It's been a difficult few months for climate scientists. There were the stolen e-mails of Climategate that purported to show an attempt to cover up data disputing global warming, the much ballyhooed summit in Copenhagen that ended in disappointment, and the revelation of several errors in the work of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. By March, congressional Republicans were calling for a McCarthy-style investigation into global-warming scientists, and researchers were being inundated with hate mail. Note to science students in search of a major: entomology is looking nice these days.
So when word went out...