Swiftboating the climate scientists 23 November 09

The outcry over emails stolen from the Climatic Research Unit's server and then plastered all over the internet by climate change deniers shows a worrying trend. Moving on from targeting Al Gore and environmentalists, the denial conspiracists are now moving on to attacking science itself.

The theft put the scientists in question in a very difficult position. If they refused to comment – on the reasonable grounds that this was stolen property – then they risked looking secretive. If they did comment, then they would become embroiled in a defensive battle over the contents of private correspondence often written over ten years ago.

The best analysis of the situation I have read comes from George Marshall on his Climate Denial blog. As Marshall states, this shows a sophisticated strategy amongst some deniers to undermine public trust in science – just in advance of the Copenhagen talks. It is also reminiscent of the ‘swift-boat’ campaign that sank John Kerry, and indeed seems to have been originated by the same people.

Needless to say, this says nothing about the actual climate warming data – which is replicated in triplicate by other agencies, working entirely independently – but everything about the twisted politics of the global warming issue. This is a bad day for science, and a bad day for the environment. Perhaps we are not living in as much of an age of reason as we think.