Things we need to know

Seriously.

John Kasaian defends his position - taken at a Communio  group one evening - that Catholics may not call an angel by any name other than the three names given in the Bible, lest they be calling on the Other Side by mistake.  He refers us to this EWTN Q&A:

My question is this: What other angel names exist other than Michael, Raphael, Gabriel? Were angels other than these given names? If so, is there a list of names available? Thank you for your time and kindness and thank you most of all for the gift of EWTN and the blessing to the world that it is! Sincerely, Christina


Answer by Colin B. Donovan, STL on 12-13-2007:

If you don't count the names by which the fallen Enemy of God is called, the only angel names we know for sure are the three revealed in Scripture. In various non-scriptural texts, such as the inter-testamental books of Jewish origin, some liturgical texts of the Coptic Church, and in the writings of some mystics, other angel names are given. We cannot verify the truth of them, however, and so the Catholic Church does not utilize such names in her practice. This was made clear in a decree of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith a few years ago, which stated that Catholics should not make a "cultus" (meaning a devotion) to angels by names other than these three. This is more than wise advice, it is a binding norm for Catholics.

One note, this does not exclude refering to angels by their function, such as one's Guardian Angel, or the Guardian Angel of others. Such a practice uniquely describes that angel. As common Church teaching asserts, the angels fullfil the Lord's will in governing the universe, nature, in guarding human beings and societies of human beings (the parish, diocese, town, state nation) etc., so that they could be addressed by function. However, we should not seek to know their personal names, lest being deceived we call on another kind of angel, one not concerned with our eternal well-being. In any case, the angels are not interested in our attention, except as it relates to fulfilling their mission before God and getting us to fulfill ours.

Catholicism is filled with this kind of concrete reasoning about nebulous theological propositions, which is very cool.

The American Century is Over

According to this Washington Times article:

Mr. Obama did make history at Copenhagen, but not in the way he expected. It says a great deal about American power and prestige when international leaders go to so much trouble to avoid meeting with the president of the United States. The American Century is over.

Alcohol Yes, Marijuana No

Mary Grabar offers a cogent argument for why marijuana should not be legalized.

But I would argue that tradition should be a reason for its continued legal status and for denying legal status to marijuana.


The sanction for alcohol use goes back to the Bible. In the New Testament, references to its use in ceremonies like the Last Supper and the wedding at Cana appear. But Jesus also warns about excessive use. In the Old Testament, alcohol is shown to cloud the judgment of Lot. The Bible, in this way, tells us when and how we can use alcohol.

This means very little, though, in the arid moral climate of today’s libertarianism.

But I would argue that it should, not only from my position as a Christian, but from my position as a citizen of a country whose foundational values spring from the Judeo-Christian heritage. The sanction for alcohol use has lasted for millennia. It has become part of our rituals at meals, celebrations, and religious services. That is a large part of why Prohibition failed.

Marijuana, in contrast, has always been counter-cultural in the West. Every toke symbolizes a thumb in the eye of Western values. So it follows that in order to maintain our culture, we need to criminalize this drug.

The prohibition against marijuana is one brick in the foundation of our society. On a practical level the use of marijuana also works to knock out other bricks, like the work ethic, emotional engagement, sexual inhibition, and the ability to reason. For example, when one of my college students leads off in defense of the legalization of marijuana, he invariably does so in a disjointed manner, unable to muster the resources of reason and conviction to his argument. (He also does this in his essays.) One caller, “Dave,” to the Doc Washburn program displayed the same apathetic, but friendly, attitude.

While one cannot come to class drunk without drawing attention, he can attend under the influence of marijuana, sitting in the back of the room with a glazed, though not unpleasant, expression.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 2009

Michael Barone provides a history lesson on why the Health Care Bill may be the Democrat's undoing.

The Tyranny of Autonomy

Father Barron explains how a tyrannical mindset results from the pro-choice ideology.

"Al Franken's Dick Move"...

...according to Anne Althouse.

But it makes sense.  Franken's a leftist.  Leftists have defined Lieberman as "the enemy."  Leftists define the enemy as not worthy of respect and you get this...

Another crack in the wall

Russians confirm that Global Warming is based on "cherry-picked" data.

Climategate has already affected Russia. On Tuesday, the Moscow-based Institute of Economic Analysis (IEA) issued a report claiming that the Hadley Center for Climate Change based at the headquarters of the British Meteorological Office in Exeter (Devon, England) had probably tampered with Russian-climate data.


The IEA believes that Russian meteorological-station data did not substantiate the anthropogenic global-warming theory. Analysts say Russian meteorological stations cover most of the country’s territory, and that the Hadley Center had used data submitted by only 25% of such stations in its reports. Over 40% of Russian territory was not included in global-temperature calculations for some other reasons, rather than the lack of meteorological stations and observations.

The data of stations located in areas not listed in the Hadley Climate Research Unit Temperature UK (HadCRUT) survey often does not show any substantial warming in the late 20th century and the early 21st century.

The Legality of Stigmatizing a Minority Group

Wintery Knight posts on the arguments in front of the Ninth Circuit on San Francisco's resolution condeming Catholic teaching on homosexuality as being "foreign meddling."

Here's the primary article:

A panel of eleven judges of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals sitting in San Francisco will hear oral arguments tomorrow, December 16, concerning the constitutionality of the San Francisco Board of Supervisor's resolution attacking the Catholic Church for its teachings against homosexual adoptions.


The en banc panel, consisting of all the judges of the court, will review the earlier opinion of a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit that upheld the resolution.

The anti-Catholic resolution, adopted March 21, 2006, was challenged by the Thomas More Law Center, a national Christian legal advocacy group based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on behalf of the Catholic League and two Catholic residents of San Francisco. The challenge was made on the grounds that the resolution expresses government hostility toward the Catholic Church and its moral teachings in violation of the Establishment Clause of the Constitution.

The city Board's resolution was issued in response to a directive from Cardinal William Levada, in which he instructed Catholic Charities of San Francisco to follow Church teaching and not begin adopting children to homosexuals.

The resolution refers to the Vatican as a "foreign country" meddling in the affairs of the city and proclaims the Church's moral teaching and beliefs on homosexuality as "insulting to all San Franciscans," "hateful," "insulting and callous," "defamatory," "absolutely unacceptable," and says that Church teaching shows "insensitivity and ignorance."

The Board's resolution makes reference to the Inquisition and it urges the Archbishop of San Francisco and Catholic Charities of San Francisco to defy Church directives.

A lower federal court's dismissal of the case based on the pleadings was later affirmed by the three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit.

However, on November 5, 2009, a majority of the Ninth Circuit judges voted to grant the Law Center's petition for an en banc (full bench) rehearing.

Richard Thompson, President and Chief Counsel for the Law Center, remarked, "It seems the only bigotry and prejudice these so-called liberal politicians tolerate is anti-Catholicism. To them the only good Catholics are the bad Catholics who ignore the teachings of their Church."

"Our constitution plainly forbids government interference in, and hostility toward, religion, including the Catholic faith. And we are fully committed to fighting homosexual activists who seek to promote their personal political agenda at the expense of our constitutional freedoms."

According to Catholic doctrine, allowing children to be adopted by homosexuals would actually mean doing violence to these children, in the sense that their condition of dependency would be used to place them in an environment not conducive to their full human development.

"Such policies are gravely immoral and Catholic organizations must not place children for adoption in homosexual households," the Law Center argued.

According to the Law Center, the "anti-Catholic resolution sends a clear message to Plaintiffs and others who are faithful adherents to the Catholic faith that they are outsiders, not full members of the political community, and an accompanying message that those who oppose Catholic religious beliefs, particularly with regard to homosexual unions and adoptions by homosexual partners, are insiders, and favored members of the political community."

 In Romer v. Colorado, the U.S. Supreme Court held that Coloradans could not pass a local ordinance denying protected status to homosexuals because the very act of passing a law saying that gays would not be given special treatment stigmatized gays.  This San Francisco resolution has the same vice of stigmatization.

Of course, Romer involved gays and these are merely Catholics, so.....

The Twelfth Best Christmas Film....

...is "One Magic Christmas", according to John Nolte.

I'm a sucker for this film.  There's not a Christmas that goes by without my watching it, along with those other classics of the season, "Ernest Saves Christmas" and "The Muppet Christmas Carol."

I'm a fan, but I'm surprised to see so high a rating, given the plot holes, cloying sentimentality and the depiction of Ronald Reagan's America in the grip of the Great Depression.

Nolte writes:

Help arrives in the form of Gideon (Harry Dean Stanton), the unlikeliest of angels, who’s been tasked with the impossible: reminding this despairing mother of two of her blessings so that the Christmas spirit ripped from her by the hard realities of life can return. How far Gideon’s willing to go in order to accomplish this makes for some of the darkest moments you’ll ever come across in a holiday film, especially one from Disney.

This quiet, understated and sometimes grim spin on It’s A Wonderful Life and A Christmas Carol is not for the wee ones. But at 88-minutes there’s a ton of story and you have to be grateful that when the end credits roll no one On High has paid the bills or found Ginny and her family new housing. The film understands that God is not our own personal deus ex machina and that the angels can only help the willing to refocus their perspective on to that which really matters. Miracles are short-term solutions, it’s wisdom that helps you go the distance.


Obviously shot in not-America (Canada), the foggy, wet locations work to the film’s advantage in giving the story’s tone a feel of generic sameness and desperation. The two kids, one played by Sarah Polley, are terrific, and the always welcome Elias Koteas makes the best of a supporting role.

Catching this unprepared as to what you’re in for is best. Just be prepared enough to know this ain’t Miracle On 34th Street, and I doubt it could get produced in today’s era of hyper-high concept studio offerings and sterile, flourescent, 133 minute, indie Oscar bait. But don’t let that scare you away. When all is said and done, One Magic Christmas is a gritty life-affirming story set in a world where God exists and cares for us enough to practice some mighty tough-love.

OK, so maybe that's why I watch it every year.

Or perhaps it was just a crappy movie that people didn't want to pay to see?

Particularly when the buried punch-line was that Christian believers should pay their hard-earned money to be insulted about their deeply-held religious beliefs.

Actor blames Catholic Church for lack of Golden Compass sequels.

Actor Sam Elliot has blamed the Catholic Church for stopping sequels from being made to the Golden Compass movie based on the first book of Philip Pullman’s atheistic trilogy His Dark Materials. The film, starring Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig and Eva Green, grossed more than $380 million worldwide after its Christmas 2007 release, but took in only $85 million in the U.S. According to the Internet Movie Database, the film had a budget of $180 million.


The 65-year-old Elliot, who played a Texan “aeronaut” in the film, charged that a Catholic-led campaign against the movie stopped its sequels from being made.

“The Catholic Church happened to The Golden Compass, as far as I'm concerned,” Elliot remarked to the Evening Standard.

He said the movie did “incredible” at the box office but the Catholic Church “lambasted” the filmmakers and “scared off” New Line Cinema executives.

The movie itself is about a young heroine named Lyra who fights against an evil organization called the Magisterium, which many people see as a reference to the Catholic Church's body of teachings of the same name. The anti-religious message was reportedly toned down compared to the book.

Sorry to see that the actor was Sam Elliott, whose characterization of taciturn westerners I've always liked, but this is a real dive into crackpottery, since everyone knows that if the Catholic Church had opposed the movie that would have been "box office gold."

In fact, the real scandal was that "[t]he U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Office for Film & Broadcasting had initially published a positive review of the movie, which was later pulled."

The atheist, anti-Catholic author Phillip Pullman chimes in:

"Pullman, the author of the book on which the Golden Compass was based, said that the likelihood of the film trilogy being completed is decreasing.


He said that Catholics’ efforts against the film “must have played a part” in the trilogy being shelved, the Telegraph reports.

Pullman has denied his series is anti-Catholic, claiming it is a warning about what religion can do “when it gets its hands on the levers of power.”

All uses of terms like "magisterium" and "pope" and the deployment of Catholic imagery in the book and film being pure coincidence.
The Vatican...is there nothing it can't do?

Global Warming: A Historical Perspective

Or why I won't start worrying until they can grow wheat in Greenland.

The reason for the reason for the season

John Mark Reynolds has a nice post about how the Blessed Virgin Mary was blessed for more than the fact that she had a womb:

Mary was the mother of God and the temptation is to stop there. It doesn’t get much greater than that does it?


It does and Jesus says so in Luke 11:

27As he said these things, a woman in the crowd raised her voice and said to him, “Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts at which you nursed!” 28But he said, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!”

Any temptation to reduce the role of Mary or women in general to walking wombs is rejected by Jesus. Mary, the Lord’s mother, is not happy (”blessed”) merely because she served as the house for the Lord, but because she heard the word of God and kept it.

It is no accident that the same gospel that records this story, Luke, also tells us the most about Mary, the mother of Jesus (especially in Luke chapters one and two).

Mary is told that she will bear the Son of God and she agrees. She is pregnant without sex, has a baby in a stable, shepherds come and worship, her baby is blessed in by two prophets. He grows to be an amazing boy who can teach the greatest teachers and she keeps all these mysteries and ponders them in her heart.

Mary is great, because Mary obeyed and never stopped obeying.

The Blessed Virgin heard the Word of God, said “yes,” and gave her flesh to the Word of God. Her obedience was virtuous and her holiness remarkable, how she did it (as a woman) was in one way incidental.

Ecological Disaster

According to this article, the filling of the Mediterranean Sea basin could have occurred in two years.

A cataclysmic flood could have filled the Mediterranean Sea — which millions of years ago was a dry basin — like a bathtub in the space of less than two years. A new model suggests that at the flood’s peak water poured from the Atlantic into the Mediterranean basin at a rate one thousand times the flow of the Amazon River, according to calculations published in the Dec. 10 Nature.

It makes you wonder what ecosystems and unique animal and plant species were destroyed without human intervention.

Liberal Fascism

A documentary film-maker asks a global warming scientists some "inconvenient questions" and hilarity ensues in the form of an attempt at censorship and retaliation for the exercise of free speech.

I wonder what the legal basis for the security guard instruction of the cameraman to turn of the camera or he would "take it away" was.



With the advent of recording technology and the internet, liberal fascism is getting a lot more exposure.

"Oh, grow up", he explained.

Joseph Bottums at First Things takes R.C. Sproul to task for his "pharisaism":

Prominent Calvinist theologian R.C. Sproul refused to sign the Manhattan Declaration on the grounds, he now explains, that it assumes that the Catholic Church preaches the gospel.


Indeed, he explains, it was born of the same impulse that produced the various statements of Evangelicals and Catholics Together.

The first point that needs to be made is that the Manhattan Declaration had nothing to do with Evangelicals and Catholics Together: If nothing else, the declaration was produced and guided to completion entirely outside First Things‘ offices, while such projects as Evangelicals and Catholics Together remain at the center of the work the magazine exists to do.

And the second point that needs to made is that R.C. Sproul’s kind of refusal of any interaction with Catholics—his pharisaical keeping of his skirts oh-so clean—is proof of why Evangelicals and Catholics Together exists: Even when we disagree, it’s vital to make clear to one another why we disagree. But that is something R.C. Sproul, in his lonely purity, will never bother to find out.

Twilight would have been so much better....

...if Buffy had been allowed to kick Edward's butt.

Did Christianity Cause the Crash

Atlantic magazine has made an exceptionally broad paint roller to smear as many groups as possible with this article. 

Atlantic can certainly blame the "prosperity gospel", but how different is the "prosperity gospel" from the political nostrums that the Democrats routinely push, where everyone can have a house and never have to pay?  After all, it was an Obama supporter who opined on national television that Obama's election meant that she wouldn't have to pay for gas anymore.

So, yes, Atlantic can blame "Christianity."  Or it can blame corrupt politicians - Democrats, mostly - and a mortgage industry that wasn't doing the bare minimum of checking salary histories before handing out billions of dollars in mortgage loans.

Obviously, Atlantic goes for the cheap smear, as can be seen in these stunning last three paragraphs:

It is not all that surprising that the prosperity gospel persists despite its obvious failure to pay off. Much of popular religion these days is characterized by a vast gap between aspirations and reality. Few of Sarah Palin’s religious compatriots were shocked by her messy family life, because they’ve grown used to the paradoxes; some of the most socially conservative evangelical churches also have extremely high rates of teenage pregnancies, out-of-wedlock births, and divorce. As Garay likes to say, “What you have is nothing compared to what you will have.” The unpleasant reality—an inadequate paycheck, a pregnant daughter, a recession—is invisible. It’s your ability to see beyond such things, your willing blindness to even the most hopeless-seeming circumstances, that makes you a certain kind of modern Christian, and a 21st-century American.

There is the kind of hope that President Obama talks about, and that Clinton did before him—steady, uplifting, assured. And there is Garay’s kind of hope, which perhaps for many people better reflects the reality of their lives. Garay’s is a faith that, for all its seeming confidence, hints at desperation, at circumstances gone so far wrong that they can only be made right by a sudden, unexpected jackpot.

Once, I asked Garay how you would know for certain if God had told you to buy a house, and he answered like a roulette dealer. “Ten Christians will say that God told them to buy a house. In nine of the cases, it will go bad. The 10th one is the real Christian.” And the other nine? “For them, there’s always another house.”

Update:

A rebuttal here.

Justice, Mushrooms and "Manure in the Dark"

We do not subscribe to the obscurantist notion that justice, like wild mushrooms, thrives on manure in the dark. As Presiding Justice Gilbert observed, "Just as a theater critic must see the play before writing a review, judges must carefully consider the evidence before deciding a case. The lifeblood of our judicial institutions depends upon judges rendering decisions that are the product of a reasoned and objective view of the law and the facts." (Rose v. Superior Court (2000) 81 Cal. App. 4th 564, 572 [96 Cal. Rptr. 2d 843].)

Titmas v. Superior Court, 87 Cal. App. 4th 738, 742 (Cal. App. 4th Dist. 2001)

I've got nothing really profound or original to say here, except that I thought this was a nice, and rare, turn of phrase in a judicial decision.

Well, except maybe that I often feel that I've gotten the "mushroom treatment" - i.e., kept in the dark and had manure shovelled at me.

The Climate Data was Fixed

This post looks at the raw data from one station in Australia, which didn't look anything like what the "Warmists" wanted until they adjusted it.

The Nativity is "Hate Speech"

Wintery Knight points to Dan Barker as proof of his argument on why some people reject their Christian tradition.  WK's argumetn is definitely worth reading.

I was interested by this video from last year where Barker essentially acknowledges that the atheist game is to piss on Christian sensibilities.

Richard Dawkins on why he won't debate William Lane Craig



Dawkins' explanation is the pinnacle of hubris.  Dawkins is the worst kind of poseur in the area of theology and philosophy, and would have an nfair advantage in the area of polemical debate with the average bishop in that they would attempt to understand Dawkins' raving nonsense, and would lose valuable time in the effort.  What is required to debate Dawkins is someone willing to call Dawkins out on the illogic and dishonesty he is peddling, notwithstanding his own apparent self-sincerity propelled by his own ego.

Besides Craig would puncture every last one of Dawkins' pretensions to intellectual competence within the first two exchanges and Dawkins knows it.

Trust us, we're scientists

Our motives are pure. We have nothing to gain from fudging the data...

NASA climate scientist pleads guilty to contract fraud.

A former top climate scientist who had become of one the scientific world's most cited authorities on the human effect on Earth's atmosphere was sentenced to probation Tuesday after pleading guilty to steering lucrative no-bid contracts to his wife's company.


In addition to a year's probation, former NASA manager Mark Schoeberl, 60, of Silver Spring, was also fined $10,000 and ordered to put in 50 hours of community service. He admitted in the late summer that he had hid some $50,000 in NASA contracts for a company called Animated Earth, which was run by Schoeberl's wife, Barbara. Prosecutors alleged that Schoeberl tried to help his wife's firm for years. When his colleagues balked at giving no-bid contracts to his wife's firm, Schoeberl pressured them to steer money to his wife through indirect means.

Schoeberl was the chief scientist of the Goddard Space Flight Center's Earth Sciences Division and the head of the Aura Project, a NASA mission to study the Earth's ozone layer, air quality and climate. He has written extensively about the depletion of the ozone level, and the influence of humans on global climate change.

Animated Earth offers plasma-screen kiosks that carry satellite images of the Earth's climate and atmosphere.

Then, there is this from the CRU e-mails:

Another approach lies in e-mail messages discussing grants from the U.S. Commerce Department's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to East Anglia; one says: "We need to show some left to cover the costs of the trip Roger didn't make and also the fees/equipment/computer money we haven't spent otherwise NOAA will be suspicious."

"When the money goes rolling out you don't keep books.  You know the good you've done by the grateful looks."  In this case, the grateful looks were from the ideologues and politicians who had their own agenda.

Hide the Decline

Here is an explanation for "Mike's Nature trick to hide the decline":

First, the data games: the data manipulation that has been most seized upon by bloggers involves the choice of which sources of temperature data should be used to reflect climate trends after 1960. Because thermometer-based measurements of the climate are only about 150 years old (and are quite spotty for much of that time), when scientists set out to construct long-term estimates of temperature trends, they use what are called “proxies,” such as tree-ring measurements that ostensibly reveal the temperatures that the tree experienced as it grew. As it happens, the tree-ring proxies match up with the thermometer measurements up until about 1960, when there is a “divergence” between the two sets of data. The tree rings indicate a global cooling after 1960, while the thermometer data indicates a sharp warming.


The CRU scientists decided to simply stop using the inconveniently non-warming tree-ring data after 1960, and splice the modern thermometer-based temperature readings instead, using statistical methods to smooth out and conceal the transition. In one email, this is discussed as a “trick” developed by Michael Mann, one of the creators of the infamous climate “hockey stick chart,” that would “hide the decline” shown by the tree rings and emphasize the recent spike in thermometer data, preserving the sanctity of the hockey stick. One problem with this is, if the tree rings don’t accurately reflect temperatures since 1960, why should we believe they accurately reflected temperatures in the past? If temperatures could diverge now, couldn’t they have equally diverged in the medieval warm period of 1,000 years ago? If so, current temperatures could be historically unremarkable, cutting away one of the key rationales for blaming human greenhouse gas emissions for recent climate changes.

There’s also the well-known problem in the thermometer record of an upward bias due to increasing urbanization around weather stations. Which is right, the trees, or the thermometers? Perhaps neither.

Those are some good questions.  Given the reports that modern temperature readings have been innacurately influenced upward by urban encroachment, I would bet on the latter.   What is disturbing though is that this kind of "trick" was used sub rosa without any explanation for why tree ring readings should have suddenly become inaccurate with the election of John F. Kennedy. 

D'accord

At Evangel, John Mark Reynolds explains why Christians should oppose the Ugandan law making homosexuality subject to the death penalty:

Morally, the bill is bad for numerous reasons.


First and most importantly, it places the life of the citizens of Uganda, fellow humans created God’s image, in peril for grossly insufficient reasons. A Christian can only support loss of liberty or the death penalty in order to protect society from peril to other citizens that cannot be handled in any gentler manner.

The application of any law is always harsh and removes the element of mercy.

This law denies the humanity of a class of Ugandan citizens, because it is so harsh, singling out one private vice for extreme public punishment, that it effectively dehumanizes a class of persons.

No sinner can vote for this bill without tacitly rejecting the Golden Rule and I have not heard that any legislature is dominated by saints.

Second, the punishments in the bill are radically disproportionate to any harm done through the putative crimes, even if one views them as crimes. Punishment must always fit the crime!

Speaking of Paradigms

As a historian - and I have the Bachelor's degree to prove it - Global Warming hysteria never made any sense to me because of an undoubted scientific fact called the "Medieval Warm Period" ("MWP") during which Vikings set up agricultural colonies in Greenland.  Since the Polar Bears did not die off during the Middle Ages, there is no reason to think that they can't survive the current age.

The MWP is the kind of hard fact that should cause a paradigmatic breakdown of the Anthropogenic Global Warming theory.  After all, if the world was appreciably warmer in 1000 AD than it is now, then the culprit is not likely to be human activity.

Wintery Knight points to these two graphs to highlight the problem:

Melanie Griffith at Spectator offers this about the AGW scientists' approach to the MWP:

What appears to be the case is that these scientists did not set out to mislead the world so much as try to force data which did not correspond to their ideology of anthropogenic global warming to support that ideology. For me, one of the most telling emails was this one from Phil Jones on the Medieval Warm Period (MWP):

Bottom line - their is no way the MWP (whenever it was) was as warm globally as the last 20 years. There is also no way a whole decade in the LIA period was more than 1 deg C on a global basis cooler than the 1961-90 mean. This is all gut feeling, no science, but years of experience of dealing with global scales and varaibility. (My emphasis)

In other words, despite the fact that science (or history) tells us that the Medieval Warm Period was warmer than today, thus destroying the basis of the AGW myth that we are living through an unprecedented warming of the climate caused by carbon dioxide arising from industrialisation, it cannot be true – because the Hadley CRU Director’s ‘gut’ tells him so.

Climategate Fallout

Australia ditches "Cap and Trade."

Emboldened following the Climategate scandal, the Liberal opposition in Australia's parliament threw out its pro-Kyoto leader yesterday and then today, under the leadership of global warming skeptic Tony Abbott, voted down the government's plan to pass cap and trade legislation. The proposed legislation, intended to be a feather in the cap of Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd prior to his departure for climate change meetings in Copenhagen, failed by a vote of 41 to 33 in the Senate, Australia's upper house

Climategate makes the New York Times - sort of

Although the New York Times is reporting that CRU chief Phil Jones has stepped down, the headline suggests that he has been suspended to allow the investigation of how the e-mails were made public. Here is the story in full, as a kind of tribute to the Pravda style of journalism that pervades the mainstream media:

Climatologist Leaves Post in Inquiry Over E-Mail Leaks

The head of the British research unit at the center of a controversy over the disclosure of thousands of e-mail messages among climate-change scientists has stepped down pending the outcome of an investigation.


Phil Jones, the director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in England, said that he would leave his post while the university conducted a review of the release of the e-mail messages. The university has called the release and publication of the messages a “criminal breach” of the school’s computer systems.


The e-mail exchanges among several prominent American and British climate-change scientists appear to reveal efforts to keep the work of skeptical scientists out of major journals and the possible hoarding and manipulation of data to overstate the case for human-caused climate change.

In a related announcement, Pennsylvania State University said it would review the work of a faculty member who is cited prominently in the e-mail messages, Michael Mann, to assure that it meets proper academic standards.

Skeptics have seized upon the disclosures to call into question years of efforts to document changes to the climate and its causes. Republicans in Congress have begun an investigation into the work of the scientists who sent the messages — many of whom have conducted much of their research with money from the federal government — and the scientific and policy decisions that may have flowed from them.

The British university has contended that the messages were illegally obtained by a hacker, who posted them on Web sites of groups critical of the current scientific consensus that human activity has caused dangerous changes to the global climate.

Professor Jones, in a statement issued by the climate research unit, said, “What is most important is that C.R.U. continues its world-leading research with as little interruption and diversion as possible.” He added that “the best way to achieve this is by stepping aside from the director’s role during the course of the independent review.”

For more than a week, the episode has fueled a fierce debate on the blogosphere and in newspaper opinion columns and once again placed global warming science under intense scrutiny.

Senator James M. Inhofe, a Republican of Oklahoma who is the most outspoken climate-change skeptic in Congress, renewed his call for an investigation on Tuesday.

“The e-mails reveal possible deceitful manipulation of important data and research,” Mr. Inhofe wrote.

So, "once again", global warming is under attack.  Skeptics are "seizing" on the e-mails. The first paragraph states that the Director of the CRU is stepping down pending the results of "an investigation."  What investigation?  That's not clear until after the NYT reports concerns that the leaks might have been a "criminal breach" according the very Director who is "stepping down."

Later, though, we do learn that the e-mails may possibly be evidence of "hoarding and manipulation of data," which, all things considered, don't sound so bad, compared to, say criminal destruction of data to avoid FOIA requests.

According to the NYT Pravda-stylebook, of course, the criminal destruction of data to avoid FOIA requests does not get mentioned.

Even Megan McCardle, who initially downplayed the information revealed in the e-mails, is now getting it.  She writes:

They apparently tried to organize a deletion of files in order to avoid an FOI request. This is horrifying, and I simply cannot understand why so many of their supporters are willing to downplay it. A couple of sample quotes: "Unfortunately, there are also a couple of messages that suggest an effort to destroy emails that might have been subject to a Freedom of Information request. That's a genuine problem, though it's not clear to me just how big a problem it is. . . . So on a substantive level, there's really very little to this." that's from Kevin Drum, who I greatly respect. More worrying is Real Climate: "Suggestions that FOI-related material be deleted ... are ill-advised even if not carried out. What is and is not responsive and deliverable to an FOI request is however a subject that it is very appropriate to discuss."


Words fail one, reading that latter comment. Ill-advised? Deleting data in order to avoid an official information request is a crime, as is trying to coordinate same, even if you fail in the execution. It's also grossly unethical, and hard to reconcile with any reasonable understanding of science. Moreover, it's the sort of thing that is often done by people who have nasty secrets, so it's hard to pass it off with a blithe, "Oh, dear, now that was a wee bit naughty!"

Imagine reading this email exchange coming from, say, senior officials in the Bush administration. Would any of these bloggers regard this as the ethical equivalent of jaywalking on an empty street?

It's entirely possible that the aspiring self-censors were merely trying to avoid some trivial embarrassment, since we have no idea what, if anything, was actually deleted. But it does not inspire the kind of trust you want to have in people who are advocating massive economic dislocations.

Well, at least the readers of the NYT do not have to lose any sleep over the implications of the destruction of data since they haven't been informed about it just yet, and can to bed believing that the Director of the CRU has stepped down in order to find out who was involved in that criminal leak of the e-mails.

More Climate Fraud

Douglas Keenan's research was one of the reports that the CRU tried to silence.  The reason,  apparently, was that one of the leaders of the CRU - Phil Jones - was found to have committed fraud in one of his pro-AGW reports.

According to Keenan:

In 2007, I published a peer-reviewed paper alleging that some important research relied upon by the IPCC (for the treatment of urbanization effects) was fraudulent. The emails show that Tom Wigley — one of the most oft-cited climatologists and an extreme warming advocate — thought my paper was valid. They also show that Phil Jones, the head of the Climatic Research Unit, tried to convince the journal editor not to publish my paper.


After my paper was published, the State University of New York — where the research discussed in my paper was conducted — carried out an investigation. During the investigation, I was not interviewed — contrary to the university’s policies, federal regulations, and natural justice. I was allowed to comment on the report of the investigation, before the report’s release.

But I was not allowed to see the report. Truly Kafkaesque.

Now, it seems that Phil Jones is "temporarily stepping down" as head of the CRU:

LONDON — Britain's University of East Anglia says the director of its prestigious Climatic Research Unit is stepping down pending an investigation into allegations that he overstated the case for man-made climate change.


The university says Phil Jones will relinquish his position until the completion of an independent review into allegations that he worked to alter the way in which global temperature data was presented.

The allegations were made after more than a decade of correspondence between leading British and U.S. scientists were posted to the Web following the security breach last month.

The e-mails were seized upon by some skeptics of man-made climate change as proof that scientists are manipulating the data about its extent.