That quote, from an Tom Bethell essay about the state of climate science, also applies to statements and studies used by the elite to push for health care reform... If a consensus for reform exists -- in the form that is currently approved by the NEJM, Health Affairs, the Kaiser Foundation, the Commonwealth Fund, Families USA, AARP, AMA, then the underlying statistics and studies must be right. RIght?
Lest one needs a refresher course in the demise of the UN clmate change report, let me point you to Andrew Neil's BBC blog.
The IPCC 2007 report claimed that global warming was leading to an increase in extreme weather, such as hurricanes and floods. Like its claims about the glaciers, this was also based on an unpublished report which had not been subject to scientific scrutiny -- indeed several experts warned the IPCC not to rely on it.
The author, who didn't actually finish his work until a year after the IPCC had used his research, has now repudiated what he sees has its misuse of his work.
His conclusion: "There is insufficient evidence to claim a statistical link between global warming and catastrophe loss."Yet it was because of this -- now unproved -- link that the British government signed up to a $100 billion transfer from rich to poor countries to help them cope with a supposed increase in floods and hurricanes.
It was also central to many of the calculations in Britain's Stern Report, which might now need to be substantially revised.
Now after Climate-gate, Glacier-gate and Hurricane-gate -- how many "gates" can one report contain? -- comes Amazon-gate. The IPCC claimed that up to 40% of the Amazonian forests were risk from global warming and would likely be replaced by "tropical savannas" if temperatures continued to rise.
This claim is backed up by a scientific-looking reference but on closer investigation turns out to be yet another non-peer reviewed piece of work from the WWF. Indeed the two authors are not even scientists or specialists on the Amazon: one is an Australian policy analyst, the other a freelance journalist for the Guardian and a green activist.
The WWF has yet to provide any scientific evidence that 40% of the Amazon is threatened by climate change -- as opposed to the relentless work of loggers and expansion of farms.
Every time I have questioned our politicians about global warming they have fallen back on the mantra that "2,500 scientists can't be wrong", referring to the vast numbers supposedly behind the IPCC consensus. http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/dailypolitics/andrewneil/2010/01/the_dam_is_cracking.html
That should sound familar (and you know who you are) to the self proclaimed healthcare experts who have shaped the consensus with factoids, overstatements and formulas for "bending the health cost curve" by simply eliminating care that actually makes patients sicker....
Most recent case in point. The resurrection of Obama's big lie, repeated by Senator Dodd and Cong. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz that uncompensated care is a $1000 tax on every American family...
First question: Will our taxes go down by $1000 under Obamacare? Will we have $1000 more to spend by 2016. Did CBO score that. I don't think so.
Second, here is the reality behind that mythical number, courtesy of AEI's Tom Miller:
[ An Urban Institute] study concluded that attributing increased private health insurance premiums to any expanded costs of treating the uninsured is a misperception; particularly when a net balance of only about $14.5 billion was arguably financed by the privately insured in the form of higher (cost-shifted) private payments for care and, ultimately, higher insurance premiums. Indeed, they estimated that the amount of uncompensated care potentially available for private cost-shifting is most likely even lower, at about $8 billion in 2008, which was less than 1 percent of private health insurance costs ($829.9 billion).
http://www.american.com/archive/2009/july/healthcare-dreams-healthcare-realities
The $1000 lie is just part of the patchwork of falsehoods stitched together to push through a government takeover of healthcare. It is hard to follow them all. But we will try.
