Science is "settled"

So far as I remember, even George Orwell didn't think of using the claim that "the science is settled" as a pretext for suppressing skepticism and alternative interpretations of data. But now, on a daily basis, politicians and the media insist the science of climate change is "settled." That is NEWSPEAK on a par with "WAR IS PEACE."

Below I have links to a variety of articles that refute the Orwellian notion that we have to stop looking at the facts because the scientists have already reached conclusions that cannot be challenged.

First, though, I came across this excellent examination of the state of science in today's society. Here are some key quotations:

Science has become a substitute religion for secularists who imagine that they are more intelligent than religious people because they are more skeptical, when in reality the things that they are skeptical about are the ones that don't touch on their own unexamined and unquestioned beliefs.

Like the old joke about the Communist who boasts that like the American he too can shout, "America is worthless!", challenging someone else's dogma is not skepticism, it's antagonism.

...

The science of the "Science is settled" crowd isn't an open system of skeptical inquiry, but a closed system of centralized authority funded and controlled by special interests, beholden to political agendas and intolerant of dissent. It has the same relationship to science that the various People's Democracies had to democracy.

The response of the science settlers to the serious questions that have been raised about their unscientific advocacy has been to demand a more closed system, to hide more data, to urge newspapers to stop printing letters from anyone who questions Global Warming and to even propose the imprisonment of Warming critics.

This isn't the confident attitude of a field that believes it has the facts on its side.It's the authoritarian response of panicked overlords who have become too comfortable with their routine of morning show alarmist appearances and the rushing flow of grant money paid to stave off the apocalypse.

Other resources:

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/372447/obamas-pseudo-scientism-victor-davis-hanson

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/charles-krauthammer-the-myth-of-settled-science/2014/02/20/c1f8d994-9a75-11e3-b931-0204122c514b_story.html

same article, more accessible:

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/371639/myth-settled-science-charles-krauthammer

http://townhall.com/columnists/susanstamperbrown/2014/02/25/obama-and-the-unsettled-science-of-global-warming-n1799838/page/full

http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2013/05/george-will-op-ed-obama-says-trust-me.html

And of course, my own blog:

http://natureoftheclimate.blogspot.com/