This report from the AP describes the results of a study by AP reporters and seven experts in research ethics, climate science, and science policy. The team examined 1,073 emails hacked from the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University.
From the story by Seth Borenstein, Raphael Satter and Malcolm Ritter:
The 1,073 e-mails examined by the AP show that scientists harbored private doubts, however slight and fleeting, even as they told the world they were certain about climate
There is a lot more in the story. It's not a pretty sight, especially when you see how petty these climate scientists were.
Here is a previous post of mine with Phil Mote's perspective.
The effects of all this? A PR nightmare.
Over at Aguanomics, David Zetland quotes Fred Pearce:
I have been speaking to a PR operator for one of the world’s leading environmental organizations. Most unusually, he didn’t want to be quoted. But his message is clear. The facts of the e-mails barely matter any more. It has always been hard to persuade the public that invisible gases could somehow warm the planet, and that they had to make sacrifices to prevent that from happening. It seemed, on the verge of Copenhagen, as if that might be about to be achieved...The e-mails represented a seminal moment in the climate debate of the last five years, and it was a moment that broke decisively against us. I think the CRU leak is nothing less than catastrophic.
"I'll be tempted to beat the crap out of him. Very tempted." - A climate scientist, about a climate skeptic, quoted in the article
And yet many (most?) of the skeptics on climate change (science) are people who DO embrace the "invisible hand" of the market as a magic wand solution. So it's fine to believe in the invisible mano of Adam Smith but NOT in the invisible (yet actually existing) gases that may retain heat better in the lower atmosphere. Irony? Paradox? Retarded? I'm sorry...I mean "logically-disabled?" - Eric P
Posted by: Eric Perramond | Monday, 14 December 2009 at 09:40 AM