14 February 2010

Climate: A Science of Doom
Climate: A Science of Doom

If not for its catastrophic predictions of doom, climate science would be a backwater -- barely funded and rarely reported in the media. Without climate doom, there would be no 100 trillion euro carbon market and Al Gore would not be approaching billionaire status. Without climate doom the UN and its IPCC would have but a tenuous grasp on the incomes of ordinary North Americans, Australians, and Kiwis. For climate science and the vast global carbon trade industry, everything hinges on doom.

Until now, the world news media and political leaders have been content to leave all of these things to the UN's IPCC, and to the academic and governmental institutions devoted to climate studies. Until now, it seemed that predictions of climate doom were scientific and disinterested, trustworthy. Until now.

Now, maverick scientists who refuse to be cowed by the climate doom orthodoxy are beginning to speak out, to question the reality of climate doom. This process is cautious and gradual, and has none of the bombastic certainty of the climate doom orthodoxy's $multi-trillion steamrolling crusade and bandwagon.

Science fiction writer and frequent warming catastrophe advocate David Brin would like for the heretics and skeptics to shut up and listen to their betters in the climate doom orthodoxy. Brin maintains that skeptics are not "real scientists" and that unless someone is a "real scientist" he should not be taken seriously in the climate debate.

Although trained as a physicist, Brin is clearly acting as an advocate for a cause. In fact, he is appealing to the infallible authority of the "consensus" orthodoxy, as opposed to the inconsequential carping of infidels and heretics -- who should probably be taken out and burned.

Every science worth the name must be willing to defend its hypotheses against serious questions of data, methods, theory, and conclusions. Appealing to authority in an attempt to avoid facing the vital skepticism of the scientific method, is an act of dogmatic cowardice.

There is no exclusive club called "science" where consensus rules, in possession of absolute truths. Any "science" that is afraid to face the scrutiny of the outside world does not deserve the name of science. It is instead a cult, or a scam.

Instead of barring the doors to the heretics, climate science had best open wide the doors and begin cleaning its own house in earnest.   Because up until now, the orthodoxy of climate doom has had it all its own way.  Things are changing.  It will be very painful for true believers in the orthodoxy to stand by and watch cherished beliefs being dismantled in a true scientific manner.  Painful, but necessary.

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8 Comments:

Blogger Ayrdale said...

Very good indeed. I think the changing tack from the green/left will be a retreat back to the 'sustainability' argument. The IPCC science is shonky, alarmism panic and haste are dead and their only refuge will be peak oil.

I have blogged on this at...

http://mickysmuses.blogspot.com/2010/02/green-left-fallback-and-fallover.html

Sunday, 14 February, 2010  
Blogger yamahaeleven said...

Dr. Brin seems to be rooting for his chums. The author of "The Transparent Society" should know better, but I expect him to, eventually, retract when it becomes ever more obvious his friends are misguided.

Sunday, 14 February, 2010  
Blogger kurt9 said...

I know David Brin from the late 80's. He likes to hear his own voice and never shuts up. I stopped listening to him a long time ago. I'm surprised anyone still takes him seriously.

Sunday, 14 February, 2010  
Blogger al fin said...

Micky: Right. Greens will use whatever tool is handy to whack at our freedoms, so as to gain more power for themselves.

Yama11: Yes, there is a great deal of cliquish behaviour involved in the increasingly plush climate doom orthodoxy.

Kurt: Interesting personal insight, thanks. I don't know David B. personally, but I admire some of his works of fiction.

The problem with any field of "science" that stops listening to new arguments, and stops accepting criticism, is that it becomes something other than a living, dynamic science. It becomes a rotting and fetid corpse, stinking up the landscape.

There is something odd about people who occupy themselves by scrupulously guarding a corpse as it stinks and rots, denying its obvious death. Time to bury the corpse and get on with life.

But as Micky points out, the current dead horse cannot be buried until the left gets a better dead horse to flog.

Monday, 15 February, 2010  
Blogger Ugh said...

Personally I've found David Brin's sci/fi novels unreadable, I haven't been able to finish even one. His preachiness is nauseating. Michael Crichton on the other hand could get his opinions out without completely turning off the readers and ruining his plot.

Monday, 15 February, 2010  
Blogger Bruce Hall said...

Speaking of "real scientists"...

http://hallofrecord.blogspot.com/2010/02/who-dat-make-me-climate-scientist.html

Monday, 15 February, 2010  
Blogger kurt9 said...

To be honest, I don't even like Brin's novels. They remind me too much of Brin himself. "Kiln People" was particularly bad with respect to this. I found that I could not read more than about 20 pages into the novel without being revolted. I really do not like this man personally.

Monday, 15 February, 2010  
Blogger al fin said...

The thing that most troubles me about Brin, Bruce Sterling, Carl Zimmer, and the other intelligent defenders of carbon hysteria, is that they seem so willing to trust in dubious data. Even after the exposure of the ClimateGate files and a host of other errors by the IPCC, these intellectuals and journalists refuse to question the reliability of all the data which climate catastrophe is based upon.

Such witless gullibility is so unlike their normal selves, as to be virtually inexplicable outside of a "religious faith" context, or some other vested interest ingredient.

No matter. Up until last autumn, only extremely alert individuals such as Freeman Dyson, Anthony Watts, Steve McIntyre, Richard Lindzen, and Al Fin ;-) etc. were aware of the expensive fraud being perpetrated on the world. Now, there is no excuse for anyone with an IQ above their shoe size not to understand what is happening.

Tuesday, 16 February, 2010  

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“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act” _George Orwell

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