Heh, gotta love this. Get popcorn. I was tipped off to this by Chris Mooney in a Tweet where he’s calling for reinforcements:
Kevin Green of the American Enterprise Institute got the war of words rolling with these comments at Mooney’s new digs at scienceprogress:
Ken Green ·
Right, so let’s continue on your dismiss-a-thon of leftist anti-science, shall we? DDT and cancer, BPA and phthalates as carcinogens and endocrine disruptors; claims that organic food are safer because they have less pesticides/contaminants; claims that eating local foods are better for the environment than foods from elsewhere; claims that re-usable cloth bags are better for the environment than plastic or paper bags; false claims of species endangerment; pseudo-scientific claims about species loss treated as gospel; claims that climate models have predictive power; claims that individual weather events represent climate change…I think you missed a few.
Ken Green ·
Oh, wait, I forgot a few: frogs dying from climate change, alligator penis malformations from endocrine disruptors, bees dying from climate change (or is it cell-phones this week?), butterflies dying from BT crops…And, let’s not forget Alar, or cancer from video displays, or cell phones, or anything vaguely reminiscent of modernity.
Ken Green ·
Oops! Oh yes, then there’s the giant plastic ocean graveyard that was never seen again, and, let’s not forget the now-famous drowning polar bears.
Chris Mooney replied, though it is hardly much of one, which is why I suppose he’s trying to get Revkin and Kloor interested in it for defense.
Chris Mooney · Top Commenter · Yale University
This is quite a grab bag of claims. Many are misleading, some might be valid, some are wrong claims that have been made sometimes on the left but refuted just as vigorously by fellow liberals….including me.
I was pretty amazed (as were other commenters on other issues) that Mooney didn’t bother to address the totally bogus and overhyped “frogs dying from climate change” issue, because that was one of the worst blunders in climate science ever.
It turned out to be totally unrelated to climate, as I’ve addressed here on WUWT. The frog decline was definitively linked an infection of the chytrid fungus. The PNAS peer reviewed paper slapping down this nonsense said:
Finally, almost all of our findings were opposite to the predictions of the chytrid-thermal-optimum hypothesis.
Even Hansen’s buddies at Columbia agree. See this: Global Warming not to blame for toad extinction
Mooney was undeterred by the rebuttals, and the war was on. Green made a full post out of it at the AEI blog:
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Over at scienceprogress, Chris Mooney opines that the political Right is more “anti-science” than the political Left. He points to climate change and evolution as areas where the Right is anti-science, and dismisses the idea that the Left is anti-science when it comes to things like their exaggerations of the risks of genetically modified crops, nuclear power, and vaccines.
His reasoning seems to break down into two arguments:
1) Chris argues that one can’t really tag the Left as being anti-science on things like vaccines and nukes because he (and a few other environmental journalists) have done their own policing on the issues, or, at least, walked away from actively shilling them. Chris actually says that he and journalists on the Left have “chased vaccine denial out of the realm of polite discourse.” That’s going to come as a shock to virtually every social-network user, who probably sees half-a-dozen anti-vaccine posts a week.
2) Chris argues that the anti-science issues usually associated with the Left (vaccines, nuclear-danger exaggerations, GMO danger claims) aren’t really left-wing issues, but rather, are held by people on both sides of the political spectrum.
Read it all here at So Who’s Anti-Science?
The “anti-science” label (which I think was coined by Joe Romm, if not he’s the worst serial user of the phrase) is no different that the “denier” label. The idea is to denigrate your opponent by applying ugly labels.
Philip Bradley ,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_left
They’re big on ” social justice ” .
Doug in Seattle says,
“Too many non-scientists…”
I have to vehemently disagree with this statement. Science is the search for knowledge and understanding on a particular subject then be able to apply it.
It is basically a question of ” How does this work?”
Politics and self serving morons get in the way of this process.
This is all just an exercise in trying to attribute ill will to the “rightwing,” Christian voting population. Any one could believe that CO2, generated by mankind, might be causing the warming of the earth. I don’t, I don’t see how you could think that given just a few pieces of technical data. I can understand how the un-inquisitive could “believe” that…
But, when the ex-Communist politico’s, Socialist dictators, the UN, the Democratic political leadership, the Hollywood brain trusts, nose-fixed rock “stars” & the MSM, all want to raise our taxes & redistribute the wealth of the world… isn’t it obvious that this has nothing to do with CO2?
“The sky is falling, the sky is falling!” “Unless you agree to pay tribute to the small islands of the South Pacific… then we can arrange for the sky not to fall.” Dah!
Guys & Gals,
Its Saturday night (at least in easter USA), and we do get older incrementally.
Freedom is simple, the othe stuff is irrational.
Good night.
John
Malcolm Miller says:
“I am still amazed that many Americans seem to believe in their bones that ‘socialism’ and ‘communism’ are somehow one and the same.”
The main difference between communists and socialists is that communists are socialists in a hurry.
curryja says:
September 24, 2011 at 4:25 pm
I have a post on this at Climate Etc.
http://judithcurry.com/2011/09/24/whos-anti-science/
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Yes, you have a sounding board.
I guess that is worth the intrusion.
Who am I to say.
Latitude says:
September 24, 2011 at 3:05 pm
“…the most scientifically literate…”
===========================
I wonder what that really means? Most PhDs I know couldn’t plan a BBQ let alone read a thermometer.
Speaking of honey bees, I had a large nest in my house this summer (maybe up to 10,000). Feeling a bit “green” about the whole thing I phoned around to various bee-keepers to have them safely removed (the bees). Not one bite. Apparently bee-keepers don’t like “natural” bees because they might infect their imported hives. So I called an exterminator and had the hive killed and then removed. The guy used a poison so I couldn’t even eat the honey. So much for my dreams of infinite mead. Oddly I feel mad at the bee keepers.
For those accusing the right of “anti-science” (sic), try some real data and thoughtful analysis instead of red herring emotional politically charged ad hominem attacks.
e.g. See: Politics & Global Warming, Democrats, Republicans, Independents, and the Tea Party
George Mason University, Center for Climate Change Communication, Sept. 2011.
Note that the “Tea Party” is the most informed about “global warming” and “climategate”.
.. Tea Party members are much more likely to say that they are “very well informed” about global warming than the other groups. Likewise, they are also much more likely to say they “do not need any more information” about global warming to make up their mind. . . .
most Tea Party members say (“global warming”) is either naturally caused (50%) or isn’t happening at all (21%). . . .
Tea Party members are far more likely to have heard about the “climategate” email controversy (45%) than Republicans (20%), Independents (27%), or Democrats (16%). . . .
Over half (51%) of Tea Party members say they are not at all worried about global warming.
See also: Gallup poll: Tea Partiers Are Fairly Mainstream in Their Demographics
Pew Poll: The Tea Party, Religion and Social Issues
Tea Party Anger Reflects Mainstream Concerns
Polls on global warming
Pew Poll: Little Change in Opinions about Global Warming
General population vs (tea party)
59% solid evidence the earth is warming
34% because of human activity (21%)
18% natural patterns (14% )
9% mixed/don’t know (6% )
32% serious problem (5% )
31% somewhat serious (18% )
16% not too serious (24% )
18% not a problem (50% )
46% requires government action (8% )
29% not require “ (39% )
21% not a problem (50%)
44% Yes: scientists agree earth is getting warmer because of human activity (19%)
44% No: “ (71%)
The ambiguous query on belief in “global warming” is a badly posed since it does not specify the TIME PERIOD. E.g. global temperature records show:
No/little warming since 2000
Warming from 1977-1998
Cooling from 1934-1977
Warming from Little Ice Age to 2000
Cooling from Medieval Warm Period to Little Ice Age
Warming since the end of the last glaciation
Cooling for the last 5 million years.
Furthermore, “global warming” is often an equivocation for “catastrophic anthropogenic global warming”.
i.e. if one queries IPCC’s 90% “anthropogenic global warming’ they are accused of being “anti-science” for rejecting “obvious” evidence (implying evidence of the earth was warming between 1977 and 1998.)
Yet when the null hypothesis of the full range of natural variations has not been quantified, how can the “anthropogenic” component be quantitatively determined.
So an unspecified “Do you believe in ‘global warming’ is meaningless”.
Dr. Nigel Fox, head of Earth Observation and Climate at NPL, has observed “Nowhere are we measuring with uncertainties anywhere close to what we need to understand climate change and allow us to constrain and test the models.” e.g. Cloud uncertainty is about 93% of the total uncertainty.
For some skeptical perspective on scientific evidence see:
Skeptic Strategy for Talking About Global Warming Ira Glickstein, PhD (see Glickstein’s slides)
I think it is a mistake to equate pesticide alongside the AGW scam.
As a practical observation, in the UK frogs were very common when I was a child. This continued until pesticides came into common useage since when they have declined to such an extent that they are now – by my observation – very rare. I have lived in the countryside all of my life and farmed for the last 30 years (I was a late entrant into farming in my 30s) although my land has no ponds or wetland habitat for frogs neighbours of mine do. Ponds which 50 years ago would have been alive with tadpoles are now without any normal pondlife because of pesticides; after harvest on their land it is not uncommon to find the skeletons of a litter fox cubs which had entered the corn shortly after spraying and succumbed to the pesticide.
I have a dog (a Jack Russel), 3 years old now, who was hit by pesticide spray drift from one of my neighbours when he was 15 months old. He was intensive care for 5 days, died twice after coming home (had kiss of life and heart massage to bring him back) , was on atropine injections for a month. Now two years later he cannot bark as the nerves to his vocal chords were affected, has very poor co-ordination and damage in other ways.
I know and know of sheep farmers who have suffered very severe effects from sheep dip.
AGW is a scam – pesticides are a real and present danger – they should not be conflated.
Actually Himmler was a big booster for organic foods. He had plans to feed the entire SS with only organic stuff. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Himmler
I guess the eco-Nazis’ acorns do not fall far from the tree.
Found this,
Charles Moore: Sailing the Great Pacific Garbage Patch
http://www.youtube.com
Capt. Charles Moore of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation first discovered the Great Pacific Garbage Patch — an endless floating waste of plastic trash…
The problem with Ken Green’s list is that he can’t differentiate those risks that are real from those that are not. Science is not easy, but deciding all science is wrong is not the way forward.
Of course the Great Garbage Patch exists! It must exist, it has its own website!
http://www.greatgarbagepatch.org/
Gaze upon the nigh-unbearable Absolute Truth of Un-debatable Science!
The Earth cannot digest plastic. Really?
The Earth cannot digest plastic. These microbes are digesting plastic.
Therefore these microbes cannot be of Earth! Extraterrestrials must have sent these microbes to our planet. But why, why, do aliens want our old plastics digested?
But wait! All the plastic ever created, save that incinerated, is still on Earth somewhere. Therefore these alien microbes are only pretending to digest, they are actually somehow incinerating the plastic! That would generate heat. These microbes are found all over the globe. Ah-ha! The aliens sent the microbes to cause global warming!
Ah, science. Isn’t it wonderful?
Malcolm Miller says:Malcolm Miller says:
“Australia tried socialism”
Yes and the effects are still damaging this country. Australia is the home of crony capitalism. You are confusing the effects of crony capitalism with those of freedom and free enterprise, something that has yet to be tried in Australia, a nation of sheep who need permission or direction from authority before they feel comfortable doing anything.
“In the case of Evolution, it is not about science at all but about naturalism, supernaturalism is ruled out regardless of the evidence, because God must be eliminated.”
No, it’s because the concept of a “god” is not evidence-based.
“Kevin Green of the American Enterprise Institute got the war of words rolling”…. Shouldn’t that be Ken (or Kenneth if you want to keep the 2 syllables) Green?
Bob (September 24, 2011 at 3:34 pm) said:
“I don’t see where “believing” in evolution has any effect on the welfare of the world population. This is a long way economically from “believing” in catastrophic global warming where the lives of millions will be put in danger because of an unscientific belief in effect of carbon dioxide on the climate.”
That may be true up to a point. Nevertheless, “evolution” is often used as a pseudo-scientific cover for “biologism”, the reduction of every phenomenon of human life to some biological (nowadays usually neurological) function. This implies animalizing humans, first as a pseudo-scientific proposition (“We are really only animals”) and then as a justification for treating people as animals to be controlled and “trained” by experts (for their own good, of course). This is NOT a long way from believing that mankind is doomed, unless the AGW thesis is accepted as a framework for policy.
By the way, I would not qualify AGW as “a religion.” If we are justified in distinguishing between true science and pseudo/false/junk/mad science then we should be prepared to make a similar distinction where religion is concerned. AGW is a pseudo-religion far more than a pseudo-science.
I see science and [theïstic] religion as complementary undertakings: science aims to discover the object (“Nature”) as it is in itself by eliminating as far as possible all contaminating factors, in particular all subjective, ideological and cultural factors that stem from the fact that science is a human undertaking. Religion, likewise, aims to get at the essence of personhood (“God”) by eliminating as far as possible all contaminating physical, subjective and ideological factors. It is surely unwarranted to claim that only the first endeavour is rational or legitimate.
And while we’re at it, let’s address Adam Shaw’s contribution to weighting the scientific errors.
So, if a person believes the earth is 6000 years old…….. so what.
But, if the wrong person believes in the CAGW scam, we get this…….. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/22/world/africa/in-scramble-for-land-oxfam-says-ugandans-were-pushed-out.html?_r=3&scp=3&sq=uganda&st=cse (thanks Tom, I had lost that link)
Well, that’s leftist science for ya! Those ultra-smart, caring souls.
See, they needed the land to grow trees so companies could buy carbon off-sets to save the world from climate change, because climate change, among many other things could cause climate refugees. And we wouldn’t want that now, would we. So, we caused refugees because we didn’t want them to be refugees.
How many have to lose their freedom, wealth, property, and lives for us to see what the climate hysteria is about?
They can call it science if they want, I call it totalitarian misanthropic socialism. And, if that’s science, I’m definitely against it.
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
September 24, 2011 at 5:35 pm
Of course the Great Garbage Patch exists! It must exist, it has its own website!
============================================================
lol, its true about the aliens!!!! Lefty science was right after all!!!
Tom Harley says:
September 24, 2011 at 5:33 pm
Found this,
Charles Moore: Sailing the Great Pacific Garbage Patch
http://www.youtube.com
Capt. Charles Moore of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation first discovered the Great Pacific Garbage Patch — an endless floating waste of plastic trash…
======
Seems like a bad link, do you have a direct link.
Brad says:
September 24, 2011 at 5:34 pm
The problem with Ken Green’s list is that he can’t differentiate those risks that are real from those that are not. Science is not easy, but deciding all science is wrong is not the way forward.
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Brad, you’re missing the point of Mr. Green’s comment. He’s not saying all science is wrong. He’s saying that leftists have wrapped themselves in these issues where the science behind them was demonstrably wrong or the alarm out of proportion to the potential harm. So, perhaps anti-science isn’t the proper verbiage when describing the left’s embracing of non-issues, perhaps pro-psuedoscience would be more apt.
I don’t know why evolution skeptics have to brought up on this blog as anti-science. Here is a good place to consider being skeptical.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v437/n7055/full/nature04072.html
“Through comparison with the human genome, we have generated a largely complete catalogue of the genetic differences that have accumulated since the human and chimpanzee species diverged from our common ancestor, constituting approximately thirty-five million single-nucleotide changes, five million insertion/deletion events, and various chromosomal rearrangements.”
>That’s over 40 million “differences” that evolved randomly in 6 millions year so the theory goes.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v463/n7280/abs/nature08700.html – another one on how different the Y chromosomes are btn chimps and humans.
We don’t have a clue on how this could have happened.
I’m no creationist, it is just that I don’t feel I have to think I know what we really don’t.
Then read both books titled Bones of Contention (two different authors).
BorgHumer above says, “In the case of Evolution, it is not about science at all but about naturalism, supernaturalism is ruled out regardless of the evidence, because God must be eliminated.” Sorry, but all the Prostestant main line churches, the Catholic Church, and many of the evengelical churches accept evolution as a fact and as the organizing principal in biology. Take your head out of the sand. Bob, above, says, “I don’t see where “believing” in evolution has any effect on the welfare of the world population.” Yeh, right, medicine and everything else based on biological science hasn’t effected the welfare of the world population. Get real!
Sadly, there’s a lot of anti-science among the skeptics and critics of the IPCC and the “team.” Those anti-science global warming critics make it much more difficult for those of us who base our critical arguments on the empirical data and on science. A bit unfair-maybe- Newton had a lot of anti-science beliefs- but the left and the right both are guilty of ad hominem thinking, and that’s part of the reason for climate change confusion, and why it’s so difficult to convince anyone to think outside of their tribal groupthink.
I have found that it is the extreme of both the right and the left who are “Anti-science” or perhaps I should say the religious fanatics, whether the religion is Christianity, Islam or the worship of the “Earth-Mother” (Gaia)
The Holy Land: the ecological turning point of the three religions
“A Joint Declaration by Christians, Jews and Muslims is to be presented in Jerusalem, in which religious leaders will be asked to get involved in the fight against climate change
Giorgio Bernardelli
rome
That the three great monotheistic religions in Jerusalem should agree on anything these days, is a miracle. But that they should choose to launch a joint appeal to world leaders on climate change – in other words, on one of the issues that have diplomats from all over the world struggling – is definitely incredible. Yet this is the aim of an initiative that will be presented in Jerusalem on 25 July. With the support of highly respected names from the Jewish, Christian and Muslim communities….” http://vaticaninsider.lastampa.it/en/homepage/world-news/detail/articolo/cambiamenti-climatici-climate-change-cambio-climatico-6046/
Religion has always been a very good way of controlling the masses. Science and logic allows individual to think for themselves so it is a threat to those who want power over the masses, therefore science, logic and the ability to think for yourself is not taught to modern students.
Dr. Samuel Blumenfeld identified the “deliberate decisions made by our educational leaders” to dumb down our education system to produce unthinking followers instead of individualists.
“…..the purpose of the school [Dewey’s 1896 famous experimental Laboratory School] was to show how education could be changed to produce little socialists and collectivists instead of little capitalists and individualists….
In order to do so he analyzed the traditional curriculum that sustained the capitalist, individualistic system and found what he believed was the sustaining linchpin — that is, the key element that held the entire system together: high literacy. To Dewey, the greatest obstacle to socialism was the private mind that seeks knowledge in order to exercise its own private judgment and intellectual authority. High literacy gave the individual the means to seek knowledge independently. It gave individuals the means to stand on their own two feet and think for themselves. This was detrimental to the “social spirit” needed to bring about a collectivist society…..” http://www.ordination.org/dumbing_down.htm
As if the deliberate dumbing down of our schools is not bad enough,we now have the US schools systems labeling the bright gifted – bored to tears – students as having ADD or ADHD. Up to 20% of the boys in some grade schools are now medicated with dangerous drugs such as Ritalin. (The street names for Ritalin include “speed” and “west coast”)
William Schmidt, a statistics professor at Michigan State University, determined how US students compare to others in math and science. “…by 12th grade, we’re at the bottom of the heap, outperforming only two countries, Cyprus and South Africa.” http://www.enterstageright.com/archive/articles/0804/0804textbooks.htm
No wonder Americans are so prone to fall for CAGW and other propaganda, we no longer have the intellectual tools needed to do critical thinking for ourselves so we allow the Mass Media to do our thinking for us.
Don’t forget the warmlist:
http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm
Also, though Romm is a serial abuser of the term, “anti-science” is centuries old.