Two weeks ago, thousands of illegally hacked emails from a British climate research center were dumped on a Russian webserver, timed to influence the politics of of the international climate negotiations commencing next week in Copenhagen, Denmark. Beginning Thanksgiving week, conservative media and Republican politicians have compared the climate scientists whose private emails were hacked to Hitler, Stalin, and eugenicists, saying they are involved in a global conspiracy to defraud and possibly take over the world. The Climategate “scandal” — a swiftboating intimidation and smear campaign against science — is the right-wing rage from Stephen Dubner to Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck to Lou Dobbs. Like the original Watergate scandal involving right-wing operatives who burglarized the offices of their political opponents, the real crime is the original break-in.

It has now been reported that the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Center is not the only victim of such a criminal invasion: burglars and hackers have also attacked the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis at the University of Victoria in British Columbia:

Andrew Weaver, a University of Victoria scientist and key contributor to the Nobel prize-winning work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, says there have been a number of attempted breaches in recent months, including two successful break-ins at his campus office in which a dead computer was stolen and papers were rummaged through.

These attacks go beyond simple burglary. University of Victoria spokeswoman Patty Pitts told the National Post “there have also been attempts to hack into climate scientists’ computers, as well as incidents in which people impersonated network technicians to try to gain access to campus offices and data.”

For thirty years, defenders of a pollution-based economy have intimidated, smeared, and suppressed climate science, using a playbook perfected by the tobacco industry and Karl Rove. Now — as the United States, led by President Barack Obama, finally appears ready to join the world in the fight against global warming — the opponents of reform are resorting to criminal desperation, harkening back to the paranoia-fueled extremes of Richard Nixon.

Memo to Climate Science community:  When illegal email hackers give you lemons, make some lemonade.

In a Physics World article, “Publicize or perish,” I pointed out “The scientific community is failing miserably in communicating the potential catastrophe of climate change.“  Of course, that isn’t entirely the scientific community’s fault.  The media — especially senior editors who decide what stories to pursue — tend to take the view that they covered climate science back in 2007 with the IPCC report, so it’s been hard to get the media interested in another story on climate science.  Well, now they are very interested.

For that reason, I helped organize a press call today for with three leading climate scientists:

• Professor Michael Mann, Director of the Penn State’s Earth Systems Science Center, author of more than 120 studies in professional journals and a new book, Dire Predictions.
• Dr. Gavin Schmidt, climate modeler at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.  He is the author of more than 60 studies, and author of Climate change: Picturing the Science.
• Professor Michael Oppenheimer, Director of the Program in Science, Technology and Environmental Policy  at Princeton.  He has authored more than 100 articles

You can listen to the full audio here:

Some excerpts below (transcript here):

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With the employment news today about 100,000 jobs better than expected — “the nation’s employers had all but stopped shedding jobs in November” — I thought I’d run this graph Nate Silver posted a couple weeks ago in a post titled, “It’s [Still] The Economy, Dumbass.”

Nate wrote “this is my favorite graph in quite some time,” and pointed out

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India’s offer to curb emissions intensity may help climate talks

India’s offer to voluntarily reduce the amount of carbon emissions per unit of gross domestic product after numerical pledges from the U.S. and China may move the climate-change talks ahead.

Asia’s third-biggest energy consumer can reduce its emissions intensity by as much as 25 percent from 2005 to 2020 through forestry measures and by becoming more energy efficient, Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh said last night.

Three days ahead of the opening of the United Nations- sponsored climate summit in Copenhagen, the offer “will certainly help the negotiations process and is something India should be doing for external and, more importantly, for internal reasons,” said Rajendra K. Pachauri, chairman of the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

“It takes the wind out of the sails of developed countries who were trying to push India,” Pachauri said. India continues to oppose binding emission-reduction goals and a date for when its emissions would peak, saying its 2008 plan to increase solar power, energy efficiency and forestation will reduce emissions of the greenhouse gases mainly blamed for global warming.

Negotiations for a new global climate treaty in Copenhagen to replace or extend the 1997 Kyoto Protocol beyond 2012 are deadlocked as rich and poor nations failed to agree on issues ranging from emission targets to financial aid for developing countries to help them cope with the effects of climate change.

Environmental organizations welcomed India’s proposal. “These targets are a good, positive step toward quantification of India’s action on climate change on the eve of the crucial Copenhagen conference,” said Vinuta Gopal, climate campaign manager for Greenpeace India.

“We hope that this will be a strong step in moving toward a low-carbon sustainable model of development since the targets will be met through the use of better and more efficient technology,” said Ravi Singh, head of WWF-India.

Together with the Chinese announcement, India’s move “puts enormous pressure on the developed countries, in particular the U.S. to get their act together,” Prodipto Ghosh, a climate expert at The Energy and Resources Institute, said from New Delhi. Ghosh called for developed countries to come up with ambitious targets that “are clearly understood by science.”

China, the world’s biggest polluter, last month offered to cut output of carbon dioxide per unit of gross domestic product by 40 percent to 45 percent over 2005 levels by 2020. The U.S. proposed to reduce emissions by about 17 percent for the same period provided that dovetails with a new domestic climate law.

Kerry unveils Foreign Relations’ contribution to Senate global warming bill Read more

Joining the Climategate swiftboating campaign against climate science, conservative pollster Scott Rasmussen has accused scientists of falsifying data about global warming — an incendiary charge. In the most recent of his instapolls designed to reinforce conservative talking points, Rasmussen finds that “[f]ifty-nine percent (59%) of Americans say it’s at least somewhat likely that some scientists have falsified research data to support their own theories and beliefs about global warming. Thirty-five percent (35%) say it’s Very Likely. Just 26% say it’s not very or not at all likely that some scientists falsified data. ” Rasmussen goes on to make the baseless charge that there is confirmation of “such data falsification“:

This skepticism does not appear to be the result of the recent disclosure of e-mails confirming such data falsification as part of the so-called “Climategate” scandal.

There is, in fact, no such confirmation or evidence, which would mean the end of the careers of any scientists who would engage in that kind of practice. Rasmussen’s libel is groundless. As Nature’s editors explain:

A fair reading of the e-mails reveals nothing to support the denialists’ conspiracy theories.

Scott Rasmussen is just the latest right-wing hack to embrace this unprincipled and unhinged smear campaign against climate scientists on the eve on international climate negotiations in Copenhagen, following the lead of everyone from Glenn Beck to Newt Gingrich. One of these smeared scientists, renowned climatologist Ben Santer, has decided to fight back against the “forces of unreason“:

We are now faced with powerful “forces of unreason” – forces that (at least to date) have been unsuccessful in challenging scientific findings of a warming Earth, and a “discernible human influence” on global climate. These forces of unreason are now shifting the focus of their attention to the scientists themselves. They seek to discredit, to skew the truth, to misrepresent. They seek to destroy scientific careers rather than to improve our understanding of the nature and causes of climate change.

Josh Nelson has more at the aptly named SwiftHack.com.

It’s no dig to say North Dakota has a long and profitable relationship with lignite coal. And it will likely continue. But make no mistake, the development of alternative energy sources, and the accompanying “green” jobs, will not be turned away. As the Tribune has said before, the state is best served by an energy industry searching for balance among traditional and new alternative sources.

The Pew Charitable Trusts did a green-economy job count for North Dakota in 2007 and found 2,112 jobs. As wind turbines start becoming more common on the skyline that number has probably gone up. The North Dakota Lignite Council’s Web site tells us that burning soft coal to generate electricity, or to gasify it, means 4,074 direct jobs and 23,915 indirect jobs — 27,989 total.

The state’s unemployment rate for October was 3.2 percent. But that doesn’t mean we don’t need any more good paying jobs. We do. We want opportunities for our soon-to-be young adults, for North Dakotans who have strayed across the state line and newcomers to have a decent paying job here if they want and earn it.

Jobs in the wind farms, like those in the power plant industries, take technical skills. They require education. And they can pay better than the state average.

So the Bismarck Tribune opined yesterday.  I just hope the ND Senators read the paper (see “When Sen. Dorgan finds out what’s in the climate bill “” hint, hint, White House “” he might just support it.”

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Lieberman says bipartisan bill will be economywide

Sen. Lindsey Graham may be under fire from conservatives back home in South Carolina. But the Republican got a personal assurance from President Obama yesterday that the White House is supporting his efforts to craft a sweeping Senate energy and global warming bill.

“The president told me personally he was very open, that nuclear power would be part of the mix, that clean coal would be part of the mix, that he’s for offshore drilling in a responsible way,” Graham said today in describing his Oval Office meeting with Obama. “But we have to have a price on carbon, an emissions standard that’s real, that’s good for the environment and good for business. And I was very pleased.”

Graham’s ties to the White House are pivotal for sponsors of an energy and climate bill as they search for more Republicans willing to work on a key feature of their domestic and international agenda. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) yesterday said he has “definite Republican votes” for the bill, though he would not name names or give exact numbers

So E&E News PM (subs. req’d) reported last night.  Again, those who think there is not going to be a bipartisan climate bill in the spring are not paying attention.

And it is going to be an economy-wide bill as Sen. Lieberman (I-CT) explains later in the piece: Read more