If this is the best they've got, it's kind of sad, really.
Looks like the link to the zip file of what was left over from the 2009 release has been removed, just a few hours after the world became aware that the FOIA gang is at it again. But most of what found its way onto the web so far, tiny snippets without even a clue as to the subject matter that prompted the excerpts, doesn't ever rise to the level of lame.
Of course, that won't stop the denial punks from engaging in a display of juvenile histrionics. But still, after the embarrassment of the BEST study conclusions, it is beginning to look like the pseudoskeptics are beginning to get desperate.
I'm with Mike Mann:
who is quoted in the batch of released emails described the release as "truly pathetic".
When asked if they were genuine, he said: "Well, they look like mine but I hardly see anything that appears damning at all, despite them having been taken out of context. I guess they had very little left to work with, having culled in the first round the emails that could most easily be taken out of context to try to make me look bad."
-- The Guardian
Shawn Otto's take is good, too.
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More like this
according to WUWT the issue seems to be....
THE CAUSE!!!1!11!!
So....let me see if I've undwerstood this correctly:
Climate science is wrong, because the people who oppose it are thieves.
I'm convinced.
Hilarious reading those emails. The science is settled obviously. Lmao. There is no science. Just flawed models and a political agenda.
Let me guess: you haven't read the emails, Derp.
My guess is that the arguments that 1. warming isn't real and 2. it isn't human-generated, is basically lost for the climate denial crowd. However, Big Fossil Fuel still has money to pay them, so - given their ethics - if it pays to lie for another year or so, they'll keep on lying. Remember, these guys are professional denialists - they don't care what the issue is, they have a technology of denial that they can sell to Big Corporate in a variety of situations. They will continue to market their wares, believe me.
The Muller study was a turning point. And I think Big Fossil knew, as with the tobacco industry, it was ultimately a losing argument, but it still accomplished its main purpose of stalling any real reform for a couple of decades while they continued business as usual.
But this isn't over. The denialists need another Big Lie to contract their services out for, and Big Fossil still has deep pockets.
My money says the Next Big Lie will be three-pronged.
The first will be a propaganda push (accompanied by obscene amounts of corporate money and lobbying, of course)arguing that fossil fuels don't really hurt the environment that much. We will see propaganda that argues that fracking doesn't affect the local environment very much, along with more lies about how coal is supposedly getting cleaner.
The second prong will be a propaganda push to convince us that other energy sources (solar and wind in particular) are 1. not viable on the scale society needs them to be deployed and 2. are decades away from coming online in any meaningful capacity
The third prong will be an attempt to leverage the fact that the economy is bad, namely, the argument that Big Fossil creates jobs. The fracking industry is already pushing this in the midwest. This third prong ties in neatly with the continued subsidizing of and deregulation agenda of Big Fossil, as well as neatly supporting the idea that the top elite executives of Big Fossil are "job creators" that need eternal tax cuts to help them create work for the unwashed masses.
The environmentally aware (which of course includes scientists who actually study the earth) are thus put in the same peculiar position as before. They are right, because the actual facts back them up, but they lack the resources to counter the lobbying and propaganda blitz by Big Fossil and their army of paid denialists.
Add in the considerable number of politicians who are in on the take, and you can see the battle is from from over.
Plus, Big Fossil and the denialists have the same advantage that they had in the tobacco wars and the AGW fight: they don't have to be supported by the actual data, and they don't have to be right. They just have to stave off any meaningful reform for as long as possible.
They can be wrong, destroy lots of lives, drive thousands of species to extinction, and keep the economy down,but again - given their ethics - it's still a win for them because they get the payday.
Jonathan Swift was a prophet. Scientists have a tendency for being narrow/limited minded, authoritarian and corrupt.
Climate deniers make 9/11 troofers look smart by comparison.
Two years and they have learned nothing about not being sucked in. Absolutely nothing.
Potholer54 has done a smashing job with his latest video on the subject.
He (gasp) actully does fact-checking.
Climategate mark 2 -- the quotes and the context
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OB2prBtVFo
well I'm rather disappointed in the lack of scrutiny over the content of these e-mails. Believe what you want about the state of climate science, but how do you deny the words of your "heroes" by their own hand?
MarkD -
If there is any content which is clearly damming (without delberate out of context quoting ar a priori assumption of wrongdoing) then feel free to explain what it is.
In fact, we could do with an explanation using the first lot of emails, since I've not seen anything particularly damming in those, either, and no one has ever been able to tell me what is. Just lots of 'go google it yourself'..
> well I'm rather disappointed in the lack of scrutiny over the content of these e-mails
This would be because the emails are the same theft from 2 years ago, which had been defended against nine investigations and is irrelevant to the science.
But I guess it's OK to slander climate scientists in your world.
If there is any content which is clearly damming (without delberate out of context quoting ar a priori assumption of wrongdoing) then feel free to explain what it is.
In fact, we could do with an explanation using the first lot of emails, since I've not seen anything particularly damming in those, either, and no one has ever been able to tell me what is. Just lots of 'go google it yourself'..
Complex 41,
I could post more links and will if you seriously want to look into what these e-mails say. I may jump to a conclusion here but I'm guessing you really aren't that interested.
In the meanwhile Delingpole sums it up rather nicely in the Wall Street Journal: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100014240529702044521045770598306260022…
"In the meanwhile Delingpole sums it up rather nicely in the Wall Street Journal"
Really? Dellingpole has had a TERRIBLE record of getting things dead wrong.
Yet you still use him as your go-to guy for "the truth"?
Try here instead:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/nov/24/leaked-climate-scienc…
But I guess you're not interested in what the emails, say, only what the echo chamber quotes insinuate.
Dellingpole? Dellingpole! The guy who says he does not need to know the science to critique the critics? Come on, let's be serious.