As physicist and climate historian Spencer Weart told The Washington Post: "...[W]e've never before seen a set of people accuse an entire community of scientists of deliberate deception and other professional malfeasance..."
There are two hypotheses that might explain this behavior. The first is unprecedented boldness of the enemies of science. The second is one I suspect Dr. Weart is not yet ready to face.
The important criticism of climate science is very different from the criticism that Spencer Weart choses to respond to.
Compare the financial crisis and the climate crisis. The
origin of the financial crisis lies in people
believing. Believing that house prices never fall, believing
that structured financial products reduce risk. Critics do
not impugn the motives of the believers. Helping minorities
to buy houses, moving financial risk to those who can
shoulder it, these are noble aims. Critics complain that
those in charge should have been intellectually rigorous but
were merely well meaning and enthusiastic and that this was
sufficient to cause disaster.
Contrast this with the climate crisis. Climate science is
excused its bumbling amateurism on the grounds that ad hoc
adjustments to the data are not sinister. The excuse for
losing the raw data and the calibration scripts is that, far
from attempting a fraud, the researchers are well meaning
and enthusiastic.
We want to know whether the hypothesis of anthropogenic
global warming is true. The allegation against against
climate scientists is that they should have been
intellectually rigorous but that they stand revealed as, at
best, merely well meaning and enthusiastic. This works no
better in science than it does in finance.
There are two hypotheses that might explain this behavior. The first is unprecedented boldness of the enemies of science. The second is one I suspect Dr. Weart is not yet ready to face.