excerpts:
We're getting close to the point where the dictionary definition of "journalist" will have to be altered to read, "A media personality who attempts to stifle news stories out of cowardice, ideology, or for pay."
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It may well be that both directors will be whitewashed by their respective institutions. But discredited as they are, it really doesn't matter. Neither can ever again pose as the disinterested, incorruptible scientist, and their programs will remain irrevocably tainted. Science as a discipline has its own way of dealing with these types. Papers will be returned with a thank-you note. Grant proposals will become tied up. Grad students will be advised to look elsewhere for doctoral material. Phil and Mike are now and forever climatology's used-car salesmen, and may as well get used to the plaid jacket two sizes too large and the white patent-leather shoes. Though I wouldn't put it past the Swedes to throw them a Nobel next time around.
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At last we arrive at Copenhagen... only to discover that there's not much to address there at all. The grand climate summit, which was supposed to herald the advent of some sort of "global government", was in trouble even before Climategate, with the preliminary negotiations, intended to provide a fait accompli for the official proceedings, petering out to nothing even before the first delegates boarded the UN's solar-powered blimps for the long trip to Denmark.
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Reports from Copenhagen since then have been muddled, confused, and deeply uninteresting. Copenhagen was supposed to be high real-world drama, with the world's leaders frantically working to stave off the Big Heat in much the same fashion as they might a menacing comet or asteroid, while the world looked on in frightened awe. The CRU e-mails, though unmentioned by anyone apart from the Saudis, have transformed it all into a cartoon, with our noble, tireless statesmen become so many Wile E. Coyotes heading off the cliff with rockets strapped to their skates.
(Another casualty is the great Al Gore, who had originally scheduled an event in which $1,200 would purchase a signed copy of his latest book, a handshake, and a personal blessing from Mother Gaia. Gore was unfortunately forced to cancel. He has to watch out for process servers now.)
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Of course, the big target is Al. There are thousands of lawyers burning office lights until all hours figuring out how to take down Al Gore. Thousands more are being decanted from the lawyers' replication vats for the sole purpose of pleading "Gore v. Whoever". The legal aspects of the new industry of carbon-offsets remain in large part unexplored. I'm sure that Al will relish his role as a pioneer in establishing necessary legal benchmarks as he has in so much else.
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Far from being accepted wisdom, global warming has always been viewed warily by the average American, as yet another excuse for governmental interference and pocket-picking. It won't take much in the way of reiteration to turn this into a raging conviction, with considerable ancillary damage to the progressive program as a whole.
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But warming is politically dead. It would require a brave politician to inconvenience voters, steal their money, and ruin their jobs based on premises that may be fraudulent. That "may" is the crucial term -- fraud doesn't have to be proven. Doubt is all that's required. When fraud enters the picture, everything else -- certainty, veracity, trust -- gets up and leaves. Fakery distorts everything that it touches. To claim that, even though the last batch of data was tainted, the next batch just might be okay, is the same as saying that the last e-mail offer you got from the Nigerian President's Office may have cleaned out your bank account, but this one you just opened has got to be for real.
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