gene robinson  today: the leaked emails "do not prove that global warming is a fraud." well of course they don't. what they demonstrate, however, is that the climate research unit - like all other decent people, more or less - concluded long ago that climate change is real and disastrous and man-made etc, and then asked themselves how they could save the world by proving it. if you accept the methodologies and the conclusions produced in an atmosphere like that, you are a fool. it's the technique of theology, not science.

if you sit there and tell me that you think what al gore says about climate change can be separated from his political agenda (=extreme enthusiasm for regulating your behavior; happy anticipation of world regulatory regimes eventuating in a bureaucracy that provides earth with a second atmosphere), i say you are a chump. and if you think science can be conducted in an atmosphere wherein to disagree with a certain set of conclusions is to be a political monster - tantamount to sarah palin - then, etc.

i say that you and i, who i'm presuming are not scientists actually out reading tree rings, cannot in any way evaluate the data (which is polluted from the ground up) and come to a reasoned conclusion. really, i assert with the utmost seriousness not that global warming is a fraud but that we have no idea what is going on and that a rational conclusion is unavailable.

one thing to realize is that the "information" is developed in academic contexts. now you might think that this lends them epistemological legitimacy, and in some cases it does: professors and ph.d.s do actually know stuff. but a problem with academia is that it is the least politically critical or independent context in the world: it is absolutely unanimous. the politics ranges from al gore on the left to al gore on the right. the consensus is enforced with informal brutality: there is the sheer constant presumption that all decent people agree. a young professor who is a climate-change skeptic is untenurable in a philosophy or english or history department, not to speak of disciplines in which the question is really being addressed. in a case where the research is meant to drive policies, and where the policy agenda is left, there just is no sense in thinking that reasonable conclusions can be drawn. there is no one at all to say: wait. what? stop: only a stampede of people whose grad training left them all with identical lobotomy scars.

one puzzling aspect of the response is expressed by robinson like this: "He appears to be conceding skeptics' claim that over the past decade there has been no observed warming. In truth, though, that wouldn't be much of a concession. At issue is the long-term trend, and one would expect anomalous blips from time to time." ok. so. the view is that warming has reached a disastrous pace since 1900. and the purely scientific conclusion is often put in terms such as these: if we don't, say, halve carbon emissions by a week from sunday, we will reach the tipping point at which life on earth with be extinguished by that wednesday. and you're telling me that on those timescales ten years is an insignificant blip? not according to...you. then i guess you won't mind if we don't do anything for ten years.