The Quiet Conservative February 7, 2010
The K.C. Star's Frozen Hotbed of Change
Last Sunday the Kansas City Star filled their front page with a picture of climate change and the
Antarctic. The 2,700 word story detailed research into climate change in the Antarctic and the perils
faced by nature in an ecosystem that is warming. In the middle of the story is found the true motive
behind this reporting:
All the modern work feeds, and is driven by, findings like those of the Nobel-decorated
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that carbon dioxide levels are at a 650,000-year high
and climbing. Such buildup of gas in the atmosphere — the IPCC attributes the steep rise chiefly to
industrialization — could explain why nine out of every 10 glaciers in the world are shrinking.
Global warming remains a controversial concept, made more so when the hacking of e-mails from
researchers at East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit last year revealed that they toyed with data to
make for more dramatic results. Skeptics also like to point out how most of Antarctica has not
warmed appreciably.
Scientists in Antarctica, though, say the climate here has changed quickly and profoundly.
'Climate change' as a given is found in the viewpoint throughout the article and presumably throughout
the staff at the Kansas City Star. You can find the article online as well as on the paper that landed in
your driveway. The canard that nine out of ten glaciers are shrinking gives a good indication of the
depth of bias. But it is one particular sentence that drew my attention and suspicion as to why such a
mammoth article for a Sunday edition: Global warming remains a controversial concept, made
more so when the hacking of e-mails from researchers at East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit
last year revealed that they toyed with data to make for more dramatic results.
It is those e-mails that were 'hacked' that has thrown Progressives into such consternation. Here is
what the K.C. Star had on file under "climategate" when searching their online archives. The first
mention is December 12, 2009 in an editorial by Thomas McClanahan:
The CRU e-mail trove lifts the veil on one of climatology’s most important nerve centers. In the
messages, some of the world’s leading climate scientists discussed how to blackball dissenting
opponents, manipulate data, bully certain editors, thwart freedom-of-information filings and
distort the peer-review process that’s supposed to be sacred to science.
Within this group, there was much more doubt and disagreement than one would expect given the
level of certainty of the U.N.’s global warming pronouncements. In one e-mail, Kevin Trenberth of
the National Center of Atmospheric Research admits climatologists “can’t account for the lack of
warming” in recent years, “and it is a travesty that we can’t.”
Worse, some of the Climate Research Unit’s raw data was discarded, preventing scientists from
outside the AGW clique from checking how the CRU adjusted, or homogenized, those readings.
That editorial didn't rate being on the front page of the Sunday paper above the fold. Two days later
on December 14th, Matthew Shofield, a member of the Kansas City Star's editorial board, had found a
defense against the damaging revelations of the e-mails. Ignore them. Belittle what they contain. Turn
against any critic by comparing the climate change skeptics to paid stooges of large corporations. By
inferring that global warming skeptics were the same as fake scientists working for the tobacco
industry, Shofield engaged in a familiar schizophrenic defense found in liberalism. He defended
fraudulent science by pointing out that anyone who contested the fraudulent science was engaged in
fraudulent science. This is a line of reasoning that is impossible to refute because it isn't reason at all.
It also isn't original. James Hanson, also implicated in global warming faked science, used this very
same example to smear climate skeptic Professor Richard Lindzen. So Shofield was neither rational,
nor original.
By January 29th the Kansas City Star again was driven to mention the e-mails as anyone with access
to the Internet was no longer crippled by having only the local paper as a source. By now the focus
was on trying to turn the damage from the contents of the leaked or stolen e-mails, to the fact they
were leaked or stolen. On February 1st you had the Associated Press story: "UK scientist: Climate
docs maybe stolen by spies." When an insider exposes misconduct Progressives like exposed, the
whistleblower or thief is a hero. When the insider or thief exposes the criminal misconduct of
Progressives, they are spies.
This Sunday lead story, "A Frozen Hotbed of Change," as we described ate up much of the front page
section of last Sunday's paper. On February 3rd, the Star had a story from the Philadelphia Inquirer
titled: "Penn State clears climate researcher on 3 charges; 1 still pending." If you weren't following the
emerging scandal you might wonder why the Kansas City Star had the story. They didn't cover the
allegations against Professor Mann, and if he had been found to be corrupt in the Penn State internal
investigation, you may well reasonably wonder if the Star would have mentioned him at all. For the
Star has been missing the opportunity to fill you in on quite a bit that is going on in the world. They
know what it is, they just haven't been printing it. In Catholic terms, this is definitely a sin of
omission.
"Climate Change" is the rebranding of "Global Warming." There is a cottage industry of researchers
funded by grants to study how man is impacting the climate. What is at the root of this impact is:
capitalism. The more man is industrialized, the more he consumes and pollutes. To a Progressive,
this is "killing the planet." Only by reducing our consumption, power usage, and by controlling the
economies of the developed nations, can we hope to save the planet. Such a concept has guided right
thinking Liberals for years. Al Gore, the pontiff of this religion, won a Nobel Prize for a fake
documentary over the whole shtick. The only problem is that it is bogus.
First, the stolen/hacked/leaked e-mails from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit that
tore the scab off this gangrenous lie. While the Star would have you focus on the fact they were
"stolen" there is no proof they were ever stolen in the first place. What is known is that they were all
found on one server at the university, and there were thousands of the old emails. Somehow they were
released to the public. It wasn't just a few taken out of context or faked. No, there is no contention
that the released emails aren't real. And, this is the problem for the Progressives. They truly do show
that researchers hid data, lied, pressured others to conform, threatened editors, etc. I have missed
where the Star did any reporting on the contents of those e-mails. Surely such a monumental story
should have fared better in the Star than "A Frozen Hotbed of Change." Cap and Trade, our energy
policy, the EPA's coming regulation of carbon emissions, and the rededication of NASA from
spaceflight for humans to climate change at home, are all based on a lie. Any newspaper of any
integrity should find that worthy of reporting.
McClanahan's editorial mentioned something not found in the full blown news story on Sunday: In one
e-mail, Kevin Trenberth of the National Center of Atmospheric Research admits climatologists
“can’t account for the lack of warming” in recent years, “and it is a travesty that we can’t.” You
would think the people at the Star read that quote. It might lead to the question if there is any warming
at all? It would also lead to reporting several other major cracks in the cathedral of Progressive Earth
Worship. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which produced the scriptures that
the Progressive Pagans follow, has had fresh eyes looking at it and wondering how much is fact, and
how much is fake. It didn't take long to find that the claim the Himalayan glaciers would disappear by
2035 turned out to be a claim by a student writing a paper and a popular magazine article. That isn't
science, it's gossip. Then the claim the Netherlands would be half under water was found to be
untrue. Then it was the claim, completely without foundation, of the destruction of the Amazonian
rainforest because of lack of rain causing famine, migration, and war. Then it was the flawed Chinese
weather station data. Then it was the omitted Russian cold weather station data. People are beginning
to wonder if the whole IPCC thing is a sham.
See, this is the problem at the Star. The news section isn't reporting the news. It is writing a
testimonial. It is presenting an editorial position dressed up as a front page story. The one actual
quoted fact you can trust coming from the Star on this topic came from an editorial that was quickly
rebutted by a different editorial from a member of the editorial board. The Star isn't interested in the
hiding of data by climate researchers from Freedom if Information requests. The Star isn't interested
in the fact the climate scientists can't even reproduce their own data sets because they destroyed the
originals. They aren't interested in researchers working backwards from a desired outcome and
manipulating the data to fit. The Star presents climate change, i.e. human caused climate change, as
fact, without a shred of doubt.
Well, there is a lot of doubt. It was warmer in the medieval period from 800 A.D. through 1300 A.D.
than it is now. It was colder from the 1300's through the 1800's than it is now (the Little Ice Age).
What is known is the Earth has variations in climate cycles and both penguins down South in
Antarctica and polar bears up North in the Arctic have adjusted. The question of the science does not
seem settled one way or the other as to what trend we are on and what impact, if any, man is playing
in that trend. Skepticism in science is a good thing, regardless of the discipline or topic. When it
suddenly becomes unacceptable to question the science, then it isn't science anymore. It is politics.
The Star, once again, failed to report the news in a professional manner. There was no mention of the
political goals in promoting climate science. There was no mention of the evidence of malfeasance on
behalf of climate scientists. There was no mention of destroyed data sets, omitted data, biased studies,
or flat out faked conclusions. There was no information on peer pressure and political pressure.
There was no information at all about the economic and national implications of climate regulations.
All of that was missing. What was left was a twenty seven hundred word piece of Green propaganda
sitting on the driveway to be discovered on a Sunday morning.