Climategate?

http://business.theatlantic.com/2009/12/climategate_iii_the_mystery_of_the_missing_data.php

Ran across another “Climategate” (silly name) article on the net.  This one written by someone who believes in the consensus that global warming is man-made.  However, there are some really good points that the author (Megan McArdle) makes in her post.

Basically, these emails point out flaws not necessarily in the conclusion, but that the road to that conclusion was flawed in a way that makes the conclusion untrustworthy.

To convince someone that you are right, you don’t go around beating up anyone who says you’re wrong.  You convince them you are right by showing your conclusion, the base facts, and how you used those facts to create your conclusion.  Even an idiot like me can see that.  Deleting your source data (or losing it), and obscuring how you reached your conclusions would have gotten at most a “C” grade in my high school geometry class.  My geometry teacher was all about “show me how you got your answer, not just the answer”.  If a high school math teacher doesn’t accept the method, why should we?

As a U.S. taxpayer watching our national debt skyrocket (and my pocketbook shrink), I’m appalled that we’re using these seemingly unsupported answers to force possibly economically devastating laws such as cap-and-trade through congress.  Even worse, it seems that we’ve spent millions or billions (I never seem to see the same answer twice) of dollars funding those very same conclusions, and maybe spending billions more in the future.

I don’t know.  All I know is that these scientists don’t seem to have a clue, and I’m not sure we can trust any of them anymore.

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