So the current hot trend in the climate debate is to rip people blogging about the subject, particularly those who are skeptical of AGW.  Case in point, an unnamed author in the Economist’s blog section rips a post by Willis Eschenbach.  The author titles the HTML page, “Trust Scientists” which is laughable given the emails leaked and the lack of trust and openness fostered within them.  Mr. Eschenbeck replies here.  The unnamed attacker (which is curious as he is in essence peer-reviewing Eschenbeck’s work but fails to divulge his name for some reason) makes a number of assumptions about Mr. Eschenbeck’s and others’ abilities to comprehend the math related to the climate issues.  I doubt they know Mr. Eschenbeck well enough to assess that.  But most concerning is the following quote from the author:

So for the time being, my response to any and all further “smoking gun” claims begins with: show me the peer-reviewed journal article demonstrating the error here. Otherwise, you’re a crank and this is not a story.

Really?  Obviously, he is referring to the well-behaved peer review process that Phil Jones and others in the leaked emails talk about.  I’d pull the same quote from Phil Jones’ email that Mr. Eschenbeck pulls in his response:

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

What is most galling, however, is the fact that these “scientists” fail to address solar activity which has been shown to have a high degree of correlation to the Earth’s weather patterns (as well as corresponding weather changes on other solar system planets).  Instead, they take a very “so let it be written…so let it be done” approach to their findings – denying any criticism or interest in their data for checking.

In the end there is so much that we don’t know about the climate and all the variables involved that I find it hard to believe that these knuckleheads have it all figured out.  As an example, it appears that there’s plenty of naturally caused events that have contributed to major climate changes.  Maybe with a bit more openness and honesty from the scientists involved we can actually advance human knowledge about the climate.  Then again, maybe we need to wait for a new crop of scientists.

GorT

GorT is an eight-foot-tall robot from the 51ˢᵗ Century who routinely time-travels to steal expensive technology from the future and return it to the past for retroinvention. The profits from this pay all the Gormogons’ bills, including subsidizing this website. Some of the products he has introduced from the future include oven mitts, the Guinness widget, Oxy-Clean, and Dr. Pepper. Due to his immense cybernetic brain, GorT is able to produce a post in 0.023 seconds and research it in even less time. Only ’Puter spends less time on research. GorT speaks entirely in zeros and ones, but occasionally throws in a ڭ to annoy the Volgi. He is a massive proponent of science, technology, and energy development, and enjoys nothing more than taking the Czar’s more interesting scientific theories, going into the past, publishing them as his own, and then returning to take credit for them. He is the only Gormogon who is capable of doing math. Possessed of incredible strength, he understands the awesome responsibility that follows and only uses it to hurt people.