Global Warming Consensus

Global Warming advocates like to claim that "the science is settled" and that "there is a consensus in the scientific community" which believes in man-made climate change. To disagree engenders quizzical looks and assumptions that you must be a creationist and a flat-earther as well.

The TCS scientists and columnists are faulted for the substantive funding they receive from petroleum companies. Perhaps that's legitimate, but I do not understand why the converse isn't true: government scientists have an equal or greater stake in perpetuating research.

So, my new buddy is the Alfred P. Sloane Professor of Atmospheric Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I don't think anybody ever accused MIT of hiring professors who don't know their science because they're right-wingers. I have quoted Richard Lindzen before, but today he writes in the WSJ Ed page about this consensus which is not a consensus.

When Mr. Stephanopoulos confronted Mr. Gore with the fact that the best estimates of rising sea levels are far less dire than he suggests in his movie, Mr. Gore defended his claims by noting that scientists "don't have any models that give them a high level of confidence" one way or the other and went on to claim -- in his defense -- that scientists "don't know… They just don't know."

So, presumably, those scientists do not belong to the "consensus." Yet their research is forced, whether the evidence supports it or not, into Mr. Gore's preferred global-warming template -- namely, shrill alarmism. To believe it requires that one ignore the truly inconvenient facts. To take the issue of rising sea levels, these include: that the Arctic was as warm or warmer in 1940; that icebergs have been known since time immemorial; that the evidence so far suggests that the Greenland ice sheet is actually growing on average.
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So what, then, is one to make of this alleged debate? I would suggest at least three points.

First, nonscientists generally do not want to bother with understanding the science. Claims of consensus relieve policy types, environmental advocates and politicians of any need to do so. Such claims also serve to intimidate the public and even scientists -- especially those outside the area of climate dynamics. Secondly, given that the question of human attribution largely cannot be resolved, its use in promoting visions of disaster constitutes nothing so much as a bait-and-switch scam. That is an inauspicious beginning to what Mr. Gore claims is not a political issue but a "moral" crusade.

Lastly, there is a clear attempt to establish truth not by scientific methods but by perpetual repetition. An earlier attempt at this was accompanied by tragedy. Perhaps Marx was right. This time around we may have farce -- if we're lucky.

Environment Posted by jk at June 26, 2006 10:39 AM