The media missed the real story about the so-called “climate-gate” scandal.

After thousands of emails were mysteriously stolen from the University of East Anglia and distributed just before the climate conference in Copenhagen, many news outlets seemed content to report the story as it was presented to them rather than bothering to read the emails in the context they were written.

A closer look at these candid messages reveals a very different problem than the supposed scientific conspiracy theory that’s been in high rotation in the media. This previously unreported story also shows why launching the long-mothballed Deep Space Climate Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) is more urgent now than ever.

Lets start with perhaps the most widely distributed and misunderstood of the stolen emails, of October 12, 2009 from Dr. Keith Trenberth to Michael Mann, which reads:

The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.

In a suspicious "leak " to the Globe and Mail, the Canadian government has announced a "tough new green plan" that will force oil sands projects and coal-fired power plants to capture and store CO2.

This would be good if it were true, but the Globe article says the federal Conservative government is still using intensity targets and has given a free pass to all projects that are already "hit the drawing board." At last report, oil sands developers had existing plans to triple their operations by 2012, so the Tory plan may be similar to the Alberta government plan: which is, effectively, to let the oil patch do whatever it wants.

A controversial theory proposes mimicking volcanoes to fight global warming. But throwing sulfur particles into the sky may do more harm than good, a new study says.

 

The temporary solution would pump particles of sulfur high into the atmosphere—simulating the effect of a massive volcano by blocking out some of the sun's rays. This intervention, advocates argue, would buy a little time to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But as well as cooling the planet, the sulfur particles would reduce rainfall and cause serious global drought, a new study says.

The melting ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are a fairly recent development that has taken scientists by surprise. They don't know how to predict its effects in their computer models. But many fear it will mean the world's coastlines are swamped much earlier than most predict.

At a climate conference, climate skeptic William Gray accused IPCC scientist Kevin Trenberth of "selling his soul to the devil."  Trenberth, in turn, blasted Gray for aligning himself with industry-funded skeptics.  

The words "global warming" provoke a sharp retort from Colorado State University meteorology professor emeritus William Gray: "It's a big scam." And the name of climate researcher Kevin Trenberth elicits a sputtered "opportunist."

(Grey repeated his assertion despite the publication of a meticulous refutation of his claims by a group of leading climate scientists.) 

At the National Center for Atmospheric Research, where Trenberth works, Gray's name prompts dismay. "Bill Gray is completely unreasonable," Trenberth says. "He has a mind block on this."