Remember when I noted the Climategate issue? I first mentioned Isaac Newton and how some of his ideas and actions were highly questionable, but since the ideas he got right proved useful enough, his wrongdoings were overlooked. No one today screams “WHITEWASH!” over that.

It was the e-mail hacker who committed a crime, remember?

https://dalehusband.wordpress.com/2009/11/23/climategate-what-it-really-means/

Thus we have now seen the depths the denialists will go to attack their targets; most of them are willing to commit crimes and/or condone those crimes committed by others to advance their cause. Yet they have the gall to demand that, on the basis of the stolen e-mails, the writers of the e-mails should by charged with fraud and imprisoned. That is sheer hypocrisy.

And as far as I know, no serious effort has been made to track down and jail whoever pulled that stunt.

Meanwhile, the scientists who were targeted have had to endure hearings on the issue. Their work has been scruntinized and their motives questioned. And the results have been as follows:

http://live.psu.edu/story/47378

http://www.essc.psu.edu/essc_web/news/MannInquiryStatement.html

http://climateprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/HC387-IUEAFinalEmbargoedv21.pdf

http://www.cce-review.org/pdf/FINAL%20REPORT.pdf

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/07/the-muir-russell-report/

So a few stolen e-mails were dissected last year, some statements within them were taken out of context and their meanings distorted and this was supposed to be the big scandal that would bring  down the movement against global warming? Such cherry picking is typical of denialists, but that is not the way science should ever be run. In the end, the climatologists have been let off the hook and allowed to resume their work. Hopefully, reforms will be made to make the process of sharing data more open and transparent, but that must be through legal means.

Climategate is a dead issue now. Let’s bury it and move on!