Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Politicization of Science

2cents posts on the intersection of science and government:
Climategate II has taken a very chilling turn.  One that to my mind raises far greater issues than the idiocy of AGW and the great hoodwink.  The Obama administration's criminal division of the Justice Department sought and executed search warrants against Wordpress, the blogging software company that hosts several of the blogs where the anonymous "FOIA" posted a link to the zipfile that contained the second batch of incriminating emails from Mann and the boys.  Worse, it participated in a physical raid and seizure at home of the blogger who goes by Jeff Id at NOconsensus.wordpress.com, where all of his computers and his router were taken.  His was the first blog to upload the link, probably because he lives in a time zone five hours ahead of the others.  He was assured that he was not a suspect, but they nonetheless had armed agents serve the warrant and seize the instruments of his blogging.  Others whose files were ordered frozen at Wordpress were Steve McIntyre at ClimateAudit.org and Tallbloke’s Talkshop at tabloke.wordpress.com.
There's much more - 2cents is a lawyer, so he has insight on this that you don't get from guys like me.  I'd add a couple of things:

1. Jeff Id, Steve McIntyre, and Tallbloke are not suspects, i.e. the Fed.Gov and UK.Gov do not think that they are "FOIA".  However, the confiscation of computers is very high profile.

2. It's not at all clear that FOIA broke any laws.  The idiot media keeps talking about a "hacker", which can only be described as drool-worthy spin.  The two ClimateGate releases were clearly from data collected by the University of East Anglia (UEA) in preparation for potential compliance with numerous FOIA requests.

3. It is clear that the UEA did commit a crime in not complying with FOIA requests.  However, the law was written such that the statute of limitations had expired.

And so, the interesting series of events: actions that do not seem to be criminal, motivated by a desire to blow the whistle on actions that clearly were criminal, have resulted in criminal investigation against people who are not suspects.

Why?

The most recent Climategate emails show clearly that the scientists were pressured by politicians to come out with more extreme results - to hype the Global Warming panic.  The emails show that environmental activists were in positions of responsibility in the governments involved. They show that the World Bank was involved in writing parts of the IPCC reports - and even peer-reviewed articles published in Science and Nature (the most prestigious scientific journals).

In short, the global power elites were involved in the minutiae of the content of scientific journals, trying to make sure that the "science was settled" that we were in a crisis.

Why?

Remember, the U.S. Government has funded climate change research to the tune of something like $90 Billion.

Why?

To understand why government does something, you need to think in terms of power and money.  Global Warming was an opportunity for both.  Enron celebrated when the Kyoto protocols were signed.  They thought they'd make a killing on Carbon markets.  So did the international financial community.  And some of that money was going to make its way back to the politicians in the form of campaign contributions.

And here comes this shadowy "FOIA" dude, peeing in the punchbowl.  So bring out the Justice Department.

At this point, let me just say that anyone who ever spoke the words "Republican War on Science" need to shut up and sit down in the back of the room.  Grownups are talking here.

And now we get to the most interesting part of the last Climategate email dump: most of the data is encrypted.  People who have looked at it say that it's locked up tight, with solid ciphers and long key lengths.  In other words, something enormously unlikely to get cracked.

I think that this is "FOIA's" insurance policy against exactly this sort of police crackdown.  Consider: the World Bank emails weren't explosive enough to encrypt?  So what was explosive enough?  More specifically, which politician's emails are in the encrypted dump, and how damaging are they?  All "FOIA" would need to do is dump the pass phrase onto the Internet - it's probably the first page of "A tale of two cities" or something (guess that, biatches!), and there are a thousand copies of the encrypted email archive.

This is the science story of the century, and the Press doesn't want to talk about it.  But they will, because they won't have a choice.  Get the popcorn, this is going to get even better than it already is.

6 comments:

Guffaw in AZ said...

Linking this to my blog. It's too important to ignore. Thanks.
gfa

TOTWTYTR said...

This isn't politicalization of sciences, it's criminalization of dissent. As in violating bloggers First Amendment right to speak out against government action, and petition for redress of grievances.

You know, they told me that if I voted for John McCain, we'd see government agents suppressing citizens' Constitutional Rights AND THEY WERE RIGHT!

H/T to Glenn Reynolds for coming up with that.

ProudHillbilly said...

Science will "bend" according to money sources. I.e., if a congressman his hyper about sea level rise, that's the guy who is going to vote for your funding if you focus on sea level rise. And minimize or ignore where it is not rising. Follow the money.

SiGraybeard said...

Back when he was at Fox, Beck did a full expose' on the Chicago Climate Exchange that was gearing up to trade indulgences, er, carbon credits. The usual players were involved and some new ones, Joel Rogers to name the big guy. It's not hard to find details but this one seems to hit the major points. After the Cap and Trade bill didn't make it through the congress, the CCX quietly reorganized.

The really important thing is this: the scheme of paying penance for carbon was estimated to be a $10 trillion dollar market that they were going to make up, invent from whole cloth. All of those principals, Goldman Sachs, Joel Rogers, main democratic donors like Soros, and lots of others, were set to skim whole number percents from that 10 Trillion dollars. Do you honestly think they're going to play nice? They're going to do anything, step on anyone, and I daresay kill anyone that needs to be gotten rid of so that they can make their billions. It is organized crime in every sense of the word.

Blue said...

sometimes the ole' punchbowl needs to be peed in.... :)

kx59 said...

linking as well