France's Minister for Science: "Cannot Decide Who's Right and Wrong in a Scientific Debate." (April 12, 2010)

Martin Enserink reporting from Paris for Science has written that the French science minister, Valérie Pécresse, early this month received a letter signed by more than 500 French researchers asking her to repudiate claims made by former French science minister (1997-2000) Claude Allègre in his recent book, L'imposture climatique (The Climate Fraud), which "contains scathing attack[s] on the climate research field and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Allègre, an emeritus geochemist from the Institute of Earth Physics of Paris (IPGP), describes the field as a 'mafia-like' system built around a 'baseless myth.'"

To date the book has sold over 110,000 copies and probably it is its popularity that has sparked the letter to Mdm Pécresse which accuses "Allègre and IPGP Director Vincent Courtillot—a self-described 'moderate global warming skeptic' who also expressed doubts about IPCC's conclusions in a book last year— of having made 'false accusations' and [who] 'have forgotten the basic principles of scientific ethics, breaking the moral pact that binds every scientist to society.'"

As an example of blatant misrepresentation of data by the former science minister is the hand-drawn  chart of global temperature from 500 - 2000 C.E. As Science reports, the chart is: "adapted from a 2008 paper in Climate Dynamics by Swedish paleoclimatologist Håkan Grudd. After he was alerted to Allègre's graph, Grudd noticed that until 1900 it largely matched his version. After that, the two started diverging, and whereas Grudd's graph ended in 2004, Allègre's continued with sharply declining temperatures, in an apparent extrapolation of global cooling, until 2100. In a statement he sent to Science, Grudd calls the changes "misleading and unethical." Other climate scientists found similar problems. Louise Sime of the British Antarctic Survey says a graph Allègre attributed to her "is not an accurate drawing of anything. ... It has nothing to do with my work."

Up or down? Paleoclimatologist Håkan Grudd says his temperature

graph (red) doesn't match one drawn by Claude Allègre (black).

Mdm Pécresse has expressed her trust in French climate science and has asked the Academy of Sciences to organize a debate about the research. But she will not choose sides, a ministry spokesperson says: "The minister cannot decide who's right and wrong in a scientific debate."

Comparable indecision caused Hamlet and his kith and kin considerable grief, and truth be told Minister Pécresse is not the only influential politician suffering from the affliction when it comes developing policy with regard to the anthropogenic effect on Earth's climate to the delight of short-sighted vested interests.