Oh, my. If James Delingpole has turned against AGW, whatever are we to do! Surely the final nail in the coffin. Next thing you know, the sun will turn yellow, the sky blue, and the grass green!
If anyone is actually interested in the discussion over the content and nature of the emails, Gavin Schmidt over at Realclimate has been fielding questions since this came out. Some of his are among the mails taken, and his responses usually give quite a bit of revealing context.
Also: the official statement from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit, complete with explanation about the "trick" to "hide the decline" - referring to the post-1960 decline in the tree ring proxy record - by replacing it with the known instrumental temperature record. Decide for yourself if this troubles your overall interpretation of global warming, but this is definitively *not* hiding a "decline" in modern temperatures.
But if you cut the quote completely out of context and write incendiary newspaper articles, it looks damning. Which is, of course, why they only give you a single sentence. Much easier to get outraged about if you leave your readers to imagine for themselves.
-Jester
Afterthought: Mr. Delingpole also follows Watts in confusing the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia with the Hadley Center (he says AKA - it is not.) They contribute to the same global temperature series (HadCRUT3), but are quite separate institutions.
If anyone is actually interested in the discussion over the content and nature of the emails, Gavin Schmidt over at Realclimate has been fielding questions since this came out. Some of his are among the mails taken, and his responses usually give quite a bit of revealing context.
Also: the official statement from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit, complete with explanation about the "trick" to "hide the decline" - referring to the post-1960 decline in the tree ring proxy record - by replacing it with the known instrumental temperature record. Decide for yourself if this troubles your overall interpretation of global warming, but this is definitively *not* hiding a "decline" in modern temperatures.
But if you cut the quote completely out of context and write incendiary newspaper articles, it looks damning. Which is, of course, why they only give you a single sentence. Much easier to get outraged about if you leave your readers to imagine for themselves.
-Jester
Afterthought: Mr. Delingpole also follows Watts in confusing the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia with the Hadley Center (he says AKA - it is not.) They contribute to the same global temperature series (HadCRUT3), but are quite separate institutions.