Quote Originally Posted by de7158 View Post
Is this all a beat up by the global warming cynics. If not what the heck is this all about and why isn't Australian main stream media all over this news?
Climategate: news spreads | Herald Sun Andrew Bolt Blog

Peter
It depends mainly on your viewpoint. Andrew Bolt is the leading press commentator on the "sceptic" side of climate change, so he is looking for every bit of evidence on his side, and ignoring every bit of evidence on the other side. Same as the climate change industry is doing on their side!

Like any scientific result, there is no absolute certainty to the answer, and some degree of dispute as to how certain the results are. To a very large extent the climate change results are the result of computer modelling based on some fairly uncertain data and possibly dubious simplifications.

I suppose that whether you think it is a beatup depends to a large extent on whether you work on the basis "If there is the slightest chance it is right, we must act" or on the basis "If there is the slightest doubt it is wrong, would be silly to act now". Both could well be based on exactly the same data and models. Unfortunately both sides have adopted a religious fervour, and on both sides there are undoubtedly people who are not above fudging a few facts to push the evidence further their way.

Because of the indirectly measured data, and the elaborate modelling needed, it is very unlikely that any set of data and models that satisfies everyone will ever be forthcoming.

To make some comparisons, in 150 years there are still people sceptical of natural selection, and after almost a hundred years still some who doubt special relativity. It took fifty years or more for the concept of moving continents to become accepted. And climate change science has really only existed for perhaps fifteen years, and has far less data to support it than any of these.

Complicating the situation is that some are using it as tool in a crusade against capitalism, ignoring the fact that China has now overtaken the US as the biggest emitter, and on the other side some see the whole thing as a socialist conspiracy. Undoubtedly many scientists and politicians have jumped on the bandwagon (can you blame them? particularly for scientists, they go where the money is, and politicians pick whatever they think will get votes), but this fact does not necessarily mean that either side is right or wrong! Just that climate change is the current bandwagon.

John