Saturday, September 01, 2007

FIRST THINGS: The Politics of Global Warming

re: Thomas Sieger Derr, "With the virtual apotheosis of Al Gore, talk of global warming has become pervasive—and pervasively one-sided... Through it all, one would never know there are dissenters of distinguished credentials in the scientific community. Even where their existence is admitted, they are thoroughly marginalized, accused of being in the pay of the oil companies... or dismissed as over-the-hill retirees out of touch and perhaps a bit senile. Their articles are denied publication in Science and Nature, those two so-called flagship science journals of high reputation despite some embarrassing lapses. /When dissenters do speak and publish, the majority who embrace the prevailing theory that humans are causing global warming try to silence them... The result is that anyone who finds the dissenters persuasive—including me—is suspected of being a right-wing extremist, making politics determine science... This dismal state of affairs is made possible by an astonishing historical amnesia..."...

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