Further update. DEC 1. : CBC HAS to cover this!!!!!
The U.K.’s University of East Anglia says the director of its Climatic Research Unit is stepping down pending an investigation into allegations stemming from the recent publication of his and other climate scientists’ private emails.
Phil Jones, the director of the global research centre on climate change, announced that he would stand aside until an independent review determined whether he overstated the case for man-made climate change.
UPDATE: Richard Lindzen has today also had an article published in the Wall Street Journal.
A couple of excerpts here, but please read the whole thing so we can’t be accused of cherry picking or taking phrases out of context..
Claims that climate change is accelerating are bizarre. There is general support for the assertion that GATA has increased about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit since the middle of the 19th century. The quality of the data is poor, though, and because the changes are small, it is easy to nudge such data a few tenths of a degree in any direction. Several of the emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (CRU) that have caused such a public ruckus dealt with how to do this so as to maximize apparent changes. …
Even a doubling of CO2 would only upset the original balance between incoming and outgoing radiation by about 2%. This is essentially what is called “climate forcing.” …
What does all this have to do with climate catastrophe? The answer brings us to a scandal that is, in my opinion, considerably greater than that implied in the hacked emails from the Climate Research Unit (though perhaps not as bad as their destruction of raw data): namely the suggestion that the very existence of warming or of the greenhouse effect is tantamount to catastrophe. This is the grossest of “bait and switch” scams. It is only such a scam that lends importance to the machinations in the emails designed to nudge temperatures a few tenths of a degree.
The notion that complex climate “catastrophes” are simply a matter of the response of a single number, GATA, to a single forcing, CO2 (or solar forcing for that matter), represents a gigantic step backward in the science of climate. Many disasters associated with warming are simply normal occurrences whose existence is falsely claimed to be evidence of warming. And all these examples involve phenomena that are dependent on the confluence of many factors.
Meanwhile you haven’t heard about it on CBC, have you?
For those following this story as we have been [and as the Main Stream Media has noticeably NOT!] this comment is just another confirmation of our conviction that “Climate Change” fears and hype and incipient policies are unfounded.
Richard Lindzen
I fervently hope that Copenhagen will avoid canonising the absurd notion that climate is determined by any single parameter like CO2. The dubious attempts to link this parameter to every form of catastrophe is producing unwarranted fear. Imposing this notion as a matter of international law will set science back several centuries. The accompanying policies seem designed to do the same for society as a whole. The carbon control movement, like every malicious movement, seeks to cloak itself in an aura of virtue. Sentient citizens should be able to see through this patent ploy.
Richard Lindzen is Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. MIT – This institution has some credibility with some people, we should think. The comment was made on this New Scientist forum.
Lots of interesting comments – on both sides – at DotEarth.
Related material : The Wegman Report (PDF) and a Summary from the US House Committee on Energy and Commerce (also PDF)
One quote:
“The public policy implications of this debate are financially
staggering and yet apparently no independent statistical expertise was sought or used.””
LATER: Further reading- Follow the money. $$$$$$
Wolfville watch 
Indeed, Richard Lindzen is a scientists scientist. His book, Dynamics in Atmospheric Physics (Cambridge 1990), has center-stage on my bookshelf.
There is far more to earth and heaven than CO2.
That is not to say that CO2 does not affect climate, it does. It’s just unfortunate that so many have fallen for the nonsense peddled by CO2 extremists.