Though Cowards Flinch

Part 1

Here’s Fraser Nelson (not pictured) of the Spectator, introducing his latest piece on what is being dubbed ClimateGate:

Last month, 1,000 emails leaked from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit.

 This is incorrect.

The emails did not ‘leak’ of their own accord.  Nor were they ‘leaked’. The term ‘leak’ implies that the content of the emails was due for release into the public sphere at some point anyway, and that it’s release was brought forward, by someone with legitimate access to them, for political or strategic gain.

 The emails were not leaked; they were stolen.

Melanie Phillips, Mr Fraser’s colleague at  Spectator (and I use her illustratively) could be considered to be handling stolen goods, and open to charge under the Theft Act 1968 Sec. 22 (1):

 A person handles stolen goods if (otherwise than in the course of the stealing) knowing or believing them to be stolen goods he dishonestly receives the goods, or dishonestly undertakes or assists in their retention, removal, disposal or realisation by or for the benefit of another person, or if he arranges to do so.

It is of little relevance that what was stolen was in electronic form and that there was no physical breaking and entering; the emails were taken deliberately, without the authority of the institution at which they were held, and are being used for career and reputational gain by Ms Phillips for herself and her publication.

If I asked a friend of mine to break into Ms Phillips’ dwelling, being careful not to cause physical damage, access computer files and download them to a USB stick, would that simply be considered a ‘leak’ ? I think not.

Consider then, for a moment, the similarity between Ms Phillips and Mr Gary McKinnon.

Mr McKinnon stands accused by the US authorities of illegally accessing government data. Mr McKinnon admits that he did so through computer ‘hacking’, and states that he did so because he felt that the US authorities were hiding important data on the existence of UFOs, and the discovery of ‘anti-gravity’ and ‘free energy’.

In holding these beliefs, Mr McKinnon is a member of a minority, but substantial grouping of people who believe that the US authorities are deliberately concealing information that should be the in public domain.

It is unclear what data Mr McKinnon did actually gain access to, and there is no evidence that he actually passed it on to third parties.

The US authorities contend that Mr McKinnon has endangered that country’s national interest through his actions, and that some of the computer systems ‘hacked’ by Mr McKinnon were damaged.

Ms Phillips, for her part, has in her possession information gained through computer hacking, which she is now passing on to third parties and to the wider public.

Ms Phillips believes that anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is not scientifically proven. In holding this belief, Ms Phillips is a member of a minority but substantial grouping of people who believe that the authorities of the University of East Anglia have been deliberately concealing information that should be in the public domain.

There is a considerable body of scientific authority which contends that, if the extent of AGW is not recognised because of continuing efforts to undermine the scientific case put forward, and appropriate actions not taken, then the world will be irrevocably damaged, billions of people will die, with the possibility of the end of all life on the planet.

Ms Phillips’ journalistic career and reputation amongst a body of readers has been enhanced by her use of stolen information.

Mr McKinnon, for his part, stands to be extradited to the United States on charges which could, if proven, result in his incarceration for 60-70 years in institutions incapable or unwilling to make provision for his clinically acknowledged condition of Asperger’s syndrome, if the treatment of Billy Cottrell, another Asperger’s sufferer incarcerated in the US is anything to go by.

Part 2

David Davis MP of the Conservative party has called an honest debate on the science of climate change, saying:

It is simply unacceptable for one side to describe the other as deniers, with its deliberate holocaust connotations, and the other side to essentially call their opponents liars. This issue is too important for the argument to be reduced to the level of an adolescent political spat, and it is time we engaged in this debate on a properly adult level.

I am all for for such a debate, but it does seem to me that it will be hard to foster, if a big step in trying to open up that debate is to steal information, and then accuse scientists of lying and cheating.  This is not, for example, the way peace was brought about in Northern Ireland.

Further, it seems to me clear enough (as set out jokingly here) that there is a correlation between holding a position on the right of the traditional political spectrum and a propensity to doubt the reality of AGW.

In order to move towards an open and honest debate that both ‘sides’ seem to desire, I contend that it would be appropriate for those who have doubts about AGW to look back at the history of the broad ‘movement’ to which they belong, and examine the extent to which that movement has been strategically and financially allied to the interests of large corporations, particularly in the United States.

A useful starting point – for we have to start somewhere – might be the Lewis Powell memo from 1971s, which Dave covered yesterday, and which is explicit enough about the desire of US corporations to control the research and educational agenda on US campuses, not least in order to counter the then nascent environmental movement.

Equally, the ‘community’ that is now convinced of the reality of AGW may need to review the strategic and financial influences it has felt over the same kind of time frame, and to seek openly to determine the extent to which political agendas may have influenced scientific methodology.

There is no reason to unnecessarily coy about any of this. Thomas Kuhn, in his seminal 1962 work ‘The Structure of Scientific Revolutions’, explored how scientific progress can never be divorced from political and financial influences, and dispelled the myth of science as neutral.  Both sides need to move beyond the essentially invalid claim that science around AGW either is neutral, or should be neutral but isn’t.  That would, to use David Davis’s terms, put the debate on a ‘properly adult level’.

By facing up to the social reality of how power is exerted within public debate, at least in a pre-Habermasian world of ‘ideal speech’, perhaps we might arrive at a point where an open and honest debate about the future of the planet is actually possible.

Conversely, given the current contention on each side of the debate that one side is science, the other side is myth-for-political-gain, I see little scope for doing what is needed, if anything, to save the planet.

Perhaps I might suggest either Thomas Kuhn or Jurgen Habermas (pictured) as principal intermediary in the ‘debate’.