I have taken several classes through Scripps Institute of Oceanography (respected research institute). Their consensus is that a global warming is occuring and that humans are the cause of it. The evidence points to the fact that this is true. And, there is no denying (even if you're a skeptic) cold, hard facts (no pun intended).
Scripps? That appeal to authority might be persuasive to me, had I not spent several years attending even more prestigious institutions and doing my own research.
Their consensus is based on flawed data and flawed models, as revealed by the Climategate dossier.
That flawed consensus, and the flawed data and flawed models which produced it, are hopelessly compromised by the incentives ($$$) to confirm ACG/AGW and the penalties for disputing it ("Hey Denier, you're fired").
There is plenty of room to disupte that consensus. Your desire to Declare Victory does not reflect, much less create, reality.
You will find that the best coverage of Climategate was reported by The Register. As an IT-focused news site, they had an advantage over the MSM in understanding all the wonky bits (hackers? arrays? fudge factors? code comments?).
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Reading the Climategate archive is a bit like discovering that Professional Wrestling is rigged. You mean, it is? Really?
The archive - a carefully curated 160MB collection of source code, emails and other documents from the internal network of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia - provides grim confirmation for critics of climate science. But it also raises far more troubling questions.
Perhaps the real scandal is the dependence of media and politicians on their academics' work - an ask-no-questions approach that saw them surrender much of their power, and ultimately authority. This doesn't absolve the CRU crew of the charges, but might put it into a better context.
After a week of scrutiny of the emails, attention is now turning to the programming source code. Three quarters of the material released is the work of the academics, much of which they had jealously guarded. This includes a version of the world's most cited and respected temperature record - HADCRUT - and a number of surveys which featured prominently in the reports of the UN's climate change panel, the IPCC. The actors here shaped the UN reports, and ultimately - because no politician dare contradict the 'science' - shaped global policy.
The allegations over the past week are fourfold: that climate scientists controlled the publishing process to discredit opposing views and further their own theory; they manipulated data to make recent temperature trends look anomalous; they withheld and destroyed data they should have released as good scientific practice, and they were generally beastly about people who criticised their work.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/30/crugate_analysis/
The archive - a carefully curated 160MB collection of source code, emails and other documents from the internal network of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia - provides grim confirmation for critics of climate science. But it also raises far more troubling questions.
Perhaps the real scandal is the dependence of media and politicians on their academics' work - an ask-no-questions approach that saw them surrender much of their power, and ultimately authority. This doesn't absolve the CRU crew of the charges, but might put it into a better context.
After a week of scrutiny of the emails, attention is now turning to the programming source code. Three quarters of the material released is the work of the academics, much of which they had jealously guarded. This includes a version of the world's most cited and respected temperature record - HADCRUT - and a number of surveys which featured prominently in the reports of the UN's climate change panel, the IPCC. The actors here shaped the UN reports, and ultimately - because no politician dare contradict the 'science' - shaped global policy.
The allegations over the past week are fourfold: that climate scientists controlled the publishing process to discredit opposing views and further their own theory; they manipulated data to make recent temperature trends look anomalous; they withheld and destroyed data they should have released as good scientific practice, and they were generally beastly about people who criticised their work.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/30/crugate_analysis/
Climate change is a natural phenomenon, controlled primarily by the sun and other aspects of geophysics that dwarf anything man has ever done.
Sorry.