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Joshua Kucera
In November, a shadowy hacker whose identity is still unknown broke into the E-mail servers of a major climate research institute in England and found that scientists there had written of "hiding" data that didn't support their position and had mocked climate change skeptics.
The news flew through the climate-skeptic and right-wing blogosphere, where it was treated as proof that climate scientists were cooking the books to promote an alarmist agenda. That disclosure was followed soon after by news that a 2007 report by the
But was it?
There is still a consensus that Earth is warming, and climate scientists have painstakingly argued that the E-mails don't do anything to challenge their conclusion that human activity is causing this climate change. But the controversy has opened the door to those who argue that human activity has played a lesser role in warming and thus does not merit a strong reaction. The splash that climategate has caused, however, is an indication of how the public debate has shifted dramatically over the past year.
For a time, it seemed that there was a growing consensus that climate change was a serious problem. Business and religious groups began to change their tune. Sen. John McCain, who spoke strongly of the need for action against climate change, won the 2008 Republican presidential nomination.
But the winds have been shifting in the other direction.
In polls by the
What's behind this shift?
Climate change has long been a partisan issue, with Republicans much more likely than Democrats to be skeptics.
And while mainstream Republicans had slowly begun to accept climate change, the ideological energy in the
Stalled. This was all going on before climategate, which has only intensified the arguments. The
Even McCain seems to have backed off on climate change. He's now facing a serious primary challenger from the right in his upcoming re-election campaign and has been noticeably quiet on climate issues of late, says Eileen Claussen, the president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. Claussen notes that as recently as last August, McCain was arguing that "climate change is real. It's happening now." But she says, "I don't think you'll see that again." And a climate and energy bill that passed the House last June has stalled. Climategate, she says, "has made the politics of actually trying to get something done here much, much harder." For all the snow that hit Washington this winter, there is still plenty of hot air.