Those who refuse to believe in climate change have ginned up the so-called Climategate scandal to obfuscate the inescapable reality of global warming; for more, see David Roberts at Grist, or RealClimate, or (my favorite), a letter writer to Andrew Sullivan (below).
In a recent post, you get to the true insanity of the whole debate over "Climategate": so-called "conservatives" clinging desperately to every bit of contradictory evidence (hence their celebratory glee over the East Anglia emails) while denigrating as left-wing propaganda whatever evidence supports it.
I know I don't need to remind you of this, but for a long time it has struck me how un-conservative this position is.
I certainly have my share of skepticism as to the absolute validity of the science involved, and the release of these emails certainly supports the value of such skepticism. But the real conservative response to the debate is to actually try to conserve the conditions that the Earth has existed within rather than blindly engaging—blinkered by a consumerist culture that is incapable of considering its long-term effects—in a vast, and potentially, irreversible experiment with our atmosphere; one of the very conditions of our continuing existence on this, our only home.
Perhaps what we need to do is stop calling this attitude conservative and start pointing out how radical it actually is.
Spencer Weart, the M.I.T. physicist who literally wrote the book on global warming, also remarks interestingly:
But for those of us who can keep a sense of humor about the situation, perhaps the best aspect of this whole absurd "debate" is the nuttiness of the climate change deniers it brought out into the open. Here's an example from Rod Dreher's right-wing site.Aside from crackpots who complain that a conspiracy is suppressing their personal discoveries, we've never before seen a set of people accuse an entire community of scientists of deliberate deception and other professional malfeasance. Even the tobacco companies never tried to slander legitimate cancer researchers. In blogs, talk radio and other new media, we are told that the warnings about future global warming issued by the national science academies, scientific societies, and governments of all the leading nations are not only mistaken, but based on a hoax, indeed a conspiracy that must involve thousands of respected researchers. Extraordinary and, frankly, weird.
All you "Warmers" ("Warmed-overs"?)are a bunch of religious nuts trying to force you beliefs on the world through an Enviro-Theocracy.
Right. Okay then.
