Remember This About "Climategate"

(National Review Online)  John Derbyshire is a National Review columnist and author, most recently, of We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism.

---

The ninth commandment is: trust science. By this we mean a true science, based on objectively established criteria and agreed foundations, with a rational methodology and mature criteria of proof - not the multitude of pseudo-sciences which, as we have seen, have marked characteristics which can easily be detected and exposed. Science, properly defined, is an essential part of civilization. To be anti-science is not the mark of a civilized human being, or of a friend of humanity. Given the right safeguards and standards, the progress of science constitutes our best hope for the future, and anyone who denies this proposition is an enemy of science.

- Paul Johnson, Enemies of Society (1977)

Well, of course we all do trust science. We trust Bernoulli's Principle every time we get on a plane; we trust celestial mechanics when we take the kids outside to watch a scheduled lunar eclipse; we trust subatomic physics when we relax with an iPod; we trust the laws of chemistry every time we strike a match; we trust the theories of Special and General Relativity when we consult a GPS gadget; we trust natural selection when we fret about drug-resistant disease strains or pesticide-resistant crop infestations; we trust molecular biology every time we pop a pill. Our trust in science is well-nigh unbounded. We hardly draw a breath without trusting science. Paul Johnson's injunction would seem to be superfluous.

How odd, then, that some high proportion of readers bristled when reading Johnson's words - or, very likely, just on seeing my title. Why get heated at being told to do something you have done a hundred times a day, all your life?

This is, of course, in the context of leaked e-mails from the Climate Research Unit at an English university - which is itself in the context of the climate-change panic (née the global-warming panic) that has been promoted by a subset of Western elites for a dozen or more years now. The scientists who generated those e-mails have all been helping to promote the climate-change thesis - the notion that humanity faces some great climatic catastrophe if we don't radically change the way we use energy.

The normal thing at this point would be for the writer to declare a position on that underlying thesis. Is the earth's climate changing to humanity's dire detriment, or isn't it? If it is, are the changes due to human activity, or aren't they? In either case, is there anything we can do about it at acceptable cost and without unforeseen harm?

I have to cop out on that. As best I can judge, our planet probably is enjoying a long-term warming trend, though with much local variation and temporary lulls and reversals sometimes lasting for years. The Arctic certainly seems to have been losing ice these past 30 years, for instance (Figure 3 here). That these changes are human-made is not clear to me. The argument that they are rests largely on theories about the overall effect of changing CO₂ levels, but those theories themselves are open to reasonable doubt. There is even more doubt about the consequences of any change that might be happening; and even where doubt is minimal, the consequences are counterintuitive. It is generally thought, for example, that an ice-free Arctic will leave Europe colder (by killing the Gulf Stream).

And the science is heavily polluted by politics. The climate-change legions are recruited mainly from the Western Left-intelligentsia, their kitbags stuffed with all the sub-Marxist and ethno-masochist flapdoodle of the modern academy. They hate capitalism, they hate Western civilization, and they hate their own ancestors. The kind of dramatic social engineering implicit in the phrase "combating climate change" is emotionally appealing to them.

Downstream from these ideologues are opportunist politicians (if you'll pardon a pleonasm), too dimwitted to understand the ideology - let alone the science! - but eager to ride the climate-change wave to power and wealth. These pols find the gimcrack formulas of postmodernist Hesperophobia mighty handy for whipping up support from Bobo academy graduates and aggrieved ethnic groups. They control departments of state, which hand out grants and jobs to ideologically friendly researchers, corrupting the whole scientific process.

Nor is climate-change skepticism free of politics. There are big, rich, powerful interests hostile to the climate-change cult: Big Coal, Big Oil, and the Big BRICs. Given the stakes, it would be astonishing if they did not have their own paid shills in the game. I'd guess that there has been some busy deleting of e-mails these past few days at Mogul corporate HQ and BRIC embassies.

Now, somewhere under that political scrum is a rugby ball of scientific truth. Which side will get possession at last, is beyond my ability to figure. Hence the cop-out. I can, though, point out a number of general truths worth bearing in mind when relating this present flap to the larger business of science. My hope here is to wipe away the scowl you scowled at my title and P. J.'s opening remarks.


1. Settled vs. unsettled science. The examples in my first paragraph up there are all of settled science - theories sufficiently well-tested and robust that we can be confident they model the real world to high accuracy. These theories have no competitors. You can of course always find a contrarian, even on such thoroughly settled topics as heliocentrism or relativity, but no working scientist is losing any sleep over their arguments. Contrarianism in this zone is a social and psychological (occasionally psychiatric) phenomenon, not a scientific one.

Science is a lighted clearing in the forest. Around the well-lit central area exists a penumbra - a ring of more or less shadowed ground. Beyond that is the infinite dark domain of our ignorance. Scientists toil to enlarge the lighted area - the zone of settled science. This is the science Paul Johnson wants us to trust. This is the science that we do trust. In the penumbra, though, there is dimness enough for all kinds of malarkey. This is the preferred playground of ideologues, politicians, and crooks. This is where the climate-change battles are being fought.

2. Trust science, but don't trust scientists. Scientists are human and subject to the same weaknesses, failings, and fixations as the rest of us. Most science research goes on in the universities of the Western world, where the dominant ideology is the leftist, anti-Western one noted above. Math and science people usually don't care much about politics. Their subjects are too difficult, demand too much in the way of mental resources, to leave anything over for thinking deeply about politics. They breathe in the atmosphere of the academy, though, and it poisons their blood, the more easily just because they don't think about it much.

Even without the political pressures of the climate-change game, scientists are often dishonest. The dishonesty occasionally slops over into downright crookedness, but discreet data manipulation is much more common. An important thing to remember here is that practically all of this is done to "improve" results the researcher believes to be true, not to put over something he believes false. (Gregor Mendel, the father of modern genetics, was accused of "improving" his data in this way.) As reprehensible as the behavior of the CRU e-mailers surely was, it tells us nothing about the existence or non-existence of climate change.

Science contains a core magisterium, which we can and do trust. It also contains a hinterland of more or less "open" enquiries, where you need to peer very carefully at the numbers before extending trust - where, indeed, it is wisest to withhold trust altogether until the smoke of battle has cleared. Public funds should likewise be withheld from these areas, though any particular problems arising from climate change should be dealt with if and when they show up.

3. Consensus vs. contrarians. In any region of science there is usually, at any given time, a consensus position and a contrarian position. For theories solid enough to be part of the magisterium, contrarianism is out at the social fringes, as noted. In less settled areas, the contrarians themselves are working scientists, with data they can bring forward to challenge the consensus data. This is certainly the case with climate science. Here, for example, are 31,000 scientists who think that

there is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate.

The temptation for outsiders is to side with the underdogs, the contrarians. The temptation is especially strong for conservatives, who are suspicious of bossy technocratic elites possessed of esoteric knowledge. We are inclined to think that the shape of our light bulbs, the capacity of our toilet cisterns, and the axle weight of our automobiles should be decided between ourselves and the relevant vendors, on market principles, not dictated to us by bureaucrats.

The temptation should be resisted. Contrarians do indeed sometimes turn out to be right, but that's not the way to bet. Consensus exists for a reason, and a consensus should put up some spirited resistance to being overthrown.

Newtonian mechanics says that the orbit of Uranus ought to look like this. In fact, it looks like this. Eeek! Newtonian mechanics must be wrong! Actually, no; it's just that there is a hitherto-unseen planet disturbing the data. A well-established consensus doing useful work should not be blown over by a puff of breath, or by scattered cases of contradictory data. Neptune-style possibilities have to be exhausted. There should be longstanding problems defying explanation. There needs to be a coherent alternative theory available - such as the one Einstein proposed to replace Newtonian mechanics.


Contrarians should be made to fight for their victories. If they fight on fair ground, wielding superior data and arguments, they will win, and become the new consensus. There have been scientific revolutions aplenty, and there will surely be more. Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Lavoisier, Faraday, Darwin, Pasteur, Planck, Einstein, Hubble, and Wegener are not revered for their defense of a consensus. To overthrow a consensus, or force major changes on it, is the dream of every young scientist. Older scientists may settle for tenure, rank, political patronage, and a quiet life, but there will always be younger ones ready to fight from the contrarian corner.

4. Small stakes. Let me deflate that last parallel a little. While the political and financial stakes in the climate-change controversy are huge - power, jobs, money, economic transformation - the scientific stakes are small.

Climate change is not an overarching theory like Newton's mechanics or Faraday-Maxwell electromagnetism. It's an interpretation of some data - data fuzzy and uncertain enough to be capable of other interpretations. The intellectual stakes here are small. Dogged defense of the phlogiston theory of combustion post-Lavoisier would make you look like an idiot; dogged defense of one plausible interpretation of iffy climatological data, against another one equally plausible, just makes you look mistaken. It is correspondingly easier on the consciences of researchers.

5. The mills grind slow. You may say: "That's all very well; but plainly we need some better method for weighing the claims of contrarians against the claims of the consensus."

Perhaps we do, but I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for it. It takes nine months to have a baby; there's no shortcut. Nor is there any way to shorten the process by which scientific truth emerges - a process at least as messy and painful as parturition, and lasting a great deal longer. It took 300 years (Copernicus to Bessel) to resolve the issue of stellar parallax, the last obstacle to the dispositive establishment of heliocentrism.

Paul Johnson is right: We should trust science. We have no other way to find out truths about the natural world, and the successes of science, both epistemic and practical, are tremendous.

That is to speak of science as a magisterium, though: as a core of settled knowledge, of theories - heliocentricity, the circulation of the blood, electromagnetism, natural selection, the Periodic Table, continental drift, cosmic expansion - supported by great masses of evidence, contradicted by none, fruitful in prediction, and without serious competitors.

The mills of science grind slow, too slow for political enthusiasts. They deliver the goods at last, though. And what goods they are! Compare the amenities of our lives now with those of our ancestors 350 years ago before the scientific revolution. Compare, too, the worldwide condominium of shared understandings - the de-tribalization of thought that science has brought about. Time was, not so long ago, that educated people in Beijing, Bombay, Berlin, and Bogotá had different creation myths, different explanations for natural phenomena, different treatments for bodily failings.

Now we all share the same knowledge of the natural world, the same systematic and clear understandings. Those are the accomplishments of science, Western civilization's great gift to humanity. To turn against science is folly, a lurch back towards superstition, tribalism, and barbarism. For a person of the West to turn against science is also cultural treason, a form of ethno-masochism as shamefully deplorable as the postmodernist rejection of reason and language that has poisoned the faculties of arts and humanities in our universities. "To be anti-science is not the mark of a civilized human being, or of a friend of humanity." I completely agree.



By John Derbyshire:
Reprinted with permission from National Review Online

[NaturalCatFood]

No one here thinks that climate change is part of earth's cycle? Come on now, we are in no need of private lending, so to speak. We don't have a problem to fix, because the earth is fixing itself.

[cjauregui10]

Are you angry about this obvious fraud and the national media's complicity in the cover-up, misinformation, reframing and misdirection of the issue and the related ?carbon derivatives? market Obama?s Administration is spinning up? Take responsibility and take action. STOP all donations to the political party(s) responsible for this fraud. STOP donations to all environmental groups which funded this Global Warming propaganda campaign with our money, especially The Environmental Defense Fund. They have violated the public trust. KEEP donations local, close to home. MAKE donations to Oklahoma?s Senator Inhofe, the only politician to stand firmly against this obvious government/media coordinated information operation (propaganda) targeted at its own people. People that government leaders and employees are sworn to protect. WRITE your state and federal representatives demanding wall to wall investigations of government sponsored propaganda campaigns and demand indictments of those responsible. WRITE your state and federal Attorneys General demanding Al Gore and others conducting Global Warming/Climate Change racketeering and mail fraud operations be brought to justice, indicted, tried, convicted and jailed. Carbon is the stuff of life. He (Obama) who controls carbon, especially CO2, controls the world. Think of the consequences if you do nothing! For one, the UK is becoming the poster child for George Orwell?s ?1984? and the US government?s sponsorship of this worldwide Global Warming propaganda campaign puts it in a class with the failed Soviet Union?s relentless violation of the basic human right to truthful government generated information. Given ClimateGate?s burgeoning revelations of outrageous government misconduct and massive covert misinformation, what are the chances that this Administration?s National Health Care sales campaign is anywhere near the truth?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bdneX1djD0

[anrolw]

Thank you for writing this elegant article.

[prohb]

I wish you naysayers were right, I really do. But...sadly... you're not.

[Kewlbreeze12]

and pray tell Prohb - on what data do you draw your conclusions? Corrupted data does not allow one to make a decision that will cost the taxpayers of the world trillions of dollars and send us all back to a 7th cnetury hellhole existance. That is what you want - but the adults in this conversation are saying "no thank you". AGW is a hoax - you have you to come to grips with that and try to get it thru your political agenda that you cannot use it anymore to fleece the taxpayer and destroy business. You lost your creditability when the lies were published.....I realize that adult logic is hard for some - but you simply must try.

[SirGareth]

While generally agreeing with the article, the premise of "trusting science" is wrong-headed. We dont "trust science" we rather "use [current]science" for some perceived benefit.

Almost all current science will be considererd laughable at some point in the future. "Trust" me on this.


....And, by the way, when I get onto an airplane I put my "trust" in the designers, manufacturers, ground crew, flight crew, and air traffic controllers etc. I certainly do not trust in Bernoulli or his principles to keep me out of harms way at 35,000 feet; you see Bernoulli has lost favor on this since you were a child.

http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/airplane/wrong1.html

The current scientifc myth to explain lift or flight is more Newtonian. I say myth only because ultimately the deepest secrets of nature will never be fully revealed or even understood by man; we aren't all that smart.

Thus the only legitimate science is utilitarian in that it works for the purposes intended. Phlogiston theory (myth) served its purpose quite well until our current quantum myth replaced it. This is good because we can do oh so much more with the quantum myth than we could with the phlogisten myth. Make no mistake - both are myths (a workable but wrong explanation of how things are or came to be).

[noloyalisti]

That's what people called me two Thanksgivings ago when I said the economy was going to crash and we would have a depression: Chicken Little.

Anyway, there is no global climate change debate. It is only the right wing corporations who could care less about life on Earth and their ignorant apologists. I think we should also question the theories of gravity and evolution. And become extremist religious freaks too. Don't worry, God will take care of the issue.

[ubrew12]

Don't just blame the oil,coal, and nat gas corporations. Some of the most powerful countries on earth would have severe difficulties with their cash flow if GW remediation were to become law: Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Venezuela, Indonesia, Mexico. Each of these countries has a VESTED interest in fouling the waters of the GW debate so that ordinary folks can't see the truth.

[SirGareth]

The corporations of university and other govt study grants has stolen over $60 billion in taxpayer cash since this climate scam began - hows that for pure evil? And all done the same "not for profit" way Joe Stalin used.

[P0STING_AWAY]

How would you doubters
(Birthers / Tinfoil-Hat-Enthusiasts / Palin Supporters / etc)
explain the fact that the WHOLE WORLD has acknowledged that
Global Warming is a problem?
The Chinese ... Japanese ... Indians ... etc.
You need look no farther than the South Pole.
The amount of Antarctic ice that has disappeared is staggering.
If you have forgotten where the South Pole is, just find where
Santa Claus lives, and then CHECK THE OTHER END.

[jrbeckwith]

Sorry Posting. Everyone in the world doesn't make something a fact if it is not. The globe has been in a cooling trend for over a decade now. That is a fact. It doesn't matter how many people believe it.

[ubrew12]

jrbeckwith said: "The globe has been in a cooling trend for over a decade now."

The only data that even came close to showing what you claim is the CRU data (GISS data showed quite the opposite, for example, that 2005 is the actual warmest year on record, not 1998). And I think you deniers have just made everybody doubt CRU data, yes? CLIMATEGATE! (and all that hysteria)

Which leaves you with what?

[Kewlbreeze12]

you must be sleeping while you type. AGW is now defunk as a theory. It is silly to suggest otherwise. The core of the "science" is has been proven a pack of lies.

Once again, your point is we must trust the "climate Scientist" who are in it for the federal grants - but ignore the rest of the scientific community who have been saying all along that AGW is hogwash - and these guys are not saying to gain federal grants - they are saying this knowing they will called names and it will hurt their reputation....but oh no - we MUST listen to the climate specialist....only they know what they are talking about. Now whose logic is flawed here??? Methinks it an't me - perhaps youshould look carefully in a mirror.

don't you get it - Jones and Mann and the rest of the "climate specialist" are liars - they are all in on it because they all knew Mann and Jones were faking the data - they were going along to get along. Why you ask? So they could stick their sticky little hands in the federal treasury..... come on man - wake up. AGW is toast. THe IPCC report is a lie and Hopenhaugen is a total waste of time.

Generally, you Warmers, hate the evil greedy corporations because they make profit and spoil the earth....don't you see that the real enemy here is the "climate specailist". They are the greedy liars and evil at heart. Think of the treasure that has been lost and the humans destroyed due to their lies already----and they wanted more. They would do anything - including faking the data and destroying the reputations of those who challenged them.

So what logic am i confused confused about? What science do I need to be better at? Gee it is pretty clear to me. AGW is a lie and you can't seem to get your mind around that. Who has a problem with logic? Me or you? Who can't deal with the truth?

you bought into a pack of lies and you don't have the courage to admit when you are wrong. That you were a dupe - you bought a load of BS. The AGW theories have been proven to be nothing but a pack of lies.....but people like you cannot let go - Say het to Chicken Little when you see him - I hear he hangs around your end of town - fairytale land.

[noloyalisti]

These are the kind of irrational, ignorant, extremist wacko people who say stuff like: "it was cold this morning so global warming must be a myth." Or "we couldn't find the weapons of mass destruction so that proves they were there." Or "Saddam Hussein wouldn't surrender his country so the Iraqis are now bombing themselves." Man are we in trouble.

[jrbeckwith]

Noloyalisti.. Put that mirror down and look at the facts. Global temperatures have been trending down for over a decade now. The "Facts" you believe in are tricks. Real facts are derived from satelite measurements. I can't help you if you cling to FAKE/Made Up science!

[noloyalisti]

Well these guys are extremist conservatives who think that whatever they think is the truth. So to think these uneducated, corrupt right wing morons would actually follow scientific principals is itself a failed scientific theory.

[Kewlbreeze12]

now if that an't the pot calling the kettle black noloyalisti??? I guess the point you are making is that we have no right to question you wise and thoughtful libs. That you warmers are the holder of all truth and you will let us weak minded extremist conservatives know when we can speak or have alternate ideas from yours....is that your point? LOL. Even when it proven to you that you guys were total dupes - you bought into a pack of lies and you carried the ball willingly and now you know you were wrong then and wrong now - you just keep on insulting and demeaning those who have ideas contrary to yours. Man what arrogance.

But don't you see, you lost the battle. AGW can not go forward as a theory. It must start all over again. No amount of "data" you spew forth will be believed - cause you lie - it is proven you are a liar......in the adult world when one is proven a liar - one is no longer considered trustworthy.....you fit that catagory.

Be a man/woman and admit when you are wrong. You have been duped - don't be mad at me be mad at the "climate specialist" who lied to you for all these years and cooked the books to get the data that would have you frothing at the mouth - afraid that on Tuesday - the world is going to end. GoreBull Warming is a hoax - get over it. Be mad at Al Gore for telling you all those lies and making a ton of money off of your Gullibility. You moan and **** about how evil corporations are but give ol' Al a pass when he jerked your shorts right out from under your pants while all the while flyig around in the fuel hog jet and living in a 35,000 sq ft house. LOL what a dupe. Direct your anger in the proper direction.

You and Lakota12 show us with your emails how it must feel to be so competely wrongheaded and too stuborn to change your mind...it is fun to watch you two twist in the wind....spewing corrupted data trying to justify your failed position....but you cannot....that is why the rest of us are laughing at you two. LOL