Things just keep getting worse for global warming advocates. Now the highly respected German media conglomerate that publishes Der Spiegel has posted a devastating eight-part series that brings together all the body blows that have been delivered in recent months to the case for global warming being the result of human activity, primarily the burning of fossil fuels like oil and coal.
The series starts with the status of Dr. Phil Jones, head of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in Britain, which is ground zero for global warming research and advocacy.
Thanks to an as-yet unknown hacker who broke into the school’s computer system last year and then posted more than a thousand emails exchanged among Jones and virtually every other major climate change advocate, he was unmasked last year as more interested in keeping critics of his research out of the public debate than to letting the facts determine the outcome of that discussion.
According to Spiegel‘s Marco Evers, Olaf Stampf and Gerald Traufetter, Jones is today borderline suicidal:
“Life has become ‘awful’ for Phil Jones. Just a few months ago, he was a man with an enviable reputation: the head of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, an expert in his field and the father of an alarming global temperature curve that apparently showed how the Earth was heating up as a result of anthropogenic global warming.
“Those days are now gone.
“Nowadays, Jones, who is at the center of the ‘Climategate’ affair involving hacked CRU emails, needs medication to fall sleep. He feels a constant tightness in his chest. He takes beta-blockers to help him get through the day. He is gaunt and his skin is pallid. He is 57, but he looks much older. He was at the center of a research scandal that hit him as unexpectedly as a rear-end collision on the highway.
“His days are now shaped by investigative commissions at the university and in the British Parliament. He sits on his chair at the hearings, looking miserable, sometimes even trembling. The Internet is full of derisive remarks about him, as well as insults and death threats. ‘We know where you live,’ his detractors taunt.
“Jones is finished: emotionally, physically and professionally. He has contemplated suicide several times recently, and he says that one of the only things that have kept him from doing it is the desire to watch his five-year-old granddaughter grow up.”
Try as we might to summon some human sympathy for Jones’ plight, the bottom line for him is now forever set in concrete: He violated the most basic rule of science. For his work to be credible, other scientists must be able to duplicate exactly the process by which Jones arrived at his conclusions regarding temperature data from around world and get the same result.
Spiegel explains in part four of the series:
“The problem is that the quality of the raw data derived from weather services around the world differs considerably. At a number of weather stations, temperatures rose because houses and factories had been built around them. Elsewhere, stations were moved and, as a result, suddenly produced different readings. In all of these cases, Jones had to use statistical methods to correct the errors in the temperature readings, using an approach called ‘homogenization.’
“Did Jones proceed correctly while homogenizing the data? Most climatologists still believe Jones’ contention that he did not intentionally manipulate the data. However, that belief will have to remain rooted in good faith …. Jones had to admit something incredible: He had deleted his notes on how he performed the homogenization. This means that it is not possible to reconstruct how the raw data turned into his temperature curve.”
The entire series is a must-read, including for the ardent global warming activist currently occupying the Oval Office and his acolytes in the White House, at EPA, the Energy and Interior departments, and elsewhere in the federal government.
