It's now been 12 days since the emails from the CRU lab found their way on to the internet and into the consciousness of many Americans.
But if you're looking for coverage of the story on TV, you have to really look for it. Fox News is covering many of the revelations, but as for the rest, The Maxwell Smart Cone of Silence has descended and it's as if the story doesn't exist.
A Washington Times editorial puts this in perspective:
Never mind that two major universities have at least temporarily removed prominent academics from heading major climate research facilities. Never mind that there are real questions raised about the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) controversial assessment report that the Obama administration and global-warming advocates have continually hyped in order to advance their case for new global regulations to curtail purported global warming.Liberal news agencies might be casting a blind eye at this controversy, but even left-wing comedians such as "The Daily Show's" Jon Stewart take these events seriously enough to make fun of the defenses being offered by the scientists caught in the scandal. Take one of Mr. Stewart's jokes regarding the now infamous e-mail about the "trick of adding in the real temps to each series ... to hide the decline [in temperature]." A Tuesday repartee follows:
Mr. Stewart: "It's nothing. He was just using a trick to hide the decline. It is just scientist speak for using a standard statistical technique recalibrating data in order to trick you into not knowing about the decline. But here is what is great about science in disagreement. We go back and look at the raw data."
Announcer: "University scientists say raw data from the 1980s was thrown out."
Jon Stewart: "Why would you go and throw out data from the 1980s? I still have Penthouses from the 1970s."
Say what you want about Jon Stewart - and we've said plenty here at AT - the guy has a nose for news that the American people want to know. And what little people have learned about Climategate from the internet, Stewart, and late night TV comics has whetted their appetite for more.
This hasn't moved the gatekeepers of the old media who continue to bury the story, hoping it will just go away. Fortunately, there are enough internet outlets as well as a precious few newspapers - many in Great Britain - who know a good story when they see it and are pursuing it with energy and intelligence.
It should be interesting to watch as mainstream news outlets have to really work to ignore Climategate at Copenhagen. My guess; they won't even cover the questions asked about it.
Hat Tip: Ed Lasky
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