AMONG climate researchers, the consensus is growing that global warming may be close to a tipping point beyond which runaway feedbacks could take hold, creating what George W. Bush鈥檚 top climate modeller this week calls 鈥渁 different planet鈥� (see 鈥溾�極ne degree and we鈥檙e done for'鈥�). Yet the political discourse that should be helping us find ways to respond to such warnings remains a mess.
Last week, the Royal Society in London sent a measured complaint to the oil company ExxonMobil, asking it to end its long-standing and extensive funding of lobby groups that the society says 鈥渕isinform the public鈥� on climate change. What response does it get? Nothing from ExxonMobil and its lobbyists, whose contempt for one of the world鈥檚 oldest scientific institutions seems to rival their contempt for good science. Instead, we get lectures from climate change sceptics, such as the UK-based Scientific Alliance, which claims the Royal Society wants to 鈥渃lose down debate鈥�. It further charges that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the cornerstone of scientific consensus-building on the issue, has become politicised.
This is farcical. The Scientific Alliance and its ilk have done more than anyone to politicise this debate, and now they have the cheek to claim purity of purpose. There is plenty of room to discuss the nature and extent of climate change, but the politically and commercially motivated abuse of science carried out by some climate change sceptics and those who back them needs to be exposed for what it is. Let the contrarians speak, by all means. But bullying, like censorship, has no place in scientific debate.
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