Update: Naturally, right after I post this article, new information comes out that makes Climategate look even worse.  It’s been noted in the comments that Russian scientists are now saying outright that climate data from Russian weather stations has been tampered with in order to make it appear to substantiate claims of catastrophic man-made global warming:

On Tuesday, the Moscow-based Institute of Economic Analysis (IEA) issued a report claiming that the Hadley Center for Climate Change based at the headquarters of the British Meteorological Office in Exeter (Devon, England) had probably tampered with Russian-climate data.

The IEA believes that Russian meteorological-station data did not substantiate the anthropogenic global-warming theory. Analysts say Russian meteorological stations cover most of the country’s territory, and that the Hadley Center had used data submitted by only 25% of such stations in its reports. Over 40% of Russian territory was not included in global-temperature calculations for some other reasons, rather than the lack of meteorological stations and observations.

The data of stations located in areas not listed in the Hadley Climate Research Unit Temperature UK (HadCRUT) survey often does not show any substantial warming in the late 20th century and the early 21st century.

The plot thickens!  Original post follows…

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It’s been some time since we’ve had an update on the State of the Global Warming Consensus, and I’m happy to report that the Global Warming Consensus remains strong and unchallenged.  Well, strong and unchallenged barring that little e-mail and data leak from a few weeks ago that is really not an issue at all.  I mean, it’s not an issue at all except in the sense that it may have exposed some unethical scientific shenanigans by some of the biggest names in the pro-Anthropogenic Global Warming community, but that’s nothing to lose sleep over.  You might lose your job, but you shouldn’t lose sleep.  COPENHAGEN OR BUST!

Some background:  the Global Warming Consensus Watch/Alert series dates back to April of 2007, and from the start has been all about reminding us that the much-vaunted Scientific Consensus on Anthropogenic Global Warming was not nearly as untouchable as folks like Al Gore would have us believe.  The reality of the situation is slightly more nuanced than the Goracle would have us believe:  indeed, the planet has been warming over the last century, and has been since the end of the Little Ice Age.  The questions being confronted over the last few decades – and most intensely over the last couple of years – are whether the warming that has happened in the 20th century is primarily caused by human activity or is part of a larger natural process; and whether or not the warming poses significant problems for human society in the future.  (Dr. Jay Richards had a presentation on this very topic as a part of the 2008 Acton Lecture Series; you can view it here.)
Read more on Bumped – Global Warming Consensus Alert: Climategate…

The Acton Institute welcomes a new writer to the commentariat today with this piece on Climategate. The Rev. Gregory Jensen is a psychologist of religion and a priest of the Diocese of Chicago and the Midwest (Orthodox Church in America). He blogs at Koinonia.
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Science and the Demands of Virtue
By Rev. Gregory Jensen

Contrary to the popular understanding, the natural sciences are not morally neutral. Not only do the findings of science have moral implications, the actual work of scientific research presupposes that the researcher himself is a man of virtue. When scientific research is divorced from, or worse opposed to, the life of virtue it is not simply the research or the researcher that suffers but the whole human family.

Take for example, the scandal surrounding the conduct of researchers at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at East Anglia University in the UK. Whether or not the recently revealed emails and computer programs undermine the theory of anthropological global warning (AGW), it is clear that current public policy debate is based at least in part on the research of scientists of questionable virtue who sacrificed not only honesty and fair play but potentially the well being of us all in the service of their own political agenda.

All of this came to mind recently when a friend sent me a talk on the environment (Through Creation to the Creator) by the Orthodox theologian Metropolitan Kallistos Ware. Ware argues that all creation is “a symbol pointing beyond itself, a sacrament that embodies some deep secret at the heart of the universe.” Unlike the Gnosticism that holds sway in many areas of life (including scientific research) the Christian Church argues that the secret of creation is both knowable and known. Creation, Ware says, points beyond itself to “the Second Person of the Trinity, the Wisdom and Providence of God” Who is Himself both “the source and end” of all created being. Insofar as the Christian tradition has an environmental teaching at all it is this: Jesus Christ is the “all-embracing and unifying” Principal of creation. Read more on Science and the Demands of Virtue…

Via Beliefnet, Rev. Richard Cizik, formerly of the National Association of Evangelicals, who once called global warming the “third rail” of evangelical politics, and who also said that evangelicals “need to confront population control,” is at the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference.

Read more on Cizik on Copenhagen: A ‘God moment’…

In his essay, “Intellectuals and Socialism,” Friedrich Hayek asked how it was possible for a small group of people to have such influence on the ideas and politics that affected millions. He argued that it was because the socialists influenced the “influencers”–those “secondhand dealers in ideas” like the press, educators, and editors, who spread socialist thought into the mainstream.

Read more on Secular Uniculturalism and Christmas…

Amidst all the craziness of l’affaire d’Tigre there are some important questions being raised about the linkage between power, wealth, and faithfulness.

The Wealth Report at The Wall Street Journal asks, “Is it harder to stay faithful with large wealth?”

Read more on Wealth and Fidelity, Golf and Marriage…

Bruce Tinsley’s comic strip Mallard Fillmore has long been an excellent examination of conservative principles, current events, and problems associated with government interventionism. The strip appears in over 400 newspapers across the country. Yesterday featured a particularly simple and poignant strip humorously pointing out early attempts to crush the entrepreneurial spirit and the free market. The December 13 strip simply speaks for itself.

Read more on Yesterday’s Mallard Fillmore Comic…

Over at the Catholic Thing, Scott Walker looks at Climategate and the intolerant groupthink undergirding the “consensus” on global warming. He starts by offering a quote from sociologist Robert Nisbet on “the Enlightenment myth that the Catholic Church brutally oppressed Galileo. Our own time, Nisbet insisted, has seen much worse.”

Read more on Recommended Reading: The Galileo Code…

Place your order online at our webstore by December 18th for 10% off your entire order and to ensure delivery by Christmas. Use Promo Code CHRISTMAS10 at checkout.

See a list of special items on sale here.

Read more on Acton BookShoppe Christmas Sale…

On Dec. 3, MTV announced the launch of “A Thin Line,” a multi-year initiative aimed at stopping the spread of abuse through sexting, cyberbullying and digital dating. MTV says that the goal of the initiative is to empower America’s youth to identify, respond to and block the spread of the various forms of digital harassment. While MTV’s program deserves an honorable mention, the network misses the mark by ignoring its complicity in glorifying mores associated with sexting, bullying, and dating abuse, failing to promote the family, and failing to enlist religious leaders.

“A Thin Line” rolled out the same week MTV and The Associated Press released a report citing the full scope of digital abuse by teens and young adults. According to the study, 50 percent of 14-to-24-year-olds have been the target of some form of digital abuse, 30 percent have sent or received nude photos of other young people on their cell phones or online and 12 percent of those who have sexted have contemplated suicide, a rate four times higher than that found among those who have refrained.

During the program launch Stephen Friedman, general manager of MTV, says “there is a very thin line between private and public, this moment and forever, love and abuse, and words and wounds. ‘A Thin Line’ is built to empower our audience to draw their own line between digital use and digital abuse.”

While it helpfully encourages teens to report abuse, MTV seems incapable of getting to the root of the problem: namely, the cultivation of prudence that orients a teen’s choices at the outset. Empowering an audience of teenagers is futile if teens are not encouraged to tap the wisdom of their parents. Read more on MTV’s Wack Morality…

It’s not too late to order The Call of the Entrepreneur and The Birth of Freedom for stocking stuffers. An eye-opening report by Patrick Courrielche at Big Hollywood makes for a fine motivator. Some excerpts:

Read more on Zinn & the Art of Socialist Education…