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"The admissions will be seized on by sceptics as fresh evidence that there are serious flaws..."

"... at the heart of the science of climate change and the orthodoxy that recent rises in temperature are largely man-made."

Huh? Why would it just be skeptics who would be interested in evidence of serious flaws in the science? I'm amazed by paragraph 6 of an article that begins:

The academic at the centre of the ?Climategate? affair, whose raw data is crucial to the theory of climate change, has admitted that he has trouble ?keeping track? of the information.

Colleagues say that the reason Professor Phil Jones has refused Freedom of Information requests is that he may have actually lost the relevant papers.

Professor Jones told the BBC yesterday there was truth in the observations of colleagues that he lacked organisational skills, that his office was swamped with piles of paper and that his record keeping is ?not as good as it should be?.

The data is crucial to the famous ?hockey stick graph? used by climate change advocates to support the theory.

Professor Jones also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now ? suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon.

And he said that for the past 15 years there has been no ?statistically significant? warming.

Everyone should perceive flaws! To talk about "sceptics" as the ones who will "seize" upon "evidence" of flaws is unwittingly to make global warming into a matter of religion and not science. It's not the skeptics who look bad. "Seize" sounds willful, but science should motivate us to grab at evidence. It's the nonskeptics who look bad. It's not science to be a true believer who wants to ignore new evidence. It's not science to support a man who has the job of being a scientist but doesn't adhere to the methods of science.

Full post as published by Althouse on February 14, 2010 (boomark / email).