Now I understand why climate science 'skeptics' hate SkepticalScience.com (+ climategate)

{edited for some typos, and to add two more investigation reports.  7/18/2013}


I've been reminded this afternoon why science-skeptics demonize "SkepticalScience.com" so viciously.  It's because the SkepticalScience team do such a great job of collecting and organizing real scientific information in a wonderfully simple and clean, accessible manner.  The occasion was a discussion over at http://www.debate.org.  The topic being "The Hockey Stick is Bad Science."  The actual debate was about a year ago, now it's down to the sparsely visited comments thread.  

I made a comment and the debate "contender" showed up to reply.  Unfortunately he dished up the usual denialist mantra I've come to know so well.  The sentence that inspires this post is:

"The Climategate e-mails showed a deliberate attempt to suppress skeptical viewpoints from ever being published."

When I hear someone inflating Climategate, like that, it's like a red flag - and I want to yell: "Stop and learn about what you're talking about!  Why can I be so absolute?  

Because, when one actually takes the time to familiarize themselves with all the claims based on those stolen emails, it comes down to maybe a half dozen short quotes, taken out of context, at that.  Most pathetic of all is that we are talking about personal, private emails, not data-sets or studies or actual publications.
 Personal freak'n correspondences.

In any event, when I went looking for a list of the many investigations examining the "ClimateGate" claims and charges - I found a factual listing at SkepticalScience.com and it's this sort of focus on the facts and the sharing of information that most threatens the community of climate science denialists.

Thanks to their generous Reposting policy I'll be reposting it here - though first I want to share some other SkepticalScience.com posts that chronicle this "Climategate" farce.
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Did CRU tamper with temperature data?

http://www.skepticalscience.com/CRU-tampered-temperature-data.htm

Climategate and the peer-review process

http://www.skepticalscience.com/Peer-review-process.htm

Climategate and the Freedom of Information (FOI) requests

http://www.skepticalscience.com/Freedom-of-Information-FOI-requests-climate-scientists.htm

Clearing up misconceptions regarding 'hide the decline'
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Mikes-Nature-trick-hide-the-decline-intermediate.htm

http://www.skepticalscience.com/Mikes-Nature-trick-hide-the-decline-advanced.htm

What do the 'Climategat' hacked CRU emails tell us?

http://www.skepticalscience.com/Climategate-CRU-emails-hacked-advanced.htm

This is a more recent post than the one I've 'reposted' below and it includes two more studies.

This post actually deserves reposting also - but there's only so much room, so please link to the complete article.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/Climategate-CRU-emails-hacked-intermediate.htm

8.  In February 2011, the Department of Commerce Inspector General conducted an independent review of the emails and found "no evidence in the CRU emails thatNOAA inappropriately manipulated data". 

9.  In August 2011, the National Science Foundation concluded "Finding no research misconduct or other matter raised by the various regulations and laws discussed above, this case is closed".

Here's a PDF of one of those official investigations:

The Independent Climate Change E-mails Review 

July 2010 - Chair: Sir Muir Russell

Review team:
Professor Geoffrey Boulton 

Professor Peter Clarke David Eyton
Professor James Norton 

http://www.cce-review.org/pdf/FINAL%20REPORT.pdf

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The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate' (via Skeptical Science)

Posted on 18 November 2010 by John Cook A year ago, the climate debate was rocked by 'Climategate'. Email servers at the University of East Anglia were hacked, emails were stolen and distributed on the Internet. Out-of-context quotes were cited as evidence…

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