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Climate Scientists refuse subpoena from Congress

washingtonpost.com

1–10 of 75 posts

Re: Climate Scientists refuse subpoena from Congress

#2
Good. The only purpose to reviewing internal communications was to find a red herring to use as a lever to undermine the scientific method. Providing details about the research and the methods presented is reasonable for a peer review, but this is someone with a political axe to grind.

Re: Climate Scientists refuse subpoena from Congress

#5
"Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Tex.) wants thousands of e-mails among scientists and NOAA’s staff of political appointees that he thinks will show that the researchers had something to hide when they refuted claims that global warming had “paused” or slowed over the past decade."

Apparently climate change science is not in the published research itself, but can only be found by going through someone's email. What bald-faced douchebaggery.

Re: Climate Scientists refuse subpoena from Congress

#6
Why would emails be more important than the data? The data should speak for itself, only a politician is looking for "gotcha" phrases they can print in huge letters for a poster board that they put up while making speeches denying global warming. It's not that these politicians don't understand how science works, they understand how to manipulate people to favor legislation that is actually against their interests.

Edit: For those that are suggesting that you need the emails to verify that scientists aren't making up the data, the data itself includes information on its providence. All the information you need to trust the data come from independent verification of the data and from information in the data itself. You don't need emails to verify research, but if you did then there's a problem with how research is published.

Re: Climate Scientists refuse subpoena from Congress

#9
On one hand, the aims of the politicos here are bald-facedly wrong.

On the other hand, good luck with that whole "refusing a subpoena" thing - courts don't generally look upon that with favor, and besides, NOAA is a public institution, so the emails are public record, regardless of the aims of the people seeking them.

Being in a contentious field is not free license to ignore the law, and it tends to make people think you're hiding something when you do this.

Re: Climate Scientists refuse subpoena from Congress

#10
Politics and science really have no place together. Politics is about pushing the most favorable agenda, and science is about the pursuit of truth. Politicians and liars have always had close association. Politics and science are thus inherently at odds.

That said, I have seen, on more than one occasion, scientists become untruthful for the sake of grants and political agendas (and this is not necessarily referring to global warming). The FDA is one example where money often trumps science. http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/10/common-decongestant-m...

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