Global warming and the chilling of politics
...For critics - variously described by climate-change advocates as ‘sceptics’ or even ‘deniers’ - the IPCC’s problems, and the palpable interference of governments in what is often presented as a purely science-led process, shows that the science is not really as scientific as is made out. Rather, say the critics, the science has been compromised by politics: it has been politicised....

...But there’s a bigger problem here than the IPCC’s consistently dodgy science, underpinned by behind-the-scenes politicking. Because while it’s partially right to say that the IPCC has always been a thoroughly politicised institution, rather than a purely scientific one, that isn’t the main issue. The important thing to grasp is that the IPCC has acquired this role, this supreme policy-determining function, in the absence of politics proper. The science of climate change has, over the past two decades, become a substitute for political argument, a means to justify and legitimate policies and politicians. Whereas once a political vision, an idea of the good life, might have guided a set of policies, now it is The Science, and a modelled idea of the not-so-good life, which determines policies. Climate-change science is therefore called upon to fill in the big ideas-shaped hole at the heart of contemporary public and political life. It is there to tell us, and our rulers, what to do. The IPCC exists because of a profound political need for it to. ...