WSJ Online
Sixteen scientists, including such luminaries as Lindzen, Kininmonth, Happer and Shaviv, write to the Wall Street Journal, expressing the view that the global warming scare is completely overblown, and that AGW alarmism may result in increased research funding. Shock!
What heresy! Wait for the excuses: they’re not the “right” scientists, of course. They’ve all been “bought off” by big oil. They’re all probably suffering from delusions caused by mental illness. The fact that they may have reached these conclusion by means of proper impartial scientific enquiry wouldn’t occur to the alarmist head-bangers (given they haven’t a clue what “impartial scientific enquiry” is – “Surely science is avoiding FOI requests, deleting data and fudging results? That’s what I was taught!”).
Cue collective warmist head-pop in 3, 2, 1…
Although the number of publicly dissenting scientists is growing, many young scientists furtively say that while they also have serious doubts about the global-warming message, they are afraid to speak up for fear of not being promoted—or worse. They have good reason to worry. In 2003, Dr. Chris de Freitas, the editor of the journal Climate Research, dared to publish a peer-reviewed article with the politically incorrect (but factually correct) conclusion that the recent warming is not unusual in the context of climate changes over the past thousand years. The international warming establishment quickly mounted a determined campaign to have Dr. de Freitas removed from his editorial job and fired from his university position. Fortunately, Dr. de Freitas was able to keep his university job.
This is not the way science is supposed to work, but we have seen it before—for example, in the frightening period when Trofim Lysenko hijacked biology in the Soviet Union. Soviet biologists who revealed that they believed in genes, which Lysenko maintained were a bourgeois fiction, were fired from their jobs. Many were sent to the gulag and some were condemned to death.
Why is there so much passion about global warming, and why has the issue become so vexing that the American Physical Society, from which Dr. Giaever resigned a few months ago, refused the seemingly reasonable request by many of its members to remove the word “incontrovertible” from its description of a scientific issue? There are several reasons, but a good place to start is the old question “cui bono?” Or the modern update, “Follow the money.”
Alarmism over climate is of great benefit to many, providing government funding for academic research and a reason for government bureaucracies to grow. Alarmism also offers an excuse for governments to raise taxes, taxpayer-funded subsidies for businesses that understand how to work the political system, and a lure for big donations to charitable foundations promising to save the planet. Lysenko and his team lived very well, and they fiercely defended their dogma and the privileges it brought them.
That distant explosion was Monbiot, by the way…
(h/t Climate Depot)
UPDATE: Check out Un-skeptical Pseudo-Science’s hilarious over-reaction to this article here (the only reason I know about it is because they linked to me as a “denier blog” – LOL!)
UPDATE 2: Lubos Motl assembles links to all the hysterical responses from the headbangers here. Probably best to be sitting down when you read them.
UPDATE 3: Add to the list Andrew Glikson from ANU writing at The [One-sided] Conversation. Glikson cites NASA GISS (i.e. Hansen) data for global temperatures, and Munich Re (alarmist insurers) for “evidence” of more extreme weather. Would be hilarious if it weren’t so tragic. Go here (if you really must).
Australian Climate Madness 
This post and the WSJ article have made my day.
Well that has made my day too. 🙂
Interesting excerpt from the Wikipedia article on Lysenko:
“Today, much of Lysenko’s agricultural experimentation and research is largely viewed as fraudulent”
I fully expect a similar refrain in the future for that of James Hansen et al. Maybe not so much “fraudulent”, but certainly “invalid”.
way for governments to scare people and bring new taxes to fill their pig troughs
“..Wait for the excuses: they’re not the “right” scientists, of course. They’ve all been “bought off” by big oil. They’re all probably suffering from delusions caused by mental illness. ..”
Not exactly. The usual excuse provided here is that these scientists are not ‘experienced, qualified climate scientists’ (where qualified climate scientists means only those scientists agreeing with AGW).
It doesn’t matter if the excuse is poor. All that is needed is one excuse. This can then be offered by the researchers to their political masters as a reason for ignoring the warning. And, given that both sides WANT to ignore these warnings to keep the cash flow going, that is what will happen.
Climate Change (originally Global Warming) is not a science. It is politics, religion, and a (very lucrative) way of life….
Just keep taking taxes what a fraud.
I never use the term “Global warming” because it locks one into a corner that may not necessarily be a true reflection of the full picture.
I do however use the term “climate change” because it has changed. Anybody who thinks the weather and all of its behavioural idiosyncracies and habits has not changed from its once reasonably predictable cycles is living on another planet. The increase in global weather extremes has become almost daily news. Records continue to be broken at an astonishing rate. Yes, we used to get fires, floods, cyclones, droughts etc, but not like these today, and not all in the space of the same year.
Anybody who thinks that the continual and unabated spewing of particulate and chemical pollution into the earth’s atmosphere will have no effect on the weather, is simply fooling themselves.
The major cause of the “daily news” of weather extremes is the increased reporting. To be sure that what we are experiencing today really is more than in times past, you need to check the whole record. Tropical cyclones, for example, make terrific headlines, and it’s easy to think they’re worse than ever. But there is an objective measure, ACE – “Tropical cyclone accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) has exhibited strikingly large global interannual variability during the past 40-years. In the pentad since 2006, Northern Hemisphere and global tropical cyclone ACE has decreased dramatically to the lowest levels since the late 1970s. Additionally, the frequency of tropical cyclones has reached a historical low.”
Maue (2011) from http://policlimate.com/tropical/index.html
Perhaps you should check your facts!
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/faqs-and-myths#1
“I never use the term “Global warming” because it locks one into a corner that may not necessarily be a true reflection of the full picture….”
Yes, we know that. So convenient isn’t it? The term “Climate Change” is far more suitable as it’s consistent with every conceivable weather event.
“Records continue to be broken at an astonishing rate.”
Indeed. And at a “head popping” rate too hmmmm?
May I suggest you check the records for Qld floods in the 1800’s Your Honour? Perhaps then you could retire to consider your verdict.
“Cue collective warmist head-pop in 3, 2, 1…”
I love the sound of leftist head pop in the morning. Hence I urge the yAyBC to provide some coverage of this story. What’s the chances?
But how do we get the politicians to see the error of their ways before people start freezing to death?
I can re-post this, but in California, this IS heresy. People ignore facts — it’s pitiful.
Its obvious front the soaring price of electricity that any bonus the Federal Government offers to “of set” the CO2 tax it will be implementing is going to cause major financial hardship and already gobbled up by increased costs of living. It’s obvious that the the “compensation” the government has promised will not actually materialize because it’s already gone before the CO2 tax has even come into effect.
It would be interesting to note every single member of parliament that supported this stupid and senseless concept and voted it in, and that for every death from heat exposure caused by people not being able to afford to cool their homes in summer with air conditioning or dying from the cold because they can’t afford to heat their homes all because of the increase in costs for heating and cooling due to price, that every single politician, AGW alarming and scientist that has supported the hoax be fully prosecuted and jailed for murder for every single person they murdered for the implementation of this rediculous money making scheme.
You really think the inquisition cares whether you are agnostic? You are a climate heathen, and shall confess before you burn (apparently with the entire planet as well).
Congrats on getting on the WUWT blogroll, and keep up the great work.
Thanks NP!
Yay, I’m a “denialist” blog, according to the Un-Skeptical Pseudo-Science headbangers (who clearly haven’t ever visited the site, since otherwise they’d know I was a climate agnostic, but hey, smear first, ask questions later, right?