Perry’s Junk Science
September 19th, 2007 at 1:02 pm
Gov. Rick Perry has repeatedly scoffed at the notion that humans are causing global warming. His latest remarks came during a recent speech to Republicans in California.
And since when did the field of science become the sole purview of left-wing politicians? I don’t know about you, but I’ve heard Al Gore talk about man-made global warming so much that I’m starting to think that his mouth is the leading source of all that supposedly deadly carbon dioxide.
Virtually every day another scientist leaves the global warming bandwagon, but you won’t read about that in the press because they have already invested in one side of the story. I’m not saying we shouldn’t be good stewards of our environment. We should. I am just saying when politics hijack science, it quells true scientific debate and can have dire consequences for our future.
That scientists are daily fleeing the “global warming bandwagon” is an extraordinary assertion that even the most strident climate change doubters rarely make anymore. We wanted to know what empirical basis Perry had for this claim so naturally we called his office. After all, this was the year the global authority on climate change, the IPCC, concluded that man-made global warming is a near certainty. If Perry had the goods on a counter-revolution we wanted the scoop.
“The governor certainly stands by [his] statement,” said Krista Moody, a Perry spokesperson. “He doesn’t accept that theory, the theory of man-made global warming.”
Perry, she said, had worked with U.S. Sen. James Inhofe’s office in preparation for the speech. A Republican from Oklahoma who previously chaired the Environment and Public Works Committee, Inhofe’s understanding of climate change can be summed up in his now-infamous claim that global warming is the “greatest hoax ever perpetated on the American people.” Moody said that she could not produce a list of scientists repudiating human-caused climate change, but cited the work of Inhofe’s right-hand man, Marc Morano, as the source.
Before going to work for Inhofe, Morano toiled as a “reporter” for such science savants as Oliver North, Rush Limbaugh, and Sean Hannity. He has no scientific expertise. Rather, Morano is a professional obfuscator, a hack who has made a dark art out of exploiting science’s built-in respect for uncertainty for partisan purposes. “[Morano] is absolutely one of the leading [climate] denialists,” wrote Ross Gelbspan, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has reported extensively on global warming, in an email to the Observer.
We called Morano to ask him to send us his list of scientists who are bailing on climate change. He talked a mile-a-minute about Greenland’s cooling trend, Al Gore’s alarmism, and the media’s embargo against climate change truth. As far as an impressive list of scientists fleeing the climate consensus, Morano pointed to a May round-up he put together that totaled - count ‘em - 12 new skeptics. Morano promised that he would have a more comprehensive list in October, when the season for skeptics apparently begins.
As to his relationship with Perry, Morano said he’s never had any contact with the governor’s office… until yesterday. Perry’s people responded to our inquiry about his speech by calling Morano to ask for his most up-to-date list of climate skeptics. That’s called a loving attention to detail.
We asked Gelbspan, the journalist, to comment on Perry’s belief in flip-flopping scientists. “That’s absolute crap,” he wrote in an email. “If anything, there were a number of scientists who were reluctant to commit until about 5 years ago. Since then, there’s been a groundswell of scientists beating the drum.”
September 19th, 2007 at 8:31 pm
I tried to look up this Pulitzer Prize-winning expert but Pulitzer does not have any record of “Gelbspan” in either its winners or finalists databases. Most curious.
Brian,
Ross Gelbspan is author of “Boiling Point: How Politicians, Big Oil and Coal, Journalists and Activists Are Fueling the Climate Crisis–And What We Can Do to Avert Disaster.” According to his website, as special projects editor of The Boston Globe, he conceived, directed and edited a series of articles that won a Pulitzer Prize in 1984.
September 19th, 2007 at 9:50 pm
Interesting. Did you see the R.A. Dyer piece in the Star Telegram a few months back where he asked several Texas GOP leaders whether global warming was a man made problem, and everyone said no?
September 20th, 2007 at 2:55 am
Say what? Since when does “editing a series” translate to “Pulitzer Prize winning journalist”? And that merely self-claimed on his own website yet his name does not appear in Pulitzer’s lists. Not sure I’m impressed by your choice of “expert”. He’s flogging a book (and therefore profiting from) claims about climate crisis and about people with differing opinions. Doesn’t he have a financial interest in maligning the other guy? How does that differ from being “a professional obfuscator” as claimed about the target of this piece?
September 22nd, 2007 at 2:34 pm
When talking about global warming, there are a few questions that must be dealt with.
First, is climate warming? The answer, though not definitive yet, is probably yes. We can readily see some evidence of that happening.
The Earth is a dynamic system, which means it is constantly in flux. Average temperatures are continually moving up or down. Equilibrium would mean that the system was dead. In spite of what Al Gore says, there never has been a time of equilibrium in the system, and that’s a good thing.
Second, if temps are going up, what is the cause? Is it Man’s contribution of greenhouse gases? Conventional wisdom (as portrayed in most of the media, anyway) says ‘yes’. But the truth is that that is a hypothesis, not even a full-fledged theory yet, and certainly not an established scientific fact. Let me explain:
Obviously we can’t put the Earth into a laboratory and experiment on it. Experiments must be done on climate models. Scientists formulate a hypothesis, plug their assumptions into the model, and then see if the model can predict reality.
Even the best climate models don’t predict reality very well. Heck, the Old Farmer’s Almanac does a better job of predicting weather patterns and climate trends.
So what’s going on? Is it worse than even the scientists have predicted?
That’s one explanation offered by the manmade global warming enthusiasts, but a simpler, scientific, and less hysterical explanation is simply that one or more of the assumptions programmed into the model are incorrect. That just means the hypothesis is flawed. It does not prove or disprove the scientists opinions, or establish cause and effect. Garbage in, garbage out, as the saying goes.
So how do we get from a flawed hypothesis to a sound scientific theory? The short answer is: we don’t. The hysteria is due to politics and propaganda.
How do we get from politics and propaganda to an established scientific fact? Again, we don’t, obviously. What we get is more politics and perhaps public policy.
Why? In two words: money and power.
More taxes. Higher prices on energy. Control of energy sources. Sales of books, ‘carbon offsets’, and myriad ‘green’ merchandise.
Does it bother the True Believer that Al Gore has 200 million dollars in the bank from selling carbon offsets, which do nothing to actaully help the environment? That his prediction of a 10-foot rise in sea level is echoed by not one scientist anywhere? No, of course not. Some people want to be scared. Does it bother them that Gore sued his ‘mentor’ Roger Revelle, to shut him up when Revelle objected to his name being used in Gore’s environmental campaign? Again, of course not. Impending catastophe is supremely sexy.
Does it bother the True Believer to learn that many of the scientists involved in the IPCC project sued to have their names removed from the report?
Does it bother the True Believer that the grandfather of global warming politics is a man named Maurice Strong, a big UN muckety-muck who happens to be a eugenicist and de-populationist? No, of course not. Those same people craving catastrophe probably don’t understand the implications of those words.
But politics and global evil aside, should we be concerned about climate change? The answer to that is an unqualified ‘maybe’. So wouldn’t it be nice to just let the scientists work without all the propaganda and hysteria?
Despite the claims of ‘consensus’, the science is very, very far from being settled. Do you realize there are still scientists studying gravity? And you thought that had been ’settled’ long ago, didn’t you?
Bottom line: Don’t let anybody take your money or freedom based on a hypothesis. And real science is not done by a show of hands. Recognize the doomsayers, propagandists, and slanted journalists (and bloggers) for who they are and get on with life.
But don’t necessarily abandon your ‘green’ practices. They’ll save you money in the long run and conservation is always a good thing.
October 8th, 2007 at 2:55 pm
[…] We have noted Perry’s absurdism on global warming in the speech, here. […]
March 1st, 2008 at 7:10 pm
[…] debunked) claim that scientists were repudiating human-induced climate change last September. As it turned out, Perry based this assertion on the scurrilous research of an aide to Sen. James Inhofe, the […]