The head of the University of East Anglia's Climatic research unit trying to cover up evidence that implies that climate change may not be happening or is less bad than feared shows that the 'consensus' in science over this problem is entirely artificial. Ignoring data showing that the world is not warming is fundamentally against what scientists should be doing, it is bad science. Climate is changing, it has done so for thousands of years, but there is evidence to suggest that humans do not cause it.

31 000 scientists have signed a petition that there is no evidence that human actions cause the catastrophic heating of the earth. The petition argued "There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of ... greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments."^[1] Renowned Scientists H. Schmitt and F. Singer supports this point of view. The reason you do not see many such scientists is because there is pressure on scientists who question global warming. Scientists just cannot get funding if they do not write in support of ‘global warming’.

1. ^ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/2053842/Scientists-sign-petition-denying-man-made-global-warming.html

The emails have not shown that information generated from the UEA's CRU were tampered with. The entire scandal was created by taking a few emails out of context, and the conclusions reached were not conclusive as the few emails by themselves are ambiguous. Since the emails were definitely not meant to be something like a press release, they contain thoughts and unscientific sentences that can be easily viewed in a way not meant by the writer^[1].

Besides, the UEA climatic research unit is by no means the only reputable scientific or academic institution to be arguing that climate change exists. There is immense amounts of evidence to back up that climate change is happening and is getting faster not slowing down. One piece of evidence supposedly being tampered with makes no difference.

While there is no complete consensus on whether climate change is man made those who believe that man made climate change is a myth are a very small minority. Probably a majority have not yet made up their minds and are waiting for more evidence while a reasonable number argue forcefully that climate change is man made and this includes major groups such as UNIPCC.

1. ^ http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/earth/4338343.html

The UNIPCC inflated the evidence on the melting of glaciers in the Himalaya's. "Glaciers in the Himalaya are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate"^[1]. This claim of the likelihood being ‘very high’ means in the IPCC’s terms that there is a 90% chance that it will happen. This shows that at least some of the time in their report they were approaching the subject in an unscientific way and creating results to suit their political aim. It is especially worrying that the panel would increase a claim if they knew that the initial claim was not verified, and even more surprising that they would do so if they did not know where the initial claim came from or without any further research to back the increase in the claim.

1. ^ http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch10s10-6-2.html

It is the sun that is the driving force of our climate and so it makes sense that it has the biggest impact on our climate rather than anything that humans might be doing. The sun is therefore the most likely cause of global warming. Professor Henrik Svensmark, a physicist at the Danish National Space Center in Copenhagen argues that climate change is caused by solar activity.^[1] Solar activity, as determined by sunspot activity, is historically high being at its highest over the last 60-70 years for over 8000 years. Solar activity could affect climate by variation in the Sun's output or potentially through having an effect on cloud formation.

1. ^ Louise Gray, 'Copenhagen climate summit: global warming 'caused by sun's radiation'', The Telegraph, 8/12/09, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/copenhagen-climate-change-confe/6762640/Copenhagen-climate-summit-global-warming-caused-by-suns-radiation.html
2. ^ I.G. Usoskin, S.K. Solanski, M. Schussler, K. Mursula, Solar activity, cosmic rays, and Earth’s temperature: A millennium-scale comparison, 1/10/05 http://cc.oulu.fi/~usoskin/personal/2004ja010964.pdf

Others however disagree with Solanski et al. on whether sunspot activity correlates with temperature changes and on whether we are in the most active period for several thousand years.

Influence of the Sun does not seem to be so great on global warming trends. Surprisingly, even though average temperatures are still rising(the 2000s are on track to be nearly 0.2°C warmer than the 1990s. And that temperature jump is especially worrisome since the 1990s were only 0.14°C warmer than the 1980s^[2].), solar activity is at a minimum, as reported by NASA in April 2009:

1. ^ Raimund Muscheler, Fortunat Joos, Simon A. Müller, Ian Snowball, 'How unusual is today’s solar activity?', Nature, 431, 1084–1087 (2004), http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/ccr/raimund/publications/Muscheler_et_al_Nature2005.pdf
2. ^ http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/
3. ^ http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/01apr_deepsolarminimum.htm

Scientists(apart from the ones justifying their jobs with this subject) and even the lowly rambler knows that for some reason that this has occured many times before. There is proof all around that it is a natural cycle.Too much money and time is wasted on it, and recycling across the board is counter productive when it comes to emmisions, it creates more, but creates jobs at the taxpayers expense. We can not stop what is happening,it happens and always has.

Much of the evidence that there is man made climate change is in the open. In the wake of climate gate and the other scandals there have been, scientists are likely to be even more open with how they compiled their results and how they came to their conclusions. Databases of temperature recordings etc will be open to access so that anyone can check the results a climate scientist gets. Transparency will prevent more far-fetched ideas, such as the too rapid melting of the Himalayan glaciers, being considered scientific so preventing these from undermining the credibility of rest of the body of science and reducing the ability of deniers to nitpick and find holes. Even if individuals don’t go and check the scientists’ work themselves simply having the evidence open to do so will help show that global warming is man made as scientists would not be making everything public if they knew they were likely to be shown to be lying about their results. The most important thing is that with their findings being questioned and under ever more scrutiny scientists will go and recheck their work or have others review it. This peer review process should help persuade the public that the scientists are not deliberately falsifying information and are producing results that are as accurate as possible

Climategate isn't the first nor will it be the last fraud by scientists to be revealed; another recent huge one was the human therapeutic cloning scandal revolving a South Korean team that falsified data in its papers. While such scandals do undermine the hard work and progress achieved by dedicated scientists it doesn't hurt science because most people do realize that while frauds may be there, most scientists produce real and reliable results, which are then confirmed (or perhaps even rejected) by further research by other scientists. So overall scientific work is reliable and shall remain so. If global warming was not in any way man made then it would have been shown by now, it has not, so the chances are man is having some impact, even if it is not as much as some proponents say.

Science is continually self-corrective, and has mechanisms (eg. peer review, repeatability) that deal as well with fraud, in the long run, as earnest scientific effort. Any real inconsistency in the data will eventually show as an anomaly, which will in turn result in more attention being paid to the work in question. The problem here is with the public's perception of science.

J. S. Mill thought we should not fear criticism of scientific (or other) beliefs. God forbid we should start believing in climate change in the same way as others believe in religions.