Thomas Sowell writes in the National Review

The ‘Science’ Mantra

Excerpt:

Today, politicized “science” has too big a stake in the global warming hysteria to let the facts speak for themselves and let the chips fall where they may. Too many people - in politics and in the media, as well as among those climate scientists who are promoting global warming hysteria - let the raw data on which their calculations have been based fall into the “wrong hands.”

People who talk about the corrupting influence of money seem to automatically assume that it is only private money that is corrupting. But, when governments have billions of dollars invested in the global-warming crusade, massive programs are underway, and whole political careers are at risk if that crusade gets undermined, do not expect the disinterested search for truth.

Among the intelligentsia, there have always been many who are ready to jump on virtually any bandwagon that will take them to the promised land, where the wise and noble few - like themselves - can take the rest of us poor dummies in hand and tell us how we had better change the way we live our lives.

No doubt some climate scientists honestly believe that global warming poses a threat. But other climate scientists honestly believe the opposite. That is why the raw data have had to be destroyed before the latter get their hands on it.

This is tragically the case as regards many other issues, besides global warming, where data are made available only to the true believers and kept out of the hands of those who think otherwise.

When climatologists such as John Coleman debunk AGW, the believers contest that he is not the right kind of scientist to dispute the “science”.  He is after all “just a weatherman”.

Al Gore is certainly no scientist and has less credentials than John Coleman on the subject.  Yet he is considered an authority on the subject by the believers. The “science” is debatable; the “certainty” is disturbing. Gore has consistently refused to debate the issue. “The debate is over” is certainly not the language of science. Nor is treating skeptics like heretics.

Climate Gate has shown that even “scientists” can be biased by the influence of money.  For every “scientist” that supports AGW there is a “scientist” debunking it.

The greater fallacies in the AGW argument are fallacies of logic, not science.  The idea of certainty in such a hugely uncertain and massive realm just defies common sense.

Science welcomes skepticism, religions generally do not.

George Will writes on Climate Gate in the Washington Post; The Climate -change travesty

Excerpt:

Barack Obama, understanding the histrionics required in climate-change debates, promises that U.S. emissions in 2050 will be 83 percent below 2005 levels. If so, 2050 emissions will equal those in 1910, when there were 92 million Americans. But there will be 420 million Americans in 2050, so Obama’s promise means that per capita emissions then will be about what they were in 1875. That. Will. Not. Happen.

Were their science as unassailable as they insist it is, and were the consensus as broad as they say it is, and were they as brave as they claim to be, they would not be “goaded” into intellectual corruption. Nor would they meretriciously bandy the word “deniers” to disparage skepticism that shocks communicants in the faith-based global warming community.

Bjorn Lomborg is an economist who writes on global warming.  He acknowledges that the global warming exists, but he doubts the severity of the problem and the potential for success from many of the misguided policies being proposed.

In the 8/28/09 Wall Street Journal Lomborg  notes in “Technology Can Fight Global Warming” that there are many much less costly solutions to the problem than onerous policies that restrict growth and seem nearly politically impossible.  Increase planting of trees, for example,  would absorb expelled CO2.

More intriguing is a proposal from J. Eric Bickel and Lee lane to have boats spray seawater into clouds above the ocean reflecting more sunlight back into space.  While costing billions it would seem small compared to the costs of the growth killing government proposals.  Similar proposals have been made to lighten the color of our asphalt and roof tiles to reduce heat absorption.

While these proposals are questionable the idea of seeking better and more cost effective solution in applications of technology rather than in cumbersome and destructive government policies is worthy of strong consideration if we can extract political ideology from the science.

One of the commonly acknowledged grave mistakes of the response to the Depression of 1929 was the Smoot Hawley Tarriff, which largely killed foreign trade in an effort to save domestic jobs.  Not only did it make the depression worse it created many of the global economic conditions that led to World War II.

The insidious cap and trade legislation threatens to make the same mistake. Acknowledging that the bill will kill American jobs our vapid leaders’ response is to use trade restrictions to penalize countries that do not comply with our plan to control the weather . This can only make a bad economy much worse.

While President Obama has criticized American arrogance in the field of foreign affairs, what could be more arrogant than America, who has consumed and produced her way to the top of the economic pyramid,  now seeking to deny the resources to poorer countries to grow their economies.

We should expect retaliatory tariffs that will hurt our exporters and as other countries develop their own middle class, they will be less and less dependent on American consumers.  If other countries do not follow our cap and trade model our efforts will have practically no effect of climate temperatures.

Obama considered previous administrations arrogant for trying to impose political systems of freedom and democracy on other nations.  He is even more arrogant for believing he can control global tempreatures, and then trying to force  other nations to comply with a very uncertain and questionable program with trade restrictions.  We will be the greater victims if this policy.

The episode of Joe McCarthy’s communist witch hunt including the blacklisting of Hollywood writers with suspected, rarely proven (as if that should even matter), communist ties was one of our most embarrassing episodes in our recent history.

McCarthy was able to capitalize on the fears of world communist domination to scare us into trashing our most basic liberties such as free press and due process. The actual arrest of a few communist spies was just like adding gasoline to the fires of fear.

Anyone who opposed McCarthy was deemed suspect and thus was dissent squashed and reason trampled. Apparently the witch hunt started with an uneventful speech that was surprisingly given legs by unexpected press coverage. But once the story got legs McCarthy rode it for all it was worth until the fateful hearings when the Senator starting charging the Army with harboring communists; It was then that Joseph Nye, the army’s chief legal representative, startled the Senator and the Chamber with his famous smack down, “”Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”

That comment was greeted with applause, and McCarthy quickly descended into shame and oblivion, and faced censure in the Senate. Edward R. Murrow also took a courageous stand on his show, “His primary achievement has been in confusing the public mind, as between the internal and the external threats of Communism. We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men. [...] We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home. The actions of the junior Senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad, and given considerable comfort to our enemies. And whose fault is that? Not really his. He didn’t create this situation of fear; he merely exploited it — and rather successfully.”

In spite of a free press and unlimited sources of information we have not escaped the dangers of a sycophantic press who fear being called ‘racist’ for challenging the reason or policy of a minority, or a ‘denier’ (i.e. as in ‘holocaust denier’ ) for challenging the claim ‘the debate is over’ (Al Gore’s response to challenges about global warming) when in fact the debate never occurred. Such accusations bring the same chill to dissent as ‘communist’ did from Joe McCarthy.

Any challenge to a political orthodoxy must come from within its own party to be effective. The opposition is never taken seriously and in this new era where most seek or filter the news to confirm their existing opinion, calls for change and contrary evidence cannot even be heard.

But we should remember Joseph Nye and Edward Murrow that it just takes one voice to expose a fraud and stop it dead in its tracks.

June 24, 2009

After Global Warming
by Larrey Anderson
see whole article here.

I have been skeptical of the claims about global warming and environmental crisis for some time, not because I have any scientific insight, but because so many adherents act like religious fanatics rather than skeptical scientists.

A position doesn’t magically become true because its proponents yell louder or humiliate the opponents with greater disrespect. Moral crusades and political jihads do not make for good science.

As more scientific evidence casts serious questions about the certainty of global warming, the proponents act more like scorned religious fanatics than concerned scientists. They act more like their faith has been challenged than their facts or their methods.

There are serious questions whether global warming exists. If it does, and there is some evidence of it, there are serious questions whether it is caused by man or a part of a natural cycle. There is a question whether global warming is a bad thing; what is supposed to be the correct temperature?

But most of all there is serious damage to human life if we respond uncritically to a fear that may be unfounded. It is the developing countries that stand to lose the most from policies that restrain growth. We can help humanity much more by putting those resources into clean drinking water, curing AIDS, and eliminating polio than we can by adopting policies that are hugely expensive and may have an impact in 50 years….

… if we are right.

Politics and science seem to go together as well as politics and religion.

In college over three decades ago we used a terrific book in statistics called, “How to Lie with Statistics” by Darrell Huff. This has been more valuable to me in my post college education than any other book I can remember, and is still in print and available at Amazon.

One of the illustrated methods was to conduct hundreds of studies and only refer to the ones that reached the desired conclusions. Perhaps there were 100 groups testing toothpaste and one of the groups had a 60% reduction in cavities. The other groups had either an increase in cavities or no statistical variation. The other 99 groups are ignored and Madison Avenue births a successful toothpaste campaign.

With any sense of integrity this is a lie, both in intent and in effect. You would think our professional media would protect us against this but they are more often willing accomplices.

This same form of statistical lying is evident in the Global Dooming debate. Dissenting research and opinion is discarded and discredited. In American Thinker (see recommended sites) James Lewis writes:

Algorism means “I’m always right, no matter how the facts turn out.”

Global Dooming has a very simple explanation. There’s nothing new about it. It is just the human desire to create a millenarian narrative that fits our political biases, whipped on by the Politically Correct elites of this world, fed by a huge infusion of money into climate modeling and other dubious science, plus unprecedented media hype, and finally, the intimidation of thousands of rational skeptics.

This “madness of crowds” happens all the time. Charles MacKay wrote about it in 1841, in his book Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. Economics bubbles and busts are just one kind. But we can see a lush diversity of other superstitions and mass delusions.

It is a shame that it is now corrupting normal science. In healthy science the burden of proof is always on the proposer of any hypothesis. But now the burden of proof is on the skeptics in the case of human-caused global warming. But you can’t prove a negative. As soon as the skeptics disprove one false claim, the Global Fraudsters are allowed to jump to another one, as long as they predict the same conclusion.

In real science the deck is never stacked against the skeptics. Rational skeptics are welcomed when people know what they are talking about. They can only help to sharpen the issues.

So this is not a scientific debate any more. Like the real estate bubble, the sub-prime mortgage bubble, the Year 2000 bubble and all the rest, there are billions of dollars riding on the outcome of the Global Doom scenarios. That’s why all those expensive folks lived it up in Bali, with their private jets, luxury hotels, and massive carbon footprint.

for the complete entry: http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/12/the_algorism_of_global_doom.html

from www.foxnews.com

Perfectly Natural

Many global warming activists point to changes in the arctic icecap as proof of the dangerous effects of man-made global warming. Now a report from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory says those changes are in fact the result of natural ocean circulation patterns. A team of scientists used satellite and deep-sea pressure gauge data to monitor ocean patterns.

Says team leader James Morison of the University of Washington’s Polar Science Center — “Our study confirms many changes seen in upper Arctic Ocean circulation in the 1990s were mostly decadal in nature, rather than trends caused by global warming.”