Post Climategate, we’ve seen a fall of sorts lately. Papers like Gergis et al are retracted for errors, then we have Michael Oppenheimer’s trainwreck of claiming climate change induced crop failures will drive Mexican climate refugees into the United States by the millions, that got knocked over by the simplest scientific scrutiny. Then of course there’s Mann’s hockey stick, and Eric Steig’s ‘Antarctica is warming’, both knocked down by solid rebuttals from citizen scientists.
Some very brave scientists like Franz Vahrenholt and Sebastian Lüning plus Nobel Laureate Ivar Giaever have recently spoken out about the quality of the arguments and the money/activism issues surrounding climate science today, but the majority of science is still standing idly by watching this sideshow. Josh writes:
There are clearly great scientists doing excellent work. So why do some seem to be ok with all the scams, boondoggles and tricks that pass for science and policy?
Answers on a placard, please.
Simple: it is fear of losing jobs, promotion, thus allowing bullying to flourish. Can you blame people? But some, mostly retired individuals, are secure. So why do not more of them speak out? Probably because they will be ridiculed and marginalised by the warmista zealots.
Confused photon, as most of hollywood are armchair supporters of the church of global warming and what we now know surely McCarthy was right?
Especially when what is being shouted gets proportionately stupider with increased volume!
Meta-hypothesis: If it were correct, it wouldn’t have to be shouted.
Chris Edwards, you’re right, McCarthy was right — Communists WERE infiltrating the government and Hollywood, and more. Soviet archives opened after the Cold War ended bear this out. McCarthy’s problem was making accusations without evidence, and primarily as a means of furthering his own career. Confused Photon, the blacklisting was not done by McCarthy or the government, but by Hollywood corporate types trying to protect their business from government intervention. Those blacklisted were indeed Communists. Too many point to the anti-Communist paranoia of the times as some sort of hysterical delusion — the Communists were not only real then, but they have largely triumphed today, as so many Hollywood types are (or claim to be) leftists of one stripe or another.