Hank is part of the “Climate Change Cult”, every time he talks about climate he takes on fatalistic and grim tone. Now this video:
Yeah that cold summer we had was the “Hottest Ever”, according to NASA…who is on record for faking data.
This isn’t such a sinister cabal that is faking weather for some New World Order goal. I saw the same data manipulation when I worked for NMFS as a fisheries observer. The fleet would have a record catch of one fish speices, or would go to great lengths to avoid catching certain fish because of amazingly low quotas set, while the papers stated that these fish were in declining populations.
The motivation for these inconsistencies is not some horrible conspiracy, but from pressures from the .gov who funds them. NMFS is paid to REGULATE the fishing industry. If regulations become effective then the need to study interactions between the fisheries and population becomes less urgent. Rather than needing huge teams of scientists collecting and analyzing huge quantities of data, all that is needed is a small group keeping a close eye for changes on what has become a stable system.
Still who declares the efforts to be a success? Well the very large and expensive teams studying the fishery!
Let’s take a comical break for a second:
In Office Space Tom’s job is essentially superfluous, and the efficiency experts of Bob and Bob are honing in on him. Tom doesn’t resign to the fact that he can’t justify his salary, instead he embellishes to comical levels.
It’s funny to see him squirm, but we also have some sympathy for him. He’s old, stupid, and doesn’t have many skills. Unemployment might be VERY painful for him (the movie plays this out), and really he hasn’t done anything WRONG, he’s simply done the job the incompetent management have given him, and of course as things are playing out the Management is safe, while he is on the chopping block.
The same can be said for these scientists, they are simply refusing to write their own death warrant, and by fudging data they can keep their comfortable jobs. There is of course some morality at place here, but in modern “Progressive” America morality has become subjective. Putting fishermen out of business protecting a fishery that their compliance has helped saved is morally better than putting scientists who have outlived their usefulness out of business. I mean SCIENTISTS! They’re educated, they’re smart, they do SCIENCE! While fishermen tend to be less educated and are killing ANIMALS, granted for people who will continue to eat them…
Same with NASA, they keep getting to launch new missions and form new teams to expose the specter of “Climate Change”, and point out how it’s all our fault, because that’s what they are paid to do. Climate has NEVER been stable in the world’s history, but that natural fluctuation has little impact on politics. Now if this natural change can be pinned on industry or human lifestyles…well REGULATION!
It’s all one big mess, and it really is the FURTHEST thing from science. Rather than observed events leading to a hypothesis that can later be proven or disproved by research, we have uneducated (at least in science) people choosing a useful hypothesis, and then demanding science ONLY prove that hypothesis correct, or they will lose funding. It doesn’t take a scientist to predict the next event.
You don’t see this in private industry. Drug companies make money from creating drugs that meet a need. While there are certainly companies that have overstated a drugs effect, and understated the side-effects, those ventures on the free market have been disastrous. The best way to make money as a drug company is to make the best drug possible, and in the end there is just no way to fudge that.
Same goes with any private industry. You make a car that sucks, people won’t buy it. You make computer software or hardware that sucks people won’t buy it.
It only becomes ugly when people aren’t buying the end product but the “Science” itself. The .gov will ONLY buy “Science” if it proves what they WANT to prove, and that is why the quotes get placed around “science”.
There’s also a couple more factors: faith and do-gooding.
Climate science is actually *very* hard. You can’t call up McMaster and whistle up a crate of earths. And unlike Astronomers you don’t have thousands of earths you can look at at varying periods in history.
And then add in that the thermodynamics of the atmosphere are hideously complex, also depend on solar influences *and* depend on out-gassing and other natural effects (that we’re only now realizing how little we know…)
You have models that can’t predict what’s going to happen 5 years from now, let along have the fidelity to acuraly predict what happens if the production of specific gasses is reduced.
But! If you sincerely think this is a crisis, then you *know* it’s a problem. And since there’s no “right thinking” opposition to said crisis….
Well wouldn’t some jiggery-pokey of the numbers help things along?
Two of the most insidious biases in science are the kissin’ cousins of confirmation bias and selection bais. In both cases the act of picking which data to use (even if the data is valid) has a dramatic result on the results later on.
And that’s assuming there’s no “interpolation” or “scaling” or “trend fitting” or “extrapolation” all the fuzzy weasel words used when you just don’t know what’s happening.
Actual scientific ethics are *very* hard, because you want your hypothesis to be right. It’s so tempting to tweak readings, to say that data set is “anomalous” to extend results to events beyond the limited scope of the test rig.
And it becomes sooo much harder when you’re not doing an experiment, when you can’t repeat tests, when other people can’t perform your own experiments.
There’s a *reason* the Royal Society’s motto is ‘Nullius in verba’
And equally so there’s a *reason* Global Warming’s biggest defense is “How dare you question ‘scientists’ “
It is interesting to me that, the longer the warming hiatus (contra the geek in the video) continues, the more complex the explanations for why it really really *is* warming are becoming. Whether it’s the oceans sucking in the warm and then spitting it out, or the warming is disrupting the polar jet stream to bring us what we only believe is cold weather (really, deniers, it’s warming causing the colding), the AGW true believers are beginning to sound like the frenzied defenders of a geocentric universe several centuries ago. What’s next? The Heat Miser was taking a nap and will be back any year now?