It's very unfortunate that scientists as a class don't live up to the image of objectivity they try to project, but it isn't surprising considering that every scientist I've met is a regular human being, with all the accompanying flaws. Still, many people seem shocked to discover that scientists are often more concerned with advancing their personal careers and agendas than with advancing the state of human knowledge.
Two of the world's leading scientific journals have come under fire from researchers for refusing to publish papers which challenge fashionable wisdom over global warming. ...The controversy follows the publication by Science in December of a paper which claimed to have demonstrated complete agreement among climate experts, not only that global warming is a genuine phenomenon, but also that mankind is to blame.
The author of the research, Dr Naomi Oreskes, of the University of California, analysed almost 1,000 papers on the subject published since the early 1990s, and concluded that 75 per cent of them either explicitly or implicitly backed the consensus view, while none directly dissented from it.
Dr Oreskes's study is now routinely cited by those demanding action on climate change, including the Royal Society and Prof Sir David King, the Government's chief scientific adviser.
However, her unequivocal conclusions immediately raised suspicions among other academics, who knew of many papers that dissented from the pro-global warming line.
They included Dr Benny Peiser, a senior lecturer in the science faculty at Liverpool John Moores University, who decided to conduct his own analysis of the same set of 1,000 documents - and concluded that only one third backed the consensus view, while only one per cent did so explicitly. ...
Prof Dennis Bray, of the GKSS National Research Centre in Geesthacht, Germany, submitted results from an international study showing that fewer than one in 10 climate scientists believed that climate change is principally caused by human activity.
As with Dr Peiser's study, Science refused to publish his rebuttal. Prof Bray told The Telegraph: "They said it didn't fit with what they were intending to publish."
Prof Roy Spencer, at the University of Alabama, a leading authority on satellite measurements of global temperatures, told The Telegraph: "It's pretty clear that the editorial board of Science is more interested in promoting papers that are pro-global warming. It's the news value that is most important."
He said that after his own team produced research casting doubt on man-made global warming, they were no longer sent papers by Nature and Science for review - despite being acknowledged as world leaders in the field.
The scientific method and scientific principles are designed to prevent this sort of adherence to dogma that, when seen in religion, evokes derision from many secular scientists, but it should be obvious that despite the perception much research is far from objective and little concerned with truth.
(HT: Clayton Cramer.)
I still maintain we are arguing about the wrong thing. It doesn't matter if there is a man made component to global warming. Scientist who think there is such a component say it is too late to reverse the man made components.
The issue should be "now what?" Should we buy property a bit inland to have future beach property? Should we start planning major grain farming efforts in Canada, oranges in Kansas, and sugar cane in California?
Moreover, there seems to be some real question about what the effects of warming will be, and some suggestions that they will be, in the main, beneficial.
RK: I agree. We need to focus less on why global warming is happening and more on what we're going to do about it in preparation. Why global warming is occurring is almost beside the point.
We should be prepared for climate shifts and any other potential consequences. I'm not saying we should drastically and hastily do things that may jeopardize our economy.. but we should at least entertain the possibility that we're in for some significant changes.. and try to calculate what those changes will mean and how best to deal with them.