This is my adaptation of a part of a machine translation of an interview Phil Jones gave to the Spanish newspaper El Pais.
Q. How do you think Climategate will be seen in 20 or 30 years? Do you think it will be important or considered a story?
R. I hope people will be back to believing in science, but I think it will take some years. There are two different cases. Many people believe that the planet is warming. It is ridiculous to question the warming, which is clear and no scientist disputes it. Then there are people who say that even so is not due to human activity.
Q. The debate about the influence of man is relevant?
A. There are scientists who still doubt it, but they are few. And when asked how to explain the warming that has occurred they have much difficulty because it is very difficult to find a rational explanation other than greenhouse gases.
Q. They say that there was a similar warm period in the Middle Ages.
A. We need more evidence on that period, about which information is very limited, and only for the northern hemisphere.
Q. But there were periods as warm as the present.
A. Yes, but we know why there were warm and cold periods in the past. The amount of solar radiation was different and so we will have ice ages in the future. These processes are still happening and will continue, but they have a completely different timescale to humans. Here we are talking about climate change in a century that is very fast compared to the past.