On Climategate
Apologies for the laconic past few weeks. I’ve been getting killed at my day job, and have been dealing with some personal issues as well. But on the issue of Global Warming and the Climategate emails, I cannot remain silent any longer–mostly out of sheer glee.
In case you have missed it a hacker–who shall never go thirsty or hungry if he or she is within range of the Daily Danet’s expense account–hacked into the East Anglia Climate Research Unit email server and found and published some telling gems of Global Warming alarmist fraud. As a reformed atmospheric scientist, many of my friends and colleagues have asked my opinion on the matter, which I am all too happy to give:
The rigor and challenge of being a scientist is to prevent yourself from cheating to get a result subconsciously.
First, the emails are and should be shocking. No scientist should be manipulating data, studies or conclusions to achieve results. The rigor and challenge of being a scientist is to prevent yourself from doing this subconsciously. To do this openly, and with such childish joy (and in writing) should end careers. As an aside, when I started my legal career at a very prestigious law firm, I was given one piece of advice by the chairman about email: never put anything in an email that you wouldn’t want printed out of context on the front page of the Wall Street Journal the next day. (I was also told to “err on the side of not erring.”)
Second, generally, the development of Global Warming and the manipulation of data is understandable (ironically) at a capitalist level. Scientists survive on grant money, which is far easier to come by if there is a crisis or a problem that needs solving. If Global Warming is either (a) not occurring or (b) not man-made (caused by the sun, for example), and there is nothing we can do about it, funding will dry up. (This, by the way, is why it does not matter whether the Earth is warming or cooling–Climate Change® is enough, so long as it is man made.) This is not to say that integrity should be compromised, but anyone would hesitate before biting that hand that feeds them.
Third, the irony of Global Warming™ as a religion is that it started in the early ’80s as Margaret Thatcher’s way of breaking the coal unions. She wanted to prove that coal was damaging to the environment and nuclear energy was safer, and so fostered research on a then little known theory called the greenhouse effect. Of course, today, that theory is being used to oppress entire regions of the globe, keeping most of Africa and Asia in the dark ages by starving them of the one thing that modern civilization needs: fossil fuels. Secondarily, Global Warming™ is also being used as the liberals’ second pet cause: redistribution of wealth. Senator Kerry is spearheading (or charging into the jungle like he sees an unarmed Vietnamese teenager) a drive to throw billions of your tax dollars into developing nations in order to “offset” the effects of Global Warming™ legislation. The greatest wealth transfer in history, all because of a sick joke meant to break a union dispute.
Senator Kerry is spearheading, or, rather, charging into the jungle like he sees an unarmed Vietnamese teenager…
Finally, to go further down the rabbit hole, why would truly smart people (not the scientists, but the businessmen and power brokers) get behind a belief system so obviously built on shaky evidence and doomed to destroy developing nations and burden developed ones? Put aside liberal guilt as the easy excuse, and you’re left with two reasons: control and protectionism. Paternalistic liberals like Kerry want to control the purse strings and dole out huge (trillions) amounts of international aide to developing countries, rather than allow them to develop and stand up on their own. Unions like the SEIU and their backers are terrified of regions like Africa developing into the next Taiwan and China. Imagine the entire continent of Africa developed into a first world capitalist society competing with the unionized labor forces of Detroit, Chicago and New York for business not just here, but in Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
So you have a situation where the scientists, the politicians and the masters all have unified in pushing an agenda where Global Warming™ had to true, and it had to be man-made. Surprise, surprise, it was.
The only problem is that even if we think the Global Warming thing is a hoax, once policies are put in – no one, and I mena no one – will have the balls to rescind them.
How about challenging Gore to a debate? Does anyone get in his face to that degree?