Politics Reasserts Itself in the Debate Over Climate Change and Its Hazard

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But both believers and skeptics said the events vividly illustrated how politics could contort science. Instead of the standard scientific process in which researchers sift disparate findings for common elements to build consensus, they say, partisans seem to be sifting only for the findings that fit their agendas.

Dr. Roger A. Pielke Jr., director of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado, said the partisanship seemed to be spreading beyond officials and interest groups.

"On the climate issue, we appear to be on the brink of having Republican science and Democrat science," said Dr. Pielke, who has long espoused acting to limits risks from warming. "If so, then this simply arrays scientists on opposing sides of a gridlocked issue, when what we really need from scientists is new and practical alternatives that might depoliticize the issue."

Skeptics agreed that politics was invading the practice of climate science.

"Climate science is at its absolutely most political," said Dr. Patrick J. Michaels, a climatologist at the University of Virginia who, through an affiliation with the Cato Institute, a libertarian group in Washington, has criticized statements that global warming poses big dangers.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/05/science/earth/05CLIM.html?ex=1061081071&ei=1&en=a7013e07cebeb1fa

the whole issue of global warming has been entirely political. The issues have been so polarized that it is not possible to have a reasoned debate between normally rational scientists.

There are rational reasons to question the IPCC TARs I, II and III. To do so has been regarded as blasphemy against Holy Writ. This isn't science it is religion. The whole question of human influence has become, as did the Copernician theory of planetary orbits, a matter of Belief vs. Unbelief.

There is no feasibility of resolution until the valid questions of deviation between observed data and model prediction are openly resolved by repeatable and congruent results demonstrated by real world data.

On NPR they reported that Pa, NY, and others are going to regulate GHGs without waiting for the federal government.

It will provide real world data with respect to the contention that GHG (CO2) regulation will be economically disastrous. It's good to see that some States are willing to step up to the plate and take a risk for the common good.