A 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…)