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Originally posted by Wulfenstar:
Ok, I've never heard of Malkin before...

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I think this is a waste of time. Sure, people like Al Gore do bad science for political gain, but the BBC is no more a scientist than Al Gore. In fact, I know someone who is one of the principles on the British board of Examiners, ome sort of national industry, and it's his opinion that in Britain, science isn't really taught as a subject. I can't disagree, from what I've seen.

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Originally posted by Bytemite:
Probably true about the schools in Europe. I wonder about the Germans? To engineer you have to know a LITTLE science, and German engineering is supposedly much touted, though I also hear it's needlessly complicated.

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Japan though... Whoo. Those people take education seriously. I hear some kids seppuku if they don't pass the extremely difficult tests to make it into their vocational schools (similar to our college departments).

I think the Japanese may be studying a lot of weird stuff, statistics, or corporation type interests, though, because I only know maybe one or two big names in physics from Japan, one of whom was a big factor in figuring out the 2/3 missing neutrinos problem. I don't know of any Japanese chemists or biologists. Not to say they don't exist, just... Haven't heard anything.

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Originally posted by Niki2:
Note the BBC only CONFIRMED that the information had been made public. Because of that, and ONLY because of that, they had to say:

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“We are aware that information from a server used for research information in one area of the university has been made available on public websites\," the spokesman stated.

“Because of the volume of this information we cannot currently confirm that all of this material is genuine.

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He denied trying to mislead, telling the TGIF digital newspaper he had no idea what he meant by the phrase.

‘That was an email from ten years ago,’ he said. ‘Can you remember the exact context of an email you wrote ten years ago?’

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In the trenches on climate change, hostility among foes
Stolen e-mails reveal venomous feelings toward skeptics
By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 22, 2009

Electronic files that were stolen from a prominent climate research center and made public last week provide a rare glimpse into the behind-the-scenes battle to shape the public perception of global warming.

While few U.S. politicians bother to question whether humans are changing the world's climate -- nearly three years ago the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded the evidence was unequivocal -- public debate persists. And the newly disclosed private exchanges among climate scientists at Britain's Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia reveal an intellectual circle that appears to feel very much under attack, and eager to punish its enemies.

In one e-mail, the center's director, Phil Jones, writes Pennsylvania State University's Michael E. Mann and questions whether the work of academics that question the link between human activities and global warming deserve to make it into the prestigious IPCC report, which represents the global consensus view on climate science.

"I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report," Jones writes. "Kevin and I will keep them out somehow -- even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!"

In another, Jones and Mann discuss how they can pressure an academic journal not to accept the work of climate skeptics with whom they disagree. "Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal," Mann writes.

"I will be emailing the journal to tell them I'm having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor," Jones replies.

Patrick Michaels, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute who comes under fire in the e-mails, said these same academics repeatedly criticized him for not having published more peer-reviewed papers.


"There's an egregious problem here, their intimidation of journal editors," he said. "They're saying, 'If you print anything by this group, we won't send you any papers.' "

Mann, who directs Penn State's Earth System Science Center, said the e-mails reflected the sort of "vigorous debate" researchers engage in before reaching scientific conclusions. "We shouldn't expect the sort of refined statements that scientists make when they're speaking in public," he said.

Christopher Horner, a senior fellow at the libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute who has questioned whether climate change is human-caused, blogged that the e-mails have "the makings of a very big" scandal. "Imagine this sort of news coming in the field of AIDS research," he added.

The story of the hacking has ranked among the most popular on Web sites ranging from The Washington Post's to that of London's Daily Telegraph. And it has spurred a flood of e-mails from climate skeptics to U.S. news organizations, some likening the disclosure to the release of the Pentagon Papers during Vietnam.

Kevin Trenberth, who heads the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., and wrote some of the pirated e-mails, said it is the implications rather than the content of climate research that make some people uncomfortable.

"It is incontrovertible" that the world is warming as a result of human actions, Trenberth said. "The question to me is what to do."

"It's certainly a legitimate question," he added. "Unfortunately one of the side effects of this is the messengers get attacked."

In his new book, "Science as a Contact Sport: Inside the Battle to Save the Earth's Climate," Stanford University climate scientist Stephen H. Schneider details the intense debate over warming, arguing that it has helped slow the nation's public policy response.

"I've been here on the ground, in the trenches, for my entire career," writes Schneider, who was copied on one of the controversial e-mails. "I'm still at it, and the battle, while looking more winnable these days, is still not a done deal."

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