The London Science Museum has abandoned it’s fort like barricade–the “NoDebateCorral” and many skeptics are rejoicing that the formerly Gung Ho institute seems to have done a major about-face. I remain highly skeptical of their new “skepticality”.
Remember, this is the same museum that was blatantly telling you the UK taxpayer which policy you were supposed to vote (and pay) for:
Note the claim about “seeing the evidence”. I have seen the light!
This is the team that only last October launched the Proveit Exhibition to “help” Copenhagen. They were not even remotely equivocal then about their political aims and beliefs:
““The Copenhagen conference is a crucial opportunity to find an international solution to the threat of climate change and to transform the way we generate and consume energy…
Dr Vicky Carroll, Prove It! Project Leader and Curator of Science at the Science Museum said: “Scientific evidence shows that climate change is happening. We need to tackle it urgently. Prove it! allows visitors to explore the evidence for climate change in the Science Museum and online, get to grips with the Copenhagen conference, and make their view count.”’
See that phrase: Make their view count? They were hoping to use their poll results to pressure politicians into “doing something”. But the poll results shocked them… with skeptics outnumbering believers by 5 to 1 initially, and amassing thousands of votes). Even though the Museum have made the minor concession of changing the gallery name to “Climate Science” instead of …”Climate Change” I remain very unconvinced that they have really shifted position themselves. The new exhibition won’t open until just before the UNFCCC deals in Mexico, and we all know that these exhibits can be stacked with loaded questions and half truths. If they were willing to get a consultant skeptical scientist, I’d be convinced this might be more than some token “trick” to appear to be impartial, (while they assembled the camouflaged AGW guns in every exhibit).
You have to wonder how much they wanted you to “make your view count”? Not apparently enough to keep the poll results up on the site page. Perhaps I missed them, but the current ProveIt page doesn’t even mention that the poll existed. It hardly looks like they’ve taken the poll results to heart. The poll itself was launched by no less than two of Her Majesties Ministers, but the results evidently don’t bear repeating. And speaking of poll results, the tally shown below from Ric Werme (who has all the data) bears all the hallmarks of a typical climate science graph–namely there are suspicious discontinuities, gravity defying changes in trends, and we all suspect some “adjustment” of the data. True to form, an FOI has been put in…
Proveit poll, Thanks to Ric Werme
Watts Up had a post on the slipshod nature of the poll security which pretty much seems to have let anything go.
The Science Museum’s director says they will be neutral, which appears to be laudable, but he also says:
“The climate science community, by and large, has concluded that humans have intervened in the system in a way that will lead to climate change. But that is their story. It’s not our story, so that can’t be our conclusion. If we take sides we will alienate some of the people who want to be part of the discussion.
Obviously he still believes carbon is a problem, and his real concern is not about getting the science right, but about alienating people.
It appears the Science Museum has realized they will be mocked if they don’t change their highly politicized position. They can hardly appear to be an impartial museum after all, if 30% of the taxpayers who fund them outright disagree with their pat conclusions. The taxpayers might revolt. (Oh look, I think they did.)
The only thing I’m sure of, is that the new version of Climate Science will be more subtle that the old one.