"Climategate 2.0" a giant flop

That tiny bump at the end is for the stunning disclosure of yet more email that the hacker had hidden for two years.

The potty peer actually jumped out of a plane to try and gin up interest in this big bag of nothinginess:



Fortunately for AIDS sufferers and puzzlers everywhere, his chute opened without problems. Reeks of desperation a bit, though, doesn't it? I don't think this is going down quite as planned. Besides not giving us anything new, this rehash repeats the experience of revealing emails that say nothing about fraud or any misconduct of any kind. The first batch of emails landed in a more innocent world in which a few scientists using rude language to describe deniers who clearly deserved the epithets could by relentlessly flogged by the right-wing noise machine and this surprised people. It could appear organic, not scripted, and sell itself as the revelation of secrets, which thrills people, and not as a political dirty trick, which it actually was.

The second batch of emails undermines all of the elements of the original story that helped it sell. It is obviously calculated, not organic. The thief held on to the e-mails for two years. Moreover, the new release proves the thief selected which e-mails to release in 2009. That destroys the myth of the "whistleblower" pulling back the curtain on bad behavior -- selective disclosure to maximize embarrassment, concealment of the full context -- these are the hallmarks of political manipulation and deceit.

All in all, a pretty devastating own goal for Team Denial.