When is science no longer science?

Sunday, August 31, 2008

When is science no longer science?

When it is used for political ends. John Lawrence writes in The Conservative Voice.

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The joy of Palin

While the selection of a huntin' shootin' fishin' Alaskan mom is a "good thing" in its own right, McCain's choice of running mate is even more welcome when you consider what could have been.

According to IHT, and doubtless many other journals, right until the last minute, McCain wanted to appoint his good friend Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, the Democrat turned independent.

What blew Lieberman out of the water, apparently, was outrage from Christian conservatives over the possibility that the independent Senator was a supporter of abortion rights. Sarah Palin, on the other hand, is a convinced anti-abortionist and is beloved by the party's religious base. Add to that the virtue that she does not come off as shrill, and this cemented the deal.

However, while abortion plays big on the US electoral scene – as opposed to the UK where the issue is treated as non-party political, reserved for free votes in the House – equally important is the attitude of the respective players to AGW.

On the one hand, Palin is an avowed sceptic while, on the other, Lieberman is co-author of the failed – but potentially disastrous – Leiberman-Warner Bill which sought to impose "cap and trade" on the US economy. According to the think-tank Heritage, this could have triggered cumulative losses to the US gross domestic product (GDP) of at least $1.7 trillion, a sum that could have reached $4.8 trillion by 2030 (in inflation-adjusted 2006 dollars).

With McCain already far too close to the greenie agenda, having shown an unwarranted enthusiasm for subsidy wind farms, Palin thus comes as a welcome corrective.

Although the Vice President is considered essentially powerless, the fact that Palin is likely to carry her own support within the country – and perhaps prove decisive in trouncing Obama – this could put her in an unusually powerful position. It may be enough – we hope – to see off the greenies and bring some rationality to US policy on "climate change".

And how the greenies will hate her. That, is the joy of Palin, the mom who, one feels, would be quite happy adding the pelt of a polar bear to her office, to match that of the grizzly which already adorns her office sofa.

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A huge diversion of resources

Booker goes to town today on the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(IPCC), charting the intellectual and political corruption behind what must the biggest (and most expensive) scam in the history of the planet.

What is doubly interesting is the way the politicians have bought into the scam, distancing themselves from the bulk of the population. To judge from the comments on theTelegraph website – which are almost entirely supportive - people are growing increasingly sceptic and weary of the preaching of our rulers, as they come up with even madder ideas to "save the planet". 

Perhaps though the greatest evil perpetrated by the IPCC is the way it has distorted public policy, elevating "climate change" to the top of the political agenda and thus skewing expenditure priorities and the focus of public administration.

No more so is this apparent than in the energy field where, instead of addressing the complex but technically solvable problems of providing cheap electricity for the masses, policy is totally bogged down by the fantasy of providing for a "carbon-free" future.

Worse still, if we are entering a period of global cooling – which even the "warmists" admit is on the cards, the policy responses required are entirely different from those needed to deal with the warming scenario postulated by the IPCC.

In that sense, the IPCC is directly responsible for a huge diversion of resources, on a global scale, sanctioning policies which have no foundation in reality while diverting attention from the nuts and bolts of good public administration that are needed to keep society functional.

That this group of self-serving politicians and politico-scientists have been able to get away with it, though, is one of those latter-day marvels which defies explanation. As Booker demonstrates, so transparent is their fraud that it is almost inexplicable that the perpetrators have not been run out of town.

Instead, they preen and posture as they collect their Nobel prizes, while the media laud them and perpetuate their propaganda. There is something very wrong with this world, and it ain't global warming.

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