Leftist political groups
are trying to control
science through
government funding
of science.
Leftists governments
are buying the "science"
they want to hear,
just like cigarette companies
did when they wanted to
"prove" cigarettes were safe !
Global warming
( the coming climate
change crisis )
has become
partisan politics,
not real science.
Leftist governments
look the other way
when scientists "adjust" data,
and theories, to better support
their leftist positions.
Opposition to the
"official" positions,
is attacked with ridicule,
character attacks,
refusals to debate,
and "pal reviews",
to block publication.
When used by
leftist politicians,
science is a source
of their authority.
But real science is
a mode of inquiry,
not a source
of authority.
Global warming
has been exploited
by many governments
for their own purpose:
Expanding government
power over the
private sector.
The general public
never experienced
a situation like the
global warming hysteria,
used to promote policies
which in 2019 call for
massive spending, and
worldwide sacrifices
in well being.
The junk science
used to support the
coming climate change
crisis fairy tale,
is reversing the
trust in science
that arose from
great accomplishments
of science and technology
during the World War II.
Science contributed
a lot to the US effort
to win World War II
( radar, atomic bomb ).
After the war,
people argued that
their government
needed to support
basic sciences
to get further benefits.
The 1960s space race
to get to the moon
was the largest
government / private sector
scientific effort.
During the Vietnam War,
the US Senate banned
the military from supporting
non-military research
( The Mansfield Amendment ).
This shifted government support
of science, which had been mainly
from the military, to other agencies.
Those agencies determined
the nature of scientific activity
they were willing to pay for.
They wanted scientists
to focus on areas
to combat fears, such as
the fear of cancer, heart
disease, and environmental
issues such as climate change.
Science to support
new and better weapons
was not their goal.
The creation of a government
scientific bureaucracy, and
growing body of regulations
attached to government funding,
caused a massive increase
in the administrative staffs
at universities and
research centers.
The funding for this
much enlarged staff
came from the overhead
on government grants.
The primary role of professional
scientific societies is
lobbying government agencies
for more spending
on their subfield of science.
Having governments as the
primary funding source,
makes the system
vulnerable to corruption.
Climatology was traditionally
a small subfield within
meteorology, oceanography,
geography, geology,
geochemistry, etc.
Climate science was targeted
by a major political movement,
called "environmentalism".
The purpose of environmentalists
seemed to be getting attention, and
funding, by creating fear of a coming
environmental catastrophe.
That has been happening
for over 50 years.
Public trust in science
used to be high, and is still
high among leftists.
Political organizations
try to improve their own
credibility by associating
their goals with science
– even if this involves
junk science.
The public sees science
as a source of authority,
but can rarely distinguish
between real science
and junk science.
Professional science societies
were created to provide
a means for communication
within professions, and
sometimes for professional
certification, and public outreach.
Increasingly, these societies
issued scientific statements
on behalf of the society.
Such statements do NOT
represent membership
positions -- there are no votes !
The environmental movement
often hides its propaganda
by pretending to be working for
a scientific organization.
The Union of Concerned Scientists,
for one example, had little or no
scientific expertise in climate.
Another propaganda technique
is publicly claiming all scientists
agree with whatever catastrophe
is being promoted.
The general public can't follow
scientific arguments, so "knowing"
that "almost all" scientists agree,
relieves them of any need
for independent thinking.
The public becomes
"trained parrots',
repeating whatever
they are told.
The claims that 97%
of scientists "agree",
even though all the claims
all from bogus "studies",
also serves as a warning
to scientists:
Any non-consensus
statements on the topic,
will be punished
with character attacks.
The final exploitation
of climate science
for political purposes
was the 1988 creation of
the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change (IPCC)
by two UN agencies,
UNEP (United Nations
Environmental Program)
and WMO (World
Meteorological Organization),
followed by the agreement
of all major countries
at the 1992 Rio Conference
to accept the IPCC
as authoritative.
Theoretically,
the IPCC summarizes
peer reviewed literature
on climate science
every five years.
For some reason,
that seems to take
hundreds of scientists
and activists,
constantly traveling
all around the world !
But the charge
to the IPCC
was NOT simply
to summarize.
The IPCC
was charged
with providing
ONLY the science
that blamed
global warming
on humans,
which was needed
to support attacking
the use of fossil fuels.
The IPCC task
was a political task,
not a scientific task.
The primary document
the IPCC uses is NOT
the extensive report
prepared by scientists.
They use the Summary for
Policymakers, issued
MANY MONTHS BEFORE
the scientists' "back-up"
reports, which they hope
will never be read and
compared with the Summary
( the scientific back-up
will certainly never be read
by people writing in the
mainstream media ).
The Summary is written
by representatives from
governments, and
environmental groups,
most of whom do not
have science degrees !
The Summary will selectively
cite results to emphasize
negative consequences.
Data that challenges
the hypothesis are changed
or simply ignored.
The goal of data changes
is to bring the data
into agreement with
the beloved climate models,
even though the models
have displayed minimal skill
in predicting the future climate.
Remember:
Computer climate model
projections ARE the basis
for greenhouse gas concerns.
Data corrections
are not unusual
in science, but in
climate "science"
they are almost always
in the 'preferred direction',
of creating a steeper
global warming trend.
In the first
IPCC assessment,
the traditional picture
of the climate during
the past 1,100 years
was presented.
There was a medieval
warm period, that was
somewhat warmer
than the present,
as well as the
little ice age,
that was cooler.
But ... the presence of
a period warmer
than the present,
WITHOUT man made
greenhouse gases,
embarrassed believers
who claimed 20th century
warming HAD to be man made.
So efforts began to get rid of
the medieval warm period
The most infamous effort
was by Michael Mann,
who used a few local
tree ring records to obtain
a reconstruction of Northern
Hemisphere temperatures,
going back one thousand years,
that no longer showed
a medieval warm period.
Tree rings showed a slight cooling
for almost one thousand years,
including the past 150 years.
Cooling in the past 150 years
is NOT what Mann wanted to show.
It was actually evidence
that his small selection
of tree ring data
were NOT useful
for temperature
reconstructions.
( Tree rings can be useful
for rainfall reconstructions. )
Instead of deleting
all tree ring data,
and starting over,
Mann secretly
truncated the
tree ring data,
and substituted
surface temperature
"measurements"
which showed
significant warming
in the past 150 years.
No one seeing the chart
would know it was
a combination of proxy
( tree ring ) data and
actual "measurements".
So the two-source chart
ended up showing
a sharp warming trend
beginning in the late 1800s.
The curve came to be known
as the hockey stick,
and was featured prominently
in the next IPCC report
to support the false claim
that the warming since 1850
was unprecedented,
based on what was "known"
about the past 1,000 years.
But the existence of
a medieval warm period
is documented in
historical accounts
for the North Atlantic region.
So Mann et al countered
that the medieval warming
had to be regional,
not characteristic of the
whole Northern Hemisphere.
In the 4th IPCC assessment,
the hockey stick chart
was no longer featured,
but the false claim that
the current warming was
unprecedented, remained.
For many years,
the global average
temperature record
showed cooling
from about 1940,
until the mid 1970’s.
This led to the concern
in 1974 and 1975
for a coming global cooling
crisis, that got a lot
of media attention --
the media LOVE a crisis !
The data have since been
gradually "adjusted:
to get rid of most
of the mid-20th
century cooling !
Greenhouse warming
is centered in the upper
troposphere, and models
show that the maximum
rate of warming
is found in the upper
tropical troposphere
But temperature data,
from both satellites
and balloons, failed
to record that maximum,
sometimes called
the "hot spot".
The reason for such
a vertical structure:
In the tropics, the
vertical temperature
distribution closely
follows what is known
as the moist adiabatic
lapse rate.
This profile has a
vertical gradient
that varies with altitude,
and inevitably leads to
a larger temperature change
in the upper troposphere,
than at the ground.
The initial papers describing this
suggested that the structure
was specifically a fingerprint
of greenhouse warming.
It was only a matter of time
before the data were ‘corrected.’
Since at least 1988,
it has been claimed
that nearly all scientists
agree about the coming
global warming crisis.
This is not true, and was
never true -- but that
did not stop the leftists
from making the claim.
Naomi Oreskes,
for one example,
published a paper
in Science,
claiming to have
surveyed
the literature,
and did not find
a single paper
questioning
climate alarmism !
One of many frauds
used by Naomi Oreskes,
who is not a scientist,
for that conclusion:
Any scientific paper
that merely ASSUMED
future global warming,
for a study about
a DIFFERENT subject,
was interpreted as proof
that paper supported
a coming man made
climate crisis !
The mere assumption
that the worst projections
of global warming will happen,
and then writing about
the implications of that
assumed global warming,
on another subject,
"automatically" made
writers of a non-climate
paper into authorities
on climate science ?
It is often argued
that in science ,
the truth must
eventually emerge.
Not in global warming
climate change alarmism.
Publication is essential
for funding, and promotions
in science.
"Pal (peer) reviews"
are used to reject
papers and/or impose
significant changes
to get a paper published.
Simple disagreement
with the conclusions
of the IPCC has become
a common basis
for rejecting papers
for publication in
professional journals
... with one exception:
it's okay if the 'disagreement' is:
"We believe CO2's negative effects
are even worse than others
have claimed in the past".
Climate scientists fear
what would happen to them
if scary IPCC predictions
were refuted, ( predictions
that have been wrong since
the late 1980s ).
That would undermine
their government salaries
and grants.
Freeman Dyson,
a great scientist
in theoretical physics,
published a book review
in the New York
Review of Books,
where he "snuck in"
substantial doubt
concerning
global warming.
This was followed by very
angry letters, and condemnation
on the realclimate.org website,
including ad hominem attacks.
Dyson, F. 2008,
"The Question of Global Warming",
New York Review of Books,
55, 10, June 12
The current rewards
for science are such
that solving a problem
is likely to result
in the end of government
salaries and grants,
for the successful
scientists.
This does NOT encourage
the solution of problems,
or the search for
actual answers.
The ONLY solution to
the counterproductive
science incentives
from government funding,
is significantly reducing
the government funding
available for scientists.
ClimateGate started with the
November of 2009 release
of thousands of hacked e-mails
and other documents ( including,
computer code comments )
from the Climate Research Unit,
( CRU ) of the University
of East Anglia.
There were clear examples of:
(1)
Manipulation of proxy records
used in paleoclimate reconstructions,
(2)
Conspiracy to delete all records
of correspondence, and to deny
the existence of such records,
(3)
Suppression of other viewpoints,
(4)
Manipulation of the IPCC process, and
(5)
Intimidation of scientific journal editors.
Muir Russell, chair of the
East Anglia e-mail
sham "investigation",
freely admitted to a
Parliamentary Committee
that they did not even
bother to ask Mr. Phil Jones
( then head of the CRU )
about the deletion
of documents,
because doing that
would have been asking
Mr. Jones to admit that
he committed a crime !
Further reading on
ClimateGate e-mails:
https://www.lavoisier.com.au/articles/greenhouse-science/climate-change/climategate-emails.pdf