I am not so sure that “Climate Gate” did *nothing* to undermine the science. If I understand the revelations about the tree ring data, it does a lot of damage to the “hockey stick.” The inclusion of that data right up until the 1960s (or whatever) and then the rejection of its use to “hide the decline” after it diverged from the modern temperature record strikes pretty much every non-climate scientist with a brain as extremely unprincipled. But maybe I don’t understand the theory.

You are more right than you know about scientists and their data hoarding. I realize all kinds of people out there are calling for transparency, but the unfortunate truth is that scientists do steal each other’s work often enough that I am sympathetic to that impulse. Academia is a cut-throat world because there are so many more highly qualified Ph.D.’s than jobs (yours truly being a prime example).

Modeling the climate of the whole planet is of course an entirely more complex matter than anything constructed for a medical device. It’s a messy business, but if you think the climate change consensus is built purely on models, you are living in the past. The general trend is that data are showing changes to be occurring more quickly than even the offendingly opaque models have predicted. Measuring the planet’s temperature, sure, that’s hard and open to different methodology. But the volume of ice melting and the number of species whose distributions are changing cannot be ignored.

The East Anglia idiots prove my point exactly – as I said, even experts mishandle advocacy badly, so that even intelligent people like you make the mistake of believing it undermines the science, rather than the scientists. But nothing in “Climate Gate” did anything to undermine the broad scientific consensus of climate change, because the overall data are so overwhelming. Scientists are simply too nonconformist in their tendencies for a group of thousands to be advancing an agenda without scientific basis in lockstep. Just wouldn’t happen. Scientists may be human, but science is an emergent property that transcends our faults.

(And as an entirely separate policy position from anything to do with me being a scientist, I take Friedman’s view that there isn’t a true downside to going greener. I still believe firmly that if we had followed Carter’s vision and veered off into getting away from middle eastern oil 30 years ago – and we could have if we had tried – a long string of events culminating in September 11 never would have happened.)

First, the reliance of most scientists on government money to do their work would have to, I would think, influence the subjects that they choose to research. More to the point, if they understand that government money comes with a policy objective attached and that future government money will not be forthcoming if their own results threaten that policy objective, some scientists will lack the fortitude to avoid putting their thumb on the scale. I know of no way out of this trap, since other sources of money (e.g., corporate) have their own shortcomings or (e.g. university general budgets) are wholly inadequate to the demands of modern science.

Second, the “ClimateGate” email scandal reveals, I think, that the leading scientists in that field are pursuing a policy agenda and not always with complete intellectual honesty. Not people at the periphery, but the very top guys. That revelation has a much more powerful “impeachment effect” than if some random dude at some out of the way place were pandering for his next grant.

Third, the problem with climate science is that all the policy turns on the science’s dodgiest aspect, which is the use of computer models to predict the future (without increasing the slope of future trends and making very big assumptions about whether feedbacks are positive or negative, you cannot justify the policy response demanded by the advocates). These models were not constructed transparently, nor (we now know) using modern process controls that we *require* for all mission critical code. The process development used for the model at East Anglia, for example, would be laughed at by the FDA if it were used in a medical device.

Fourth, modern technology allows for a great deal of transparency, but the climate scientists have not taken use of it. So, for example, it would be possible to document, ex ante, the reason for each manual adjustment for the data at each weather station and do so transparently on the web, allowing for others to comment and approve or object. Why not do that? Instead, people are forced to submit FOIA requests and fight for years to get information that the taxpayers paid for. Same with the code — why not build it using open source techniques? Post the code, document the subroutines you are trying to build, the data you are using to test them, and let all the geeks in the world try their hand at doing it better? Candidly, I think that the real reason this fairly obvious and inherently credible process does not happen has nothing to do with conspiracy, but rather than scientists have an understandable professional need to get the “credit” for their discoveries, which becomes a lot harder in a big collaborative venture.