Good to see Mann going on the offensive:

It’s important to understand here that the timing of this event is rather suspect. We’re one week away from this historic summit in Copenhagen, where leaders from around the world will be meeting to discuss how to combat the threat of human-caused climate change. And going into that meeting, there’s a very robust consensus among the world’s scientists that the problem is real and there’s something that we need to do about it.

Now there is, of course, a group of people and there are special interests who do not want to see any progress made at this summit. And frankly, they don’t have the science on their side. The science behind human-caused climate change is quite solid. The National Academy of Science in the U.S. has weighed in on this…there is in fact a consensus behind the reality of climate change. So, the other side doesn’t have the science on their side, and instead they’ve engaged frankly in what I believe is a smear campaign; stolen emails, taken out of context, mined for single words or phrases that can be twisted and taken out of context, in many cases to completely misrepresent the context of what was being discussed.

…let me stress again that there is nothing in any of these emails that in an way calls into question the consensus of the world’s scientists that the problem of climate change is real and that we need to do something to confront it. So my hope is that people will see through this fairly thinly disguised smear campaign and recognize that in no way does anything in any of these emails call into question the validity of the science behind human-caused climate change.

World Resources Institute:

This brief paper, rooted in WRI’s long-running analysis of the complex and interconnected issues under negotiation, identifies key elements for a successful and possible outcome in Copenhagen (categorized in this document by The Big Picture Agreement, Building a Sound Foundation, and Support for Developing Countries). These include a clear set of follow-on negotiations to complete a legally binding agreement. This process could be achieved in two stages – at a continuation of the COP 15 Copenhagen session six months later (a so-called COP 15 bis), and at the next full conference of the UNFCCC parties (COP 16) in Mexico in December 2010. Putting in place a clear process to agree upon the final legally binding instrument(s) in one negotiation track will be key to success. After two years of negotiations, many of the elements required for an effective post-2012 climate agreement are already clear.

countdown_to_copenhagen_foundation_for_a_low_carbon_future –

GREENING YOUR SMALL BUSINESS Press Release.jk –

Update: Crooks and Liars has video.

Transcript via ABC.

STEPHANOPOULOS: And meanwhile, he is also going to be dealing with health care, right now on the floor of the Senate. He announced this week to Copenhagen to deal with climate change. And it comes at a time when the politics seem to be changing a little bit in this.

Let me show our latest ABC News/Washington Post poll. It shows whether people believe global warming is occurring. That number is going down. July 2008, 80 percent of the public; down to 72 percent now. And there’s been a sort of a real partisanship. Look at Republicans, 74 percent believed global warming was occurring back in 2008. Now, a 20-point drop to 54 percent.

George, there has been a partinizing of this issue, and let me turn to one more complication we’ve had over the last week. This Climate Research Institute at East Anglia University, someone hacked into their e-mail account and showed a bunch of emails between scientists, which opponents of climate change legislation said proves that they are rigging the science and trying to hide information that runs counter to their theories.

WILL: It raises the question of — we’re being asked to wage trillions of dollars and substantially curtail freedom on climate models that are imperfect and unproven. And the consensus far from being as solid as they say it is, and the debate as over as they say it is. The e-mails indicate people are very nervous about suppressing criticism, gaming the peer review process for scholarly works and all the rest. One of the e-mails said it is a travesty, his word, it is a travesty that we cannot explain the fact that global warming has stopped. Well, they shouldn’t be embarrassed about that. It’s a complicated business, and that’s why we shouldn’t be (inaudible).

KRUGMAN: All those e-mails — people have never seen what academic discussion looks like. There’s not a single smoking gun in there. There’s nothing in there. And the travesty is that people are not able to explain why the fact that 1988 was a very warm year doesn’t actually mean that global warming has stopped. I mean, that’s loose wording. Right? Everything is about — we’re really in the same situation as if there was one extremely warm day in April. And then people are saying, well, you see, May is cooler than April, there’s no trend here. And that’s what — the travesty is how hard it has been to explain…

WILL: One of the emails, Paul, said he wished he could delete, get rid of the medieval warming period. That lasted 600 years…

KRUGMAN: It’s not — read — this has all been explained. What he meant is they want to put a start on it. We have an end to it, we don’t have a start on it. There’s a lot of loose use of language when you’re just talking among each other. And what (inaudible) really meant, deleting would be meant that, you know, we don’t know when this thing started, because we don’t have very good data back then. There weren’t any weather stations. And that’s what the context was.

Read the rest of this entry »

As always, the full Swifthack Scandal: What You Need to Know document can be found here.

In the statements from scientists section:

Marine-Mammal Biologist Peter Watts:

Science doesn’t work despite scientists being asses. Science works, to at least some extent, because scientists are asses. Bickering and backstabbing are essential elements of the process. Haven’t any of these guys ever heard of “peer review”?

There’s this myth in wide circulation: rational, emotionless Vulcans in white coats, plumbing the secrets of the universe, their Scientific Methods unsullied by bias or emotionalism. Most people know it’s a myth, of course; they subscribe to a more nuanced view in which scientists are as petty and vain and human as anyone (and as egotistical as any therapist or financier), people who use scientific methodology to tamp down their human imperfections and manage some approximation of objectivity.

In the pieces of general interest section:

Changes in the Weather

On “ClimateGate”

The Manufactured Doubt Industry and the Hacked Email Controversy

Using Karl’s Trick To Hide The Consensus

ClimateGate: Addressing the ‘Not a Hacker’ Meme

With ‘ClimateGate,’ Some Republicans Embrace Thug Politics

The Global Warming Emails Non-Event

Climate Science Data Sources

Tell it to the Ice Caps

This article by Jeff Masters is so good I’m not even going to quote it. Please go here and read the whole thing.

This is just awful:

Workers at a nuclear power plant in southern India were treated for poisoning after drinking water was deliberately spiked with radiation, senior government officials said Sunday.

Routine tests showed 55 employees from the plant in Kaiga in the state of Karnataka had increased levels of the radioactive element tritium, which is used in nuclear reactors.

B. Bhattacharjee, a member of the National Disaster Management Authority, said someone had inserted contaminated water into a water cooler, according to the Press Trust of India.

Mann_Public_Statement –

Adbusters:

There’s only one way to avoid the collapse of this human experiment of ours on Planet Earth: we have to consume less.

So this November 27 (November 28 in Europe and overseas), we’re calling for a Wildcat General Strike. We’re asking tens of millions of people around the world to bring the capitalist consumption machine to a grinding – if only momentary – halt.

We want you to not only stop buying for 24 hours, but to shut off your lights, televisions and other nonessential appliances. We want you to park your car, turn off your phones and log off of your computer for the day.

We’re calling for a Ramadan-like fast. From sunrise to sunset we’ll abstain en masse, not only from holiday shopping, but from all the temptations of our five-planet lifestyles.

Politico has more:

“In the climate change sense, it’s not that every other retail day isn’t bad. This just happens to be the worst day for the environment,” says Bill Sheehan, executive director of the Product Policy Institute, a non-profit that aims to prevent waste through better design.

Shoppers will buy mountains of limited-use products wrapped up in disposable boxes, bubble wrap, Styrofoam and other packing materials. It’s a lot of trash that’s not going to go away – and the production of those products has a major effect.

Consider the average microwave oven: It comes in a cardboard box, wrapped in a plastic bag, sandwiched with at least four chunks of Styrofoam and bubble wrap. A new pair of shoes comes in a cardboard box with tissue paper stuffed around and inside the soles.

Yesterday’s White House Press gaggle:

MS. BROWNER: Well, first of all, we’ve all seen bits and pieces, we haven’t seen the full e-mails. But I think more importantly there has been for a very long time a very small group of people who continue to say this isn’t a real problem, that we don’t need to do anything. On the other hand, we have 2,500 of the world’s foremost scientists who are in absolute agreement that this is a real problem and that we need to do something and we need to do something as soon as possible.

What am I going to do, side with the couple of naysayers out there, or the 2,500 scientists? I’m sticking with the 2,500 scientists. I mean, these people have been studying this issue for a very, very long time, and agree that the problem is real.