Cart before horse: Agenda driven science

This email from the FOIA2011 release demonstrates one of the ways in which the agenda of those funding scientific work skews the way proposals for research are constructed. The back story to this one is the desire of the political paymasters of the Carbon Climate Catastrophe Crew to downplay uncertainty in the science. This bolsters the appearance that ‘the science is settled’ and those dissenting from the ‘consensus’ can be safely ignored.

(italics are mine)

date: Fri, 22 Nov 1996 08:42:56 +0100
from: Wolfgang Cramer
subject: Re: missing-c
to: Mike Hulme ,  Colin Prentice

Dear Mike, dear Colin,
I like the acronym, in general, but at the same time I think it 
would emphasize too much of the missing C story which I believe many 
funding agencies are tired to hear about. Even though this is a 
missing-C-proposal, too, I think we should really emphasize the 
interannual question, rather than the absolute location of the C sink.
But this made me wonder, and I’ll ask this to Colin as well: What 
about the “political preparation” for this proposal. Do you have any 
idea who to contact in Brussels and ask about further views on the 
draft before the deadline?

In this case it’s the question of why the scientists sums of how much carbon ends iup where, don’t add up. The carbon cycle is a vast natural network of interlocking subsystems which are poorly understood, and of which human emitted co2 is only a tiny fraction. The simplified assertions fed to the public regarding how much of the increase in airborne co2 is due to human emissions are based on a scanty understanding of natural carbon sinks and are full of assumptions about the way plants absorb carbon dioxide which contain carbon atoms with certain isotope signatures. It’s a technical argument outside my own area of specialised knowledge so I’ll leave interested readers to research this much discussed topic elsewhere. Those in the know are welcome to leave links in comments below.