Climategate

The fashion to add the suffix -gate to everything to indicate a scandal has really worn out its welcome, but I think we are stuck with it. The most interesting thing about the whole set of e-mails from Climatologists in which it is obvious that they have been manipulating data and the public debate is that everyone is acting so surprised--it is a Casablanca moment--I'm Shocked! Shocked!

Anyone who has paid attention already knew this was happening. I once was in a forum with local professors on this topic in which one of them said, "You have to present the global warming disaster scenario because that is the way to get grants"--and the person saying that thought this was a good thing rather than a bad thing. (For more on this, see this nice article.)

Meanwhile in actual scientific news, the Science of Climate Change is as uncertain as always. Of course nobody ever believes an economist when he talks about it--what do you know?--but in this case I actually do know something. I have spent a lot of time thinking about modeling. Climate models are just like economic models. And Climate models are not very good models.

But, you don't have to take my word for it.
Here is a really nice article on the actual science of climate change by an MIT meteorologist.

By the way, the clever change from talking about "Global Warming" to Talking about "Climate Change" was an implicit acknowledgment that the world hasn't actually become any warmer in the last decade. But the climate changes every day, so that is a great new catch phrase because the evidence of climate change will be obvious tomorrow.