It's Still the: Best. Science. Scandal. Ever.

Give credit where credit's due -- Jon Stewart provides a pretty good report on Climategate...



"He was just using a trick to hide the decline. That's just scientist-speak for using a standard statistical technique to... trick you into not knowing... about the decline." Although the Penthouse and polar bear lines are even better.

Meanwhile, Megan McArdle, in a post addressing some of the issues, zeroes in on the efforts of the climate researchers to avoid FOIA requests...

This is horrifying, and I simply cannot understand why so many of their supporters are willing to downplay it. A couple of sample quotes: "Unfortunately, there are also a couple of messages that suggest an effort to destroy emails that might have been subject to a Freedom of Information request. That's a genuine problem, though it's not clear to me just how big a problem it is. . . . So on a substantive level, there's really very little to this." that's from Kevin Drum, who I greatly respect. More worrying is Real Climate: "Suggestions that FOI-related material be deleted ... are ill-advised even if not carried out. What is and is not responsive and deliverable to an FOI request is however a subject that it is very appropriate to discuss."

Words fail one, reading that latter comment. Ill-advised? Deleting data in order to avoid an official information request is a crime, as is trying to coordinate same, even if you fail in the execution. It's also grossly unethical, and hard to reconcile with any reasonable understanding of science. Moreover, it's the sort of thing that is often done by people who have nasty secrets, so it's hard to pass it off with a blithe, "Oh, dear, now that was a wee bit naughty!"

Imagine reading this email exchange coming from, say, senior officials in the Bush administration. Would any of these bloggers regard this as the ethical equivalent of jaywalking on an empty street?

McArdle's right here -- deleting documents and talking about doing so screams cover-up, and lends credence to the worst things skeptics are saying about your claims... which you may not be able to substantiate, or cannot do so with as much strength as you did before. Ronald Bailey sums it up beautifully:

In their zeal to marginalize and stifle their critics, this insular band of climate researchers has damaged the very science they sought to defend. We all now are the losers. That’s the true tragedy of Climategate.

This may well be the case. Of course, anything that leads to more mocking of Al Gore can't be all bad.