Science as Consensus?

Particularly in regard to the global warming hysteria of "Consensus Science”, I think this is pithily appropriate!
.......


"I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels. It's a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of science or scientists agrees on something, rather, reach for your wallet because you're being had. Let's be clear. Work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science, consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. There's no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. And if it's science, it isn't consensus period.
excerpted from speech.....
attribution upon request!

Hey Wav, I posted this on another thread, but it is certainly worth posting again...enjoy, it doesn't get much better thank this-




Here is the text of Newsweek’s 1975 story on the trend toward global cooling.

[SIZE=+2]T[/SIZE]here are ominous signs that the Earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production – with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth. The drop in food output could begin quite soon, perhaps only 10 years from now. The regions destined to feel its impact are the great wheat-producing lands of Canada and the U.S.S.R. in the North, along with a number of marginally self-sufficient tropical areas – parts of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indochina and Indonesia – where the growing season is dependent upon the rains brought by the monsoon.
The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it. In England, farmers have seen their growing season decline by about two weeks since 1950, with a resultant overall loss in grain production estimated at up to 100,000 tons annually. During the same time, the average temperature around the equator has risen by a fraction of a degree – a fraction that in some areas can mean drought and desolation. Last April, in the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded, 148 twisters killed more than 300 people and caused half a billion dollars’ worth of damage in 13 U.S. states.
To scientists, these seemingly disparate incidents represent the advance signs of fundamental changes in the world’s weather. The central fact is that after three quarters of a century of extraordinarily mild conditions, the earth’s climate seems to be cooling down. Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the cooling trend, as well as over its specific impact on local weather conditions. But they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century. If the climatic change is as profound as some of the pessimists fear, the resulting famines could be catastrophic. “A major climatic change would force economic and social adjustments on a worldwide scale,” warns a recent report by the National Academy of Sciences, “because the global patterns of food production and population that have evolved are implicitly dependent on the climate of the present century.”
[SIZE=+2]A[/SIZE] survey completed last year by Dr. Murray Mitchell of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reveals a drop of half a degree in average ground temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere between 1945 and 1968. According to George Kukla of Columbia University, satellite photos indicated a sudden, large increase in Northern Hemisphere snow cover in the winter of 1971-72. And a study released last month by two NOAA scientists notes that the amount of sunshine reaching the ground in the continental U.S. diminished by 1.3% between 1964 and 1972.
To the layman, the relatively small changes in temperature and sunshine can be highly misleading. Reid Bryson of the University of Wisconsin points out that the Earth’s average temperature during the great Ice Ages was only about seven degrees lower than during its warmest eras – and that the present decline has taken the planet about a sixth of the way toward the Ice Age average. Others regard the cooling as a reversion to the “little ice age” conditions that brought bitter winters to much of Europe and northern America between 1600 and 1900 – years when the Thames used to freeze so solidly that Londoners roasted oxen on the ice and when iceboats sailed the Hudson River almost as far south as New York City.
Just what causes the onset of major and minor ice ages remains a mystery. “Our knowledge of the mechanisms of climatic change is at least as fragmentary as our data,” concedes the National Academy of Sciences report. “Not only are the basic scientific questions largely unanswered, but in many cases we do not yet know enough to pose the key questions.”
[SIZE=+2]M[/SIZE]eteorologists think that they can forecast the short-term results of the return to the norm of the last century. They begin by noting the slight drop in overall temperature that produces large numbers of pressure centers in the upper atmosphere. These break up the smooth flow of westerly winds over temperate areas. The stagnant air produced in this way causes an increase in extremes of local weather such as droughts, floods, extended dry spells, long freezes, delayed monsoons and even local temperature increases – all of which have a direct impact on food supplies.
“The world’s food-producing system,” warns Dr. James D. McQuigg of NOAA’s Center for Climatic and Environmental Assessment, “is much more sensitive to the weather variable than it was even five years ago.” Furthermore, the growth of world population and creation of new national boundaries make it impossible for starving peoples to migrate from their devastated fields, as they did during past famines.
Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its effects. They concede that some of the more spectacular solutions proposed, such as melting the Arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or diverting arctic rivers, might create problems far greater than those they solve. But the scientists see few signs that government leaders anywhere are even prepared to take the simple measures of stockpiling food or of introducing the variables of climatic uncertainty into economic projections of future food supplies. The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality.
[end]

How cool is that?

No med, the point of Danky's post is to demonstrate the fallacy of scientific consensus.....In the mid '70s the prevailing wisdom had it that there was an impending Ice Age headed our way, If I remember we were to have exhausted all petroleum deposits in the next decade or so, and would be truly screwed by 1995!
They were incorrect by a laughable margin.

I read this earlier today and wanted to pass it along:


Gore announced recently on the Oprah Winfrey Show that Americans should congregate this Saturday, December 16, to watch and discuss his DVD, An Inconvenient Truth, advertised as "a true story about the hard science and real threats of global warming."

The idea is to demonstrate that "action" is wanted on climate change.

If climate alarmists are to be believed, Americans must cut their electricity use substantially, and soon, to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions associated with fossil-fuel combustion. Celebratory holiday lighting -- what doomsayer Paul Ehrlich once called "garish commercial Christmas displays" -- would surely be the first to go, coming before indoor lighting, cooking, heating, and air conditioning.

But are these changes really necessary for the United States, the world's most prolific user of energy? The good news -- and a reason for holiday cheer -- is that the science behind rapid, disruptive global warming scenarios is murky at best. Though the debate is highly politicized and emotionally charged, good science is beginning to drive out bad......

Also
And here, in a nutshell, is what the climatology debate is about: if and how much the human influence on climate is detectable above natural variability.
The American Spectator

if and how much the human influence on climate is detectable above natural variability.
The American Spectator I read this and many other views. Basically what I've been contending is this: Mans over use of chemical and petroleum products can spell no great good for the population, animals, vegetation, or any other biological entity on the planet. A curtailment of reckless squandering of our resourses might give the biosphere a break, and let it regenerate a tad. We here in the US are the largest gross polluters. If everyone would do a little conservation, I'm sure it wouldn't be a big deal, but something we could live with. Afterall are we concerned with quality of life for our grandkids or is it let them eat, sh...........cake

I agree with most of your post, med!!!
Moderation is the key, we need to be aware of and address any reckless consumption and resulting pollution.
We do not clearly understand the true extent of Man's activity on what may be natural variations.
The reaction to climate change pessimism with political agendas springing up with great urgency!.......this I consider reckless also!