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Climate Emails Don't Prove Warming Is a Fraud

But they do damage credibility of scientists

By Harry Kimball,  Newser Staff

Posted Nov 27, 2009 9:55 AM CST
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(Newser) – The leaked climate change emails are “damning” and dangerous to the deadly serious inquiry into the state of our planet, Eugene Robinson writes. It’s not that the science is bad—“If I'm wrong, somebody ought to tell the polar ice caps that they're free to stop melting”—but the perception of it. “Most Americans are convinced that climate change is real,” Robinson writes. Add deception, and watch that surety “dissipate, and fast.”

The emails, which talk of “tricks,” “hide the decline,” and the “lack of warming,” are not what skeptics declare them to be—a revelatory glimpse into the hucksterism of doom-and-gloom climate science, writes Robinson in the Washington Post. But it’s the talk of crowding out contrary voices that could sour the public on the consensus view. The ice caps don’t lie, but if scientists don’t stop trying to “squelch dissent,” people will listen to them with extremely skeptical ears.

An iceberg melts in Kulusuk Bay, eastern Greenland.
An iceberg melts in Kulusuk Bay, eastern Greenland.   (AP Photo)
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Consensus on the nature and scope of the problem will dissipate, and fast, if experts try to obscure the fact that there's much about the climate they still don't know. - Eugene Robinson

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COMMENTS
Showing 3 of 21 comments
OrganicTea
Nov 29, 2009 12:43 PM CST
@DLY So where's your evidence for that "fact"? Nobody in the scientific community, absolutely nobody, thinks that climate change is a fraud. The issue is whether human influence in the global environment is great enough to influence natural global climate patterns and what the impact of contemporary climate shifts are likely to have on ecosystems, agriculture, migration, food supplies, etc. At least get your controversies straight before you comment.
lindamae
Nov 29, 2009 5:36 AM CST
Right! Another huckster at work. There would have been NO need for these emails IF the facts, figures, charts, etc. "proving" GW were on the up and up. That they were needed really confirms what 30,000 scientists have already signed on to: GW caused by CO2 is a hoax - lacks true scientific debate - and the peer reviews everyone points out were part of a incestuous plot. If it were true - them any scientist worth his salt would have loudly, gladly, openly, proudly - given out his data and not beg other scientists to hide, delete or "lose" the info needed. Requests from the freedom of info act have been ignored these past few years. I don't need any more proof than that. We don't even have to review any of the "report" since we know know they aren't honorable. Did anyone read that Gordon Brown is pushing for a billion dollar fund to help e money to poor nations so that they can start fighting GW? That is why this whole fiasco is alive. Cap and trade - share the wealth - and Gore and his investors will get even more than the billion they now have. Plus - George Soros - he gave Jim Hansen $750,000 and John Kerry's wife's fund gave Hanson $250,000 when his first report was made - to help with legal expenses. Yeah! Right!!! They think the American public are morons.
Assassin
Nov 28, 2009 12:27 PM CST
You don't have to prove that if it looks like a duck, waddles like a duck & quacks like a duck - that it's a Duck. Eco-Fascists want to control your life. Reminds me of a party I was at in Berkeley, Ca where this Hindu Bitch is OFFENDED beacuase there was Animal Protein offered as part of the food to which I replied - is that Leather Belt you're wearing from an Animal? Isn't that one if your Hindu Gods? What hypocrites. These eco freaks use gasoline, wear clothes made from animals, drink $4.00 Lattes from Starbuck's - they are all Full of Shit!

 
climate change • global warming • email • scientists • public opinion • Eugene Robinson • climate skeptics • climate change emails

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