After doing yeoman’s duty in going through the CRU emails, Steve Hayward notes:
How is it possible for a group of smart people to write over 1,000 e-mails over the course of a decade without a single shred of wit or humor in any of them?
As the title says…
And as Mark Steyn notes at the link, the New York Times’ Andrew Revkin has been excommunicated.
A boss of mine once had a sign in his office that read ‘Avoid zealots – they’re generally humorless.’
1,000 emails over a course of a decade, assuming normal working hours, is 3.5 per day. Sounds light to me – maybe we’re missing a few?
We already know the selection was “random”, meaning selected for its impact. Further a number of these people appear to dislike each other strongly. That’s not a great environment for making jokes.
PeeCee myers has finally weighed in on the climategate scandal:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/12/febrile_nitwits_and_the_hacked.php
Here is Moldbug’s take:
http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2009/11/climategate-and-other-correspondence.html
The nice thing about being an AGW alarmist acolyte is that if it does not happen you get to say that all your efforts to reduce CO2 emissions worked and that you helped save the planet. One of the great benefits of a non testable pseudo science is that you get to be right both ways. If the non AGW alarmists get it wrong – it will be apparent.
R7:
I checked out “Moldbug’s take.”
Sorry Rand, I don’t mean any disrespect, but the discussion by Moldbug and in comments is on a whole ‘nther plane. I mean, even the trolls over there have a modicum of intelligence and respect for civil discourse.
And where a thread on “Climategate” degenerates into arguments about the putative role of the Canon of Saints in Catholic, Reformation, First Century, and Anglican Christianity. Who are those people?
From the PeeCee Meyers link:
“The emails are prosaic banter, the sort of thing that people on every side of every debate do every day.”
Prosaic banter.
“That dripping faucet we talked about? We just sent a repair truck out this afternoon, Mr. Gotti.”
If you want more humor with your climate number crunching, check out Ed Smith’s http://chiefio.wordpress.com/gistemp/ pages. A few gems:
“Ah, the luxuries of being semi-retired (aka: too young to retire and too old to get a job you like, but with enough money to grouse about it before you accept that pizza delivery gig ;-)”
“GIStemp- Dumber than a Tomato! I’m adopting this “tag line” about tomatoes due to the simple fact that my tomato garden is a more accurate reporter of the temperature than is GIStemp. Normal tomatoes will not set fruit below 50F at night. Cold varieties, like Siberia, can set fruit down to 40F (and some claim lower to 35F). My tomato plants reliably report the temperature. GIStemp, not so much…”
Hey, thats insulting to religious fanatics.
Watt’s Up With That seems to think it’s a religion, too – an infernal one. They’re calling the emails the “CRUtape Letters.”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/23/the-crutape-letters%C2%AE-an-alternate-explanation/
So which one is “Hockey Stick” Mann – Screwtape or Wormwood?
For the C. S. Lewis uninitiated:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Screwtape_Letters