Global Warming and a Reminder to the CO2 Church Crowd of How Science Works

There’s dissension among the ranks? Say it ain’t so!

Glenn Reynolds, of Instapundit.com fame, links to an interesting article the TimesOnline of the UK had this Sunday of how science is supposed to work and some ignored studies about the role the sun plays in altering the Earth’s climate.

It’s the sun, dummies. Okay, the article doesn’t come right out and say that—but it should. Lots of evidence as to the affect solar radiation has in fluctuating global temperatures past and present.

Disdain for the sun goes with a failure by the self-appointed greenhouse experts to keep up with inconvenient discoveries about how the solar variations control the climate.

With so many adherents/disciples to the CO2 cause, it’s little wonder that these alternative studies get so little play. But as Nigel Calder says in the opening paragraphs

The small print [of the IPCC report] explains “very likely” as meaning that the experts who made the judgment felt 90% sure about it. Older readers may recall a press conference at Harwell in 1958 when Sir John Cockcroft, Britain’s top nuclear physicist, said he was 90% certain that his lads had achieved controlled nuclear fusion. It turned out that he was wrong. More positively, a 10% uncertainty in any theory is a wide open breach for any latterday Galileo or Einstein to storm through with a better idea. That is how science really works.

Twenty years ago, climate research became politicised in favour of one particular hypothesis, which redefined the subject as the study of the effect of greenhouse gases. As a result, the rebellious spirits essential for innovative and trustworthy science are greeted with impediments to their research careers. And while the media usually find mavericks at least entertaining, in this case they often imagine that anyone who doubts the hypothesis of man-made global warming must be in the pay of the oil companies. As a result, some key discoveries in climate research go almost unreported.

Go one over and read the whole thing here.

Also see the Cosmic Ray story in the Telegraph.Co.UK to which Instapundit links.