At
Grist, David Roberts writes
What we have and haven't learned from 'Climategate':
I wrote about the "Climategate" controversy (over emails stolen from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit) once, which is about what it warranted.
My silent protest had no effect whatsoever, of course, and the story followed a depressingly familiar trajectory: hyped relentlessly by right-wing media, bullied into the mainstream press as he-said she-said, and later, long after the damage is done, revealed as utterly bereft of substance. It's a familiar script for climate faux controversies, though this one played out on a slightly grander scale.
Consider that there have now been five, count 'em five, inquiries into the matter. Penn State established an independent inquiry into the accusations against scientist Michael Mann and found "no credible evidence" [PDF] of improper research conduct. A British government investigation run by the House of Commons' Science and Technology Committee found that while the CRU scientists could have been more transparent and responsive to freedom-of-information requests, there was no evidence of scientific misconduct. The U.K.'s Royal Society (its equivalent of the National Academies) ran an investigation that found "no evidence of any deliberate scientific malpractice." The University of East Anglia appointed respected civil servant Sir Muir Russell to run an exhaustive, six-month independent inquiry; he concluded that "the honesty and rigour of CRU as scientists are not in doubt ... We have not found any evidence of behaviour that might undermine the conclusions of the IPCC assessments."
All those results are suggestive, but let's face it, they're mostly ... British. Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) wanted an American investigation of all the American scientists involved in these purported dirty deeds. So he asked the Department of Commerce's inspector general to get to the bottom of it. On Feb. 18, the results of that investigation were released. "In our review of the CRU emails," the IG's office said in its letter to Inhofe [PDF], "we did not find any evidence that NOAA inappropriately manipulated data ... or failed to adhere to appropriate peer review procedures." (Oddly, you'll find no mention of this central result in Inhofe's tortured public response.)
Whatever legitimate issues there may be about the responsiveness or transparency of this particular group of scientists, there was nothing in this controversy -- nothing -- that cast even the slightest doubt on the basic findings of climate science. Yet it became a kind of stain on the public image of climate scientists. How did that happen?
• • • • •
At Daily Kos on this date in 2003:
Let's forget about Iraq for a moment and talk about an enemy more ruthless and cunning than Saddam Hussein, more sinister than a nuclear-armed North Korea. I'm talking about spam.
Just kidding. I actually love getting invitations to refinance my house, lose weight fast, talk to lovely Russian ladies, help Nigerian bankers loot dormant accounts, and enlarge my penis.
And boy, am I getting them. I've been overrun at the office for some time, but for a while I managed to keep my home email account relatively clean. It couldn't last. Over the past week they've started coming in, 2 or 3 a day, then 4 or 5, now up to 10 or 12.
So I started wondering if it was just me or if it's getting worse for everybody. That's when I found out: Spam is multiplying faster than the tribbles in that old Star Trek episode. Consider:
According to the Washington Post, AOL blocks more than 780 million spams a day -- 100 million more messages than it actually delivers.