It took none other than Eugene Robinson to bring me out of my blogging funk. Eugene’s column in yesterday’s Washington Post opens with this salvo at climate change “deniers”:
“Stop hyperventilating, all you climate change deniers. The purloined e-mail correspondence published by skeptics last week — portraying some leading climate researchers as petty, vindictive and tremendously eager to make their data fit accepted theories — does not prove that global warming is a fraud.”
As usual, Eugene misses the subtly of the reasoning behind the opinions of those he seeks to denigrate. In Eugene’s World, you’re either for the president, or you’re a racist. You’re either for the ReidPelosiObamacare or you’re for the “greedy insurance companies”. You either memorize and revere every frame of “An Inconvenient Truth” or you’re an carbon terrorist.
Earlier this month, hackers, or an insider with a conscience, released thousands of emails and documents lifted from the computers at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit. . These documents show some of the world’s “leading climate scientists” behaving in a somewhat less than forthright manner. Emails written to and received by Phil Jones, the head of the Climate Research Unit, seem to contain evidence of efforts to squelch viewpoints opposed to the climate change orthodoxy, rig the peer review process, elude attempts to more widely disseminate the raw data on which much climate change policy is made and massage data in order to fit climate behavior which doesn’t support what climate change alarmist are selling.
These emails don’t prove or disprove that climate change (whether that change means a cooling Earth , a warming Earth or an Earth that’s just staying as is) is occurring. Eugene is correct in that regard. Where Robinson misses the point is that an increasing number of people are losing faith that these scientists really know what they are talking about and, as these documents seem to indicate, they are really willing to go to great lengths to cover that fact up. Instead of furthering knowledge by stimulating debate among different viewpoints, these scientists seem intent on crushing any evidence that suggests they are wrong.
Attempts to trivialize or explain away these emails doesn’t hold water because these are the very “leading climate scientists” cited by politicians who say that man made global warming is a fact and that the debate on the matter is closed. The work these “leading climate scientists” are doing is the basis for hundreds of billions of dollars of taxes Congress wants to impose on us. It’s the basis for the proposed transfer of a trillion dollars in wealth from developed countries to developing countries that the UN is pushing. Its turns the stomach to think that such a massive shift in wealth is based on the word of a bunch of petty scientists who act like a bunch of bickering eighth grade girls, deciding who is “cool” and who is not.
Money, as is the case with most scandals, is what is behind Climategate. Somewhere along the line Phil Jones’ priority went from following the science to following the money. It isn’t lost on Phil that the louder he sounds the alarm the more funding flows to the Climate Research Unit. The “leading climate scientists” have a vested interest in shutting down any voice of dissent which threatens the flow from that spigot. There is an ever-expanding circle of people who use what “leading climate scientists” are saying to get their fingers into the pie. We have Al Gore’s venture capital firm, which is already profiting to the tune of tens of millions of dollars from government contracts to “green” firms in which it invests. We have Mohamed Nasheed, President of the Maldives, holding underwater press conferences, trumpeting his nation’s impending doom because of the rise of the oceans. Nasheed, no doubt, has dreams of the billions the UN would have flow from our country to his in payment for our past carbon sins. In this country, proposed legislation will open up a huge market in carbon credit trading. The folks that brought you bundled mortgages, Gordian Knot derivatives and credit default swaps are licking their lips over the billions to be made off “man made climate change”.
The emails and documents brought to light in the wake of Climategate prove nothing as far as the “science” of climate change is concerned except that the debate is far from over and that motives of those who control the data are far from pure. Let’s figure out whether or not the altar at which we’re sacrifice our economic future is built on sand.
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