Climate Change: We're often told by advocates of climate change that the "science is settled." But in fact, "science" itself is in a deep crisis over making claims it can't back up, especially about climate.
As BBC News Science Correspondent Tom Feilden noted last week, "Science is facing a 'reproducibility crisis' where more than two-thirds of researchers have tried and failed to reproduce another scientist's experiments, research suggests." This isn't just his journalistic opinion, but the conclusion of the University of Virginia's Center for Open Science, which estimates that roughly 70% of all studies can't be reproduced.
And this includes the field of climate change, by the way. It's a disaster. Being able to reproduce others' experiments or findings from models is at the very heart of science. Yet, radical climate change advocates would have us spend 2% of global GDP, or roughly $1.5 trillion a year, to forestall a minuscule amount of anticipated warming based on dubious modeling and experiments.
Meanwhile, the federal government spends literally billions of dollars a year on climate change, with virtually none of the money funding scientists who doubt the climate change threat. There is no serious debate. This is a problem for all of science.
Worse, our government's own science fraud is a big problem. Dr. John Bates, a former top scientist at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, recently detailed how a government paper that called into question the 18-year "pause" in global warming was based on "experimental" data and politicized. That "paper" was used to justify President Obama's signing of the Paris climate agreement.
Meanwhile, Georgia Institute of Technology climatologist Judith Curry recently retired, blaming the "CRAZINESS (her emphasis) in the field of climate science."
Even so, mythical claims of a "consensus" among scientists about climate change continue in an effort to shut up critics. Those who dissent, and literally thousands of scientists and engineers do, are shouted down and harassed.
As Princeton University physicist Will Happer told the left-wing British newspaper the Guardian earlier this week: "There's a whole area of climate so-called science that is really more like a cult. ... It will potentially harm the image of all science."
It's time for some science Glasnost. New EPA Director Scott Pruitt has called for an open debate on climate science, rather than the name-calling and outright dishonesty of the past. Real science has nothing to fear from more openness and discussion, but everything to fear from more politicized dishonesty.