Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers. The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present – and is gravely to be regarded. Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.
– Eisenhower’s Farewell Address
In the section of President Eisenhower’s Farewell Address that I quoted above, we see exactly how Anthropogenic Global Warming took over and ravished Earth’s environment. The physical and logical tools of research became too steep an investment to undertake without significant political or corporate support. The providers of this financial and material support came to influence the results of the actual research, independent of, and at times athwart the actual physical conditions occurring in situ. Finally, the scientists, themselves became enriched, empowered and corrupted by a march through the very political and corporate bodies that supported vast and far-flung scientific research. The results of this research then became synonymous with what would require much more research and power for the scientists and politicians in charge of the research. The Greenhouse Effect became a veritable 5th Horseman of the Post-Industrial Apocalypse.
You will read other, competing theories of how Global Warming works. They measure CO2 levels at the Mauna-Loa Observatory, and track temperatures via the NASA-GISS thermometer network. Some claim that increasing quantities of Greenhouse Gases trap outbound solar radiation and lead to significant warming of the upper Troposphere which then sabotages the natural mechanisms controlling and moderating terrestrial climate.
The Denialists that reject this view may still repent and be saved. You still have dwindling hours in hand to cut your check to Earth First! And buy lots of Al Gore’s Carbon Indulg, err, I mean Carbon Credits. The UN IPCC publishes a frequently updated Book of Revelations that details how nefarious corporate Infernalists will die in lakes of fire reminiscent of the far left panel of a famous Hieronymus Bosch Triptych.
But anyone foolish enough to buy the UN IPCC’s version of how Global Warming works instead of Good Old General Eisenhower’s are admonished to peruse the actual commentary of the scientists who work for the UN IPCC. Eisenhower’s first point involved the vast expense and scale that were required to perform adequate professional research on difficult Geophysical problems. Jim Lacey cites a recently-divulged back-office communiqué between the scientists that describes how dependence upon vast government resources undercuts professional objectivity.
”I can’t overstate the HUGE amount of political interest in the project as a message that the Government can give on climate change to help them tell their story. They want the story to be a very strong one and don’t want to be made to look foolish.”
Once the honesty of the scientific research became a function of the willingness of interested political actors to continue supporting the scientific efforts, the outbreak of fraud, waste and abuse became as predictable as a crooked deal involving Jim Corzine. Lacey describes the rationale behind the grotesque exaggerations that became standard fare in each increasingly hysterical piece of climate “research.”
“Having established scale and urgency, the political challenge is then to turn this from an argument about the cost of cutting emissions — bad politics — to one about the value of a stable climate — much better politics. . . . the most valuable thing to do is to tell the story about abrupt change as vividly as possible.”
Having established that politics would drive the science, it then became a necessary piece of self-preservation for the self-interested political scientists to take over much of the politics. When researchers shot holes in the AGW “consensus”; the proponents of this meal ticket cum end of the world scare launched forth their inquisition. Dr. Michael Mann became particularly famous for fixing people’s attitudes in a way that ratiocination and scientific method never seemed to have a part in. Here is James Delingpole’s description of how Michael Mann adjusted people’s perception of the truth.
“I have been talking w/ folks in the states about finding an investigative journalist to investigate and expose McIntyre, and his thus far unexplored connections with fossil fuel interests. Perhaps the same needs to be done w/ this Keenan guy.”
And when fixing people didn’t get the job done, they could always go back and burn all evidence of their rigging of a scientific consensus. Here is an example of leading English Academic and researcher, Dr. Phil Jones, explaining how he intended to send his primary research data right down the memory hole. He did so with explicit knowledge and cooperation from the United States Government. The Daily Mail describes the process.
‘Any work we have done in the past is done on the back of the research grants we get – and has to be well hidden. ‘I’ve discussed this with the main funder (U.S. Dept of Energy) in the past and they are happy about not releasing the original station data.’
Dr. Jones was the go-to-guy for handling those pesky FOIA requests from evil Denialists as well.
‘I’ve been told that Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is above national Freedom of Information Acts. ‘One way to cover yourself and all those working in AR5 would be to delete all emails at the end of the process.’
But why would these noble public servants go to such Orwellian means to deceive the taxpayers who funded their vital and civic-minded research? Because they were dramatically over-selling their case! As one climate scientist emailed to Michael Mann’s co-author of the famous “Hockey Stick” Paper:
Why don’t you just give these people the raw data? Are you hiding something — your apparent refusal to be forthcoming sure makes it look as though you are.
One thing that may have been hidden is the following “Quantifying climate sensitivity from real world data cannot even be done using present-day data, including satellite data. If you think that one could do better with paleo data, then you’re fooling yourself. (HT:Wattsupwiththat) Maybe this is just my layman’s interpretation of this email passage, but….This would imply that there is no method currently available to physical science to verify ANY of the climate forcings that are shown as detrimental in the voluminous UN IPCC reports. In even plainer terms, Global Warming is political bull-[decency edit]!
So, like President Eisenhower predicted in the Winter of 1961, Global Warming has occurred. The science became too expensive to privately fund as a disinterested public enterprise. The politicians seized upon this problem as a powerful mechanism to warp the public’s perception of reality. The scientists, themselves, got in on the corruption jack-pot, and the end result of this was the rampant Global Warming that occurred in every major American Newspaper – even as the snow fell yesterday in Huntsville, Alabama.
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