Posted on 07/26/2014 5:40:29 AM PDT by Kaslin
Left-leaning environmentalists, media and academics have long railed against the alleged conservative war on science. They augment this vitriol with substantial money, books, documentaries and conference sessions devoted to protecting global warming alarmists from supposed harassment by climate chaos skeptics, whom they accuse of wanting to conduct fishing expeditions of alarmist emails and rifle their file cabinets in search of juicy material (which might expose collusion or manipulated science).
A primary target of this unjustified harassment has been Penn State University professor Dr. Michael Mann, creator of the infamous hockey stick temperature graph that purported to show a sudden spike in average planetary temperatures in recent decades, following centuries of supposedly stable climate. But at a recent AGU meeting a number of other persecuted scientists were trotted out to tell their story of how they have been attacked or had their research, policy demands or integrity questioned.
To fight back against this harassment, the American Geophysical Union actually created a Climate Science Legal Defense Fund, to pay mounting legal bills that these scientists have incurred. The AGU does not want any prying eyes to gain access to their emails or other information. These scientists and the AGU see themselves as Freedom Fighters in this war on science. Its a bizarre war.
While proclaiming victimhood, they detest and vilify any experts who express doubts that we face an imminent climate Armageddon. They refuse to debate any such skeptics, or permit nonbelievers to participate in conferences where endless panels insist that every imaginable and imagined ecological problem is due to fossil fuels. They use hysteria and hyperbole to advance claims that slashing fossil fuel use and carbon dioxide emissions will enable us to control Earths climate and that references to computer model predictions and extreme weather events justify skyrocketing energy costs, millions of lost jobs, and severe damage to peoples livelihoods, living standards, health and welfare.
Reality is vastly different from what these alarmist, environmentalist, academic, media and political elites attempt to convey.
In 2009, before Manns problems began, Greenpeace started attacking scientists it calls climate deniers, focusing its venom on seven scientists at four institutions, including the University of Virginia and University of Delaware. This anti-humanity group claimed its effort would bring greater transparency to the climate science discussion through educational and other charitable public interest activities. (If you believe that, send your bank account number to those Nigerians with millions in unclaimed cash.)
UVA administrators quickly agreed to turn over all archived records belonging to Dr. Patrick Michaels, a prominent climate chaos skeptic who had recently retired from the university. They did not seem to mind that no press coverage ensued, and certainly none that was critical of these Spanish Inquisition tactics.
However, when the American Tradition Institute later filed a similar FOIA request for Dr. Manns records, UVA marshaled the troops and launched a media circus, saying conservatives were harassing a leading climate scientist. The AGU, American Meteorological Society and American Association of University Professors (the nations college faculty union) rushed forward to lend their support. All the while, in a remarkable display of hypocrisy and double standards, UVA and these organizations continued to insist it was proper and ethical to turn all of Dr. Michaels material over to Greenpeace.
Meanwhile, although it had started out similarly, the scenario played out quite differently at the University of Delaware. Greenpeace targeted Dr. David Legates, demanding access to records related to his role as the Delaware State Climatologist. The University not only agreed to this. It went further, and demanded that Legates produce all his records regardless of whether they pertained to his role as State Climatologist, his position on the university faculty, or his outside speaking and writing activities, even though he had received no state money for any of this work. Everything was fair game.
But when the Competitive Enterprise Institute filed a FOIA request for documents belonging to several U of Delaware faculty members who had contributed to the IPCC, the university told CEI the states FOIA Law did not apply. (The hypocrisy and double standards disease is contagious.) Although one faculty contributor clearly had received state money for his climate change work, University Vice-President and General Counsel Lawrence White falsely claimed none of the individuals had received state funds.
When Legates approached White to inquire about the disparate treatment, White said Legates did not understand the law. State law did not require that White produce anything, White insisted, but also did not preclude him from doing so. Under threat of termination for failure to respond to the demands of a senior university official, Legates was required to allow White to inspect his emails and hardcopy files.
Legates subsequently sought outside legal advice. At this, his academic dean told him he had now gone too far. This puts you at odds with the University, she told him, and the College will no longer support anything you do. This remarkable threat was promptly implemented. Legates was terminated as the State Climatologist, removed from a state weather network he had been instrumental in organizing and operating, and banished from serving on any faculty committees.
Legates appealed to the AAUP the same union that had staunchly supported Mann at UVA. Although the local AAUP president had written extensively on the need to protect academic freedom, she told Legates that FOIA issues and actions taken by the University of Delawares vice-president and dean would not fall within the scope of the AAUP.
What about the precedent of the AAUP and other professional organizations supporting Dr. Mann so quickly and vigorously? Where was the legal defense fund to pay Legates legal bills? Fuggedaboutit.
In the end, it was shown that nothing White examined in Legates files originated from state funds. The State Climate Office had received no money while Legates was there, and the university funded none of Legates climate change research though state funds. This is important because, unlike in Virginia, Delawares FOIA law says that regarding university faculty, only state-funded work is subject to FOIA.
That means White used his position to bully and attack Legates for his scientific views pure and simple. Moreover, a 1991 federal arbitration case had ruled that the University of Delaware had violated another faculty members academic freedom when it examined the content of her research. But now, more than twenty years later, U Del was at it again.
Obviously, academic freedom means nothing when ones views differ from the liberal faculty majority or when they contrast with views and science that garners the university millions of dollars a year from government, foundation, corporate and other sources, to advance the alarmist climate change agenda. All these institutions are intolerant of research by scientists like Legates, because they fear losing grant money if they permit contrarian views, discussions, debates or anything that questions the climate chaos consensus. At this point, academic freedom and free speech obviously apply only to advance selected political agendas, and campus diversity exists in everything but opinions.
Climate alarmists have been implicated in the ClimateGate scandal, for conspiring to prevent their adversaries from receiving grants, publishing scientific papers, and advancing their careers. Yet they are staunchly supported by their universities, professional organizations, union and groups like Greenpeace.
Meanwhile, climate disaster skeptics are vilified and harassed by these same groups, who pretend they are fighting to let scientists conduct research without the threat of politically motivated attacks. Far worse, we taxpayers are paying the tab for the junk science and then getting stuck with regulations, soaring energy bills, lost jobs and reduced living standards based on that bogus science.
Right now, the climate alarmists appear to be winning their war on honest science. But storm clouds are gathering, and a powerful counteroffensive is heading their way.
It is appalling as a person that has studied many branches of science ever since I was a child how these phonies can get away with using terms like “science denier” or “war on science”, when they really know it’s all about trying to shame people into buying into their crackpot man-made global warming theory.
As if if you don’t subscribe to one theory, then that means that the entire spectrum of science from Astrophysics to Zoology is something you also “don’t believe in”.
Never mind how many scientific theories and findings are contradicted and overturned on a daily basis by people that didn’t agree with the “science” of the original findings.
And it if hilarious how these same people believe that homosexuality is biologically normal, and genetic, or that a fetus is just a “blob of tissue” and not a human.
But they claim we are waging a war on science?
Albert Einstein was a real theoretical scientist. He presented his theories and stepped aside to let others prove or disprove them.
That is an awesome graphic. I should print it out and post it on my desk as a handy reference guide.
Bump
And, importantly, his theories were provable.
ping
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