Warm and Cold Lies

posted 5 Dec 2009 17:44 by Dick Pountain

Lies and deceptions have always been potent political weapons, from the Trojan Horse all the way to the Zinoviev Letter. They are not the sole preserve of either Left or the Right, despite what adherents of those two wings would have you believ. We all know how Stalinism distorted the truth and rewrote history, the faces that disappeared from the photographs. However during the last decade lies have become a particular speciality of the Right, culminating in the deceptions used to launch the Iraq invasion, but most hilariously illustrated by the Bush neo-cons references to "making our own reality".

It's in this context that you should judge those recent leaked emails from climate scientists. It may be the case that believers in the reality of Global Warming have been "fine-tuning" the data to make their case look stronger. The sceptics' side prefer the newer, Bush/neocon style of lying, by just flat out denying the facts on  the (observably effective) principle that any lie you tell three times becomes true. None of this matters a damn though, because lies only have any effect on human minds, not on nature. If the planet has decided to fry us all it will continue to do so whatever nonsense we spout about the matter...