While it is the view of many scientists, including this one, that research behind the global warming scare has and continues to suffer from a lack of integrity, it is nonetheless true that think tanks, universities, and environmental groups continue to funnel dollars to scientists who will provide the desired conclusion rather than produce unbiased results. But, it’s not just in the sphere of climate change research that the scientific method has been undermined; environmental science in general suffers from the same condition. UCLA recently fired James Enstrom, an epidemiologist who has worked at the UCLA School of Public Health for 34 years, for daring to publish results that were not in step with the school’s official alarmist philosophy.
A recent column by Lois Henry, published at Bakersfield.com, describes the lynch mob mentality that drove the decision to sack Enstrom in disturbing detail. Among other things, Henry explains how Enstrom was “…dumped by a secret vote of the faculty in the Environmental Health Sciences Department. Their official reason for not reappointing him is ‘your research is not aligned with the academic mission of the Department,’ according to a July 29 letter sent to Enstrom notifying him that his appeal of an earlier dismissal letter had been denied and his last day would be Aug. 30.”
Enstrom’s purported sin was doing shoddy research, a claim that both he and many of his colleagues vigorously deny. The real reason appears to be that Enstrom’s work concluded that the risk to human health and the environment posed by “fine particulate” air pollution is much less than other researchers and – most nobably – the California Air Resources Board (CARB) have decreed. CARB is in the process of crafting new rules to cut emissions of pollutants that contribute to fine particulate formation and thus, Enstrom’s work undercut the state’s initiative and was embarrassing to the university as well.
The reduction of fine particulate matter, also known as PM-2.5 (particulate matter less than 2.5 microns in diameter) is a case of natural evolution in the regulatory world. When the Clean Air Act was first published in 1970, the EPA was charged with reducing total particulate emissions of all sizes. The industrial sector responded with a wave of controls that met the agency’s targets, so the EPA then dialed the standard down to focus on PM-10 (particulate matter less than 10 microns in diameter). Those goals have been met as well, with a few scattered exceptions. Neither regulators nor environmental groups ever seem able to close the book on a pollutant, so the “need” to regulate an even smaller fraction of particulate evolved. Thus, the push to create PM-2.5 standards was born, despite the fact that – when first proposed – USEPA didn’t even have a reliable method of measuring such emissions from industrial sources.
I'm waiting to hear the liberal defenders of academic freedom jump up to express their outrage.
This is standard practiced in the environmental regulations industry.
As productive industry reduces emissions, regulations must be changed
so as to keep industry spending – and paying fines. There can be no end
to this except to close all industry. That may well be the goal of these
Marx-inspired bureaucrats.
Exactly. Between the taxation, EPA / OSHA regulation, litigation and unionization there has been a concerted effort for 30 years to destroy our industrial base.
Funny how the newspaper industry has always been exempted from these regulations, litigations, taxations and unionizations……
Lysenkoism, . . . " ‘your research is not aligned with the academic mission of the Department,’", . . . my gosh, what an embarrassment done to themselves. Really, raising of a standard allowing true academic diversity to flourish as a thing of practical effect as not of political bias can come only from the students, . . . and so unlikely, . . .
The Global warming hoax was thunk up by the same malcontents who gave us the Alar in the apples scare in the 1980's. As one who was part of the national "environmental" movement back then I can tell you from personal knowledge that the environment was selected as the cause under which the radical militant activists from the 60's Peace and Civil Rights movements could recruit the most people to support their real cause which was to overthrow the US government and set up a Communist/socialist Paradise like they had in the old USSR. Their fellow traveler student activists now control govt. agencies, schools, the media and just about every other aspect of our lives so that we are now fed a constant stream of propaganda designed to convince us that the government is the only answer. Private Enterprise Industries must be demonized and made unprofitable for them to succeed. The plan? Regulate them out of business. End of lesson.,
Marilyn, you are spot on. The average person (useful idiots) today will not even understand what you are saying…the reason they are duped so easily. The activists who have infested our educational system make sure the students never learn the evils of socialism and communism. Just ask any recent high school grad or college grad what the difference is between socialism and capitalism…notice the deer-in-the-headlights look.
They have to bring in "the global warming agenda" so that they can tax America and other prosperous countries to give free (well not really) hand outs to other countries. Just wonder if the Muslim countries will play ball.
It will all be a form of world Government playing with everyone's money. So everyone's little heart will force them to rally around, I mean who wants all the Polar Bears to die.
Sounds like the academic mission of the Department is advocacy as opposed to the pursuit of truth. Of course, if pursuit of truth is the mission, that base is covered also. To wit:
"Because ordinary people will pervert reason with ideology, religion, or interest, science is 'science' only in the 'right' hands. Consensus among the right people is the only standard of truth. Facts and logic matter only insofar as proper authority acknowledges them.
That is why the ruling class is united and adamant about nothing so much as its right to pronounce definitive, 'scientific' judgment on whatever it chooses."
"America’s Ruling Class – And the Perils of Revolution" — Angelo M. Codevilla, http://spectator.org/archives/2010/07/16/americas…
And that is why even when global warming data was shown to be dry-labbed [i.e., faked], they still maintained that it was legit; IOW, the "right" people said it was.
The technical term for this is "moving the goal posts."
This kind of reminds me of how scientist colluded in the 19th century to say indians were sub-human which led to the forced removal off of their lands. The climate scientist collude to give government more power over our lives in the same way as mentioned above. This is not to say that science is bad but it is just as susceptible to human bias, error, and sin as any other field.
This all has to lead to CARB boss Mary Nichols, a radical environmentalist appointed by Schwarzenegger. . She was the one who hired a certain Hien Tran to do the study that led to regulation against diesel fuel based on Tran's fraudulent findings. Turns out Tran lied about his education-having a phd from UC Davis. What he had was a piece of paper from a London diploma mill run by a guy living in Israel while on the lam from a NY sex charge. Then Nichols hid this fact from thr CARB board as they approved the new legislation which has crippled businesses with diesel engines.
And guess who is still a professor-in-residence at UCLA?
Mary Nichols.
Is the John Froines mentioned in this article the same John Froines who (if memory serves) was one of the Chicago Seven back in the 60's?
This shows the absolute evil of mixing politics and science. Science integrety loses every time. You cannot shame politicians – mixing with politicians is like wrestling with a pig, you just get dirty and besides, the pig likes it. Mark Twain once said: America does not have a native criminal class, except for Congress.
"Postmodernism is a tendency in contemporary culture characterized by the rejection of objective truth and global cultural narrative. It emphasizes the role of language, power relations, and motivations;"— Wikipedia
Postmodernism has infected science, having already infected almost every other major department in universities.. The goal of science has become political success and not the search for objective truth. Enstrom's case is just another example. Pro human caused global warming scientists assume the conclusion they want to reach ( CO2 causes global warming) and then build arguments to prove their conclusion, all for the sake of politics and money. Welcome to the destruction of Western civilization.