I typically do not pay much attention to the global warming debate for a number of reasons*, but this “controversy” is rather compelling.

The email hacking of appears to imply that scientists have both modified data to support their conclusions AND obfuscated opinions that differed from the consensus meme.

All this is bad … but …

* - The why not …

- Carbon dioxide [CO2] in the atmosphere has a specific affect on atmospheric temperatures. Arguing against this is like arguing against a magnifying glass making stuff hotter when focusing rays of sunlight onto something … it physics folks … no getting around it; or debating it.

- Owing to the fact that one can take ice core samples in places where the ice has formed over the course of 100s of thousands of years; and that those ice core samples contain samples of what the atmosphere was composed of at the time the ice was formed leads to a pretty compelling set of graphs. CO2 levels have changed rather dramatically in the past … on the order of hundreds or thousands of yrs. Since the early 1800s, CO2 levels have spiked precipitately.

- In the end, IMHO, there is no consensus amongst industrialized nations to change their CO2 emissions so our descendants will probably be FUBAR’d … oh well.