That journ-uh-list (and global warming believer) would be Gregg Easterbrook, blogging for Reuters, in a longer post that for the most part is an eulogy to the recently passed Stephen Schneider. As might be expected he remembers Schneider for qualities that were largely undetected by skeptics, and he blathers about how the Climategate scientists had their correspondence “stolen,” but he also hits a few points that will have some climate realists nodding in agreement:
- The University of East Anglia, the place that was hacked, also looks bad, since its much-publicized “vindication” of the researchers involved was conducted by a committee paid for by the school. Of course the hired hands “vindicated” the organization that signed their paychecks!
- …Important to rising disbelief in climate change is that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations agency that produces global warming studies, allowed itself to be hijacked by Al Gore and a few other phonies. When the IPCC shared the Nobel Prize stage with Gore, it consented to being equated in the public mind with Gore’s relentless self-promotion. A decade ago, the IPCC was apolitical. Now it’s a marketing organization, selling the climate-doomsday brand. A new authority on climate change is needed to supplant the IPCC.
- Also diluting belief in climate change is high-and-mighty behavior of some – surely not all — in the science community. Recently the environmental radio show Earthbeat ran a segment in which Susan Hassol, who’s in the instant-doomsday camp, claimed that scientists researching global warming are subject to “McCarthyism.” McCarthyism? Most climate scientists enjoy academic tenure, while being darlings of the P.C. cocktail-party circuit.
- Last year the federal government awarded $7 billion in climate change research grants, making life cushy for climate scientists. I don’t recall Joe McCarthy giving billions of dollars to State Department China hands! One climate pessimist, Michael Mann of Penn State, has indeed received unfair treatment from the far right, but then again Mann is a holier-than-thou type who is quick to denounce those who disagree with him, and one reaps what one sows.
And of course you can apply his comments about East Anglia’s “vindication” of its researchers to Penn State’s “vindication” of Mann.
