When I testified before the U.S. Senate on Dec. 6, 2006, I stated that the public was "vastly misinformed” on global warming, and that "there is no sound scientific basis for predicting future climate change with any degree of certainty.” Since the "climategate” scandal broke, the global warming hoax has collapsed like a house of rotten cards.

The earth hasn’t warmed appreciably for the past decade. There is no significant evidence that our climate has changed, or that the mild warming of the last 150 years can be attributed to anything other than natural variation. The poles aren’t melting, polar bears are thriving, and last year’s Atlantic hurricane season was below average in activity. And this bitter winter has brought home to Oklahomans the undeniable truth that cold weather is inherently more inclement than warm. The Christmas Eve blizzard of 2009 was directly responsible for the deaths of at least nine people, and seven more died as a result of the recent storm that peaked on Jan. 29.

For telling the truth as I saw it, I was called a "denier” who didn’t care about the environment or the future. I was accosted by angry students. A group of senior meteorologists at the University of Oklahoma publicly claimed that I was attempting to deliberately misinform people.

But the climategate e-mails demonstrate that it’s not skeptics like me who have been misleading and misinforming the public. Climate researchers conspired to suppress the publication of dissenting views. Data were distorted and hidden for political purposes. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, that supposed bastion of objective and reliable science, has been revealed to be a political body that tendentiously manipulates data for ideological reasons. And we are just now learning that some of the IPCC’s wild predictions weren’t based upon scientific study, but upon speculative and self-serving claims invented by environmental advocacy groups.

In October 2007, the Oklahoma Climatological Survey released a statement on climate change that asserted "the climate will continue to warm through the 21st century.” We shouldn’t confuse weather with climate. But the 2007 report by the OCS explicitly predicted "warmer winters” and "fewer cold-air outbreaks and extremes.” The authors of the survey report were wrong. The second half of 2009 was "exceptionally cool,” and last October was the coldest October in Oklahoma since record keeping began in 1895. As a result of misinformation provided by the OCS, Oklahoma was ill-prepared for the severe winter weather we are currently experiencing.

Why was I, a geologist, able to get it right, while the professional climatologists got it wrong? The OCS report relied upon junk science produced by the IPCC. Political ideology was substituted for science. And intolerance produces bad science.

Deming is associate professor of arts and sciences at the University of Oklahoma.