Conservative bloggers are going wild after hackers got into the email from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU). The global warming deniers and conspiracy theorists are distorting the emails which have been posted on line to fuel their fantasies that the scientific consensus on climate change is a hoax. While it would be great if it turned out that we do not have to worry about climate change, the emails do not support the conspiracy theories of the right wing. Real Climate and Grist have reviewed their claims.
We are seeing three common techniques used by the right wing to distort the facts:
1) Taking statements out of context
2) Ignoring alternate meanings of words (for example, when scientists use “trick” in informal communications they are talking about finding a clever way to make things work, not trying to deceive people or distort data), and
3) Ignoring the science. There is a strong body of scientific evidence supporting climate change and this is the consensus view of scientists working in the field from different institutions from around the world. The science is not altered by anything in these emails.
how is falsifying data a god thing? Or trying to squeeze out anything showing inconsistencies. Sounds dishonest to me.
maybe light actually travels through ether.
There is no evidence of falsification of data. The claims of this are based upon right wingers distorting what is contained in the hacked emails. They will make up anything to try to justify their beliefs.
I’m particularly amused by how obvious some of the mischaracterization in the ‘Climategate’ blog article is. The guy, despite writing a blog for the Telegraph, writes as if he is utterly ignorant of just how ‘trick’ is used in British English and expects his readers to be equally ignorant. It’s the kind of intellectual dishonesty almost impossible to write off as mere stupidity… and yet the kind of intellectual dishonesty that requires absolute stupidity to believe one is telling a ‘good’ lie.
After reading some of the emails which have been taken out of context I feel that there is something here. The secular society we live in relies totally on cold hard scientific data to direct it!
From our climate to our toothbrush, and the the information which has not been denied will eat away at our Liberty (especially if we are hit with ‘green taxes’) and Enlightened Thought cannot be based on lies.
I think our climate is changing we have screwed this planet into the ground but the way forward must be based on hard scientific evidence and someone changing results to silence what is a sacred institution of peer review is unscientific and wrong!
Also I read the telegraph review and the BBC one and I felt the Telegraph was a lot more informative than the BBC’s vague report!
I like your motto
Defending Liberty and Enlightened Thought
just feel that simply attacking well known bias papers doesn’t serve either purpose!
(please excuse my English I am dyslexic)
The blog article on the telegraph was not a ‘review.’
It is important to understand this, whatever one’s opinion on the topic may be. For the record, I think that rather than wage a hopeless battle to stop climate change (though I support alternative energy for reasons of economic sustainability, it is not realistic to rely on a finite resource to fuel our society /without/ alternatives) we need to focus on how to help people threatened by climate change and save species threatened. I consider that more practical. I don’t think we’re going to stop climate change, we’ve already done too much damage, and I while I think we can slow it I think it is important to recognize that all we can do is slow it and we don’t know the exact amount that is possible. So we need to start planning for it.
My personal views aside, this was a deliberate hatchet job by a global warming denier using deliberately misrepresented information taken out of context. Some of it, the desire to punch a global warming denier in the face, was not even useful to the real point he was trying to make. It was an ad hominem attack snuck in for fun.
If they wanted to accuse scientists of being parsimonious with their data, that would be a legitimate argument that could be legitimately rebutted and there would be room for opinion on both sides.
This article takes the position that because they kept data among themselves for further work before releasing it publicly they are bad people. It then takes the position that bad people cannot possibly be right. It doesn’t truly address climate change except through the repetition of talking points.
Tony,
Once we get to the point where it is realized that these are ” emails which have been taken out of context” there is no longer any reason to believe “there is something here.” or that there is “someone changing results.”
Science is best discussed in peer reviewed professional journals, not be hacked email, and certainly not from email which was taken out of context and distorted by those with a political agenda here.