WSJ/ Climate of Fear

[twa]

http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008220

Climate of Fear

Global-warming alarmists intimidate dissenting scientists into silence.

BY RICHARD LINDZEN

Wednesday, April 12, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

There have been repeated claims that this past year's hurricane activity was another sign of human-induced climate change. Everything from the heat wave in Paris to heavy snows in Buffalo has been blamed on people burning gasoline to fuel their cars, and coal and natural gas to heat, cool and electrify their homes. Yet how can a barely discernible, one-degree increase in the recorded global mean temperature since the late 19th century possibly gain public acceptance as the source of recent weather catastrophes? And how can it translate into unlikely claims about future catastrophes?

The answer has much to do with misunderstanding the science of climate, plus a willingness to debase climate science into a triangle of alarmism. Ambiguous scientific statements about climate are hyped by those with a vested interest in alarm, thus raising the political stakes for policy makers who provide funds for more science research to feed more alarm to increase the political stakes. After all, who puts money into science--whether for AIDS, or space, or climate--where there is nothing really alarming? Indeed, the success of climate alarmism can be counted in the increased federal spending on climate research from a few hundred million dollars pre-1990 to $1.7 billion today. It can also be seen in heightened spending on solar, wind, hydrogen, ethanol and clean coal technologies, as well as on other energy-investment decisions.

But there is a more sinister side to this feeding frenzy. Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their grant funds disappear, their work derided, and themselves libeled as industry stooges, scientific hacks or worse. Consequently, lies about climate change gain credence even when they fly in the face of the science that supposedly is their basis.

...

Alarm rather than genuine scientific curiosity, it appears, is essential to maintaining funding. And only the most senior scientists today can stand up against this alarmist gale, and defy the iron triangle of climate scientists, advocates and policymakers.

M. Lindzen is Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT.

[Peregrine]

Wow an MIT professor who has it right. Im surprised.

Its amazing to see these claims of what just a simple degree change in climate temperatures(what the HECK is a global temperature first off, we dont have a reading in every single place at the same time), considering we have seasons that change temperatures drasticaly, and in the past, the climate has been degrees different than it is now. We read about ice melting and flooding. Yet we know glaciers are 90% underwater, and water has a unique property where it EXPANDS when it moves to solid form, rather than the opposite, so the whole arguement makes no sense.

We know increased heat means increased evaporation, which in turn means increased rainfall. We know that means increased plantgrowth, which means more C02 consumption by plants, and leading to less green house gases. WE also know increase heat in the winter means less fossil fuel use, less greenhouse emisions.

Half a year ago there was an AP article on the fact that, Scientists believe 10k years ago there was an ice age brought on by global warming, yet we all, and the animals and plants, lived through it fine, or they were dead wrong( as they usually are with anything over a couple thousand years old). People fear what they dont know. Fear is often irrational. It wasnt that long ago everyone was crying out about the world getting colder.

[chomerics]

The climate is warming, there is a tremendous amount of data to prove it out. I also find it HIGHLY offensive that he would have the unmittigated gaul to say funding is revoked for people who come out against global warning. It is not only offensive, but an outright lie.

Where does the money come from? Ummm, the government. . .well then Mr. Wizzard, can you please tell me how an administration that has been slanderous to climatologists who differ from their wacked version of reality would somehow decide to revoke funding for people who agree with them? It has been far and above the opposite, and working in an industry which relies on government funding, I can tell you it is a freakin joke. The Smithsonian had their funding cut for having a Evolution Exhibit. Yes, you hear me right, because a government institution which is based on science had the gaul to publish the truth, they had their funding cut. Where was the outrage then?

[chomerics]

People fear what they dont know. Fear is often irrational.

Mushroom cloud. . . weapons of mass destruction. . . clear threat. . . Saddam and Al Qaeda. . .nuclear weapons programs.

It is amazing how clear some can see when they are posed with a different scenario but the same premise huh.

[Ancalagon the Black]

Chomerics, to claim that the scientific community is somehow immune to the political maelstrom that envelops all of us is naive at best. There is good science on both sides of this issue, and to accuse the author of the article of lying is a bit premature. Not everyone gets to be a Sloan professor at MIT, and those who do are tenured (so they're not scrambling for jobs or appointments) and well respected.

[skinz1972]

The climate is warming, there is a tremendous amount of data to prove it out. I also find it HIGHLY offensive that he would have the unmittigated gaul to say funding is revoked for people who come out against global warning. It is not only offensive, but an outright lie.

Where does the money come from? Ummm, the government. . .well then Mr. Wizzard, can you please tell me how an administration that has been slanderous to climatologists who differ from their wacked version of reality would somehow decide to revoke funding for people who agree with them? It has been far and above the opposite, and working in an industry which relies on government funding, I can tell you it is a freakin joke. The Smithsonian had their funding cut for having a Evolution Exhibit. Yes, you hear me right, because a government institution which is based on science had the gaul to publish the truth, they had their funding cut. Where was the outrage then?

the climate is changing,not warming,you can look back 2,000 yrs and maybe see what is going on 2day.......................CLIMATE CHANGE............. PERIODS OF COLD CLIAMTE,AND A PERIOD OF A HTO CLIMATE.

[twa]

Please visit the link for more info:

And

So how is it that we don't have more scientists speaking up about this junk science? It's my belief that many scientists have been cowed not merely by money but by fear. An example: Earlier this year, Texas Rep. Joe Barton issued letters to paleoclimatologist Michael Mann and some of his co-authors seeking the details behind a taxpayer-funded analysis that claimed the 1990s were likely the warmest decade and 1998 the warmest year in the last millennium. Mr. Barton's concern was based on the fact that the IPCC had singled out Mr. Mann's work as a means to encourage policy makers to take action. And they did so before his work could be replicated and tested--a task made difficult because Mr. Mann, a key IPCC author, had refused to release the details for analysis. The scientific community's defense of Mr. Mann was, nonetheless, immediate and harsh. The president of the National Academy of Sciences--as well as the American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Union--formally protested, saying that Rep. Barton's singling out of a scientist's work smacked of intimidation.

All of which starkly contrasts to the silence of the scientific community when anti-alarmists were in the crosshairs of then-Sen. Al Gore. In 1992, he ran two congressional hearings during which he tried to bully dissenting scientists, including myself, into changing our views and supporting his climate alarmism. Nor did the scientific community complain when Mr. Gore, as vice president, tried to enlist Ted Koppel in a witch hunt to discredit anti-alarmist scientists--a request that Mr. Koppel deemed publicly inappropriate. And they were mum when subsequent articles and books by Ross Gelbspan libelously labeled scientists who differed with Mr. Gore as stooges of the fossil-fuel industry.

Sadly, this is only the tip of a non-melting iceberg. In Europe, Henk Tennekes was dismissed as research director of the Royal Dutch Meteorological Society after questioning the scientific underpinnings of global warming. Aksel Winn-Nielsen, former director of the U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization, was tarred by Bert Bolin, first head of the IPCC, as a tool of the coal industry for questioning climate alarmism. Respected Italian professors Alfonso Sutera and Antonio Speranza disappeared from the debate in 1991, apparently losing climate-research funding for raising questions.