Corrupção da Nomenklatura científica sobre o aquecimento global

The Wall Street Journal
BEST OF THE WEB TODAY NOVEMBER 23, 2009
Settled Science?
Computer hackers reveal corruption behind the global-warming "consensus."

By JAMES TARANTO

"Officials at the University of East Anglia confirmed in a statement on Friday that files had been stolen from a university server and that the police had been brought in to investigate the breach," the New York Times reports. "They added, however, that they could not confirm that all the material circulating on the Internet was authentic." But some scientists have confirmed that their emails were quoted accurately.

The files--which can be downloaded here--surely have not been fully plumbed. The ZIP archive weighs in at just under 62 megabytes, or more than 157 MB when uncompressed. But bits that have already been analyzed, as the Washington Post reports, "reveal an intellectual circle that appears to feel very much under attack, and eager to punish its enemies":

In one e-mail, the center's director, Phil Jones, writes Pennsylvania State University's Michael E. Mann and questions whether the work of academics that question the link between human activities and global warming deserve to make it into the prestigious IPCC report, which represents the global consensus view on climate science.

"I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report," Jones writes. "Kevin and I will keep them out somehow--even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!"

In another, Jones and Mann discuss how they can pressure an academic journal not to accept the work of climate skeptics with whom they disagree. "Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal," Mann writes...

Mann, who directs Penn State's Earth System Science Center, said the e-mails reflected the sort of "vigorous debate" researchers engage in before reaching scientific conclusions. "We shouldn't expect the sort of refined statements that scientists make when they're speaking in public," he said.

This is downright Orwellian. What the Post describes is not a vigorous debate but an attempt to suppress debate--to politicize the process of scientific inquiry so that it yields a predetermined result. This does not, in itself, prove the global warmists wrong. But it raises a glaring question: If they have the facts on their side, why do they need to resort to tactics of suppression and intimidation?

It is hard to see how this is anything less than a definitive refutation of the popular press's contention that global warmism is settled science--a contention that both the Times and the Post repeat in their articles on the revelations: "The evidence pointing to a growing human contribution to global warming is so widely accepted that the hacked material is unlikely to erode the overall argument," the Times claims. The Post leads its story by observing that "few U.S. politicians bother to question whether humans are changing the world's climate," and that "nearly three years ago the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded the evidence was unequivocal." (As blogger Tom Maguire notes, this actually overstates even the IPCC's conclusions.)

The press's view on global warming rests on an appeal to authority: the consensus among scientists that it is real, dangerous and man-caused. But the authority of scientists rests on the integrity of the scientific process, and a "consensus" based on the suppression of alternative hypotheses is, quite simply, a fraudulent one.

Redefining 'Consensus'

Then again, maybe "consensus" doesn't mean what we thought it did. Consider the first three paragraphs of a New York Times article about economists' views of President Obama's so-called stimulus:

Now that unemployment has topped 10 percent, some liberal-leaning economists see confirmation of their warnings that the $787 billion stimulus package President Obama signed into law last February was way too small. The economy needs a second big infusion, they say.

No, some conservative-leaning economists counter, we were right: The package has been wasteful, ineffectual and even harmful to the extent that it adds to the nation's debt and crowds out private-sector borrowing.

These long-running arguments have flared now that the White House and Congressional leaders are talking about a new "jobs bill." But with roughly a quarter of the stimulus money out the door after nine months, the accumulation of hard data and real-life experience has allowed more dispassionate analysts to reach a consensus that the stimulus package, messy as it is, is working.

So there's one group of economists that thinks the stimulus was insufficient, another that thinks it was harmful, and a third that thinks it was both beneficial and sufficient. This is not normally what one would describe as a consensus.

But then, if you read that third paragraph carefully, you'll see that the Times is claiming a consensus only in the third group, i.e., "more dispassionate analysts," which seems to be defined as those who think the stimulus is working. It's a consensus by tautologyhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif! This approach may hold some promise for keeping global warmism alive.
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Alguém já leu alguma nota na Grande Mídia tupiniquim sobre o modus operandi da Nomenklatura científica reagindo aos ataques de críticos científicos? Tem sido assim com os teóricos e proponentes da teoria do Design Inteligente.

Como ironicamente eu afirmo, a Nomenklatura científica é antropofágica. Maquiavélica no lidar com os 'diferentes' que ousam discordar do paradigma consensual. Gente, nós do DI entendemos desde duas décadas que os atuais paradigmas sobre a origem e evolução do universo e da vida demandam profunda revisão ou simples descarte de tais teorias.