[T]he main damage to the credibility of climate science was done not by the Climategate emails, nor by the principals’ efforts to justify themselves. The main damage was done by the many climate scientists who affected to see nothing troublesome in what was disclosed, and the far larger number who decided it was best to say nothing. That was the really shocking thing. If climate scientists had united in criticising the methods and practices revealed by Climategate, the scandal might very well have fizzled. In saying they saw nothing wrong, they impugned their own work and that of all their colleagues, and brought the whole enterprise under suspicion.

Yes, but it isn't the enterprise as a whole that is important to individual scientists, except perhaps those with a contrarian temperament and the deep security of old age and independent means. It's important to grasp this if we hope to avoid more of the same.

[I]t is not enough to praise the bloggers, salute the carcase of the IPCC, and move on. Policymakers need a repaired IPCC, not a discredited IPCC nobody believes. This is something governments need to attend to urgently. And in attending to it, they should acknowledge how deeply implicated they are in the IPCC’s failure. The panel gave them what they wanted. Give us the useful science, governments said. Give us a clear message; let’s not dwell on stuff that’s unhelpful. If governments had wanted disinterested science, without the cosmetic surgery, they could have insisted on it. They are very much to blame for the whole mess.

And they will do the same at the very next opportunity. Their incentives require such behavior. That's politics. The fault lies chiefly with journalists in the major media, the ones who were so slow to respond and so reluctant to speak truth to power. If they can't do this task then they have less than zero value to society. Heads should be rolling at the BBC and every other major media house. This is a massive journalistic failure that reveals their corrupt and intellectually bankrupt core. How pathetic that we have come to depend on bloggers to do the job.