An informal group of scientists, theologians, and philosophers of which I’m a part got to discussing the lack of critical thinking ability that plagues much environmental discussion. One correspondent said that while she agreed that there was great need to emphasize and cultivate critical thinking, critics of environmentalism need to distinguish between “environmentalists who do their homework and those who make snap judgments on partial data.”

But I believe snap judgments on partial data aren’t really the primary problem. In my opinion, most rank-and-file movement environmentalists really believe they’re taking their positions on the basis of solid data, and certainly politicians, the media, environmental advocacy organizations, and even government and academic research institutions do all they can to promote that impression. “Doing their homework,” in other words, may contribute little to ensuring rational, epistemically warranted conclusions. Underlying the problem are two others, the first rooted in the second:

1. Particularly on alleged dangerous, anthropogenic global warming, highly influential scientists have fabricated, cherry picked, fallaciously “adjusted,” suppressed, and destroyed data in a clear effort to magnify both the magnitude of the alleged environmental problem (in this case, global warming) and to magnify the influence of human activity alleged to cause it. There is plenty of evidence in the Climategate documents and the whole history of the “hockey stick” controversy that this is so. The really fascinating question is why it is so. The usual response—follow the money—may indeed explain a great deal in terms of the corrupting effect of government funding on scientific research. But I really don’t believe that effect could have been so great had it not been for a deeper problem, namely:
2. The turn, over the last thirty or forty years, from “normal science” to “post-normal science,” on which I’ve written briefly and British scientist (and Christian) Kevin McGrane has written more extensively. The fact is that many in the scientific community no longer know how to do objective (to the extent humanly possible) scientific research, weren’t trained to do it, but were instead trained to use “research” methods (which can include a great deal of intentional fabrication, cherry picking, adjusting, suppressing, and destruction of data) to promote predetermined policy goals. Further, the formerly culture-wide commitment to basic honesty in Western civilization has collapsed, and now few in any field, science included, feel any great compunction against exaggerating or outright lying in the service of what they consider a worthy cause. Like the pseudo-Christian cults that borrow vocabulary from Christianity but redefine all the terms, post-normal science is simply the application of rhetoric borrowed from the sciences to policy debates, cloaking one particular policy preference with the authority of “science,” and successful at doing so only to the extent that policy makers and the public are ignorant of the fact that post-normal science isn’t science at all. It is part of the general war against the Logos that characterizes important branches of human thought in every generation and has in the last couple of hundred years especially characterized naturalism/secularism and, more recently, evised pagan, New Age, and Gnostic traditions.

This war must be fought at far more fundamental levels than most involved recognize. Axioms (presuppositions) and world views are the real battleground. Everything else is sideshow.