As is their wont, scientists largely eschew the political world. They concern themselves with their jobs. They focus on data and analysis. This works well in most fields. There is no anti-particle physics movement. Conservatives have (yet) to mount an assault on mathematics.
The sciences involved with climatology are not so lucky. They have decided to strike out against those who are dedicated to destroying the credibility of this field.
The Los Angeles Times reports:
Climate scientists plan campaign against global-warming skeptics
The American Geophysical Union plans to announce Monday that 700 researchers have agreed to speak out on the issue. The effort is a pushback against congressional conservatives who have vowed to kill regulations on greenhouse gas emissions.
By Neela Banerjee, Tribune Washington Bureau
November 7, 2010
Reporting from Washington — Faced with rising political attacks, hundreds of climate scientists are joining a broad campaign to push back against congressional conservatives who have threatened prominent researchers with investigations and vowed to kill regulations to rein in man-made greenhouse gas emissions.
The still-evolving efforts reveal a shift among climate scientists, many of whom have traditionally stayed out of politics and avoided the news media. Many now say they are willing to go toe-to-toe with their critics, some of whom gained new power after the Republicans won control of the House in last Tuesday's election.
I am very happy about this. While it is unfortunate that this part of the scientific community must aggressively point out that temperature readings don't lie, that the physics of greenhouse gases is established fact, that glaciers melt because it's warming, that humankind produces greenhouse gases, etc., the time has come.
Continuing from the article:
On Monday, the American Geophysical Union, the country's largest association of climate scientists, plans to announce that 700 climate scientists have agreed to speak out as experts on questions about global warming and the role of man-made air pollution.
Some are prepared to go before what they consider potentially hostile audiences on conservative talk-radio and television shows.
John Abraham of St. Thomas University in Minnesota, who last May wrote a widely disseminated response to climate-change skeptics, is pulling together a "Climate Rapid Response Team," which so far has more than three dozen leading scientists to defend the consensus on global warming in the scientific community. Some are also pulling together a handbook on the human causes of climate change, which they plan to start sending to U.S. high schools as early as this fall.
Rest of the article at the link.
Go science. Down with the troglodytes.