One of the most interesting stories of the past couple of months has been the whole Climategate scandal. I’m not going to dig that up and rehash the substance of it (though if you didn’t see Bill’s posts on the Thinklings about the lousy quality of the computer models behind the anthropogenic global-warming argument and the dubious nature of the standard assertions that the results of such models are truly properly peer-reviewed, you ought to), I just wanted to throw an observation out there. To wit, I recognized the spirit in those leaked e-mails, with their insistence that the theory must be right regardless of the data, and their willingness to adjust the facts as needed to fit the dogma: it’s the spirit of fundamentalism. It’s the exact same tone one meets in people arguing that the Earth must be only 6,000 years old and therefore, whatever facts that would seem to indicate otherwise must be incorrect.
Now, to call someone a fundamentalist doesn’t mean they’re wrong, by any means. I don’t happen to believe the Earth is only 6,000 years old, and I don’t happen to believe in AGW, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that one or both couldn’t be correct. But the spirit in which many who call themselves Christian fundamentalists argue (which is not, be it noted, equal with fundamentalism itself; one can hold to fundamentalist positions without this sort of attitude and approach) is one which is absolutely certain it has discovered the truth, unquestioningly convinced of its own rightness, and thus is committed to maintaining its position by whatever means necessary. This is the sort of spirit one also finds in Islamic fundamentalism—and it’s the spirit that’s in view as well in Michael Mann and the leaked CRU e-mails.
Again, that doesn’t mean their position is wrong; to argue that would be to commit the genetic fallacy. It does, however, give the lie to their claims that they alone are scientific and their opponents are anti-science. In truth, what we have here is a religious dispute, complete with threats by the high priests against the heretics; and the pretensions of those high priests to be above ideology, their insistence that they are disinterested seekers of the pure flame of fact, have been shown to be a sham. This will be, I think, the long-term effect of Climategate: it’s knocked AGW proponents off their pedestal, and I don’t think they’re going to be able to climb back up.