If you are tempted to question climate change because of the recent flap over hacked emails that are alleged to show scientists falsifying data, you should read Lee Fang’s article, “A Case Of Classic SwiftBoating: How The Right-Wing Noise Machine Manufactured ‘Climategate’ “. Fang shows how conservatives distort facts in order to discredit legitimate science:
…Polluter-funded climate skeptics, along with their allies in conservative media and the Republican Party, sifted through the e-mails, and quickly cherry picked quotes to falsely accuse climate scientists of concocting climate change science out of whole cloth. The skeptics also propelled the story, dubbed “Climategate,” to the cover of the New York Times and newspapers across the globe. According to a Nexis news search, the Climategate story has been reported at least 325 times in the American press alone….As the right attempts to use the Climategate story to derail the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference this week, arctic sea ice is still at historically low levels, Australia is still on fire, the northern United Kingdom is still underwater, the world’s glaciers are still disappearing and today NOAA confirmed that not only is it the hottest decade in history, but 2009 was one of the hottest years in history. But how did the right-wing noise machine hijack the debate?
And the media goes right along with the scam:
A right-wing echo chamber — including the Rev. Moon-funded Washington Times, the Wall Street Journal editorial page, talk radio, and the constellation of various conservative front groups and think tanks — would then blare the scandal incessantly, regardless of the truth. But the more troubling aspect of this gimmick is the increasing willingness for traditional media outlets, from the Evening News to the Washington Post, to largely reprint unfounded right-wing smears without context or critical reporting.
One of the most successful coups for right-wing hit men was the “SwiftBoat” campaign, a well financed effort orchestrated by lobbyists and Bush allies to smear Sen. John Kerry’s (D-MA) war record. But “Climategate” is no different, with many of the same conservatives actors playing their respective roles…
Fang provides a detailed chronology of the media campaign to discredit global warming science.
Despite this nonsense, in fact, the scientific consensus on climate change has been achieved through the publication of thousands of independent peer-reviewed papers and field research.
The hacked emails show only that scientists are human and care about putting their data in the best light. Is that some kind of earth-shaking revelation? A scientific consensus such as that enjoyed by the global warming hypothesis is formed when competing scientists with an interest in making their own reputations can’t refute the data.
When data withstands repeated tests it becomes the consensus.
A few scientists dressing up their graphs does not threaten the underlying science of global warming.
