The Facts On Climategate
Friday, December 11th, 2009A Shameless Distraction From The Reality That Faces Earth
In November thousands of private e-mails were published on the Internet when a computer hacker breached the security of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) database in the UK.
The stolen data flew lickity-split around the news outlets and web sites skeptical about climate change. Even here in the US on Capitol Hill, it has given new ammo to opponents of climate change legislation. And then there’s Fox News calling the hacker a “whistle-blower”. While on his Fox News show, Sean Hannity falsely claimed the stolen emails show that the scientists “were certainly fudging” climate data; as an example, Hannity read from an email from CRU scientist Phil Jones in which he employed the word “trick” to describe his methods. In fact, the word “trick” has been grossly misinterpreted and refers to, as climate expert Bob Ward writes, “Scientists say ‘trick’ not just to mean deception. They mean it as a clever way of doing something — a short cut can be a trick. (more…)
Not quite a fortnight ago, November 23 to be exact, officials were prompted to issue a shipping warning because of more than 100, and possibly hundreds, of Antarctic icebergs floating towards New Zealand. Some measuring more than 650 feet (200 meters) across were seen in just one cluster, indicating there could be hundreds more. An Australian Antarctic Division glaciologist said the ice chunks, spotted by satellite photography, had passed the Auckland Islands and were heading towards the main South Island, about 280 miles (450 kilometers) northeast. Scientist Neal Young said they were the remains of a massive ice floe which split from the Antarctic as sea and air temperatures rise due to global warming. “If the current trends in global warming were to continue I would anticipate seeing more icebergs and the large ice shelves breaking up,” he said. 
