New Scientist has a barrage of articles on “denialism”, including one from DeSmog Blog misinformer Richard Littlemore, who runs with the tired old comparisons of today’s skeptical public to tobacco industry campaigns. He bashes what he calls “manufactured doubt” while at the same time ignoring the billions poured into the climate industry, including the funding he and his namesake publisher (Hoggan and Associates PR firm, who run DeSmog Blog) receives from that industry. It’s quite the sanctioned hatefest going on there. It is truly sad that like Scientific American, New Scientist has become nothing more that a political science mouthpiece, and a shell of its former self.
Here’s links to all the New Scientist articles on “denial”. They did include one article from Michael Fitzpatrick that is a feeble attempt at balance, but even it too strays into the ugly territory of comparing climate skeptics with AIDS deniers.
- Special report: Living in denial Opinion > Special Report p35 From climate change to vaccines, evolution to flu, denialists are on the march. Why do so many people refuse to accept the evidence?
- Living in denial: When a sceptic isn’t a sceptic Opinion > Special Report pp36-37 There are clear lines between scepticism and denial, but telling them apart can be tricky in the real world, says Michael Shermer
- Living in denial: Why sensible people reject the truth Opinion > Special Report pp38-41 Denialism satisfies deep emotional needs. That makes it easy to encourage and hard to counter, says Debora MacKenzie
- Living in denial: How corporations manufacture doubt Opinion > Special Report p41 If the truth is inconvenient, put up a smokescreen instead. It works wonders for big business, argues Richard Littlemore
- Living in denial: Unleashing a lie Opinion > Special Report pp42-43 It’s easy to send a lie flying around the world, and almost impossible to shoot it down, says Jim Giles
- Living in denial: Questioning science isn’t blasphemyOpinion > Special Report p44 Michael Fitzpatrick argues that calling an opponent a denier is illiberal, intolerant and ineffective
- Living in denial: The truth is our only weapon Opinion > Special Report p45 We must let denialists be heard, and respond with patience, vigilance and tireless rebuttal, says Michael Shermer
Wow. What an epic pile of [snip]!
Afraid for their livelihood it seems.
We all know who the real denialists and liars are.
They are really getting desparate. Sounds like their last gasp.
New Scientist went left.
Projection is one of the core symptoms of Marx induced madness.(The others are narcissism and envy.)
It’s not surprising that the Big-Scares for Big Grants industry is projecting now it’s losing all the arguments. You see the same things said by marxists about economics calling people who want to stop innocent workers being extorted by the state as nasty.
The soviet union is an example of the ecological destruction that happens when so much of an economy is directed by bureaucrats (that’s the narcissism part, the bureaucrat thinks they care more and can arrange the world better than anyone else regardless of how much violence is required).
The last bit Envy is the most important for academics who have been told that only intelligence = wealth, when it’s meeting demand that creates wealth (and that requires social skills they lack).
I notice that all of the listed articles are Opinion pieces. You know the old saw about Opinions: “Opinions are like assholes, everybody has one.”
I’d read the article by Michael Shermer yesterday. It left me thoroughly disgusted, and now that I see a lot of similar articles, I doubt I could stomach the rest.
It’s interesting…these are usually the people proclaiming the loudest that there is no objective truth, but clearly that’s not how they feel about “their truths”.
What’s also interesting is that only a few people (“conspiracy theorists”) are skeptical of all the topics associated with “denialism”. Yet, by their simple psychological analysis, most of the people that are skeptical of one should be skeptical of all.
The amount of hypocrisy is mouth dropping…these are the same people that deny their own variety of well-established history to suit their own agenda (two examples that come immediately to mind are the MWP/LIA past climate and the fact that the majority of America’s forefathers were Christians).
As a person that’s about to finish their Ph.D. in a hard science, I know a little about the scientific process. These people have twisted it to something disgusting and made it their golden calf to worship. How sad.
Just my thoughts,
-Scott
Climate Change on Jupiter???
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1277734/Jupiter-loses-stripes-scientists-idea-why.html
Must be all that increased Carbon Dioxide from all the little Jovian aliens driving around montster SUV has caused Climate Change on Jupiter.
Maybe we can send Al Gore out there to help save their planet too.
;>P
I’ve been reading New Scientist’s website a lot 10 years ago but checked it less and less as they came up with a new scenario about how the universe will end or what a black hole really is every other week. So it looks like i missed the whole climate denialist fun. Maybe they should rebrand to “New Dogmatist” or “Weekly Balderdash”.
Still waiting for my “big oil” check. They must be too busy cleaning up the mess they made in the Gulf of Mexico.
I guess I will have to stick with my day job.
Is this really from the New Scientist? If so I hope they will look at this edition in future and hang their heads in shame.
tonyb
This is ludicrous. The term “climate change denialist” has been applied to “those who refuse to accept that climate change is occurring”. The Wikipedia definition is not only incorrect, its absurd.
There is a very odd similarity between this absurd dogma and the “Church” which once dictated “Science”.
I really hope the zealots of this warming mania pull their heads out of the ground before this goes to far and they begin to use the term Heretic.
Off Topic:
What are the drinking over at East Anglia? What ever it is… I DON”T want some….
Yeah, ain’t it awful?
“Living in denial: Unleashing a lie Opinion > Special Report pp42-43 It’s easy to send a lie flying around the world, and almost impossible to shoot it down, says Jim Giles.”
Are they bragging or complaining?
How many years has this been going on now?
And the so called “truth” has not carried enough weight to actually become “truth”.
I say encourage them to scream even louder.
The more hysterical they get, the less people believe.
There’s Klingons on the starboard bow.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/mar/05/scientists-plot-to-hit-back-at-critics/
It’s life Jim but not as we know it.
I found out yesterday that my steer was regulated by the EPA under the American Power Grab Act and the corn was under the USDA. I can NOT give the steer the bushel of corn until Goldman sachs gives me a carbon credit certificate and the approval arrives with proper signatures.
This manufactured coercion follows manufactured hockey stick reports.
Does any one blame me for thinking there is some stupidity out there?
Fred Pearce, New Scientist senior environment correspondent, is the guy at the centre of Glaciergate.
For 11 years Fred Pearce sat on the lie that the Himalayan glaciers would dissappear by 2035 (he made up that figure himself).
Since Glaciergate both the New Scientist and Fred Pearce have ben trying hard to re-establish their credentials with the alarmist movement.
This series of articles is atonement for their global warming sins. They have been forgiven by the high priests of the climate-change religion.
PS You should look at IPCC Chairman Pachauri’s presentation to IAC Review Committee
http://reviewipcc.interacademycouncil.net/Presentation_%20IAC_review_Amsterdam_14th_May_2010.ppt
Pachauri repeats the lie that the +18,000 papers in the AR4 are all peer-reviewed. Now that should make heads turn.
It would appear that global warming alarmists have trouble with basic numbers.
I used to refer to global warming as neo-Lysenkoism. However, seeing these New Scientist articles, I think the term will eventually be called “Hansenism” as memory of Lysenko fades.
These anti-skeptic articles have an increasingly angry, bitter and desperate tone. It’s not attractive.
Been following New Scientist’s coverage of AGW for some time and watching their coverage become more and more of a joke. A bad joke.
New Scientist should change their name to Mad Scientist.
Lubos Motl has for years called it Nude Socialist.
I like this little piece of spin:
Living in denial: When a sceptic isn’t a sceptic Opinion > Special Report pp36-37 There are clear lines between scepticism and denial, but telling them apart can be tricky in the real world…
The New Scientist was one of my oldest bookmarks until it became obvious it had become a Drudge Report for crank science. Haven’t been there since.
We just need to make fun of these people more.
That is the best they deserve.
Thankfully I saw the light and gave up my subscription to New Scientist years ago. I’m surprised it has any readers left. Perhaps it just has left readers.
Wow. But yes, haha, Nude Socialist can no longer surprise me. 😉
Since when hasn’t NS been lefty political pseudoscience rag?
New Scientist wants a new age, the “Age Of Acceptance” where all scientific material is published must be believed and where all scrutiny is to be denied.
Accept the Gospel of New Scientist, you bunch of denialist heathens. The editors at New Scientist must have decided there is more money in religion than science. Maybe they are right, just look at our supreme leader Al Gore.
New Scientist has been looney since the early 80s at least. Always goes for the screaming hair-on-fire angle if it can find one. MAD magazine has more credibility, AFAIC.
New Scientist / Post Normal Scientist. Same-same.
What a heap of garbage! I’m really pleased that I stopped buying New Scientist when it stopped being an objective science publication.
The only climate deniers today are the ones who cling to the discredited idea of catastrophic global warming.
[snip]
They doth protest too much. The irony of course is that they are in denial. Their denial is that reasonable, intelligent people could significantly disagree with them without either having been manipulated in some fashion by evil interests, or being actively on the payroll of those evil interests.
Is there really any difference between New Scientist, Scientific American and the National Enquirer? When are they going to start publishing articles about “Elvis found on Mars”
Actually I am maligning the Enquirer by lumping them with New Scientist. Seems they are up for a Pulitzer Prize according to the New York Times!
“….The Enquirer is under consideration for a Pulitzer Prize, and it has strong support for its bid from other journalists….” http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/08/business/media/08enquirer.html
Interesting how these people see open discussion as the equivalent of being gagged, when it is actually quite the opposite. They are used to gagging any dissent and having control control of the discussion.
People defending undefendable religions always fall into this mode. Logic can’t win the argument, so they resort to more intellectually violent approaches.
About Elsevier; and New Scientist.
New Scientist is printed by Reed Business Information Ltd, a subsidiary of Reed Elsevier. Reed Elsevier is owned by The Reed Elsevier group is a dual-listed company consisting of Reed Elsevier PLC and Reed Elsevier NV.
At a 2009 court case in Australia where Merck & Co. is being sued by a user of Vioxx, the plaintiff alleged that Merck had paid Elsevier to publish the Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine, which had the appearance of being a peer-reviewed academic journal but in fact contained only articles favorable to Merck drugs. Merck has described the Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine as a “complimentary publication”, denied claims that articles within it were ghost written by Merck, and stated that the articles were all reprinted from peer-reviewed medical journals. In May 2009, Elsevier released a statement by Michael Hansen regarding the Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine, conceding that these were “sponsored article compilation publications, on behalf of pharmaceutical clients, that were made to look like journals and lacked the proper disclosures”.
Also: “Herman van Campenhout is Chief Executive Officer of Science & Technology at Elsevier … Prior to joining RBI, Herman spent 17 years with the Royal Dutch Shell Group”, Royal Dutch Shell provides funding to the Climate Research Unit.
So, the people that own, control, publish and distribute New Scientist print ’fiction as science for money’ and the ‘Science and Technology Division’ is run by an ex Royal Dutch Shell executive.
New Scientist was a source of the IPCC Glacier Melting lie.
Its a major circling of the wagons as if science were an “ism”.
This is the real threat to science. A bunch of ignoramous magazine editors playing the role of the Pope’s propaganda machine in insulting the many scientists challenging the orthodoxy.
Warmists In Groupthink Death Spiral
They past “craziness” a long time ago.
New Scientist is to science as Newsweak is to news. I had a subscription for a while and found it to be so horribly shallow that its hardly worth using to light a fire with. Flashy cover promising real neat stuff in the story. When you hit the story, its mush.
The alarmist lobby has hundreds of millions of dollars to play with each year.
Almost all the ‘climate scientists’ are funded by government and want to continue their comfy lifestyles – hence the never ending stream of alarmist propaganda.
We are now entering the age of painful budget cutbacks. Yet, the very underfunded sceptical movement – does anyone give us serious funds? – is steadily winning the hearts and minds of Jo Public.
Why? Joe Public is beginning to clearly see that: a) The alarmist scare stories are daily becoming more ridiculous, ii) the practitioners of present day climate science have regularly manipulated data to ‘prove’ their flawed hypotheses, and iii) there is an unhealthy and mutually supportive relationship between very overpaid populist politicians and overpaid ‘climate scientists’.
Why should Joe Public support the Establishment and AGW, when the actions proposed will do almost nothing to reduce the growth in carbon dioxide levels and cause widespread economic misery through huge rises in stealth and other forms of taxation?
Bottom line: the attacks on reasonable scepticism by alarmists will become ever more shriller.
So what is it about millions of us who believed in global warming hysteria for years but then realised it didn’t add up? Did an evil corporation put something in my tea that killed my Marxist leanings?
These New Scientist articles are opinion pieces, and only that. There is no science here.
The idea that AGW skepticism is somehow linked to all of the other anti-science examples that they listed (they missed the faked moon landings) just shows that there is a lot of traction to the skepticism.
Its sad that they can’t see that many of the arguments that they apply to the “deniers” are actually more reasonably applicable to themselves. They are the real deniers.
Cap & Trade is on the Senate floor again, with the compliments from Maurice Strong, George Soros, Al Gore and all the other hacks who belong behind bars.
In itself the argument of “It is wrong because it was said by a denialist” is a logical fallacy but one can justifiably ask the following:
Do you have an experimental test, which could be replicated in the lab, which could demonstrate that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and that at current or even double present concentrations in the atmosphere of the earth could increase temperatures in any measure?
If you don’t, then you have NOTHING. PERIOD!
time for a good old book burning!!!
Mmmpf. The lizards are not going extinct, they’ve just taken up writing for New Scientist…
Scientific American and New Scientist have been politically motivated for over two decades. The only real scientific import they have now is to give the left a “scientific” fig leaf for their talking points.
The irony level of Michael Shermer writing a article sub- titled “When a Speptic isn’t a Skeptic” is off the charts. Shermer can’t see his own blind spots.
Even to a true believer, this issue must seem over the top.
If you look really closely, you can actually see a little tiny motorcycle jumping a shark on page 17.
On the other hand, this kind of desperation disparaging is what will kill their little cult… so bring it on.
Climate craze/hysteria and swine-flu craze/hysteria have much in common: there was not much to it, but certain industries, international bureaucracies and internationalist politicians strengthened their positions.
Create a “crisis” and then “solve” it, and it looks like you did a marvelous job. Better give this guy my vote next time as well.
Here in Norway, we recently had a sick-leave crisis. Sick-leave was suddenly out of control – even though the rate was perfectly normal, and would be less than normal if it wasn’t for the swine-flu crisis, during which people were advised to stay home for 8 days at the slightest symptom.
But the real “crisis” was of course the need to slash public spending to balance the budget.
So what is the proper democratic response to public manipulation, deceit and manufactured crises?
Yep.
Proud denial. Based on facts.
And watch out for the next “crises”!
Scepticism has contributed a great deal to science and humanity over the centuries. It is a natural component of scientific inquiry and, as such, should be sought after, not reviled. It is incomprehensible why a scientific journal would seek to legitimise this distorted view of scepticism.
A large part of my unpringing was being taught to observe my world and question why. I believe truth is relative to social and intellectual constraints and, as such, is not a constant, but something we should always be seeking to advance and enrich.
Articles such as, “Why sensible people reject the truth” and “The truth is our only weapon” demonstrate a blatant unwillingness to advance scientific knowledge.
I would argue denial is very real, but it is not exclusive to sceptics. In our modern, secularised society, it is not surprising Environmentalism has become the new religion; sceptics the heretics who are threatening its foundation. I sincerely believe history will chronicle today’s treatment of climate change sceptics as another example of persecution through millennia.
“Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it.” —Andre Gide
I don’t deny the existence of ManBearPig; I simply haven’t seen any evidence for it yet.
Maybe what is needed is a series on “Living with Climate Phobia” or “The Modern Social Illness of Climaneurosis”. Fear of C02 is simply unnatural. I’m guessing the issues involved may be Oedipal, but further investigation will be necessary.
Quick Note to the New Scientist:
We the skeptics do not deny that the climate is changing, climate change is as certain as water change on a river bend. We the skeptics are skeptical about the ability to know where climate is going to be next year, next decade and next century and even more skeptical that any warmist actually understands the mechanisms of climate to know what was driving climate last year or last decade or last century.
I personally understand that every generation will have it’s own group of hubristic phrenologists who are certain beyond doubt (and reason) that they have solved some aspect of the complex world. At this point, however, we are leaving the somewhat quaint realm of phrenological quackery and into the truly regrettable push for climatologically driven economic eugenics.
You will be stopped. Truth will win out. Try just once to lose with some damn dignity.
Wow. Just… wow!
Let me just set the record straight. I have never denied that the Earth’s climate changes. On the contrary, the climate of this planet IS changing, and has been since it was formed billions of years ago. I accept that as an immutable truth – the climate IS changing.
What I cannot accept, is that humans are causing the Earth’s climate to change merely by our paltry emissions of carbon dixode through use of our burning of various fuels in order to keep our lives and livelyhoods going forward.
I am still convinced that – as it has been for billions of years before – the planet’s climate changes are entirely due to “natural” causes, that we live on a non-sentient rocky planet that simply is completely indifferent to the needs of the human race. It doesn’t have a consciousness therefore it doesn’t care about us one iota. The planet doesn’t need “saving” as the greenies say it does, and that anyone who says “we need to save the planet” is suffering from a mental illness of a disturbing and dangerous kind – i.e. dangerous to all the other human beings on this planet who care about getting on with their lives and those of their offspring.
That doesn’t mean that I don’t care about my local environment. Not at all, I care very much about pollution, and by that I mean that it is important not to poison our food, water, and air – for the sake of myself, my family and others around me.
But these guys! There they go again, calling me and my ilk “deniers”, as if I’m some kind of crazy guy, where in fact it is they who are the crazy ones, expounding doom and gloom and exclaiming that The Panet Must be Saved.
I also stopped subscribing to New Scientist a few years back, as I realised that it was becoming nothing more than a mouthpiece for these crazies.
Wow. Just… frackin’ wow!
I remember specifically being called a “denier” and promoter of “hate speech.” There is an aspect of the the AIDS issue that is quite analogous to the AGW hysteria:
When I was in medical training in the early 1980’s, AIDS came on the scene along with a mnemonic: “the 4 H’s of AIDS—-Homosexuals, Hemophiliacs, Heroin Addicts, and Haitians”. No one understood the disease at first. HIV had not yet been discovered. AIDS was seen almost exclusively in these 4 groups. So the epidemiology was front and center in helping to study the disease, as well as in helping to diagnose it in individual patients with vague symptoms.
In the mid-80’s, a coalition of the self-interested, specifically gay activists and the AIDS research community, developed a loose organized push to scare the hell out of the general population. They promoted the frightening notion, in every way they could get away with, that AIDS was soon going to be as common among Heterosexual, non-drug addicts, as Herpes and that soon millions of regular folks would be getting the bad news form their doc’s.
This was always a fraud, and a grab for research and treatment dollars. The widespread heterosexual AIDS in Africa and parts of Asian could already then be traced to high risk sexual behavior prevalent in those affected cultures. Americans who simply avoided the high risk behaviors never had more than a miniscule risk of AIDS. Yet the push worked. AIDS became what I call a “sacred disease” and AIDS research was funded way out of proportion to the risk it presented for the average person. This funding that did not go to the more widespread, if mundane threats, like lung, colon, and prostate cancer, heart disease, and stroke, which together are hundreds of times more important diseases than AIDS in terms of real risk for average people.
So AIDS gained religiosity and political distortion thereby, much like AGW today.
R. de Haan says:
May 14, 2010 at 9:13 am
Cap & Trade is on the Senate floor again, with the compliments from Maurice Strong, George Soros, Al Gore and all the other hacks who belong behind bars
Don’t blame these ambitious kids by its bad behaviour, they are just diposable servants, butlers, stewards. They are convinced a ruling post will be asigned to them. This is the most funny part: They will be discarded as useless after the Global Governace is approved in Cancun, as it always has been and it always will be.
Poor Al Baby!…so brave, handsome and intelligent he thought he was!
Special Report p35 From climate change to vaccines, evolution to flu, denialists are on the march. Why do so many people refuse to accept the evidence?
17 years later, I’m still waiting to see some that is conclusive. I’m not alone either, there’s now 14 others in my circle who are debating the issue amongst ourselves now that it’s out in the open. I’m not sure if it’s relevant or not, but several of these people were very reluctant (if not afraid) to speak up about the topic, as most people on the green side of the coin are under quite a bit of pressure to accept and support the narrative. Derision and ridicule are the order of the day when we stray off-message.
Isn’t the psych term for this projection?
What an embarassing pile of anti scientific garbage.
The only people still in denial are those who are denying that the risks and problems of AGW has not been vastly over stated.
From the article:
New Scientist has a barrage of articles on “denialism”…
Psychological projection. It is Al Gore’s acolytes who wrongly believe the climate was static for a thousand years before anthropogenic CO2 emissions increased.
They base their belief on Michael Mann’s repeatedly debunked Hokey Stick chart.
This is simply evidence that skeptics are winning the debate. Look for the alarmists to become more shrill as time marches on. It’s interesting how backwards their arguments are. I know of no skeptic that assumes the climate is static. Quite the contrary, skeptics know our climate is dynamic and is always changing and it should. It is the alarmists that seem to believe the climate would be basically static if it weren’t for mankind and his evil ways of interfering with the “natural” cycles.
“Denialism satisfies deep emotional needs. That makes it easy to encourage and hard to counter”
You mean the “deep emotional need” to avoid the UN imposing 23 trillion in “climate debt” on developed nations, based on acausal, unfalsifiable, voo-doo climate science? That deep emotional need?
Al Gore’s Holy Hologram says:
May 14, 2010 at 9:11 am
“So what is it about millions of us who believed in global warming hysteria for years but then realised it didn’t add up? Did an evil corporation put something in my tea that killed my Marxist leanings?”
_______________________________________________________________________
Like the rest of us you grew up. All the discrepancies you had ignored finally added up to being just too much. Once you actually started to examine those discrepancies you realized you had been fed a pack of lies with just enough truth to keep you credulous, at least that is what happened to me.
Although I saw the fallacy in Marxism at age ten after listening to my brother and father arguing for a summer.
I ran a small company in the uk, for 25 years and tried as best i could to give my customers the best service possible. My products and services included a 10 year guarantee and because i fulfilled all of my obligations to my customers, i never made the fortune that others in the same business made. The best advice that was ever given to me was “never ever be seduced by your own advertising” It seems to me that NS is suffering from just such a malady. Phrases like “THE TRUTH” have no place in science magazines and the fact that they dont realise this is to their detrement.
I would be interested to know if their circulation is rising or falling. The latter would be frightening.
watch out for guest posts in NS from Chris Hune (Misspelled I Know) the new minister for climate change in the UK. Very very depressing.
I did of course mean, the former
As I have stated before with alarmists, its not that we deny that climate changes, that was never in dispute and they know it. We question that humans are driving the climate in a disastrous and measurable way that can be scientifically proven in repeatable observations (climate models are not evidence).
More to the point we also question the merit of any taxation scheme that claims to be able to control world climate for the better.
New Scientist must be run by Tiny Tim fans who sang this song too much when they were kids or stoned hippies
New Scientists Maturity Level = 0
Only children should argue by calling names.
It’s sad edition for a well loved magazine. They seem to have fallen for the sad tactic of ” if you can’t challenge the idea, attack the person” However we need to stop confusing politics with science. As a European style lefty and evironmentalist , I have grave concerns with climate theory. That does not make me right wing. If we accuse proponants of climate theory as “lefties” they could refer to us as right wing capitalists which just destroys constructive debate based on good evidence.
Al Gore’s Weather (AGW) :
Ah am not now; nor, have Ah ever been a member of the AGW Party. Ah was, howevah, Treasurer of the Wobblies when Ah was a green youth.
This is a whitewash. Here is the reason: “when unknown hackers stole more than 1,000 e-mails”.
…-
“The Climategate Chronicle
How the Science of Global Warming Was Compromised
To what extent is climate change actually occuring? Late last year, climate researchers were accused of exaggerating study results. SPIEGEL ONLINE has since analyzed the hacked “Climategate” e-mails and provided insights into one of the most unprecedented spats in recent scientific history.
Is our planet warming up by 1 degree Celsius, 2 degrees, or more? Is climate change entirely man made? And what can be done to counteract it? There are myriad possible answers to these questions, as well as scientific studies, measurements, debates and plans of action. Even most skeptics now concede that mankind — with its factories, heating systems and cars — contributes to the warming up of our atmosphere.
But the consequences of climate change are still hotly contested. It was therefore something of a political bombshell when unknown hackers stole more than 1,000 e-mails written by British climate researchers, and published some of them on the Internet. A scandal of gigantic proportions seemed about to break, and the media dubbed the affair “Climategate” in reference to the Watergate scandal that led to the resignation of US President Richard Nixon. Critics claimed the e-mails would show that climate change predictions were based on unsound calculations. ”
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,694484,00.html
New Scientist has become nothing more that a political science mouthpiece, and a shell of its former self.
Typo – should read than.
They’ve almost reached the point were they’re going to blame the skeptical movement on the International Jewish Banker’s conspiracy. We’ve already been called Nazis so what else is there?
Al Gore’s Holy Hologram says:
May 14, 2010 at 10:06 am
New Scientist must be run by Tiny Tim fans who sang this song too much when they were kids or stoned hippies
LMAO!
What a visionary (LSD).
I can’t even get myself to read the linked articles… because I know they just frustate me and thoroughly piss me off by insulting my intelligence.
I do have to admit that for me, watching these guys is like watching the reality-TV shows my wife watches…curled toes caused by replacement-shame.
What gall. What incompetence. At least, N Sc no longer had a reputation to lose.
Curiousgeorge says:
May 14, 2010 at 7:43 am
I notice that all of the listed articles are Opinion pieces. You know the old saw about Opinions: “Opinions are like assholes, everybody has one.”
And it continues to say that not everybody gives it away.
Ceasefire chaps, the warmers want to make a deal as we have more ammo.
If we are right that the warming is natural, then they have agreed to do this;
http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/ns/cms/mg20627605.900/mg20627605.900-1_300.jpg
There is a misprint, surely the magazine is called No Scientist.
I get this viruswarning when opening this site.
Threat:
HTML/ScrInject.B.Gen Virus
Object:
solar2[1].php
?
OT: Hey, Anthony – maybe the IPCC will send you an invitation?
“We will not have time to hear from every critic of the IPCC,” he said.
“But we will try to put together some public sessions of those who are I would say ‘thoughtful critics’ – very very respectable and highly thought of scientists with criticisms of the organisation – we definitely want to hear that.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science_and_environment/10112136.stm
It appears the dangerous AWG argument (opposed to any warming) can no longer be supported by current facts or logic. The current data all supports the assertion that the planet’s response to a change in forcing is negative rather than positive. A doubling of CO2 will therefore result in warming of around 1C as opposed to the 3C to 5C estimate. The warming is in addition primarly at high latitudes where it will be beneficial. The effects of the warming are based on the 3C to 5C plus warming.
If it is no longer possible to win an argument based on facts, name calling and questioning of motive must be used.
John from CA says (May 14, 2010 at 7:58 am): “I really hope the zealots of this warming mania pull their heads out of the ground before this goes to far and they begin to use the term Heretic.”
I actually prefer to be called a “climate heretic”. It emphasizes the religious (i.e. faith-based) nature of the CAGW creed. However, I don’t expect the “Mannish Inquisition.” 🙂
I stopped buying that rag. I have several time told them that I will never even pick it up for free until they drop their enviromentalism (sic).
Agreed. The worst sign of New Scientist’s delusional behaviour is the open use of a professional public relations rep as a supporter. Openly. A paid “truth shaper.”
Are the staff at New Scientist recovering Trotskyites or similar looking for their next monomaniacal religion?
My daughter used to buy me a subscription for Christmas every year. A couple of years ago I asked her to stop. A year ago I forbade her to ever buy me a copy again.
The science is so poor, the alarmism so over the top and the bias so blatant that they can’t even get me to read a free copy. Shame, I read it from the very beginning, back when it came with a three colour pulp cover.
JF
I have asked several times where I sign up to get my check from “Big Oil.” Maybe they use PayPal instead?
To add, only one thing more, from Mr. Shermer’s piece:
That is the biggest, cleanest psychological projection I have seen in some time. Sincerely felt, I do not doubt. In their religious fervor people like this have absorbed every criticism directed towards them and adapt it for their own, rather than ponder the criticisms’ validity.
I read a very interesting account of creationists by Ron Numbers many years ago, The Creationists: The Evolution of Scientific Creationism. I know you folks don’t like to be compared to creationists, but the parallels are very strong. They cannot accept science when, in their view, it goes against the Bible. [snip] cannot accept science when, in their view, it goes again the free (unregulated) market. Both groups claim that the world’s scientists are in some sort of vast conspiracy. Both groups trumpet work by a few amateurs and jump on any open questions or conflicting data as proof the whole theory is wrong.
Anybody who thinks a computer model outputs facts or is evidence is in denial of the scientific method.
I maybe a flat earther, but at least I am sure which way is up! Not sure about these guys.
I used to subscribe to New Scientist. I haven’t bought it since its awful cover re- Darwin and evolution. This issue confirms that the mag is now a shadow of its former self – banging its eco-political drums wth no thought for objectivity.
Curiousgeorge says:
May 14, 2010 at 7:43 am
I notice that all of the listed articles are Opinion pieces. You know the old saw about Opinions: “Opinions are like assholes, everybody has one.”
‘and they all stink’ properly completes the saying. 🙂
cheers David
Mike says:
May 14, 2010 at 12:14 pm
That’s a pretty poor representation of the situation. Most reasonable skeptics don’t think it’s a vast conspiracy, they think it’s a case of following the wrong path so long that you can’t see anything else. I think it was Willis that posted a comment here about the statistics of looking for a 95% probability of some facet of man’s contributions causing warming. By the time you reach roughly a dozen studies looking for this, the probability of one of them finding a “positive” spuriously has increased to ~50%! Now consider the number of studies actually be done…way more than a dozen, right? As one who works in academia, I fully understand the pressures and directions of funding. Finding “statistically significant” manmade causes of “climate change” is easy when you’re paid to do so and look at dozens of data sets. As a comparison, 15 years ago nearly 100% of the scientists in the field of microfluidics would have told you that in a dozen years, microfluidics would have revolutionized the world of chemical and biochemical analysis and be the standard way of doing things. Well, what happened? Clearly they were wrong, and part of it because their funding pursuits blinded them to the truth. Is this happening with AGW? Possibly. Is this happening with CAGW? My opinion is a definite “yes”.
Also, do you consider Roy Spencer an amateur? I think that in terms of data analysis/statistics, Michael Mann is more an an amateur than Steve McIntyre…have you considered that?
The stand here on creationism/intelligent design is typically apathetic, but a few people have commented for/against it in the past. However, your post twists that debate too. Do you label Michael Behe as an amateur? Seriously, read his stuff sometime and make your own decisions on it…don’t swallow what your liberal professors or magazines send your way without a second thought.
I’m just so tired of being labeled a conspiracy theorist because my views on CAGW…
-Scott
dp says: May 14, 2010 at 8:30 am “The New Scientist was one of my oldest bookmarks until it became obvious it had become a Drudge Report for crank science. Haven’t been there since.”
It’s become more like a smell of its former self, then?.
“From climate change to vaccines, evolution to flu, denialists are on the march.”
I haven’t read the op-eds in question, but one thing I have noticed about the climate debate is the number of sahred claims made by anti-evolutionists and climate sceptics about their respective opponents. Among the claims held in common are:
Media bias, religion/cult, groupthink, no consensus, educational indoctrination, lack of falsifiability, career prejudice, funding corruption, “growing numbers” of anti-evolutionists/climate sceptics, incivility, refusal to debate, accusations of Marxism/Nazism, evolution/AGW as eugenics, genocidal intent, censorship, evolution/AGW as postmodernism, and hoax and fraud.
What is notable about these claims is that they are overwhelmingly non-scientific. A few shared claims can be expected of people who oppose an idea, but there are too many here to be coincidental.
In my view these shared claims serve a particular function. They attempt to explain the fact that evolution and AGW have become the dominant view among the scientific establishment and the major societal institutions.
Does that mean that all climate sceptics are creationists? Of course not. But these shared claims are uncomfortable reminders that opposition to mainstream science contains many factors beyond science.
I know you folks don’t like to be compared to creationists, but the parallels are very strong
Then why do you give such weak examples. Seriously. Fail.
But who reads it anyway?
New Scientist is like MSNBC or Newsweek.
Hey Mike, how’s that trolling working out for you? Looks to me like you’re using the wrong bait.
Mike,
What you fail to grasp is that the faith based belief system is CAGW, not the skeptics. When facts don’t fit their belief system (i.e. models) they deny they exist or torture the data till it agrees with their belief in CAGW. MWP can’t be global because that would disagree with their hockey stick. Feedbacks must be positive or else they can’t get more than a degree or so of warming from CO2.
“Hide the decline” is their approach to science if it interferes with their views. The heat must have gone to the deep ocean because it must be there, because CAGW is the REVEALED TRUTH.
You imply that support for the skeptical position is based on the belief in unregulated freemarkets, yet you fail to grasp that the CAGW position is based on government imposed controls of all aspects of life. The enthusiastic supporters of CAGW are the politicians of the world who see it as a way of increasing their power. No wonder that Al Gore spins tales of imminent global apocalypse. How else to they gain power?
Zeke the Sneak says:
May 14, 2010 at 9:56 am
I find, instead, those “deep emotional needs”in BELIEVERS
And those “deep emotional needs” are commonly, and of course unconsciously, originated in very profound “feelings” like: “Mommy I wanna that icecream!”, “Bad boss doesn’t want me”, or as a consequence that “she” or “he” didn’t look at me!”,etc.
Those are the “feelings”of instinct not real feelings, are characteristical of spoil grown up kids.
However we must say that this applies only to Global Warming preachers, leaders, and “scientists” but NOT in any way to their patrons, bosses or funders, they are perfectly conscious of their inexaustible need of power and money.
New Scientist has not been worth reading for about 25 years. It got hijacked by warmists long ago.
They are actually now suffering from displacement. They consider themselves a knowledgeable elite and all sceptics as below average IQ.
What amuses me is that they lump Creationists, the religious and the tobacco-doesnt-cause cancer with Climate Sceptics.
– When it is now quite clear who is suffering from religious fervour.
What really hurts and angers them is that they failed miserably to get earth scientists, physicists, chemists, engineers etc on the AGW bandwagon.
But dont worry about it. No real scientists subscribe and it has a rapidly dwindling readership. It is outrageously expensive and this kind of Editorial Commentary will just switch off yet more readers.
After reading this issue, people can review New Scientist at Amazon. I just read the reviews of Sci American, there are many bad reviews due to lefty/green politics.
I noted about ten years ago that New Scientist had become the para-military wing of Greenpeace, and that its articles had become inane drivel aimed at the average ten year-old. Hence I cancelled my subscription.
Like the BBC’s flagship Horizon documentary program, which has become an adult version of Blue Peter (a children’s show), New Scientist has become a dumbed-down propaganda mouthpiece for environmentalism.
.
If you want to complain, the email address for New Scientist is:
.
tonyb says: May 14, 2010 at 7:49 am Is this really from the New Scientist? If so I hope they will look at this edition in future and hang their heads in shame.
I think he is being kind. Sad as it may seem, this issue makes it clear that “The New Scientist” has no future. Au revoir!
Bruce Cobb says:
May 14, 2010 at 9:30 am
Fear of C02 is simply unnatural. I’m guessing the issues involved may be Oedipal, but further investigation will be necessary.
I’d rather incline myself to an asphyxiating mother case.
If you want to complain, the email address for New Scientist is:
letters@newscientist.com
.
I was intrigued by ‘Living in Denial – the Truth is Our Only Weapon:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627606.500-living-in-denial-the-truth-is-our-only-weapon.html
In the nearly 20 years I have been debating AGW with crisis supporters, I have never found one who was willing to follow the guidelines put forth in this article. It states:
“Those who are in possession of the facts have a duty to stand up to the deniers with a full-throated debunking repeated often and everywhere until they too go the way of the dinosaurs.”
To date, none of my concerns about the theory of an AGW crisis have been seriously addressed, much less debunked! All I have ever received for my arguments were ad hominem attacks and logical fallacies. I, for one, would be greatly appreciative if the AGW proponents would follow the advice in this article. Of course, they really can’t afford to do that, because they do not have the truth or the facts.
Discouraging, but not surprising. The New Scientist was created when the term “new” was starting to be used as a euphemism for “communist” or “socialist”. At least they’re consistent.
New Scientist is weak and foolish, no doubt, but it still gets bought, albeit not read, because it carries adverts for scientific jobs. A bit like the [UK newspaper] The Guardian, which sensible people long ago gave up reading, but which still stumbles from issue to issue based on state subsidy due to Public Sector job advertising. That, and the best Cryptic Crosswords on the Planet.
However there IS [in my opinion] a grain of sense in the linked articles. Why DO so many intelligent people believe in stuff [CAGW] which is obviously false? Again in my opinion, it is because they have seen something with their own eyes which conflicts, so they think, with the sceptical position. That something is the FACT that it HAS warmed up in Western cities since the clean air acts stopped smog from cooling cities relative to the country. Journalists and politicians, right and left, step out of their city parterres and see, feel, smell that it is hotter right where they are [aka the Centre of the Universe] than 10 years ago. It’s human nature to seek a cause when one sees an effect, and lo! there are more cars, people are richer, it MUST be that those clever scientists who say human activities warm up the earth are correct. This hypothesis also explains why Weatherpeople, who look at the big picture, and countryfolk, whose experience is different, are [almost all] sceptics.
Enneagram says:
May 14, 2010 at 12:56 pm
Zeke the Sneak says:
May 14, 2010 at 9:56 am
I find, instead, those “deep emotional needs”in BELIEVERS
…we must say that this applies only to Global Warming preachers, leaders, and “scientists” but NOT in any way to their patrons, bosses or funders, they are perfectly conscious of their inexaustible need of power and money.
Point very well taken. If they want to play the dime-store psychologist about “deep emotional needs,” “two can play,” as they say.
I no longer give quarter in conversation to even my closest family members for supporting AGW policies, because deep down they are insisting that they know best, and must micromanage other people’s lives, making every little decision for them using the force of government. That is the real “deep emotional” aspect at play here. And it’s beyond arrogant.
So perhaps we have a tiny disagreement; I think the deceived are just as exactly as guilty of this insensate elitism as the deceivers.
Electric regards
and best always
The New Scientist folks aren’t just in denial, they’re on a scuba diving expedition through Cairo.
“The AGW warm-mongering carbon-fear cutlists are in denial about the evidence, about the proper application of the scientific method, about the fact that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, that the burden of proof is always on the theory to be proved and not on the null hypothesis, and about the fact that the hundreds of billions of government funding politicizes and corrupts them beyond any possibility of objectivity.” – Alan Lovejoy
Jon-Anders Grannes said on May 14, 2010 at 11:13 am:
As is noted here, someone using Firefox got that warning, virus was in the disk cache. As mentioned on the Firefox Support site, it is unlikely a Firefox user would get infected, and also possible that anti-virus scanners can misidentify some files as viruses.
That said, I just about Hansen’d my shorts yesterday when my browser was hijacked. I just started doing something on WUWT but afterwards it looked like it started at another tab that was loading a different page. I got this warning in a pop-up box:
I tried to cancel, it ran anyway, showing me a page with “ongoing virus screening.” Tried to go back, I got a warning message pop-up (I took screen shots):
Take a flying guess how effective “cancel” was. Plus I couldn’t go to another tab while that warning was up, couldn’t really do anything with the browser. Had to let it complete.
It finished with a beautiful blue pop-up box, Win XP style or something, titled Windows Security Alert, saying how Windows Web Security has detected trojans and is ready to remove them. This time hitting Cancel did something, forced a download of an exe file that I guess a user can run later. Shortly thereafter that page ceased to exist, browser couldn’t find it, and it had a random-generated name anyway. The page had looked nice, showing all the Windows directories being scanned on my C: drive, where in those directories the viruses were…
I use a Linux box. Thus I knew it was bogus, I don’t have those directories. And I knew it is very unlikely I was infected with anything, being Linux. But I also know sites can remote-detect operating systems, there are a few Linux viruses out there… And there went the rest of my day, downloading many megabytes of Linux-flavor anti-virus software on dial-up. (:-(
If I had been running Windows… *shudder*
Anyone else have strange virus warnings or browser hijacks lately?
At some point, someone will actually do an experiment with forcing and gain some clarity. In fact, if I get off my backside and get some funding it may even be me. Theory and the impression of understanding is so intoxicating; experimenting is ugly and complicated yet much more rewarding.
As for the hubris, I turn to a fellow Norn Iron poet: Crawford Howard and The Diagonal Steam Trap (apologies for the long post but you’ll see the relevance):
Now they built a big ship down in Harland’s –
She was made for to sell till the Turks –
And they called on the Yard’s chief designer
To design all the engines and works.
Now finally the engines was ready
And they screwed in the very last part
An’ yer man says ‘Let’s see how she runs, lads!’
An’ bejasus! the thing wouldn’t start!
So they pushed and they worked an’ they footered
An’ the engineers’ faces got red
The designer he stood lookin’ stupid
An’ scratchin’ the back o’ his head.
But while they were fiddlin’ and workin’
Up danders oul’ Jimmie Dalzell
He had worked twenty years in the ‘Island’
And ten in the ‘aircraft’ as well.
So he pushed and he worked and he muttered
Till he got himself through till the front
And he has a good look roun’ the engine
An’ he gives a few mutters and grunts,
And then he looks up at the gaffer
An’ says he ‘Mr Smith, d’ye know?
They’ve left out the Diagonal Steam Trap !
How the hell d’ye think it could go?’
Now the engineer eyed the designer
The designer he looks at the ‘hat’
And they whispered the one to the other
‘Diagonal Steam Trap? What’s that?’
But the Gaffer, he wouldn’t admit, like
To not knowin’ what this was about,
So he says ‘Right enough, we were stupid!
The Diagonal Steam Trap’s left out!’
Now in the meantime oul’ Jimmie had scarpered
– away down to throw in his boord –
And the Gaffer comes up and says ‘Jimmy!
D’ye think we could have a wee word?’
Ye see that Diagonal Steam Trap?
I know it’s left out- it’s bad luck
But the engine shop’s terrible busy
D’ye think ye could knock us one up?’
Now, oul’ Jimmy was laughin’ his scone off
He had made it all up for a gag
He seen what was stoppin’ the engine –
The feed-pipe was blocked with a rag!
But he sticks the oul’ hands in the pockets
An’ he says’ Aye, I’ll give yez a han’!
I’ll knock yez one up in the mornin’
An’ the whole bloody thing will be grand!’
So oul’ Jim starts to work the next morning
To make what he called a Steam Trap,
An oul’ box an’ a few bits of tubing
An ‘ a steam gauge stuck up on the top,
An’ he welds it all on till the engine
And he says to the wonderin’ mob ,
As long as that gauge is at zero
The Steam Trap is doin’ its job!’
Then he pulls the rag outa the feed pipe
An’ he gives-the oul’ engine a try
An ‘ bejasus! she goes like the clappers
An’ oul’ Jimmy remarks ‘That’s her nye!’
Now the ship was the fastest seen ever
So they sent her away till the Turks
But they toul’ them ‘That Steam Trap’s a secret!
We’re the only ones knows how it works!
But the Turks they could not keep their mouths shut
An’ soon the whole story got roun’
An’ the Russians got quite interested – –
Them boys has their ears till the groun ‘ !
So they sent a spy dressed as a sailor
To take photies of Jimmy’s Steam Trap
And they got them all back till the Kremlin
An’ they stood round to look at the snaps.
Then the head spy says ‘Mr Kosygin!
I’m damned if I see how that works !’
So they sent him straight off to Siberia
An’ they bought the whole ship from the Turks!
When they found the Steam Trap was a ‘cod’, like,
They couldn’t admit they’d been had
So they built a big factory in Moscow
To start makin’ Steam Traps like mad!
Then Kosygin rings up Mr Nixon
And he says ‘Youse’uns thinks yez are great!
But wi’ our big new Russian-made Steam Trap
Yez’ll fInd that we’ve got yez all bate!’
Now oul Nixon, he nearly went ‘harpic’
So he thought he’d give Harland’s a call
And he dialled the engine-shop number
And of course he got sweet bugger all!
But at last the call came through to Jimmy
In the midst of a terrible hush,
‘There’s a call for you here from the White House!’
Says oul’ Jim, ‘That’s a shop in Portrush !’
There’s a factory outside of Seattle
Where they’re turnin’ out Steam Traps like Hell
It employs twenty-five thousand workers
And the head of it – Jimmy Dalzell!
Crawford Howard
+The question that has to be asked is; for whom are these opinions provided? Us ‘deniers’ just laugh and the warmists nod their heads in agreement. It all seems a bit pointless, unless of course it is themselves who need convincing. Why have they bothered.
Talk about gray literature… New Scientist is a prime example.
Gareth Phillips says:
May 14, 2010 at 10:22 am
It’s sad edition for a well loved magazine. They seem to have fallen for the sad tactic of ” if you can’t challenge the idea, attack the person” However we need to stop confusing politics with science. As a European style lefty and evironmentalist , I have grave concerns with climate theory. That does not make me right wing. If we accuse proponants of climate theory as “lefties” they could refer to us as right wing capitalists which just destroys constructive debate based on good evidence.
—————————————————————————————
As a liberal I quite agree with your satement, this debate must not be divided along political lines (LOL, I know that’s a tough one…). Working in the field of science and engineering for decades with strong interests in renewable energy, I also have strong reserves and totally disagree with AGW and CO2 driving climate.
Well this is the problem, isn’t it ?
Climate science has taken AGW and renamed it ‘climate change’… a catchall phrase. With this catchall phrase they can play on words much easier.
And this is where they get you.
So you no longer question AGW, you now question ‘climate change’, thus making you a ‘climate change denier’ and ultimately portraying you to look like an idiot.
See how that works ? How convenient for them.
One day, when the AGW hypothesis is found out to be false on many levels, they’re all going to look back on this and hang their heads in embarrassment… and will most likely deny that they ever said/did such things, or at the very least, attempt to soften the blow their dogmatic agendas had on the world. The term ‘backpeddling’ comes to mind.
I hope I live to see that day.
I know you folks don’t like to be compared to creationists, but the parallels are very strong. They cannot accept science when, in their view, it goes against the Bible. [snip] cannot accept science when, in their view, it goes again the free (unregulated) market. Both groups claim that the world’s scientists are in some sort of vast conspiracy.
Seriously, do you think most of us think there is an actual conspiracy among scientists?
There is all the difference in the world between believing the opposing view suffers from group-think and aligned interests and thinking that there is some kind of nefarious plot.
The “free (unregulated) market” dig is also wildly off beam. In the US it might be true, but then that’s how most Americans are at the best of times (there it is the warmists liking of controlled markets that is the minority). In other countries it is just plain false to assert a link between climate scepticism and belief in free markets. I doubt that the Chinese and Russian scientists who disagree with the pronouncements of imminent climate doom are even remotely free market.
Both groups trumpet work by a few amateurs and jump on any open questions or conflicting data as proof the whole theory is wrong.
The warmists gave a Nobel Prize to Al Gore. They let Pachauri run their most important organisation. They listen, God help us, to Sting.
Accusations that only the sceptics listen to amateurs falls completely flat to me. The warmists do just the same.
My work was once published in The New Scientist and I had a subscription for a year or two. Now I don’t even look at it on the magazine shelf in the airport. Do they really think this opinionated rubbish will improve their circulation?
Ray said on May 14, 2010 at 2:28 pm:
Grey? Nah, it is clearly RED literature. See the cover?
“denialists” have more fun, and get featured on the cover of leading scientific magazines!
I used to read New Scientist. I wouldn’t go near that rubbish rag now. There’s probably many more like me.
I’ll not read the linked articles. Stopped reading NS a couple of years ago and not going back there to remind myself why I stopped.
BTW – as soon as I see the ‘D’ word, I stop reading. I know exactly what will follow and have better things to do with my time.
BTW2 – We don’t refer to “economic scientist”, even though economics is an interesting, numercial and philisopical subject. The term “economist” maintains a handy separation beteween economics and experimental science. For much the same reason, I prefer “climatologist” to “climate scientist”.
Cheers
I gave up on No Scientist Magazine. The straw that broke the camels back?….an edition that asked ‘Can the Universe get any stranger? – Yes it can’ to paraphrase.
Post Normal Physics n’ Cosmology, fantasies of mathematics, ‘Thought Experiments’ and computer models. Multiple universes, Dark Matter, Dark Energy, proof of the unobservable being observed – Proxies anyone?
Proclaimations without humility, on the beginning of the universe, Inflation, the first nano second of the Big Bang – all presented as fact. They’d passed the point of no return, they’d replace enquiry with ego pieces, PR, Spin journalism, science fiction and sanctioned press releases, they deified fancy and promoted it as mainstream KNOWLEDGE.
Thank goodness for WUWT,…phasing out the stagnant and festering heap of the Print journals, bypassing the reek, to get to the clean air of clear thinking.
Mike says:
May 14, 2010 at 12:14 pm
Hello Mike!
If I were to believe in something, I think I would prefer Odin and Thor.
After all, Thor is making the thunder, right? And when I die, I can go to Valhalla!
Im sure Valhalla has the correct amount of CO2. How much is correct, by the way? In your opinion? I have heard gardeners like 1000 ppm in their greenhouse’s. Makes the plants enjoy life.
1000 ppm too much, you think?
“From climate change to vaccines, evolution to flu, denialists are on the march.”
Hilarously the same hippies and commies who believe in climate change hysteria are opposed to vaccines (they say vaccines aren’t green enough) and other pharmacueticals (private profit is evil apparently), believe in Atlantis and that trees have souls, believe in homeopathy (which is junk science), believe in reincarnation without evidence, support authoritarianism when it suits their causes, and are the same morons who scream on Facebook and Twitter that they have contracted avian swine mad cow flu every time they need to sneeze.
To give you some idea of the nuttiness of the whole Green movement one of the MP’s for the city of Brighton in England is now from the Green party. Anybody with a pair of eyes can go down to the seafront and see the same promenade, the same sea walls, the same beaches as have been there since I was a child 50 years ago and long before. In short it just takes a pair of eyes to see that sea-level has not risen.
All the Green councilors on the city council must know this with one part of their brains because nothing has been done to increase the height of sea defences. There is no need.
All it takes is a brain, and not a very good one at that, to realise that we are currently in a period of cold winters and cool, crap summers. Yet we still get Green idiots elected. We once again have a minister for climate change! Many people are just very, very thick.
I can remember long, long ago when I was young and innocent, I thought those with a university education, those who were called professors or scientists or both, were smarter than the average joe like me. No longer. Many of them are not even averagely intelligent about things they have ‘studied’ all of their lives.
I suppose it was ever thus. Consider how long it took before anybody realised the completely bleeding obvious like the Earth going around the sun or evolution by natural selection and how hard it was resisted after it was pointed out in excruciating detail. Many ‘scientists’ and a large part of the general public seem to be distinctly lacking in grey matter.
I remember, back when I was in High School in the Sixties, how I anxiously awaited the latest Scientific American’s arrival in my Dad’s mailbox. I couldn’t wait to immerse myself in the latest news in Science! If I immersed myself today, I’d come up gasping for air, feeling dirty!
@winterkorn May 14, 2010 at 9:36 am:
winterkorn, there was a lot more to it than that.
But first I DO want to tie in with this post.
Does anyone think that AWG was the first effort at funneling billions into a specific channel intentionally?
Ever heard of Dr Robert Gallo? The supposed “discoverer” of the AIDS virus? The one that was in bed with the Director of the NIH? The one that was researching on a harmless retrovirus then named HTLV-III (which was later renamed “the HIV virus”)? The one who fudged his data on said retrovirus and even plagiarized Luc Montagnier’s photo of the retrovirus and claimed it was his own? The one who made a secret deal with Montagnier and his Pasteur Institute which forbid anyone from revealing any of the facts of the case, as long as everyone got to share in the proceeds?
Anyone here who wonders anything about AIDS should read Peter Deusberg on AIDS, which tells the whole sordid tale. And who is Deusberg? Up until AIDS hit, he was the world’s foremost expert on retroviruses, and was the man who volunteered to inject himself with HTLV-II, because he knew for a fact that it didn’t cause AIDS.
In other words, the AIDS virus, the so-called HIV virus, doesn’t cause AIDS. (Only about 70% of people with AIDS ever tested positive for HTLV-III, and many, many people who DO test positive simply do not, nor never will, have AIDS. AIDS – like winterkorn suggests – WAS and IS a gay disease, a hemophiliac disease, a disease of those who shared drug needles. It was NEVER a heterosexual disease.)
Retroviruses, according to Deusberg, have been around IN most humans, since time immemorial, just like hundreds of other microscopic creatures that make up the community within our bodies.
And AIDS in Africa? It was – and IS – actually a separate condition previously called “the slims.” It has nothing to do with AIDS. But when the alarmists didn’t get their AIDS pandemic, they widened the definition of AIDS so that they could include the slims numbers into it, thus giving us “the AIDS epidemic in Africa” which allowed the funding juggernaut to continue. There was no epidnemic in the heterosexuals ANYWHERE in the world, but by including the slims population, they could not only keep the lie going, but tell us all that it WAS going on somewhere. And just like terrorism, they were able to “fight it over there instead of over here.”
AIDS alarmism was global warming before there was global warming. And after global warming there will be another one, and another one. . . They HAVE to have a sky falling, somewhere. Fearmongers need something to spread.
Sorry for being off-topic. But the parallels are there. And on the Liberal blogs, it is the same people pushing both. Along with bird flu. And the recent swine flu, which was supposed to kill 2 million people worldwide, but came up about 99% short of that (16,500 vs 2,000,000). But the alarmists had a field day.
A disclaimer for Anthony: The views expressed in this comment are not necessarily the views of the owner of this blog.
Brendan H says:
May 14, 2010 at 12:43 pm
I haven’t read the op-eds in question, but one thing I have noticed about the climate debate is the number of sahred claims made by anti-evolutionists and climate sceptics about their respective opponents. Among the claims held in common are:
Media bias, religion/cult, groupthink, no consensus, educational indoctrination, lack of falsifiability, career prejudice, funding corruption, “growing numbers” of anti-evolutionists/climate sceptics, incivility, refusal to debate, accusations of Marxism/Nazism, evolution/AGW as eugenics, genocidal intent, censorship, evolution/AGW as postmodernism, and hoax and fraud.
Your attempt to analogize AGW scepticism with creationism is a clever dodge, but with regard to AGW, perhaps you would be willing to provide some actual refutations for all or any of the list of similar claims you seem to find so troubling.
Why do people let climate scientist claim they are scientists.
A scientist is someone who applies the scientific method, nothing more, nothing less.
Where is belief or denial mentioned in the scientific method?
Where is opinion or consensus mentioned in the scientific method?
When did guesswork (modelling) become part of the scientific method?
If its not science its psudo-science!
If your not sceptical of all theories then you are not a scientist!
I have not seen any ‘belief’, emotional statements, ‘warm mongering’ etc. in the primary scientific literature. Maybe you point some out to me.
Then again, if you had an open mind, you would reckognize facts and not believe whatever you want to believe. But if you ignore the scientific literature and don’t get the evidence, this does not mean the evidence does not exist.
I read the book by Hoggan and Littlemore. Where is the misinformation? If anything was blatantly wrong in there, they would have been sued inside out by the Friends of Science and the energy industry. It did not happen for a reason. Maybe, somebody should nitpick the book apart and point out their shortcomings and falsifications. Should be lots of them, the book is over 200 pages long.
latitude: May 14, 2010 at 12:46 pm
New Scientist is like MSNBC or Newsweek.
Newsweek‘s up for sale, and the ownership believes the fact it’s losing money hand over fist is actually a *good* selling point — of course, they also thought the policy of becoming a shill for the Left while pretending to be neutral was a *good* idea.
I’m wondering if New Scientist and Newsweek share more than a policy and the word “New” in their titles…
Choo-Choo: “and make this as foolproof as is humanly possible.””
“”Alright, there was this error, but …”.
…-
“UN climate panel chief defends research at review
THE HAGUE (AFP) – The head of the United Nations’ climate change panel defended the body Friday before an academic council charged with reviewing its research methods after a string of challenges to its findings.
Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), admitted an error was made in warning that Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035, but said there was nevertheless some value in the finding.
“Alright, there was this error, but there is a whole lot of valid information and assessment related to the glaciers which we can only ignore at our own peril and the peril of generations yet to come,” he told a public meeting in Amsterdam of the InterAcademy Council (IAC), webcast live.”
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100514/wl_afp/environmentwarmingunipcchearing_20100514133643
…-
“IPCC Will Now Consider Science From Non-Peer-Reviewed Sources?
Telegraph:
Dr Rajendra Pachauri, the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has been under fire since a report from the charity the WWF was used to make claims about reductions in ice on mountains.
In particular it included the erroneous claim that the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035. It was said to be 300 years out and led to accusations that the organisation was cherry-picking evidence to justify its claims.
In a hearing at the InterAcademy Council, an organisation of the world’s science academies which is conducting an independent review of the processes and procedures of the IPCC, Dr Pachauri described the inclusion of the glacier claim as “human failure” which should not have happened.
But the IPCC’s chairman said there was a need to use information which was not from peer-reviewed scientific journals, because in some places that was the only research that had been done.
He said the media and other sections of society had misunderstood the role of such information, labelling it grey literature, “as if it was some form of grey muddied water flowing down the drains”.
Dr Pachauri said academic work being done by bodies including the International Energy Agency, the World Bank, national governments and charities “cannot be ignored”, but had to be closely examined to make sure it was robust.
Really, this should be the end of Pachauri’s tenure with the IPCC.”
http://www.nationalreview.com/planet-gore/55640/ipcc-will-now-consider-science-non-peer-reviewed-sources/greg-pollowitz
http://network.nationalpost.com/NP/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2010/05/13/peter-foster-birthers-truthers-and-warmers.aspx#comments
On Topic…
I’m not as active with my link cross posting… But this is to good not to share…
The comments are good too…
Stay cool Anth…
I quit reading that pile of bilge years ago. Science should be neutral, not served up with a side order of leftist political bias. I refuse to shell out hard earned cash for garbage like that. If only I could do the same with the UK TV licence so I don’t have to subsidise the leftist, AGW bilge pumped out by the BBC…
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
May 14, 2010 at 2:15 pm
I ran into something very much like what you saw months ago. On my Linux box. I’ve seen others, but this deserved an A+ for effort.
I think I continued to the end without disabling Javascript. I didn’t take any action to clean up any potential damage, I figured any .exe files wouldn’t execute even if they were tried. I do generally click on the close window icon in the upper right corner of the windows instead of clicking something the malware labeled “Cancel” lest it be some piece of user interaction that launches some local executable.
Text of letter:
Sir,
You will notice I am writing an old-fashioned letter by hand. This is to high-light the point that I am presenting a considered opinion, and not a knee-jerk enet reaction.
Your issue of denial is beyond the Pale; a propaganda too far; the last bridge between New Scientist and its proud history is destroyed.
Just what were you thinking? Grief, you even have that guy from DeSmog Blog writing his usual garbage!
For what it is worth, it is the AGW people who are in denial about natural climate change. This issue of yours is a propaganda piece; Goebels would be proud of this issue. It’s all a conspiracy, this denial. Those in denial are misbegotten fools or simply in it for the money. Ah, those snide references to tobacco and big oil money.
May I point out to you the obvious? That it is the AGW proponents who have had the billions bestowed upon them, and behind whom large financial organisations are alligning.
Your publication has become the “Beano” of comics; once you were “The Eagle”.
Shame!!
R of O
I am now reading some of the comments and they miss the point a bit. The association of global warming deniers (their words) with vaccine deniers, evolution denioers, round Earth deniers, etc. is a tried and true propaganda ploy. This issue of New Scum is aimed directly at most of us here.
Yvo de Boer is leaving the UN for a very cushy number with a company that stands to make billions with “carbon trading”. He, and all the ensuite boot-lickers are angry that their scam is being rejected. Hence this New Scum issue.
My standard answer to this croc would be too much for a post but here is a snippet:
[Mods: please feel free to delete my post but I get angry all the time with AGW]
CRU Funding
British Petroleum (Oil, LNG)
Central Electricity Generating Board
Eastern Electricity
KFA Germany (Nuclear)
Irish Electricity Supply Board (LNG, Nuclear)
National Power
Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (Nuclear)
Shell (Oil, LNG)
Sultanate of Oman (LNG)
UK Nirex Ltd. (Nuclear)
Source: http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/about/history/
————
Exxon: “(how about $100 million for Stanford’s Global Climate and Energy Project, and $600 million for Biofuels research).”
“The US government spent $79 billion on climate research and technology since 1989 – to be sure, this funding paid for things like satellites and studies, but it’s 3,500 times as much as anything offered to sceptics.”
“The $79 billion figure does not include money from other western governments, private industry, and is not adjusted for inflation.”
“According to the World Bank, turnover of carbon trading reached $126 billion in 2008. PointCarbon estimates trading in 2009 was about $130 billion.”
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2835581.htm
————
In 2005, Pachauri helped set up set up GloriOil, a Texas firm specialising in technology which allows the last remaining reserves to be extracted from oilfields otherwise at the end of their useful life.
“He is an internationally recognized figure in energy and sustainable development, having served on numerous boards and committees including Director of the Oil and Natural Gas Company of India; Director of the Indian Oil Corporation Limited;…
Source: http://www.glorioil.com/advisors.htm
“Our chemical lab in Houston is state of the art, custom built for purpose with one goal in mind – to supply the US oil industry with world class biotechnology to increase oil recovery from mature fields.”
Source: http://www.glorioil.com/technology.htm
“Our research facility in India focuses primarily on long term R&D projects such as heavy oil degradation, methane biogeneration from coal beds, and other initiatives.”
Source: http://www.glorioil.com/company.htm
———–
The United States’ largest electric utilities association and three of the country’s biggest oil companies will endorse the climate proposal Sens. John Kerry et al.
http://views.washingtonpost.com/climate-change/post-carbon/2010/04/by_juliet_eilperin_the_nations.html
———-
CRU seeks big oil and big business cash
Source:
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=171&filename=962818260.txt
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=156&filename=947541692.txt
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=332&filename=1056478635.txt
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=270&filename=1019513684.txt
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=1041&filename=1254832684.txt
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=204&filename=973374325.txt
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=185&filename=968691929.txt
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=159&filename=951431850.txt
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=362&filename=1065125462.txt
Monckhausen says:
May 14, 2010 at 3:56 pm
“if you ignore the scientific literature and don’t get the evidence, this does not mean the evidence does not exist.”
So you just decided to come here and accuse the audience of WUWT of ignoring the scientific literature? Which literature is that, pray tell?
I assure you we are all well aware of practically all the literature relied on by the IPCC. We do not ignore it, we criticise it, and point to other, better literature that could have been considered. If there is any other “scientific literature” we should have read, why did the IPCC not quote it also?
UK Sceptic @ May 14, 2010 at 4:32 pm
Hasn’t anyone told you yet? The TV license is unenforceable.
Some years ago we were given a course in press handling and media relations. Journalists explained the trade press was often where newly minted journalists cut their teeth, with low pay, low budgets and limited experience. So if you gave them a story, they’d often run with it and be greatful they could fill pages without much effort, which was quite useful.
Fast forward and many media companies have less money, less investigative journalists and even less time or inclination to do much fact checking. Flat Earth News by Nick Davies explains the rise of ‘churnalism’ and how it’s even easier now to place advertorials or opinion pieces as ‘news’. Climategate emails showed how concerned the team where when key opinion formers like Revkin or the BBC looked like they may be drifting off-message. Luckily they still have Borenstein at AP though. No doubt the NS articles will spread to other media because that’s how the consensus has been managed.
I’ve said it before these loonies will go to great length at trying to upheld their delusions and their illusion of being at the center of attention wielding power and authority. Just like the church did, heck just like the catholic church did for decades, and then even after they got caught with trying to sweep it all under the rug for all those decades. Mass delusions.
In this case probably the most healthy thing is just to make satire of their foolish delusions and laugh ones head off. :-()
Whaddayaknow! New Age McCarthyism.
Nude Socialist’s tantrum is highly entertaining. Pages and pages of bitter petulance that clearly illustrate that despite years of publishing warmist propaganda they know they are losing. The most delicious part is they still have no idea why. Just as they told the world lies about CO2, they are telling themselves lies about the nature of climate skeptics. AGW believers seem unable to comprehend that they are being challenged by a genuine grass roots movement thriving on the freedom of speech and democracy of ideas provided by the internet. I for one am thrilled to see this warmist rag continue to trot out the old lines about “Big Tobacco” and “Big Oil”. If they have no idea of who they are fighting, they have no hope of winning.
Dave Wendt: “Your attempt to analogize AGW scepticism with creationism is a clever dodge, but with regard to AGW, perhaps you would be willing to provide some actual refutations for all or any of the list of similar claims you seem to find so troubling.”
I’m not sure what “dodge” you are referring to, but my point was that anti-evolutionism and climate scepticism share some marked similarities in the way they see their opponents. The issue then becomes: if these types of claims are invalid in the case of evolution, why should they be valid in the case of AGW?
Northern Exposure says:
May 14, 2010 at 2:45 pm
Well this is the problem, isn’t it ?
Climate science has taken AGW and renamed it ‘climate change’… a catchall phrase. With this catchall phrase they can play on words much easier.
Yes, it is a big part of the problem, as spelt out by IPCC expert reviewer Dr Vincent Gray in his excellent NZCLIMATE TRUTH NEWSLETTER No.212 where he explains “the origins of the term “climate change”, how it came to exclude natural causes and how the IPCC manipulates language to mislead the unwary into accepting as fact scenarios that are derived from computer models that are unable to reproduce the realities of Nature”.
My own challenge to natural climate change deniers (AGW believers) is always to ask the question:- produce just one example of a statistically significant observed climate change event that could be solely attributed to CO2 or any other minor greenhouse gases and in which normal natural cyclical causes could be categorically ruled out.
I’m still waiting for someone to do so!
My reply to the “New Scientist”
We are not the underdogs here, we are the people who are going to pay the $trillions in taxes and try to survive in a drastically altered economic world. People are starving to death right now, many more are surviving only because of the charitable goodwill of people in the industrialized countries. When it gets to the point that I have to choose between feeding myself or someone who was born in a third world country, well I’m sorry about their luck. When climatology was just Ivory Tower mental masturbation, it was OK that the degree of certainty was on the dodgy side, now that we are talking about trillions of dollars and lives of millions, the certainty of your data and conclusions from it go up dramatically; you are coming to me with your hand out, you have the burden of proof and you have to convince me to my standards, not yours.
Why are so many angry? You are on the cover of a major magazine! :0
Brendan H, May 14, 2010 at 5:59 pm:
“… anti-evolutionism and climate scepticism share some marked similarities…”
And Elmer Gantry and Michael Mann share some marked similarities.
FYI, the only honest scientists are skeptics, first and foremost. That eliminates about 99% of alarmist scientists feeding at the public trough.
The N(B)S folks and their cohorts can cry all they please, but thoe of us who actually think about it and pay the least bit of attention to their surroudings can’t help but wonder what the heck the AGWers are talking about.
Someone earlier said that country folk generally aren’t buying AGW. As one of said folk, I’d agree. People who are, for lack of a better phrase, “close to the land,” pay more attention to climate and recognize AGW for the foul carcass it is.
And for the AGW believers here, perhaps you would answer one question that I’ve never had an AGWer willing to address.
The temperature in my neck of the woods varies by as much as 40 degrees F every day. The annual temperature range is over 100 degrees, from 10F to 110F. Given these FACTS, why do you think that a 10 degree increase or decrease in either the daily or annual range is worthy of panic? Your worst-case scenario is 10% of the run-of-the-mill annual temperature range over which no one panics, so why should your 10% scare me?
I read this drivel yesterday. Unfortunately as they take subscriptions in advance I have already paid for it. Never again, however.
One thing I noted was that if you replaced every instance of ‘climate denier’ with ‘AGW believer’ or possibly ‘natural climate variation denier’, and every instance of ‘climate scientist’ with ‘climate sceptic’ the result would be much more valid than the current articles.
I guess that makes me a ‘denier’ because I have preconceptions (or maybe I have just had enough BS?). In fact, if you read their definitions of denier and sceptic, it is really saying sceptics are those who will come around to believing them, deniers are those who won’t. So who has the preconceived ideas now?
Whoever “New Scientist” is written for, it certainly isn’t scientists.
I think the whole climate issue is very much like the Scopes Monkey Trial. Often the warmers use the wrong issues and science but currently have a very good chance of winning. However, I think in the long run, history will prove us correct.
I hate being proved wrong so I always look carefully at both sides of an issue before I make up my mind on what is the truth. It seems the far left is blinded by fear or the warming idea (or political power) and only looks at what supports their belief. This is very much like what happened in the Scopes Monkey Trial where absolute belief in the bible blinded people to the truth. The more things change, the more things stay the same.
Brendan H says:
May 14, 2010 at 5:59 pm
“I’m not sure what ‘dodge’ you are referring to, but my point was that anti-evolutionism and climate scepticism share some marked similarities in the way they see their opponents. The issue then becomes: if these types of claims are invalid in the case of evolution, why should they be valid in the case of AGW?”
Your response does a very good job of proving that your initial point was indeed a “dodge”, although I may have to rethink that descriptive “clever” that I added. The list of claims you offered is commonly shared by many proponents on either side of many contentious ideas and they are by turns valid or invalid for each case. The fact that you choose to use strained analogies to dismiss contrary views rather than make even a feeble attempt to argue the merits of your position is QED for me
Smokey: “And Elmer Gantry and Michael Mann share some marked similarities.”
Last I heard, Elmer Gantry was a fictional character.
Brendan H says:
“Last I heard, Elmer Gantry was a fictional character.”
Same qualities. But if you want to pick nits, replace Gantry with Madoff or Ponzi. Grifters all, like Mann. Peas in a pod, birds of a feather.
Happy now?
Dave Wendt: “The fact that you choose to use strained analogies to dismiss contrary views rather than make even a feeble attempt to argue the merits of your position is QED for me.”
I’m not using analogies to dismiss contrary views. Climate scepticism is not just a “contrary view”, but rather a position, or number of positions, taken by people who oppose the theory of anthropogenic climate change. Climate sceptics could make their case without resorting to the claims I listed. But since climate sceptics do make these claims, one can subject them to scrutiny.
The facts are that both evolution and AGW are new scientific theories that overturn previous understandings; both have potentially far-reaching social and political consequences; both have generated very strong resistance from some people.
Furthermore, both theories have generated a similar set of responses from their opponents. In my view, these similarities are significant and not incidental. My conclusion is that the same sorts of non-scientific objections to a scientific theory indicate a similar mindset.
I stopped buying New Scientist (which I now refer to as “New Environmentalist” when it run a article from a Greenpeace report that blamed cow farts for 2/3rds of all “global warming”. Anyone with even a basic education in the sciences should now that cows are part of the contempory c02 and play no part in “global warming”. Despite this obvious fact, New Scientist published it any. That was a line for me, when it went from Science to Green PR promoting vegetarianism to save the planet and it lost my subscription for it (even though I am already vegetarian I cant stand others telling people they should be – its a personnel choice). Good ridence to them. I now read an excellent Australian science magazine (cant recall its name off hand!) that is much more balanced with out angenda.
Brendan H says:
May 14, 2010 at 8:34 pm
“I’m not using analogies to dismiss contrary views.”
” The issue then becomes: if these types of claims are invalid in the case of evolution, why should they be valid in the case of AGW?”
Sounds fairly dismissive to me.
“Climate scepticism is not just a “contrary view”, but rather a position, or number of positions, taken by people who oppose the theory of anthropogenic climate change.”
Seems like a distinction without a difference to me, and ACC is a barely supported hypothesis that doesn’t rate being called a theory.
“Climate sceptics could make their case without resorting to the claims I listed.”
And they generally do, but due to issues related to those claims you find so appalling and which,I would note, you have yet to offer a single counter argument against the discussions seldom rise to the level of rational debate.
“But since climate sceptics do make these claims, one can subject them to scrutiny.”
One wonders why you are not willing to provide similar scrutiny to the claims made in the series of opinion pieces that were the genesis of this post.
“The facts are that both evolution and AGW are new scientific theories that overturn previous understandings; both have potentially far-reaching social and political consequences; both have generated very strong resistance from some people.
Furthermore, both theories have generated a similar set of responses from their opponents. In my view, these similarities are significant and not incidental. My conclusion is that the same sorts of non-scientific objections to a scientific theory indicate a similar mindset.”
Evolutionary biology has a few more whiskers than AGW and a considerably sounder basis in science. People who oppose it for the most part, though not always, do so based on religious faith and your continued attempt to analogize that opposition to climate scepticism demonstrates your own intellectual dishonesty.
The reason the sceptic side offers the claims which you find so unscientific is that almost from the start the science of all this has been primarily a pretext for attempts to remodel almost the entirety of human culture to match the utopian visions of its major proponents.
My own conclusion is that your continued insistence on clinging to this phony argument indicates you lack the intellectual skills to argue your case on the merits and you probably deserve to be classed as just another “useful idiot”.
I’ve read ALL the New Antiscientist articles. All of them.
I was looking for something special: evidence. One, single, little, tiny bit of actual evidence.
None, Nothing. Nada. Zip.
If you’re publishing a major issue of a supposed science magazine, shouldn’t you accompany all the nasty filthy abuse of those with whom you disagree with at least one article (heck, even one paragraph! One SENTENCE!!) setting out in simple terms for lay people the CASE IN FAVOUR OF YOUR CLAIM?? (Excuse the shouting, but this sick and hateful trash has really got my goat.)
If you can’t do that, then what are you? And, of course, no matter where you look, no matter who is abusing those people who ask for evidence, none of them, ever, provide that evidence. Maybe there isn’t any?
Brendan H says:
May 14, 2010 at 8:13 pm
Smokey: “And Elmer Gantry and Michael Mann share some marked similarities.”
Last I heard, Elmer Gantry was a fictional character.
Last I heard, Michael Mann was still dismissing the MWP with two tree rings.
>>Jim Clarke says: May 14, 2010 at 1:37 pm
>>To date, none of my concerns about the theory of an AGW crisis
>>have been seriously addressed, much less debunked!
And likewise on this wind-energy site, regards wind power and other Green issues.
http://www.navitron.org.uk
The standard reply by wind proponents is that they will either (a.) store the energy to cope with wind outages, or (b.) have more wind turbines elsewhere in Europe and transmit the energy to all the windless areas of the continent along a super-grid.
To cover for a 3-week outage of wind, Britain would require:
In the first option (a.) 2,100 Dinorwig plants and 90,000 3mw windelecs (turbines).
In (b.) you would require something like 200,000 3 mw windelecs (to power the rest of Europe having no wind – estimating the average size of a anticyclonic weather system).
And they said these were realistic proposals.
.
Excerpt from: Ric Werme on May 14, 2010 at 4:35 pm
Yup, clicked the “X” on that very first box, still didn’t work. Come to think about it, the “X” could also activate malware. That final pop-up box looked like a Win message box, but it sure wasn’t a message box either Linux or Firefox would generate. It apparently was just an image, with an image map over it so it acted like it had normal working buttons (however no color change on mouseover or click IIRC).
I could have killed Firefox outright and started a new session, using System Tools: System Monitor (Debian) so the hijacked Firefox had no say in it. But at the time I thought it was WUWT related and the “Remove Threat to my Species” routine was running, I wanted the details. Later, while knowing I likely had nothing to worry about, one of the main reasons for installing ClamAV was to make sure I wouldn’t be passing anything on to anyone else.
I am worried that thing was looking through my History, snooping out any words or numbers that Firefox was waiting to helpfully suggest while I’m filling in blanks (forms, etc). I don’t let Firefox remember my passwords, so at least I shouldn’t have to worry about those.
But, man, to see your trusted browser get out of your control like that… Wow. Now I know what it feels like to drive a Toyota.
😉
Dave Wendt: “…but due to issues related to those claims you find so appalling…”
I didn’t say the claims were “appalling”. I noted their existence and offered an explanation as to why both anti-evolutionists and climate sceptics make these sorts of claims.
“…you have yet to offer a single counter argument against the discussions seldom rise to the level of rational debate.”
I think you’re probably complaining that I am not arguing against the claims. That is not my argument. I am suggesting that these claims serve a particular function, ie they are used to explain the fact that both evolution and AGW have become the dominant view among the scientific establishment and the major societal institutions.
“People who oppose [evolutionary biology] for the most part, though not always, do so based on religious faith and your continued attempt to analogize that opposition to climate scepticism demonstrates your own intellectual dishonesty.”
People may oppose a scientific theory for a number of reasons. In the case of AGW, opposition comes primarily from people and groups whose views are associated with the conservative/libertarian end of the political/ideological spectrum.
Of course, this says nothing about the accuracy or otherwise of the science. Nevertheless, it is striking that two groups of people who oppose different scientific theories should share so many claims about their opponents.
Hu Duck Xing says:
May 14, 2010 at 3:19 pm
I remember, back when I was in High School in the Sixties, how I anxiously awaited the latest Scientific American’s arrival in my Dad’s mailbox. I couldn’t wait to immerse myself in the latest news in Science! If I immersed myself today, I’d come up gasping for air, feeling dirty!
A lot of that is because we are NOT doing any science any more. We have taken all those financial resources an pumped them into social projects instead. (Britain alone used to have about a dozen new aviation projects on the go at any one time. Now we have 1/4 of two projects).
Instead of investing in science and technology to lift the poor out of poverty, we now either (a.) give financial assistance directly to the poor, which is wasted on either booze, drugs or weaponry (depending on the nation in question); or (b.) we waste money on projects designed to bring the richer nations down to the same level as the poor (by emulating their farming techniques etc:).
The ’60s were full of hope for a brighter future, based on science and technology. The ’00s are full of fear and self loathing, based upon atoning for the ‘sin’ of wanting a better and brighter future.
.
I gave up on New Scientist years ago – they interpret all science from a juvenile socialist point of view. Any objective scientist can see that the issue is about strength of evidence – the evidence for smokers getting lung cancer is robust, but the risk from second-hand smoke is minimal in most cases. The evidence supporting most vaccinations is robust, but the links between CO2 levels and climate change are pathetically weak.
My inclination is say that academics need to speak out, but perhaps the issue is more fundamental – we need to protect government research funding from direct political influence. What does Bill Gates think?
Smokey: “Same qualities. But if you want to pick nits, replace Gantry with Madoff or Ponzi.”
Madoff and Ponzi were convicted swindlers.
“Happy now?”
Always happy to shoot the breeze with you, Smokey.
I am a denialist! I denied the existence of the Millenium Y2K computer bug, never seen one, nobody ever showed me one, if anybody had found one they would have shouted it from the rooftops for all too see.
As a bit of a machine code junkie, after half an hour of investigation, I came to this conclusion that it was largely an overhyped myth. My professional colleagues who also knew it was a myth told me to shut up as they were very busy filling their pockets with cash
This was a scientific myth supported by the scientific press and all the great scientific establishments. The Institutions produced great peer reviewed works on what might happen, the IEE in UK produced a thousand page manual, but not one practical example of faulty code is given in the whole 1000 pages.
The really strange thing is that certain parts of the scientific establishment and press still actually believe that they solved the Y2K problem, but when I meet such people I ask “which bit of code did you alter or cause to be altered?” I have never received a reply.
Idid have colleagues in the non english speaking part of the world who thought we had gone mad, they did nothing and nothing went wrong!
The NS articles are brilliant!
They show the weapons of the AGWers, they show us that the warming conspiracy have nothing else than propaganda, emotionalism, etc. etc. to show. No facts, just opinions, and probably not even opinions, just handy cliches the AGWers use in order to further their underlying causes.
The fun thing is, the AGWers THINK that this kind of propaganda helps, simply because this kind of propaganda functions so well towards their own kin, in general people not used to facts, science, logic and reasoning.
Whoo-hoo!
Michael Shermer has just provided the perfect description of a climate scientist.
I became aware of the NS publication in question here when I dropped in at The Reference Frame , and after a taking a closer look came to remember an old adage “.. Give them a long enough rope and they will hang themselves..” .
Seems to me the editors at NS are really very intent on shortening the rope they already have.
All I could think of as a comment on that utter collection of garbage was to parrot a short comment I saw somewhere recently
“I love the smell of desperation in the morning”
I used to buy New Scientist every week but I stopped some time ago for the obvious reason. However, when I’m in Smiths I may occasionally buy a copy if the contents appear to be free of the usual nonsense. When I saw the cover yesterday I didn’t even bother to look inside….
Chris
It’s a vast right-thinking conspiracy.
PS: I should have said, “It’s a vast right-think conspiracy.”
(I.e., it’s a holier-than-thou fad / bandwagon.)
NS was probably nagged into running this series by “activist” warmists, as part of their counter-reformation campaign — I doubt that it was their own idea.
When that happens, and you get a pop-up warning-of-infection box, don’t hit “cancel” — instead, immediately quit your browser. That’s the only safe way.
Brendan H: “anti-evolutionism and climate scepticism share some marked similarities in the way they see their opponents.”
“I’m not using analogies to dismiss contrary views. Climate scepticism is not just a “contrary view”, but rather a position, or number of positions, taken by people who oppose the theory of anthropogenic climate change. Climate sceptics could make their case without resorting to the claims I listed. But since climate sceptics do make these claims, one can subject them to scrutiny.
The facts are that both evolution and AGW are new scientific theories that overturn previous understandings; both have potentially far-reaching social and political consequences; both have generated very strong resistance from some people.
Furthermore, both theories have generated a similar set of responses from their opponents. In my view, these similarities are significant and not incidental. My conclusion is that the same sorts of non-scientific objections to a scientific theory indicate a similar mindset.”
Hmm, BH… As a biologist (epizootiologist, if you wish to nit-pick and/or pigeon-hole) with a long history in the study of speciation and a sceptic based on my knowledge of the science of ecosystems, I find the first statement [quoted above] offensive. I can discern that the core of your rant is really based on one fundamental question: how may bales does> it take to create your army of strawmen? Reductio ad absurdum, my friend, a bizarre case of -ismosis.
BH, another small point – AGW isn’t a theory, its a weakly structured hypothesis, rapidly being falsified. If you’re going to pontificate pseudo-intellectually, at least take the time to get the jargon down.
If you can prove to me that the ‘New Scientist Magazine’ actually exists….I’ll believe them. 🙂
Re the comment on AIDS: Three years ago Henry Bauer published a heretical book on the topic, available on Amazon here:
http://www.amazon.com/Origin-Persistence-Failings-AIDS-Theory/dp/0786430486/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1273924171&sr=1-1
I recently read a detailed positive review of it in either the London Review of Books or TLS (Times Literary Supplement). I tore the review out, but can’t find it at the moment. Apparently Bauer takes a more moderate and more believable position than Deusberg, saying (or inclining to the belief) that the cause of AIDS is HIV + another infectious agent. Bauer also (according to the reviewer) manages to illuminate the whole subject in a fairly even-handed way, despite his heretical position. Typical of the controversy, there are no 2-, 3-, or 4-star reader-reviews on Amazon. They’re all 1- or 5-star. (Mostly 5-star.)
PS: here’s a gem from one of the reader-reviews:
And both share marked similarities to the much-mocked anti-fluoridation movement of the 50s, which has subsequently been vindicated — or at least un-smeared. The issue then becomes, if their type of claims were valid, why should they be invalid in the case of AGW?
It appears to me that the Real Denialists are those who refuse to accept the fact that we are not all about to be engulfed by an Anthropogenic Global Warming Crisis. The evidence and the basic science seem to be saying that no such problem is likely any time soon.
It appears that the only real problem here is a runaway urban technical legend.
I´m really glad of having cancelled the New Scientist subscription a year ago!
Brendan H says, May 14, 2010 at 8:34 pm:
“The facts are that both evolution and AGW are new scientific theories…”
BZ-Z-Z-Z-ZT!!
Wrong.
But thanx for playing, and Vanna has some lovely parting gifts for you on your way out.
AGW [by which you must mean catastrophic AGW — otherwise, why spend tens of billions on something insignificant?] is not a “theory.” Never was.
Equating CAGW with evolution is like equating astrology with astronomy. That dog won’t hunt.
Evolution is a theory, while CAGW is simply a conjecture; an opinion. To even be a hypothesis, CAGW must be testable. It is not.
Brendan, your feeble attempt to connect CAGW/CC Skeptics/Climate Realists with anti-evolutionists uses a logical fallacy known as Guilt by Association. Nice try.
Is that really the best you can do?
Jo Nova wrote an article on Non Scientist’s propaganda back in December 2009 regarding the fallout from Climategate.
http://joannenova.com.au/2009/12/new-scientist-becomes-non-scientist/
Brendan H, those guilt by association tactics are most commonly used by those who have arguments with weak or no factual evidence to back them.
Brendan H says:
May 14, 2010 at 12:43 pm
OK, getting a little tired of the tennis match. Allow me to make a point by adjusting your original words a tad (my changes in italics):
It’s not perfect, but I think you can get the idea if you try, and are willing. The natural climate variation deniers are acting exactly like those they are essentially attacking in this excessive number of excessively biased articles. You are merely following the same pattern, in my view.
my last post contained the ‘D’ word a few times. I was trying to make a vaild point without offence. An altered version is:
Brendan H says:
May 14, 2010 at 12:43 pm
OK, getting a little tired of the tennis match. Allow me to make a point by adjusting your original words a tad (my changes in italics):
It’s not perfect, but I think you can get the idea if you try, and are willing. The natural climate variation d*****s are acting exactly like those they are essentially attacking in this excessive number of excessively biased articles. You are merely following the same pattern, in my view.
my last post contained the ‘D’ word a few times. I was trying to make a vaild point without offence. please save from the sin bin.
[We go over the spam folder before we junk anything. It doesn’t show up as “waiting fr moderation”, but it’s still there and will be eyeballed before being trashed. ~ Evan]
“Doubt is uncomfortable, but certainty is absurd.” — Voltaire
I read the NS from the early 60’s faithfully, learned to love particle physics and that revolutionary new idea: plate tectonics, that overthrew the prevailing theses. Much of what I know about science I learned from the NS. Everywhere I lived in the world I managed to find a weekly source. It was written for me!
I suffered thorough the printers strikes of the 70’s, the intolerable politics of Stephen J Gould as editor in the 70-80’s. He at least had the honesty, despite his speciality and strong Darwinian leanings, to print undeniable evidence of Lamarkian changes in the genes of mice. The NS was capable of printing news. No longer.
Now, NS endlessly crusades against straw effigies of what they imagine is the Church of England and jumps to rabid defence of their apparently speechless earth-god, newly threatened by an all-powerful Humankind, ruler of a homocentric universe. They fantasize, as did Lysenko, that overthrowing the prevailing scientific order with politically correct beliefs popularised as ‘truths’ will, after suitable penitent suffering, lead to an era of plenty, comfort and security. Resistance is futile!
In his 1970 book “Design for the Real World”, Victor Papanek quotes Dr Alfred Hulstrunck from the Atmospheric Research Center, University of New York inciting people to think catastrophic thoughts about air travel (referring to particulates from jet fuel shading the whole earth)
“If transportation continues to grow the way its going, it’s possible the next generation may never see the sun.” (p.242)
Sound alarmistly familiar?
A slathering Papanek amplifies this idea: “Were this to happen (and there is a good chance it will by 1990), this might not necessarily spell global darkness. Instead a ‘hothouse effect’ might take over. Transparent to sunlight, but opaque to the earth’s radiation, a blanket of moisture and carbon-dioxide might raise the temperatures of the earth enough to melt the polar icecaps. This would, at the very least, raise seal levels by 300 feet (shrinking habitable land by 64 per cent). But in all likelihood, the sudden weight shift might spin the earth off its axis.” (p.242)
Be still, my trembling knees! It might even make a good science fiction book. In 1971.
It is clear to me that for years the rabid Greens (in contrast to concerned environmentalists) had adopted the themes propounded by Hulstrunck and Papanek and mounted them as hood ornaments on their Mother Earth Cadillac making its Trip to Total Importance.
It is sad, even shocking, that the once venerable New Scientist has fallen off the real science wagon into the ditch of “sky is falling” chickenism. Hulstrunck’s running dogs have gagged the mouthpiece of British popular science. NS is apparently now edited by Monbiot’s evil twin, former owner of a pet shop selling Monty Python’s ex-parrot: “It’s not dead, it’s SLEEPING!” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vuW6tQ0218
Fred Pearce is helping in the back, nailing more ‘sleeping’ birds upright on three-column glossy perches, lining their cages with NS modern art pictures.
Incredible! NS, you have become the Monty Python of science, a perfect across-the-pond pairing for Scientific American, the Glenn Beck of climate science.
I have a subscription to NS that expires in June. It will, like John Cleese’s dumbstruck ex-parrot, utter no more brainless squawks in my home. Enough is enough. I will return only when real science once again graces its pages.
Bruce Cobb: “Brendan, your feeble attempt to connect CAGW/CC Skeptics/Climate Realists with anti-evolutionists uses a logical fallacy known as Guilt by Association.”
Are you arguing that my claim is false?
Rogerkni: “And both share marked similarities to the much-mocked anti-fluoridation movement of the 50s, which has subsequently been vindicated — or at least un-smeared. The issue then becomes, if their type of claims were valid, why should they be invalid in the case of AGW?”
I’m sure you’ll find that the “authorised” view of fluoridation does not agree.
rogerkni said on May 15, 2010 at 4:24 am:
My experience, with Windows one needs something authoritative like Norton Utilities to do a “hard kill” and force a sudden program termination. If you try a standard exit the browser will still do some housekeeping operations before fully ending, which doesn’t sound too safe with an already-hijacked browser. Plus in the past (when I ran Windows), sometimes the browser would appear ended but then Norton would still find it running, apparently stuck in the housekeeping, even though it had disappeared otherwise and I couldn’t access it. Netscape did that often, and that was the Mozilla-based later version (3.7?). Windows wouldn’t definitively kill it but Norton would.
Thankfully Debian Linux has no problem doing a hard kill through the System Monitor program, nothing else needed.
Brendan H: Are you arguing that my claim is false? Yes, of course. All you’ve done is “notice” that some skeptics somewhere might possibly use some similar types of arguments that anti-evolutionists use. So what? Even if it were true, not only doesn’t it prove anything, your motives are clear, and your method dishonest. You’ve been outed.
Excerpt from: Brendan H on May 15, 2010 at 12:49 pm
Fluoridation of public water supplies has now become another classic “What the #@$% were those eggheads thinking?” example.
Fluoride is desirable in teeth because it displaces calcium and forms stronger bonds, leading to longer-lasting teeth. Therefore it is a good idea to flood the body with fluoride in water where it can displace calcium and disrupt a multitude of complex chemical processes throughout by forming stronger bonds than the body’s normal chemistry can handle?
Thus once again scientists (as a whole although the fault is with some) have earned the line of derision which has long existed in various wordings: “You know, if you ever looked up from your test tubes you might actually learn something.” Still true, and still far too true.
Michael Shermer stated in a radio interview a few months ago that he “had no horse in this race” referring to the climat debate. These articles clearly show that this was a lie.
Brendan H says:
May 15, 2010 at 12:49 pm
Bruce Cobb: “Brendan, your feeble attempt to connect CAGW/CC Skeptics/Climate Realists with anti-evolutionists uses a logical fallacy known as Guilt by Association.”
Are you arguing that my claim is false?
Not too quick on the uptake are we? What part of logical fallacy don’t you comprehend?
Dave Wendt: “Not too quick on the uptake are we? What part of logical fallacy don’t you comprehend?”
Logical fallacy does not depend on the truth or falsity of the argument. It refers to the form of the argument.
Thus the claim: some popes were corrupt, therefore Catholic doctrine is false, is a logical fallacy, even though the premise may be true.
Brendan, the entire point of examining the logic of an argument is to help determine whether it’s true. Otherwise, the activity has no value.
WRT your example, you just mis-stated it:
Given that A) Catholic doctrine states that all Popes are infallible, and given the historical fact that B) Some Popes are fallible, then it is concluded that C) Catholic doctrine (as stated) is false.
It is not a logical fallacy. If the premises are true then so is the conclusion, as far as that goes.
Your original argument was that arguments in one field were similar in form to another field, then tried to link the two fields in terms of credibility with no demonstration that the arguments were logical fallacies, untrue, based on false premises, or relevant to your conclusion.
The same logical construct can result in falsehood or truth depending on its premises.
Many of the arguments you cited (by name only) can in fact be both valid and true and be used in defense of propositions that are either true or false, for example the “media bias”, “no consensus” and “educational indoctrination” arguments.
A lot of people (myself included) have reacted negatively to your argument because it makes no particular amount of sense. Your claim is partly true, but it doesn’t mean anything.
I could very well list the internal organs you and Chairman Mao share. Doesn’t mean anything.
Jerome: “The natural climate variation d*****s are acting exactly like those they are essentially attacking in this excessive number of excessively biased articles.”
Here is some evidence to support my claim.
1.“But what will it take for the media to take up the exactly parallel case of scientists who question the ability of Darwinian natural selection to explain the origin of life and the development of species?”
http://www.discoverynews.org/2009/11/climategate_raises_questions_a028661.php
2. “Global warming isn’t the only field in which we have witnessed this kind of brazen ideological corruption of science in recent years…My colleagues at the Discovery Institute face a similar buzz saw in their pursuit of intelligent design hypothesis, and then are taunted by the censors for not being published in peer reviewed journals.”
http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/secondhandsmoke/2009/11/28/the-new-inquisition-ideologys-corruption-of-science/
3. “…It is for that reason that Darwinists constantly manufacture false evidence. But their frauds are only short-lived.”
http://www.darwinism-watch.com/index.php?git=makale&makale_id=1892
4. “The continued use of deceitfulness has continued by modern evolutionists.”
http://www.conservapedia.com/Atheism_and_deception
5. “That is the reason why Darwinists have resorted to fraud, speculation and countless propaganda techniques to keep this false religion alive for the last 150 years.”
http://us2.harunyahya.com/Detail/T/EDCRFV/productId/11762/DARWINISTS_HAVE_DECEIVED_THE_WORLD_WITH_FRAUD_
6. “But the Times story does at least correctly and helpfully quote John West of Discovery Institute on a way global warming and Darwinism are connected. “‘There is a lot of similar dogmatism on this issue,’ he said, ‘with scientists being persecuted for findings that are not in keeping with the orthodoxy. We think analyzing and evaluating scientific evidence is a good thing, whether that is about global warming or evolution.'”
http://www.discoverynews.org/2010/03/it_is_time_to_connect_the_dots032561.php#more
7. “From global warming to evolution, from psychology to sociology, blatant corruption of science is running rampant.”
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=124000
8. “It catalogues the deliberate corruption of climate science, several scientific organisations and several science journals.”
http://forum.junkscience.com/index.php?action=printpage;topic=482.0
Bruce Cobb: “All you’ve done is “notice” that some skeptics somewhere might possibly use some similar types of arguments that anti-evolutionists use.”
The claims are a good deal more frequent, and closer at hand, than suggested by the words “somewhere” and “possibly”.
Take these quotes on subject of AGW as a religion: “There is a very odd similarity between this absurd dogma and the “Church” which once dictated “Science”; Gospel of New Scientist; people defending undefendable religions; Pope’s propaganda machine; true believer; Al Gore’s acolytes; the religious (i.e. faith-based) nature of the CAGW creed; religious fervor; the faith based belief system is CAGW”.
These quotes come from the current thread. So the arguments are “here” rather than “somewhere”, and “definitely” rather than “possibly”.
Brendan:
Take these quotes on subject of AGW as a religion: “There is a very odd similarity between this absurd dogma and the “Church” which once dictated “Science”; Gospel of New Scientist; people defending undefendable religions; Pope’s propaganda machine; true believer; Al Gore’s acolytes; the religious (i.e. faith-based) nature of the CAGW creed; religious fervor; the faith based belief system is CAGW”.
Yes, there is certainly a religious type of dogmatism to the belief in CAGW/CC. “Saving the planet” has an emotional appeal to people, which leads them to not only ignore, but to deny facts and reality, and to attack and disparage those who question the basis for their belief, much the same way you are attempting to do in trying to connect skeptics with anti-evolutionists. Apparently, you either are too dense to understand the concept of the logical fallacy you are using , or you are simply being disingenuous.
Bruce Cobb: “Apparently, you either are too dense to understand the concept of the logical fallacy you are using , or you are simply being disingenuous.”
Happy to have a conversation, Bruce, but your tone isn’t working for me. Try again, and we can continue.
Merovign: “Given that A) Catholic doctrine states that all Popes are infallible, and given the historical fact that B) Some Popes are fallible, then it is concluded that C) Catholic doctrine (as stated) is false.
It is not a logical fallacy. If the premises are true then so is the conclusion, as far as that goes.”
Yes, but the above is not my argument. More to the point, in Catholic doctrine popes are infallible in their teaching of doctrine, not in their personal behaviour. Therefore, the term “infallible” in A is not an accurate antonym for the word “fallible” in B.
Since the terms of an argument must be consistent, the argument fails.
But I agree your argument is not a logical fallacy. However, “A is a wife-beater, therefore his science is suspect” is a logical fallacy, because the conclusion does not follow from the premises, even though A may in fact be a wife-beater. Similarly with my own pope example.
“Many of the arguments you cited (by name only) can in fact be both valid and true…”
Some of the claims may be true, others may not. Whether or not they are valid in a logical sense depends on how they are used in an argument. But I’m not talking about the truth or validity of arguments, rather the similarity between claims made by two groups of people opposed to a scientific theory.
In my view, this is significant, for at least two reasons. First, these sorts of claims are regarded as illegitimate in the case of opposition to evolution, so for consistency’s sake should be seen in the same light in regard to opposition to AGW. Secondly, the convergence of claims strongly suggests that the relationship between climate scepticism and AGW is similar to that between creationism and evolution.
Brendan H,
Of course you know that CAGW is not a scientific “theory.” It is merely a conjecture. But to avoid stepping on toes, let us take the middle ground and label CAGW an hypothesis. In that case it is a falsified hypothesis.
Next, your conflating of scientific skepticism with creationism is merely a talking point purveyed by the alarmist contingent, which argues in that despicable manner because they lack any empirical evidence showing that CO2=CAGW.
Finally, catholics believe that the Pope is infallible only in matters of faith and morals. Science may be a part of faith, but faith is not a part of science… unless you believe in CAGW.
It’s fascinating that they picked the word “denial”. That sort of equates it to “holocaust denial” – evidently hoping to form some sort of equivalence between climate change skeptics and holocaust deniers.
Recognition of AGW as a religion is more clearly presented by its attributes: it gives us an Original Sin; it has its high priests (Al Gore, James Hansen &c) and heretics (Bjorn Lomborg &c); it has its doctrine (we are bad, we’re ruining the planet); it gives us a way to do penance (give all our money to the “Church of AGW”)… You can probably extend the list.
Smokey: “Next, your conflating of scientific skepticism with creationism is merely a talking point purveyed by the alarmist contingent…”
I listed a good number of claims made by both creationists and climate sceptics about their opponents and also about their opponent’s science. The claims exist. One could ask whether these claims (religion/cult, hoax etc) are central to climate scepticism or mere rhetorical flourishes.
“Finally, catholics believe that the Pope is infallible only in matters of faith and morals.”
The term “doctrine” covers both faith and morals, so we are in agreement.
It’s a shame that non-subscribers can’t comment there….
The whole “article” violates their terms-of-use: “Are libellous, offensive, or contain prejudice against any individual or group”
Christopher Wood says:
May 14, 2010 at 2:27 pm
+The question that has to be asked is; for whom are these opinions provided? Us ‘deniers’ just laugh and the warmists nod their heads in agreement. It all seems a bit pointless, unless of course it is themselves who need convincing. Why have they bothered.
___________________________________________________________________________
It is for the modern day “Innocents’ Club” members. Remember the actual goal is a world wide tax paid to the United Nations and the crippling of the USA economy and that of other western nations.
Brendan H says:
May 14, 2010 at 5:59 pm
“……I’m not sure what “dodge” you are referring to, but my point was that anti-evolutionism and climate scepticism share some marked similarities in the way they see their opponents. The issue then becomes: if these types of claims are invalid in the case of evolution, why should they be valid in the case of AGW?
_______________________________________________________________________
Now that I have finished laughing, I will suggest you spend about a week reading the articles AND comments on this site, so you can remove both feet from your mouth. Of course you may be like other newbies who complain the science is too far over their heads….
Ralph says:
May 14, 2010 at 11:53 pm
>>Jim Clarke says: May 14, 2010 at 1:37 pm
>>To date, none of my concerns about the theory of an AGW crisis
>>have been seriously addressed, much less debunked!
_________________________________________________________________________
“And likewise on this wind-energy site, regards wind power and other Green issues.
http://www.navitron.org.uk
The standard reply by wind proponents is that they will either (a.) store the energy to cope with wind outages, or (b.) have more wind turbines elsewhere in Europe and transmit the energy to all the windless areas of the continent along a super-grid….”
_____________________________________________________________________
Has anyone ever looked at the total amount of energy required to mine and transport the ore, process it, manufacture the parts, transport, erect and whatever one of these windmills compared to their life time energy output? I know when they looked into bio-fuels, Cornell found the energy required to grow and process was much greater than the energy gained, so has anyone done a similar study on windmills?
I worked in an industry making aircraft turbine blades and the energy required was mine boggling. Therefore I wonder exactly how “green” wind energy actually is.
Brendan H says:
May 15, 2010 at 1:32 am
Smokey: “Same qualities. But if you want to pick nits, replace Gantry with Madoff or Ponzi.”
____________________________________________________________________
“Madoff and Ponzi were convicted swindlers.
“Happy now?””
____________________________________________________________________
No, not until Mann joins their ranks and that day is getting a lot closer, surprisingly. I guess there is at least one elected official who is acting in an honest fashion.
Gail: “Now that I have finished laughing, I will suggest you spend about a week reading the articles AND comments on this site, so you can remove both feet from your mouth.”
Thanks for the advice, Gail. I took a recce and came across this comment:
“Remember the actual goal is a world wide tax paid to the United Nations and the crippling of the USA economy and that of other western nations.”
Hmm. Where have I read that sort of thing before?
“Evolution: Vehicle of Apostasy! Destination: the New World Order!”
http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/Evolution%20Hoax/devilution.htm
Now we can take Brendan H’s last wonderful post, combine it with his ramblings about the “shared claims” and “marked similarities” between anti-science creationists and the more political-type (C)AGW skeptics as he attempts to link the groups, and see that he has theorized there is a conspiracy among conspiracy theorists.
Reminds me of those tales about all those people who study psychology and even enter careers in it, because they suspect they are messed up themselves and are seeking explanations and how to self-help themselves. “Look, I know you’re crazy, and trust me, I know crazy.”
Kadaka: “…he has theorized there is a conspiracy among conspiracy theorists.”
There’s a lot of it about.
“Look, I know you’re crazy, and trust me, I know crazy.”
Sounds like you’re projecting there, KD.
“tired old comparisons of today’s skeptical public to tobacco industry campaigns”
More than true comparisons, they are often the same people. And these 32 organizations who have helped deny the science of tobacoo dangers, and now the science of climate change.
1. Acton Institute
2. American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)
3. Alexis de Tocquerville Institute
4. American Enterprise Institute (AEI)
5. Americans for Prosperity
6. Atlas Economic Research Foundation
7. Burson-Marsteller (PR firm)
8. Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW)
9. Cato Institute
10. Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI)
11. Consumer Alert
12. DCI Group (PR firm)
13. European Science and Environment Forum
14. Fraser Institute
15. Frontiers of Freedom
16. George C. Marshall Institute
17. Harvard Center for Risk Analysis
18. Heartland Institute
19. Heritage Foundation
20. Independent Institute
21. International Center for a Scientific Ecology
22. International Policy Network
23. John Locke Foundation
24. Junk Science
25. National Center for Public Policy Research
26. National Journalism Center
27. National Legal Center for the Public Interest (NLCPI)
28. Pacific Research Institute
29. Reason Foundation
30. Small Business Survival Committee
31. The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (TASSC)
32. Washington Legal Foundation
“Tobacco dangers” come in three flavors: smoking, chronic 2nd-hand smoke, and intermittent 2nd-hand smoke (in restaurants, etc.). Denial of the first was outrageous, of the second was non-outrageous (the initial science was spotty), and of the third is well-justified. The use of the “tobacco card” is unjustified in cases where the institutes cited were engaged in quibbling about the dangers of 2nd-hand smoke. I suspect that the card players know that what they’re doing creates the false impression about what these institutes have done, but they do so anyway, because it’s so rhetorically effective.
The “card players” like the UCS report engage in a similar smear when they list the names of skeptical scientists who have “affiliations” with these institutes without spelling out what they are. The unwary reader thereby gets the impression that affiliation means employment, rather than merely (as I suspect) getting a speaker’s fee for giving a talk at a dinner or for reprint rights to an article, etc.