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
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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 @ur momisugly 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!