[Editor Note: This piece originally appeared in the Calgary Herald on December 28th. It should be noted that a new website is devoted to Climategate.]

Responses to “Climategate”–the leaked e-mails from Britain’s University of East Anglia and its Climatic Research Unit — remind me of the line “Are your feet wet? Can you see the pyramids? That’s because you’re in denial.”

Climate catastrophists like Al Gore and the UN’s Rajendra Pachauri are downplaying Climategate: it’s only a few intemperate scientists; there’s no real evidence of wrongdoing; now let’s persecute the whistleblower. In Calgary, the latest fellow trying to use the Monty Python “nothing to see here, move along” routine is David Mayne Reid, who penned a column last week denying the importance of Climategate.

Unfortunately for Professor Reid, old saws won’t work in the Internet age: Climategate has blazed across the Internet, blogosphere, and social networking sites.…

Just how much warming should we expect from rising levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases (GHGs)? The answer largely hinges on how much extra warming might be generated by the initial warming—that is, how strong (and in what direction) are the feedbacks from water vapor and clouds.

By most estimates (including climate model outcomes), these feedbacks are positive and result in about a doubling of the warming that would result from greenhouse gas increases alone. By others, however, the total feedbacks are negative,…

“The climate movement is dealing with a host of problems of its own making. The anti-CO2 crusade will have fewer and fewer defenders as reality continues to strike back.”

The Climate Industrial Complex wants to tax, regulate, and subsidize, not debate (“report, block, don’t engage,” says Michael Mann). But Climate Week NYC, hosted by Climate Group, allowed (a precious few) alternative voices to alarmism and forced energy transformation at its more than 600 advertised events and activities.

The hard core was upset. “Fossil Fuel Presence at Climate Week NYC Spotlights Dissonance in Clean Energy Transition,” complained Inside Climate News. “Blah, Blah, Blah,” wrote Liza Featherstone in TNR. She noted:

… instead of being an urgent call to action, it is now the closest thing the climate movement has to a trade show, a week of fancy lunches and private drinks and flashy presentations announcing new investment funds, new green pledges from businesses and states, and thought leaders taking the opportunity to show their climate bona fides.

“Funny thing. The climate alarmists’ favorite energies–wind and solar–have ruined the margins of nuclear to cause premature retirements and a lack of private funding for new construction. So the fossil-fuel haters in the nuclear camp find themselves victimized by the climate crusade. It sure is hard being ‘nuclear green’.”

Being active on social media with several thousand followers, I actively engage with my critics for fun and profit. I learn much, and those who have chosen to follow me (6,400+) might also. But I have also attracted scorn, some of the worst kind. My foes are typically wed to an energy dependent on special government failure. The ideological, deep-ecology, Church-of-Climate types spare little invective about how I am a threat to the future. Arguments failing, ad hominem often follows,

I employ plenty of analysis and link to a variety of sources.…