Let me make it clear that there is still a level at which science is no more wrong than math is wrong, a level at which it eliminates whole orders of fanciful impossibilities—the component level. But the challenges cum opportunities of the new millennium are overwhelmingly at the level of whole systems and emergent behaviour which cannot be predicted in advance though it can always be rationalised as consistent with lower level laws with the curse of hindsight. And 1+1 still equals 2, at least where the units are the same. Where different there remains potential synergistic production of a whole which is greater than the sum of its parts.

We are reminded of this almost hourly with dispatches from Copenhagen and Minchin's rump where the "debate" is portrayed as being on the other side of science from the actual debate we need to have. Sustainability cannot be measured in ppm or °C, especially not when we have to get serious about the collapse of ocean ecosystems, of tropical rain forests, of food supply, of potable water, of non-coal energy supply, of monoculture agriculture, of soil exhastion long before the direct effects of carbon dioxide really cut in.

But, yes, the "Climategate" e-mails also speak to the underlying problem. A combination of careerist excess and impatience with the prominence given to the false debates has made too many members of the science establishment feel and act beleaguered, never more so in the month of what should be the greatest ever celebration of a publication's 150th anniversary. So science slides too easily into a habit of religiously defending the indefensible, and making sure its authority is unquestioned, both tactics so against the spirit of science before it encounter with the direction-free thrashings of the old media–old politics–law as first resort empire in decline.

Maybe it takes an old woman who does not pretend to be a scientist to put things in perspective.