#3 Government is driving AGW - Dissecting Dr Lindzen's intrinsic obtuseness

 This is the third part (link to part one, part two) of my review of an interview by Alex Epstein with Professor Richard Lindzen.  I've taken the time and trouble to transcribe much of it in order to focus on Lindzen's bizarre version of reality and to juxtapose it against history and the known science.  

In this installment we consider Alex and Lindzen's conviction that climate science is all a government plot of some kind.  Oh yeah, to rob us of our freedoms.  As if the developing AGW driven climate change we've allowed isn't going to radically curtail freedoms we take for granted today, over this next couple decades.  

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Power Hour: Questioning Climate Science with Dr. Richard Lindzen 

October 22, 2012 | Alex Epstein

Richard Lindzen joins Alex Epstein to talk about perspectives on climate change:

• Questions about climate
• “Balance” in nature
• The goals of environmentalists

1:45  Alex:  Whenever I read one of his (R.L.) papers I get almost emotional just by the level of clarity and diligence and utter lack of any kind of appeal to authority. ...

3:05  Lindzen: What bothers me about this issue is the intrinsic obtuseness of the questions. ...

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15:30  Alex:  What set the direction of climate science in the past before this whole government hierarchy?

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CC:  Originally?   
How about curiosity to understand why we had ice ages and tropical hot house ages on this planet through deep time.  

There was also the obvious purely utilitarian desire, if not need, to understand what drives global weather patterns… {wasn't there professor?}  

Focusing on some vague "government hierarchy" is a game of fabricating political enemies. 
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15:40  Lindzen:  "Oh, you know, there were problems that had come up.  Probably the most interesting problem was the ice age cycle, you had theories there and they were argued and tested.  There was the climate program of the 70s.  Ah as the paleo records become clearer. The Eocene was a fascinating climate period and people were trying to understand that.

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What bothers me about Lindzen's calculated obtuseness is that he never acknowledges the pivotal role weather plays in our lives.  

Isn't it self-evident that, of course, many people, for many reasons, needed to learn as much as possible about weather?
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Lindzen: I mean it was very much a matter of, here are things that we see, how did that happen, how did it work.

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Student's and scientist's desire to learn and understand remains as strong and passionate as ever!  But, you'd have to actually listen to them to know that.

I'd suggest the critically huge change over the past half century has been, our citizen's no longer demand honesty from information sources, and the Republican/libertarian PR machine has fully embraced repetition of lies, stonewalling and rejection of learning as a political strategy. 
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