A lot of people just look at data and say, “Well, this is the data, so this is what we must believe.” But data in the modern age is a leaky vessel. There is such competition to produce innovative provocative research that scientists are manipulating their data so they can win funding as well as personal and professional prestige. This is the big irony of the Information Age. We are awash in information, but we are drowning in lies.
Just look at what has transpired in the world of COVID-19. The manipulation of data from government agencies to achieve a specific outcome. Incentivizing doctors and hospitals with money for death certificates linked to SARS-CoV-2. Vaccine manufacturers ignore, and in some cases, hide injuries and death counts as profits soar into the hundreds of billions of dollars.
“Follow the Science,” became synonymous with whoever was pushing their version of the facts.
National Review captured this exchange with Fauci perfectly… While it is absolutely true that some Republican senators calling for the legal prosecution of Fauci are cynical showmen, Fauci is responding in kind. “I have to laugh at that. I should be prosecuted? What happened on Jan. 6, Senator,” he said, referring to Senator Ted Cruz. But all this was prelude to the truly grand peroration. Saith Fauci:
“So it’s easy to criticize, but they’re really criticizing science because I represent science. That’s dangerous. To me, that’s more dangerous than the slings and the arrows that get thrown at me. I’m not going to be around here forever, but science is going to be here forever. And if you damage science, you are doing something very detrimental to society long after I leave. And that’s what I worry about.”
So why do government bureaucrats make false, misleading statements under the guise of science and manipulated data?
For example, we were told by NASA that 2014 was “the hottest year on record.” This fiction has been repeated year after year, even though all databases show temperatures declining since 2016. The fiction is exposed once you get into the data set and find that NASA is only about 35 percent confident of the statement. In fact, NASA has proclaimed most of the last 20 years as the “hottest on record,” with less than 50 percent confidence in the proclamations.
NASA (and NOAA) have also been “adjusting” the historical data to reflect the climate crisis narrative. That’s right, historical temperatures are being changed by your government. For more information on this deliberate deception, see the “2021 ‘hottest year’” post at Climatedepot.com. Also, check out the excellent videos created by Tony Heller at RealClimateScience.com. Heller has a fondness for using NASA and NOAA’s own graphs to expose deceptions that cannot possibly be errors.
Keep in mind that even with the “adjusted” data (i.e., fabricated data), the difference between the most recent “warmest year” and the last “warmest year” is typically so small and within the margin of error that it’s meaningless.
Science is supposed to be self-correcting. Peer review is supposed to allow only the best ideas to surface. But peer review ceased to provide a reliable scientific check on fraud many years ago. Inside the academic world, “peer review” is not-so-jokingly called “pal-review” because an insular club of academics checks the work of others in the club.
Those reviewing the research rarely, if ever, put papers through a rigorous stress test, questioning methodology, and assumptions. Not surprisingly, history has demonstrated that at least half of all scientific research is incorrect, misleading, or just plain fiction. There’s also the problem of ideology reinforcing confirmation bias.
In the peer review process of today, papers that suggest the prevailing “consensus” is wrong, get rejected, whereas the papers that support the phony consensus get accepted. Researchers are looking for confirmation of their theory rather than attacking their theory with every idea possible to prove that it is solid. The willingness to mercilessly attack your favored theory is the bedrock of good science. Do you see that happening?
Consensus is not science. Consensus is a tool to suppress opposition. For example, the thoroughly debunked claim that “97 percent of scientists believe humans are causing catastrophic human-caused climate change” is repeated so often by the mainstream press that it’s no longer questioned. But let’s set that aside. The more troubling problem is that people skip right over the fact that even if an overwhelming number of scientists believe a theory, that doesn’t make it true. A sustained and rigorous testing of a hypothesis using credible data constitutes proof, not what any number of scientists believe to be true, but cannot prove to be true. In other words, belief is not evidence, and it’s certainly not science.
Climate change is being positioned as an either-or proposition. Either you believe man is having no impact on the climate, or you believe an increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere due to human activities is causing a climate catastrophe. This is what’s known as a “false binary choice.” In reality, there are many places along the spectrum between the extremes of “no impact” and “catastrophic impact.” This truth has been pointed out by the highly-credible authors of several recent books such as “Unsettled” by Steve Koonin, “Apocalypse Never” by Michael Shellenberger, and “False Alarm” by Bjorn Lomborg.
The use of the disparaging term “climate denier” is especially egregious. When you call someone a denier, you are saying his or her position is so ridiculous, so despicable, that he or she is the equivalent of a Holocaust denier. We should reject this kind of unscientific rudeness in our public discourse. The term “denier” is such transparent hyperbole anyone can see it is really just a tool intended to intimidate and shame people and ultimately to shut down legitimate debate. Such tactics are unworthy of people interested in true scientific inquiry.
Legitimate investigators don’t deny there may be an impact by man or that the greenhouse effect occurs, but they are convinced from data, analysis, and observation of the politicization of science that the impact is likely manageable, small, or even insignificant. Objective observers also take note of the fact that there are many positives to the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere. Would any true scientist only obsess over computer modeling of potential negative effects while ignoring the positives?
Consider the fertilizer effect. Additional amounts of CO2 cause plants to grow more quickly. More greenery on the planet enables us to produce more food while decreasing drought. Then there’s the observable fact that higher uses of fossil fuels directly equate to lifting people out of poverty.
For example, between 1990 and 2010, 100 million people gained access to electricity in Indonesia. In that 20-year time period, Indonesia’s per capita income increased by 440%, and the GDP rose by the same amount. Life expectancy rose by 8 years; infant mortality fell by 45%; child malnutrition fell by 65%; illiteracy declined by 77%. This is not a coincidence. It’s directly due to poor people gaining access to electricity and fuels for heating, cooling, cooking, and transportation.
In the developing world, people in China, India, Malaysia, Africa, and other regions want to live as people do in the US and Western Europe. To do that, they are going to exploit energy (most of it being coal), so they can advance their societies as we have. That is going to happen. We can’t stop it, nor should we want to.
The societies that care most for the environment are those rich enough to do so. This is the sound logic of serious thinkers such as Bjorn Lomborg, who argues the best way to make environmental improvements across the globe is to make poor people as rich as possible as fast as possible. Doing so will reduce exploding populations in the world’s poorest nations while giving them the resources they need to care for the land, sea, and air around them.
The only way to make this happen is through energy abundance
