If I were to look for… say the latest numbers on the Iraqi death toll and I were to find a paper which was written by “The 2008 Council on Iraqi Death Count” or some other official sounding group, it would be interesting. However, if it was drastically higher than every other body count… if it stated in certitudes what other reports did not… if the names of the attendees were George Soros, Arianna Huffington, Al Gore and Al Frankin… then I would seriously question the usefulness of the data. Sure it ‘could’ be correct, but only if we didn’t go see Occam for a shave.
So, when I hear “Here’s a devastating new report on Global Warming” I do the same thing… I see who made the claims and what claims they made.
So I took a look at “The Manhattan Declaration on Climate Change” which sounds just spiffy… but then I find that they state in no uncertain terms that the whole issue is concluded and done. Case closed. I find myself wondering what great and wondrous people made such a fantastic discovery.
So, we begin to search:
David Archibald: Known vocal opponent to Global Warming. He produced a paper a couple years back which was, according to a number of experts… crap. For example, his worldwide statistics were based, not on data collections from around the world, but from 5 rural stations in the Southeast US. Maybe this is valid… but then maybe Dennis Kuchinich is a reasonable choice for President too…
J. Scott Armstrong: Took a minute to find this specialist… since he’s a professor of marketing and has no scieney/meteorological training that I can find. again, he could be right… but so could Al Gore, as they both appear equally qualified.
Now, I’m not gonna fill up this page with names and descriptions… but suffice to say that more than a few of the people listed as signatories to this official sounding document, either work for think tanks that are specifically conservative in nature or have a history of saying “NO Climate Problems” even when the data appeared to support it… or the people are Marketing people, policy people etc.
Now, some of the people appear to actually be experts and they may have real and useful arguments… just as someone in 2002 may have had a real and useful argument regarding the exaggerated threat of WMD’s. However, the company they keep makes me far more concerned about them getting fleas, rather than putting stock in their claims.
