Climategate

Now, at real-climate they defend the hacks and say that nothing illegal is in the emails and that most are taken somewhat out-of-context. Now, there may really be some out of context remarks in them, but they are on-going series of conversations. On top of that, even if they are when it comes to the science, out of context, some of the wording is very very poor. They could be seen as insults and exactly those kind of felloneys some of the sceptics expected.

A very ironic comment by someone named "Steve" (though he might not understand the joke) on this realclimate thread is enlightening for the mindset of the pro-catastrophe crowd:

Best wishes to RC and the relevant scientists – no professional deserves the violation of privacy done by these virtual thugs.

Please persevere; knowledge and information beats special interests in the long run.

Not only did some of the people at climate-audit or chez Anthony Watts predict this kind of reasoning, no, they were even proven right. It is true that private email should not be stolen and read publicly, but at the same time, it is not right to not release requests and to threaten people if they didn't comply.

They were not even virtual thugs but it was most likely an inside job. The funny and very leftist political thing to say is "knowledge and information beats special interests". Did he even read his sentence after writing. The sceptics are those who want to get information and possess the knowledge to really understand what MANN et al. did. And in the hacked data there is a file that shows the special interest funding of Jones. Also, some of the scientists letters were worded with help from Greenpeace. What the hell? If that isn't special interest than nothing is.

I don't understand the argument, why it is so important WHO funded research. The findings should stand on their own, or they are not science whatsoever. And if we compare funding for pro-catastrophe against "industry" funding contra, we see that the pro-crowd outspends the cons at least 10 folds.

Another shoddy reply by Gavin Schmidt can be seen in the comment with J:

[Response: That would only be true if they had in fact produced convincing evidence that solar effects were larger than thought. They did not, and so the conclusion does not follow. - gavin]

I remind you of what is was replying to:

[Response: ...Hint: if you assume that only one factor matters, then it is rather predictable that this is what you think is important.]
You seem to have gone backwards in your argument here.

And I’ve already posted the link to the rebuttal of Benestad and Schmidt’s criticism.

[Response: (I'm Schmidt if you didn't realise). You aren't getting this. Scafetta's work assumes that only solar can be responsible for the trends and very unsurprisingly comes up with a conclusion that it does! However, this doesn't mean anything. In a proper attribution study you need to include all of the factors otherwise you risk conflating two elements which might both have a trend. In model results where you know the answer, Scafetta's kind of technique does not work in extracting a true solar signal. Thus it demonstrates nothing about the real world. As for the 'rebuttal' we were promised a comment on the paper would be submitted within days of that blog posting. No such comment has emerged. Neither has a copy of Scafetta's code that would allow us to reconcile our calculation and his. Maybe you'd like to complain that he's 'hiding' something? - gavin]

Sometimes, it is just ridiculous. What Gavin answers to the questioning commenter is that when you watch one variable and you expect an outcome, you will get it. Now, we return to most of realclimates positions that CO2 is the driving factor in Climate change. IF you expect this, then you will get it!

Sometimes comments are far too sloppy...