climate gate

I am a skeptic. Not a climate skeptic, not in the sense of the improperly commandeered word we use in the climate debates. In my experience they know little of real skepticism as a general rule. But me, I really do dislike taking assertions on their face if I don't have all the facts and I really do try to form my own opinions, especially about people. So I have tried very hard to reserve judgement on Judith Curry and her emerging role in the climate blogosphere despite reading some pretty damning reviews of her blog performances from voices in my own "camp". My first awareness of her is…

Via the amusing and insightful musings and insights of Marc Roberts: (click for slightly larger and more legible image) I think this is rather apropos given the recent retraction of one of Jonathon Leake's um, let's be kind, "dodgy" bits of journalism from the recent spate of IPCC "gates". (Cartoon seen at In It For the Gold who uses it for the recent UVA report that again finds no academic misconduct by Mike Mann)

Roy Spencer, darling of the climate skeptic community, says he is not very organized, as Phil Jones said of himself, and that "if you asked me to find original data from 20 years ago I'd have great difficulty too. We just didn't realise in those days how important and controversial this would all become - now it would just all be stored on computer." This is quoted in a BBC article on the recent Heartland climate conference in New York. Spencer goes on to say: "Phil Jones has been looking at climate records for a very long time. Frankly our data set agrees with his, so unless we are all…