Climate Science and Groupthink

In mid-March, Students for a Free Economy held a forum at Central Michigan University with three panelists who discussed their doubts about the research that is being used to support the climate change concerns of the U.S. government and the governments of many other industrialized nations. SFE is a campus outreach project from the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.

Hugh McDiarmid Jr., a spokesman for the Michigan Environmental Council in Ann Arbor, created a flier that was placed on the seats for members of the audience. In reference to SFE, the flier read: "Anti-government activists convene science bashing forums at OU, CMU."

A similar SFE event was held earlier that day at Oakland University.

Among the claims in McDiarmid's flier was: "All major United States scientific organizations concur with the most recent finding of the International (sic) Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)."

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's 2007 report stated - among many things - that global warming gases had increased as a result of human activity since 1750.

McDiarmid's flier listed 11 U.S. scientific organizations that he claimed backed the panel, including the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the National Academy of Sciences.

Will Happer said McDiarmid's claim in the flier was "a propaganda statement."

Happer is the Eugene Higgins Professor of Physics at Princeton University and a fellow at the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the National Academy of Sciences.

In 2009, Happer told a U.S. Senate Committee that man-made global warming fears were mistaken, according to the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.

He says he was fired in 1993 from his role as director of the research budget for the Department of Energy by then Vice President Al Gore. Happer said he was let go for questioning the global warming agenda in private meetings.

Happer said global warming advocates have infiltrated the ranks of the leadership of many scientific organizations and have posted positions without consulting with the membership or even doing their own study.