Cross-Examining the Climate Change Scammers

A trial lawyer reading through the hacked emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (CRU) will immediately, almost unconsciously, begin generating a list of questions he would love to ask the authors if he were able to face them on the witness stand and under oath. The beauty of the adversarial process is how cross-examination tests and challenges the other side’s position – precisely what the emails indisputably show the CRU and its allies in the climate change scam have gone to shocking lengths to avoid.

There are several lines of examination that come immediately to mind. We can rest assured that it will never happen – as the emails show, the last thing they want to do is be in a position where they have to explain themselves. But certainly asking leading climate change cheerleader Phil Jones about his email describing his use of a “trick” to describe the manipulation of observed temperature data to “hide the decline” in order to achieve the desired result would be amusing:

• So, Dr. Jones, when you used the word “trick,” you really meant that it was not a “trick” at all but a valid, scientifically recognized process of data interpretation?
• Can you identify another instance in your experience where a scientist described his valid, scientifically recognized process of data interpretation with a term commonly used to describe a hoax, scam or fraud?
• And when you wrote the words “hide the decline,” is it now your testimony that when you used the word “hiding,” you were not actually “hiding” anything, and moreover, though you used the word “decline,” there was no “decline” in temperatures to be hidden in the first place?
• So, if I understand your explanation, it is that you commonly use language in your communications which means precisely the opposite of the meaning that you are seeking to communicate?
• And if an email from those who disagree with your findings – who you call “deniers” or “skeptics” – were to be made public that described their use of a “trick” to “hide the increase” in temperatures, would you find this to be of no great import because scientists commonly describe their processes as “tricks” and that their act of “hiding the increase” must be purely benign based on the manner of usage you describe?
• So, is it only proponents of man-made global warming that habitually use words and phrases that mean precisely the opposite of their common usage to describe their work?

But, as delightful as it would be to pick at particular instances of the activists’ admissions of fraud and their lame attempts to explain them away, there’s really one question that needs to be asked. In fact, if Al Gore would ever expose himself to the questions of anyone beyond the most credulous climate change sycophants, someone ought to ask it of him:

Mr. Gore, would you be happy if tomorrow you were to see irrefutable scientific evidence that mankind’s activities are not causing the Earth to warm?

A normal person would answer with a resounding, “Yes!” A normal person would be relieved that not only is our planet safe, but that we need not spend trillions of dollars and forfeit our most basic freedoms in pursuit of remedies for the bugbear of climate change.

But do you think for a second Al Gore would say, “Yes”? Do you think any of the global warming suckers would? Get real.

Understand you would not get an express, “No.” He would probably just deny the validity of the question (“We know climate change is real so that will never happen”). But after 15 years of examining witnesses, I have a rule of thumb. Any answer to a question that is not an unambiguous “Yes” is really a “No.”

And to those invested (ideologically, professionally and financially) in man-made climate change, the answer would be “No.” But contrary evidence would make no difference regardless. Al Gore and his ilk would not be shaken in the least by contrary scientific findings because the climate change scam is not driven by science. It is a campaign driven by the end the believers seek – an agenda of political, economic and social control. The science is simply a convenient means to that end. In fact, climate change belief is the opposite of science. It is a faith, a pagan religion complete with infallible doctrines, ritual sacrifices and even heretics who must be burned at the (so far) figurative stake.

A basic concept in the scientific method is falsifiability, the idea that a scientific hypothesis can be disproven through evidence. If a hypothesis cannot ever be falsified, then to believe it requires an act of faith. Therefore, if the climate change hypothesis is truly based upon science, with the production of satisfactory evidence it could be disproven. And this leads to one final question for the climate change believers:

Mr. Gore, if presented with irrefutable scientific evidence that the man-made climate change hypothesis is incorrect, would you accept it?

Of course, believing that Mr. Gore would answer with an unambiguous “Yes” would itself require an enormous leap of faith.