It’s not hard to anticipate the climate-change-deniers’ response to this bit of unbelievable news:
WASHINGTON — A Republican-led federal probe of climate scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found no evidence that they manipulated data, after leaked e-mails in 2009 sparked the “climategate” controversy.
[…] “We did not find any evidence that NOAA inappropriately manipulated data,” the inspector general concluded in a recent report. It also cleared Lucbhenco for testifying before Congress that the e-mails did not weaken the science of climate change.
The probe was requested by Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, the top Republican on the environment committee, who has called global warming “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.”
No, the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people is this inquiry clearing climate scientists of perpetrating a hoax, I tell you! So if I were Inhofe, I’d immediately demand a probe of the people who conducted this probe.
And I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he did exactly that.
It should be noted by the gentle reader that, in revenge, the GOP budget passed in the house strips the NOAA of all funding, killing vital weather monitoring programs, shipping monitoring and an assortment of pro-commerce scientific observation.
Like most Americans, Inhofe probably didn’t understand that scientists operate based on reason rather than emotion when he decided to put some in charge of this probe.
They seem to really enjoy probing.
Not a hoax but will certainly be one of the biggest scams ever perpetrated.
The damage is already done. Their little “climategate” dog and pony show has managed to successfully re-introduce the idea that global warming isn’t happening at all. Now some right-wingers are insisting that all the data up to now is bad and they need to start again with their own monitoring stations. Should only take a hundred years or so to gather enough data.
The tactic here is delay and obfuscate.
I agree, but the hoax by the coal and oil companies is only now coming to light, @4.
I’m just glad I should be dead in another 30 or 40 years. With luck the planet should still be largely habitable during that time so I shouldn’t have to suffer too much. Sucks for anyone younger though.
@7: Damn it.
Where are the jobs, Inhofe? Stop fucking around with nonsense and fix the economy. Oh, that’s right, Republicans only fuck things up, not fix them.
@9 for the Where Are The Fucking Jobs win.
The republican’s next planned legislation will be to deny women the right to choose to be probed.
Wait, I’m confused…don’t the results of this probe hurt the GOP’s (or at least Inhofe’s) position on climate change? I mean, if a Republican-led witch hunt can’t find any evidence of manipulated data slanted in favor of human-caused climate change, it doesn’t exist, right?
If this had been a GOP probe of climate scientists who were accused of fixing the data AGAINST climate change and they were found innocent, I’d be outraged. But this is just the opposite. Are you saying that the GOP had no right to conduct the probe at all? Because I don’t agree; Climategate was a big fucking problem, and it’s actually a public service to root out whoever was theoretically responsible, or, optimistically, prove once and for all that the whole controversy was a made-up sham…which is what this probe apparently does.
So I guess I don’t understand the point of your post.
@12 I agree, hackers stealing emails from British scientists is a fucking problem, especially when they work for coal and oil interests and the net impact is millions of dead people due to denial.
@12: I think the point here is that the fact that such investigations were even deemed worth the time and effort to conduct in the first place is a win for the deniers. The fact that the probe reveals no wrongdoing doesn’t matter, because it will just be held up as further evidence of government collusion in the “hoax.”
A few out-of-context quotes from purloined private emails obviously do not even begin to counter the mountains of research behind climate change, and yet the deniers managed to get their narrative of a “theory in crisis” out in the public eye again. They’ve managed to call into question the credibility of every existing source of information on the subject, and that’s all they really want from this.
I think the point is tha climate change deniers will go si far to discredit the science that they will launch a probe to find out why this probe didn’t find errors (and was therefore clearly manipulated).
Were the Republicans bought off by Big Concern For Grandkids?
@14/15: I get your point(s), but I still think this makes the GOP look stupid, or rather, even stupider. And that’s always a good thing. I look forward to the probe of the probe of the probe.