Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
is the basis of society's respect for scientific endeavour. Trading reputational capital for
short-term political gain isn't the most sensible way of going about things.
The trap was set in the late 1970s when the environmental movement first realised that
doing something about global warming would play to quite a number of its social agendas.
At much the same time, it became accepted wisdom around the corridors of power that
government-fundedscientists(thatis,mostscientists)shouldberequiredtoobtainagoodly
fraction of their funds and salaries from external sources—external anyway to their own
particular organisation.
The scientists in environmental research laboratories, since they are not normally
linked to any particular private industry, were forced to seek funds from other government
departments. In turn this forced them to accept the need for advocacy and for the
manipulationofpublicopinion.Forthatsortofactivity,anarms-lengthassociationwiththe
environmental movement would be a union made in heaven. Among other things it would
provide a means by which scientists could distance themselves from responsibility for any
public overstatement of the significance of their particular research problem.
The trap was partially sprung in climate research when a significant number of the
relevant scientists began to enjoy the advocacy business. The enjoyment was based on a
considerable increase in funding and employment opportunity. The increase was not so
much on the hard-science side of things but rather in the emerging fringe institutes and
organisations devoted, at least in part, to selling the message of climatic doom. A new and
rewarding research lifestyle emerged which involved the giving of advice to all types and
levels of government, the broadcasting of unchallengeable opinion to the general public,
and easy justification for attendance at international conferences—this last in some luxury
by normal scientific experience, and at a frequency previously unheard of.
Somewhere along the line it came to be believed by many of the public, and indeed by
many of the scientists themselves, that climate researchers were the equivalent of knights
on white steeds fighting a great battle against the forces of evil—evil, among other things,
in the shape of 'big oil' and its supposedly unlimited money. The delusion was more than
a little attractive.
The trap was fully sprung when many of the world's major national academies of
science (the Royal Society in the UK, the National Academy of Sciences in the US, and
the Australian Academy of Science) persuaded themselves to issue reports giving support
to the conclusions of the IPCC. The reports were touted as national assessments that were
supposedlyindependentoftheIPCCandofeachother,butofnecessitywerecompiledwith
the assistance of, and in some cases at the behest of, many of the scientists involved in the
IPCC international machinations. In effect, the academies, which are the most prestigious
of the institutions of science, formally nailed their colours to the mast of the politically
correct.
