On ClimateGate

One thing that no one seems to mention with respect to ClimateGate, as it has come to be called, is that in terms of the scientific case for anthropogenic global warming, the work of the scientists involved is relatively insignificant. These particular researchers worked in the field of paleo-climatology, specializing in the sub-discipline of dendrochronology (the study of dating by tree rings!). Pretty much by any standard one wishes to apply, their work constitutes only a very small supporting footnote to the present evidence for global climate change.

That's not to say that what they got caught doing isn't a big deal. It is, but for another reason than many global warming critics seem to think. It is a big deal precisely because their behavior and the reporting of that behavior has muddied the water and led otherwise intelligent but relatively uninformed-about-the-issue individuals to be led into an intellectual cul-de-sac. The greatest tragedy in all this is that in spite years of obfuscation, fraud and deceit on the part of the climate change denial industry (as has bee meticulously documented in James Hoggan and Richard Littlemore's Climate Cover-up - a must read for those who don't want to be fooled by a very well funded corporate denial industry), it is now the public's perception that it is only climate scientists are engaged in dirty dealing, when the truth of the matter is that by comparison to his opponents, Phil Jones's offenses are pretty minor. As Hoggan and Littlemore have shown, in nauseating detail, the fossil fuel industries have employed "experts" to lie, cheat and manipulate on their behalf. The revelations in their book (as well as in Ross Gelbspan's book, The Heat Is On) are immensely graver than anything contained in these emails. But of course, these considerably graver revelations aren't news, because no corporate entities, marketing groups, or advertisement executives have an interest in making sure that this side of the story remains in the public's face - whereas the corporate financial interest in using ClimateGate to skewer the Kyoto Accords is enormous.

All of this explains why a lot of us who are not in the least in doubt about the reality of anthropogenic global warming are also really, really angry at these ClimateGate scoundrels. The global warming deniers' campaign of smears and falsehoods, horrific as it is, simply cannot be used to condone secrecy and the suppression of conflicting data on the part of genuine climate scientists, no matter how harrassed, frustrated, and misrepresented they may be by the media and the public. Far from justifying such poor behavior, such external pressure makes it all the more essential that those engaged in authentic science should distinguish themselves from their opponents in every way - and the personal failure of these particular scientists to rise above petty politics and personal frustration is disheartening. But to conclude from their behavior to the absurdly inflated claim that anthropogenic global warming is a politically motivated lie or that the vast majority of atmospheric scientists are idiots, liars, and crooks is to fall prey to a non-sequitur analogous to concluding that the Orthodox Church is an immoral and false faith because some priest one meets is 40 lbs. overweight or cheats on his taxes. As a matter of pure logic, the conclusion simply does not follow from the argument.

W.H.Auden once wrote "Prohibit sharply the rehearsed response." These are words to live by. Now, more than ever, we are surrounded on every side by those who wish to reduce our intellectual powers to mere stimulus and response, to an automatic salivation or to an angry baring of our teeth when we are presented with buzz words like "liberal", "conservative", "socialist", "global", "environmentalist", "religious", "fundamentalist", "feminist", and so forth. In such a way, those who care more for power than they do for truth seek to adapt us to be intellectually herded like sheep - by wolves.

But we are not sheep - we are human beings, made in the image of God - and we abandon our duty to courageously reason and pursue the truth wherever it leads whenever we allow ourselves to be swayed by persuasive but factually and philosophically unsupportable rhetoric - as often happens when we adopt positions without a sufficient examination of the subject under discussion and reach for habitual attitudes and affiliations regardless of their legitimate application to the subject at hand.