No Evidence (Again)
The IPCC scientists are stridently biased on proving man made climate change to get more funding from liberal governments around the world who provide research grants for their academic studies. One need only suggest doing a study that verifies some of the IPCC’s politically motivated conclusions to receive money. The media is in on the scheme too. They keep the global warming issue at top priority ensuring that it is in the consciousness of voters. Politicians bend over backwards to award research grants that are slanted in favour of man induced climate change to get more votes. So the story goes. We have read it on right wing blogs for years now. It is one of the right’s pet conspiracy theories.
Richard Black, a reporter for the BBC wanted to test the claims of scientific bias and even intimidation to toe the the line on global warming with an open invitation and a promise. Provide him with any example of bias, refusal to print opposing studies in academic journals, refusal of government funding on the basis of contrary research to the IPCC “consensus”, intimidation or reprisal for same, and he would do the leg work of investigating the claims and publish any legitimate examples.
His article on the BBC website is here. He sums up the exercise, which lasted for about a year as:
“I invited sceptics to put their cards on the table, and send me documentation or other firm evidence of bias.
For my part, I agreed to look into any concrete claims.”
[....]
“I anticipated having to spend days, weeks, months even, sifting the wheat from the chaff, going backwards and forwards between journal editors, heads of department, conference organisers, funding bodies and the original plaintiffs.
Here are some of his conclusions:
“The sum total of evidence obtained through this open invitation, then, is one first-hand claim of bias in scientific journals, not backed up by documentary evidence; and three second-hand claims, two well-known and one that the scientist in question does not consider evidence of anti-sceptic feeling.
No-one said they had been refused a place on the IPCC, the central global body in climate change, or denied a job or turned down for promotion or sacked or refused access to a conference platform, or indeed anything else.”
Read the whole thing for yourself and draw your own conclusions. What I have found in my own reading is that the skeptics continue to push conspiracy theories (some well funded and organized) with no evidence – no peer reviewed studies – just anecdotes and absurd suggestions about how the IPCC scientists, media and governments are somehow all in this together pushing an agenda falsely validating human induced climate change.
H/T: Emily at Desmogblog
(First!)
Good post TH. How many of the deniers do you think are going to read the article, or pay it any mind?
What do you figger is their reaction? Discredit the journalist, maybe?
“What do you figger is their reaction? Discredit the journalist, maybe?”
That is a familiar possibility. There are a lot of ideologues on the other side of the debate who fail to see a distinction between actual peer reviewed scientific study and a blog post with a picture of a temperature monitor located close to an air conditioning unit, for example. Since there are no studies a common tactic is to either discredit the messenger or provide anecdotes that MUST mean that all of the IPCC scientists work is bunk.
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Well, it’s really cold in Ottawa today, and David Suzuki drives a diesel bus, and Al Gore has kind of a puffy face.
So obviously global warming is a myth and you’re both dupes.
treehugger
a common tactic is to either discredit the messenger or provide anecdotes that MUST mean that all of the IPCC scientists work is bunk.
It’s even more common to hear scientists who have diputed AGW as being in the pocket of “Big Oil”.
Both sides swing that sword.
and as someone who is in the pocket of big oil I can attest to the fact that most of those scientists are never at the meetings.
“It’s even more common to hear scientists who have diputed AGW as being in the pocket of “Big Oil”.”
If the point that you are making NB is that dismissals occur on any side of an argument with labels then I agree. In this case, however, there is more than a kernel of truth to the label. The climate change denial crowd gets many of their talking points from some very organized groups, some who have a vested interest (such as being funded by oil companies). I can think of one example recently in the US. At Desmogblog, they have evidence that some of the most outspoken critics of the science AGW are some of the same people who were outspoken supporters of the tobacco companies; they suggested cigarettes don’t cause cancer 20 years ago and are now on to a new cause: denying human induced climate change.
Personally (and despite my nick
), I have an open mind on this. If a scientist, or many, come forward with more conclusive evidence that this AGW was just hysteria, then I will accept it and move on. That hasn’t happened yet.
Every time I hear about these scientists the same question pops to mind…. if 500 scientists dispute the findings and 498 of them are either astrophysicists, anthropologists, or theoretical physicists dealing in the quantum mechanics of the multiverse, does their disagreement mean anything significant?
does their disagreement mean anything significant?
Maybe. One theory (calm down I said THEORY) I have read, is that global warming could be attributed to increased sunspot activity, which could also answer the question as to why Mars’ is heating up and why it’s polar caps are melting too.
Other scientific disiplines could bring provable alternate theories to the table other than AGW.
Absolutely. But what we are doing here yet again, unfortunately, is reframing the argument so that it’s an argument from authority, rather than an argument from evidence.
I haven’t read, or read of, a single scientific paper on AGW that declares it the ONLY factor in climate change. The existence of other factors is a given.
Global warming panic is nothing but a commie plot.
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/columnists/story.html?id=3fb688e9-4379-4373-98ed-d2ce59d434b4&p=1
I don’t exactly how to categorize the reposting of a David Warren article as a rhetorical strategy. You sure couldn’t call it argument from “authority”.