Philosophy is wonderful discipline. It teaches one to think clearly, to reason, and to weigh evidence dispassionately. More scientists should study philosophy. It was there that I learned that the basis of sound theory is that for a theory to be valid, it must be observable, repeatable, and falsifiable;  if  an hypothesis did not meet those criteria, it could not be found to be a theory - which brings us to anthropogenic global warming.

For some years now we have been told, by Al Gore, by the news media, by the environmental left, by just about anyone with an agenda, that "the science is settled" - "the earth has a fever." There was a "scientific consensus" - as if science was ever conducted by consensus.  We have been urged to support legislation that would impose harsh penalties on carbon emissions, drastically increase the cost of fuel such as gasoline and home heating oil and electricity, thereby punishing those who can least afford it (the poor), and attenuate the progress of developing countries which rely on fossil fuels to power their economic engines. The earth, we have been told, was on a collision course with rising seas due to melting polar ice caps, increasingly devastating hurricanes and monsoons, desertification of once lush forests, extinction of species - you get the picture. Drastic action had to be taken. Those of us who were skeptical due to the fact that the last ten years have failed to produce any warming at all have been compared to Holocaust deniers, and scientists who have dared to question whether there was indeed a "consensus" have had their motives questioned and their integrity impugned. They have been accused of being on the payroll of Big Oil, without their legitimate objections to AGW alarmism being addressed. In fact, each time an objection has been raised, the response has been an ad hominem attack against the person raising the objection, usually a sure sign that the objection is worth another look.

Enter a collection of emails from the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in England, which were recently hacked, or leaked (depending on whom you believe). They indicate a pattern of obfuscation and manipulation, of subverting the peer review process, and of destroying original data, thereby making it impossible for any reputable scientist to a) observe the phenomenon in question; b) repeat the results obtained by the testers; and c) falsify the data. At least one professor, Professor Watson of the University of East Anglia, has said that there's nothing wrong with the science, but there is no way to verify that without the original data; in other words, it can't be falsified. They want the rest of the scientific community merely to accept their word that their methods were solid, their data were solid, and their conclusions were valid. Any objective observer should be capable of seeing how damaging this is to the scientific community in particular, and to mankind as a whole..

We live in an age when many people distrust science, whether it is global warming, evolution, vaccinations - the list could go on. The politicization and manipulation of science, which has gone on for hundreds of years, I'll grant (note poor Galileo), is always detrimental to mankind, since it invariably leads to a justification for a political power-play on the basis that it's "for the good of the mankind." Early twentieth century progressives tried to implement eugenics programs based on "science". The Vatican tried to enforce a geocentric view of the universe in the 17th century via "science". Due to Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring," the use of DDT was banned, and many have died in Africa of malaria who might have been saved, due to the proliferation of mosquitoes; due to the distrust of science, many children go unvaccinated against diseases such as whooping cough because of fears about autism; due to environmental alarmism over the possible extinction of a species supposedly based on "science," farmers in California have been denied access to needed water for their crops, turning their land into dry waste (and harming the impoverished immigrants the left purportedly champions). If science is truly to benefit mankind, then it must be kept free of political agendas that so warp and skew its results. But maybe that's just wishful thinking.