We’ve Got A ‘Gate’! We’ve Got A ‘Gate’!

James Joyner has a good round-up of blog responses to “Climategate.” James Delingpole at The Telegraph:

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”. These alleged emails – supposedly exchanged by some of the most prominent scientists pushing AGW theory – suggest:

Conspiracy, collusion in exaggerating warming data, possibly illegal destruction of embarrassing information, organised resistance to disclosure, manipulation of data, private admissions of flaws in their public claims and much more.

One of the alleged emails has a gentle gloat over the death in 2004 of John L Daly (one of the first climate change sceptics, founder of the Still Waiting For Greenhouse site), commenting:

“In an odd way this is cheering news.”

But perhaps the most damaging revelations  – the scientific equivalent of the Telegraph’s MPs’ expenses scandal – are those concerning the way Warmist scientists may variously have manipulated or suppressed evidence in order to support their cause.

Andrew Bolt:

So the 1079 emails and 72 documents seem indeed evidence of a scandal involving most of the most prominent scientists pushing the man-made warming theory – a scandal that is one of the greatest in modern science. I’ve been adding some of the most astonishing in updates below – emails suggesting conspiracy, collusion in exaggerating warming data, possibly illegal destruction of embarrassing information, organised resistance to disclosure, manipulation of data, private admissions of flaws in their public claims and much more. If it is as it now seems, never again will “peer review” be used to shout down sceptics.

Michelle Malkin:

First things first: The alleged hackers need to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

That said: The crimes revealed in the e-mails promise to be the global warming scandal of the century — and have massive bearing on the climate change legislation being considered by our lawmakers here at home.

Ed Morrissey:

Do scientists use data to test theories, or do they use theories to test data? Scientists will claim the former, but here we have scientists who cling to the theory so tightly that they reject the data.  That’s not science; it’s religious belief.

Jules Crittenden:

“Trick” to “hide the decline,” just scientific buzzwords … “can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty” so much give-and-take, a glimpse behind the curtain at the scientific process … “Next time I see Pat Michaels at a scientific meeting, I’ll be tempted to beat the crap out of him. Very tempted” and “until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor” … Good Lord, man, they’re only human!

It’s true what they say about the scientific process. No, not that “hide the decline” is obviously just something highly technical that dolts like us can’t understand. How openness benefits all. In fact … and this hasn’t been tested or peer reviewed or anything like that … but I have a hypothesis about how the reprehensible act of illegally revealing how full of it warmalist zealots are may in fact have had a dramatic effect on the environment. Anthropogenic cooling, if you will. Like a big bucket of cold water just got thrown on the whole thing. Consider this. It was unseasonably warm in Boston yesterday. This morning, cold out. Brrrr …

Tom Maguire:

Andrew Revkin of the Times provides the obvious pushback:

The documents will undoubtedly raise questions about the quality of research on some specific questions and the actions of some scientists. But the evidence pointing to a growing human contribution to global warming is so broad and deep that the hacked material is unlikely to erode the overall argument.

“Erode”?  Surely it will erode public confidence, if only a teensy bit.  Public confidence will take a quantum leap downwards.

But more importantly, this is not a case where emails where hacked at fifty prominent research centers across the world and suggestions of fraud emerged once.  Right now, as best we know the hackers are one for one.  Does Mr. Revkin, or anyone else, have complete confidence that if other email servers were hacked we wouldn’t find similarly troubling hints of “tricks” meant to “hide the decline”?

UPDATE: James Joyner

UPDATE #2: Jonah Goldberg at The Corner

Mark Steyn at The Corner

John Hinderaker at Powerline

UPDATE #3: Jim Manzi at The American Scene

David Frum and FrumForum

UPDATE #4: Roger Pilon at Cato

Clive Crook

UPDATE #5: Ronald Bailey at Reason

Megan McArdle

Michelle Malkin

UPDATE #6: Allah Pundit

UPDATE #7: Steven Hayward at The Weekly Standard

UPDATE #8: Gateway Pundit

UPDATE #9: Jonathan Petre at Daily Mail

Mark Steyn at The Corner

Jules Crittenden

UPDATE #10: John Hudson at The Atlantic

UPDATE #11: Sharon Begley at Newsweek

Alex Pareene at Salon

UPDATE #12: Fred Pearce at The Guardian

UPDATE #13: Jim Newell at Gawker

Brad Plumer at The New Republic

UPDATE #14: More Clive Crook

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