2010-07-09 The greatest science scandal in the history of man predictably falls apart

2010-07-09 Ben Dimiero MediaMatters \global warming denial\mainstream media/distortions\Glenn Beck\Rush Limbaugh\neocon noise machine\Fox News http://mediamatters.org/columns/201007090048 The greatest science "scandal" "in the history of man" predictably falls apart The greatest science scandal in the history of man predictably falls apart  Last year, conservative climate change skeptics, in the words of Wall Street Journal's Kimberly Strassel, thought they had found a "gold mine." Conservative media figures seized on emails stolen from climate scientists and proceeded to completely distort their contents. As we pointed out repeatedly at the time, this "scandal" relied on outrageous misrepresentations of the stolen emails and did not in any way undermine the scientific consensus about climate change.

Nevertheless, conservative media figures incessantly hyped the non-scandal with their usual overblown rhetoric:
 * Glenn Beck -- who says he is not a conspiracy theorist, remember -- suggested in the wake of "Climategate" that climate change is a "scam." He also said that if the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report "had been done by Japanese scientists, there is not enough knives on planet Earth for hara-kiri."
 * Noted climatologist Rush Limbaugh, who frequently decries the supposed global warming "hoax," proposed that all of the scientists involved in "Climategate" should be "named and fired, drawn and quartered, or whatever it is."
 * Andrew Breitbart called for "capital punishment" for NASA scientist James Hansen, because "Climategate" was supposedly "high treason."
 * The Washington Times, Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter, Investor's Business Daily, The American Spectator's Robert Stacy McCain, Rich Lowry, Newsmax's James Hirsen, and Michael Ledeen all joined forces to smear the scientific consensus on climate change as a "cult."
 * Fox News' Mike Huckabee explained that "Jesus would be a truthseeker" while discussing the "revelation" that scientists had "cooked" climate change data.

&ldquo;Last year, conservative climate change skeptics, in the words of Wall Street Journal's Kimberly Strassel, thought they had found a "gold mine." Conservative media figures seized on emails stolen from climate scientists and proceeded to completely distort their contents. As we pointed out repeatedly at the time, this "scandal" relied on outrageous misrepresentations of the stolen emails and did not in any way undermine the scientific consensus about climate change.&rdquo;   