I had the privilege last week, of having lunch with a few scientists that work in or near NOAA's lab in Boulder, CO. The conversation drifted to the blog Junk Science by Steve Milloy, and thence to my colleague, John Christy, who works in my building.  If you ever wanted to read the science or understand what the greenhouse effect is, there's no better source than their Greenhouse Primer. Well both men are famous for being staunch opponents of global warming, and the conversation dismissed their work with winners like "Isn't Junk Science funded by oil companies?" "Yes, and didn't I hear that Christy finally admitted that global warming was occurring?" Then the topic of conversation drifted into other nefarious conspiracies of Republican administrations.

Now there were several things that disturbed me about this conversation. These are all scientists whose work is paid for by the federal government. Yet they were quite willing to assign conspiracies theories to the operation of government research. If anyone should know how federal conspiracies work, it would be these people, all relatively high up on the management ladder.  Further, they had blithely assumed, without any explanation at all, that tainted funding produced tainted research. This requires that scientists lack all ethical training, and/or behave as cynical opportunists. Again, if anyone should know the ethics of scientists it would be these people. Finally, and perhaps least distressing, both statements were false, and could easily be disproved with just a few minutes on the web.

Being a scientist, I know how easy it is to jump to conclusions, make bad assumptions, and otherwise get the facts hopelessly confused. I've done it myself on many occasions, and am always grateful to those who correct me. However I had the suspicion that this was not a matter for gentle correction. I bit my tongue and spent the remainder of the day in a blue funk. For if ad hominem arguments, and "tainted motives" become the standards for evaluating scientific theories, then God help the US of A. Do any of us have pure motives? Do any of us live a blameless life? Then how can research progress at all? Should we not all trade in our lab coats for cassocks and join the new Inquisition?

But this last post on the 4 stages of theory, got me thinking that this new Committee for the Purity of Science, was perhaps damning in a different sort of way. Rather than a demand for ideological purity and a reinstatement of torture for the apostate, what was really going on was projection. These scientists were saying in effect, "We think Milloy and Christy are behaving as we are. We know how we got to our positions of power and privilege, and we suspect they are using the same techniques."  Taken as projection, including the Bush Derangement Syndrome symptoms on display later in the meal, one can only feel embarassed for these people.  Far from being a new Inquisition, it is, perhaps a Freudian Confessional, a plea for someone to help them before they hurt themselves, and hurt their field of science.

That thought cleared the red haze from my eyes, and I began to note something else. Of all topics to use for the Ideological test, why pick global warming? For one thing, it might as well be the Black-Scholes economic theory of stock options for the clarity and evidence and understanding involved. (Did you read that primer above? Were you surprised how little you actually knew about greenhouse gasses?). For another, it was a scare story with a 30-100 year fuse, surely one could find shorter fuse disasters to worry about: AIDS, world overpopulation, famine, bird flu for heaven's sake. Why global warming?

A paper by MIT climatologist, Richard Lindzen, explained it to me.

"Such weak predictions feed and contribute to what I have already described as a societal instability that can cascade the most questionable suggestions of danger into major political responses with massive economic and social consequences."

The whole point of global warming, is not saving the planet, but providing excuse for economic and social changes that transfer power and prestige. Lindzen focusses on the avaricious opportunists in the scientific community, though perhaps the more sinister are the power-hungry IGOs.  It is essential, then, that global warming NOT be a soluble problem, or else the solution might shortcircuit the desired social changes. Greenhouse gas is a red herring, a plausible story, a Reichstag fire, a Chicken Little tale with global consequences.

And that reminded me of another red herring, the Young Earth theory that the world (and universe) is only 6000 to 10,000 years old. Popularly known as "creationism", the view is relatively recent, as documented by Ronald Numbers in The Creationists.  as it took hold within the Fundamentalist subculture around 1960 with the arrival of Whitcomb & Morris' book, The Genesis Flood. What is novel about the young earth doctrine, is that no major denomination or religion had ever used it as a measure of doctrinal purity or doctrinal importance. Yet suddenly, it became a litmus test for orthodoxy. In the grand scheme of things, could one's savior or salvation or sanctification depend on the dating of the book of Genesis? Yet Henry Morris was adamant as he travelled about the country in the church speaking circuit, "It's a question of whether you believe the Bible is inerrant or not."

And that was the key. Seminaries were cranking out plenty of smooth-talking preachers who used all the right words with all the wrong meanings. Fundamentalists wanted a test, a doctrine that was so abhorrent to liberals that they could immediately ascertain ones conservative credentials. At the heart of this doctrine was the rejection of 200 years of geology and science. A progressive would sooner defend the flat earth than this absurd position. And so was born the "young earth" litmus test.

In much the same way, global warming performs all the same functions that a young earth doctrine does. It separates UN believers from UN detractors, it redirects funding and attention to itself and away from historical faultlines of oceanography versus meteorology versus geology, uniting them all behind a common banner. It separates Democrats from Republicans, big government fans from libertarians. It identifies get-along, go-along scientists from the recalcitrant sort, no matter what their specialty. It is the jihad that gives meaning to dry textbooks, purpose to an otherwise purposeless pursuit of knowledge, possessing the seriousness and self-importance of a Communist cell meeting.

In this way, global warming and young earth theories have been smashing successes. What better way to find out if a Christian is a liberal or a conservative, what better way to find out if a scientist is a Republican or a Democrat? But as theology or science, neither is of any great importance. There will never be a "Church of the 6000 year Earth" or field of "Hyperthermoclimatology". Once these tools have served their purpose they will be discarded for the latest litmus test, much like the "Infra/supra lapsarian" debates of two centuries ago, or the Piltdown Man hoax.

So in the spirit of Procrustes, let us not focus on the questionable tactics of a highwayman bent on murder and robbery, but rather on his magic bed. What separates real science from bandwagon politicking? What should we be focussing on, if we wish to avoid Lindzen's social instabilities? How can science interact with society without contamination from power politics? Is peer-reviewed science compatible with democracy? What has gone wrong in America?