I know that many apocalyptic predictions from environmentalists turned out to be false, that the ClimateGate letters show strong evidence of politics and groupthink affecting the field, and that even taking the environmentalists' dire predictions at face value does not provide an economic justification for the remedies they propose. As long as there are some smart, well-trained people questioning the "consensus", I will be slow to make up my mind.
> I know that many apocalyptic predictions from environmentalists turned out to be false
Let me know when it's actually most climate scientists making those bogus predictions and then maybe you'll have a point. Being an environmentalist doesn't make someone's opinion qualified.
> ClimateGate letters show strong evidence of politics and groupthink affecting the field
They showed no such thing. There was no wrong doing uncovered nor anything unethical, ClimateGate was a fake story put on and kept alive by the press.
At the least, the ClimateGate letters contain the refusal of a lawful FOIA request due to the requestor's political beliefs and a conspiracy to get others to do the same. The emails are out there. You can read them instead of the output of the True Believers' spin factory if you so choose.
None of that has anything to do with the science or the validity of it; you're bickering over whether the appropriate red tape was followed in the political process... who fucking cares, they didn't do anything unethical and nothing that was done or shown showed any of the science to be incorrect so using the incident to somehow doubt climate change makes zero sense.
