@hightor,
Well, Hi, we'll see where all this comes out, and I don't really care to pursue the Bates/Karl relationship.
I will say that the "disgruntled worker" smear is commonplace, even if that is actually the case here.
I have read statements by other co-workers who completely took Bates' "side," and praised him highly. Apparently he was considered to be a sort of annoying "gadfly," because he was constantly insisting that proper procedures involving documentation of the work done be complied with and some others (like Karl) wanted to dispense with such procedures.
On the "science" side I will say this:
Apparently Karl took the position that the data which had been unquestionably accepted by all concerned for 15 years had all been wrong. This, he claimed, created the "illusion" of a warming hiatus.
The problem is that, even if he's right, this merely undermines the average person's confidence in these fools. We were told 20-25 years ago that the science was completely "settled." But settled on the basis of what, exactly?
The "bad" data they had been uncritically accepting for years, that it?
And why didn't any of these geniuses spot this "flaw" in the data in the prior 15 years? It creates a lot of doubts, which is one reason for the congressional investigation.
I've seen some AGW supporters (correctly, I think) claim that one of the foremost causes of skepticism was the over-confidence and over-reaching claims of the alarmists about the "certainty" of their propositions.
