Now that "Climategate" has been conclusively demonstrated to be ...

... six pounds of bogus in a five-pound bag, to everyone except the wingiest True Believers in Denialism, at least, can we get back to talking about it as adults?

Probably not! Nonetheless, there is no reason for you to wait for all of the children to grow up before reading this excellent article in the flagship of science journals, Nature, "The real holes in climate science."

Doubtless, some of the children will seize upon the headline only and will crow EVEN A RESPECTED PEER-REVIEWED PUBLICATION ADMITS THERE ARE HOLES!!!1!. So, just to get you started, in case you're not immediately inclined to click over, here is a bit worth quoting:

A fuller reading of the e-mails from CRU in Norwich, UK, does show a sobering amount of rude behaviour and verbal faux pas, but nothing that challenges the scientific consensus of climate change.

As is this:

Such holes do not undermine the fundamental conclusion that humans are warming the climate, which is based on the extreme rate of the twentieth-century temperature changes and the inability of climate models to simulate such warming without including the role of greenhouse-gas pollution. The uncertainties do, however, hamper efforts to plan for the future. And unlike the myths regularly trotted out by climate-change denialists (see 'Enduring climate myths'), some of the outstanding problems may mean that future changes could be worse than currently projected.

And here I add some emph:

Researchers say it is difficult to talk openly about holes in understanding. "Of course there are gaps in our knowledge about Earth's climate system and its components, and yes, nothing has been made clear enough to the public," says Gavin Schmidt, a climate modeller at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York and one of the moderators and contributors to the influential RealClimate blog. "But this climate of suspicion we're working in is insane. It's really drowning our ability to soberly communicate gaps in our science when some people cry 'fraud' and 'misconduct' for the slightest reasons."

And don't miss the closing line of the article, which I truly encourage everyone to read.

By the way, if you're of a mind to print out the article, perhaps to pass around, there is also a PDF version.

(h/t: Starwatcher162536 | x-posted)