The global warming hysteria is ending the way all hysteria ends, first with a trickle of contrary evidence then with a flood of admissions exposing the underlying fraud.
Part of this phenomenon is the classic madness of crowds, epitomized by the Tulipomania in Holland in the mid-1800s 1600s:
IN READING THE HISTORY OF NATIONS, we find that, like individuals, they have their whims and their peculiarities; their seasons of excitement and recklessness, when they care not what they do. We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object, and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first.
The other part of this phenomenon is reflected in the recent housing bubble, when artificially low interest rates were perpetuated so as not to upset the markets. When that artificial stimulus proved insufficient to support the markets indefinitely, the underlying frauds in mortgage financing and related government policies were exposed.
So too with the manmade global warming bubble. Highly politicized science was needed to support hysterical claims that we needed to act right now, or it would be too late.
Few thought to connect the dots between the people pushing this hysteria and the financial interests which would profit from this bubble. Al Gore embodied both aspects of this bubble domestically, as he was the person who most singularly hyped fears from which he has profited. Internationally, the UN climate bureaucracy sought to supplant its policies for our sovereignty in order to redistribute wealth.
And as we are learning, politicized scientific grants, which only were given to scientists who agreed with the popular hypothesis, contributed to the silencing of scientific challenge.
Now the bubble is bursting, and the fraud is being exposed.
First there were the revelations of scientific dishonesty at one of the primary climate data centers in Britain, and the related revelations that scientists sought to silence dissenting points of view.
Now there are revelations that the alleged disappearance of glaciers and rainforests — two key elements in the hysteria — due to manmade global warming was based on shoddy research:
- World misled over Himalayan glacier meltdown (“A warning that climate change will melt most of the Himalayan glaciers by 2035 is likely to be retracted after a series of scientific blunders by the United Nations body that issued it.”)
- UN climate change panel based claims on student dissertation and magazine article (“The United Nations’ expert panel on climate change based claims about ice disappearing from the world’s mountain tops on a student’s dissertation and an article in a mountaineering magazine.”)
- UN climate panel shamed by bogus rainforest claim (“A startling report by the United Nations climate watchdog that global warming might wipe out 40% of the Amazon rainforest was based on an unsubstantiated claim by green campaigners who had little scientific expertise.”)
The fraud in the global warming scientific community does not prove that their conclusions are wrong. But before we base our public policies on those conclusions, these scientists need to open their books and theories to scrutiny and challenge, much as we require of public companies.
We also need to ask why most of this climate fraud is being uncovered by British journalists and bloggers of all nationalities, and why the American mainstream media largely has been a cheerleader for the global warming alarmists.
About the only good thing we can say about the global warming hysteria is that the bubble burst before we implemented Democratic cap-and-trade policies based on that hysteria.
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Related Posts:
UN Climate Chief to US: “Show Me The Money”
Political Tulipomania
Hacked E-mails Skeptic No More
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Comments
All these so-called entities and people should be tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail. I have other thoughts and ideas but they are illegal.I'm sure there is some great quote that some famous President said about politicians and lawyers somewhere.Present company excluded.
Why not the U.S. scientific community? They have too much invested, both monetarily and reputationally, to back down now. Stupid, really, when you consider that some of the greatest scientific discoveries of all time arose out of mistakes in experiments or in scientific theses.
I have another popular social concern that is beginning to gain traction but is not based on good science. All of you have already felt its effects.
That is the concept that cholesterol in diet is associated with athrosclerotic disease. The association is totally bogus. In addition, I feel that I can state that statins do little in the way of preventing cardiac disease.
Now here is the justification for these statements. I am a cardiologist and was called upon to give expert testimoney in a case in Federal court in which VA doctors were accused of causing a man's myocardial infarct due to the fact they did little to alter his diet or prescribe statins. I researched the literature back to the origianl articles and found that indeed the association of diet cholesterol with disease is false. In fact, many studies have demonstrated illnesses associated with low cholesterol intake. The same applied to statin use. The result was winning the case in Federal court.
We are getting ready to have to fight this battle with recent efforts in NYC to alter food preparation. Besides, emphasis on low fat food intake since the 50's has resulted in a world wide obesity epidemic. Fat intake will actually assist in weight loss. Look into this.
I don't think the problem ends with global warming or cholesterol, the whole peer-review system is ripe with these problems. DDT? PCBs? does anyone really know how reliable the data behind the bans on these and other chemicals is? There are plenty of labs that are proficient in GLP toxicology such that double-blind studies could be run cheaply and effectively to determine the risks, yet data from academic labs published in peer reviewed journals remains the gold standard. Give the extreme left wing bias in american universities, the results are never in doubt. Bis-phenol A would be a good example of this.
david7134,
What else are you going to ask the Professor to look into? That smoking doesn't cause lung cancer? And excessive alcohol doesn't lead to liver damage? The earth is flat… maybe?
You ask rhetorically "why the American mainstream media largely has been a cheerleader for the global warming alarmists." Just ask Andrea Mitchell and fellow travelers way back in July of 1990:
"At a conference on the environment in Washington earlier this year, reported by The Wall Street Journal's David Brooks, Charles Alexander harrumphed:
"'As the science editor at Time I would freely admit that on this issue we have crossed the boundary from news reporting to advocacy.' There was applause from the pressies in conclave assembled, after which Andrea Mitchell, an NBC correspondent, said that 'clearly the networks have made the decision now, where you'd have to call it advocacy.'"
http://bit.ly/89Dj5S
The Progressives are so invested in this scam of Global Warming/Climate Change they just refuse to let it go in the face of overwhelming eveidence it is a fraudulent concept. We must hope that their poster child Obama flames out in the same fashion the Tulipmania did in the 1800's. Given his ability to stick to a "lie told over and over begins to look like truth" theory….we have hope!
I do not understand the "tarred and feathered" argument here. If these people were in businesses, they would be JAILED. At the level of damage they proposed to our economies and to our very liberites, they should be jailed for significant parts of their lives. Those who took money for grants and tailored research to show dramatic damage due to global warming on their research subject should be brought up on charges fraud and fined as well as blacklisted from future grant proposals.
ThomasN said…
"What else are you going to ask the Professor to look into? That smoking doesn't cause lung cancer? And excessive alcohol doesn't lead to liver damage? The earth is flat… maybe?"
Second hand smoke causes cancer is bad science. We are talking about junk science here, and even so, smoking causing cancer is not a forgone conclusion, although it has been held up through many studies and thus remains credible scientific finding. I think pretty much every one knows that the earth is flat, er I mean spherical, and those who do not state it is such are doing so for some inner joke. On the other hand, the earth would appear as flat to anyone who views the world through a 4th, 5th or higher dimension. As for cholesterol, I have done the research as well, and I find that the person you pathetically try to mock is correct. That the studies are not robust in any form or fashion and should not be relied upon.
People like you just simply are jerks, so my suggestion is that you should go find like minded people to hang out with.
Professor, I believe you have a misspelling in your post. Didn't you mean "babble" not "bubble"?
ThomasN,
I think you have been sufficently put down by Angelstoner. If I were only making my statements out of the blue it would be one thing, but I do back this up with a Federal court decision. Now the tragedy of this is that the obsession with cholesterol has set back the science. It is now known that inflamation causes the athrosclerotic lesions. Cholesterol makes up the patch the body puts down. Trying reading and research and not believing what you are told.
Those who are interested in the hows and whys of Al Gore and the global warming hoax should take a trip on over to the Canada Free Press website and search Maurice Strong, who is not only a one-worlder that made his billions from fossile fuels but also a close friend of (tah-dah) George Soros.
Strong has been pushing the AGW meme for years, and whose ear did he have? Why the IPCC, of course.
And who first got Gore interested in the AGW scam right after Gore left office? Why (tah-dah)Maurice Strong, of course.
These are a nefarios bunch who are out to make a profit that will reduce the U.S. to third world status right after they bust our economy paying for the GW of other nations.
You know what is really really annoying? When someone who teaches law demonstrates a masterful command of economics. Not even an "I'm no expert at economics but…". Nope. Just jumps right in. Really frosts me.
Mark Parker: it would help everyone to understand the billions of dollars invested by the likes of Sumner Redstone, GE, Al Gore's syndicate of venture capital, and many others in what was supposed to a sure thing. they were so close but…
All of that wealth that was going to be transferred to the developing world to as payment for not having participated in the wealth creation in the industrialezed world when pollution was not penalized, where do you think that will land? Sure the corrupt politicians will get their cut but most of it would end up with multinational interests doing business in those 3rd world countries for that very reason.
Yes, I am that cynical but I study this stuff every day all day long. And these wealthy "Robin Hoods" arguing for global government on the virtue of social justice are not pure of heart. This is the biggest opportunity for anybody to get wealthy by stealing in history.
The evidence underlying the “lipid hypothesis” was never strong to start since then a massive lipid lowering campaign has had no effect on heart disease rates. More and more openly people are rightly questioning the wisdom of the cholesterol lowering campaign.
Cholesterol is an essential component of every cell membrane and important for myriad physiologic functions. When Dr. Uffe Ravnskov, MD PhD looked at the medical literature he found something quite surprising had been documented there. On average people with higher cholesterol live longer. Then again the statin cholesterol lowering drug class alone is a 30 billion dollar a year industry. The latest attempt to expand cholesterol lowering medication to children is cynical, baseless and repugnant
http://healthjournalclub.blogspot.com/
Psst….. tulipomania was a 17th century phenomenon peaking around 1635-37.
The book Popular Delusions was from the 1800s.
@Gerard, that was sloppy of me. My earlier post, which I linked, had it right, charts and all, http://legalinsurrection.blogspot.com/2009/10/political-tulipomania.html
A few years ago, I read an article by Dr. Nortin Hadler who wrote a book called the "Last Well Person." The jest was his opinion (as a dr. and professor) of the over diagnosis and treatment in medicine today.
Preventative care in the form of dr. visits will not do as much for your health as your own choices and socio-economic status. The late Christopher Lasch states in his book "The Culture of Narcissim" that contrary to popular belief, it is a higher standard of living rather than better medicine that has allowed us to live longer.
I am with the others here who see the danger of popular movements becoming a substitute for actual information.
Knowledge in science is constantly changing (Einstien called it the evolution of physics from Newton to quantumn mechanics), so to assume that what is conventional or popular is the end of knowledge or settled science is probably a mistake.
Today coffee is good for you, tomorrow it will be bad, the next day not so bad, the next pretty good, etc.