So, no conspiracy, no collusion, no manipulation of data, no corruption of the peer-review process, no scandal; just an understandable reluctance to hand over data to dishonest people with a history of misrepresenting it.
Squibs don’t get much damper than “Climategate”. The most worrying aspect of the drama was the way in which most of the media ditched any attempt at assessing the claims and became caught up in the frenzy, when a couple of hours spent reading the emails and talking to one of two of those involved would have made the conclusions of the House of Commons inquiry entirely predictable.
That’s CP’s favorite Australian ethicist Clive Hamilton in his ABC column, “Climategate: The lion that squeaked.” Note that a “damp squib” is an explosive dud, “a firework that fails to go off, due to wetting,” like say, the Segway, questions about Obama’s place of birth, or anything Geraldo Rivera reports on.
I don’t think “damp squib” will catch on, though, nor did “Swifthack,” so offer your own suggestions for renaming the non-gate. Gotta be catchier than TSFKAC to give the status quo media something to write about. They lavished coverage on TSFKAC, but it has mostly been crickets chirping on the exoneration of Phil Jones by the House of Commons. At the very least, CP needs something to call it.
Here’s Hamilton’s whole piece:
It was the “final nail in the coffin” of global warming science, declared James Delingpole of London’s Daily Telegraph, the moment you should start dumping shares in renewable energy companies.
Lord Monckton announced that it proved beyond doubt “the abject corruption of climate science”.
“The reputation of British science has been seriously tarnished”, thundered Lord Lawson and in the United States Senator James Inhofe went so far as to recommend that all those involved should be chased down for criminal prosecution.
Our own Lord of Blog Andrew Bolt declared it “a scandal that is one of the greatest in modern science”, an outrage in which leading scientists were guilty of “conspiracy, collusion in exaggerating warming data, possibly illegal destruction of embarrassing information, organised resistance to disclosure, manipulation of data, private admissions of flaws in their public claims and much more”.
Across the globe, denialists were cock-a-hoop. At last, the leaking of emails from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia had vindicated everything they believed, even the conspiracy theories about which they were a little embarrassed.
Except that the leaked emails that sent the denial industry into a heart-stopping frenzy have turned out to be the mouse that squeaked. That roar we heard was generated in the denialist echo chamber.
Today the Science and Technology Committee of the British House of Commons brought down its report into “Climategate”. What did it find?
1. There was nothing untoward behind the “trick” used to “hide the decline” in the temperature record. The phrases were colloquial terms without any sinister implications. The Committee found that the “evidence patently fails to support” the claim that these words reveal a conspiracy to hide evidence that does not fit with global warming, and that CRU Director Professor Phil Jones has “no case to answer”.
2. The results and conclusions of CRU research have been independent verified by other methodologies and other sources of data. The Unit’s analyses “have been repeated and the conclusions have been verified”.
3. There is no evidence to suggest that Professor Jones was trying to subvert the peer review process.
4. While 95 per cent of the CRU data have been publicly available for years and some of the remainder is subject to confidentiality agreements with overseas organisations, the report did find that CRU scientists had refused to hand over their data to climate “sceptics” and the University may have breached the Freedom of Information Act.
Despite this finding, the Committee wrote that it “can sympathise with Professor Jones, who must have found it frustrating to handle requests for data that he knew””or perceived””were motivated by a desire simply to undermine his work.”
The University of East Anglia had submitted that in “July 2009 UEA received an unprecedented, and frankly administratively overwhelming, deluge of FOIA requests related to CRU”, which helps to explain why the Committee noted a “culture at CRU of resisting disclosure of information to climate change sceptics”.
The Committee blamed the failure to release data on the relevant officers at the University who should have stepped in to over-rule the scientists. “We believe that the focus on CRU and Professor Phil Jones, Director of CRU, in particular, has largely been misplaced”, concluded the Committee, and recommended Jones be reinstated.
So, no conspiracy, no collusion, no manipulation of data, no corruption of the peer-review process, no scandal; just an understandable reluctance to hand over data to dishonest people with a history of misrepresenting it.
Squibs don’t get much damper than “Climategate”. The most worrying aspect of the drama was the way in which most of the media ditched any attempt at assessing the claims and became caught up in the frenzy, when a couple of hours spent reading the emails and talking to one of two of those involved would have made the conclusions of the House of Commons inquiry entirely predictable.
The winner of the contest to rename TSFKAC gets the contents of Al Capone’s vault.
Related Posts:
- The top 5 ways the ‘birthers’ are like the deniers
- Nature editorial: “Nothing in the e-mails undermines the scientific case that global warming is real “” or that human activities are almost certainly the cause.”
- Debunking Misinformation About Stolen Climate Emails
- Here’s what we know so far: CRU’s emails were hacked, the 2000s will easily be the hottest decade on record, and the planet keeps warming thanks to us!
- Michael Mann updates the world on the latest climate science and responds to the illegally hacked emails
- Select Committee Staff Analysis debunks stolen climate email myths
Previous in TP Climate Progress
The Hacking of Climate Science.
FOX-hate!
IlliterateDenialistsGate?
(They could have read them emails…)
Al Capone’s vault: Part 2?
Florifulgurator, #3: “(They could have read them emails…)” They did read them, each and every one! Looking for words or phrases that could be misinterpreted or taken out of context to advance their anti-science, anti-humanitarian, anti-sustainability agenda. The very folks that want desperately to be your leaders!
Climate-Swift-Boat
Swiftboating Climatology
Something involving the swift boat comparison.
Calorie-less Controversy Candy
un-Credible Controversy Candy
Gosh Gum for Gullibles
Damaging Dumb Distraction (now Debunked)
Maddening Misleading Matter for the Mindless Media
Surely this is half way between weather and climate….
http://news.bbc.co.uk/weather/hi/home/newsid_8598000/8598677.stm
Records broken across Canada due to lack of March snow
A lack of snow across Canada during March has broken records for the normally snowy month.
Toronto, which on average sees 22 centimetres (nine inches) of snow in March, recorded none during the month for the first time since records began in 1845.
Clueless Calorie-less Controversy Candy
Faux Fun For Fox
Swiftboating of climate scientists
“endless slander by dishonorable men who fight dirty, in the media, because no judge or jury would ever side with them in a fair court”
The Climategate bubble.
Would it be worthwhile to obtain follow-up reactions from those who immediately hopped on the smear-wagon (Inhofe, Monckton, Fox, etc)?
The Desperate Distraction
Deniergate
Imhoax
Beck-and-Switch
Hackergate.
Cheryl Rofer (#1) – We were close to each other (I had the idea before reading the comments)!
This puts the onus and emphasis on the illegal hacking rather than a misunderstanding of the meaning of the words “trick” (technique) and “hide the decline” (reconcile why tree ring data in recent decades shows a decline in temperatures when actual temperature data which supersedes it – Duh – is rising).
Absolutely everyone who has emphasized the content of the e-mails rather than the illegal hacking would be like someone emphasizing only what the Watergate burglars found without ever mentioning their crime or its cover-up.
And why were the e-mails found on a Russian server? Is there an investigative reporter left on Earth that is willing to pound the pavement or at least their keyboard to try to explain that?
Russia is the one country more than any other (even the U.S.) that is almost literally saying “Bring it on!” to climate change because selling fossil fuels comprises such a high percentage of their economy, they want to drill in formerly icy places when the ice melts and they have the most northern land if agriculture moves northward (Memo to Putin: It’s not that simple, there must be appropriate soil, nutrients and water – much of Siberia is quite dry – and insect, disease, plant and animal pests including David Koch will migrate north as well).
So anyway:
Hackergate.
Green herring
Climate Kerfuffle
ClimateMOON – Mountain Out of Molehill
ClimateMAAN – Much Ado About Nothing
Climate Tempest In Teapot – (you do the acronym)
Too late. Folks did this months ago. SwiftHack. At the time, the rubes were furious at the acknowledgment of the Swift Boat tactic, so you know it is twoo.
Best,
D
Dudgate
MacBethgate – ‘A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.’
The problem with Swifthack is that this was perpetrated on a UK institution and less than 0.0001% of the UK population – who are about to go into a general election where climate change may figure – has the first clue about Swiftboating or Kerry. Nor could they care
so it needs to be a name that’ll work on the front cover of the Independent, or the London Times as well as the NYT.
So I’d suggest anti-climate fraud. It’s as succinct as you can get, while saying what needs to be said. And it’s accurate – this was fraud, perpetuated in an attempt to derail Copenhagan.
Gate to nowhere
Hellish Dark and Smells of Cheese
Since it was funded by oil money prospecting for greater fortunes:
The Dry Hole
I have to note the utter irony that the original “gate” was Watergate. The genisis of the scandal was an illegal break-in and the ensuing cover-up, and it eventually brought down a Presidency. If anyone reported on the content of material obtained in that break-in, I missed it.
Contrast that to the current situation, where few reporters if any write on the illegal break-in and the associated cover-up, and instead, they all feel compelled to comment on the material obtained (which is quite unremarkable).
Climategate hoax?
The Hackneyed Denial Affair
Hide the Denial
The Deceitful Denial Dud
I’ve always leaned toward “TomskTwaddle” but that’s a bit obscure.
half-ass gate
gatetonowhere
iHoax
KochScam. I have no doubt that the dirty scoundrels at Koch Industries were behind this phony scandal from the get go.
Swiftgate
The fact that climate scientists were cleared is not surprising. The spotlight should be shifted to those who perpetrated climategate and that they have and continue to misrepresent everything they can find to the dissadvantage of the general world public for very specific personal gain. This is the massive conspiracy – Misrepresentation of known fact for the aquisiion of pure personal and corporate power. Climate scientists are not the guilty party.
You’re right, Tim. With your post in mind, here’s another idea:
Koch-choke
Koch
(pronounced “Coke”)
choke
to stop by obstructing or clogging
The CRU Hack-and-Smear
Or maybe CRU Hack-and-Muck.
..although “muck” can also be interpreted as “cleaning away filth”, so maybe that is not optimal.
Exxonergate
wattergate
bastargate
expur-gate
ignoramus-gate
Canute-gate
don’t worry be happy – gate
(posted again think it got lost or moderated not sure which.)
Failhack?
Much ado about Nothing…(to continue the on-and-off Shakespeare theme)
The Great Clutching of Straws
Neg-gate
Apoplectic Denier-Gate
CRUhack
The -gate I’m most concerned about is how the emails were stolen: investigate!
The Muir Russell submissions are being posted, and there are some goodies
Crudgate.
Check out Climate Audit- I commented there a couple of days ago. McIntyre is of course spinning it as a politically motivated only-3- out-of-four victory. The echo chamber ya ya’s are holding fast, but seem to sense they’re on thin ice.
Mc himself looked a little fuzzy and desultory in his CNN interview on the subject. I told him he sounded like his heart wasn’t in it.
I suggest some of you visit enemy territory for a few comments, either CA or WUWT. They’ll print them, and the blog managers are generally courteous. Vitriolic commenter responses will be easy to ignore.
This is a defeat for the deniers, all right, but the truth hasn’t changed all along. They’ll dream up something else. I do sense, however, that their bullshit is starting to smell funny, even to some of the denier apparatchiks.
floodgate
I’ve been calling it the CRU Hacking Incident, to avoid using the “gate” terminology, to avoid the suggestion of wrongdoing.
How about Idiotgate?
Dupegate?
Foolgate?
Astroturfgate?
Try Climate Smeargate.
How about WattsUpWithThatGate?
It’s the great Teapot Sham!
The denial industry has created two powerful memes:
- Hide the decline
- Follow the money
Both of these memes need to be “killed off” or at least have some good counter memes: http://watchingthedeniers.wordpress.com/2010/04/01/kill-those-memes-there-was-no-decline-to-hide-and-yes-we-can-follow-the-money/
My two cents worth, or ideas I’m kicking around:
- There IS no decline
- It’s your decline, not mine
- Koch Indu$trie$: we’ve followed the money
- Denialgate
- Deniergate
- Climategate: closed
“Climategoat”?
That’s the product of about 15 seconds of thinking on it so far. It’s kind of like “scapegoat”. Might be catchy, though.
It’s also a bit like that theoretical game show — the one where you pick from one of three doors, one of which has the prize behind it, and the other two have billy goats. So the goats represent the wrong choices.
What would be best is some historical event that turned out to be a non-event, or otherwise wrong or a lie, that is well known. I can’t think of one with a well-known name. Gulf of Tonkin? Not sure how to make that one work.
#46 …
“I suggest some of you visit enemy territory for a few comments, either CA or WUWT. They’ll print them …”
Not necessarily. I just posted a critical comment (similar to what I post here) that was blocked by the moderator for Tony the Toady (a.k.a. the Witless Watt). The guy is an unctuous scourge on humanity, and visits to his site only boost his ratings.
It should have the word “climate” in it, but if you go like climategate – “something”, it does not sound right.
So maybe…
Climate smear?
Climategate-gate (implying that the scandal was the scandal ITSELF!)
Substantia8:
I’m surprised, because both of them run my comments, and I roast them as hard as anyone.
Maybe this is a good sign, and they’re starting to panic. They may be circling the wagons, trying to think up another line of nonsense that will sell.
Seems to me that we don’t know what to tag it since we don’t know who the perpetrators are. The main significance may be that MI5 has completely missed the operation of a foreign intelligence agency on British soil possibly because of the deep cooperation of trusted British citizens or even members of the security services. That it happens to be about climate may be less important than the exposure of weakness in a key component of western intelligence.
Or, it could be something more freelance or a personal vendetta masquerading as an idealism about data.
In the end, the correct tag will be about the thief or those who should have prevented the theft. But the details are not there yet to make it stick.
Vapor-Gate?
“The Great Denialist Nothingburger of 2009″
Chris, #56, thanks for reminding us what actually happened here. This was a criminal breakin, and efforts to investigate and prosecute are lagging badly. The same appears to be the case in Victoria, Canada.
If companies like Koch and Exxon have bought the police, M15, and FBI, along with everyone else, I don’t see a lot of hope.
I would vote for either the Climategate Hoax or Hackergate, both pretty much sum it up.
Break-ins of this type can be impossible to track down for certain, no need to buy people off.
Thud Gate
The Big Thud
BFD Gate
How about “Exaggergate,” from a Beck POV, or “Exaspergate” from a CP POV?
The Anglia Affair or The East Anglia Affair
The Anglia Email Affair
The Anglia Email Scandal
The Climate Email Affair
The Climate Email Scandal
The Climate Denial Affair
The Deny Climate Affair
The Deny Climate Scandal
The Discredit Climate Affair
The Discredit Climate Scandal
Climate Squawk – A lot of noise about nothing
Mike, I just checked WUWT one more time and discovered that my comment was finally posted here, after a considerable delay (at least two hours, I think). Search for my user name to see it.
The censored word was “denier”. That word is apparently forbidden in Neverland.
There’s so much less scandal here than meets the eye. The story to draw attention to is the organized persecution of scientists. How about something like “the East Anglia Witch Hunt”? That refers to the zealous anti-scientific nature of the perpetrators and explains why they couldn’t find anything.
I like Vapor-Gate, as suggested above, but think a renaming is impossible and so suggest the “Climategate Canard”.
Climatemailtheft
The big mail robbery
The media will ALWAYS have a tendency for getting caught in a frenzy. Quoting Margaret Atwood, the media are like corpse flies which feed on people’s misery. Of course, it is also the media’s job to sensationalize news so that people will sit up and pay attention. Anyway, here’s an article about climate change worth reading: http://www.ecoseed.org/en/general-green-news/features/in-depth/5561-Climate-change-why-we-should-give-a-damn
Well if we want to pin down who exposed themselves, it has to be SKEPTIGATE
No, scepticism is a rational position, how about;
DENIERGATE
I rather like having “denier” in the title, as it implies it was their balls up. Like toby, I’ve suggested *Deniergate*. I wonder if “-gate” is hackneyed, but still it has asymmetry in using it.
Personally, I’m calling it their “Dover Moment” – like the ID/Creationists in Kitmiller v Dover, they came a cropper in a setting where they had the change to present their evidence (via submissions etc.)
Perhaps “Dover Moment” can be used to imply past and future failures. “And yet another “Dover Momement” for the denail movement….” etc.
propergate
Some months ago in discussion elsewhere I called this ‘vapourgate’ with the English spelling natural to myself.
I note that Think Big at #59 has come up with ‘vaporgate’.
So ‘vapourgate’ or ‘vaporgate’ is my shout.
Re my #77 see here:
http://www.desmogblog.com/our-politicians-failed-us-copenhagen-and-will-soon-regret-it
Lionel A
Sun, 2009-12-20 08:33
Chris Dudley has a good point, IMO – we don’t know what to name it because we still don’t know who did it.
We don’t really know who originated the hacking incident.
I think that the presence of some misleadingly damning quotes in the emails was likely picked up by the intelligence agencies, who routinely use Narus supercomputers and software to monitor email content in real time.
Information that such quotes existed then leaked out, or possibly was used to deliberately torpedo Copenhagen by someone inside the NSA or CIA. The Rockefeller family has a long, long history of cooperation with the CIA, and both Nelson and David Rockefeller have been known to receive “family jewels” briefings by the CIA, while sitting on panels that control CIA policy. Nelson’s dead, but David is still alive. The CIA has long acted as almost a private security force for ExxonMobil, for example, too, routinely overthrowing foreign governments that threatened to nationalize oil fields or redistribute wealth. The Rockefeller foundation has also acted as a CIA front overseas.
Foreign intelligence agencies also cooperate extensively with the NSA, and receive large amounts of information from the NSA, so the presence of the quotes in the emails could have leaked to the “hackers” from there, too.
What I don’t buy is that some hackers just got lucky, just in time to torpedo Copenhagen.
Interesting, Leland, #79, thanks.
The best hope may be for a whistleblower within the intelligence agencies. Unlikely, but possible.
Crimategate
Better, although longer CrimateHackGate. This makes clearer that the deniers committed the crime.
PurpleOzone, I vote for your Crimategate.
A cretins’ view through the looking glass……
Climategate turns out to be Denier-Gate.
I think FireMountain gets it in comment # 15.
Instead of climate science being debunked, the climate change deniers were once again debunked. I think it plays off the original well and gets to the point. Maybe Climate Change Denier Gate or Climate Denier Gate. Deniergate works though.
Oh I forgot Toxic, too.
Climategate: the silicon breast implant of controversies. Squishy, fake, toxic, mesmerizing to the uncritical, and created as often as not, for money.
Windgate
Reading over the many contributions I would caution everyone against the use of any references that call for insider knowledge, appreciation for logic, detail, refined sense of irony, or Shakespeare, for crying out loud. We didn’t land up with this hassle because people widely understand Shakespeare, or data, or logic. The communication gap between climate advocates and the anti-intellectual part of America is largely the fault of the intelligentsia — they just DONT GET IT how simply and memorably a case needs to be made. The climate needs a top-flight communications arm, hopefully with the writing team of Monty Python and the ad budget of Proctor and Gamble.
Hot-Air-gate is my original suggestion. Hopefully, it both indicates the subject matter and takes a position on the matter.
Of the suggestions so far, I like “Climategate hoax”. It’s one more syllable than the above, but it is crystal clear on both counts. Keep it simple.
Denial @ the Gate
Hell and High Watergate
Know your gates! Watergate: A serious crime. Climategate: Crock of the Decade.
HackingGate (scandle): the continuous moral corruption of the invested (the monied class) and the hacking, diseased public.
CarbonGate, MiningGate, PropagandaGate.
Where is the gate to clean government, energy, economics, environment? Must have gotten washed away in the typhoon of corruption of the world ordered marketplace (and the world demand for the drugs of choice and disaster).
James, #92: “Where is the gate to clean government, energy, economics, environment?”
I hope that in the not too far distant future we can look back and say with pride,
Progressive-Gate!
Gotta be DENIERGATE. Love it.
I’m leaning towards deniergate as well.
Points about clear, concise communication without having a working knowledge of the body of science or otehr issues is a good point.
Given the spectacular psychic abilities the deniers have been claiming to have when it comes to reading the minds of climate scientists: “CRUwoogate”.
I like “Deniergate”, though, but I’d save it for after the Sir Muir Russell Report’s conclusions: Maybe even “Epic-fail-gate”?
Enough. Closethegate.
Maybe not quite enough…
The techniques of the climate deniers in general resemble the dirty tricks that the CIA has used for decades to overthrow foreign governments. The techniques of setting up information laundering organizations and astroturf propaganda campaigns are very sophisticated – the best that money can buy.
Just a thought.
The propaganda techniques seem similar to what we see among government and industry propaganda and public relations, is all I’m saying. That plus the undeniable use of insider knowledge of the content of the CRU emails suggest an Intelligence origin for the incident.
We also know something about the motives of the perpetrators- they wanted to torpedo Copenhagen.
We also know that there was apparent cooperation between various elements of the ExxonMobil paid climate denier network to propagandize the incident, and portray the quotes in the most exaggerated possible way.
I know we’re tired of this, and want to forget it, because it’s damned unpleasant.
Unfortunately, we can’t. We need to investigate this to make sure it doesn’t happen again, and start advocating for an investigation of the incident by the Obama administration.
We also need to make sure that the word of the exoneration spreads as widely as the slurs themselves – an almost impossible task.
The “Climategate” tag is probably too late to change given its use in the media but to disarm the tag, “fissle” seems an appropriate term so how about:
Climategatefissle
Alternatively, you could keep the “Climategate” tag but always attach “fissle” immediately after it so that references read, “the Climategate fissle”. That keeps the known tag but succinctly deflates the hubris attached to it.
I’m late to the party, but — climategategate.