Tempest in a teapot

So much for “Climategate.”

As a panel in Britain reported last week after investigating the controversy, the scientists at East Anglia University whose e-mails were hacked in late 2009 had not, as global-warming deniers furiously charged, distorted scientific evidence to prove that the planet was heating up primarily because of human activity.

Other reports have reached essentially the same verdict regarding Climategate. Also, in recent months there have been several reports confirming the basic findings in the United Nation’s 3,000-page report on climate change in 2007, including a major assessment in May from the National Academy of Sciences.

This report, according to The New York Times, “not only confirmed the relationship between climate change and human activities but [also] warned of growing risks—sea level rise, drought, disease—that must swiftly be addressed by firm action to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.”

(Did you catch that, Assemblyman Dan Logue? And are you going to apologize to your constituents for insisting that Climategate proved that global warming was all a big hoax?)

Polls show that people are increasingly unconcerned about global warming, in part because of manufactured controversies such as Climategate. Now that it’s behind us, perhaps we can start doing something meaningful to cut greenhouse-gas emissions.