In other words, what these emails confirm is that the great man-made global warming scare is not about science but about political activism. This, it seems, is what motivated the whistleblower 'FOIA 2011' (or "thief", as the usual suspects at RealClimate will no doubt prefer to tar him or her) to go public.
As FOIA 2011 puts it when introducing the selected highlights, culled from a file of 220,000 emails:
“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 2011 is right, of course. If you're going to bomb the global economy back to the dark ages with environmental tax and regulation, if you're going to favour costly, landscape-blighting, inefficient renewables over real, abundant, relatively cheap energy that works like shale gas and oil, if you're going to cause food riots and starvation in the developing world by giving over farmland (and rainforests) to biofuel production, then at the very least you it owe to the world to base your policies on sound, transparent, evidence-based science rather than on the politicised, disingenuous junk churned out by the charlatans at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
You'll find the full taster menu of delights here at Tall Bloke's website. Shrub Niggurath is on the case too. As is the Air Vent.
I particularly like the ones expressing deep reservations about the narrative put about by the IPCC:
/// The IPCC Process ///<1939> Thorne/MetO:Observations do not show rising temperatures throughout the tropical
troposphere unless you accept one single study and approach and discount a
wealth of others. This is just downright dangerous. We need to communicate the
uncertainty and be honest. Phil, hopefully we can find time to discuss these
further if necessary [...]<3066> Thorne:I also think the science is being manipulated to put a political spin on it
which for all our sakes might not be too clever in the long run.<1611> Carter:It seems that a few people have a very strong say, and no matter how much
talking goes on beforehand, the big decisions are made at the eleventh hour by
a select core group.<2884> Wigley:Mike, The Figure you sent is very deceptive [...] there have been a number of
dishonest presentations of model results by individual authors and by IPCC [...]<4755> Overpeck:The trick may be to decide on the main message and use that to guid[e] what’s
included and what is left out.<3456> Overpeck:I agree w/ Susan [Solomon] that we should try to put more in the bullet about
“Subsequent evidence” [...] Need to convince readers that there really has been
an increase in knowledge – more evidence. What is it?
And here's our friend Phil Jones, apparently trying to stuff the IPCC working groups with scientists favourable to his cause, while shutting out dissenting voices.
<0714> Jones:Getting people we know and trust [into IPCC] is vital – hence my comment about
the tornadoes group.<3205> Jones:Useful ones [for IPCC] might be Baldwin, Benestad (written on the solar/cloud
issue – on the right side, i.e anti-Svensmark), Bohm, Brown, Christy (will be
have to involve him ?)
Here is what looks like an outrageous case of government – the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs – actually putting pressure on climate "scientists" to talk up their message of doom and gloom in order to help the government justify its swingeing climate policies:
<2495> Humphrey/DEFRA:I can’t overstate the HUGE amount of political interest in the project as a
message that the Government can give on climate change to help them tell their
story. They want the story to be a very strong one and don’t want to be made
to look foolish.
Here is a gloriously revealing string of emails in which activists and global warming research groups discuss how best to manipulate reality so that climate change looks more scary and dangerous than it really is:
<3655> Singer/WWF:we as an NGO working on climate policy need such a document pretty soon for the
public and for informed decision makers in order to get a) a debate started and
b) in order to get into the media the context between climate
extremes/desasters/costs and finally the link between weather extremes and
energy<0445> Torok/CSIRO:[...] idea of looking at the implications of climate change for what he termed
“global icons” [...] One of these suggested icons was the Great Barrier Reef [...]
It also became apparent that there was always a local “reason” for the
destruction – cyclones, starfish, fertilizers [...] A perception of an
“unchanging” environment leads people to generate local explanations for coral
loss based on transient phenomena, while not acknowledging the possibility of
systematic damage from long-term climatic/environmental change [...] Such a
project could do a lot to raise awareness of threats to the reef from climate
change<4141> Minns/Tyndall Centre:In my experience, global warming freezing is already a bit of a public
relations problem with the mediaKjellen:I agree with Nick that climate change might be a better labelling than global
warmingPierrehumbert:What kind of circulation change could lock Europe into deadly summer heat waves
like that of last summer? That’s the sort of thing we need to think about.
I'll have a deeper dig through the emails this afternoon and see what else I come up with. If I were a climate activist off to COP 17 in Durban later this month, I don't think I'd be feeling a very happy little drowning Polie, right now. In fact I might be inclined to think that the game was well and truly up.