This week in 2009, one of the biggest blows to climate science exploded into public awareness: Climategate. It began with the release of thousands of emails from the University of East Anglia. The denier PR machine was then able — by truncating quotes and releasing them to a harried and conflict-driven media without context — to portray climate scientists as unethical, unscientific and untrustworthy.
Ultimately, however, truth prevailed. One investigation after another cleared the scientists of any wrong-doing and proved the deceptive depths to which deniers had sunk. Years later, the damage appears to have been minor and transitory. In a study published in Environmental Research Letters, Anderegg and Goldsmith used google searches to show that while there was an intial surge in media coverage, the manufactored scandal quickly died down.
But, as Lewandowsky points out in a letter in ERL about the Anderegg study, those with a "conspiracy obsession" continue to focus on the event, even though the general public has long forgotten its existence (assuming they even knew about it in the first place).
These days, Climategate is a perfect test for determining if a dissenter to the consensus is a legitimate skeptic or an unhinged denier. Deniers, of course, deny that the exonerations were meaningful and maintain that the emails revealed nefarious and malicious activities, while true skeptics will disown the shameful escapade as political theater.
We've seen precious few of those skeptics. If any. Ever.
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