Climate Change: Science, Politics, or Rex Murphy Bullshit.

Last night Rex Murphy gave a blog-provoking commentary on what has been called "climategate" about the hacked emails of a few researchers at the Climate Research Unit of East Anglia University. Here are some highlights:

Let's hear no more talk of "the science is settled", when it turns out some of the principal scientists behave as if they own the very question of global warming - when they seek to bar opposing research from "peer-reviewed journals”, to embargo journals they can't control, when they urge each other to delete damaging emails before Freedom of Information takes hold, when they talk of "hiding the decline”, when they actually speak of destroying the primary data, and when, now, we do learn that the primary data has been lost or destroyed.

They've "lost" the raw data on which all the models, all the computer generated forecasts; the graphs and projections, are based. You wouldn't accept that at a Grade 9 science fair.

Rex Murphy's commentary is an embarrassment both to the CBC and to the profession of journalism. The science on global warming is settled: literally thousands of peer reviewed journal articles have established both that the phenomenon is occurring and that it has been caused by human action. To deny it in the face of such evidence is to place oneself among creationists, flat-earthers, "truthers", and "birthers" as an ignorant crank. A few cherry-picked quotes from the illegally obtained personal correspondence of a few climate scientists will do nothing to change this. To repeat the lies and distortions of those who stole and disseminated the emails in question is at best to be dupe of these conspirators, and at worst to be complicit in a conspiracy designed to deceive the public in a way which could seriously harm our children and grandchildren. Having a forum at the CBC gives Murphy significant power to influence Canadian public opinion, but with that power comes responsibility. To make a commentary so fraught with ignorance is a violation of that responsibility. Murphy and the CBC should be ashamed.

UPDATE: here's a nice Nature editorial which gives the proper perspective on the "controversy."

UPDATE 2: here's a detailed response to the "controversy."