The Daily Mail is running the "Climategate" story this morning – the first paper to give it a halfway decent airing. Furthermore, the piece is accompanied by robust editorial which wonders whether "the pernicious culture of spin and deception which ruined our belief in politicians has now infected the world of science."Researchers at one of the world's leading climate change centres stand accused of manipulating data to exaggerate the extent of global warming - a deception which would represent a scandalous betrayal of trust, the leader says.
It goes on to tell us that we rely on scientists to give us the truth about these complex and crucial issues and suggests that, "If they are now twisting the facts to support their own doomsday theories, they are no better than Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell, who fabricated the 'dodgy dossier' of lies on which we were dragged into the disastrous Iraq war."
That this newspaper should take this line is quite significant, and there is more with a long piece by Booker, putting the rest of the media in the shade. The BBC is trying to hold the warmist line, with its "daily scare" – this one on the Antarctic (how novel) and The Guardian recruits Bob Watson to tell us how the sceptics are destroying the planet.
Meanwhile, in a parallel universe, the blogs are still making the running on the "hack" – which is now looking more like a leak - leaving the government with an inauspicious start to its poster campaign – which starts today – on climate change.
Billboards across 900 locations in the UK will "offer a stark message for any climate change sceptics" and are timed to precede a United Nations climate conference in Copenhagen next month, the Department of Energy and Climate Change is saying. The sceptics aren't listening though ... the game has moved on. The warmists have been outed.
CLIMATEGATE THREAD