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Climate Scientists Plot to Fight Skeptics
By Stephen Dinan
5 Mar 10 - (Excerpts) - Undaunted by a rash of scandals over the science
underpinning climate change, top climate researchers are plotting to
respond with what one scientist involved said needs to be "an
outlandishly aggressively partisan approach" to gut the credibility of
skeptics.
In private e-mails obtained by The Washington Times, climate
scientists at the National Academy of Sciences say they are tired of
"being treated like political pawns" and need to fight back in kind.
Their strategy includes forming a nonprofit group to organize
researchers and use their donations to challenge critics by running a
back-page ad in the New York Times.
Apparently the science can't stand on its own.
"Most of our colleagues don't seem to grasp that we're not in a
gentlepersons' debate, we're in a street fight against well-funded,
merciless enemies who play by entirely different rules," Paul R.
Ehrlich, a Stanford University researcher, said in one of the e-mails.
Oh, that I were indeed well-funded. I'm fighting a
billion-dollar
environmental juggernaut
aligned with a trillion-dollar carbon-
trading scheme, with no
funding from any outside source.
Some scientists question the tactic and say they should focus instead on
perfecting their science, but the researchers who are organizing the
effort say the political battle is eroding confidence in their work.
Perfecting their science. What annoying concept
that must be to
Mr. Ehrlich and Mr. Schneider
(see below).
The scientists have been under siege since late last year when e-mails
leaked from a British climate research institute seemed to show top
researchers talking about skewing data to push predetermined outcomes.
Meanwhile, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change... had to
retract claims that Himalayan glaciers will melt over the next 25 years.
Sen. James M. Inhofe, Oklahoma Republican and a chief skeptic of
global-warming claims, is considering asking the Justice Department to
investigate whether climate scientists who receive taxpayer-funded
grants falsified data.
Three cheers for Senator Inhofe.
That news has enraged scientists. Stephen H. Schneider, a Stanford
professor and senior fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment,
said Mr. Inhofe is showing "McCarthyesque" behavior in the mold of the
Cold War-era senator who was accused of stifling political debate
through accusations of communism.
Not all climate scientists agree with forcing a political fight.
"Sounds like this group wants to step up the warfare, continue to circle
the wagons, continue to appeal to their own authority, etc.," said
Judith A. Curry, a climate scientist at the Georgia Institute of
Technology. "Surprising, since these strategies haven't worked well for
them at all so far."
And three cheers for Judith Curry.
She said scientists should instead shore up and defend their research.
The e-mails emerged months after another set of e-mails from a leading
British climate research group seemed to show scientists shading data to
try to bolster their claims, and are likely to feed the impression among
skeptics that researchers are pursuing political goals as much as they
are disseminating science.
See entire article:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/mar/05/scientists-plot-to-hit-back-at-critics//print/
Thanks to Rick Fulton for this link
"I guess only "Climate Scientists" can discuss
science?????"
says Rick.
"Skeptics just don't know anything!"
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