Court Finds Conservative Newspaper Guilty for Spreading 'Climategate' Smears, Defaming Scientist

Zounds! very much like this is a test bed for how gullible we as a forum are.
It is well known that NASA's Gavin Schmidt likes to make fanciful remarks about GW sceptics, "They are are all paranoid" and that he likes to threaten online, and he does that even though data is being manipulated. I think the OP should have stuck to the newspaper case, and not come in with most of the post talking about Global warming is a fact as per the UEA PFffff.
Just to add,

Sounds like the scammers are getting more and more nervous with all the exposures.

a reply to: xuenchen

Who are the scammers you are talking about?

The scientists who disagree with climate change are almost all bankrolled by big oil.

So again who are the scammers you are referring to?

a reply to: greencmp

"The heat becomes motion"


Yeah, that's extreme weather patterns pal.

I was optimistic until I read three things. A $50,000 fine, a retraction, and a Canadian judge.

I'd like to see multi-billion dollar fines and lengthy prison sentences for the American MSM for pushing lies about Obamacare, Middle East wars, and Homeland Security.

A man can dream.

In any conspiracy, it's always a good idea to follow the money/power.

On one side there's big oil/coal.

On the other there's ...er... big solar? Big wind.. geothermal? Being promoted due to the undue influence of big science? Seriously?

I get that certain reports can be twisted to produce bad info ... but in this case of the overwhelming majority of scientists agreeing, I really don't see the reasoning behind this alleged conspiracy "climategate."

I'm all for independent thinking... but when your own ideas go against the vast majority of smart folks with highly specialized information who are, on the whole, sworn to unbiased truth, and those same pet ideas have no motive or supporting data, then I offer that that idea is crap.

Just remember OP, if you go outside tomorrow and don't like the weather, it isn't because the weather is just bad. It's because it's your fault for simply being alive and breathing/burping/farting/driving your car, and if you want better weather tomorrow ... you better sign over at least half of your existing paycheck to the government as quickly as you can because only they have the knowledge and wisdom to figure out how to make your weather better in the future.

But be warned! It may take a long time and may not be fixed in your lifetime and may demand ever more of your freedoms and creature comforts and, let's not forget, and even bigger slice of your wages.

But at least you will be able to feel good about yourself that you "did something" and feel morally superior to "that guy" who still has actual heat in the winter as you freeze because you "did something" and are sacrificing for the cause.

a reply to: Baddogma

Try big government. We don't call greens watermelons for nothing - green on the outside, red on the inside.

originally posted by: jrod
a reply to: xuenchen

Who are the scammers you are talking about?

The scientists who disagree with climate change are almost all bankrolled by big oil.

So again who are the scammers you are referring to?

I think solar + wind = hot air.

originally posted by: Baddogma



I'm all for independent thinking... but when your own ideas go against the vast majority of smart folks with highly specialized information who are, on the whole, sworn to unbiased truth, and those same pet ideas have no motive or supporting data, then I offer that that idea is crap.

Yes twisting of the truth is a bad thing isn't it? Trouble is that's been around for a long long time, a bit like the 'tricky well known' tree rings.
But you see, for starters the UEA did get their knuckles slightly rapped for not making FOI requests quickly enough...Ooooh! who's gonna make FOI requests about something they can't put into a sentence, because it's 'well known'... but in house jargon.
As for unbiased truth, look again at NASA'S Gavin Schmidt's E-Mail to Lucia liljegren, one of those who received the dump of the controversial Emails, and put them on-line.


Date: Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:48:21 -0500
From: Gavin Schmidt
To: lucia liljegren
Subject: a word to the wise

Lucia, As I am certain you are aware, hacking into private emails is very illegal. If legitimate, your scoop was therefore almost certainly obtained illegally (since how would you get 1000 emails otherwise). I don’t see any link on Jeff-id’s site, and so I’m not sure where mosher got this from, but you and he might end up being questioned as part of any investigation that might end up happening. I don’t think that bloggers are shielded under any press shield laws and so, if I were you, I would not post any content, nor allow anyone else to do so. Just my twopenny’s worth

Gavin


Gavin Schmidt is the guy that realised his site had been hacked in the first place, and already knew that the mails were legit, yet he uses the words, 'If legitimate' as above and is basically saying STFU. Now, is that an example of "unbiased truth" ?
Would you want to fawn to someone like that? Not me mate!

a reply to: smurfy

Thus the "mostly."

Scientists are human... but are 'mostly' interested in the unvarnished truth, or as close as can be measured, anyway. But there are, of course, exceptions... but the actual data, taken holistically, points to a reality.

What a few individuals do to spread that data or influence what they see as suicidal ideology is another matter.

a reply to: smurfy

It wasn't his site that was hacked. It was UEA's email accounts that were hacked. Which by the way no one at UEA ever denied the emails weren't legitimate. Anyone involved has only ever said that the few quotes still circling to this day, were taken wildly out of context and spun to paint a picture of dishonesty.

a reply to: Kali74

Meanwhile the other thread has degenerated into Al Gore name drops.....

I figure I would just copy and past what I call useful information in this whole climate 'debate.'

Perhaps this is a reason why most online forums in the US have more than their fair share of human induced climate change deniers:

Billion-dollar climate denial network exposed

An extensive study into the financial networks that support groups denying the science behind climate change and opposing political action has found a vast, secretive web of think tanks and industry associations, bankrolled by conservative billionaires.

"I call it the climate-change counter movement," study author Robert Brulle, who published his results in the journal Climatic Change, told the Guardian. "It is not just a couple of rogue individuals doing this. This is a large-scale political effort."

His work, which is focused on the United States, shows how a network of 91 think tanks and industry groups are primarily responsible for conservative opposition to climate policy. Almost 80 percent of these groups are registered as charitable organizations for tax purposes, and collectively received more than seven billion dollars between 2003 and 2010.

Among those named as key nodes of the network were the American Enterprise Institute, which claims to have no institutional position on climate change, and the Heritage Foundation, which campaigns on a number of issues.

a reply to: jrod

Goredwins Law

a reply to: mc_squared

Yeah nowhere did I say the court case justifies the science. The science does a perfectly fine job of justifying the science.

What this court case does is justify all the lying media that have been trying to undermine and derail the science.

But just as I predicted in the OP - some people have this disinfo so deeply ingrained into their bloodstream there's just no going back to facts and truth.

What science exactly, that climate change is man made? Of course it isn't. The climate has been changing since before He put us here. Sure, as people, our activities may stimulate or feed the process, but we are ultimately irrelevant to the cycle of climate change. Perhaps one could see us as a catalyst of sorts for something that happens with our without our participation.

"Climategate" is just a dumb scenario anyway. MSM and alternative media both ate it up, but in the grand scheme of things emails aren't very important. One kind of gets the feeling that stories like this exist solely for media limelight and their potential to set and create social trends, e.g., attitudes our beliefs, so they can be better categorized into a malleable spectrum that makes it easier to manipulate the people into securing their overall agenda. In other words, forget about Climategate. It only divides and distracts, and who can trust news these days, even alternative?

a reply to: Baddogma

In any conspiracy, it's always a good idea to follow the money/power.

On one side there's big oil/coal.

On the other there's ...er... big solar? Big wind.. geothermal? Being promoted due to the undue influence of big science? Seriously?

That's what always kills me too. I get that some people may have a hard time digesting the science, because it can easily be made complicated (and that's what disinformers do on purpose to obfuscate the facts). But it's the total lack of awareness when it comes to the actual conspiracy that leaves me reading most comments on ATS and wanting to barf.

So many people here just throw around meaningless cliches without any regard for how absurd or backwards they actually are. And they never seem to notice, since they're all too busy congratulating each other for repeating the same predictable mantras over and over.


I've been studying the big oil side of the conspiracy for a long time now, and become quite fascinated with the psychological engineering involved.

For example you always hear skeptics ranting about the supposed "alarmism" of the global warming crowd. They LOVE this narrative because it lets them pretend everyone else is a chicken little coward, while they remain cool as a cucumber in their own minds.

But this exact reaction has been carefully seeded into their psyche by professional deniers for years now:




On the flip side, they use the exact same trigger (fear) to stir up intense paranoia and mistrust in things like science:




And yet, they are totally oblivious to these very blatant devices.

When you really dig into the denial side of the conspiracy, you don't just end up following the money - you can follow the specific gameplan of propaganda and psychological warfare that has led us exactly where we are today in this so-called "debate". That's why it becomes so easy to predict the reactions of deniers in every one of these discussions.

They have been programmed into mindless robots spitting out the same old recursive and nonsensical talking points, and they have no idea how transparent it is to everyone else who's not stuck inside the same loop.

Why am I not surprised that after reading this:

Anyway, this should probably be celebrated as a small victory in the fight against MSM misinformation, but since the topic at hand is so contentious to begin with – I have a feeling these results will just be flatly rejected by a certain portion of the political spectrum.

Those who have already made up their minds (because the above disinformation is firmly spoonfed and digested in their bloodstream) will probably decide now that the Canadian justice system is just in on the conspiracy too. One more interesting caveat to the overall case then is this:

The first couple posts after it were people flatly denying this without having read the OP?

originally posted by: ketsuko
Just remember OP, if you go outside tomorrow and don't like the weather, it isn't because the weather is just bad. It's because it's your fault for simply being alive and breathing/burping/farting/driving your car, and if you want better weather tomorrow ... you better sign over at least half of your existing paycheck to the government as quickly as you can because only they have the knowledge and wisdom to figure out how to make your weather better in the future.

Weather and climate aren't really the same thing. This analogy is wrong.

But be warned! It may take a long time and may not be fixed in your lifetime and may demand ever more of your freedoms and creature comforts and, let's not forget, and even bigger slice of your wages.

Continuing with the false analogy.

But at least you will be able to feel good about yourself that you "did something" and feel morally superior to "that guy" who still has actual heat in the winter as you freeze because you "did something" and are sacrificing for the cause.

For the record, I don't agree with government's "solution" for climate change, but that doesn't make the science invalid.

originally posted by: mc_squared

That is a great billboard, it hovers right at the boundary between truth and misinformation.

originally posted by: Baddogma
In any conspiracy, it's always a good idea to follow the money/power.

On one side there's big oil/coal.

On the other there's ...er... big solar? Big wind.. geothermal? Being promoted due to the undue influence of big science? Seriously?

I get that certain reports can be twisted to produce bad info ... but in this case of the overwhelming majority of scientists agreeing, I really don't see the reasoning behind this alleged conspiracy "climategate."

I'm all for independent thinking... but when your own ideas go against the vast majority of smart folks with highly specialized information who are, on the whole, sworn to unbiased truth, and those same pet ideas have no motive or supporting data, then I offer that that idea is crap.

How about "Big carbon Taxes" that big enough for you?