The 700 Club Minus 300
Or faith based climatology
Simon Donner at Maribo has a pretty good take down of the 400 Club, being composed of "IPCC expert reviewers", "weather experts" and "peer reviewed" scientists. Simon carefully explains why those are giggle quotes. To give you a taste of Maribo's Christmas Pudding
Climate change “skepticism” began with an industry-funded effort to question the science. It has since morphed into questioning whether the effects of climate change would really be so bad, a move I call the Smiling Lomborg.
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It's not merely that people have changed their argument (though some have).
If the recent letter written by Carter and signed by McKitrick, Wegman and others is any indication, there are still some who question the science, though the basis upon which they do ("there has been no net global warming since 1998") is very shaky, to say the least.
Statisticians like Wegman should be embarrassed by such a claim -- to say nothing of having their membership in the national Academy revoked.
One cannot revoke that which has not been granted. (FYI Wegman was on a National Research *Council* committee, which is not at all the same thing as being elected to the NAS.) Plenty of people have been elected to the NAS at earlier stages in their careers, so perhaps Wegman's opportunity has already passed by. It appears that statisticians can only be elected via the NAS math section, which could put them in a difficult spot to begin with. Even if Wegman's record is considered unblemished (and I suspect that his over-close relationship with the DoD might be a blemish), the NAS math section includes only a little more than a hundred people, and bearing in mind that these are lifetime positions there would be very few slots available for statisticians.
Perhaps apropos nothing, I notice that the NAS has a fair load of climatologists.
Freeman Dyson, who also signed the letter, is a member of NAS and so is Richard Lindzen.
Whether these people think global warming is a problem or not, they should never have signed on to such nonsense as the Carter letter.
If the average academician did such a thing early in their career, they would be laughed right out of their field, no matter what it was. The only reason people like Lindzen and Dyson can get away with it is because of their earlier work.
Either way, their signature really is an embarrassment.
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