Climategate

I don’t entirely understand why many environmentalists are so dismayed by allegations that much of the evidence of man-made global warming may have been greatly exaggerated. Just as a thought experiment, if incontrovertible evidence were found that conclusively disproved the inconvenient truth, wouldn’t that be like finding out that what you thought was cancer was just a kidney stone? And yet I think, for quite a few on the environmental Left, it would feel more like being the Catholic church in the age of Darwin.

The current scandal at East Anglia does not by any means disprove man-made global warming. It does, however, reveal the deeply problematic nature of the evidence on which it is based, and the ripples are starting to shine a light on similar flaws elsewhere. While I don’t think more than a minute percentage of climate scientists are guilty of bad faith, I do believe that too many are too eager to prove a pet theory, and that social pressure to hew to “the consensus” has likely skewed the peer review process.

I would think, as an environmentalist, that the only logical approach is to call for maximum sunlight: if the science is really sound, then transparency would increase the faith of skeptics like myself, and if it is proven to be badly mistaken, then we have averted a catastrophe with minimal cost. So why the long face?