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.
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Comment: For more on climate change, see: Younger Dryas Glacial Rebound and 'Cosmic Showers': Climate shifted suddenly from present day warmth to Ice Age cold