Is the climate changing, and are we responsible?  It is a hotly debated question. However, the lack of readily accessible data, and the reluctance of some of the climate researchers to make all their data and research material available to skeptics has made some of the skeptics suspicious that perhaps the work wasn’t entirely up to generally recognized scientific standards. Now it appears there may be evidence that the skeptics are right. The evidence comes in the form of massive numbers of e-mails from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia, in the UK. The e-mails, obtained by a hacker, seem to show a pattern of attempts by some climate research scientists to avoid sharing research data which might dispute their claims that the climate is being changed by human activity. More telling are some e-mails which indicate that some of the scientists may have been talking about ways to avoid supplying data they believed would damage their agenda. Some of this has been picked up by the libertarian law blog, Volokh Conspiracy, which also links to other comments on the subject.

Most posters at Volokh, understandably is interested in the legal aspects of this. Is it simply criminal activity – vandalism, hacking, electronic theft – or is it whistle-blowing, like Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon papers? Personally, I tend toward the latter view. I also find it especially hard to give much sympathy to the people defending the CRU, given that there appears to be evidence that the scientists there were actively working to subvert normal scientific practice for purely political ends. Also, no one in the media was calling for Ellsberg to go to prison, or the prosecution of Mark Felt, AKA “Deep Throat” for his role in unmasking the details of the Watergate break in. Not at all. In fact, the media saw both men as public spirited citizens defending the role of lawful government by unorthodox means. That would seem to apply here as well. In fact, there are folks already referring to “Climategate” – see the main page here at Poligazette.

Climate change has been a contentious subject for the past forty years. Back in the 1970s the outrageous theory was that we would suffer global cooling, and all freeze to death. Since then, the ascendant theory is Man-Made Climate Change (or, to the politically correct, Anthropomorphic Global Warming – AGW). As more and more people began asking questions about the scientific studies supporting MMCC, they found that even AGW was too contentious, and opted to refer to “Climate Change,” which sounded more neutral, but, they assured us in less strident terms, was a scientifically proven reality. AWG was, of course, still the fault of mankind, especially developed Western countries like the USA and western Europe. There have always been critics of AWG. However, the scientific community has not been particularly welcoming of them, and the critics have grumbled that the mainstream scientific community has tended to close ranks in defense of AWG theorists. Until now, this has been a “he said – she said” sort of situation, where no one could really show bad faith on the part of anyone else.

That seems to have been changed. If the e-mails are genuine, it seems that there is reason to believe that some of the scientists at the Climate Research Unit have, not to put too fine a point on it, cooked the books. There are items implying that the research samples in some cases were cherry picked to provide desired results. There are items which read to ordinary people as someone talking about how to hide evidence of manipulating data to obtain a desired result; and of efforts to avoid responding to requests for data and other information which might be embarrassing to the research goal.

You won’t find the mainstream media looking into this. In the USA the media is too busy obsessing about the fact that so many people want to buy Sara Palin’s book, and that Oprah Winfrey is taking her show off broadcast television. The media is obsessed with a woman they hate, and a woman they love, and has no interest in the possibility that some geeks in England are lying about the accuracy of data being used to bolster claims that we need to destroy the entire economies of the developed Western world or face climactic apocalypse. No, nothing to see here. Just more about how intellectually incompetent some woman politician with a degree from the University of Idaho is, and how brilliant the other self-made woman with the TV program is.

This affair damns the intellectual elites – on campus, in the media, in politics – rather completely. A group of scientists engaging in unscientific behavior are positing unstoppable climate change, and no one seems to be willing to demand that they allow those with differing views to have access to their data, and try their theories using the normal scientific practice, of allowing any interested party to access the data, and try to replicate the results for themselves. This is called independently verifiable data and experiments. This is, in crude layman’s terms, how scientific work is done. This is, judging form the e-mails. what is being discouraged by some of the scientists at the CRU. What makes this a great big deal is the reality that the suggested solutions to AWG all essentially destroy the economies of the democratic industrialized nations. Given that, it would seem reasonable that some in government might want to try testing the theories before undertaking something so extreme.

How extreme are the proposals?  Well, I posted on this a few days ago.  The mission to end climate change is was pronounced economically impossible years ago.  Recently the scientific community calling for change seem to have admitted this.  The Institution of Mechanical Engineers, also in the UK, reported that it would not be possible to meet the carbon emission reductions called for in Britain.  Tim Fox, who sides with the MMGW theorists, flatly states that the British targets for carbon emission reductions by 34% from 1990 levels by 2030, and 80% of 1990 levels by 2050 are technologically impossible.  He says, pointedly:  “The ability to undertake the size of task needed to meet the 80% target is not possible within a modern industrialized democracy.”

On top of that statement, we now find evidence that the research upon which claims for such extreme measures be undertaken is suspect.  Not only suspect, but that some of the scientists engaged in it seem to have known that their work did not reach the scientific conclusions they were advocating in the political arena.  This is a scandal.  Much more of a scandal than a failed vice-presidential candidate from Idaho possibly being more popular than any of the media intellectuals criticizing her.  Much more of a scandal than the possibility that President Obama’s health care is going to pay for abortion.

This is a scandal because it cuts to the root of what we profess to believe in democratic society.  That government, media, and intellectual pursuits are intended to be conducted in the open, in an easily understood manner, allowing any citizen to raise questions and receive answers.  The e-mails from the CRU at East Anglia University suggest that instead of open government, open and unfettered scientific and intellectual inquiry, and open and unbiased  reporting by the media,we have elites engaging in intellectual and morally bankrupt practices to force the supposedly democratic governments to make changes in society by undemocratic means.  Changes which are forced upon majority of the public, regardless of their preferences.  Because the arrogant elites know better than the rest of us.

We are in trouble.  Don’t look for anyone in the mainstream media to take an interest.  It looks like this will depend on the new media, the internet to spread the news.  Someone needs to turn the lights out on the New York Times.  It’s no longer a newspaer, but a propaganda organ.  Comrade Lysenko, they’re paging you at the CRU.  Read all about it in Pravda.