You may be familiar with a proverb about making laws and making sausages: You don’t want to watch either process.

In my off-line life, I’m an attorney, a professional advocate. It’s my job — not to find the truth, but to win the argument for my side.

I’m not allowed to lie — but I don’t have to tell the whole truth. If there is evidence that proves I’m wrong, I’m not allowed to destroy it — but I certainly don’t tell my opponent about it. If there is an argument that blows a hole in mine, I calculate whether my opponent is smart enough to figure it out — and where the judge cares enough to do it for him. And I play by those rules even when I know I’m right and that my argument could stand on its own. (My opponent plays exactly the same way.)

That’s not being dishonest — it’s being an advocate. Advocacy is a game — a deadly serious one sometimes. And like any other game, you play to win — basically for the sake of winning — or you lose.

So now someone has hacked into a computer system and found that the scientists concerned with climate change are calculating how to win their argument, how to present their data to make it most convincing. Good for them. When are we going to see the e-mails from the climate-change deniers? Does anyone think they’re being any more high-minded? They’re doing the same thing, and I, for one, would be disappointed with them if they didn’t.

The facts remain: Climate-change is real. We have to deal with it seriously. We’re going to run out fossil fuels at some point anyway, so the sooner we face up to it, the better. The special interests will do anything to hold onto their wealth and power. And we have to break their power if we hope to have any future worth having.