Two years ago someone stole a lot of emails belonging to climate scientists, prompting the British gutter press to talk a lot of garbage about how climate science is fake. It was not much of a "scandal"; notwithstanding, terms such as "Climategate" and "hide the decline" have solemnly entered the winger catechism, and to this day are fapped to with the utmost reverence.
Yet, as is known, there is no feral dog so syphilitic that it will refrain from revisiting the scene of a much-loved spew. Hence this class of thing.
A fresh tranche of private emails exchanged between leading climate scientists throughout the last decade was released online on Tuesday. The unauthorised publication is an apparent attempt to repeat the impact of a similar release of emails on the eve of the Copenhagen climate summit in late 2009.
The initial email dump was apparently timed to disrupt the Copenhagen climate talks. It prompted three official inquiries in the UK and two in the US into the working practices of climate scientists. Although these were critical of the scientists' handling of Freedom of Information Act requests and lack of openness they did not find fault with the climate change science they had produced.
It is accurate yet somehow overly elegant to describe this "release" as a "tranche"; if we must use the term, expanding it to tranche de merde would work better. It is, see, the same shit as last time -- its just more bobbing for road-apples out of the turd-vat containing what was stolen two years ago.
Crucially, as the Guardian says, none of the inquiries into this crap showed any sort of scientific misconduct. Which matters! It's easy enough to find see hysterical "updates" like this at the usual cesspits:
In a statement, UEA doesn’t deny these emails, but posts about the whitewash investigations of the past, like they matter now.
But they actually do still matter, a lot. A bit of common sense would be nice here.
If the original hack-scandal had any teeth or real meaning, it would have had an effect on the science. You would have seen journal articles retracted, reputations ruined, some firings.
Like, you would have seen ONE at minimum journal article retracted. That would have been momentous.
But that didn't happen.
Bluntly, you can't have an email science scandal. The science is published. It's public. It's not hard to find, if you want to go look at it. And you can judge it for yourself, if you're competent to do so.
If the public record had been distorted by hidden mysterious agendas, that would indeed be Shocking.
But it wasn't. Science, it emerges, remains science.
These emails simply do not have any bearing on established science. How do we know that? The established science!
Go read the whole thing: Hooray, Fresh Hooey!
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