The Global Warming Golden Goose

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July 12, 2022

Climate science was an obscure and unimportant corner of academia until the professors lucked out with global warming.  The global warming idea apparently struck a spark with the government and media establishments and caught fire.  Money and influence flooded from Washington to academia. 

In his farewell address in 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned against the scientific-technological elite being dependent upon government grants. Eisenhower feared that the elite would use their influence and expertise to warp public policy for their own benefit. That is exactly what is happening. Global warming is only one of many current scientific frauds that enhance the welfare of the scientists and bureaucrats promoting the frauds.

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Since World War II, the increasing flow of big money from Washington has contributed to a gradual change in the character of research universities. Money became more important than science. Administrators who were focused on money and power grew in number and became dominant. This change in character was documented in an important essay by the MIT scientist Richard Lindzen.

Global warming provided the professors and academic administrators with a junk science golden goose. They were determined to stop anyone from killing the goose. 

A narrative was developed to crush “deniers” who dared to question the global warming narrative. The deniers were depicted as agents of the international oil companies. This is somewhat comical since the oil companies were constantly searching for someone to accept their surrender. The oil companies not only had no chance of winning a propaganda war with academia and the media, they didn’t want to try. They were ready to swear allegiance to the global warming narrative.  They knew perfectly well that global warming nonsense was no threat to their business. But the mob needs a villain so they weren’t allowed to surrender.

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Many fighters against global warming fraud dislike the label “denier.” They consider it an attempt by the global warming crowd to lump their opponents in with Holocaust deniers. My feeling is that we might as well wear the label proudly and thus destroy its effectiveness.

We deniers come from a small contingent of people with argumentative personalities, scientific background, and a job or income that gives some immunity to retaliation. Deniers are adult versions of the child who said that the emperor has no clothes. 

It’s easy for the establishment to depict deniers as crackpots. Who are they to challenge the scientific consensus? That a few deniers actually are crackpots doesn’t help. But there are far more crackpots promoting phony climate scares, many of them in the most privileged ranks of human society.

Climate science groups have been spending billions of dollars developing computer models of the Earth’s atmosphere in an attempt to support the global warming narrative. The computer models are obedient to their authors.  The scientists can manipulate the models to show whatever result that supports the desired conclusion — global warming or global cooling. Kevin Trenberth, no denier and one time head of modeling at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), may have clarified the situation when he said: “None of the models… correspond even remotely to the current observed climate.”  

The beauty of a black box computer program with hundreds of thousands of lines of code is that it is difficult to know if it is an amazing work or a futile exercise.

Academic scientists dare not criticize anything that brings money into their organization. When they do, they quickly learn that tenure is a joke compared to the importance of the money flow from Washington.

The average scientist promoting global warming really believes in global warming. It’s easy to believe in doctrines that bring in money. Academics outside of climate science who could challenge the global warming fraud prefer to keep quiet. Criticizing someone else’s junk science is dangerous for those who live in glass houses. 

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Professional climate scientists who are openly critical of the global warming narrative are either retired or so scientifically distinguished as to be impossible to fire. To my knowledge there is no such thing as a critical early career climate scientist. Such an aspiring scientist would not last long.

There are organizations fighting against the global warming fraud, but they don’t have the advantage of billions of government dollars to spread their message. They are always under attack by those supported in grand style by big government science. The Heartland Institute and the CO2 Coalition are two of many denier organizations.

There are numerous­ websites run by deniers or denier groups. One of the best, realclimatescience.com, is run by the electrical engineer Tony Heller. He hilariously exposes the lies of the global warming crowd as well as the sensationalism of the media. His specialty is exposing the tampering with climate data to make it agree with global warming theory. If a theory fails to agree with real world data, tampering with the data is one method of promoting the fraud.

People are fooled by prophets or gurus who pretend to have understanding beyond that of ordinary people. Such people may be called witch doctors by anthropologists studying African tribes. One has to ask who are the witch doctors fooling the anthropologists? The American Anthropological Association released a statement on climate change giving all-out support to the global warming fraud.

I don’t see an end to junk science because there’s too much money in it and the credible institutions that could puncture it lack objectivity and expertise. The ideological bias of the mainstream media attracts them to any crackpot theory that calls for more government money and power mobilized to solve the “problem.” For them the global warming narrative is wonderful because it provides an excuse for the government to regulate nearly everything.

A possible reform is sending the money and control of scientific research to the states. That at least would provide fifty different approaches, even if some may turn out to be disasters. It would also promote competition and diversity of opinion. The top Washington bureaucrats could be offered early retirements. The younger bureaucrats could look for jobs with the states.

Norman Rogers is a long-time denier. He is the author of Dumb Energy, a book critical of wind and solar. He is a member of the board of the CO2 Coalition. He has a master’s degree in physics. He was the co-founder of the company Rabbit Semiconductor. He has websites here and here.

Image: Stephen and Helen Jones

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