Absent from the blogosphere for a while now, however I can not help you pass this section of the World, which my sunny day of his insight, truthfulness and humor.
The earth is flat it has the Institut de France?
Professors Claude Allegre, Vincent Courtillot, and some colleagues have created an organization whose mission is to inform the French that human activities are a minor cause of climate change. They want the Institut de France - which includes five academies, including the Academy of Science - home to this body, which already enjoys significant support in some quarters. A brief detour through the United States will help understand the issues.
There are no members of the Flat Earth Society who believe the earth is flat. A majority of Americans believe. If this is not literally in the same scientific error, they believe that the universe does not much more than six thousand years, or that the ozone hole is mainly due to volcanic activity, or that human activities are not much in the climate change. Their beliefs are inoculated by powerful organizations, commercial or otherwise, by bodies-screen appearance of scientific organizations have created and funded generously, and spokespersons (some brilliant scientific background) backed by these agencies.
First there was the world's tobacco. Basically, we find here American Tobacco, Benson & Hedges, Philip Morris, RJ Reynolds ... These companies have created the first agency-screen under an infinitely honorable name: Alexis de Tocqueville Institution (Francois de la Rochefoucauld would have appreciated the tribute, once again, by vice to virtue). As the chief spokesperson, is a senior science, Fred Seitz. Author of important contributions in solid state physics, he has chaired for seven years the National Academy of Sciences, and then the prestigious Rockefeller University.
his retirement in 1979, the tobacco industry gave it with substantial financial means, the mission of generating research and conduct information campaigns to cast doubt on the results of epidemiological studies that began to prove the harmfulness tobacco. In maximizing the effects of this smokescreen scientific as well as more traditional forms of lobbying , the tobacco industry has managed to push through 2006 conviction of national scope, particularly infamous when it came, it is true because a decision on the basis of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act.
After tobacco, there were denials of acid rain, ozone hole and even dangers of star wars. And now, it seems, men are not much in the climate change. New sponsors: Exxon Mobil, BP, Peabody (first coal company U.S.), Ford, General Motors, a half-dozen power producers, and others. New Organisms-screen names always engaging: National Resources Stewardship Project, Greening Earth Society, The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition ... Fred Seitz was still engaged in this fight, and another renowned physicist retired, Fred Singer, known for its "good" words ( "Environmentalists are like watermelons, green on the outside, red inside" ) and its devastating bad faith.
There is also, notably, the geographer Tim Ball, known for his "good" direction ( "How can we talk seriously about climate in fifty years when we are unable to predict the weather next summer? "). And the master manipulator Frank Luntz, who in the Straight Talk Memo has compiled guidelines for campaign Republican candidates in the 2004 election, George Bush included ( "If the public comes to believe that the scientific debate is over, his views on global warming will adjust accordingly, so be the lack of scientific certainty maintain a central theme for the debate ").
SPECIAL INTEREST
And it is the goal of all these people : Seize the hand of inevitable uncertainty involved in a science dealing with a complex system (be it the climate, the human body, a rainforest, ocean ...), this hairpin climb of uncertainty, amplify it, make the appropriate order to discredit - in particular in media debates supposedly "balanced" between "opinions" opposed - scientific results that validate policy choices that do not want some economic or political well-placed. Doubt is an indispensable engine in the scientific approach, but manipulated and controlled in the interests individuals, it is an engine not months effective from confusion in the public and among politicians and economists. This engine has functioned remarkably: "Human activities are they the cause of global warming?" (Pew Research Center National Survey on Climate). Responses: 50% yes in July 2006, 34% in October 2010. Not yet
major American scientific institutions like the National Academy of Sciences or the American Association for the Advancement of Science (publisher of Science Magazine ) have undertaken anything to legitimize one or other agencies-screen or their spokesmen. In this connection, so there is still room for innovation that some seem to operate in France. Why? And why scientists known to grow? Why did they kill them in scientific integrity? Why do they hate so their grandchildren?
Even in the U.S., it does not seem that money is the main motivation. Do not underestimate the psychological difficulty for a certain generation of scientists and engineers to accept the existence of a hitch in progress as monumental as climate change. And, at least among those who have previously made an enviable reputation - usually in disciplines far removed from scientific climatology - but that their future science behind them, as there is a fierce desire to survive under the spotlight, an ego that will not fade.
Is it the role of the Institute of France to heal the ego of a few scientists of this kind by hosting in his screen within the organization they are working to develop and proclaim that human activities are a minor cause of climate change and why not, that the earth is flat? (Incidentally, how does one translate "Exxon-Mobil" or "Peabody" in French?)
Claude Henry, a professor at Columbia University, Professor Emeritus at the Ecole Polytechnique, a founding member of the Academy of Technology
