The American Spectator

Re, your point at the end—you’ve taken the words out of my mouth. Skepticism is essential for the functioning of science. It yields an erratic path towards eventual truth. But legitimate scientific skepticism is exercised through formal scientific circles, in particular the peer review process. A necessary though not in general sufficient condition for taking a scientific criticism seriously is that it has passed through the legitimate scientific peer review process. those such as McIntyre who operate almost entirely outside of this system are not to be trusted.

The e-mails, however, showed how corrupt the peer review process had become. In one, Mann suggested a boycott of a journal that had published an article questioning the global-warmist hypothesis: “Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal.” In another, Phil Jones, the director of the Climate Research Unit, wrote to Mann promising to prevent skeptics’ papers from being cited by the UN’s International Panel on  Climate Change: “Kevin and I will keep them out somehow—even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”

Yet the week after these e-mails were revealed, Revkin posted an entry on his NYTimes.com blog reporting that the “latest peer-reviewed science” shows that “the case for climate change as a serious risk to human affairs” is “clear, despite recent firestorms over some data sets and scientists’ actions.”

EVEN SO, it turned out that Revkin wasn’t nearly slavish enough for some climate scientists. The conservative scholar Steven Hayward was copied on an e-mail Revkin received in early
December from Michael Schlesinger, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Illinois. Schlesinger took exception with one of Revkin’s blog posts:

Andy:
Copenhagen prostitutes?
Climate prostitutes?
Shame on you for this gutter reportage….
The vibe that I am getting from here, there and everywhere is that your reportage is very
worrisome to most climate scientists.
Of course, your blog is your blog.
But, I sense that you are about to experience the ‘Big Cutoff’ from those of us who believe we
can no longer trust you, me included.
Copenhagen prostitutes?
Unbelievable and unacceptable.
What are you doing and why?
Michael

Did Revkin really accuse climate scientists of prostituting themselves for a political agenda? No, he did not. The blog made a passing mention of actual prostitutes. Revkin picked up an amusing report that Danish hookers were offering services free of charge to Copenhagen delegates.

Revkin was a fairer reporter than his credulousness about “peer review” would lead you to expect. Even before Climategate, he came under fire from global warmists for failing to suppress inconvenient information. Last September Joe Romm of the left-liberal Center for American Progress issued a tirade against him for an article noting that recent years have been relatively cool: “That litany of misinformation and confusion is what you expect from the Swift boat smearer’s website, not the paper of record.”

After Climategate broke, Revkin reported that Romm’s center had “organized a telephone conference call, including two of the scientists embroiled in the fracas over the disclosed e-mails, that it said was aimed at ‘setting the record straight on global warming.’” The irony of a political advocacy group purporting to set the record straight on a scientific matter was not lost on Revkin.

His colleagues on the Times editorial page, however, continue to march in lockstep. When they
finally weighed in on Climategate, more than two weeks after Revkin reported on it, it was only to pronounce the scandal unworthy of attention: “It is… important not to let one set of purloined e-mail messages undermine the science and the clear case for action, in Washington and in Copenhagen.” The Times editorialists need not worry about being subjected to the Big Cutoff.

Then again, at least, unlike their counterparts at the Miami Herald, they managed to produce their own editorial on the subject.