On November the 19th 2009, the first batch of emails and other files hacked from the University of East Anglia’s (Climatic Research Unit) servers were distributed across the internet from a server in Russia. Climategate – a term first suggested by a commenter at WUWT and subsequently popularised by James Delingpole – was born and has refused to die ever since, much to the annoyance of the climate consensus establishment. They’ve attempted on a number of occasions to exonerate those involved and to remove the lingering stains which Climategate left when climate scientists’ dirty linen got aired in public. With limited success. The main reason being – the emails speak for themselves.

I remember November 19th very clearly, not because of Climategate, but because my beloved German Shepherd dog Jade, rescued by my family from Battersea Dogs Home in 1998, then rescued by yours truly from my then fractured family home in 2000, passed away. I had no idea of the momentous events taking place across the internet, nor would I have even cared. I was not even a climate change sceptic who would have celebrated the revelations of such poor behaviour among climate scientists.

But here we are 10 years later and I predict the Final Push from the man-made climate change establishment. I predict a huge concerted, coordinated and exhaustive attempt to finally exorcise the ghost which has bedevilled the consensus climate establishment ever since that fateful day. I predict a huge media-focused whitewash exercise aimed at finally dispelling the notion that climate scientists could ever be involved in such shady practices as attempting to conceal data, falsify data, massage data, in order to exaggerate man-made global warming.

They will say that, if there was ever any doubt in 2009 about the seriousness of the climate crisis, there is absolutely no doubt whatsoever now. ‘Deniers’ then might have successfully exploited a few illegally obtained emails to sow doubt, but they cannot do the same now. The evidence is ‘overwhelming’ and the need to act is more urgent than ever. So we should all now stop raking over the long dead coals of Climategate and get on with saving the planet – they will say.

The BBC will soon be airing a program where they interviewed Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick and (of course) Michael Mann. They cut McKitrick’s contribution to the programme entirely and we shall have to wait and see how much they edited McIntyre’s. My guess is that the whole thing will be hugely biased and ultimately dismissive of Climategate. Like this Guardian article which paints the whole episode as some sort of fossil fuel conspiracy to delay action on climate change:

Note also that since Climategate we have had eight of the warmest years on record; carbon dioxide emissions have continued to rise inexorably; and Arctic sea ice levels in summer have reached record lows over the past decade. Occurrences of heavy rainfall and heatwaves have also increased dramatically. The world has continued to heat up dangerously. Yet humanity has done very little to tackle the crisis.

Climate crisis fanatics will use this 10th anniversary of Climategate to try and finally lay to rest the ghosts of the Jones/Briffa/Osborn/Hulme emails which have haunted establishment climate science for so long. We shouldn’t let them. Let’s make sure the buggers keep getting haunted and then get haunted some more because the ‘science’ which underpins the current alarm is still the same ‘science’ which the climategate conspirators deliberately tried to exaggerate for political and/or personal gain 10 years ago. It hasn’t moved an inch in that time, just accumulated more layers of mainly BS.