So, it's a hoax. What now?

What are the broader implications of last week's revelation that anthropogenic global warming researchers have allegedly engaged in potentially criminal and certainly not just massive academic fraud? With the reputations of several of the leading figures in agw research on the line, a ramped up attack against skeptics is likely to follow as part of a major pushback by the agw faithful. The latest accusations of intimidation and distortion, this time backed by emails written by the agw researchers themselves, are by far the most serious test of faith for environgelicals who view the coming of global warming as evangelicals view the second coming of Christ. While skeptics feel vindicated by what increasingly appears to be the mushroom cloud showing agw is the modernized tale of the Biblical Eden corrupted by the sin of carbon emissions, there is a real danger of reverting back to earlier worse habits that hurt the environmnent.

The issue up for debate isn't the impact of carbon emissions on global temperatures, but its extent. Well not really even. Many scientists doubt the connection between carbon and global warming and argue that past historical spikes in global temperature do not show any direct correlation at all. Moreover, skeptics have long argued that agw researchers have been cherry picking their data to exaggerate and then institutionalize the exaggeration of global warming. Aside from merely being incorrect, the exaggeration has been used by policy makers to legislate new tax schemes and wealth transfers that critics say will have devastating impact on the global economy.

Environgelicals have virtually monopolized the debate on global warming. Moreover, devotees in Big Hollywood have reliably propagated the faith with movie-Earth-friendly films and concerts that leave real-Earth carbon-footprints only slightly smaller than the egos of Hollywood divas. TV Networks also demonstrated their openness to diversity of thought by giving air-time to diverging ideas they approve and refusing to sell air-time to diverging views on global warming that they don't approve. At worst, skeptics were even hauled off into kangaroo courts, the most notorious of which was the trial of environmentalist Bjorn Lomborg under the Danish Committee on Scientific Dishonesty for writing "The Skeptical Environmentalist."

The global warming debate until now has mostly been defined by some agw believers calling skeptics "greedy, capitalist, hating deniers" and others disagreeing, "They're also sexist, racist, homophobic, conservative Republicans" and the media moderating by essentially agreeing with both. Many libertarians and liberals of course have been just as much on the forefront of the opposing side, despite the institutional "ban" on opposing views. But indeed, the defense of agw, like many politically-correct causes, has been lazy and one-sided. Like most politically-correct causes, there is a suspension of skepticism and intellectual rigor that places reason and proof on the backseat behind a Liberal understanding of tolerance - a tolerance that understands oppositions as either racist, sexist, or homophobic. There can no substantive disgreement. All dissent can be explained as a function of some latent self-hatred and bigotry of the agw atheist.

The next coming days will be very significant for they will reveal the direction of the public's attitudes not just toward the environment but honesty and accuracy in debates as well. If the media-created environmental heroes do turn out to be a ring of international racketeers in lab gowns, will there be a restoration of public skepticism not just over global warming but over other unassailable liberal policies as well such as health care, immigration, stimulus, affirmative action, race and gender issues among others?