[Dean's World] Dean: Climate Change Alarmism

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Posted by Dean:
Climate Change Alarmism
http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1178628443.shtml


   Der Spiegal has a [1]fascinating look at the IPCC and alarmism in the
   climate change debate. Note the quotes from scientists who say the
   emotionalism and alarmism are probably good things.

   Wis it that I am 100% certain that the new IPCC report(s) will call
   for increased funding to study the problem, even though supposedly the
   problem is already so obviously bad, and the alarmism so obviously
   correct, that the skeptics need to be compared to Nazis and
   flat-Earthers?

   It's also fascinating to read about Pachauri. At least Der Spiegel
   notes honestly that he and his fellow scientists on the IPCC derive
   their entire incomes from their activism, even if they don't say that
   openly. It's fascinating how Pachauri gets to be treated like a rock
   star as he jets all over the world telling powerful politicians what
   to do and what to think, holding press conferences and showing up on
   talk shows.

   No conflict of interest there, eh? Just good old fashioned
   dispassionate science, utterly free of any hint of corruption or lack
   of objectivity or self-interest. [snort]

   Despite Der Spiegel's glossing over of it, one essential fact is
   manifest in their story, and is in no way an "attack" on
   climatologists who study global warming to say so: these people's
   income and their entire professional prestige is dependent on
   governments and the general populace continuing to believe that Man
   Made Global Warming is a dire crisis and that more funding for
   research into it is desperately needed.

   And, oh yeah, how do they dole out that government funding? By the
   same [DEL: peer :DEL] crony-review system that has been shown to
   routinely crush scientific dissenters from orthodoxy in multiple
   fields. What a shock. So virtually all the funding for climatology now
   is related to Global Warming and "climate change," and there's more
   and more of it all the time, and the scientists who get together at
   regular conferences and at their anonymous "peer review" funding
   chambers are completely dispassionate and in no way compromised by
   self-interest when they decide which projects get funded and which do
   not, eh?

   Der Spiegel also misses the obvious: this community of researchers
   could fix their undeniable conflict of interest by having greater
   independent review by mathematicians, meteorologists, and
   climatologists who can be shown to be utterly free of conflict of
   interest on this issue.

   Otherwise, their objectivity being nonexistent, there is no reason to
   be anything other than skeptical of these folks. Especially since all
   of the most important charges of [2]the Wegman Report remain
   unanswered by this community of researchers so far as I've been able
   to determine.

   By the way, watch for the paint-by-numbers responses: they love to
   trot out phrases like "conspiracy theory" and "politics" and "pseudo
   science." Because that lets them not only smear the skeptics, but also
   lets them completely evade the real issue: these scientists' inherent
   conflict of interest.

   (Link via [3]Instapundit.)

References

   1. http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,480766,00.html
   2. http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1156978676.shtml
   3. http://www.instapundit.com/