It is the unabashed realm of the conservative media to engage in hyperbole about issues that effect things they care about. The whole climategate nonsense is a perfect example of what happens when commentators who, being short on brain but long on wind, get a hold of a story and spin it to meet their own particular agenda.
The hacked emails from CRU seems to be the holy tinfoil jesus for climate change denialists, finally proving that it was all a lie and a hoax. Keep in mind these are some of the people that also believe that a rapture is coming and need to prepare for the coming of their lord and high-douchbag – jebus himself.
Predictably, when actual rational people look into things the picture is much different. The data in question does not contradict the last 30 years of evidence based climatological research. There is no grand conspiracy, no deliberate hoax; just much partisan grandiloquent bloviatation from ignorant people.
Thunderfoot does his usual impeccable job of describing the situation and illustrating how thick the tinfoil is for some people. Enjoy the video.
Update: More information on the ‘debate’ here and here.
Second Update June 2010 – The media admits it was wrong and prints a retraction.
bleatmop
Mystro
The Arbourist
Dead Wild Roses 
7 comments
December 7, 2009 at 8:43 am
don hagan
All this hullabaloo about man-made climate change is such a crock! The facts simply do not support the claims of all the alarmists that “if we don’t do something NOW, the earth’s climate will be irreversibly altered by our activities. As a climatologist with NO POLITICAL AGENDA, I can state unequivocally that climate change is and has always been throughout geologic history part of the natural order of things. It is related to variations in sunspot activity, the southern oscillation of ocean currents, volcanic erutpions etc. over none of which man has any control. Less than three decades ago, many of my colleagues were espousing the “icebox effect” theory that emissions from automobile, industry, etc. were resulting is such global cooling that we were threatened once again by glacial invasion into the heartlanc of America!
It is well understood that grant monies are available internationally to those scientists who can come up with models that project global warming of massive proportions and that those whose research counter that theory have no chance at those grant funds. This madness must cease before world-wide economic chaos destroys not only developed but devloping countries alike! In short, MAN-INDUCED GLOBAL WARMING IS A CRUEL HOAX!! which ignores dendro-climatological and paleo-climatoligical data which verify the existence of the Medieval Warming Period and the Little Ice Age unrelated to man’s activity!
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December 7, 2009 at 3:50 pm
pino
The facts simply do not support the claims of all the alarmists that “if we don’t do something NOW, the earth’s climate will be irreversibly altered by our activities.
I agree Don. I certainly am no scientist, but I have tried to keep up with the arguments. As a layman, I am willing to believe that the world is getting warming. And, in fact, I am willing to entertain the fact that CO2 may be contributing to some VERY SMALL portion of that warming. As such, I don’t consider myself a denier, I am simply a skeptic.
I am skeptical that we are in a run away disaster that is created by a very strong positive feedback system that is being presented to us.
I don’t know if it’s a hoax, an over exaggeration or simple human nature that these people are trying to foist this upon us. All I know is that I am…skeptical.
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December 8, 2009 at 12:15 am
llewelly
Red herring. Climate change having been part of the “natural order” and modern global warming being human-caused are not mutually exclusive possibilities.
Myth.
The work of Naomi Oreskes shows that nearly all publishing climate scientists agree that modern global warming is human caused.
You have offered no evidence for this claim.
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December 8, 2009 at 12:16 am
llewelly
Please read Spencer Weart’s The Discovery of Global Warming.
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December 8, 2009 at 2:00 am
ianam
“As a climatologist with NO POLITICAL AGENDA, I can state unequivocally that climate change is and has always been throughout geologic history part of the natural order of things. ”
I can state unequivocally that you are lying about being a climatologist.
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December 8, 2009 at 3:10 am
negentropyeater
@don hagan
just the usual repetition of tired and oft debunked one liners… and you claim to be a climatologist with no political agenda ?
LLewelly has already debunked the myth of “30 years ago, scientists thought there would be global cooling”.
And here’s a very good and detailed page that debunks the myth “AGW ignores the fact that the Medieval Warming Period and the Little Ice Age were unrelated to man’s activity”.
There’s not a single credible climatogist on this planet who would say that “AGW IS A HOAX”. There are a few (very veryf ew, Lindzen being probably the only serious one) who disagree with the consensus on climate sensitivity and feedbacks.
btw, how does Lindzen gets his grant money if he disagrees with the consensus ?
@pino
please provide a link to a peer reviewed scientific paper (or a page making reference to it), that supports this claim.
What you are “willing to entertain” isn’t relevant if you say yourself that you are certainly no scientist. Please only provide the scientific evidence on which you have based your beliefs.
You are definitely a denier.
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December 12, 2009 at 1:27 pm
hkyson
“Climategate” started out when there appeared on the Internet a collection of e-mails of a group of climatologists who work in the University of East Anglia in England. These documents reveal that some climatologists of international preeminence have manipulated the data of their investigations and have strongly tried to discredit climatologists who are not convinced that the increasing quantities of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere are the cause of global warming.
It is true that a majority of the scientists who study climatic tendencies in our atmosphere have arrived at the conclusion that the world’s climate is changing, and they have convinced a group of politicians, some of whom are politically powerful, of the truth of their conclusions.
A minority, however, is skeptical. Some believe that recent data that suggest that the average temperature of the atmosphere is going up can be explained by natural variations in solar radiation and that global warming is a temporary phenomenon. Others believe that the historical evidence indicating that the temperature of the atmosphere is going up at a dangerous rate is simply not reliable.
Such lacks of agreement are common in the sciences. They are reduced and eventually eliminated with the accumulation of new evidence and of more refined theories or even by completely new ones. Such debates can persist for a period of decades. Academics often throw invective at one another in these debates. But typically this does not mean much.
But the case of climate change is different. If the evidence indicates that global warming is progressive, is caused principally by our industrial processes, and will probably cause disastrous changes in our atmosphere before the end of the twenty-first century, then we do not have the time to verify precisely if this evidence is reliable. Such a process would be a question of many years of new investigations. And if the alarmist climatologists are right, such a delay would be tragic for all humanity.
The difficulty is that economic and climatologic systems are very complicated. They are not like celestial mechanics, which involves only the interaction of gravity and centrifugal force, and efforts to construct computerized models to describe these complicated systems simply cannot include all the factors that are influential in the evolution of these complicated systems.
All this does not necessarily indicate that the alarmist climatologists are not right. But it really means that if global warming is occurring, we cannot know exactly what will be the average temperature of our atmosphere in the year 2100 and what will be the average sea level of the world’s ocean in that year.
It also means that we cannot be confident that efforts by the industrialized countries to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere will have a significant influence on the evolution of the world’s climate.
Alas, the reduction of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere would be very costly and would greatly change the lives of all the inhabitants of our planet–with the possibility (perhaps even the probability!) that all these efforts will be completely useless.
Harleigh Kyson Jr.
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