Climate Scientists Strike Back

After another dumb climate change denial article in the Wall Street Journal last week, a group of climate scientists had enough. We need a lot more aggressive attacks like this from the scientists. An excerpt:

Check With Climate Scientists for Views on Climate

Do you consult your dentist about your heart condition? In science, as in any area, reputations are based on knowledge and expertise in a field and on published, peer-reviewed work. If you need surgery, you want a highly experienced expert in the field who has done a large number of the proposed operations.

You published “No Need to Panic About Global Warming” (op-ed, Jan. 27) on climate change by the climate-science equivalent of dentists practicing cardiology. While accomplished in their own fields, most of these authors have no expertise in climate science. The few authors who have such expertise are known to have extreme views that are out of step with nearly every other climate expert. This happens in nearly every field of science. For example, there is a retrovirus expert who does not accept that HIV causes AIDS. And it is instructive to recall that a few scientists continued to state that smoking did not cause cancer, long after that was settled science.

One of denialists’ prime tactics has been to confuse the public by stretching the definition of “expert” to mean “whoever they find to shill for them.” If you are a member of the general public, do you know the difference between climatologist and meterologist? Or any other kind of scientist? No. You put a guy in a lab on the TV and that looks pretty expert to most people. The Weather Channel passes for expertise for those who are into the weather and TV weather forecasters have been at the forefront of climate denial, even though they lack the knowledge to analyze long-term climate patterns.