Throughout history, governments have twisted science to suit a political agenda. Global warming is no different, according to Dr. Richard Lindzen of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“Global climate alarmism has been costly to society, and it has the potential to be vastly more costly. It has also been damaging to science, as scientists adjust both data and even theory to accommodate politically correct positions,” writes Lindzen in the fall 2013 issue of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons.

According to Lindzen, scientists make essentially “meaningless” claims about certain phenomenon. Activists for certain causes take up claims made by scientists and politicians respond to the alarmism spread by activists by doling out more research funding. — creating an “Iron Triangle” of poor incentives.

“How can one escape from the Iron Triangle when it produces flawed science that is immensely influential and is forcing catastrophic public policy?” Lindzen asks.

Lindzen compares global warming to past politicized scientific movements: the eugenics movement in the early 20th Century and Lysenkoism in the Soviet Union under Stalin. However, the MIT professor argues that global warming goes even beyond what these past movements in terms of twisting science.

“Global Warming has become a religion,” writes Lindzen. “A surprisingly large number of people seem to have concluded that all that gives meaning to their lives is the belief that they are saving the planet by paying attention to their carbon footprint.”

“There may be a growing realization that this may not add all that much meaning to one’s life, but, outside the pages of the Wall Street Journal, this has not been widely promulgated, and people with no other source of meaning will defend their religion with jihadist zeal,” he added.

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Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2013/08/29/mit-pr.../#ixzz2wLzYv9Vi

I do not know if this item has been added on this Forum. I don't recall seeing it and it is most appropriate to this thread.

Philosophy professor says global warming 'deniers' should be thrown in jail

If Lawrence Torcello, an assistant philosophy professor at Rochester Institute of Technology, had his way, people who disagree with him about global warming would be thrown in jail, the Daily Caller reported Monday.

"When it comes to global warming, much of the public remains in denial about a set of facts that the majority of scientists clearly agree on. With such high stakes, an organised (sic) campaign funding misinformation ought to be considered criminally negligent," he wrote last week at The Conversation.

According to Torcello, there are times when criminal negligence and what he calls “science misinformation” must be linked.

Global warming -- or "climate change" as it is referred to now -- is one of those times, he argues.

He cited a case in Italy where six scientists and a local defense minister were accused of providing “inexact, incomplete and contradictory information" and imprisoned for six years each because they failed to “clearly communicate risks to the public” about living in an earthquake zone.

The 2009 earthquake in L'Aquila, Torcello said, left 300 people dead and nearly 66,000 people homeless.

"I don’t believe poor scientific communication should be criminalised (sic) because doing so will likely discourage scientists from engaging with the public at all," he wrote, but added that "scientists have the corollary obligation to correct public misinformation as visibly and unequivocally as possible."

Shades of Galileo. Note he's not a scientist but a philosophy professor. The Rochester Institute of Technology must be so proud to have him on its faculty.