I’m pleased to offer some essays and letters with links that have recently appeared in The Australian newspaper. One of them is an essay from my friend and fellow skeptic, Jo Nova, in Perth, who does a superb job with her rebuttal to an attempt to shut down debate on climate change.
Here’s a short timeline of events:
It seems to have started with this editorial piece: Climate debate no place for hotheads, by Graham Lloyd, Environment editor, The Australian, December 04, 2010
Then there were responses, a lot of them, in this summary of letters: Long may The Oz promote open debat, The Australia, December 07, 2010. plus there has been a flurry of related coverage:
Then there was this essay, by David McKnight, which brought out the ridiculous old “tobacco and big oil” arguments to use in smearing skeptics. Sceptical writers skipped inconvenient truths.
Followed by Jo Nova’s rebuttal to that essay: Newspapers should lead the country
Here’s McKnight’s essay:
Sceptical writers skipped inconvenient truths
- David McKnight From: The Australian December 11, 201
A response to The Weekend Australian’s summary of its editorial position on climate change
THE Australian is undoubtedly the most serious newspaper in Australia and its record on climate change matters because of this. More importantly, its stance matters because of the civilisational challenge that climate change presents to Australia and the world.
This was recognised by the chief executive officer of News Corporation, Rupert Murdoch, who warned in 2007 that climate change posed “clear catastrophic threats”. Murdoch also pledged that News Corporation would “weave this issue into our content” and “tell the story in a new way”.
I happen to agree with Murdoch’s description of the seriousness of the threat.
But there is a puzzle. In recent years The Australian campaigned in favour of objective facts in the teaching of Australian history against “political” interpretations.
By contrast, its attitude to the science of climate change has zig-zagged from a grudging acceptance of the facts to simple denial and back again.
In all modes, its stance is invariably dominated by old ideological obsessions that are tangential to this profound issue.
Last weekend in Focus, The Australian’s new environment editor, Graham Lloyd, defended his newspaper’s stance on climate change. It is healthy for a newspaper to publicly debate its stance on such an issue but Lloyd’s article was highly selective and, I believe, misleading.
Lloyd argues that there has been a “longstanding misrepresentation of this newspaper’s editorial position on climate science and its longstanding support for a global response to limit greenhouse gas emissions”.
Really? How longstanding? Editor-in-chief Chris Mitchell told Crikey last week that “for several years the paper has accepted man-made climate change as fact”. “Several years” is hardly longstanding. But Mitchell’s statement is also disingenuous because it omits vital facts.
As Lloyd showed, it is possible to find editorials in 1997 in The Australian under then editor-in-chief David Armstrong that accepted the science on climate change. But after that period, The Australian took a different direction. This is paradoxical. As the scientific evidence for climate change strengthened, the newspaper’s attitude went in the opposite direction.
At the beginning of 2006 an editorial agreed that the world was warming but claimed “no one knows . . . why it is happening” (January 14, 2006).
At the same time the newspaper described itself as “healthily sceptical about the possible causes of and solutions to global warming” (November 4, 2006). No wonder Mitchell confined himself to the phrase “several years”.
A couple of months after this, an editorial made the extraordinary suggestion that “the real debate on climate change is only now getting started”.
The editorial’s contribution to this debate was to disparage the latest UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report and proffer the long discarded sceptical claim that there was “a link between cyclical sunspot activity and the climate here on earth”.
Shortly after its “sunspot” editorial, The Australian published a feature article (“Rebels of the Sun”, March 17, 2007) recycling this discredited theory and lamenting that the debate “has become increasingly stifling and intolerant to dissenting voices”, citing fossil industry-funded sceptics, and attacking Al Gore, whose campaign on climate change was documented in An Inconvenient Truth.
For many years The Australian has been unable to see climate issues except through a distorted ideological lens. For example, an editorial on January 14, 2006, argued that the environment movement was about “more theology than meteorology” and “[S]upport for Kyoto cloaks the green movement’s real desire: to see capitalism stop succeeding”.
Later, an editorial accused “deep green Luddites” of believing that “the only way to avert the coming apocalypse is to close down all the power plants, take all cars off the road and return to a pre-industrial Arcadia” (June 8, 2007). Lloyd’s article last Saturday ignored these editorials.
He failed to mention that just before the 2007 federal election an editorial characterised an environmental approach in politics as wanting to “transform the nation into a wind-powered, mung bean-eating Arcadia” (October 27, 2007). This kind of unrestrained invective suggested the newspaper itself could be accused of hysteria and alarmism, a charge it regularly threw at those who disagreed with it.
Such rhetoric meant that genuine debate on climate in the pages of The Australian was simply not possible.
The newspaper continually framed the debate as one between, on the one hand, sensible sceptics and, on the other, “deep green Luddites”. By implication, the political and business leaders of Europe, plus Gore and Tony Blair, were in the latter category.
A newspaper’s columnists have access to valuable journalistic real estate under the sponsorship of the editor. Instead, The Australian’s columnists have largely repeated the paper’s dominant editorial line.
The former economics editor, Alan Wood, over many years characterised concern about climate change as “green hysteria”. Another occasional columnist, Alan Oxley, chaired the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation study centre that sponsored a conference of fossil fuel companies and climate deniers in Canberra in April 2005.
At the conference, he said, “Leading scientists also explained how the science on which Kyoto is based was unravelling and argued that the cataclysmic threat of global warming is oversold.”
Shortly afterward Oxley argued, “There is no reasonable certainty that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide from human activity cause significant global warming.” (August 2, 2005).
When the Howard government began to acknowledge that carbon emissions were linked to dangerous climate change, another regular columnist, Christopher Pearson, said he felt “bitter disappointment” about curbs on “what will turn out to be, in all probability, a perfectly harmless gas” (November 18, 2006).
Unsurprisingly, this column, as with many others from The Australian, was recycled on denialist websites around the world.
Lloyd reported that The Australian has defended the right of climate sceptics “to have a voice”. This is curious. Does it defend the right of tobacco sceptics to have a voice? Of course not, for the simple reason that all intelligent people recognised long ago that such sceptics were fronts for the tobacco industry and that the medical science of smoking was settled.
On climate issues The Australian still gives voice to a global PR campaign largely originated by the oil and coal companies of the US. On this score genuinely sceptical journalism is missing in action. Instead, an ideological sympathy with climate sceptics has been concealed behind a fig leaf of supposed balance.
But what shines through in the attitude of the newspaper is its lack of intellectual and moral seriousness in dealing with the consequences of climate change. Climate issues are always taken as an opportunity for cheap shots about what The Australian calls “the Left” or “deep greens”. This attitude stands in stark contrast to the deep seriousness of the newspaper’s endlessly re-affirmed belief in free markets, competition and privatisation.
The Australian’s editorials and columns on climate change raise questions about its own standards of evidence.
For example, the newspaper never questioned the so-called evidence cobbled together to confirm Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction.
This was deemed adequate enough to support an invasion at a terrible cost in lives.
But the overwhelming evidence on climate change accumulated over more than 25 years by the best minds in the field was dismissed for many years by The Australian and is now only grudgingly accepted. This is what alarms many of Australia’s leading climate scientists.
The challenge posed by climate change to our economy and society is profound. Most Australian political leaders who are locked into the 24-hour news cycle see it as merely another issue. For a long time the newspaper has characterised climate change as an issue with a political, not scientific basis. It bears some responsibility for the impasse we have reached as a nation.
The role of a serious national newspaper is to give leadership on such issues. It could do this by asking hard questions on the future of the coal industry and on Tony Abbott’s comment that the science is “absolute crap”.
This is especially so given that climate change poses “clear catastrophic threats”, in the words of the newspaper’s publisher in 2007. On that score, I’m with Rupert Murdoch.
David McKnight is the author of several books on politics and history. He works in the arts faculty at the University of NSW.
==========================================================
Here is Jo Nova’s red hot rebuttal:
Newspapers should lead the country
A REPLY to a critic of The Australian’s coverage of the debate about climate change.
- Joanne Nova The Australian December 18, 2010
DAVID McKnight’s criticism of The Australian over climate change (“Sceptical writers skipped inconvenient truths”, Inquirer, December 11) makes for a good case study of Australian universities’ intellectual collapse.
Here’s a University of NSW senior research fellow in journalism who contradicts himself, fails by his own reasoning, does little research, breaks at least three laws of logic, and rests his entire argument on an assumption for which he provides no evidence.
Most disturbingly – like a crack through the facade of Western intellectual vigour – he asserts that the role of a national newspaper is to “give leadership”.
Bask for a moment in the inanity of this declaration that newspapers “are our leaders”. Last time I looked at our ballot papers, none of the people running to lead our nation had a name such as The Sydney Morning Herald. Didn’t he notice we live in a country that chooses its leaders through elections? The role of a newspaper is to report all the substantiated arguments and filter out the poorly reasoned ones, so readers can make up their own minds.
The point of a free press is surely for the press to be free to ask the most searching questions on any topic. Yet here is an authority on journalism attacking The Australian for printing views of scientists who have degrees of doubt about global warming and/or any human component in it.
And these scientists that McKnight wants to silence are not just the odd rare heretic.
The swelling ranks of sceptical scientists is now the largest whistle-blowing cohort in science ever seen. It includes some of the brightest: two with Nobel prizes in physics, four NASA astronauts, 9000 PhDs in science, and another 20,000 science graduates to cap it off. A recent US Senate minority report contained 1000 names of eminent scientists who are sceptical, and the term professor pops up more than 500 times in that list. These, McKnight, an arts PhD, calls deniers.
Just because thousands of scientists support the sceptical view doesn’t prove they’re right, but it proves their opinions are nothing like the tobacco sceptics campaign that McKnight compares them with in a transparent attempt to smear commentators with whom he disagrees.
Ponder the irony that McKnight, the journalism lecturer, is demanding The Australian adopt the policy espoused by the dominant paradigm, the establishment, and censor the views of independent whistleblowers.
He thinks repeating government PR is journalism; the rest of us know it as propaganda.
McKnight doesn’t name any scientific paper that any sceptic denies. Instead, he seems to use a pre-emptive technique designed to stop people even discussing the evidence about the climate.
McKnight’s research starts with the assumption that a UN committee, which was funded to find a crisis, has really found one, and that it is above question. His investigation appears to amount to comparing articles in Fairfax versus Murdoch papers, as if the key to radiative transfer and cumulative atmospheric feedbacks lies in counting op-ed pieces. If he had made the most basic inquiry, McKnight might also have found out that the entire case for the man-made threat to the climate rests on just the word of 60 scientists who reviewed chapter nine of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fourth Assessment Report.
He’d also know that the people he calls deniers, far from being recipients of thousands of regular Exxon cheques, are mostly self-funded – many are retirees – and that Exxon’s paltry $US23 million for 1990-2007 was outdone by more than 3000 to one by the US government alone, which paid $US79 billion to the climate industry during 1989-2009.
So “sharp” is McKnight’s analysis that he calls the independent unfunded scientists “a global PR campaign originating from coal and oil companies”, but all while he is oblivious to the real billion-dollar PR campaign that is waged from government departments, a UN agency, financial houses such as Deutsche Bank, the renewable energy industry, the nuclear industry and multi-hundred-million-dollar corporations such as the WWF.
The job of a newspaper, he indicates, is to decide which scientist is right about atmospheric physics. Is Phil Jones from the East Anglia Climate Research Unit right, or is Richard Lindzen, Massachusetts Institute of Technology meteorologist, right? Add that to the duties for aspiring national editors. Tough job, eh?
McKnight’s main error in his article – accepting an argument from authority – has been known in logic for 2000 years, and his entire synopsis is built around this fallacy.
Just suppose, hypothetically, that the government employed many scientists on one side of a theory and none from the other. McKnight’s method of “knowing” who is right involves counting the institutions and authorities who support the grants – I mean, the theory. If science were exploited this way, McKnight would fall victim every time, blindly supporting the establishment.
That doesn’t prove he’s wrong but his analysis is confused at every level. He claims The Australian has zig-zagged from acceptance to denial but then later accuses The Australian’s columnists of repeating “the dominant editorial line”. But which editorial line would be dominant: the zig type or the zag? In science, evidence is the only thing that counts, not opinion. McKnight, the follower of funded opinions, has the gall to question The Australian’s standards of evidence but the only evidence he offers is a collection of opinions. McKnight paints himself as an authority on journalism yet fails to investigate his base assumption, research the targets of his scorn or understand the role of the free press: he is his own best example of why argument from authority is a fallacy.
If our journalism lecturers are feeding students with ideas of leadership roles, how decrepit is the institution where students are not even taught that the highest aim of a journalist is to ask the most penetrating questions and leave no stone unturned, so the people they serve might have the best information?
Such is the modern delusion of the activist-journo: McKnight wants to be the leader, to dictate what the public can think and to direct where public spending goes, but he doesn’t want to bother running for office or to expose his claim to open debate. He’s nothing more than a totalitarian in disguise.
Joanne Nova is a commentator and the author of The Skeptics Handbook. She is a former associate lecturer in science communication at the Australian National University.
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Spen said:
“I assume the Green Aussies have recognised the elephant in the room. Australia exports about 200 million tonnes of coal each year. If these guys are really committed then it would be hypocritical not to close down the national coal industry altogether.”
They would happily close down the coal industry. Destroying the economy would be a bonus. They just don’t have the political numbers.
don,t worry papers are a on the way out in australia because thay only tell one side of the story.that is man made CO2 is the problem .
Mr Lynn says:
December 18, 2010 at 5:02 pm …
Thanks for that reply to Theo Goodwin. I appreciate most of what he’s written here, but his critique of Kuhn missed the mark entirely as you explained so well. What Kuhn argued in effect is that most “scientists” are not. They do not practice what we like to think of and support as proper science. They follow fads just as we all find ourselves doing occasionally, and those fads form the “consensus science” that will frequently dominate a field for a generation or more. Too many seem to aspire to a status as a “priest” of the “proven fact” rather than a seeker of it.
Nom De Plume says:
December 18, 2010 at 8:14 pm
Mike Borgelt says:
December 18, 2010 at 3:21 pm
“Tell us your real name you gutless [snip].”
You may well ask that question of Jo Nova, or whatever her name is.
[Reply: Joanne Nova is given as her name. Tell us about your screen name]
======================================================
Here’s some info on Nova.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joanne_Nova
As for my screen name, I’ll leave that to your imagination.
Cheers!!
Quote:
The method of “knowing” who is right involves counting the institutions and authorities who support the grants – I mean, the theory.
Nice one, Jo.
That’s what is boils down to. Scientists have become prostitutes – selling their money-maker-ing skills to the highest bidder.
.
On December 18, 2010 at 3:08 pm, MikeD wrote:
“The consensus view was that DDT was killing birds. Dissenters were silenced. DDT was banned. As a direct result over 100 million people have died of malaria.”
Well, Mike, let’s say you are partly right. The fact that DDT was killing insect, birds and fish was the main reason to stop its use. But it was also no longer effective. In many areas, the mosquitos had become resistant. It was banned by a Republican administration in 1972. More recently it became clear that DDT might cause preterm birth and early weaning and can cause breast cancer.
In 2007 the Competitive Enterprise Institute (followed by others) came with the statement that the banning of DDT had killed millions of people. Given the resistance the mosquitos developed and the potential for health side-effects, that is unlikely. Some people think the CEI aimed to discredit environmental regulation in general.
(Sorry to stray from the original topic of discussion here, but I felt Mike’s comment deserved to be addressed.)
Jo Nova is the demolition queen. McKnight is just the latest of a string of charlatans who have been surgically dismantled by our Aussie champion of truth, logic and true science. I shudder to think where we might be now without heroes like Joanne and Anthony shining their inconvenient bright light.
Duster writes:
“What Kuhn argued in effect is that most “scientists” are not. They do not practice what we like to think of and support as proper science. They follow fads just as we all find ourselves doing occasionally, and those fads form the “consensus science” that will frequently dominate a field for a generation or more.”
Kuhn undertook a fundamental assault on the philosophy of science. He introduced the term “paradigm” to the philosophy of science. If you investigate what he said about paradigms, you will find that they shape the imagination of the scientist. He did not use the word “fad.” People who pursue fads are aware that the popularity of what they are doing is part of its attraction. Kuhn discussed no such matters at all. Now, would you like to engage my claims or just continue pontificating?
Mr. Lynn writes:
“Minor point in this discussion, but to claim that Thomas Kuhn is the “grandfather” of “postmodern philosophers of science” is calumny. The paradigms of which Kuhn speaks do not “determine what various individuals believe and experience.” They are rather the product of what today we call ‘groupthink’, the herd tendency to follow the mainstream, the ‘consensus’, and—of course—the money. Mr. Goodwin has the causation arrow backward.”
Would you please explain your claim that paradigms do not determine what individuals believe and experience? I can assure you that “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” argues quite emphatically that a scientist’s observations, the meanings of his terms, his standards of truth and much more are determined by paradigms; that is, Kuhn argued that they are caused by the paradigm. If you can produce something from the book which contradicts what I have said, I would really like to see it.
The fact that you refer to “the paradigms of which Kuhn speaks” reveals that you were not there in the trench warfare during the Sixties and Seventies. “Paradigm” is Kuhn’s baby. It had no currency in the philosophy of science until Kuhn introduced it.
Kuhn never once mentioned a herd instinct or a similar concept from sociology. If you can find it in his book, please give us the quotation.
You do understand, I hope, that Kuhn made a fundamental assault on the standard model of scientific explanation as explicated by Carl Hempel and others. Regardless of his iconoclasm, he always addressed core concepts of science and logic. In saying that he is the grandfather of postmodern philosophy of science, what I mean is that no such thing would have been possible had Kuhn’s assault on the basics not achieved some popularity. Kuhn did not address the concepts of postmodern philosophy of science, as they are from sociology and not philosophy of science.
Mr. Lynn writes:
“What happens, Kuhn observes, is that over time the consensus paradigm begins to break down as explanations of anomalous data become increasingly convoluted, and that leaves the way open for scientific genius to seize the day, though often at great personal cost.”
Under Kuhn’s explanations of the interactions among scientists, their paradigms, and the troubles caused by anomalies, troubles both scientific and social, the process of movement from one paradigm to its successor can only be irrational. Under the standard model of scientific explanation, the successor can rationally accommodate his predecessors, as Newton’s calculus enabled him to deduce Kepler’s Laws of Motion from his Law of Gravitation.
What gives genius its opportunity to win converts is one matter. Whether genius can continue to communicate rationally with the scientists whose work has been displace is another matter. Kuhn answers the second question in the negative. Therefore, all that remains is sociological description of the irrational transfer of loyalties.
Nom De Plume says:
December 19, 2010 at 2:06 am
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. I’m sorry, but to cut and paste a wikipedia entry on a skeptic and then claim “this is what Jo Nova is about” is absolutely hilarious. Please keep posting Nom De Plume, you are really, really, funny!! This HAS to be a prank !!!
OOOHHH I’m all mysterious, see if you can figure out my screen name!! What are you , 6 years old? My 3 year old comes up with better stuff. Better let your parents know you will be staying up past your bedtime to think of something better than Nom De Plume. I saw a post by a warmist claiming that the “iceman” found under the glacier was “proof” of global climate disruption (still makes me laugh when I say that). His/her reasoning was that the glacier must be melting due to rising temps. It had obviously not occurred to him to consider how the dude got there in the first place. I could not believe the lack of critical thinking skills. Was that you Nom De Plume?
So you’re one of the ones who’s “aware” of the Heartland Institute’s support for denial of the link between SMOKING and cancer. (“Smoking” was the word McKnight used, not “tobacco,” a crucial point.) Good. I’ve been on the lookout for someone who had that depth of knowledge so he could give me a link substantiating it, rather than merely mindlessly repeating a smear he’d read.
(The smear is equating, by the implication of an ambiguous term like “tobacco industry,” the Heartland Institute’s support for skepticism about the effects of second-hand smoke with support for skepticism about the effects of smoking.)
Money for us? There are no public service ads promoting the skeptic position, no PR agencies working for us forwarding packaged stories to the press (the other side is doing a superb job of that), no handy umbrella site for bloggers, etc., etc. (For much more along this line, see my “Notes from Skull Island” on this site somewhere.)
YOUR mind, I daresay, has been effectively manipulated by propaganda. (Selfless, and all the worse because of it.) We’ll see if the evidence (that McKnight was smearing Heartland) “wins out” in your case, by your response.
A small, lavishly funded clique is prima facie different from a large, unfunded (mostly), and largely spontaneous movement. Yesterday’s (50’s & 60’s) smoking skeptics got what amounted to large annual salaries from Big Tobacco. A few of today’s skeptics get piddling speaking fees and article-reprint fees from places like Heartland, and a few skeptics work for free market think tanks, but that’s about it. (Anyway, such is my impression.)
Mike Borgelt says:
December 18 at 3.21 pm:
“You are just another anonymous troll. Tell us your real name you gutless [snip].”
Fair cop. My real name is Herbert Montmerency Jones II. Bit of a mouthful, and caused me agonies in school, but now I’m resigned to it. However, people on blogs tend to think it’s an alias, hence the resort to a real alias. The surname is also a bit of a problem nowadays.
Acqaintances calll me “Monty”, best friends, “Sir”. You’ve already called me a name, or rather two, so further name-calling on your part would be redndant.
Interestingly, one of the names you call me violates the site’s edict on politeness. So which of the moderators is in your pocket?
[Reply: Moderation on this site is done with a light touch, as opposed to the heavy-handed, outright censorship of most climate alarmist blogs. It is often a balancing act between freedom of expression and less than polite comments. Each moderator draws his or her own line. I wasn’t aware of the comment in question until I read your post here. But since your feelings were hurt, I’ve gone back and snipped that particular word. ~dbs, mod.]
Roger Knights, I assume you to be a liberal (IE Democrat) left-leaning individual. If from the US and a card carrying Democrat, then I accuse you of outright bigotry, racism, and a supporter of the KKK and enslavement.
Don’t shoot the messenger, I was a life long Democrat too till just last year and my grandfather, God rest his soul, was a Southern Democrat. In every way. Anyway I thought it would be instructive to use your logic you used against the Heartland Institute’s stand related to smoking as a proof that folks should not buy into their story about AGW.
Don’t ya just love logic?
Roger Knight: “A small, lavishly funded clique is prima facie different from a large, unfunded (mostly), and largely spontaneous movement.”
Before accepting tobacco money, I would say that a scientist probably has at minimum an affinity with free-market ideology. I don’t have any figures for relative funding in the two cases, but in my view the point of similarity outweighs any difference in funding.
In that case, the issue is a numbers game. We also cannot now know the possible effect of web blogs on the tobacco dispute, which is now past its peak.
I also dispute the “largely spontaneous” claim. The Oregon petition, for example, is certainly not a matter of spontaneity, nor are Morano’s lists, and these are the ones that get the most airing in blogs.
Hi, BH. (We go back to Climategate–remember me?) It’s too bad such insults aren’t being filtered out the way they used to be. It’s an unfair way of discouraging warmists from continuing to make comments here.
(Hey, I just corrected a Freudian typo: I initially typed “swarmists” for “warmists”! In the future, maybe I’ll let the typo stand.)
I hope there isn’t a misunderstanding here, but only a poor choice of words. I was not using logic “against the Heartland Institute’s stand related to smoking,” but defending the HI from the smear / implication that it once supported denial of the link between smoking and cancer. (I visited its site early this year and from what I read it seemed that they only supported questioning the link between second-hand smoke and cancer, which is a different kettle of fish.)
Well, as a kid a rang doorbells for Stevenson (in a very pro-Ike neighborhood), but since then I’ve Moved On. I’ve omitted making political comments in the 1500-plus posts I’ve made here, because I think they’re counterproductive in moving mainstream lurkers, and because I think the politics of the matter is secondary to the psychology and sociology of it. (I especially like Stefan’s comments on those matters.)
Pam, I’ve read and admired all your posts for the two years I’ve been here. For instance, I’ve been convinced by what you and Leif have said that the sun’s influence is secondary to internal thermostat effects like ocean currents. And I’ve been entertained by the saga of your political migration. It’s one that other disillusioned dupes of the CACA Cult may be making in future years.
The Democratic Party (like left-wing parties elsewhere) has gained a huge number of votes by irresponsibly and possibly cynically getting aboard the Swarmists’ bandwagon. Their support has in turn led to increased funding of climatology, which has in turn led to more alarmist “findings,” which has in turn led to more votes for left-wing parties, which has in turn forced conservative parties to try to regain those votes by saying “me too,” in an out-of-control positive feedback loop.
Until now, when the wheels are coming off the Great Pumpkin.
The recipients of the most tobacco money, by far, are the federal and state governments. They are more hooked on tobacco taxes than the most helplessly addicted smoker.
If governments wanted to outlaw tobacco for the good of the people, it would be easy. The great majority of voters don’t use tobacco products. But governments crave the tax money from tobacco; the government is the real pusher.
Rob “Meathead” Reiner got an initiative passed in California about ten years ago that added a fifty cent tax per pack. But the money doesn’t go into the state’s general fund; the initiative wasn’t written that way. Reiner personally gets to spend that immense income with practically no restrictions at all. But we see very little anti-cigarette advertising – while Reiner and his Board rake in multi-millions in pay every year, because they get to set their own salaries and benefits. Does anyone believe that Reiner wants to ban tobacco use? All he did was create a monopoly, with him and a few friends as the pushers.
Next, the “second hand smoke” canard has never been proven in any legitimate study. Human lungs evolved since fire was first discovered. Evidence of fires in caves predates human history, and those caves must have been very smoky. Chimneys were not invented until the Middle Ages. Now, houses have ventilation systems, furnace filters, and windows. The whole second hand smoke story is as baseless and self-serving as the debunked CAGW story. [I don’t smoke and I don’t like it, but I know a scam when I see one.]
Lungs contain cilia which naturally remove particulates, and they have no trouble at all removing second hand smoke. IIRC, only about 3% of smokers die as a direct result of smoking. And those tend to die quickly, actually putting less burden on the medical system than non-smokers, who generally require ever more costly measures to keep them alive as they age.
Those who use the ‘tobacco’ argument in the climate debate are as reprehensible as they are dishonest. It is an ad hominem attack that has nothing to do with whether CO2 could cause catastrophic AGW. They resort to the tobacco argument because they have decisively lost the scientific argument.
Any time you read a commenter tying in tobacco to support the CAGW argument, you know that the CAGW promoter has lost his argument; if there were testable measurements showing the degree of temperature rise resulting from a specific increase in CO2 emissions, we would be reading about it 24/7/365.
But there are no such measurements. None. It is all speculation, which is why the fictitious “consensus” argument is used in place of the scientific method.
Finally, those who use the tobacco comparison in the climate debate always avoid mentioning the fact that Al Gore’s fortune came largely from growing and selling tobacco and fossil fuels. Could the CO2=CAGW believers and promoters be any more hypocritical?
Jo Nova, very astute intelligent woman.
Roger Knights: “Hi, BH. (We go back to Climategate–remember me?)”
Yes, I remember. You were busy making predictions re the fallout from Climategate. Wonder how they panned out.
“It’s too bad such insults aren’t being filtered out the way they used to be. It’s an unfair way of discouraging warmists from continuing to make comments here.”
I think the poster made a mistake in his target, and is now too embarassed to admit it.
Not tbat I’d call myself a warmist. More of a free-thinker, unbound by ideology and willing to follow the facts fearlessly, wherever they lead.
Wow, I am seriously impressed.
Joanne really shredded David.
We need more people like this to speak up.
Bill
[Since the thread is petering out, and a few more electrons won’t matter, I’ll take the liberty of reposting my previous comment (response to Theo Goodwin), just to get the formatting right (or try to), not to elevate my maunderings any. If it works, and if the Moderator has time, he can delete the original comment and formatting instructions above. Now if WordPress allowed for a Preview function. . . /Mr L]
Thank you for the interesting reply. I do not have the time at the moment to go back to The Structure of Scientific Revolutions for chapter and verse (and it has been a long while), and it is only with temerity that I take issue with a professional in the philosophy of science—
But it was never my impression that Kuhn eschewed “the standard model of scientific explanation” as a principle and an ideal; rather the evolution of paradigms and the need for occasional ‘revolution’ skews or interrupts the process, as ‘punctuated equilibrium’ might skew biological evolution.
Clearly there is a sociological component to the establishment of a paradigm. But practitioners operating within the core assumptions of the paradigm can still adhere to the scientific method, as within any theoretical framework there is plenty of room for compensatory hypotheses, explanations, etc., even if it means epicycles within epicycles.
I am troubled by the term ‘irrational’, but agree that paradigm replacement in Kuhn’s view would necessarily involve egos, loyalties, alliances, organizations and whatnot, as scientists do operate as social beings. Paradigms make for comfortable surroundings (and often, for a long time, quite productive science). And even when a new theory can logically encapsulate the old, it may indeed be difficult for the establishment to get out of its easy chair.
What I objected to in your comment was the suggestion that Kuhn’s paradigms obviate or invalidate the epistomology of science, by determining “what various individuals believe and experience.” Obviously there is an element of reinforcement in any community sharing ideas and beliefs, and this social pressure will create blinders, but what is important about scientific paradigms (as opposed to other kinds) is that they can and will be overturned, by the underlying principles of scientific explanation. Unless the dam is reinforced by outside authority (e.g. the state) it will eventually burst.
My impression is that the ‘postmodern’ exponents are far more radical, claiming that scientific explanation is a but an artifact of social conventions, of ‘narratives’ holding scientists prisoner. If it is true, as you say, that such views owe their origin to Kuhn, that would indeed be a sad reflection on his essential insights.
/Mr Lynn
Brendan H says:
“Not that I’d call myself a warmist. More of a free-thinker, unbound by ideology and willing to follow the facts fearlessly, wherever they lead.”
Oh, please, Mr Fearless. You’re fooling nobody. You constantly ignore inconvenient facts in order to promote your CAGW belief system and your big government ideology. In your attempt to discredit Jo Nova upthread [@12:38 pm], you ignored the fact that McKnight has no science education while Nova does, and that she has effectively debunked the globaloney and censorship that McKnight is trying to sell.
A major issue is McKnight’s push for a totalitarian society, which requires a propaganda organ. In his opinion views that he disagrees with must be censored. Since you take the anti-Nova, pro-McKnight position, and similarly argue for the climate alarmist position or against the scientific skeptics’ position when you post here, your bogus claim that you are “unbound by ideology and willing to follow the facts fearlessly” is ridiculous. You’re just another fanboy of totalitarian government. That makes you the problem, not the solution.
[Reply: Moderation on this site is done with a light touch, as opposed to the heavy-handed, outright censorship of most climate alarmist blogs. It is often a balancing act between freedom of expression and less than polite comments.”
This site has chosen freedom of expression and civility as marketing tools, so what we’re looking at is a matter of truth in advertising.
On civility, the matter is simple enough. If you’re going to use civility to market the site, apply the criterion across the board. Otherwise, the impression is that incivility by warmers is highlighted for special mention, while incivility and snark by sceptics is given the nod.
“But since your feelings were hurt, I’ve gone back and snipped that particular word. ~dbs, mod.]”
I made no mention of feelings. Nor did I ask you to snip the word.
Smokey: “Oh, please, Mr Fearless.”
While I appreciate your showing me the proper degree of respect, Smokey, there’s no need for formality. Just call me Frank.
“You’re just another fanboy of totalitarian government.”
Not at all. I support the greatest liberty consistent with order. Not only for myself, but for all men of good will. And of course, you too, Smokey.