That river we just crossed

In Cross the river, burn the bridge, Mark Steyn says "“health care” is the fast-track to a permanent left-of-center political culture":

My Republican friends often seem to miss the point in this debate: The so-called “public option” is not Page 3,079, Section (f), Clause VII. The entire bill is a public option — because that’s where it leads, remorselessly. The so-called “death panel” is not Page 2,721, Paragraph 19, Sub-section (d), but again the entire bill — because it inserts the power of the state between you and your doctor, and in effect assumes jurisdiction over your body. As the savvier Dems have always known, once you’ve crossed the Rubicon, you can endlessly re-reform your health reform until the end of time, and all the stuff you didn’t get this go-round will fall into place, and very quickly.

Will it lead to Government-run, single-payer? DU, hot off Senate vote, today wants to destroy the private health insurance industry.

Patriot of the Year

The American Activist, the grassroots Tea Partying activists, have been the real surprise of 2009 and the real "Person of the Year" according to AFP's Tim Phillips:

Without a doubt, everyday Americans concerned about the future of their country have had more of an impact this year than any politician, Fed chairman, or celebrity. ...

Sometimes these tireless activists ask me if doing their part is really making a difference. CNN and Rasmussen polls show a majority of Americans oppose the current health care bill. That shift in opinion came because people paid attention and got their neighbors to pay attention, too.

But more than that, I tell them to look at Washington. The genuine uprising among constituents has pushed cap-and-trade off the congressional agenda for the year, and pushed back the deadline for a health care bill from August to Christmas.

QOTD: Noonan on parents and the culture

Peggy Noonan on the de-moralization of parental America:

"It cannot be exaggerated, how much Americans feel besieged by the culture of their own country, and to what lengths they have to go to protect their children from it."

ObamaCare, Senate version: Most Dishonest Bill Ever

There are many disgraces, big and small, substantive and process-wide, associated with the ObamaCare bill now in the Senate. This terrible Bill just passed a hurdle on a strict party-line vote 60-40.

But I will mention just one. The 1am Monday vote to proceed today meant that: A vote was held in the middle of the night; there were ZERO business days to review this bill; a 2,000 page bill was amended by back-room deals on a weekend and then RUSHED to the Senate floor with NOBODY reading the bill prior to voting.

Dept of Obvious Research: Less TV is Good for Ya

Watching less TV burns more calories. Who would have guessed?

Travis County Health Board Funds The Execution of 1000 Poorest

Last Thursday night (Dec. 10) the Travis County Healthcare District Board voted to fund the execution of 1000 of the County’s poorest. These humans are so poor they don’t have jobs, they don’t own a house or a car, and they don’t even own any clothes. The only thing they have is their lives and the County is paying to take that away. These, of course, are the preborn. In spite of testimony that they are living human beings, in spite of testimony that abortion hurts the mother as well as killing a baby, in spite of testimony by a father who had his fourth child aborted and now suffers from guilt every day, in spite of testimony that there are many alternative agencies to help women during and after a pregnancy, and in spite of receiving a petition with 10,000 signatures asking them not to fund abortions. In spite of all this testimony the Board unanimously voted to fund the execution of 1000 healthy babies and to condemn their mothers to a life time of guilt. The Board decided to ignore its stated purpose of providing health care for the County’s poorest and instead decided to hasten the death of 1000 health humans.
It is obvious that no one on this Board understands the value of human life. The citizens of Travis County should demand the replacement of all the Board members.

ObamaCare becoming Stalingrad for Obama & Co.

Maybe Senator DeMint was wrong. ObamaCare isn't actually Obama's Waterloo, it's his Stalingrad.

Hitler made three big mistakes in 1942 fighting the Russians. First, he tried to do three things in the Russian South in the summer of 1942: Take Caucasus oil fields, take the black sea ports and take Stalingrad. He bit off more than he could chew. His 6th Army got bogged down in street fighting in Stalingrad, and a city that had a deadline to be taken in August, which slipped into October and then November, with the city not fully in his control. Then he underestimated the Russians, setting himself up for a trap. In November, the Russians under Genreal Zhukov counterattacked in a pincer movement and in a week were able to surround the German Army in Stalingrad. Hitler then made the third mistake that cost him the whole 6th Army - instead of having them try a breakout retreat, he forced them to hold their ground, as he didnt want to give up Stalingrad. But his Lufwaffe lacked the air superiority to supply the surrounded troops. He lost both the city and his army.

Far be it from me to make comparisons that invoke Godwin's Law, but President Obama and the Democrat leaders have made parallel mistakes this year to those made by German High Command in 1942: First, they were over-ambitious and put too much politically risky things on the plate. They went in three directions, instead of one consistent vector. The ambitious over-reach ignited a conservative reaction in Tea Parties, and pegged Obama as a left-liberal. The legistative division, in particular the cap-and-trade House vote in June, started to make the wheels fall off of Congressional discipline. Deadlines for legislative accomplishments have been blown, and the big-ticket legislative front - cap-and-trade, immigration amnesty, card check, big spending, ObamaCare - has had middling success, with only the "Stimulus" as the big ticket that has actually passed Obama's desk. Obama failed to "choose his battles."

Second, they underestimated the opposition, both disorganized and organized. They've insulted the "Teabaggers" and put Republicans they might have got on board bipartisan bills out in the cold, taking a very partisan approach simply because they felt the numbers insulate them. The failed to consider that an energized minority has powerful ability to shape, if not the final votes, at least the debate - as the August recess showed.

Now, they are on mistake number three: Holding on to the ObamaCare prize even as the legislative and lobbying street-fighting make it impossible to fully win a clean bill. Will they make it? Only yesterday, it seemed that maybe they had; they first tried a "Medicare buy-in" trial balloon, and that didn't work, and then, having given up finally on public option to win over Senator Lieberman, find that progressives are now off the reservation and calling for the bill to be killed. Oh, and Senator Nelson is still a "NO" too.

The bill without public option is the 'all-pain no-gain' version, as I mentioned three months back. That is why - even though the votes aren't really there - they are trying to put public option in. With it out, the liberals say stuff like: "I'll be D @ M N E D if I'm going to be forced to buy something that is costly and inefficient. " on HuffPost. The coup de grace may be Senator Burris being a 'no' vote if public option is excluded.

Obama's polling numbers are worse than ever, and the ObamaCare bill gets more and more unpopular. Must be something to do with the trillions it will tax and spend in the next decade. So trying to hold on to a bill for the sake of holding on to it could be the costliest and final mistake of a very mistake-prone first year for President Obama. A flawed reform will only energize and anger opponents, while at the same time demoralizing his own base who a defecting from the bill. Time has run out for Senator Reid's "A bill by Christmas" deadline.

The Bad Obamacare Bill should just be killed - kick it to January, get out a clean sheet, and do a tailored targeted bill that only does the minimum popular things. But Democrats will probably decide to throw good political capital after already-spent political capital in a desperate gamble of losing teams. Holding the ground didn't work in Stalingrad 1942 and it won't work here.

Hey Democrats, You're Screwed!.

Monarchy

On hearing about Prince Charles' visit to Copenhagen I am reminded ...

Monarchy is like a union shop: Seniority over merit.

Renewable Energy Does Nothing

A report from Germany (PDF) on renewable energy shows that it is so expensive and produces so little, that "net climate effect has been equal to zero", while costing billions of dollars:

Given the net cost of 41.82 Cents/kWh for PV modules installed in 2008, and assuming that PV displaces conventional electricity generated from a mixture of gas and hard coal, abatement costs are as high as 716 € (US $1,050) per tonne. Using the same assumptions and a net cost for wind of 3.10 Cents/kWh, the abatement cost is approximately 54 € (US $80). While cheaper than PV, this cost is still nearly double the ceiling of the cost of a per-ton permit under Europe’s cap-andtrade scheme. Renewable energies are thus among the most expensive GHG reduction measures.

There are much cheaper ways to reduce carbon dioxide emissions than subsidizing renewable energies. CO2 abatement costs of PV are estimated to be as high as 716 € (US $1,050) per tonne, while those of wind power are estimated at 54 € (US $80) per tonne. By contrast, the current price of emissions certificates on the European emissions trading scheme is only 13.4 Euro per tonne. Hence, the cost from emission reductions as determined by the market is about 53 times cheaper than employing PV and 4 times cheaper than using wind power. Moreover, the prevailing coexistence of the EEG and emissions trading under the European Trading Scheme (ETS) means that the increased use of renewable energy technologies generally attains no additional emission reductions beyond those achieved by ETS alone. In fact, since the establishment of the ETS in 2005, the EEG’s net climate effect has been equal to zero.

Travis County Healtcare Board of Managers, Please Reconsider

Thursday night at the Travis County Commissioners' Court on West 11th Street in downtown Austin, TX the not-elected-but-appointed-by-elected-officials Travis County HEALTHCARE District Board of Managers voted unanimously to use $450,000 of the district's property tax revenue (assessed without recourse to all Travis County property owners) to abort the unborn babies of poor and minority women. Margaret Sanger, who never met a person whom she considered of inferior race whom she didn't want to prevent from reproducing, would be so proud. The Board of Managers should be so ashamed of themselves.

As a result of this decision whether they like it or not, whether they live in Austin or not, whether they believe in the right to life or not, all Travis County Property owners' who pay their property taxes will be funding the killing of the unborn babies of poor and minority women. The Board of Managers made such a decision in the face of overwhelming opposition by the public. Why should the managers care about public opinion, they were not elected to their positions and so do not fear the public.

When unelected boards make life and death public policy decisions that are controversial and opposed by the public such decisions are dictates, not a consensus, not the decisions of a democratic body. Those decisions are therefore of questionable legitimacy. Those decisions should be appealed and litigated, and if there is no recourse they should perhaps be civilly disobeyed, in this case by a taxpayer revolt.

For the sake of decency and respect for the poor and minorities, we at The Travis Monitor urge the Hospital District Board of Managers to reconsider their ill-advised decision made without regard of public opinion.

And one more thing, ABORTION IS NOT HEALTH CARE.

Click here to read the Austin American Statesmen story on the "hearing".

Live from Copenhagen

I'm sitting here at the Texas State Capitol with Americans for Prosperity watching the AFP News conference live from Copenhagen, Denmark where the elite of the elite are discussing how to strap the West with a tax and trade system based on a myth, a system that would bring us to our knees and deprive us of freedom and prosperity.

I got lost in the Capitol looking for E2.102 when the event was being held in E2.012. When I came in the room Lord Monckton was up and Cindy Mallette told me I had just missed the protestors. Shucks!

Lord Monckton warned of Obama's potential signing away of US sovereignty though such an executive action, even if confirmed by Congress, could be reversed by a subsequent Administration, thank God, but we can't let it get confirmed in the first place.

Next up was a German, Wolfgang Muller, who talked about the cost of going sustainable/green as experienced in Germany and elsewhere in Europe. The cost of living will at least double. The implication of that, though not stated, is the expansion of poverty.

Then Phil Kerpen, policy director took the podium. Sorry, I didn't catch that.

Now Rick Perry is up via video talking about the issue form a Texas perspective. Cost to Texans will be at least $1100 per year. Texas will loose 400,000 jobs. Any limits the EPA impose won't make a dent in CO2 levels, according to the EPA itself. He encouraged us to speak out against the EPA and those in Congress who support cap and trade.

Steve Lonegan, from Philadelphia, is up decrying the Little Red Book that the left is using to promote the climate change agenda. They unabashedly use such a communist symbol to indoctrinate the world.

Steve Moore of the WSJ just joined Lonegan on the stage. It's 10 degrees below zero today in North Dakota. It snowed in Houston last week. Not sure where the evidence for global warming is. Just a couple of decades ago the consensus was that the planet was cooling. Over the last ten years the earth has cooled, not warmed.

Only FOX News is following the climategate story. Steve took an informal poll of the audience and found that about half thought Obamacare was the biggest threat to freedom, about half thought that Cap&Trade was the biggest threat to freedom and a minority thought Card Check was the greatest threat to freedom. The climate alarmists say that hurricanes will increase because of global warming effects but this year we had few hurricanes and none that reached category 4.

Tim Philips from Copenhagen is talking about the events going on around the US.

Phil is now talking about the economic impact of C&T. The average family will loose 1000s of dollars of disposable income. It seems that the leftist want Americans to dispose of their money into the hands of leftists like themselves to spend as the left pleases. He said that what will come out of Copenhagen will be an executive agreement and in the Spring they will try to bring it up in Congress. Of more immediate concern are regulatory changes at the EPA, such as the recent "finding" that CO2 is a pollutant.

Now we have a speaker here at the Capitol, Kathleen Harnett White. She said that either the protesters or the counter-protesters (I'm not sure which she was referring to since I missed the protest but I expect it was the counter-protesters defending the status quo at the conference there in Copenhagen) were representative of those "scientists" who say that we are ignorant climate change deniers, just as some people are Holocaust deniers. The C&T bill is so complex and would produce 1000s of regulations and corresponding bureaucracies. Those "scientists" who say that global warming is unequivocally proven are spouting dogma rather than science. The EPA in it's endangerment finding last week regarding CO2 is regurgitated the "findings" of the IPCC. Texas needs to litigate this finding. We need to reverse it. The scientists that testified before the Texas Legislature last session were uniformly believers in climate change. The members of the Legislators were afraid to ask these "scientists" questions for fear of being tagged a denier. Texas leads the nation in CO2 emissions producing 670 million metric tons of CO2 per year. This is a sign of our vibrant economy, size, and the fact that we prove the country with a large part of its energy needs.

The best that could come out of this focus on CO2 would be if scientists arise that tried to measure in the troposphere the man caused CO2 and how it interacts with the other molecules and compounds up there. In other words doe real science.

Now Ms. White is taking questions. A couple of lively ones, including one from the blogger (me) about the implications of the reports of doctored data and why people don't realize that the entire man-causes-climate-change "science" is a fraud. If the proponents have to stoop to such measures (as faked hockey stick graphs) is it any doubt what is going on. Such "scientist" can make the data support whatever they want it to support.

Another lady commented that we need to not skip over explaining what CO2 is. It is not soot. It is an invisible and odorless gas at normal atmospheric conditions. It is not the bellowing black smoke that used to come out of smokestacks before we decided to cleaned up the air from real pollutants.

Ms. White ended with the costs of fuel (below) and with the statement that if you care about people you will care about and promoting freedom and prosperity, and you will fight the EPA and Cap & Trade.

Cost of alternative sources of fuel for electric generation (cost per kwh):

Wind

$24

Natural Gas

$0.23

Coal

$0.08

End Report.

Taxpayer Funded Abortions

All those 1970s things are coming back - We have a Jimmy Carter in the White House, high priced oil, environmental lunacy, and ... Taxpayer funded abortions.

On the local scene - Travis County's so-called Hospital district wants to spend taxpayer money on contracts with abortion providers. he governing board of managers will have a special meeting on Thursday, Dec. 10. At the meeting the board will vote on proposed contracts with three local abortion providers to use $450,000 in property taxes to pay for approximately 1,000 abortions for the next 12 months. They will decide on funding three abortion providers for non-medically necessary abortions on healthy unborn babies: Planned Parenthood at 201 E. Ben White Blvd., Whole Women's Health at 8401 N. IH 35, and Austin Women's Health Center at 1902 S. IH 35.
Texas Alliance for Life is tracking this issue. If you want to send a message to the nine members of the Board of Managers: Contact them here.

On the national scene - Senate Democrats defeated a measure to bar funding for abortion in the Obama/Reid Healthcare bill. The Nelson Amendment was defeated 54/45. Thanks to the Hyde Amendment of 20 years ago, we have for the past two decades avoided spending Federal dollars on abortions. That may end. Democrats are working to schmooze out a few more votes by relabelling public option. It's still over-expensive, over-regulatory, kills jobs, and harms the existing healthcare system... which means there is unfortunately a better than 50/50 chance the Democrats will all support it.

Taxpayer funded abortions, job-killing Democrats and a lousy economy. Oh joy. Bring out your bell bottoms and disco balls and party like its 1979.

EPA to People: Drop Dead

In their eco-Fatwa against CO2, the EPA has now declared the act of breathing an offensive act of pollution! A climate date that will live in infamy, CheifIO says:

"From this day forward, EPA has taken responsibility for the climate with a goal of making it colder. Every time there is a cold excursion that causes loss or damage, the EPA ought to be presented the bill."

I signed up to Stop the Copenhagen treaty. We all will have to do our part for the greater good of humanity and save us from the anti-CO2 lunacy.



UPDATE - Next April 1st, they go after Water Vapor! Dihydrogen Monoxide, the most dangerous greenhouse gas - "(Washington, DC) The Environmental Protection Agency is seeking to classify water vapor as a pollutant, due to its central role in global warming. Because water vapor is the dominant greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, accounting for at least 90% of the Earth's natural greenhouse effect, its emission during many human activities, such as the burning of fuels, is coming under increasing scrutiny by federal regulators...." See Eco_examiner.

Senate Dems New Twist on Public Option

The Senate Dems are at it again. To salvage the Public Option, Senate Dems seek expansion of Medicare, Medicaid. It's like trying to fit a 300lb woman in a size 8 dress. They keep trying on different names and outfits for their socialized medicine, but it is still the same thing. These plans will bankrupt already fiscally unstable programs and set us on a path of unsustainable Government commitments in healthcare subsidies.

Senator Cornyn has weighed in on Reid's Healthcare takeover bill - calling it "my way or the highway" and showing how it breaks many of Obama's promises.

Climate Audit - Blog of the decade (even before Climategate)

Steve McIntyre's Climate Audit blog has been taking on the AGW scientific establishment for almost a decade, and has on multiple occasions uncovered errors, sloppiness and outright deception, even before the "Climategate" emails from CRU were leaked. McIntyre's initial primary contribution was investigating the MBH 98 paper results and showing the MBH98 'hockey-stick' was based on poor statistical methods and debunking its implications. In busting the Mann 'hockey stick', McIntyre up-ended the claim that recent warming was unprecented, and busted a figure that was prominent in Gore's "Inconvenient Truth".



In doing so, he forced the IPCC to back down on some bold claims, but the "Hockey Stick team" didn't take kindly to that and pressed on to save Mann-made Hockey Stick. "Caspar and the Jesus paper" narrates the attempt by the team to salvage the Mann hockey stick that M&M busted, an amazing journey of multiple self-referencing Wahl and Caspar Ammann papers that attempted to reconfirm the Hockey stick. McIntyre's response: "Rather than disproving our results, at first blush, Ammann's results confirmed them.... the seemingly high RE statistic (99.999% significant) was an illusion from inappropriate benchmarking." The pesky details that the authors pushed to Supplementary Information got released much later - which McIntyre dissected in a Tour de Force, noting that their analysis confirmed his own - "the results are completely at odds with their representations."

A third attempt at recreating the hockey stick was tried, and this time McIntyre uncovered the culprit - the trends were relying on a mere 12 trees in corner of Siberia by tossing out trees that 'diverged' from the non-desired answer: Declining proxies when temps are rising. JoNova narrates what happened there as well. Well, that and Putting proxies in upside-down. All the climate scientists trying to "Hide the decline" have been unable to put Humpty Hockey stick back together again.

An appreciation for McIntyre on the Climate Audit blog explains what happens to those who dare expose the 'consensus' climate science as flawed:

I remember having an office down the hall from John Christy in the late 1980’s. He found something interesting in that no one had been looking at satellite temperature records that were stored on tapes, measured by NASA satellites. Dr. Christy took the time to look at this data and reduce it to a paper.

This paper took issue with the computer models of the time showing a dramatic global warming. Most people today don’t remember that the old models from the 80’s projected much more warming than the current ones. Dr. Christy’s (and I think McNiter) paper showed that the actual measurements from satellites and balloons diverged from what the models were saying. I don’t think that he had any motivation other than to help improve the science and that the result would be better models and more data collection.

Very quickly this paper was attacked and seized upon by various interests and before long Dr. Christy was hauled before non other than Senator Albert Gore to be personally pilloried. This began a completely new era for Dr. Christy, that has helped to lead where he and others are today. He, and others like him, are still pilloried, claimed to be shills of big oil, et al. but his work back then has led him to amazing places.

The same is with you Steve. I don’t think that you ever thought when you began this interest in the arcane details of the statistics related to temperature reconstructions, that you would end up being in the position that you are today. Take pride in this, realize that what you have done, are doing, and hopefully will do, will be of material benefit to billions of people, by helping to bring clarity to a topic that has been hijacked by the political class for their own ends.

What "Climategate" has done is confirm the suspicions of the baises and errors in the climate science community. internal emails acknowledge more errors and 'hide the decline' fixes than are admitted publicly, and the effort to hide data and information and confront rather than work with auditing skeptics is clear. Steve McIntyre has been the whistle-blower on the errors of climate scientists pushing flawed statistical representations that made AGW look worse than it is. For that, his blog is the "blog of the decade" in my humble opinion.

Lamar Smith on Stolen Jobs

RedState, Rep Lamar Smith has an idea for getting millions of Americans back to work: Enforce immigration law and give the jobs they took back to Americans.

Copenhagen

Here's to hoping that Climategate and the lack of real warming in recent years has cooled off the Copenhagen fever to destroy our industrial economy on the Altar of the Globalist Warming theory/religion.

RealClimate Blog: Part of the ClimateGate "Front"

I posted the following comment to the RealClimate website on This thread. It was a challenge for the website to 'come clean'. They moderate comments and did not deign to allow this comment to get published:

Prof Mann had a letter to the editor in the Washington Post this Sunday, and directed people to RealClimate website - here.

This is what Prof Mann said of RealClimate website in one of the CRU emails to colleagues writing a 'helpful' paper: " We can hold comments up in the queue and contact you about whether or not you think they should be screened through or not, and if so, any comments you'd like us to include. You're also welcome to do a followup guest post, etc. think of RC as a resource that is at your disposal to combat any disinformation put

forward by the McIntyres of the world. Just let us know. We'll use our best discretion to make sure the skeptics dont' get to use the RC comments as a megaphone..."

#18 says "I was under the impression that this is supposed to be a neutral website discussing climate." Well, #18 - I was too - once. We and a lot of other folks who decided to take it all on trust were apparently 'played'. The question the above quote raises is - Is RealClimate about science, where-ever it leads, or is it stage-managed PR on behalf of the Jones/Mann/IPCC viewpoint?

If RealClimate wants to extricate itself from the widening scandal that has now has seen Jones step down and Mann be put under investigation, it can take steps to rehabilitation:

1. Offer an apology to the McIntyre's of the world. Acknowledge that McIntyre and ANYONE who wants the data backing up ANY peer-reviewed paper or ANYTHING that appears in IPCC has the right to get it. No complaints about the burden of such request is legitimate, replicating results is vital to science. We now know that several of the items and issues he has raised have been legitimate, valid and have ADVANCED the science. Whether McIntyre and ClimateAudit is right or wrong on a particular item, we now have seen - shockingly - how groupthink and attempts to hide information leads to bad science.

2. End the policy of moderating comments at RealClimate. It's a poor way of way of stifling the knowledgeable skeptics, since I would guess their sites are now more visited. Attempts to stifle the skeptic voices has been the Mann & Jones way, as shown in the CRU emails - trying to get journal editors canned, refusing to allow certain peer-reviewed publication into the IPCC chapters, steering people into illegally obstructing FOI requests - and it has destroyed their credibility as professional scientists. It has done NO GOOD.

It's time for a New Era of Openness. Engage and accept the alternative views, not as correct per se, but as worthy of respect instead of revulsion and shunning. As of now, there has been enough of a breach of trust that at minimum the IPCC will need a whole new set of Lead Authors and a whole new level of transparency and open-ness to the next round, or the entire enterprise will be treated as a farce.

We will see if RealClimate / Gavin realizes how seriously this has damaged the credibility of ALL involved in these emails and work, and works diligently to repair it. Your actions will tell all. As Jesus put it, 'know them by their fruits'.

Postscript - we have our answer: RealClimate didn't post this comment. The blog, which was founded by Prof Mann among others, is part of the 'front' to deny the legitimacy of questions about the theory of man-made global warming, calling the skeptics of AGW theory 'deniers'. They have no interest in admitting the errors of their sponsors or changing their ways.

Climategate Aftershocks

I knew it would be a bombshell, but it's gotten bigger and more fundamental than many thought possible: Dr Phil Jones - who in emails wrote about deleting data and emails rather than submit to FOI requests, who spoke of using the 'trick' to 'hide the decline', and who conspired to can journal editors - stepped down ('temporarily'). Penn State is putting Prof Mann of hockey stick infamy under investigation. As usual, the Lamestream Media is in "denial" mode, underplaying how serious this is, and the real story is on the internet, where you can find the real emails and judge for yourself.

Climate Depot is having a field day with this story - links galore. Here is a good summary by Lord Monkton (PDF): http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/Monckton-Caught%20Green-Handed%20Climategate%20Scandal.pdf

What it all means is the skeptics have been proved right in several areas:
1. Skeptics were suspicious of 'data massaging' and the error of torturing data to fit conclusions - and the emails and data released shows things even WORSE than we might have thought: outright fudging of temperature series, skewing of data, using 'tricks' to make misleading presentations of data, mistakes in how proxies are used are admitted in emails but not shared with others, so bad data is reused, and now CRU claims the underlying raw data doesnt even exist! They have a 'dog ate my homework' excuse.
2. Skeptics claimed the IPCC was shutting out dissenters - the emails prove it now; attempts to get Journal editors who didnt toe the line canned, attempts to keep dissent out of IPCC reports, refusal to public review notes, and a complete paranoid approach to any questioning of their 'science'
3. Skeptics were claiming that the 'Hockey Stick Team' scientists were denying access to data to replicate results - we now have emails where Jones and Mann talking about how to subvert FOI requests and how to stop the skeptics from figuring out their 'tricks'.

What is left of the 'science'?
#1 - The temperature trends for the last century were skewed - Lord Monckton explains more in above summary, using the example of New Zealand, where "official" temperature took raw temp data and 'adjusted' it to create a warming trend that in the raw data doesnt even exist!
#2 - The IPCC's credibility is now complete shot. The 'system' was gamed to create a phony 'consensus'; we skeptics knew that, but this email release proved it.
#3 - The credibility of ANYONE who claims "the science is settled" is now shot.
There IS no science left to trust, we have to hit the 'reset' button on every brick of evidence
in the whole chain, because the behavior of these men so skewed the 'science' it is all tainted.
#4 - The hockey stick is busted - unproven if not a myth.
#5 - The IPCC models were based on suppositions, and the 'skeptic' theories that pointed out the data that undermined the models was shunned. These too need to be reviewed from the ground up, and until this is done the models have no value.

Without models, a hockey stick ramp up and temperature records worthy of trust, there is not much to go on.

What to do now?
- Removal of any global warming theory nonsense from schools. This stuff has the credibility of Piltdown Man and Lysenko-ism as of now.
- They need to FIRE Prof Mann and Dr Jones and possibly charge them with FOIA violations.
- The IPCC needs to fire all lead authors, and start from scratch with a whole other team
and a process based on 100% transparency. Or failing that, the IPCC needs to disband.
- Congress needs to have an investigation and needs to put a rule into Govt-funded research requiring the full and complete sharing of data produced to support published articles; less than that is not acceptable.

UPDATE 12/2: House and Senate GOP Leaders Call for Withdrawal of EPA Endangerment Finding, Other Rules Based on Dubious Science Exposed by E-mails .