Climategate one-liners

It’s been over a year and a half since climategate gave us some disturbing and at times hilarious insight into some of the world’s most noted alarmists. Below is a list of some of the most priceless climategate quotes.

“They would like to see the section on variability and extreme events beefed up if possible.” – Adam Markham, WWF

Political activist involvement with scientific discussion already? Who’d have thought at this point that Greenpeace would end up writing an IPCC report?

“I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temperatures to each series for the last 20 years (i.e. from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.” – Phil Jones

Maybe this divergence in proxy data with real temperatures indicates that your reconstructions are duds. Just maybe. Why would they hide this?

“I simply would not like to see you write a paper that puts out a confused message with regard to the global warming debate…I am totally confident that after a day’s rephrasing this paper can go back and be publishable to my satisfaction by Science.” – Keith Briffa

Shouldn’t the opposing views be encouraged?

“Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal.” – Michael Mann

Part of Mann’s campaign to delegitimise the journal Climate Research and by extensions, any doubt over his side of the debate.

“It would be nice to try to “contain” the putative “Medieval Warm Period”.” – Michael Mann

The medieval warm period, an inconvenient truth.

“So, acceding to the request for this to do the review is setting a very dangerous precedent.” – Phil Jones

Yeah, for you.

“In an odd way (the death of John Daly) is cheering news!” – Phil Jones

What a lovely character insight(!)

“Personally, I wouldn’t send (Stephen McIntyre) anything. I have no idea what he’s up to, but you can be sure it falls into the “no good” category.” – Michael Mann

What preoccupation and paranoia with someone just checking up on his work.

“Mike Mann refuses to talk to these people and I can understand why. They are just trying to find if we’ve done anything wrong.” – Phil Jones

His work is involved in policy-making worldwide. It is astonishing he does not grasp this and as such the need to ensure his research is reliable.

“We also have a Data Protection Act, which I will hide behind.” – Phil Jones

Why would an innocent man hide?

“If anything, I would like to see the climate change happen, so the science could be proved right, regardless of the consequences. This isn’t being political, it is being selfish.” – Phil Jones

Another character insight.

“The others who could be added (to this email list) at this early stage are Ray Bradley and Malcolm Hughes, your “co-conspirators”—and perhaps Phil Jones, Keith Briffa and Tim Osborn.” - Tom Wigley

“Conspirators”, their terminology.

“In our discussion of possible participants in Bern…the last two on the list (with question marks) would be unwise choices because they are likely to cause conflict than to contribute to consensus and progress.” – Michael Mann

Why are scientists trying to work towards consensus rather than encouraging debate?

“Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith regarding the latest (IPCC) report? Keith will do likewise…Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same?…We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.” – Phil Jones

Mann actually confirmed he would comply with this request.

“Next time I see Pat Michaels at a scientific meeting, I’ll be tempted to beat the crap out of him. Very tempted.” – Ben Santer

I’d like to see that, Michaels vs. Santer.

“The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.” – Kevin Trenberth