Posted on 02/11/2014 12:59:13 AM PST by neverdem
Over at Forbes, Patrick Michaels, Director of the Center for the Study of Science at the Cato Institute and a senior fellow in research and economic development at George Mason University, has written a serious and thought-provoking piece regarding the deleterious impact of the fraud of global warming on the world scientific community. Michaels, citing an article in the Australian literary journal, Quadrant, by Garth Paltridge, whom Michaels characterizes as one of the world's most respected atmospheric scientists, posits a harsh view of the inevitable and devastating impact of the current climate change hysteria on future scientific research.
For those of us who have smelled a rat since the outset of this latest "sky is falling" phenomenon, there's little in the article to surprise us and a whole lot of material to support "I told ya so's." As we Deniers long suspected, Paltridge and Michaels lay the blame for the specious science supporting the Goreist fanaticism right at the feet of leftist politics and federal funding. Says Paltridge:
"...the average man in the street, a sensible chap who by now can smell the signs of an oversold environmental campaign from miles away, is beginning to suspect that it is politics rather than science which is driving the issue."...
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Some say science isn’t political... {{{snort}}}
Bump
The referenced Quadrant article:
http://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2014/01-02/fundamental-uncertainties-climate-change/
Thanks for the quadrant link!
There have been discussions and publications for decades and decades on the confluence of politics and science.
Global warming as a political campaign issue is nothing new. What is different about it is the scale of its political support at its peak, spanning the world and its political societies and bodies with an ultimate push inside the dysfunctional United Nations and the leftist media outlets.
And of course a now thoroughly devalued Nobel Peace Prize for a very disturbed person by the name of Al Gore.
Excellent articles, thanks for posting them and thanks for the thread.
What a depressing article (the Quadrant article, particularly).
Not depressing because, it is true, the hoax is unravelling (and that is GOOD) but depressing because there not just good people and good scientists who have allowed themselves to be taken in by this, but science in general.
There was a time when science was respected, and real scientists were perceived as having principles based on truth and reality. Whether true or not, the perception was there. And, after all, it wasn’t just perception. To make great inventions and discoveries, you generally have to see things factually. We used to have people inventing light bulbs and penicillin or discovering DNA. Now we have people inventing Facebook.
Now, like the article where the guy says his first reaction and focus won’t necessarily be the results of the science but a cynical “So, who funds you?”, scientists have been brought to the level of integrity of politicians, and that isn’t a good thing.
Sadly, too, there are many otherwise good people who went along with this because they trusted and believed in the science and the scientists. And those people contributed to the harm caused. They gave the political movements behind this de facto respectability.
In the end, the whole mess was about power and money. We may have avoided driving over that cliff and granting our rights and livelihoods lock, stock and barrel to Greenpeace and their ilk. The liberals overplayed their hand, like Chirac and his statement when he thought he was in a safe place to speak his mind about the AGW movement being the “First step towards global governance”.
Normally, we might sarcastically say “Gee, you say that like it is a GOOD thing...” when in actuality, he DID mean it as a good thing.
They bared their teeth a little too early, and in the end, we might just escape them.
Well, I should say, “real” science shouldn’t be.
But this ain’t real science.
It seems I'll need a LARGER grant than first estimated.
There is a line that Ayn Rand wrote in Atlas Shrugged that nailed it down. I can’t remember who said it or to whom in the book but I cannot forget the basic point which was this, “FREE scientific inquiry” is a redundancy and “GOVERNMENTAL scientific inquiry” is an oxymoron. I might state it as TRUTH IS NOT BOUGHT WITH TAX MONEY.
An additional factor:
I can remember experiments in high school physics where we had to roll balls down a track and time how long it took them to reach certain points. As you might imagine, clicking a stopwatch at exactly the right instant was as much art as science. It required good attention and good reflexes.
I knew what the answers were “supposed” to be, but I dutifully did the experiment as designed and was not surprised to have some data points that didn’t perfectly fit the expected curve. Other students, who knew what the outcome was supposed to be, faked their data, so that it would exactly match the acceleration curve. To my surprise, they got better grades because they had the “right” data. The teacher was apparently too stupid to understand concepts like experimental error. He rewarded students who lied to make their “data” fit.
I wonder how much of that went on in other schools across the country. I wonder how often that still happens today in schools and in real laboratories.
As a scientist, trying to explain scientific matters here on FR, I constantly have to explain that medical science is not "climate change" science. People do paint all of us with very broad brushes that are simply not justified.
Although I guess that medical science does have its own version of "climate science"--for example, in nutrition science where too often, broad unsupported conclusions are made because a statistical correlation was found in a huge retrospective study. The problems there arise from the fact that many people--the authors of those studies included--do not recognize what those studies really do, and are often looking to prove predetermined outcomes by those studies.
Anyway, I could go on and on about the misuse of science to promote agendas...but I will stop here.
When these so-called ‘scientists’ ban together in secretive cabals and plot to suppress legitimate contrary scientific papers, articles by legitimate scientists who don’t subscribe to their mania, and any public voicing of difference, it isn’t hard to see how they got away with it.
With people like NASA’s Hansen, PSUs Michael Mann, and EA-CRUs Phil Jones colluding months and years on end to fake data, hide exculpatory data, and to cherry pick data it’s not hard to see how Al Gore got all the self-serving evidence he needed.
bfl
It sounds like your teacher understood how modern science works. It also says a lot about the teacher certification system.
Same goes for second hand smoke.
I’m seeing ads by the gov now that show a kid in his 20s as a quadruple amputee due to smoking.
And as if that didn't devalue the Nobel enough, they gave one to obama too.
That is a great comparison, and it makes me crazy.
Coffee is good for you. Coffee is bad for you. Repeat cycle.
Wine is good for you. Wine is bad for you. Repeat cycle.
Vitamin E is good for you. Vitamin E is bad for you. Repeat cycle.
Iron is good for you. Iron is bad for you. Repeat cycle.
And so on.
I have reached the point I ignore that stuff completely. But some people just oscillate up and down with each pronouncement from some bozo on ABC evening news.
Coffee is good for you. Coffee is bad for you. Repeat cycle.
This “oversold” BS hit me on a chairlift ride this weekend, sitting next to a Yale grad student studying “climate policy” at the Yale Forestry School. She was going on about how winter is “becoming extinct”. I’d just read that Quadrant piece. I politely said “gee I hope you’re wrong”.
Ironic that she was more than willing to burn all the fossil fuel it took her to get from New Haven to Vermont ... and then to ride a chairlift up a mountain all day.
Gotta be accurate!
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