http://www.climate-resistance.org/20...o-georges.html

November 24, 2009, 15:16:53 | Editors

One event, seen by two environmental activists called George, produces two, contradicting stories
in the Guardian.

George Marshall, suggests that CRU email hacking was 'orchestrated smear campaign', but one which
yielded no evidence of anything questionable, but that 'an application of dirty political tactics
to climate change campaigning' seeks to undermine the upcoming Copenhagen conference. Innocent
scientists, who know little about communication, have unwittingly handled the affair badly, causing
a PR disaster for themselves.

George Monbiot, on the other hand, is uncharacteristically reflective, and 'dismayed and deeply
shaken by' the emails. 'There are some messages that require no spin to make them look bad', he
says.

There appears to be evidence here of attempts to prevent scientific data from being released, and
even to destroy material that was subject to a freedom of information request. Worse still, some of
the emails suggest efforts to prevent the publication of work by climate sceptics, or to keep it
out of a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Monbiot then calls for head of the CRU, Phil Jones, to resign. Nonetheless, this doesn't support
the conspiracy-theories about the hockey stick and widespread scientific fraud, he concludes,
before giving a 'satirical' example of what it would take to convince him that such a conspiracy
did exist. Most notably, however, he answers a commenter to the site:

I apologise. I was too trusting of some of those who provided the evidence I championed. I would
have been a better journalist if I had investigated their claims more closely.

This is, of course, what we've been telling Monbiot for several years now.

The point here is that the two Georges seem to have very different takes on what the CRU hacking
has revealed. Marshall believes that the attempt to prove a conspiracy reveals a conspiracy.
Monbiot says that the hacking has not substantiated the conspiracy-theory, but that certain
scientists are culpable. It's worth pointing out that, although Marshall and Monbiot accuse
sceptics of conspiracy-theorising, their own arguments about 'deniers' and 'well funded denial
machines' are also conspiracy theories.

We have argued here on Climate Resistance that it is a mistake to see the ascendency of
environmentalism's influence as the fruit of a conspiracy. This, we have argued, credits the
environmental movement with too much. What we have said is that environmentalism has become
mainstream because of the failure of the political parties, individuals, organisations, and
institutions to sustain coherent political ideas and to share them with the public. The
environmentalist's tendency to see scepticism as the expression of a conspiracy owes itself, we
think, to this same symptom. Climate change denial is discussed in terms of secret deals between
trans-national corporations and think-tanks to subvert the public's understanding of 'the science'.
Whereas such networks that they do manage to 'expose' turn out to be barely funded at all
(especially by contrast to green lobbying and PR efforts), not at all hidden from view, and
entirely consistent with the way the business of politics is done in today's world. The point is
that it is because environmentalists start from a position of disorientation that they tend to see
any political relationship or connection as evidence of a conspiracy. The 9/11 'truthers' offer us
a useful metaphor: it is what isn't said that often counts for more than what is said.

But let's be fair. It isn't just environmental activists who are conspiracy-mongering. The
increasingly prominent climate sceptic Christopher Monckton wrote yesterday:

This is what they did - these climate "scientists" on whose unsupported word the world's classe
politique proposes to set up an unelected global government this December in Copenhagen, with vast
and unprecedented powers to control all formerly free markets, to tax wealthy nations and all of
their financial transactions, to regulate the economic and environmental affairs of all nations,
and to confiscate and extinguish all patent and intellectual property rights.

Monckton is right that this is a phenomenon relating to the 'classe politique', but he again makes
the mistake of attributing to it far too much intentionality. The objectives of environmentalism
are not deliberate, nor about purposively engineering a social order as such. They are not 'about'
realising any political project. There is certainly a concerted effort to build supra-national
institutions that will control, regulate and manage every level of public and private life. But the
'classe politique's' desire for these institutions is unfocussed, and the result of its attempting
to manage its own crises. What Monckton sees as an attempt to establish a 'global government' are
the desperate attempts of governments to rescue themselves from their own failure of purpose. As we
are fond of saying, 'the crisis is in politics, not in the skies'. Politicians and political
movements project their own failures - their loss of identity, and their inability to communicate
with constituencies and to explain the world - out into the world. They respond to their own
failure, by creating institutions that are 'above' them, to which they defer.

The unconscious logic is this. Politicians (and movements, etc) borrow authority from science,
because they cannot create their own. As such, any political project that this process produces is
necessarily negative - the avoidance of catastrophe, terrorism, epidemics, etc. In short,
politicians borrow 'objectivity' from science because of a lack of faith in the inherently
subjective nature of democratic politics - the need for political engagement and discussion. But
the loan of credibility from science to politics is not sufficient to sustain the legitimacy of
political institutions, because of the problem of democratic accountability and legitimacy. As we
can see, this form of politics has failed to connect with the public. So, on the basis of the
looming catastrophe, institutions are established above politics, which it putatively 'answers to'.
Contemporary politics (ie, politicians) cannot cope with accountability, and so defers sovereignty
away from 'the people' (to whom they are accountable) to a higher agency, such that it can be made
'necessary' to meet 'international obligations' (and to avert catastrophe) before meeting demands
'from below'. In short, this is about managing people's expectations of politics and politicians.

Monckton's criticism is expressed as concern about the vulnerability of 'free trade' to
environmental institutions, taxation, and regulation. But it is during an era in which the idea of
free markets have become orthodoxy that the conditions for environmentalism's ascendancy have been
created. In that same era, communism has virtually disappeared, socialism too. What remains of the
'left' - social democracy - has embraced market principles. Moreover, it is as much conservatives
as ossified leftists who have attempted to reinvent themselves as 'green'. The climate debate
simply does not divide on either left/right or pro-market/anti-market lines. The UK conservatives
have fully embraced the sustainability agenda, and its emphasis on localism. Moreover, schemes such
as cap-and-trade, albeit while regulating a market, nonetheless use the market to provide putative
solutions to putative climate problems. And it should not be forgotten that it was Monckton's
former boss, Thatcher, who was instrumental in bringing climate change to the attention of the
world's governments, and the creation of UK and international institutions to combat climate
change. As the website of the exposed CRU itself explains:

The UK Government became a strong supporter of climate research in the mid-1980s, following a
meeting between Prime Minister Mrs Thatcher and a small number of climate researchers, which
included Tom Wigley, the CRU director at the time. This and other meetings eventually led to the
setting up of the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, within the Met Office. At the
same time, other governments were also taking notice and wanted more information. As this need was
not being met by international scientific bodies and institutions at the time, they set up the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This was under the United Nations Framework
(later the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, UNFCCC) and led to assessments being produced
in 1990, 1995, 2001 and 2007. CRU staff have been heavily involved in all four assessments,
probably more than anywhere else relative to the size of an institution (see IPCC AR4 Authors).

The 'classe politique' began its greening, and its borrowing from scientific authority more than 25
years ago - during which time Monckton himself was an active member of that same 'classe politique'
he now shouts at. Yet he spoke to it, and influenced it. He cannot have it both ways. The history
of contemporary environmentalism is as much the history of contemporary conservatism as it is the
history of the contemporary, yet now equally defunct, Left. That it has taken him this long to see
what kind of monster has been created is surely something on which he needs to reflect a little
more deeply than he has done. The sleep of reason brings forth monsters. It is not enough to say
'environmentalism is communism', because he must know it is not true - he was there at the former's
birth, if not its conception, and the latter's comprehensive death. Such an ahistorical perspective
is precisely the symptom of the Georges, and their paranoid conspiracy-mongering. Yet the Georges
can be let off the hook - slightly - because it cannot be claimed that they were there, at number
10 Downing Street, as environmentalism's seeds were being sown.

Our argument thus far, then, can be summarised as follows. It is disorientation that causes debate
to be seen as consisting of good guys beset by political conspiracies. The loss of historical
perspective causes attempts to give a coherent account of the opposing argument to fail. Both
'sides'
lack the means to explain the other, and to positively express themselves. Thus each side becomes
the side that wants to save the world, the other the one that intends to destroy it. Yet, no doubt,
both sides act out of conviction, and in good faith, even if they would deny the other. Their
problem is their inability to self-reflect.

Curiously, the responses to the 'Climategate' mess similarly do not divide according to 'sides'
taken in the debate. Monbiot thinks that those involved need to be punished:

I believe that the head of the unit, Phil Jones, should now resign. Some of the data discussed in
the emails should be re-analysed.

Bob Ward, director of policy and communications at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate
Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics, believes that 'only a thorough
investigation could now clear [the CRU researchers'] names.'

The selective disclosure and dissemination of the messages has created the impression of
impropriety, and the only way of clearing the air now would be through a rigorous investigation.

Nigel Lawson, another conservative-from-the-Thatcher-administration-turned-climate-sceptic
similarly feels there is a need for such a process:

The integrity of the scientific evidence on which not merely the British government, but other
countries, too, through the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, claim to base far-reaching
and hugely expensive policy decisions, has been called into question. And the reputation of British
science has been seriously tarnished. A high-level independent inquiry must be set up without
delay.

On each side of the debate, there are those for, and those against such an investigation, and those
who think that the CRU researchers need to be either punished, or exonerated. No clear lines
emerge.

Ward, characteristically, presupposes the findings of any such investigation. If it's green, it's
right, in his view of the world. Monbiot and Lawson, to different extents, believe that clarity
needs to be recovered. Marshall takes a different view, saying that:

Jones should speak to every journalist who calls, go on the offensive and defend his science.

Before we agree with Marshall, we shall point out that if Jones had taken this advice years ago,
there would be no Climategate now. It's a bit late to start being 'transparent', now that it is
clear that he has gone out of his way to be opaque.

The Guardian article from which many of these quotes were taken, goes on to cite another opinion.

Andy Atkins, Friends of the Earth's executive director, also dismissed calls for an inquiry. He
said: "Calls for an inquiry look suspiciously like an attempt to cast doubt on the science of
climate change ahead of crucial UN negotiations. The overwhelming majority of climate scientists
believe that climate change is happening, that it is man-made, and that it poses a major threat to
people across the planet. We can't afford to be distracted from the need for urgent action to
combat global warming - rich countries must lead the way by agreeing to slash their emissions when
they meet in Copenhagen next month.

.. In other words, the stakes are too high to allow an investigation to create the idea in the
public mind that there is any reason to doubt the certainty that the CRU have seemingly produced.

If there were such an inquiry, it would certainly not be the first of its kind.

Bjorn Lomborg's book, The Skeptical Environmentalist attracted much angry attention earlier this
decade, prompting an investigation by the Orwellian-sounding Danish Committee on Scientific
Dishonesty (DCSD). They found Lomborg guilty of 'dishonesty' in 2003, but later that year, the
Danish Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation overturned the ruling, finding it dishonest
itself.

After McCintyre and McKitrick's efforts to replicate the methodology of the iconic 'hockey-stick'
graph and subject it to the scrutiny it deserved, the US congress asked the National Research
Council (NRC) of the United States National Academy of Sciences to investigate the plausibility of
such historical reconstructions (the North Report). Simultaneously, another report was instigated
by Congressman, Joe Barton, focusing more specifically on the work behind the Hockey Stick (the
Wegman Report).

Speaking in the aftermath of the recent leak (but before the discussion of an inquiry), Bob Ward
brings up what he presents as 'attacks' on the Hockey-stick's authors.

The attacks on the hockey stick graph led the United States National Academy of Sciences to carry
out an investigation, concluding in 2006 that although there had been no improper conduct by the
researchers, they may have expressed higher levels of confidence in their main conclusions than was
warranted by the evidence.

In fact, the reports and their meanings are far less easy to parse than Ward claims. For McIntrye's
perspective on the reports and their findings, read here.

The fact is that institutional modes of 'clearing up' controversies fail comprehensively. Critics
of Lomborg will cite the initial DSCD finding, rather than its parent organisations retraction.
Similarly, the reports that followed in the wake of McIntyre and McKitrick are not as conclusive as
their detractors (or their supporters) often claim. Arguably these kind of reports merely muddy the
waters, entrench positions, demonstrate the paucity of clear evidence, and, far from convincing the
public of the stainless character of those implicated, such inquiries just generate suspicion about
the execution of the process, and alienate the public from the debate. Lack of facts provoke an
argument, and rather than drawing a line under sordid affairs, inquiries have a tendency to amplify
them.

Moreover, an inquiry into Climategate would be truly Kafkaesque. Politicians, deferring the
business of democratic politics to scientific and supra-national institutions, commissioning
inquiries when that process generates controversy. It's easy to imagine an infinite regress of
deferments. commissions, inquiries, reports, organisations. none of which ever resolve the
increasingly surreal problematic created by the previous layer of spin, intrigue, sleaze and
abrogations of responsibility.

No, the problem begins with this. There is no need for an inquiry into the behaviour of the CRU
staff, because what is really at issue is not 'is the world really warming, and is it our fault?'.
Creating institution after inquiry after organisation after report after commission after
committee, after international treaty, after 'science' to answer this question is the reason this
whole debacle stinks. The farce began with politics being deferred to 'science'. Instead of a
public contest of values and ideas, vapid and gutless politicians outsourced their responsibilities
to scientific academies, hoping that it would rescue their own legitimacy. It failed. An inquiry
will shed no light on the matter as much as it would extend the symptom, because, as we said in our
previous post:

There is no need for sceptics to attempt to locate conspiracies, fraud, or deception. Because the
reality is that environmentalism has thrived in an era in which any purposive political action -
least of all the execution of a conspiracy - is impossible. Environmentalism has influenced public
policy not because of fraud, but because of the intellectual vacuity of politicians. And it is
beyond the ken of most commentators, journalists, and eco-PR bods such as Ward to deceive the
public, because they don't even reflect on the coherence, consequences, or political character of
their own ideas. Fecklessness is rife, and that is why the world is greening.