Mitt Romney's running mate for the 2012 presidential election is to be Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, a youthful figure from the right of the Republican party. There is a profile of Ryan here.
Perhaps more interestingly he turns out to be very sceptical on the climate front and rather well informed on Climategate. As he said in an interview in 2009:
At issue ...are published e-mail exchanges from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU). These e-mails from leading climatologists make clear efforts to use statistical tricks to distort their findings and intentionally mislead the public on the issue of climate change.
The CRU e-mail scandal reveals a perversion of the scientific method, where data were manipulated to support a predetermined conclusion. The e-mail scandal has not only forced the resignation of a number of discredited scientists, but it also marks a major step back on the need to preserve the integrity of the scientific community. While interests on both sides of the issue will debate the relevance of the manipulated or otherwise omitted data, these revelations undermine confidence in the scientific data driving the climate change debates.
While I think there was only one scientist who actually stood down, the rest is on the button. Of course, people like Chris Mooney are jumping up and down saying that Ryan has it wrong, but given that the CRU bods were found to have been misleading in their trick to hide the decline, this just makes him look disingenuous.