ClimateGate busts things wide open

[nevket240]

http://nzclimatescience.net/index.php?o ... 4&Itemid=1

I cannot get the PDF link to work so you will have to open it manually. apologies but thats windows.
The head of NIWA is a vice-chair at the IPCC.
regards

[WBU ALUM]

More folly.

The 2007 IPCC Report concluded that CO2 accounted for 90% of warming in the last 30 years. It’s equivalent to saying the small left toenail controls 90% of your body.

They’ve moved the goalposts again as they did when global warming became climate change and carbon credits became cap and trade. The focus is Climategate when it should be how even excluding rigged data the science is wrong. Scientists involved in the ‘climategate’ scandal have successfully diverted attention from the real issue with their denials. The mainstream media whose silence is either deafening or defensive have enabled them.

The Climate Scandal Has Diverted Attention From the Climate Scandal

This is just getting to be hilarious ... if it wasn't so sad.

[WBU ALUM]

From the Telegraph.co.uk
December 2nd, 2009

Climategate: it's all unravelling now

There's so much being affected in so many countries, the quoted information would be almost the entire article. Read it for yourself.

[nevket240]

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/counterpoint/s ... 757619.htm
excellent interview wtih an IPCC reviewer. not what you would expect from the Australians Broadcasting Communism mob.
regards

[nevket240]

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2747744.htm

holy cow BatRobin, the ABC is turning coat. it must be the Swine flu injection..

regards

[BKKSTAN]

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2747744.htm

holy cow BatRobin, the ABC is turning coat. it must be the Swine flu injection..

regards

Very interesting easy read article!I enjoyed the comments also =D>

[WBU ALUM]

More hypocrisy by those so worried about the climate and the earth. You couldn't even make this foolishness up.

Copenhagen climate summit: 1,200 limos, 140 private planes and caviar wedges

Copenhagen is preparing for the climate change summit that will produce as much carbon dioxide as a town the size of Middlesbrough.

And the hypocrites just keep on pushing this hoax as if nothing is in question.

[rjj04]

Okay, so, being a gluten for punishment, and as a lifetime continuous student of trying to parse arguments logically... I watched the video linked in the post...

Postby marshallb66 on November 25, 2009, 6:21 am

1) This is a bunch of notes on the video... it may not be in the correct sequence, it assumes you watched the video and it is fresh in your mind (as I did not time reference notes to the video itself).

2) I do not want to hear rubbish on misspelling (if you want we can have a spelling bee for all those so inclined). Don't want to hear about grammatical mistakes either.

3) It is not well organised as I do not wish to spend time doing so... if you want to read further do so, if not I do not care. I myself probably (well most likely) made mistakes in the notes.

4) And yes.. maybe I should "get a life"

5) oh yes, I will not be reading any more from threads on GW from Udonmap, as I do not want to waste my life completely. Ignoring GW, CimateGate, etc etc If somebody wants to PM me on logical mistakes I made, I would be happy to learn, as I am certainly far from perfect and happy to be educated, but I do not want to hear any more nonsense as in this video.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Introduction...
He is a writer, columnist, inventor, and educated in some Cambridge school.
Educated in what major. Mathematics? There is no mention of what his formal
education was in. How does this make him a climatologist? How does this bio,
which the narrator mentioned was a full bio, no admissions, make him an authority
on anything in any field of science? Even if he was a meteorologist or something
he would have more authority. He published in scientific works, which?
They forgot to mention them. He was an "advisor" to Margret Thatcher. Hmmmmmm "Lord Monckton, the Nth something from somewhere. Being a "Lord" does not make you an authority on the subject at hand either. So, no points whatsoever on his authority as a climatologist then.

He quickly starts to evoke religious passages to win over his audience. Quoting the Bible makes you an authority on science? hmmmm In my opinion, bringing Biblical references into a discussion supposedly about the science behind climatology shows that the actual science is not being taken seriously.

To summarise it a bit...
This man commits many logical fallacies throughout his presentation, and yet
has the audacity to point out the logical fallacies of others.

Some of the Fallacies committed in his presentation...
Appeals to emotions (scare tactics, religious fervour, us versus them,...)
Irrelevant appeal to humour
Fallacies of Distraction...
Slippery Slope Fallacy (Global government, etc)
False dilemma - do nothing or do everything
From Ignorance - because climate is a chaotic system, we can know nothing
Changing the subject
Ad Hominem attacks all over the place
"Poisoning the well" throughout
Avoiding the Issue (HIV, DDT, etc)...conspiracy
Appeals to Authority
Style over substance (compare his Lordships presentation to that of say Sam Harris)
Appeals to Motives..
Prejudicial Language (religion, environmentalism)
Consequences (economic implications)
Appeals to Pity (children, malaria)
Inductive Fallacies...
Suppressed Evidence Fallacy
Biased statistics (unrepresentative samples)
False Analogy, Faulty Comparison Fallacy, apples to oranges
Fallacies Involving Statistical Syllogisms...
Accident, generalisation is applied when circumstances suggest there should be an exception. (English temperature charts, Japanese temperature/radiance charts)
Quibbling Fallacy

I probably missed a few... I am tired

Most important points to me...
1) He did not mention why so many scientific organizations around the globe accept the IPCC conclusion. He attempted to show that there was no consensus. His attempt was the same as that used in "Creationist" arguments, pick a few outlier scientists and get them to refute particular parts of the theory. Same as the Tobacco "debate." Same mentality.

He wants to engender a view that there is NOT a consensus. But, as per my last post, there IS a consensus. His "argument?" is similar to the God of the gaps combined with, there is a conspiracy afoot, science is malleable...tweak it this way or that way. As if scientists are lay, gullible people. The models are NOT perfect, the data is not complete, therefore we should not care about what the models have to say.

Please tell me why, tens of thousands of real scientists conclude that the IPCC report is correct. Are they all conspiring? Scientists are noble men who want to discover the TRUTH.

2) His conclusion sums it all up quite nicely.

World government conspiracy... slippery slope fallacy.
Scare tactics. This IS NOT an argument about climate change. Scare scare,
and Heaven and Hell. Beautiful, this credulous religious audience have been sucked in completely by
the applause he received. I myself have fallen for conspiracy theories so I understand how easy it is
to buy these stories. But this is science people, not who killed Kennedy!!

Genetic Fallacy - IPPC (tries to use the underlying dislike of the UN) therefore all these scientists must be ignored. Once again, he is allied to one side of the political/economic spectrum. Or perhaps it is a Composition Fallacy, that is UN politicians are bad therefore UN scientists are bad.

Authority - He says the head of the UN IPCC is a railroad engineer, therefore you can not trust the report. So, every CEO needs to be an engineer/scientist in the products he makes/sells? The head of NASA needs to be a scientist, I thought they were administrators? I assume an engineer can administer a large project as well as say... a politician who worked for Ms Thatcher


Uses religion - Genesis - his audience is religious (statistical probability in MN) so he uses religious quotes and latin to gain support of his audience. Gaining respect of audience for quoting from theist literature? Genesis a book that if taken literally, goes against every discipline of science, but I am sure the audience gave His Lordship more authority on climatology because he has studied the Bible. Science is humbug, ignore it, and the scientists. God has a plan (a bit of straw man for his Lordship)

Use of Loaded language throughout (GW bedwetters, communist, cowards, wimps, leftists, tree huggers etc)
These are tactics unbecoming of his Lordship. Constantly deriding his opponents. These are not arguments, just wonderful ways of winning over your audience.

He is speaking for "Free Trade" group? He obviously has an agenda of his own. But most scientists, as the gentleman mentioned himself, seek the truth. If he wants to use genetic fallicies, then he should also mention how he himself is biased.

Banning DDT was a terrible thing? Come on...
50K->1M died because they could not use DDT for malaria. DDT causes genetic
damage!!! If he wants to do a calculation, promoting indiscriminate DDT usage,
I think he is going to have a difficult time of that. http://www.nrdc.org/health/pesticides/hcarson.asp AND WHAT HAD THIS GOT TO DO WITH CLIMATE FRICKING CHANGE!!!! Poisoning the well... oh those bad people, conspiracy, etc... how about he spends his time creating a good climate model than making these speeches? Something useful!

HIV - what has any of this got to do with climate change? It is a conspiracy of the LEFT, the communists. Build up the audience to believe that was a conspiracy, so this must be the same BAD people conspiring again. Somehow I do not recall climatologists involved in the HIV science. I must have missed that somewhere. Avoiding the issue.

His whole modus operandi seems to be to make it a conspiracy theory... those bad people are at it again. Those scientists, they know nothing, I am the authority. Sure! Then please write a climate model to predict what will happen in the next ten years, we will continue on the way to fixing the climate problem, if after 10 years, your model predicts the reality better than others, we shall assume you are correct. You have done nothing to help the situation except sow seeds of doubt in credulous people to continue your economic/political status quo in the world. My two bits, yet again.

He mentions a judgement in court against Al Gore's movie. I looked into this ruling and it seems it was not quite as terrible a ruling as they would point out. Semantics. This man takes many many things out of context. Quibbling Fallacy

He mentioned a Start Point fallacy, but he goes from using more data, to using less data. Why did he not go back in time? Instead he went forward where you get a smaller and smaller data set. He says it "is a bogus statistical technique." Linear regression, come on? Please tell that to the people who play stock market by technical indicators. He accentuates the short term trend-line, and picking his starting points as well, to show what he wants to show. Statistical analysis is bunk Con con.

He does not mention the End Point Fallacy he committed... like speaking about a chart you are presenting as if the data is current, when the end point of the chart is decades old Presenting skewed data again.

Apparently he does not understand the scientific method, refining the theory, models as better/more data becomes available and the climate is better understood. He goes on to say, since the models differ as to the temperature outcome (although as I recall they all pointed to increases in temperature, and differ on magnitude) then we just can not trust any of them. The whole thing should be thrown out, we should stick our heads in the sand. That is his pro-status quo statement. Perhaps this ties in with the Biblical references, as in, God has a plan we don't need to THINK, and do SCIENCE. Well that is a straw man for his Lordship.

Lying to children. Learning from Hitchens Evoking sympathy fallacy, as he mentions others doing, hypocritical to say the least.

One thing we KNOW is that CO2 is a greenhouse gas. That is undeniable!
He subtly implies that CO2 is not a green house gas, and warming precedes CO2 increases in the data. But, it is provable that CO2 causes warming of the air. He uses the temperature rise follows CO2 rise in the data. Scientists already know that there are many things that can kick off a change in climate (such as changes in the Earth's orbit), that will warm or cool the planet, "and then" the CO2 rising/falling will accelerate the trend. Without CO2 the temperature changes could never have been as dramatic as they were due to the initial mechanism. It is a reinforcing feedback mechanism in those cases! Biased statistics, not presenting the facts, this is not being honest about the science.

Showing a chart of English temperature, and forgetting we are talkig about the global temperature. Comparing apples to oranges. Local variations in temperature do not matter to the global trend.

He points to a report on the Greenland ice sheets (by laser altimeter), to show that the ice is actually growing in depth.
He does not mention that all the other studies show the ice sheets lowering, and that this report has been reconciled with the others (increased atmospheric moisture and precipitation and/or shifting storm tracks forced by enhanced greenhouse gases (IPCC 2007)).

Then he tries to use pictures of sensors, with snow around them to PROVE ice level is rising. Before picture, has the sensor standing tall, after pictures show the sensor having snow up to it ears. First, he doesn't know when the pictures were taken... after a storm perhaps? Snow is not an ice sheet thank you, and a few pictures of sensors, that is not science, that is con-artistry. Second, if the sensors are ON the ice sheet, and the WHOLE ice sheet is reducing in depth, then how would you be able to tell from a picture of the sensor, that it had risen or fallen? Ridiculous! It is like many commercials, before and after, "before" the picture is dark, the model wears ugly clothing and is not smiling. The "after" picture is bright, the model is smiling, new clothes, etc etc. People are easily manoeuvred by this tactic. Pattern recognition. But, in fact, as I mentioned, because the sensor sits on the ice sheet, you can tell nothing by taking a picture of a sensor!! How credulous one must be to believe that, but the audience was impressed Tracks in the desert, missile trucks,... invade

Sunspots causing GW? This has been debunked by mainstream science for a long time. He used another chart where the data stopped in 1980, because the correlation between sunspot activity and temperature rise stopped there. If he would have used data to 2007 the correlation would have been shown to break down completely. He failed to mention this fact to the audience, that he used decades old data, once again. Biased presentation of data. Yet, he once again has the audacity to call others LIARS!!

Solar radiance, Japan sensors, correlation!=causation... obviously if the local radiance goes up, the temperature goes up as well. Local versus global yet again. Quibbling Fallacy.

Scale 1/10,000 of atmosphere is CO2... how can it cause a problem. Fallacy of size. Biased statistics fallacy. Laymen will take this as a serious point but not a scientist. Example, a virus is extremely tiny, yet can kill you quite easily!! Biased statistics presented...etc etc

He used temperature charts 20+ years old to show that the Medieval warm period had temperatures higher than today. Of course since the dramatic increase in temperatures have been most pronounced since then, he is presenting data skewed to his cause yet again. Biased presentation of extremely important data. That is LYING!! Not showing current data, taking segments of data, and speaking about the "temperatures now" as if it was the data to this date (or even remotely close to the date of the presentation)!! The data was decades old.

Then he goes on to compare the medieval warming chart he used, with a chart that seems to be a temperature anomaly chart, once again comparing apples to oranges. One is absolute temp, one is deviation data.

He makes a point of errors in IPCC charts, and reports. There are errors in many scientific reports. They are not mathematical proofs being presented. Misspelling something does not make the report wrong! He actually made a point of spelling errors in a chart title...made a joke, audience laughed...hahaha... these IPCC people are fools... please! Fallacy of Quibbling and Ad Hominem attacks again.

I do not know enough about climatology to say much of anything about the SCIENCE of it, but I know that this presentation is an attempted con, using con-artist tactics throughout.

Sometimes I am happy we do not have pure democracies if it is so easy to fool people. I even believed that Sadam had those WMD Thank you GWB, and people like His Lordship.

[jackspratt]

For balance, please feel free to read this blog, and make of it what you wish:

http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/ ... ther_name/

An excerpt:

Let’s start by examining the bona fides of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It’s important to note that the IPCC does not conduct its own experiments or carry out its own research. It relies on groups like the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research to conduct research, assemble and collate data and prepare reports that are published under the IPCC’s imprimatur, including the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report published in 2007.

While the CRU has played a significant role in reporting to the IPCC, it is merely one player of many that contribute climate data. Scientists from over 130 countries contributed to the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report.

These scientists included more than 2500 scientific expert reviewers, more than 800 contributing authors, and more than 450 lead authors in their chosen areas of expertise.

Other scientific bodies that have made significant contributions to the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report include the NASA Goddard Institute, the Earth Institute at Columbia University, the British Atmospheric Data Centre, the German climate monitoring institute, Deutsches Klimarechenzentrum, and a host of others who maintain that anthropogenic climate change exists.

There is no indication that any of these scientists and the august bodies that they represent have engaged in an elaborate fraud or active deception or some silly hoax on climate change.

All of these scientific bodies have assembled their own data. While there may be some scientific challenge to the data, these are generally a matter of nuance or style rather than a comprehensive debunking of method and conclusion.

[WBU ALUM]

Ray Weiss looks at the chanting protesters, harried delegates and the 20,000 other people gathered here for a global warming summit and wonders: What's the fuss all about?

Weiss, a geochemist who studies atmospheric pollution at San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography, says the numbers at the core of the debate in Copenhagen are flawed.

Specifically, he says the cuts that countries including the USA are proposing in greenhouse gas emissions are difficult to measure and highly susceptible to manipulation by government officials and companies.

"I don't see the point in doing all this if the numbers are so far off," Weiss said, shaking his head as he watched conference attendees hurry by Thursday. "When you hear politicians tell you that they can measure these things, just because they passed a deal in Copenhagen, I think you should take that with a few grains of salt."

After climate talks, scientists worry about enforcement

The title of the article talks about "worry" over enforcement. It reads more like knowing that numbers cannot be measured. It gets more hilarious by the minute.

[nevket240]

http://mclean.ch/climate/docs/IPCC_numbers.pdf
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m ... n19506379/
IPCC reviewers. Same old number stacking rorts that local councils get up to. It is useful to follow the history of this scam from the start of FatAlberts involvement with Revelle through the 'Limits to growth', 'Population Time Bomb", drug addled Marxist Hippie era into thre present where a lot of the Hippies are running at the top of the tree in what is unfolding. The weren't going to get jobs making cars or banking were they?? Where do you think their networks were going to take them??? They were Uni Grads with contacts. its so simple, "follow the money" taxpayer money.

http://www.populartechnology.net/2009/1 ... rting.html
The only thing in global warming that is man made is the IPCC 'facts'.

http://www.financialpost.com/story-prin ... id=2056988

last but not least, poor Harry.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/25/c ... -codified/

regards

[nevket240]

http://biggovernment.com/2009/12/11/un- ... more-44722

watch the short vid. says it all really. (do not question us, ve are the new EcoGestapo!!!) how sad.
this is the same man who was a cooler proponent until he realised the amount of money to be made in warming. and he says it is OK to lie so long as the end justifies the means. FatAlbert attracts his own kind doesn't he??

regards

[jackspratt]

Please do watch the vid, and ask yourself:

1. Why was it cut, and what happened during the period between the second question from McAleer, and the intervention of the guard?

2. Was Prof Schneider even on the stage during part 2 of the video? - from looking at the video a number of times, I can't see him.

3. Why was there no sound from McAleer's microphone when the woman in the blue, and then the "assistant", approached him? - there clearly was discussion occurring.

In the absence of answers to these pretty basic questions, this video (? propaganda) has the same degree of credibility as the deniers.

As Micheal C so well put it in another thread:

So far, the fight of the deniers has been in the political, economic and media arena, because there is no credible scientific arena that will even consider anything not supported by evidence.

[TJ]

Here is a good article with interesting pro and con GW comments.
http://timesonline.typepad.com/science/ ... asics.html

BTW Why has little been said (and probably I missed it) about the changes in water vapor on the Earth's climate within the last 50 or 100 years. Supposedly water vapor has a greenhouse effect somewhat in a magnitude of 100 times that of CO2. Consider the vast increase in urban water and sewage systems, irrigation use, dams, etc. Those white cloud-like streams from industrial smoke stacks and jets are water vapor. Combustion engines emit water vapor. All animals and plants emit water vapor. Why doesn't global warming theory and analysis consider this pollutant?

[WBU ALUM]

A Memo from Dr. Zero to the Global Warming Fanatics

Dear global warming fanatics,

Please. Stop. You’re embarrassing yourselves. Take a deep breath, and try to understand what has happened to you during the past month. You need to accept that your dreams of global domination are over. Increasingly shrill attempts to terrify the masses into ignoring Climagate are only making you look foolish. The con job you’ve been running for the last thirty years is busted forever.

I know this is difficult for you to accept. Things seemed to be going well. You’ve got the cap-and-trade bill lurking over the United States, ready to shatter an already weakened economy plagued with unemployment problems, and effectively end America’s role as a dominant industrial power. Your beliefs have been instituted in public schools as the official state religion, whose rituals and incantations are forced upon millions of school children. The wealthy royalty of popular culture is pleased to produce an endless string of movies, music, and television programming to market your beliefs. Your critics were marginalized to the point where the presidential candidate from the 2000 Democrat ticket felt comfortable referring to them as Nazis.

I can see how losing all of this cultural and political power in a few short weeks would be stunning. I hope the shock has dissipated enough for you to understand where we are now, and where we are going from here.

You aren’t going to frighten the world into reducing the human population. You’re not going to succeed in terrorizing free people into embracing totalitarianism, to fend off a phantasmal catastrophe that no democratic nation has the discipline to combat. We’re not going to politely ignore swarms of private jets and limos ferrying you to carbon-belching “climate summits,” where you draw up plans for the Western proletariat to live as primitive hunter-gatherers. We’re not going to let a pampered elitist, who once flew around the world to attend cricket practice, tell us that we need to make do without air travel and ice water.

We’ll never be foolish enough to allow a band of fanatics to use “peer review” to rule all dissenting opinion out-of-bounds, then declare themselves the proud owners of a mighty consensus. You global-warming fanatics underestimate how much you needed those tactics to gain power. You’ll never have that kind of unchallenged authority again, because we will never stop demanding the raw data, and we’ll drown you in laughter when you mutter something about deleting it by accident. We will never forget that you began with a conclusion and sought to harvest data that supported it – the exact opposite of the scientific method.

Your arrogant condescension to your critics is horribly misplaced. You have completely lost the ability to call anyone “stupid.” Your capacity for reason is the matter in question. Your status as “scientists” is on probation. It will take years of faithful adherence to the scientific method, and rigorous efforts to test and disprove your hypotheses, before you can regain the trust of thoughtful men and women. Until you have accomplished this, the attitude we expect from you is humility and contrition. You have much to answer for. The time for you to issue pompous lectures is over. The time for you to give sworn testimony may soon begin. We’re a year away from the American voter’s first opportunity to respond to the politicians who terrorized them by waving a loaded cap-and-trade bill in their faces.

We ask you to stop propagandizing our children, because it won’t work any more. We will prepare them to deal with you. Informed parents across the industrialized world will explain what Climagate means to their children, and prepare them with questions your public-education minions cannot answer. The vindicated critics you’ve been working to silence will fill the post-Climagate void with publications, and some of them will become best-sellers. You’ll always have your political allies and fellow travelers, but you’ll never have a population ignorant of climate science to push around again.

You can stop trying to make Climagate go away by ignoring it, or lying about it. That won’t work, either. Huge stories can no longer be suppressed by a handful of like-minded network executives and editors. Those glittering eyes you see in the darkness, beyond the comforting glow of the New York Times editorial board, are the massed ranks of the Internet’s Army of Davids. They are a feral mixture of blogging curiosity and search-engine memory. If you think they’re closing in around you… well, it’s not just your imagination.

One of the worst sins you must answer for is the damage you have done to real science. We have much to learn about the Earth, its ecology, and its climate. We will not enhance our ability to learn those secrets by impoverishing ourselves in fit of primitive superstition and political opportunism. Desperate people don’t do a good job of protecting the environment… it is a job suitable only to vibrant nations of industry and technology. Those of us who still cherish independent thought, and the spirit of scientific inquiry, would like to resume our studies of the universe. It’s difficult to hear the truth whispered in the tides, the breeze, and the solar wind over the hysterical jabbering of fanatics, and the angry demands of greedy politicians.

Update: Thanks to osogrande for pointing out a typo where I referred to Al Gore as the 2000 vice-presidential candidate. I’ve corrected the mistake. I wanted to acknowledge the error, instead of claiming my original raw data was accidentally deleted.

[jackspratt]

Rico even when you are cut-and-pasting opinionated nonsense, I don't believe it relieves you from following forum rules requiring a link, so the original source can be accessed.

http://hotair.com/greenroom/archives/20 ... ming-cult/

[WBU ALUM]

Thanks for linking it. I'm usually very detailed in that regard.
=D>

[WBU ALUM]

The Goracle dropped in on the Copenhagen Stand Up Comedy Club and delivered this gem.

Mr Gore, speaking at the Copenhagen climate change summit, stated the latest research showed that the Arctic could be completely ice-free in five years.

In his speech, Mr Gore told the conference: “These figures are fresh. Some of the models suggest to Dr [Wieslav] Maslowski that there is a 75 per cent chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during the summer months, could be completely ice-free within five to seven years.”

However, the climatologist whose work Mr Gore was relying upon dropped the former Vice-President in the water with an icy blast.

“It’s unclear to me how this figure was arrived at,” Dr Maslowski said. “I would never try to estimate likelihood at anything as exact as this.”

Mr Gore’s office later admitted that the 75 per cent figure was one used by Dr Maslowksi as a “ballpark figure” several years ago in a conversation with Mr Gore.

We're now using "ballpark" figures? What next???

Reporters catch Gore in ‘embarrassing error’ about claim of ice-free Arctic—Gore Admits Error

[JimboPSM]

An analysis on “Climategate” from Factcheck.org:

• http://www.factcheck.org/2009/12/climategate/

In addition a similar organisation, Politifact.com, published this analysis with regard to a statement claiming that the Climatic Research Unit e-mails show that the science behind climate change "has been pretty well debunked" that was made on CNN's "The Situation Room":

• http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter ... behind-cl/

Both Factcheck.org and Politifact.com are organisations I have found to be pretty thorough in verifying the facts; their reports provide their sources of information with appropriate links.

While neither organisation has proved to be infallible, on the occasions their reports are found to contain errors, they have been big enough to both publish an apology and correct their errors - and they do so prominently.

Neither Factcheck nor Politifact are liked by the loony left or the rabid right as their ideological prejudices are debunked on a regular basis.

[WBU ALUM]

Those resources are good for some things, but I am not likely to believe two Internet organizations and their assessment of any of this until a reasonable and unbiased investigation can occur -- which it has not. There have only been dismissive and insulting remarks that continue to come from "experts" on climate change toward those who look at the information revealed in these emails as a serious breach of the public trust.

However, I am not going to shoot the messenger. Jimbo, you are level-headed in your judgment and analysis, and I appreciate those links; but I'm not likely to put any stock in them for the primary reason stated above.

Lastly, those scientists who have been previously involved in all of this "peer review" nonsense that has been limited to those who are in agreement, need to find an unbiased group to investigate this. Having co-conspirators investigate the conspirators arrives at no conclusion other than the "peer review" conclusion again. Hardly credible.