BIG SUNSPOT: More than four years after solar maximum, the sun continues to produce big sunspots. One is transiting the solar disk today: sunspot 756. It's about five times wider than Earth and poses a threat for M-class solar flares. Sunspot 756 is big enough to see with the naked eye, but do not stare at the blinding sun. Try building a safe solar projector instead.

http://spaceweather.com/

Science has been politicized repeatedly, and it has survived and will survive. Eventually, (especially with the blogosphere on the case which should accelerate the prcoess) we will be able to apply the scientific method to climate change, innate diffferences between men and women, perhaps even to racial differences (long a "third rail" of science) to mention just a few contentious issues.
Political considerations have circumscribed scientific inquiry by channeling funding to those who do not question dogma and by limiting opportunities to publish for those who challenge conventional wisdom. Consider all the work on anti-angiogenesis in cancer. It took a courageous scientist to risk his career and labor in obscurity for 30 years before the scientific community recognized he might be on to something and now he has a Nobel Prize and lots of large and small Pharma are trying to make use of his insights.
Science is still conducted by human beings who have their own innate resistance to change and challenge. Again, I expect the blogosphere will help bring reason and rationality, maybe even, eventually, some "true facts" out of the chaos of human inquiry.

That's the hope, at any rate. But for it to happen, there needs to be a groundswell of exposure to politicized science - not matter what the political bent - and care that our upcoming students understand what science is and is not, how it works when it works well and why it is so important not to skew things to fit one's political or other beliefs.

It's a lesson you pretty much have to teach each new generation independently. There are some things inherent to science that make this easier, but the chain of transmission is also fragile... and the implications of failure reach far beyond science itself.

BTW, bill's observation is on point. See this article we ran re: some research from the Max Planck Institute covering solar cycles and global warming.

The Global Warming alarmists are one end of the political spectrum, opposite from the Creationists. Each side views science -- and everything else -- through a polarizing, distorted lens. People who have a discomfort with modernity's increasing influence on life find solace in the idea that mankind's activities must be curtailed to avoid Armageddon; that humanity is directly responsible for everything that befalls the Earth. This holds true for Creationists and Global Warming adherents alike.

Global warming concerns me greatly, especially if the cure is worse than the problem. There are a lot of factors at play, but I think people want to rally around a cause that is constructive; they like the idea that we can 'save the world.' And it also plays into self-disgust for those who see the modern world in negative terms. But saving the world and self-disgust are emotional issues, not scientific ones.

I agree with #2 ShrinkWrapped that this burgeoning medium I type on here might yet change the game of chess. Dr Peiser not having the opportunity to be reviewed by his peers sounds like a classic Cathedral roadblock. The Bazaars of the Web and blogosphere might remove that roadblock, and let his hypotheses and conclusions rely on their scientific merits rather than political correctness.

Science is not only a method; it is yet another institution that faces the rigors of this age that challenges top-down, established methodology. Interesting times ahead.

Science is not only a method; it is yet another institution

Bingo.

Reality will still be there for whoever wants to study it.

Agreed, T. J. But what's at stake here is science specifically being used to back public policy. We all have a stake in that.

I guess that Daniel Patrick Moynihan's observation that “everyone is entitled to their own opinion but everyone is not entitled to their own facts” may not be so true, after all. Or at least some pretty influential people are convinced that they are entitled to their own facts (or can't be bothered with them).

The tragedy of this is that with the incredible power that's readily available and the even greater power we can see just over the horizon we need real, honest science more now than ever. The sword that failed at its time of greatest need.

Science magazine doesn't hurt science, it only hurts its own credibility. Assuming Dr. Peiser's description of the reason his findings were declined are accurate, that would say a lot about the thinking at Science magazine. They seem to be saying that we will be the magazine of one theory, one hypothesis, one way, and will cede the openness and objectivity to the Internet. It's an interesting strategy.

... that only one third backed the consensus view, while only one per cent did so explicitly.

That result is very similar to a Scientific American reader's poll done in 2002.

Something of a shock to the editors, who had just given the Inquisition treatment to Bjorn Lomborg ("Science defends itself against The Skeptical Environmentalist", Jan 2002)

One might hope that the blogosphere could act as an alternative information dissemination vehicle to overcome establishment bottlenecks, as it has done with the MSM. The problem, though, is that many forms of science require significant funding...you probably really can't do much with global climate modeling unless you have a supercomputer in your basement. So the politicization of science may be even more threatening than the biases of the media.

David, Steve McIntyre is doing some great work showing the flaws in key elements of IPCC's case - and without a supercomputer.

#6: Nice analogy Marcus.

I think what's also at fault here is the process of scientific consensus. In general, it's much harder to get research published that contradicts "conventional wisdom", unless you have institutional backing and an iron-clad study to present. If the scientific community didn't establish these norms, the discourse would be a whole lot more cacophonous and politicized than it already is. Unfortunately, that also means it's quite difficult to overcome the inertia of accepted truth.

I forget which physicist is reputed to have said "Physics advances one funeral at a time."

And physics is the hardest of the hard sciences!

I lost forever any faith (good word, that) in climate modeling when I attended a climate conference and failed to get any satisfactory answers to my questions. If a brand-new physics BA can ask them questions they can't answer after years of work, then their models need some serious work.

(Sample question: "You said that you could not get a stable climate in your model in the no-anthropogenic-CO2 case despite repeated attempts. What reasons do you have to believe that the current climate is stable but for man-made greenhouse gasses?"

Answer: "We don't know that.")

Robin, science will overcome. But we can loose the advantage while that's happening. Consider the odious "bioethics" council. During the 2004 election campaign Frist stood up there and told researchers to "come and get 'em", referring to cell cultures from the 11 stem cell lines we're currently allowed to have, knowing all the time those lines were contaminated with mouse feeder cells and completely useless for human research.

But the blogverse is a powerful tool for the dissemmination of science-- when Hamer's [latest silly book] The God Gene made the cover of Time, razib's post on the book was google-ranked second, after Time, but before the actual book!

And when Collapse came out, godless' "Guns, Germs, and Gonads" was on the first page of google rankings, refuting Diamond's PC apologia in Collapse.

Who shall be our next Galileo and publish the truth without the imprimatur of the Holy Order of Liberal Science.

Robin,

I think real scientists all have a terrific sense of humor-- pseudo-scientists (ie, creationists, hbd-deniers, environmentalists) have absolutely no sense of humor at all. ;)

Anyway, i thought this was funnie.

Thanks jinn, very funny link.

The internet is becoming a far more powerful tool of scientific idea exchange than the editors of Nature and Science might wish. And not all valid scientific research requires mega-bucks.

For David Foster #14, soon most educated folks will have a "supercomputer" on their desktops, if not in their pockets. And climate modeling is not a very sophisticated art.

If they could somehow remove the "true-believers of climate religion du jour" from the financing/publishing loop.

The earth has gone through several glaciations and interglacial periods in the last 600,000 years. The glaciations averaged about 46,000 years, the interglacial averaged 95,000 years. It has been about 10,000 years since the end of the last glaciation. It is unclear whether the earth is in an interglacial period or whether it is in a postglacial period.

The questions that come up are how much of the current warming is due to human activity and how significant it is. The question that follows that is what can we do about it.

Leftist science, leftist media

Whats the difference ?

Why cant we just state what we see in front of us?

Koyoto was all about putting world resources under the control of the UN, the Global warming fraud, and Koyoto is part of Agenda 21.

This is agenda driven, not science driven.

The left wanted gun, control, leftist terrorism, creating crime by making the innocent helpless, so that people beg for slavery to get protection.

Bellesiles wrote a fraud Titled Arming America
Bellesiles resigns as fraud investigation ends

Then out came the democrats on all the talking head shows touting his book as proof that 2nd Amendment was not an individual right, thats what the debate was, the drumbeat was centered on the undermine of this individual garranty to military weapons.

Military weapons, is exactly what is protected, and the right belongs to the individual person.

The koyoto fraud is the same thing on larger scale, its agenda, not science, its an agenda with the name Agenda, Agenda 21.

Lets look at what emanated from the Earth Summit, Rio de Janeiro. UN Conference on Environment and Development

"Isn't the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn't our responsibility to bring that about?" -- Maurice Strong, Secretary General of the Rio Conference

Giving society cheap, abundant energy would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun." -- Paul "Population Bomb" Ehrlich.

"Complex technology of any sort is an assault on human dignity. It would be little short of disastrous for us to discover the source of clean, cheap, abundant energy, because of what we might do with it." -- Amory Lovins, Rocky Mountain Institute.

"We've already had too much economic growth in the US. Economic growth in rich countries like ours is the disease, not the cure." -- Ehrlich again.

"The planet is about to break out with fever, indeed it may already have, and we [human beings] are the disease. We should be at war with ourselves and our lifestyles." -- Thomas Lovejoy, assistant secretary to the Smithsonian Institution.

"The only real good technology is no technology at all. Technology is taxation without representation, imposed by our elitist species (man) upon the rest of the natural world." -- John Shuttleworth, FoE manual writer.

"The only hope for the world is to make sure there is not another United States. We can't let other countries have the same number of cars, the amount of industrialization, we have in the U.S.. We have to stop these Third World countries right where they are." -- Michael Oppenheimer, senior scientist for the Environmental Defense Fund.

"People are the cause of all the problems; we have too many of them; we need to get rid of some of them, and this (ban of DDT) is as good a way as any." Charles Wurster, Environmental Defense Fund.

"Man is always and everywhere a blight on the landscape." -- John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club.

"The world has a cancer, and the cancer is man." Alan Gregg, Rockefeller Foundation.

The koyto treaty was one of the big bannanas, and they are getting frantic the ruse might fail.

There are other bits, the biodiversity treaties and the wildlands project, the LOST treaty being pushed by globalist Lugar.

All of it attacks Americans authority to rule ourselves, and removes control from American voters and places it under the authority of a global government.

Its about agenda, not science, fake science is being used as tool, a means to an end.

Its in your face dishonesty, deception, for a plan put together in Rio.

Agenda 21

Raymond,

The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.

this crowd doesn't seem all that distinguishable from him

No,,, they dont,,, do they.

Dont worry tho, their public perception savy leftist media always tone down what the wackjob moonbats say, they know how to make their own look good.

John Kerry called the man that exterminated his own people by a 5% death quota of killing, "George Washington"

Did the media tell us John Kerry glorified a man guilty of crimes against humanity ?

Course not.

The left dont need to hide their twisted maligant thoughts, the media does the polish job for them.

Why, if they didnt, people whould find out all those leftist wackjobs are leftist wackjobs.

Mainstream Climate "science" has become an alternative faith. You know:

"When a Man stops believing in God he doesn¹t then believe in nothing, he believes anything."
http://www.chesterton.org/

Indulge me while I repeat my own point:
Even IF global warming is real (though this is not yet well-established) AND even IF such warming is of human/technology origin rather than part of a natural cycle (though this too is not well-established) AND even IF such warming is of such magnitude as to threaten macro-scopic consequences such as submerging the island of Tuvalu (though this, again, is not well-established) THEN there MAY be need for some solution. But not Kyoto's.

The Kyoto Accords are like attempting to solve the horse-shit problem on the streets of 19th century London by restricting the number of hansom cabs. They're like trying to solve the temporary housing shortage problems of New York City in the 1940's via rent control. They are like the attempts to solve the perceived over-population problems of India and China in the 1970's by destroying familes -- China tried; while India turned to Norman Borlaug and the Green Revolution.

We might solve an excess carbon dioxide problem, if it exists, by encouraging plankton formation in our oceans. We might solve an "excess" solar insolation problem, if THAT turns out to be the cause, by a Cristo-like wrapping of silverized mylar sheets over vast areas of land -- to increase the Earth's albedo. We might look for a way to cure rather than to endure.

But only if we think that we can. If we doubt the power of science, then we're as doomed as the doom-sayers say.

Its not science thats in doubt, its the scientists.

You cant trust a leftist scientist any more than what was published from those working for the tobacco companies 20 years ago.

They are infected with malignant leftism, basically a brain disorder, we are awash in scientific fraud, historical fraud, even anthropology is full of fraud. (because socialist theory demands the perfectable man)

The left have distroyed achedamia, they control all the review boards, all the awards panels.

You just cant trust them anymore.

All it took is one large volcano to toss their models on the trash, Penitubo turned the morning and evening skys orange for almost 2 years, (due to the SO2) and you should see the CO2 it belched.

Plant growth shot up a little and the CO2 was gone before the skys orange tint was gone.

But the data from Penitubo was persona non grata, it endangered the leftist agenda.. so poof down the memory hole it goes.

Svience is great, its the globalist agenda of the new leftist internationale that sucks.

And thats all that Rio summit and those that came before and after are, the new form of the communist internationale.

They have new words for their fabian program called Agenda 21. "Sustainable Development" et al.

BTW, those carbon credits was supposed to be traded thru ENRON, whoes people was regulars on Air Force 1 with the clintons. who underwrote the failed generator project in India with fed loan garranties. ever ask yourself why Ken Lay was pushing for Koyto to be ratified ?

Its no mystery really why the Koyoto plotsters, the Oil For Food theives, adscam et al are the same people.

And JK, Yeah I know M Strong cavorts with globalist corporatists, When Ruben called the Bush white house to get an ENRON bailout (he was refused) was he calling as a fresh Neocon?

What power would all those leftist wackjob groups have without their corporate sponsors?

Jinn, your link parodies some of the subjects quoted in my comment #22 but perhaps the hardest hitting part is that the people are depicted exactly as they are, they do think and say things like that.

They have planned an 80% population reduction, however they can obtain it, and consider pestulence and disease merely tools for that effect.

So when you see leftist despots in Africa doing stupid things that perhaps should be seen as criminal things for all the suffering and death it brings about. Is it idiocy or agenda ?

No, science is fine, but the scientists cant be trusted without examining his voter registration.

Gunter...a "supercomputer" as used for climate modeling, nuclear weapons research, etc is something very different from a fast PC, server, or mainframe.

I look forward to reading SPQRs link on non-supercomputer-based climate analyses; such things may turn out to be possible.

But, regardless, there are many aspects of science that need expensive equipment and hence are subject to the political leanings of those doing the funding.

#6 Cicero mentions "Chang[ing] the game of chess." Marc, pal, I like to think of it as turning the board into Chinese checkers.

But of course, the Big Certainty is attractive. We want The Story, and we want it over and over again just like kids of a certain age being read to (or, eeeuhhh, watching kiddie vids over and over).

Somewhat off topic: I just saw the paperback edition of Lakoff's book on "taking back the dialog" in politics (emphasis mine). He actually has the gall, or the blind spot, or both, sufficient to describe "the only progressive think tank" as "nonpartisan"--in virtually the same sentence. "As if", made to be "as". There's an awful lot of assumption packed in there.

Now, I happen to have studied with one of the folks who coined the term "reframing", so it's funny to see Lakoff (who has done some interesting actual science-like work) cranking up to go political, and thus a-scientific, and tossing that word around with seeming gleeful abandon. In the words of Invader Zim's The Tallest, "It's not stuuupid. It's advaaaanced."

Hold me, I'm scared.

/s/

Nortius Maximus

I'm one of those who thinks the notion of man-made global warming is totally politicized (bottom line: anti-capitalist) BS.

Here's something I posted on another website:

We humans naturally assume that the climate we've grown used to is "normal". Human history only goes back roughly 5000 years. If we look further back than that we can see that there have been wild climate swings throughout the Earth's history. The one thing we can say for certain is that the climate will not stay the same as what we've grown used to.

That leaves us with only two possibilities:

a. The climate will get warmer
b. The climate will get cooler

Possibility "b" will lead to a new ice age and will be an unimaginable catastrophe for the human species. Much of North America will become uninhabitable, and one can readily picture the war and bloodshed that will occur as people in the temperate regions migrate towards the equator and elbow aside the people already living there.

Therefore, possibility "a" is far more desirable.

Robin - many thanks for a fine post on the Oreskes controversy. My much past-due comment is because we are cruising to Alaska, and have only epsodic internet access, now from Victoria, BC.

In the comments you wrote:

...why it is so important not to skew things to fit one's political or other beliefs.

I've been studying the climate change/global warming issue for a couple of years, beginning from a similar perspective: that "objective science" should determine policy.

What I think I've learned is that objective science is insufficient to determine policy, at least for an issue as uncertain as climate change. Both sides of the climate change debate are debating what are fundamentally political/economic choices using SCIENCE AS A PROXY.

In my truth search, I've found some science policy resources that I wish to promote (sell you) - hoping that at least a few WOC folk will take a peek. I'll use my seekerblog posts as shorthand:

1) A Taxonomy of Climate Politics

2) A Third Way on Climate which includes a dozen+ links to resources on climate change science policy.

3) The SeekerBlog collection of 'climate change' posts.

My working hypothesis is that it is a waste of time/energy to ask that we receive our policy guidance from "objective science" today. The science is nowhere nearly good enough. Rather we should be evaluating policy options with the full appreciation of our uncertainty about both future climate change and human impacts.

No Regrets Policies is what we are seeking for immediate implementation - those policies that have a real payoff even if NOT (global warming).

E.g., 99% of the press coverage, and nearly that percentage of the big-science journals like "Science", are focused upon mitigation. I.e., mitigation of climate change forcings such as greenhouse gases.

But what about adaptation policies? These evidently are not PC, but they must be on the policy menu as well. Not to the exclusion of mitigation options, but to be considered amongst the array of {uncertain cost, uncertain benefit} options.

PS- if you are looking for a one-stop-shop resourse on science policy, I highly recommend the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado/Boulder .

Peiser has been dishonest about his work on this issue - see here for more information:

http://backseatdriving.blogspot.com/2005_05_01_backseatdriving_archive.html#111630828673744298