Thursday, March 15, 2007

Government "Science"

Cox and Forkum capture the essence of the problem:

posted by Amit Ghate at 7:17 PM

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'm glad someone posted this cartoon, because I wanted to comment on it, and C&F don't permit comments.

I have a simple question: is there actually evidence that any scientist has been denied funds for opposing man-made global warming? Perhaps there is, I just haven't heart it.

NS

11:18 AM  
Blogger Amit Ghate said...

Hi L.S.

To answer your question, I don’t think we’re at the stage yet where a government agency will come out and overtly say that they are denying funding because of a scientist’s conclusions. However there are many people who say that it is done tacitly, and there definitely are documented cases of the government using its force to change scientific opinions and/or suppress scientists from sharing their objectively reached conclusions. Moreover, I don’t think it’s an accident that most scientists who do speak out loudly against the politically correct “consensus” view are of the emeritus variety, that is their jobs no longer depend of government funding. (It would be awfully coincidental for so many scientists to change their opinions just as they retire, much more likely that they couldn’t freely speak their minds while in the government’s thrall.)

I’m no expert on the field, but here are a few examples of which I’m aware:

Oregon and Delaware want to remove state climatologists for opposing views:
http://climatesci.colorado.edu/2007/02/07/political-correctness-for-state-climatologists-in-order-to-force-these-positions-to-embrace-global-warming-as-summarized-by-the-ipcc-%E2%80%93-a-chilling-development/

Also: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003618979_warming15m.html

Richard Lindzen dragged into congressional hearings by Gore and then subject to bogus lawsuits: http://www.boston.com/news/science/articles/2006/08/30/mits_inconvenient_scientist/

Christopher Horner cites several instances in the “Consensus Lie” chapter of his book “The Politically Correct Guide to Global Warming”. First Gore smears Singer in the Revelle affair. Full story said to be available in Politicizing Science (though I haven’t received my copy yet so I can’t confirm personally). Second, Gore as VP chased Dr. William Happer out of the US Dept. of Energy because his views didn’t fit Gore’s alarmism. Happer remarked at the time: “I was told that science was not going to intrude on policy”.

Here’s a link to the Politicizing Science book which should have much more info:

http://www.amazon.com/Politicizing-Science-Policymaking-Michael-Gough/dp/0817939326/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-3997026-1163303?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1174256792&sr=8-1

Richard Lindzen claims that funds disappear for dissenters, see e.g. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/03/11/ngreen211.xml

Art De Vany (former UCI prof.) has commented that he’s heard the same.

I’ll blog other examples as I run into them, but I hope that’s of some help for now.

9:03 PM  
Blogger Amit Ghate said...

Oops, I meant NS not L.S.

9:20 PM  

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