Frauds

I'm gonna compile a list of academics who are committing scientific fraud in their attempts to foist their political ideology and personal opinions upon us all as if they were "science."

James "Global Warming" Hanson is grandfathered in, of course, but today I will add the following:

Stephen H. Schnieder of Stanford University
Michael Oppenheimer of Princeton University
Joel B. Smith of Stratus Consulting (Not an actual academic, but an actual fraudulent dipshit.)

The reason? Statement like this:

Other researchers, they noted, have suggested that "the likelihood of the 2003 heat wave in Europe, which led to the death of tens of thousands of people, was substantially increased by increased greenhouse gas concentrations."

Tens of thousands? Bullshit. As I've noted before, such numbers have no basis in science. Absolutely none. They are the products of politically minded organizations looking for increased funding from public and private interests. The thing about science is you need real data about which one can be reasonably sure. Even a cursory glance at the Wikipedia page for the 2003 "heat wave" shows the data is not consistent. For example, within the same article we read:

18,257 people died in Italy.... New Scientist magazine reported 4,200 deaths in Italy and Spain attributable to the 2003 heatwave. The Guardian reported 1,000 deaths in Italy, 4,000 in Spain....

There were 141 deaths in Spain.

So what is with the different numbers? Well, they are being invented by various organizations concerned mostly with fund raising and inventing a "crisis." That any academic would treat such numbers seriously, without a hint of skeptical inquiry, shows a serious disregard for the scientific method. It is inexcusable, and can only be regarded as fraudulent.

"For example, events such as Hurricane Katrina and the 2003 European heat wave have shown that the capacity to adapt to climate-related extreme events is lower than expected and, as a result, their consequences and associated vulnerabilities are higher than previously thought," the scientists report.

Bullshit. Show me a scientific report that can blame (i.e. show direct causation) the impact of a rather pedestrian Cat 3 hurricane, like Katrina, on AGW? Oh, that's right, there isn't one. (Nor could there be one. Scientific causation is funny that way. It has to exist in the data before it can be proven.)

Really, if this is the best they have got... blatant fear mongering without even a gloss of real science behind it... then these folks are screwed, and they know it. Expect them to get increasingly shrill and loud as the financial underpinnings of their easy street existence begin to give way over the next 5 years or so.