Consensus Might Be The Problem

Because it is being used as a club to beat down - or up - dissenting views;

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Scientists
threatened for 'climate denial'

By Tom Harper, Sunday Telegraph
Last Updated: 12:24am GMT 11/03/2007

Scientists who questioned
mankind's impact on climate change have received death threats and claim to have
been shunned by the scientific community.

They say the debate on global
warming has been "hijacked" by a powerful alliance of politicians, scientists
and environmentalists who have stifled all questioning about the true
environmental impact of carbon dioxide emissions.

Timothy Ball, a former
climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg in Canada, has received five
deaths threats by email since raising concerns about the degree to which man was
affecting climate change.

One of the emails warned that, if he continued
to speak out, he would not live to see further global warming.

"Western
governments have pumped billions of dollars into careers and institutes and they
feel threatened," said the professor.

"I can tolerate being called a
sceptic because all scientists should be sceptics, but then they started calling
us deniers, with all the connotations of the Holocaust. That is an obscenity. It
has got really nasty and personal."

Last week, Professor Ball appeared
in The Great Global Warming Swindle, a Channel 4 documentary in which several
scientists claimed the theory of man-made global warming had become a
"religion", forcing alternative explanations to be ignored.

Richard
Lindzen, the professor of Atmospheric Science at Massachusetts Institute of
Technology - who also appeared on the documentary - recently claimed:
"Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their funds disappear, their
work derided, and themselves labelled as industry stooges.

"Consequently, lies about climate change gain credence even when they
fly in the face of the science."

Dr Myles Allen, from Oxford University,
agreed. He said: "The Green movement has hijacked the issue of climate change.
It is ludicrous to suggest the only way to deal with the problem is to start
micro managing everyone, which is what environmentalists seem to want to do."
Nigel Calder, a former editor of New Scientist, said: "Governments are
trying to achieve unanimity by stifling any scientist who disagrees. Einstein
could not have got funding under the present system."
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Death threats?
Loss of funding?
Derision?
Insults?

Is this the cost of "consensus?"

"Consensus" is feeding us BS because many scientists would have their bread and butter snatched away if they dare dissent - or, they might even be killed. What sort of "consensus" is that and how is it a good thing?