Friday
May062011
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill A good day to bury whitewash
May 6, 2011 Climate: CRU Climate: Parliament Has anyone else been struck by the timing of the official response? On the same day as the local election and referendum results come out?
A good day to bury whitewash, I suppose.
Reader Comments (26)
Perhaps a good day to make paranoid conspiracy comments, eh Andrew.
Do you also think Osama's not dead and Obama's not really American?
OT: Phil Jones giving a talk at his alma mater next week:
http://www.lancs.ac.uk/sci-tech/events/?event_id=724
The Measurement of Global Temperature
Professor Phil Jones, Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia
Friday 13th May 2011, 1300-1400
Cavendish Lecture Theatre
Does someone want to ask a question about Harry?
The stench of the UEA and CRU fiasco will persist, no matter how 'robust' the media burying activities.Shame on the defenders of disgraced, FOI-breaching, email-deleting, scientific-method abusers. It is extraordinary to people like Paul Nurse and Simon Singh throw away their reputations in this way.
Zed
Are you naive, stupid, or just by nature a s**t-stirrer?
Have you forgotten that it was a political adviser, Jo Moore, who suggested, as we all watched the demolition of the Twin Towers, that that would be "a good day to bury bad news"?
She is also alleged, on the BBC web site http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/1823120.stm, to have suggested that the day of Princess Margaret's funeral would be a good time to get some bad rail figures out into the public domain.
What makes it so incredible to you that government might not take advantage of the distraction of two-fold (in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, three-fold) voting to release something that perhaps they would rather we didn't examine too closely? Or is that OK in your book while anyone who spots and comments is seeing conspiracies?
Have you never heard of "news management"? I would expect government to try it on which is why no reporter should trust official pronouncements without looking very carefully for men behind curtains, elephants in the room, and the number of fingers still left on his hand.
Grow up.
"Do you also think Osama's not dead"
ZBD,
I'm not sure if he is or not. What evidence can you produce that he's dead (or alive)?
(Hint: I'm asking on what evidence do you base your conclusion that he's dead (or alive))
Andrew
Zed
Weak.
@May 6, 2011 at 6:49 PM | Bad Andrew
I'm sure she'll find a computer model which provides conclusive proof that he is dead / alive / a figment of your imagination / a Freudian slip / asleep / a reflection in your mirror ....etc etc etc. (all according to your requirements).
Worse than we thunk.
But there, we're all just nasty denier paranoid conspiracy theorists.
Whereas ZedDeadBeat and her heroes Jones / Briffa / Mann / Gore are all saintly models of probity that are alas! just slightly misunderstood.
I believe, that if one uses one's mind and thinks, that is called a conspiracy.
My daughter (i.e., Baby Shub) came up with this defintion recently:
What is recycling?
Recycling is when you take something old, and make it into something new, by throwing it away.
Any more strawmen there Zeddy? Or is it just too inconvinent a truth that there couldn't have been a more perfect time to release this if one wished to have it avoid scrutiny?
I am deeply impressed by the way that all participants in the Climategate event, the independent inquiries and their various aftermaths have all gone out of their way to not only be scrupulously correct in all their words and deeds but have also demonstrated complete transparency at every turn.
Note how they have voluntarily disclosed things that are even in excess of the most stringent of the Law's requirements, and generally showed the devotion to the facts and nothing but the facts that we associate with the highest quality of scientist......
.....We interrupt this bulletin from the heart of leafy Surrey to bring first reports of the arrival of the cratf from Porcine Aviation Inc. soon to make its inaugural landing at Heathrow (T5). And in the referendum stakes we have confirmation that the Turkeys have indeed voted for Christmas.........
This just appalls me. These guys think they can get away with anything, and the pity is that they can.
Perhaps you need to write a second book BH on the CRU "hack" with a large section on the inquiries just to put everything out there in one place so it can be a reference for us all.
In fact it's almost worth writing as comedy it's so ridiculous. It's a shame private eye won't touch this - Hislop is probably keeping out of scientific controversy after supporting Wakefield in the MMR scandal.
Hang on a moment you're critical of the House of Commons report which you call a whitewash, but you're also suggesting the government is hiding it's report amongst a busy news day. Burying it's own whitewash, sounds like a paranoid conspiracy theory to me.
@Fred Bloggs
fwiw The Eye count Christopher Booker and Richard North amongst their hacks
No, Hengist, if you look very carefully at the title of this thread you will see that His Grace is criticising the way that the government's official response to the Commons report has been released.
That is not the same thing at all except in your fevered paronoia.
Why is it that this site has started attracting trolls that appear to be unable to read or apply their brain cells to what is patently laid out in front of them?
Do try to keep up.
Poor Zed. calm down dear and actually read and understand Andrew's posts.
I voted today as I have at every opportunity since 1969 but even I am becoming completely disillusioned by the current stranglehold 'government' and its advisors seem to have on 'independent' inquiries. Add MSM disinterest in one of the biggest scientific scandals of our time and 'conspiracy' seems to be the only way to explain events.
I wish it were compulsory that every person involved, MPs, scientific advisors, press etc., was required to declare all financial interests and investments.
No doubt that the release of this report was carefully planned for today.
you have to like Hengist...the horse without an arse
G.Watkins
Agree with your point, but MSM is "uninterested", if only they were "disinterested"
You lot have been told time and time again "DON'T FEED THE TROLL"
Fair enough Roger.
I have requested that Zed engages in an unbiased discussion about (anything really) current issues of concern. Through the blog administrator I would even be happy to engage in private correspondence once emails are exchanged and it WOULD be a very reasonable interaction.
Zed just will not engage beyond the superficial sniping we observe. Never mind.
In my case it isn't a matter of feeding the troll I am genuinely interested in motivations/cognitions/mindsets(if you like).
You could almost consider it a pet project if you will as I have been following these pages for a long time now (frequently post under different names actually...real name is Jones though.).
Ah well.
Maybe you have this the wrong way round, Bishop.
I think, more likely, our deputy PM hoped to bury the news of the Lib. Dem's electoral Wipeout with the release of the WhitewashGate papers!
henigist: @Fred Bloggs
"fwiw The Eye count Christopher Booker and Richard North amongst their hacks."
They may indeed be among the contributors, but Ian Hislop, with whom I once dined, is a born again warmist and sincerely believe we are on the way to hell. They used too have a fort nighty feature called "Eat Up Your Greens", maybe they should ressurect it and call it "Heat Up Your Greens". Could be fun.
ZDB. Good one but you've got us conspiracy theory wackos all wrong. We believe Obama,s dead and Osama's wasn,t born in the USA.
I can find no reference to The Proclamation in either the Guardian or Telegraph so mission accomplished. However, comments of STTC individuals are worth repeating, if only to spoil The Proclaimers' day;
Graham Stringer: "It is not a whitewash, it is the establishment looking after their own. They are not looking hard enough at what went wrong."
Andrew Miller: “The Committee is concerned that the Sir Muir Russell inquiry did not fully investigate the serious allegation relating to the deletion of emails and finds it unsatisfactory that it has been left with a verbal reassurance from the Vice Chancellor of UEA that the emails still exist,”
Yes Hengist as a Private Eye reader I knew that as I read their reports on various previous crises like foot and mouth. But it looks as though Hislop is keeping them away from this fight. More's the pity since whatever you think of the science, the inquiries have been blatantly non-independent and even Hislop should be able to see that.
I gave up my Private Eye subscription after their support for Wakefield and his MMR scaremongering was revealed for the disgrace it was. Even more disgracefully they then published a "peer" review of their conduct written by their in-house medic who was presumably paid by them to write it (does that sound familiar?). Hislop's warmism was just the last straw.
I can't see that it matters when this response was issued. It's not as if anyone in the MSN was going to do a careful and critical analysis of it, even on a slow news day.
@May 6, 2011 at 9:49 PM | Hengist McStone
"Hang on a moment you're critical of the House of Commons report which you call a whitewash, but you're also suggesting the government is hiding it's report amongst a busy news day. Burying it's own whitewash, sounds like a paranoid conspiracy theory to me."
Well, it might sound like that to a particularly intellectually challenged troll.
Just consider the facts.
The HoC Science & Technology Committee Report is self evidently a whitewash. There has been a cornucopia of evidence published on this blog which demonstrates both that and the fact that the initial S&T Committee Report, the Oxburgh Report and the Muir Russell report were whitewashes.
If in any doubt, read Stringer's very charitable but slightly less pusillanimous minority report which has now been brushed under the carpet by the present Government Response, published yesterday. Anyone even glancing through this and noting Sir John Beddington's comments had hardly escape the obvious conclusion that this is a further (if somewhat oleogenous) layer of whitewash.
Agree with that or not, you seem to suggest that it is impossible to hold that view and also note the 'convenient' timing of the response's release, without it being a "paranoid conspiracy theory".
OK, explain, please.
You think the choice of 6 May was just weird happenchance? Really?
And you think that the Government wants the media to admire its latest coat of whitewash in the glare of publicity?
Was there a press conference? How many accounts have you read in the media about the response?
"Burying it's (sic) own whitewash"? Yeah, that's how it's done.
Better at least than burying whatever intelligence you might possess.
... such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.