ClimateGate

As I follow the breaking scandal that has already become known as “climategate,” I can’t help but think back to a lab course I had when I was still an undergraduate. On the first day of the course, the instructor warned us not to “massage” the data to make it correspond to what we knew were the proven laws of physics. “Data are sloppy” he said, “not every data point will fit. Report what you measure, nothing more, nothing less.”

It appears that an influential group of paleoclimatologists at the Hadley Climatic Research Unit at Britain's University of East Anglia should have heeded my lab instructor’s advice. Instead, they “massaged” their data to make it conform to their prejudices about climate change, publishing papers that drew conclusions that were less than honest. Worse, they worked to suppress the publications of serious researchers who tried to present opposing views and interpretations. They even went so far as to destroy information rather than allowing other scientists to examine it. All in order to reinforce the contention (popularly voiced by Al Gore) that anthropogenic global warming is beyond debate. It isn’t.

Robert Tracinski writes:

The picture that emerges is simple. In any discussion of global warming, either in the scientific literature or in the mainstream media, the outcome is always predetermined. Just as the temperature graphs produced by the CRU are always tricked out to show an upward-sloping "hockey stick," every discussion of global warming has to show that it is occurring and that humans are responsible. And any data or any scientific paper that tends to disprove that conclusion is smeared as "unscientific" precisely because it threatens the established dogma.

For more than a decade, we've been told that there is a scientific "consensus" that humans are causing global warming, that "the debate is over" and all "legitimate" scientists acknowledge the truth of global warming. Now we know what this "consensus" really means. What it means is: the fix is in.

And now, climategate poses an “egg on your face” moment for the true believers. So what do they do? Ignore the evidence of fraud and hope that the whole thing will blow over.

Newsbusters.com provides interesting insight into this strategy. Of the major broadcast and cable networks, only FoxNews has run stories about climategate. To date, there has been no mention of the event or its consequences at ABC, CBS, NBC, NPR, CNN, and MSNBC. Why is this? Is the Left-leaning media so invested in the climate change meme that it can’t bear to examine the possibility that it may not yet be settled science.

Early next year, President Obama and the Congress will propose energy legislation that will seek to impose massive new taxes on CO2 emissions. But what if CO2 data presented by Al Gore and company was developed using methods that were (to be generous) less than scientific. What if CO2 isn’t the problem that we think it is? What if our fears about global warming are overblown or misplaced? What if the scientists who were maligned as “deniers” are in fact the only honest brokers in the room?

No matter. There is to be no scientific debate. After all, the science is settled. Just ask Barack Obama, Al Gore and ABC, CBS, NBC, NPR, CNN, and MSNBC.