Climategate: Ten Years After

It’s Officially the Tenth Anniversary of Climategate – and they’ve learned nothing

By Charles Rotter and Anthony Watts

From Charles:

It was ten years ago today that I personally first viewed the instructions to download the Climategate files from the anonymous Russian server. That set in motion a series of events still affecting the outcome of worldwide energy and environmental policy today. The whitewashers at the BBC, The Guardian, and elsewhere have started putting up their officially sanctioned narrative version, amounting to little more than nothing to see hear move along.

I wrote up my contemporaneous version of events here.

Anyone who wants to rebut claims of exoneration can use this Ross McKitrick paper for reference.

A couple of days ago we reposted Judith Curry’s excellent 10 year anniversary write up.

There’s little I can say that Dr. Curry does not touch upon, except for the fact that it is gratifying to see ideas we help disseminate echoing back to us via both traditional and social media.

At the time of the event, Patrick Courrielche did one of the best jobs covering it in the media.

His original three part series can be found here (part 1), here (part 2), and here (part 3)

Patrick also published an interview with Anthony Watts, Steve McIntyre, Steve Mosher, and myself earlier this year on his Redpilled America Podcast. It is excellent and worth a listen.

The Curry article is well worth the read.

From Anthony:

Coincidentally, 10 years ago today is not only the day that “Mr. FOI” released the files, it was (and is) WUWT’s birthday. On November 17th, 2006, I wrote my first post.

In November 2009, while Charles was holding the fort at WUWT and examining the emails left by “Mr FOI”, I was in Brussels at a climate skeptic conference being put on by Hans Lobohm.

I remember the first message I got from him: “You need to look at this!“. Then reading the emails, wide-eyed, and realizing I was about to go through security at the EU, I wondered about the timing….and told Charles that under no circumstances would we write anything about it or release it until I was back on U.S. soil. Then, after clearing customs at Dulles two days later, I sat down in the airport, and wrote the story, breaking the news on the 19th. I was literally the last person on the plane back to Sacramento, and in those days, WiFi on planes didn’t exist. So I was faced with over six hours of unknowing. Thoughts of “what have I done?” raced through my mind. See the “Red Pilled America” audio interview above for my personal recollections.

Luckily, James Delingpole picked up the story for his column, and it’s entry into the British newspaper The Telegraph started the chain reaction that made the story grow, becoming the “worst scientific scandal of our generation“.

Today, I look back, especially at the latest BBC “whitewash” of the issue, and I shake my head. These people, journos and climate scientists alike – have learned absolutely nothing. . . .

I was a catastrophic warming skeptic before Climategate, but Climategate crystallized my skepticism of the climate science cabal.