Originally blogged at Realclimategate

The long promised, but forgotten about, further release of the climategate emails has just occured…

And the accusation is that it was a deliberate attempt to influence Durban Cop17 Climate Conference.

…. and of course this is EXACTLY what it was.

The real question should be, what is the motive..

Prof Michael Mann of course, has just repeated his usual mantra, of his thoughts of the motivations of the people behind the release:

“agents doing the dirty bidding of the fossil fuel industry know they can’t contest the fundamental science of human-caused climate change. So they have instead turned to smear, innuendo, criminal hacking of websites, and leaking out-of-context snippets of personal emails in their effort to try to confuse the public about the science and thereby forestall any action to combat this critical threat. Its right out of the tried-and-true playbook of climate change denial.”

Michael Mann – Guardian

The accompanying note from FOIA, perhaps reveals  a different motive, one that I very much relate to:

“Over 2.5 billion people live on less than $2 a day.”

“Every day nearly 16.000 children die from hunger and related causes.”

“One dollar can save a life” — the opposite must also be true.

“Poverty is a death sentence.”

“Nations must invest $37 trillion in energy technologies by 2030 to stabilize greenhouse gas emissions at sustainable levels.”

Today’s decisions should be based on all the information we can get, not on hiding the decline.” FOIA – Nov 22, 2011

The last 20 years since Rio, have seen vast amounts of money, but more importantly political capital and TIME chasing a vision of AGW derived catastrophy.  Even if the direst predictions for the future were true.  Money and time would have been better spent (imho) in developing the infrastructure in the poorest parts of the world, to deal now to the natural weather extremes that have occured since time immemorial. Because a extreme weather related death, flood, drought, hurricane, tornado, etc spread of disease, etc, is a 1st order function of being poor…

ie Malaria is predicted to spread becase of AGW, by some, meaning more deaths in an indeterminate future… With the political capital and time (and relativelly small amounts of money) malaria could be erradicated in a few short years. And electricity to the billion and a half with out it, sanitisation, clean water, all the diseases of the poor, etc, etc could be eradicated.

And if an AGW hurricane, or flood, or whatever does comes along in the developing world in 20,30,40 years, infrastructure, wealth will protect the populations whether it is of natural attribution, or a supposed 5% (or whatever) future AGW hurricane…

So the big question of the email leak comes down to motive..

Michael Mann appears to be trapped in his own thinking, as the ‘enemies’ he imagines are very much a USA centric construct (probably very true 15 or so years ago).

But WORLD emission have gone up 40% in the last 20 years.. and it is not because of the WEST.. China and India, and all the developing countries have clearly chosen economic growth over AGW. And thus Kyoto fails, and any sucessor, as no developing country will cut any emissions, which in reality is energy production needed for growth.

(‘developing world’ – even though China now emits more per capita than France, en par with Italy, and will very soon race ahead of the EU average and India, et al will do all they can to match this growth – and have lots of coal)

Leo Hickman of the Guardian has I think a very good initial article about Climategate 2.0, put together very quickly no doubt, and I think very balanced for the Guardian (far better than the BBC’s Richard Black initial reaction, who makes no mention of content), ie he picks out one of the key issues regading FOI, and mentions perhaps a non (‘evil’ motive) . Balanced enough to no doubt get criticism from everybody probably 😉 , so Leo is doing something right.

I would LOVE to hear George Monbiot reaction, to the new Phil Jones, FOI related email content, as he was very strong worded about Phil Jones – FOI behaviour… the latest emails really clarify this: (extracts)

“I’ve been told that IPCC is above national FOI Acts. One way to cover yourself and all those working in AR5 would be to delete all emails at the end of the
process”

“With the earlier FOI requests re David Holland, I wasted a part of a day deleting numerous emails and exchanges with almost all the skeptics. So I have virtually nothing. I even deleted the email that I inadvertently sent. “- Jones writing to UEA Information Officer

This rather worried Osborne, who was prompted to remind Jones ‘not to say deleting’ in face of FOI, that would be illegal, but housekeeping ……. 😉

Hi Phil!

re. your email to Dave Palmer [which he copied in his response to you andcc’d to me, Keith & Michael McGarvie, and which has hence already been multiply copied within the UEA system, and therefore will probably exist
for a number of months and possibly years,and could be released under FOI if a request is made for it during that time!]…

I assume that you didn’t delete any emails that David Holland has requested (because that would be
illegal) but that instead his request merely prompted you to do a spring clean of various other emails that hadn’t been requested, as part of your regular routine of deleting old emails.

If that is what you meant, then it might be a good idea to clarify your previous email to Dave Palmer, to
avoid it being misunderstood.

The way things seem to be going, I think it best if we discuss all FOI, EIR, Data Protection requests in person wherever possible, rather than via email. It’s such a shame that the skeptics’ vexatious use of this
legislation may prevent us from using such an efficient modern technology as email, but it seems that if we want to have confidential discussions then we may need to avoid it.

I shall delete this email and those related to it as part of my regular routine of deleting old emails! – Osborne

It’s quite funny really,  a very careful email that may be FOI’d itself reminding Phil that he meant ‘spring cleaning’ not deleteing (well that’s my perception of it). They really do not understand the spirit of this law – motive blind.

Ben Pile of Climate Resistance, takes a look at the ‘Influence Durban’ question, and makes the contrast to all the ‘frightening message and scientific ‘press releases’ (full reports to follow much  😦 )  also no doubt designed to influence Durban.

I’m sure much more will be said…..

The best place to watch is probably Bishop Hill, Climate Audit and Watts Up With That and quite possible Dot Earth and even the Guardian. The Telegraph take should be interesting (Gray vs Delingpole, Lean vs Booker)  and the Daily Mail as more information comes out..

But the abosulte majority of the public, politicians and even scientists will be oblivious to it, the real world has real pressing issues. Even if this event gives perversly Durban  a spike of interest, the public/politicians, etc will still have moved on..