Your Climate Gate Primer: Complete with stats, facts, and a game of make-believe.

On the days that I drive to San Francisco, I pick up carpoolers. This means I get to play frogger across 5 lanes of traffic to get into the car pool lane. For the few moments it takes to cross the five lanes of traffic all parts of my brain are engaged at once, I am looking ahead, looking behind, and always checking my blind spot. You never know what’s going to show up in the blind spot. I got to thinking it’s just like working on climate change issues: a constant examination of history, a constant process of visioning the future, and a constant process of checking your blind spot.

The recent scandal that is being referred to as Climate Gate was hiding in the blind spot. The very concept that all of the information we have been basing our stories, our Public Service Announcements, our policies, and most important, our fears upon could be wrong….well that just wasn’t on the itinerary.

I have received shocked and at times annoyed requests from the Current Green community about why I didn’t jump on this story. And frankly, I mean REALLY FRANKLY, I didn’t think it deserved any time. Because really:
Even if it were true, that there are scientists out there out who are suppressing information that global warming is not created by humans, does it change anything?

I still go to my faucet and get dirty water, I still go to the fish market and know that we are over fishing the oceans and that the majority of the fish have poisons in them and are dangerous to eat. I still know that the air I am breathing is the cleanest it has been since the 1980’s due to the clean air act cutting down on emissions, I still know that the majority of the vegetables made available to most Americans are made from genetically modified seeds, and I still know that the rate of consumption is filling the oceans with plastics. I hate to be Debbie Downer, but really, even if the temperature isn’t rising because of human impact, we still have a plethora of critical issues that need to be addressed pronto.

Now that last paragraph just summed up my greatest fear: that people will make the association that human impact on the environment is the same as human impact on climate change. The two issues are so woven together they are nearly impossible to separate. So lets play a game of make-believe. Let’s pretend that climate change is not created by humans.

You might be thinking, I don’t want to play a game of make-believe. Cut to the chase, what do I need to know? Ok, well fine. Here are the basics:

Josh Nelson of Enviroknow posted a stellar piece, and I appreciated his concise breakdown of info you are probably curious about:

* The scientific consensus on climate change remains strong.
* The impacts of catastrophic climate change continue to rear their ugly head.
* Hacking into private computer files is illegal.
* All of the emails were taken out of context.
* The story is being pushed by far-right conspiracy theorists.
* Scientists are human beings and they talk frankly amongst themselves.

Now you might be thinking, But what’s the story and how did this all go down?

1. An undisclosed group hacked into the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in England and publicized over 1,000 emails.

2. A majority of them were nit picky gossipy emails. (Can we say embarrassing?) About 40 of them openly discuss the data and how they disagree or want to influence it.

For the complete post: goto: http://blogs.current.com/green/2009/12/01/your-climate-gate-primer-complete-with...