Albert Einstein spoke for all who view science as a noble profession when he said he was "trying to understand the mind of God."

But I am concerned that many who promote the idea of catastrophic global warming reduce science to a political and economic game. Scare tactics and junk science are used to secure lucrative government contracts.

Consider first an example of what makes science so fascinating. The well-documented observation that the global temperature peaks every summer in July seems unremarkable to those of us living in the Northern Hemisphere.

But it is remarkable when you realize that the Earth's closest approach to the sun, when sunlight is strongest, occurs during the Southern Hemisphere summer in January. It is even more remarkable when you realize that the Earth was significantly warmer 10,000 years ago when its closest approach coincided with the Northern Hemisphere summer.

It is still more remarkable when you realize that we are now close to an orbital configuration for another ice age. The present warm Holocene interglacial period, during which human civilization has flourished, may give way by the end of this millennium to 90,000 years of cold. Climate changes from orbital variations are called Milankovitch Cycles and are confirmed by Antarctic ice core data. Typically, good science is not particularly controversial because it has been tested by the scientific method involving theories validated by observations made by many scientists working independently.

The ClimateGate scandal revealed that this method can be easily scammed. In that case, prominent scientists with the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were caught conspiring to circumvent normal checks and balances in their research. They were compensating for their lack of honest evidence linking man-made carbon dioxide to global warming by doctoring data, refusing to disclose analysis techniques, bullying any who questioned them and working to silence critics.

Early hints of the developing scandal surfaced when British researcher Keith Briffa was forced by the Royal Society to release his Siberian tree ring data purporting to show a dramatic temperature rise in the 20th century. Astonishingly, he substantially relied on a single tree, far different from all others. It was a clear case of selecting data to support his viewpoint. This may be acceptable politics, but to me, it is scientific fraud.

Subsequent disclosures confirmed widespread participation in data manipulation. Others are involved in touting climate models as substitutes for honest data and as predictors of catastrophe. These far-from-rigorous computer simulations are said to "prove" that carbon dioxide is the only explanation for recent short-term warming, despite substantial evidence that ocean and solar cycles are largely responsible.

The connection to an $80 billion government gravy train should have alerted our media to conflicts of interest. But they were too dazzled by the so-called "experts" and too sold on the politics to realize that these scientists had been corrupted by the age-old problems of money and power.

A recent editorial in the journal Nature admits that implicated scientists are scared. They know that honest mistakes are typically forgiven but fraud is not. The editorial urges them to fight back with a war of words: "The core science supporting anthropogenic global warming has not changed." Such a bluff can succeed only if the public remains ignorant that the core is rotten.

The political and economic empire is already striking back. We are beginning to see blue ribbon commissions of carefully chosen "experts" whose job is to exonerate the guilty and get global warming hysteria back on track. A better approach is to embrace what the Nobel laureate in physics, Richard Feynman, called "utter honesty." Implicated scientists are aware of what honest data show. Increased carbon dioxide has, at most, a minor effect on global temperature and is highly beneficial to our green natural world.

All plants and animals owe their very existence to carbon dioxide. Scientific scandals inevitably require significant corrective measures to restore objectivity, including in this case, major revisions to the way we support scientific research.

Gordon Fulks
© Oregon Live.comGordon J. Fulks
Gordon J. Fulks of Corbett holds a doctorate in physics from the University of Chicago, Laboratory for Astrophysics and Space Research. Reach him at gordonfulks@hotmail.com