I suppose I held my own fairly well for a non-scientist; but I was actually trying to point readers in the same direction as Richard Graves:
“The real scandal is not the email archive, or even how it was acquired, sorted, and uploaded to a Russian server, but rather the emerging evidence of a coordinated international campaign to target and harass climate scientists, break and enter into government climate labs, and misrepresent climate science through a sophisticated media infrastructure on the eve of the international climate talks.”
Yeah, where did the hackers get their funding? Graves also makes note of the characteristic psychological projection that comes from the wingnutosphere and Faux Noise fear factory:
(T)his story would be an eerie and ironic echo of Michael Crichton’s “State of Fear” that was embraced by many of the same groups currently promoting the ClimateGate talking points.
John Birchers screech about secret commies, but organize themselves in secret cells. Obama detractors yelp about “worship-like reverence for a false prophet” and then pray to a six-foot cardboard cutout of George Bush. This is just more of the same: the denial industry insists there’s a vast global conspiracy at work in climate science, but the only conspiracy you’ll actually find is Saudi oil + Exxon + hackers = loud, stupid noises.
Let us conclude this chapter with the most thorough YouTube debunking of “climategate” I’ve found:
