Corrupt from the start

A Major Deception on Global Warming, by a former president of the National Academy of Sciences, was published in 1996, almost 15 years ago; to say it was, or should have been, a giant red flag is an understatement. (NOTE: The IPCC is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a UN organization that does not do original research, but periodically issues highly influential reports that assess "the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant for the understanding of the risk of human-induced climate change." In fact, the IPCC appears to have functioned as a tool of the cabal of data-cooking climate fraudsters now being exposed, who operated out of the CRU and other research sites, and who provide the evidentiary basis from which the IPCC reports are written. The IPCC was, of course, given the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007...)

It is well to keep in mind that this scandalous mess has occurred for specific reasons. The larger context begins with a scientific specialty, climate science, that had never been anything but a scientific backwater. Suddenly, the concept of Global Warming, which promised to provide a powerful scientific rationale for certain environmental and political agendas, changed all that over night. Eager enablers stood readily available and more than willing. All that was needed to bring every conceivable kind of reward to the lowly field of climate science and its practitioners was scientific backing for the propositions that global temperatures were rising with a speed unprecedented in history and that the rise was due to human activity. The models were primitive, the data weak and subject to interpretation -- perfect conditions for building a consensus based on nothing but ambition. The corruption of climate science has followed as night follows day.

Climate change: this is the worst scientific scandal of our generation is a very nice summary of why these revelations are of such huge importance. The Cliffs Notes version is this: (1) Policy makers around the world rely on reports from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to formulate their views about the reality and severity of AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming) and the steps required to combat and reverse it. Those steps would involve government controls on every aspect of economies around the world, by national and supra-national regulatory bodies, and they would result in enormous transfers of wealth. (2) The IPCC reports, in turn, have been controlled by a small group of climatologists in Britain and the U.S. Recently revealed emails document the way this group of AGW true believers has used its power to subvert the peer review process to silence dissenting voices, and how it has manipulated and falsified the data on which IPCC recommendations have been based. (3) If, as it appears, the evidence base for IPCC reports is misleading or fraudulent, then those reports must not be used to formulate economic or other policies. (4) But a huge Climate Change Industry has emerged, encompassing capitalism haters and carbon traders, tree huggers and government bureaucrats, with vested interests so varied and so deep, within and outside of government, that it will not be easy to slow down the AGW freight train, even if its scientific basis is shown to be without merit.

Two predictions: (1) This will eventually be recognized as the biggest boondoggle in the history of science; and (2) Its proximate cause will be determined to be the purposeful subversion and consequent failure of the peer review system.

Byron