Monckton submits this rebuttal argument to the piece in the New Scientist Stamp out anti-science in US politics here. He doesn’t expect his rebuttal to be published.
Background: Paul Nurse is a Nobel prizewinner and Royal Society president.
Stamp out anti-science in UK science
By Christopher Monckton
It is time to reject UK political movements that masquerade as scientific societies while turning their backs on science, says former adviser to Margaret Thatcher FRS Christopher Monckton
IF YOU respect science you will probably be disturbed by the following opinions.
On climate: true science may be found in “the consensus opinions of experts” [1], we can “say with assurance that human activities cause weather changes” [1], recent variations are not “natural, cyclical environmental trends” [1], the manmade CO2’s contribution to the annual carbon cycle is not the 3% imagined by the UN’s climate panel, the IPCC, but 86% [2], “anthropogenic climate change is already affecting every aspect of our lives” [3],
On freedom of information requests asking publicly-funded scientists for their data: the requests are “a tool to intimidate some scientists” [4].
On a sceptical interviewer: the force of Sir Paul’s replies had left him “tongue-tied” and had compelled him to stop the cameras on several occasions, when the interviewer had in fact told Sir Paul he suffered from hypoglycaemia and needed to take regular breaks to maintain his glucose intake [5].
On US politics: voters should not choose Republicans [1].
You would probably be even more disturbed to be told that these are the opinions expressed not by some climate scientist or politician but by Sir Paul Nurse, the geneticist who heads the world’s oldest taxpayer-funded lobby-group, the grandly-named and lavishly-grant-aided Royal Society.
It’s alarming that a country which leads the world in science – the home of Isaac Newton, Lord Kelvin and James Clerk Maxwell – might be turning its back on science. How can this be happening? What can be done?
One problem is treating scientific discussion as if it were political debate. When some scientists try to sway public opinion, they employ the tricks of the debating chamber: cherry-picking data, ignoring the consensus opinions of experts (who, in the peer-reviewed economic literature, are near-unanimous that it is cheaper to pay for the damage arising from any global warming that may occur than to spend anything now on attempted mitigation), adept use of a sneer or a misplaced comparison, reliance on the power of rhetoric rather than argument. They can often get away with this because the media rely too much on confrontational debate in place of reasoned discussion.
It is essential, in public issues, to separate science from politics and ideology. Get the science right first, then discuss the political implications. Scientists also need to work harder at discussing the issues better and more fully in the public arena, clearly identifying what they know and admitting what they don’t know.
Another concern is science teaching in schools. Is it good enough to produce citizens able to cope with public discussions about science? We have to ensure that science is being taught in schools – not pseudoscience such as a one-sided belief in the more luridly fanciful claims of climate extremists. With the rise of politicized science in the UK, measures need to be put in place to safeguard science classes. This has been difficult to maintain particularly in the US.
We need to emphasise why the scientific process is such a reliable generator of knowledge – with its respect for evidence, for scepticism, for consistency of approach, for the constant testing of ideas. Everyone should know and understand why the processes that lead to astronomy are more reliable than those that lead to astrology, or the wilder conclusions of the environmental propagandists adopted as though they were science by the IPCC and naively but profitably parroted by the likes of Nurse.
Finally, scientific leaders have a responsibility to expose the bunkum, not to perpetuate it. Scientists have not always been proactive about this. They need to be vigilant about what is being said in the public arena. They need to be vigilant about what scientific societies are publicising about science in their name, as four Fellows of the Royal Society did recently in forcing a complete and now largely sensible rewrite of the Society’s previously extremist statement about climate science. They take on the Paul Nurses when necessary. At elections, scientists should ensure that science is on the agenda and nonsense is exposed. If that nonsense is extreme enough – as Sir Paul’s ill-informed statements on climate science have been – then the response should be very public.
If scientists and scientific societies in the UK are anti-science and are allowed to carry the day it will ultimately hurt the British economy. The best scientists will head for the established leaders of science, such as the emerging powerhouses of China and India, whose leaders have realized that the climate scare has been more than somewhat oversold. But beyond that, the Royal Society’s present leadership will damage the UK’s standing in the world. Who will be able to take those leaders seriously? Scientists may not care, but they should.
Science is worth fighting for. It helps us understand the world and ourselves better and will benefit all humanity.
We have to hope that the people of the UK will see through some of the nonsense being foisted on them by vocal minorities. It is time to reject – and to de-fund – political movements that pose as scientific societies while rejecting science and taking us back into the dark rather than forward into a more enlightened future.
Acknowledgements
Nearly all of this article was written by Sir Paul Nurse and published in New Scientist on September 14. With remarkably few changes, the present article comes to a legitimate conclusion opposite to that of Sir Paul. The New Scientist will not print it, of course.
References
- Nurse, P, 2011, Stamp out science in US politics, New Scientist, November 14, http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128302.900-stamp-out-antiscience-in-us-politics.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news
- Booker, C, 2011, How BBC warmists abuse the science, Sunday Telegraph, January 29, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/8290469/How-BBC-warmists-abuse-the-science.html#dsq-content.
- Motl, L., 2011, BBC Horizon: president of Royal Society defends AGW ideology, The Reference Frame, January 25, http://motls.blogspot.com/2011/01/bbc-horizon-president-of-royal-society.html
- Jha, A., 2011, Freedom of information laws are used to harass scientists, The Guardian, May 25. http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/may/25/freedom-information-laws-harass-scientists.
- Delingpole, J., 2011, Sir Paul Nurse’s big boo-boo, climaterealists.com, January 30, http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=7127.
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>>Robert E. Phelan says: September 17, 2011 at 1:27 pm
>>Kary Mullis has a wonderful video on TED and starts off talking
>>about the intersection of politics and science and the founding of
>>the Royal Society in the 17th century. It’s worth a view.
>> http://www.ted.com/talks/kary_mullis_on_what_scientists_do.html
Yes, that TED video is worth watching. But Mullis is wrong in one key aspect. People always did have enquiring minds and understood something akin to the ‘scientific method’, but before the European Reformation and the Enlightenment Era (and the establishment of the Royal Society), having such views was both heretical and dangerous.
Many good freethinking people, like Giordano Bruno and William Tyndale, were burned at the stake for having slightly heretical views. This, in his own way, is what Paul Nurse wants to bring back to the West – the political persecution of those whom you disagree with.
.
Mullis also forgot to add that King Charles II’s brother, King James II, was no better than their father. James tried to re-establish the Catholic Church in England, and so the ‘leading lights’ of London invited a Dutch king, King William III, to become King of England. It was William III who defeated the French Catholic forces in Ireland, and so paved the way for the Age of Reason and the Industrial Revolution.
I would slightly revise what Mullins said here – every technological gadget you have in your house and office, was the product of the emasculation of the Catholic Church and the establishment of the Age of Reason. This is why the American Constitution was written in the form that it was, as a secular constitution.
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Hmm, I find myself agreeing with a couple of R gates points…
Yes, over here, good science teachers are in demand, I have had numerous calls rom the TDA to convert me to teaching just because I showed an interest a couple of years ago.
Also, as a geo-engineer, I am totally opposed to any geoengineering of the climate – but not necessarily because the principles/methods may be wrong, more because the flipping size of the climate/atmosphere/biomass, etc is simply too flipping large and complicated to be affected by some poxy geoengineering scheme (e.g. carbon capture!), etc….the words p*ssing and ocean come readily to mind…
However, for exactly the above reason, I cannot and will not accept that AGW exists, at least not on the denigrating scale as suggested by the very weak and currently unproven CO2 based AGW theory.
‘It must be Thursday, I never could get the hang of Thursdays….’
Ralph says:
September 17, 2011 at 2:26 pm
“Peak oil is an undeniable fact – written in stone.”
Does the “peak” mean that we will stop consumption on the peak level as new revolutionary energy resources will emerge or that we will not be able to extract it (due to what constraints?)?
Regards
The whole thing was his; Monckton reversed a few words, making the warmists the villains of the piece.
Yes, someday we will have reached our peak production of oil. The nonsense about Peak Oil is in the panic. We reached our peak production of steam engines long ago. And so it will be with oil.
The problem with “Peak Oil” is the doomsday nonsense attached to it. We aren’t running out of oil this decade, or next, or the one after that. Oil production may peak during that period, but so what? Do you think we won’t advance technologically?
>>R. Gates says: September 17, 2011 at 2:18 pm
>>There is no conspiracy to “dumb down” our schools, at least on the
>>public school level…quite the opposite.
Come, come, now – the ‘grade inflation’ scam has been well known in the UK for years.
In the UK, candidates can get a grade ‘C in chemistry (a pass) with 18% !
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23636375-gcse-where-18-was-enough-to-get-grade-c.do
While many of the questions were dumbed down to an appalling degree. One maths question last year was: “spell 50,000”. While the ‘science’ exam was an entire paper full of childish questions about Global Warming.
In the UK, they took 30 grade A* students, and gave them (after a month’s extra tuition), the 1960 exam. 90% of them flunked the old-style exam completely. There is no comparison between the old education and examinations, and the new.
.
Ralph says: September 17, 2011 at 2:21 pm
Ralph, for a substantial portion of the CAGW movement, the issue has always been that there are too many humans consuming too many resources (e.g. burning fossil fuels, clearing forests, priducing cement, planting rice and herding live stock) and thus contributing to CO2 production. Fewer consumers means less of them to produce CO2.
?… while developing and religious nations breed exponentially…
It is the poorest nations that have the highest population growth. The developing nations, whether religious or not, are starting to reduce their population. I think we can safely say that countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia can be defined as “religious nations”; check the CIA world fact book and see how thweir fertility rate compares with nations like Somalia or Sudan.
The problems in East Africa are less the result of population pressure than a lack of infrastructure (which can be fixed by having a larger work force) and the corruption of their governments. With development population comes down… but development requires a work force that is not engaged in subsistence activities. Even China currently has about 40% or its labor force engaged in agriculture, whereas Western Europe has only about 2% so engaged and the U.S. has about .6%. Without population increase, they can’t develop… and only developed nations can afford to be concerned about quality of life issues like the environment.
Pat Frank ,
I think you are mischaracterizing the majority of Republicans by painting the entire party with the religious right brush – a tactic the Left has employed for the last couple of decades at least . Outside of the evangelicals , Republicans have no problems with birth control and evolution , not that birth control has much to do with “science” as we are discussing it . Abortion is really a non-issue that only pops up in election years . Abortion is here to stay , at least until the majority of women in this country decide they oppose it , and I suspect that – privately – most Republican pols wish it would just go away . So what we have here is politics . Remember that the evangelical right of today were Democrats some thirty years ago . Jimmy Carter is a “born again” Christian and used that to his advantage in 1976 .
>>Przemysław Pawełczyk says: September 17, 2011 at 2:45 pm
>>Does the “peak” (oil) mean that we will stop consumption on the peak level
>>as new revolutionary energy resources will emerge or that we will not be
>>able to extract it (due to what constraints?)?
What new energy sources? Every time anyone mentions nuclear, it gets trodden on (witness Germany).
Anyway, any new discoveries of oil do not alter the undeniable fact that oil is a limited resource – and so its production MUST peak at sometime. That may be 50 years, or that may be 500 years, but it WILL peak.
My guess, based upon recent oil finds getting smaller and harder to extract by the decade, is that we shall peak in less than 30 years. That’s only a guess, and others may have a different opinion – but the production of oil WILL peak at some time. I bet you ten million dollars it will. Bet?? … 😉
.
Hugh Pepper says:
September 17, 2011 at 1:39 pm
This article is almost verbatim lifted from Sir Paul Nurses’s piece already published. It is legitimate to quote from the work of others, but using almost their entire work without quotation marks, or direct attribution, is normally considered unethical.
================================================
Boy they sure do crawl out when Monckton’s name is mentioned. Hugh! Read the damned article before you start spewing garbage about ethics!
What does this mean to you?“Acknowledgements
Nearly all of this article was written by Sir Paul Nurse and published in New Scientist on September 14. With remarkably few changes, the present article comes to a legitimate conclusion opposite to that of Sir Paul. The New Scientist will not print it, of course.”
Mark S says:
September 17, 2011 at 12:40 pm
Peter Hadfield was a correspondent for New Scientist. Watch his 5 part YouTube series on Christopher Monckton. Monckton is ripped to bits.
While interesting videos, you are in fact using ad hominem attacks. As we all know ad hominem attacks are the first resort of those that have weak arguments or rather immature children. Monckton provided an interesting and thoughtful opinion to Nurse’s opinion piece. To this you offer ad hominem attack.
With respect to Hadfield, I’d be much more impressed if he were to refute of a science heavy weight say Dr. Lintzen or Dr. Ivar Giaever.
>>Robert E. Phelan says:
>>Fewer consumers means less of them to produce CO2.
That’s a rather counter-intuative argument, considering this blog denies that CO2 is involved in GW. The point is, that many people are concerned about the ENTIRE environment, not just this CO2 nonsense. And for the ENTIRE environment, population pressures are the No1 threat, and so we allow our population to increase exponentially at our peril. Search through history, and discover the number of civilisations that out-bred their resources.
And your arguments about the Third World needing more people are (religiously motivated?) nonsense. You say that the West uses LESS people to produce their resources, and so the Third World can only emulate the West by INCREASING their populations !!!! Que?? Back of the class, Master Phelan.
.
Much of what Nurse said is not just controversial, but just plain wrong. Case in point:
That’s not a scientific question; it’s a bioethical question. All the science in the world will never be able to address it.
That was a very poorly composed political rant, with little to actually say about science. But he apparently fancies himself a priest of science, and thus entitled to blither without criticism.
R. Gates says:
September 17, 2011 at 2:06 pm
Too late. Scientists are already about to experiment with an artificial volcano to address a ‘Potential’ threat from a trace gas hypothesis. Thier actions are pre-emptive strike. Where do you think they got that idea?
P Walker, I was speaking to the party and its leaders, not of the rank-and-file. But whatever the views of the membership, it’s a fact that one can’t get nominated in Republican national politics without making public obeisance to religion and the religious right agenda, which dominates the social legislation of Republican lawmakers. The obsession of the Democratic Party with environmental extremism, most stridently and destructively AGW, is a kind of mirror image ideological imposition.
Ralph says:
September 17, 2011 at 3:00 pm
I absolutely believe in the degrading of the ‘grades’ regarding the examination achievements. It is apparent not only in the lack of understanding of so called ‘graduates’ but also in their lack of problem solving skills. It is even worse today – if they can’t google it, they haven’t a bloody clue!
In my day, if you weren’t sure, you always started over from first principles – I seriously believe that today, the first principles have long been removed from the basic curriculum, leaving many simply unable to ‘self-educate’ when a problem presents itself. IMO it will only get worse – it won’t be long before kids today won’t able to wipe their own backsides without computer assitance!
Ralph:
I pretty much agree with your comments on peak oil and grade inflation, but you are really wrong about population issues. (a side note: this blog does not deny that CO2 is involved in GW, merely that it is vastly overstated and grossly under-estimates natural processes; I think most of the regular commenters here would agree with that) and I was merely summarizing the neo-malthusian / CAGW position.
Suggesting that my position on Third World Countries needing more people is “religiously motivated” is on a par with suggesting that maybe you want to see their populations reduced because you fear dark-skinned people. Both are silly suggestions. My argument is essentially that until a society can afford to mechanize its agriculture and develop a robust distribution infrastructure (and thus set in motion the forces that reduce population) it needs a large enough population to build that infrastructure and afford the means to mechanize agriculture. It needs people.
Sir Paul writes:
‘IF YOU respect science you will probably be disturbed by the following opinions.
On evolution: intelligent design is “a legitimate scientific theory that should be taught in science class”. And don’t believe in “a theory that human beings – thinking, loving beings – originated from fish that sprouted legs and crawled out of the sea or from monkeys who eventually swung down from the trees.”‘
Why is it that when people discuss the teaching of evolution in high schools they never refer to the facts. The facts are students are taught that Darwin was a great scientists, that he discovered evolution, proved that mankind evolved from Chimpanzees, and proved that no designer is necessary for production of the highly complex species known as homo sapiens sapiens.
After the course, none of the students can name or describe any of Darwin’s hypotheses, order them according to importance, identify those that have been falsified, or identify metaphysical claims among those hypotheses. In addition, not one of the students can identify conflicts between Darwin’s theory and Mendel’s theory nor can they explain why the two theories gave rise to two disciplines that are barely on speaking terms with one another. If you raise the question of who discovered the mechanism of heredity, you will find that all students will say Darwin. Of course, both Darwin and Mendel knew that there must be some physical mechanism of heredity, but neither of them had a clue what that mechanism might be. If you start asking really challenging questions such as “What are the differences between Darwin’s account of the scientific methodology of evolution and his account of the mechanisms of evolution, you will get nothing but blank stares. Amazing, isn’t it? And we haven’t yet reached Watson and Crick.
The reason that high school students cannot intelligently discuss any of these matters is that they are not taught them and they are not taught them because to do so teachers would have to be critical of Darwin and explain what he got wrong. But they cannot do that because the PC Police will castigate them for criticizing the accepted religion of Darwinism. After all, the PC Police will say, if Darwin might be mistaken, then his account of human evolution might be false. If teachers taught that humans might not have evolved, that would violate the First Amendment, right? Or that is how the PC Police would put it. The result is that public high school students in America learn to be stupid about biology and the reason is that they must learn the religion of the PC Police.
As regards Nurse’s reference to the thought of some (religious) people “that human beings – thinking, loving beings” could not have descended from apes, I defy Nurse to find something in biology which explains human consciousness and the unique place of human consciousness in all of Nature. There is no other living creature that possesses anything resembling human consciousness, or a near predecessor of it, and no digital computer that can simulate it. You can become expert in Darwin, Mendel, Watson, Crick, and all the works of their followers and you will learn that there is no evidence whatsoever that human consciousness is not unique in all of nature. So, why teach that it evolved from a lower consciousness? Because it is contained in a body that might have evolved? What nonsense that is.
When oil becomes either too scarce or too expensive, we will switch to synthetic fuels based on coal and/or biomass. US coal reserves can meet domestic demand for a couple hundred years, and deep coal, which can be pyrolyzed in place, can double or triple that. Do you think we can come up with some technological advances in the next 400 – 600 years?
Kev-in-Uk,
School grading is simply following the
liberalprogressive agenda: clickRalph says:
September 17, 2011 at 3:09 pm
“Anyway, any new discoveries of oil do not alter the undeniable fact that oil is a limited resource – and so its production MUST peak at sometime. That may be 50 years, or that may be 500 years, but it WILL peak.”
So what? The stone age didnt end because of lack of stones.
@ur momisugly Pat Frank says:
Your bigotry is noteworthy as too is your lack of understanding about how religion (specifically Christianity) plays a significant role in the advancement of science.(Check Newton, Planck, and Monsignor Lemaître just for starters) I would also submit that you would benefit from a historical review of the foundations of this nation. (Start with J. Adams and Madison)
Vile? Vile would be disparaging a group of people that wish nothing more than to live in peace within a moral and religious society. Why don’t you try engaging in the arena or ideas as opposed to mischaracterizations?
“In the UK, they took 30 grade A* students, and gave them (after a month’s extra tuition), the 1960 exam. 90% of them flunked the old-style exam completely.”
When I was taking O-/A-/S-level exams twenty years ago we practiced with old exam papers and I can safely say that the questions from the 60s were noticeably harder than those we were given.
Dumbing down has been happening for decades in the UK. I presume the same is true in all countries with institutionalised ‘education systems’ because dumbing down exams is much easier than improving education.
Ralph
I bet you ten million dollars the sun won’t rise at some time in the future.
You have to pay me if it doesn’t. I never have to pay you, because we always have to wait for tomorrow.
A bit like your bet that production of oil will peak ‘at some time’.
So are you telling us that peak oil is about as likely as the sun not rising tomorrow?
“In an age where science can be used to move the political football one direction or another for your team, can a new dark ages be far behind?”
Indeed. As Eisenhower warned in 1961:
“The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded. Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientifictechnological elite.” (http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/eisenhower001.asp)
Oddly, while we hear about the perils of the military-industrial complex on a regular basis, I’ve rarely see people warning about the scientific-technological elite and the perils of taxpayer funding for science.