The Climategate Effect

It's dawning on me just how damaging ClimateGate really is. At first I thought it would come and go, a minor blip in the steadfast march toward Controlling Us All In The Name Of Saving Us All.

But here's the thing. The more I think about ClimateGate, the more I realize something: because of it, I literally don't trust a damn thing that comes out of the climate science community anymore. Not one damn thing. This is unexpected.

You might think 'big deal, you're a right-wing skeptic anti-science zealot, so what else is new'. Not so. For one thing, I worked briefly in climate science. More to the point, I used to accept the standard view on global warming. Don't believe me?

Let me clarify something: there's global warming and there's Global Warming. The first one, global warming, might just be the following statement: "the earth has gotten a bit warmer on average recently". It's only the second that says "and it's our fault, and it's going to be a disaster, and we must Do Something, and and and...", and in its extreme form escalates the whole thing to a religion, a modern-day Armageddon story.

So yes, I used to believe in global warming. After all, as far as I knew (=what other climate scientists told me), the temperature record was pretty unequivocal in showing a warming trend the past 100+ years. I had no reason to doubt them. I mean, data is data. Who can argue with data? Not me. So yes, I used to believe in global warming. Sure. What I didn't believe in was Global Warming - the dire predictions about the future, and the implication that various taxes and controls were necessary. But yes, I did accept the basic account of the history of the temperature. Sure.

You know what? Now I don't. I try to think of a single reason that I should believe the statement "the earth has gotten warmer recently" and I cannot. What? You're going to say "well, Scientists say so"? That might have been sufficient for me two weeks ago. In fact, it was sufficient.

Now it is not. "Scientists" my ass. "Science" is full of self-important dishonest arrogant dishonest pricks just as much as - if not more so than - any other human institution. This, I already knew, to some extent. But now we have proof that a lot of supposed data was being cooked by said pricks.

As a result, I simply don't believe a single. damn. piece. of. data. that I have not verified and confirmed, myself, to my own satisfaction. You say you have a graph? Show me the data. You say this data is real? Show me where you got it. You say the data had to be 'corrected' for this or that? Show me your formulas and assumptions. You say you didn't correct the data for known effects? Justify that.

Climate science has lost the benefit of the doubt. It has lost the right speak with authority. It has lost my trust.

"But this was only one group of bad actors", you say? Like hell. This was a group of bad actors that all the other brilliant Scientists in their field - their peers, their peer reviewers - either failed to catch or didn't want to catch (the difference is academic - like asking did the Taliban approve of Al Qaeda or just fail to stop them?).

Remember how that vaunted 'peer review' is supposed to work? It is supposed to catch mistakes and lies precisely like these. So everyone who ever peer reviewed any of these jerks' papers and let them go through, for whatever reason, is culpable. The point is that it's not merely a group of bad actors, it's the entire process and field that is broken - and thus the results they spit out simply cannot be trusted.

To win back trust climate science needs to start from scratch. Throw out all corrupted data and piggybacked research and start from scratch, with primary sources, and data as raw as can be found. Unless and until that happens, you can go ahead and call me a Denier. I deny that it's worthwhile wasting my time listening to dishonest creeps and/or inept fools any longer.

That has been the effect of Climategate on me.

[Originally posted at Rhymes With Cars And Girls]