Government party VVD wants to stop funding the KNMI, the Royal Meteorological Institute because it actually takes climate change seriously. According to member of parliament René Leegte the KNMI is a partisan organisation that listens too much to the IPCC (Dutch). What’s more, according to him twenty percent of the KNMI’s researchers work for the IPCC and are therefore certainly not to be trusted.
A shocking display of truthiness, roundly mocked in the Dutch media, but these accusations are done in the context of a debate about the possible privatisation of the KNMI. By throwing doubts about its independence and realibility Leegte attempts to make it easier to sell the idea of getting rid of it to parliament and the voter. It’s done very clumsily, but that it’s done at all is worrisome. More and more our rightwing parties are using Republican tactics to force through their ideologically driven policies.
Jay Vos
June 29, 2011 at 6:37 pmRadio Netherlands Worldwide (English) reported on this. Your last sentence is correct. In 2004, former Republican senator Rick Santorum of PA (and now a 2012 presidential candidate) wanted privatise our national weather service; he received donations from AccuWeather, a private weather reporting company based in PA & used by several tv stations.
Jay Vos
June 29, 2011 at 6:38 pmSorry, it was 2005.
opit
July 1, 2011 at 11:52 pmI recall that Accuweather story myself – though I didn’t know the payola particulars. But while it is tempting to follow the meme castigating ‘climate change denial’, I find it a case of Poisoning the Well Argumentation : Logical Fallacy.
Quick and dirty : what is your position on scientific proof one can foretell the future ? Nonsense, isn’t it ?
Regrettably, Blogger ‘ate’ a file I had compiled on the ever present story of how an emotional political argument conforming to rules for demonizing an opponent has come to be ‘common knowledge’ when it should be no such thing.
I don’t ask anyone to take my say-so on that. There are a number of intriguing links on the left column of my blog and a partial post – not a reconstruction – dealing with contention over climatology…including a link to environmentally conscious scientists.
My focus has always been water pollution, so I have tended to see AGW as a colossal waste of time on a humbug when disaster stares us in the face. See the Topical Index at opitslinkfest.blogspot.com for the particulars.