Climate change

Kevin was watching the congressional hearings regarding governmental scientists who research climatology. I was trying to blog but kept getting distracted by these SUPER-science-geeks who were testifying. It is fantastic to watch a politician, who is clearly trying to score a cheap point, ask some innane question of a scientist and then demand a yes or no answer.

I'll tell you this much - most scientists cannot do "yes" or "no". In fact, when you hear scientists making dogmatic statements like that on things other than obvious facts/natural laws - you better check out who is paying their bills.

And this was the central point of the hearings. Should the executive branch be able to sway the content of scientific findings whose funding comes from the legislative branch. These testifying governmental scientists claim that they and their peers have been pressured to change results and content of papers to suit the executive branch's need to downplay the effects of increased CO2 in the atmosphere.

One silly congressman went so far as to suggest that these climatologists had coalesced into a cabal and were, in fact, suppressing alternative hypotheses and points of view. That, my dear boy, would be politics and scientist after scientist took exception with this inference that any legitimate point of view outside of those supporting climate change would be suppressed by the "cabal".

One scientist put it out there for all to see, and his general idea was that: 1) science should not be suppressed, 2) the people should see the clear and unbiased results that the scientists found, and 3) since the taxpayers have paid for it, it is inappropriate for politicians and lobbyists and policy people to manipulate the results for they have no basis for being able to "interpret" these results, rather the people should get a succinct presentation of the scientific results that they paid for, and 4) if a set of different researchers reach the same conclusions from independent work then this indicates that they must be on to something.

Three snaps for that weather queen (and she was a screamer).

Kevin was mentioning that their was a proposal floated around that each governmenal body that does science would have a policy person named by the executive to "prescreen" all data before it is made public. While we all know this would never make it as a official policy, it does sound like this is an existing unspoken policy currently. I seem to recall that the conservatives are the ones who detest spin and offer a "fair and balanced" view where you can decide.

It is clear that for governmental scientists, there sure has been a climate change.