look even more like dinosaurs than they do anyway.

Nor will this story go away any time soon. For as long as two or three Green Global Governors are gathered together, anywhere on the planet, telling the rest of us what to do and how our taxes will be spent, then for that long will there be more stories to tell and more reputations to be dragged through the mud. At present, the journos are busy putting awkward questions to the skewered Hockey Team and their friends. But when these scientists have finally gibbered and stuttered and self-condemned and no-commented their way through this ordeal, in among worrying about what the rest of their sad little lives will consist of, next in line will be: everyone else! All the global mover-and-shaker twats who believed them, basically. Every idiot politician who chooses to brazen it out at Copenhagen by pretending that none of this is happening, every political party leader who has ever posed next to baby polar bears, every member of the Green Global Government. Everyone who should have scrutinised the claims made by the Hockey Team before helping to make those trillion dollar decisions that they still want to rubber-stamp at Copenhagen, but who instead simply took it all on trust because … well, you know, we all assumed that someone had checked it out, will now be hunted down and tormented. If the old-school journalists won’t do this, newer-school blogger-journalists and us bloggers will.