It's just not the IPCC's month. Now, on top of Pachaurigate and Glaciergate, the original Climategate scandal has finally exploded underneath the crimatologists at the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit. In a shocking rebuke of the key scientsts behind the IPCC 'peer-reviewed' assessment of the dangers of manmade climate change, the UK Information Commissioner ruled yesterday that the group of scientists known as 'the hockey team' had broken Freedom of Information laws by conspiring to ignore legitimate requests for information and even conspiring to delete key emails and correspondence so they could never be assessed. The decision comes as no surprise to those who have been following the scandal since it broke. Given that the authenticity of the leaked emails themselves has never been in doubt, it was an open and shut case to find criminal conspiracy in emails such as this one from chief crimatologist Phil Jones to some of his closest collaborators: Mike,

Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith will do likewise. He's not in at the moment - minor family crisis.



Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don't have his new email address.



We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.



I see that CA claim they discovered the 1945 problem in the Nature paper!!



Cheers

Phil Or this one from Phil Jones to chief cohort Michael Mann in 2005 about Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, two researchers who had a well-known problem getting basic data out of the CRU: The two MMs have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I'll delete the file rather than send to anyone. Does your similar act in the US force you to respond to enquiries within 20 days? - our does [sic]! The UK works on precedents, so the first request will test it. We also have a data protection act, which I will hide behind. The illegal activity will not be pursued criminally, however, because of a statute of limitations on Freedom of Information request violations. Although a mere technicality, this does raise the rather Kafkaesque question of how the afflicted parties were supposed to have shown grounds for appeal of the hockey team's initial denials (let alone criminal activity in conspiring to deny the requests) before the Climategate emails were leaked. Give the pre-Climategate mentality—where those who suspected criminal conspiracy amongst the crimatologists were often compared to flat-earthers, it is almost inconceivable that complaints to the Information Commissioner would have been given serious consideration, especially given the crimatologists' own admissions that they had gotten advice from none other than the Information Commissioner on how to avoid dealing with FOI requests. But while this ruling will not result in criminal conviction, it certainly will further expose the alarmist machine that has been working desperately to downplay this criminal activity. Scientific American (henceforth known as SCAM) has just released an article claiming that the Climategate emails exposed nothing other than "how science is actually done," putting the venerable publication in the awkward position of arguing that breaking the law in a mad quest to keep data out of the hands of dissenting scientists is a routine part of the scientific method. Sadly, such reasoning is par for the course in publications that have thrown their lot in with a group of criminals who are threatening the name of science itself with their insane behaviour. ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW

Perhaps the most hopeful sign to emerge from this is that the truth will out, especially when an informed online community does an end run around the dinosaurs of the establishment media to get that truth to the people. All of the publications one would have expected to defend the indefensible did so right from the start of the Climategate scandal, from the BBC to The Guardian to The New York Times to Nature. Now, each of them have egg on their faces as the scandal they dismissed as a "tempest in a teapot" is in fact evidence of criminal activity...as the alternative media has pointed out all along. Scandals like this are exactly why the establishment media is hemorrhaging readers and viewers by the day while the alternative online media is exploding across the board. From Watts Up With That? to Climate Audit to to Climategate.tv, readership has never been better. The people recognize the truth when they see it, and those who continue to propound lies in the face of truth and defend the indefensible will be turned off by a public that is simply fed up. And that, ultimately, is why the truth is winning.