User:Tillman/Climategate missing stuff

Climategate: the missing criticisms
I'd pretty much given up on Climatic Research Unit e-mail hacking incident‎ -- aside from being hideously mistitled) it's, basically, a whitewash, and missing answers to essential, common-sense questions, such as:


 * If the "Hockey Team" were so confident of their diagnosis of near-catastrophic AGW, why were they resisting release of their data so strenuously? Did they have something to hide?

WSJ editorial quote which I can't find now, dammit. Help?


 * Clive Crook, a senior editor of The Atlantic Monthly, asks: "We contemplate outlays of trillions of dollars to fix this supposed problem. Can I read these emails and feel that the scientists involved deserve to be trusted? No, I cannot." Source:, the Atlantic Monthly, 30 Nov 2009.


 * The impact of Climategate on the public perception of science:

Wall Street Journal columnist Daniel Henninger has written, in "Climategate: Science Is Dying": "I don't think most scientists appreciate what has hit them. This isn't only about the credibility of global warming. For years, global warming and its advocates have been the public face of hard science. ... [T]he average person reading accounts of the East Anglia emails will conclude that hard science has become just another faction, as politicized and 'messy' as, say, gender studies." Source:

Georgia Tech climate scientist Judith Curry wrote that “This whole concept of, ‘We’re the experts, trust us,’ has clearly gone by the wayside with these e-mails.” Source:, NY Times, published November 27, 2009.


 * Who's investigating what went wrong?

Information technology columnist Gordon Crovitz reports in "Bloggers peer review a scientific 'consensus' ":

"Unlike Watergate, Climategate didn't come to light because investigative journalists ferreted out the truth. Instead, this story so far has played itself out largely on blogs, often run by the same scientists who had a hard time getting printed in the scientific journals. Climategate has provided a voice to the scientists who had been frozen out of the debate.

This may be how information-based scandals play out in the future: A leak from a whistleblower directly onto the Web. Expert bloggers then assess what the disclosures mean—a Web version of peer review." Source:, WSJ column, 12-6-2009.


 * Is there any good that can come out of this mess?

Mike Hulme, a climate scientist at the University of East Anglia, writes:

"If climategate leads to greater openness and transparency in climate science, and makes it less partisan, it will have done a good thing." Source:, WSJ Europe, Dec.2, 2009.

These or similar well-sourced criticsms and commentary urgently need to be added to our article, if it is to have any semblance of credibility. Or so I believe. Best, Pete Tillman (talk) 06:11, 23 December 2009 (UTC)