Garth Paltridge, the former chief research scientist with Australia's Commonwealth Scientific & Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), atmospheric research division, has had enough and has come out with "guns blazing"! He has just launched a devastating attack on the creation of the global "consensus" and the corruption of his beloved CSIRO. He writes......The broad theory of man-made global warming is acceptable in the purely qualitative sense, however the economic and social argument is whether the supposed increase, even if it were noticeable, could change the overall welfare of mankind for the worse. Considering that at the time of the Vikings, it was 3 degrees warmer than it is today and that didn't seem to stop them from running amuck and plundering. Its the presence of a lot of unpredictability and uncertainty that gives rise to strong forces encouraging public overstatement and a belief in worst-case scenarios.
But the real worry with climate research is that it is on the very edge of what is called postmodern science. Postmodern science envisages a sort of political nirvana in which scientific theory and results can be consciously and legitimately manipulated to suit either the dictates of political correctness or the polices of the government of the day.
There is little doubt that some players in the Climate Game, not a lot, but enough to have severely damaged the reputation of climate scientists in general by having stepped across the boundary into postmodern science. The Climategate scandal of 2009, wherein thousands of emails were leaked from the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in England, showed that certain SENIOR members of the research community were, and presumably still are, quite capable of deliberately selecting data in order to overstate the evidence for dangerous climate change.
Climate science has transformed itself from a research backwater a few decades ago into one of the greatest public-good cash cows ever devised. In Australia, there is a separate federal Department of Climate Change & Energy Efficiency specifically devoted to implementing (buying ?) the social change required to limit global warming. The livelihood of many climate scientists within the CSIRO and sadly in our universities is now dependent on grants from that department. It is truly not a situation conducive to sceptical outlook and balanced advice.
No doubt these scientists don't see themselves as intellectual harlots but genuinely believe in their own perception of the climate change story. But why do mainstream scientists go along with the inevitable overstatements associated with the activism business? I guess one factor is a form of loyalty to colleagues. Another, bearing in mind the singular nature of the funding source, is the need to eat.
The Way I See It....a new Coalition Government should as a first step set up a bureau to audit the assumptions driving climate change policy, with a particular mandate for a proper assessment of probabilities, risks and costs. It is obvious now that it is not enough to rely upon peer review and hope for impartiality of those scientists with their snouts in the trough. NOW is the time we need to spend money to try to prove that case against CO2 is flawed. We need an organisation to do this for CO2 and for the public at large.
They have heard from too many warmist fanatics like Tim Flannery (head nut job), Clive Hamilton (academic elitist), the Greens Party (pure Watermelons) and the ABC (totally biased) that has made them lose faith in science and scientists. Something has to be done to regain the objectivity and balance to the climate discussion and we can hope a Coalition trouncing of Labor will make it so. The sooner the better, so we can see the eradication of the idiotic Carbon Tax.
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