Posts Tagged ‘Climategate’
Friday, November 22nd, 2019
Another week of the impeachment farce, another week of an embarrassing nothingburger and bombing ratings for Democrats:
Week one impeachment farce summary: “None of those three witnesses were have met with the President, none of them were on the July 25th phone call, and none of them have firsthand information, and none of them are aware of any criminal activity or impeachable offense. In short, why are we here?” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
The so-called “Whistleblower” has no statutory right to anonymity.
The impeachment farce is boring American voters to sleep. (Hat tip: Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit.)
“Impeachment Inquiry Canceled After 5 Episodes Due To Low Ratings.”
How the impeachment farce has actually validated reports of Democrat skullduggery in Ukraine:
The half dozen seminal columns I published for The Hill on Ukraine were already supported by overwhelming documentation (all embedded in the story) and on-the-record interviews captured on video. They made three salient and simple points:
- Hunter Biden’s hiring by the Ukrainian gas firm Burisma Holdings, while it was under a corruption investigation, posed the appearance of a conflict of interest for his father. That’s because Vice President Joe Biden oversaw US-Ukraine policy and forced the firing of the Ukrainian prosecutor overseeing the case.
- Ukraine officials had an uneasy relationship with our embassy in Kiev because State Department officials exerted pressure on Ukraine prosecutors to drop certain cases against activists, including one group partly funded by George Soros.
- There were efforts around Ukraine in 2016 to influence the US election, that included a request from a DNC contractor for dirt on Manafort, an OpEd from Ukraine’s US ambassador slamming Trump and the release of law enforcement evidence by Ukrainian officials that a Ukraine court concluded was an improper interference in the US election.
All three of these points have since been validated by the sworn testimony of Schiff’s witnesses this month, starting with the Bidens.
(Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Schiff and Pelosi are racing two clocks: The narrative clock for dropping the Horowitz IG report into FISA, etc. abuse, and the judicial clock against three different court cases that might derail the farce. And since they just went into their Thanksgiving break, the House only has eight voting days in December to do it and pass a budget before leaving for the Christmas brealk.
“Former FBI lawyer under investigation after allegedly altering document in 2016 Russia probe.”
Trump is surging with suburban women, raking in more donations than any of the Democratic candidates.
Trump Administration to start enforcing new asylum rules by sending asylum-seekers back to Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
“[Democratic] Former Baltimore Mayor Pugh indicted on 11 counts of fraud, tax evasion in ‘Healthy Holly’ book scandal.” (You only have to get six paragraphs in to learn that Pugh is a Democrat. Progress!)
Federal prosecutors have charged former Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh with 11 counts of fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy in what they allege was a corrupt scheme involving her sales of a self-published children’s book series.
In a grand jury indictment made public Wednesday, prosecutors allege Pugh defrauded area businesses and nonprofit organizations with nearly $800,000 in sales of her “Healthy Holly” books to unlawfully enrich herself, promote her political career and illegally fund her campaign for mayor.
Though her customers ordered more than 100,000 copies of the books, the indictment says Pugh failed to print thousands of copies, double-sold others and took some to use for self-promotion. Pugh, 69, used the profits to buy a house, pay down debt, and make illegal straw donations to her campaign, prosecutors allege.
At the same time, prosecutors said, she was evading taxes. In 2016, for instance, when she was a state senator and ran for mayor, she told the Internal Revenue Service she had made just $31,000. In fact, her income was more than $322,000 that year ― meaning she shorted the federal government of about $100,000 in taxes, according to the U.S. attorney’s office.
The charges Pugh faces carry potential sentences totaling 175 years in prison. Prosecutors are seeking to seize $769,688 of her profits, along with her current home in Ashburton, which they allege she bought and renovated with fraudulently obtained funds.
Uncle Sam is not omniscient, but if you’re a public official and you’re taking in ten times as much money as you declare, yeah, I bet they’re gonna figure that one out, Crooked Kathy.
(Hat tip: Dwight.)
Speaking of Democratic Party mayors being indicted, Mayors Against Illegal Guns member Dennis Tyler, mayor of Muncie, Indiana, was arrested by the FBI as part of a corruption probe. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
More background on corruption in Muncie.
Last January, former Muncie Building Commissioner Craig Nichols pleaded guilty to wire fraud and money laundering. He was sentenced to two years in federal prison.
Others charged in the federal corruption probe include Muncie Sanitary District Administrator Debra Nicole Grigsby, Muncie Sanitary District official Tracy Barton; and local businessmen Jeffrey Burke, Tony Franklin and Rodney A. Barber.
(Hat tip: Dwight.)
The U.S. just extradited a top Russian cybercriminal from Israel.
The Russian government has for the past four years been fighting to keep 29-year-old alleged cybercriminal Alexei Burkov from being extradited by Israel to the United States. When Israeli authorities turned down requests to send him back to Russia — supposedly to face separate hacking charges there — the Russians then imprisoned an Israeli woman for seven years on trumped-up drug charges in a bid to trade prisoners. That effort failed as well, and Burkov had his first appearance in a U.S. court last week. What follows are some clues that might explain why the Russians are so eager to reclaim this young man.
On the surface, the charges the U.S. government has leveled against Burkov may seem fairly unremarkable: Prosecutors say he ran a credit card fraud forum called CardPlanet that sold more than 150,000 stolen cards.
However, a deep dive into the various pseudonyms allegedly used by Burkov suggests this individual may be one of the most connected and skilled malicious hackers ever apprehended by U.S. authorities, and that the Russian government is probably concerned that he simply knows too much.
There seem to be very few elite Russian hacking organizations Burkov, AKA “K0pa,” didn’t have a key administrative role in.
Speaking of hacking: “Ghost ships, crop circles, and soft gold: A GPS mystery in Shanghai.” Somebody in Shanghai has been spoofing GPS signals to make ships (and anything else using GPS) appear they’re someplace else, and GPS experts don’t understand how they’re doing it. (Hat tip: Borepatch.)
China is stealing our secrets from inside our own government:
Foreign-born researchers working at U.S. agencies secretly joined China’s payroll, sending sensitive U.S.-funded research to the country while U.S. government agencies took almost no defensive measures against a major recruitment operation, a Senate investigation found.
Researchers linked to the Chinese government formed a Chinese cell within the Department of Energy, attained access to American genomic data, and recruited other U.S. researchers to join, the bipartisan report stated.
China’s Thousand Talents Plan (TTP) aims to get foreign governments to finance the communist power’s military and economy by buying off researchers who are doing work abroad. The experts apply to the program, and if approved by the Communist Party, they join China’s payroll and sign secret side agreements that the experts will share their research with that country, according to the investigation.
China’s looming class struggle. As always, the proletariat get screwed by communism…
The Clinton Foundation suffered a $16.8 million loss in 2018. It’s a great mystery how that could have happened…
The upcoming UK election is no longer an election about Brexit, it’s an election about how incredibly unpopular Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is. UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson enjoys a mere plus 4% favorability rating. Corbyn has a minus 43% favorability rating. “This election is no longer primarily about Brexit, it’s primarily about Corbyn and his extreme socialist policies! Corbyn is rightfully getting clobbered.”
Snipers kill protestors in Iran.
The sudden move by the oil-rich regime to ration gasoline and hike fuel prices is a direct result of President Donald Trump’s strategy of “maximum pressure” against Tehran. While the regime thrived under the Obama administration, which handed billions of dollars to Tehran for signing the nuclear deal, the current administration has reinstated stiff sanctions against the ruling Mullahs.
After President Trump withdrew the U.S. from the 2015 deal, the sanctions have crippled Iran’s state-run oil, shipping, and banking sectors. The U.S. government implemented the sanctions against the regime’s top brass and the IRGC, which controls critical sectors of the Iranian economy.
“Reuters Deletes Story Meant to Make Trump Look Bad After Realizing it Made Obama Look Bad.” The Ministry of Truth confirms that this story has been rectified.
“Google Is Blacklisting Conservative News Sites, Despite Denials Made Under Oath.”
Trump appointment flips the 11th circuit court, which covers Florida, Georgia and Alabama.
Jeffrey Epstein evidently had cameras in every bedroom…and every toilet. Makes the “honeypot for blackmail” idea seem all the more likely…
The MSM doesn’t trust you to handle the truth.
Woke Charlie’s Angels is the latest box office disaster.
“Call us old-fashioned, but we don’t think the chairman of the Homeland Security committee should fly cocaine from the Mexican border into the interior.”
How NBA executive Jeff David stole over $13 million from the Sacramento Kings. That amount of money will get people’s attention…(Hat tip: Dwight.)
Climategate refresher.
Heh:
Florida Man, meet Wisconsin Man: “Man arrested for 4th OWI, fake license plates made of cardboard beer case.”
“Democrat Finally Releases Something Of Substance.”
Tags:Adam Schiff, Alexei Burkov, Baltimore, Border Controls, Boris Johnson, Brexit, Catherine Pugh, China, Climategate, Communism, corruption, Crime, data security, Debra Nicole Grigsby, Democrats, Dennis Tyler, Donald Trump, El Salvador, Eric Swalwell, FBI, Florida, Foreign Policy, Global Warming, Google, GPS, Greta Thunberg, Guata, Guatemala, hacking, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton Scandals, Hollywood, Honduras, Hunter Biden, impeachment, Indiana, Iran, IRS, Israel, Jeffrey Burke, Jeffrey Epstein, Jeremy Corbyn, Jihad, Joe Biden, LinkSwarm, Luke Rosiak, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, Media Watch, Military, Muncie, Nancy Pelosi, NBA, Poncho Nevarez, Reuters, Russia, Shanghai, Social Justice Warriors, spying, Supreme Court, technology, Texas, Tracy Barton, UK, Ukraine, Wisconsin
Posted in Border Control, Communism, Crime, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Jihad, Media Watch, Military, Social Justice Warriors, Supreme Court, Texas, Waste and Fraud | 1 Comment »
Monday, April 19th, 2010
Between finishing my taxes and the House District 52 race, I’ve had precious little time to post updates on other issues, but despite my personal lacunae interesting developments in Climategate have been bubbling right along.
This piece in the Telegraph does a good job of covering some of the further revelations. One of the more interesting points:
“The first report centred directly on the IPCC itself. When several of the more alarmist claims in its most recent 2007 report were revealed to be wrong and without any scientific foundation, the official response, not least from the IPCC’s chairman, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, was to claim that everything in its report was ‘peer-reviewed’, having been confirmed by independent experts.
“But a new study put this claim to the test. A team of 40 researchers from 12 countries, led by a Canadian analyst Donna Laframboise, checked out every one of the 18,531 scientific sources cited in the mammoth 2007 report. Astonishingly, they found that nearly a third of them – 5,587 – were not peer-reviewed at all, but came from newspaper articles, student theses, even propaganda leaflets and press releases put out by green activists and lobby groups.”
And who would you get to provide an objective, disinterested analysis of IPCC claims? Why, obviously “chair of Falck Renewables, a firm that has wind farms across Europe, and chair of the Carbon Capture and Storage Association, ‘a lobby group which argues that carbon capture could become a $1 trillion industry by 2050.'” Who else? That’s like asking G. Gordon Liddy to perform a dispassionate, objective analysis of Watergate.
You would think that Climategate, the failure of the last “cap and trade” bill, the deep unpopularity of ObamaCare, and the continued poor jobs situation would conspire to prevent Democrats from pushing a huge, job-killing, tax-and-spend global warming bill. You would be wrong. Under the bipartisan fig-leaf of the ever more RINO-ish Lindsey Graham, Harry Reid and company are getting ready to unveil Cap-and-Trade Junior. And they plan to do it in secret, without all those messy public committee meetings. There doesn’t seem to be any limit to how low congressional Democrats are willing to drive their poll numbers in order to get the government’s fingers into as many economic pies as possible before the reckoning comes in November.
The battle over cap-and-trade, and Climategate, is far from over. If you know anyone in South Carolina, they should be ringing Graham’s phone off the hook to oppose this. Speaking of which, here’s the contact information for Graham’s offices off his official website:
Washington Office
290 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Main: (202) 224-5972
Upstate Regional Office
130 South Main St.
7th Floor
Greenville, SC 29601
Main: (864) 250-1417
Midlands Regional Office
508 Hampton Street
Suite 202
Columbia, SC 29201
Main: (803) 933-0112
Pee Dee Regional Office
McMillan Federal Building
401 West Evans Street, Suite 226B
Florence, SC 29501
Main: (843) 669-1505
Lowcountry Regional Office
530 Johnnie Dodds Boulevard, Suite 202
Mt. Pleasant, SC 29464
Main: (843) 849-3887
Piedmont Regional Office
140 East Main Street, Suite 110
Rock Hill, SC 29730
Main: (803) 366-2828
Golden Corner Regional Office
124 Exchange Street
Pendleton, SC 29678
Main: (864) 646-4090
Here’s the email form: http://lgraham.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Contact.EmailSenatorGraham.
Tags:Anthropogenic Global Warming, Climategate, Global Warming, IPCC, Lindsey Graham, peer review, Rajendra Pachauri
Posted in Global Warming | 1 Comment »
Monday, January 4th, 2010
Interesting piece on Climategate by former National Hurricane Center Director (and former KHOU meteorologist) Neil Frank.
Some have asked why people like myself pay attention to critics of Anthropogenic Global Warming, rather than the “(insert random percentage between 75 and 99 here) of scientists that agree with it.” To which it is important to provide a few points of perspective:
- We don’t know what percentage of the relevant scientific community actually supports the AGW consensus, and to what degree, because the pro-AGW crowd is the only one that’s been doing the counting.
- Some scientists previously counted on as holding the AGW consensus have changed their mind, complaining that the process has become politicized and that their research has been distorted.
- The number of scientists dissenting against the AGW consensus continues to grow. Here, for example, are some 700 scientists that disagree with the AGW consensus.
- Many scientists have been questioning the AGW consensus almost from the beginning.
- It’s a lot easier to forge consensus when questioning AGW, or producing results that refute it, can kill your career.
- Ever since ClimateGate information started leaking out, it’s become more apparent that a significant percentage of that consensus was maintained via data manipulation, suppression of dissent, and outright fraud.
- Even if a majority of climate scientists support AGW, that would not ipso facto prove the AGW case; science relies on empirical data, not popular votes.
- That also raises the question: Who do you call a “climate scientist”? Meteorologist? Oceanographers? How about experts in Botany to talk about tree rings, one of the central issues of the Climategate scandal?
- Finally, climate studies are in their relative infancy. To make far-reaching changes to economies and society, in essence giving up on economic growth in order to hand over vast tax and regulation powers to unelected bureaucratic elites, based on computer climate models that, in some cases, date back to 1981 (or earlier) is sheer folly.
In light of that, Frank’s commentary points out that there are many more AGW-skeptics than the media wants to report on:
But who are the skeptics? A few examples reveal that they are numerous and well-qualified. Several years ago two scientists at the University of Oregon became so concerned about the overemphasis on man-made global warming that they put a statement on their Web site and asked for people’s endorsement; 32,000 have signed the petition, including more than 9,000 Ph.Ds. More than 700 scientists have endorsed a 231-page Senate minority report that questions man-made global warming. The Heartland Institute has recently sponsored three international meetings for skeptics. More than 800 scientists heard 80 presentations in March. They endorsed an 881-page document, created by 40 authors with outstanding academic credentials, that challenges the most recent publication by the IPCC. The IPCC panel’s report strongly concludes that man is causing global warming through the release of carbon dioxide.
In short: many critics of Anthropogenic Global Warming aren’t just a few Internet cranks, they’re thousands of well-trained scientists with expertise in areas related to climate change, and whose only point of agreement is that there are too many questions about it to throw trillions of dollars at the problem without determining whether it’s real or not. Calling them all “deniers” is pure argumentum ad hominem.
Tags:Anthropogenic Global Warming, Climate Change, Climategate, Global Warming
Posted in Global Warming | No Comments »
Monday, December 21st, 2009
Here are the authors of a study critical of the consensus AGW narrative which the leaked CRU letters talk about how to suppress. The letters discuss how to stack peer reviewers in favor of AGW and against dissenters, and how to bypass the normal peer review cycle to cram a response in immediately after the critical paper.
Hint: this is not the way disinterested science is supposed to work.
Tags:Climategate, CRU, fraud, Global Warming
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Wednesday, December 16th, 2009
According to this report CRU “probably tampered with Russian-climate data.”
It goes on:
“Analysts say Russian meteorological stations cover most of the country’s territory, and that the Hadley Center had used data submitted by only 25% of such stations in its reports. Over 40% of Russian territory was not included in global-temperature calculations for some other reasons, rather than the lack of meteorological stations and observations.
“The data of stations located in areas not listed in the Hadley Climate Research Unit Temperature UK (HadCRUT) survey often does not show any substantial warming in the late 20th century and the early 21st century.”
The deeper people look into the data, the more data manipulation they find. Insert your own “tip of the iceberg” joke here.
Tags:Anthropogenic Global Warming, Climategate, Global Warming, Russia
Posted in Global Warming | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, December 9th, 2009
Today’s example of CRU cherry=picking and flat-out changing data that didn’t show man-made global warming comes from Willis Eschenbach at Watts Up With That?. It turns out that what some climate scientists call “homogenizing” data, the rest of us would call “lying.”
One thing is clear from this. People who say that “Climategate was only about scientists behaving badly, but the data is OK” are wrong. At least one part of the data is bad, too. The Smoking Gun for that statement is at Darwin Zero.
So once again, I’m left with an unsolved mystery. How and why did the GHCN “adjust” Darwin’s historical temperature to show radical warming? Why did they adjust it stepwise? Do Phil Jones and the CRU folks use the “adjusted” or the raw GHCN dataset? My guess is the adjusted one since it shows warming, but of course we still don’t know … because despite all of this, the CRU still hasn’t released the list of data that they actually use, just the station list.
Another odd fact, the GHCN adjusted Station 1 to match Darwin Zero’s strange adjustment, but they left Station 2 (which covers much of the same period, and as per Fig. 5 is in excellent agreement with Station Zero and Station 1) totally untouched. They only homogenized two of the three. Then they averaged them.
That way, you get an average that looks kinda real, I guess, it “hides the decline”.
Oh, and for what it’s worth, care to know the way that GISS deals with this problem? Well, they only use the Darwin data after 1963, a fine way of neatly avoiding the question … and also a fine way to throw away all of the inconveniently colder data prior to 1941. It’s likely a better choice than the GHCN monstrosity, but it’s a hard one to justify.
Now, I want to be clear here. The blatantly bogus GHCN adjustment for this one station does NOT mean that the earth is not warming. It also does NOT mean that the three records (CRU, GISS, and GHCN) are generally wrong either. This may be an isolated incident, we don’t know. But every time the data gets revised and homogenized, the trends keep increasing. Now GISS does their own adjustments. However, as they keep telling us, they get the same answer as GHCN gets … which makes their numbers suspicious as well.
And CRU? Who knows what they use? We’re still waiting on that one, no data yet …
What this does show is that there is at least one temperature station where the trend has been artificially increased to give a false warming where the raw data shows cooling. In addition, the average raw data for Northern Australia is quite different from the adjusted, so there must be a number of … mmm … let me say “interesting” adjustments in Northern Australia other than just Darwin.
And with the Latin saying “Falsus in unum, falsus in omis” (false in one, false in all) as our guide, until all of the station “adjustments” are examined, adjustments of CRU, GHCN, and GISS alike, we can’t trust anyone using homogenized numbers.
(Hat tip: The Volokh Conspiracy.)
Tags:Climategate, CRU, data manipulation, Global Warming
Posted in Global Warming, Uncategorized | No Comments »
Monday, December 7th, 2009
This story in the Telegraph shows what astonishing lengths the Climatic Research Unit in East Anglia went to in order to eliminate the Medieval Warm Period from climate records. In particular, Global Warming proponents have thrown out a vast host of other proxy measurements, and now want to us put vast swathes of our economy under government control based on evidence from a single tree from the Yamal Peninsula in Siberia. (As an added irony, they’ve had to ignore all the other trees from that region, because they all show the Medieval Warm Period being much hotter than today.)
Read the whole thing. (Hat tip to Roger Simon).
Tags:Climategate, CRU, fraud, Global Warming
Posted in Global Warming | No Comments »
Sunday, December 6th, 2009
Lots and lots of people have been going through the CRU material mentioned before.
Here’s a rather extensive analysis by Marc Sheppard over at American Thinker as to why the “nothing to see here” line on the various hacks and tricks mentioned therein don’t hold water. if I’m reading it correctly, and the analysis is correct, then at least half of the 20th century warming trend (and all after about 1998) are the results not of solid science, but of various hacks to skew the data.
By all means, let’s get better data on the climate. But we’d be insane to cripple our economy through meaningless treaties like Kyoto and Copenhagen based on blatantly manipulated data pushed by people with a post-national agenda of higher taxes, bigger government, and control of vast swatches of the world economy by unelected international bureaucratic elites.
Tags:Climategate, data manipulation, Global Warming, Marc Sheppard
Posted in Foreign Policy, Global Warming | No Comments »
Tuesday, November 24th, 2009
Once again, Iowahawk proves he’s the web’s reigning satire master.
“The Alpha Grantwriter in our hive has been very successful indeed. He has earned three publications, a keynote address, and attracts the attention of a suitor from the symbiotic grant-giving predator genus Lucra Ecologica Hysterica. The suitor’s grant bags are bulging with carbon credits and tax revenues harvested using the hive’s last graphs, and the pair once again engage in their annual cross-pollination ritual. They relax with a cigarette, and return to their respective hives: the Grantwriter with fresh money, the Grantgiver to Washington or Brussels with new carbon tax proposals. The circle of life is completed.”
Tags:Climategate, Global Warming, Iowahawk, Satire
Posted in Global Warming, Uncategorized | No Comments »