Who "Peer Reviews" the Peer Reviewers?

Apparently only e-mail hackers.  Here’s an excerpt from Mark Steyn’s recent article “Cooking the Books on Climate.”

The trouble with outsourcing your marbles to the peer-reviewed set is that, if you take away one single thing from the leaked documents, it’s that the global warm-mongers have wholly corrupted the “peer-review” process. . . .Here’s what Phil Jones of the CRU and his colleague Michael Mann of Penn State mean by “peer review”. When Climate Research published a paper dissenting from the Jones-Mann “consensus,” Jones demanded that the journal “rid itself of this troublesome editor,” and Mann advised that “we have to stop considering Climate Research as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers.”

So much for Climate Research. When Geophysical Research Letters also showed signs of wandering off the “consensus” reservation, Dr. Tom Wigley (“one of the world’s foremost experts on climate change”) suggested they get the goods on its editor, Jim Saiers, and go to his bosses at the American Geophysical Union to “get him ousted.” When another pair of troublesome dissenters emerge, Dr. Jones assured Dr. Mann, “I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”

Which, in essence, is what they did. The more frantically they talked up “peer review” as the only legitimate basis for criticism, the more assiduously they turned the process into what James Lewis calls the Chicago machine politics of international science. The headline in the Wall Street Journal Europe is unimproveable: “How To Forge A Consensus.” Pressuring publishers, firing editors, blacklisting scientists: That’s “peer review,” climate-style. The more their echo chamber shriveled, the more Mann and Jones insisted that they and only they represent the “peer-reviewed” “consensus.” And gullible types like Ed Begley Jr. and Andrew Revkin of the New York Times fell for it hook, line and tree-ring.

I have a question:  If the evidence for global warming is so persuasive, why the deception, censorship and blacklisting?

This strikes me as the same kind of dishonesty that goes on in the question of biological origins.  To even suggest that intelligence might be behind biological systems is to get one censored, blacklisted or fired (just ask Dr. Richard Sternberg and see the documentary “Expelled” for confirmation).  Those who control the “reputable” peer-reviewed journals are the self-selecting gate keepers who rarely publish anything other than their own party line, and then complain that for any opposing view to be considered respectable it must make it into their journals!  That’s like saying to Jackie Robinson, “to be considered a great baseball player you must play in the major leagues,” but then denying him the opportunity to play in the major leagues.

This again shows that science doesn’t say anything– scientists do.  All data must be gathered and then interpreted which means that science is only as objective as the people who do it.  If the scientists are corrupt or allow their philosophical or personal biases to influence their conclusions, you get the kind of incorrect conclusions we see with global warming and biological origins.

I haven’t studied the global warming issue in depth.  So for those who believe that man-made carbon emissions are responsible for changing the climate (whether the climate is actually changing is also under dispute),  I have a question:  why did the climate change so drastically long before there were man-made carbon emissions?  It seems that if the climate today actually is changing (again, disputable), there’s probably a much more potent natural cause.  True?