Over the years, there has been an emergence of a number of climate skeptics. Critics of climate change or global warming have posed arguments against taking action because they actually do not believing that there is a problem. The critiques of climate science touch a wide variety of perspective. These perspectives range from political to religious reasons. Some of the skepticism is natural reaction to any dilemma as large as global climate change. Scientists are also partly to blame because of poor messaging and lack of political savvy. But the facts of the debate outweigh the opinion of the skeptics. Climate change scientists have been studying the data for decades and have provided conclusive facts about the causes of climate change. Skepticism of climate change is less about the science and more about the fear of the solution.
Let’s first break the myth that Climate-Gate was an actual scandal. Climate-Gate refers the incident in 2009 when confidential e-mail correspondence between climate scientist and geologist from University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit where hack and leak to the press. These emails were supposed to be the “smoking gun” to put to rest the “global warming hoax”. The emails mostly just showed how scientists were angered by skeptics and correspondence without context may seem like they doctored data. The e-mails themselves contain no evidence of wrongdoing. Even the most egregious e-mails were at best badly worded and provided no context. “It does look incriminating on the surface, but there are lots of single sentences that taken out of context can appear incriminating," said Bob Ward, director of policy and communications at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics (Guardian). The “smoking gun” for this false scandal was put to rest when the official British investigation into the emails and accusations turn up no wrong-doing by any of the people name. “(N)ot only did British investigators clear the East Anglia scientist at the center of it all, Phil Jones, of scientific impropriety and dishonesty in April, an investigation at Penn State cleared PSU climatologist Michael Mann of ‘falsifying or suppressing data, intending to delete or conceal e-mails and information, and misusing privileged or confidential information’ in February (Newsweek). Now that we know that we know that the science itself was not really in question, what were the real motivations for hacking and leaking these emails?
Climate-Gate was politically motivated from the beginning. The hackers leak the e-mail when they would do the most damage despite not being any definitive evidence. “Now, just in time for the global warming conference in Copenhagen, comes Climate-Gate, the controversy over thousands of e-mail messages and documents purloined from the computers of British climate scientists… The first thing to know about Climate-Gate is that, despite the uproar, it doesn't prove global warming is a fraud” (USATODAY). The entire Climate-Gate Scandal was a manufactured scandal to stop progress from happening over the Copenhagen Climate Talks in 2009. The strategy had work because the Copenhagen talks couldn’t be mention on the press without bringing up the now discredited Climate-Gate. They were successful in politically bludgeoning the talks preventing anything produce from the talks gaining traction in the respective leaders countries.
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| International Symbol for Manufactured Scandals |
There are a plethora of reasons why skeptics of the scientist would manufacture climate gate. The number one reason I believe is that they don’t want a cap and trade system for fear of higher taxes or a nefarious one world government. Climate skepticism has never been about the science. Climate Gate portrayed the scientist in a bad light not the science. The reason why they are attacking the scientist is because the skeptics have lost the science debate but the political debate continues. Skepticalscience.com list 147 arguments against climate change and those arguments are exposed to be fundamentally flawed. The number one argument against climate change is that it is caused by the sun despite the sun is cooling. Skepticism is not based on the facts but on the people pushing the science. The Climate-Gate was more about destroying the credibility of the scientist rather than the science.
A quick search of the term "climate change hoax" yields vast conspiracies by UN members and scientist to control the globe through cap and trade. A lot of it has roots and religious end of days type scenarios, which David Orr noted in his bookDown to the Wire. I have actually read half of the Left Behind series, a series of books that talk about the end times as described in Revelations in the Bible. I was in grammar school at the time and was actually engrossed by the series, but even then I knew those books were fiction. Skeptics are using religious fears too of a One World Order to scare people into opposing action or dismissing grounded sound science. In a sense we have left the political engineering to the science which was a mistake. We should have developed a story that touches people in a real way. The skeptics draw their arguments from people’s fears, while climate change scientists take a fact base approach. Ironically, climate change skeptics are blunting the very real end of the world scenario with a spiritual based one.
