That’s Just Not Cool
First thing yesterday morning, before I’d even finished my first cup of coffee, I came across this – “Breaking News Story: CRU has apparently been hacked – hundreds of files released”
An unknown person put postings on some climate skeptic websites that advertised an FTP file on a Russian FTP server, here is the message that was placed on the Air Vent today:
We feel that climate science is, in the current situation, too important to be kept under wraps.
We hereby release a random selection of correspondence, code, and documents
Climategate: the final nail in the coffin of ‘Anthropogenic Global Warming’?
If you own any shares in alternative energy companies I should start dumping them NOW. The conspiracy behind the Anthropogenic Global Warming myth (aka AGW; aka ManBearPig) has been suddenly, brutally and quite deliciously exposed after a hacker broke into the computers at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (aka Hadley CRU) and released 61 megabites of confidential files onto the internet. (Hat tip: Watts Up With That)
When you read some of those files – including 1079 emails and 72 documents – you realise just why the boffins at Hadley CRU might have preferred to keep them confidential. As Andrew Bolt puts it, this scandal could well be “the greatest in modern science”
And, very quickly, Fox was on it.
Climate Skeptics See ‘Smoking Gun’ in Researchers’ Leaked E-Mails
The Internet is abuzz about the leaked data from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (commonly called Hadley CRU), which has acknowledged the theft of 61MB of confidential data.
Climate change skeptics describe the leaked data as a “smoking gun,” evidence of collusion among climatologists and manipulation of data to support the widely held view that climate change is caused by the actions of mankind. The files were reportedly released on a Russian file-serve by an anonymous poster calling himself “FOIA.”
… along with climate change skeptics and deniers around the globe.
I am truly interested in how this is going to be explained away….. got any ideas?
How what is going to be explained away?
What’s truly depressing/funny (depending on how cynical you’re feeling) is what this great “leak” actually consists of. It seems to be large emails between scientists doing what they do – arguing, sometimes about science, sometimes about politics, sometimes about the interpretation of findings.
If you compare the material “leaked” (or at least the bits I’ve seen), there’s simply nothing that even comes close to the volume and quality of actual research that feeds IPCC and supports the hypothesis of ACC. But of course, the Furiosi don’t actually understand what “science” means – they’re simply looking for ammo in the propaganda war.
For many in the global community you don’t really need anything remotely “close to the volume and quality of actual research that feeds IPCC and supports the hypothesis of ACC” do you?
Lets look at the following lines.
We have no context but to the average citizen of the world who is possibly confused, or afraid for their livelihood, or to the politician worried about the next time s/he has to go to the polls in a riding where fossil fuel energy resource development is a major factor in the local economy, what does it say?
It says that there is a lack of warming that cannot be explained using the data available so the data must be wrong – something that leads immediately to the conclusion that this group of scientists is looking for data that supports what they want to see.
I’m not saying that’s my conclusion, but that’s the conclusion that a whole lot of people are gonna see isn’t it?
But lets’ not acknowledge that, it’s far easier to say there’s nothing to see here or toss an insult or call them stupid because, as we’re all aware, that’s the absolute best way in the known universe to bring two groups of people with differing viewpoints to a productive common point that benefits all isn’t it?
A times (and this is one of them) I seriously wonder what the point of discussing climate change here, or anywhere else for that matter, actually is. Both sides of the (so called) debate have dug their trenches, strung their barbed wire, stocked up on ammunition, horded their water, and for all intents and purposes are unwilling to poke their heads out into the daylight other than to lob an insult into the other guys’tm trench and then quickly duck down and snicker.
This hyper-dogmatic polarization of every issue that crops up in the blog-0-sphere is starting to frustrate the crap out of me and more and more…..
….. I think I’ve got some lint in my pockets that needs to come out before I do laundry, and I’ve been stuck on line 4 of my current tanka for 3 days now —- at this point both endeavours look more productive than hanging out here, or wandering around the ‘net, reading about how stupid, short sighted, unintelligent, uncaring, dishonest, greedy, suspect, and }}}}}pick your favorite insult or negative descriptive adjective and put it here{{{{{, the other guy and his/her opinion is.
Yup, folks are not very good at thinking about science, that’s for sure. I’ve even noticed it here, where some writers look for a firm, absolute prediction of an outcome where only a range of possibilities can actually be predicted.
@stageleft –
A times (and this is one of them) I seriously wonder what the point of discussing climate change here, or anywhere else for that matter, actually is.
There isn’t any point in it. It’s simply better to wait a few years and snap photos of the first commercial ships making their way through the North West Passage.
Here is a response by the group at RealClimate:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/11/the-cru-hack/
And a couple of posts at DeSmogBlog:
http://www.desmogblog.com/climate-contrarians-spinning-hard-stolen-email-files
http://www.desmogblog.com/node/4196
I post there as VJ; the Spencer Weart I mention is a physicist and historian who has created a website as a great new way to do history; “The Discovery of Global Warming: A hypertext history of how scientists came to (partly) understand what people are doing to cause climate change”
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/
The 79 Billion Dollar Climate Scam
Gores Blue Dress moment – his carbon tax stocks just plummeted from $7 per share to 10 cents per share. The truth hurts. It is hard to admit that you have been scammed – that is what scammers count on the embarrassment of it all keeps them from reporting it. AGW was never science, it was all politics and greed – it became a religion that was being used to control people – actually the world – another false god has fallen.
I doubt this is going to pose that much of a problem to the cause. Ten years of cold will do that much more effectively. And balb is quite right that cherry-picking a few private e-mails out of a decade’s worth means nothing in terms of the integrity of their science. But what will cause wariness is the e-mails that point to their efforts to marginalize dissent and get it bounced from journals, etc.. Scientists are forever boasing about their dispassionate search for truth, their rigorous internal debates, their openess to revision based on new research, etc., and they can’t afford much evidence that they are engaged in some normative, internecine Darwinan struggle for survival that is red in tooth and claw. I’m sorry, but overstated doomsday scenarios don’t justify unilaterally revising the scientific method.
And speaking of Darwin, the same problem attends the materialist prostletyzing of Dawkins, Dennett, Myers, etc. Just as climate change advocates have come to use the term “science-denier” recklessly to encompass both know-nothing rejection and perfectly respectable scientists in the minority, so the angry Darwinists hurl the term “creationist” indiscriminately and biliously at biblical literalists, biologists who simply say the theory can’t get us from there to here and even atheist evolutionists like Jerry Fodor who argues there has to be more driving evolution than natural selection, even though he assumes what is driving it is 100% natural.
I’m taking this series of posts by SL to suggest that the greatest threat to an intelligent debate on climate comes not from dissenting scientists, but rather from David Suzuki. If so, he’s right.
“AGW was never science, it was all politics and greed.”
No, AGW is simply a scientific hypothesis, subject to validation or dismissal through the usual method – observe, test, predict, replicate.
Greed and politics do enter into it, of course. On the “pro” side, some scientist have committed themselves to a view they feel obliged to defend – that community is no more immune to pride, ego, and self-deceit than any other community of professionals on the planet. On the “anti” side, industry stand to lose a lot of money if forced to retool their production practices – and more broadly, in the unlikely event that humanity adopts some of the “reduced consumption” attitudes implicit in a solution to AGW.
So the trick is to hang on grimly through the propaganda from both sides and try to keep your eye on the science – ignore Al Gore’s self-promotion and Michelle Malkin’s hysteria (SCANDAL OF THE CENTURY? Oh, please…)
that community is no more immune to pride, ego, and self-deceit than any other community of professionals on the planet.
Except that other communities don’t assert as a matter of course that their professional modus operandi has successfully found a way to neutralize or minimze these factors and weed them out, and that therefore what they say can and should be trusted prima facie.
“Except that other communities don’t assert as a matter of course that their professional modus operandi has successfully found a way to neutralize or minimze these factors and weed them out, and that therefore what they say can and should be trusted prima facie.”
I have the feeling that your mother must have been exposed while you were in utero to a Lysenkoist.
I personally have never met a scientist who claims that the scientific method infallibly yields objective truth, nor is that what I believe. I DO believe that it’s a better approach than many, and that aberrations like cold fusion and “remembering water” eventually fall by the wayside.
No, Mom never even heard of Lysenko, but she cautioned me against automatically taking the side of professional biologists over traditional aboriginal knowledge. I’ve been denying science ever since.
I personally tend toward the professional biologists, myself. Their approach incorporates TK as an input: TK doesn’t incorporate “Western” science as readily.
The greatest threat to an intelligent climate change debate comes from our Conservative politicians who refuse to acknowledge the reality of climate change in the first place, Peter.
All of that Arctic Ice Loss is a scam. Disappearing SIDS are a scam. Melting permafrost is a scam.
I highly doubt any of the hunters and elders I’ve talked to were included in these e-mail ‘conspiracies’.
As for how others will view it – it will only make it easier to do nothing to slow or reverse our emissions of GHG’s.
SL – you (admirably) challenge your readership to change how we approach skeptics and counter the propaganda. I gotta say, I have no clue.
@Throbbin: I have no clue either Throbbin, I do not however see the current trench warfare tactics gaining many converts to our side of the discussion, and in fact they are, in my opinion, doing more harm than good. If ‘read the science that I happen to agree with stupid clod‘ worked we probably could have saved a lot of time, money, equipment, land, buildings, and lives by dropping a couple of million “your vision of the world is wrong and you mother wears army boots” leaflets on Hitlers command bunker ‘eh?
In actually talking to people (some of whom I have a great deal of respect for) in a face to face environment I am finding that attitudes are changing, and they are not changing in the direction I, and many here, may wish they were.
One segment of science can observe a general warming trend over X years, another segment can observe a general cooling trend over Y years — who is to say which segment has chosen the “right” set of years?
And even if everyone could get together and agree on which years are the relevant years to track climate change over I’ve yet to see any agreement or consensus that says man categorically is driving the change, and human contribution is X, with that X being a hard number. (added in an edit: nor do I have some unreal expectation for science to quantify that)
Currently we are told that it is “likely” or “probable” that there is a (possibly even significant) human component involved in the climate change we see around us – to me this makes sense. As I’ve said before, I look at the fact that we’ve been pumping growing amounts of crap into the atmosphere since the first factory of the Industrial Revolution fired up and that eventually there’s gonna be a point where the environment simply cannot easily absorb any more as simple common sense — but as I have also been told before not everyone’s common sense is the same.
I had a great face to face discussion with one of the few people that I know I can bounce things off of without it moving to defensive wall building and we both agreed that even our (supposed) side of the discussion is so rampantly hypocritical with respect to climate change and what could/should be done that it’s no wonder that the skeptics are able to do such a good job at gaining converts.
We discussed at some length “what we say verses what we do and how we live” and, quite frankly, despite our (collective – as in the majority of us – and supposed) environmental concerns that lead us to doing laundry in cold water, using low wattage light bulbs, recycling, taking public transit, etc., advocacy for someone else to do something,or for the government to tell us all what to do, is pretty well 99% of what we do — and theres a word for that sort of behaviour that is, very often appropriately, hung around our necks.
SL:
If you are talking about persuading the muddled middle, then by far the most persuasive argument is in your third to last paragraph. That is the language of pollution and pollution control, readily understandable by almost everyone. It resonates. Run with that and see where it takes you. It isn’t just the overhype and panic that has caused the reaction of which you complain, it was the increasing presentation of the issue in abstract, ethereal terms beyond the ken and sensory pereceptions of almost everyone, together with a lot of reckless tying into “quality of life” and political issues, which eventually comes off as elites simply haranging those lower down the ladder or ecological nannies. Also, I think a lot of people began to smell a rat when over quite a few years, every weather anomaly was followed by scientists screaming in the media how it was more evidence of global warming, while normality meant nothing and was “perfectly compatible with the science”. Plus Gaia talk was not your friend. Too close to baying at full moons for most.
But cheer up, it has spawned all kinds of beneficant technological advances that we are all better off for.
“… Also, I think a lot of people began to smell a rat when over quite a few years, every weather anomaly was followed by scientists screaming in the media how it was more evidence of global warming,..”
Peter, this is simply false. The scientists were actually very careful not to claim any specific event was proof.
So stageleft is mad at the scientists for not making definite statements and Peter claims that they do so where it is not justified. The scientists can’t get a break.
C’mon, Holly. European heat waves, Katrina, melting ice, Atlantic storms, floods in Bangladesh, a bad year for daffodils… OK, maybe not the latter, but surely you aren’t going to make me Google all night to prove that the population has been overwhelmed by media conjectures supported by “experts” from places like the University of Nevada about how these had all to do with climate change. To go back now and parse the disclaimers ( “the evidence suggests”; “more research is needed”) is surely disingenuous.
Three years ago we had an uncommonly warm early winter. It didn’t snow or freeze until mid-January. Ski-resorts owners were pronouncing on climate change with the zeal of an IPCC contract researcher and calling for government subsidies. Con M.P.s were all sporting green ties and promising their first priority was to to fix it. The issue topped the polls as a general concern. Then, we had two years of brutally cold winters and cold, wet springs/summers. The whole tone changes. Science gets very equivocal about the short term and snow-shovellers unite in the lonely cry: “WTF!”. Suddenly, we’re more worried about credit, the markets and the Olympics. OK, class, what lesson do we derive from this?
I’m not sure, but I suspect it is somewhere between the corrupt arrogance of science and the hopeless fecklessness of people. Choose your poison.
C’mon yourself, Peter. You find a story screaming about an extreme weather event and you’re likely to find a scientist near the end of the story advising caution about attributing it to global warming.
The thing is, fifty years from now we can look back and say: yes, all those events were signs of global warming. But we cannot say that for sure now.
@Holly Stick: No Holly, I am not mad at scientists for not making definitave statements, that is your perception (despite my edit add of “nor do I have some unreal expectation for science to quantify that”) of what I said based on your particular thought process on climate change which, and do correct me if I’m wrong, includes anyone who isn’t on side with you is wrong or deluded or probably engaged in some conspiracy (or some combination of all three).
It is a perfect example pf the polarization I’ve been talking about….. wanna help be develop some leaflets to drop on China and America?
Just out of curiosity…… what is your personal contribution to significantly addressing climate change issues Holly? And how much more are you personally willing to do?
We live in different worlds, Holly. If you are going to tell me that stories like this haven’t been part of daily media fare for many years, then I give up.
I ignore the climate change deniers, but I do have a lot of concern about the credit trading schemes. Any kind of a scam would be enough to turn people off the issue and convince them that there’s nothing to be done about climate change because everybody who’s anybody is a crooked lying son-of-a-bitch.
Well Peter, I think your link is not about a weather anomaly (which I would say is a one-time event like Katrina) but a trend. The scientists, who you will notice are not in fact screaming, are pointing out what is happening now and what is probably going to happen over the long term. Do you think they are wrong in this case? The long term climate is changing, and if the short term weather is acting weird, that doesn’t mean global warming is not happening; it may be another effect of global warming. It’s been warm in Calgary all November, and that is not normal.
Look, I’ve lived in southern Alberta all my life and I know that water has always been a limiting factor for farming, and there is a lot less snow in winter now than there was in the 1960s and I am pretty sure it is going to get drier here, and desert in some parts. I don’t like to hear it, but I’m not going to call the scientists liars because I don’t like what they are finding out.
And Peter, for years I’ve been reading quite a few websites that talk about climate change much of the time; and the denialists who comment there are mostly dishonest or stupid or both. They post the same bullshit arguments over and over and over again, and they are not interested in learning and they are mostly trying to fog up the issue, to persuade people that the science is uncertain, that we don’t have to do anything about it now, that it will absolutely destroy our economy if we force corporations to be more efficient, less wasteful, and less polluting. And talk about screaming hysterically, there is your prime example, so don’t tell me the scientists are the screamers when the denialists are constantly screaming THE ECONOMY!!!
stageleft, there is a conspiracy, sorry about that. You can read all about it at DeSmogBlog and sourcewatch; website that keep track of who pays for things like sending Viscount Monckton on a speaking tour all over Canada so he can lie that global warming isn’t happening and call the people who are worried about it bedwetters. It was Friends of Science who paid, an astroturf group in Calgary who won’t reveal where their funding comes from, but it’s probably oil companies; and the Frontier Centre for Public Policy in Winnipeg . http://www.desmogblog.com/calgary-foundation-friends-friends-science
Who else is in the conspiracy? All sorts of American rightwing think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute, and our own Fraser Institute, of course. Don’t like conspiracy thinking? I don’t either; and I remember Art Buchwald said the worst thing about Watergate was that it proved the conspiracy thinkers were right.
stageleft, I tried to post this before; it’s a blog by a British guy who talks about things you and Peter have expressed concern about, how to reach people who aren’t convinced about climate change and criticising the inadequate messaging by scientists (and people like me):
“…So, with time running out, please humour me and imagine that we focus our efforts on generating a socially held belief. What would change in the way we present climate science?
Well, for one thing we would become far more concerned about the communicators and their perceived trustworthiness. ..”
http://climatedenial.org/2009/07/24/why-we-still-dont-believe-in-climate-change/
Holly, thank you for that link to climatedenial. The discussion was interesting and I was particularly struck by this comment by someone named Josie. Much wisdom in that one. As the self-flagellating millenialists of a thousand years ago discovered, doomsday is a real downer.
A lot of AGW proponents seem to have come to see the word sceptic as synonomous with rejecting the science holus-bolus or signing on to the claims of some dissenting scientist with conviction. To me it describes someone who is guarded and wary, and not prepared to simply bow to the panicky urgings of scientific authority without consistent, observable confirmation in experience, especially over time. It’s a check & balance, not an assertion of an alternative authority.
Your example of southern Alberta is a good one and I think it is perfectly reasonable to see it as confirming evidence of significant change, at least after you discount the tendency in us all to nostalgia for the arcadias of our youths. Same, obviously, with melting in the Arctic. But as a non-scientist with considerable exposure to the debate (more than most, not nearly enough to pronounce on anything with certainty), there is one thing that troubles me about these examples. If indeed we are in a period of accelerated warming ( emphasis on accelerated–the absolute warming since 1880 is a matter of record) that averages out across the globe, why do we not hear much of complementary positive changes? Should we not expect to see extended growing seasons in marginal areas, semi-tropical flora pushing north, etc.? The only one I can remember hearing of is some returning fish stocks in the North Atlantic. And just when are sea-levels actually going to start drowning the Maldives? There has been no shortage of predictions and time is marching on. To be perfectly cynical, whenever I see some article featuring evidence of climate change, it always seems to focus on favourite exotic tourist destinations of wealthy Westerners.
@Peter – “…why do we not hear much of complementary positive changes? “
Could be that there are more negative effects than positive ones. Who sez there has to be a complementary positive for every negative?
Here in exotic, touristy SW Ontario, milder winters mean local municipalities save millions on snow removal. The massive surplus in electricity generation capacity this past cool summer meant that Ontario nuclear reactors were temporarily shut down to reduce a destabilizing excess of power in the grid. Billions earmarked for new nuke plants are still in public coffers thanks to a decreased demand.
A flattening of year-round temperature cycles means consumers spend less on AC in the summer and less on heating in the winter. I have central air and this past summer, I only ran it once and that was only to make sure it was fully operational. Yesterday, I saw farmers out tilling some fields in my neck o’ the woods. November 23 and no frost in the ground.
The thinning and disappearance of arctic ice cover means year-round shipping and resource exploration in previously unfathomable waters. While I do not personally think the opportunity to do more drilling and more shipping is a plus, many economists would probably disagree.
Species like the opossum that were unknown in Ontario just 30 years ago are commonplace now. A positive? Maybe for the coyotes. Species like the Asian carp are moving north and, according to reports just this week, are now entering the Great Lakes. South American killer bees are still moving north. While these expanded ranges may be negatives as far as humans are concerned, they are positives for the species that are growing in numbers… often at the expense of local northern species.
JB
Here’s a report on the effects of climate change on birds:
http://assets.panda.org/downloads/birdsclimatereportfinal.pdf
An abstract ; you would have to pay for the whole thing. It does mention some adaptation to the changes:
http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.ecolsys.37.091305.110100
The thing is that if species are adapted to current conditions, then change is going to disrupt their lives, and some will adapt, some wont. I would think that the faster the change occurs, the harder it would be to adapt. The challenge for us is to try to slow down the changes.
Peter, I would agree with your view of what a sceptic is, but the problem is that what I call the denialists have appropriated the word “sceptic” to themselves. They pose as sceptics, but they are not actually willing to follow the evidence.
It’s basically a case of branding yourself with a good name and your opponents with a bad name, like when people who are anti-abortion call themselves pro-life and they would say pro-choice people are pro-abortion.
I don’t think we are all doomed, but I think things will get tougher and we need to try to mitigate the harm. Like Ian Holm said in The Day After Tomorrow “Save what you can.”
It is a strange thing that “denialist” or “denier” should be the only label assigned to people unwilling to follow the evidence. Several prominent promoters of the theory have also been found to be unwilling to follow the evidence. Whether or not some mentions of shuffling, concealing, or destroying evidence and experimental procedures (eg. models) were made in jest, the plain fact is that at very few points were the players willing to adhere to scientific method.
The whole point of exposure of data and methods is to verify findings and uncover mistakes. A scientist’s most pedantic and tireless reviewer and critic, willing to thoroughly walk through the entire experiment / analysis, is the hottest fire in which is forged the strongest steel (theory). A small circle of prominent field leaders forgot that in the rush to feed whatever hunger – fortune, fame, political control – drove them.
IrC, despite the fact that your comment is almost devoid of defensible substance…welcome back. Where you bin so long, man?
The conduct of the researchers is what is indefensible. No matter which way the evidence points, they have done it a disservice. If the theory is essentially wrong, they’ve stalled progress toward better understanding. If the theory is essentially correct, they’ve tainted the legitimacy of their claims in boy-crying-wolf fashion.
The whole notion of concensus at different levels – among climate scientists (peers), among all scientists in general, among politicians, and among the public – is founded on trust and faith. Very few – if any – people who write about their views on climate change understand enough to properly and critically digest the contents of the scientific papers even if they bothered to read the journals. It is assumed that what has been published is truthful and has been fact-checked and confirmed (reproduced or verified), quite apart from the assumption that there has been no deliberate omission or falsification. That assumption is now invalid. Along with GIGO being applicable in its proper meaning to the results of manipulated data, it is applicable to the general conclusions. No one can be certain now which conclusions and claims are still valid and truthful, and which are not.
“No matter which way the evidence points, they have done it a disservice.”
Yup. And that’s the point. As noted, the science is pretty much intact – however, the perception of the science has suffered.
“It is assumed that what has been published is truthful and has been fact-checked and confirmed (reproduced or verified), quite apart from the assumption that there has been no deliberate omission or falsification. That assumption is now invalid.”
Naw. That assumption pretty much holds true, except among those who are unfamiliar with the real history of science and publication.
That assumption pretty much holds true, except among those who are unfamiliar with the real history of science and publication.
Which would be about 99% of the population, no?
Yup. How many folks remember “Remembering Water”, and what it did to the credibility of Nature’s peer review process? I think 1% is generous.
However, it was a scandalous and memorable issue precisely because it was so unusual. AND the bottom line is: the scientific method caught the error. When labs around the world were unable to replicate findings that seemed to validate the premises of homeopathy, the key study was exposed as a fake.
As I’ve noted before, the only real debated going on is between propagandists. The climate change science remains untouched.
Quite true. I must say that, as a card-carrying right-wing science-denier, I find this whole story decidedly underwhelming (this institution isn’t co-ordinating the whole show, is it?). I do trust I can count on a similar sense of fair play from you when our leading expert on warming in the Middle Ages is found to have promoted his assistant’s dicey research so she wouldn’t tell his wife about what really happened at that conference in Aspen?
Only if you send me the pictures.
On reflection, your statement about untouched science raises an interesting “falling trees in the forest” philosophical conundrum that would keep keen undergrads arguing well into the night. If the scientists are all fudging the data, is there any science to remain untouched?
Umm…if all oranges were plaid, would we still call them oranges?
Wow! We denialists don’t have a hope.
The science is not “intact”, if by “science” you mean data, methods, and predictions. You can’t wish it to be so by assertion. Where the data and methods lack completeness, the conclusions are indeterminate. Where the data and analyses are faulty, lost, or irreproducible, the conclusions are indeterminate. Where the integrity of the persons concerned is in doubt, the “concensus” is simply an unfounded opinion.
All conclusions of policy following from flawed analyses are invalid. The problem is that the fault is in the bedrock upon which many pillars stand. Everything which depends on a prior questionable finding is itself questionable.
Peer review and everything else associated with publication, btw, does not necessarily imply experimental or analytical verification. Peer review didn’t catch the “hockey stick” statistical errors. The issues raised at this point are not necessarily all that remain to be uncovered.
Uh…yup. And attempts to replicate findings will catch those.
So, who do you think paid the hackers?
I imagine the same people that pay the BT’s, sooey.
The New Conservative Party of Canada?!
But isn’t computer hacking illegal?
That’s the point. The findings must be replicated; until that is done, the “?” hangs over everything. “Catastrophic AGW” is unproven.
“That’s the point. The findings must be replicated; until that is done, the “?” hangs over everything.”
Yup. As it always did. The publication of these emails, while it changes absolutely nothing about the science, is providing valuable propaganda for those who see this as a political issue.
““Catastrophic AGW” is unproven.”
Absolutely right. It is one potential outcome within the range of possible outcomes.