Obama a Man of Science or the New Religion?

It’s just not that long ago that the Left was ranting over conservative Republicans supposed assault on science. The claim was that the Republican party had largely been taken over by fundamentalists and creationists. Some school districts were required to teach Darwinism side by side with creationist theory. Other groups attempted to get the National Parks to carry creationist literature in their bookstores. The Left fanned fears that Intelligent Design proponents were undermining hard science and over the last few years, several dust-ups occurred in which we were re-fighting the Scopes Trial.

While I am a conservative Catholic, I am a strong believer in science, the scientific method, hard analysis, and hypothesis testing to explain phenomenon in the natural world. Conservatives have gone off the rails attempting to supplant scientific knowledge with a fundamental biblical explanation of the natural world and a literal interpretation of the Bible. These people undermine our credibility as conservatives and they muddle the notions of traditional conservative values embodied in scripture with explanations and models for how the natural world was created and evolved.

True science involves continuous hypothesis testing and challenge to conventional wisdom. It involves constant reassessment and reinterpretation of data as new data becomes available and as old data is reexamined. All good scientists challenge conventional wisdom. Truly great scientists are not afraid of the challenge of others—indeed, an intellectually pure scientist is passionate about finding one thing—the truth and great scientists sometimes “eat their own children” and revise their own view of the world as new knowledge is gained.

The Left is correct to be concerned about fundamentalism thinking attempting to fence in science. They occupy two different realms (not necessarily incompatible with one another in my view) and they should stay that way.

But now the Left has adopted a religion of its own that it has deemed beyond the challenge of science and it is just as pernicious as the Creationists—Global Warming.

The science of Global Warming is difficult and complex. It involves interpreting data of thousands of years of history in which even without man’s influence, global temperature changes were subject to wide fluctuations. It involves teasing apart natural and potentially man made environmental changes. The questions are large and complicated. Is the globe getting warmer? Is this a normal cycle? Is it bad for everyone or just for some? Even so, can we do anything about it that will have real impact?

Al Gore, the great messiah of this religion, famously proclaimed that “the debate is over” in promoting his movie “An Inconvenient Truth.” That should have been the tipoff—for in science, the debate is never truly over.

And now the great arbiters of Global Warming, the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), have been caught suppressing the work of scientists that present a challenge to the religion of the Left, and further were caught enhancing the effect of temperature change. This is important because the IPCC is highly influential and is the group of scientists that policymakers have been relying on to make their case that governments should exert greater control over CO2 emissions. The emails system of the IPCC was hacked into and these rather startling emails were exposed. The UK Telegraph called this the “worst scientific scandal of our generation.” This scandal has powerful implications for the discussions of the upcoming Copenhagen summit and the “Cap and Trade” bill under which will be asked to make enormous economic sacrifices for the new religion.

And what is the response from our new administration? Largely silence, which is odd on the eve of the Copenhagen Summit. John (Mr. Population Control) Holdren dismissed it as something that affected a small number of scientists. Barbara Boxer attempted to turn it around and attacked the hackers, calling it “email theftgate”. The mainstream media has mostly delegated it to about page 25.

This is an issue that has profound implications for our country, our economy and the relative power between the private and public sector and relationships between nations. In the end, its resolution will have much more international import than the Iraq War. The Left caterwauled that Bush Administration manipulated evidence over WMD to justify the invasion of Iraq (although there was no direct evidence of this). But here we have a smoking gun that shows that the “scientists” – the high priests of this religion-- have manipulated and suppressed evidence and yet our scientific president is silent.

Mr. President, the debate is not over. With this much at stake and so many open questions, it cannot be. If you truly are a proponent of science, you must express your outrage over this scandal. But I suspect you, like the others on the Left, simply wish to supplant the religion of the fundamentalist right with your own.