"Activism" Trumps Science

A letter to the San Jose Mercury News:

Sharon Noguchi's understanding of "global warming" seems a bit sketchy.

Instead of writing adoring paeans to the genius of college sophomores making cardboard playhouses incorporating "emission free" batteries (where does the lead in batteries come from?) perhaps Ms. Noguchi should spend a bit of quality intellectual time with Emeritus Professor of Physics Harold Lewis, formerly a fellow of the American Physics Society (APS).

As a starting point for Sharon's desperately needed education, Professor Lewis could begin by explaining some facts about global warming and Big Science: " It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist."

Ms. Noguchi appears not to know or even suspect that there might be some valid scientific issues that call into question the actual scientific reality of "human caused global warming", and therefore, the need for goofy, pointless, and wasteful cult rituals like "Earth Day", "The California Global Warming Act", "Global Work Party" and other feel good nonsense.

President Bush Enjoys the Olympics

NYT: In 2008, a 100 Percent Chance of Alarm

January 1, 2008

Findings

In 2008, a 100 Percent Chance of Alarm

By JOHN TIERNEY

I’d like to wish you a happy New Year, but I’m afraid I have a different sort of prediction.
You’re in for very bad weather. In 2008, your television will bring you image after frightening image of natural havoc linked to global warming. You will be told that such bizarre weather must be a sign of dangerous climate change — and that these images are a mere preview of what’s in store unless we act quickly to cool the planet.

Unfortunately, I can’t be more specific. I don’t know if disaster will come by flood or drought, hurricane or blizzard, fire or ice. Nor do I have any idea how much the planet will warm this year or what that means for your local forecast. Long-term climate models cannot explain short-term weather.

But there’s bound to be some weird weather somewhere, and we will react like the sailors in the Book of Jonah. When a storm hit their ship, they didn’t ascribe it to a seasonal weather pattern. They quickly identified the cause (Jonah’s sinfulness) and agreed to an appropriate policy response (throw Jonah overboard).

Today’s interpreters of the weather are what social scientists call availability entrepreneurs: the activists, journalists and publicity-savvy scientists who selectively monitor the globe looking for newsworthy evidence of a new form of sinfulness, burning fossil fuels.

A year ago, British meteorologists made headlines predicting that the buildup of greenhouse gases would help make 2007 the hottest year on record. At year’s end, even though the British scientists reported the global temperature average was not a new record — it was actually lower than any year since 2001 — the BBC confidently proclaimed, “2007 Data Confirms Warming Trend.”

When the Arctic sea ice last year hit the lowest level ever recorded by satellites, it was big news and heralded as a sign that the whole planet was warming. When the Antarctic sea ice last year reached the highest level ever recorded by satellites, it was pretty much ignored. A large part of Antarctica has been cooling recently, but most coverage of that continent has focused on one small part that has warmed.

When Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans in 2005, it was supposed to be a harbinger of the stormier world predicted by some climate modelers. When the next two hurricane seasons were fairly calm — by some measures, last season in the Northern Hemisphere was the calmest in three decades — the availability entrepreneurs changed the subject. Droughts in California and Australia became the new harbingers of climate change (never mind that a warmer planet is projected to have more, not less, precipitation over all).

The most charitable excuse for this bias in weather divination is that the entrepreneurs are trying to offset another bias. The planet has indeed gotten warmer, and it is projected to keep warming because of greenhouse emissions, but this process is too slow to make much impact on the public.

When judging risks, we often go wrong by using what’s called the availability heuristic: we gauge a danger according to how many examples of it are readily available in our minds. Thus we overestimate the odds of dying in a terrorist attack or a plane crash because we’ve seen such dramatic deaths so often on television; we underestimate the risks of dying from a stroke because we don’t have so many vivid images readily available.

Slow warming doesn’t make for memorable images on television or in people’s minds, so activists, journalists and scientists have looked to hurricanes, wild fires and starving polar bears instead. They have used these images to start an “availability cascade,” a term coined by Timur Kuran, a professor of economics and law at the University of Southern California, and Cass R. Sunstein, a law professor at the University of Chicago.

The availability cascade is a self-perpetuating process: the more attention a danger gets, the more worried people become, leading to more news coverage and more fear. Once the images of Sept. 11 made terrorism seem a major threat, the press and the police lavished attention on potential new attacks and supposed plots. After Three Mile Island and “The China Syndrome,” minor malfunctions at nuclear power plants suddenly became newsworthy.

“Many people concerned about climate change,” Dr. Sunstein says, “want to create an availability cascade by fixing an incident in people’s minds. Hurricane Katrina is just an early example; there will be others. I don’t doubt that climate change is real and that it presents a serious threat, but there’s a danger that any ‘consensus’ on particular events or specific findings is, in part, a cascade.”

Once a cascade is under way, it becomes tough to sort out risks because experts become reluctant to dispute the popular wisdom, and are ignored if they do. Now that the melting Arctic has become the symbol of global warming, there’s not much interest in hearing other explanations of why the ice is melting — or why the globe’s other pole isn’t melting, too.
Global warming has an impact on both polar regions, but they’re also strongly influenced by regional weather patterns and ocean currents. Two studies by NASA and university scientists last year concluded that much of the recent melting of Arctic sea ice was related to a cyclical change in ocean currents and winds, but those studies got relatively little attention — and were certainly no match for the images of struggling polar bears so popular with availability entrepreneurs.

Roger A. Pielke Jr., a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado, recently noted the very different reception received last year by two conflicting papers on the link between hurricanes and global warming. He counted 79 news articles about a paper in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, and only 3 news articles about one in a far more prestigious journal, Nature.

Guess which paper jibed with the theory — and image of Katrina — presented by Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth”?

It was, of course, the paper in the more obscure journal, which suggested that global warming is creating more hurricanes. The paper in Nature concluded that global warming has a minimal effect on hurricanes. It was published in December — by coincidence, the same week that Mr. Gore received his Nobel Peace Prize.

In his acceptance speech, Mr. Gore didn’t dwell on the complexities of the hurricane debate. Nor, in his roundup of the 2007 weather, did he mention how calm the hurricane season had been. Instead, he alluded somewhat mysteriously to “stronger storms in the Atlantic and Pacific,” and focused on other kinds of disasters, like “massive droughts” and “massive flooding.”
“In the last few months,” Mr. Gore said, “it has been harder and harder to misinterpret the signs that our world is spinning out of kilter.” But he was being too modest. Thanks to availability entrepreneurs like him, misinterpreting the weather is getting easier and easier.

Global Warming Will Save America from the Right...Eventually

COMMENTARY:

Global Warming Will Save America from the Right...Eventually
-->
by Dave Lindorff
-->

The future political map of America is likely to look a lot different, with much of the so-called “red” state region either gone or depopulated.Sat., 12/22/2007 - 19:21—Say what you will about the looming catastrophe facing the world as the pace of global heating and polar melting accelerates. There is a silver lining.

Look at a map of the US.

The area that will by completely inundated by the rising ocean—and not in a century but in the lifetime of my two cats—are the American southeast, including the most populated area of Texas, almost all of Florida, most of Louisiana, and half of Alabama and Mississippi, as well as goodly portions of eastern Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina. While the northeast will also see some coastal flooding, its geography is such that that aside from a few projecting sandbars like Long Island and Cape Cod, the land rises fairly quickly to well above sea level. Sure, Boston, New York and Philadelphia will be threatened, but these are geographically confined areas that could lend themselves to protection by Dutch-style dikes. The West Coast too tends to rise rapidly to well above sea level in most places. Only down in Southern California towards the San Diego area is the ground closer to sea level.

So what we see is that huge swaths of conservative America are set to face a biblical deluge in a few more presidential cycles.

Then there’s the matter of the Midwest, which climate experts say is likely to face a permanent condition of unprecedented drought, making the place largely unlivable, and certainly unfarmable. The agribusinesses and conservative farmers that have been growing corn and wheat may be able to stretch out this doomsday scenario by deep well drilling, but west of the Mississippi, the vast Ogallala Aquifer that has allowed for such irrigation is already being tapped out. It will not be replaced.

So again, we will see the decline and depopulation of the nation’s vast midsection—noted for its consistent conservatism. Only in the northernmost area, around the Great Lakes (which will be not so great anymore), and along the Canadian border, will there still be enough rain for farming and continued large population concentrations, but those regions, like Minnesota, Wisconsin and Illinois, are also more liberal in their politics.

Finally, in the Southwest, already parched and stiflingly hot, the rise in energy costs and the soaring temperatures will put an end to right-wing retirement communities like Phoenix, Tucson and Palm Springs. Already the Salton Sea is fading away and putting Palm Springs on notice that the good times are coming to an end. Another right-wing haven soon to be gone.
So the future political map of America is likely to look as different as the much shrunken geographical map, with much of the so-called “red” state region either gone or depopulated.
There is a poetic justice to this of course. It is conservatives who are giving us the candidates who steadfastly refuse to have the nation take steps that could slow the pace of climate change, so it is appropriate that they should bear the brunt of its impact.

The important thing is that we, on the higher ground both actually and figuratively, need to remember that, when they begin their historic migration from their doomed regions, we not give them the keys to the city. They certainly should be offered assistance in their time of need, but we need to keep a firm grip on our political systems, making sure that these guilty throngs who allowed the world to go to hell are gerrymandered into political impotence in their new homes.
There will be much work to be done to help the earth and its residents—human and non-human—survive this man-made catastrophe, and we can’t have these future refugee troglodytes, should their personal disasters still fail to make them recognize reality, mucking things up again.

It should be considered acceptable, in this stifling new world, to say, “Shut up. We told you this would happen.”

Skeptical Scientists Urge World To ‘Have the Courage to Do Nothing' At UN Conference

Skeptical Scientists Urge World To ‘Have the Courage to Do Nothing' At UN Conference

December 11, 2007

BALI, Indonesia - An international team of scientists skeptical of man-made climate fears promoted by the UN and former Vice President Al Gore, descended on Bali this week to urge the world to "have the courage to do nothing" in response to UN demands.

Lord Christopher Monckton, a UK climate researcher, had a blunt message for UN climate conference participants on Monday.

"Climate change is a non-problem. The right answer to a non problem is to have the courage to do nothing," Monckton told participants.

"The UN conference is a complete waste of our time and your money and we should no longer pay the slightest attention to the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,)" Monckton added. (LINK)

Monckton also noted that the UN has not been overly welcoming to the group of skeptical scientists.

"UN organizers refused my credentials and appeared desperate that I should not come to this conference. They have also made several attempts to interfere with our public meetings," Monckton explained.

"It is a circus here," agreed Australian scientist Dr. David Evans. Evans is making scientific presentations to delegates and journalists at the conference revealing the latest peer-reviewed studies that refute the UN's climate claims.

"This is the most lavish conference I have ever been to, but I am only a scientist and I actually only go to the science conferences," Evans said, noting the luxury of the tropical resort. (Note: An analysis by Bloomberg News on December 6 found: "Government officials and activists flying to Bali, Indonesia, for the United Nations meeting on climate change will cause as much pollution as 20,000 cars in a year." - LINK)

Evans, a mathematician who did carbon accounting for the Australian government, recently converted to a skeptical scientist about man-made global warming after reviewing the new scientific studies. (LINK)

"We now have quite a lot of evidence that carbon emissions definitely don't cause global warming. We have the missing [human] signature [in the atmosphere], we have the IPCC models being wrong and we have the lack of a temperature going up the last 5 years," Evans said in an interview with the Inhofe EPW Press Blog. Evans authored a November 28 2007 paper "Carbon Emissions Don't Cause Global Warming." (LINK)

Evans touted a new peer-reviewed study by a team of scientists appearing in the December 2007 issue of the International Journal of Climatology of the Royal Meteorological Society which found "Warming is naturally caused and shows no human influence." (LINK)

"Most of the people here have jobs that are very well paid and they depend on the idea that carbon emissions cause global warming. They are not going to be very receptive to the idea that well actually the science has gone off in a different direction," Evans explained.
[Inhofe EPW Press Blog Note: Several other recent peer-reviewed studies have cast considerable doubt about man-made global warming fears. For most recent sampling see: New Peer-Reviewed Study finds 'Solar changes significantly alter climate' (11-3-07) (LINK) & "New Peer-Reviewed Study Halves the Global Average Surface Temperature Trend 1980 - 2002" (LINK) & New Study finds Medieval Warm Period '0.3C Warmer than 20th Century' (LINK) For a more comprehensive sampling of peer-reviewed studies earlier in 2007 see "New Peer-Reviewed Scientific Studies Chill Global Warming Fears" LINK ]

‘IPCC is unsound'

UN IPCC reviewer and climate researcher Dr. Vincent Gray of New Zealand, an expert reviewer on every single draft of the IPCC reports since its inception going back to 1990, had a clear message to UN participants.

"There is no evidence that carbon dioxide increases are having any effect whatsoever on the climate," Gray, who shares in the Nobel Prize awarded to the UN IPCC, explained. (LINK)
"All the science of the IPCC is unsound. I have come to this conclusion after a very long time. If you examine every single proposition of the IPCC thoroughly, you find that the science somewhere fails," Gray, who wrote the book "The Greenhouse Delusion: A Critique of "Climate Change 2001," said.

"It fails not only from the data, but it fails in the statistics, and the mathematics," he added.
‘Dangerous time for science'

Evans, who believes the UN has heavily politicized science, warned there is going to be a "dangerous time for science" ahead.

"We have a split here. Official science driven by politics, money and power, goes in one direction. Unofficial science, which is more determined by what is actually happening with the [climate] data, has now started to move off in a different direction" away from fears of a man-made climate crisis, Evans explained.

"The two are splitting. This is always a dangerous time for science and a dangerous time for politics. Historically science always wins these battles but there can be a lot of causalities and a lot of time in between," he concluded.

Carbon trading ‘fraud?'

New Zealander Bryan Leland of the International Climate Science Coalition warned participants that all the UN promoted discussions of "carbon trading" should be viewed with suspicion.
"I am an energy engineer and I know something about electricity trading and I know enough about carbon trading and the inaccuracies of carbon trading to know that carbon trading is more about fraud than it is about anything else," Leland said.

"We should probably ask why we have 10,000 people here [in Bali] in a futile attempt to ‘solve' a [climate] problem that probably does not exist," Leland added.

‘Simply not work'

Owen McShane, the head of the International Climate Science Coalition, also worried that a UN promoted global approach to economics would mean financial ruin for many nations.
"I don't think this conference can actually achieve anything because it seems to be saying that we are going to draw up one protocol for every country in the world to follow," McShane said. (LINK)

"Now these countries and these economies are so diverse that trying to presume you can put all of these feet into one shoe will simply not work," McShane explained.

"Having the same set of rules apply to everybody will blow some economies apart totally while others will be unscathed and I wouldn't be surprised if the ones who remain unscathed are the ones who write the rules," he added.

‘Nothing happening at this conference'

Professor Dr. William Alexander, emeritus of the University of Pretoria in South Africa and a former member of the United Nations Scientific and Technical Committee on Natural Disasters, warned poor nations and their residents that the UN policies could mean more poverty and thus more death.

"My message is specifically for the poor people of Africa. And there is nothing happening at this conference that can help them one little bit but there is the potential that they could be damaged," Alexander said. (LINK)

"The government and people of Africa will have their attention drawn to reducing climate change instead of reducing poverty," Alexander added.

Related Links:

New UN Children's Book Promotes Global Warming Fears to Kids (11-13-2006)

Scientists Counter AP Article Promoting Computer Model Climate Fears

New Peer-Reviewed Scientific Studies Chill Global Warming Fears

Newsweek Editor Calls Mag's Global Warming 'Deniers' Article 'Highly Contrived'

Newsweek's Climate Editorial Screed Violates Basic Standards of Journalism

Latest Scientific Studies Refute Fears of Greenland Melt

EPA to Probe E-mail Threatening to ‘Destroy' Career of Climate Skeptic

Prominent Scientists Reverse Belief in Man-made Global Warming - Now Skeptics

Senator Inhofe declares climate momentum shifting away from Gore (The Politico op ed)

Scientific Smackdown: Skeptics Voted The Clear Winners Against Global Warming Believers in Heated NYC Debate

Global Warming on Mars & Cosmic Ray Research Are Shattering Media Driven "Consensus'

Global Warming: The Momentum has Shifted to Climate Skeptics

Prominent French Scientist Reverses Belief in Global Warming - Now a Skeptic

Top Israeli Astrophysicist Recants His Belief in Manmade Global Warming - Now Says Sun Biggest Factor in Warming

Warming On Jupiter, Mars, Pluto, Neptune's Moon & Earth Linked to Increased Solar Activity, Scientists Say

Panel of Broadcast Meteorologists Reject Man-Made Global Warming Fears- Claim 95% of Weathermen Skeptical

MIT Climate Scientist Calls Fears of Global Warming 'Silly' - Equates Concerns to ‘Little Kids' Attempting to "Scare Each Other"

Weather Channel TV Host Goes 'Political'- Stars in Global Warming Film Accusing U.S. Government of ‘Criminal Neglect'

Weather Channel Climate Expert Calls for Decertifying Global Warming Skeptics

ABC-TV Meteorologist: I Don't Know A Single Weatherman Who Believes 'Man-Made Global Warming Hype'

The Weather Channel Climate Expert Refuses to Retract Call for Decertification for Global Warming Skeptics

Senator Inhofe Announces Public Release Of "Skeptic's Guide To Debunking Global Warming"

# # #

Rat's Milk Fights Global Warming

London,
Monday 19.11.07

Vegan Heather Mills's latest bizarre outburst: 'Why don't we drink rat's milk?'

19.11.07

It has been a hotspot for tub-thumpers and eccentrics alike for more than a century.

So it was perhaps fitting that Heather Mills - fresh from her TV tirades complaining about her treatment - should choose Speakers' Corner to launch her latest onslaught.

But as the former model got on the popular London soapbox yesterday for a global awareness campaign, there was speculation her real target may have been her estranged husband Sir Paul McCartney.

For while the 39-year-old was there to unveil billboards for animal welfare charity Viva! the giant posters were draped in an ad for the National Domestic Violence helpline.

The cover - which bore the logo: "Well, he said he was sorry" and was whipped off as she made her entrance - echoed Miss Mills' previous allegations of being assaulted by the former Beatle during their marriage. Last year she also hinted she was applying for an occupation order, commonly used in domestic violence cases to decide who keeps the family home.

Officials from the charity insisted it was a "coincidence" Miss Mills' posters were covered with the ad.

A spokeswoman said: "The domestic violence posters were for an old campaign that is nothing to do with us."

The Viva! campaign, which will involve 100 billboards going up around the country, feature Miss Mills in two controversial poses.

In one, she appears to be announcing her newly-single status with the caption: "Hey Meaty, you're making me so hot!" as she writhes in a gold sequined dress. The poster aims to highlight how the meat and dairy industry is contributing to the greenhouse effect.

In the second billboard the campaigner - whose leg was amputated after a motorbike accident - sends herself up with the logo: "You haven't got a leg to stand on!" aimed at meat eaters for playing a part in global warming.

But Miss Mills triggered accusations of hypocrisy after she arrived at the launch in a gas-guzzling Mercedes 4x4 and kept the engine running for part of the morning.

She said: "The startling truth is that animals farmed for met and dairy are now one of the greatest threats to the planet.

"The United Nations last year issued a shocking report on the environmental damage being done by livestock.

"I became a vegetarian for health reasons. Then I found out about the awful animal abuse in factory farms and dairy herds and became vegan.

"The easiest and most effective way of cutting our contribution is to change our diet and go vegan. It is that simple.

"We are the only species that drinks another creature's milk so why aren't we drinking rats' milk, dogs' milk or cats' milk? That is how crazy it is."

Viva! director Juliet Gellatley said: "Heather was not the slightest bit precious about her disability and loved the idea of mocking all those who have called her a fantasist.

"Meat and dairy animals are literally destroying the Earth and are the second biggest cause of greenhouse gases at 18 per cent compared to 13.5 per cent from all the world's different modes of transport combined."

Earlier Miss Mills caused a stir with a rant on a radio chat show in which she snapped at the interviewer then stormed out halfway through.

During a 10-minute interview by Nick Ferrari on LBC radio, she complained she was being treated like a "murderer or a paedophile" before cutting him short after six minutes and walking out saying: "Let's forget it. He is just a waste of time."

The radio chat got off to a bad start when Ferrari asked her about her recent slew of TV and magazine interviews, to which Miss Mills retorted: "Shall I fall asleep now or do you want to get on with talking about global warming?" before making snoring noises.

She went on: "You don't know me as a person. To have an opinion about somebody you've never met before is pretty superficial."

When Ferrari responded, "I can have an opinion on murderers, on corrupt politicians. I don't have to meet them all", she hit back: "I am not a murderer or a paedophile. I am a charity campaigner.

"To put me in the same bracket as those is exactly why I've been treated like one."

After several more clashes Miss Mills said: "Just cut him off," and walked out.

She has previously told how her marriage breakdown drove her to the brink of suicide and is currently wrangling with Sir Paul, 65, for a slice of his £825million fortune.

Global Warming's Senseless Consensus

Global Warming's Senseless Consensus
Monday , November 12, 2007
By Steven Milloy

Is there a "consensus" on global warming among the scientists participating in the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)?

To find out, I conducted the first-ever survey of scientists participating in the most recent IPCC report.

In early October, I e-mailed a six-question survey on climate change to 345 U.S. scientists involved in the IPCC's 2007 report.

By month's end, I had received responses from a surprising 95 scientists (28 percent).
Some of the responders claimed that the survey questions were flawed and declined to participate.

Some wanted to know, ironically enough, what was meant by the term "climate change" even though the term is part of the IPCC's name.

One IPCC-er declined to participate because, he said, the climate science debate was over.
Another, who acknowledged that current climate had probably just resulted from a "just a geological wiggle," declined because it was wrong to deny that humans are "adding undesirable stress to natural systems."

Another refused to answer, claiming that the IPCC report "is a much more powerful statement than any individual scientist can make."

One survey refusenik said, "Science is not a vote or survey. It is not democratic. It is not debatable."

Another said he didn't "see the point of frequently uninformed free-for-all style debates about topics that require diligent study instead."

Others accused me of having a biased agenda, being "reckless and irresponsible," and wanting to misrepresent the IPCC's work.

One National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientist responded simply by dropping an f-bomb-laced insult into an e-mail.

This particular response and any institutional intolerance for climate skepticism, so I am informed, is being investigated by NOAA chief Vice Admiral (Ret.) Conrad Lautenbacher.
In the end, 54 of the IPCC-ers completed the survey, including such alarmist bigwigs as the National Center for Atmospheric Research's Kevin Trenberth and Tom Wigley. Trenberth and several other survey participants are lead authors of the IPCC report.

The survey results are quite illuminating about the much-touted "consensus."

The responses to the survey's first four questions were predictable — 83 percent to 90 percent of the respondents favored the view that man-made carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are driving global climate to unprecedentedly warmer temperatures and that limiting manmade CO2 emissions would reduce such climate change.

The responses to the last two questions, however, raise questions about the consensus's credibility.

Less than 50 percent of the respondents said that an increase in global temperature of 1 degree Celsius — twice the level of warming occurring during the 20th century — is flatly undesirable.
Half of the respondents said that such a temperature increase is desirable, desirable for some but undesirable for others, or too difficult to assess.

Only 14 percent said that the ideal climate was cooler than the present climate. Sixty-one percent said that there is no such thing as an ideal climate.

But if there's no agreement on whether a target climate even exists, what precisely is the point of taking action on global warming?

Other notable results from my survey include the 20 percent who bizarrely said that human activity is the principal driver of climate change.

So was climate a static phenomenon before the arrival of man? And if there was natural climate change before man, why not now also? And 44 percent don't think that current global climate is unprecedentedly warm.

The survey indicates that when asked routine questions about the role of man-made CO2, the IPCC-ers respond in the Pavlovian fashion seemingly demanded of them by the global-warming establishment.

But when asked questions off the usual script, the supposed consensus falls apart.
Don't forget that many scientists don't participate in the IPCC because they perceive it as biased.

The Pasteur Institute's Dr. Paul Reiter, for example, resigned from the IPCC because he and a colleague found themselves "at loggerheads with persons who insisted on making authoritative pronouncements, although they had little or no knowledge of our specialty."

There's also the Petition Project, where 19,000 scientists have endorsed a statement questioning the scientific basis of climate alarmism.

The whole idea of a consensus in science is dubious.

As economist John Kay recently wrote in an op-ed entitled "Science is the pursuit of truth, not consensus" (Financial Times, Oct. 10), "Statements about the world derive their value from the facts and arguments that support them, not from the status and qualifications of the people who assert them."

This week, Al Gore attacked IPCC-er John Christy for a Nov. 1 Wall Street Journal op-ed in which Christy questioned the global-warming orthodoxy.

Appearing on NBC's "Today" show, Gore described Christy as an "outlier" who no longer belonged to the IPCC and who is "way outside the scientific consensus."

Gore also said that it was wrong for the media to pay any attention to opinions outside the consensus.

Christy told me that, as far as he knows, he remains part of the IPCC process.

As to being an outlier, it just so happens that Christy's survey responses were within the 50 percent who didn't think that a 1-degree Celsius rise in global temperature was uniformly undesirable and the 86 percent who didn't think there was any such thing as an ideal climate.
The "climate consensus" notion functions primarily as a marketing tool for converting the public to a political viewpoint, rather than as a valid scientific approach toward understanding global warming.

But even then, the survey indicates that the claimed IPCC consensus is not nearly as monolithic as we've been led to believe. That alone is good reason for demanding that the IPCC scientists declare and defend their positions in a public forum.

Steven Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and DemandDebate.com. He is a junk science expert and advocate of free enterprise and an adjunct scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.