For my Friday funny I give you the New York Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/science/earth/25climate.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1275069659-CzTnXrHg0734iCunqvbrww

Last month hundreds of environmental activists crammed into an auditorium here to ponder an anguished question: If the scientific consensus on climate change has not changed, why have so many people turned away from the idea that human activity is warming the planet?

Last month you say...way to get right on that story.

A survey in February by the BBC found that only 26 percent of Britons believed that “climate change is happening and is now established as largely manmade,” down from 41 percent in November 2009.

Wow! A poll from February? Might one surmise there were some events leading up to that changing opinion? Might the polls have shifted even more in the past, say, three months?

A poll conducted for the German magazine Der Spiegel found that 42 percent of Germans feared global warming, down from 62 percent four years earlier.

This poll is from March, which is more recent than February, but it's still 2 months old.

And a poll in January of the personal priorities of 141 Conservative Party candidates deemed capable of victory in the recent election found that “reducing Britain’s carbon footprint” was the least important of the 19 issues presented to them.

A March Gallup poll found that 48 percent of Americans believed that the seriousness of global warming was “generally exaggerated,” up from 41 percent a year ago.

Again, 2 months ago.

Here in Britain, the change has been driven by the news media’s intensive coverage of a series of climate science controversies unearthed and highlighted by skeptics since November.

That must have hurt. To actually write about a story that broke 6 months ago. Do you need to sit down for a bit, dear Lady?

Two independent reviews later found no evidence that the East Anglia researchers had actively distorted climate data, but heavy press coverage had already left an impression that the scientists had schemed to repress data.

The highlighted phrase had me confused until I realized they were talking about heavy European press coverage. Here in the US we're just getting the news from the "paper of record" months later.

Describing the whitewash "investigations" as "independent" is amusing as well.

Thanks to the old Grey Lady reporting on months old polling from across the pond I feel completely informed.

Meanwhile U-Va is fighting their state's attorney general's investigation
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/27/AR2010052705374.html

NASA is stalling FOI requests (reminiscent of East Anglia and Climategate n'est pas?)
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/may/26/nasa-accused-of-climategate-stalling/

and there may be reason to believe that
NASA covered up for forty years proof that the greenhouse gas theory was bogus.
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=5783&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ClimaterealistsNewsBlog+%28ClimateRealists+News+Blog%29

OK so the last one dives into the conspiracy theory deep end. ;)

Have a great weekend all!