ClimateGate II: Handy Guide to spot whitewash journalism – The top 10 excuses for scientists behaving badly « JoNova: Science, carbon, climate and tax

The top 10 excuses for PR writers  who pose as “journalists” to ignore ClimateGate emails

This is standard issue damage control for ClimateGate — protect the cheats and liars, attack the whistleblower, and  use excuses and padding-fillers to cover a story without actually giving the public any information on the behavior of scientists who make statements that billions of dollars of public spending is guided by.

1. “The emails are old.” (No one has seen them before, and what makes two-year-old lies acceptable now?).
2. “The timing is suspicious”. (Alarmists release alarming stuff all the time in the lead up to big meetings, but look out, it’s suspicious when a skeptic releases alarming stuff about those scientists at the same time!)
3. “They’re out of context”  (We won’t explain the context, or quote the email, trust us, they just are, OK?)
4. “The emails show a robust scientific debate”. (But that is the whole point isn’t it? We were told the “science was settled”? It is dishonest to discuss uncertainties in private while you tell the public “the debate is over” and call anyone who questions that a “denier”.)
5. “They’ve been investigated”. (Even though the investigations didn’t have these emails, didn’t investigate the science, and were at least in one case, chaired by a windfarm expert, this point is supposed to have credibility?)
6. “They’re hacked” or “stolen”. (After years of investigation there is no evidence they were hacked. They could have been leaked. Police can’t or won’t say. Does this journalist “know” something the police don’t?)
7. “Aren’t the skeptics nasty people?” (Crikey, imagine reading emails written by paid public servants on the job about their professional work? What victims! Those poor scientists can’t even threaten journal editors, conspire to ignore peer reviewed papers they don’t like, or discuss their ignorance in private… what’s the world coming too?)
8. “This doesn’t change the science”. (Since most of “the science” is merely a consensus of these same experts, whom we are told to respect, then actually it does change “the science” when they are caught cheating.)
9. The emails “mean nothing” according the scientists caught cheating. (The sock puppet earns bonus points if those same scientists also get to slur the whistleblower and skeptics with unsubstantiated implications that “they are funded by fossil fuels”.)
10. The public response is a “yawn”. (And given how few journalists are reporting the actual emails to the public, that’s entirely predictable eh? Circular reasoning strikes again.)

Real Journalists don’t try to hide the emails

...Andy Revkin, New York Times. I think Revkin sincerely believes he is an investigative journalist, and he “investigates” in a half-hearted way: he links to a few skeptical sites, he ask “climate scientists” to respond to Pielke’s point, and asks the Norwich police how much they’ve spent. But there are no direct quotes of the emails, no phone calls to skeptics or people on the other side of the emails. By writing it all off as though the first emails were already “explained”, he implies that using tricks to hide declines is a reasonable scientific practice. If scientists distort the peer review process, bully and slur critics even as they hide their own debates and uncertainty, that’s apparently all fair too. Thus he is an apologist for corruption of the scientific process. His update relies on the intellectual vacuum of the precautionary principle: “You’re Driving a Bus Full of Kids With a Curve Ahead“.

Blog: UN climate change negotiations, Durban, November 2011 - Norton Rose Group

Opening of the negotiations were characterised not by the usual optimism and hopeful statements of intended progress, but rather by stark statements reflecting the deep (and historic) divisions between the parties.

Energy Tribune- Occupying Durban: The Greatest Sham on Earth

As the latest UN IPCC climate narrative is staged in Durban, an adapted Macbeth soliloquy offers its own summary: “A tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

Volt: The Heat Is On - By Henry Payne - Planet Gore - National Review Online

Still, the Volt episode reveals the issue of a “depowering protocol.” Never heard of that for your gas-powered car? That’s because it doesn’t need one. No, Greens didn’t tell you about that either.

Talk to some Detroit-area car repair shops — where new car prototypes are not uncommon — and they might tell you that electric vehicles are different. Crash a gas-powered vehicle and the shop boys go to work. No draining the gas tank. No decoupling the 12-volt battery. Crash a plug-in and company officials descend to warn of not cutting high voltage cables — in fact, they would prefer repair shops not deal with the cars at all.