Pessimism is the reality.
I hope I am wrong, but I doubt anything much will come out of this Climategate kerfuffle in the longer term. The scientists involved in the leak will take their professional cyanide capsules, and there will be a bit of public head-hanging and self reflection from the rest of the major players, after which the “science” behind AGW will be declared “pure” again. Aided and abetted by the majority of the world’s political leaders, who have invested so much in the AGW industry that it is now surely Too Big To Fail. So bail it out and back to business, already.
The reality is that while the anti-AGW side of the argument are stacking up the facts, we have neither the political or media backing to disperse them to the general populace. Hence, the vast majority of current and future Cultists will not get to know the facts.
One of the big leftosphere blogs finally posted on the topic of the CRU emails on Wednesday. There was no link to the emails, but there were links to other corrupted pro-AGW “studies”. I read nearly a dozen comments to that post which started out as “I haven’t read the emails, but I’m sure there is nothing in them that proves they did anything wrong.”
Heads in the sand, indeed.
“I haven’t read the bill, but I’m sure there isn’t anything in it we need to worry about.”
“I haven’t read the Constitution, but I’m sure there’s nothing in it that says we can’t do this.”
“I haven’t read anything about the guy, but I’m sure he’s not a Marxist, and I know he’ll make a good President.”
*spit*
Heads in the sand, but hands on our wallets. Forget about the the Islamic penalty for theft, we used to hang horse thieves.