Closing out dissent
By Professor Bob Carter August 1, 2010, originally published at Quadrant Online, portions republished here with permission.
The phenomena of disinvitation and the brotherhood of silence
Scientists who venture to make independent statements in public about environmental myths soon come to learn about two post-modern-science tactics used to suppress their views – namely, disinvitation and the application of a brotherhood of silence. How these tactics work is explained in this article.
The modus operandi
A member of the organising committee for one or another conference comes to one of my talks, or chances to meet a friend who has attended. Enthusiasm thereby arises for me to speak at the conference that is being planned. 
Prompted by the member, the conference committee approves an invitation, which I accept. Later, the Council or governing body of the society in question gets to “rubber stamp” the conference program and someone says: “Bob Carter as a plenary speaker! You must be joking”. The disinvitation follows, sometimes well after the talk has been written and travel booked.
In a variation on this, earlier this year I was invited by our ABC to contribute an opinion piece about climate change to their online blog site, The Drum. The piece was duly written and tendered, only to be declined.
Similarly, strong control has long been exercised by public broadcasters ABC and SBS against the appearance of independent scientists on their TV and radio news and current affairs programs. I first encountered this in 2007, when I participated in a broadcast discussion about Martin Durkin’s epoch-making documentary film, The Great Global Warming Swindle. Before the broadcast I had the astonishing experience of being successively invited, disinvited, prevaricated with and then finally invited to participate again, as competing interests inside the ABC battled, as they obviously saw it, to control the outcome of the panel discussion.
I have generally viewed these and similar experiences over the years as amusing irritations that go with the territory of scientific independence. But the matter starts to become offensive, and indeed sinister, when it transpires that scientists from CSIRO, and other IPCC-linked research groups in Australia, have been behind particular disinvitations; or, even more commonly, have refused to participate in public debate on climate change.
The same self-appointed guardians of the sanctity of IPCC climate propaganda also strive ceaselessly to prevent invitations from being issued in the first place. For example, when it was suggested to a Sydney metropolitan university that I might give a talk on the campus, their Distinguished (sic) Professor of Sustainability responded that:
he would not be interested in allowing anyone to present a point of view which did not support the fact that human-generated carbon dioxide has caused global warming.
Que?
Engineers Australia (Sydney)
On July 8th this year, at the invitation of the Chairman of the Electrical & ITE Branch, Engineers Australia Sydney, I delivered a lecture on climate change in Chatswood to an attentive audience of about 55 practicing engineers, retired engineers and engineering students.
EA (Sydney) run a series of about 22 such lectures every year for the continuing professional development of their members. The intent is to impart knowledge to the engineering fraternity on current subjects of interest, and lecturers are generally recognized as leaders in the field of the subject that they present.
When controversial topics are involved, the institute attempts to attract speakers who will illustrate different aspects of the debate, as indeed they did on this occasion. For the lecture that I delivered was intended to be one of a pair, in which the other speaker would explain the reasons behind the federal government’s preference for using United Nations (IPCC) advice as the basis for Australian climate policy.
Significantly, CSIRO were asked, and declined, to provide such a speaker, thereby exemplifying the brotherhood of silence, i.e. the long-held ban that all IPCC-linked research groups strive to inflict upon independent scientists by refusing to debate with them as equals on a public platform. Earlier this year, CSIRO chairperson Megan Clarke boasted that her organisation had 40 persons involved in advising the IPCC, yet not one of them was available to talk to Australia’s major engineering professional institute? Pull the other one, Megan.
Well, if CSIRO is not prepared to explain the basis for government’s science policy then there’s always the universities, so a Director of the Climate Change Research Centre at another Sydney metropolitan university was approached to participate as the second speaker. He too declined on the grounds that the envisaged two-lecture format was “flawed”, adding:
You would not have an “anti-gravity” person debate gravity and since there honestly is no debate in this space in SCIENCE the offer I made a little while ago of offering a full day to detail the science to your members stand(s).
Your society risks falling into the trap of the media in believing there is debate and that is sad, misleading and unfortunate.
This stance was supported by an experienced NSW power engineer who wrote to EA at about the same time to malign my professional standing, and who included, for good measure, a gratuitous remark about the well-regarded London publisher of my recent book on climate change, viz.:
It appears that Bob Carter is representative of the group of the relatively little-published 2% group of scientists who generally are not mainly working in real climate science (Bob Carter is a geologist not a climate scientist, and is published in You-tube and popular magazines, not peer-reviewed journals), who oppose the real climate science consensus. This appears to be correct based on your notice of the meeting and his website. In this case he does not deserve equal time to the 98% of scientists regularly published on climate change in peer-reviewed journals. There is no counter consensus! I question the wisdom of giving this man the Engineers Australia podium.
Furthermore, Stacey International is a publisher of popular works and has no specific scientific credibility.
These examples both involve the citation of private letters. Other engineers blatantly attain the same ends of denigration or censorship in full public gaze. For example, ANU’s Tony Kevin wrote recently in an invited address in Canberra to the Australian Council of Engineering Deans:
I am not going to dwell on climate change denialism. The science is in. Climate crisis denialism should simply be condemned as a socially disruptive cognitive disorder. It seduces people who are psychologically unwilling to admit limits to economic growth. Denialists cling to the arrogant “mechanical philosophy” of mankind’s infinite right and capacity to exploit and transcend his natural environment. Or, they suffer from a kind of morally indifferent, fatalistic nihilism.
Like other cognitive disorders that have in the past caused great suffering to humanity, climate denialism is impervious to observed facts. As the climate crisis worsens, denialism perversely flourishes even more, confusing the community and eroding public support for sound risk-averse policies.
Needless to say, all these statements, both the private and the public, are a confused farrago of mostly ad hominem nonsense. It is disturbing, to say the least, that organisations and persons who would be quick to claim professional status consider that it is their current duty to disparage, or to refuse to debate with, or to muzzle scientists whose views on climate change they apparently disagree with.
Disturbing too is the fact that for at least the last twenty years the practitioners of environmentalism and climate alarm have made it their business to exert special influence on our younger citizens. Many parents have shared the experience of being horrified by the imbalance of information that their children from time to time come home from school with about iconic environmental issues. The indoctrination continues, of course, at university, and through into the junior workforce.
An exemplary case follows next of the way in which the views of young Australians are manipulated.
…
Conclusions
The scientific behaviour described in this article is pathological, for the essence of scientific methodology is the free sharing of data, and the unfettered and unprejudiced discussion of those data. Issuing statements of “consensus” or “authority” is antithetical to good science, and especially so in circumstances where the originating organisations have been established with political intent, have acted to restrict public debate or have a financial conflict of interest. Those familiar with the global warming issue will know that (IPCC) authority rules, despite it being well known that some IPCC practitioners of warming alarmism have flouted correct scientific procedures since the 1990s. And, anyway, a science truth is so not because the IPCC, the Royal Society or the Minister for Science asserts it to be so, but because it is based upon a hypothesis that has survived repeated testing by many independent scientists.
The behaviour is not just pathological. It is also part of a much wider pattern of science degradation that has developed since the 1980s. The change has been caused in part by the insistence of politicians that taxpayers’ money must be used in support of scientific research that is “useful” or “in the national interest”. Such superficial diktats are attractive to bureaucrats and businessmen, but they have proved to be a recipe for turning scientists from experts in problem solution into experts in (insoluble) problem creation. Given the persistence of such attitudes, Australia will never see the Tasmanian forests, the Murray-Darling River or the Great Barrier Reef “saved”, and nor will we ever be free from the ogre of human-caused climate change.
…. more
read the rest of this article at Quadrant Online here
Professor Bob Carter is a stratigrapher and marine geologist at James Cook University (Queensland) and the University of Adelaide (South Australia). I had the honor of being accompanied by him and having him chair several of the events on the tour.
His new book in the Stacey International Independent Thinkers series is Climate: the Counter Consensus, which summarises the scientific and sociological and policy aspects of the global warming debate.
Available here:
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geo says:
August 1, 2010 at 6:08 am
Alas, one gets the definite feeling that the hardcore of the AGW tribe would like to treat leading skeptics the way the old Soviet Union treated many leading dissidents –by sending them off to mental hospitals.
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Unfortunately it was not only the old Soviet Union who has done this. Ezra Pound was also “jailed” in this manner.
Ezra Pound was a political prisoner for thirteen and a half years at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, Washington, D.C. (a Federal institution for the insane). His release was accomplished largely through the efforts of Mr. Mullins.
Darn, I can not find the comment I was looking for. The gist of it was, a US community health care nurse caution people not to talk to their health care practitioners about any conspiracy theories such as 9 -11, global warming… or they could easily find themselves in a psychiatric hospital as did the elderly couple in the article. Is this true? I have no idea but at this point I do not trust government at all.
I found these again they may or may not be true, however those locked up in this way would not have access to computers or the “outside” now would they?
Steiner Ranch Elementary student Mark was assigned to ‘detention’ during recess as punishment, after being sent to the principal’s office and made to sit in the hall, all for looking up information on a ‘9/11 cover up.’ …Mark’s father said the school approached him about a complete assessment of his son’s psychological make-up.
————–
I was wrongly diagnosed as delusional by the psychiatric staff of Ward 7 at Northland Base Hospital in Whangarei and held against my will for 11 days in mid-2006, because I maintained the attacks of 9/11 were orchestrated by criminal elements inside the US Administration… Clare Swinney – New Zealand
And one of the comments:
Doug Soderstrom, Ph.D. // August 29, 2009 at 3:12 +00:00Aug | Reply
Having been a psychologist for nearly thirty years now I am not at all surprised to find that such a thing has occurred. The United States government has routinely used (or should I say misused) psychologists to do their “dirty work,”….
https://clareswinney.wordpress.com/incarcerated-in-a-psychiatric-ward-because-i-said-911-was-an-inside-job/#comment-523
There is a “Doug Soderstrom, Ph.D.” psychologist in the USA
Same one? who knows.
Bob Carter’s experience seem to be wide spread. On 16th Dec. 2009 the Climate Congress in Copenhagen, March 10-12, 2009, wrote: “I am pleased to inform you that your paper entitled:
“Did the West-Spitsbergen-Current entailed the two decades long Arctic Warming 90 years ago?” has been accepted for Oral Presentation.” By end of Jan.2010 the presentation was schedule: 10 March 17:15 – 17:30. A short time later the Organiser wrote: “Due to scheduling error and the lack of time, I am writing to inform you that your paper …..(Title)…had to accepted for poster presentation instead of oral”.
Air Vent and WUWT posted the paper on 4th November 2009. In PDF 1-MB at: http://www.arctic-warming.com/_FIN_Feb2010_WEB_CC_Arctic1919.pdf
But it came worst. Few month later Willy Soon contacted me and asked with regard to my just published book (http://www.arctic-heats-up.com/), whether I would be willing to join his session at the AGU Fall Meeting in San Francisco: “U06: Diverse Views from Galileo’s Window: Researching Factors and Processes of Climate Change in the Age of Anthropogenic CO2”. I agreed, submitted an abstract in time (end of August), became AGU member, paid conference fee, purchased flight tickets, made hotel booking. Few weeks later AGU cancelled the U06 session and offered Lindzen and Steinhilber oral presentations, and Soon, Scafetta and Willson were made chairs of the GEC Monday morning poster session. The rest were transferred to poster sessions.
A number of complains by Willi Soon and other U06 applicants followed suit. One of them wrote to the AGU President (excerpt):
“___………the decision to cancel U06 appears to be (and will appear as such to many) a censoring of the topic by AGU, in line with its position statement (which a few courageous scientists, more proactive than me, have denounced in EOS forums). I find this exceedingly damaging to AGU, makes me regret very much the significant donation I had made to AGU just a few weeks ago, and even makes me feel like withdrawing from the Fall meeting (I am not even talking about the refunding issue, which has been well illustrated to be unfair and rather ridiculous by Dr. E… in his email dated September 30), and even from AGU which for me would be heartbreaking.
___I believe this withdrawal will tarnish the image of AGU. It would take a negligible effort for AGU (in comparison with the risks for its image and values to be accused of censoring, even if nor completely true…) to reinstate the session which has a size, contributors and topics fully worth a small session. By the way, I am worried about the arguments (in C….’s email notably) arguing (following AGU bylaws and practice?) that the scientific program committee decides a topic is interesting and worth a session based on numbers of abstracts submitted and people attending. This is absolutely contrary to the idea of incorporating some amount of risk and foresight. It makes AGU a follower of current fashion not an organization seeking new avenues of research. It would have made AGU miss every single major discovery or innovation, to start with plate tectonics. I claim that my knowledge and practice of science committees over now more than 35 years allow me to say that this session has scientific merit.”
Willi Soon & David Legates critic at:
http://www.heartland.org/full/26365/Galileo_Silenced_Again_.html
This, I think, is probably the most depressing thing I’ve read regarding climate science. And, no surprise, it appears to be the sole domain of the alarmists.
The next election cycle is beginning to sound very important.
“1684 – Major confrontation between Hooke and Newton. It concerned Newton’s Principia, and the involvement Hooke had in it. Newton claimed Hooke had none, but a closer look at the events prior to the Principia’s publication, leave little doubt that Hooke was indeed involved. The Principia was published, without recognition to Hooke.”
Funny footnote to this, from the introduction to the Principia by Newton:
“If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants”
This was a nasty comment aimed at Robert Hooke who was a short hunchback.
Although no iron law, there is much to the saying ‘You can’t
have your cake and eat it’. When some scientist decides to cross
the line to blatant advocacy and deliberate disinformation, what would
the point of trying to meet him in debate? The scientific community
doesn’t need that: there is enough interesting and differing point of views
within. Who wants to be dragged back to pre-Arrhenian times? And when you
invite a sceptic, does he come alone or with some right-wing think
behind him in the same package? Rhetoric question.
Wouldn’t the title, “The phenomena of defamation and the brotherhood of silence,” be more accurate? While I don’t know how defamation law works in Australia, under the law of most U.S. states, Professor Carter’s article lays out a prima facie defamation claim. If Carter wants to draw the AGW mafia into head-to-head public debate, why not file a defamation lawsuit against one or two of the most high profile AGW thugs? It is likely that enough of the offending behavior has taken place in the United States to create the necessary jurisdictional nexus.
Added ”Climate – The Counter Consensus” to my Amazon.com cart; 4 when I order next batch of books from that usual source. Thank you Anthony for pointer making that easy; and kudos to Bob Carter for his efforts and significant contribution to the cause of real science (as compared to the politically-correct variant).
If the Pranksters Above initiate a sharp cooling trend and pull the rug out from under these self-important do-gooding warmists and their gatekeepers, funders, activist-backers, and media-enablers, they will twist slowly in the wind for decades. They won’t be able to wiggle out of their position now: The Pranksters have “set the hook” in them with the recent warm blip, causing them to reiterate their commitment to “Gawdsaker” alarmism.
Climate change — bring it on.
What is as old as antiquity is new again:
“(“The debate is over,” as some people like to say.) ”
…-
“Most disturbing in Gnostic doctrine, as the sample-texts cited above attest, is the prominence of unanimity as the supremely desirable state, with silence validated as preferable to volubility in so-called error. (“The debate is over,” as some people like to say.) I have suggested that this unanimity represents the resurgence in Gnosticism of sacrificial thinking since its practical function is to sustain in-group solidarity by identifying the slightest hint of dissent so as to make it eligible for expulsion.”
“Gnosticism from a Non-Voegelinian Perspective, Part II”
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/4452
Ergo,
“The phenomena of disinvitation and the brotherhood of silence”
“Closing out dissent”
DocWat says:
August 1, 2010 at 7:11 am
Someone help me here… WHY?? I just do not understand why the “warmists” are doing these things.
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“Global Governance” is the goal and Global Warming is the instrument. Socialist activists have been lead to believe this is the way to a world wide “utopia” The powerful are planning a “shearing of the sheep and perhaps a “culling” of the herd.
In both cases you get a government by the elite:
“What unites the many different forms of Socialism.. is the conception that socialism (or a reasonable facsimile thereof) must be handed down to the grateful masses in one form or another, by a ruling elite which is not subject to their control…” marxists.org
Read these:
Obama’s Chief Science Adviser, John Holden wrote up the plan in his 1973 book “Human Ecology: Problems and Solutions,”
“A massive campaign [read global warming] must be launched to restore a high-quality environment in North America and to de-develop the United States….“The need for de-development presents our economists with a major challenge [Agenda 21].. They must design a stable, low-consumption economy in which there is a much more equitable distribution of wealth than the present one. Redistribution of wealth both within and among nations is absolutely essential, if a decent life is to be provided for every human being.””
Global Warming and Environmental concerns were first introduced as a big issue in 1972 by oil mogul Maure Strong who chaired the First Earth Summit. He has been a big player in the game through out.
This Climategate e-mail shows the Global Governance/Agenda 21/IPCC connections Sustainable Development (B1)
Here is who Ged Davis is (Shell Oil executive with IPCC connection)
Here is the context and history:
In Maurice Strong’s 1972 First Earth Summit speech, Strong warned urgently about global warming
The de-development plan is UN Division for Sustainable Development – full text of Agenda 21
UN REFORM – Restructuring for Global Governance (Maurice Strong again)
Our Global Neighborhood – Report of the Commission on Global Governance: a summary analysis
a lot of research and links about Agenda 21 in the USA
EASY MONEY:
Carbon Credit derivative market:woman who invented credit default swaps the key architects carbon derivatives
It is not the first time “easy money” has been very bad for the little guy:
“….These days, corporations seem to exist for the investment bankers…. In fact, investment banks are replacing the publicly held industrial corporations as the largest and most powerful economic institutions in America…. THERE ARE SIGNS THAT A VICIOUS spiral has begun, as each corporate player seeks to improve its standard of living at the expense of another’s. Corporate raiders transfer to themselves, and other shareholders, part of the income of employees by forcing the latter to agree to lower wages. January 29, 1989 New York Times: LEVERAGED BUYOUTS: AMERICAN PAYS THE PRICE
PS: The recent whitewashes will further discredit establishment science and mainstream politics, once dioxidism is discredited and delaminates.
Well, Bob, you certainly state the case rather well: The opposition can’t stand close scrutiny!
When has that not ever been the case?
It’s rather interesting that the ‘true believers’ must seek to silence anyone who dares question their received knowledge.
Hand in there, as I’m sure when the truth of matters finally hits the fan, the students are going to need someone to help them pick up the pieces!
I salute you!
It really doesn’t matter whether skeptics could provide irrefutable proof, a slam dunk scientific “mother of all papers”, together with a letter from God, because it has never been solely about the “science”. Tony Kevin has told us here “…unwilling to admit limits to economic growth.” I believe that within this phrase lies the real strategy behind the entire bogus mass manipulating charade. Whether there exists some “world order plan” the masses can never comprehend – I don’t know, but it really pi$$e$ me off that we have to be lied to and manipulated against our will.
Eric Dailey asks “Why”? I think it’s pretty obvious: Money and academic politics.
On the money side, millions if not billions of grant dollars (and related fraud claims under, at least, the U.S. False Claims Act) hang in the balance for the AGW mafia. They’ve taken millions in government funds by, in essence, lying on grant applications that the Professor Carters of the world are crackpots. If Carter ever gets a chance to prove their lies, their house of cards comes crashing down.
On the academic politics side, Henry Kissinger is said to have said, “University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.” In this controversy, a large group of mentally and emotionally small academics had a “corner” on credibility on a subject of enormous importance — or so they imagined — to the world. Academic nirvana.
But when AGW skeptics story finally broke into the open, they lost their academic monopoly and some, like Phil Jones, have lost more. As their grasp on professional recognition begins to slip away, they are willing to do almost anything to hang on to it. At this point, having gone “all in” by sacrificing their scientific skepticism and fully committing themselves to what they now know is a hoax, their only logical play is to discourage debate by defaming and ostracizing their academic opponents.
This, I think, is probably the most depressing thing I’ve read regarding climate science. And, no surprise, it appears to be the sole domain of the alarmists. The consequence is, climate science is a fraud. I know Steve M doesn’t like to see that word, but how else do you describe a process where perhaps half or more of what can be known is pre-disqualified because it doesn’t support the desired outcome?
The next election cycle is beginning to sound very important.
Keep going Professor Bob Carter! I am impressed by the courage of those with independent views who continue to say loudly and clearly where they think the truth lies. I read ‘Climate: the Counter Consensus’ and it describes in detail and very clearly and convincingly how this AGW lunacy came about.
Prof Carter points out that ‘The world has the IPCC, for at least a little longer. It also has innumerable national greenhouse offices, ministries of climate change, state greenhouse offices, specialist climate change sections within government departments, bureaus of meteorology, national and internationals science organizations with climate alarmist views, and an untold number of other climate change research groups, organizations and lobbyists. What it does not seem to have is measurable human-caused climate change.’
All those employees cling to the faith because their livelihood depends on it, and they will do their best to shut up Prof Carter for as long as possible.
Sadly I think this phenomenon is not limited to the AGW debate. A similar form of scientific intolerance is evident in the field of evolutionary theory where any scientist that is open to the possibility of intelligent design is in danger of dismissal and ridicule. Ben Stein’s recent film ‘Expelled – No Intelligence Allowed’ explores this worrying trend in some depth.
hide the decline says:
August 1, 2010 at 9:08 am
Thanks for that Bob. Australian farmers have been treated that way for about 20 years now. Take it from me…………..you get used to it !!!!!!!!!
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There are STILL some Australian farmers left??? I thought all of you had been strangled in government red tape!
There are many answers and most are ugly but truth heals.
Know the Biblical David? After he’d killed the giant Goliath, with no armour and only a sling and five small stones, the people shouted he was better than King Saul. As a result, Saul tried to kill him and for several years David was in hiding and on the run. During this time he wrote his
blogspsalms.It is a sad tale, but is anyone really surprised? For many, on both sides, this is an ideological war not a scientific debate. It is clear to me that many of the CAGW advocates have a specific economic agenda. The late Steven Schneider was a no growth guy from early on. His (and Randi Londer) 1984 book, The Coevolution of Climate & Life, published by the Sierra Club and inspired by Paul Ehrlich, is an interesting, well written, comprehensive and overall very good summary of climate science at the time. However, it is written with a clear agenda that needs to be recognized and factored into his policy prescriptions. Do his values distort how he reports the actual science? Essentially his arguments over-emphasize our impact on climate as opposed to other physical factors. More importantly the argument is made as if there is no reasonable alternative assumptions and a form of moral absolutism emerges. The net result is a refusal to debate.
dp says:
August 1, 2010 at 10:18 am
This, I think, is probably the most depressing thing I’ve read regarding climate science. And, no surprise, it appears to be the sole domain of the alarmists.
The next election cycle is beginning to sound very important.
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The next election cycle is very important. It may very well be the cycle that determines whether we have free countries or “Global Governance” by an over-arching international body of “elite” answerable to no one but themselves.
The European Union is the template. It started as a trade organization and now is a law making body with no real representation by those it governs.
The human race suffers from a collective weakness. The prophesy of doom excites us. It engages our attention. In other respects we may be pretty close to the rational overall, but pending doom irresistibly rivets us. Our propensity in this regard is almost certainly primeval – we are hardwired to pay heed to the lookout’s call of danger.
This weakness has been exploited by the high priests since time immemorial. The high priest declares and the herd believes. The skeptic should not be surprised by his lonely position nor detracted from his course. Skeptics have always been lonely and always will be, for once the herd accepts what he says, then he is a skeptic no longer. It is not the physically brave but the skeptic who has it in his power to save the next batch of maidens from the fire.
Well, it’s a fair cop.
I am definitely unwilling to admit limits to economic growth.
I also believe that mankind has the capacity to exploit and transcend his natural environment.
(And I remain impervious to observed facts until such time as CRU deigns to release them.)
It sounds like blacklisting to me. So, what do they call it these days?
If the debate is over and the science is in, why do the scientists need to engage in more research, why do their models need refining? Whilst the logic escapes me I realise that the true warmist scientist needs to boost their funding and their egos.