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Global Warming on 15-Year Hold
April 2, 2012 | 12 comments
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Suddenly This Summer
March 31, 2012 | 8 comments
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FakeGate: Just Another Day at Team Green
February 22, 2012 | 7 comments
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“Climate” and the Campaign
January 12, 2012 | 8 comments
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Germany’s Green Bubble Follows Spain’s; Will Congress Waste More Billions on Ours?
December 15, 2011 | 3 comments
The Spectacle Blog
Slate has a piece noting that the politicization of scientific issues might trace back to the skew of the politics of scientists (and offering a useful exercise: “When President Obama appears Wednesday on Discovery Channel’s Mythbusters (9 p.m. ET), he will be there not just to encourage youngsters to do their science homework but also to reinforce the idea that Democrats are the party of science and rationality. And why not? Most scientists are already on his side. Imagine if George W. Bush had tried such a stunt.”).
Which note about the skew is also a worthwhile point, one at the heart of my response when answering the inevitable question: how did ‘global warming’ get so politicized? A quick check reveals how, some years ago, scientists leading the charge on the issue slipped the rails of science to show their true driver, leaping instead headlong into… demanding policies, even as — despite billions of dollars and by now decades — they could not manage to make their case beyond the un-compelling ‘I can’t explain it any other way’ or ‘my computer model says so’. Policy is partisan. So, we see, are policy-demanding scientists. So, then, becomes the issue.
And we see this contemporaneously. Note the recent call by some pretty hard-lefty scientists at Rutgers getting all bent out of shape because Gov. Chris Christie rather soberly indicated the alarmists have still yet to be able to make their case (though he has in the meantime become the first governor to move all state-level cap-and-trade revenues on-budget).
Among them, a Castro toady (oddly, the original of this item has been taken down), and a fellow who says this.
“Paul Falkowski, director of the Rutgers University Energy Institute, said global warming doubts are based on politics and personal beliefs, not science. ‘There is no honest argument against human climate change. The issues now rely primarily on political dialogue on how we’re going to move this country forward,’ he said.” (emphases added)
So, yes, the good professor is on to something, even if some glaring projection leaves his telescope turned around. Though not such that he can’t still keep talking, and prove too much.
View all comments (8) | Leave a comment
More Blog Posts by Chris Horner
http://spectator.org/blog/2010/12/11/political-science
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bobmontgomery| 12.11.10 @ 3:39PM
A professor at Rutgers is going to "move this country forward"? We think not. We have discovered that the Earth is round, Professor. And we have had enough of your ilk attempting to "move the country forward."
Occam's Tool| 12.11.10 @ 10:24PM
The science is quite controversial, as well it should be.
I always like PJ O'Rourke on the subject of mandates in politics. (He was specifically discussing taxes) He stated that since ultimately the power of taxation was the power to shoot your grandmother (much funnier the way he put it), one should be very careful how one madates things.
My job consists every day of balancing people's rights with the potential of their deaths if the rights aren't temporarily removed so this strikes me where I live. I find that I do my best by stepping as lightly as possible on freedom. But, then again, I have trust in the American people, which Al Gore and Barack Obama do not.
Mel Torme| 12.12.10 @ 10:36AM
Let me try to give you my best answer to your question: "how did 'global warming' get so politicized?", Chris.
I think the answer has three components, the scientists, the stupid, and the evil (or, the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, respectively). No, Clint Eastwood is neither of the three this time. Let me break this post up into 3 posts on these 3 areas, as it got a bit out of hand length-wise.
Mel Torme| 12.12.10 @ 10:47AM
The Good
(well, really, The Fairly Decent)
The scientists: most people, no matter what job they do for a living, like to think they are making some difference in their world. This goes for anyone, and more so for scientists, as an occasional scientist will discover something that really does make a huge difference (though it's the engineers that do the hard work of building a reality of any pie-in-the-sky idea).
So, I don't think all of the scientists working in the climate field are corrupt; in fact, maybe only a few percent are. However, there are many who want to feel good being a part of "saving the world", even though their small contribution to climate science does not prove anything. If you've read some of the more mundane science fiction novels and seen any recent hollywood S.F. movies , it's always the scientists who save humanity (not like real life at all). Scientists love to go to the conferences and present papers to an audience (especially the young co-ed grad. students with the tight ... and the journalists) to present something that shows they are part of this big "world-saving" (as they see it) effort. Who can blame them, especially the co-ed grad. student part?
I don't think most climate scientists fudge the data to an extreme, but there is that climate-gate bunch. I really don't see those in the majority, however, as bad as they are for truth and science itself.
You've got to keep in mind the 2nd reason though (the two are interrelated). The 2nd reason is the bucks. The US government, in various forms and agencies gives out huge amounts of money in research grants. I don't know who else does give out money in the climate field but the government (I can see an agricultural organization wanting to see some basic research, but that's about it.). So, yeah, a climatologist at a university may realize that there's no way in hell there is any working model of the entire climate of the earth. That still won't stop him from using the phrase "global warming", aka "climate change", aka "climate disruption" in any grant proposals to kiss some gov. ass. It does not mean his whole research project is junk; it's just that it is done under the guise of "saving-the-world" instead of what it truly is - just a small piece of climate science that may or may not later have a part in trying to make a model of the earth's climate. But, if you leave out the guise, the money will not show up.
The money comes from the grants. No grant money, no growth of that university's research funds, no tenure, aka job, for this professor, no more new Volvo with the FM needle glued to NPR, and no more new tweed jackets with elbow patches. Talk to the people that dole out the grants.
So, most scientists play the game, but probably think of it as a way to get the money they need to study the areas they are interested in. I don't think they totally corrupt. Now, then, there are the few that claim they have a working model of the earth's climate. They can argue with me, right here, right now, but they are the ones that are fraudulent. (Oh, no more cute graduate students... that's where it really hurts)
Mel Torme| 12.12.10 @ 11:07AM
The Bad
MTorme| 12.12.10 @ 11:23AM
The Bad (got totally erased, starting over)
Well, you've got the truly stupid, the Ted Turners, Jane Fondas (well, I'm not sure, but she's usually involved in all things stupid), the Bushes Clintons and everyday people who have not had any science education since 8th grade.
I can't blame this last group. There should be no reason everyone must get a science education. Now, because this global-warming hoax is so politicized already. political campaigns involve talk about science with many fallacies spoken. A citizen voter should not have to know science to choose a good candidate for office, but now he does. What do you expect of the outcome, knowing the state of our government schools?
Lastly, you've got your journalists, who are just as stupid, as they cannot interpret a scientific article, but have less an excuse for being stupid on this, due to their jobs requiring said interpretation.
Many journalists have the same "savior-of-the-world" complex, and they all wish to be the next Woodward/Bernstein. The difference between then and now is: for the Watergate story, one just had to understand breaking-and-entering and secret tape-recording to have the story, not climatology, as for the current story. The problem is that these journalists are nothing if not scientifically and even numerically illiterate.
These journalists can only read the last paragraph, the conclusion, of a 10-page scientific paper. The good, upstanding scientist who wrote it may have very clearly stated the wide tolerances in his model or experimental output due to the many assumptions involved. The scientist readers and the reviewers will, of course, understand this, and they know that the paper's subject is a small part of climate science, but could at least be used at some time by others to continue that work, or as part of a bigger model of the actual entire earth's climate. Our journalist will not read this (nor could he) so he will take the worst-case numbers he can find from the conclusion, though, and go running back to his Lou Grant and Mary Tyler Moore, "Hold the presses!", with visions of a pulitzer prize (and a night with the young Mary Tyler Moore) in his puny, unscientific, head.
So, stupidity plays a large role here. It cannot be discounted in this global-warming hoax. Therefore, do not call it a conspiracy, as a conspiracy requires mostly smart people to be carried out properly. We don't have that situation here, about the smart people, that is.
Mel Torme| 12.12.10 @ 11:31AM
The Evil
Finally, you have your evil ones, the left wing that may or may not belong to the other categories. The communist part of their personality simply wants to ride along on this climate-hoax wave to get their system of controls on the population in place.
These people, to use the term loosely, could not give a rat's derriere whether the whole world were indeed becoming warm enough to make a difference, or whether an alleged rising sea will swamp some island in the Pacific Ocean. They are rich enough to move all their stuff off of said island to another island, where they can build another 1000 acre compound (oops, it's not a compound - it's a ranch. it's only a compound if you are right-winger who wants to be left alone), build a new 20,000 sq-ft house, pour a new heli-pad, put in the new yacht-slip, and start over, just like the Clampetts did.
I don't want to name too many names on this, as I don't really know what kind of power you have once you sell your soul. I know these folks should all be good at blues guitar, but I fear it's more than that. Otherwise they got really screwed on that deal.
VinceP1974| 12.13.10 @ 10:30AM
From Melanie Philips "The World Turned Upside Down"
Post-normal science starts with a theory that is politically sensitive, and then makes up the facts to influence opinion in its favor. This practice was revealed in a display of commendable frankness by Mike Hulme, a professor in the school of environmental sciences at the University of East Anglia, founding director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, and a guru of manmade global warming theory. In 2007, Hulme confided to the Guardian:
Philosophers and practitioners of science have identified this particular mode of scientific activity as one that occurs where the stakes are high, uncertainties large and decisions urgent, and where values are embedded in the way science is done and spoken. It has been labelled “post-normal” science. . . . The danger of a “normal” reading of science is that it assumes science can first find truth, then speak truth to power, and that truth-based policy will then follow. . . .
Self-evidently dangerous climate change will not emerge from a normal scientific process of truth seeking, although science will gain some insights into the question if it recognises the socially contingent dimensions of a post-normal science. But to proffer such insights, scientists—and politicians—must trade (normal) truth for influence.
If scientists want to remain listened to, to bear influence on policy, they must recognise the social limits of their truth seeking and reveal fully the values and beliefs they bring to their scientific activity. . . . Climate change is too important to be left to scientists—least of all the normal ones.35 [My emphasis.] So global warming theory did not seek to establish the truth through evidence. Instead, truth had to be traded for influence. In areas of uncertainty, scientists had to present their beliefs as a basis for policy. It was a brazen admission that scientific reason had been junked altogether in the name of science, but for the sake of promoting ideological conviction. In other words, science had short-circuited. Where science failed to support an ideology, the overriding imperative of the ideology meant that science had to suspend its very essence as a truth-seeking activity and instead perpetrate fictions