More Plaudits for Timothy Ball

If you haven't read Luther's comments on Canadian climatologist Timothy Ball, check 'em out at:

HazZzMat: Canadian Climatologist Standing In Arthur Koestler's Shoes?

PoliPundit points out further observations in Opinion Journal (link cited in excerpt below):

In its 2001 report, the U.N.’s best high-end estimate of the rise in sea levels by 2100 was three feet. Lord Monckton notes that the upcoming report’s high-end best estimate is 17 inches, or half the previous prediction. Similarly, the new report shows that the 2001 assessment had overestimated the human influence on climate change since the Industrial Revolution by at least one-third.

Such reversals (and there are more) are remarkable, given that the IPCC’s previous reports, in 1990, 1995 and 2001, have been steadily more urgent in their scientific claims and political tone. It’s worth noting that many of the policymakers who tinker with the IPCC reports work for governments that have promoted climate fears as a way of justifying carbon-restriction policies. More skeptical scientists are routinely vetoed from contributing to the panel’s work. The Pasteur Institute’s Paul Reiter, a malaria expert who thinks global warming would have little impact on the spread of that disease, is one example.

U.N. scientists have relied heavily on computer models to predict future climate change, and these crystal balls are notoriously inaccurate. According to the models, for instance, global temperatures were supposed to have risen in recent years. Yet according to the U.S. National Climate Data Center, the world in 2006 was only 0.03 degrees Celsius warmer than it was in 2001–in the range of measurement error and thus not statistically significant.

Well, yeah.

But tell that to the "global warning" fanatics. Actually, maybe you'd better not, particularly if you're an academic, as Ball explains here:

No doubt passive acceptance yields less stress, fewer personal attacks and make career progress easier. What I have experienced in my personal life during the last years makes me understand why most people choose not to speak out; job security and fear of reprisals. Even in University, where free speech and challenge to prevailing wisdoms are supposedly encouraged, academics remain silent.

The Gramsci Effect(TM) again. Undermine the culture—or in this case, the scientific method itself—by silencing those who challenge the Party Line, with the ultimate goal of altering the prevailing cultural model from capitalism to Marxism. Looks like the disease once strictly limited to the Humanities and "Social Sciences" departments has now infected the last bastions of objectivity in the university community, our science departments, with disastrous consequences for the pursuit of knowledge and objective truth. (And of course, the MSM is always there to help with the propagandizing and demonizing.)

Actually, there are good reasons for reducing our dependence on foreign oil and getting back to nukes and other innovative sources of energy. All of which have nothing to do with the "global warming" mythos. But that's never what this has been about, as PoliPundit would agree:

It’s all about anti-capitalism. This issue has nothing to do with the climate.