I agree with the article that any global policies have to be very well-founded since they involve very large sums of money, but these research grants? It's pocket change.<p>My guess is that at the bottom of this there's actual data that shows worrying trends that the involved scientists think are important to continue doing research on, and that some of them fudged it, exaggerated a bit, and polished it a bit to make it easier to "sell" it to the politicians in charge of handing out the grant money.<p>But that there's some sort of malicious conspiracy to fool then entire world that everything is going to hell? For what's practically pocket change that pays the salaries of a large group of scientists? No, that makes no sense.<p>And what have they spent the research money on? Hookers and blow? Of course not, it's been spent on climate research and taking us closer to understanding what's happening and what, if anything, we can do about it. Spin-off effects of this is that money has been going into research projects for cleaner energy, more efficient energy use, alternatives to fossil fuel, and all these things are undeniably good.<p>The media hype, that I could live without, and the Copenhagen Climate Conference is becoming I don't know what, but I hope that cooler heads prevail and that actual non-fudged data and science is used there, because there is of course a lot of that, just because the leak showed one instance of bad data, it doesn't mean that the entire thing is bad.
I get the feeling that the entire purpose of the CRU email leak is to create FUD leading up to Copenhagen. What exactly was the motive of this anonymous whistleblower? If the person who leaked these emails had the best interest of climate research in mind why were they conveniently leaked right before Copenhagen? I do not believe this leak was done in the interests of clarity because I believe the timing of this leak was significant to the whistleblower. I do hope this leak leads to more openness in climate research. But I don't think openness was the motive of the leaker.<p>I also doubt any analysis of these emails and their conclusions so close after the leak. It will take time and analysis to understand how the supposed infractions and rigged data actually affected the dialogue surrounding climate change. It's not enough to say someone fudged data. What we need to see is how that fudged data affected the actual debate over the climate's change. And that analysis should take longer than a week.
"But in this decade, according to one of the leaked documents, the total shot up to £11.8 million,"<p>Holy shit, ELEVEN MILLION POUNDS??? They must be criminals. Nobody makes that much money legally.<p>Just think how many weather stations, researchers and assistents you could buy for that. Oh wait...<p>But yeah, research involves a lot of politics.
Reading that article I was actually shocked at how little money was being spent studying climate change.<p>Meanwhile, being a "skeptic" is good money these days:<p><a href="http://tinyurl.com/22go3n" rel="nofollow">http://tinyurl.com/22go3n</a><p><a href="http://tinyurl.com/yzgojux" rel="nofollow">http://tinyurl.com/yzgojux</a><p><a href="http://tinyurl.com/2kzqd7" rel="nofollow">http://tinyurl.com/2kzqd7</a><p><a href="http://tinyurl.com/2ozbrc" rel="nofollow">http://tinyurl.com/2ozbrc</a><p><a href="http://tinyurl.com/yhealhs" rel="nofollow">http://tinyurl.com/yhealhs</a><p><a href="http://tinyurl.com/mrmb9j" rel="nofollow">http://tinyurl.com/mrmb9j</a><p><a href="http://tinyurl.com/yfq5tam" rel="nofollow">http://tinyurl.com/yfq5tam</a><p><a href="http://tinyurl.com/yhuhceh" rel="nofollow">http://tinyurl.com/yhuhceh</a><p><a href="http://tinyurl.com/yf8pekp" rel="nofollow">http://tinyurl.com/yf8pekp</a><p>(not spam, all links relevant in terms of providing some balance)
"For the world's economy, of course, trillions of dollars are now at stake in pursuit of emissions reductions based on the flawed science that these leaked emails have helped lay bare."<p>From what I've read about them the emails lay <i>little</i> bare about the science - more about the politics of trying to keep down the FUD-slingers and easily-publicized, some-what contrary findings.<p>Further, a huge increase in funding does <i>not</i> constitute evidence that it is being used for "flawed science".<p>The future of powerful data and analysis of climate changes is in sad shape if (unsigned) articles in WSJ.com by persons of unknown scientific credentials become the guides for world policy.