Global Warming Is In The Eye Of The Beholder

The Stiletto ^ | August 21, 2006 | The Stiletto

[theothercheek]

The Washington Post marvels that scientists looking at the same data can come to wildly differing conclusions about whether global warming is real:

A year after Hurricane Katrina and other major storms battered the U.S. coast, the question of whether hurricanes are becoming more destructive because of global warming has become perhaps the most hotly contested question in the scientific debate over climate change.

Academics have published a flurry of papers either supporting or debunking the idea that warmer temperatures linked to human activity are fueling more intense storms. The issue remains unresolved, but it has acquired a political potency that has made both sides heavily invested in the outcome.

Paradoxically, the calm hurricane season in the Atlantic so far this year has only intensified the argument.

Both sides are using identical data but coming up with conflicting conclusions. ...

The Stiletto notes that The Post doesn’t mention where the Earth Policy Institute gets its funding. The article also fails to mention where James B. Elsner, of Florida State University, Judith A. Curry, of Georgia Tech, and Kerry Emmanuel of MIT – all of whom believe there is a link between global warming and hurricane intensity) - get the wherewithal to conduct their research. On the other hand, readers aren’t told where Phil Klotzbach, of Colorado State University (who disputes such a link), gets his funding.

Perhaps the reader is supposed to conclude that Ebell is less credible than the others because he is tainted by his association with, and funding from, an industry with a stake in the outcome of the debate. Unfortunately, readers cannot make similar inferences about the objectivity of the other experts quoted in the article who may also have a vested interest in the outcome of the debate.

It’s easy to figure out how the fossil-fuel industry benefits if global warming turns out to be a crock. But how do scientists on the other side benefit if greenhouse gasses are, in fact, causing cataclysmic atmospheric changes?

Here’s how: “Sexy” science (typically, politically correct lines of inquiry) brings all sorts of rewards from grant money, to well-appointed labs, to a veritable fiefdom of power and personnel within a university, to being on the cover of a newsweekly. ...

Empirical data is supposed to be impervious to slanting, shading or manipulation to fit a preconceived idea or result – and the scientific process depends upon allowing the data to lead to a conclusion rather than starting with a preconceived conclusion or bias and then “finding” data that support it. Once upon a time, this was how science was done. Thanks to greed, politics and vanity, not any more.

NOTE: This is an excerpt from "The Daily Blade" Feature.

SEE ALSO: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/19/AR2006081900354_pf.html

http://thestilettoblog.com/2006/08/08/on-the-cutting-edge-will-al-gore-update-his-powerpoint-presentation.aspx

[My2Cents]

marvels that scientists looking at the same data can come to wildly differing conclusions about whether global warming is real

It depends on the source of their research grant money.

[CedarDave]

Two of the biggest frauds spread and perpetrated by the drive-by media are global warming is caused by man and Saddam Hussein's Iraq did not have WMD's. Someday both frauds will be exposed and proved wrong.