A Rearranged Top Ten List of Scams

TigerHawk blog on
Ranking the Scam
By Escort81

Almost exactly six years ago, Guardian writer Tim Radford selected his top ten list of "all-time favourite science scams," credibly headed by the Piltdown man mystery.

Whether or not the planet is warming, cooling, or staying about the same, and whether or not modern human activity contributes significantly to any changes in climate, it seems to me that ClimateGate is a much bigger scandal than anything on Radford's list. The scope of the academic dishonesty is remarkable -- the disregard for the long-accepted practices of the scientific method with respect to legitimate peer review, the self-serving thumb-on-the-scale grant money grab, and the audacity to propose and insist that the now-compromised climate models be used to re-engineer the global economy at a cost of trillions of dollars, all make Piltdown man seem minor by comparison. I think we have a new Number One. The CRU people might be lucky to get new jobs as professional wrestling referees.

I should add that I basically agree with TigerHawk's implied position that it is entirely possible that the activities of 6.8 billion people may well have an impact on the climate. It is observable that more densely populated areas experience environmental changes during growth, so if humans can locally alter the ground and the flow of water, it may be premature to rule out the notion that we can't or don't alter the climate. We are apparently not at a point, however, where the "science is settled."
The U.S. has compelling national security reasons to reduce its dependence upon foreign oil, probably leading to the development of non-fossil fuel alternative energy sources. I will continue to be a thrifty, skin-flinty Yankee, keeping the house cool in the winter and warm in the summer, and generally try not to be wasteful. Of course, I do so out of choice, with no real desire to compel anyone else to conform to my habits, which disqualifies me from becoming a Gorebot.

Every scam requires a mark -- in the case of Piltdown man, it was principally the curators of the Natural History Museum in London, where the skull was on display for four decades -- so the question remains, why are so many well-educated elites willing to swallow the entirety of AGW whole?