I think we should try to look into the reasonableness of the claims and arguments and not defer everything to people who are or claim to be experts. And that's a general rule. It certainly applies to climate science.
When I first heard of this global warming thing ... about 1980, I assumed there might be something to it. I thought that for a long time, I figured the human race was performing a global experiment burning lots of fossil fuels. I never thought though we had a chance of not burning fossil fuels. Even were we in the West to decide to totally swear off fossil fuels, countries on the rise like China and India WILL burn them in our place.
But as I learned more, I found the argument for CAGW was pretty shallow. It relied heavily on appeals to authority and ad hominem denunciation of skeptics and has from the beginning ... example, Senator Gore's attempts to browbeat Richard Lindzen in 1992:
....
Shortly after the 1992 release of his book, then Senator Gore ran hearings reminiscent of the Spanish Inquisition. Before his committee, scientists who disagreed with his junk science beliefs were put to the rack and urged to recant. One scientist forced to face Interrogator Al was Richard Lindzen, the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at MIT.
Dr. Lindzen was and is a well known vocal critic of the seriousness of a human-induced global warming threat. That, and his reputation for questioning the motivations of his easily swayed brother scientists, made him a prime candidate for the spectacle of public conversion.
In an interview with Mike Miliard of The Phoenix, he recalled:
Gore would run star-chamber hearings and invite the heads of funding agencies while he would try to get scientists [who doubted climate changes severity] to recant. . . . Everyone in the field knows [that] when the funding went up to $2 billion a year under Bush the elder, that money didn't come because people thought climate was a wonderful thing. It came because of alarm.
.....
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.
....
If Dr. Lindzen is correct in his contentions, and there certainly exists every reason to believe that he is, then, how can we possibly hope to ever learn the truth about Earth's climatology? Or, for that matter, any other science which has been hijacked by the PC police? What are the real dangers of AIDS? What are the long term health risks of abortion for the mother? What do we really know about the evils of DDT? What other junk might our scientists be feeding us as a byproduct of the struggle to remain funded and unbridled?
....
http://mensnewsdaily.com/2006/06/30/gore%e2%80%99s-grave-new-world/
Furthermore, as time went on we could see the CAGW proponents scare-mongering predictions failed and observed that the CAGW promoting scientists ACTED like crooks, trying to hide their data and programs, conspiring to violate FOI laws and corrupt peer review in order to deny skeptical scientists publication, discarding original temperature data and making unexplained adjustments to historical data which always go in one direction - lowering past temperatures and raising later temperatures.
Here's an example of a spectacular failed prediction:
“If what you’re saying about the greenhouse effect is true, is anything going to look different down there in 20 years?” He looked for a while and was quiet and didn’t say anything for a couple seconds. Then he said, “Well, there will be more traffic.” I, of course, didn’t think he heard the question right. Then he explained, “The West Side Highway [which runs along the Hudson River] will be under water. And there will be tape across the windows across the street because of high winds. And the same birds won’t be there. The trees in the median strip will change.” Then he said, “There will be more police cars.” Why? “Well, you know what happens to crime when the heat goes up.”
James HANSEN - 1988, to Rob Reiss
http://www.prisonplanet.com/a-little-known-20-year-old-climate-change-prediction-by-dr-james-hansen-... |
