Tiring Environmental Crusade

An article on the BBC writes the EU Commission is to bring in standard labeling on car tires across the EU. Similar to the labels Europeans will be familiar with on consumer electronics, with A (green) to G (red) labeling. The labels assess safety, noise but also interestingly fuel consumption. The article states changing tired would be like taking 1.3 million cars of the road in Europe. Whilst it's brilliant steps are being made to help consumers choose better products (that can really help the environment), it's depressing that it has taken so long to happen. All of the above qualities would be desirable even if we weren't facing catastrophic climate change. I read a good article about that somewhere, will try and find it, but it basically asked why, if many of the things that we need to do to fight climate change are in themselves desirable (energy efficiency), is it not already happening. Basically, humans have limited information, many companies have little competition and so don't have incentives to become more efficient, and the issue of low hanging fruit, that companies will choose the easiest ways to increase revenue/lower costs first and that many energy efficiency projects take time to show yields. Will try and find article. In the mean time, use Ecofont!

Climate Research Unit hacked

The Climate Research Unit (CRU) has been hacked according to several million articles floating around the net right now. Here's one from old faithful, the BBC. The CRU, for those of you not in the know, i.e. most of you, is the climate research department of the University of East Anglia (UEA), and is apparently considered one of the leading institutions of its type in the world. So what you say? Well, the hack (committed last week) mainly involved emails between scientists there and a number of them seem to suggest, to put it bluntly, the climate change isn't real. Some of the quotes from the emails look very bad indeed:
Phil Jones (one of the scientists) talks about using Mann's (another scientists) "...Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series"...to hide the decline".
Many naturally interpreted that to mean hide the decline in temperature. There are easily 50 or so similarly damning statements. Now the scientists, or their "collaborators" seem to be striking back, essentially, through sympathetic blogs, like this one. Most of their explanation do seem reasonable. For example, above, where they talk about "hiding the decline" apparently this is taken out of context, they are referring to the fact tree rings used to give a good indication of temperature, but since the 60s they no longer correlate. Thus it is necessary to use other data to hide that. The words "trick" and "hide" were just unfortunate.
I'd love to read a more professionally drafted analysis of the whole affair. Sadly, on an issue this big, I kind of feel those who believe in global warming (or should I say science) will do anything to interpret the data to support there position (imagine how stupid they'd feel otherwise) and those who don't take anything, even clear science, to support their view.
Frankly, I find it hard to believe that the world's entire scientific establishment has entered into the mother of all conspiracies to trick the world into..... great efficiency? Over 40 Noble laureates over 4 decades, from every part of the world, in every Nobel field all collaborate to trick us? It seems a bit much, so I'm happy enough that these emails are really just massively out of context. I believe the hacker got over 500 emails, more than enough to find things that look bad, especially given the one-sided, casual nature of email. Still, great story, send me more if you find it.