You wouldn't read about it: climate scientists right

[panzerfaust]

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/you-wouldnt-read-about-it-climate-scientists-right-20100725-10qev.html

Chances are, you have not heard much about Climategate lately, but last November it dominated the media. Three weeks before the Copenhagen summit, thousands of emails from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia were published on a Russian website...

The scandal was one of the pivotal moments in changing the politics of climate change. What seemed close to a bipartisan agreement on an environmental trading scheme collapsed with Tony Abbott's defeat of Malcolm Turnbull. Within months the Rudd government lost its nerve on what the former prime minister called ''the greatest moral and economic challenge of our time''.

By casting doubt on the integrity of the scientists, Climategate helped puncture public faith in the science, and probably contributed to Labor's political panic. The echo chamber of columnists reverberated with angry and accusatory claims. In Australia, Piers Akerman said: ''The tsunami of leaked emails . . . reveal a culture of fraud, manipulation, deceit and personal vindictiveness to rival anything in a John le Carre or John Grisham thriller.'' Later he wrote: ''The crowd that gathered in Copenhagen were there pushing a fraud.''

In short, the deniers won for the polluters that which they wanted: Time.

Time to delay, Time to make it too late to place any meaningful controls which might adversely impact the current bottom lines of the extractive industry.

Who paid for the break-in: BP, Shell, Exxon? ... for who else stood to gain?

Sadly, just as with the Gulf oil spill the rest of us, and the environment, has lost. All the denial politics in the world will not change reality.

[lunatica]

1. They're cutting off their noses to spite their faces

We live in bizarre times.

[niceypoo]

2. The GOP is an apocalyptic suicide cult

...where money has replaced god as the object of adulation.

[izquierdista]

3. I'd call that progress

At least money can buy you dinner at a nice restaurant. They're not going to serve you if all you have are prayers. :evilgrin: