... I would like to have Salon (in the interest of this subject) have credible, bona fide scientists who disagree with the anthropogenic perspective to debate the issue.

This will never happen for the simple reason that the people you describe don't exist.

Seriously, it is almost like trying to find a credible, independent physicist who claims to have disproven the modern theory of relativity. You can't, because they aren't there, because although many have tried they have all tried and failed.

Climate science is more about modeling than the classic observation/prediction type of research, so as such the math involved is statistical rather than purely deductive, and there will always be confidence estimates and ranges of results rather than flat-out, definitive answers.

But imprecision is not the same as inaccuracy. Modern global warming models are very good and getting better. As time goes by and the consensus grows stronger, if anything it means that a credible scientist has even more to gain from publishing some startling new results that show everyone else up and push research in a new direction.

The fact that nobody has done so speaks louder than all the whining in the world over climate Nazis.

If you want an example of how DUMB detroit executives are, you need merely look at their refusal to initiate higher gas mileage standards over the years. Not only should they have supported it, but they should have mandated that "clunkers" be destroyed by law as newer versions emerged.

I know, right? The idea that these people represent some kind of pure ideal of ruthless entrepreneurial capitalism — find a way to profit from anything — is self-evidently false. They were lazy and hide-bound and didn't want to change their habits of mind even for fatter profits. No wonder they got beat!

...the much larger number of us who must simply take it on faith that the scientists studying the climate and reporting on alarming changes in it are behaving in a fair, transparent, and unself-interested way, to the greatest extent humanly possible. It would be hard for most of us to read the e-mails in question objectively and not have that faith shaken, at least a bit.

Well if you start out placing your faith in scientists, you are going to have your faith shaken, that's a given. Scientists are people. Like all people, they are sometimes blind, they can overlook the obvious, they are capable of pigheadedness. Among them are liars, cheats, and thieves.

It is for precisely those reasons that the edifice of modern science exists. The scientific method, and the community of peers it engenders, is based on one principle more fundamental than all others, and that is falsifiability.

If someone can follow your methods and disprove your theory, they are "in" and you are "out." If your theory was cherished and long-held it will be gently and respectfully pushed aside, and you are permitted to occupy the same sort of golden fuzzy role reserved for other beloved has-beens like James Carville; otherwise, you and it are simply discarded together.

Similarly, if someone claims to have results that disprove you but cannot themselves be duplicated by anyone else, they are "out" and are "in", or you get to stay "in" for a little while longer.

Results talk, bullshit walks. Science is unforgiving in that respect, and it is for that reason and in that way that it is worthy of our faith.

It is unseemly to have one's faith in science shaken by the bad behavior of scientists. It is childish. It reflects an elementary-school understanding of how science actually works, of what makes it so effective, not dissimilar to the elementary-school platitudes offered by climate change deniers in venues like this letters section.

Andrew Leonard has the right idea. What the climate science community needs to do is step up to the responsibilities of its calling, nothing more and nothing less. They are right to be concerned about the ongoing fear/uncertainty/doubt campaign from the world's energy companies, but the worldwide consensus on global warming was formed in the face of the same antagonism and it formed because the actual science is indisputable.

Nothing industry groups could do will change that. Good scientists are not going to defect because industry gets its hands on raw data sets. But they might over the way the scientific community as a whole deals with the crisis.