It was bullshit? Really?

No need to go into details when it's been done so well elsewhere by Devils, bishops (and a snappy title the Bishop gives it there too), clowns among others (see also here and most especially here). All I'll add, and again I won't be the first, is that it's really no big surprise. There's at least as much incentive to twist, manipulate, spin, hide or just fucking lie about what's laughingly called 'the science' on the catastrophist pro manmade global warming theory side of things as there is for any scientist who really is paid by Shell or BP (hint - fewer than the number of sceptical scientists and nowhere near as fucking many as the greenie panic mongers would like to believe). About a week ago I left a comment over at Bishop Hill's on a somewhat related story, and I think it's worth repeating.

I can see the point of the greenies when they have doubts about findings from researchers and scientists on the payroll of Big Oil (or Big Coal or Big Whichever Demon They're Upset About At The Time) ... it's not unreasonable for them to point out that he who pays the piper often calls the tune. Equally, I don't think it's unreasonable for those of us on the sceptic side of things to point out the vested interests among AGW proponents. Companies who make wind turbines, solar arrays, tidal generators and nuclear power stations have a vested interest in pushing AGW since it damages their CO2 emitting competitors. The same applies to companies who supply in turn supply them, e.g. turbine components, uranium mining etc. Greenpeace, WWF and the rest gain from a lot of free publicity and extra donations that might well dry up if (when?) AGW is ever falsified beyond doubt. Then we've got the researchers and scientists who, even before they get on one of Greenpeace's ships, who have food to buy and bills to pay at the least and possibly nice comfy tenure of a professorship of chair that probably didn't exist fifteen years ago. Again, vested interests in keeping the AGW scare going - if they said it was all a load of balls the sources that fund many of those positions would have no reason to carry on and there'd be a lot of climate researchers on street corners with guitars and upside down hats. Then there are the governments who see AGW as an excuse to tax and regulate and control more. And the media who always love a good scare story to help sell papers and attract viewers - if it bleeds it leads, and oh my god our poor planet is bleeding. Collectively I think of them all as 'Big Eco'.

Ignoring the tenuously linked six degrees of separation crap, whatever that lot have to say about research funded by Big Oil/Coal/Carbon that doubts AGW applies just as much to research that they've funded or produced and which supports their agenda or vested interests. If we should not take the word of Big Oil then we shouldn't do so for Big Eco either.

I've only recently started thinking of those vested interests as 'Big Eco' but for several years I've felt that as long as the global warming hype was putting food on their tables and keeping roofs over their heads, not to mention providing some five star hotel hosted conferences to attend for some, there was as much reason to question their version of events as those of the allegedly oil funded sceptics. Doubly so when, as seems so often to be the case, they refuse to disclose data to anyone trying to check their work for errors. Somewhere on the web recently* I saw a nice little homily that sums it up rather well: if someone's trying to hide something then they've probably got something to hide. What appears to have been hidden is that some of the most important and supposedly settled science has foundations constructed of sand.

Could it be an accidental error? Could they seriously have not realised?


* UPDATE - It was Numberwatch.