Climate Gate: the Leaked CRU Emails Taken Out of Context

Climategate is still running wild in the blogosphere and even getting some good coverage in the main stream media. In case you are unaware Climategate is the new name for the brouhaha created by the leaked CRU emails and programs. The latest cause of the scuffling is the cry that the leaked information is being taken out of context.

The warmers out of context comments caused me to have a belly laugh or two. Dr. Eric Steig posted on the blog Real Climate an interesting post about Andy Revkin's interview with Dr. Rodger Pielke, Jr. Stieg included what appeared to be a quote of Pielke then set about proving Pielke wrong, wrong wrong! The comments on this post are amusing.

After Steig proved so convincingly why Dr. Pielke should not be allowed to comment in the mainstream media the warmers patted themselves on their cyber backs at the victory of climate science over climate ignorance. The only problem is that Lucia on her blog the Black Board discovered that just two sentences, one from the start and one from the end of his true response was the apparent quote. That would be the definitive example of out of context. So the warmers do know what out of context really means. When the whole quote was examined on her blog it appears that Dr. Stieg was the one wrong.

The skeptics believe that "hide the decline" is politically motivated and just by chance Dr. Pielke is a political scientist engage in the study of the politics involved with climate change. Dr. Pielke is generally labeled as a lukewarmer by everyone other than the true warmers.

So the warmers turned their attention to coordinated indignant outrage over being called political. Most have restated their apolitical agenda when engaged in all things climate science related. One, on his blog the Rabbet Run challenges all comers to prove that any climate scientist is a stealth political advocate for anything. Interestingly he actually did allow my tongue in check reply to stand. If you would like to offer a comment, do be courteous.

The out of context debate does not stop with Stieg. Steve McIntyre on his blog posted a comprehensive example of exactly why the "hide the decline" email is taken in context. The whole issue with that email exchange is the attempt by the warmers to pretty up a graphic for an International Panel on Climate Change report in 2000. Comparing the two examples, it would seem that the skeptics have a better grasp of reality than the warmers at least in this issue of context.

There is another interest post on the Bishop Hill blog that indicates there just may be a little political motivation involve in climate science funding. It seems that some sources of research funding require that the research prove global warming. Hum, that does seem to be a little biased.

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