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The role of scientific societies

The management of most scientific societies has enthusiastically signed on to the global warming bandwagon. This is not surprising, since government, as well as many states and foundations, generously fund those who reinforce their desired outcomes under the cover of saving the planet. Certain private industries are also involved: those positioned to profit from enacted controls as well as financial institutions heavily invested in “green technologies” – technologies whose rationale disappears the moment global warming is widely understood to be a non-problem. There are known connections and movements of people involved in government policy, scientific societies, private industry and foundations -- all with the common thread of influencing the outcome of a set of programs and investments underpinned by the supposed threatof global warming.

My own trade union, the American Physical Society (APS), is a good example, but hardly the worst. An APS Council statement issued on November 18, 2007 states: “The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.” This is pretty strong language for physicists, for whom skepticism about evidence was once considered a virtue, and nothing was incontrovertible.

In the fall of 2009 a petition, organized by a Fellow of the American Physical Society, Roger Cohen, and containing the signatures of hundreds of distinguished APS members, was presented to the APS management with a request that at least the truly embarrassing word “incontrovertible” be taken out of the statement. The APS management’s response was to threaten the petitioners, while grudgingly appointing a committee to consider the request. It was exactly what James Madison warned against. The committee included members whose careers depended on global warming alarmism, and the predictable result was that not one word was changed. Bad as the actions of the APS leadership were, they were far better than those of most other scientific societies -- that rejected any reconsideration of extreme statements by the society leadership on climate.
The situation is even more lamentable for the general public, which is fed a constant stream of propaganda by specialists in environmental issues from the mainstream media and well-funded alarmist blogs. Not unlike functionaries of Orwell’s Ministry of Truth in 1984, with its motto “Ignorance is Strength,” many of the environmental news media dutifully and uncritically promote the party line of the climate crusade.

But Abraham Lincoln got it right when he (supposedly) said, “You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.” The situation is slowly getting better. Skeptics are more numerous and better organized than before. In a few cases, leading former adherents have publicly and courageously spoken out against the dogma and its core of establishment promoters. The IPCC itself has come under severe criticism by the international scientific establishment for its series of bizarre errors and organizational failings. Under pressure from a dissident group of Fellows, the Royal Society moved to meaningfully moderate its former radically alarmist position on global warming. And perhaps most important of all, public skepticism has increased significantly, and with it has come a major drop in support of the climate crusade’s attempt to seize control of the “pollutant,” CO2.

Click source to read FULL report from William Happer [PDF Download from TheGWPF.org]