The Hacked Climate Change Emails: What They Do And Don’t Show

From Zachary Roth, TPM.

So, what to make of those emails, stolen from a top climate research center in Britain, that conservatives are excitedly touting to argue that the science of climate change is fatally flawed?

The Wall Street Journal‘s Daniel Henninger calls the episode “an epochal event” that shows “science is dying.” But underneath the bombast, the key question is whether the emails — hacked from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (CRU), and indexed here — actually undermine the case, now settled, that man-made warming is happening. And despite the claims of the New York Post, among others, they don’t come close to doing so.

Exhibit A for conservatives has been the revelation in the emails that, back in the 1980s, CRU discarded a set of data on raw surface temperature. The Post argues that that means “it’s now impossible to check the CRU research,” and adds “So much for settling questions and resolving debates with science.”

To Read More…