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Originally Posted by RWJ
This is an excellent point, because it illustrates the problem a lot of people have with the scientists who endorse climate change orthodoxy. (There is also an ever-growing body of climatologists inter alia who criticize that orthodoxy.) I agree with you that the great majority of scientists are dedicated to truth and intellectual integrity in their field. What they're doing on the public stage, however, isn't science, it's politics, and their integrity and honesty in the pursuit of science doesn't carry over into their political lobbying. Further, since politics by its very nature is never subjected to objective verification, the way to ensure that you're not "wrong" when debating policy is to squelch all debate and railroad the opposition, usually with cries for the rest of us to think of the children, the polar bear, the declining bumblebee population, etc.
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What you say may be so, but I think it is safe to say that making science political started on the political side. A number of interests, both inside and outside the government didn't like what the science said about global warming and then they looked very hard for scientists who agreed with their viewpoint. Then they would point to a few scientists and then say "see the debate is still open", even when the vast majority of scientists had accepted the evidence that suggested global warming is real. Ultimately, the political process is what has corrupted the lobbying of scientists. No one can really go in and claim that there is a 75% probability that global warming will continue and an 82% chance that if it does continue that there will be negative effects in 150 years and expect the politicians to act.
Frankly, the basic problem is that too much of the government is run by lawyers and business men who are not educationally equipped to deal with how science works.
In any case, the science behind the politics is subject to verification and it appears to me that every year there are fewer and fewer scientists who are arguing that global warming is 1. not real and 2. that human activity has not played a significant part in that warming.
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Bill