Who would be a climate scientist? You spend your life locked in a lab doing obscure statistical analyses of tree rings, and then suddenly a hidden curtain is raised and your ivory tower transforms into a hostile courtroom. Every private thought you have been foolish enough to commit to email over the past decade is put on display before a baying public. And intimidating tribunals are set up to pronounce on your alleged crimes.
Now, after some initial reluctance, even the liberal media establishment is falling over itself to get in on the act, presumably to demonstrate its great rigour and impartiality — all paranoid conspiracists will be duly taken seriously, all climate deniers given their deserved moment in the sun. Witness the Guardian trumpeting its great “investigation” over three successive double-page spreads, though accompanied in one case by a curious comment piece, authored by one of the principal investigators (New Scientist‘s Fred Pearce), correctly pointing out that the hullabaloo is a non-story and changes nothing that we know about the reality of anthropogenic global warming.
Then, one has to ask, why add fuel to the fire? All of us who have followed this issue for long enough — and Pearce has an expert pedigree second to none — know perfectly well that the scientists at the centre of the so-called Climategate scandal have for years been the targets of an orchestrated smear campaign. That is why they resisted Freedom of Information requests and bent the rules by refusing to share data: because they knew that any data shared would be picked apart and used to undermine public confidence in their work, as has indeed now happened.
We need to recognise that the denialist movement is a true grass-roots phenomenon, though this does not make it any less reactionary. But it is also supported by, and many of its ideas originate from within, conservative think tanks and powerful industrial vested interests, based mainly in the US. Still, somehow the Climategate non-story — augmented by “Glaciergate” and “Pachaurigate” — has grown with each repetition, so that now everyone has to pay obeisance to it, the Guardian included. For what? Scratch the surface and the sceptics have nothing to offer but distortion, innuendo and nutty alternative theories about sunspots and cosmic rays.
But maybe it’s already too late. The mob has gathered; now it must be appeased. Who will be the first sacrificial victim? Perhaps Michael Mann, already hauled before a Penn State University investigative committee and ordered to produce yet another voluminous dossier of private emails. Perhaps Phil Jones, who made the awful mistake of not realising the media firestorm that was about to be unleashed and went to ground, instead of mounting a stout defence. He is now surely heading for the academic gallows. Maybe after the cathartic presentation of a successfully persecuted victim, some sanity can be restored.
I think this is a shameful episode. Having followed their work for years, I still see no reason to doubt the professional integrity of the Climatic Research Unit scientists and their US colleagues. Without their dedication, as individuals and as part of the unprecedented collaborative effort of the IPCC, we would not see the problem of global warming as clearly as we do today. Climategate may seem important now, but it is all sound and fury, signifying nothing.
This article appears in this week’s New Statesman.
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