And If A "Consensus of "Experts" Told You to Jump off a Cliff?

Goofball Warming or Climate Change as proponents of the former like to style it now, has been a cause of mine since the first Kyoto Treaty was signed. Mark Hendrickson has a good explanation of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and how it works (or doesn't) in this piece titled A Closer Look at Climate Change.

The IPCC’s Feb. 2007 report stated: It is “very likely” that human activity is causing global warming. Why then, just two months later, did the Vice Chair of the IPCC, Yuri Izrael, write, “the panic over global warming is totally unjustified;” “there is no serious threat to the climate;” and humanity is “hypothetically … more threatened by cold than by global warming?”

So what explains how an individual sitting on the IPCC, a Vice Chair, say just the opposite?

The policymakers’ summaries are presented as the “consensus” of 2,500 scientists who have contributed input to the IPCC’s scientific reports. “Consensus” does NOT mean that all of the scientists endorse the policymakers’ summaries. In fact, some of the 2,500 scientists have resigned in protest against those summaries. Other contributing scientists, such as the individuals quoted above, publicly contradict the assertions of the policymakers’ summaries.

Just so we are clear, "consensus" has no place in determining scientific truth. Newton did not seek consensus when he published his laws of motion. Instead these were the result of individual effort, that was confirmed by other scientists who saw that his laws worked by putting them to the test. Today, we know that Newtons "laws" only hold for a spectrum of reality, and that Einstein's laws become more descriptive as thing speed up. Einstein's theories were initially rejected. Scientists devised experiments which would prove him wrong, only to discover he had been right. But few people think of Einstein's Theory of General Relativity as a "law."

From Anthony Watt's site "WattsUpWithThat" there is this quote. go read the whole thing. Indeed, bookmark the site and refer to it often.

In order to support a theory, specific predictions need to be made that are based on the claims of the theory, and the predictions then need to happen.
While the occurrence of the predicted events is not proof positive of a theory, they increase the believability of the claims. However, if the predictions are not observed, this tends to indicate the theory is flawed or even wrong. Some predictions are absolute in nature. Einstein’s prediction of the bending of light by the Sun is such a case. It either would or would not bend, and this was considered a critical test of the validity of his theory of general relativity. It did bend the predicted amount, and supported his theory.

So what then is the reason for claiming a "consensus" of scientists agree to this if a "consensus" has no meaning here? Well, of course it is to bully the public, with the help of the MSM into believing we must act now. It is, in other words, another made up "crisis." Mark Hendrikson again:

The sponsors of the IPCC, the United Nations, and liberal American politicians all share the goal of reducing Americans’ wealth by capping our consumption of energy with a binding international climate change treaty. They are willing to resort to scientific fraud to further their goal. In the words of Al Gore’s ally, former Under-Secretary of State Tim Wirth, “Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing” by reducing Americans’ consumption of fossil fuels. Keep that in mind whenever the IPCC is cited in support of a climate treaty.

When I was receiving my first indoctrination training on goofball warmening, I asked a buddy, an "expert" from one of our field offices, "If the theory is correct how does it explain the dramatically warmer and cooler temperatures that existed in prehistoric times? Where were the SUVs then?" That question has never been answered.

For the true believers, those who buy into the myth of Gaia, the "ecology" is on a knife edge. Cut down a single tree that happens to be the only habitat for some rare butterfly, and the whole thing unravels. In this myth, man must not do anything which might disturb the delicate balance lest we destroy everything. However, for those of us who believe that God created the universe, and this planet specifically for us, and knowing who and what we are before he created us, the earth is probably immune to man's undoing. Einstein said it best: "God does not play dice with the universe."

For more information, please read: Richard Lindzen's The Origin and Nature of the Alleged Scientific Consensus and bookmark this site: Science and Environmental Policy Project.