Some naughty scientists have been fudging the figures on global warming:
Last Friday it was revealed that someone as yet unknown had hacked into the computers of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) in Hadley, U.K. The CRU — or Hadley as it is often referred to — is the source of one of the four main temperature records used by the United Nations and environmentalists to claim that the Earth is on the verge of a global meltdown. It is also home to some of the most prominent climate researchers in the world.
Stolen and then released were over 1,000 emails and 3,000 research files that appear to show that those at the CRU and other equally well-known climate scientists around the world have been working together for years to “cook” the data about climate change. The emails seem to suggest that much of what the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change claims is “settled science” is based on data manipulated to confirm assertions that man is dangerously altering our climate. Recent decades may not have been exceptionally warm. The planet may not be warming as fast as these scientists have claimed publicly — and it looks as though they may have known it and tried to hide it.
If the emails are correct, CRU scientists also took glee in the death of a prominent skeptic and did their level best to keep those who disagreed with them from being published in peer-reviewed journals or invited to contribute to IPCC reports. There is even one exchange in which some of the CRU scientists and their colleagues elsewhere tried to have fired the editor of a peer-reviewed journal that dared publish contrary research.
One of the interesting aspects of all this is the light it sheds on the dishonesty of the scientists. Scientists tend to portray themselves as the High Priests of a secular culture: only they have the specialised expertise needed to make sense of our world: lesser mortals are enjoined to trust the findings of science – via the ministrations of a priestly intermediary – on the path to enlightenment. Richard Dawkins in particular exudes this kind of fanatical rabbinical piety in his dogmatic excursions into the meaning of existence; while attempting to smite Christians in the name of science, he himself has become the victim of an irrational fundamentalist religion – scientism. I wonder what we would discover if someone hacked into his emails.
What has become apparent is that scientists are fallen human beings just like everyone else: their besetting sin in this case has been to hold an ideological position with little regard for facts – and lie to protect it.
