Freeman Dyson: Patron saint of climate skeptics

Officials at climate-change-skeptical think tanks, including the founder of one, responded earlier this week to my Mother Nature Network column on such think tanks. The column argued that they’re closer to PR organizations than research institutions.

First up was David J. Theroux, founder and president of the Independent Institute, a free-market oriented think tank has published the work of skeptic S. Fred Singer:

You fail to even mention, much less examine, the empirical findings discussed at [last week's Heartland Institute] conference that indicate that climate alarmism is unfounded and has far more to do with environmental religion and interest-group politics than science. Instead, your article is just more dismissive punditry, with the obvious point that while Lord Monckton may not be a scientist, neither are you or Al Gore.

In contrast, here is a new interview with Nobel Prize Laureate physicist Freeman Dyson that actually discusses some of the pertinent matters that you will not address: http://www.e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2151 As for the matter of corporate interests determining the debate, perhaps the following will be useful regarding what is now the eco-corporatist Climate-Industrial Complex: http://www.independent.org/blog/?p=2217 David J. Theroux Pres[i]dent The Independent Institute

Anti-environmental polemicists have been bringing up Dyson a lot recently. Read more

Media Mayhem: A plague of ‘think tanks’

I write the Media Mayhem column every week for the Mother Nature Network. Here’s this week’s:

The Goliaths are crazed environmentalists, corrupt scientists and secret socialists, on a mission to manufacture a crisis so they can implement a stealth agenda of government control, toy-sized automobiles and pork-barrel grants — grants the scientists can then use to live off the hard-earned money of taxpayers forever.

Cue evil laugh track: Hah-hah-hah-hah-hah!

The Davids are the few brave souls who dare counter that juggernaut — that hoax — by pointing out that science is a complex endeavor, rife with unfulfilled hypotheses, and whose reputations have suffered because of their independence.

You may not see the debate that way. I sure don’t.

Whatever you and I think, though, the David/Goliath storyline, or something like it, will have more to do with the outcome of Congress’ current climate debate than will another dozen studies firming up the actual consensus that climate change is happening, is caused by humans, and is on a trajectory to lay a big whammy on civilization.

The Davids played their role in a Washington hotel last week at the Heartland Institute’s grandly named Third International Conference on Climate Change.

Read the rest of this column on the Mother Nature Network.