One of the interesting aspects of Climategate is that the website Climate Audit (www.climateaudit.org) has become a lot more prominent. For instance, here is a excerpt from an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal.
“This September, Mr. Mann told a New York Times reporter in one of the leaked emails that: “Those such as [Stephen] McIntyre who operate almost entirely outside of this system are not to be trusted.” Mr. McIntyre is a retired Canadian businessman who checks the findings of climate scientists and often publishes the mistakes he finds on his Web site, Climateaudit.org. He holds the rare distinction of having forced Mr. Mann to publish a correction to one of his more famous papers.” (“Rigging a Climate Consensus” – November 27, 2009).
The Climate Audit website challenges published, “peer-reviewed”, articles in “scientific journals” by global warming proponents. It seems to me that this is a paradigm that the ID community might consider adopting.
You do not have to be a “professional” to critique a paper. You do not have to publish such a critique in a “peer-reviewed journal”. You simply have to be right, get it out on the Internet, and market your content. A second point is that the Climate Audit’s critique revolves around data and how it is massaged. As a data professional myself I can assure you that the level of intended and unintended error in data management is far higher than is usually suspected. I think that going for the data – and auditing it – is an excellent approach.
Instead of complaining about lack of access to “peer-reviewed journals”, which we know will never happen, why not adopt the Climate Audit paradigm in the ID community?