Global Warming Freak-Out: Gone too Far?

Drudge has a link today (which at times has been difficult to access) to an article in the Houston Chronicle. It describes the increasing unease of some scientists as they see how politicization has been warping the "global warming" issue.

...it took the dramatic images of a hurricane overtaking New Orleans and searing heat last summer to finally trigger widespread public concern on the issue of global warming.

Climate scientists might be expected to bask in the spotlight after their decades of toil. The general public now cares about greenhouse gases, and with a new Democratic-led Congress, federal action on climate change may be at hand.

Problem is, global warming may not have caused Hurricane Katrina, and last summer's heat waves were equaled and, in many cases, surpassed by heat in the 1930s.

In their efforts to capture the public's attention, then, have climate scientists oversold global warming? It's probably not a majority view, but a few climate scientists are beginning to question whether some dire predictions push the science too far.

"Some of us are wondering if we have created a monster," says Kevin Vranes, a climate scientist at the University of Colorado.

Gosh, do ya think?

Vranes continues:

The science of climate change often is expressed publicly in unambiguous terms.

For example, last summer, Ralph Cicerone, president of the National Academy of Sciences, told the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce: "I think we understand the mechanisms of CO2 and climate better than we do of what causes lung cancer. ... In fact, it is fair to say that global warming may be the most carefully and fully studied scientific topic in human history."

Vranes says, "When I hear things like that, I go crazy."

So do we.

The Chronicle piece avers that scientists (who are not necessarily climatologists) are coalescing around the "global warming" point of view but—contrary to nearly all press reports, particularly those in lefty broadsides like the Washington Post—they're not nearly unanimous about what's causing it or even whether it's particularly out of the norm. After all, the planet has experienced cycles of heating and cooling, sometimes extreme, since it was formed.

In addition, other nefarious factors may be in play in the "global warming" hysteria, as we noted yesterday in citing an Alabama weatherman, James Spann, who responded with extreme negativity toward the Weather Channel's latest attempt at public policy coercion. (For those who entered late, Weather Channel Climate Babe Heidi Cullen encouraged a move to ban AMA certification weather broadcasters who dissented from the Party Line on the "global warming" orthodoxy). Spann says, like Deep Throat, "Follow the money" if you want some answers explaining this kind of Brown Shirt approach to scientific skeptics.

If you take Spann's advice, you might discover something like this observation in the Chronicle piece:

Other climate scientists [...] say there may be some tension as described by Vranes. One of them, Jeffrey Shaman, an assistant professor of atmospheric sciences at Oregon State University, says that unease exists primarily between younger researchers and older, more established scientists.

Shaman says some junior scientists may feel uncomfortable when they see older scientists making claims about the future climate, but he's not sure how widespread that sentiment may be. This kind of tension always has existed in academia, he adds, a system in which senior scientists hold some sway over the grants and research interests of graduate students and junior faculty members.

The question, he says, is whether it's any worse in climate science.

And if it is worse? Would junior scientists feel compelled to mute their findings, out of concern for their careers, if the research contradicts the climate change consensus?

Oh, please. Of course they would. As an ex-academic, the Wonk can tell you, a significant number of junior professors would outfit grandma in cement overshoes if it got them tenured.

This kind of dishonesty does not have a huge economic impact in pure propaganda departments like History and English that long ago ceased to support any kind of academic rigor except doctrinaire Marxism. But when you build a "scientific" consensus on the backs of timid, grant-hungry junior faculties in the sciences, it arguably has a more direct and negative impact on the nation's economy.

In addition, when bogus or unproven "science" is later found misleading at best and fraudulent at worst, scientific perps undercut the public's faith in the disinterestedness of science with predictably negative consequences, of which skepticism is only the beginning.

Make sure you read the whole link above before the Chronicle discovers what they've actually printed and deletes or revises the link.