Myron the Coal-funded citizen reporter

A world of pain as Myron Ebell wears his pope of death outfit and questions various environmental offices about the "ClimateGate emails", berating people about the lack of scientific ethics. That's got to hurt. It's like being called a fantasist by L Ron Hubbard.

Here is The Video

In the first doorstep everyone must have been told to give them no comment.

It's dangerous to give these people any footage, because you know they will edit it in any way they can. If you pick your nose or give them the finger, it will make their day.

But one guy took the chance.

Worker: The consensus on global warming is settled by many more scientists that are involved in these emails... Some folks have been cherry-picking out of context. This isn't where the debate on global warming is. The debate on global warming is what we should do about it.

Myron: The CRU is really the Pentagon of research. This may be the Pentagon for this research.

Worker: I think that's completely inappropriate. We've got decades of research, much of which has improved just in the last few years. These are conversations that happened years ago. Once the information is public, we're talking about peer reviewed information that is settled.

Myron: Can I ask you another question?

Worker: I want to ask you something. What is your argument here? That we shouldn't be doing anything about global warming? Because that is the conclusion of scientists around the world. And we need to take action now.

Myron: Let me follow up by asking you about a recent email from Keven Trenberth of the National Center for Atmosphere Research, one of the really key people in the IPCC, a lead author and one of the real central characters. Kevin Trenberth in one of the recent emails, just a month ago said, "I think we need to be very embarrassed about the lack of warming in the last decade and the fact we don't have an explanation for it." Doesn't it bother you that all the scientists agree and yet global warming seems to have stopped in the late 1990s.

Worker: That's a ridiculous assertion. I think that you're cherry-picking a particular piece of information, not putting it into the global context. Obviously it's a complex system and to pick out one piece and call it evidence you.

Second CEI fuckwit: Do you think it helps your credibility if you just look at these emails and take them seriously and address some of the serious criticisms that some people.

Worker: I'm not particularly interested in what private citizens had in private discussions among themselves before the public scientific data came.

Myron: Smiling You're a denier!

Worker: I'm a global warming optimist. I believe that we'll solve this problem and I think the solutions will help us. It'll help the economy. It'll help create jobs. And I think the science is settled.

Scene 2 – Greenpeace

Myron: You don't have any thoughts about these emails that have been released, and documents?

Kert Davies: My main thought and interest is who stole them. They came into your hands. The ones that were cherry-picked. The ones that were on the original FTP site are the ones that your side would want to broadcast as scandalous. But it's already been debunked that this mention of a trick. It's not a trick. It's a mathematical solution.

Myron: To, quote, Hide the decline.

Kert: No.

Myron: That's what the email says: Hide the decline.

Kert: The trick is adding to the historical record a more current material record from the instrumentation.

Myron: Because the decline in the proxy records...

Kert: No, we're not going to hash it out for your TV show. Global warming is real. You're wrong, we're right, and I don't care where you go with this. But you're wrong.

cut

Myron: But it looks like a lot of the evidence on your side is phony. Phil Jones, Michael Mann, Van Sander, Kevin Trenberg, Gavin Schmitt. These are not people who were not central to promoting global warming alarmism. These are people right in the middle of it.

Kert: Are you assuming that they're fabricating data?

Myron: Read the emails. Look, they say things like, We've got to hide the decline. We've got to figure out how to explain why it hasn't been warming for the last ten years.

Kert: What you've got in these emails is some measure of exchange between scientists where they're debating the data. I don't honestly care what they do as long as we come out with the right conclusions in the science that drives policy.

Myron: Are you in denial about all this?

Kert: Not at all. I'm furious about it. It's been a revelation to see all this email. We'll see what happens. I'm sure there will be investigations on who hacked the computers, or if this information breaches any national security, because there were some government scientists involved. I think this thing is going to play out for many years.

Cut to the Center for American Progress who kindly let the wolf into their house without taking the precaution of recording their own footage of the following interview in case anything happened that it would be a shame for Myron to cut out.

Faiz Shakir: I don't think there's any concern about whether these are upending notions that climate change is already occurring. There is a consensus that climate change is occurring. The nobel prize willing IPCC has concluded that. And I don't think anything in these emails suggests otherwise. I don't see this as a terribly important news event in itself. There are some ethics of individual scientists I might have issue with. But in general I'm not at all interested in these emails.

Number 2: Have you had any chance to actually go through and read the emails.

Faiz: You know, I've read a few of them that have been reported by Reuters and some other news agencies, but I haven't had the time to go through and document every single one of these emails.

Myron: We need to figure out a way to explain how the world hasn't been warming for the last decade. How can global warming be going forward if the world hasn't been warming for the past decade?

Faiz: Right, do you have that email on you, Mr Trenberg's email?

Myron: I don't.

Faiz: I think if you look at the context of what he said, he said he was concerned there wasn't enough observable data, and he was concerned that he wanted to get more data. I think there has been a misinterpretation by those who are looking for a conspiracy theory in all this. They want to get emails and infer that there's an attempt to deceive the public about climate change, when in fact if you read these emails in the context that they were provided, particularly that one you referenced, he's merely saying, I want more observable data. Can I find it somewhere? Can we invest in trying to find more data so we can demonstrate to the public. So I don't think that there was an intent to deceive. Simply an attempt to clarify. And in many of these emails, the intent was there. Let's just present this data in a way that people can see it and understand it. Let's look at another way to show this data in a way that people like Myron Ebell will be convinced.

Myron: But the data is, from all of the main temperature sets, the satellite and the Hadley CRU datasets don't show any increase in the global mean temperature for the past decade.

Faiz: One second. What was the year of that data?

Myron: It's 2000. There was no warming.

Faiz: Those emails were sent in 1999.

Myron: There were recent ones from Kevin Trenberg.

Faiz: But that one that you referenced about the dataset is from 1999, if I remember correctly.

Myron: There were ones this fall the same. We've got to have a story to explain why the global mean temperature hasn't been going up. And in fact don't you agree that it's sort of worrying for people who think the world is in crisis. In fact, they ought to be happy. The world doesn't seem to be in crisis. Warming isn't a problem. There hasn't been any warming.

Faiz: Mr Ebell, we've had the hottest decade in history, this past decade.

Myron: You really believe that?

Faiz: Absolutely.

Myron: Jim Hansen had to take it back from the US record this summer. He had to say, Sorry I was wrong. It wasn't the case. It was the 1930s.

Faiz: Not only was it the hottest decade in history. You've got arctic ice sheets melting. You've got it going on in Greenland and Antarctica. We've got the species of the polar bear. The drought and the wildfires in Australia. We've got sea levels rising. All of these are observable and predicted by the IPCC reports.

Myron: You looked at sea level rise? There isn't any sea level rise in the last several years. There is none. If this is the warmest decade in history, there's quite a lot of evidence that the people at the CRU and Phil Jones didn't know what they were doing or they were intentionally manipulating the data. There are all kinds of documents in this treasure trove to show they were either intentionally manipulating the data, or they didn't know what they were doing. So I think this whole temperature record going back to about 1850 is very suspect. Don't you think it should be investigated to find out if that temperature record is accurate or whether we can't believe it any more? Because Phil Jones has already said that he's deleted or destroyed the data, right? The underlying raw data no longer exists.

Faiz: Mr Ebell, I have a concern for people who believe in conspiracy theories. I see the Glen Beck-ization of the Republican Party. You want to grab hold of the nearest conspiracy theory to justify things you already believe in that climate change doesn't exist. Grasping for emails to make that point. I think if you read these emails with the intent that they were written, there was no intent to deceive or manipulate.

Myron: There was no intent to suppress the science that disagreed with them, to try and lean on journal editors not to publish papers they didn't agree with, to try to get editors fired, to try to arrange peer review so that articles wouldn't be accepted. You do agree that that looks like a conspiracy.

Faiz: I said at the outset that there were some ethics of these people who are put into question. To the extent that there were efforts to suppress scientists with whom they had disagreements with, and to freeze them out, and to isolate them, I think that those type of ethics need to be questioned. But as pertains to the issue of climate change, we've got so much observable data, we've got so much going on, and yet you want ...

Myron: We can agree or disagree about that. But you do agree that the personal ethics problems. There really needs to be an investigation into these people and what they're up to, don't you think?

Faiz: What kind of investigation are you looking for, exactly?

Myron: The idea of trying to manipulate peer reviewed literature, the things you referred to as personal ethics problems. Don't you think that that ought to be investigated?

Faiz: I don't mind looking into that, as long as you and I can agree that the issue of climate change is settled.

Myron: Oh no, we can't. I think it's settled. But I think it's settled the other way. Global warming is not a problem.

This is useless. It's time there was a counter-attack. Where are all the datasets which these guys do support? There aren't any. They have nothing to contribute. It's all suppress suppress suppress.

It's funny how the fossil fuel industry and the shipping lines are making business decisions based on the understanding that the Arctic ice melt is continuing.

Meanwhile, here's some big sets of raw data sources that Myron doesn't need to talk about while he's got this subject going on.