[Editor Note: It was during the Thanksgiving weekend 11 years ago that the Climategate’s unsettling oeuvre was first being disseminated and analyzed. This post summarizes some remembrances from that period.]

“The conflict between the two ideas about how science should be conducted–a closed system dominated by gatekeepers, or a more chaotic but less hierarchical open system–is the dominant story of the [Climategate] emails over more than a decade.” – Fred Pearce, The Climate Files (2010), p. 13.

“There is no doubt that these emails are embarrassing and a public-relations disaster for science.” – Andrew Dessler, “Climate E-Mails Cloud the Debate,” December 10, 2009.

Climategate lives in infamy. Then, and now, it is a case study of agendas driving science rather than science driving agendas.

A decade ago, climate alarmists and friends (including Dessler above) went into damage control.…

“Climate change, for many conservatives, is associated with fringe environmentalism and a political nemesis, [Al] Gore.”

“Climategate showed us what was behind the curtain,” said Robert Bradley…. There’s a whole lot of alarmism and a whole lot of scientific intolerance toward other views.”

– Eric Berger, Houston Chronicle, January 24, 2010.

Think back ten years ago, when a federal cap-and-trade bill passed the House and was before the Senate. And Climategate was just a few months old.

Today? Cap-and-trade remains dead as federal policy, and proposals for a carbon tax are not being pushed by Biden/Harris (Harris/Biden?) in the current debate. Climagate? Its ten-year anniversary last year brought forth numerous retrospectives, apologetic, critical, and harshly critical.

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All this brings me to a January 2010 piece by Eric Berger of the Houston Chronicle, Climate Change Activists Work to Regain Momentum.…

The statement that “the science is settled” is an assertion of imagined consensus deployed by climate activists as a substitute for science.

Society expects that science plays a major role in solving the big problems on our planet. Therefore, it is of utmost importance that the scientific community is honest about the limitations of their theoretical models.

CLINTEL (Climate Intelligence), previously highlighted at MasterResource (here and here), has published a Great Charter of Universities for Research Freedom (Magna Carta Universitatum 2020). David Wojick summarized its importance, drawing on history:

The first Magna Carta Universitatum was issued in 1988 and to date at least 889 universities have signed on to it. CLINTEL notes that it is building directly on this precedent, to fit “the special challenges of today”.

“[This paper is] the most important climate science paper that’s come out in several years…. [It’s] really moved the game away from these questions about the physics of the climate system into questions about how are humans going to react to climate change.”

– Andrew Dessler. Quoted in “Groundbreaking Study: Earth Will Warm 4.9 to 7 Degress F.” E&E News, July 23, 2020.

“During the period of strongest greenhouse gas forcing (since 1979), the latest CMIP6 models reveal 50% more net surface warming from 1979 up to April 2020 (+1.08 deg. C) than do the observations (+0.72 deg. C).”

– Roy Spencer, “CMIP6 Climate Models …” June 25, 2020.

An alleged breakthrough, hold-the-presses moment has arrived–right during the summer heat and just in time for a Presidential election to give the problematic Green New Deal veneer.…