The Consensus has come under assault from a familiar foe.

At a recent presentation before the Texas Public Policy Foundation, Roy W. Spencer, Principle Research Scientist at The University of Alabama in Huntsville, demonstrated how testing current climate models against actual satellite data reveals fatal flaws underlying the assumptions regarding the feedback mechanisms related to heat capture, CO2 and cloud formation.

This is a standard smear tactic used by global warming deniers in which they take observed data and apply it in a straightforward manner to reach verifiable conclusions.

Okay, that doesn’t sound as bad when you say it out loud.  However, we’ve already established that The Consensus is true so the real question is not so much how do we subject it to critical examination that may yield superior climate models and in so doing generate information that could be better acted upon by policy makers, it’s how do we defend it from any and all criticism.

Fortunately, Al Gore has two suggestions on how to better shore up the science underlying The Consensus:

1. Vandalism
2. Suppression

Vandalism: Al Gore has called for “civil disobedience” to stop the construction of new coal plants that do not incorporate “carbon sequestration,” a process by which coal plants are made too expensive to build. (So it’s sort of a win-win.) This kind of direct action skips the laborious, time-consuming process of building political support among the citizenry, who, let’s face it, clearly do not recognize the size and magnitude of the problem Al Gore is still having getting over the 2000 election.

Suppression: Al Gore has also called on attorneys general across the country to prosecute public companies for committing stock fraud if they challenge The Consensus. People who might object to using state law enforcement to suppress dissenting views clearly lack an understanding of the history of scientific inquiry:

If someone as revered as Galileo can face criminal prosecution for challenging the prevailing consensus, then who are we too argue?

Of course, Galileo lived in what we now refer to as the “Golden Age of Consensus Enforcement.” It makes our attempts at intimidation look feeble in comparison.  Sure, you can threaten to strip someone of their scientific certification.  But you know what would be better? Threatening to imprison them for life.

Sometimes it’s that little extra bit that helps to get you over the top.

Now, yes, you could argue that Galileo happened to be, in the strictest technical sense of the word, “correct,” regarding the motions of the planets, but that’s not really the point.  The point is that we need a similar enforcement mechanism to get Richard Lindzen to sign something like this:

Now that’s how you set someone straight, old-school.

Source