Thanks for the No More Executive Bonuses article.

If the past is now with Mike Bird – I look forward to the future.
And – we will be rooting for the University of Wisconsin Green Bay Phoenix who are not in the top 25 – but beat DePaul (21 and 23 in the polls) last Wednesday, and where my niece plays.

That’s all you’re going to say about the CRU debacle? Offer more evidence?
Here’s some pretty solid evidence. Take 2 minutes and read the executive summary.
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/surfacestationsreport_spring09.pdf

Micah, I was weighing on Steyn’s approach: debunk by discrediting the scientists. What we need from Steyn, if he wants to prove his point, is evidence — scientific — against global warming.
Does your report support or criticize the theory that the earth is warming due to human factors?

Micah, interesting report. But in effect it nullifies the evidence offered instead of proposing anything substantive about the actual rise of temperatures, right?

I love watching women’s basketball coach Muffet McGraw with Notre Dame!

Thanks for the link from the-life-of-a-theologian (you!)
That Christmas tree looks enchanting. Is the snow real? (All our NY snow is off galavanting in Texas : )

You know that LarkNews is a Christian satire site, right? Poke around on the site, you might actually find something funny.

Great piece by Brooks!
We always loved Tiger for who he was as a sports champion (perhaps the greatest champion of all time). Never for who he was off the course. Our perception of Tiger is that he is the perfect athlete with the perfect smile. That hasn’t changed…

I think that Steyn’s point is that because the peer-review process has been corrupted and the data has been manipulated, the case for AGW theory is undermined. If the CRU had kept the raw temperature data, it would be easy to go back and reconstruct the case for AGW theory. However, since the raw temperature data has been lost, it pretty much defeats the scientific case for AGW. Given that it is now known that proponents of AGW wanted to “hide the decline,” any case that they make will be subject to even more doubt. It’s like when a kid who believes in Santa Claus finds out that his uncle is wearing the suit. From there on out he has a good reason to think that every Santa is an impostor, and that perhaps Santa isn’t real.

Amen and a million times Amen on Jason Boyett’s item. But Scot, that should read “stores”, not “stories”.

A place to go for reliable information about climate change by people who actually know what they are talking about (unlike most political pundits on both sides) is http://www.RealClimate.org.
With regard to the recent controversy about the stolen emails [as an aside, I'm sure if somebody stole and cherry-picked 13 years of my emails I could be made to look bad also], relevant recent posts at the site include “CRU Hack: More Context” (and its predecessor threads), and “Where’s the Data?”.
In one of the threads it pretty much debunks the meme that the original data have been permanently lost or discarded; there is however a problem that some data currently can’t be released because some of the countries that supplied data through their national meteorological organizations have strange rules that don’t allow the data to be shared.

I can think of few better public declarations than changing your facebook status. It’s no different than a minister presenting the couple to the audience at the end of the ceremony. Different times/cultures = different traditions.

Scot,
I think you’re missing the point in the “climategate” thing.
“Evidence” is defined so that it must go through the peer-review process. They own that process and may have refused to allow any counter evidence simply due to their own presuppositions.
The very “fact” that the earth is warming is now in question. In the minds of many, we are at ground zero with no trustworthy evidence. Sure, the con-side needs to put out their own evidence, but the pro-side does too — everything they’ve put out to date is suspect.

ChrisB,
Steyn’s article is ridiculous – it is no more appropriate (i.e. likely to facilitate truth and accuracy) to argue a point by ridicule than it is to rig the peer review system.
I don’t think that everything to date is suspect, but I’ve always been suspicious of temperature data alone. There are normal fluctuations and we are not outside of these (yet).
But there is other information available also, and mechanistic studies and …
This is not my area of expertise, so I won’t even try to comment in depth.
On the other hand the potential consequences of failure to consider possibilities are far more severe than the consequences of a cautious over reaction.

Come on, 12AHH, you can’t cite RealClimate as a good third-party source when it’s actually RUN by the “Hockey Team.” It’s like asking Rumsfeld for his opinion on how the War in Iraq is going.
Scott, have you read more on the CRU situation than Steyn’s writeup? I agree that he does nothing except go after the scientists, but then that’s his MO. He’s a social commentator so he’s commenting on the social issues. For more technical details, Eric Raymond (yes, ESR) has been dissecting the code pretty thoroughly but easiest-to-grasp writeups so far have been coming from Tim Oren.
http://due-diligence.typepad.com/blog/2009/12/head-of-global-warming-research-unit-steps-down.html
http://due-diligence.typepad.com/blog/2009/12/a-good-laymans-analysis-of-the-climategate-scandal.html

Re “Climategate”; I think that this simply confirms what many thinking people have known all along: that despite claims to the contrary, there is a lot we are not certain of when it comes to climate change. However, any somewhat sentient being would have to acknowledge that the idea that we can pour as much stuff into our environment as we do and not cause changes in the environment strains all credulity. Even if we can’t put our finger on how exactly excess CO2 in the atmosphere will affect global temperatures, assuming that it will have no effect on anything important is absurd to the nth degree. Besides which, there are many other observable effects of our output on the environment such as rising acidity of ocean water which are troubling in their own right. I think that the climate change scientists made a mistake by hitching their horse to certain policy outcomes which could be so disruptive that they needed much more certainty than science sometimes allows in order to be accepted. However, even a lay person with the smallest modicum of common sense should be able to understand why simply saying “well they stacked the deck. I guess there’s nothing to worry about here” is just not a realistic or responsible option.

Scot: Steyn has no burden in this matter. He has impeached the motives and methods of those proposing a theory, and that is sufficient to move the discussion forward. He does not purport to be a scientist; he is merely showing on non-scientific grounds why the credibility of those promoting “global warming” is suspect; the burden. It is up to other scientists to wage the technical debate, and, quite frankly, it has been going on for years but has been ignored by the mainstream media in favor of the sensationalism offered by the “warming” story.

A fair point, Rebecca T. CO2 levels are undoubtedly higher than they’ve been in the last thousand years.
On the other hand, unless you hold to a 6,000-year-old earth then you believe CO2 levels have been WAY higher than this in the past… we’re only at 1/18th the CO2 levels of the Cambrian period. Coincidentally (or not), the world was far more temperate and fertile at that time. The equator wasn’t much different than now, but the higher latitudes (like Canada and Siberia) were quite a bit warmer. Interestingly, this is EXACTLY what the UN models predict.
I’d actually be fine with the craziness if it led to a cleaner environment, but because we’re focusing our environmental efforts entirely on carbon we’ve stopped caring about pollution.
I’d be happy to live in a warmer world if it was clean. I don’t want to live in a cooler world that’s dirty.