Science Vs Anti-Science, Part 1

Climate Change Deniers the world over scored a huge "victory" this week when hackers gained illegal access to the servers at the Climatic Research Unit within the University of East Anglia, in the UK. Specifically, the criminals stole thousands of e-mails off the CRU servers and posted them online, some of which contained embarrassing exchanges between climate scientists. You can read the response by RealClimate, perhaps the foremost blog site for climate matters, here.

There's something vaguely familiar about the pattern that always seems to emerge between those who support science and those who oppose it. Whether it's Evolution vs Intelligent Design, Climate Change vs its skeptics, or even something as ridiculous as History vs Holocaust Deniers, it usually boils down to examining data on the one side, and smear tactics on the other. Hacking into someone's e-mail server and publishing what you find there? Smear tactics. They can't attack the science so they try to embarrass the people who use it.

The funny thing about that, though, is that what was released - illegally - somehow fell well short of supporting the various conspiracy theories that the Deniers have sworn existed for years now. A few poorly-worded exchanges out of the thousands stolen suggest some tailoring of the data in this report or that one, but that's about it. As the owner of the RealClimate site puts, "... if cherry-picked out-of-context phrases from stolen personal emails is the only response to the weight of the scientific evidence for the human influence on climate change, then there probably isn’t much to it."

If either side in this particular "debate" should be forgiven for taking an "ends justify the means" approach, it has to be the Climate Change advocates. After all, whether they're right or wrong (and clearly I think they're right), they believe that they're fighting for the survival of the human race! The other side believes that it's battling to protect the financial interests of various industries, to maintain the status quo and to ensure that we don't suffer economic hardship as a result of moving away from cheap, accessible energy sources. So if it were the Climate Change camp that were hacking into the computer systems of their opponents, it would still be every bit as illegal... but maybe just a little bit less reprehensible? As it is, though, it's just another case of those who don't have any data on their side resorting to dirty tricks to win the day.

And interestingly, there seems to be more jubilation over the little bits of "dirt" that the hackers uncovered than there is recrimination toward the criminal act itself, among those who say that Climate Change is a myth or conspiracy. That seems to me to be telling, all on its own.