As far as I remember, there was an official investigation into this, which found no misconduct. The quotes are out of context and rather ridiculous ("I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.") - uh oh, they used a "trick"!!! They must be cheaters. The trick could actually just be some clever idea, which is what scientists tend to come up with to make progress, but people hear what they want to hear.
Becoming a little suspicious is exactly what the skeptics want you to become, hence the attempts to blow those emails out of proportion.
It might also be worth noting that attacking the science based on those emails is not actually scientific criticism, it is merely ad hominem. If you wanted, you could perhaps draw some conclusions from the skeptics resorting to such attacks, rather than science. But lets not go there...
There was an official investigation into the $2.3 trillion that Pentagon could not account for 10 years ago. They found nothing, conveniently. There are billions of dollars riding on green energy, government grants, and reputations on the line. I don't think it would be hard to do a "similar" investigation to the one done on the Pentagon.
You suffer from selection bias. You'll believe any source, no matter how tenuous, when it detracts, but refuse to believe one that supports, citing some kind of nebulous conspiracy. You're behaving in a profoundly unscientific manner.
Well I think the emails are public in their entirety, which is a distinction to the oval office accounting books? So everybody can do an investigation. Where are the results from skeptics (other than out of context quotes)? I am sure they invested in analyzing those emails?
In any case, you chose who you trust. Of course the impression that you can not trust anybody in the climate discussion is also beneficial to some parties (it is called FUD).
What do you think an average climate scientists earns, btw? I mean, what would be their incentive for faking it all?
I do not think that everybody is faking it - at most, there were a handful of scientists who covered up some bad data (if that even happened). Most scientists are benevolent - they are proposing hypotheses they honestly believe in. The problem is that they get attached to the consensus because it is the easiest thing to believe, and do not address all of the factors that could be wrong with their hypothesis. Being skeptical against AGW is much harder - I should know. For the first 25 years of my life, I was a die-hard AGW proponent.
What does AGW stand for - is it not the belief that no global warming is happening?
Anyway, this is all just guesswork (what scientists are doing, I mean). More interesting are your motivations for believing certain things. Maybe you need the self-image of being a skeptic?
Becoming a little suspicious is exactly what the skeptics want you to become, hence the attempts to blow those emails out of proportion.
It might also be worth noting that attacking the science based on those emails is not actually scientific criticism, it is merely ad hominem. If you wanted, you could perhaps draw some conclusions from the skeptics resorting to such attacks, rather than science. But lets not go there...
Edit: for completeness sake, here is a random result from Google about the investigation: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/24/climategate-investi...