…From Boycotting to Blacklisting…
The previous article showed how most media ignore factual information about CO2 and its affect on climate change, or global warming.
This has resulted in many Americans not having a complete picture of atmospheric CO2 and its affect on climate change or global warming.
Now, there has been a call for all media outlets to blackball anyone who has a view on CO2 emissions contrary to those who believe the science is settled. (Of course the science is never settled, but let’s set that aside for the moment.)
The paper calling for the blackballing of scientists and engineers who don’t kowtow to the IPCC was sent to the National Association of Scholars (NAS) and they replied by saying:
“To the Editor, Nature Communications:”
“I am alarmed to find a call for censorship promoted in the pages of Nature Communications.”
“In their article, Discrepancy in scientific authority and media visibility of climate change scientists and contrarians, Alexander Michael Petersen, Emmanuel M. Vincent, and Anthony LeRoy Westerling, repeat the widely heard demand for “rapid public action” on climate change. To this end, they propose steps that would help to ensure that “communicating authoritative information about the risks of inaction” would not have to compete with the views of skeptics. ‘Achieving global action’ is their priority, which plainly differs from providing the most accurate and best-assessed scientific inquiry on climate science.
“To achieve this ‘global action,’ [They] argue for censoring scientific opinions with which they disagree.”
“Their article offers a roadmap and a rationale for suppressing opinions they deem not to provide ‘trustworthy information.’ The 386 ‘prominent contrarians’ they list by name constitute a blacklist. (Emphasis added.)
Fun with numbers
The authors calling for the blacklisting of scientists cite the oft repeated bogus claim “97% of climate scientists agree with climate change.”
They have identified 386 scientists who presumably comprise the 3% who disagree.
If so, there are 12,866 scientists who qualify as climate scientists. (Note that if there are more than 386 skeptical climate scientists the total number of climate scientists would be greater.)
A 2015 survey (referenced by the American Institute of Physics) identified only 4,000 people who were members of the climate science community, of whom 1,320 had been authors or reviewers of the IPCC’s most recent report.
If only IPCC reviewers and authors are considered climate scientists then the 386 called out as skeptics represent 29%, not 3%.
Being generous, let’s say 4,000 represent the climate scientist community, then 386 represent 10%, not 3%.
The real climate science community
Until 60 years ago, there really wasn’t a community of climate scientists. Quoting from the American Institute of Physics:
“Until the middle of the 20th century, the discipline of climatology was a stagnant field preoccupied with regional statistics representing a static ‘normal’ climate. The study of climate change (what too many climatologists seemed a contradiction in terms) was only an occasional interest of individuals who worked in divergent ways, and scarcely knew of one another’s existence.”
In the article, there was the following comment:
“We cannot hope to understand the causes of climatic stability or change by restricting ourselves to any one field of earth science. Nature is ignorant of how our universities are organized…” — Peter Weyl
What are the disciplines encompassed by climatology?
There are many, as Weyl infers, but Thermodynamics, Meteorology, Geology, Hydraulics and fluids, Chaos Theory, Physics, and Statistics are certainly among them.
Engineering graduates have been exposed through course study with many of these disciplines. They may not have specialized in climatology, but they have the ability and scientific knowledge to read, evaluate and interpret the reports prepared by the IPCC.
Potentially, there are millions of engineers and scientists of various disciplines who, if they take the time, can be part of the climate science community.
A good example of this is the group of Apollo engineers who put a man on the moon who have taken the time to study climate issues and published their findings as the Apollo Right Climate Stuff Team.
The idea that a few mighty pooh-bahs can dictate the science is contrary to good science.
Especially since the pooh-bahs, when challenged, say, “Ignore the data and believe the computer programs.”
This was the gist of the argument by a scientist devoted to the CO2 hypothesis in a series of recent email contacts I had with him.
Blackballing scientists merely suppresses the facts, and that’s bad science.
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