Should Have Expected This From The "Experts"

In Saturday's 07/29/06 Detroit News Nation & World section is an Associated Press article by Seth Borenstein titled "Experts: Get used to heat waves." The headline alone doesn't indicate global warming as the cause but the subtitle does. "Global warming causes warmer nights and drier days, leading to extreme temps, scientists say."

Guess who the scientist was who said that. Kevin Trenberth, the same guy who, in his capacity as an IPCC official, declared that global warming caused increases in hurricanes. This was in direct contradiction to the evidence documented by the IPCC's hurricane expert Chris Landsea. When the director of the IPCC sided with Trenberth, Mr. Landsea resigned in protest.

The article continues with:

"And in the long term, the world will see more killer heat waves because of global warming, scientists say."

followed by:

"The July burst of killer heat waves around the world can't be specifically blamed on global warming. And they aren't the worst ever. But the trend is pointed in that direction, experts say."

Translation: "We can't blame this on global warming but, oh what the hell, lets do it anyway."

Even Mr. Trenberth seems to say this: "The immediate cause of the California heat wave--and others--is day-to-day weather, he said."

This seems to be a new twist. "Specifically," "day-to-day", the "immediate" cause is not global warming, but the "trend" toward the general "long term" is caused by global warming. Or to put it another way, these heat waves are caused by natural variability but we don't want you to know that hence the use of obfuscators like "specifically" and "day-to-day" and so on. But we do want you to believe that this non-evidence of global warming is caused by global warming. We know, we're experts.

And when it comes to experts, I recently watched a 49 minute video interview of Richard Feynman and he had some things to say about the concept of *experts* with which I agree. (which is here)

Of course 'expert' is a valid concept. However, the way it is being used today reminds me of the way 'high priest' was used in more primitive times. The high priest was a person who simply declared what reality was. If you valued your life, you didn't argue with him either. His wisdom and knowledge came to him by way of revealations from some mystical source only he could understand.

Well, not much has changed since then. Today they are not called high priests but are *experts* and they are still getting their knowledge revealed to them from a mystical source called computer models that only they (the modelers) can understand.

This is what happens when science becomes a government establishment. The solution of course is to get science back into the hands of private enterprise.