Democrat Opponents Of Scientific Inquiry

Geologist Dr. David Gee, chairman of the science committee of the 2008 International Geological Congress, asked a very pertinent question recently: “For how many years must the planet cool before we begin to understand that the planet is not warming? For how many years must cooling go on?”
The mainstream media narrative, as dictated to them by such luminaries as Al Gore and Roseanne Barr, dictates that anthropogenic global warming is “settled science,” and that no serious scientist disagrees. As CNN’s ever vigilant and unbiased reporter Miles O’Brian phrased it, “The scientific debate is over,” and that skeptics “are bought and paid for by the fossil fuel industry, usually.” That’s only true if you cover your ears, your eyes and your mouth like the little monkeys who hear, see and speak no evil. There’s a reason why Al Gore will only take the stage alone and refuses debate invitations.
According to atmospheric scientist Stanley B, Goldenberg, the debate isn’t over. “It is a blatant lie put forth in the media that makes it seem there is only a fringe of scientists who don’t buy into anthropogenic global warming,” he said. Goldenberg serves in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Hurricane Research Division.
Time Magazine perhaps summed up the mainstream news media’s narrative that Democrats are guided by science while Republicans are anti-scientific: “By picking Steven Chu — who shared the 1997 prize in physics for his work trapping atoms with lasers — as his candidate for energy secretary, Barack Obama looks to turn the tide on a government bureaucracy that under the Bush Administration often minimized the importance of scientific expertise.”
But this is pure bunk. The ideological left is virulently anti-science when it comes to such matters as nuclear energy, genetically modified crops and, of course, the dismal science of economics.
Ivar Giaever can match Stephen Chu’s scientific credentials. Like Dr. Chu, Ivar Giaever is a Nobel Laureate in physics. He recently insisted that, “Global warming has become a new religion,” and declared himself, “a skeptic” of the new faith. He has company. In 2008 a Senate minority report cited 650 fully credentialed atmospheric scientists who disagreed with the pop culture’s scientific certainty. Anti-science?
And there are a great many other highly credentialed physicists and scientists who dissent from global warming orthodoxy. The often-cited United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) did not reach its conclusion unanimously. And it’s worth noting that it was an intergovernmental panel, with its scientific representatives chosen by governments. If there is one principle that most governments agree upon, it is that they should exert ever more power over their subjects. And the only anthropogenic global warming solutions seriously considered by these governments all have the effect of tightening governments’ grip on their people. It’s reasonable to suspect that IPCC scientists were chosen to represent government interests rather than scientific integrity.
It’s ironic that the supposedly scientifically grounded left embraces global warming models that fail to predict atmospheric behavior and ignore models that demonstrate the economic non-viability of such nonsensical alternative energy solutions as wind power and corn ethanol.
The disappearance of global warming finally caught the attention of the Discovery Channel. Climate modeler Kyle Swanson, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison notes: “This is nothing like anything we've seen since 1950. Cooling events since then had firm causes, like eruptions or large-magnitude La Ninas. This current cooling doesn't have one.”
Those of us with more than a few tree rings recall that 1950 ushered in a period of global cooling that atmospheric scientists insisted was the imminent herald of an ice age.
A report issued by the Japanese Society of Energy and Resources (JSER) ridiculed the pop science conventional wisdom regarding anthropogenic global warming in remarkably harsh terms. The JSER is a panel of scientists that advises the Japanese government on issues of energy and resources. Panelist Kanya Kusano, Program Director and Group Leader for the Earth Simulator at the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science & Technology, dismisses anthropogenic global warming models as the modern day equivalent of “ancient astrology.”
I have spent my entire adult life as a scientist. A central scientific principle states that, when data conflicts with a hypothesis, it is the hypothesis that is at fault. To argue otherwise, or to stifle debate, is quintessential anti-science.