Noonan blames scientists for global warming confusion

July 20, 2006

In the Wall Street Journal today, [tag]Peggy Noonan[/tag] argued that it’s “sad and frustrating” that the world’s leading scientific minds can’t get together and decide if [tag]global warming[/tag] is real, and if it is, whether it’s dangerous. And this meeting of the minds happen, Noonan says, because scientists aren’t reliable.

You would think the world’s greatest scientists could do this, in good faith and with complete honesty and a rigorous desire to discover the truth. And yet they can’t. Because science too, like other great institutions, is poisoned by politics. [tag]Scientists[/tag] have ideologies. They are [tag]politicized[/tag].

All too many of them could be expected enter this work not as seekers for truth but agents for a point of view who are eager to use whatever data can be agreed upon to buttress their point of view. And so, in the end, every report from every group of scientists is treated as a political document. And no one knows what to believe. So no consensus on what to do can emerge.

If global warming is real, and if it is new, and if it is caused not by nature and her cycles but man and his rapacity, and if it in fact endangers mankind, scientists will probably one day [tag]blame[/tag] The People for doing nothing. But I think The People will have a greater claim to blame the scientists, for refusing to be honest, for operating in cliques and holding to ideologies. For failing to be trustworthy.

What on earth is Noonan talking about? Who, exactly, are these politicized scientists who deserve the blame for inaction on global warming?

This is the height of anti-intellectualism. Noonan offers a broad attack on scientists, backs up her claims with literally nothing, and throws her arms up in despair, wondering whether to believe the overwhelming evidence on global warming or not.

For that matter, on the substance, Noonan is badly mistaken.

Noonan, for example, suggested leading scientists should get together to pore over existing data. As TP noted, that’s already happened.

It’s called the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which involves thousands of scientists from over 120 countries who develop detailed reports on climate change. Their most recent report (from 2001) was reviewed by more than 1,000 top experts, including so-called “climate skeptics” and representatives from industry. Here’s what they concluded: “There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities.”

Ironically, Noonan wants to us to be skeptical about scientists because they’ve been “politicized” and are no longer “trustworthy.” It sounds to me like Noonan is projecting a bit. As Judd put it, as long as Noonan is pointing fingers, “[T]he blame should go to people like Peggy Noonan who give our leaders the political cover to do nothing in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence.”

Remember, CB—we’re talking about a nitwit who, if a tree with a thousand perfect apples has but one wormy apple, would have us chop down the tree, burn it to ashes, bury every good apple in a toxic-waste dump…and then preserve the one wormy apple on a pedestal as an example of what an apple should look like….

  • “… can’t get together and decide”???!

    If Noonan would pull her head from out her ass (where it’s been for decades), she’d know the fact that …. O, forget it. There’s no reasoning with these dumb-ass creeps. The world is flat, God’s in his Heaven, and it’s too warm (in most of the US) to argue Theology (which is all they really care about – not real Theology, of course, just party-line stuff).

  • Just more of the “They, Those, Them” condemnations they continually spout. Remember – facts are to be ignored.

  • All too many of them could be expected enter this work not as seekers for truth but agents for a point of view who are eager to use whatever data can be agreed upon to buttress their point of view. And so, in the end, every report from every group of scientists is treated as a political document. And no one knows what to believe. So no consensus on what to do can emerge.

    The piece in bold is is the only truth that I can discern in this. CB’s question is who is she talking about. My question who is she writing for? Perhaps she’s trying to make the corporate executives, who read the Journal over breakfast, feel a bit less guilty. Can’t you hear them turning to their trophy wives and saying,”Damn right!”

  • Think about it this way: the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal just admitted that global warming “might” be a real phenomenon caused by humankind that endangers our future. Forget warming; I think hell just froze over.

  • Here is the note I sent to the WSJ (yes, I included the P.S.):

    I think that poor Ms. Noonan has been drinking neoconservative Koolaid for far too long. Yes, citizens should be frustrated and angry about confusion over global warming, but angry at scientists? Whatever for?

    Academically speaking, there is very little scientific debate over global warming. Using peer review objections and comments as a standard the ‘debate’ is clearly over.

    The reason there is still confusion is that journalists, and psuedo jounalists like Ms. Noonan, insist on misrepresenting the state of science on the matter to the general population. Perhaps Ms. Noonan should give herself, or her coworkers a good sharp whack with a stick.

    Or, perhaps we should take a step further back. Traditional journalism appears to be dying in this country. Instead of representing the interests of viewers and readers, talking heads like Ms. Noonan serve primarily as mouthpieces for politicians and the other powerful folks they cling to like parasites.

    So why vent at scientists, who try to study the world as it is and make sense of it? Instead, why not be angry with politicians, who make choices to serve themselves and the powerful among us, then justify those decisions with deceit spread via over paid loud speakers like Noonan?

    -jjf

    P.S. Now that I have tried to remain clear and rational for whole paragraphs, allow me to observe that if Ms. Noonan were to pull her head out of her ass before speaking, the gas emitting from her would be cooler. Asking such a valueless, self serving, and dishonest indiviual to shut the fuck up would be both un-American, and fruitless. However, perhaps her bull shit would kill fewer American brain cells if she did not insist of super heating it before delivery…

  • I don;t know about all of you but I know at least 30 or 40 people I went to college with who flat out told me “I’m majoring in biology (or chemistry, or geology) because I want to confuse the public at some point in the future to forward my personal political viewpoint.” Man, they were thick as flies.

    All cynical sarcasm aside, I think Noonan is onto the right idea here but she has the roles reversed. I think what we actually have is people confusing science in the public sphere for the purpose of thier political views.

    Who reads this crap and takes it seriously?

  • Back when I was blogging…

    I almost did a post on my so-called WSJ proof of why Global warming exists– AND is a real problem.

    That was at least a year ago…

    What was my “proof?”

    The WSJ had some articles on how best to “vacation” given the existence of global warming and how best to “invest.”

    Trust me: The ruling class knows global warming exists.

    Right now they are just in the “obfuscation” stage.

    And that’s because they are not yet smart enough to realize yet that their money can’t save them if global warming happens.

    Once the moneyed dolts realize that,
    The WSJ will stop running Noonan’s noise…

    I swear… I live in a nation of sheep and sleepwalkers…
    Dummies everywhere! Rich and poor alike.

  • Nonnan will begin to believe that global warming is real when the ice cubes start melting in her Harvey Wallbangers.

  • The ruling class knows global warming exists. Insurance companies have been examining their risk factors for several years (reported in the Economist a few years ago, and in the following links:
    http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2005/09/08/59279.htm
    http://eetd.lbl.gov/emills/PUBS/PDF/peara.pdf) although they are still discussing the issues. But to do something about global warming endangers their wealth, and most business people examine a very short event horizon, confined by the yearly P&L. Global warming always seems somewhere in the future.

  • This is even better than anyone has realized if you break it down.

    scientists are political for warning us about global warming
    if nothing is done about global warming, blame the scientists for being political(warning us about global warming.

    its rare you see such a vicious circle.

  • The WSJ had a recent front page article describing how global warming is good for reindeer ranchers in Greenland. (full article). The WSJ’s philosophy: global warming is not happening, and even if it were, it would be beneficial.

    I have never agreed with the WSJ’s ultra-conservative editorial stance. Recently it seems like its news coverage is becoming increasingly biased as well.

  • What an idiot. Even Bush has lately seen the light, and said that global warming is both real and at least partly caused by people (not that he gives a damn, or he’s willing to do anything about it…)
    Republicans are such morons. No wonder they elected a mediocre idiot like Bush to be President.

  • Heck yeah the ruling class knows. The Pentagon put out a report a couple years ago about it and how it will affect the possibilities of future conflict.

  • Noonan continues to live in her shining city on a hill. In other words, Fantasyland. She and the Republican party hate science. It confuses, frightens and inconveniences them. How long will it be before we see Flat-Earthers for Truth?

  • Why exactly is climate change a political issue?

    I’m a carbon cycle scientist in an Atmospheric Science department. I’ve been to innumerable conferences where we discuss many of these issues. The debate is lively. There are a lot of questions that need to be answered.

    And yet I do not recall a single instance in which political questions were a part of the substantive discussion.

    Yes, of course people have expressed their politcal preferences, but this is nearly always over beers after meetings. The point is that the scientific questions are so much more interesting (at least to us) than the political questions that why would anyone waste their time on them.

    btw those questions include the following. How much change is anthropogenic and how much is natural? How fast will CO2 increase in the future? How will that affect climate? How will it affect the biosphere? How will it affect seawater chemistry? What is the best way to measure climate change? And so many more.

    Now those are interesting questions. And to the best of my knowledge there is no conservative and/or liberal position on any of these questions.

  • What you don’t under stand is that this is the first attempt to shift the blame from the conservative faith based thinkers.

    They are trying to figure out who to blame.

    If this doesn’t fly then next it will be Clinton.

    Jim

  • In a story about global warming Jonathan Weiler writes:

    “(Al) Gore noted that in an exhaustive study of almost every piece of research published on
    global warming in scientific journals, a sample of 928 articles was examined. Every single one of
    those 928 studies concluded that global warming was happening and that human activity was
    substantially responsible for it. In other words, as Gore has noted, the scientific debate about
    global warming and its sources is over. In a parallel study of 636 news accounts of global
    warming, by contrast, 53% suggested that there was NO scientific consensus on the question of
    global warming and its causes.
    Noonan is a moron.

  • I am a scientist. My Ph. D. is in theoretical physics (gravitation theory). Obviously, many of my friends are scientists. So I can make the following observations:

    1. Scientists are political. Humans are political and scientists are a type of human, so it follows.

    2. Science as a social endeavor is subject to politics and fads that can impede progress. So is any other human endeavor.

    3. Scientists, by and large, tend to be left of center to varying degrees. There are probably a variety of reasons for this ranging from distrust of facile explanations to deliberate antiintellectualism on the right (that is, the right often seems to scientists to deliberately assume positions that scientists view as, to put it frankly, stupid).

    To this extent, what Noonan says is quite correct, but no more so that a corresponding claim made about any other subset of the human race.

    What she leaves out is that, at the end of the day, to a scientist NOTHING AT ALL MATTERS BUT THE DATA. The quickest way out of the community of science is to ignore the data. You will be shunned. Any number of positions can be assumed that respect the data, and arguments will be welcomed, but arguments contrary to the data lead only to the exit. And that is where Noonan is brain damaged. The relationship between data and interpretation of data is murky and ill defined, and leads to many long lasting disputes in science, but the primary allegiance is always to the data, not to the political position it implies.

  • oh, margaret, what a dope.

    and a bum grammarian as well. lecturing people that it’s ‘the media is.’ please.

    your pal,
    blake

  • “Republicans are such morons. No wonder they elected a mediocre idiot like Bush to be President.” – sig@zipa.com

    Please, Sig, Bush is not a mediocre idiot, he is an exceptional idiot.

  • Thank you, pjcamp, for speaking for the facts instead of assuming that facts will speak for themselves.

    Daschle said it correctly, “..this president is a miserable failure.”

    Noonan is a supercilious twit.

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