UPDATE: BEING PROPHETIC AND CLIMATEGATE

Given my recent post on the inconsistency between the professed environmental concerns of the Community of Christ and its responses to environmental issues, and given also my personal experience in giving scientific advice to government agencies, I feel an ethical obligation to comment on something being reported as “climategate”.

In the past few days, either hackers or whistleblowers have posted numerous e-mails on the web which have been obtained from Britain’s most prestigious climatic research center in East Anglia. This is the custodian of one of the most important models and climatic data sets that the international community (and the United States government) is relying upon in its plans for development of a “green economy” and greenhouse emissions regulations.

These e-mails appear to show, at minimum, a scientific establishment at East Anglia that has closed its mind to flaws in its own analyses, errors in its computer models, and to new data that might modify its previous conclusions or lead governments or citizens to support different policy preferences.

That increases the chance for policy errors. And hiding that fact from policy makers and the public opens the door for some of the most important decisions this generation of humans will make to be corrupted. I can’t imagine a more important case of possible scientific misconduct to be investigated.

GUEST POST: THE 80/20 CHRISTIAN

I’m cheap with graduation presents. My daughter, who posts as TH, just completed her Doctorate in Organizational Psychology — and all she got was this lousy guest post!

TH is also a High Priest in the Community of Christ who frequently challenges my thinking by perpetually asking, “Why?” I suspect she’ll be back at this blog in the future.

Here she draws on her academic expertise to discuss some practical insights into “why” and “how” we often need to reexamine priorities in living as Christians.

SCIENCE TRIBES

The Community of Christ is reconsidering its identity as it struggles with its early history. But historians and theologians are not the only disciplines with relevance to that debate and can not decide solely the “rules of evidence” on which conclusions will be drawn. The world has absolutely no need for another Protestant denomination.