10 years ago on the 17th November 2009, some 3,000 e-mails, software files, and other documents from the University of East Anglia Research Unit were covertly released by someone** onto the Internet.
Not long after I created the petition asking for an investigation into the University of East Anglia. Looking back, those ten years, I now realise how gullible I was. I really did believe that when the evidence of academics deluding themselves by fabricating the data on climate was known to the press & politicians, that inevitably the renewable energy scam would blow out.
10 years later, the fact is that the press had not the slightest interest in the truth. Instead, over the years I have watched in horror as they encouraged the truth to be deliberately hidden. The original “crime” of Climategate was some inept academics deluding themselves by changing the data. But Climategate became one of the most blatant cases of official corruption deliberately hiding the truth from press and public. That was done by creating three under-lapping inquiries designed to give the appearance of a “thorough” investigations but intended to allow the main accusations and allegations to slip through the gaping hole that had been deliberately left in the middle.
As for those like the the Biased Corp, a decade ago I thought they were mistakenly on the wrong side. Today, I know they were deliberately on the wrong side. For over those 10 years I have seen them using the propaganda techniques straight out of Goebbels propaganda manual of the big lie. They lie and lie and lie and lie again without any ethical standards and without care at all for science. They have absolutely no credibility on climate and as time progressed, I learnt they had no credibility on a host of other subjects as well.
On the other hand … whilst the academics involved in climate AS A GROUP behaved dishonestly and fraudulently, at least some academics (namely Phil Jones) did seem to learn the lessons of being caught out and did for a while amend their ways and begin looking scientific. So, guilty yes, but guilty of being inept and deluded. And thus, if it hadn’t been for the establishment corruption, the lies from the press and if that recognition of problems had been shared across all of academia, I really do think the scam would have disappeared into history and be largely forgotten by now.
The problem with Climategate, was that the worst culprits were not in the UK where the rumpus was, but in the US. So whilst the UK saw an improvement in standards, that did not last long nor have any profound effect, because their US colleagues, unaffected by Climategate and wholly unrepentant, quickly dragged those in the UK back into the mire.
The result is that the subject of climate has literally been going backwards for the last decade. Because instead of making progress in understanding the climate, the data has been tampered with more and more to fit a non-science theory of catastrophic warming and it is very arguable we know less about how the climate works today than we did a decade ago.
The Climate Cult
However, for all the angst about Climategate, it is largely academic now. For whilst ten years ago, the science did matter, today, it doesn’t matter one iota what the science says. The Climate Cult is now a fully fledged religions with its own 16 year old prophets of doom and martyrs. The cult is no longer based on any science, and so, to be honest, it wouldn’t matter if every climate academic in the world confessed on camera that they had been altering the data and that the sceptics were right, the Climate cult would just claim they were being manipulated by “Big Oil” and return to their crusade with even more fervour.
The irony, is that we sceptics and the academics are now very much in the same boat as the academics are about as impotent and unimportant as we sceptics were 10 years ago. It’s no longer about science, no one listens to the vast majority of academics. They can only watch as they see their subject being dragged into a medieval quagmire the Climate Cult’s religious nuttery.
Historical Viewpoint
Climategate may now be largely irrelevant, but from a historical view, when people in the future look back at the scam, and knowing it was clearly a scam, Climategate is going to be critical. Because without it, people could claim “no one knew”, but with Climategate no one can claim that the sceptics did not make the world aware of what was going on so proving governments have the evidence which should have compelled them to start investigating the corruption properly. Instead, Climategate will show a conspiracy by the British Establishment to prevent the evidence being heard, both by public and politicians. That is not something that is going to be easily swept under the carpet, because it will be one of the key events recorded in all its gory detail that every historian will recognise. It should have prevented the scam going further. It will not be easy to explain how the evidence showing climate alarm was based on delusion was ignored, without facing the fact that there was a criminal conspiracy by members of the establishment.
The original “crime” could be passed of as over-enthusiastic, inept and deluded academics. But the establishment cover up was a deliberate, premeditated conspiracy to deceive public and politicians.
**A few years after the event, on the 1st April as I recall, I stated that I had been involved. Strangely no one believed me 🙂
