Posted by
Andrews on Thursday, May 21, 2009 5:16:11 PM
I know I generally disdain posts which simply reproduce other people's text, or endorse an article, but in this case,
a WSJ editorial does such a good job, I have to write such a post. It seems that there are many pushing for environmental legislation from a position of financial self-interest. When read in conjunction with my post "
The Failure of Peer Review", it helps answer the question many on the left ask "If AGW is false, why do so many studies support it?" Is it possible that a combination of government orthodoxy, the huge mass of grant money controlled by the government, and additional grant money from financially interested firms might be pushing science into a single channel, and, as a result, even the peer review boards represent a single orthodoxy?
If you doubt it, recall how hard it would be to get published in physics journals at one time if you denied the reality of the aether. Or challenged the Bohr model of the atom. Both have now gone by the wayside, but at one time it would have taken extraordinary proof (and eventually it did take such proof) to defeat these presumptions. Could not belief in AGW seem to future generations as absurd as the view of the "indivisible" neutron or the existence of the aether?
POSTSCRIPT
A list of most of my posts on environmental matters can be found in the postscripts of "
Interesting Evidence" and "
Need I Say It?".