A very good site, and a very good discussion of this letter is found at Marketing Advice for Mad Scientists at WattsUpWithThat.com .
It discusses some reactions in the media to this letter. Not as well received, even by those on “their side” it seems.
An interesting item noted, and one that has been called even on Forumosa.com by the “Warmist” group regards the “scientific creds” of those critical of the GW/XX/AGW theories:
[quote]All in all, this letter is a PR train wreck. Then there’s the signatories.
Since it is common to see the “but he/she is not a climate scientist” argument used against people that offer views differing to “the consensus”, here are the impeccable climate science credentials of the first 20 signatories :
Robert McC. Adams – Division of Social Sciences, UCSD
Richard M Amasino – Biochemist, UW Madison
Edward Anders – Geologist, University of Chicago
David J. Anderson - Biologist, Cal Tech
Luc Anselin - Geographer, ASU
Mary Kalin Arroyo – Biologist, University of Chile
Dr. Berhane Asfaw – Palaeoanthropologist, Rift Valley Research Service
FRANCISCO J. AYALA – Professor of Biological Sciences, UC Irvine
Dr. Ad Bax – Physics, NIH
Anthony Bebbington – Professor of Nature, University of Manchester
Gordon Bell – Computer Pioneer
MICHAEL VANDER LAAN BENNETT – Neuroscientist, Albert Einstein College of Medicine
Jeffrey Bennetzen - Geneticist, University of Washington
May R. Berenbaum – Entomologist, UIUC
Overton Brent Berlin – Anthropologist, University of Georgia
Pamela Bjorkman – Biologist, Cal tech
Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn – Biologist, UCSF
Jacques Blamont – Astrophysicist
Michael Botchan – Biochemistry, Berkeley
John S. Boyer – Marine Biosciences, University of Delaware
After the first 20 names, they are batting 0.000. If anyone cares to go through the rest of the list and report, please pitch in.
[/quote]
Interesting challenge of CVs I’d say.
And as to this plea…[quote]We also call for an end to McCarthy-like threats of criminal prosecution against our colleagues based on innuendo and guilt by association,…etc[/quote]…the facts of history have shown that quite a number of the people accused of being communist spies by McCarthy actually [i]were communist spies.[/i] Not the best example to have used for the plea process.
Science? really? has a view on what is to be done about global warming? really? and do tell us why there are no sea level increases in the South Pacific study which follows all the rules that “science” says are necessary while we have those who support “science” ignoring this to refer to global studies that rely on incomplete, incomprehensive studies that even the studies themselves admit are “unscientific?” Yeah… so much for consensus… smirk… smirk… smirk… now all we need is the intellectual heavyweight Chief to weigh in… yes, chief, we want to hear from you. It makes our argument all the more persuasive for having your “views.” smirk smirk smirk… sneer sneer sneer… where are you chief? we are waiting? hahahahahahahahahahahaha
[quote=“fred smith”]Gosh… 225 scientists from the National Academy of Scientists…
No one doubts that some scientists share these views, the fact is that others do not.[/quote]
And guess whose payroll the “others” are on.
[quote=“TainanCowboy”]An interesting item noted, and one that has been called even on Forumosa.com by the “Warmist” group regards the “scientific creds” of those critical of the GW/XX/AGW theories:
[quote]All in all, this letter is a PR train wreck. Then there’s the signatories.
Since it is common to see the “but he/she is not a climate scientist” argument used against people that offer views differing to “the consensus”, here are the impeccable climate science credentials of the first 20 signatories :[/quote][/quote]
Another example of changing the subject. The letter signed does not require any of the signatories to have any credentials in climate science. It is a list of names of protesters against ‘the recent escalation of political assaults on scientists in general and on climate scientists in particular’.
In all seriousness, you shouldn’t even be allowed to post with the grownups.
This bit is so true. Scientists loooove to argue. When they hear a talk or read a paper, they’re not sitting there nodding their heads like sheep, they’re searching out every single flaw in the study and trying to figure out how they can one-up it (I’ve just spend a week at a conference doing exactly that, so I’m speaking from recent experience 
). We’re competing for funding, for publication, for recognition, and the more people working on the same thing, the more competition there is.
Controversy is great for scientists, we love it. Controversy means that there’s still work to be done, and when you have a big high profile controversy it’s even better - it’s so much easier to get funding when you have a project that you declare is going to resolve a big controversy (and your project is always going to be the one that resolves thing once and for all ). People who can convincingly challenge and overturn conventional wisdom are absolutely the ones that get the most recognition (and the papers in Science), so of course everyone would love to come up with the study or the data that proves everyone else wrong. Of course the catch is that you have to be able to back it up. There are many people who try to challenge convention and fail, because, well, they were wrong. If there really was controversy within the scientific community, the scientists would be all over it.
You guys apparently think that the scientific community is some monolithic thing that up and decided one day that it wanted to push this climate change story for whatever reason. That is so far from the reality of how things work among scientists…
No they don’t actually think that, it’s just an untruth they deliberately use to try and obscure their real agenda.
No they don’t actually think that, it’s just an untruth they deliberately use to try and obscure their real agenda.[/quote]
Well, yeah. That’s why, like a real scientist, I hedged it with the “apparently”
Science is not set on this issue but the policy makers apparently are. Witness the recent backtracking in numerous countries. Let the National Academy of Scientists “win” this debate. Regardless, nothing is going to be done along the lines suggested so why are we even arguing about this anymore. Global warming, climate change, alternating weather patterns, it is immaterial. Oil ain’t going away and with the recession no one has any interest in discussing these “measures” any more. so? What gives? Why discuss the esoteric parameters of this issue? What is going to be done? nothing? and why not point out that for every oil company funded study, Gore and others are making millions if not billions and no one says anything about that… why not? We have won. Again… so what does anyone here suggest is going to be done? about the “scurge” of “global warming?” Ah… … well… pity that…
A majority of scientific research in the US relies on funding from agencies like NIH, NSF, DoD, DoE, etc., and government policy determines the general directions and subsequently which agencies get funding and have the powers to direct them to research institutions and universities. Therefore, there is no way to actually carry out experiments or continue research in climatology if no agencies have sufficient funding to delegate roles or projects.
The US federal budget this year currently stands at $3.5T. Out of that, 68B is made available for funding scientific research, or a little less than 2% of the total budget. In comparison, DoD has an operating budget of 685B. Homeland Security, one department alone, even gets allocated 44B.
Well, that’s not strictly true. The US also has vast swathes of research in basic and applied science (without even counting technology R&D) that are funded by private sources. The funding promoted by these bequests, speculatory funds, corporations, etc, dwarfs the entire science budget of the rest of the world. The USA trains the largest fraction of PhD students and performs more science than the rest of the world put together, unfortunately (from the point of view of balance in education and research maturity of the rest of the world).
It is that dominance that makes this letter from the NAS so weighty. and remember, it is not a letter whose purpose is a mere supporting of the climate change position held by IPCC, it’s a condemnation of the recent politicised polemics towards scientists as a whole, and the vile slanderous attacks on individual scientists perpetrated by ill-informed, opinionated pundits with ulterior motives and malign agendas.
And too their dweebish and absurdly less knowledgeable online cheerleaders.
HG
And too their dweebish and absurdly less knowledgeable online cheerleaders.
HG[/quote]
hey welcome back! (i might be late in noticing lol).
Yep, oil companies, for example, fund a lot of research in the geosciences, from basic research to more applied stuff. It can be a very nice source of funding if you work on the right things.
Much of it is never published, so it fails one criterion of science… but that’s a sticky point about the definition of science most people don’t actually wish to consider (i.e., that science must be published). In-house, confidential research, even of a basic nature, is often not published until years later in the quest to protect patentable findings and their money-spinning offspring, like much of the pre-tech basic R&D coming out of places like Bell Labs and so on on the technology side, or drug companies and small biotech start ups using retirement fund monies.