Jeff Masters reviews "Climate of Fear" essay

[phantom power]

An opinion piece titled, "Climate of Fear: Global-Warming Alarmists Intimidate Scientists Into Silence" appeared in the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, criticizing the "iron triangle" of of climate scientists, advocates and policymakers responsible for raising the alarm over the threat posed by global warming. The article's two main points:

1) Climate scientists who are raising alarms over global warming are exaggerating the danger in order to get funding.

2) "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."

I'm not familiar with the scientists Dr. Lindzen discusses who have lost their funding because they are greenhouse skeptics, and he does not provide any quotes or references to support this point. So, to keep this discussion shorter, I will only focus on his first argument--that climate scientists are exaggerating the threat of global warming in order to get funding.

http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=341&tstamp=200604

[jrw14125]

1. Want funding? Become a GW skeptic! Exxon pays em all!

[Odin2005]

2. Sounds like the same BS spewed by creationists and quacks.

Tell enough stupid people that "mainstream science is a dogmatic racket that is supressing the truth" and they begin to beleive it. It's an abuse of the refutation of the Argumentum ad Populorum argument (majority opinion is truth), which only applies to lay people, not experts.

[NNadir]

3. It looks rather like Dr. Masters is finally committing on the matter.

[phantom power]

4. He seems to be taking a firm anti-Lindzen stance, at any rate.

I noticed that he continues his hard-line skepticism about the meaning of 2005.

Several of Dr. Lindzen's concerns in his article are valid ones. For instance, he complains of "repeated claims that this past year's hurricane activity was another sign of human-induced climate change", which is a concern of mine, as well. A single extreme weather event, or an even a series of extreme hurricanes in one ocean basin during a single year, are not valid indicators of climate change. Lindzen also criticizes the world's most prestigious scientific journals, Science and Nature, for bias against papers by global warming skeptics. This bias is difficult to prove or disprove, but I believe there is probably some substance to this claim. I've seen a number of complaints that ring true about this from the greenhouse skeptic scientists.

It got me to thinking about what it takes for a climate scientist to firmly declare "Hurricane frequency and/or intensity is increasing due to climate change." The simple answer is probably "however much data it takes to drive my p-values down to <= 0.01" or something. But I wonder how that translates into "how many more years like 2005 will it take?"

And, of course, hurricanes are just one of many facets of climate. Thunderstorms, drought, floods, etc, raise the same questions.

[Dead_Parrot]

5. I was mulling this point...

...whilst looking at your TC Monica post. I don't have the figures, but isn't this turning into an unusual year down here, too? That must shorten the odds on the 2005 (gulf) hurricane season being a freak occurance...

[phantom power]

6. I'm not clear about how your season is shaping up against average.

Part of the problem is, it isn't over yet. It seemed on track to be above average as of last month. I haven't actually caught anybody down-under saying things like "dammit, that's a lot of tropical cyclones!"

Unless you want to be the first :evilgrin:

[Dead_Parrot]

7. Dammit, that's a lot of tropical cyclones!

Well, it seems like a lot. Part of the problem is, most of this end of the planet is water, so there's nowhere near the reporting or analysis that we have for the gulf: name six people* who've heard of Typhoon Tip and win a donut...

Conversely, it might be we're just noticing them because this year they're clipping Aus for a change, and it's actually just an average season... :shrug:

*excludes the wunderground posse :)

[hydrashok75]

8. RealClimate had an interesting debunking of Lindzen

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/04/lindzen-point-by-point/

[Dogmudgeon]

9. It's the typical story

As soon as the bullies start to attract attention for pulling the funding from their victims, they commission a large number of essays about how they, themselves, have been oppressed, and have lost funding.

The reality of the situation can be measured in dollars and academic positions, but when was the last time you've seen any accurate accounting for scientific funding under a Republican or conservative regime?

It's not so much that the neo-cons are anti-science; rather, they believe it is possible to buy the truth by "buying science" that they like. The scientists themselves are increasingly being used as pawns. The Conservatives not only crave the protection of pop-victimhood, they also want the glam and esteem of science. And they're willing to pay well.

ObFairAndBalanced: Yes, lefties occasionally do it, too. But not very often. The discrepancy is easy to observe. We all need to be careful about funding our fantasies, but science-appropriation is mainly the right-wingers' game.

--p!