Greta admits Climate Crisis is a Hoax?

I ran into this YouTube video where Greta Thunberg says, "Since the climate crisis doesn’t exist, how can we expect people to want climate action?"  Freudian slip?  Has she just given up the game, admitting that she has been playing us for fools all along?  No, this is just another of those deceptive selective edits.  Donald Trump has often been on the receiving end of such deceptive editing (e.g., fine people hoax, drinking bleach hoax, etc.) but now it is Greta's turn.  Maybe those who accepted the misreporting on what Trump said will have their eyes opened by this obvious misreporting of Greta.  Probably not, but one can hope.

Averting Climate Change

Robert Pindyck has a new book, Climate Future: Averting and Adapting to Climate Change, and he appeared on EconTalk to discuss his findings.  He admits out the gate that the situation is uncertain, and we cannot know what the future holds.  Perhaps carbon pollution will lead to catastrophe or maybe it will have little noticeable impact.  However, he likened the situation to having insurance.  You don't know if your house will burn down, so it is a good idea to have insurance just in case.  Good point, but that doesn't quite work.  If the worst does happen, what will my insurance money buy me?  Nothing.  The government will - in the best circumstance - spend it to mitigate climate change.  More likely, it will spend it on pet projects that have nothing to do with climate change.  Though I am highly skeptical of the climate change issue, it is certainly reasonable to take some actions.  It was proposed that the government stop subsidizing people to build houses on the beach or in flood plains.  Proposing a carbon tax to decrease the use of fossil fuels is a classic proposal, but it will have little impact unless China, India, and other parts of the developing world agree.  Not going to happen.  To show how urgent the situation is, Pindyck noted that it will be 30 to 40 years before the current CO2 emissions have their full impact on the global temperature.  Stop all CO2 tomorrow and the future is still bleak.  Great.  With that in mind, adaptations were suggested.  Russ was more willing to consider adapting to change, while Pindyck was eager to enact his carbon tax.  I did like the mention that an electric car is often a coal-powered car under our current method of power generation.  In the end, there are no easy answers, though we should take precautions.  I'll agree with that.

My big issue with the climate change debate is that the earth has been much warmer, so warm that the poles had no ice.  That was millions of years ago.  A thousand years ago, it was warmer than today, which is why the Vikings thought it would be a good idea to colonize Greenland.  This was the Medieval Warm Period.  I've never heard a climate scientist explain this based on the current modeling.  The earth today is in an interglacial period of an ongoing ice age.  Yes, this is an interglacial period of the current ice age, the Quaternary glaciation.

Apologies of a Climate Scaremonger

Here is an article I encountered thanks to the Streisand Effect.  Forbes had posted an article from a long-time environmentalist, a true believer, who had doubts about the over-the-top tactics and claims made by his fellow environmentalists.  Apparently, the backlash was such that Forbes pulled the story and begged forgiveness.  Well, this I have to read.

Click this link to read the story for yourself.

The article is a preview of his book, Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All. Among his points are that we are not seeing a mass extinction, climate change is not making natural disasters worse, fires have declined over the last 17 years, carbon emissions are declining in most rich nations, wood fuel is worse for people than fossil fuel, and more.  An interesting point is that air pollution and carbon emissions diminish by moving from wood to coal to petroleum to natural gas to uranium.  Nuclear plants are the most environmentally friendly.  Well, unless you're in Russia.

The most interesting thing is that his views were discouraged by fellow environmentalists.  Though he remains an environmentalist, he sees that climate alarmism is needlessly scaring people.  When AOC said the world would end in 12 years, that may provoke eye-rolling among some but terrifies youth.  Oddly, I recall when I was in elementary school, a student said the world was going to end in 1980.  Credulous as I was, I believed it.  The teacher didn't shoot down the idea.  Why hadn't my parents told me about this?  Looking back now, it's silly.  Imagine if I had marinated in such claims throughout my childhood.  That's what has happened to Greta Thunberg.

Be of good cheer.  The world is not ending any time soon.

The Pawn

Who is Greta Thunberg?  Obviously, I know who she is but why is she Time's Person of the Year?  There are countless people who have made climate change their life's work but somehow this teenager from Sweden is the face of the movement.  How did that happen?  When some accomplished person starts lecturing me, at least I can see that they are accomplished.  When Warren Buffet calls for higher taxes, I may disagree but I understand why he has the platform to say this.  His success as an investor earned him a platform to opine about how his taxes are too low.  So what did Greta do to get her platform?  She ditched school.  Lots of teens ditch school and that is a pretty low bar as far as accomplishments.  Why would some Swedish teen rise to such heights on a topic where she has no special knowledge?  Why not Al Gore or any one of the frequently stated 97% of scientist who say climate change is real?

 

As someone who believes taxes are too high and government spends too much, who would be a better spokesperson for that cause: Arthur Laffer or a random teen from Nebraska?  For some reason, the climate change folks have chosen the random teen over the a PhD in the subject.  Why is that?  Greta is not trying to convince anyone with her knowledge of the issue but rather with the emotions she can evoke.  The evidence has failed to achieve the goal so now the guilt trip.  You have stolen my childhood.

 

Greta is a pawn, a useful figure to pull heartstrings.  She is not the first.  Back in 1992, there was Severn Cullis-Suzuki.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJICmLMb06Y

 

Severn has since gone to Yale where she earned a BS in ecology and evolutionary biology.  Gee, she sounds like a better advocate.  Well, except that her 1992 doomsaying didn't come to pass.  Back then, the big concern was the ozone layer of the atmosphere and global warming was only just getting traction as a topic.  We don't hear much about the ozone these days.  Huh.

 

Greta and Severn were plucked from relative anonymity because they were useful pawns for the environmentalists.  Kids are often used as pawns.  Kids parrot what their parents tell them.

No Warming Trend Continues

In 2005, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration established 114 temperature monitoring stations in isolated locations throughout the contiguous 48 states.  Since they were established, there has been no warming.  The temperatures, at least in the United States, are static.  This is yet another data point to explain the change in terminology from Global Warming to Climate Change.  Climate Change is a much more flexible description, allowing virtually any weather pattern to be alarming and in need of more tax dollars.

 

Coincidentally, the Obamas have purchased a $15 million beachfront mansion on Martha's Vineyard.  Clearly, they are confident that rising sea levels aren't going to drown their new residence.

Phony Temperature Data

Yet again, an inquiry into the data that 'proves' global warming has shown falsified data.  This is an old story that really blew up when the East Anglia emails exposed the "trick" that allowed them to "Hide the decline" in temperatures.  You see, a flatline on global temperatures is a big problem for the Chicken Little crowd.  Panic, fear, and impending doom make for great sales pitches when requesting government funding.  Real science doesn't need to massage the data.  Real science appreciates critics because it forces the science to be more reliable, it doesn't try to silence them.

 

The Climate Crisis fear mongers act less like dispassionate scientists following the data where it leads and more like religious zealots who denounce skeptics as heretics.  This alone reveals the lack of honest science where climate change is involved.

Global Warming Hyperbole

Trump's action could push the Earth over the brink, to become like Venus, with a temperature of two hundred and fifty degrees, and raining sulphuric acid.

Stephen Hawking

 

Interesting.  This is coming from the most celebrated scientist of our era so let's not dismiss it out of hand.  Let's take a look at what is said by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).  I have never heard of that particular organization before right now but it was the first thing to come up when I searched Global Warming.  The NRDC indicates that "unless we curb global-warming emissions, average U.S. temperatures could increase by up to 10 degrees Fahrenheit over the next century."  The NRDC does not agree with Trump that climate change is a Chinese Hoax and would be put firmly in the climate-change-is-real camp.  Let's do the math with their presumed worst-case scenario of 'up to 10 degrees' in 100 years.  Okay, 10 degrees divided by 100 years gives us 1/10th of a degree a year.  Trump will be out of office in 4 or 8 years and can thus - worst case per NRDC - see 0.8 degrees of warming.  Okay, we are missing a piece.  What is the current average global temperature?  If it is 249.2 degrees, then I have to give the win to Hawking.  My Google search provided Atmos News, which says the average annual temperature from 1951 to 1980 was 57.2 degrees while 2015 saw an average temperature that was 1.8 degrees warmer (reportedly the hottest on record), which - if my math is correct - would be 59 degrees.  Even if NRDC's worst case scenario played out entirely within the Trump administration, that would only get us to 69 degrees, woefully short of Hawking's fear-mongering 250 degrees.

 

If the science is solid, it doesn't need to be sold with this sort of easily debunked hyperbole.  For a famed scientist to spout such obvious nonsense only damages the credibility of scientists.  There is so much junk science in the world today that it is much harder to trust any science.  Hawking is not helping that sad state of affairs.

Green Profiteer

As any regular reader knows, I'm a fan of Elon Musk.  He thinks big and somehow manages to achieve great things.  I am mostly interested in SpaceX but he is also noted for his Tesla cars, the proposed Hyperloop, and underground tunnels to relieve traffic gridlock.  He is now in the solar panel business thanks to a merger with Solar Roof.  He has big, transformative ideas.  However, he also spouts the gospel for global warming, referring to it as a 'crisis.'  It is interesting how a move away from fossil fuels would be immensely beneficial to a man who sells electric cars (Tesla), solar paneling, and alternative transportation systems (Hyperloop).  Everyone who can be scared away from fossil fuels becomes a lifelong customer for his products.  Does he really believe in man-made climate change or is he jumping on a useful hoax that will improve his profit margin?  Decades of predictions on the subject have failed to pan out but he remains a true believer?  Politicians always sell a tax increase or a government power grab by appending 'for the children' to the pitch.  Businesses now use 'sustainable' and 'green' in much the same way.

Concrete Costs for Uncertain Returns

President Trump withdrew from the Paris Agreement on Climate Change today, citing that there were trillions in costs to the United States.  He pointed out that China, the top polluter, would be allowed to increase its share of pollution for another 13 years (gee, I wonder if that was a bribe to get them to sign?) but America has to start cutting immediately.  Let's see, we can increase pollution in China but not America and would like to build a new factory; where does that factory get built?  Like most global schemes, the goal is to pick America's pocket.  The US pays the largest share for maintaining the United Nations and the place votes against us on a regular basis.

The most outlandish attack was by billionaire Tom Steyer who accused Trump of a "traitorous act of war against the American people."  Oh, the hyperbole!  Forcing American taxpayers to subsidize the world's economies because of Al Gore's misleading movie and scores of climate models that have failed to predict the current state of the climate does not sound like treason against Americans.  In fact, it sounds more like putting American interests first.

 

The government that governs least, governs best.

Thomas Jefferson

 

International organizations are just another brick on the structure of global government, which will inevitably be oppressive as monopolies always are.  The powerful elites of the world truly hate that their citizens can vote with their feet and leave; global government will solve that.  However, selling the monopoly is always hard but years of trial balloons have come up with certain strategies to convince taxpayers to vote away their freedoms.  Global warming/climate change has been particularly effective.  If the uncooperative climate hadn't flat lined in the late 90s, it would be selling much better today.

Doubt the Expert

In the last year, two major discoveries have occurred in human anatomy.  First, the mesentery has been upgraded to an organ.  This may be a case where anatomy has modified the definition of an organ and suddenly the mesentery fit that new definition, not unlike how changes in astronomy recently downgraded Pluto from being a planet.  However, we are hundreds of years along in our study of anatomy, have dissected untold thousands of bodies, and have just determined that this bit is an organ.  Then there is this new development.  The lungs produce blood cells?  I was taught that blood cells came from bone marrow.  If true, this is a mind-blowing discovery.  Again, hundreds of years with a vast number of scientists studying the human body and only now we are discovering where blood cells are made?  My faith in medicine and medical science is shaken by these two discoveries.

 

Scientists and doctors have been studying the human body for vastly longer than scientists have studied climate science.  Today, the number of people studying the human body exceeds the number of people studying climate.  Climate research is a small sector when compared to medical research.  In 2012, $119 billion was spent on medical research in the US.  In 2013, climate change had a $22.5 billion budget, about a fifth of medical research.  Therefore, medical science with its vastly greater resources, greater number of scientists, and vastly longer history of study is still discovering things about how the human body works but climate scientists - with less money, time, and personnel - have already figured out that we are doomed without drastic changes.  Gosh, I wish those climate scientists had gone into medicine instead and we'd have a cure for cancer. 

Render unto Caeser

Pope Francis has recently stated that there is no Muslim terrorism.  I beg to differ.  The evidence of Muslim terrorism is overwhelming.  Whereas Christianity started as an oppressed religion that nonetheless won converts to become the dominant religion, Islam was a conquering religion that swept through the Middle East, North Africa, and into Spain.  One - which Francis leads - saw voluntary converts, while the other saw forced conversion or subjugation.  Muhammad himself said, "I have been made victorious through terror."  Though it is understandable that the pope does not wish to speak ill of a religion practiced by more than a billion people, he ought not offer clearly false assessments of it either.

 

Fresh from whitewashing Islam, he once again jumped on the climate change bandwagon.  If history is any guide, once religion - especially Christianity - takes a visible stance on science, the side chosen is probably wrong (e.g. Sun revolves around the Earth, Evolution, age of the Earth, Creation of the Universe).  With that in mind, scientist should be worried to have Vatican support.

 

The pope would be best served to avoid these political debates and stick to tending his flock.  Where his predecessor Pope John Paul II was a critic of the oppressive Soviet Empire, Francis is carving out a position as an apologist for an even more oppressive Islamic world.  If he believes Catholicism is the path to salvation, shouldn't he be spreading the good news and trying to win converts rather than reassuring everyone that they are just fine where they are?

How to Incite Skepticism

For years, it has been repeatedly stated that global warming... er... climate change is a fact.  Furthermore, the consensus of scientists agree that humanity is a significant factor in the warming... uh... climate change.  Those who have doubts are climate deniers (not unlike Holocaust deniers, if you didn't catch that clever branding technique).  Fine.  Okay.  You know what you don't do if you have a slam dunk case: you don't do this:

Exposed: How world leaders were duped into investing billions over manipulated global warming data

The article reveals how the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration broke its own rules in order to provide a sensational report in time for the Paris Climate Conference in 2015.

Science, honest science, doesn't need to fudge the numbers.  Real science is not determined by consensus.  There was a consensus in opposition to Galileo.  There was a consensus in favor of a flat Earth model.  Shenanigans like this support the hoax theory much better than the anthropomorphic warming model.

2016: Hottest Year Ever!

I am not a climate scientist.  I studied history, economics, and Latin in college.  I dabbled a bit with political science and creative writing but never took a class even remotely related to climate science.  Despite all that, I hold that the "climate crisis" is a hoax.  Here are some interesting points:

1. When I was 10, the earth was heading toward an Ice Age.  As a family, we would watch 'In Search of' hosted by Spock.  I liked it because it had Spock.  This episode provided a dark glimpse of what the world might be like in a single lifetime.  If the scientists were wrong here, why are they right now?

 

2. 1816: The Year Without a Summer.  In the wake of the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora, so much debris was thrown into the atmosphere that the following year saw mass starvation from failing crops.  New England had severe frosts every month of summer.  Despite decades of pollution, humanity has been unable to duplicate the Year Without a Summer.

 

3. The Medieval Warm Period (950 to 1250) saw temperatures roughly equivalent to today.  The Vikings found Greenland to be habitable and transplanted their agricultural and pastoral lifestyle there for several centuries.  By 1400, the Greenland settlements were nearly gone and vanished soon thereafter because of the increasing cold.  Clearly, this warming was not anthropogenic.  Why is the current warming trend different from the Medieval Warm Period?

 

4. The Earth is currently in an ice age that began 2.6 million years ago.  An ice age is geologically defined as the presence of extensive ice sheets in the northern and southern hemispheres.  Because the ice sheets/glaciers have retreated for several millennia, the earth is experiencing an interglacial period.  This 10,000 year warming is not anthropogenic.  Why is the current - comparatively insignificant - warming different from that trend?

 

5. During the Mesozoic Era (252 million to 66 million years ago), the earth was 10 degrees Celsius warmer than it is today.  There were no ice caps at the poles.  This was not anthropogenic.  Was 2016 hotter than an average year in the Mesozoic?  If not, is it really the Hottest Year Ever?

 

The earth has been much warmer and much colder than today.  The climate experienced these huge swings with no input from humans.  These variations have developed over millions of years.  Though these points may provide the layman some reason to doubt the ongoing panic about climate change, that isn't a reason to call it a hoax!

 

Like all living things, government wants to grow and prosper.  Studies that 'prove' that climate change is anthropogenic provide cover for government to expand its power and reach.  Taxes on pollution, regulations to make sure cars get more miles to the gallon, laws to make washing machines more energy efficient, and so on and so forth.  There is so much that government can do, provided there is a basis for it.  Thus, scientists who find that humanity is to blame and the problem could be solved by government intervention are handsomely funded.  Scientists who conclude that it is the sun - which governments have no legislative authority to control - are not funded.  Anthropogenic warming = funding.  Natural climate cycles = no funding.  Scientists are smart people and see the pattern.

Extreme Crackpot

Noam Chomsky, a famous linguist whose language theories are being overturned, has demonstrated that there are no limits to his crackpottery.  He has now declared that "The Republican Party Has Become the Most Dangerous Organization in World History."  Really?  This is because the Republican Party will not take global cooling... er... global warming... er... climate change as seriously as he thinks it needs to be taken.  Yes, that makes them more dangerous than the Soviets during the Cuban Missile Crisis.  They are more dangerous than Nazis during WWII.  Can you say 'hyperbole,' Noam?

Here is the interesting thing.  Chomsky's work in his area of expertise is being undermined by evidence but EcoWatch thinks that his views on climate science - not his area of expertise - should be viewed as sacrosanct.  If you are a mathematician whose equations don't add up, it would be foolish to take your views on English Literature as gospel.

 

Having read a couple of Chomsky's books and several articles, it is clear that he hates America.  He has a gift for sounding utterly reasonable while saying unreasonable things.  When asked about any event in modern history, it inevitably turns out to be America's fault.

Welcome to the Apocalypse

When former Vice President Al Gore attended the Sundance Film Festival in January 2006 to premiere his propaganda film, An Inconvenient Truth, he declared that, unless drastic measures were taken regarding greenhouse gasses, the earth would reach a point of no return in ten years.  It has now been ten years.  The doom is now unavoidable.  The ice caps will melt shortly, the polar bears will drown, and NYC will sink into the Atlantic Ocean any second now.  Okay, just a few more seconds.  Hmm.  Well, the standard deviation of the ten year prediction must allow for leeway.

 

Obviously, the claim was just fear-mongering, an effort to convince the electorate to approve 'drastic measures' that would include more money and power to government.  The people didn't bite and now, ten years later, the scam is clearly revealed.  Of course, there will be an excuse.  Perhaps it has already been offered and I have missed it.  Gore's Frying Pan Earth notion has been replaced by Obama's more vague Climate Change.

 

This has been the modus operandi of the environmental movement since the first Earth Day in 1970.  Here is a list of some of those initial predictions.  Note that none of them came to pass.  The catastrophes scheduled for 1975 haves still not occurred even 40 years later.  Global cooling changed to global warming and now it is climate change.

 

If only the government could take more of our money and infringe further on our property rights and freedom, I'm sure the issue could be solved.

The Coming Ice Age... er... Global Warming... er... Climate Change!

In April of 1975, Newsweek published this story about The Cooling World.  Ominous signs portended likely famine because average temperatures were falling.  Dr. Murray Mitchell noted a half degree drop in the Northern Hemisphere between 1945 and 1968.  Columbia University's George Kunda saw a large increase in snow cover.

 

In May of 1978, In Search of, the television show hosted by Leonard Nimoy, investigated The Coming Ice Age in this episode.  Several scientists (Dr. James Hayes, Dr. Chester Langway, Dr. Gifford Miller, Dr. Stephen Schneider) were consulted.  The glaciologist argued that Baffin Island in Canada was signaling the next ice age; ice didn't melt in the summer of 1972.  A severe winter across North America in 1976-77 showed just how close we were.  Buffalo, NY had 40 days straight of snow!  Dr. Miller suggested that the current warm period likely ended 3000 years ago.  The show concludes that, in as little as one lifetime, we could see ice sheets stretching into Kansas.  It was all very dire.

 

Then, in 1987, Dr. James Hansen of NASA testified before the Senate that Global Warming was going to ruin us.  Senator Al Gore seized upon this doomsayer's testimony and soon published a book, Earth in the Balance (1992).  Later, he wrote and starred in the Oscar winning movie, An Inconvenient Truth, which predicted doom from fossil fuels and the earth becoming an oven.  The polar bears are doomed!

 

In a space of less than 10 years, scientists had switched from an Ice Age to a heat wave.  With ice cores dating back scores of millennia and geologic weather data that stretches back hundreds of millions of years, somehow the predictions all turned on a dime.  How could all of those scientists in the 70s have been SO wrong?  Were they fired for incompetence?  Moreover, the predictions were now based on human activity, not natural cycles.  We can stop it, but only if we give government the power and money to rescue us from our folly.

 

Climate change is a government fundraiser, kind of like a school bake sale but scarier.  Scientists who are funded by government grants offer research that says government needs more power and money.  You scratch my back...  Climate change is a convenient lie; by the time the warming would have occurred, most of us will be dead.  However, in the present, government will have increased its authority and funding.

Opportunity Missed

The Pope came to the United States and, as chance would have it, his visit coincided with a political effort to defund Planned Parenthood (PP), the major abortion provider in the United States.  A series of sting videos indicated that PP was profiting by selling the parts of the aborted fetuses.  Moreover, the Pope was scheduled to address the Congress where the Speaker, John Boehner, and the Minority Leader, Nancy Pelosi, are both Catholics.  The stars had aligned in the fight against abortion and the Pope pressed Congress on the issue... of climate change.

The Papacy is not necessarily political.  Though the very teachings of Catholicism come down on one side or another of a great many political issues (e.g. abortion, capital punishment, gay marriage, welfare, etc.), it is not incumbent on the Pope to lobby or cajole governments to follow these teachings.  Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's.  But this Pope isn't that kind of Pope.  He has been more political than his predecessor and has taken a decidedly leftist view of the world.  Clearly, Pope Francis has embraced climate change and he takes a dim view of capitalism.  So one wonders why, when the table was set for a victory against abortion, he put his political capital behind climate change.

I'm not Catholic and may be missing something.  Perhaps someone who follows the doings of Popes is fully aware of the reasons behind this.  It's been my understanding that the Church has a very long standing opposition to abortion while this climate change interest is very recent.  Pope John Paul II spoke about it but it was not top of his docket.  Pope Francis has elevated it considerably.

The Uninformed Electorate

"Wherever the people are well informed they can be trusted with their own government."

Thomas Jefferson

I stumbled upon the following story today.  It is not the first of its kind nor, sadly, will it be the last.

http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-science-quiz-americans-pew-20150909-story.html

Here is yet more evidence that the American Electorate is not well informed.  It is no wonder that so many accept Global Warming/Climate Change.  Lacking any foundation upon which to judge claims, it quickly becomes impossible to make informed decisions.  Last year, I posted a link to a YouTube video in which college students were quizzed about American government and politics; the results were disastrous.

When Davy Crockett returned to his district in Tennessee after a term in Congress, he had a farmer demanding for him to explain some of his votes and where the Constitution gave him the right to provide charity from the treasury.  Here was an informed voter.  Elected officials do not like informed voters because informed voters can hold them to account.  On the other hand, uninformed voters will numbly nod to whatever a politician says:

"There’s one issue that will define the contours of this century more dramatically than any other, and that is the urgent and growing threat of a changing climate."

Barack Obama, Sept 23, 2014

Plenty of skepticism has been published here regarding the Climate Change Hoax.  It is a government power grab to get more taxpayer dollars and further limit freedom through 'common sense regulations.'

It is not by accident that our public education system is producing an uninformed electorate.  That is its purpose.  To whatever degree students are informed, it is indoctrination in favor of larger and more intrusive government.  An armed (2nd Amendment) and informed (1st Amendment Freedom of the Press) electorate was meant to prevent the growth of over-reaching government.

"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground."

Thomas Jefferson

In the long game, it looks like the government is winning, just as Jefferson predicted.

The Coming Mini Ice Age

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3156594/Is-mini-ICE-AGE-way-Scientists-warn-sun-sleep-2020-cause-temperatures-plummet.html

So how do you feel about that 'Global Warming' now?  Gee, maybe this explains the switch to Climate Change.  I wonder how it will turn out to be our fault that the sun is going to sleep.

More Doubts for Global Warming

I stumbled upon this interesting story:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/environment/globalwarming/11395516/The-fiddling-with-temperature-data-is-the-biggest-science-scandal-ever.html

Why would the data be adjusted?  Who benefits?  Government is funding this research because the results of the research are that we need to give government more money and more power.  Governments aren't funding the 'climate deniers' because that isn't going to get more money and power for government.