Oh, those climate science guys!

This from the pen of our own Ex-PH2;

You may or may not have heard that last year, AG Loretta Lynch was considering persecuting some climate scientists who disagreed with the popular opinion about climate change, held by a wide number of science people and non-science people: that climate change going on now is caused by manmade pollution.

I used the word ‘persecuted’ instead of ‘prosecuted’ for a good reason: the jackass who started this buzzroll in the first place was dead set on persecuting anyone who disagreed with him. That could have been Michael Mann, who is currently (still) pontificating at Penn State. But it was not Mann. There is another jackass pulling this stunt, as you will see.

I’m sure pollution and CO loads were much worse before the tobacco industry was taken to task over its genetic engineering of tobacco to make it more and more addictive, something that was leaked by a whistleblower who worked for RJReynolds. Genetic engineering is NOT the same thing as hybridizing. Since I’m sensitive to particulate matter like smoke of any kind in the air, it was kind of a relief to me when people were told they couldn’t smoke on the buses or trains any more.

For the record, lung cancer rates have not really dropped a whole lot since tobacco became more expensive and people gave up smoking, a habit about as nasty as picking your nose and eating it. In fact, this statistical chart going back to 1975, shows a slight increase in the 1990s then a tapering off through 2012.

And this is with a drop in the number of people who smoke. A good deal of cancer-related illness and mortality is related to genetic susceptibility and an immune system that doesn’t work as well as it should. There is, in fact, research going on which shows that antibiotics seem to have an effect on cancers if they’re caught soon enough.

So how does that relate to climate change and dissenting opinions? I’m glad you asked. When I watched the C-Span video of Low-retta’s appearance before a Senate committee responding to this request for a RICO investigation of a small group of people with dissenting opinions, I wondered why any reasoning person would even consider something like that. Science doesn’t advance without dissent and differing opinions. Scientists frequently have serious ego issues, as we have seen with Michael Mann and his Climategate e-mail boondoggle, and his personal attempts to squelch or disparage anyone who disagrees with him. Brian Sussman takes Mann to task over a lot of things, but also castigates The Gore, who became awash in money earned from climate panic-mongering with his film ‘An Inconvenient Truth’. The link to Sussman is here:

That was back in the early mid-2000s, when I still lived in Chicago and was monitoring the extremes of temperature between summer and winter. There was a summer (1995) when over 700 people died of heat-related causes in Chicago. In 2003, France suffered a similar heat wave with almost 15,000 people dying of heat-related causes. In Europe, not many people use air conditioners, and some of those older buildings are poorly ventilated. These incidents were part of the wave of global warming hysterics that were underway, but you do have to view this with a skeptical eye. My mother lived in Chicago in the 1930s. She told me that one summer was so hot, everyone slept outdoors in the parks and on the beaches to escape the heat. And the opposite side of that coin is the worst winters Chicago ever had, at this link.

My point is that weather varies from one seasonal form to the next seasonal form. We had a pretty mild winter here in my kingdom (2015-2016), but the winter before (2014-2015) my pipes froze and a plumbing connector broke and had to be replaced. February 2011, my front door was blocked with 4 ½ feet of snow. It’s weather, people. It is NOT climate.

In regard to the proposed Congressional investigation, I found it amazing that anyone would even suggest questioning the dissenting opinions of seven people with more than valid credentials, using the ridiculous idea that they should be investigated under the RICO Act, a 1970 legislation that was aimed at breaking up the Mob. As I said, science does not advance without dissent and differences of opinion. Remember that at one time, heavier-than-air flight was a notion ridiculed by people who ‘just know better’.

When I dug into this business, my intention was nothing more than understanding what was happening. What was really behind discrediting people in the first place? As it happens, the individual who started the buzzroll about a RICO Act investigation is himself a climate scientist by the name of Jagadish Shukla. He wrote a letter at the link in this article, to the White House demanding such an investigation. He teaches at George Mason University. He conned nineteen (count ‘em) other scientists into signing that letter with him.

Why do I say ‘conned’? Because while he gets a more than adequate salary for teaching, and his wife’s and daughter’s salaries bump up the family income considerably, he also gets taxpayer-funded grants for climate research for his Institute for Global Environment and Society (IGES) to the tune of $3.8+ million per year. Some of those grants come from agencies such as NASA. That’s a lot of money to lose if he’s wrong about AGW. Dissenters are a clear threat to his pocketbook, you see, so he had to do something. Right?

This article by Paul Driessen outlines Shukla’s vested interest in turning innocent people into criminals:

Yes, Shukla is now being investigated himself. No, don’t do stupid things like call the university or post crap on his Facebook page. I’m sure that he and his four associates may find their tenure ending without any of your help.

If you want to know why some people do the things they do, follow the money. It’s almost always about money.

Category: Global Warming