Monbiot in the Guardian::

“When it comes to his handling of Freedom of Information requests, Professor Jones might struggle even to use a technical defence. If you take the wording literally, in one case he appears to be suggesting that emails subject to a request be deleted, which means that he seems to be advocating potentially criminal activity. Even if no other message had been hacked, this would be sufficient to ensure his resignation as head of the unit.

I feel desperately sorry for him: he must be walking through hell. But there is no helping it; he has to go, and the longer he leaves it, the worse it will get……….

Some people say that I am romanticising science, that it is never as open and honest as the Popperian ideal. Perhaps. But I know that opaqueness and secrecy are the enemies of science. There is a word for the apparent repeated attempts to prevent disclosure revealed in these emails: unscientific……

When the emails hit the news on Friday morning, the university appeared completely unprepared. There was no statement, no position, no one to interview. Reporters kept being fobbed off while CRU’s opponents landed blow upon blow on it. When a journalist I know finally managed to track down Phil Jones, he snapped “no comment” and put down the phone. This response is generally taken by the media to mean “guilty as charged”.

My Comment

George Monbiot seems to be the only global warming advocate with the integrity to state the obvious. What the emails reveal is reprehensible in the extreme, given the position of the scientists involved. They have to go, no matter where you stand on the issue.

And by the way, I´m no hard-core skeptic about climate change or human influence on the environment at all.  I think the “preventive principle”

(correction: I mean precautionary principle)

is a pretty good rule to go by when considering economic and other options, am a strong advocate of organic and sustainable farming, and think that many forms of development do indeed create havoc with the environment – destroying shorelines and exacerbating natural disasters, if not actually provoking them.

However, hijacking the entire world into an international regime in which scam artists like Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan, allied hedge funds, speculators, and governments play roulette with “carbon credits” has nothing to do with being a steward of the environment.

Want to help the planet?

Plant a garden. Plant trees. Use meat as a condiment not as a staple. Walk or ride a bike as often as you can. 

Don´t think of yourself solely as a consumer but also as a citizen.

And fight the militarized state.

The single biggest problem (I mean man-made problem) for the climate is war. Nuclear weapons, depleted uranium, fighter jets, weapons testing, bunker-busters – this is where the damage is done, most of all in misdirecting energy and resources into destruction, when they could as easily be directed toward productive uses.