Reposted from [link]

I have a story to tell.

Recently, in the local, ass-end-of-nowhere, newspaper, a local businessman ran an op-ed piece about the "Climategate" scandal unfolding around the world, as various personalities, talking heads, and, in general, everyone and their grandmother, tossed their two cents in the vain hope that someone would care about their opinions (we do, sometimes).

It prompted me to do a little research into the matter myself to see if there was any weight to the allegations that the many nay-sayers put forth. The major arguments, if they could be called that, consist of: one, fraudulent data, as in, the scientists in the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia willingly obscured the truth, and were conspiring to fix the data such that it would show anthropogenic global warming (AGW) to be de facto; two, the scientists working in the IPCC actively discouraged oversight, thus preventing others from testing their results, which effectively negates the scientific methodology.

I've found that there is some truth to the claims. The CRU scientists were pretty much dicking around with the data, and have done some shady things to make it look like, without a doubt, humanity is exacerbating global warming.

This has understandably shaken my comfort zone.

This does not, however, mean that I don't think that there is now no truth behind AGW; it does mean that now, I'm going to withhold my opinion on the matter, with the truth behind human-enhanced global warming in flux. You see, I really do care if my opinions are backed up with reliable data, and I hesitate to utter anything unless I've previously researched it and come to a conclusion based on the evidence.

That is thinking outside the box.