By Dr. Robert Thorson

Does “climategate” (the fuss about e-mails stolen from the desktop of climate researcher Phil Jones at the University of East Anglia) sum up to something significant? Or is the media frenzy little more than a mountain made from a molehill by naysayer scientists, media corporations and blowhard politicians?

Based on a recent review by The Associated Press, during which five senior reporters examined more than a million words from 1,073 e-mails, the answers to the questions posed above are “yes” and “yes.”

The good news is that climategate is helping the public realize how science actually works. Ideally, this path to understanding is above reproach, yielding objective, apolitical answers that stand the test of time. But when human failings intrude, it becomes a messy institution on a par with religion, government, education and the military. Bias intrudes, priorities are poached, egos inflame, cliques consolidate, oversights are ignored, politicians take advantage and misconduct takes place.

But given enough time, the ship of science is self-correcting. The institution always rights itself, usually after considerable dissent, pain and lost opportunities.

The bad news is that sensationalist media outlets have, once again, prematurely stepped in to fan the flames of naysayer noise, feed our appetite for hubris and rationalize the veiled desire that we can have our carbon cake and eat it, too. Before the AP weighed in to help settle the allegations and denials, climategate had become a lynching party, with Jones, his colleagues and the vast majority of climate scientists (including me) accused of fondling data behind closed doors.

Let’s consider a fictional scenario, spun toward the opposite poles of news vs. no news.

A highly skilled hacker steals incriminating evidence from a cloistered British laboratory and publishes it for the whole world to see. This brave act brings down a powerful laboratory director caught red-handed instructing his associates to delete evidence inconsistent with their program funding objectives. With the conspiracy revealed, credentialed skeptics are vindicated, empowering citizens to dream the impossible dream, that fossil fuels can be burned without consequence.

The ethically motivated hacker steps forward, is found innocent of unlawful trespass, and becomes a cultural hero. A happy family exits an eight-lane interstate, parks an SUV at the Mall of America, and walks inside. The ship of science sinks.

Alternatively, it’s just another gray day on an English campus. An ordinary lab director skips breakfast, drives to work and begins dealing with the daily e-mail deluge. In various messages, he advises colleagues to substitute a series of poor-quality tree ring data with better data. Later, in a regrettable lapse of judgment, he asks these recipients to delete the correspondence, fearing that it will be misconstrued and misunderstood by politicians.

Suspecting a case of data fudging, an in-house colleague tips off the university administration, which creates an ad hoc internal investigating committee. After careful scrutiny, the committee verifies that the data management techniques were acceptable, that the terms “trick” and “hide the decline,” were figures of speech taken out of context and that the substituted data series had no real effect on the climate consensus. They exonerate the lab director of academic misconduct, but reprimand him for his sloppy handling of FOI requests and his disparaging remarks about other scientists. The following day, he walks across the parking lot preparing to send a few e-mails. The media never hears a word. The ship of science rights itself.

Now, back to nonfiction. The Arctic ice pack is disappearing. Greenland glaciers are melting to the point of collapse. It’s snowing more above the South Pole, but West Antarctica continues to calve icebergs larger than some countries. In both hemispheres, permafrost is thinning, releasing potentially staggering amounts of methane. Temperate lakes are freezing later or not at all. Subtropical lakes are desiccating. Equatorial ecosystems are shifting upward in altitude.

Around the globe, plants are flowering earlier and longer, animals are breeding and migrating out of sync with food resources, and human beings are watching Sarah Palin on TV.