Like most sensible people, I believe that human-caused climate change is a grave threat, but I urge you not to move [state Climatologist] George Taylor's office to a state agency and replace him. This would be ethically wrong, and would cause tremendous political damage.
- It's a violation of his academic freedom. If he's wrong, better to just let him turn into a laughingstock as evidence piles up against him.
- Firing an academician for political reasons will make him into a political martyr.
- It will backfire on us liberals more broadly. Conservative bloggers are drooling over the chance to prove us "hypocrites" for preaching tolerance and freedom of thought while persecuting those with a different viewpoint. Please don't prove them right!
- It plays right into the key claims of the skeptics: that the science cannot be trusted because scientists are biased, promoting climate theory to get more research dollars, and that dissenters would lose their jobs. Again, please don't prove them right!
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