Climate-Gate: All About Science or Just Money?

Amar Ali

What is the climate really? What are people talking about when they say “the climate” or “climate change”? In all the arguing and back and forth about global warming and climate change, we may have lost sight of an underlying concept which is central to grasping this widely discussed issue.

The definition of climate is “the composite or generally prevailing weather conditions of a region, as temperature, air pressure, humidity, precipitation, sunshine, cloudiness, and winds, throughout the year, averaged over a series of years.”1

So what we think of as the climate is essentially a running average of the weather. Similarly, climate change is basically a conclusion reached by looking at trends in the historical record.
The conclusion that climate change and global warming is occurring was reached by a bare simple majority of scientists (not climate experts) who claimed that there was a rise in the world’s average temperature. They argued that this rise is clearly attributed to a rise in carbon dioxide or CO2 level in the atmosphere, which, in turn, is directly linked to the burning of fossil fuels by humans.

Now if you have taken a statistics or econometrics class or you’re just a sports enthusiast, you know the enormous room for miscalculation and manipulation that exists when calculating averages. Imagine for example, if you looked at the batting average for any run of the mill rookie and averaged in Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire’s record blowing, once in a life time averages in the 1998 season (during their heyday). The addition of Sosa and McGwire’s averages would certainly throw off the average of all rookies. This would seem suspicious to say the least. Yet that is exactly what climate scientists have been caught doing.2 But its not just inflating the numbers. If we only looked at Sammy Sosa’s batting average for 1998 and said that was the average for his entire career, which would be a completely unsubstantiated claim.3

Recently, evidence has been uncovered that shows that advocates of the theory of global warming have manipulated the data in order to support their assertions. They have lost data and hidden evidence, downplayed previous non-human induced warming cycles, and covered up evidence which suggests that there has been no global warming since 1995. The data, unfortunately for the global warmers, did not go along with their theory.4

So what explains this manipulation and fabrication of data? Why would someone knowingly lie and continue to do so when they knew the opposite was true? As a cynic once advised, we should follow the money for people’s true motivations. Fear and hysteria can lead people to act differently than they normally would, including giving billions to fear-mongerers and snake oil salesmen who insist that only they know the problem and the solution.5

What is worse is most people’s ignorance of science leads them to shift the debate away from the faulty science and manipulation by agenda and greed driven scientists. Many people forget basic facts taught in their high school biology classes: that the so-called pollutant, CO2, is a byproduct of all life on earth, whether humans are breathing it out or plants taking it in during photosynthesis.6 The lack of scientific knowledge leads many people to accept global warming and enter into a useless discussion about who can or cannot best solve the problems brought on by climate. But why solve a problem that doesn’t exist? The only problem here is fraud, lack of transparency and most importantly, greed.7

1.http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/climate
2.http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100017393/climategate-the-final-nail-in-the-coffin-of-anthropogenic-global-warming/
3.Ibid
4.http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1250872/Climategate-U-turn-Astonishment-scientist-centre-global-warming-email-row-admits-data-organised.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703939404574566124250205490.html