The Futility Of "Climategate"

Ever since the hacked emails from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia in the UK were posted on the web there has been an enormous brouhaha over the apparent squashing of dissent, massaging of data, and similar sins of both omission and commission. By and large the contretemps has been confined to the blogosphere, particularly sites such as Pajamas Media which reside on the right side of the political spectrum. Coverage by the MSM has been slight and rather biased against the contention that there is anything amiss at CRU.

Government officials, particularly in the UK, as well as outlets such as the London Times have decried the hacking itself as well as assuring all who might listen that the scientific consensus regarding anthropogenic climate change was both real and robust. Those who dissent from this consensus are dubbed "deniers" and "flat earthers."

While branded as being nearly paleolithic in mentality, the range and competence of the many climate contrarians have been gaining traction and credibility with the public both in the US and Western Europe to the dismay of the It's-Getting-Hot-And-We-Did-It crew. Given that thirty or so years ago the same sort of "climate scientists" who today predict death by heat prognosticated death by arctic emergency as the globe was cooling and the glaciers must be coming soon, a healthy dose of skepticism is appropriate.

The sorrow and the tragedy surrounding human driven global warming and its political expressions such as that forthcoming in Copenhagen is not that the science may be shaky or questionable--or that the consensus may be driven not by objective science--but rather by the human needs of scientists for status, power, and the other good things of life.

The sorrow, the tragedy, the pity of it all is that neither science nor truth matter in the slightest. As the Geek has posted before, the issue of global warming is simply too attractive to politicians and bureaucrats--particularly of the international sort--to allow to pass unexploited. Ever since Al Gore and other exemplars of The-Sky-Is-Falling school of thought latched onto the initial, fragmentary, contradictory data concerning temperature changes over the past century of so, the potential for further governmental power enhancement has exercised a hypnotic appeal to both governments and the elites affiliated with them.

In a way quite similar to earlier expansions of governmental authority, of public space into the private space of individual decision making, key political, bureaucratic and, oh yes, scientific personalities have adopted global warming and its halting as a way of further narrowing the private space available to individuals. As a high ranking member of the US National Institutes of Health once said to the Geek regarding the absence of sound science in support of the second hand smoke kills hypothesis, "That's true. But it doesn't matter. A political decision has been made."

Global warming, or, more properly, the halting of the menace provides an exceptionally fertile field for the pursuit of manifold agendas.

Left leaning politicians can avail themselves of the global warming fig leaf to cover their actual genitalia--those of controlling, restricting, perhaps removing the residuals of the free market and gaining more and more control over even such trivial personal decisions as what sort of light bulb does one buy.

Internationalists as well as bureaucrats at the UN, the EU, and other regional organizations can use the specter of global cooking to gain power over national entities as well as private citizens and everyone's (particularly if one is on the Left) favorite evil--the soulless, multi-national corporation.

As a sort of secondary reward, the multi-cultural, multi-lateral, nations-are-evil-and-reactionary portion of Western and American elites can use the lever of global warming to foster more and more reliance upon supra-national entities at the expense of national ones.

Then there are the national leaders, the national governments, who see global warming as an opportunity to mulct the "wealthy, developed nations." The unseemly behavior of a number of African delegations at the preliminary climate meeting last month in pursuit of extortion demonstrates this use of global warming with perfection.

The scientists--that is the scientists who hold "correct" views on the subject--can use the global warming threat to gain grants, acquire power, elevate status. Some from the physics community might even construe the global warming warnings as a sort of penance for the "sins" of physics such as nuclear weapons and long range missiles.

Overall there is much to be gained and little or nothing to lose in the pursuit of ameliorating the presumed planetary catastrophe of global warming. That is if one is a member of one of the components of the elite which would gain power by doing so.

If, however, one is not a member of one of the elect groups, the "healing of Gaea" will be costly. Costly in money. More costly in the loss of personal freedom, in the further diminishment of private space.

History demonstrates that encroachments by public space on private, by the authority of the state on the liberties of the individual, are rarely reversed. And, any reversals are normally purchased in blood.

The expansion of public space, of national and international remote authority, is reason enough in and of itself to make the science utterly irrelevant to the process. The process of gaining power needs no real objective, scientific basis. It only requires the existence of a plausible fear. That plus the will and means to exploit and stoke fear will result in the goal of power acquisition being achieved.

Climategate does not matter in the slightest. Even the harboring of doubts about the scientific base of the global warming hypothesis by a majority of We the People doesn't matter.

Science--and public desires--be damned! Full speed ahead at Copenhagen and its successors. Full speed ahead to a brave new world order of less personal freedom as Authority protects against the thermometer.