CRU Cut

"CRU" stands for Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University in England which has been the wellspring of much of the "research" done on global warming. Recently, its computers were hacked by party or parties unknown and 156 megabytes if embarrassing information (e-mails and computer programs among others) were posted on a Russian server. At first, there was much focus on the e-mails (see: UK Telegraph) which displayed a decidedly non-scientific approach to this subject ... exhibiting hubris, obfuscation, mendacity, and cold-heartedness. But soon thereafter, more damaging information came to light as people started sifting through the programmer's code comments (see: Climategate).

Now, having been painted into a corner, the CRU critters have decided to make public the data that was used to arrive at their world-wrenching conclusions about man-made global warming. They should also come clean on any and all of the processes they used to arrive at their results along with the statistical details of their regression models (goodness of fit measures, etc.). We should then see if their results are reproducible by acolytes and skeptics alike. I personally think that there are a lot more things that make the world's temperature go up and down ... many, I believe, much more consequential than CO2. The fact that "man-made" CO2 has become the political focus of the "climate-change" worrywarts is, I believe, another "Madness of Crowds" canard. Man, as it turns out, has a very small effect on CO2 levels ... see this rather old but revealing reference: Man's Effect)

These revelations have hopefully brought about a hiatus ... one that should cause us all to step away from the groupthink that now prevails and which has carried the world's political lemmings to dangerous economic conclusions ... until such time as we know better scientific truths (if in our lifetimes).