CALM DOWN, TOM – AT 8:10 A.M. ET:  Tom Friedman of The New York Times has done some good work, and some not-so-good work.   I've never thought of him as a crackpot.

But he's also a cheerleader for the "global-warming" religion.  Or a deacon.  Or a minister.  Or a rabbi.  Or whatever the cheerleaders should be called.

But Friedman realizes that recent scandals have not helped the faithful.  So he has a proposal, which is, hands down, one of the worst ideas I've seen recently:

Although there remains a mountain of research from multiple institutions about the reality of climate change, the public has grown uneasy. What’s real? In my view, the climate-science community should convene its top experts — from places like NASA, America’s national laboratories, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford, the California Institute of Technology and the U.K. Met Office Hadley Centre — and produce a simple 50-page report. They could call it “What We Know,” summarizing everything we already know about climate change in language that a sixth grader could understand, with unimpeachable peer-reviewed footnotes.

Oh, just great:  The very institutions that get huge grants will tell us what they know.  I guess this is called "independent analysis."  And we will have "unimpeachable" peer-reviewed footnotes.

Applause, applause.

Doesn't Tom realize that the very peer-review process is under serious question?  Who's doing the peer-reviewing?  What do these "peers" actually know, especially about the software programs that have been used in making the stark predictions that we constantly hear?

I don't think Tom is up to speed on this.

And get this gem:

At the same time, they should add a summary of all the errors and wild exaggerations made by the climate skeptics — and where they get their funding. It is time the climate scientists stopped just playing defense. The physicist Joseph Romm, a leading climate writer, is posting on his Web site, climateprogress.org, his own listing of the best scientific papers on every aspect of climate change for anyone who wants a quick summary now.

Same old story.  The skeptics can't be right because their funding is suspect.  Everyone is a crook but the guys Friedman believes.  Who cares that one of the key "warming" scientists now concedes that we haven't had warming for 15 years? 

Look, some skeptics have had connections to oil companies.  That does not automatically prove them wrong.  You have to look at their actual research. 

Friedman is in the "consensus" camp.  A "consensus" of scientists says something, so it must be believed.  But science isn't about consensus.  It's about proof and observation.  It took one little guy working in a German patent office to revolutionize physics.  Albert somebody or other.  It took one Australian nurse, Elizabeth Kenny (Sister Kenny) to disprove a century of medical "science" about polio.

Friedman takes the ludicrous position that the warmers have been playing defense.  Seriously?  They've been on the offense, with Al Gore as quarterback, for about two decades.

We need better science here, not better political science.

February 18, 2010