Get Off My Lawn, Part VII

I knew the second I saw the headline on the latest Hering masterpiece that I was going to be annoyed.

It's not really a good way to begin a Thursday:

As if reading from the same script, Al Gore and Newsweek dwelled on exactly the same point this week: Scientists and others who question the consensus on global warming are all part of a propaganda campaign funded by polluters, namely the fossil-fuel industry.

Maybe that's because a) Gore has been talking about global climate change nonstop for years; b) for once Newsweek noted - and on its cover no less - that the vast majority of scientists agree that global climate change is real; and c) because it's been pretty conclusively proven true - the fossil fuel industry has been throwing propaganda out there for years to try and disprove global warming.

It should be painfully obvious that this does not equal reading from the same script, unless that script happens to be reality.

Oh, poor Hasso. It must be tough simultaneously thinking that you're smarter than everyone else and then having so many people disagree with you. I can't wait until you retire to watch FOX News and complain constantly....only without an audience.

Moving on:

Gore knows propaganda when he sees it. He is a well-practiced propagandist himself.

In Singapore this week, he repeated the Newsweek report that the industry “deniers” offered $10,000 to scientists raising questions about the prevailing view on global-warming science. He called that a “bounty.”

When scientists get money for studies that reach conclusions in which Gore believes, he presumably does not call it a bounty. More likely he calls that a government research grant.

I can't decide if Hering really believes there is no difference between getting funding to study something and getting money to reach a predetermined conclusion. First of all, funding for scientific research is given out before the research happens, whereas the $10,000 bounty that Gore is referring to is given out upon delivery of results. Second, actual funding is not or should not be contingent on the results, but on good methodology (if anything) whereas this bounty is completely dependent on whether or not the science matches up with preconceived notions. (Check out the comment below the editorial by greenie; it makes this point rather well.)

I should clarify that the process that Hering describes occurs all the time; it's just that I think it happens mostly in his beloved private sector. Well, there and in military research.

Furthermore, he is either massively cynical - which is possible - or he is completely butchering the integrity of the scientific method. I like the scientific method (even though I have my own criticism of it), so the latter possibility tends to make me angry. As for the former, even if Hering is that cynical, an honest person would have noted the difference between the way the scientific method is supposed to work and what he thinks happens. Instead, the result is to suggest that the entire process of research is merely some process of buying data friendly to your pet cause. That's not a good thing.

Finally, there is this little bit:

Supporting someone who honestly, without falsifying or making up the data, supports your point of view is hardly immoral or wrong, is it? How else can a legitimate industry try to defend itself when it’s under attack, especially when it’s under attack from the likes of Gore?

Hasso is really starting to piss me off. This is mischaracterizing what's going on to such a degree that he is either an idiot or lying. Or both.

Again, Hering apparently has no idea how science is supposed to work - here he mistakes it for some sort of patronage system. He also adds that a caveat that, if he was honest, would force him to admit his whole editorial is garbage: "without falsifying or making up the data".

Turns out that much of the work that's been produced recently that is against the existence of global climate change is either falsified or made up. In other words, it's junk science.

I will continue to say this until I turn blue: Hasso Hering is a dishonest hack who needs to be pulled from the editorial page. Instead of informing his readers about major issues of the day and providing the context and analysis that only an editorial can, he is actually making people who read his editorials dumber. That's quite an accomplishment.