Climate Change Conspiracy? Scientists Accused Of Turning Into 'Activists' Over Global Warming
Scientists Accused Of Turning Into 'Activists' Over Global Warming
The Huffington Post UK
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A Turkana woman washes clothes using water she scooped from a dry river bed in Lodwar (Turkana region) on March 13, 2014. A first downpour relieved pastoralists in the drought stricken Kenyan Turakana region after a twelve month span that pushed livestocks and communities to the brink of another looming humanitarian crisis.AFP PHOTO/ MARCO LONGARI (Photo credit should read MARCO LONGARI/AFP/Getty Images)
MARCO LONGARI via Getty Images
Scientists have been accused of confusing their role as impartial observers with green activism after a paper challenging predictions about the speed of global warming was apparently "suppressed" because it was seen as “less than helpful.”
One of the world’s top academic journals rejected the work of five experts after a reviewer denounced it as “harmful”.
Professor Lennart Bengtsson, a research fellow at the University of Reading and one of the authors of the study, said he suspected that an intolerance toward climate change scepticism was preventing his paper from being published.
“The problem we have now in the scientific community is that some scientists are mixing up their scientific role with that of climate activist,” he told the Times.
Bengtsson has claimed he has been subjected to what he described as McCarthy-style pressure from fellow academics because of his views and resigned from the advisory board of Lord Lawson of Blaby’s climate sceptic think-tank this week.
In his resignation letter he described “enormous group pressure” which had become “unbearable.”
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A Turkana woman scoops water from a dry river bed in Lodwar
Bengtsson’s paper suggested that the climate might be much less sensitive to greenhouse gases than had been claimed by the UN’s Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its landmark report last September, and recommended that more work be carried out “to reduce the underlying uncertainty”.
But a scientist asked by the journal to assess the paper under the peer review process wrote concluded: “Actually it is harmful as it opens the door for oversimplified claims of ‘errors’ and worse from the climate sceptics media side.”
A spokesman for the journal said the research was rejected for publication because two independent reviewers found errors in the paper and that the work did not represent a “significant advancement” in the field.
He said: "As a consequence the independent reviewers recommended that the paper should not be published in the journal which led to the final editorial decision to reject the paper."
Contrastingly, the IPCC report starkly warned that climate change is fuelling war, hastening natural disasters, causing the extinction of species and threatens to drag societies back into poverty.
The report claimed that no one is immune to the impact of climate change and said "now, ignorance is no longer a good excuse" for inaction to tackle the threat.
The Climate Change 'Sceptics'
Boris: Earth heading for a "mini ice-age"(01 of07)
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Amid the snow and cold temperatures last month Boris Johnson joined the climate change debate, firmly planting his skeptic staff in the ice. "I see from the BBC website that there are scientists who say that "global warming" is indeed the cause of the cold and snowy winters we seem to be having. A team of Americans and Chinese experts have postulated that the melting of the Arctic ice means that the whole North Atlantic is being chilled as the floes start to break off — like a Martini refrigerated by ice cubes"I merely observe that there are at least some other reputable scientists who say that it is complete tosh, or at least that there is no evidence to support it." (credit:PA)
"Al Gore is obviously just a propagandist"(02 of07)
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Founder of The Global Warming Policy Foundation, Lord Lawson, who memorably referred to Al Gore as "obviously just a propagandist", called reports that the floods were influenced by global warming as "absurd" and previously stated: "Global warming is a new religion and blasphemy against that religion is not a laughing matter,""While satellite observations do indeed confirm that the extent of arctic sea ice has been declining over the past 30 years, the same satellite observations show that, overall, Antarctic sea ice has been expanding over the same period." (credit:PA)
"The temperature has not changed in seventeen years"(03 of07)
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While the Prime Minister has unequivocally acknowledged the presence of climate change, the Secretary of State for environment, food and rural affairs, Owen Paterson, appears to still need convincing…"People get very emotional about this subject and I think we should just accept that the climate has been changing for centuries“It would also lead to longer growing seasons and you could extend growing a little further north into some of the colder areas.“The temperature has not changed in the last seventeen years" (credit:Getty Images)
"Since the beginning of this century, the average global temperature has flatlined"(04 of07)
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Peter Lilley, MP for Hitchin and Harpenden, who describes himself as a “global lukewarmist”, surprisingly sits on the government’s Energy and Climate Change Committee – here are his views in a nutshell:"The simple fact is that, since the beginning of this century, the average global temperature has flatlined; indeed, over the past 18 months it has fallen back, and according to the satellite measurements of temperature, it is now basically back at the level it was in 1979, when such measurements started to be taken." (credit:PA)
Wind farms are "like props from War of the Worlds"(05 of07)
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Former Shadow Home Secretary David Davis is another of the Conservative party to emit climate change skepticism, and once denounced wind farms as looking "like props from War of the Worlds". Davis claimed that temperatures are in fact cooling not warming and that scientists were "conspiring to rig the figures to support their theories". (credit:Getty Images)
"The facts seem to have changed"(06 of07)
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Douglas Carswell, once a staunch supporter of climate change has now gone cold on the issue. The Clacton MP said backing the Climate Change Act in 2008 was his “biggest regret”.“I once shared the view that mankind was involved in changing the climate. I’m much more skeptical about that now, “When I was a member of Friends of the Earth, I did believe human CO2 emissions were responsible for global warming. It's just that the facts seem to have changed. And so I've changed my mind.” (credit:PA)
"We're not going to save the planet by putting our country out of business"(07 of07)
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Ok he's probably not a climate sceptic, but Osborne certainly hasn't done much to push his green credentials. Ahead of the Tory Party Conference, the Chancellor revealed a crack in his Climate Change support, when he stated "I want to provide for the country the cheapest energy possible, consistent with having it reliable, in other words as a steady supply." Osborne has previously stated: "We're not going to save the planet by putting our country out of business. So let's at the very least resolve that we're going to cut our carbon emissions no slower but also no faster than our fellow countries in Europe." (credit:PA)