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 .