Chris Mooney has come up with new book to explain why people like you and I are “abby-normal” for not unthinkingly and uncritically accepting all aspects of global warming climate change climate disruption. I haven’t read it, though the cover itself speaks volumes. I won’t commit the same dumb mistake that Igor Peter Gleick committed when he wrote his bogus non-review of Donna LaFramboise’s IPCC book, so I’ll let somebody who has reviewed it speak about it. Dr. Roger Pielke Jr.
He writes: 
Chris Mooney, the author and blogger who once alleged a Republican “war” on science, is going back to that well one more time with a new book (above). In it he “explores brain scans, polls, and psychology experiments to explain why conservatives today believe more wrong things.”
Mooney writes:
“[T]here might be a combination of genes acting together that somehow predispose us to have particular politics, presumably through their role in influencing our brains and thus our personalities or social behaviors ..,”
Mooney promises to explain:
“[T]he real, scientific reasons why Republicans reject the widely accepted findings of mainstream science, economics, and history—as well as many undeniable policy facts.”
…
Roger adds:
I wonder how well telling half the American populace that they are genetically/psychologically/mentally inferior will communicate?
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Next I suppose we’ll hear why we need selective breeding programs to weed out this “genetic scourge”.
Turnabout is fair play:
I’m sure Josh could do a better satire, but hey, this is the best I can do on one cup of coffee.
Some inspiring levity from Mel Brooks:
STATE COLLEGE, Pa. (AP)—Penn State trustees fired football coach Joe Paterno and university president Graham Spanier amid the growing furor over how the school handled sex abuse allegations against an assistant coach.
If climate science was like sports…
All of this has been refuted,
Rebuttal to Greenfyre – “Poptart gets burned again, 900 times”
“Greenfyre continues his dishonest and desperate attempt to attack the Popular Technology.net peer-reviewed paper list with the same lies, misinformation and strawman arguments that have all been refuted ad nauseam. He is so dishonest he refuses to even make corrections to things that have been shown irrefutably not be true. […] As an example of his dishonesty; his original posts still contain the same lies that, Addendums, Comments, Corrections, Erratum, Rebuttals, Replies, Responses, and Submitted papers are included in the peer-reviewed paper count. Anyone with an elementary ability to count knows this is irrefutably not true.”
Google Scholar Illiteracy at Skeptical Science
“In a desperate attempt to diminish the value of the list of peer-reviewed papers supporting skeptic’s arguments, Rob Honeycutt from Skeptical Science not only lies but puts on a surprising display of his Google Scholar Illiteracy. It is clear that not only does he not understand how to properly use Google Scholar, he has no idea of the relevance of any of the results he gets.
Update: Rob was forced to concede I was correct (though never owns up to blatantly lying) and has desperately made a flawed updated “analysis”. His original inaccurate number of 954,000 results went down to 189,553 results (which he fails to mention in his update) of which 160,130 (84%) CANNOT BE VERIFIED due to the 1000 result limit imposed by Google Scholar. The remaining results are irrefutably filled with erroneous nonsense that has to be individually removed before any sort of accurate count can be taken (see the updates for more information). None of which was done leaving his post to be worthless and those who cite it computer illiterate.”
Total lie.
Total lie. At Greenfyre’s site I posted the contact information from a vicious Greenfyre commentator who posted by their full name. Everything that I posted was freely available online and found using Google. No threat was made and what I did was perfectly legal. I did that to expose how much of an idiot he was nothing more.
Mooney’s book his hilarious as it fails to explain myself, I am a climate skeptic yet support evolution theory. I am also agnostic and a libertarian. I don’t fit any of his stereotypes. What is poor Chris Mooney, B.A. English to do?
Does Amazon have a climate phrenology section for this book?
My god! How ridiculous.
The world is not divided into republicans and democrats!
What dismays the most about the ‘debate’ on climate change is that has been co-opted by political agendas. It’s not a scientific debate (enough) but a political one. Now that is a real travesty.
@ur momisugly Joe Horner:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/09/hump-day-hilarity-chris-mooneys-abby-normal-post-modern-science/#comment-792497
I am completely with you comrade… 🙂
My own politics is very much to the left and my view of republican politics is that they are a bit beyond the pale. It just so happens that the skepticism of climate change aligns with their own political ideologies and they have adopted as part of their ’cause’. But if CAGW really was a serious issue with good evidence to support it, then it’s the first duty of government to act on our behalf.
What frustrates me is that it seems to be a particularly American bent to characterise the debate and political idiologies based on their experience of their own country. It’s a big world out there! There are completely different, alien and often very successful political systems other than their own. And this is what makes this book so ridiculous – is he saying that republican and democrat differences are confined to the Borders of the US?
The picture in this article is of the comedian Marty Feldman. If there was ever an ‘abnormal’ brain, it was Marty’s – (in the nicest possible way).
.
I expect that he believes in retrophrenology as well
Chris Mooney the mordern day Margaret Sanger. Perhaps he can start the Planned Preisthood to ensure acceptance of science.
RE: TRM: (November 9, 2011 at 7:58 pm)
REF: My ‘Fear-Forced Science’ as a better alternative for ‘Post-Normal Science’ statement.
“So that is what FFS stands for. I always wondered about that :)”
Website: “http : // acronyms . thefreedictionary . com / FFS” now lists 62 possible polite definitions for FFS, including ‘Fast File System,’ ‘Focused Feasibility Study,’ and ‘Fumble Finger Syndrome.’
🙂
In the satrical picture of Chris Mooney’s book, his brain should be shown as having only a right lobe to acknowledge his left only thinking. Oh while I am on a roll — given his last name need one say anything more.
Smokey says: November 9, 2011 at 9:40 am
Young Frankensein had to be one of the funniest movies evar! A sample.
Eh you are a funny boy Smokey
Look up the takes on that short act in Young Frankenstein – they were endless. (endlessly hilarious).
Anway because I got snipped on this one, I will try again (totally unrelated to post) but a very early rebutt on eugenics 😉
And also http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsXyDrf9HO0
Nope try again
And this
Al Gored says:November 9, 2011 at 9:56 am
DCA says: November 9, 2011 at 9:09 am
[Re the Copenhagen Diagnosis]
Actually it’s a treasure trove of recycled very scary conclusions. Despite 2 press releases and fanfare (Nov. 24/09 and Dec. 15/09) it didn’t pack quite the wallop its authors probably expected to get from the MSM.
According to the website, this is the “second edition” [although Elsevier does not list it as such]
If there are any differences between the first edition (which is available as a free download) and the second (iUS$49.95 for 114 pages), my guess is that, like a second verse of a song, this one will be “a little bit louder, and a little bit worse”. The headline of their Dec. 15/09 Press Release:
I seem to recall that 14 of the 26 “leading scientist” authors were IPCC-niks (but it was not an IPCC document)
Here’s the list of authors, for the Copenhagen Diagnosis (according to Elsevier):
Ian Allison, Nathaniel Bindoff, Robert Bindschadler, Peter Cox, Nathalie de Noblet-Ducoudre´, Matthew England, Jane Francis, Nicolas Gruber, Alan Haywood, David Karoly, Georg Kaser, Corinne Le Que´re´, Tim Lenton, Michael Mann, Ben McNeil, Andy Pitman, Stefan Rahmstorf, Eric Rignot, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Stephen Schneider, Steven Sherwood, Richard Somerville, Konrad Steffen, Eric Steig, Martin Visbeck, Andrew Weaver
Exactly the same as those indicated on the website for the 2009 version – including Stephen Schneider. Wonder how he managed to contribute to this “second edition”.
Perhaps they should have called it “The Copenhagen Diagnosis Dusted off for Durban”
Iskandar says:
November 9, 2011 at 11:01 am
I work for a DNA sequencing company. Given his loony ideas, he must have some extreme abberations in his DNA. We would love to have his genome sequenced, so we could suggest therapy for this poor fellow, along with advise how handle this in his offspring.
/sarc
/ SARC
fragment,
A T G C T C G A C G T T C G A C T T A G C
C T G C A A G C T AC AGW AGW AGW TTAG
JeffC says:
November 9, 2011 at 8:06 am
I would bet that there is a higher percentage of degree’s in the hard sciences and engineering on the right than on the left …
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
You would win that bet. The DEMOCRATS even did a poll that supports your conclusion!
This is from the Blair-Rockefeller Poll (YUP oil/banker money from the Winthrop Rockefeller Institute) with the University of Arkansas. It seems to be a Democratic party think tank poll to figure out why they lost so many of the 2010 elections.
http://newswire.uark.edu/Article.aspx?ID=16325
And here are the Democrats:
http://blairrockefellerpoll.uark.edu/5292.php
The report showed older people were more inclined to be conservative and Republican. There was a “…a 23 point gap in favor of the Republican Party among a group that is highly involved in contemporary political life.”
http://blairrockefellerpoll.uark.edu/5292.php
I guess that explains why the school systems are targeting young white males for brain damage that will make them more easily led and keep them from thinking for them selves.
“..Among elementary students, 17% of all students and 33% of white boys had been diagnosed with ADHD and the vast majority had been medicated for this condition …
Neither Safer nor Jensen reported ADHD rates by race and gender. Such reporting is important (in addition to reporting by age groups) because prevalence and treatment have been documented to vary by all three factors, with the highest rate of ADHD among 6- to 9-year-old white boys” http://www.srmhp.org/0201/adhd.html
“…Lead researcher, Prof. Joan Baizer of the University of Buffalo says, “clinicians consider Ritalin to be short-acting. When the active dose has worked its way through the system, they consider it all gone.” She went on to say that this concept may be wrong, that their research “suggests that [Ritalin] has the potential for causing long-lasting changes in brain cell structure and function.”” http://www.yourspine.com/Chiropractic/Ritalin+May+Cause+Longterm+Brain+Damage.aspx
And back to the Rockefellers and following the money with the Rockefeller – Pharmaceutical industry connections.
Nick says:
November 9, 2011 at 9:38 am
Why does this remind me of the eugenics movement of the early 1900′s?
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Because the movement never went away it just went underground and morphed into “population Control”
http://www.rense.com/general59/kissingereugenics.htm
California-based Epicyte corporation developed the corn with money from the USDA. Biolex Therapeutics acquired Epicyte and the corn Biolex Therapeutics is a private company based near my home in Pittsboro NC the last I checked.
This is just one of the new GM crops, known as biopharmaceuticals, that produce industrial and pharmaceutical chemicals within their tissues.
http://askville.amazon.com/kind-corn-seed-Epicyte-develop-2001/AnswerViewer.do?requestId=55840510
TRM says:
November 9, 2011 at 10:13 am
….It would be a lot easier for me to change my understanding than for Mr Mooney to change his beliefs. All you have to do is prove things to me but no amount of proof, including an ice age, would change his beliefs.
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You are making the mistake in thinking Mooney actually BELIEVES the stuff he is spewing. CAGW is nothing more than a political device used to scare the unthinking into handing over their freedom and wealth. It has ALWAYS been about power and money. That is why the IPCC only looks to find evidence that mankind is the villain specifically Western Industrial Civilization.
It is interesting to note that the villain or villein was originally a free peasant and sometimes a minor landholder not a serf. The rights to a serf could be bought and sold but it was not “slavery” since the “rights” were limited. http://books.google.com/books?id=SOdNT0xFnJsC&pg=PA76&lpg=PA76&dq=Medieval++Villein+%22Free+peasant%22&source=bl&ots=NyQDgJYAp0&sig=n53H7WS62JJl75fgkzaHjM4cEro&hl=en&ei=qOG7Tv2kC4-2tgeUkLnPBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8&ved=0CEMQ6AEwBw#v=onepage&q&f=false
It would seem the hatred of “Free Peasants” by the Upper Class is centuries old given how the word for “Free Peasant” has morphed into meaning a “scoundrel – rascal – rogue – miscreant – blackguard” a person “capable of a crime, wickedness or depravity”
I sometimes wonder if the whole “Socialism” bit was created as a method to push the “Middle class genie” back into the bottle and reinstate an Upperclass/Serf society.
Direct from the United Nations:
United Nations Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat I), May 31 – June 11, 1976. Agenda Item 10 – Preamble
“If you don’t have the right to own property…you are property!” Anon.
Jay Davis says:
November 9, 2011 at 10:41 am
I’m one of those people who believes liberalism/progressiveism is a mental disorder….
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Actually anyone who leans far left or far right I find VERY scary. They have more in common than one would think because their goal is to force their views on everyone else. They also blindly follow dogma and do not bother to think for themselves.
This is why you find “Left” and “Right” here on WUWT. We think and therefore moderate our views more to the center combining the good parts of both and rejecting the extremes.
“compulsory euthanasia for the inferior – now where have i heard that before?”
This is why they re-adopted the title “Progressive”. They wanted to get back to their roots.
Seems to me that if Chris Mooney and his ilk actually thought they were winning the social, political, economic and scientific debates, they wouldn’t need nor want to write books like this. In fact, they are not. They know they are not. This book is simply an indicator of the level of their hysteria over their impending marginalization and powerlessness. Their tears of utter despair are yummy to me.
This is more evidence of personality type manifestation (and infestation) as opposed to science or climate. We need another reference page for that.
“I wonder how well telling half the American populace that they are genetically/psychologically/mentally inferior will communicate?”
For those of us outside the USA, it will come as no surprise.
In Australia we do have some people like that, but we keep them together in a special institution. It’s called “Parliament”.
Mainstream economics?
The problems start when people do accept what economists say. Keynes, Hayek. Friedman, Mises, etc., are all a bunch of charlatans.