Finally, the beginning of the end of the global warming fraud. XV. The Future of Scence.

Global Warming Fraud and the Future of Science By J.R. Dunn November 29, 2009

The East Anglia Climate Research Unit (CRU) revelations come as no real surprise to anyone who has closely followed the global-warming saga. The Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) thesis, to give it its semi-official name, is no stranger to fraud. It would be no real exaggeration to state that it was fertilized with fraud, marinated in fraud, stewed in fraud, and at last served up to the world as prime grade-A fraud with nice side orders of fakery and disingenuousness. Damning as they may be, the CRU e-mails are merely the climactic element in an exhaustively long line.

A short tour of previous AGW highlights would include:

The Y2K Glitch. This episode involved the NASA/GISS team led by James Hansen, possibly the most fanatical and unrelenting of all warmists, a man who makes Al Gore look like a skeptic. (Among other things, Hansen has demanded that warming "deniers" be tried for "crimes against humanity".) While examining a series of NASA temperature graphs, Canadian statistician Steve McIntyre, himself not so much a skeptic as an anti-warming Van Helsing, uncovered a discontinuity occurring in January 2000 that raised temperatures gathered over widespread areas by 1-2 degrees Fahrenheit. McIntyre had no easy time of it, since Hansen refused to reveal what algorithm he'd used to process the data, forcing McIntyre to perform some very abstruse calculations to figure it out.

Once notified, Hansen's team promised to correct the error, stating that it was an "oversight". When the corrected figures were at last released, they rocked the church of warming from bingo hall to steeple. Vanished was the claim that the past few years were "the warmest on record". Now 1934 took precedence. A full half of the top ten warmest years occurred before WW II, well prior to any massive CO2 buildup.

No explanation has ever been offered. We have a Y2K glitch that behaves like no other computer glitch ever encountered, uniformly affecting a large number of sources distributed almost nationwide. Although the incident trashed all recent data and raised uncomfortable questions about the warming thesis as a whole, NASA itself made no effort at an investigation or inquiry. All that we're ever going to hear is "oversight". I guess that's how they do things at NASA/GISS.

The Arctic Ice Melt. We've been informed for the better part of a decade that Arctic ice was melting at an unprecedented rate, and that the North Pole would be ice-free in twenty, thirty, or forty years, depending in the hysteria level of the media platform in question. In truth, ice thinning was due to a cyclical weather pattern in which winds blow ice floes south into warmer water. Everybody involved knew that this cycle occurred, everyone had seen it happen previously time out of mind. But it was too good an opportunity to pass up. Worse yet, when the weather returned to its normal pattern two years ago, large numbers of scientists put in considerable effort to suggest that the "new" ice was thinner than usual and would vanish in a flash as soon as the temperatures went back up. The media went along with the joke. The Germans have a phrase to cover such eventualities: this crew should be stripped of their trade. (Several expeditions setting out for the Pole to "call attention" to the coming Arctic catastrophe had to stop short due to icy conditions. In one case, both women involved suffered serious frostbite.)

The Poor Polar Bears. Closely related is the saga of the polar bears, staring extinction in the face due to warming while, somewhere beyond the aurora, Gaia weeps bitter tears. This was evidently inspired by a single photograph (you've seen it -- the entire world has at this point) of a woebegone polar bear crouched on a melting iceberg. That bear had to be sulking over allowing a nice juicy seal to escape, because it was in no danger. Out of the twenty major polar bear populations only two are known to be decreasing. Estimates of bear population (there are no exact figures) have increased over the past forty years, from 17,000 to19,000 to the current number of 22,000 to 27,000. The bears are becoming pests in municipalities such as Churchill and Point Barrow. (As clearly shown here.) Despite all this, last year the bear was put on the U.S. "endangered" list.

The Hockey Stick That Wasn't. The "hockey stick" is a nickname for a chart prepared by Michael Mann, a University of Pennsylvania professor and leading warmist. The chart purports to show temperature levels for the past millennium, and consists of a straight line until it reaches the late 20^th century, when it suddenly shoots upward, creating the "hockey stick" profile. This chart was a major feature of International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports on global warming and is a commonly-used media graphic.

This chart creates immediate doubt in anyone knowledgeable about the climate of the past millennium, which more resembles a roller coaster than a straight line. It developed -- in yet another impressive McIntyre takedown, this time with an assist from Ross McKitrick -- that Mann was utilizing an algorithm that would produce hockey sticks if you fed it telephone numbers. (Mann is the "Mike" mentioned in the CRU e-mails, and this is one of his "tricks".) Despite this disclosure, Mann has never withdrawn the chart, offered an explanation, or made a correction. The chart remains an accepted piece of evidence among warmists.

Tree-Ring Circus. Due to the fact that direct temperature measures for past epochs are lacking, climatologists utilize "proxy measures", such as tree rings, glacial moraines, and lake sediments. Tree rings have played an important part in the warming controversy, as evidence backing the claim that temperatures have been consistently lower worldwide until recently. A crucial series of measurements, utilized by Mann among others, involves trees located on the Yamal peninsula in Siberia. How many trees were measured, you ask? A hundred? A thousand? Ten thousand?

The answer is twelve. A number perfectly adequate to trigger international panic, overthrow the capitalist system, establish a Green totalitarianism, and completely turn Western culture on its head.

But it turns out that further measurements were in fact made in the area, involving at least thirty-four other trees. And when this data is added to the original twelve, then the warming evidence disappears into the same branch of the Twilight Zone as the blade of Mann's hockey stick. Another "oversight", you understand.

We could go on to mention the automated U.S. weather stations chronicled by the tireless Anthony Watts, which were conscientiously placed next to air-con vents, atop sewage plants, in parking lots, and in one case, in a swamp (as many as 90% may be giving spurious high readings). The glaciers that are vanishing worldwide except where they aren't. The endless papers demonstrating that the coral reefs, along with various birds, animals, insects, and plants, are facing extinction even though no warming whatsoever has occurred for twelve years. (And in the thirty years before that, the total rise was 1.25 degrees Fahrenheit, easily within normal variation.) Powerful stuff, this warming -- it maims and destroys even when it's not happening.

It's within this context that the East Anglia e-mails must be judged. The vanishingly small number of legacy media writers who are paying attention behave as if the messages comprise some kind of puzzling anomaly, with no relation to anything that came before. In truth, they stand as the internal memos from the East Anglia branch of the Nigerian National Bank, which can save us from the horrors of global warming after payment of a small up-front fee.

There is always a deeper level to the damage caused by fraud. It strains social relationships, generates cynicism, and debases standing institutions. What has suffered the most damage from AGW is faith in the scientific method, the basic set of procedures -- it could be called an algorithm -- governing scientific investigation. These procedures embody simplicity itself: you examine a phenomenon. You gather data. You construct a hypothesis to explain that phenomenon. And then...

Well, first, let's cover what you don't do.

• You don't manipulate data. (As CRU chief scientist Phil Jones stated he was doing in the now-famous "Mike's trick" e-mail, not to mention throughout the now-famous source code.)

• You don't fabricate data. (As one CRU scientist did while compiling weather-station data. Running into problems, he states, "I can make it up. So I did." He adds an evil smiley face. This e-mail has gone under radar up until now. It can be found in the comments on James Delingpole's blog.

• You don't deny data to other investigators. (As Hansen, Jones, and, it appears, everybody else in the warming community has done at one time or another.)

• You don't destroy evidence. (As the members of the CRU did following a Freedom of Information request.)

• You don't bury contradictory data. (As Jones and several colleagues did in an attempt to undercut the impact of the Medieval Warming Period.)

• You don't secretly manipulate the argument from behind the scenes. (As the CRU staff did with the website Realclimate.org., screening comments to allow only those that supported the warming thesis.)

• You don't secretly undercut your critics. (As Mann advised the CRU to do concerning the scientific journal, Climate Researh: "I think we have to stop considering ‘Climate Research' as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal.")

• You don't try to get a journal editor critical of your case fired. (As the CRU staff evidently succeeded in doing with an editor for Geophysical Research Letters.)

What you do, if you are a serious scientist operating according to the established method, is attempt to falsify your hypothesis. Test it to destruction; carry out serious attacks on its weakest points to see if they hold up. If they do -- and the vast majority of hypotheses suffer the indignity embodied in a phrase attributed variously to Thomas Huxley and Lord Kelvin: "a beautiful theory slain by an ugly fact" -- then you have a theory that can be published, and tested, and verified by other scientists. If you don't, you throw it out.

None of this, amidst all the chicanery, fabrications, and manipulations, appears to have been done by anyone active in global warming research, the CRU least of all. From which point we are forced to conclude that AGW is not science, and that any "consensus" that can drawn from it is a consensus of fraud.

(The late-breaking revelations of temperature manipulations at New Zealand's NiWA institute -- another one of Mike's tricks? -- merely underlines the lesson of CRU. Now that the dam has busted, we'll be hearing dozens of stories like this over the weeks and months to come.)

The West is a technological society. Science is as responsible for making us what we have become as any other factor, including the democratic system of government. The two are in fact complementary, each supporting and encouraging the other across the decades since this country was established. (And yes, I am aware that Britain and Germany were both centers of scientific progress, both of them nations liberalized by the example of the United States. Even the utterly authoritarian Bismarck was forced to heed the voice of the people despite his inclination to do anything but.)

The technology developed from scientific research has created a world that would be unrecognizable to our forebears of even a century ago. Technology has transformed diet, health, communications, and transportation. It has doubled lifespans in advanced countries. Prior to the modern epoch, few ever caught a glimpse of the world past their own farming fields. India, China, and Africa were wild myths, the Pacific and Antarctica utterly unknown, the planets and stars merely pretty lights in the sky. Technology opened the world, not just for everyday men and women, but for invalids, the disabled, and the subnormal, who once lived lives of almost incomprehensible deprivation. Technology was a crucial factor in the dissolution of the ancient empires, the humbling of the aristocracies.

As Paul Johnson has pointed out, a technological breakout appeared imminent at a number of points in the past millennium. Consider the anonymous Hussite engineer of the 15^th century who left a notebook even more breathtaking than that of Leonardo, or the revolutionary English Levelers of the 17^th century who dreamed of flying machines and factories. If a breakout had occurred at those times, the consequences would have been unimaginable. But the Hussites were destroyed by the German princes, the Levelers by the reestablishment of the English crown. It required the birth of a true democratic republic in the late 18^th century to provide the setting for a serious scientific-technical takeoff, one that after 200 years has brought us to where we stand today, gazing out at the galaxies beyond the galaxies with the secret of life itself within reach.

It is this, and no less, that scientific fraud threatens. This is no trivial matter; it involves one of the basic elements of modern Western life. When scientific figures lie, they lie to all of us. If they foment serious distrust of the scientific endeavor -- as they are doing -- they are creating a schism in the heart of our culture, a wound that in the long run could prove even more deadly than the Jihadi terrorists.

Such failings are not relegated only to climatology. With the apparent success of the climate hustlers, it has infected all areas of research. Over the past decade, stem-cell studies have proven a hotbed of fraud. Recall Dr. Hwang Woo Suk, the South Korean biologist who claimed to have cloned various higher animals and isolated new stem cell lines, to worldwide applause. Suk was discovered to have faked all his research, prompting the South Korean government to ban him from taking part in any further work. Nor was he alone. Researchers throughout the field have been caught fabricating and manipulating data, and at least one large biotech company has developed the habit of announcing grand breakthroughs to goose its stock prices.

A number of factors are responsible, among them the grant-making process, which rewards extravagant claims and demands matching results, and the superstar factor, in which media adulation creates a sense of intellectual arrogance -- as in the case of Dr. Suk -- unmatched since Galileo's heyday. But the major problem lies in politics, specifically as involves ideology.

In both major recent cases of fraud, science had become entwined and infected with ideology to a point where its very nature had been transformed. It was no longer science in the classic mold, boldly asking basic questions without fear or favor. It had become an ideological tool, carrying out only such research as met with the approval of political elites. Stem-cell research had become enmeshed with the abortion question. Embryonic stem cells, obtained by "processing" aborted babies, received the lion's share of funding and attention despite its showing no potential whatsoever. Adult stem cells, obtainable from bone marrow, skin cells, or virtually any other part of the body, were shunted aside despite extraordinarily promising research results. This bias permeated the entire field and distorted all perceptions of it -- one of the reasons Dr. Suk was so wildly overpraised was his willingness to attack Pres. George W. Bush for limiting embryonic stem-cell exploitation.

The climatology story is little different. Environmentalist Greens needed a threat, one that menaced not only technological civilization but life on earth itself. They had promoted an endless parade of such threats since the 1960s -- overpopulation, pollution, runaway nuclear power, and global cooling -- only to see them shrivel like popped balloons. They required a menace that was overwhelming, long-term, and not easily disproven. With warming, the climatologists gave them one. In exchange for sky-high funding, millennial scientists, the heirs of Bacon, Copernicus, and Einstein, men who bled and suffered for the sake of their work, continually inflated the nature and extent of the CO2 threat, using, as we now know, the sleaziest methods available. The result has been complete intellectual degradation.

Scientists were once among the most trusted figures in Western public life, similar to bankers, priests, and doctors, but in a real sense standing above them all. Scientists were honored as truth-tellers, aware that their reputation for veracity and seriousness was their only real asset. And while exceptions existed (read the story of Blondlot and his N-rays, for one example), the public took them at their own valuation.

That is ended, one with the scholastic monasteries and the academy at Athens. Scientists today are well on their way to becoming an amalgam of the cheap politician and the three-card monte dealer. They are viewed by the less educated as a privileged class making alarming and impudent claims for their own benefit. The better informed find ourselves in the uncomfortable position of being unable to defend something we once admired.

The next set of questions in physics cannot be answered without equipment costing billions at the very least, and possibly much more. Will a disbelieving public pay for that? We are facing serious dilemmas concerning breakthroughs in biology, not only in stem-cell technology but also in neurology and synthetic biology, breakthroughs that threaten to distort the very nature of humanity itself. Should we leave the solutions up to people who want us to pick a card, any card?

The collaboration between science and democracy is one of the great achievements of human history. It is now threatened by the behavior of people at the very heart of that collaboration. If it is destroyed, something of unparalleled value will have vanished, something that will be nearly impossible to replace. If the Western world wishes to continue its magnificent upward journey, we will have to save science from itself. An errant and corrupt climatology is the place to start.

Finally, the beginning of the end of the global warming fraud. XIV. Steyn on peer review.

CRU’s Tree-Ring Circus
Who peer-reviews the peer-reviewers?

By Mark Steyn. November 28, 2009, 7:00 a.m.

My favorite moment in the Climategate/Climaquiddick scandal currently roiling the “climate change” racket was Stuart Varney’s interview on Fox News with the actor Ed Begley Jr. — star of the 1980s medical drama St. Elsewhere but latterly better known, as is the fashion with members of the thespian community, as an “activist.” He’s currently in a competition with Bill Nye (“the Science Guy”) to see who can have the lowest “carbon footprint.” Pistols at dawn would seem the quickest way of resolving that one, but presumably you couldn’t get a reality series out of it. Anyway, Ed was relaxed about the mountain of documents recently leaked from Britain’s Climate Research Unit in which the world’s leading climate-change warm-mongers e-mail each other back and forth on how to “hide the decline” and other interesting matters.

Nothing to worry about, folks. “We’ll go down the path and see what happens in peer-reviewed studies,” said Ed airily. “Those are the key words here, Stuart. ‘Peer-reviewed studies.’”

Hang on. Could you say that again more slowly so I can write it down? Not to worry. Ed said it every 12 seconds, as if it were the magic charm that could make all the bad publicity go away. He wore an open-necked shirt, and, although I don’t have a 76” inch HDTV, I wouldn’t have been surprised to find a talismanic peer-reviewed amulet nestling in his chest hair for additional protection. “If these scientists have done something wrong, it will be found out and their peers will determine it,” insisted Ed. “Don’t get your information from me, folks, or any newscaster. Get it from people with Ph.D. after their names. ‘Peer-reviewed studies is the key words. And if it comes out in peer-reviewed studies . . . ”

Got it: Pier-reviewed studies. You stand on the pier and you notice the tide seems to be coming in a little higher than it used to and you wonder if it’s something to do with incandescent light bulbs killing the polar bears? Is that how it works?

No, no, peer-reviewed studies. “Peer-reviewed studies. Go to Science magazine, folks. Go to Nature,” babbled Ed. “Read peer-reviewed studies. That’s all you need to do. Don’t get it from you or me.”

Look for the peer-reviewed label! And then just believe whatever it is they tell you!

The trouble with outsourcing your marbles to the peer-reviewed set is that, if you take away one single thing from the leaked documents, it’s that the global warm-mongers have wholly corrupted the “peer-review” process. When it comes to promoting the impending ecopalypse, the Climate Research Unit is the nerve-center of the operation. The “science” of the CRU dominates the “science” behind the UN’s IPCC, which dominates the “science” behind the Congressional cap-and-trade boondoggle, the upcoming Copenhagen shakindownen of the developed world, and the now routine phenomenon of leaders of advanced, prosperous societies talking like gibbering madmen escaped from the padded cell, whether it’s President Obama promising to end the rise of the oceans or the Prince of Wales saying we only have 96 months left to save the planet.

But don’t worry, it’s all “peer-reviewed.”

Here’s what Phil Jones of the CRU and his colleague Michael Mann of Penn State mean by “peer review.” When Climate Research published a paper dissenting from the Jones-Mann “consensus,” Jones demanded that the journal “rid itself of this troublesome editor,” and Mann advised that “we have to stop considering Climate Research as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers.”

So much for Climate Research. When Geophysical Research Letters also showed signs of wandering off the “consensus” reservation, Dr. Tom Wigley (“one of the world’s foremost experts on climate change”) suggested they get the goods on its editor, Jim Saiers, and go to his bosses at the American Geophysical Union to “get him ousted.” When another pair of troublesome dissenters emerge, Dr. Jones assured Dr. Mann, “I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow — even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”

Which in essence is what they did. The more frantically they talked up “peer review” as the only legitimate basis for criticism, the more assiduously they turned the process into what James Lewis calls the Chicago machine politics of international science. The headline in the Wall Street Journal Europe is unimproveable: “How To Forge A Consensus.” Pressuring publishers, firing editors, blacklisting scientists: That’s “peer review,” climate-style.


The more their echo chamber shriveled, the more Mann and Jones insisted that they and only they represent the “peer-reviewed” “consensus.” And gullible types like Ed Begley Jr. and Andrew Revkin of the New York Times fell for it hook, line, and tree-ring. The e-mails of “Andy” (as his CRU chums fondly know him) are especially pitiful. Confronted by serious questions from Stephen McIntyre, the dogged Ontario retiree whose Climate Audit website exposed the fraud of Dr. Mann’s global-warming “hockey stick” graph), “Andy” writes to Dr. Mann to say not to worry, he’s going to “cover” the story from a more oblique angle:

I'm going to blog on this as it relates to the value of the peer review process and not on the merits of the mcintyre et al attacks.

peer review, for all its imperfections, is where the herky-jerky process of knowledge building happens, would you agree?

And, amazingly, Dr. Mann does! “Re, your point at the end — you’ve taken the words out of my mouth.”

And that’s what Andrew Revkin did, week in, week out: He took the words out of Michael Mann’s mouth and served them up to impressionable readers of the New York Times and opportunist politicians around the world champing at the bit to inaugurate a vast global regulatory body to confiscate trillions of dollars of your hard-earned wealth in the cause of “saving the planet” from an imaginary crisis concocted by a few dozen thuggish ideologues. If you fall for this after the revelations of the last week, you’re as big a dupe as Begley or Revkin.

“Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” wondered Juvenal: Who watches the watchmen? But the beauty of the climate-change tree-ring circus is that you never need to ask “Who peer-reviews the peer-reviewers?” Mann peer-reviewed Jones, and Jones peer-reviewed Mann, and anyone who questioned their theories got exiled to the unwarmed wastes of Siberia. The “consensus” warm-mongers could have declared it only counts as “peer-reviewed” if it’s published in Peer-Reviewed Studies published by Mann & Jones Publishing Inc (Peermate of the Month: Al Gore, reclining naked, draped in dead polar-bear fur, on a melting ice floe), and Ed Begley Jr. and “Andy” Revkin would still have wandered out glassy-eyed into the streets droning “Peer-reviewed studies. Cannot question. Peer-reviewed studies. The science is settled . . . ”

Looking forward to Copenhagen, Herman Van Rumpoy, the new president of the European Union and an eager proponent of the ecopalypse, says 2009 is “the first year of global governance.” Global government, huh? I wonder where you go to vote them out of office.

Hey, but don’t worry, it’ll all be “peer-reviewed.”

— Mark Steyn, a National Review columnist, is author of America Alone. © 2009 Mark Steyn

Finally, the beginning of the end of the global warming fraud. XIII. Britain and the flat earthers.

Climate Change: this is the worst scientific scandal of our generation

Our hopelessly compromised scientific stablishment cannot be allowed to get away with the Climategate whitewash, says Christopher Booker. Published: 6:10PM GMT 28 Nov 2009

"A week after my colleague James Delingpole, on his Telegraph blog, coined the term "Climategate" to describe the scandal revealed by the leaked emails from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit, Google was showing that the word now appears across the internet more than nine million times. But in all these acres of electronic coverage, one hugely relevant point about these thousands of documents has largely been missed.

The reason why even the Guardian's George Monbiot has expressed total shock and dismay at the picture revealed by the documents is that their authors are not just any old bunch of academics. Their importance cannot be overestimated, What we are looking at here is the small group of scientists who have for years been more influential in driving the worldwide alarm over global warming than any others, not least through the role they play at the heart of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Professor Philip Jones, the CRU's director, is in charge of the two key sets of data used by the IPCC to draw up its reports. Through its link to the Hadley Centre, part of the UK Met Office, which selects most of the IPCC's key scientific contributors, his global temperature record is the most important of the four sets of temperature data on which the IPCC and governments rely – not least for their predictions that the world will warm to catastrophic levels unless trillions of dollars are spent to avert it.

Dr Jones is also a key part of the closely knit group of American and British scientists responsible for promoting that picture of world temperatures conveyed by Michael Mann's "hockey stick" graph which 10 years ago turned climate history on its head by showing that, after 1,000 years of decline, global temperatures have recently shot up to their highest level in recorded history.

Given star billing by the IPCC, not least for the way it appeared to eliminate the long-accepted Mediaeval Warm Period when temperatures were higher they are today, the graph became the central icon of the entire man-made global warming movement.

Since 2003, however, when the statistical methods used to create the "hockey stick" were first exposed as fundamentally flawed by an expert Canadian statistician Steve McIntyre, an increasingly heated battle has been raging between Mann's supporters, calling themselves "the Hockey Team", and McIntyre and his own allies, as they have ever more devastatingly called into question the entire statistical basis on which the IPCC and CRU construct their case.

The senders and recipients of the leaked CRU emails constitute a cast list of the IPCC's scientific elite, including not just the "Hockey Team", such as Dr Mann himself, Dr Jones and his CRU colleague Keith Briffa, but Ben Santer, responsible for a highly controversial rewriting of key passages in the IPCC's 1995 report; Kevin Trenberth, who similarly controversially pushed the IPCC into scaremongering over hurricane activity; and Gavin Schmidt, right-hand man to Al Gore's ally Dr James Hansen, whose own GISS record of surface temperature data is second in importance only to that of the CRU itself.

There are three threads in particular in the leaked documents which have sent a shock wave through informed observers across the world. Perhaps the most obvious, as lucidly put together by Willis Eschenbach (see McIntyre's blog Climate Audit and Anthony Watt's blog Watts Up With That), is the highly disturbing series of emails which show how Dr Jones and his colleagues have for years been discussing the devious tactics whereby they could avoid releasing their data to outsiders under freedom of information laws.

They have come up with every possible excuse for concealing the background data on which their findings and temperature records were based.

This in itself has become a major scandal, not least Dr Jones's refusal to release the basic data from which the CRU derives its hugely influential temperature record, which culminated last summer in his startling claim that much of the data from all over the world had simply got "lost". Most incriminating of all are the emails in which scientists are advised to delete large chunks of data, which, when this is done after receipt of a freedom of information request, is a criminal offence.

But the question which inevitably arises from this systematic refusal to release their data is – what is it that these scientists seem so anxious to hide? The second and most shocking revelation of the leaked documents is how they show the scientists trying to manipulate data through their tortuous computer programmes, always to point in only the one desired direction – to lower past temperatures and to "adjust" recent temperatures upwards, in order to convey the impression of an accelerated warming. This comes up so often (not least in the documents relating to computer data in the Harry Read Me file) that it becomes the most disturbing single element of the entire story. This is what Mr McIntyre caught Dr Hansen doing with his GISS temperature record last year (after which Hansen was forced to revise his record), and two further shocking examples have now come to light from Australia and New Zealand.

In each of these countries it has been possible for local scientists to compare the official temperature record with the original data on which it was supposedly based. In each case it is clear that the same trick has been played – to turn an essentially flat temperature chart into a graph which shows temperatures steadily rising. And in each case this manipulation was carried out under the influence of the CRU.

What is tragically evident from the Harry Read Me file is the picture it gives of the CRU scientists hopelessly at sea with the complex computer programmes they had devised to contort their data in the approved direction, more than once expressing their own desperation at how difficult it was to get the desired results.

The third shocking revelation of these documents is the ruthless way in which these academics have been determined to silence any expert questioning of the findings they have arrived at by such dubious methods – not just by refusing to disclose their basic data but by discrediting and freezing out any scientific journal which dares to publish their critics' work. It seems they are prepared to stop at nothing to stifle scientific debate in this way, not least by ensuring that no dissenting research should find its way into the pages of IPCC reports.

Back in 2006, when the eminent US statistician Professor Edward Wegman produced an expert report for the US Congress vindicating Steve McIntyre's demolition of the "hockey stick", he excoriated the way in which this same "tightly knit group" of academics seemed only too keen to collaborate with each other and to "peer review" each other's papers in order to dominate the findings of those IPCC reports on which much of the future of the US and world economy may hang. In light of the latest revelations, it now seems even more evident that these men have been failing to uphold those principles which lie at the heart of genuine scientific enquiry and debate. Already one respected US climate scientist, Dr Eduardo Zorita, has called for Dr Mann and Dr Jones to be barred from any further participation in the IPCC. Even our own George Monbiot, horrified at finding how he has been betrayed by the supposed experts he has been revering and citing for so long, has called for Dr Jones to step down as head of the CRU.

The former Chancellor Lord (Nigel) Lawson, last week launching his new think tank, the Global Warming Policy Foundation, rightly called for a proper independent inquiry into the maze of skulduggery revealed by the CRU leaks. But the inquiry mooted on Friday, possibly to be chaired by Lord Rees, President of the Royal Society – itself long a shameless propagandist for the warmist cause – is far from being what Lord Lawson had in mind. Our hopelessly compromised scientific establishment cannot be allowed to get away with a whitewash of what has become the greatest scientific scandal of our age."

Finally, the beginning of the end of the global warming fraud. XII. The Cast.

Finally, the beginning of the end of the global warming fraud. XI.

US Senator James Imhofe(R, Ok), minority leader of the Environment and Public Works Committee, has announced today that an investigation will be launched into ClimateGate emails. He has advised that letters have been sent out to many government departments and also to many of the scientists named in the emails. Committee activity should be interesting as Imhofe's co-chair is America's sweetheart, Barbara Boxer(D, Ca).

The First SockPuppet will continue to sell-out and diminish his nation at Copenhagen

The LA Times is breaking the story this morning that Obama will go to Copenhagen after all:

President Obama will attend the international climate negotiations in Copenhagen next month, according to a senior administration official, a sign of the president’s increasing confidence that the talks will yield a meaningful agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The White House will also announce today that the United States will commit, in the talks, to reduce its emissions of the heat-trapping gases scientists blame for global warming “in the range of” 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020, the official said. That’s the target set out in the climate bill the House passed in June.

The president will address negotiators on Dec. 9, just after the opening of the two-week summit, on his way to pick up the Nobel Peace Prize in nearby Sweden. His speech will come ahead of planned visits by prominent heads of state from Europe and around the world, and before the talks are expected to reach their most frenzied pitch.

In light of the revelations surrounding ClimateGate, the controversy that pegs anthropogenic global warming as an out-and-out fraud, the wise course for the US would be a wait-and-see. For a president whose popularity is dropping faster than global temperatures, standing up at Copenhagen and announcing draconian tax grab commitments in the face of the collapse of the AGW meme (on his way to pick up a dubious Nobel prize, no less), will clearly signal to the American people that he is either too narcissistic to see past the teleprompter, never had any intention of implementing policy based on rational science or economics, or as many suspect, wishes to continue his path of Socializing the US regardless of the cost to the nation, both on a personal level, and as the competitive and surviving democratic entity in the world.

In the face of the aspirations of China, the "new" Russia, and the Orwellian machinations of the European Union, the US cannot afford a president who is rapidly becoming the world's rent-seeker.

Finally, the beginning of the end of the global warming fraud. X.

BBC wobble on Climate Change: the Corporation and the dead-tree media have lost the war

By Gerald Warner UK Telegraph.co.uk Last updated: November 24th, 2009

Call it the Domino Effect. After Monday’s Newsnight item on the Climategate scandal it is evident that the leaked e-mails allegedly from the University of East Anglia’s manmade global warming propaganda unit are threatening to bring down more than just the IPCC/Al Gore axis. Themuch-derided mainstream media are waking up to the fact that their owncredibility and hence commercial viability are imminently threatened bytheir clinging to the climate change superstition.

Do not misunderstand me. The Newsnight package was in no sense a mea culpa by the BBC; nor was it a resiling from the Corporation’s fanatical attachment to the global warming legend. Many of the familiarfeatures were in evidence: Paxman’s scepticism of scepticism; the interviewing of a sceptic scientist in his overcoat, outdoors, somewhere in central London, while Professor Bob Watson, from the University of East Anglia, lorded it comfortably in the studio.

Yet there was something new. BBC Kremlinologists could not fail to notice just a scintilla of unease, reflected in Susan Watts’ relatively open-minded presentation of the issue; above all, the fact that the BBC felt compelled to address the matter at all. Clearly, someone at the BBC realised that this is a global scoop in which the blogosphere has left the Corporation and all the dead-tree media standing. Those media are already facing increasing marginalisation without marginalising themselves by refusing to report news that is viral on the Internet.

Is it even just possible that some trillionaire BBC executive,somewhere in the depths of Broadcasting House, retained just enough ofhis youthful news-hound instincts to feel a hollow pit in his stomachand to ask himself: “Ohmigod, what if it is all a crock and we are left looking like a bunch of complete self-abusers when Al Gore takes his place alongside Titus Oates and other great false witnesses in history?”

Is there just the dawning of a self-preservation instinct at the BBC to hedge the odd bet on AGW? Possibly. It is more likely that the establishment consensus will prevail and years from now Paxman, shivering in his woolly combinations (we have his own testimony he has problems with his underpinnings) in mid-July will still be proclaiming global warming as cooling reaches brass-monkey levels.

But it is surely not beyond the realms of possibility that one or two of Auntie’s servitors look at e-mails exchanged within a supposedly scientific community in which the death of a sceptical scientist is greeted as “cheering news”; the suggestion is made that “Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline”[in warming] should be employed; the removal of a sceptical writer froma journal is triumphantly reported; and colleagues are urged to delete material subject to Freedom of Information law – and asked themselves is this the language and methodology of Einstein?

From Professor Bob Watson, on Newsnight, we learned that the scientists’ only offence was “looseness of language”: their command of climate science was unquestionable, but their handling of the English language had been inept. We further learned that the term “trick” refers to a mathematical process; this interview was more educational than the Open University. The clowns at Hadley CRU know that they are blown; that one of the four legs on which the great IPCC imposture stands has been broken and will never be repaired.

Manmade global warming is not science, but a religious cult. It is the 21st century’s equivalent of the Fifth Monarchy Men and the Countess of Huntingdon’s Connexion. Only a massive collaborationbetween governments anxious to extend state power, scientists with their mouths clamped to the IPCC teat and entrepreneurs eager to make billions has enabled a superstition to be imposed on the world that will wreck developed nations’ economies, impoverish developing countries and kill their populations and rape the landscape of Europe.

The majority of people now reject this nonsense. Media organisations like the BBC have betrayed truth and objectivity on this, as so many other issues, so should not be surprised if the public abandons them for open debate online.

Finally, the beginning of the end of the global warming fraud. IX.

The excerpt below is from a recent post on wattsupwiththat , detailing the chronology of the CRU email fiasco and the duplicity of CRU members, and indeed, of the office of the British Information Commissioner itself. There can no doubt in any right thinking person's mind, about the worthlessness of the global warming temperature conclusions as presented by the East Anglia Climate Research Unit. Eschenbach tightly chronicles the unfolding controversy, from his perspective of one of the major antagonists. The post is a long one, but should be read in its entirely, including the comments. This is a hugely significant developing story.

[...]

[By Willis Eschenbach]

"People seem to be missing the real issue in the CRU emails. Gavin over at realclimate keeps distracting people by saying the issue is the scientists being nasty to each other, and what Trenberth said, and the Nature “trick”, and the like. Those are side trails. To me, the main issue is the frontal attack on the heart of science, which is transparency.

Science works by one person making a claim, and backing it up with the data and methods that they used to make the claim. Other scientists then attack the claim by (among other things) trying to replicate the first scientist’s work. If they can’t replicate it, it doesn’t stand. So blocking the FOIA allowed Phil Jones to claim that his temperature record (HadCRUT3) was valid science.

This is not just trivial gamesmanship, this is central to the very idea of scientific inquiry. This is an attack on the heart of science, by keeping people who disagree with you from ever checking your work and seeing if your math is correct.

As far as I know, I am the person who made the original Freedom Of Information Act to CRU that started getting all this stirred up. I was trying to get access to the taxpayer funded raw data out of which they built the global temperature record. I was not representing anybody, or trying to prove a point. I am not funded by Mobil, I’m an amateur scientist with a lifelong interest in the weather and climate. I’m not “directed” by anyone, I’m not a member of a right-wing conspiracy. I’m just a guy trying to move science forwards.

The recent release of the hacked emails from CRU has provided me with an amazing insight into the attempt by myself, Steve McIntyre, and others from CA and elsewhere to obtain the raw station data from Phil Jones at the CRU. We wanted the data that was used to make the global temperature record that is relied on to claim “unprecedented” global warming. I want to give a chronological account of the interactions. While we don’t know if all of these emails are valid, the researchers involved such as Gavin Schmidt and Michael Mann that clearly indicate that they think they are authentic They certainly fit with my experience. I have only included the relevant parts of emails, and indicated where I have snipped by an ellipsis (…)."

Mr. Eschenbach has detailed his brief here, in addition to what's in the WUWT post, and indicates this will be a work-in-progress as more analysis of the FOIA dump is done.

[...]

Finally, the beginning of the end of the global warming fraud. VIII.

Finally, the beginning of the end of the global warming fraud. VII.

Global Warming With the Lid Off

Wall Street Journal * OPINION EUROPE * NOVEMBER 23, 2009, 7:22 P.M. ET

The emails that reveal an effort to hide the truth about climate science.

'The two MMs have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the U.K., I think I'll delete the file rather than send to anyone. . . . We also have a data protection act, which I will hide behind."

So apparently wrote Phil Jones, director of the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU) and one of the world's leading climate scientists, in a 2005 email to "Mike." Judging by the email thread, this refers to Michael Mann, director of the Pennsylvania State University's Earth System Science Center. We found this nugget among the more than 3,000 emails and documents released last week after CRU's servers were hacked and messages among some of the world's most influential climatologists were published on the Internet.

The "two MMs" are almost certainly Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, two Canadians who have devoted years to seeking the raw data and codes used in climate graphs and models, then fact-checking the published conclusions—a painstaking task that strikes us as a public and scientific service. Mr. Jones did not return requests for comment and the university said it could not confirm that all the emails were authentic, though it acknowledged its servers were hacked.

Yet even a partial review of the emails is highly illuminating. In them, scientists appear to urge each other to present a "unified" view on the theory of man-made climate change while discussing the importance of the "common cause"; to advise each other on how to smooth over data so as not to compromise the favored hypothesis; to discuss ways to keep opposing views out of leading journals; and to give tips on how to "hide the decline" of temperature in certain inconvenient data.

Some of those mentioned in the emails have responded to our requests for comment by saying they must first chat with their lawyers. Others have offered legal threats and personal invective. Still others have said nothing at all. Those who have responded have insisted that the emails reveal nothing more than trivial data discrepancies and procedural debates.

Yet all of these nonresponses manage to underscore what may be the most revealing truth: That these scientists feel the public doesn't have a right to know the basis for their climate-change predictions, even as their governments prepare staggeringly expensive legislation in response to them.

Consider the following note that appears to have been sent by Mr. Jones to Mr. Mann in May 2008: "Mike, Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith will do likewise. . . . Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same?" AR4 is shorthand for the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change's (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report, presented in 2007 as the consensus view on how bad man-made climate change has supposedly become.

In another email that seems to have been sent in September 2007 to Eugene Wahl of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Paleoclimatology Program and to Caspar Ammann of the National Center for Atmospheric Research's Climate and Global Dynamics Division, Mr. Jones writes: "[T]ry and change the Received date! Don't give those skeptics something to amuse themselves with."

When deleting, doctoring or withholding information didn't work, Mr. Jones suggested an alternative in an August 2008 email to Gavin Schmidt of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, copied to Mr. Mann. "The FOI [Freedom of Information] line we're all using is this," he wrote. "IPCC is exempt from any countries FOI—the skeptics have been told this. Even though we . . . possibly hold relevant info the IPCC is not part of our remit (mission statement, aims etc) therefore we don't have an obligation to pass it on."

It also seems Mr. Mann and his friends weren't averse to blacklisting scientists who disputed some of their contentions, or journals that published their work. "I think we have to stop considering 'Climate Research' as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal," goes one email, apparently written by Mr. Mann to several recipients in March 2003. "Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal."

Mr. Mann's main beef was that the journal had published several articles challenging aspects of the anthropogenic theory of global warming.

For the record, when we've asked Mr. Mann in the past about the charge that he and his colleagues suppress opposing views, he has said he "won't dignify that question with a response." Regarding our most recent queries about the hacked emails, he says he "did not manipulate any data in any conceivable way," but he otherwise refuses to answer specific questions. For the record, too, our purpose isn't to gainsay the probity of Mr. Mann's work, much less his right to remain silent.

However, we do now have hundreds of emails that give every appearance of testifying to concerted and coordinated efforts by leading climatologists to fit the data to their conclusions while attempting to silence and discredit their critics. In the department of inconvenient truths, this one surely deserves a closer look by the media, the U.S. Congress and other investigative bodies.

Copyright 2009 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Finally, the beginning of the end of the global warming fraud. VI.

"The Scarlet Emails"

"I reject your reality..."

By Dafydd Ab Hugh, November 12, 2009

“…And substitute my own!”

So reads a t-shirt often worn by Adam Savage, one of the two original starts of the Discovery Channel’s series Mythbusters, which I have slavishly watched since the very first episode (I think that was the episode where they busted the myth of the rocket-propelled car launching into the air).

The tee commemorates a pithy summary Adam Savage delivered on the show, I can even remember whether he meant it optimistically or sarcastically: “I reject your reality and substitute my own!” I remember Adam saying that, but I can’t recall now what precipitated the remark. But after today, I suggest he send his wonderful t-shirt to another fellow who now has a greater claim to it: President Barack H. Obama.

Take a look and tell me I’m exaggerating:

"President Barack Obama rejected the Afghanistan war options before him and asked for revisions", his defense secretary said Thursday, after the U.S. ambassador in Kabul argued that a significant U.S. troop increase would only prop up a weak, corruption-tainted government.

“I’m not happy with the options reality has offered me; I demand you produce new fantasy options more to my liking!”

Let’s take an Eikenberry detour. Yes indeed, he was once a military commander in Afghanistan; but he’s not the commander now, and he hasn’t been for well over two years — during which time the situation has changed dramatically. Note that he also left before Gen. David Petraeus achieved such a thorough and remarkable victory in Iraq using a very similar strategy.

In 2007, as the Iraq COIN was picking up, Eikenberry was named Deputy Chairman of the NATO Military Committee, and NATO was not officially involved in the Iraq War (as they are in Afghanistan). Thus I see no evidence that Eikenberry has spent any significant time studying the Iraq COIN — or even talking to David Petraeus, who, as Commander of CENTCOM, is now McChrystal’s boss.

Nor was Ambassador Eikenberry a COIN specialist when he wore a uniform instead of a suit. So why should his advice trump McChrystal’s in the Obamacle’s mind? (Except for the obvious explanation: Because what Eikenberry says, by happenstance or design, precisely matches what Obama wants to hear.)

Eikenberry’s argument for why we should abandon Afghanistan is not exactly subtle; I think it boils down to the peculiar idea that the purpose of a counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy is to “prop-up” the existing government, whatever it may be; therefore, since we don’t like the fellow that Afghan voters elected, Hamid Karzai, we shouldn’t prop it up by implementing a COIN strategy. Instead, we should focus on “training” the indiginous Afghan troops.

Most others experts on the subject I’ve read — I’m certainly not an expert, so I must rely on others, such as Fred Kagen or David Petraeus— who seem to believe the purpose of COIN is to improve civilian security throughout the country, thus to enlist civilian support for the war effort against the insurgents and deny the latter the chaos and collapse they need to seize the government.

It needn’t incorporate any support for the specific civilian government at all, just for the concept of democratic voting. All we need from Karzai is that he not interfere with Afghan troops’ participation in COIN-related joint patrols and operations… which is, incidentally, exactly how we go about training the local forces, both military and tribal militia, in the first place. No joint ops — no training.

Here is the Eikenberry thesis on display:

Obama’s ambassador, Karl Eikenberry, who is also a former commander in Afghanistan, twice in the last week voiced strong dissent against sending large numbers of new forces, according to an administration official. That puts him at odds with the current war commander, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who is seeking thousands more troops.

Eikenberry’s misgivings, expressed in classified cables to Washington, highlight administration concerns that bolstering the American presence in Afghanistan could make the country more reliant on the U.S., not less. He expressed his objections just ahead of Obama’s latest war meeting Wednesday.

But there is an even more disturbing possibility: If AP is accurately recounting Eikenberry’s objections (and I don’t know that to be the case), then he, too, believes that Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s recommendations consist of nothing but “send 40,000 more troops” — rather than “implement a COIN strategy, then decide how many troops we need.” (McChrystal adds, “Psst… it turns out to be about 40,000 more than we have right now”). This would put the former commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan in the same conceptual box as the elite news media.

It’s hard to swallow the contention that a former lieutenant general (that’s a 3-banger) in the United States Army would be blissfully unaware of what counterinsurgency strategy is, and how it differs from a counter-terrorism strategy… where we “fire a $2 million missile at a $10 empty tent and hit a camel in the butt”. I hope that’s not the problem. But if not, then what makes Eikenberry think he’s more fit to opine on Afghanistan than the general that Barack Obama himself hand-picked to do just that? (And who is, as I understand it, an expert on COIN strategy.)

(There is a third, even more disturbing possibility: That Eikenberry knows very well that McChrystal is right, that a COIN strategy is the only one that leads to victory; but the ambassador believes that victory is the last thing Obama wants. In that case, Eikenberry may be quietly conspiring to lose the war, either to give Obama’s leftist supporters the terrible American defeat they demand, or to deny President Bush the victory he earned. Or both. I certainly hope this is not what’s going through Eikenberry’s mind!)

But back to the One, who is ultimately calling the shots here. His philosophy of “I reject your reality and substitute my own” is, in fact, the standard modus vivendi of liberalism. As in:

• “I reject the reality that one must work hard, or at least smart, to live well; I substitute the reality where I can sit around and smoke pot all day but still receive a national income (big enough to pay for my dope).”
• “I reject the reality that says the best remedy for bad speech is more good speech; I substitute the reality where we can simply outlaw or ban bad speech, and then all that will be left is good speech.”
• “I reject the reality that increasing health-insurance demand (via mandate) while decreasing supply (by driving companies out of business) will result in much more expensive insurance; I substitute the reality where a complete government takeover will lower costs, improve care, and expand the pool of those covered.”
• “I reject the reality that we need cheap energy; I substitute the reality where we can tax the hell out of it, raise energy costs through the roof (as Obama himself gleefully predicted), declare more and more energy sources off-limits, and therefore make America stronger and more prosperous.”
• “I reject the reality that doubling taxation of the average Joe will leave him with less money to spend; I substitute the reality where doubling taxation results in an explosion of new economic growth, causing the economy to take off like a rocket.”
• “I reject the reality that Israel needs the ability to defend itself, or it will be destroyed; I substitute the reality where, if Israel will only give the Palestinians everything they want, while demanding nothing in return, the latter will be so grateful they will become fast friends with the Jewish state.” (Alternatively: “I reject the reality that Jews should be allowed to have a state; I substitute the reality where Jews are so uniquely evil that they are the only “race” who should be barely-tolerated strangers wherever they live.”)

To the liberal, reality is infinitely malleable: If you don’t like it, just hold your breath, close your eyes, strain really hard, and intensely visualize the new reality. When you open your eyes and gasp in a lungful, the new reality will miraculously have been subbed in!

This seems to work in some environments but not others. It works great in Hollywood; and it works reasonably well in two-party politics — averaging out to being successful about half the time. However, it doesn’t seem to work much at all in warfare, where the default reality has a depressing way of contradicting the happy-facers, rudely and abruptly.

Alas, even that catastrophe could play into the hand of Barack Obama and his incompetocracy; after bargaining down the number of troops we need — and implementing Slow Joe Biden’s counter-terrorism strategy, rather than a COIN strategy — we might be handed a signal, Vietnam-style defeat. Then B.O. could declare:

1. “Clearly this means the war was unwinnable from the beginning, and my predecessor should never have invaded Afghanistan in the first place.”
2. “I gave the policy of the previous administration every opportunity; I even sent more troops — not once, but twice! It’s time to admit that the whole adventure was a terrible miscalculation, pull out, accept that defeat was inevitable, and MoveOn.”

3. “Now the whole country understands why I have embarked upon a new era of Strategic Reassurance, talking to our enemies without preconditions, instead of the “cowboy militarism” of the Republican Party.

   “We’re going to redouble our efforts to talk Iran and North Korea into doing what’s best for America, rather than what’s best for themselves. I know we’ve tried it again and again, and it’s never worked yet; but by the Law of Averages, that means we’re due to hit the jackpot really soon now!”

In the long run, I don’t think a strategy of denying reality is a military winner; and a long-run strategy of hoping for American defeat will not be a political winner in 2010 or 2012. But as John Maynard Keynes is reputed to have said, “In the long run, we’re all dead.”

A jihadist hiding in plain sight

Orange County Register: "How many deaths are acceptable for the sake of diversity?"

By MARK STEYN 2009-11-13 11:55:01

Shortly after 9/11, there was a lot of talk about how no one would ever hijack an American airliner ever again – not because of new security arrangements but because an alert citizenry was on the case: We were hip to their jive. The point appeared to be proved three months later on a U.S.-bound Air France flight. The "Shoebomber" attempted to light his footwear, and the flight attendants and passengers pounced. As the more boorish commentators could not resist pointing out, even the French guys walloped him.

But the years go by, and the mood shifts. You didn't have to be "alert" to spot Maj. Nidal Hasan. He'd spent most of the past half-decade walking around with a big neon sign on his head saying "JIHADIST. STAND WELL BACK." But we (that's to say, almost all of us; and certainly almost anyone who matters in national security and the broader political culture) are now reflexively conditioned to ignore the flashing neon sign. Like those apocryphal Victorian ladies discreetly draping the lasciviously curved legs of their pianos, if a glimpse of hard unpleasant reality peeps through we simply veil it in another layer of fluffy illusions.

Two joint terrorism task forces became aware almost a year ago that Maj. Hasan was in regular e-mail contact with Anwar al-Awlaqi, the American-born but now Yemeni-based cleric who served as imam to three of the 9/11 hijackers and supports all-out holy war against the United States. But the expert analysts in the Pentagon determined that this lively correspondence was consistent with Maj. Hasan's "research interests," so there was no need to worry. That's America: Technologically superior, money no object (not one but two "joint terrorism task forces" stumbled across him). Yet no action was taken.

On the other hand, who needs surveillance operations and intelligence budgets? Maj. Hasan was entirely upfront about who he was. He put it on his business card: "SOA." As in "Soldier of Allah" – which seems a tad ungrateful to the American taxpayers who ponied up half a million bucks or thereabouts in elite medical school education to train him to be a Soldier of Uncle Sam. In a series of meetings during 2008, officials from both Walter Reed and the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences considered the question of whether then-Capt. Hasan was psychotic. But, according to at least one bigwig at Walter Reed, members of the policy committee wondered "how would it look if we kick out one of the few Muslim residents." So he got promoted to major and shipped to Fort Hood, Texas.

And 13 men and women and an unborn baby are dead.

Well, like they say, it's easy to be wise after the event. I'm not so sure. These days, it's easier to be even more stupid after the event. "Apparently, he tried to contact al-Qaida," mused MSNBC's Chris Matthews. "That's not a crime to call up al-Qaida, is it? Is it? I mean, where do you stop the guy?" Interesting question: Where do you draw the line?

The truth is, we're not prepared to draw a line even after he's gone ahead and committed mass murder. "What happened at Fort Hood was a tragedy," said Gen. Casey, the Army's chief of staff, "but I believe it would be an even greater tragedy if our diversity becomes a casualty here." A "greater tragedy" than 14 dead and dozens of wounded? Translating from the original brain-addled multicult-speak, the Army chief of staff is saying that the same fatuous prostration before marshmallow illusions that led to the "tragedy" must remain in place. If it leads to occasional mass murder, well, hopefully it can be held to what cynical British civil servants used to call, during the Northern Irish "Troubles", "an acceptable level of violence." Fourteen dead is evidently acceptable. A hundred and forty? Fourteen hundred? I guess we'll find out.

"Diversity" is one of those words designed to absolve you of the need to think. Likewise, a belief in "multiculturalism" doesn't require you to know anything at all about other cultures, just to feel generally warm and fluffy about them. Heading out from my hotel room the other day, I caught a glimpse of that 7-Eleven video showing Major Hasan wearing "Muslim" garb to buy a coffee on the morning of his murderous rampage. And it wasn't until I was in the taxi cab that something odd struck me: He is an American of Arab descent. But he was wearing Pakistani dress – that's to say, a "Punjabi suit," as they call it in Britain, or the "shalwar kameez," to give it its South Asian name. For all the hundreds of talking heads droning on about "diversity" across the TV networks, it was only Tarek Fatah, writing in The Ottawa Citizen, who pointed out that no Arab males wear this get-up – with one exception: Those Arab men who got the jihad fever and went to Afghanistan to sign on with the Taliban and al-Qaida. In other words, Maj. Hasan's outfit symbolized the embrace of an explicit political identity entirely unconnected with his ethnic heritage.

Mr. Fatah would seem to be a genuine "multiculturalist": That's to say, he's attuned to often very subtle "diversities" between cultures. Whereas the professional multiculturalist sees the 7-Eleven video and coos, "Aw, look. He's wearing ... well, something exotic and colorful, let's not get hung up on details. Celebrate diversity, right? Can we get him in the front row for the group shot? We may be eligible for a grant."

The brain-addled "diversity" of Gen. Casey will get some of us killed, and keep all of us cowed. In the days since the killings, the news reports have seemed increasingly like a satirical novel that the author's not quite deft enough to pull off, with bizarre new Catch-22s multiplying like the windmills of your mind: If you're openly in favor of pouring boiling oil down the throats of infidels, then the Pentagon will put down your e-mails to foreign jihadists as mere confirmation of your long-established "research interests." If you're psychotic, the Army will make you a psychiatrist for fear of provoking you. If you gun down a bunch of people, within an hour the FBI will state clearly that we can all relax, there's no terrorism angle, because, in our over-credentialized society, it doesn't count unless you're found to be carrying Permit #57982BQ3a from the relevant State Board of Jihadist Licensing.

Ezra Levant, my comrade in a long battle to restore freedom of speech to Canada, likes to say that the Danish cartoons crisis may one day be seen as a more critical event than 9/11. Not, obviously, in the comparative death tolls but in what each revealed about the state of Western civilization. After 9/11, we fought back, hit hard, rolled up the Afghan camps; after the cartoons, we weaseled and equivocated and appeased and signaled that we were willing to trade core Western values for a quiet life. Watching the decadence and denial on display this past week, I think in years to come Fort Hood will be seen in a similar light. What happened is not a "tragedy" but a national scandal, already fading from view.

©MARK STEYN

Bringing al-Qaeda to New York

EDITORIAL: Bringing al-Qaeda to New York

By the Editors, National Review Online

Candidate Barack Obama urged a return to pre-9/11 counterterrorism-by-courts. President Obama’s Justice Department overflows with lawyers who spent the last eight years representing America’s enemies. Thus, Friday’s announcement that top al-Qaeda terrorists will be brought to New York City for a civilian trial is no surprise. That doesn’t make it any less inexcusable.

The treatment of jihadist terror as a mere law-enforcement issue, fit for civilian courts, was among the worst of the national-security derelictions of the Nineties. While the champions of this approach stress that prosecutors scored a 100 percent conviction rate, they conveniently omit mention of the paltry number of cases (less than three dozen, mostly against low-level terrorists, over an eight-year period, despite numerous attacks), as well as the rigorous due-process burdens that made prosecution of many terrorists impossible, the daunting disclosure and witness-confrontation rules that required government to disclose mountains of intelligence, the gargantuan expense of “hardening” courthouses and prisons to protect juries and judges, and the terrorists’ exploitation of legal privileges to plot additional attacks and escape attempts.

In placing the nation on a war footing after the September 11 attacks, the Bush administration invoked the laws of war to detain terrorists as enemy combatants and to try those who had committed provable war crimes by military commission — measures that were endorsed by Congress despite being challenged in the courts by some of the lawyers now working in Obama’s Justice Department. This military-commission system provided due-process protections that were unprecedented for wartime enemies, including the right to appellate review in the civilian courts. But they protected national-defense information from disclosure.

This commission system is tailor-made for the 9/11 plotters, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the suicide-hijacking mastermind who is brazen in taking credit for that and numerous other attacks against the United States. In fact, last December, KSM and his four co-defendants indicated to the military judge that they wanted to plead guilty and move on to execution. But then the Obama administration swept into power and undertook to repudiate many of Bush’s counterterrorism practices, declaring its intention to close Gitmo within a year and forcing a moratorium on military commissions so the process could be “studied.” Friday’s announcement that KSM and the other 9/11 plotters will be sent to federal court in New York for a civilian trial is the most significant step to date in Obama’s determination to turn back the clock to the time when government believed subpoenas rather than Marines were the answer to jihadist murder and mayhem.

It is difficult to quantify how dangerously foolish this course is. As they demonstrated in offering to plead guilty while bragging about their atrocities, KSM and his cohorts don’t want a trial so much as they want a soapbox to press their grievances against the United States and the West. With no real defense to the charges, they will endeavor to put America on trial, pressing the court for expansive discovery of government intelligence files. Having gratuitously exposed classified information on interrogation tactics and other sensitive matters in order to pander to Obama’s base, the Justice Department will be in a poor position to argue against broad disclosure, even if it were so inclined. As the court orders more and more revelations, potential intelligence sources and foreign spy services will develop even graver doubts about our capacity to keep secrets. They will reduce their intelligence cooperation accordingly, and the nation will be dramatically more vulnerable.

Moreover, the transfer of the worst al-Qaeda prisoners into the U.S. will grease the skids for many, if not most, of the remaining 200-plus Gitmo terrorists to be moved here. This will be the worst of all possible outcomes. These are trained terrorists who have been detained under the laws of war, but most of whom cannot be tried because the intelligence on them cannot be used in court. We are still holding them because they are deadly dangerous and because no other country is willing to take them off our hands. Once inside the United States, they will indisputably be within the jurisdiction of the federal courts — which are staffed by judges predisposed against wartime detention without trial. As long as the terrorists were at Gitmo, those judges were reluctant to order them released into the U.S. — a transfer that would violate federal law. If the terrorists are already here, though, judges will not be as gun-shy. Inevitably, some will be freed to live and plot among us.

The Obama Left delusionally argues that running these risks will make us safer. The international community will see how enlightened we are, the fable goes. The hostility of America’s enemies will melt away. They’ll lay down their bombs and stop attacking us. As observed by former attorney general Michael Mukasey — who presided over terrorism cases as a federal judge — “We did just that after the first World Trade Center bombing, after the plot to blow up airliners over the Pacific, and after the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. In return, we got the 9/11 attacks and the murder of nearly 3,000 innocents.”

Embellishing The First Person

Obama's swelling ego
By Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe, November 14, 2009

PRESIDENT OBAMA was too busy to attend the celebrations in Germany this week marking the fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago. But he did appear by video, delivering a few brief and bloodless remarks about how the wall was “a painful barrier between family and friends’’ that symbolized “a system that denied people the freedoms that should be the right of every human being.’’ He referred to “tyranny,’’ but never identified the tyrants - he never uttered the words “Soviet Union’’ or “communism,’’ for example. He said nothing about the men and women who died trying to cross the wall. Nor did he mention Harry Truman or Ronald Reagan - or even Mikhail Gorbachev.

He did, however, talk about Barack Obama.

“Few would have foreseen,’’ declared the president, “that a united Germany would be led by a woman from [the former East German state of] Brandenburg or that their American ally would be led by a man of African descent. But human destiny is what human beings make of it.’’

As presidential rhetoric goes, this was hardly a match for “Ich bin ein Berliner,’’ still less another “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.’’ But as a specimen of presidential narcissism, it is hard to beat. Obama couldn’t be troubled to visit Berlin to commemorate a momentous milestone in the history of human liberty. But he was glad to explain to those who were there why reflections on that milestone should inspire appreciation for the self-made “destiny’’ of his own rise to power.

Was there ever a president as deeply enamored of himself as Barack Obama?

The first President Bush, taught from childhood to shun what his mother called “The Great I Am,’’ regularly instructed his speechwriters not to include too many “I’s’’ in his prepared remarks. Reagan maintained that there was no limit to what someone could achieve if he didn’t mind who got the credit. George Washington, one of the most accomplished men of his day, said with characteristic modesty on becoming president that he was “peculiarly conscious of his own deficiencies.’’

Obama, on the other hand, positively revels in The Great I Am.

“I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters,’’ he told campaign aides when he was running for the White House. “I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that . . . I’m a better political director than my political director.’’

At the start of his presidency, Obama seemed to content himself with the royal “we’’ - “We will build the roads and bridges. . . . We will restore science to its rightful place. . . . We will harness the sun and winds,’’ he declaimed at his inauguration.

But as the literary theorist Stanley Fish points out, “By the time of the address to the Congress on Feb. 24, the royal we [had] flowered into the naked ‘I’: ‘As soon as I took office, I asked this Congress.’ ‘I called for action.’ ‘I pushed for quick action.’ ‘I have told each of my Cabinet.’ ‘I’ve appointed a proven and aggressive inspector general.’ ’I refuse to let that happen.’ ’’ In his speech on the federal takeover of General Motors, Obama likewise found it necessary to use the first-person singular pronoun 34 times. (“Congress’’ he mentioned just once.)

At this rate, it won’t be long before the president’s ego is so inflated that it will require a ZIP code of its own.

Then again, how modest would any of us be if we were as magnificent as Obama knows himself to be? “I am well aware,’’ he told the UN General Assembly in September, “of the expectations that accompany my presidency around the world.’’

In 1860, writes Doris Kearns Goodwin in her celebrated biography “Team of Rivals,’’ an author wishing to dedicate his forthcoming work to Abraham Lincoln received this answer: “I give the leave, begging only that the inscription may be in modest terms, not representing me as a man of great learning, or a very extraordinary one in any respect.’’

Obama has often claimed Lincoln as a role model, but apparently it only goes so far.

Jeff Jacoby can be reached at jacoby@globe.com.

Sarah Palin and the Dysfunctional Political Class

by James V. DeLong

The frenetic hostility to Sarah Palin, even by many on the Republican side, is unnerving, because her qualifications to be president are objectively better than those of almost anyone who has been on the national ticket over the past decade.

A reasonable conclusion is that these qualifications are precisely the cause of the hostility. To admit to the reality that the dominant political class, including the MSM and the punditocracy of both parties, has been giving us abysmal presidential candidates, to accept that a hockey mom plucked from small-town Alaska is better than the best that the political class can come up with, would require recognition of the terrible truth that the system has become deeply dysfunctional. Doing this would force our political elites to look into an abyss of serious questions about the functioning of our democracy. Palin creates a cognitive dissonance so intense that it simply cannot be accepted.

To start, compare her experience as a person, mayor, and state leader with George W. Bush’s pre-presidential career as an alcoholic, baseball executive, and ornamental governor. Whatever one thinks of his performance as president — and like most conservatives my views are complex — he was not promising material as of 2000.

Al Gore would be disqualified by knowledge of his academic career and by a reading of Earth in the Balance, an exercise in messianic ignorance. His subsequent career getting rich from climate change subsidies would reinforce this opinion. John Kerry had a Senate career of unbroken mediocrity, compounded by his unapologized-for Winter Soldier exercise and the still-unanswered Swift Boat questions.

John Edwards had no shadow of a qualification, and again the judgment is confirmed by subsequent events.

Obama’s qualifications were will-o-the-wisp. His supporters cited his “potential,” as they had to, because his only actual feat was his first book — and the claims that this was ghosted have been met by non-denial. The Asia Times characterizes these rumors as “well-established,” which tells one something about current foreign assessments of Obama. The president’s long-standing ties to the radical left should have tipped the balance to the negative.

Vice President Joe Biden has a long history of blurring the line between fantasy and reality to a degree that one wonders if he sees any distinction, but 36 years of this is enough to make him “qualified.” This, too, tells a lot about the mental processes of the dominant political class.

One can deeply respect John McCain’s courage and service. But he is an erratic senator, with a tendency to reach decisions on a whim and then excoriate anyone who disagrees. As demonstrated by McCain-Feingold — which hamstrings the middle-class base of the Republicans while leaving intact the power of unions and public employees, the media, the rich, and Native American tribes — McCain does not, or cannot, think even two moves ahead.

This leaves Joe Lieberman and Dick Cheney as the only candidates with any weight, and Palin’s executive experience gives her an edge over Lieberman.

The list may not be impressive, but being number two is not bad.

The biases of the political class also explain why Palin got sandbagged at the outset. Anyone familiar with the world of Washington private schools knows that they are experts at resume building — creating scads of extracurricular activities and awards so that every student can shine for the college of his or her choice. Well, the kids learned it from their parents, who are also experts at blowing air into the CV.

Palin was called inexperienced because she had never gone on a five-photo-ops-with-foreign-leaders-in-four-days tour, held show hearings on the topic du jour, introduced meaningless legislation, or had her staff give her a list of the publications she should say she was currently reading.

In fact — and of course — negotiating with Exxon is better preparation for negotiating with Putin than is a foreign photo op. And running a town is a miles-better education than warming a Senate seat. But again, it is not in the interests of the political class to acknowledge this.

So her handlers tried to cram her into a D.C. frame of reference by stuffing her with facts on national and international issues that could withstand grilling from a gotcha! press, something that was neither possible nor the right game.

Palin should instead have conceded that of course she would not be ready to be president on day one, but that:

1. What she had turned her hand to, she had quickly learned to do successfully — and this ability, based on her solid grounding in the realities of American life, was and is the real test.

2. If she were called upon on day one, she would be the head of a government, not a lone individual, and she had the experience in handling people that would be necessary to tap into the collective intelligence of the nation.

Those are called real qualifications!

Since the election, Palin has learned her lesson about the political handlers and she has followed Mao’s advice, as channeled through Anita Dunn — “you fight your war and I’ll fight mine.”

Her resignation from the governorship, which was mostly condemned by the pundits, was dead-on shrewd. Why let herself be tied down defending perjured ethics charges from people with infinite money, whose only desire is to shut her up or bankrupt her? Her willingness to be herself and pursue her own ideas without regard to whether or not they could lead to future office is a source of great political strength. Her public pronouncements, such as the Hong Kong speech, are serious and adult, unlike most of the vapidity produced by politicians, especially Obama. And Palin is mastering the art of short, sharp statements.

None of this is winning over the political class. Indeed, Palin’s refusal to fulfill their desires that she be a clown or take a proper role in the kabuki theater of Washington is making them angrier than ever and more determined to marginalize her. But the disillusionment with government among the tea-partying middle class is so great that every attack on her builds her stature on Main Street.

Is Palin going to be nominated? Hard to tell, even assuming she wants it. The unrelenting hostility of the media does have an insidious effect. She also needs to achieve the discipline in speaking that she displays with her written pronouncements — more brevity and less nattering — but this is doable.

The cultural issues are more important. There is a middle ground of people who are against the increasing bipartisan kleptocracy but not conservative on cultural matters — personally, I am pro-choice (but with reasonable caveats about the exercise of that choice), utterly indifferent to gay marriage, pro-gun, pro-decriminalization of marijuana, in favor of a forward strategy towards the terrorist wing of Islam and with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and sympathetic to China’s extraordinary effort to remake itself economically and politically.

Ultimately, this may or may not make me into a Palin supporter. But either way, our most fundamental current crisis is the inability of the political class to produce plausible leaders, and its hostility to anyone, such as Palin, who threatens the system. The election of Obama was a symptom of our current dysfunctional politics, not a cause.

We need more Palins, not fewer.

James V. DeLong is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, and a former Book Review Editor of the Harvard Law Review. Recent articles include The Coming of the Fourth American Republic and Rhett Butler Comes to Washington.

Remembrance Day 2009

The Hole at the Heart of Our Strategy

The Hole at the Heart of Our Strategy
We’re scrupulously non-judgmental about the ideology that drives terrorism.

By Mark Steyn

Thirteen dead and 31 wounded would be a bad day for the U.S. military in Afghanistan, and a great victory for the Taliban. When it happens in Texas, in the heart of the biggest military base in the nation, at a processing center for soldiers either returning from or deploying to combat overseas, it is not merely a “tragedy” (as too many people called it) but a glimpse of a potentially fatal flaw at the heart of what we have called, since 9/11, the “War on Terror.” Brave soldiers trained to hunt down and kill America’s enemy abroad were killed in the safety and security of home by, in essence, the same enemy — a man who believes in and supports everything the enemy does.

And he’s a U.S. Army major.

And his superior officers and other authorities knew about his beliefs but seemed to think it was just a bit of harmless multicultural diversity — as if believing that “the Muslims should stand up and fight against the aggressor” (i.e., his fellow American soldiers) and writing Internet paeans to the “noble” “heroism” of suicide bombers and, indeed, objectively supporting the other side in an active war is to be regarded as just some kind of alternative lifestyle that adds to the general vibrancy of the base.

When it emerged early on Thursday afternoon that the shooter was Nidal Malik Hasan, there appeared shortly thereafter on Twitter a flurry of posts with the striking formulation: “Please judge Major Malik Nadal [sic] by his actions and not by his name.”

Concerned Tweeters can relax: There was never really any danger of that — and not just in the sense that the New York Times’s first report on Major Hasan never mentioned the words “Muslim” or “Islam,” or that ABC’s Martha Raddatz’s only observation on his name was that “as for the suspect, Nadal Hasan, as one officer’s wife told me, ‘I wish his name was Smith.’”

What a strange reaction. I suppose what she means is that, if his name were Smith, we could all retreat back into the same comforting illusions that allowed the bureaucracy to advance Nidal Malik Hasan to major and into the heart of Fort Hood while ignoring everything that mattered about the essence of this man.

Since 9/11, we have, as the Twitterers recommend, judged people by their actions — flying planes into skyscrapers, blowing themselves up in Bali nightclubs or London Tube trains, planting IEDs by the roadside in Baghdad or Tikrit. And on the whole we’re effective at responding with action of our own — taking out training camps in Afghanistan, rolling up insurgency networks in Fallujah and Ramadi, intercepting terror plots in London and Toronto and Dearborn.

But we’re scrupulously non-judgmental about the ideology that drives a man to fly into a building or self-detonate on the subway, and thus we have a hole at the heart of our strategy. We use rhetorical conveniences like “radical Islam” or, if that seems a wee bit Islamophobic, just plain old “radical extremism.” But we never make any effort to delineate the line which separates “radical Islam” from non-radical Islam. Indeed, we go to great lengths to make it even fuzzier. And somewhere in that woozy blur the pathologies of a Nidal Malik Hasan incubate. An army psychiatrist, Major Hasan was an American, born and raised, who graduated from Viriginia Tech and then received his doctorate from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, which works out to the best part of half a million dollars’ worth of elite education. But he opposed America’s actions in the Middle East and Afghanistan, and made approving remarks about jihadists on American soil. “You need to lock it up, Major,” cautioned his superior officer, Col. Terry Lee.


But he didn’t really need to “lock it up” at all. He could pretty much say anything he liked, and if any “red flags” were raised they were quickly mothballed. Lots of people are “anti-war.” Some of them are objectively on the other side — that’s to say, they encourage and support attacks on American troops and civilians. But not many of those in that latter category are U.S. Army majors. Or so one would hope. Yet why be surprised? Azad Ali, a man who approvingly quotes such observations as “If I saw an American or British man wearing a soldier’s uniform inside Iraq I would kill him because that is my obligation” is an adviser to Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service (the equivalent of the U.S. attorneys). In Toronto this week, the brave ex-Muslim Nonie Darwish mentioned en passant that, on flying from the U.S. to Canada, she was questioned at length about the purpose of her visit by an apparently Muslim border official. When she revealed that she was giving a speech about Islamic law, he rebuked her: “We are not to question sharia.”

That’s the guy manning the airport-security desk.

In the New York Times, Maria Newman touched on Hasan’s faith only obliquely: “He was single, according to the records, and he listed no religious preference.” Thank goodness for that, eh? A neighbor in Texas says the major had “Allah” and “another word” pinned up in Arabic on his door. “Akbar” maybe? On Thursday morning he is said to have passed out copies of the Koran to his neighbors. He shouted in Arabic as he fired. But don’t worry: As the FBI spokesman assured us in nothing flat, there’s no terrorism angle.

That’s true, in a very narrow sense: Major Hasan is not a card-carrying member of the Texas branch of al-Qaeda reporting to a control officer in Yemen or Waziristan. If he were, things would be a lot easier. But the pathologies that drive al-Qaeda beat within Major Hasan too, and in the end his Islamic impulses trumped his expensive Western education, his psychiatric training, his military discipline — his entire American identity. One might say the same about Faleh Hassan Almaleki of Glendale, Ariz., arrested last week after fatally running over his “too Westernized” daughter Noor in the latest American honor killing. Or the two U.S. residents — one American, one Canadian — arrested a few days earlier for plotting to fly to Denmark for the purposes of murdering the editor who commissioned the famous Mohammed cartoons. But Noor Almaleki’s brother shrugs that’s just the way it is. “One thing to one culture doesn’t make sense to another culture,” he says.

Indeed. To infidels, Islam is in a certain sense unknowable, and most of us are content to leave it at that. The vast majority of Muslims don’t conspire to kill cartoonists or murder their daughters or shoot dozens of their fellow soldiers. But Islam inspires enough of this behavior to make it a legitimate topic of analysis. Don’t hold your breath. We’d rather talk about anything else — even in the Army.

What happened to those men and women at Fort Hood had a horrible symbolism: Members of the best trained, best equipped fighting force on the planet gunned down by a guy who said a few goofy things no one took seriously. And that’s the problem: America has the best troops and fiercest firepower, but no strategy for throttling the ideology that drives the enemy — in Afghanistan and in Texas.


— Mark Steyn, a National Review columnist, is author of America Alone. © 2009 Mark Steyn