Can we please stop the "Global warming evidence was faked" crap now?

Mr. Brilliant is a bit of a science geek. I can't tell you how many nights I've sat blogging, playing mahjong titans on Vista, trying to do the Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle, or sitting around waiting for an Excel spreadsheet to load while I'm connected to my employer's VPN while he watches yet another program on plate tectonics, or black holes, or how the universe began, or something else that makes my eyes glaze over because if I pay attention I'll feel so insignificant that nihilism seems like a good way to go. He really does understand what the Large Hadron Collider is supposed to be doing.

You know what he doesn't really get, though? What the hell happened with the infamous Climate Change E-mails™. What he DOES understand, though, is that the scientific community and those who recognize that if we don't do something about climate change PDQ we are going to be in a world of shit, have done a really crappy job of explaining why these e-mails don't "disprove" that climate change exists, that we are largely responsible for it, and that if we don't do something about it, we are going to be in a world of shit.

It's unfortunate that it's up to the Associated Press, that wonderful organization that brought us Nedra Pickler, to do the job. AP has been known to be somewhat dickish when it comes to excerpting their articles, so you'll have to click over. Or, you can read the statement directly from the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Yes, it was bitchingly cold in New Jersey yesterday. Yes, I know there have been blizzards in the midwest. Global warming doesn't mean "Everyplace gets hotter." Anyone who's enough of a dumbass (I'm talking to you, John Elliott, the nimrod on WCBS-TV in New York who says crap like this every time the temperature is below normal) to believe that one cold day means decades of science is bunk deserves to drown or die of tropical diseases that are going to be moving north. But I defy you to look at this, this, this, or this and tell me that there's nothing going on and that if there is, we have NOTHING to do with it, and then try to tell me that we have a God-given right to burn as much fossil fuel as possible driving our kids to soccer practice.

And how weird is it when I find a voice of sanity on all this over at Little Green Footballs? But I did, and found this: