Considering the fact that 2009 marked the inauguration of the United States' most liberal president ever, 2009 has been a surprisingly bad year for liberalism and liberal causes.

Ten months into President Obama's administration liberals have accomplished essentially nothing other than their massive $787 billion spending package which has, so far, failed to keep unemployment from rising and is being criticized and mocked from pretty much all sectors--by conservatives because it isn't working (as predicted) and by liberals because, not surprisingly, they think the problem is that it wasn't big enough. The ACORN debacle continues to unfold (which the mainstream media largely continues to ignore). The Democrats health care reform has been largely stalled in the wake of a summer of Tea Party and town hall protests that left legislators more than a bit concerned. The Cap-And-Tax proposal that squeaked through the House is now stalled in the Senate behind Health Care which is, itself, potentially stalled.

In short, considering the overwhelming level of support that Obama had when he assumed the presidency, he has accomplished precious little.

The Unraveling of the Three Pillars of Liberalism

It is my belief that there are three primary pillars to liberalism in the United States today: Universal Health Care, Global Warming, and the liberal Legacy Media to promote the previous two. All three of these pillars have been used, abused, and politicized by liberals to achieve their primary goal: Wealth redistribution.

Universal Health Care provided by the government has been a powder keg in this country ever since the administration decided it was the crisis-du-jour back in June (after they realized their attempt at cap-and-tax was dead). That topic has tied up Congress and the political debate for the last five months and still has uncertain prospects. Despite the efforts of Democrats to make health care out to be a full-blown crisis, no-one in America is denied critical health care, about 85% have health insurance, , and 83% are satisfied with the health care they receive. Given these numbers it's not surprising they weren't able to pass health care in the week or two Obama was hoping for. Regardless, opposition to the Democrats' plan continues to mount.

The legacy media, for its part, continues to wilt on the vine. After ignoring the amazing ACORN scandal and basically proving its own liberal bias, the media has made no effort to patch up its reputation. It has made no serious effort to report, let alone investigate, ACORN in the aftermath of the scandal. And the legacy media is once again demonstrating that it is nothing more than a liberal propaganda machine by largely failing to report (or investigate) what is increasingly look like the collapse of the third pillar of liberalism...

The Death Of Global Warming

Many of us have been criticizing the essentially religious devotion to the concept of human-induced global warming for years. I've done so here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here (and I probably missed a few).

Contrary to the talking points of liberals, it's not because we refuse to acknowledge science or because we're oil industry cronies. It's because we look at the data (when it's actually published), look at the plans, and evaluate the obvious results of those plans and simply realize it doesn't make sense. Given the questionable science it seemed more than a little fishy that we were supposed to run around with our heads cut off to "fix" it by applying policies that wouldn't address the supposed climate problems, but which would accomplish liberals' goal of wealth redistribution on a global level.

Skeptics of global warming have, for years, been the target of liberals and the legacy media. We've been told the science is settled, we've been told that we're "deniers," we've been told there is a "consensus" in the scientific community. In short, we've been insulted and mocked by global warming believers that we dare to question the conclusions of those that have "PhD" after their names.

Climate scientists have been held sacred. Even when scientists have dabbled in wealth redistribution politics, their conclusions have not been significantly criticized because, well, they're scientists.

We've been lead to believe that while those that question human-induced global warming are easily corrupted by the oil industry, vested interests, and politics, the scientists that have been leading the global warming movement are beyond reproach. They don't have vested interests. They're honest. They're pure. Heck, they're scientists and scientists don't let their personal agendas get in the way of science.

Except they do.

ClimateGate

The explosive "ClimateGate" which has been exploding over the last week or two is absolutely amazing. Once again the legacy media, by mostly ignoring this story, has shown itself to be the propaganda arm of the Democrat party and the liberal movement in general.

ClimateGate is quickly becoming the scientific scandal of our generation, if not of all time. Never has a "scientific" hoax achieved the level of credibility and political weight as global warming. Consider that Obama's cap-and-tax plan would amount to a massive new tax on everyone (but mostly the poor) to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars--and the whole premise of this tax is based on the theory of global warming. This tax, not surprisingly, is now being tabled in the Senate until at least next year. Similar schemes are being considered or implemented around the world, and Kyoto amounted to a global version (with exceptions being made for the worst polluting nations, ironically).

For those that haven't already heard (presumably liberals, but you never know), ClimateGate has exploded as the result of megabytes and megabytes of data and emails from "leading" climate scientists having either been hacked or leaked and made public. The newly public information and conversations most definitely do not lend a lot of credibility to some of the top scientists and proponents involved in the U.N.'s IPCC.

In one message climate scientist Phil Jones, head of the Climatic Research Center from which the information was hacked/leaked, writes about using a "trick" with recent temperature data to "hide the decline." While the use of "trick" is arguably innocent (which is what the climate scientists have been saying in the last few days), the "hide the decline" is far more damning--and there hasn't been any real explanation of why a scientist would want to "hide" anything.

In another message, a scientist noted that "the fact is we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it's a travesty that we can't." Yet we've continued to be treated to public reports that indicate that scientists are confident about their conclusions... no matter they "can't account" for a climatic trend that completely contradicts their conclusion.

In yet another message a scientist, unhappy that a peer-reviewed journal is publishing studies that contradict the global warming argument, states "So what do we do about this? 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."" In other words, they want to blacklist scientific journals that dare publish papers that contradict global warming. That amounts to a complete assault on the modern scientific process.

Phil Jones also wrote an email in which he promised to keep studies that contradict global warming out of the next IPCC report. He promised to "keep them out somehow--even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!"

It has also been admitted that scientists have thrown out their original "raw" field data on which their calculations are based--making it impossible for other scientists to go back and verify their work or use the raw data as the basis for their own theories. This is, at best, negligently reckless and, at worst, criminally deceptive.

It can be argued (and the culprits are arguing) that none of this goes to the actual data and to the conclusion that global warming is real. Maybe. But what it does do is completely discredit some of the most prominent members of the global warming movement. It discredits people that have an unusually large influence on the conclusions of the IPCC which are then used as the basis of other studies, environmental claims, and even governmental policy around the world.

Real scientists do not lose their source data and formulas after they've massaged it to produce the data they like to prevent other scientists from evaluating their work--to the contrary, they go out of their way to preserve that information so that their conclusions are beyond reproach. Real scientists do not "hide" data that contradicts their thesis. They don't try to blacklist peer-reviewed journals that have the audacity to contradict their studies. Real scientists do not ask each other to "delete any emails you may have had" regarding submissions to the IPCC report. Real scientists do not try to stifle dissent in order to protect their theories from attack.

Real science is about being fully open about a theory and encouraging others to attack your theory.

Ironically, the claim has been made that those that question global warming are ignoring the science. However, it's looking increasingly clear that its the global warming's scientists that are behaving in a distinctly non-scientific manner.

The Response

Not surprisingly, the legacy media has thusfar paid lip service to the scandal. Despite it's absolutely astounding depth and ramifications, coverage has generally been weak.

Meanwhile, in the White House, President Obama's Climate Change Czar Carol Browner has stated that she doesn't think the emails change anything. She says that 2500 scientists believe in global warming, no matter that a lot of those scientists are basing their conclusions on the data that has come from tainted sources. You can't have tainted scientists playing a major hand in the IPCC reports that draw a conclusion and then use those conclusions to say the "science is settled." The science is tainted!

And while President Obama's Global Warming Czar apparently doesn't think these emails are important, at least one IPCC scientist is already disagreeing. Eduardo Zorita, a contributing author to the fourth IPCC Assessment, states that the ringleaders Michael Mann, Phil Jones and Stefan Rahmstorf should be banned from all future IPCC processes...

... because the scientific assessments in which they may take part are not credible anymore...

By writing these lines I will just probably achieve that a few of my future studies will, again, not see the light of publication...

... Editors, reviewers and authors of alternative studies, analysis, interpretations,even based on the same data we have at our disposal, have been bullied and subtly blackmailed. In this atmosphere, Ph D students are often tempted to tweak their data so as to fit the 'politically correct picture'. Some, or many issues, about climate change are still not well known. Policy makers should be aware of the attempts to hide these uncertainties under a unified picture. I had the 'pleasure' to experience all this in my area of research.

We can only hope that more scientists will take the honest stand that Eduardo Zorita has. As he says in his statement (worth reading!), it's not that he thinks global warming is a hoax--it's that the science is not settled, and is most likely even less settled in light of these revelations.

And, while Obama's Climate Change Czar downplays the importance of the scandal, Phil Jones, the director of the scandal-ridden CRU in the UK, has indicated he's stepping aside while an independent review can be conducted. Obama's climate czar might not recognize the explosive nature of what's happening, but apparently even Phil Jones does (or whoever pulls Jones' strings).

President Obama, for his part, has decided to go to Copenhagen for the Global Warming Meeting. This is odd since it was previously indicated that he wasn't going to go. But now that emails have been published that call into question the whole premise, now Obama's on a plane heading to a meeting. It's increasingly seeming that whenever the president finds a hot pile of radioactive dung, he makes every effort he possibly can to step right into it. It'd be one thing to attend the meeting if he had already made those plans. But when ClimateGate erupted the correct (private) response of the president would have been, "Whew, I sure dodged a bullet by not planning to go before this went public." Instead, he's jumping into yet another Chicago Olympics-style fiasco.

Update 12/2/2009: The day after I published this article, the following article was published that also likened Obama's decision to go to Copenhagen to that of the trip to Europe on behalf of the Chicago Olympics.



President Obama's plans for seeking an international agreement at a U.N. climate change conference next week sound precariously similar to his plans for pitching Chicago as the host city for the 2016 Summer Olympics two months ago.

What Happens Now

It seems that the Obama Administration and the legacy media is hoping this will blow over. The weak explanations offered by the psuedo-scientists involved also suggest they think this is a one-day news event that will soon be forgotten (though Phil Jones' "temporary" resignation suggests they're waking up to the reality of what's happening).

But those psuedo-scientists, the Obama Administration, and the legacy media itself has forgotten that the legacy media is no longer able to shut down stories. They tried to ignore the ACORN scandal but their funding was cut by both the House and the Senate. They also ignored the Van Jones scandal but Van Jones was forced to tender his resignation anyway. And despite ABC News whoring themselves out to promote Obama's health care plan, the president's health care reform ambitions still languish in Congress five months later.

ClimateGate isn't going away.

This is especially true if a few more scientists join Zorita in calling for the banning of the three culprits from future IPCC work. This is a credibility blow of epic proportions--the only reason damage has been somewhat contained is because the legacy media isn't heavily reporting on it... yet. But they're going to have to eventually. Especially with the president drawing even more attention to the Global Warming meeting in Copenhagen so soon after the CRU director has stepped aside for an independent investigation.

If anything, the president's decision to attend is only going to increase the profile of the meeting... and of ClimateGate. While the legacy media will make its best effort to avoid reporting this inconvenient truth, it seems likely to me that ClimateGate will only become more newsworthy as the media is forced to report on the issue at the center of Obama's attendance at the meeting.

Does ClimateGate prove global warming is a hoax? When considered along with all the other "errors" and "oversights" that have been detected in the global warmers' science over the years, it certainly is providing a worrisome inside look at what's going on behind the scenes. And what's going on does not inspire confidence.

At the very least it would seem that it's time to throw out all the data that was produced by these clowns, discard any studies that draw conclusions based on their data (that would seem to include the IPCC!), and start with a clean slate without bias, threats, or blacklisting. It's time real scientists go back out into the field and collect copious amounts of new, raw data... and then try real hard not to lose their data (if they run out of room like they did at CRU, they can ship the data to me and I'll store it in my basement for them). It's time for that newly collected data to be published in raw form with a complete explanation of any processing or massaging that is done to the data, and the rationale behind that "data massaging." It's time for every scientific study that is used in a policy decision to be fully testable and reproducible. You know, like real science is supposed to be.

In short, ClimateGate shows that it's time science actually be applied to the theory of global warming.

Despite the political claims that have been made, the science is not settled. In fact, it's now further from settled than it has been at any time.