Bishop Hill Nullius at Climate etc
Feb 11, 2012 Royal Society Judith Curry has also written about my GWPF report.
In my recent presentation to the IAC, discussed on the thread Questions on Research Integrity and Scientific Responsibility, I stated that I felt that issues of institutional integrity and responsibility were arguably issues of greater concern than the ethics and behavior of individual scientists. Montford has lucidly described the “what.” I am trying to understand the “why.” I have an idea why individual and groups of climate scientists have been behaving this way (see my previous essay reversing the positive feedback loop), but why the Royal Society?
I encountered Lord May at the Royal Society Uncertainty Workshop, and I liked his presentation Science as Organized Skepticism. However at the end, or in the questions, he dismissed climate change skepticism. Lord May is a biologist, where does his conviction on climate change science come from? I am trying to understand this.
The "why" is a really, really difficult question, and I think there is no simple answer.
Reader Comments (54)
Actually I found your report quite clear on the "why", and there seem to be three different reasons:
(1) Robert May is a biologist and an environmentalist. As a biologist he has been exposed to the "evolution wars", and tends to lump all scepticism of main stream scientific positions in with "flat earth anti-evolutionism". As an environmentalist, the opportunity to push his beliefs through the RS must have seemed wonderful.
(2) Martin Rees has a strong pessimistic strand: see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Final_Hour . As such CAGW fits neatly into his "the end of the world as we know it" world view.
(3) Paul Nurse's position, in contrast, is largely driven by a desire to raise the importance of the RS by making it invaluable to government, and he is simply backing the latest trendy topic. In the short term this strategy (which is the default strategy of all high level academic administrators) works well. In the long term it has the potential to be catastrophic when the whole sorry mess blows up. But the academic world, just like the financial world, is driven by short term pressures, leading to bubbles.
All "in my opinion" of course.
My best shot at an answer to Lord May's lapse of scepticism would be to recommend Dan Gardner's book Future Babble.
We're none of us - and that includes me & you - immune to confirmation bias, peer group pressure and cognitive dissonance.
The 'why' is complex, full of inter-related issues such as status, herd-mentality, peer-pressure, advancement, Murry Gell-Mann's amnesia theory etc. But by far the most believable answer is that CAGW is a perfect storm for reinforcing political/moral beliefs about the world. If you believe that people like you are right about the way the world should be politically structured, it is almost too good to be true to come across a scientific theory that says, "Hey! If we don't structure the world the way we wanted everyone is going to die!"
This ties into the religious belief system that most of us have buried away in our subconsciousness.
And when you add the fact that following/advocating said belief system will make you, and all your friends richer, it's a win win.
Confirmation of political/moral view + tapping into religious fervour + financially prospering = success of CAGW.
The 'why' is the simple bit -- it comes from the stripping away of any meaning bigger than one's own self (in aggravated cases, called narcissism)
From http://drsanity.blogspot.com/
What to do about it is the difficult bit.
Why?
Because the Royal Society has evolved in order to fill one of the Establishment's interstitial spaces.
Why..? Follow the money....
Answer to why? Anyone seen the film Invasion of the Body Snatchers? :)
Millennial hysteria?
Answer to why? Anyone seen the film Invasion of the Body Snatchers? :)
Rick Bradford
Add in moral relativism and you have the perfect storm of self-justification. Good note on narcissists. I had the misfortune to have dealings with a full blown clinical narcissist not that long ago. Don't go there is all I can council. Very very nasty apology for a human being.
@Paul
Yes! I saw it twice.:) (sry, bish. couldn't help it)
CAGW is just another manifestation of religion for the secularist. It ticks all the right boxes: feigned concern for the environment, halting capitalism, concern for the disadvantaged ( oh the Maldives/Tuvalu are sinking), stopping pollution etc.
It is just 21st Century Marxism, but given that little environmentalist twist to make it look "harmless". It is one of the reasons why even the fools in the Church ( CofE ) embrace such ideas, as it allows them to show how empathetic they are, without having to tackle any of that nasty political stuff.
It is just symptomatic of how those who pursue "equality" and "justice" hound those who disagree. All dissent must be squashed, just look at the case against prayers in a council in Devon, the couple who were entrapped by Stonewall by turning away a gay couple from their hotel, the late Ray Honeyford, the Fabio Capello/John Terry incident even. It is all part of the same campaign, it just happens to be the one that can be disproved, because the warmists foolishly believed that people would just "take their word for it" and not actually investigate the science behind their statements and hence expose the whole thing as a fraud
I think Stuck Record (above) has it right.
One of the pithiest comments I've seen on AGW appeared on a US blog (I forget which). A commenter said that its proponents had had the ideological cart ready for years - AGW was just the horse they'd been waiting for to pull it.
It delivers almost every wish sacred to the 'liberal' mindset - from vegetarianism to the redistribution of wealth.
Why wouldn't they believe it?
A REMINDER: Please send this invitation to your MP and ask them to attend the Prof Richard Lindzen seminar in the House of Commons (Email your MP)
Dear xxxx MP,
Please attend the second in a series of seminars on the Climate Change Act Reconsidered at the House of Common in Committee Room N0.10 on 22 February 2012 from 2pm-4pm. (To book a place contact fay@repealtheact.org.uk)
In this special seminar top climate scientist Professor Richard Lindzen, who was a lead author on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC’s) third assessment report, will give a seminar on:
Global Warming: How to approach the science (Climate models and the evidence?)
This subject is of great relevance today in light of scientific scandals and a recent letter published in the Wall Street Journal signed by 16 leading scientists (including Professor Lindzen), “No Need to Panic About Global Warming: There's no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to 'decarbonize' the world's economy”.
Please take this opportunity to join and participate in this important seminar and discussion.
Kind regards
xxxx
MIT Professor Richard Lindzen
Global Warming: How to approach the science
(Climate Models and the Evidence?)
Special guest speaker
Prof. Richard S. Lindzen
Program in Atmospheres, Oceans, and Climate
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Chairman: Philip Stott Emeritus Professor
Emeritus Professor of Biogeography at the University of London,
and former Editor-in Chief of the International Journal of Biogeography.
2pm-4pm 22nd February 2012
House of Commons, Committee Room 10
Westminster
London SW1A 0AA
Biography
Professor Lindzen is a dynamical meteorologist. He has made major contributions to the development of the current theory for the Hadley Circulation, which dominates the atmospheric transport of heat and momentum from the tropics to higher latitudes, has advanced the understanding of the role of small scale gravity waves in producing the reversal of global temperature gradients at the mesopause, and has provided accepted explanations for atmospheric tides and the quasi-biennial oscillation of the tropical stratosphere. His current research is focused on climate sensitivity, the role of cirrus clouds in climate, and the determination of the equator to pole temperature difference.
Prof. Lindzen is a recipient of the American Meteorological Society’s Meisinger, and Charney Awards, the American Geophysical Union's Macelwane Medal, and the Leo Huss Walin Prize. He is a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences, and the Norwegian Academy of Sciences and Letters, and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences, the American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society. He is a corresponding member of the NAS Committee on Human Rights, and has been a member of the National Research Council’s Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate and the Council of the American Meteorological Society. He has also been a consultant to the Global Modeling and Simulation Group at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, and a Distinguished Visiting Scientist at California Institute of Technology's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He is the author of over 230 professional papers and books. He was a reviewer and contributing author for the first and second IPCC Scientific Assessments and a lead author on the third assessment. (Ph.D., '64, S.M., '61, A.B., '60, Harvard University)
I recall a BBC "Question Time" some years ago where an audience member suggested that quite simply they did not believe one of the statements an honourable member on the panel had recently made in parliament.
This lead to outrage from the MPs on the panel, and Dimbleby as well - I really don't know if the "shock" was completely phony or whether the suggestions that a senior member of the government had lied to parliament was truly unbelievable, but I got the strong impression that to suggest that one MP is lying is somehow an insult to all.
I suspect that exactly the same thought process occurs with reknowned scientists. To folk like the presidents of the RS, and to TV scientists like Brian Cox, they simply accept that other scientists are as honourable as they are themselves, or more importantly, as they would like to assume that they are seen themselves, so any implication of sloppy science is an insult to them all, and so not acceptable.
I think the "why" is simpler than the explanations many have offered.
I've seen it at first hand with senior, and previously hard-headed, business people who have been co-opted into public roles on advisory bodies etc. I've even had a minor dabble myself (very unsuccessfully).
The human desire for prestige and and recognition is very powerful. Ever since we crawled out of the caves, humans have sought prestige by moving closer to the seat of power - whether at the court of a medieval monarch or on the board of a quango. There is nothing quite so flattering as being invited to get involved in the process of government.
When successful and clever people are invited into the halls of power - they quickly adapt to to the cynical pragmatism of the political class and "go with the flow".
It's just "The Emperor's Clothes" really.
The apparent problem with May, Rees and Nurse is that they simply take the IPCC gospel as true when there a four major mistakes in the basic physics.
This is obvious to those who have vast experience across many areas so can see intuitively where the mistakes exist. However, the typical academic like Nurse, essentially a technician, haven't a clue because they can't tell that the heat transfer was cocked up from the start, an elementary mistake.
Add to this faulty IR physics that Happer warned of in 1993, faulty aerosol optical physics, my discovery but helped by the US' top cloud physicist who made the satellite observations, and what may have been original fraud, Hansen's claim of 33 K present GHG warming when it conflates lapse rate.
This 'science' can only continue with vast expenditure of money on propaganda and politicians, which is what is happening. I'm prepared to accept these three eminent scientists were duped but they must react now the errors are being revealed.
I think steveta_uk has got to the nub of the issue of why Climategate I (and subsequently II) did not lead to an outcry from the scientific community. Reputable scientists simply cannot countenance the thought that other scientists might act in a devious or disreputable manner.
I have come across a number of scientists who, when looking at questionable parts of the IPCC Reports dealing with their own area of experise, have commented that there are some mistakes here, but the rest of the document must be alright becasue it is written by scientists who are honorable people.
Why?
Because, for the UK, 'global warming' morphed into a means of filling the vacuum of a global leadership, left in the wake of a post-colonial world?
Because, as the Bish points out in his GWPF paper, May and Rees are powerful authority figures. They have enormous influence in shaping the message, which we then perceive as 'the Royal Society's message'. As Lindzen has pointed out, scientific organizations around the world are not democratic institutions (in their essential functioning) and appear to insiders as the place where the most 'useless' people in their area agglomerate. In contrast, the same organizations carry enormous political clout - by authority of their name. Secondly, for all their faults, these are the organizations that lobby in their names for money, grants, exemptions, and for preservation of the status quo.
Science has become a big boy now: the 'Royal Society's message' can hardly be considered to be the Royal Society's message, if indeed anything like that would exist. But yet indeed it does, and we pay obeisance to it, because it is us who bow to the authority and prestige of the Society.
It is us who see the need, and imagine, an august body as the Royal Society.
Scientists drape themselves in the robes of 'independent intellectual pursuit', 'academic freedom', and go after upholding higher principles, when they are under scrutiny or attack. They are just as ready to jettison these superfluities when they find a seat at the high tables.
Nobody wants to hear it, but the reason is because DOGMA--received, rather than reasoned, belief--is ascendant in the world today. Science, it was once hoped, would counter the old dogmas, and so it did, but only so long as it didn't become addicted to dogma itself (and it never wiped out the endemic dogmas of established religions, superstitions, and ethnic traditions, whose dogmas continue to pound relentlessly upon the shores of reason and civil society). But with Darwin (yes, and denying it doesn't make it less true, in the final analysis), science made a fundamental error, cut off a whole line of valid reasoning about this strange and wonderful world--that it was in fact subjected to wholesale, intentional design, as my epochal research has uncovered for science--and has increasingly become mired in dogma, over sound (air-tight) logic, and sound experimental discovery and verification. A broad and deep, entrenched incompetence in science has been the result. Science has become just another part of the problem of Man on Earth, trying to learn how to treat, and how to live with, others of different beliefs.
As the discoverer of unprecedented new knowledge about the origin of the world as we find it today, I can only keep harping on the need to FOCUS, upon the DEFINITIVE FACTS that alone can correct current false theories. I have discovered, and verified, the definitive facts for correcting climate science (see my climate science posts, such as "Venus: No Greenhouse Effect"), but the world community of scientists needs to focus upon them, and accept them, in order to recover a competent climate science.
And the whole paradigm, of blind, undirected "evolution" of the Earth, and all the life on it, needs to be let go, because there is new knowledge, correcting both science and religion, waiting to be acknowledged, studied, and accepted by all. If you are not ready to hear that, you are part of the problem, that vexes us all.
Robert May was involved in the development of the modelling of animal populations and then moving into other areas of ecology, however I believe he did physics as an undergraduate and postgraduate.
I think this actually makes his rather extreme stance on climate even more difficult to understand.
And we MUST give Roger Harrabin credit for reporting it: especially the last sentence or 2 form extract below:
----------------------
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10178454
Harrabin: "I remember Lord May leaning over and assuring me: "I am the President of the Royal Society, and I am telling you the debate on climate change is over."
Lord May's formidable intellect and the power of his personality may have made it hard for others to find a corner from which to dissent. "The debate is over" was a phrase used in order to persuade Tony Blair that policies were needed to tackle the rise in CO2.
It was widely acknowledged that climate sceptics wanted to continue the debate in order to delay action to curb emissions.
But what did the phrase mean? Did it mean the IPCC is unquestionably right? Or that cutting emissions 80% is the only way to save the planet? Or simply that it is basic physics that CO2 is a warming gas?
Even at the Heartland Institute climate sceptics' conference in Chicago last week most scientists seemed to agree that CO2 had probably warmed the planet at the end of the 20th century, over and above natural fluctuations.
But they did not agree that the warming will be dangerous - and they object to being branded fools or hirelings for saying so."
I'm not an academic so I may be wrong, but as far as I can tell, the number of papers published is absolutely crucial to future career prospects. The quality required for the acceptance of a paper relies on peer review. Most academics must be aware of the limitations of peer review but they will defend it to the death because without it they have nothing.
Here we have a dodgy science and abuse of the peer review process. The rest of the establishment holds its nose and looks the other way. They are afraid to break ranks and the leaders reach the point of no return - too much has been invested based on so-called scientific advice. It becomes a blind faith in the emporer's clothes (if I can be allowed to butcher the language).
It fills the space in the human psyche left by the decline of organized religion. Redemption (saving the world) by penance (giving up fossil fuel), fasting (localism), plenary indulgences (carbon credits), ignoring temptation (sceptical debate) and the reward of belonging to a close community sharing the same beliefs. The scientific process defined by empiricism, falsifiability and honesty in handling data has been abandoned
Speaking with my christian 'ministerial' hat on, it is party because admitting you are wrong is so very hard for human beings who are leaders (as elsewhere)! But then I may be speaking through my hat!
jb
You make an excellent argument.
I am in the middle of re-reading Anthony Browne's The Retreat of Reason which deals with the growth and effects of Political Correctness.
While it doesn't mention global warming specifically, the relationship is clear.
There are things you may say and things you may not say; some views are acceptable even if they fly in the face of the known (or easily ascertainable) facts while it is quite common to deny or conceal facts which do not fit the current paradigm.
Anyone who doesn't follow the politically correct line is not just wrong but evil. And so on.
All sounds horrifyingly familiar. The book is a 'must read'!
Why? Fundamentally I believe it is because May, Rees and Nurse are Malthusians at heart and like Ehrlich and Schneider believe that we are overpopulating the earth. They are convinced that the compound growth of mankind has but one outcome. CAGW is but one manifestation of their population driven pessimism. In addition, it is the Royal Society's misfortune ot have had 3 Sheldon-type characters (from Big Bang Theory) as Presidents in a row. What it needs is a modern day Hook, not another Newton. Never underestimate the hubris of the brilliant. (See Clark and Clark, Newton's Tyranny: The Suppressed Scientific Discoveries of Stephen Gray and John Flamsteed for a brief, but engaging history of the early days of the Royal Society. )
"...most scientists seemed to agree that CO2 had probably warmed the planet at the end of the 20th
century, over and above natural fluctuations."
Seriously? They agreed to that?
I would like to know the basis for agreeing with such things.
Arthur Dent wrote (Feb 11, 2012 at 1:59 PM)
A perfect example of the "Gell-Mann" amnesia effect mentioned earlier![Actually, it was Michael Crichton who formulated it and named it so, saying "I call it by this name because I once discussed it with Murray Gell-Mann, and by dropping a famous name I imply greater importance to myself, and to the effect, than it would otherwise have."]
I think the Why is 2 forms of government persuasion. Firstly government controls ther purse strings of most of science and if you want funding saying "this research will prove the warming story" you are more likely to get it than if you say the more scientific "may or may not support" it. If you say "I am sceptical abgout the whole scare" you had better be emeritus because you ain't getting no funding & probably neither is any University dept that can't sit on you. Since even good scientists are looking for the chance to go real rersearch, in preference to having a fight, they tenjd to keep silent.
It remains undisputed that not a single scvientist anywhere in the world publicly supports the warming scare, who is not paid by government.
The second governmental influence is in their at best heavy influence and at worst control of the mainstrem media. (Try and find any part of the media which, while treating seriously the claim that the Sytian government bombed Aleppo and hasn't always rubbished the almost improbable one that the US government bombed the Twin Towers) Since the media has the power to select what stories it reports and who it interviews it is not difficult to report that absolutely every scientist (they chose to talk ro) supports the warmist "consensus"& that "CAGW is more widely accepted by scientists than any other theory" (to quote the BBC. Thus a tiny number of publicisists can give the appearance of a consensus.
Again this is proven by the fact that the only media where thisdeliberate fraud is properly examined in the net.
As to why government push the scam "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."Henry Louis Mencken
Of course they couldn't do this if almost every politician in the ruling parties (& almost every "journalist")wasn't a wholly corrupt, thieving, fascist animal lacking the most remote trace of human decency & willing to tell absolutely any lie and censor absolutely any fact in the Fascist cause. But the facts prove they can & are.
I think that summarises my attitude best. And I think our odds are better than the Light Brigade's.
The Royal Society was the ultimate strategic jewel for the environmental movement to enrol in promoting legitimising and funding AGW. Robert May found himself in the perfect spot at the perfect time. A fervent environmentalist, trustee of the WWF, father of theoretical ecology, using the classic back to front postnormal method of model theorising first, and observational confirmation last. A fearsome dominating personality with utter self-confidence in his own intellectual infallibility, sitting in the presidential chair. The Royal Society die was cast from then on.
Pharos
The end — as ever for the environmentalist — justifying the means.
Since they know that their philosophy is anathema to the overwhelming majority of the human race and that being a species for which they have very little time and even less tolerance any distortion, obfuscation or downright mendacity is acceptable if it furthers the cause.
That is at least part of the "why".
Robert May, according to Wikipedia, received a PhD in Theoretical Physics. His essays in population dynamics seem more like mathematical essays than biology. One of his examples from population dynamics (Nature 1976) has been widely cited in chaos theory. He doesn't seem to have continued contributing to his original field in recent years.
Why?
Sustainability; aka Eugenics.
Us nasty plebs are messing up their pretty planet so they're going to stop us.
Hopefully the Fred Goodwin saga has set a precedent, and both both May and Nurse will be stripped of their ill-gotten gongs.
It's interesting that so many scientists who become passionate about "climatology" seem to have moved on from a solid background in a "hard" science like physics into more sociological areas like "population dynamics" where concepts like chaos theory" prevail with al their post modernist connotations.
Peter Gleick is another evangelical warmist who's heavily into "population dynamics".
The first "population dynamicist" was, of course, Malthus and he was wrong about pretty well everything.
I don't understnd why these intelligent and highly educated neo-Malthusians seem to be able to ignore pretty well the whole of technological progress from the industrial revolution onwards - and take a huge leap backwards into 18th century doom mongering.
Foxgoose
"The first "population dynamicist" was, of course, Malthus and he was wrong about pretty well everything."
Wiki (sorry) on pessimism and its environmental flavour;
Some environmentalists believe that the ecology of the Earth has already been irretrievably damaged, and even an unrealistic shift in politics would not be enough to save it. According to this view, the mere existence of billions of humans overstresses the ecology of the planet, eventually leading to a Malthusian collapse. The collapse will reduce the ability of Earth to support large numbers of humans for a long time into the future.
I also think Stuck Record (above) has it right. Scientists and their professional bodies have been raised by the AGW doctrine into positions of enormous -- literally earth-changing -- power and control over vast sums of money. When everyone else wants to credit you with God-like capabilities, it takes a great deal of humility to turn around and say "Sorry, but I simply can't be trusted with these responsibilities."
And the scientists who reach the heads of their professional associations are unlikely to be the ones with conspicuous amounts of humility.
Why would a man want to be Pope of the RS Church? Difficult: character flaws, presumably.
It's quite amusing how much academic time and effort the believers have spent investigating the psychological deficiencies that drive middle aged, white, conservatives into climate "denial".
Strangely, no effort at all seems to have directed at investigating the much more dangerous psychological pathology of the terminally pessimistic misanthropes who can only assuage their fears by taking control of the lives of their fellow citizens......now that would be interesting.
Foxgoose,
I suspect there would be no funding for research into pessimism as a cause of AGW but there may be for the reverse hypothesis!
Strange times.
SSAT: always look on the bright side of life, de dum, de dum, de dum.....
SSAT -
I think actually CAGW is indeed fear of the dark by another name.
It is instructive to note that whenever mankind doesn't have a really pressing problem to deal with, it looks up, looks into the 'future', and within about 20 seconds has perceived the end of the world. Depending on the psychological predilections of the moment - guilt, shame, anger, fear.. - the end is characterised in specific ways.
The weather has always been a favourite of the doomers, and it is ironic that despite our technology and mastery of the material world, we live in an age of superstition. The fears of the day? Weather-weirding and 'disruption' of the climate system. [Seriously, does that idea even make any sense? A disrupted climate?]
I second an earlier commenter's recommendation of 'Future Babble' - it is a wonderful way to reduce the false authority of high priests (aka climate scientists) and makes more reasonable the assertion "You don't know what you're talking about!!"
I think that Jonathon Jones and Schrodinger's cat get close to the truth, re the investment so many have in it. The bubble analogy is a very good one, with many scientists playing the role of real estate agents. The tragic thing is that the last fate most of them ever would have wanted was to end up being spruikers of dodgy product, but life and circumstances (read funding opportunities) just led them there.
Bodies like the RS fill the role of those media economics columnists, really paid shills for the construction industry, going on about how fundamentals are sound, demand is outstripping supply, buy now or forever be priced out.
And then there's the various departments of government at all levels, which expanded or were created from thin air, all on the basis of a looming catastrophy. The big ones here drove the whole thing, after a few activist scientists provided them with the perfect excuse to justify ever expanding powers, but most of them are more mug investors who bought "investment properties" at overinflated prices in the hope of making a quick buck. They are probably now realise that the peak is past, but can't afford to sell into a falling market, as the investment property is all they have. They live in hope that the market for climate "solutions" is just experiencing a temporary correction, because crash will wipe them out.
@Richard Drake Feb 11, 2012 at 3:41 PM
Or, perhaps, in this particular case ... the Blight Brigade's. Seems to work on so many levels, don't you think? ;-)
I'm a "simple computer programmer" still beavering away in my seventh decile, writing systems which get from "a" to "b" with all the usual "tricks" - non Jonesian/Mannian) of the trade. If I get the logic wrong, the sale fails, or the member is not notified or the hole is punched in the wrong place. The point being, that I always have to be super sceptical of every thing I do or code. I like to apply the same process to everything and everybody else. Doing this, you can quickly separate belief from reason. I have become convinced that most people (including myself from time to time) have great difficlty in doing this.
Some innate force makes us want to believe or achieve the same effect, by joining a cause. We also often have "approaching infallible" belief in ourselves and the more important we become the more infallible we become and conversely the less correct everybody else. And if we become extremely important our infallibily is approaching infinity. This explains the Lord Mays (he did go the right high school and first university - my personal self importance), Sir Pauls etc.
In a few words - human nature - which very few can overcome.
The other element in our particular "global warming" problem is that Western civilisation has absorbed the Christian "original sin" belief - regardless of whether the current proponent of "mankind is evil" belongs to any formal religion or not.
It keeps showing up as say, Puritanism, Malthusianism, Rouseauianism, the ism of Eugenics, Communism and currently in Greenism.
Put Human Nature, the Cause of the moment and 3rd element, scuds of money and the RS is fully explained.
(As I wrote the RS abbreviation above I immediately thought of the colloquial use of the term RS in Australian English.)
Part of the 'why' is that science has become increasingly enmeshed (and conflated) with politics. It was a win-win trade - the scientists got money and prestige, and the politicians got to claim that they were saving the world, based on bought and paid for science. As is common in such situations, many (probably most) of those participating genuinely believed in what they were doing. It is always easier to believe that when, coincidentally, you are personally benefiting from the arrangement.
One proof of this is that not just the RS, but scientific bodies all over the world fell for the same sloppy, evangelistic and ultimately anti-scientific scam. They are not bad people (well, not all of them), but they tuned into this very powerful zeitgeist, which managed to combine the anxieties of Malthusians, environmentalists, vegetarians, technophobes, anti-capitalists, international development campaigners and a host of other groups under one banner. There was something for everybody who came to sit at the table - not only in ideological terms but also in terms of prestige and cold hard cash - lots of it. Once the cash factor became apparent, camp followers like merchant banks, renewable energy entrepreneurs and fraudsters appeared in droves.
Since scientists are human, ie no better or worse than anybody else, what is required to validate their authority in the long term is transparency and scientific rigour. There are encouraging signs that these admirable checks and balances are starting to re-emerge on the subject of climate science. But it has been a less than salutary period in scientific history, and one which will destroy the reputations of many who should have been remembered as the best and the brightest.
A simple explanation for the 'why' is this:
You are a highly regarded and very busy scientist.
You hear that 97% of scientists in a certain field support a viewpoint.
You hear that opposed to this viewpoint is a motley selection of one or two scientists in the field, retired mining engineers and accountants.
You don't have time to look into the details but it's quite clear that the mainstream scientific view of your respected colleagues is the correct one.
This was pretty much my situation until I started to look into it about 4 years ago (well, except for the "highly regarded" bit).
Paul thanks and agreed. Highly regarded here.