Climategate?

This whole climategate issue seemed to fall out of the media eye pretty quickly. I haven't heard anything about it on a major media outlet in several weeks, although since returning home from school I have certainly been watching less of the news.

Several other university students I've talked to in my department expressed concern about how this would impact pending climate or environmental legislation. I have to say, it weirds me out that even in a state as liberal as Massachusetts I kept seeing ads that were anti-environmental legislation (notably all paid for by the American Petroleum Institute).

Personally, I think this whole climate scandal was an attempt to darken the skies over the Copenhagen summit. American and foreign oil companies want to block any legislation that might have an impact on their profits, and they don't see too far beyond the next fiscal year in my opinion. Taking email correspondence out of context is a very dangerous thing, and I hope that people don't read too far into this scandal without knowing the whole story.

Unfortunately, I think that won't be the case. The public appears to be very skeptical of science in general, not just climate science. It's important for scientists to make their information more understandable to the public so that people can form their own opinions instead of blindly following the twisted propaganda that they're fed.

The bottom line is that these oil companies and other polluting industries are about to get their way, and everyone who believes in keeping this world healthy and safe for future generations absolutely HAS to step up and help keep pro-environmental legistlation on the table. If we lose this battle and keep emitting carbon like we've been doing for the last 100 years, things are going to heat up real fast. We have to look beyond the next 10 or 20 years and see how our behavior will impact the next 100 to 200 years and farther. Climategate or not, we have to accept the reality that our behavior may be and most probably is drastically altering the world we live in so many ways.