Read here. Dr. Judith Curry, a prominent climate scientist, is becoming famous (infamous?) for taking the alarmists to task for the abysmal failures of climate science in the last year. She once supported the IPCC "science" alarmism agenda, but since Climategate she has soured on the process and on many of the climate players who have brought discredit to science, in general. [Update: a profile on Judith Curry, h/t Bishop Hill]
In this very interesting piece on her blog, she describes the elites' institutional/cultural positive feedback that has inadvertently managed to drive the public to ever shrinking belief in global warming calamities and its theorized human cause, while at the same time harming the credibility of the science community - a twofer!
"Nevertheless, the policy cart was put before the scientific horse, justified by the precautionary principle. Once the UNFCCC treaty was a done deal, the IPCC and its scientific conclusions were set on a track to become a self fulfilling prophecy. The entire framing of the IPCC was designed around identifying sufficient evidence so that the human-induced greenhouse warming could be declared unequivocal, and so providing the rationale for developing the political will to implement and enforce carbon stabilization targets. National and international science programs were funded to support the IPCC objectives. What should have been a political debate about energy policy, environmental quality, and reducing vulnerability to weather and climate disasters, became a debate about the nuances of climate science, with climate scientists as the pawns and whipping boys.....However, at the heart of the IPCC is a cadre of scientists whose careers have been made by the IPCC. These scientists have used the IPCC to jump the normal meritocracy process by which scientists achieve influence over the politics of science and policy. Not only has this brought some relatively unknown, inexperienced and possibly dubious people into positions of influence, but these people become vested in protecting the IPCC, which has become central to their own career and legitimizes playing power politics with their expertise."
