Which part of this Scientific paper did Government Advisors Not read or Understand? By Sherwood B. Idso and Craig D. Idso

If there is any human enterprise that should be free of appeal to authority, it is science, where observation and impartial analysis are supposed to reign supreme. However, when the outcome of an ongoing scientific investigation is perceived to be a powerful catalyst for governmental action by the world’s community of nations, and when the leading policy prescription for those actions is something akin to a massive restructuring of the way the energy that runs the modern world is produced, distributed and used - and especially if the policy is developed before all pertinent data have been acquired and properly analyzed - this principle can easily be forgotten. In such circumstances, and even more so if the subject being studied is extremely complex - such as how human activity will impact global climate centuries into the future - and when a divergence of views develops because of ambiguities in the observations and different methods of analysis, it is important that personal opinion be clearly differentiated from demonstrable fact. Sadly, however, this distinction is hard to make on a consistent basis, even for some of the very best of the world’s scientists.

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