Academic Reality?

So, as you're aware, I try as much as I can to read what folk I don't agree with are saying. I read from the fringes of the academic debate quite often it seems - certainly from the right-hand side of the fringe in libertarians, and also the left-hand side with quite a few liberal blogs. Anyhow, David Henderson in classic fringe rant style posts this on "academic reality". If you read it, yes you have understood it correctly: A kid, not yet even started at university, has been able to process all the nuances and details of a number of academic fields (chemistry, humanities, English, etc), and come to the conclusion they are all populated by some extreme liberal agenda. And Henderson thinks this is a "one gritty piece of academic reality", apparently.

The liberal agenda that apparently catches this poor student's eye is that chemists have apparently in the mainstream come to the conclusion that global warming is happening. Does the kid (and Henderson for that matter) discuss why she thinks this conclusion is wrong? Does she present some evidence to suggest that, actually, global warming is not happening, or whatever is happening has conclusively nothing at all to do with human activity?

Nope, she just states that this is bias. It's propaganda, it's an agenda. It's polluting kids in the US, and all over the world. Apparently.

Henderson trumpets the rant of a student who hasn't yet studied anything at university about things studied at university. I teach at university and I wouldn't claim to have even all the nuances of my own subject understood as yet, let alone all these other subjects. Yet this kid is qualified in the eyes of Henderson to pass judgement on what is happening at all US (and presumably worldwide) universities.

I guess the botton line is that this is just those on the fringes moaning that they are on the fringe. Throwing some trite "bias" accusations to the mainstream because the mainstream doesn't really care for what they have to say. Now knowing mainstream economics as I do, I don't thus claim the mainstream is right. But I do at least expect criticisms of it to be a little less rant-style than this. Particularly when it comes to something as important as global warming. Yet the level of the debate is that climate change deniers think it's a contribution to post the rant of a kid that doesn't even start to look at the evidence for or against it.

Personally, I like to read the accounts of those I know are able to process and understand the various literatures on this. I'm talking about Prof. Sir David F. Hendry, a man who produced the ideas for two Nobel Prizes that went to other people, a man whose empirical work is as transparent and faithful to the underlying realities he is trying to model as possible. He's written a paper on climate change, it's short (17 pages), and it certainly doesn't just cry that it's all some liberal thing. It engages with the evidence from many fields, and concludes that - shock horror - something does need to be done. Not necessarily what is being done, but something needs to be done. But people like Henderson would just dismiss it out of hand as "propaganda" or something.