From an editorial from nature.com, and published in the journal, they seem to think the d-word is proper vernacular.
Volume: 467, Page: 133 Date published: (09 September 2010) DOI: doi:10.1038/467133a
The anti-science strain pervading the right wing in the United States is the last thing the country needs in a time of economic challenge.
…
There is a growing anti-science streak on the American right that could have tangible societal and political impacts on many fronts — including regulation of environmental and other issues and stem-cell research.
…
The right-wing populism that is flourishing in the current climate of economic insecurity echoes many traditional conservative themes, such as opposition to taxes, regulation and immigration. But the Tea Party and its cheerleaders, who include Limbaugh, Fox News television host Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin (who famously decried fruitfly research as a waste of public money), are also tapping an age-old US political impulse — a suspicion of elites and expertise.
Denialism over global warming has become a scientific cause célèbre within the movement. Limbaugh, for instance, who has told his listeners that “science has become a home for displaced socialists and communists”, has called climate-change science “the biggest scam in the history of the world”. The Tea Party’s leanings encompass religious opposition to Darwinian evolution and to stem-cell and embryo research — which Beck has equated with eugenics. The movement is also averse to science-based regulation, which it sees as an excuse for intrusive government. Under the administration of George W. Bush, science in policy had already taken knocks from both neglect and ideology. Yet President Barack Obama’s promise to “restore science to its rightful place” seems to have linked science to liberal politics, making it even more of a target of the right.
==========================================
They say in a sidebar that: “The country’s future crucially depends on education, science and technology.”
I don’t disagree, but we also need to separate science from the global warming ideology that has hijacked it. The current backlash they speak of has in fact been brought about in part by allowing this to happen. I’ll point out though that the sort of idealogy we see in the global warming movement doesn’t seem to pervade other sciences, at least until somebody demands that one of the science organizations embraces or endorses the cause. That’s when the dissent starts. For example:
American Physical Society rejects climate policy plea from 160 physicists
Dissenting members ask APS to put their policy statement on ice due to Climategate
Witness Nature using the word denialism, born of the politically nurtured global warming ideology. If Nature’s editorial staff was not indoctrinated to at least some of that ideology, I wager they’d have used a different word. And they wonder why there is dissent while at the same time they use the word to insult people. I encourage subscribers to call them to task on this use of the word.
h/t to Dr. Leif Svalgaard
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What irks me is why leave the “Anthropogenic” out of their use of “Global Warminig” or “Climate Change” – that’s a weasel move and we should never let them get away with it, and never let everyone else forget that the “human-caused” goes in front of “global warming” and “climate change” when warmists are spouting off their religeous rants about it.
Wow… disappointing.
I guess guys Professor Richard Lindzen & Professor Willie Soon are anti-science now. Funny how when the political left nay say technical innovations like SDI nobody runs around and calls them anti-engineering. Anyway this article may just as well been made to order for the DNC if it wasn’t.
“The movement is also averse to science-based regulation, which it sees as an excuse for intrusive government.”
I will use this article the next time a true believer argues that “science is not political!” And that these so called scientists are only following what the data shows. That argument is dead now. Hopefully the backlash wont be too severe, and what they hysterically claim is just another gross exaggeration.
Opposition to EMBRYONIC stem cell research being FUNDED by govt has nothing to do with science and everything to do with ethics and morality. I for one find science devoid of these two characteristics frightening in the extreme…it is what has led in the past to eugenics and concentration camp experimental horrors. Belief that if you support destruction of human embryos to do stem cell research you’re pro-science is complete BS. It’s an ideologically driven, holier than thou (or other inferiors) that ignores both science for a fairy tale (if we just do this the lame will walk!) and the fact that it’s legal for commercial interests to fund such research (and companies are doing it). It’s also part and parcel of an ideology that worships government and believes nothing can or will happen if it’s not dictated by the State.
AGW is not concerned with “science” but again with ideology and control, hence the complete ignoring of serious problems and issues with the “science” in favor of blind, mindless obedience to the ideology and dogma of the cargo cult.
Nature has devolved into a caricature of itself.
I am sceptical of AGW’s wild claims and I am not right wing. For me it is not about right and left but about getting to the truth.
For some balance in relation to the Nature propaganda here are some left-leaning climate dissenters:
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressRoom.Speeches&ContentRecord_id=B87E3AAD-802A-23AD-4FC0-8E02C7BB8284
So according to Nature if I disagree with the methods, statistics, assumptions, and conclusions of the AGW “scientists” I am automatically a gun clinging, right-wing, bible thumping, redneck. Hmmm. Sounds a bit judgmental to me. Especially, since I’m not religious in any sense of the word. Although I do enjoy the shooting sports, and have a fairly significant background in Engineering with emphasis on statistical analysis and design of experiment. Politically, I’d call myself an Independent, with leanings toward that “piece of paper” called the Constitution of the United States of America (which I took an oath to defend “against all enemies foreign and domestic”, and spent quite a few years and some blood doing exactly that).
Their article is political. It is not about science but only about their dogma.
Nature:
They have everything upside-down, accusing others of their own sins. WUWT is the upholder of real science, where they are blind contributors to the current poisoned atmosphere. Even the reply thread shows a remarkable paucity of good scientists (only 1): much of the MSM are currently doing better; Monbiot would improve if he studied his own comments threads (where not censored).
Henry chance, sadly you are correct. Nature is devolving from an scientific magazine into a political screed.
Weird editorial for a magazine like Nature; I wonder who wrote it. It seems very Joe-Romm-esque. Frankly, I agree with almost all of what it says (oh yes, sorry, I’m an AGW proponent) but I felt very uncomfortable reading that in perhaps the top scientific journal in the world. That kind of vernacular should stay in the blogosphere.
Does Nature always have anonymous editorials putting across a certain point of view? And do these editorials speak for the entire journal? (I don’t subscribe to Nature so I wouldn’t know how it works…)
We all know the earth is flat. Don’t be denier and sail a ship off the edge of the earth. We all know whats best for you, so we will not fund your ships to sail! You just need to properly educated in real scientific thought and put away your childish ideas.
This romp from Nature magazine is not surprising.
It is clear that Climate Change is being used as a wedge-weapon to turn scientists upon each other, and to bring political pressure to bear upon Science in general. Bring on the November Pink Slip lottery.
Anthony, you had it exactly right when you say:
“I don’t disagree, but we also need to separate science from the global warming ideology that has hijacked it. The current backlash they speak of has in fact been brought about in part by allowing this to happen.”
I’ve told friends that when the IPCC makes so many obvious errors (Himalayagate, North African 50% drop in crops by 2020 gate, etc.) that all go in the same direction, when they invent a hockey stick, when they prevent publication of papers they don’t like, it encourages those who believe in non-science such as creationism, those who want to deny evolution. If those folks gain strength, it will be harder to maintain our leadership in biotech, one of the few growth areas in our economy. I wouldn’t want our scientists going abroad because the pastures get greener. And I want our kids to learn real science. Partly so they won’t be bamboozled by the next IPCC, but also because good science is so engaging, and so important.
So you are so right: separate good science from the IPCC bandwagon, for the sake of science itself.
Anti-science is synonymous of science that does not condone the alarmist AGW views. Nature and its editorial bias and activism keeps lowering its scientific credibility.
“the defenders of science have few easy remedies”
They could debate “deniers”.
And lose.
It would be easy.
Nature is scared because a lot of people aren’t volunteering to be spoon-fed anymore. Tapping into a suspicion of elites and expertise? You bet, because those very elites and experts have failed to demonstrate their way works better than the alternatives. I think you can make a compelling case it has gone significantly downhill instead.
I listen to Rush and don’t remember the quote in the article, but he has opined that the environmental movement is the new home of the Communist party and you’d have a hard time proving him wrong on that one. I’m probably a poster child for the type of individual they are insulting in the article, i.e. a conservative, rural midwestern Christian (even worse, a Catholic). Oddly enough I’ve never found my political and religious views to interfere with the process of scientific discovery. I have had issues with being called anti-science because I didn’t swallow some of the pet theories being shoved down my throat.
They wouldn’t have written the article if they weren’t worried.
” I encourage subscribers to call them to task on this use of the word.”
Would if I still did.
Last gasp desperation on the part of that editorial board.
To pretend that AGW is not a settled science, and to pretend that skeptics are deniers, is simply dishonest.
To skip over the inconvenient part of stem cells and to dishonestly characterize the concerns- as well as to deny the problems- embryonic stem cells, is cynical and dishonest.
To assert that only right wing nuts resist the policies they call for is clever, but ignorantly childish.
Nature is joining the rest of the imploding media that flatters themselves that by clever lies and artful deceit they can impose their will on the larger public square.
They will fail as well.
Americans, by and large, have a healthy respect for science.
But only lately are they able to identify science from snake oil.
God bless Al Gore for inventing the internet.
Gee, my guess would be editorials like this one turning people off………
Does the word fanatic ring a bell?
Did NewsWeek really sell for $1?
Nature only shows why they are losing credibility be pretending that there is no legitimate reason for skepticism for catastrophic global warming, as well as their pathetic attempt to pretend there is no difference between embryonic stem cell research and stem cell research in general.
Their predicable derivative position that skepticism and clarity on these and other science issues is a sign of evil right wing double ungood thinking is only demonstrating how shallow and ignorant the writers at Nature actually are.
I fear the backlash these dopes are earning environmentalism. They seem incapable of simply growing up.
Ordinarily people have their youthful idealism tempered by pragmatism, which has led to quotes such as Winston Churchill’s, “Anyone who isn’t a liberal when they are twenty has no heart; anyone who isn’t conservative at age fifty has no brain,” and Mark Twain’s, “When I was eighteen my father was a fool; now I am forty and it’s amazing how much he’s learned.”
This gradual maturity shows up in the lives of composers as improvements in their music. Even an individual oppressed, such as Beethoven was by deafness, shows a greatness of greater and greater clarity, which we notice in the comparison between Beethoven’s first symphony and his ninth.
However some modern environmentalists had a brilliant thought or two back in 1969, but haven’t had one since, it seems. It is as if Beethoven’s ninth symphony sounded no different from his first. They seem stuck, and seemingly feel frustrated by being stuck, and therefore turn to crude politics in an attempt to force changes which they cannot effect using a mature mind’s ability to reason and persuade.
Remembering how brilliant these fellows were back in 1969, I wonder why it is they never grew up. Could it have anything to do with what they smoked, and in some cases still smoke? I can see no other reason for minds being so stubbornly stuck in a rut.
well i consider myself extremely liberal and this article simply offends me.
as soon as i get time i plan to pen an LTE to these guys
this piece lays bare the machinations of the marketing/PR/propaganda machine…
Divide et Empere
Tragic that science has been so badly hijacked that the null hypothesis is now that AGW predictions are 100% correct and the idea that there may be some flaws in AGW modelling is being treated as something wild and whacky akin to alchemy.
My colleagues and I organized the APS petition referenced in the link provided above. This was followed by a petition by 266 physicists asking that the Society undertake an independent scientific study and assessment. The signatories included about 100 Fellows of major scientific societies (almost all APS), 17 members of national academies, and two Nobel laureates. A number have published major research on the global warming issue, authored books on the issue, or worked in contiguous areas of meteorology and climate. Nearly all have backgrounds in key science areas that underlie the global warming issue.
It is unreasonable and insulting to characterize these physicists as “deniers” or “tools of the right wing.” By doing so and by continuing to deny the legitimacy of a large body of scientific work critical of large AGW, Nature continues the slide that has eroded its scientific integrity and contributed to the decline of public trust invested in science and scientists. This decline will continue unless and until there is a recognition that scientific debate must proceed, unencumbered by advocacy and accusations of political interests.
So when is Anthony going to add Nature magazine to the list of Pro AGW View Website on the right hand side of the page?
It’s not that other sciences haven’t been hijacked, it’s just that they don’t have the leverage to be used for gaining political power. Remember the scarcity/overpopulation horror stories that were being used for similar purposes? They weren’t gaining the traction that they wanted because of the green revolution/birth control, so they’ve switched to climate. If climate fails them, they’ll try something else.
Nature still has subscribers, at least enough to notice?
Do James Hansen, Gavin Schmidt et al hold “Defend Science from the Deniers!” subscription drives for Nature‘s benefit?
(“In kind” reciprocal support agreements, or anything resembling kickbacks, are not being implied by this comment. They are not being ruled out either, especially an informal “you scratch my back” arrangement.)
I am far from a right-wing religious, anti abortion, anti gay, anti stem cell research person (I am pro-choice, all for stem cell research, and believe in the sanctity of love in all its many colors). I am fiscally conservative, yes, in spades, and I am ALSO about as close to a science nut as you can get. Religion, to me, is completely outside the realm of science. I guess in a nutshell, I believe in the null hypothesis till proven otherwise.
Jimbo,CuriousGeorge, I hardly fit the stereotype either.
I’m sure I’m considered a beyond the pale liberal/lefty atheist by some – though not by many outside of the US.
I have no problems with stem cell research, think that creationism is bogus and the American right wing cheerleaders make my skin crawl.
The evidence also leads me to think that dangerous AGW is something propagated by the mad, bad and deluded, whatever their politics.
Incidentally, in Europe, it’s by no means as clear a left/right split. The right are almost as taken in as the left.
The editors of Nature or any other publication have every right to express themselves. Like may of us who take that license seriously they have the same right to be in error. I do take some exception when anyone: right, left, or in the middle, confuse science with faith, politics and ideology.
“The movement is also averse to science-based regulation, which it sees as an excuse for intrusive government.”
Darn right it is an excuse for intrusive government and after seeing the first example of International ” Science-based regulation” applied in the USA, I hope I am long dead before they try any of it ever again.
Keep these references handy so the next time someone accuses a “denier” of being “averse to science-based regulation” you can give them a real life example of “science-based regulation” in action…. That is if they don’t have to make a run for the loo because of another bout with food poisoning…..
” Science-based regulation” is what they called the “new international” 1996 HACCP regulations that replaced the old US regs producing the “safest food in the world.” HACCP regs, by turning over lab testing to corporations, allows US and international corporations to poison people. Then when the HACCP regs caused a major increase in food poisoning it is now being used as an excuse for the government to regulate farms by blaming farmers for the real problem, contamination problems in the factories. The Festering Fraud Behind Food Safety Reform
As with CAGW, it all goes back to globalization:
“…This latter option was chosen by the negotiators of the WTO Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (SPS Agreement) in the Uruguay Round. The agreement was negotiated to provide a set of multilateral rules…
(2) use scientific risk assessment to inform regulatory decisions (science-based risk management)…. Adoption of international standards (multilateral harmonization) is encouraged…
Science-based risk management (Articles 2 and 5): SPS measures must be based upon scientific principles and sufficient scientific evidence; more particularly, measures must be based on a risk assessment. Measures should be chosen so as to minimize distortions to trade and must be no more trade restrictive than necessary to achieve a country’s “appropriate level of protection.”….” Regionalizing the Rules for Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures
The same guy who is trying to shove Cap and Trade down our throats wants to also strangle US farmers in red tape, poison and bulldoze our farm ponds, removing vegetation buffers near field crops and place fences and poison baits in wildlife corridors. All so the mega corporations can pass the blame on to farmers if there are food borne illnesses.
“I’ll point out though that the sort of idealogy we see in the global warming movement doesn’t seem to pervade other sciences . . .”
Except one particular branch, which shall remain unnamed for readers to discern on their own . . .
“Limbaugh, for instance, who has told his listeners that ‘science has become a home for displaced socialists and communists’, has called climate-change science ‘the biggest scam in the history of the world’”.
I think that Rush Limbaugh is exaggerating. Yes, I agree that climate-change ‘science’ is a scam. But the biggest ever?
How about the 1949 Nobel Prize in Medicine? Egas Moniz, a Portuguese physician, became a Nobel laureate for his pioneering work on lobotomies. Thanks to the Nobel imprimatur, lobotomies became more frequent in the early 1950s, before the advent of relatively effective anti-psychotic drugs, like Thorazine.
The big irony here is that the Universal Declaration on Human Rights came out in 1948, the year before the Lobotomy Nobel, and in response to revelations about the monstrous medical ‘experiments’ and other atrocities conducted by the Japanese and by the Nazis during World War II. Bodily integrity is a fundamental human right. And schizophrenics are usually *not* able to give informed consent. The Nobel Committee screwed up big-time. What on Earth were those nice Swedes thinking?
The 1949 Lobotomy Nobel, and more recently, CAGW, are not unique in the history of science. They are two egregious examples of mainstream junk science. There are other smaller examples as well. And when I use the expression ‘mainstream junk science’, I’m *not* talking about garden-variety stupidity, or about sloppy lab technique.
Nature has gone the same way as many enviromental groups and in my view ended up doing more damage to themselves than anything else. So may enviromentalists automatically assume if you don’t believe in AGW you are anti ALL environmental issues. As a result they just alienate more people. I’m totally opposed to the AGW theory but I am certainly not against many other environmental issues.
Similarly Nature’s reputation among the science community cannot be a strong today as it once was. With the advent of more online Journals with more rapid review and publication methods they may live to regret their political stance
Nature Magazine’s doltish Cargo Cultists are best described by Lewis Carroll in the ninth verse of his “Mad Gardener’s Song” from Sylvie and Bruno (1889):
“He thought he saw an Argument
That proved he was the Pope.
He looked again, and found it was
A Bar of Mottled Soap.
‘A fact so dread,’ he faintly said,
‘Extinguishes all hope.’ ”
Let’s just say that Warmist theses so beloved of Nature Magazine’s besotted acolytes
“won’t wash,” no matter how much Mottled Soap they slather on. Dread facts, my little friends, extinguish all your hopes. And where will propagandists’ grants be then, poor things?
Lucy Skywalker says:
September 9, 2010 at 5:34 pm
In psychiatry this behavior is called psychological projection. This is when one sees in another the traits that they themselves possess and are in denial about. As some “right-wing” (meaning normal) pundits have said correctly, the left-wing elitists are mentally ill. Some really sick puppies now control the formerly considerable publication, Nature.
By the way, as a research scientist, I was a subscriber to that publication for over 20 years, but two years ago cancelled. Nature’s downward spiral was inevitable for some time, because of “buddy-reviewed” submissions by story-tellers all with the same story to tell.
The right-wing fanatic gun-toter and Bible-thumper [sarc] Dwight D. Eisenhower recognized this as one of the major threats facing America (yea, the world) in his farewell address at Dartmouth in 1957!:
“The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present – and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”
Jimbo says:
September 9, 2010 at 5:26 pm
For me it is not about right and left but about getting to the truth.
===============================
Exactly. And nature (not the magazine) will eventually weed out all of the impostors.
Science, philosophy, and religion intersect in one fashion, though, each in its own way: the search for truth.
They diverge (or CONverge, as the case may be today) when they resort to dogma and propaganda (on either”side”).
For a major, premier science magazine to publish a nazi-esque term like “denialism”…is not only dogma…it is propaganda.
The New Inquisition has arrived.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
I have always been “pro-science” in that science and the scientific method has always been my first love.
The fact that I choose to enforce the scientific method in this field of science now makes me “anti-science”.
Strange development it seems to me. Strange enough that we should be labelling the pro-AGW side as “anti-science” instead.
Roger Cohen says:
September 9, 2010 at 6:27 pm
My colleagues and I organized the APS petition…..
_____________________________________________
Roger Cohen, a heart felt thank you to you and your colleagues for that petition and for your courage in taking a stand against cargo cult science.
“There is a growing anti-science streak on the American right that could have tangible societal and political impacts on many fronts — including regulation of environmental and other issues and stem-cell research.”
Interesting, the Administration has lost a court case (subject to appeal) on the legality of Embrionic Stem Cell research. I wonder if the article recognizes that there are Laws in the US?
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-09-07/stem-cell-funding-ban-upheld-during-u-s-government-s-appeal-judge-rules.html
“The Obama administration can’t continue to fund embryonic stem-cell research while appealing a ban on government support for any activity using cells taken from human embryos, a federal judge ruled.
“U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth in Washington today rejected the government’s motion to reconsider his ruling last month enforcing the ban pending an appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington. The Justice Department argued that Lamberth’s injunction itself is causing irreparable harm to researchers, taxpayers and scientific progress.”
Since when is skepticism unscientific? I thought it was the foundation of science.
I am a warmist liberal who enjoys reading this at times zany blog. I do like Anthony’s choice and wide range of topics considered here. I don’t particularly like the badmouthing of climate scientists who do exacting and elegant experimental work.
By this point in the climate debate, the real question is: Who is really in denial here? Is it the skeptics who just want transparent, experimentally reproducible science shared? Or is it the emergent climate academic/industrial complex that want to hide data and methods, who ignore climategate, who don’t scrutinize IPCC results or citations and still defend Mann and Phil Jones and other work which has been discredited but still forms the basis of their argument?
Will the real Deniers please stand up?
There is one scam much bigger than the AWG fiasco.
This has made science into a joke of fictional proportions with suppressing science very early and creating the corrupted science we have today based mostly on theories.
This article isn’t political, it’s all about money. If conservatives get power and slash Federal spending, a lot of scientists might hit the bricks. Personally, I think the way Federal funding is disseminated needs to be re-worked. I would be for giving money ear-marked for scientific research to the States and let them decide who gets the money; in the US of course. I would also be for cutting the total amount. Hopefully, it wouldn’t be p*ss*d away like some is now.
As a scientist, politics had almost nothing to do with me becoming an AGW skeptic except that when I saw G.W. Bush jump on the global warming bandwagon I decided to do more investigation myself.
Of course, some of my previous beliefs were proven wrong. I used to accept the belief of AGW and I never thought we would have a President as bad as Bush.
“I don’t particularly like the badmouthing of climate scientists who do exacting and elegant experimental work.”
I don’t think I’ve seen such a person badmouthed here. That description hardly fits the majority of the consensus peddling groupthink following “scientists” who are at the forefront of AGW.
BTW, computer models are not “experiments” let alone elegant ones.
I rather enjoy watching the truly anti-science AGW elite (sorry – Its MMCC now isn’t it) self immolate over the impending demise of their pseudo-religion.
It scares me greatly that they still have control over science’s governing bodies and many of the world’s governments (including my own), but their panic over their dwindling powers of persuasion and loss of the public’s trust is fun to watch.
Nature that once proud, but now tarnished bastion of science, ignoring their own role and culpability!! Now attempting to “frame the debate” and “hide the decline” bought on by their own political spin to present a distorted rather than true unbiased science to the world.
When you can’t justify the unjustifiable, attack the reasonable voices, in the hope that they won’t be listened too above the violence of your attack! i.e. Ignore the message try and kill or discredit the messenger, very unscientific.
Got news for them, it won’t work out in their long term favour, as its just an extension of the typical responses we have copped for the last five years. Those past objectional (rather than scientific) responses have been at the heart of the critical change around in this whole debate. (and thanks to some probing questions, and the work of those scientists blessed with inquiring minds!!)
Nature – Dead set losers IMHO if they think that will work!
R. Shearer says:
September 9, 2010 at 7:26 pm
As a scientist, politics had almost nothing to do with me becoming an AGW skeptic except that when I saw G.W. Bush jump on the global warming bandwagon I decided to do more investigation myself.
It was all part of our evil conservative plan. It’s called reverse psychology.
It is emblematic of the sloppy thinking in this editorial that opposition to embryonic stem-cell research is labeled as “anti-science”. (And I say this as someone who favors embryonic stem-cell research.) The vast majority of the opponents aren’t arguing that no useful treatments could come of this research; rather, they view it as immoral even if it could.
I could easily come up with all sorts of research projects that would produce useful scientific knowledge, but would horrify those on the left. (Are the people horrified by the study of Tuskegee inmates with syphilis “anti-science”? We learned lots from that study.)
Never has President Eisenhowers famous military-industrial complex speech become more relevant:
“Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.
“In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
“Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
“The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.
“Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific technological elite.”
Larry Fields@September 9, 2010 at 6:50 pm
No, he’s not.
The ‘Green’ Party in West Germany was funded and directed by the KGB for the EXPRESS purpose of politically forcing US nuclear weapons out of said country. This is NOT a debatable fact; the KGB archives have said as much. After that issue became a moot point (via various treaties), did the Greens go away? No. They then set their sights on nuclear (and political) power, and have been quite successful in their goals. And there are sister parties in every major western nation.
Who’s the other Grand Champion of the Environment? Gorbachev, comfortably snug in SanFran.
And what do enviros demand?
Collective action. Collective planning. State control. The subjugation of individual lifestyles to needs of the many and the betterment of the planet. The suppression of dissent, and punishment of ‘unbelievers’.
I think I’ve heard this tune before.
If looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and walks like a duck . . . it’s probably a duck.
As to your other point, yeah, I’d say that particular Nobel Prize was a bad call.
It was a sign of the times: once upon a time, all the ‘smart people’ thought Margaret Sanger was the ‘cats meow’. Here’s a quote:
“Organized charity is itself the symptom of a malignant social disease. Those vast complex, interrelated organizations aiming to control and to diminish the spread of misery and destitution and all the menacing evils that spring out of this sinisterly fertile soil, are the surest sign that our civilization has bred, is breeding and is perpetuating constantly increasing numbers of defectives, delinquents and dependents. My criticism therefore, is not directed at the ‘failure’ of philanthropy, but rather at its success” – Margaret Sanger, The Pivot of Civilization [NY: Brentano’s, 1922], p. 108).
There were MANY dubious ideas being tossed about in the early-mid twentieth century.
Owen says:
September 9, 2010 at 7:11 pm
“… elegant experimental work.”
I must have missed that.
We applaud their determination to do the right thing and stand up and be counted. Don’t know why they didn’t before, but, me feels these guys represent the tip of the ice berg. You have to add in almost all Geologists who feel AGW is bunk……and….epidemiologists who didn’t buy the migrating Malaria BS……
I personally agree with the comments about the Nature editorial being overtly political. It is the mostly the political/environmental left that is eager to question the science of conventional farming, GMO’s, chlorination of water, not to mention basic biology like how to determine if something is alive or not. For them, whether an embryo is alive is a philosophical/legal question. Whether something should be afforded legal protection is a philosophical/legal question, the biology is absolutely straightforward. Because the majority of reporters are not centrist or conservative they assign blame towards conservatives for a so-called war on science. My personal conclusion is that conservatives are suspicious of science and scientific policies advocated by governments and international entities, while liberal environmentalists have a distrust of manmade or corporate science and technologies. As a conservative and an agricultural scientist, I am constantly exposed to misinformation and fear mongering promoted by mostly left wing environmental groups. I just keep hoping I’m not exactly like them in my distrust of AGW claims.
Also thanks to Watts up with That and all your contributors and commentators for a great science-based site that has many respectful and thoughtful comments.
A minor correction to bubbagyro, September 9, 2010 at 7:02 pm.
Eisenhower gave his farewell speech in 1961 from the Oval Office, not in 1957 at Dartmouth.
The rise of federal funding of science during and after WWII contributed to the creation of the scientific-technological elite. Once created, the government began to rely on this elite to make decisions concerning public policy.
The Nature editors are concerned that their influence is being curtailed by the “right wing” yet they should look in the mirror for the real reason that the public is wary of some of the science. When scientific journal editors are advocating public policy, they become politicians not scientists. The public has a right to be wary.
I am a politician who used to be a scientist so I think I know the difference.
I finally got my hands on “The Hockey Stick Illusion” and can hardly put it down. It has told me all I need to know about the integrity of the folks who run “Nature”. This editorial tells me more than I need to know. Pathetic vindictive self aggrandizing bullies.
“First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you- then you win”
Natures editorial sounds like fighting words to me.
Where do we assemble for the victory parade?
bubbagyro says:
September 9, 2010 at 7:02 pm
Lucy Skywalker says:
September 9, 2010 at 5:34 pm
Well said. That’s a double bingo! The shame of Nature is beyond belief. They seem to want the great unwashed masses to bow down and worship their caricature of science and scientists. No thanks.
how does Nature explain the millions of CAGW sceptics who fit none of the editorial’s descriptives? people such as myself, for instance.
why won’t Nature and the rest of the MSM use the words “CATASTROPHIC ANTHROPOGENIC GLOBAL WARMING” to argue their case? better still, why won’t the MSM use the words “CATASTROPHIC ANTHROPOGENIC GLOBAL WARMING REQUIRING CAPPING, TRADING, OFFSETTING, UPSETTING AND/OR TAXING CARBON DIOXIDE” to argue their case?
why won’t Nature and the MSM stop saying sceptics DENY climate change, when every human being KNOWS the climate changes?
anthony –
maybe it’s time for WUWT to solicit examples from readers for a piece –
“CAGW hypothesizers undone: In their own words”
there are so many great examples available which we could then print out and circulate.
Jim has it EXACTLY right…
Jim says:
September 9, 2010 at 7:17 pm
This article isn’t political, it’s all about money. If conservatives get power and slash Federal spending, a lot of scientists might hit the bricks. Personally, I think the way Federal funding is disseminated needs to be re-worked. I would be for giving money ear-marked for scientific research to the States and let them decide who gets the money; in the US of course. I would also be for cutting the total amount. Hopefully, it wouldn’t be p*ss*d away like some is now.
—
This screed by Nature is all about the gobs of Climate Ca$h that these clowns stand to lose if real budget cutters get elected this fall in the US (I’ll be working hard for that goal). My hope is that we can defund the crap science, which we CANNOT AFFORD ANYMORE! Why, for example, do we need a National Climate Service? Why do we need ten expensive government-funded groups creating climate codes that don’t work (or aren’t properly validated and documented)? There is so much needless waste. If people think their research is valuable, perhaps they can get private industry or rich individuals (like Al Gore and George Soros) to fund them. I mean if the Catlin Group can fund arctic exploration, they can fund GCMs…
There is nothing “anti-science” about acknowledging that the government science gravy train must come to an end because we are trillions of dollars in debt!
They say in a sidebar that: “The country’s future crucially depends on education, science and technology.”
They also say it right in the editorial:
[snip]
Don’t worry, global warming skeptics can just tune out all the journals and magazines and TV channels and websites and books and scientists and scientific organizations and scientific data that they don’t like. I hear the Arctic sea ice recovered splendidly this summer – those corrupt, deceitful scientists don’t know what they’re talking about.
Billionaire Rush Hudson Limbaugh III, and the Koch brothers, are never wrong.
REPLY: Ya know, “geronimo” I get rather upset when people accuse me of “missing” things when they themselves don’t understand what’s going on here, especially when you play the roll of anonymous troll. You see there’s a thing called copyright and fair use. Fair use says I can copy a few paragraphs and provide a link, but not the whole article. Your complaint (and subsequent copying of more of the article) therefore is denied.
Read the policy page about changing handles. – Anthony
OT Peer Review, Reviewed. Found Lacking.
Just a small number of bad referees can significantly undermine the ability of the peer-review system to select the best scientific papers. That is according to a pair of complex systems researchers in Austria who have modelled an academic publishing system and showed that human foibles can have a dramatic effect on the quality of published science.
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/43691
Basically they are saying if anyone disagrees with us they must be right wing nut jobs.
The truth is the computer models at University of East Anglia in Britain were poorly written and I suspect written backwards to prove their beliefs. Now that they have been discovered their last refuge is to call those who disagree with them nuts -jobs.
The Climate Change Industry is DOA. There will be no Cap & Trade legislation and their golden goose has been cooked, by themselves.
Eric Anderson says:
September 9, 2010 at 6:47 pm
Eric, you are too right (no pun intended) – CAGW climatology is not the only ‘science’ that is this ideological…
What an appalling, nasty, bigoted editorial. I guess if you can’t address the science, just start labelling people instead.
I think I made a convert yesterday – all I had to do was to point out to a grad student (arts, not science) who was going to make money from the fight against global warming (he had just finished cursing Big Oil for ‘leaking’ the Climategate papers just before Copenhagen). As I said over a year ago, the way to defeat this is to paint CAGW as a corporate, right-wing conspiracy designed to put more money into the pockets of the oil companies and other interest groups.
‘Nature’ is afraid to see where science funding is going to go as this sham weakens a nice scientific nest egg. That reminds me – big science funding has also historically been from right wing (i.e. defense and corporate) sources. Once upon a time the suspicion of science and undermining of funding of same came from the left wing. I suspect that at heart this suspicion on the part of the left is still there, and that many on the left found themselves in support of ‘science’ only when it could be used as a nice tool with which to bash western and capitalist civilization, and in the case of some of the other ‘science’ the right wing opposition to which ‘Nature’ is harping – i.e. embryonic stem cell research – its moral underpinnings. I once got accused by a student of imposing ‘moral correctness’ for decrying the use of prisoners in horrifying experiments in the Nazi Death Camps. I was too stunned to think of an appropriate response 🙁
…we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific technological elite…
And really, in the end, that is exactly why the public feels that we should have some sort of say in all of this. Isn’t it? It is all about having our rights as Americans to eat eggs even though they are
unhealthy healthy unhealthyhealthy. Because science, once discovered, remains settled, and should never be exposed to moral questions, since they are outside the realm of science.When the climate science community is skeptical about catastrophic global warming in PRIVATE, why not everyone?
Here is what they say in PRIVATE:
1) “Be awkward if we went through a early 1940s type swing!”
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=927&filename=1225026120.txt
2) “I think we have been too readily explaining the slow changes over past decade as a result of variability–that explanation is wearing thin.”
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=947&filename=1231166089.txt
3) “The scientific community would come down on me in no uncertain terms if I said the world had cooled from 1998. OK it has but it is only 7 years of data and it isn’t statistically significant.” [This statement was made 5-years ago and the global warming rate still is zero]
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=544&filename=1120593115.txt
4) “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.”
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=1048&filename=1255352257.txt
5) “I know there is pressure to present a nice tidy story as regards ‘apparent unprecedented warming in a thousand years or more in the proxy data’ but in reality the situation is not quite so simple.”
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=138&filename=938031546.txt
6) “IPCC is not any more an assessment of published science (which is its proclaimed goal) but production of results”
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=186&filename=968705882.txt
If the climate science community itself is allowed to be skeptical about man made global warming in private, why can not everyone in PUBLIC?
I should have set my last sentence apart as sarcastic for clarity.
Tom says: September 9, 2010 at 5:40 pm — “Weird editorial for a magazine like Nature; I wonder who wrote it.”
I’m wondering too. How would one go about rebutting it? The writer(s) took a rather ignorant stance, or perhaps, a deliberate and politically motivated rant to obfuscate the facts and mislead the reader. How could anyone writing for such an august journal completely avoid the tremendous amount of data and analysis regarding the Holocene Interglacial warmth thousands of years ago or the more recent Medieval Warm Period?
The irony here is science is supposed to be about skeptical thinking vs. dogmatic thinking. The group that is truly anti-science are the non-skeptics because they are so dogmatic.
I am a scientist.
I am skeptical.
And I am damn proud of it!
Doug in Seattle says:
September 9, 2010 at 7:28 pm
I rather enjoy watching the truly anti-science AGW elite (sorry – Its MMCC now isn’t it) self immolate over the impending demise of their pseudo-religion.
It scares me greatly that they still have control over science’s governing bodies and many of the world’s governments (including my own), but their panic over their dwindling powers of persuasion and loss of the public’s trust is fun to watch.
Hubris – they assumed that we were so stupid that we would not see through their lies.
On that fatal assumption rests their failure.
I don’t know about you, but it seems to me that they’re stuck in adolescences.
Girma says:
September 9, 2010 at 9:05 pm
Here is what they say in PRIVATE:
3) “The scientific community would come down on me in no uncertain terms if I said the world had cooled from 1998. OK it has but it is only 7 years of data and it isn’t statistically significant.”
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=544&filename=1120593115.txt”
This says it all really, doesn’t it?
vigilantfish says:
September 9, 2010 at 8:57 pm
Eric Anderson says:
September 9, 2010 at 6:47 pm
Eric, you are too right (no pun intended) – CAGW climatology is not the only ‘science’ that is this ideological…
Hmmm… Eugenics, pre-WWII, would give CAGW a good run for it’s money for being a very ideological driven “science”.
Hmmm… Eugenics like CAGW was beloved of the progressive elites as it provided a framework for increased control over individual lives.
After all, forced sterilisation is a very deep intervention into someones life. For some background google “Margaret Sanger Racist Eugenics”.
This (Nature using the Denier word) is very sad. I too lean much more to the left than right on most issues, but like Jimbo hold truth (i.e scientific objectivity) much higher than political predilection. And there’s no doubt that climate science has become politicised to such an extent that it has now been inverted / subverted beyond recognition, even in this Orwellian world.
I have always found the alarmists’ use of the ‘d’ word deeply ironic, when it is they who have and continue to deny the solid science (backed by decades of archaeological and anthropological evidence) for the MWP. (Likewise they always seem to look away when it comes to the Roman Warm Period, the Minoan, and the Holocene Optimum, and lets not mention the Vostok and Greenland ice core data which corroborates all these optima and makes complete nonsense of the claim the slight warming of the late 20th Century was ‘unprecedented’, or indeed, a problem.
If it is any consolation, it is not only climate science that has been corrupted beyond repair; the pharmaceutical industry has had effective control over the medical science with regard to the funding, peer-review and publishing of vaccine safety studies for many years, and they also maintain very close links with government in terms of vaccine regulation and marketing. Hence the many severe reactions now being reported by young girls following the HPV (Gardisal & Cervarix) vaccines, which should never have been granted a license. I have not looked at the agri-chemical companies so closely but it seems they also have much too free a hand (and government influence and funding) when it comes to the licensing of pesticides; e.g. ssc’s comment at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/7980954/Bee-decline-already-having-dramatic-effect-on-pollination-of-plants.html . The UK Met Office must be high on the list, but perhaps the best example of pure ‘political’ interference in a scientific institution has to be NIST, and their laughable attempt to re-write Newton’s Laws (with extensive use of computer modelling, and guess what – they won’t publish the data or code!) to explain the mysterious and very sudden demise of building 7. As I say, we live in a very Orwellian world, and Nature using the denier word is no longer to be unexpected (doesn’t make it any less offensive though).
Good to see Eisenhower’s 1957 address being mentioned above, an amazingly perceptive speech, how right he was about the dangers presented by the “scientific-technological elite”, not to mention the military industrial complex. (And more evidence that WUWT isn’t just populated by those on the right of the political spectrum!)
Well, Nature has finally dropped its mask and showed itself (or its editor) that politics is their main business and that the left side of the road is the way to go.
Not that we haven’t known that from long ago, but now it is official.
And we thought that science was an important part in the debate!
I admit to not reading the prefacing comments because I needed to vent a bit about the trash that is being written in the name of Science. This editorial has nothing to do with science or its defense. Its a political hit piece – supposedly in the name of science (or junk/sloppy/or weak science).
Science is not defended in the political world with political statements like this. Science is defended by skeptics of the realm who undertake whatever observations and analyses are necessary to disprove someone else’s hypothesis. Apparently that is frowned upon today because the “Climate Science Industry” can’t defend its work with observations and data. This new Industry is so cloistered within its funding parameters that it can’t collect data to prove its “Models”. What a joke! It will get worse in the coming years.
This piece is offensive to real science and should be catalogued.
The article accuses conservatives of being ideologues and some of them indeed are, but deliberately lumping all ‘deniers’ into the conservative camp demonstrates the writers insincerity and leftist bent.
Worst still is that it is published in a science journal, ultimately serving to undermine their own credibility.
Both the left and the right are responsible for many things including statism and bureaucratic ascendancy but I find it even more reprehensible that the left claim to be objective, progressive, humanitarian, scientific etc; when these virtues are merely a front for the hatred of capitalism, religion (except Islam) and its subversion, ultimately having the potential to coerce through these so-called fine principals.
The real issue here is that large bureaucracy and institutionalism has the power to coerce, collude and persuade, and THAT is the problem. The predominately left climate community are guilty of it and the apathetic machine which is corporatocracy is guilty of it. But most of all, government greases the wheels for large conglomerates because they will always side with populism and lucrativeness.
Anu says:
September 9, 2010 at 8:51 pm
………………
REPLY: Ya know, “geronimo” …….. – Anthony
Damn you Anthony, you made me spit coffee all over my keyboard!!!!
Geronimo eh? Absolute classic. (anyone whose been frequenting the sea ice pages will understand the meaning).
I don’t align myself with any political party. So to say it’s all “right wing” is unfounded.
Severian (responding to Owen)
As I read it, I think you missed the point of his post – the “badmouthing” refers to the quoted article using the d-word to describe those questioning AGW dogma.
And I expect the “exacting and elegant experimental work” refers to that performed by none other than our distinguished host and contributors.
As I read it…
🙂
Countering bad science is not remotely the same as being anti-science. Nature is itself responsible for delegitimizing real science through blind political advocacy, ad hominem attacks, and especially editorial censorship of true scientific debate. It is Nature that is racing toward the dustbin of history, not science.
It is sad to see a science publication grovel and pander to the party in power, but when you depend on government handouts you bend which ever way the political wind blows.
Looks like Nature is going or has gone the way of New Scientist. It’s disappointing how the term ‘right wing’ is increasingly being deployed as a catch-all term for unsavoury viewpoints that don’t tow the official line. The semiotics are clear, people who disagree with us are a small step away from being crypto-fascists.
AGW scepticism is driven by honest appraisal of science, it is not a ‘left’ or ‘right’ issue.
R. Shearer says:
September 9, 2010 at 7:26 pm
“Of course, some of my previous beliefs were proven wrong. I used to accept the belief of AGW and I never thought we would have a President as bad as Bush.”
________________________________________________
Boy were you wrong!
You need not look much further than the Texas school board.
Reading many of the comments on the Nature website put a smile on my face. Aim at foot. Fire. Hilarious.
And no significant temperature rise in 12 years. It’s a travesty.
@R. Shearer who said:
“As a scientist, politics had almost nothing to do with me becoming an AGW skeptic except that when I saw G.W. Bush jump on the global warming bandwagon I decided to do more investigation myself.
“Of course, some of my previous beliefs were proven wrong. I used to accept the belief of AGW and I never thought we would have a President as bad as Bush.”
Surprise!
I’m sorry if someone posted this reminder already (no time at the moment to read through everything), but don’t you guys recall the Nature “D-word” editorial from December 2009? It was pretty classic (and quite pathetic):
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v462/n7273/full/462545a.html.
It used “denialists” 6 times (and “denialist fringe” to boot) as well as other special treats including the “slang for a clever technique” and “contractual restrictions” defenses.
More nuggets: “e-mail theft,” “harassment that denialists inflict,” “paranoid interpretation,” “conspiracy theories,” and of course, “robust.”
Having re-read last year’s rant, I thought it worthy to revisit Nature’s editorial policy about availability of data:
http://www.nature.com/authors/editorial_policies/availability.html
Cheers!
Nature should get back to being a journal about scientific issues and stop its political grandstanding. There are many scientists of all political persuasions who are genuinely sceptical about Anthropogenic Global Warming and there should be proper debate over this issue in journals such as Nature and Scientific American.
ddc your not alone we have a prime minister in australia worse then your president
Bush was the brunt of many jokes yet Obama has done nothing different in his term as president. I find the lack of criticism towards him interesting to say the least.
Anu says:
September 9, 2010 at 8:51 pm
REPLY: Ya know, “geronimo” I get rather upset when people accuse me of “missing” things when they themselves don’t understand what’s going on here, especially when you play the roll of anonymous troll. You see there’s a thing called copyright and fair use. Fair use says I can copy a few paragraphs and provide a link, but not the whole article. Your complaint (and subsequent copying of more of the article) therefore is denied.
Read the policy page about changing handles. – Anthony
A google search shows you seem to be confusing me with a “geronimo” that thinks AGW is not happening:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/18/u-n-climate-chief-resigns/#comment-321849
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/16/the-bbc-may-drop-met-office-for-forecasts/#comment-292254
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/19/bonus-quote-of-the-week-the-new-scientist-rocks-our-world/#comment-434017
etc…
I can assure you, that person is not me.
I post here as Anu, the Sumerian god of the sky (drawing a contrast between the very earliest attempts at Civilization to understand the climate, and the Science we have today). When I first posted, I didn’t know you frowned on “Names” like Anu, Smokey, and Amino Acids in Meteorites.
My main interest at WUWT is the Arctic sea ice summer melt – if you think my opinions, and correct prediction, is “trolling”, then I’ll take my Comments elsewhere.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/09/06/sea-ice-news-21/
REPLY: And you still don’t get it. Other posters did though. Heh. -Anthony
I may not have the greatest grasp on grammar but the differences between your, you’re there, their and they’re is elementary. Just sayin’.
I’ve started calling warmists “Climategate Deniers”. Perhaps we should all give them a taste of their own medicine!
I’ll just say that I believe in stemcell research, embryo research, abortion and evolution. I don’t believe in creationism or the bible.
I do believe in our kids being taught science not bullschitt, and I trust the influence of blogs like WUWT to keep the mainstream media off balance.
Maybe some regulars won’t like me for that, but that’s me. I’m just trying to say it’s impossible to define a *denier*. We come from all walks of life, and for the record, my voting history is left/green, until I challenged them.
SamG says:
September 9, 2010 at 11:37 pm
Bush was the brunt of many jokes yet Obama has done nothing different in his term as president. I find the lack of criticism towards him interesting to say the least.
Oh come now, Obama has done somethings very differently; he has apparently played more rounds of golf, and had more holidays than Bush did in his first year. But when it comes down to it there is very little in terms of difference between Bush/Obama and the Dem/GOP administrations; [snip . . conspiracy theories need proof or endless ping pong starts and this site has plenty of other much more productive debate going on. . mod kab].
Jimbo says:
September 9, 2010 at 5:26 pm
I am sceptical of AGW’s wild claims and I am not right wing. For me it is not about right and left but about getting to the truth.
———————————————————-
Hear, hear!
Mod (Kab) – I am truly shocked that you think that my suggestion that Bush and Obama were both primarily funded by the military industrial complex is a ‘conspiracy theory’. But no big deal.
It is very difficult for believers to give credence to contrary views.
For Nature the CAGW theory has informed their publications for a decade. That they were wrong, or that the science is not, in fact, settled, is a conclusion too horrible to be entertained.
What to do?
The simple minded answer is to say that the whole damned thing is political with the intelligent on the side of CAGW and the dumbos in denial. But, as the facts mount up contra the CAGW position that political position begins to fail.
In the end a cooling climate, increasing ice caps, broken hockey sticks, crappy IPCC research, lower than expected hurricanes and the rest of the evidence will reduce Nature to embarrassed irrelevance.
Science is hard and it is fact driven. Nature’s mindless embrace of CAGW theory will simply sideline it in any serious discussion of the data and the science.
About time.
Jimbo says:
September 9, 2010 at 5:26 pm
………”I am sceptical of AGW’s wild claims and I am not right wing. For me it is not about right and left but about getting to the truth.”………
Exactly correct, I am well to the left of most people I know.
However I am smart enough to know that objective reality is independent of your political standpoint.
At some time in the future the climate will do what the climate does and a great number of people who let politics guide their science will look pretty stupid.
No offence but I don’t understand the attraction to the left. Surely, if you omit what the left has appropriated, i.e. faux-egalitarian principals; then all you are left with is a political ideology that is utterly divorced from human nature and at odds with guiding principles.
I shouldn’t ask because I know this is O.T. but it may help to know that pure capitalism has not been reached as of this day therefor socialism is merely a reaction.
Well, we don’t have Tea Parties here in Britain (except in the literal sense) and, like Bryan above, I’d describe myself as generally fairly left-wing politically and most certainly not a Conservative. But I AM a rationalist and of sceptical mind in all areas of my life, interested in truth and reason and “objective reality” both in science and in politics (a tall order in both cases currently). I certainly don’t fit Nature’s alleged demographic but I can recognise lies, deception and the stench of self-interest when it smacks me in the gob repeatedly. If this fight against irrationality isn’t won we will descend again into medieval mindsets – people like Romm and Hansen are already there.
Shortly after the Obama administration took office, the Department of Homeland Security released a report linking right-wing extremists, like those opposing (increased) federal government control, with domestic terrorism.
Nature and others are linking Climate Change deniers, like those opposing the Obama administration’s plans to regulate carbon (dioxide), with right-wing extremists.
Therefore Climate Change deniers are linked to domestic terrorism.
Antony,
You say:
“I’ll point out though that the sort of idealogy we see in the global warming movement doesn’t seem to pervade other sciences”.
“seem” is the key word here as the GW scam is by no means alone. We have been very lucky so far that a bunch of sceptics have got together and expose the corruption before it has been able to take root and become part of our cultural perception thus allowing vested interests to profit from our collective blindness. This kind of things has in fact already happened and a good example is the “trans-fat genocide”. While there are doubtless implementational difference between countries the ideology has formed our Western cultural perception, a view perhaps best expressed by the phrase “polyunsaturates are good for you”. We are inundated by this propaganda on a daily basis here in the UK. What we are not told is that most polyunsaturates in our diets are actually trans fats, the oils in which they are found having been passed over a hot nickel catalyst at 260 degrees celcius, along with hydrogen when partially or fully hydrogenated. In Europe recent legislation now makes the labelling of hydrogenated vegetable oil content mandatory, but not trans-fat content. This has allowed manufactures to avoid labelling as “hydrogenated” simply by turning off the hydrogen! This of course increases the number of trans isomer bonds and makes such processed oils even more dangerous. This increase in danger was overseen here by the Food Standards Agency who are now actively participating in genocide against the British people. Meanwhile on the medical front line doctors, dieticians and of course the Pharmaceutical companies use deception to encourage their victims to consume trans-fats. For example after being diagnosed with CV disease or diabetes you are given stern lectures about not eating saturated fats and how you should concentrate on eating those excellent polyunsaturates which you can find in sunflower oil and rapeseed oil (canola). These are extremely high in trans-fat content.
In the UK and USA trans-fats are both the single biggest cause of death and profits for the entire medical establishment killing at least 250,000 people a year here in the UK. The symptoms of trans-fatty acid poisoning include obesity, diabetes, CV disease and Alzheimers etc. etc. etc. Google tfx.org for more info.
I have no doubt that most people in the system know not what they do. They are living in a belief system and will never have checked out the abundance of scientific research which tells them they are killing people. What we have here is an established system of profiteering corruption which is now deeply engrained in the Western culture. It is a good parallel to the system of profiteering corruption envisaged by the prime movers of the AGW swindle.
Thank you for your part in tackling this monster before it gains hold and when you are successful might you consider taking on the trans-fat genocide?
JM
I well remember Harold Wilson’s declaration of Labour’s motto of the hour, “The White Hot Technological Revolution”? All starry eyed I voted for it, thinking at last some rational government, but of course like all revolutions: “La révolution dévore ses enfants”
Don’t trust what any of them say.
I’m never really sure what people mean my right-left. I generally call myself a liberal (UK definition). I’d recommend having a go on the http://www.politicalcompass.org/test
It splits left-right into 2 categories socialist-capitalist and authoratarian-anarchist which are scales I can understand. I’ve just completed it again and it agreed from with my views 2 or 3 years ago where I’m a slight left-libertarian (about where they put Gandhi)
The AGW supporters prefer to use the term ‘denier’ as the opposite implies an upholder of the truth – themselves.
Whereas, the opposite of the term ‘sceptic’ is ‘dogmatic’, which could not possibly be themselves, of course.
It is not just Nature which is baffled by people holding views contrary to their own: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/theroyalfamily/7993756/Prince-Charles-baffled-by-extraordinary-climate-change-scepticism.html
The last comment is a gem:
“”And I would say to all these sceptics – alright it may be very convenient to believe that somehow all these greenhouse gases we’re pouring into the atmosphere just disappear through holes conveniently into space, it doesn’t work like that.”
This is just part of the last, great political push of the Left to test the high water mark of this phase of societal engineering. It’s sort of like the Battle of Gettysburg where the South tried one final push to win. In this case, journals are deciding which side to support. Today, the UN leadership is in private meetings on how to force climate change as the vehicle to take “the world’s agenda” and “redistribute wealth”. Nature just came down, completely, on the side of power, elitism, control and money.
What will happen now? The bulk of the UN will join with the “non-deniars” and make one big push before Jan 1, 2011 to get the US Congress to jump onboard. It’s critical for them to try since by January, the Congress will become outright hostile to the “non-deniars”. The cresendo, this round, will be the Lame Duck Congress. Just remember, they passed Obamacare at Christmas last year. Don’t party too much this fall-early winter.
I was upset enough with Nature over this putrescent editorial to register and post –
A note to the editors of Nature –
Sadly this editorial is receiving wide and somewhat negative coverage across the internet. This would appear to be due in part due the use of the phrase “Denialism over global warming”. I would like to point out to the editors of Nature that “Denier” is seen as a term of vilification amongst those skeptical of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming. “Anti Science” is also a term viewed as offensive by those CAGW skeptics worried about the supplanting of the traditional scientific method with what is referred to in the popular vernacular as “Post normal science”
As the editors of Nature and it’s readers would no doubt be aware, the unproven hypothesis of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming hinges on water vapour feedback from minor CO2 radiative forcing. Research that has been based on empirical evidence rather than computer modeling has indicated that any such feedback may be neutral to negative. It is looking increasingly likely that the catastrophic CO2 warming hypothesis is incorrect.
I would like to advise the editors of Nature to distance themselves from the use of offensive terms with regard to the CAGW debate. Due to the significant expenditure on what is increasingly looking like a non problem, it is likely that a major blame game is about to begin. We do not live in the age of Big Brother. Rather, due to the internet we live in the age of Little brother, and Little Brother is watching and recording. When looking for those to punish for what may be the world’s largest hoax, the vengeful will only have to search the internet for terms such as “denier”, “denialisim”, “contrarian” and “big oil shill” to identify the guilty. As I indicated before – Little Brother is watching and recording. Be a little more careful 🙂
I will be fascinated to see if this passes moderation at Nature or any of it sinks in, but no harm in trying 🙂
They are trying to redefine science as their religion. To those without a scientific background they are the equivalent of scientific priests. Their problem eventually is that applied science works – and is seen to undisputably work, and the more they protest the more the applied scientists get dragged into the argument. People respect science because of the achievements of modern technology, not articles in nature. Under normal conditions this kind of science would be of no interest to me – it is too inprecise with too few real world applications (because of the imprecision). How many farmers would base next years crop based on this stuff? If that was their goal maybe it could eventually attain a stronger claim.
“The anti-science strain pervading the right wing in the United States is the last thing the country needs in a time of economic challenge.”
Oh, tell that to the environmental left who are against oil, petro-chemicals, E-numbers, genetically modified foods, nuclear power, fertiser, etc. All stuff we rely on otherwise we would return to the caves and slaughter each other in the name of tree gods and objects in the sky seen and unseen.
And the leftwing never seem to have a problem with the spread of anti-science Islamists because they need aggrieved immigrants to vote for leftwing parties.
“science has become a home for displaced socialists and communists”
That sound like Greenpeace co-founder Dr Patrick Moore’s words, not Limbaugh’s.
This is the bit I find both hilarious and tragic.
“Denialists often maintain that these changes are just a symptom of natural climate variability. But when climate modellers test this assertion by running their simulations …”
“test this assertion by running their simulations” ?!?!?!?!
These people really seem to believe whatever the computer says.
Further to my previous post, I note that Nature has indeed published my vitriolic and somewhat provocative comment. As a consequence I now find that I must dial my cynicism down from 11.
peakbear says:
September 10, 2010 at 2:10 am
I took that test and ended up almost exactly dead centre.
I think the correct spelling would be “cynicism”. A super moderator would be able to sort that out? yes? Maybe??
[maybe 😉 …. bl57~mod]
It is understandable that there would be an anti-scientist notion in the land; that should not be confused with an anti-science streak. Indeed, the former comes about because those who would wrap themselves in the prestigious mantel of “science” have in too many instances revealed themselves as self-interested charlatans, rather than as people to whom science – real science – matters.
This wide ranging attack on anyone who might conceiveably question the view of the politically motivated wanna rulers of the world is shameful.
Let us be clear, scientists are first and foremost people, individuals who share in all of the vices and virtues of the rest of humanity. They are not, just because they work in the field of science, somehow magically superior, even if they are intellectually able. Indeed from their recent conduct they are worse than the average in some respects because they have openly used their position and authority to deride equally emininent and articulate individuals who openly question from the standpoint of fact and understanding.
If we are to progress as a species then we must base our future on reasoning. That is, or should be the forte of the true scientist, political leader or commercial executive. Shutting someone up simply because they are contradicting your cherished notions is little more than childish. It gets us nowhere.
In fact by lumping together and dismissing all those concerned enough to question the various behaviours of ruling elites and authorities in such a way as to imply they are nothing more than morons simply exposes the weakness of this article. It is entirely rational to look at those at the head of affairs, be they commercial, political or scientific, and evaluate how and what they are doing. The majority of ordinary folk may struggle to understand the details, but most are savvy enough to recognise a stitch up when they see it.
The day to day realities suggest that there are those determined to use these issues in a way that cannot be conducive to a decent prosperous future. The future I want for my sons. I am looking for the solutions we are able to devise if we put our minds to it. I certainly do not need to be pointlessly labelled by some obnoxious phrase issued by an ideological zealot determined to reduce us all to penury.
peakbear says: September 10, 2010 at 2:10 am
I’m never really sure what people mean my right-left. I generally call myself a liberal (UK definition). I’d recommend having a go on the http://www.politicalcompass.org/test
Interesting test. Although some of the questions are like polls, ie. worded inappropriately, I’m probably what it indicates – a slightly economic right wing libertarian. I don’t see anarchist anywhere though ;~D.
Economic Left/Right: 2.12
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -1.28
Opps. My previous post was in response to:
peakbear says: September 10, 2010 at 2:10 am
I’m never really sure what people mean my right-left. I generally call myself a liberal (UK definition). I’d recommend having a go on the http://www.politicalcompass.org/test
[added it to the previous post for you… bl57~mod]
Konrad says: September 10, 2010 at 3:35 am
I was upset enough with Nature over this putrescent editorial to register and post.
Konrad says:
September 10, 2010 at 4:08 am
Further to my previous post, I note that Nature has indeed published my vitriolic and somewhat provocative comment. As a consequence I now find that I must dial my cynicism down from 11.
Well played!
Lucy Skywalker says:
September 9, 2010 at 5:34 pm
“They have everything upside-down, accusing others of their own sins.”
They could repent by acknowledging that the prospects of global cooling are far more serious than global warming.
Nature is no longer a science journal, but a part of the state political apparatus.
Thank God Nature is there telling us what to think. I can still believe in God right?
When I first looked at the quadrants at http://www.politicalcompass.org/test (recommended by peakbear – thank you), I thought that in the context of the Nature editorial it needed an extra axis, representing “attitude to science”. On reflection though, I think it is good enough as it stands. Anyone – sceptic or not – who accepts the validity of modern physics is also likely to accept the reality of the GHE. The difference may be in how they respond to uncertainty in the magnitude of that effect. Perhaps sceptics are more likely to also be libertarians and in turn more willing to accept this uncertainty, whilst authoritarians want to eliminate it. Which of course fits snugly with the view of environmentalism as an authoritarian and elitist political movement. Since (unlike Nature) I don’t want to label people, I’ll also point out that I’m not suggesting everyone who advocates mitigation policies is also green in this sense – although the opposite may be true. For the record, I came slap in the middle of the bottom half.
The sad thing is that, as I always understood from the four univerity science professors in my immediate family, Nature together with Science were the world’s two premier scientific journals. For a scientist to be published in Nature rated more brownie points than to be published almost anywhere else.
By espousing without question the propaganda emanating from the dominant anthropogenic global warming wing of the body of climatologists the journal has abdicated its premier position.
Thank you Roger Cohen.
PS I am a sceptic but having taken Philip’s test http://www.politicalcompass.org/test my results were:
Economic Left/Right: -0.50
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -2.56
I find, therefore, that I am definitely of the left, both economically and socially. So much for the suggestion that all sceptics must be right wing.
Why write and publish an editorial like this one in Nature? I think it is because the writer’s religion is apparently losing major AGW adepts and they are trying to rally their remaining lesser adepts before they abandon AGW for another religious cause.
As for the journal Nature, it is being more stridently political [where the grant money comes from after all : ) ] and un-scientific.
Watch for strategic shifts in US government major research funding. That will foreshadow the next noble cause that the ex-AGW adepts are fleeing to.
John
John says:
September 9, 2010 at 5:46 pm
Creation vs. evolution is a practical waste of time and talent. Whether life and the universe was purposely created or not has no practical implication in science and engineering. Life and the universe is what it is no matter how it originated.
A friend of mine, National Academy of Science member Phillip Skell whose claim to fame is in antibiotic research, separates biology into two fields – historic and experimental. He asserts that the former does not inform the latter and every practical benefit that flows from biology comes from the experimental side. I agree.
As a case in point you might be surprised to learn that evolutionary biology is not a required course to become a medical doctor. The reason is it has no bearing on anything in medicine and medical doctors have more relevant things to learn than they have time to learn them. Evolutionary biology would be a waste of precious time that could be better spent elsewhere.
You might also be interested to know that science was philsophically founded on the principle that God created a rational universe governed by consistent and inviolable laws that rational man could study and understand. In other words science began as the study of God’s creation and rested on the principle that the creation was consistent, rational, and hence could indeed be understood.
When it comes to the time wasted on the controversy I say “a pox on both your houses”.
Everytime I read something like this, I think of Robin Warren and Barry Marshall.
In the 1980’s they were viewed as crackpots and lunatics by their peers and even physically ejected from symposiums, in 2005 they were awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine (yes Virginia, every so often the Nobel folks get something right).
****** Frank K. says:
September 9, 2010 at 8:49 pm
There is nothing “anti-science” about acknowledging that the government science gravy train must come to an end because we are trillions of dollars in debt!
*******************
That is exactly my position. I was a chemist in industry for 15 years before switching to programming. I still love science. It is fun, sometimes mysterious, and always intriguing. But we as a nation must come to grips with our spending. Scientists will have to bear a fair share of those cuts when, hopefully, the time comes. We are all looking at the prospect of a lower standard of living and leaner times all around. I would like to see the Federal government shrunk and out of business. You seldom hear a businessman talk without referring to the government in fear or with a hand extended to it. The market must be freed once again. That will get us out of this mess.
Eric Worrall says:
September 9, 2010 at 11:42 pm
“I’ve started calling warmists “Climategate Deniers”. Perhaps we should all give them a taste of their own medicine!”
I like the descriptive term “ice huggers”. The new tree huggers are the ice huggers!
I come from a long line of innovators and minor inventors (all of which is well- documented and authenticated) and have inherited an insatiable curiosity gene as part of my make-up – I really do need to know how stuff works. But because I have always become easily bored with mathematics this has ruled me out as any kind of scientist, so I opted for Fine Arts as a lifetime study and as a career. One of the things I have learned from this study is that societies are not great at learning from their own pasts. In the Medieval world our forefathers were overwhelmingly God-centred and tended to regard the few who questioned that mindset to be Godless, wicked and to be cast out immediately if not sooner. Which is why some of my English antecedents fled the Puritans and England and sailed for various parts of the New World.
I find it a little scary that what should be a noble publication devoting itself to disseminating the truth and enlightenment of the sciences is indulging in medieval bigotry.
What will be next from this quarter – Witch-sniffers?
This is all they have left. Science has abandoned AGW and politicians are now masquerading as scientists. The name calling and smears are the last desperate attempt to sway public opinion, but it is backfiring. I am conversing with more and more people who are turned off by the over the top attacks coming from the alarmists and who are becoming ever more skeptical of the AGW claims. The warmists are only discrediting themselves by refusing to discuss the science and ducking debate.
Your political compass
Economic Left/Right: -1.38
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: 0.36
Almost dead center. Interestingly, although I’m not a card carrying member of the Tea Party, I mostly agree with them and hope they become the dominant force in US politics. Yet I’m a centrist. What’s up with that?
Does anyone know at which point Jeremy Clarkson’s piss-take coinage ‘denialist’ came to be seen as a real word?
It’s NOT the Science, it’s the Scientists. It’s the question of who and what controls the direction of science’s POLITICAL direction. It’s NOT about the Science!
Much as the weather changes from season to season, there are changes of season in educational and political philosophy that seem to last a few generations and then change again. Years ago Grade Schools, High Schools, Universities, and Colleges were run by, and students were taught by, shall we say rather conservative ‘academics’. During and after WWII, the conservative ‘Old School Mob’ gave way to the ‘New Age School Mob’ of rather liberal, sort’a free thinking, more-radical, quote open minded end quote academics and many ‘social changes’ also followed. As the Mob In Power ages and tends to think, more and more, that they are the only cheese in the firdge, things gradually change to a different and –shall we say– more enlightened way of thinking for the world.
Some might say, “The Pendulum Swings” back and forth and the so on and so on around the circle as the world turns. Others might say, “It’s a Paridigm Shift” kind’a thing. Whatever it’s called, it happens. It’s always happened. For those in the midst of the mayhem it very likely seems like billions of madmen and Englishmen are over the ramparts and through the gates and destroying and desacrating everything sacred and meaningful. This is only a reasonable reaction. Do not feel you are being treated any differently than your Young Turks treated their betters. Every displaced generation feels this way. It’s natural! Indeed, it’s one of Nature’s Laws. Get over it!
[Off topic – snip – (jove~mod)]
While I strongly agree that there is an anti-science streak, and a nearly fundamentalist pre-science, atreak afecting society right now – look no farther than the crazies trying to remove science from textbooks in Kanasas and Texas – there is also an anti-science streak on the left that takes bad science that supports their position as truth. We need a more civil discourse, science included, if we are going to move forward. Don’t watch Fox or MSNBC or Rush or Hannity, or Olbermann or MAddow.
Does anybody have a hockey-stick graph of Nature’s circulation statistics? Is their a direct correlation with the number of CAGW articles?
Changing times, the unavoidable “turn of the screw”, everything in life comes to an end: It’s being born, it grows, it gets older and finally dies. That secular dream of some secret societies to change the world almost succeeded for almost three hundred years: We have not yet returned to the natural paradised J.J.Rosseau envisioned, we didin’t get to live all naked, however you tried oldies now is the turn of the youth; just take it easy…cooooolit down, buy some pop-corn and wait.
Their “Pebbles Universe”, expanding and throwing its stones all around IS OVER. This is why I called it the “Flintstones Universe”, of those INITIATES (LOL!) who belong to the secret society of Peter Flintstone.
I will use my own D-word in regard to Nature:
Deluded.
There is an opportunity here: To publish a new science magazine. Why not WUWT Magazine?
Old lawyer joke:
If the facts are in your favour … hit them with the facts, else
If the law is on your side … hit them with the law, else
Just hit the table
Nature is now hitting the table.
Economic Left/Right: -1.38
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -5.03
Mmmm, that’s rather surprising, but then me being from the Netherlands 🙂
Al those things that make me proud to be Dutch, Same Sex Marriage, Abortion, Euthanasia, semi legal use of cannabis. The habits of the Dutch to always question authority and trying to bend the rules.
As if post modernism is right wing. Just as big a threat; I think.
Alexander K says:
September 10, 2010 at 6:16 am
“[…] I find it a little scary that what should be a noble publication devoting itself to disseminating the truth and enlightenment of the sciences is indulging in medieval bigotry.”
It is simply the decline of a publication.
They have made the wrong choice: If the market has changed then they must change with it, otherwise…you have a lot of examples out there, babies.
I think it is especially surprising that Nature would use the d-word since they are owned by a German publishing conglomerate (that also owns Scientific American). I would think Germans would be the most sensitive to the use of that word.
Although, the company was founded by a former member of the Nazi party who was judged after the war to have only joined for purposes of making a profit.
http://www.german-times.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=12709&Itemid=121
It appears the company is continuing its founders tradition of aligning themselves with crackpot movements just to make a buck.
Scott Basinger says:
September 9, 2010 at 10:58 pm
_____________________________
I agree that the comments at Nature are more interesting than the nasty little editorial. The “science” may be crumbling, but the financial need of big government is greater than ever.
Also interesting is the regional nastiness in these comments over Creationism. I understand its religious basis but I view it as an implausible interpretation of natural history, much like Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Change.
peakbear says:
September 10, 2010 at 2:10 am
“I’m never really sure what people mean my right-left. I generally call myself a liberal (UK definition). I’d recommend having a go on the http://www.politicalcompass.org/test
”
Thanks! Very funny. I nearly hit the Friedman. Which was what i expected…
Economic Left/Right: 4.12
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -3.08
After reading the item in Nature, somehow the phrase “Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing” comes to mind. Not quite accurate, but seems to fit the general tone of the item.
They, Nature, profess “true” science, as long as you agree. Otherwise, you deny reality.
I also support stem cell research, but draw the line on the destruction of innocent human life, including the embryonic stage. However in reading the research journals, it would appear, that “as one door closes, another opens” as in the case of expanding adult stem cell treatments out there.
Many Conservative Republicans, like me, are not opposed to stem cell research. What we oppose is taxpayer funding for the research. If the universities with large endowments would like to use some of their own money for stem cell research, that’s OK, but it’s not OK to force somebody else to fund it.
(BTW, Full Disclosure: My grand-daughter has type I diabetes, so I stand to benefit from stem cell research. I’m just not willing to force you to pay for my benefit.)
Solomon Green says:
September 10, 2010 at 5:46 am
Economic Left/Right: -0.50
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -2.56
I find, therefore, that I am definitely of the left, both economically and socially. So much for the suggestion that all sceptics must be right wing.
You are now an official candidate for comment acceptance on RC. ;~P
Robert says:
September 10, 2010 at 8:02 am
Economic Left/Right: -1.38
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -5.03
Whew, for a second there I thought I was the only right-wing denialist wacko. ;~D
Let’s not forget the Nuremberg Laws were based on “science” based government regulation. While I certainly enjoy reading in science, particularly new theories in physics, astronomy, and climate, I am not a scientist. However, I do feel very qualifed to opine on radical political movements, and the AGW zanies methods are in lock step with some of the worst of the worst including the Eugenicists, the Nazis, and some of the loopy Scientific Socialists of the Marxist-Leninst camp (Stalin was evil, but pragmatic). Some of the statements of the fringe element wishing to imprision or exile “Denialists” (Oh so very a Leninist term), especially denialist scientists (the radical always loathes his heretical brethern the worst, just look at bloody Communist/Socialist battles in the early 20th Century and the Shia/Sunni fueds), and impose their morally superior way of life on the unwashed masses, I’m afraid are far from rhetorical if they would ever get true power. Luckily Americans, who at times are taken in for a while, almost universally loathe demagouges, much to our credit I would say.
Nature ‘journal’ has long since gone down the leftist politics = science road. In an apparent effort to promote the feminist agenda “Nature” magazine published the infamous Whipp & Ward, “Will Women Soon Outrun Men?” study. This study was laughable in the extreme even on the day it was published, but as time has passed and none of its predictions remotely occurred it is really beyond laughable in hindsight. The only way a person could have bought this is if they just really WANTED it to be true.
Actually the Whipp & Ward study has a close resemblence to the CAGW work because it takes a small trend and then just extrapolates it out into the future festooning it with fanciful predictions. There is a good and funny critique of this nonsense here.
http://commons.bcit.ca/physics/rjw/pers/womenrun.htm
…………………………………………………
I’m surprisd so many people are taking the Political Compass Test seriously. I’ve only seen conservatives (USA) refer to it derisively. It was obviously created by liberals. With questions like “If economic globalisation is inevitable, it should primarily serve humanity rather than the interests of trans-national corporations.” You’ll notice that it presumes that “trans-national corporations” inherently are in opposition to so-called service to humanity. The rest of the questions are biased as well.
The science of the right: Gnosis. The Science of the left: Agnosticism.
Hey buddies: We do not deny the “force”, you deny it!
“Either you got some readers or you close that magazine” ….Funders are the first ones in running out. Ask for support:
http://euro-med.dk/?p=13656
In the discussion of the article at the Nature site (which is MUCH shorter and less informed than this one) Steve Black replied to Johan F. Prins with:
“After careful reading of the website http://www.cathodixx.com/home.html and excerpts of the book called “The Physics Delusion”, may I suggest the following course of action. Set up your experiment where you achieve/demonstrate room temperature superconduction on doped diamond substrate without Cooper Pairs and invite the media to record the event. With the ensuing media frenzy, I am sure that other physicists around the world will try to reproduce your results.”
Well, is replication that not exactly the problem with AGW? “Science” as a publication is preventing exactly that: they are publishing numerous papers on the subject of climate change and refuse to publish papers that show what happens when other scientists try to duplicate their results. “Science” stifles science! Good heavens!
Hiding behind the bloomers and bloopers of church-wing nutters is pretty deperate. Further, they insult, even demonize, researchers who dare to disagree with the claims put forward in papers they print, trying to link them to any and everyone to fringe thinkers they feel will be rejected by the average person: disagreeing with CAGW is the same as praying at the feet of Glenn Beck.
The last fig leaf is falling.
The discussion a http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v467/n7312/full/467133a.html is a classic example of the problem: the AGW camp advocates publication and replication, yet refuses publication space to those who demonstrate the errors, misrepresentations and on occasion, scientific fraud, perpetrated in support of some CAGW scare. Unless Science can bring a more balanced view of the complex nature of life on this planet to their pages, particularly reining in the exaggerated claims for future warming and impact from AG CO2, they are surely doomed to drop from the list of mainstream publications.
Skepticism about CAGW or other scientific theories puts one in the right-wing – only as the antonym of the wrong-wing. This is true even if the world turns out to be in a long era of warming. Skepticism about any theory is healthy for science especially when plausible alternative theories exist both about what we are observing or have observed (history, archeology, geology-paleo) and not less, when the promoted theory is turning out to be significantly flawed. I find it egregious that a scientific journal would engage in this type of partisan political name calling (I’ve said elsewhere: this and a few other journals are headed for extinction over this terrible period in science). Thinking people know that there are know-nothing ideological hacks on both sides of the question – Limbaugh, Al Gore….. grinding their political axes and pushing their prejudices – we can’t stop them. But when a scientific journal takes an ideological position such as Nature has, they put themselves in this nutty ideological fringe. They also have a better than 50% or better chance of giving right-wing ideologues credit for being “right” as in correct as we slip into a cooling phase of the climate.
Dammit! I’m not a Republican or a Democrat nor am I some fundie nutjob. I’m a Libertarian, Atheist and Skeptic. I know evolution is true, childhood vaccines are entirely unrelated to autism, Uri Geller is a below average magician, John Edward may talk to the dead (but they don’t answer back) and man-made global warming is a vastly overblown non-problem. I revere the scientific method as the single greatest achievement of mankind (because it enabled so many of the others). Calling me anti-science is ludicrous when the warmist creed has all the hallmarks of a religion.
I particularly despise the fact so many of the people claiming we’re “anti-science” don’t even read the scientific papers themselves. It’s remarkably similar to the religious believers that naively assume atheists haven’t studied christianity. Yet if they bother to engage in conversation with me, they learn (to their amazement) that I can quote chapter, verse and theological concept far better than they (plus 3 or 4 other religions if they’d like). Invariably it becomes clear that I understand what they believe better than they do. Which has also been the case with every AGW discussion I’ve ever had with an AGW “true believer”.
Stereotyping climate skeptics is just another, more subtle ad hominem attack.
Pamela Gray says:
September 9, 2010 at 6:37 pm
“I am far from a right-wing religious, anti abortion, anti gay, anti stem cell research person (I am pro-choice, all for stem cell research, and believe in the sanctity of love in all its many colors)….”
How about the ‘sanctity’ of the love between a female and her cats?
Mister Mr says:
September 10, 2010 at 10:47 am
So, Nature guys, are deterministically deterministic, or, better expressed, self deniers or suicidal. No, No!, they don’t exist at all!…. What a mess! 🙂
Don’t get mad!, it’s just that they DO and we don’t, or was it that they DON”T and we DO, instead. One thing is obvious: They DID.
And…what did they do? this: Booooah!, Mommy, those kids are telling me bad things!
As a devout Catholic this is the statement that most offends me:
“There is a growing anti-science streak on the American right that could have tangible societal and political impacts on many fronts — including regulation of environmental and other issues and stem-cell research”
The Catholic Church, devout Catholics, and other “right wing” opponents to embryonic stem-cell research are NOT opposed to stem-cell research. In fact the Catholic Church and devout Catholics strongly support “adult stem-cell” research. Adult stem-cell research is making fantastic strides in developing cures for all kinds of illness. There are many advantages beyond the moral and ethical reasons behind the advancement of adult stem-cell research. Adult stem-cells are stable. Adult stem-cells taken from a patient are not subject to rejection of the patients body.
The disadvantage to adult stem-cell cures is that adult stem-cells can not be patented.
Therefore, research companies will not be able to realize as much profit.
It is the subtle lies of this administration that I find most objectionable.
Lucy Skywalker says:
September 9, 2010 at 5:34 pm
Perfect! Thanks for stating the obvious, and true.
Dave Springer says: Evolutionary biology would be a waste of precious time that could be better spent elsewhere.
No it isn’t. For example, developmental biologists have reversed the changes in chickens that make them more modern. Modifications produce teeth, more scales, and long tails. Definitely, more dinosaur-like features. Thus, using evolution as the model, a series of experiments demonstrated that modern birds could be made to look more like dinosaurs. It seems unlikely that the features would easily be created if they were not overlaid with new genetic information. In other words, an old program with a newer subroutine was modified to remove the new code. Evolution supported by experimentation, and evolutionary theory being the source of the hypothesis tested.
Now a general comment: The ‘right wing’ doesn’t necessarily equate with the religious right. There are many brands of conservatives. I am a scientist-atheist-conservative. I happen to believe in the moral teachings of christians and the value of Judeo-christian philosophy as the basis of western civilization. I simply don’t care for a supreme being, and would probably be a revolutionary if there were one. Our rights do not come from government, but we are born with them.
We Americans are in a voluntary association as free people, who derive benefit from living under the Rule of Law and the US Constitution. I am not a kept person, like the Europeans, who are not really free. We need to defend our liberty and take back what government has usurped. The more government does for us, the less freedom we have.
*****
Joseph Day says:
September 10, 2010 at 12:05 pm
We Americans are in a voluntary association as free people, who derive benefit from living under the Rule of Law and the US Constitution. I am not a kept person, like the Europeans, who are not really free. We need to defend our liberty and take back what government has usurped. The more government does for us, the less freedom we have.
******
Very well said. If some haven’t heard of it, a good book on this topic is “The Road To Serfdom” by F. A. Hayek. It was written during WWII and discusses how socialism led to a dictatorial state in Germany among other things. Even though it was written in the ’40s, so much of it rang true today for the US and definitely for Europe. Quotes from the book:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1775089/posts
I highly recommend reading it if you haven’t already.
http://www.amazon.com/Road-Serfdom-Fiftieth-Anniversary/dp/0226320618
Joseph Day says:
September 10, 2010 at 12:05 pm
Can’t believe they made this to create Al Baby and other post modern/post normal sciencetists!. I always thought there was kind of an alien look in them all 🙂
For example, developmental biologists have reversed the changes in chickens that make them more modern. Modifications produce teeth, more scales, and long tails. Definitely, more dinosaur-like features. Thus, using evolution as the model, a series of experiments demonstrated that modern birds could be made to look more like dinosaurs
Definitely, those rossy cheeks were not normal….
Helen Hawkins says,” Adult stem-cell research is making fantastic strides in developing cures for all kinds of illness.” Further, there was a recent announcement that pluripotent adult stem cells were developed. This attribute was THE main element promoting embryonic stem cell research.
Curt says:
September 9, 2010 at 7:49 pm
Curt, you are right on. It is not anti-science. It is pro life. The opponents (most of them) understand the only way to get EMBRYONIC stem cells (no one to my knowledge is against stem cell research period) is to abort a baby. And to some of us that is murder (I understand not all see an unborn baby as a true human). It is akin to the “opponents” in WWII using Jews for medical research. No one has ever denied that great advances were made – but the price is way too high for those who view human life as the most important thing.
The nascent science of climatology has indeed been hijacked. We learned a lot of real climate science at Heartland Institute’s 4th International Conference on Climate Change this year in Chicago (they have put it online, for anyone interested). WUWT’s projects were a prominent feature.
The Idso’s were there to present a bit of the science on CO2 and plants, but the theme was Rethinking the Science and Economics.
I have concluded that the Biology is a bigger issue–warmer temperatures and higher CO2 levels are clearly proven to result in more plant and animal life, yet the call is catastrophe. Recently, I did some literature searches in biology peer-reviewed databases, and found a considerable skewing in the field of biology that I suspect is far worse than even in Climate Science (where editors have been fired and papers denied publication because of politically incorrect results) itself.
I found wild speculation as to some enzyme system that might actually reduce the numbers of a Mexican bat in warmer temperatures. Some research results were involved, but the hypothesis itself was testable–and appropriate research was simply not included. The whole point of peer review is to exclude pure guesses like that.
AGW is mentioned in the intro to a very large number of studies. This tells you it is a money item, but the papers themselves have no defensible connection.
The science of ecology says primary production (plants) are the number one thing correlated to biodiversity. Since biodiversity is at the heart of many of these publications, they shoot themselves in the foot by complaining about things likely to increase it.
Worse, some suggest toxic “solutions,” and help steal poor peoples’ farmland to plant “carbon offset” noncrops–and that is murder.
The political correctness in biology is more extreme than the climate correctness, and threatens our well-being and all our lives.
Upon reading the article, I must conclude that Nature indeed failed to resist the temptation to detour from objective science in this piece. The author unnecessarily overburdened any real message with pejorative and inflammatory terms like “denialism,” attacking political and religious views, and labeling other views as derelict, all of which are whipping horses readily available when science fails in delivering a consumable message.
From a historical vantage, the premise that religion and politics has stifled and undermined the message of science is a sad and even desperate position to take. Science indeed flourished and excelled in the U.S. in an era where politics and religion were far more prevalent in the hearts of its society. So, what has changed today?
In my humble opinion, what has changed is in the day of its flourishing, science was entrepreneurial, scientists were good spokespersons who engaged the public as part of their excitement in their accomplishments. Albert Einstein never missed a photo opportunity to engage the press and the public. Thomas Edison was both an entrepreneur and a sales man of science. Both became household names. In my youth, I was inspired to be like them by their example and by their exuberance. Where are the household names of science today?
Today’s crop of scientists can’t be bothered with public appearance. They are content to grub for government grants, hide behind institutional walls, and leave inept politicians and activist zealots to do their speaking for them. They then whine when the message delivered isn’t consumable. If I were young today, why would I be inspired by anything held forward by the likes of Jones, Mann, Briffa, Hansen, or Schmidt? Why would I dream of being a scientist when science publications like this are no more than wailing and crying – something more appropriate at funerals?
Yes, pointing the finger at assuages the guilt of the pointer but it does nothing to solve the problem as it displaces the culpability. When failure reaches the point where we must burn the Christians, label those who disagree as intellectually deficit, and brand the critics as heretics – all unfit as citizens – the kingdom is close to collapse. Nero iconized this unfortunate reality. Nature has indeed set a new low in standards for scientific publication with this sad but revealing article.
well here is my LTE. it is quite a rigmarole to submit one
To the Editor
I was extremely offended by your 8 September editorial, “The anti-science strain pervading the right wing…”
As an educated liberal, I have news for the readers of Nature: We are in the middle of an ice age. It is ludicrous to be frightened by a dubious few tenths of a degree of warming.
But the editorialists “business interests and their sponsored think tanks and front groups” along with the governments owned by them have poured trillions of dollars into a “climate science” propaganda machine. This machine funds thousands of think tanks and professors who are paid to terrorise naive but otherwise well meaning folk into turning over large sums of money to said banks, corporations, and governments.
The Global Warming scare is indeed another scam perpetrated by the cleptocratic class, those same “business interests and their sponsored think tanks and front groups” responsible for such classic theft schemes as the WTO, World Bank, and our perpetual wars based on lies. No wonder Limbaugh is suspicious of these “elites” and their paid experts.
Perhaps Limbaugh, a man I despise, is actually right for once. Limbaugh says,”The four corners of deceit: government, academia, science and media. Those institutions are now corrupt and exist by virtue of deceit.” From the liberal perspective, all of these institutions have been bought out by “business interests and their sponsored think tanks and front groups.”
From the liberal perspective, Global Warming is just one more scam to further impoverish the poor, and further enrich the rich. It is one more scam to transfer wealth from those who work to those who don’t. Only from the liberal perspective, those idle hands are the idle hands of the owning class.
Rather than being swayed left by your association of “denialism” with sundry right-wing fanatics, I am offended by having my honest skepticism labeled “denialism” and “anti-science”. Skepticism is the heart of science, and our greatest hope for progress.
Sincerely,
Peter Hodges
The left believes it is sole custodian of the truth, exemplified by the self-serving title An Inconvenient Truth – that only they have the science. The fact is they have a single precept, that CO2 is solely responsible for agw. And on this one issue, the GRIP2 ice core data reveals that CO2 increases come about 800 years AFTER temperature increases. Therefore, the science says: the left’s single issue is moot.
The MSM, Nature, Science, and the rest of the left leaning sycophants daily throw anecdotal information against the wall to see what will stick. Fortunately, with millions watching on the Internet, none of this crap hangs around for long. The Hockey Stick is dead. The corrupt IPCC is next.
The right isn’t anti-science. It is anti-dogma. It knows tossing virgins into the volcano is not going to placate the gods, be they the warming or cooling variety. The right knows building solar panels and wind turbines are unsustainable and a total waste of resources. The right knows global climate models are useless because they only look at corrupted data ‘homogenized’ by Dr. James “thumbs on the temperature scale” Hansen. The right knows planetary mechanics solely dictate our climate. The right knows CO2 has no choice but to come along for the ride.
Konrad says:
September 10, 2010 at 4:08 am
“I note that Nature has indeed published my vitriolic and somewhat provocative comment.”
Well done! There are some other comments critical of Nature.
I’m glad to see that Nature is not censoring them.
I have archived the comments in case they disappear, in which case they will reappear all over the Intenet.
Dave Springer says:
September 10, 2010 at 5:48 am
I really enjoyed your post, especially this quote:
I really agree with this. Though the debate is important for a lot of reasons, I agree that it is completely unimportant in science and engineering which inherently work with natural processes. They explore/explain/utilize how the universe operates, not how it orginates (which would seem to have to be an unnatural process and doesn’t fall under science, as it isn’t reproducible). I realize that current operational observations can be extrapolated backwards…but can you really extrapolate back to the origin of the universe???
And this is related to the topic at hand because use of the D-word by scientists (especially climate scientists) is absurd. It simply does not fall into their area of expertise. Yet a lot of scientists these days seem to think their views are 100% correct on a variety of topics, particularly politics and religion. Perhaps psychologists should be the one accessing why the “results” are being “denied”. Oh wait, a lot of scientists think psychology is whack. 😉
-Scott
“The Tea Party’s leanings encompass religious opposition to Darwinian evolution and to stem-cell and embryo research — which Beck has equated with eugenics.” Yes, there are religious conservatives opposed to science. What ‘Nature’ misses is left-wing and green anti-scientism. And left-leaning scientists who use their credentials to undermine scientific reasoning – Steven Rose, Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin. People like Edward Wilson were attacked by the left, sometimes physically, for trying to apply Darwinism to the behavior of homo sapiens, and their followers still threaten academic freedom. Gould also used the ‘eugenics’ scare tactic.
Just curious…
1) AGW types went to great lengths to demonstrate that the “climate skeptics” are in the minority… let’s assume that as the case for now.
2) The Nature article seems quite comfortable labelling the alledged minority (see point 1) with the label “denier” which we all know has very negative connotations.
It would seem to me, given my rather vague knowledge of US law as gleaned from watching “Law & Order” etc (great source I am sure 🙂 ) that these would be the criteria that satisfy the necessary conditions for “hate speech.”
Just musing aloud…
Math and Physics older than I am are my religion . Apparently even if you are “registered” but not about to drop $200 on a subscription you can’t comment on Nature’s arrogant statist lumpen insults .
They should learn some basic 19th century physics of radiantly heated balls . Simply adding up the energy impinging on the planet gives a temperature of about 279 Kelvin , within 10 degrees of our observed . And that temperature applies to any gray ball no matter how dark or light .
But “climate science” academia foists the unphysical “cold earth” hypothesis , to use Marty Hertzberg’s term , “frozen earth” in mine , that the the earth somehow reflects as a 0.7 absorptivity ball , but emits as a 1.0 black body , to claim that without a “greenhouse gas effect”‘ our temperature would be 255k .
So 2/3rds of their claimed greenhouse effect is simply getting back up to the temperature of a gray ball . That’s why a greenhouse effect has been found on the moon . How the hell they calculate “forcings” given this false nul hypothesis I find beyond my comprehension .
Actually calculating equilibrium temperature , given the sun’s spectrum , for a ball with any particular spectrum , like the lumped earth and atmosphere in our orbit is simply a matter of calculating the correlation between those 2 spectra .
I’m offering , as an individual who has to calculate , on his own time , his taxes due rather than one who is paid by taken taxes , a very small cash prize for any student who extends my algorithms for non-uniform flat spectrum bodies to full spectra and computes the equilibrium temperatures for various substances and spheres of interest .
I think David Nolan may be the only counter example to the comment that any field with science in its name probably isn’t one . In any case the understanding of classic physics evident in “climate science is pathetic – to be kind . It is a personally painful reminder of my age that a name as once revered as Nature has so revealed its mortality . But in the age of the www blog , it , and all restricted review , are dinosaurs .
Here’s to the end of the cult of the omniscient omnipotent geographic monopoly of force , we call the state . Here’s to the free market of free minds doing the best for their families .
I’ll submit this as a LTE to Nature to request an answer to the hundred year old physics which falsifies their rational for world domination .
Curiousgeorge says:
September 9, 2010 at 5:28 pm
So according to Nature if I disagree with the methods, statistics, assumptions, and conclusions of the AGW “scientists” I am automatically a gun clinging, right-wing, bible thumping, redneck.
You rang sir?
Yeah! That’s me alright. I am armed to the teeth at all times. I do have a rifle in the rifle rack of my pickup truck.
I also have three engineering degrees and have met very few people I would be afraid to cross technological swords with.
Also, I am old enough to be in a perpetual bad temper.
I do not suffer fools gladly!
ps. I am NOT kidding.
peterhodges says:
September 10, 2010 at 1:40 pm
Rod McLaughlin says:
September 10, 2010 at 4:00 pm
An excellent letter, Mr. Hodges, and some really great examples of historic left-wing anti-science, Mr. McLaughlin.
The left-wing feminist attack on E.O. Wilson was prolonged and influential – it was considered quite daring to defend his ideas even in the late 1980s. The debate concerned the ideological implications of the genetic determination of human traits and behaviour for womens’ liberation (among other issues), and was not carried on at a scientific level, but very much on a political level. Yet the theory of human development being defended by these ideologues was equally open to abuse: the idea that our strengths and shortcomings are due to nurture rather than nature led to such things as ‘refrigerator mothers’ (career women) causing autism in their children (usually sons) by being emotionally distant. As the mother of an autistic son, I understand how devastating it must have been in the 1960s to go seek help for an emotionally unresponsive, developmentally delayed child and being told on no uncertain terms that it was your own fault! It’s hard enough to deal with now when current theories have linked genetic anomalies to the disorder. One always wonders if one was spending too much time at the photocopier, or doing other things that tipped the genetic/environmental balance. Contra Anthony’s comment at the outset about most sciences not being permeated by ideology, I would argue that unfortunately, the opposite is true, and especially for the biological and medical sciences (but you’ll also find it in theoretical physics). It’s just that the implications of those ideologies vary enormously.
Next at Nature Magazine, burn the witch.
kadaka (KD Knoebel) wrote:
“Shortly after the Obama administration took office, the Department of Homeland Security released a report linking right-wing extremists, like those opposing (increased) federal government control, with domestic terrorism. Nature and others are linking Climate Change deniers, like those opposing the Obama administration’s plans to regulate carbon (dioxide), with right-wing extremists. Therefore Climate Change deniers are linked to domestic terrorism.”
We will know that AGW is dead when the MSM comments just as vehemently against eco-freaks like Ted Kaczynski and James Jay Lee (both inspired by Al Gore).
When will we see Nature sold for $1?
Consider this – the first Tea Party was given by a bunch of everyday, middle of the road, fed-up guys dressed up like Indians (the Native American kind) because back then guys didn’t give tea parties and Indians did a lot of crazy things. Anyway, the point of it all is that it had a lot to do with taxes and the stupidity by politicians across the Pond in the Old Country. The current Tea Party is a bunch of guys and gals who couldn’t care less about how they look or what anyone else on the planet thinks. It’s a kind’a ‘personal’ thing to them, and these folks were, are and always will be The Mighty Middle, the ones who rule and pick the winners. Anyway they’re not the Left (Commie Democrats) or the Right (Gutless Republicans). Tea Parties are the way Americans tell politicians that things are getting out of hand and they’re fed up.
PS: Just thought I’d give the meaningless few on the left and the right a little education about the mighty middle.
Curiousgeorge says:
“So according to Nature if I disagree with the methods, statistics, assumptions, and conclusions of the AGW ‘scientists’ I am automatically a gun clinging, right-wing, bible thumping, redneck. Hmmm.”
============
Hmmmm………now I also read that article in ‘Nature,’ and not once did I read anything close to “guns, bibles or rednecks,” so I must say you and many others are reading entirely between the lines and just making it up as you go along, to increase the huge polarization in our country today. How is this helpful? Apparently, you don’t want it to be, even though you go on and try to tell us you’re an “Independent,” but that certainly can’t be your voting record today.
“I’ll point out though that the sort of idealogy we see in the global warming movement doesn’t seem to pervade other sciences, at least until somebody demands that one of the science organizations embraces or endorses the cause”
I think this statment is incorrect, although I acknowledge I may have misunderstood it. In my experience the great majority of people in research are working hard and trying to do good science. A minority, including many of the people your likely to see and hear about, are stroking their egos promoting themselves and doing whatever it takes to get funding and profile. There are tremendous egos, cliques and ideaologies at play. I put it to you that theory by fashion/associations/funding is the norm rather than the exception and I have personally seen important discoveries buried for many years because the person who made them was not in the right club.
The reason the GW thing has managed to become what it is is due to the secondary effects. Mentalist groupes latched onto it as a way to attract funds, then the finance industry realised there was a crooked buck in it.
Usually when these things arise mostly they are ignored until someone finally manages to publish a solid rebuttal, this time the issue went exponential. It is the secondary activity, not the bad science, which makes GW unusual.
There was a time when no one but a handful of people would have cared about a punch up over temperature trends or atmospheric CO2 levels – I am, sadly, the sort of person who would have cared 🙂 – but when you get talking about a tremendous tax on the whole developed world….
The sad state of science is not the data, but the intrepretation. I truly admire science and love it. The problems I have discovered in science is its method of intrepretation and its lack of a philosophy to ground itself and that has led to the current political problems in that science needs a philosophy to “validate” itself and has thus turned political to do so. That is why we got “the earth is flat” when the Jews knew it was round for at least a thousand years due to what God told them through their prophets: Isaiah using the word “sphere” in Hebrew. Science needs to expand its roots beyond the lab to include a solid philosophy that will at least take historical facts to start some decent thinking to avoid the political, besides the political solution has not worked out so well for us!