the scandal that isn't

I am not sure what is supposed to be so shocking about the so-called "climategate" scandal.  Someone hacked into servers at the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University.  Cue the flying monkeys of climate change denial who, after picking through the 10 years' worth of faculty emails, have declared climate change science invalidated.  Climate scientists can hang up their models and go home. It's all a big hoax! 

I challenge any organization, or individual for that matter, to surrender all of their email to their worst enemies.  Let's see what might turn up.  We might find that "gasp" some emails are nasty, inconsistent, dishonest, or just plain wrong.  Shock. horror. yawn.

This is typical behaviour of the denialist community (climate change, evolution, holocaust, birthers, etc.).  Launch fact-free attacks on the science and scientists, howl over reasonable scientific disputes, misrepresent uncertainty, argue in bad faith, quote mine and clip out of context, and generally behave like 4th graders. 

For some other views, let's check in with the lefty hippie treehuggers at Shell Oil (commenting at LGF):

I think that the science now tells us more than enough to warrant action. Certainly there remain uncertainties, but not on the issue as a whole.
With regards the private e-mails posted on the internet, I think the story is a simple one and it could apply to any one of us. Think of all the e-mails you have written over the past 10 years. Now imagine that someone ciminally breaks into your e-mail account and downloads all of them, handpicks a few and posts them on the internet to cast you in a particular light. We could all be shown to be saints or sinners or anything in between.
Now look at what has happened with these scientists going about their work in much the same way anyone of us might attend to our job. Enough said.

Enough indeed. Unfortunately some don't concur, and we'll be hearing more from the denialists & their monkeys.  Some further excellent roundup of the "controversy" at Nature, Popular Mechanics, and of course RealClimate.