Peter Sinclair in Crock of the week uses some old classic movie and TV footage to debunk the ‘climategate’ myth. Quite simply this hack of the e-mails hasn’t changed any of the science of climate change and is as ineffectual as most of the anti-science inquisition has been over the last century.
A letter by a large number of scientists in the US National Academy of Science in the AAAS Science magazine (PDF at Science or web) quoted in the video sums up the essential stupidity of the denier/skeptic positions perfectly.
There is always some uncertainty associated with scientific conclusions; science never absolutely proves anything. When someone says that society should wait until scientists are absolutely certain before taking any action, it is the same as saying society should never take action. For a problem as potentially catastrophic as climate change, taking no action poses a dangerous risk for our planet.
But when some conclusions have been thoroughly and deeply tested, questioned, and examined, they gain the status of ‘well-established theories’ and are often spoken of as ‘facts.’
Climate change now falls into this category: There is compelling, comprehensive, and consistent objective evidence that humans are changing the climate in ways that threaten our societies and the ecosystems on which we depend.
Quite simply if you want absolute certainty in science, then you are delusional. It is not a faith and if you want certainty then you need to seek a place of worship.
When new evidence comes along challenging or even disproving a theory in science, then the theory is adjusted. The problem for the climate change deniers and skeptics (CCDs) is that they have proved to unable to find any evidence that causes issues for the theory of human induced climate change. So they resort to smear tactics and conspiracy theories like ‘climategate’ instead.
It has nothing to do with science and more to do with how ineffectual the CCDs are at disproving a working well-established theory.
Pretty pathetic really.
hat-tip: joe90 in comments
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