[ale] Disappointed in the recent climate research hack

[Jim Kinney]

On Wed, Dec 2, 2009 at 1:40 PM, Doug McNash <dmcnash at charter.net> wrote:

>
> It appears that the paradigm is shifting from the "consensus" of
> Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) to probing the depths of how deep the
> fraud goes and who stands to benefit.
>

Sadly, people _do_ have failings at a personal level. There are loudly
promoted cases of scientific misconduct and that very publicly undermines
the general public trust of the scientific community. But by the same
illogical arguments below to condemn the field based on the single person
bad ethics is the same as punishing the class for the bad behavior of a
single student. I don't hear people harshly criticizing the fraud science
surrounding cold-fusion to the extent that climate science is denigrated. Is
it perhaps the personal financial interests of those who stand to loose the
most as the population shifts to mitigate the current bad behaviors
contributing to excess CO2 production? Is it instead a general opposition to
new ideas? Or maybe is a deep seated fear of of change? I suspect is a
blending of all of the above plus some good old fashioned laziness.

It took nearly 40 years before quantum mechanics was understood well enough
that it became universally accepted as a solid model of subatomic
interaction mechanisms. It took 30 years for the periodic table to become
fully accepted. Climate science has been around for about 25 years. Prior it
was a mix of distinct fields (sort of still is) so it is still assembling
itself as a single cohesive field.

The notion that humans can have a deleterious impact on a global scale is
anathema to many people of a less progressive personal philosophy. Partly
this seems to be related to religious dogma that forms the core beliefs of
modern conservatism. If God created the Earth and Man is less than God, how
can Man impact the Earth without elevating himself to the status of a god.
To do so is fundamentally denied in the acceptable behavior models in
western religious practices. Additionally, western religion has a phrase
(too lazy to look up the exact wording in any bible version or the exact
reference) that is something like "and God gave all of the land and seas and
creatures to man to do with as he chose". Again that's a bad paraphrase but
the point there is a core belief that Man has the right to extract all the
wealth and use from the planet as he can and there are no consequences for
him doing so because God said it was OK.

Before I made the deliberate choice to walk away from all religion, I found
that attitude repugnant. To think that a person today has the right to eat
up all the resources we are supposed to be holding in trust for our children
and their children and do it all for the sake of making a sack of gold
heavier stinks of the highest level of arrogance and irresponsibility that
even the buggering priests and the vermin church scum that hide them can't
compare to.

At the point where the climate change naysayers on this list go and get a
PhD in physical chemistry or geology or physics and have the mental
athleticism to actually perform research  and have the competancy to draw
solid conclusions instead of relying on the weak minds of modern journalism
for their thoughts on climate change, I will stop further rants like this.

<what a freakin' rant. can you tell it hit nerve?>


-- 
-- 
James P. Kinney III
Actively in pursuit of Life, Liberty and Happiness
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