Climate Policy

[kandrathe]

I already pointed you to a site with answers to pretty much everything Milloy brings up.

Yes, the site with a pat unsubstantiated answer for any point any skeptic might ever bring up. Very useful for shutting down a debate.

My point was not to drag him out, but to point out that you can't have a holier-than-thou attitude about attacking sources on one hand, when presenting notoriously biased sources, and then launch into a diatribe about how James Hansen is biased by his politics and his idealism.

Either this is about the ideas and not the people, or it isn't. Take your pick.

Perspective. While Steven Milloy has a BA in Natural Science, he doesn't claim to be a climate scientist and he runs an opinionated website and guests on Fox News. Dr. James Hansen is the Director of the NASA Goddard Space Sciences division feeding at the public trough. Dr. Hansen is a climate scientist and uses his position as a bully pulpit, and his scientific credentials to forward his political ideology (and I guess also that of Greenpeace) and his biased opinions. That is not science. It is ideology and proselytizing. Scientists let their research and findings speak for themselves, and sometimes, although seldom, they are invited to speak in public to explain their research.

Milloy is a pundit, a politico, a lawyer, and a talking head who devotes himself to science skepticism, and admittedly has an agenda he is forwarding. I expect him to be on one side of the debate. It may be unfair, but there are a few professions where your credibility suffers if you don't keep your political opinions secondary to your primary profession, for example doctors, judges, grade school teachers, scientists, and news casters. We expect some people to remain above the fray and attempt to present all sides fairly. Milloy is a political hack and always will be one.

Perhaps Dr. Hansen's political activities make him a hero to the Al Gore crowd, and perhaps to you, but to me it tends to make me more skeptical of what he says, and what he writes since he has an obviously extreme bias. A bias so huge it probably affects his judgment on science matters as well.

It is Al Gore who says that any scientist who disagrees with him on Global Warming is a kook, or a crook. That is politicizing science, and sending a chilling message throughout the academy. I'm glad there are heretics like Dr. Dyson who have the credentials to withstand the political scorn, and attacks.