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Global Warming Dissenters Suppressed?
sycodon writes "Global Warming has become more than just a scientific issue and has been portrayed as nothing less than the End of the World by some. However, despite all the hoopla from Hollywood, Politicians and Science Bureaucrats, there is another side, but it's being suppressed according to Richard Lindzen, an Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT. From the article: '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.'"
Slashdot's financial situation has become more than just a mess and has been portrayed as nothing less than the End of the World by some. However, despite all the hoopla from Zonk, Malda and Scuttle Monkey, there is another side, but it's being suppressed according to various Slashdot denizens. From the article: 'Slashbots who dissent from the alarmism have seen their karma disappear, their posts derided, and themselves libeled as Evangelicals, Republicans, or worse. Consequently, lies about Slashdot's impending death gain credence even when they fly in the face of the truth that supposedly is their basis.'
Yeah, they just have $1.7 Billion in funding to fight over, in the US alone.
RTFA
People who disagree with global warming are just blowing hot air. If we don't suppress them, this hot air is going to contribute to global warming.
I am 100% on the side of the global warming crowd. The way I see it, if global warming does happen, I will be able to score points by telling everyone "I told you so." If it doesn't happen, I can claim that I saved the planet.
-Kurt
"We can categorically state we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - UK military spokesman, July 2007
First off, it's not professional to call peers "alarmists", especially if you want respect from them. Scientists are usually if anything very reserved about stating an opinion, so I'm highly skeptical of scientists willing to immediately and simply label a broad class of their peers as "alarmists". It might explain why these guys are getting their funding yanked and such. Second, just like "Darwinism" isn't a theory but proven fact- global warming, the fact that humans are causing it, and that we had better do something very quickly or we'll be fucked- is all widely accepted. We have decades of research and evidence, like glacial "records" going back more than long enough to show the planet has never seen anything like us humans, climate-wise. Or evidence that on September 11th, when the FAA grounded planes across the country, the weather patterns changed dramatically.
It's widely accepted that pretending we're not having a massive effect on our planet's climate is the exact opposite of "alarmism"- it's sticking your head in the sand and hoping the lion's gone away.
We have an administration which forbids government scientists from speaking with press, and requires all climate-related press releases to be routed directly through the whitehouse, where they are absolutely gutted? (really. 60 minutes got photocopies of the press releases and reports, after they'd been scribbled all over by white house staff.)
So in one corner, we have a bunch of disgruntled scientists claiming they're being marginalized for taking an unpopular view. And on the other hand, we have scientists being gagged and censored by the Bush administration for presenting valid evidence that the climate is seriously fucked up.
Yeah, I'm really going to loose sleep over the head-in-the-sand people getting to be "unpopular"...
Please help metamoderate.
Did you know that the Bush administration has barred climate researchers working for the government from speaking directly to the press? And that press releases, statements, or publicly released research on any climate matter must pass through the White House first, where they are essentially rewritten?
Maybe you should tune into 60 minutes more often.
---Piltz worked under the Clinton and Bush administrations. Each year, he helped write a report to Congress called "Our Changing Planet." Piltz says he is responsible for editing the report and sending a review draft to the White House.
Asked what happens, Piltz says: "It comes back with a large number of edits, handwritten on the hard copy by the chief-of-staff of the Council on Environmental Quality." Asked who the chief of staff is, Piltz says, "Phil Cooney." Piltz says Cooney is not a scientist. "He's a lawyer. He was a lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute, before going into the White House," he says.
Cooney, the former oil industry lobbyist, became chief-of-staff at the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Piltz says Cooney edited climate reports in his own hand. In one report, a line that said earth is undergoing rapid change becomes "may be undergoing change." "Uncertainty" becomes "significant remaining uncertainty." One line that says energy production contributes to warming was just crossed out.
"He was obviously passing it through a political screen," says Piltz. "He would put in the word potential or may or weaken or delete text that had to do with the likely consequence of climate change, pump up uncertainty language throughout." ----
Please help metamoderate.
If you don't trust Lindzen, you can run your own global climate model at home and check the outputs yourself!
EdGCM is a NASA GCM that has been ported to run on Mac and Windows, and given a GUI interface. Want to turn the sun down by 2% or add some CO2? Just point and click and drag. Then, hit play, wait a day or two, and you'll have your own GCM outputs, complete with a visualization utility to view them with.
Space and Computers.
We were saying about labeling people as corporate stooges?
Here's the way it works:
1. You say "hey, this thing is more complex than we thought, let's try to understand it"
2. Your are labeled an "enemy of the planet" by those who review grant money
3. You get no further funding
4. You go to the sources that WILL fund your research
5. Because you are now backed by evil corporations your are branded a stooge
6. Your peers ignore your data and input
Isn't it great how we're not surpressing anyone's research?
PS: "enemy of the planet" is a direct quote from those reviewing funding for a friend of mine who was in solar astrophysics at the time. His lab had dared to propose a model by which the sun could power observed warming.
The earth has supposedly been warming over some period of very, very recent history. So with over 4 billion years of weather, we humans in our infinite wisdom are choosing about 100 years of data and trying to extrapolate where the earth is heading.
Let's face it, religious zealots have been calling for the End of the World since the beginning of time and now Scientific zealots are getting into the act.
What's really funny is that when I was a kid the real weather scare was the coming Ice Age. What happen to those Ice Age zealots anyway? Probably driven underground by the latest "Sky is Falling" group known as the Global Warming evangelists.
I'm so sick of the press reporting on predictions of idiots from idiot scientists to idiot psychics as if they were fact and then never following up when most of these nutballs are wrong.
I guess the press doesn't want to report on the failings of these wackjobs since the press was the ones who gave them credence in the first damn place.
We had Y2K in our industry and look how many billions were spent on something that we all knew was a bunch of BS. Many people post rationalized that the reason nothing bad happened was because something was done. But these people were part of the problem and don't want to admit to their bosses that huge amounts of money didn't need to be spent. And if you don't believe me, just look at the countries that didn't spend the money we did. No doomsday for them even though very little was done.
Global warming is going to follow the same stupid path. Tomorrow there will be a new threat and billions will be spent on that problem, meanwhile we'll be paying $10.00 / gallon for gas and no one will be solving the real problems.