Howl

If you have some time to kill, you could amuse yourself by watching various left wing bloggers and pundits try to undermine Sarah Palin's op-ed discussing the politicization of climate change science that appears in today's Washington Post.

The Op-ed, titled "Copenhagen's political science" contains what appears to be a few rhetorical embellishments and minor factual inaccuracies based upon what we now know, but overall, is more or less accurate.

Climategate and questions about the validity of data sets maintained and possibly manipulated by several other research gatekeepers should be taken very seriously, and the raw data reexamined and opened to public review. Instead, climate change scientists have conspired to hide their data, and in the case of the East Anglia CRU, "lost" their raw data, a very improbable claim according to career scientists.

Likewise, the code for the CRU's climate modeling software was exposed in the Climategate leak, and reveals that the the modeling of temperature trends was all but fraudulent, and compromised repeatedly by manual "adjustments" designed to provide advocates of anthropogenic global warming the manufactured evidence they desired.

The outrage on the left was loud and predictable.

Alan Colmes claimed the op-ed was "false and misleading," but instead bogged down in minutia. Perhaps Palin was incorrect in claim that AGW advocates deliberately destroyed data, but those scientists were forced to admit admit the raw data was destroyed. The rest of his "evidence" includes an ad hominem attack from a former Post correspondent and an attempt at obfuscation by a left-wing think tank over the damage cap-and-trade would do the to economy. The later still included an admission that Palin was essentially right on main basic point, that cap-and-tax would cost American jobs.

Think Progress also screams in indignation, but does no better a job of explaining why admittedly polarized and deceptive practices lead to science that should be trusted.

Taylor Marsh repeats similarly unimpressive arguments, and quite unscientific claims that climate change is leading polar bears to cannibalism (simultaneously, other advocates complain that the bears are in danger of extinction even as their population grows).

A survey of progressive blogs responding to Palin's op-ed seem to focus primarily on variations of the argument that:

• the data is accurate and unaltered, but doesn't need to be released to the public
• that the scientists involved have unimpeachable integrity, even though they admit in private emails to attempting to manipulate peer review and data to achieve desired results (which is why the CRU's head has stepped down and others in the cabal are under investigation)
• the data models are accurate, even though programmer's notes in the CRU code reveals it to have been manually corrupted to achieve specific results, thereby corrupting an other models that use the CRU's code or data, as apparently all other significant models used by the United Nations apparently do

If critics of anthropogenic climate change are correct, then billions of lives will be affected and trillions of dollars wasted for a minimal or non-existent impact to the natural process of climate change.

It is therefore only logical to open the raw data to public scrutiny outside of the closed enclaves of pro-AGW theorists so that independent scientists and statisticians can validate the data and conclusions drawn thus far.

If supporters of anthropogenic climate change are correct, then billions of lives will be affected and trillions of dollars must be spent for the most effective impact to reversing anthropogenic climate change.

It is therefore only logical to open the raw data to public scrutiny outside of the closed enclaves of pro-AGW theorists so that independent scientists and statisticians can validate the data and conclusions drawn thus far, in order to establish the best policies and procedures to make sure we do things correctly.

Those that still argue that the science is settled and insist that we must act now are not looking for the best solutions for mankind or the planet. They are opportunists drumming up fears based upon uncertainty, motivated by political or financial gain. They are the ones now howling the loudest, fearing that their mad dash will come to naught.

Such souls should be watched, monitored, investigated, and sentenced appropriately, regardless of station.