I don't know what I believe about the scientific debate on climate change. There seems to be both credible and questionable evidence supporting each side. The political debate however, is far more clear to me. It appeals to the fears people have that the earth will become unable to continue to support mammalian life, due to pollution. It also appeals to the anti-propertarian sentiments of collectivists, because governments use climate change fears to justify laws that attenuate property rights. Governments everywhere sure do like the fear and the anti-propertarian sentiments, because both reduce resistance to government creating more laws, and more and higher taxes. Governments everywhere, at all levels therefore, have an interest in perpetuating global climate change fears, real or imagined.
Enter the scientists. Free from the fears of the ecologically undereducated, as well as the crass political interests of politicians aggregating more power to themselves. The scientists are supposed to be the referees, the objective minds, sorting fact from presumption. Until, that is, they get mixed up with government. Right now, most scientific research is funded by government. And that funding comes with strings attached. If they don't find the conclusion that empowers government, government has no interest in funding them. Some scientists, motivated by a desire for accurate science, will seek the conclusions as the evidence guides them. Those reports and studies completed by those scientists will be summarily silenced by the peer review process. Have a peer reviewer who lets a dissenting study slip by, because the method is valid and the facts support the conclusion? Discredit the peer reviewer. Perhaps call the dissenters "deniers", as you would a holocaust denier.
Think this doesn't happen? Think again.
And, once you're done reading that one, take a look at these:
“This was the danger of always criticising the skeptics for not publishing in the “peer-reviewed literature”. Obviously, they found a solution to that–take over a journal! So what do we do about this? I think we have to stop considering “Climate Research” as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board…What do others think?”
“I will be emailing the journal to tell them I’m having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor.”“It results from this journal having a number of editors. The responsible one for this is a well-known skeptic in NZ. He has let a few papers through by Michaels and Gray in the past. I’ve had words with Hans von Storch about this, but got nowhere. Another thing to discuss in Nice !”
- Climategate: the final nail in the coffin of 'Anthropogenic Global Warming'?
[Upcoming UN climate conference in Copenhagen] “is about raw politics, not about the politics of science. [...] It is possible that climate science has become too partisan, too centralized. The tribalism that some of the leaked emails display is something more usually associated with social organization within primitive cultures; it is not attractive when we find it at work inside science. It is also possible that the institutional innovation that has been the I.P.C.C. has run its course. Yes, there will be an AR5 but for what purpose? The I.P.C.C. itself, through its structural tendency to politicize climate change science, has perhaps helped to foster a more authoritarian and exclusive form of knowledge production – just at a time when a globalizing and wired cosmopolitan culture is demanding of science something much more open and inclusive.
-Top British boffin: Time to ditch the climate consensus
I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline. Mike's series got the annual land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999 for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for 1999 with data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998.
-Hadley CRU hacked with release of hundreds of docs and emails
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