Want to know why I distrust our liberal friends?

They drive how science goes wrong.

I started this three-part series with the simple question, “If you distrust what the Administration told you about the military, why do you trust what they say about global warming?”

Yes, I chose two hot button issues across the political spectrum. It’s always more interesting than yattering in a corner about National Safe Digging Month versus potholes

The responses follow a predictable pattern:

“Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and the latest IPCC AR say it is so.”
“in Europe, where environmental awareness is far higher, everyone takes human caused global warming seriously.”
“There is 97% agreement on human caused global warming.”
“Man-Made Climate Change Deniers are the authentic environmental wackos.”
“BS, Dick.”

“Trust but do not verify” follows every “complete agreement,” the Liberal signal that people have not thought through their pet issue, are mistaken about their pet issue, don’t want to hear contradictions about their pet issue, and go ballistic if I ask them to rethink it.

See the summary of responses above.

Let’s look at the 97% agreement on human caused global warming and the IPCC.

John Cook published a paper in Skeptical Science that claims he and others reviewed nearly 12,000 abstracts of studies published in the peer-reviewed climate literature. They found that “97 percent of the papers” that expressed a position on anthropogenic global warming “endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming.”

Our liberal friends latched onto that one, you betcha.

Unfortunately, Mr. Cook, um, cooked the books.

It turns out he was not alone.

The Economist reports that “modern scientists are doing too much trusting and not enough verifying — to the detriment of the whole of science, and of humanity” — and they are doing it in fields from biotechnology and rust to, yes, “global warming.”

• “Too many of the findings that fill the academic ether are the result of shoddy experiments or poor analysis.”
• “Researchers at … Amgen found they could reproduce just six of 53 ‘landmark’ studies in cancer research.”
• “‘Negative results’ now account for only 14% of published papers, down from 30% in 1990.”

Papers from PNAS and IPCC fill most of the categories the Economist lists. Unfortunately, I do not expect my Liberal friends to accept the Economist [La la la la la la la la la la la] as a source, though. After all the Economist said of Liberal darling Paul Krugman, “the most striking thing about his writing these days is not its economic rigour but its political partisanship.”

And finally, for those who pray at the institutionalized ignorance altar to Al Gore, there may be a scientific consensus on global warming after all. Only 36 percent of geoscientists and engineers believe that humans have created global warming, although I suspect 100 percent of them believe humans have created the crisis itself. Of course, this finding was in the peer-reviewed Organization Studies, so it must be suspect, yes?

There is good news: The Economist also reports, “The most enlightened journals are already becoming less averse to humdrum papers. Some government funding agencies, including America’s National Institutes of Health, which dish out $30 billion on research each year, are working out how best to encourage replication.” [Emphasis added]

That small trend is a good start, but I don’t see it taking hold anywhere in the human-caused global warming industry and I don’t see it taking hold in the media or populace that supports and pays for said human-caused global warming industry.