Finally: Washington Post discovers Climategate

The e-mails don’t say that: They don’t provide proof that human-caused climate change is a lie or a swindle.

But they do raise hard questions. In an effort to control what the public hears, did prominent scientists who link climate change to human behavior try to squelch a back-and-forth that is central to the scientific method? Is the science of global warming messier than they have admitted?…

Pielke said his research shows that, in addition to carbon dioxide and other factors, Earth’s warming is affected by how people alter the land. When a forest becomes a farm, or a farm becomes a suburb, that changes the amount of heat and moisture coming off the ground, he said.

But Pielke said he has seen some papers rejected and has felt so marginalized that he quit a U.S. panel summing up climate change a few years ago. One of the stolen e-mails seems to confirm the idea that he was being excluded: In 2005, Jones wrote to colleagues about some of Pielke’s complaints, “Maybe you’ll be able to ignore them?”

“These individuals, who are very sincere in their beliefs, have presumed that that gives them permission to exclude viewpoints that are different from their own,” Pielke said.