As Judy Curry notes, the Bengtsson affair is going to be very damaging for the climatology profession. From the press reports today it seems clear that Bengtsson was threatened with ostracisation from the rest of the "community" because of his temerity in offering to provide scientific advice to GWPF. It seems that at least one climatologist demanded that his name be removed from a forthcoming joint paper with Bengtsson.
As a result, the word "McCarthyism" has been bandied about. The behaviour of climatologists does not carry an official stamp of course (although I can't say I've noticed any protests from Ed Davey either) but the effects look rather similar: you toe the line or you will be cut off. A senior scientist like Bengtsson could perhaps consider carrying on regardless - hard, but not impossible. For a younger scientist it would of course be the end of their career.
And all for what? Because he wanted to join the Academic Advisory Council of GWPF? And what is the problem with GWPF exactly? Over at Marcel Crok's blog the theory is advanced by commenter "Neven" that GWPF is a group of "old, white, male, free market fundamentalists". On the face of it, this idea is scarcely worth our time: a scan of the GWPF Board of Trustees shows that it includes Lord Donoughue (Labour) and Baroness Nicolson (LibDem); hardly the free-market jihadis of Neven's fevered imagination (and I believe that the word "baroness" is traditionally associated with people who are women).
But despite Neven's idea being silly, I think they really are the reason that so many scientists object to GWPF. To many in academia, being right-wing or (horrors) in favour of free markets is anathema - just listen to anything said on the subject by Paul Nurse. But Nigel Lawson is, in their minds, something else, being closely associated with the right-wing triumphs of the 1980s. In the academy such connections amount to being the devil incarnate, but on steroids. I think many academics just lose the plot entirely when they see his name in print. I was told the story of a sceptic who was having an exchange of emails on a largely unrelated matter with a prominent (non-climate) scientist; an FRS, no less. During the exchange, he mentioned that he had once been in contact with Lawson. The scientist in question said that if that was the case then their correspondence must cease forthwith and he cut off all contact. In similar style, one of Bergtsson's tormentors compared the GWPF to the Ku Klux Klan. It's that hateful, that crazy. And governments take advice from people with views like this.
Still in the comments at Marcel's site, Roddy Campbell muses on Neven's ideas:
I’ve rarely seen it so clearly expressed that those who object to the GWPF and other libertarian / liberal economics think tanks on climate and related issues – whether the physical science, the impacts science, the policy, the inter-geographical and inter-generational ethics, the importance of GDP versus other things, the economics, the discount rate, the ability to forecast the future, risk, precautionary principle – often / generally / usually / primarily object to wholly non-climate issues – their political grounding.
Neven seems to have a fundamental political objection to the GWPF, and any argument or expression of reason they might make. He believes that they are primarily in existence for the reason he gives – to defend laissez-faire capitalism, their status quo.
Interesting.
I’m musing on whether that is symmetrical, and I don’t think so – as a capitalist middle-aged white western male I have no such feeling towards WWF or Greenpeace or left-wing think tanks. I enjoy their thoughts and the debate.
Would I send Matt Ridley abusive comms if he became connected to such a body? Of course not – it would be really interesting to find out how he got on, and who converted who and on what issues.
There is a fundamental difference in my view. Right-wingers think that lefties are wrong. Well-meaning perhaps, but guilty only of a failure to think things through properly and of putting feeling good about themselves ahead of the good of others. So if Matt Ridley suddenly took a Marxist turn, I think Roddy would wonder about the possibility that age had got the better of him but wouldn't even think of ostracising him. The friendship would endure.
To a lefty, however, *most right wingers are evil (eeevillll!!!). And when you see an evil person it is of course quite natural to have nothing more to do with them or indeed with anyone who associates with them. Ostracisation is the correct thing, the moral thing to do. So here we see why universities - and indeed all public and third sector organisations - are so overwhelmingly left-wing: it is simply that *many left-wing people are free to ostracise and to blacklist those whose political views they disapprove of. I think this must be why so many charities set up by fervent right-wingers soon end up funding left-wing causes. It's not a conspiracy - it's just a reflection of the way *many left-wing people see right-wing people.
In private sector organisations the situation is rather different. Here there is a profit motive, which forces people to focus on an external objective - making customers happy and making profits. People of different political (or religious) views are forced to work together; what divides them becomes less important than the thing that unites them. If people end up being employed (or frozen out) because of their political beliefs, the business suffers a huge competitive disadvantage and is weeded out by the competition.
What I am saying is that we should not be surprised by what happened to Bengtsson. It is a reflection of the way people on the left behave. The unpleasant results are simply inevitable.
There's a corollary to all this. If scientists (and everything else that comes out of the university system) is overwhelmingly left-wing and, if we accept what I've written above, will always be so, where does this leave evidence-based policy? In a politicised subject such as climatology, I'd posit that it is left in tatters.
Updated 19.33, 15 May 2014 by Bishop Hill
* qualifications added