Natural scientists have sought to understand the workings of the climate system and its various parts. But in recent decades the process of discovery has been subverted, and the science is going in circles. Richard Lindzen tells how it came to this in his essay: Climate Science: Is it Currently Designed to Answer Questions?

As you might guess, the title is a rhetorical question. From his long and deep experience with the field, Richard Lindzen can and does describe in detail how and why climatology is failing as a natural science. The machinations and convolutions bring to mind the quotation:

Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made.

– Otto von Bismarck

Perhaps because the field was contaminated with political aims early on, the whole enterprise has come to resemble a legislative process:



Lindzen sets the record straight with names and maneuvers which have crippled efforts to answer questions about the functioning of earth’s climate system.

When an issue becomes a vital part of a political agenda, as is the case with climate, then the politically desired position becomes a goal rather than a consequence of scientific research. This paper will deal with the origin of the cultural changes and with specific examples of the operation and interaction of these factors. In particular, we will show how political bodies act to control scientific institutions, how scientists adjust both data and even theory to accommodate politically correct positions, and how opposition to these positions is disposed of.

By taking a few minutes to read his text (here), you can learn from Lindzen some important truths:

How science was perverted from a successful mode of enquiry into a source of authority;

What are the consequences when fear is perceived to be the basis for scientific support rather than from gratitude and the trust associated with it;

How incentives are skewed in favor of perpetuating problems rather than solving them;

Why simulation and large programs replaced theory and observation as the basis of scientific investigation;

How specific institutions and scientific societies were infiltrated and overtaken by political activists;

Specific examples where data and analyses have been manipulated to achieve desired conclusions;

Specific cases of concealing such truths as may call into question gobal warming alarmism;

Examples of the remarkable process of “discreditation” by which attack papers are quickly solicited and published against an undesirable finding;

Cases of Global Warming Revisionism, by which skeptical positions of prominent people are altered after they are dead;

Dangers to societies and populations from governments, NGOs and corporations exploiting climate change.

Summary:

Thanks to Richard Lindzen and others for putting on the record how broken is the field of climate science. It is dangerous in itself, and it also extends into other domains, threatening the scientific basis of modern civilization. Fixing such scientific perversions will be difficult and lengthy, but it can only start with acknowledging how bad it is. It truly is worse than we thought.

No matter that these contortions extend back for some years; there is no statute of limitations on crimes against science. And the bad behavior is unabated: witness the fresh Revisionism of attacks in 2016 against Exxon and other oil companies for not proclaiming warming alarms in the 1970’s.

Was there ever a field of knowledge so abused, corrupted and corrosive? Who will drain the swamp of Climate Science and contend with the alligators there?