Excerpts ftom this humorous yet insightful piece by William York in Online Opinion.
The bylaws, Newton’s Laws of Experts, are as follows:
First Law: every expert persists in his state of rest or opinion unless acted upon by an external grant
Second Law: the rate of change of opinion is directly proportional to the applied grant
Third Law: for every expert there is an equal and opposite expert.
The present major concern of society is climate change. Why this is so is best understood in the words of H.L.Mencken, the Sage of Baltimore: “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” The effect of the political interest in climate change has been the violation of Newton’s Third Law.
From the above analysis, it is a firm conclusion that the climate change debate is distorted in its presentation and that its alleged scientific conclusions are unsound. Only when the Third Law is satisfied will we finally understand. This writer would not like to estimate how long this will take. Rather he would suggest that we all heed the advice of another sage, this time from Hollywood, where Sam Goldwyn is supposed to have said that he never liked making predictions, particularly about the future. Read more here.
Investor’s Business Daily Possibilities for 2008
If 2007 was the Year of Al Gore, with his movie, Academy Award and Nobel Prize, 2008 just might be the year the so-called scientific consensus that man is causing the Earth to warm begins to crack.
The fissures started to show in 2007: Prominent French physicist Claude Allegre called Gore a crook and equates Gore’s French followers with religious zealots. Weather Channel founder and meteorologist John Coleman said global warming is “the greatest scam in history.” Gore continued to duck open invitations to debate his theory. More than 400 scientists disputed the global warming claims.
Though they were shut out of the meeting, dissenting scientists were able to get a bit of media attention at the December climate conference in Bali.
Richard Lindzen, professor of atmospheric science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told us that it will take several years for the climate change scare to finally die. But the death spiral will begin at some point, and it looks like the spinning will start in ‘08.
Climate Resistance
Back at Gristmill, Andrew Dessler stands by his cancer/doctor analogy in the in-whom-do-we-trust war, after some comments on his blog: The complexity of climate change does not suddenly make a sociologist, economist, computer programmer, etc. a credible skeptic. In fact, the weakness of Inhofe’s list is readily apparent by the very fact that he had to include such people on his list.
This is the nail in the coffin to all critiques of the Senate report! Prof. Andrew Dessler (who claimed there were only two dozen skeptics of AGW) has embarrassed himself beyond what even I thought possible!
Andrew claims that only expertise in climate science qualifies legitimate opinion on the future the world faces. He also appears to be promising to reveal the expertise (or lack of it) of the 400. But if he is so intent on defending the reputation of the IPCC, might I suggest he starts by checking his own facts, by auditing the expertise at the IPCC?
Looking at the 51 contributors to WGII AR4 from the UK, there were 5 economists, 3 epidemiologists, 5 who were either zoologists, entomologists, or biologists. 5 worked in civil engineering or risk management / insurance. 7 had specialisms in geography. And just 10 have specialisms in geophysics, climate science or modelling, or hydrology. But there were 15who could only be described as social scientists. If we take the view that economics is a social science, that makes 20 social scientists.
Of the 70 US contributors, there were 7 economists, 13 social scientists, 3 epidemiologists, 10 biologists/ecologists, 5 engineers, 2 modellers/statisticians, 1 full-time activist (and 1 part time), 5 were in public health and policy, and 4 were unknowns. 17 worked in earth/atmospheric sciences.
The IPCC contributors are simply neither the experts Andrew claims, nor are they mostly climate scientists - but in fact are made up of specialisms that he would exclude as not being qualified. Andrew is an activist, who urges us to beleive that the IPCC is made up of climate experts, yet investigation reveals that this is not the case. But Andrew is also a climate scientist, who either has not investigated the IPCC, in which he invests so much faith (and if we can’t trust climate scientists to check the IPCC, who can we trust?) or he is deliberately misleading the public. Andrew is living proof of the confusion of politics and science, and yet asks us to believe him that the earth is “sick”.
Physician, heal thyself!
Read more here. Read the analysis of IPCC WGIII here. Read Morano’s response to Dessler’s and other attacks here. Critical Blogger Steve Bloom is on the Executive Committee of the Sierra Club of San Francisco (was Executive Director).