Via ClimateAudit, here’s an editorial in Nature Magazine, excusing the breaking of UK FOI (equivalent to the US FOIA) law and the conspiracy to break the law by the “team”. The argument basically comes down to this:
If there are benefits to the e-mail theft, one is to highlight yet again the harassment that denialists inflict on some climate-change researchers, often in the form of endless, time-consuming demands for information under the US and UK Freedom of Information Acts. Governments and institutions need to provide tangible assistance for researchers facing such a burden.
Gosh. I should remember that defense if I ever get my taxes audited. These geniuses say the IRS should do my taxes for me, because it’s too hard for me to do.
A couple of asides: this is the same Nature Magazine referred to in the famous CRUtape letter in the phrase “Mike’s Nature trick”. And after being made fools of by this comment, they defend it with the hackneyed (and wrong) argument that “trick” is innocent and clever:
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.
Excuse me while I barf. That’s either ignorant or disingenuous. The “trick” had nothing to do with the actual dendro reconstruction, it was entirely about decieving the public. That was its only purpose. The ‘clever’ part, I’ll leave you to decide, but the ‘legitimate’ part is just plain wrong. Which leads me to conclude that the editors are either too ignorant to be editors of a science magazine, or too dishonest to be editors of a science magazine.
The other aside: the loaded language. It’s truly breathtaking that a supposedly dignified journal can used such incendiary language. Read the piece; it’s not that long. I loaded it into my word processor, and came up with these statistics:
Total words: 974
Instances of “denial, denialist”, or variations: 8
Instances of “conspire, conspiracy”, or variations: 3
Instances of “theft or stolen”: 5
Instances of “fringe or paranoid”: 2
The editors of Nature Magazine are a disgrace. The general MSM has nothing on them in terms of bias and unprofessionalism. Dan Rather in a lab coat.
Extra bonus: IPCC officially piles on, says “nothing to see here except the cyber theft”.
Comments on blogs and in the media about the contents of a large number of private emails stolen from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, United Kingdom, have questioned both the validity of the key findings of the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) and the integrity of its authors. IPCC WGI condemns the illegal act which led to private emails being posted on the Internet and firmly stands by the findings of the AR4 and by the community of researchers worldwide whose professional standards and careful scientific work over many years have provided the basis for these conclusions.
My answer to that is [expletive deleted], you bunch of [expletive deleted] [expletive deleted].
Extra extra bonus: A comment @ the ClimateAudit link, from none other than the Steve Mosher who broke the Climategate story:
Steven Mosher Posted Dec 29, 2009 at 5:44 PM | Permalink | Reply
Thanks steve. So I downloaded it and found my request. The[n] for kicks I started to search around for others..
Greenpeace, Associated press, who really burdened people?
JeffRuch Of a public Employee union. He’s got more requests than you. Including requests for all emails containing words like climate change, scientists talking to the press.
Context context context. people need to put your requests in context with all the other requests. So folks can check on wildlife organizations, etc.
have fun folks
Well, golly. They piss and whine about all the FOIA requests from “denier” blogs, and how much of a burden it is to tend to them, and looky here. Most of the FOIAs are coming from “friendlies”. [expletive deleted]
And there’s more…
Jeez Louise, why’s all of this hitting at the same time two days before New Years? New Scientist magazine (aka “Nude Socialist”) joins the dogpile:
This anger is understandable. Over the past two decades, the CRU has compiled the most authoritative record of recent temperatures on the planet. It is how we know the world is warming. Yet its researchers have been inundated over the past few years with what feel like unreasonable and malicious demands for their raw data. They fear the hacking of their emails is the culmination of a concerted attack by data terrorists.
They deserve to be protected. The trouble is that there should also be a place in the scientific dialogue for critics to make their views known, for the heretics who are not part of the scientific consensus.
Moving right along…
Back at ClimateAudit, there’s a second thread. And in the first one, they’re rapidly discovering that (see “extra extra bonus”) this is not only a flimsy excuse on its merits, but the actual numbers of FOIA requests have been anything but onerous.
That hissing sound you hear is the sound of 10,000 climate activists collectively pissing their pants. Oh, the urine footprint.
Tags: ClimateAudit, climategate, Nature Magazine
