Rex Murphy ~ Climate Change: Science or Politics?

Here, courtesy of Mississauga Matt, is Mr. Rex Murphy’s latest commentary, Climate Change: Science or Politics? Interestingly, perhaps, on 2006-07-06 it was noted here at SDA that Mr. Murphy wrote, in Selling something, Dr. Suzuki?, in the Globe and Mail, on 2002-09-28:

“Ratifying the Kyoto Protocol is a real debate, has real costs, is a mix of guesses, best estimates and conflicting claims, with real consequences whichever way it’s decided. For the sake of the debate, let’s lay off the science unless it is science.”

Now, seven years later, here we are. The climate change shysters lied to us. For two weeks now I’ve been waiting for a definitive public summary of the situation ~ not for students of politics, for Kate has covered that ~ rather something my mother, god bless her, at 83, can understand. Thank you, Rex Murphy.

Updated on Friday Afternoon (Bumped):

I am pleasantly encouraged by the number of commenters, in the discussion of Mr. Murphy’s commentary in the article about it at Anthony Watts’ blog, who have realized just how good that video is. I think that sometimes some of those of us commenting here at home can’t see the effective result we have at hand because they are so livid over various other things. After hearing Mr. Murphy’s comments, normal people aren’t going to, for example, fixate on some television news reader’s facial expression.

Anyway, I found a transcript at the Paths to Knowledge blog, where Mr. Murphy’s commentary is described as “An amazing editorial by Rex Murphy. Stunning in it’s clarity. Absolutely stunning. Breathtaking in it’s scope. A video that everyone interested in their planet must see”. Pick the Continue Reading link to view the transcript.

Please email Rex’s video to everyone you know:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgIEQqLokL8


Transcript of Climate Change: Science or Politics?

“When Jon Stewart, the bantum rooster of conventional wisdom, makes jokes about it you know Climategate has reached critical mass. Said Stewart: ‘Poor Al Gore, Global Warming completely debunked via the very internet he invented’.

“Stewart was half joking, but Climategate is no joke at all. The mass of emails from the Climate Research Unit of East Anglia University let loose by a hacker or a whistle-blower pulls back the curtain on a scene of pettiness, turf protection, manipulation, defiance of freedom of information, lost or destroyed data, and attempts to black list critics and skeptics of the Global Warming Cause.

“Now the CRU is not the only climate science advisory body but it’s one of the most influential and feeds directly into the UN Climate Panel on Climate Change. So let’s hear no more talk of the science is settled when it turns out some of the scientists behave as if they own the very question of global warming, when they seek to bar opposing research from peer review journals, to embargo journals they can’t control, when they urge each other to delete damaging emails before freedom of information takes hold, when they talk of ‘hiding the decline’, when they actually speak of destroying the primary data, and when now we do learn that the primary data has been lost or destroyed. They’ve lost the raw data on which all the models, all the computer generated forecasts, graphs and projections are based. You wouldn’t accept that at a grade nine science fair!

“Now CRU is not the universe of climate research but it is the star. These emails demonstrate one thing beyond all else, that climate science and global warming advocacy have become so entwined, so meshed into a mutant creature, that separating alarmism from investigation, ideology from science, agenda from empirical study is well neigh impossible.

“Climategate is evidence that the science has gone to bed with advocacy and both had a very good time. That the neutrality, openness and absolute disinterest that is the hallmark of all honest scientific endeavor has been abandoned to an atmosphere and a dynamic not superior to the partisan caterwauls of a sub average Question Period.

“Climate Science has been shown to be, in part, a sub branch of Climate Politics. It is a situation intolerable even to serious minds who are on side with Global Warming such as Clive Crook who wrote in Atlantic Magazine about this scandal as follows, ‘The stink of intellectual corruption is overpowering’.

“Climate Science needs it’s own reset button, and Climategate should be seen not primarily as a setback, but as an opportunity to cleanse scientific method. To take science away from politics, good causes, and alarmists, and vest climate science in bodies of guaranteed neutrality, openness, real and vigorous debate, and way from the lobbyists, the NGO’s, the advocates, the Gores, and professional environmentalists of all kind.

“Too many of the current leadership on Global Warming are more players than observers, gatekeepers not investigators, angry partisans of some global re-engineering rather than humble servants of the facts of the case.

“Read the Climategate emails, you’ll never think
of climate “science” quite the same way again.

“For the National, I’m Rex Murphy.”


130 Replies to “Rex Murphy ~ Climate Change: Science or Politics?”

  1. L’Affaire Climategate turns “newspaper world”, aka MSM, blinder, deafer, and dumber.
    …-
    “L’Affaire Tiger turns newspaper world upside down
    Toronto Star”

  2. a different bob and doowleb: I think Vitruvius expressed it perfectly. Sometimes the f-bomb is precisely what is required, especially coming from someone of Vitruvius’s obvious erudition
    My roughly 83-year old Newfie grandmother (and mother of twelve) would understand Vitruvius’s point precisely.

  3. Rex ran for the NDP when he was just out of university so I guess inlight of his current politics that makes him a neo con.
    If memory serves, he was quite the radical who led a group of students to strike and occupy one of the buildings and none other than joey smallwood met with Murphy to negotiate a settlement.

  4. O’Goreacle Report: O’Cooling.
    Peter’s CBC lede story tonight.
    AGW+O’Cooling: perfect combo.
    …-
    “Main Street Tour Faces Frosty Greeting
    Wall St Journal ^ | 12/4/2009 | ELIZABETH WILLIAMSON
    When President Barack Obama launches a multicity tour Friday to take Main Street’s temperature, he will likely get a cool reception from business leaders and workers here who say he hasn’t delivered.”

  5. ET @ 9:38 said….”Rex says that they’ve “lost the raw data upon which the models are based”. Hmm. But remember, I’m a believer, so this doesn’t mean that those models are now wrong. It just means that the data is lost…ho hum.”
    This is the typical response from the true believers, that must be confronted and pounded on at this stage of events, because it is the ultimate in hypocrisy and incompetence, and truly spells out the political agenda we face.
    “The data is lost? That doesn’t matter, the science is settled.”
    This is beyond reprehensible, yet, the warmongers, and there are many in high places, continue to repeat the talking point.
    That is the next step, Kate, talk this down!

  6. You Tube view counter stuck at 303. There’s another organization that need investigation.

  7. It must be remembered that Rex is a commentator in the CBC lame circus not a “presenter”, therefore has less to fear from disagreeing with or offending gatekeepers of the true faith. One bit of truth slipping through once a week isn’t really going to outrage the rulers of the propaganda dept who deal in massaging or suppressing to produce the “real news by real leftists 24/7”.

  8. Re: “You Tube view counter stuck at 303. There’s another organization that need investigation.”
    Not really though, Google owns YouTube.

  9. DanBC – exactly. Arriving at a conclusive belief isn’t necessarily done by factual evidence. AGW is a firm belief and it’s arrived at by a reliance on ‘Authority’ and ‘a priori’..and held by Tenacity. None of these methods have a thing to do with scientific methodology.
    I, as a firm believer in AGW, have come to this belief by my reliance on Authority. Heck, what do I know about these things, and double heck, all those images of polar bears floating around (and I don’t know they do this normally); and all that talk about the seas rising right up to Noah’s Ark (after all, it’s happened before in Noah’s time); and …
    Then, there’s my ‘a priori’ sense that, you know, it does seem to be warm..and the reports about drought in Africa..well, what do I know about the loss of trees there by cultivation, and what do I know about seasonal droughts; and what do I know about population increases that stress the land. So, even though it’s been really cold here, in other places, it’s been warm (so they say)..and so, my ‘a priori’ feeling is..Those Authorities are Right.
    So, when some neo-con or Big Oil hired hack tells me that my beliefs are wrong, I’ll hold on to them with Tenacity.
    What has to be exposed is the AGENDA of AGW, which has nothing to do with the environment or with the climate or with science. It’s a political UN scheme to transfer wealth from the wealth-producing nations to the welfare-nations. And reducing the ability of the industrial nations to ‘be wealthy’. It’s Malicious Socialism. Not AGW.
    Notice that both Malicious Socialism and AGW are emotional templates, filled with guilt-inducing narratives, filled with recriminations of Past Sins of Greed and Profit and ..accomplishments.
    Neither Malicious Socialism nor AGW refer to science, to objective reality; they are strategies of emotional manipulation.
    So – if you kick AGW out of the field because it’s been exposed for what it is: emotional manipulation rather than science, you are still left with Malicious Socialism. And THAT is the real problem. Malicious Socialism will not give up; the fact that its cover of AGW is statistically blown is utterly irrelevant to its focus. That’s my concern.

  10. Perhaps I’m reading too much into Mansbridge’s smile at the end but to me it said “Don’t mind Uncle Rex, he’s crazier than a loon but we love him anyway.”

  11. I’m sure the CBC keeps Rex so they can point to him (and only him) and claim not to be comprised entirely of lefties. However, this makes him no less admirable. He is on our side on this one. As he says, Climategate has reaced critical mass. It’s not going away. Thanks to Kate for her tireless efforts on this one. Once the politicians of the western democracies realize that less than half the population is still drinking the coolaid, they’ll jump off the bandwagon, and global warming alarmism will fizzle.

  12. I really hope the words, “inconvenient” and “truth” get mentioned a LOT in the coming weeks.

  13. Kathryn, I agree with you about Mansbridge’s smile.
    I’ve been sending emails to the PM, Prentice and my own MP. It offends me that Prentice continues to say that the science is sound and full speed ahead on cap and trade and harmonizing with the US. Do our representatives live in some kind of vacuum chamber–where the real world just does not penetrate? I also agree with the previous article that I think the raw data still exists. There are too many clues in the emails about how the researchers were determined not to share the data. I think they’re sitting on it as we speak.

  14. On CBC radio this morning, I learned that the Friends of Science (FoS) is under attack from the Sierra Club because FoS had the audacity to post the leaked emails on their website. Reps from both organizations were on the local CBC radio show, and the denials coming from the Sierra Club’s John Bennett were comical. Yes, let’s not look at the messages sheeple, let’s prosecute those who are for free and open debate. So for the first time in my life I called their CBC talkback line and left this voicemail:
    The desperation of the alarmist Sierra Club is evident when John Bennett ironically advocates censorship to suppress the widely available emails. It is the very subversion of the free and open scientific process that is at the heart of the these emails. Yet the denials of scientific malfeasance continue from alarmists like the Sierra Club, David Suzuki, and Al Gore. These alarmists insult a scientist like me who knows that what has been going on in East Anglia is anything but science. Thank you.

  15. Allen – I heard Bennett on the radio a few days ago and he was stuck on “10 year old emails”. No mention of the code, the deleting to avoid FOI requests, the perverting of peer review, etc.
    As has been pointed out before, you’d think everyone would be dancing in the streets because the world is not going to end. Maybe the whole thing doesn’t have anything to do with the planet after all.

  16. ET, Kathryn:
    Precisely…
    You are correct that AGW from a scientific point of view is bogus as noted in the paper above.
    I do however take your point that Malicious Socialism is the driving force behind the AGW cover which has been blown.
    For the CBC to get to the point where Rex was given some free reign to present the AGW debacle is notable.
    Remember Malicious Socialism worships at the temple of the unHoly state. The critical analysis of ‘state capitalism’ per George Soros, or Maurice Strong’s UN ‘shakin downin’ via environmentalism run amok, or the Copenhagen Treaty appendix which establishes a carbon regulating government for the world, was of course not addressed.
    Malicious Socialism always worships at the temple of perpetual revolution, the Anti-Christ to human freedom. Buy your carbon indulgences here!
    Don’t forget that a lot of the enviro-political organizations, NGOs, lobbyists, etc. also go begging for government dollars which Rex also touched on. When it’s dollars leaving the door you bet the people who represent these organizations are going to be defensive.
    The reason they are defensive is now also transparent.
    Cheers
    Hans-Christian Georg Rupprecht, Commander in Chief
    1st Saint Nicolaas Army
    Army Group “True North”

  17. kathryn – yes, that’s fascinating; why aren’t people dancing in the streets because the data base of AGW has been shown to be false? Doesn’t this mean that the apocalpyse isn’t going to occur?
    Or is it:
    1) that the average Dick and Jane don’t come to their beliefs by reason and empiricism but by Faith. The ‘experts’ in this scam have been honed down to a Select Group; the Al Gore, Suzuki, CBC, IPCC, UN, et al…and THEY haven’t accepted that their scam is, well, a scam, and not science;
    2) the real template of the AGW is far more important than the experienced weather, which is indeed, not warming but cooling and, if it’s warm, well, it’s warm elsewhere; Most AGW types are in the West after all.
    This template is Malicious Socialism, with its agenda of stealing billions from the capitalist West to hand over to the burgeoning capitalist billions in China and India. Africa is, as usual, left to Aids and malaria.
    Since most of the media, academic and non-business bureaucracy of the West is firmly left and anti-capitalist…despite their wellbeing, their salaries, their pensions and etc all due to capitalism…then these people are committed to Malicious Socialism and that 18th c. elite landowner sanctimonious contempt for those people engaged in (sniff)’trade’. After all, a gentleman doesn’t engage in trade; his income comes from his inherited lands (now, the Government).
    3)The people driving the AGW scam AND its concomitant Malicious Socialism, are the government-paid Set of the West.
    They aren’t abandoning their contempt for ‘workers’ and ‘market trade’ and their mission of controlling the expansion of the market of capitalism. They certainly won’t dance in the streets because of any loss of the myth of global warming since their agenda has nothing to do with the climate in the first place.
    And Dick and Jane didn’t arrive at their beliefs by experience and reason and won’t change them until The Authorities tell them to do so.
    The template of socialism has to be confronted as well as removing the cover under which it has been operating.

  18. CBC must have some sort of unwritten/unspoken pact with Murphy. If he ever left their employ, I’m sure he could blow the whistle on that organization and create a scandal as huge for
    Canada and Canada’s broadcasters as Climategate is for the whole planet. You’ll notice he breaks with the official line by suggesting that the leak could just as well have been an insider job as a hacker. He is the only sane voice that Mother Corpse offers. They must fear him, hense, the need to keep him where he can be closely monitored.

  19. Rex was consistent with his separation of science and advocacy, a good segment. Did anyone notice that when it ended and the camera shifted back to Mansbridge, that smile that denoted “oh that crazy coot Murphy, now back to reality” (fantasy actually).

  20. Agreed ET, AGW is the battle, not the war. The real issue is defining the enemy, who, where and what they are. If you think the sheeple are ignorant of Climategate, they’re completely clueless to the agendas at play in the larger picture.
    Many have opined on how the MSM will react once the scam is defeated. I suspect that they will just ignore the disappearance of the “crisis” and continue along slandering the conservative voting block. I base this prediction on the disappearance of the Ozone layer “crisis” of the 90s. I graduated from high school in 1993 and I recall a constant insistence at school from the instructors that the world was in “peril” because of our reckless western lifestyle.
    I have used the Ozone analogy many times while discussing AGW. It’s a good example of the cycle of hysteria caused by the media and parroted by the education institutions and the government. I recall one person saying ” Well, I just thought the hole in the Ozone layer was part of Global Warming”. Anyways, the MSM will simply drop the story and wait for the sheeple to forget about it.
    Btw, Climategate was the topic of discussion in the elevator when I left for lunch.

  21. “it’s obvious the science and advocacy went to bed together, and have had a very good time”
    LOL

  22. Jema54- You spotted it, right off. He didn’t really say anything useful. He want’s to restart the game, with the same players. No cheating, this time.
    The real solution is to cut their funding, and let nature take its course. By the time climate changes enough to have an effect on mankind, it will have evolved into something completely different, anyway. Economics will shape mankind, same as always.

  23. There was more than one poster that e-mailed the CBC ombudsman. The CBC in order to be balanced allows three minute opinion piece. The only problem being.. Rex is good. That’s my take.

  24. Rex’ll get a Xmas card from Suzuki, this year? 😉
    I donno, but I will send him congratulatory one telling him that, finally, he may be an OK guy.

  25. The line of climate research with the hypothesis of CO2 concentrations forcing Global Warming has to end.
    No reset button, no do-over.
    If hiding the decline was necessary, than we should already conclude that the hypothesis has been falsified.
    Not another penny should be spent in that direction, especially by the UN using our taxes with these same guys involved in the research.
    They should all be in prison.

  26. @Kathryn:
    I give the public a bit more credit than my posts would indicate. As you rightly observe, there isn’t “dancing in the streets” about the world not ending because most people ignored the doomsayers the first place.
    At the same time, these are the same “most people” that could easily be persuaded by a reasoned argument either way. As a scientist it is my job to present evidence that may point to truth or expose a falsehood. It is then up to others to put the spin on my evidence for consumption by the public. Right now, the MSM is spinning the evidence of misconduct as “nothing to see here, move along”, but as time is wearing on, the public is repudiating that schtick. I hope that this repudiation turns into opinion polls that suggest public support for the alarmist side is in freefall. If this happens near an election I guarantee that the astute political party will craft platforms that are silent or even dismissive of climate alarmism. I want to ensure that efforts to expose the fraud lead to a situation where it would be a political suicide to suggest to taxpayers that more money needs to be funnelled to a proven scam.

  27. @Oz: While I agree that the climate alarmism was a fraud, we haven’t seen falsifying evidence against the hypothesis. That’s because the hypothesis has never been properly subject to free and open testing by the scientific community!
    What has been going on in East Anglia has been a criminal perversion of science that makes the activities of the fiction CRU not worthy of being called science.

  28. Allan,
    We know that the CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere went up, and that the global mean temperature went down.
    The hypothesis has been falsified.

  29. I just find it refreshing that we’re hearing about it from a major news source. Why not jump on it when it first ame to light? What was everyone waiting for? If Mrs. Palin removed her glasses for some reason, you can rest assured that the sleaze media would be over it with some kind of wretched angle. But someone lied about a global green octopus and it’s muffled noises and a sweep under the rug!

  30. Great segment by Rex. Not just because of the content but how he ended it, something like ” read those emails yourself, you may never look at climate science the same way again”
    He should replace Mansbridge, he isn’t exactly photogenic but neither is Larry King.

  31. @Oz, falsification of that hypothesis is clear to me. Sorry about that confusion. I am so angry about the perversion of scientific process at East Anglia that I want any trace of this man-made climate change hucksterism obliterated from public discourse.

  32. S’okay, Allen.
    I’m pretty worked up about this too.
    It amazes me that Kate runs such a wonderful blog and still has a life apart.
    Me, not so much.
    My wife is grumbling about me.
    At least I’m getting work done.

  33. @Oz: We’ll keep fighting the good fight with Kate and the others who can sort out truth from fiction.
    Science has enabled a very good career for someone as curious as me, so you can understand that I have some skin in the game.

  34. Matt – Well of course your grandmother would not have been bothered by Vit’s use of the F-bomb. I’ve yet to have a conversation with any Newfoundlander that wasn’t laced with the word.

  35. If Canada had a genuine small-c fiscal, social and judicial conservative Prime Minister he would stand up enthusiastically and ardently as an antagonist of any kind of “Cap, Tax, & Transfer” system of new taxation and wealth redistribution. Rather, the “Cap, Tax & Transfer” system that left-plunging Harper and Prentice keep advocating is a stealth strategy for an enormous, disingenuous, long-term tax increase on all Canadian households. “Cap, Tax & Transfer” would evolve around an economic Ponzi scheme that includes an enormous new source of tax revenue to the Canadian government to allow it to continue to expand into the private sector, demolishing thousands of high paying manufacturing jobs, the emergence of global governance, create a temple of dome which would lock in devastating disasters for our children’s generation, and a devastating transfer of wealth from wealth producers to wealth wasters.
    This tax increase and wealth transferring vehicle would immediately increase the costs of goods and services such as gasoline, electricity and a wide range of industrial products. The increase in the price of Canadian goods would make them less competitive. Canadian firms would suffer in export markets and domestically in competition with goods imported from countries that do not impose such a high implicit tax on CO2 emissions. There would no doubt be pressure to impose tariffs on imports from other countries that have lower carbon costs. Countervailing tariffs base on carbon content would hurt Canadian consumers, destroy thousands of jobs, and threaten our global trading system.
    Any candid, forthright genuine small-c fiscal conservative would verify that the “Cap, Tax & Transfer” tax system is nothing less that the extreme left’s new, socialistic approach to redistribute wealth from wealth producers to others. An ingenuous small-c fiscal conservative, contrasting our CINO PM, would divulge that the “Cap, Tax & Transfer” system is just another version of Trudeau’s National Energy Program which also was created to transfer wealth from the west.
    If Canada had a authentic, candid fiscal, social and judicial small-c conservative as PM, he would informed us that the climate has not changed in the last eleven years, that “Cap, Tax & transfer is a socialistic hoax to transfer wealth; therefore, he would not annihilate the Canadian economy just to please the left-wing extremists who insist on higher taxes wealth transfers. The first step must include a discussion pursuant to erroneous computer models which are based on bias assumptions and manipulated data.
    It is becoming transparent that the so-called “climate change” panic is nothing more than a hoax by the far-left wealth redistributing advocates, and the tax the rich crowd.

  36. We should print out Rex’s commentary and drop off copies of it in the lunch rooms at work, in the doctors offices, and leave copies in coffee shops and truck stops etc.
    The newspapers are trying to keep this from the people who aren’t news junkies or political junkies so leave copies of this and other good summaries laying around next to the old readers digests and where people will stumble across them.

  37. The MSM could somehow find time to talk about OJ Simpson, Micheal Jackson and everything in between.
    Totally corrupt, Lefties you need to clue in that you too are being bamboozled.

  38. Rex has never been a lock-step goosestepping leftie. I suspect his popularity with the centre right in this country is CBC’s token gesture to the 35% or more of Canadians that they consistently fail to represent. Funny, that. That one man is perceived capable of representing the views of 1/3 or the country’s population, while it takes dozens of frothing at the mouth leftists in the rest of the echo chamber to represent the rest of them says a lot about his influence.
    I agree, he should be given a considerably more responsible position at Mother Corpse, but it ain’t gonna happen.

  39. Lard tunderin’ Jesus ‘bye! Dat Murphy is tellin’ it like a good Newfie – dat dog don’t hunt!

  40. Better watch out Kate – the Sierra Club of Canada is asking for an investigation into the stolen material and is going after websites that are posting the emails etc. Go to http://www.sierraclub.ca/national/media/item.shtml?x=3020 to get their press release.
    I’m sure the massed forces of Small Dead Animals can help them see the error of their ways.
    Posted by: Maureen at December 4, 2009 5:30 PM
    Who is going after websites that are posting the emails etc., the Sierra Club of Canada ? Are they admitting they were part of a possible fraud? They new about a possible fraud and did not report it? What are they admitting to be a party too?

  41. Let this be just the first in a series of commentaries/investigations concerning the global warming scams. Next week I’d like Rex to talk about the world governance aspect of the proposed agreement at Copenhagen. State the names and the connections of the parties involved. – money and power at work again. Do NOT ignore the Maurice Strong behind the curtains.
    I’m sure others of you would have similar suggestions. Instead of showing Al Gore’s piece of trash AGAIN on the Canadian taxpayers’ broadcasting corporation , I would suggest giving Rex Murphy, A CANADIAN, the air time. The ratings would increase, no doubt.
    So much B.S. to fork through, and so little time. Keep at it Rex.

  42. It is becoming transparent that the so-called “climate change” panic is nothing more than a hoax by the far-left wealth redistributing advocates, and the tax the rich crowd.
    The only ‘redistribution’ carbon schemes will achieve is from the first world middle class to the global wealthy. This is why Power Corporation, Goldman Sachs and other bigwigs are onside with this scam. They will clean up big time.
    Maybe the left-wingers think this will create the socialist world order, they could not be more mistaken. The wealthy elites have entirely co-opted AGW to their advantage. The leftists are, once again, ‘useful idiots’ in promoting that scheme. The five or so billion people living in poverty won’t see anything ‘redistributed’ their way.
    And that’s why I don’t hold much hope our PM will go full-blast against AGW in Copenhagen. Ultimately governments do the bidding of the rich. Just look at ‘socialist’ Obama giving trillions in bailout cash to Wall Street while Main Street is being boarded up.
    The problem i have with many people, both on the right and the left, is that they confuse capitalism with the oligarchy of the elites. One strives for freedom, the other for power. The former will soon be crushed by the latter, and must be defended at all times.

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