Global warming and corrupted science

I have long been only a mild skeptic of the received wisdom on global warming/climate change, largely because I simply haven't taken the time to delve very deeply into the science, although Pat Michael's latest book seems pretty sound to me. As Mark Landsbaum notes in this post on the Register's Orange Punch blog, what seems fairly certain in the wake of the leaked/stolen material from East Anglia's climate gurus, is that there was pretty active work to cement an orthodoxy -- the virtual opposite of real science -- by climate change believers. I'm not sure whether data was manipulated in truly egregious ways, but there's little doubt it was manipulated to some extent. That's not the kind of thing people utterly secure in their acceptance of the "scientific consensus" should feel impelled to do.

Anthroprogenic global warming theory in some form may turn out to have some validity. But the revelations in the various e-mails undermine its credibility a lot more than most of the MSM is prepared to admit -- yet.

Global warming cooling off?

The big news over the weekend was that a bunch of e-mails and other material from the UK's East Anglia University's climate change department were leaked/stolen/whatever. Mark Landsbaum, who follows this issue much more closely than I do, thinks they're extremely significant, telling me today there's evidence of conspiring to make sure non-enthusiasts of warming didn't get published, and evidence of data that didn't fit the hypothesis being suppressed or simply ignored. Was AGW (anthropogenic global warming) a scam from the get-go, or did it seem true until the data stopped supporting it and other theories (sunspots?) came to seem more plausible? Pat Michaels of Cato, says it's not a smoking gun, it's a mushroom cloud.

Anyway, Mark wrote this editorial for the Register, calling for more complete analysis of the data released and a full investigation into how it came to seem all right to suppress information and the implications for the underlying science -- and for confidence in the integrity of scientists. The unraveling may be only beginning.

Interesting times indeed!