Best.Science.Scandal.Ever

As if Climategate wasn't bad enough... the IPCC predicted that Himalayan glaciars may disappear by 2035, based on a 1996 study. Turns out that the study actually says 2350, so they're off by 215 years. (hat tip: Instapundit) This is only a big deal if you think the world might change a little in 215 years. It probably will -- keep in mind that in 1794, George Washington was stuck using dial-up Internet at Mount Vernon, or so I've heard.

Seriously, I'm guessing that this was an innocent error involving transposed numbers, but the IPCC seems to be losing credibility by the hour. The biggest problem for the climate scientists and researchers who believed in global warming is that their own arrogance makes them less credible when even innocent errors like this crop up. John Tierney, while discussing the scandal as a whole, makes this point generally...

As the scientists denigrate their critics in the e-mail messages, they seem oblivious to one of the greatest dangers in the climate-change debate: smug groupthink. These researchers, some of the most prominent climate experts in Britain and America, seem so focused on winning the public-relations war that they exaggerate their certitude — and ultimately undermine their own cause.

Consider, for instance, the phrase that has been turned into a music video by gleeful climate skeptics: “hide the decline,” used in an e-mail message by Phil Jones, the head of the university’s Climatic Research Unit. He was discussing the preparation of a graph for the cover of a 1999 report from the World Meteorological Organization showing that temperatures in the past several decades were the highest of the past millennium.

Most of the graph was based on analyses of tree rings and other “proxy” records like ice cores and lake sediments. These indirect measurements indicated that temperatures declined in the middle of the millennium and then rose in the first half of the 20th century, which jibes with other records. But the tree-ring analyses don’t reveal a sharp warming in the late 20th century — in fact, they show a decline in temperatures, contradicting what has been directly measured with thermometers.

Because they considered that recent decline to be spurious, Dr. Jones and his colleagues removed it from part of the graph and used direct thermometer readings instead. In a statement last week, Dr. Jones said there was nothing nefarious in what they had done, because the problems with the tree-ring data had been openly identified earlier and were known to experts.

But the graph adorned the cover of a report intended for policy makers and journalists. The nonexperts wouldn’t have realized that the scariest part of that graph — the recent temperatures soaring far above anything in the previous millennium — was based on a completely different measurement from the earlier portion. It looked like one smooth, continuous line leading straight upward to certain doom.

The story behind that graph certainly didn’t show that global warming was a hoax or a fraud, as some skeptics proclaimed, but it did illustrate another of their arguments: that the evidence for global warming is not as unequivocal as many scientists claim.
...Contempt for critics is evident over and over again in the hacked e-mail messages, as if the scientists were a priesthood protecting the temple from barbarians. Yes, some of the skeptics have political agendas, but so do some of the scientists. Sure, the skeptics can be cranks and pests, but they have identified genuine problems in the historical reconstructions of climate, as in the debate they inspired about the “hockey stick” graph of temperatures over the past millennium.

Read Tierney's whole piece -- it's measured and well-written by someone who probably believes in manmade global warming, but is at a loss to explain why many of the scientists who made the case for it opted for exaggeration and obfuscation.

Meanwhile, I have to cite my favorite comparison thus far in this scandal -- one reader of Jonah Goldberg's likened the climate researchers to the Underpants Gnomes. In fact, there's something beautiful in referencing that episode, as noted by this point on its Wikipedia page...

The episode satirizes the common complaint of large corporations lacking scruples and driving seemingly wholesome smaller independent companies out of business. Paul Cantor, a literary critic and economic theorist, who has taught college courses revolving around the "Gnomes" episode, has described it as "the most fully developed defense of capitalism" ever produced by the show. Cantor said the episode challenges the stereotype that small businesses are public servants who truly care about their customers by portraying local business owner Mr. Tweek as greedier and having less scruples than that of the corporation he is challenging. At the end of the episode, Kyle and Stan conclude big corporations are good due to the services they provide people, and uphold the notion that the businesses providing the best product deserve to succeed in the marketplace and grow to become larger.
The episode portrays the mainstream media as biased against capitalism during a news report in which the reporter openly speaks in favor of Harbucks' opponents. Cantor said the use of children in the anti-Harbucks commercials demonstrate a liberal tendency to use young people to advance their positions. Economic protectionism, portrayed in the episode as Mr. Tweek seeking a law to ban Harbucks from South Park, is portrayed as a tool used by businessmen to restrict free entry into the marketplace to protect their own profits.

This is a scandal where we can reference both Ghostbusters and one of my favorite episodes of South Park, while criticizing a graph that's been called a hockey stick. If someone could find a way to make a beer or Jessica Alba reference, this might be the Best.Scandal.Ever that didn't involve actors, musicians, or sports stars.