It’s been a stormy time in the science of climatology since various emails were hacked that revealed the British-based Climate Research Unit, a major contributor to the IPCC, had used bad data and dodgy coding in some of its reports.
The minimal scientific impact of this has been explored widely, but I’m more interested in the way it has regalvanised a movement which, dominant in the US blogosphere, and now increasingly vocal over here, seeks to deny the agreed probabilities of both climate warming, and human contribution to it.
Once again, the blogosphere, while providing wonderful resources for fact checking, data analysis and corroboration, actually seems to be working in reverse, and actively promoting groupthink, irrationality and faith-based argument…