[ExI] climategate again

[spike]

> ...On Behalf Of BillK
> ...
> Book Review:
> "This is a story of betrayal, a story of selfishness, greed, 
> and irresponsibility on an epic scale." That's how James 
> Hoggan opens his newly published book Climate Cover-Up: The 
> Crusade to Deny Global Warming... BillK

Ja, BillK, I agree partially, but this would have played much better a month
ago than it will now.  It was the scientists who have been apparently caught
doing some dirty business, corrupting or influencing the peer review
process, sloppy handling of data etc.

That being said, I noticed three things: there is a huge population which
believe that global warming is a bad thing, but that crowd did not rejoice
at the possibility that the threat was exaggerated.  Our own senator (Boxer)
wants to direct the entire investigation at finding who leaked the
incriminating email, and never mind the actual contents of that leak.  Good
luck with that irrelevant task.  The AGW-is-bad crowd should be filled with
hope, happy as hell, but they seem bitter and angry.

Second, I notice the British are talking about this more than the Yanks.
Scandals are supposed to come out of the US and Nigeria, not Britain.

Third, the debate seems to be: in the light of these leaks, is AGW true or
false?  But a whole bunch of us realize AGW is probably true, but that isn't
the critical question.  The critical question is: how much?  If we try to
say the warming was not exaggerated at all by the CRU crowd, how do we know
that for sure?  And if we say it wasn't exaggerated, how do we know they
didn't underestimate it?  And if they did underestimate it, by how much?
And if they suppressed dissenting papers by a corrupted peer review process,
where are those authors now?  Where are those papers?  And if they didn't
corrupt the peer review process, why did Prof. Jones make that comment about
somehow keeping two papers out of the journal (apparently before he had seen
them) and blackballing the Climate Science journal?

BillK, I am not denying climate change, but the changers are carrying the
burden of proof, and there is a definite suspicion that scientific
misbehavior took place.  We have some work to do before we are ready to draw
conclusions.

spike