What's Your Motivation?

Climate activists have their own motivations -- and they aren't forthcoming about them

Ever since the emails demonstrating the extent to which researchers at East Anglia University's Hadley Climate Research Unit have put their desired results ahead of the actual science, the climate activists who have promoted the "scientific consensus" have been looking for any way they can spin the story to their benefit.

Recently, Greenpeace Canada accused those who leaked the CRU emails of being "politically motivated".

"People are going to look at the solid body of scientific evidence that is out there and realize that this is really a distraction and a politically motivated one," complained Greenpeace Canada Executive Director Bruce Cox. "I think there are probably vested interests out there that knew that this would harshly -- I don't want to say derail -- but would act as a distraction."

"Clearly it's a huge distraction from what needs to be done in Copenhagen," Cox concluded.

To which one can honestly only ask: what, precisely, is Greenpeace's motivation?

The argument, to date, has been that science clearly demonstrates that an environmental cataclysm is on the horizon. But the climategate emails clearly demonstrate that there is more afoot than simply science. In many cases, the emails reveal attempts by the Hadley Climate Research Unit to intentionally skew their own results to meet the conclusions they wanted.

In other words, the climategate emails cast serious doubt on the quality and veracity of the science that has been the foundation of climate activism.

It's perhaps for this reason more than any that individuals like Cox -- and Green Party leader Elizabeth May -- have been so desperate to spin the issue any which way they can.

For her own part, May wants to make the story not about the subversion of the scientific process made so evident by the CRU emails, but rather about the leak itself.

"Strange, isn’t it that media are not wondering about who hacked into the computers and who paid them?" May asked in a recent post on the DeSmog blog.

Not only is May more than willing to skip over all the emails that demonstrate the manner in which the members of the Hadley CRU threw out entire data sets that didn't support the findings they wanted, but she's also treating the internal investigation launched at East Anglia University as a potentially persuasive exhoneration.

"Certainly nothing in these emails suggests any problem with fundamental science," May insists. "Dr Phil Jones, who headed up the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia, has just stepped aside during the investigation. My money is on a full exoneration for him."

So May expects the East Anglia CRU to investigate itself, and naturally has no doubt that Jones will be exhonerated. For reasons that are self-evident.

And just as Elizabeth May has made her own motivation -- getting elected to Parliament -- self-evident, so have various other climate activists. Al Gore has profited handsomely from the controversy. George Monbiot imagines climate talks like the Copenhagen summit will eventually lead to the establishment of a World Parliament.

That, even amongst all of this, these people can find it in themselves to question the motivation of those blowing the whistle on them, even as the need for that whistle-blowing becomes perfectly evident, simply demonstrates the extent to which they expect people to overlook their questionable motivations.

More and more people are beginning to question the motivations of people like Brian Cox and Elizabeth May. Maybe if they were more forthcoming about their motivations, manipulations like those evident in the Climategate emails would have never been necessary.