By the Democrats, of course, who are the most avid warriors and always have been.

[C]onsider the reaction of the scientific community to Al Gore’s invited speech at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) last week (a video can be found here).

In his speech Gore attributed a wide range of recent weather events to human-caused climate change including floods in Iowa, Hurricane Ike, and the Australian bush fires. . .

How did AAAS and the many scientists in attendance respond to being blatantly misled with scientific untruths in a speech calling for political action?

Why, by issuing a press release repeating the misrepresentation:

With charts and images, Gore described the immediate nature of the threat . . . A 500-year flood that has wrecked Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Wildfires in Greece that nearly toppled a government, and wildfires this month in Australia that have left scores of people dead and sparked a new national debate about climate change.

And of all of those scientists in attendance, here is a list of those who sought to set the record straight on blogs and in the media:





OK, I couldn’t find any, but if you know of any such reactions, please share.

The bizarre bit is that scientists are so deeply involved in the war on science.

Update: Ooooohh, ooohh, the damage done

Being a skeptic is commendable and scientists should never cease questioning their models, but throwing all models to the winds and using only “facts” to drive one’s decisions is not very helpful. As put by George Box (or by someone else before him), “all models are wrong, but some models are useful” and we (as statisticians) can devise tools to assess how wrong and how useful. Encouraging a total mistrust of anything scientific or academic is not helping in solving issues, but most surely pushes people in the arms of charlatans with ready answers.

Nonsense. Some will embrace charlatans, but some do so already. Scientists have screwed up so badly by overselling their modest capabilities that it is perfectly rational to mistrust them. Their work needs careful scrutiny rather than trust. If it has value then scrutiny won't hurt. It's only bad science that will suffer. It can be argued that this increases costs and delays. This is something that scientists can also be held accountable for. Their bad.