A Climate Of Fear, Cash And Correctitude
Trashing
real science to protect grants, prestige, and desire to control energy,
economy, lives
Paul
Driessen and Dennis Mitchell
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| Paul Driessen |
Earth’s geological, archaeological and
written histories are replete with climate changes: big and small, short and
long, benign, beneficial, catastrophic and everything in between.
The Medieval
Warm Period (950-1300 AD or CE) was a boon for agriculture, civilization
and Viking settlers in Greenland. The Little
Ice Age that followed (1300-1850) was calamitous, as were the Dust Bowl and
the extended droughts that vanquished the Anasazi and Mayan cultures; cyclical
droughts and floods in Africa, Asia and Australia; and periods of vicious
hurricanes and tornadoes. Repeated Pleistocene Epoch ice ages covered much of North America, Europe and Asia under mile-thick ice sheets that denuded
continents, stunted plant growth, and dropped ocean levels 400 feet for
thousands of years.
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| Dennis Mitchell |
Modern environmentalism, coupled with
fears first of global cooling and then of global warming, persuaded politicians
to launch the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Its original goal was
to assess possible human influences on global warming and potential risks of
human-induced warming. However, it wasn’t long before the Panel minimized,
ignored and dismissed non-human factors to such a degree that its posture
became the mantra that only humans are
now affecting climate.
Over the last three decades, five IPCC “assessment
reports,” dozens of computer models, scores of conferences and thousands of
papers focused heavily on human fossil fuel use and carbon dioxide and greenhouse
gas emissions, as being responsible for “dangerous” global warming, climate
change, climate “disruption,” and almost every “extreme” weather or climate
event. Tens of billions of dollars have supported these efforts, while only a
few million have been devoted to analyses of all factors – natural and human –
that affect and drive planetary climate change.
You would think researchers would welcome
opportunities to balance that vast library of one-sided research with an
analysis of the natural causes of
climate change – so that they can evaluate the relative impact of human activities, more accurately
predict future changes, and help ensure that communities, states and nations can
plan for, mitigate and adapt to those impacts. Unfortunately, that’s rarely the
case.
In autumn 2013, Nebraska
lawmakers budgeted $44,000 for a study of climate cycles and natural causes
– avoiding additional speculation about man made effects. Several Nebraska researchers rejected the idea, saying
the budget was insufficient and they would not be interested unless human
influences were made part of the study. They would not compromise their
integrity or let politics dictate their research, they said. Ultimately, the
project was cancelled
in favor of yet another study of human influences.
Integrity is an important concern,
especially when so many scientists have accepted far larger sums for research
that emphasizes human causes, including some at Penn State, Virginia, George Mason and other institutions
associated with the IPCC and EPA. Such grants have brought us “studies”
connecting “dangerous manmade global warming” to dwindling frog populations,
shrinking Italian pasta supplies, clownfish getting lost, cockroaches
migrating, and scores of
other remote to ridiculous
assertions.
It is essential that some studies now
begin to assess, understand and calibrate the powerful, complex, interrelated natural forces that drive climate
fluctuations, cycles and changes. Only then will we be able to discern and
separate significant human influences – and begin to predict why, when, how and
where Earth’s climate is likely to change in the future. Even $44,000 would have
enabled these accomplished Nebraska researchers to examine
existing scientific papers and prepare a valuable report on natural factors
that would help to put human influences in context. Only such comprehensive
knowledge will enable us to predict, prepare for, mitigate and adapt to future climate
variations with sufficient accuracy.
American taxpayers alone are providing
billions of dollars annually for research focused on human factors, through the
EPA and other government agencies. The universities and other institutions
routinely take 40% or more off the top for “project management” and “overhead.”
None of them wants to derail that gravy train, and all fear that accepting
grants to study natural factors or climate cycles would imperil funding from
sources that have ideological, political or crony corporatist reasons for
making grants tied to manmade warming, renewable energy and related topics. Peer
pressure, Eco-activist harassment, politically correct posturing, and shared
ideologies about fossil fuels, forced economic transformations and wealth
redistribution via energy policies also play a major role, especially on
campuses.
Racial and sexual diversity is applauded,
encouraged, even required, on campuses, as is political diversity across the “entire”
spectrum from communist to “progressive.” But diversity of opinion is restricted to 20x20-foot “free speech zones,” and
would-be free speech practitioners are vilified, exiled to academic Siberia, dismissed or penalized – as “climate
skeptics” from Delaware, Oregon, Virginia and other institutions can testify. Robust
debate about energy and climate issues is denounced and obstructed.
As The Right
Climate Stuff team points out, we cannot possibly model or distinguish human influences on climate change,
without first understanding and modeling natural
factors. But solar, cosmic ray, oceanic and other natural forces are dismissed
in the corridors of alarmism. Even the adverse effects of climate change and
renewable energy policies on jobs, economic growth, human
health and welfare, and bird and
bat populations receive little attention. Sadly, science has been subjected
to such tyranny before.
When Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo found
that science and observations did not support Ptolemy’s clever and complex model
of the solar system, the totalitarian establishment of their day advised such
heretics to recant – or be battered, banished or even burned at the stake.
Today’s climate models are even more clever and complex, dependent on questionable
assumptions and massaged data, unable to predict temperatures or climate
events, and employed to justify costly energy and economic policies.
The modelers nevertheless continue to
enjoy fame, fortune, power and academic glory – while those who question the
garbage in-garbage out models are denounced and ostracized.
A particularly ugly example of junk
science occurred in Stalin’s Soviet
Union, where Trofim
Lysenko rejected plant genetics and promoted the idea that traits were acquired
by exposure to environmental influences. His delusions fit the regime’s utopian
fantasies so well that a generation of scientists accepted them as fact, or at
least said they did, so as to stay employed, and alive. Meanwhile, Lysenko’s
crackpot ideas led to agricultural decline, crop failures, starvation, and
finally the demise of the centrally planned Soviet economic system that perpetrated
and perpetuated suffering for millions of people.
Skepticism and debate would have saved
resources and lives. However, the Stalinist political machine would not
tolerate dissent. Today’s scientific disease is less pernicious. However, politically
driven science still frames critical public policies, because ideologically
driven government has become the dominant financier of science. The disease has
already crippled Europe’s industry and economy. It now threatens
the vitality of the once powerful and innovative American system.
We’re all familiar with the Third World “democratic” process, where voters are
“persuaded” by fear, fraud, deception, free meals and sham theatrics to give
tin-pot dictators 97% of the “freely” cast votes.
Today we’re told 97% of climate
scientists agree that the science is “settled” on climate change. This sham “consensus”
is based on 75
of 77 scientists who were selected from a 2010 survey that
went to 10,257 scientists. It
ignores the 700
climate scientists, 31,000 American
scientists and 48%
of US meteorologists who say there is no evidence that humans are causing
dangerous climate change.
More important, science is not a
popularity contest or a matter of votes. As Galileo and Einstein demonstrated,
one scientist who is right, and can prove it with evidence, trumps hundreds who
have nothing but models, old paradigms, scary headlines and government cash to
support their hypotheses.
Few scientists would say the Dust Bowl
was caused by humans, even though poor farming practices clearly exacerbated
it. Few would say cancer research should be limited to manmade chemicals, even
though they may be responsible for some cancers.
Nebraskan and other researchers should
end their focus on human causes – and start working to understand all the complex, interrelated factors
behind global climate changes and cycles. Government financiers and policy
makers must do likewise. Our future well-being depends on it.
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Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the
Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org)
and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green
power - Black death. Dennis Mitchell, CPA/QEP, has been professionally
involved in environmental and tax compliance, monitoring and education for 40
years and is an avid student of climate change.
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