Global warming or global hysteria?

Is the sky falling? Proponents of global warming apparently would have you believe that there is no question that global warming as caused by human generated pollution is a fact. Proponents of global warming have all their eggs in one basket when they tell you that there is a consensus of scientists that believe pollution causes global warming because what their “consensus” consists of are the views of IPCC whose reputation has been somewhat tarnished recently in the aftermath of their computer network being hacked and embarrassing emails being published. In a recent
report that tends to exonerate IPCC there are criticisms of bias and conflicts of interest regarding the scientists in that organization. While there are those who will tell you all climatologists agree on global warming the fact is that there are reputable climatologists who do not agree with this “consensus.” For example:

Link

"This is horrible," said Pat Michaels, a climate scientist at the Cato Institute in Washington who is mentioned negatively in the emails. "This is what everyone feared. Over the years, it has become increasingly difficult for anyone who does not view global warming as an end-of-the-world issue to publish papers. This isn't questionable practice, this is unethical."

Also this from the same article:

John Christy, a scientist at the University of Alabama at Huntsville attacked in the emails for asking that an IPCC report include dissenting viewpoints, said, "It's disconcerting to realize that legislative actions this nation is preparing to take, and which will cost trillions of dollars, are based upon a view of climate that has not been completely scientifically tested."

Mojib Latif, a climate researcher at Germany's Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences, said he found it hard to believe that climate scientists were trying to squelch dissent. Mr. Latif, who believes in man-made global warming but who has co-authored a paper ascribing current cooling to temporary natural trends, said, "I simply can't believe that there is a kind of mafia that is trying to inhibit critical papers from being published."

Squelching dissent in science is bad science and in view of the attitudes, conflicts of interest, and the questionable practice of approaching a problem with the assumption that a theory is true and then weeding out any information that contradicts that theory causes me to view the IPCC with a great amount of skepticism. I cannot think of anything worse in the realm of science than making the facts fit the theory rather than the other way around. If people cause global warming then the IPCC has done a great disservice with their methodology and if global warming isn’t caused by humans they have also done a great disservice with their crappy science.

And since when is science based on consensus? That is truly a weird brand of science. All we need do then is claim that opinions are facts and so are theories, indeed in this brave new brand of science who needs facts when theories will suffice?

According to Walter Cunningham, a geophysicist and former astronaut:

Link

For a new hypothesis to be accepted by the scientific community, it must be confirmed by considerable evidence and must survive all attempts to disprove it. The hypothesis claiming that human-generated carbon dioxide is a principal driver of the earth's temperature has not satisfied either of these criteria.

AGW alarmists could have made their case quite simply by collecting and making available solid evidence to support their hypothesis, and by defending it in the court of scientific inquiry. Not in the court of public opinion. Instead, they refused to release their data that would permit other scientists to look at the problem and come up with similar results - if possible.

The only thing alarmists are able to cite in support of their simplified hypothesis are mathematical models that they have developed to make their case. The earth's atmosphere is currently impossible to model well, so it is no surprise that their models have been unable to use past data to correctly predict today's temperatures. In any event, models are not data.

When alarmists could produce none of the required confirmation for their hypothesis, scientific principles were put on the back burner in favor of interpretation and opinion. They invented something called "consensus science," switched from "global warming" to "climate change" and appealed to fear with the question, "What if CO2 is responsible and we do nothing?"

The media, in general, have lost some enthusiasm for consensus science. While journalists cannot be expected to understand the science without specialized training, that doesn't keep individual journalists from aggressively pushing AGW and influencing a great many readers.

Right on Mr. Cunningham.