Climategate: A symptom of driving science off a cliff

Impartiality?

They may "say" that. It's done in the interests of viewers and readers. Sensationalism only works when my headline is gorier than yours.

How is it called passive drinking? Is someone pouring it down their throat without them noticing? Perhaps they attached them to a drip against their will.

Passive smoking comes from actually being affected by the physical substance. I do not doubt that drinking has adverse effects, we can all see that. It has been know for many years. But to call it "passive drinking" is just wrong.

Passive stupidity is even more of a problem.

The catastrophe isn't a sure thing. The IPCC reports which make that clear.

The issue is that rapidly elevating CO2 so much higher than it's been for millions of years will very likely have a number of significant effects on climate (ocean pH drop, warming of the planet, increased plant fertilization). In turn there are a myriad of secondary knock on effects from each of these changes - physical and biological and it's domino's from there. The catastrophe is the potential result of these changes happening so fast.

The reason the word "denier" exists is to describe those who would rather trick themselves and others into believing none of the above mentioned effects are likely to happen at all and that the matter can simply be shelved and ignored.

f you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.

Whatever "lie" could you be referring to?

(a) AGW is no threat at all to anyone

(b) AGW is looming and certain catastrophe

Anything in the media is either a lie or a gross (and very likely mangled) oversimplification. But no non-scientist (and only a subset of all scientists) is really qualified to understand the science (such as it is).

So we have these boisterous debates in the media, in politics, commentary, and forums where almost everybody talks a load of horseshit . The debate about AGW that really counts is this propaganda war.

We can only hope that the winners of the propaganda war happen to (by sheer bloody fluke) agree with whatever turns out to be the case. Just maybe the current state of climate science (however imperfect) suggests which side of the propaganda battle to support. But how that battle is fought has nothing all to do with what the science says now or might say in the future. Talking real science, (with its detail, interminable qualifications, subtletly, and often non-intuitive answers) in a propaganda war just gets in the way of the repetitive lying and sloganeering you need to win over the target audience.

That's because you are deniers

"the fact that sceptics are also called 'deniers"

Yes, that's what happens when the overwhelming evidence supports one point of view, and you choose to subscribe to another. in spite of it. And indeed your rant continues on in that vein.

That picture is worth a thousand. Anyway, what about pickled onions? I just ate a whole jar.

In the same vein

Another book in the same vein would be Aaron Wildavsky's "But Is It True?: A Citizen’s Guide to Environmental Health and Safety Issues".

There seems to be a cultural parallel between people who like to be terrified by going to scary movies, and those who prefer to get their "thrills and chills" via the news media, presented as fact.

"It's interesting to note the difference between CERN's handling of some odd results, and CRU and, well, any data at all."

I must agree.

CERN's handling of it's "faster than light" findings has been an example to all scientists. Publishing all the data involved, including the method used to collect and analyse that data, allows the whole scientific community to analyse it and find any possible errors. This is a very important step in something which affects a fundamental law of physics...

...or something which may have massive impact upon the entire human population, as climate scientists claim will happen with climate change.

I am not saying one way or the other whether man-made climate change is correct. All I am saying is that when something is as important as this, CERN's method is the correct one, not CRU's.

If you tasted the stuff my Aunt makes those suspicions would be confirmed.

indeed so

we try very hard to write ever better research proposals about even more interesting and relevant topics, all the while maintaining the highest quality of research output we possibly can.

It's how you phrase the question

My wife works indirectly for the NHS in research. She explained to me how they get funding. This is a rather silly example to convey the idea:

A scientist is interested the effects of litter on Wombles. Now nobody is really interested in these results, so the scientist might write their proposal "The effect of litter and chutney on Wombles".

Pitch it to producers of (or campaigners against) Indian condiments - ???? - profit!