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Science and scientific process must inform and guide decisions of my administration on a wide range of issues including climate change. The public must be able to trust the science and scientific process.
--President Barack Obama
SCIENCE, which Webster's defines
Some unknown whistleblower hacked into the computers of the East Anglia Climatic Research Unit in Norwich, England and accessed some eye-opening e-mails from research scientists. The messages suggest that the scientists at the CRU are such strong believers in global warming that they are willing to resort to underhanded tactics to buttress their thesis and marginalize skeptics.
Off-balance because data reveal that the rising temperatures of the past century plateaued in 1998, and have slightly fallen since, one scientist wrote a colleague, "I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series from the last 20 years to hide the decline [in temperature]."
Worse, CRU director Phil Jones wrote, "The two MMs have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the U.K., I think I'll delete the file, rather than send it to anyone. We also have a data protection act, which I'll hide behind."
The "MMs" are Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, two Canadian researchers who disproved the iconic "hockey stick" graph, a methodologically flawed depiction that showed that temperatures had remained flat for a thousand years, only to rise sharply following the industrial revolution. When one "MM" asked CRU for data, the organization did indeed hide behind the data-protection act.
As evidence contrary to global-warming dogma began to mount, the CRU gang even began plotting how to get colleagues around the world to boycott a journal that published articles contrary to global-warming doctrine. In all this, they were aping some anti-warming scientists, including those who took money from corporations (e.g., Exxon) to present data friendly to industrialists' cause, as a 1998 American Petroleum Institute memo shows.
Climategate, let's be clear, neither proves nor disproves global warming nor the extent of man's role in climate change. No one should look with equanimity upon, say, the recent retreat of Arctic sea ice so rapidly that it left the Northwest Passage navigable to ships for the first time in recorded history. But the scandal does shed light on the bias of these scientists, and discredits fear-mongering politicians.
Last week, as Mr. Obama prepared to go to Copenhagen, where leaders have gathered to forge an anti-warming agreement, a reporter asked presidential spokesman Robert Gibbs whether corruption at the highest levels of scientific research had changed the president's view on global warming. "I don't think that's anything that is, quite frankly, in dispute anymore," he said.
Balderdash. That's just the problem: disdain for dissenters. In politics, majorities may rule; but in science, it's often the oddball, the creative thinker, the innovator--the Orville or Wilbur Wright, for example--who holds the truth in his hands. In science, truth matters. In politics it should as well.
As Copenhagen opened, 56 newspapers in 45 countries ran a joint, sky-is-falling editorial begging the politicians to put aside their differences and come to an agreement, and thereby avoid being "so stupid that we saw calamity coming but did nothing to avert it."
Rather, the newspapers and the politicians, led by President Obama, should insist that scientists return to practicing objective science, following the data wherever it leads. Global-warming adherent Judy Curry of Georgia Tech is leading the charge in this regard. She writes that "Climate data need to be publicly available and well documented" and calls for an end to the "tribalism" that is polarizing the scientific community.
For the public to "trust the science" it must be just that--science--and not political advocacy in disguise. Mr. Obama should be true to his word and insist on objectivity.
