University of East Anglia spent £112,870 on 'climategate' PR

Editor's Note:  Notice how the Guardian fails to mention the release of the 2nd batch of emails which put to bed the notion that the first batch of emails were "wild accusations from cherry-picked statements taken out of context."   Also not mentioned but painfully obvious:  A scientific body should not have to resort to using a P.R. firm to sell its science.  The science should speak for itself.  The notion that East Anglia needed to hire a P.R. firm suggests that the information they have presented is indeed suspect.

The Guardian

University forced to reveal how much it paid the Outside Organisation in wake of hacked emails furore

Public relations is an uncertain science. There are some widely agreed ground rules – be on top of the facts, be proactive, etc – but each event or crisis also demands a uniquely tailored response.

The University of East Anglia (UEA) found itself in just such a PR "hole" in November 2009 when thousands of private emails exchanged between climate scientists were dumped online in an incident that became known as "Climategate". In the following months, the university and its scientists became the focus of an international maelstrom with all sorts of wild accusations and claims were being made against them, particularly online. It was exactly the sort of situation that required expert and sustained handling by PR professionals.

In the days and weeks after the email release, the university's in-house press department was criticised for not reacting harder and faster to the storm enveloping them. The accusation was that they were actually making the situation far worse by largely refusing to comment, or, more importantly, putting any of the scientists up for interview so that they could defend themselves against any accusations by contextualising and explaining their emails which were being cherry-picked for damning isolated quotes.

But something changed in February 2010. Suddenly, key scientists were now being offered up for interview. The "fight back" had begun, just as a wave of enquiries into the affair were getting under way. It has since transpired that UEA had at this point finally decided to hire the services of an external PR consultancy called the Outside Organisation, the managing director of which, Neil Wallis, has since been arrested and bailed without charge as part of the on-going police investigation into phone hacking due to his former role as deputy editor of the News of the World.

Environmental Advocates Use Racism to Dismiss Global Warming Skeptics

Reduced to desperate measures, proponents of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) have resorted to formally identifying those who are skeptical of the global warming science as conservative white males.  

One inherent shortfall of the study is that it inadvertently celebrates the intelligence of conservative white males and denigrates every other race, gender and political background (including my own). 

Recently, mainstream media began the slow, tacit admission that global warming hasn't manifested in the way it was so definitively predicted 10 years ago.   This admission was presented last month through a recent study suggesting that Çhina's sulfur emissions were to blame for the lack of global warming.   Blaming China wasn't enough, so scientists scrambled to present the following two additional excuses for the foiled predictions of the past 10 years:

Volcanoes Now Blamed for Lack of Global Warming

Aerosols Blamed for Lack of Global Warming

Ironically, the aerosols article also blames the burning of fossil fuels for offsetting the effect of global warming.  Fossil fuels were initially blamed for global warming.

To understand how a group pushing human induced climate change could be reduced to conducting such a bizarre survey involving the socio-economic class of those who question the science of AGW, one has to look at the way they handle adverse information.

On a local level, anyone can make this discovery for themselves.  For example, If you have a group of environmentalists in your area that refer to global warming as one of the reasons for great ideas like localization, cleaning up the eco-sphere or reducing automobile exhaust, introduce some of the contradictory information involving climate change and see how they react to you. Pay close attention to the way they try to dismiss you or shape the argument away from what you present in support of recent conventional climate research. See if they actually answer your questions or address the specific points you present. Turning over this rock may involve an ugly discovery underneath.

An article describing this study indicates a comparison between conservative white males and the rest of the population.  Race, gender and political affiliation aside, the survey comes up with 39% "denying there's a scientific consensus".  White male conservatives boast a portion that is as high as 59%.  Not only does the scientific consensus of global warming have nothing to do with the science of global warming, the AGW movement is notorious for suppressing skeptical scientists.   The question should be, "Who is aware of the skeptical scientists being suppressed?"

The AGW climate scientists' tendency to suppress alternate views was revealed earlier through the hacked emails of the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU).  Suppression was one red flag in addition to suggestions for "hiding the decline" of global temperatures and refusing requests to see the original data. 

Since this incident occurred in November of 2009, East Anglia's CRU hired a PR firm to help with their public image after the email scandal.  This is an unusual move by a research department because the science is expected to hold up to public scrutiny on its own.

In what is commonly called the "third party technique" among PR professionals, panels were put together on three occasions to examine the hacked emails.  The idea was to reassure the public that the inquiry was indeed independent and trustworthy.  All three "blue ribbon panels" exonerated East Anglia's CRU by downplaying the erroneous activity and declaring that none of the relevant data was affected.   Unfortunately for East Anglia, it appears that their PR department had a hand in this process.

Common sense would have the AGW movement take its blows, distance itself from the scientists involved with East Anglia, and allow newer cleaner research to emerge.  Instead, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change seemed hell bent on protecting the research called into question with the hacked emails. 

For some reason, the AGW movement thought that the best tactics were to further corrupt the peer review process, 'conspiracy bait' those who question the severity of CO2's warming effects and chime together with the mantra of "scientific consensus".   In the short run, this strategy seemed to work, especially when the establishment joins in with the motivation of another market bubble - carbon derivative scams.  Banks love human-driven climate change.  Anthropogenic global warming enjoys the privilege of mainstream acceptance.   When contradictory information slips by, the story is typically interspersed with statements reaffirming "the reality of anthropogenic global warming".  Sometimes, the information is revealed in such a vague manner, one begins to wonder what the initial purpose of the story was supposed to be. 

But the recent avalanche of contradictory information and discrediting scandals seem to be overwhelming the self aggrandizing orthodoxy that is AGW.