Saudia Arabia’s announcement that the CRU email hack will have a "huge impact" on the Copenhagen summit is unsurprising. But it doesn't change the science.
Saudia Arabia’s announcement that the CRU email hack will have a “huge impact” on the Copenhagen summit is unsurprising but deeply unsavoury.
Al-Sabban, the Saudis’ lead spokesman on this, is now saying:
“It appears from the details of the scandal that there is no relationship whatsoever between human activity and climate change”.
But let’s remind ourselves of the long and deep history of Saudi Arabia’s support for the denial of man-made climate change; the concrete actions that they have taken to prevent timely action; and their pitiful failure to take any action themselves over the greatest of all threats to our species and our living world.
Climate-deniers don’t like to focus on the role of the likes of Saudi Arabia and Exxon in backing them up. They prefer to talk about things like the minutiae of the programmer’s code used in working on the CRU data. For example, on last night’s Newsnight (11’45”) in which the new ‘Harry’ programmer’s code controversy is presented.
As has been shown expertly here and here, there is no smoking gun at all; just a vague suggestion that the way that the CRU data has been worked with has not been as flawless as the way that NASA’s has been. For more, watch this video:
Does this cast any doubt at all on their fundamental findings, or suggest any kind of conspiracy? The answer is simple: No.
The bottom line is this: There are many people out there, some of them just wilful contrarians, some of them directly profiting from the continuation of the fossil-fuel-economy, who are desperate to do whatever they can to try to hold off the moment when they have to change. CRU is one of the messengers saying that change in the way we live is necessary, if manmade climate change is not to overwhelm us. At the end of the day, the mad furore around this hack is simply a new case of a very old phenomenon: shooting the messenger.
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33 Responses to “Shooting CRU, the climate change messenger”
Rupert Read
Anon E says: “…the fact that in black and white the programmer has set up the software to give bogus results…”
As so often from you climate-deniers, nothing more than a scurrilous and potentially-defamatory lie. If you actually watch the Newsnight clip that I link to above, you’ll see that it is pretty clear that the software had an accidental bug in it that the programmer ought to have removed. That’s all. No conspiracy. Just a minor cock-up – the kind of thing that happens all the time in real life / real science / real computer-programming, and that the IPCC process is precisely designed to overcome the significance of. The CRU data matches the NASA data very closely – there is almost certainly absolutely nothing significant wrong with it.
As for why I prevent most of your posts from going up on my blog, Anon E: it is because you frequently choose to personally attack/insult me in them. If you refrain from doing so, then we can engage in debate there too. I am not afraid of your misrepresentations – but I will not tolerate personal attacks.
Rupert Read
CRU: Shooting the messenger: https://www.leftfootforward.org/2009/12/shooting-cru-the-climate-change-messenger/ http://bit.ly/7Ajr15
Anon E Mouse
Rupert – I call you a “Global Cooling Denier” because you are and even though Caroline Lucas admitted the planet was cooling on Sunday morning to Andrew Marr you won’t answer that fact here because she is right and the planet is getting cooler but that doesn’t suit your case.
I don’t care what that news clip says, I write software now in my job (mainly C now for pics and avrs) and I have friends, including university lecturers in computing and C programming and they know more than the biased/ill informed/uneducated/whatever person who said that.
Rupert, a bug is not a piece of code that is intentionally written in a program – it is a mistake in what has been written, hence it is called a bug.
All bugs by their nature MUST be accidental or they wouldn’t be bugs.
Or will you now smear my character again with your “Brave” prefix as you often do and claim that last statement is wrong?
Let me be clear Rupert, that program routine was deliberately included – it says so in the comments of the software, that’s why it has been highlighted – it is not a bug.
I can accept that you passionately believe in this pseudo-science – I’ve seen pictures of you from every angle on your website with a “Stop Climate Change” placard. Fine.
What you do in your free time is up to you but to come into an open forum and claim that code which is deliberately written and included is a bug, when that is simply not true, is in my opinion wrong.
You do your case no favours and do not call me a liar please, it is not true and it is rude. I do not tell lies. If something is true, even if I wish it were not so, I will say it is true. If it is not true I will also say so.
Kindly stop your personal attacks against me – I expect more from an elected council member in Great Britain in 2009. Please play the ball Rupert Read.
Simon Arnold
RT @GreenRupertRead: CRU: Shooting the messenger: https://www.leftfootforward.org/2009/12/shooting-cru-the-climate-change-messenger/ h …
Rupert Read
Sigh…
It really ain’t worth debating with someone who pretends that [Green Party Leader] Caroline Lucas has “admitted that the planet is cooling.” You are evidently a bit like King Midas, my dear Anon – everything you touch gets misrepresented.