Academic

SO YESTERDAY I COMPARED THE RESPONSE TO CLIMATEGATE TO THE BELLESILES SCANDAL. Now all the fraud, c?

By Glenn Reynolds

SO YESTERDAY I COMPARED THE RESPONSE TO CLIMATEGATE TO THE BELLESILES SCANDAL. Now all the fraud, critical “lost” data, suppression of criticism and so on doesn’t prove that there’s no global warming — people can lie about things that, nonetheless, turn out to be true — but it has to induce a certain degree of skepticism. So what should we do?

Nothing. At least, in my opinion, we should continue to try to minimize the use of fossil fuels regardless. Burning coal and oil is filthy, and they’re more valuable as chemical feedstocks anyway. We should be building nuclear plants and pursuing efficiencies in the shorter term, while working on better solar (including orbital solar), wind, etc. power supplies for the longer term. That doesn’t mean “hairshirt” environmentalism, where the goal is for neo-puritans to denounce people for immorality and trumpet their own superiority. It just means good sense.

I actually had a long post on this here and Amory Lovins has it right: “He also says ? and I agree ? that it doesn?t matter whether you believe ‘peak oil’ catastrophe scenarios because you ought to be doing the same thing anyway.”

UPDATE: Rand Simberg responds: “What do you mean ‘we,’ white man?”

Full post as published by Instapundit.com on February 16, 2010 (boomark / email).