Here is a post on the global warming equivalent of the ACORN scandal. Here is the story thus far. Somebody hacked into the emails of a major global warming research center, posted the emails on a public server, where they were for a few hours. Before they were taken down, some other folks downloaded them, and so they are now available for the edification and amusement of global warming skeptics, like lots of people, and global warming deniers, like me. I appreciated the astute comment of one contributor over at Hugh Hewitt’s blog, who said that global warming is caused by that GIANT BALL OF FIRE IN THE SKY.
Before proceeding further, let me say that the edifying results here do not in any way justify the actions of whoever the hacker was. I do not know what the relevant laws are, but if the hacker is caught and identified, the same thing should happen to him that happened to the fellow who hacked into Sarah Palin’s email account. Justice is justice, and justice shouldn’t be politicized any more than scientific data should be.
At the same time, if the guy who hacked Palin’s emails had actually found the dirt he was eagerly looking for, that dirt would still be public knowledge even after he headed off for jail. Everybody can’t stop knowing what they now know.
And what we now know is that global warming is not just an egregious scientific mistake (which it always was). It is a mistake that certain dedicated true believers are prepared to persist in, by means of scientific fraud as necessary. If you scroll down to the bottom of the post I linked to, you will see an email in which a particular technique of number fudging is commended in order to “hide the decline.”
Global warming religionists have already been on the defensive because of a decade or so of unusually wintery conditions every old place, but this puts them back on their heels in a serious way. In the next phase, look for defections of former believers to begin, and as soon as it is possible to be a global warming skeptic and/or denier, without being the leprous equivalent of a Holocaust denier or flat-earther, the thing will be completely over. Stick a fork in it; it’s done.