AP Caught Misleading On Climategate

"AP misleading on climategate" is putting it mildly. They have been caught outright lying and are being called on it by the Washington Times and the scientists they quoted as dismissing the climategate scandal.

I'm sure we all remember the AP story Science not faked, but not pretty in which the 3 scientists interviewed gave the impression that the Climategate scandal was much ado about nothing. Recent investigations have concluded that the scientist's quotes were taken out of context.

Washington Times



The New American does a good job of summing up the dishonesty in their review of the editorial;

The New American



Looks like the MSM got caught lying to us again.

Is anyone suprised?

Definately not surprised at all. This kind of thing is expected. I hope this puts pressure on people to scrutinize claims made by the pro-agw croud as thoroughly as they do the "deniers".

"Mr. Sarewitz was trying to issue a warning that politcs infects too much science..".

SHAMEFUL! So much for the 4th Estate, eh! The reality is that I am not the least bit suprised. The media has been complicit in every takeover perpetrated by the politicians. Certain elements of the establishment stand to make billions upon billions in the impending carbon trading scheme. You can rest assured that they are doing everything in their power to salvage their credibility and restore fear amongst the masses that the planet is going to burn up!

reply to post by FortAnthem


The AP is crooked.
It looks like the AP has switched from "cherry picking" the news to
"distorting" the news.
Thank God for the Washington Times.
It looks like the truth shall set us free.

[edit on 2-1-2010 by Eurisko2012]

I don't know why, but it doesn't surpise me. Is is the fact that the US refused for years to sign the Kyoto Protocols, or is it that this country is ruled by industrial cartels?

How does media coverage go again.

Lie, Deny, Obfuscate, Attack and if you absolutely must tell the truth; only tell a little bit that makes it look like what you are trying to say is the whole truth.

Wait, isn't that what the government does?

Oh yeah, who owns the AP again?

The three quoted all wanted an investigation, but to hear the AP tell it, nothing wrong here, move along.

I bet you do not get one AGW proponent on this thread.

They will have no where to stand except in the corner with their google search going and the phone to the bull line open.

Originally posted by MattMulder


I don't know why, but it doesn't surpise me. Is is the fact that the US refused for years to sign the Kyoto Protocols, or is it that this country is ruled by industrial cartels?

Huh?

You do know the article shows the AP was biased toward the MMGW clowns right?

Originally posted by MattMulder


I don't know why, but it doesn't surpise me. Is is the fact that the US refused for years to sign the Kyoto Protocols, or is it that this country is ruled by industrial cartels?

how much darn evidence do some folks need?

there are freaking piles of it now.

i don't know about youse guys, but me, when i am lied to by someone, their word turns to dookie.

why is this not bumped to the top?

this calls bs on every thread that sources the ap

wtf

Originally posted by vermonster
why is this not bumped to the top?

this calls bs on every thread that sources the ap

wtf

Amen to that.

I guess most people are content to live within the web of all the MSM lies, even here on ATS.

This rabbit hole just keeps getting deeper...

I am seriously starting to wonder just where this will end up. How much of what we have been told all our lives is actually true and how much is 'true' only because people believed it? How intertwined has science become with politics and the MSM? I am afraid I have already started scrutinizing every scientific article I read with a bent toward the idea that this information may be falsified.

How much more so would those without a scientific foundation begin to question? How much can we believe anyone who claims to be a 'scientist' or who claims to be reporting on 'science'?

I said before that I would be forgiving if the investigation into ClimateGate were to be conducted in an intellectually honest and transparent method. I also said I would be extremely suspicious of any and all future claims of the CRU or IPCC should it not be. It would appear that the latter may well be my position.

If this investigation does not immediately turn around, I hope the IPCC and the CRU are both dismantled and every 'scientist' involved is blackballed from the scientific community for perpetuity. As of this moment, I will now no longer consider anything anyone connected with either organization says to be worthy of consideration, until I am somehow convinced that appropriate investigations and censures are performed. That means any word that issues form the mouth of Jim Hansen carries as much weight as that of a bum lying drunk in a gutter. Less, actually, since that bum hasn't lied to me yet.

Dark ages, here we come.

TheRedneck


[edit on 1/3/2010 by TheRedneck]

I guess this threads popularity isn't being fueled by the usual debate because the warming alarmists are avoiding it like the plague.

Looks like the usual suspects are not even going to attempt to rationalize this one.

Originally posted by Deny Arrogance
I guess this threads popularity isn't being fueled by the usual debate because the warming alarmists are avoiding it like the plague.

Looks like the usual suspects are not even going to attempt to rationalize this one.

The truth hurts.

They are hoping that if they ignore it, it will just go away.

Edit to add: This is a threat to their religion and must be stopped at all costs.

[edit on 3-1-2010 by FortAnthem]

reply to post by TheRedneck


I gave up believing anything from the academic community a long time ago. When your tenure is based on how many liberal outlook papers you publish and the content braying the TPTB line of BS, I stopped taking what they preach as safe and truthful. The science community runs on the grant programs they can accrue through giving the gran-tors what info they need to further their goals. Truth does not enter into the equation! When a large portion of these scientists in academia work the system instead of exacting peer review studies there is no way to garruntee factual results. Too many of them stand to make the big bucks here. I would not be surprised to see the investment portfolio's of these men heavily invested in the new Cap and Trade stocks!

Zindo

Originally posted by FortAnthem

Originally posted by Deny Arrogance
I guess this threads popularity isn't being fueled by the usual debate because the warming alarmists are avoiding it like the plague.

Looks like the usual suspects are not even going to attempt to rationalize this one.

The truth hurts.

They are hoping that if they ignore it, it will just go away.

lol

The truth hurts what? That the media is generally a bit crap? You won't find much challenge from me. However, the Times article is really an exaggerated load of BS itself.

The issue is really with the AP headline, IMO. As the Times points out, while the emails don't show fraud (which, of course many here like to suggest) they also don't 'prove' no fraud.

There's a big difference between saying that there isn't sufficient evidence to determine if falsification of data occurred - and that there should be an investigation - and saying, as AP did: "Science not faked."

Wash Times

But considering that many of you folks like to suggest that there is some sort of fraud going on and that these emails have been pushed as evidence, doesn't help your cause that in a dozen years of private emails there's actually little of interest in that regard.

Apart from the headline the AP article is fine. All the Times article really criticises is that the AP didn't ask the questions they did and the headline is crap - whoopee. They think there was fraud so they focused on some silly investigation which is meant to uncover the supposed fraud of which there is no evidence in the emails. Lets take a closer look...

Times article:

Arizona State University professor Dan Sarewitz is quoted by AP as saying, "This is normal science politics, but on the extreme end, though still within bounds." However, Mr. Sarewitz wasn't speaking about the validity of the climate science; he was discussing his belief that politics infects how most scientific research is conducted. While AP used the quote to suggest that there was nothing terribly wrong that had been revealed in Climategate, Mr. Sarewitz was trying to issue a warning that politics infects too much science and that reporters, politicians and the public are naive about that reality.

As he told The Washington Times, "When the human underside (of science) gets revealed, then suddenly people are disillusioned and they say, 'Oh, how shocking!' But it's not particularly shocking."

Wash Times

So they make a big point that the AP article was supposedly using Sarewitz to argue for the validity of the science, whereas he was really talking about how 'politics' can influence science.

However, the Sarewitz quote actually says "This is normal science politics". I think there is a difference between politics as in lib/dems/cons blah blah and science politics (cf. 'office' politics). So they are in some ways playing a term out of context. The full section of the AP article with Sarwitz's quote says:

"This is normal science politics, but on the extreme end, though still within bounds," said Dan Sarewitz, a science policy professor at Arizona State University. "We talk about science as this pure ideal and the scientific method as if it is something out of a cookbook, but research is a social and human activity full of all the failings of society and humans, and this reality gets totally magnified by the high political stakes here."

AP

And it clear he's talking about the general behaviour of the characters involved. The 'attacks' on idiot deniers, taking the piss out of others work, working to challenge crap denier science, etc. And the political background to the issue only magnifies the 'clashes'.

The AP article doesn't use Sarewitz to support the validity of the science. So they are actually misrepresenting the AP article. This section would come under the 'not pretty' part of the headline.

What about the next person (Gerald North) they interviewed?

The third scientist interviewed by AP, professor Gerald North at Texas A&M University, joined Mr. Frankel and Mr. Sarewitz in hoping that climate data would be more readily shared in the future. He told us he also thinks it is important that investigations proceed at the two universities.

Wash Times

Oh right, again they are just focusing on the need for an investigation into the scientists affected by a hacker who stole emails and the furore and deceptive quote-mining of those emails. So I guess what he said in the AP article was fine?

Gerald North, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University, headed a National Academy of Sciences study that looked at — and upheld as valid — Mann's earlier studies that found the 1990s were the hottest years in centuries.

"In my opinion the meaning is much more innocent than might be perceived by others taken out of context. Much of this is overblown," North said.

AP

The next one, Mark Frankel...

The first scientist quoted in the article, Mark Frankel, is director of scientific freedom, responsibility and law at the American Association for the Advancement of Science. AP quotes him as concluding that there is, "no evidence of falsification or fabrication of data, although concerns could be raised about some instances of very 'generous interpretations.'" While the article mentions that former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and some Republican lawmakers are calling for independent investigations, AP doesn't note the views of the scientists they interviewed.

When The Washington Times talked to Mr. Frankel, the scientist gave a quite different impression. The e-mails, he said, are not sufficient to reach any judgment at all on whether the data or science was faked or misleading. "You can't do that on the e-mails alone, you can't do it on the e-mails or the program," he concluded. For that reason, Mr. Frankel supports investigation of East Anglia and related allegations of fraud at Pennsylvania State University.

He gave quite a different impression? So they asked him if he supported an investigation of specious allegations of fraud, and he said yes. Yet, as they note, the AP article quotes him as saying there is no evidence in the emails to support such allegations and he reiterates that they still don't support such a claim.

So whence the allegations?

Oh, yeah, the fantasies of deniers. So that's their point? The AP didn't ask them if they supported an investigation into specious allegations of scientific fraud? lol

Edit to add: This is a threat to their religion and must be stopped at all costs.

I generally ignore this stuff because it's irrelevant fluff. A manufactroversy. Suppose it gives you the illusion of having a horse (a three-legged donkey) in the race.

[edit on 3-1-2010 by melatonin]

reply to post by melatonin


When was it conclusively determined that it was a hacker as opposed to a whistle blower?

Where is your evidence to support that allegation?

Oh yeah, the fantasy of AGW alarmists.

[edit on 3-1-2010 by Deny Arrogance]

Originally posted by Deny Arrogance
When was it conclusively determined that it was a hacker as opposed to a whistle blower?

Where is your evidence to support that allegation?

Oh yeah, the fantasy of AGW alarmists.

Because the person with the file also hacked realclimate and posted a link to said file on that blog. The individual also used open proxies to hide their location when hacking realclimate and posting a link to the hacked blog on McIntyre's blog and another (Air Vent). This is common behaviour for hackers, so is using Russian FTPs. Moreover, the Times in the UK reports this as a hack from investigating sources (and the Times is not an overly Climate science-friendly paper, although not as wacky as the Torygraph).

E-mails alleged to undermine climate change science were held back for weeks after being stolen so that their release would cause maximum damage to the Copenhagen climate conference, according to a source close to the investigation of the theft.

Climate change sceptics obtained the e-mails by hacking into a computer at the University of East Anglia. Professor Phil Jones, director of the university’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU), has agreed to stand down during an independent review of the affair.

The first hack was in October or earlier, the source said. The e-mails were not leaked until mid-November.

Dinky-link

Ergo, there is evidence the information was acquired by a hacker.

Conclusive? Not really, but sufficient to apply the label until evidence shows otherwise.

[edit on 3-1-2010 by melatonin]

reply to post by ZindoDoone

Well, hello Zindo! Long time no debate.

I gave up believing anything from the academic community a long time ago.

There is the danger, and the reason the crimes now coming to life from within the IPCC and the CRU are so heinous.

There is nothing wrong with academia. There is much right with academia. It was academia which gave us longer lifespans, greater convenience, the ability to speak across the globe with a handheld wireless device, the ability to communicate in forums such as these, and the ability to move ourselves across the globe at will in comfort.

For centuries, academia has resisted the efforts of fanatical religious zealots and ignorant naysayers to progress mankind's understanding of the Universe around us. Many great men gave their entire lives to further this lofty goal, some financially, some professionally, others socially, and some physically. Science prevailed because of these great men, these great open minds who dedicated all they were to truth and understanding.

Now, for mere colored paper, all that has been achieved is in jeopardy. That trust that people once had in science is dissolving away. This affects not only those who are involved, but due to the depth of the cover-up will affect all scientific thought in all disciplines.

Those who advocated AGW in the past, and especially those who advocate AGW even now in the face of this revelation (and of course all the others) of wrongdoing and subsequent efforts to hush up and propagandize any possible investigation are accomplishing what religion, ignorance, fear, and politics has not been able to accomplish since the last Dark Ages. The Spanish Inquisition itself seems impotent beside this mirage of deceit and treachery that is slowly but surely being exposed. The faux scientists at the CRU and IPCC are guilty of the most treasonous act imaginable: destroying the very thing they claim to love.

Yes, I called it a crime earlier. There is no better term, no other word to describe what has happened, and unfortunately there is no punishment on this earth that suffices for their actions.

TheRedneck

deny ignorance?

on ats?

don't make me lol.

celebrities that are dead but now are alive and all kinds of 2012 blah blah.
"BUMP IT BUMP IT, THIS IS SOOOOOOOO IMPORTANT" -average atser apparently.

ASSOCIATED PRESS CAUGHT LYING!
"not worth my time" -average atser apparently.

ats = a load of baloney

reply to post by vermonster


So true. I post hard news stories and REAL conspitacies on this forum all the time only to watch them die from disinterest.

My two top threads so far: Once Upon a Time Men Wore Pants... and Kill your pets to save the environment

Hardly breaking hard core news, but it seems to get the interest of the masses.


Edit to add: I have nothing against light hearted or humorous threads. It would just be nice if real news and conspiracy threads got more attention.


[edit on 3-1-2010 by FortAnthem]