Promise breaking incoming in 5, 4, 3, 2,...
...and 1. Yep. Promise breaker has arrived right on schedule. If it weren't so pitiful it would be funny.
Re: tough times for pseudoskeptics. Pft. What tough times? They had 8 years of the Bush administration, an administration that actively suppressed any scientist who dared talk about global warming. That administration edited, rewrote and/or sat on any report that talked about global warming. This has been the subject of at least two books (Climate Coverup, Censoring Science, and The Republican War on Science, which also covers the climate aspect among other things). Censored documents are now being released and the censorship picture is even uglier than first thought.
Real scientists who did speak out, like Dr. James Hansen, were hauled before Congress and questioned. His job was on the line numerous times and he was slandered viciously for simply doing his job.
Dr. Michael Mann has been the target of a witch-hunt because he and his colleagues came up with the hockey stick diagram. No matter that he was vindicated by other scientific agencies around the world including the prestigious National Academy of Sciences, because you will still find people saying the hockey stick is broken, and that Dr. Mann just made it all up (and presumably bribed all the other scientists to come to the same conclusions).
Dr. Mann is still being harassed by Senators (mainly Inhofe), and is the target of frivolous lawsuits, and requests to appear before a hearing (yet again). Just last week he was vindicated again on other spurious charges yet Inhofe wasn't happy and decided they needed to form their own investigation for which Mann has to spend time, money and effort to prepare.
Every major climate scientist in the US, UK, and Australia is under attack. They are called frauds, liars, hoaxers, and incompetent. They are accused of hiding data, of making up numbers, and silliest of all, of being involved in a worldwide conspiracy to hide the truth. Many of them are subject to silly lawsuits, most of which are tossed out but that still takes a toll in time and money (not to mention peace of mind).
They see their work taken and misrepresented to say something completely opposite. They have radio talk show hosts telling others that these scientists should be tortured and killed. They see people making up quotes and attributing these quotes to them. They have many of the mainstream media printing absolute nonsense about them and their work. They are threatened on the streets, they have anonymous threats left in the mail, on email, on the phone, they have dead animals left at their doorsteps, their computer systems are hacked, they are harassed everywhere they turn by
ill-informed average citizens to ill-informed politicians. Their organizations receive constant pressure from the public and from politicians to get them fired.
Ninety-seven percent of climatologists agree that the globe is unequivocally warming and that we most likely are the cause (that's greater than a 90% certainty). Every
major scientific organization in the world now agrees we are warming the planet, and in 2007 even the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, a holdout, issued an agreement. Apparently that now means there is no scientific body of national or international standards that rejects AGW.
and not caring a bit for what other people had to say.
On the contrary, I pay very close attention to what other people are saying which is why I know that most of what they say is fabricated nonsense.
Make a claim and I will check it. After 3 years of that though a pattern emerges. The claim is based on a misunderstanding of the what the scientists say. The claim is actually the opposite to what the scientist says. The claim is completely made-up and has no basis in reality. The claims are also illogical. The claims tend to contradict each other (I posted about that last week). The claims don't even have internal logical consistency. The claims are based on a misunderstanding of science in general.
Why should I trust any claim, often put forth by someone with no expertise, that contradicts every leading science organization in the world when there is a long long record of those non-experts either lying or being ignorant of what they speak?
You want to know what happens to the scientist who goes against the trend and demonstrates the consensus is wrong? S/he wins the Nobel Prize. Their name is mentioned alongside of Einstein, Newton, Galileo. They achieve immortality. The goal of scientists is to overturn current thought, not to spend their lives repeating what everyone else is saying.
To think that there is a global-wide cabal suppressing the truth about climate change, and that none of them are spilling the beans, is a pathetic and juvenile conspiracy theory that would be laughed off by the majority of people if it dealt with a subject other than climate change (e.g. flat earth, geocentric earth, the Illuminati, Reptilian overlords, Jewish and Socialist agendas to take over the world).
The "skeptics" have contributed precious little to the debate. They have access to all the same data plus have access to money from places like Exxon--so much money a scientist would kill, or at least lie, to get it--yet they are unable to contribute anything outside of "you faked it" and "show us the data". They have nothing that stands up to any examination, and they have not been able to demonstrate what is causing the planet to warm, nor have they been able to explain why that extra CO2 isn't having an effect if the planet isn't warming--you cannot change the laws of physics, you know.
In short, "skeptics" and their stance on the issue is based on faith and belief, not evidence, and anytime belief contradicts reality, belief eventually has to give way. In this case though belief may not give way till we're faced with catastrophes because of our own inaction.
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