Marc Ambinder Wishes Governor Palin and Climategate Would Go Away

Governor Palin's op-ed in today's Washington Post in which she discusses the anthropogenic global warming scam has had a predictable and hilarious effect. The odd assortment of left-wing nuts who, for a variety of self-serving reasons, continue to promulgate the AGW fraud, have been whipped into a hysterical frenzy by the supposedly irrelevant Governor Palin. Some moron by the name of Art Brodsky, a so-called "writer" for the wacky internet tabloid Huffington Post, has questioned Palin's right to even publish the op-ed.

Not to be outdone, Marc Ambinder of the once credible Atlantic, immediately wrote a remarkably obtuse hit piece in which he trumpeted most, if not all, of the excuses for embracing the AGW hoax despite the fact that the science is, at best, unproven (I'm being charitable). The left wing loons at the Atlantic seem to have a lot invested in the AGW scam because they react frantically whenever Palin addresses the issue, even if indirectly. Last summer, when Governor Palin wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post addressing the left's economy-killing "response" to global warming, cap and tax, the Atlantic's Conor Clarke was compelled to rush a hit piece onto the Atlantic's website which was noteworthy for being both frenetic and pedestrian. Rob Harrison masterfully demolished Clarke's piece here. The Atlantic is also home to the truly disturbed AGW believer, Andrew Sullivan, whose steady descent into insanity has been quite a spectacle to behold. Clearly, for some reason (ignore the oxymoronic nature of the words "reason" and "Atlantic" being in the same sentence) the Atlantic has a stake in the promotion of the global warming scam.

Ambinder begins his piece with a similar stance to the HuffPo, lamenting the fact that she was allowed to publish the op-ed in the first place:

Once again, the Washington Post has given Sarah Palin the chance to harness herself to the political story of the hour.

This ridiculous contention, also promulgated in the HuffPo piece, is profoundly ludicrous. In essence, what they are saying is that the former Vice-Presidential candidate, Governor of Alaska, chair of the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission, chair of the National Governors Association (NGA) Natural Resources Committee, and head of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, doesn't have the right to publish an op-ed on energy related public policy.

Think about that for a moment.

The only justification for such an absurd claim is that they are scared to death of how effectively she has lead the opposition to Obama and his plans. This morning, Pamela Gellar at Atlas Shrugs said it best:

The woman is singular. She takes on all comers. Obama must want to go Chicago gangsta on her. He is planning something. Watch. She is sooooooooooooo on to him.

Check out her editorial in the Washington Post on Climategate and Obama's war on America. She has more testicular fortitude than all of the GOP. The left wets their pants at the mere mention of her name.

The Atlantic's writers want to muzzle her because they are afraid that, given her increasing popularity, her open rejection of the AGW scam and common sense approach to the nation's energy problems will resonate with the American people. A contrived "problem" like AGW simply can't hold up to public scrutiny. To have an immensely popular public figure like Governor Palin shining such a bright light on the Climategate scandal will accelerate the demise of the AGW theory as its proponents head for the exits, seeking cover like cockroaches when a light is turned on in a dark warehouse.

Ambinder next tries to deflect attention from the scandal, in true Barbara Boxer fashion, by changing the subject to the manner in which the scandal came to light:

Remember, the "revelation" was born from an potentially illegal e-mail hack.

This is a convenient priority. I guess if one doesn't like the message, shooting the messenger is the best option. We need to be more concerned with how the emails were exposed than what is contained within them. Ambinder wistfully wishes a judge, as if this were a courtroom, could declare the emails out of bounds and therefore, we can go back to the pre-Climategate world. I wonder if Ambinder was equally concerned when the son of a Democrat hack in Tennessee hacked into Governor Palin's private emails during the 2008 campaign. Ambinder next attempts, unsuccessfully, to minimize the damning evidence of data manipulation contained in the emails:

For a sensible take on what the e-mails actually show, see here A few quick points: some of the e-mails discuss deleting data; there are investigations underway to determine whether data was deleted; there is no evidence that data was manipulated, aside from words deliberately taken out of context, like "trick" and "contain".

Ambinder is basically making the claim that there is "no evidence" that data has been manipulated. This is, of course, rubbish. Ed Morrissey at Hot Air has a post today in which he links to a story by Willis Eschenbach who methodically looks at the extent to which the data has been manipulated by AGW enthusiasts. Eschenbach's story is very well researched and contains numerous graphs and tables to support his thesis. I will post two of his graphs here, along with Eschenbach's explanation of the graphs:

Figure 7. GHCN homogeneity adjustments to Darwin Airport combined record

YIKES! Before getting homogenized, temperatures in Darwin were falling at 0.7 Celcius per century … but after the homogenization, they were warming at 1.2 Celcius per century. And the adjustment that they made was over two degrees per century … when those guys “adjust”, they don’t mess around. And the adjustment is an odd shape, with the adjustment first going stepwise, then climbing roughly to stop at 2.4C.


Figure 8 Darwin Zero Homogeneity Adjustments. Black line shows amount and timing of adjustments.

Yikes again, double yikes! What on earth justifies that adjustment? How can they do that? We have five different records covering Darwin from 1941 on. They all agree almost exactly. Why adjust them at all? They’ve just added a huge artificial totally imaginary trend to the last half of the raw data! Now it looks like the IPCC diagram in Figure 1, all right … but a six degree per century trend? And in the shape of a regular stepped pyramid climbing to heaven? What’s up with that?

Those, dear friends, are the clumsy fingerprints of someone messing with the data Egyptian style … they are indisputable evidence that the “homogenized” data has been changed to fit someone’s preconceptions about whether the earth is warming.

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.

Oops. I guess Ambinder didn't see that. Read Eschenbach's entire article here. It's excellent. When Ambinder claims that data is not being manipulated, I have to assume he is well on his way to the same institution as his colleague, Andrew Sullivan. Ambinder finishes his piece with the usual nonsense promulgated by Al Gore and his fellow travelers, such as AGW is "settled science", that there is no evidence that cap and tax will destroy the economy or raise energy prices through the roof, etc., etc. These demonstrably false talking points have been destroyed in numerous posts in the past. For just a few examples, go here, here, here, and here. Governor Palin is right and they're wrong, and it drives them crazy.