Letter to museums betokens nastiness of climate politics

April 27, 2015
Activism has usurped science in the politics of climate change to the extent that its unhinged polemic discredits itself.

Activism has usurped science in the politics of climate change to the extent that its unhinged polemic discredits itself.

Campaigners for aggressive precaution against global warming claim the first and last word on "science" and disparage anyone with a contrary view. Science doesn't work this way. Scientists are supposed to know that.

Yet a group of scientists-128 of them at last count-has sent an open letter to museums of science and natural history calling on recipients to reject funding from fossil energy companies.

"We are concerned that the integrity of these institutions is compromised by association with special interests who obfuscate climate science, fight environmental regulation, oppose clean energy legislation, and seek to ease limits on industrial pollution," the letter says. And later: "We believe that the only ethical way forward for our museums is to cut all ties with the fossil fuel industry and funders of climate science obfuscation."

The letter even singled out David Koch, whose Koch Industries, it claimed, "is one of the greatest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions in the United States."

Koch is routinely demonized by Democratic Party leaders because he contributes to Republican political causes. Koch also gives large sums to museums and charities.

Vilification of Koch and the fossil energy industry isn't science. It isn't rational argumentation. It's naked politics. And it undermines the case for urgent response to climate change.

That case is weakening. Temperature measurements don't support model predictions driving assertions that people can halt warming by changing behavior. To point this out is not obfuscation. It certainly isn't unethical.

Science is supposed to treat hypotheses unsubstantiated by empirics as flawed. Yet signatories to the museum letter treat people who notice the discrepancy-people who disagree with them, in other words-as flawed.

The generous explanation for this nastiness is that those resorting to it have lost confidence in their arguments. Whatever the reason, it's indefensible. And it has suppressed debate and motivated climate politics far too long.

(From the subscription area of www.ogj.com, posted Apr. 17, 2015; author's e-mail: [email protected])