Nope. I'm not excusing bad behavior. I think those scientists were being immature and irresponsible. But their bad behavior doesn't change my belief that the field of climate change research is valid.
Truth be told, the evidence I've seen doesn't even change my confidence level in their paper -- because unlike "skeptics", I never felt that any one source of historical temperature data was terribly likely to be precise in the first place. Fortunately for climate science, there are many other independent sources of historical temperature data, and all show the same trend. I believe it's extremely unlikely that they're all wrong. Certainly not in the same way.
(In case you were wondering, that's a core difference between skepticism, and "skepticism". A skeptic can be convinced that he's wrong. A "skeptic" wants only to convince others.)
Truth be told, the evidence I've seen doesn't even change my confidence level in their paper -- because unlike "skeptics", I never felt that any one source of historical temperature data was terribly likely to be precise in the first place. Fortunately for climate science, there are many other independent sources of historical temperature data, and all show the same trend. I believe it's extremely unlikely that they're all wrong. Certainly not in the same way.
(In case you were wondering, that's a core difference between skepticism, and "skepticism". A skeptic can be convinced that he's wrong. A "skeptic" wants only to convince others.)