UPDATE: University of Oregon responds, see Update #3 below.
I’ve been purposely ignoring this ugly pronouncement related to “Planet Under Pressure“, because well, it was just so beyond ugly and it brought up visions of the Soviet politburo defining political opposition as a mental illness. As Andrew Bolt put it, Something is sick, and it’s not the sceptics.
But now there’s been a cover up, and I have the goods.
Apparently, the maelstrom of embarrassment and public ridicule created by Kari Marie Norgaard, professor of sociology and environmental studies at the University of Oregon was too much for the University to bear. So, in the best Soviet style, they rewrote history, as if nobody would notice, without so much as an apology or update. I find it amazing in this day an age that University types still don’t understand the Internet and that disappearing things like this only makes it worse for you.
Now you see it:
Source: Google Cache which says: This is Google’s cache of http://uonews.uoregon.edu/archive/news-release/2012/3/simultaneous-action-needed-break-cultural-inertia-climate-change-respons. It is a snapshot of the page as it appeared on Mar 29, 2012 21:42:11 GMT. The current page could have changed in the meantime
Now you don’t:
The words “and treated” have now been sanitized from the University’s press statement, which is located here:
I hope that the University of Oregon Alumni are made aware of this.
h/t to Christopher Monckton
==============================================================
UPDATE: It seems Norgaard herself has been “disappeared” from the University of Oregon web server. In the ORIGINAL press statement that I got from Google Cache, there’s a link to Norgaard’s faculty page, a portion of which I used in my third paragraph above.
Here’s the screencap, I put yellow highlight either side of the link to her page:
That link goes to: http://sociology.uoregon.edu/faculty/norgaard.php but that gives a 500 Internal Server error now:
Although she still appears of the sociology faculty page listing at:
http://sociology.uoregon.edu/faculty/index.php
…that link is dead as well, but other faculty members on the same page have working links.
And, further, the link from the original press release has also been removed in the revised one, note the missing link underline between the yellow highlights on Norgaard’s name:
Curiouser and curiouser.
Again, Google Cache is your friend:
What a bunch of rank amateurs. Maybe they’ll soon go from being called The Mighty Ducks to “The Mighty Schmucks”.
===============================================================
UPDATE#2 – It gets worse. As pointed out in comments, apparently her official uoregon.edu email address has been replaced on the Sociology Faculty page. On the Google Cache for that page, as it appeared on Mar 28, 2012 19:55:22 GMT, the “send email” link for Norgaard goes to a uoregon.edu email address. On the current page, it goes to a yahoo.com email address. If they were trying to shield her from hateful email, why shift it to a private email account?
Something is going on behind the scenes that we aren’t privy to yet.
UPDATE#3 4/3/12 2PM PST
UO responds:
I asked Jim Barlow, director of science and research communications, University of Oregon when and why the sentence was changed. Here’s his response:
“I intended the original first sentence of the news release to function as a play-on-words on our researcher’s message about recognizing and addressing cultural inertia. Unfortunately, the word “treated” became the focus of the story, leading to inaccurate portrayals. In an effort to shift the focus back to the actual topic of the conference presentation, I chose at midday Monday to remove the word from the version of the news release that appears on our website.”
Source:
http://cnsnews.com/blog/craig-bannister/call-climate-skeptics-be-treated-removed-universitys-press-statement (h/t David L. Hagen)
No mention of why her faculty page disappeared.
The ‘Planet Under Pressure’ conference now taking place in London is sponsored, among others, by NASA.
http://www.planetunderpressure2012.net/commercial_supporters.asp
US tax dollars at work!
For me we are reaching the endgame. Rio is the final battlefield for ending this nonsense and sending sociological crackpots like this back to whatever dimension the have come from.
The ‘Planet Under Pressure’ conference presently taking place in London and at which our esteemed Professor is appearing, is sponsored, in part, by NASA.
http://www.planetunderpressure2012.net/commercial_supporters.asp
US tax dollars at work!
http://sociology.uoregon.edu/faculty/living%20in%20denial/Lertzman%20and%20Norgaard%20Interview.pdf
A nice find on Norgaard’s interview about her book and research, and how to address and solve (i.e treat) the issue of massive denial on climate change. In short, bunch of bile stuff. Her last quote?
“It will not be easy to make those kinds of social changes, but it is going to be less painful
than suffering the economic consequences of not making those changes.”
Lord Monckton needs to have a lively talk with her about “economic consequences.” Maybe he can send he an invite? Heh.
They struck that word from their website but it is obviously what her indoctrination of her “students” is about. I put scare quotes around students because at this point they aren’t students. They aren’t learning, they are being indoctrinated in a political world view. The University of Oregon has become a political academy.
Byron says:
April 2, 2012 at 11:59 pm
It would be both interesting and frightening , I generally refer to them as neo-puritans because the behaviour is entirely consistent with the “everything is sinful” early extremist puritans who`s self-loathing was only exceeded by their loathing of others . The similarities were striking enough that , several years ago , before I was aware of sites like WUWT and Jo Nova etc. I put ” Global warming religion ” into a search engine and found this by Prof. John Brignell
http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/religion.htm
I know it`s not exactly the study You were looking for but it is a superbly worded essay that hits on all the points of comparision .
*
That really does sum it up, Byron. thank you for posting that link. I’d like to see copies of that everywhere, in schools, on walls, in letter drops. Prof. John Brignell has got this unpleasant movement totally pegged.
Creepy Stalinist behaviour
– re-writing of history
– treating dissidents as psychiatrically ill
http://www.enotes.com/topic/Punitive_psychiatry_in_the_Soviet_Union
[Also – if I may say so – it’s a bit creepy being made to log in if your email is recognised as being registered on some other blog]
Wow! They’re airbrushing their own now? Probably be interesting to check back in about a month & see if Ms Kari re-appears…
Many of you have probably read Thomas Sowell’s A Quest For Cosmic Justice, written in 1999… He gave a short speech on it that explains the motivations of folks like these. http://www.tsowell.com/spquestc.html
“Cosmic visions of society are not just visions about society. They are visions about those people who hold these visions and the role of such people in society, whether these people are deemed to be leaders of a master race, the vanguard of the proletariat, saviors of the planet, or to have some other similarly self-flattering role as an anointed visionary group ‘making a difference’ in the unfolding of history.”
I’ll be darned, Monckton already responded.
http://antigreen.blogspot.com/2012/04/advance-warning-nature-magazine-have.html
=====================================================
Lord Monckton was one of those who piled on the pressure
He wrote to Ms Norgaard as follows
“My attention has been drawn to what is said to be a press statement by the University of Oregon saying that you have prepared a paper saying, inter alia, that what you describe as “cultural resistance” at “individual level” to the notion of spending large sums on attempting to prevent global warming is something that “must be recognized and treated”.
Yet I invite you to understand that those of us who are doubters have good scientific and economic reason for our doubts.
First, there is good evidence that the principal conclusions of all four IPCC assessment reports are erroneous, and that two of these conclusions may be fraudulent.
Secondly, the IPCC’s predictions first made a generation ago have proven to be considerable exaggerations. What you have described as a “massive threat” appears to be non-existent. What was predicted is not happening at anything like the predicted rate.
Thirdly, the IPCC’s very high climate sensitivity estimates depend upon the assumption that temperature feedbacks that cannot be either measured or distinguished from direct forcings will triple those forcings, whereas the remarkable homeostasis of temperatures over at least the last 64 million years suggests either that feedbacks are net-negative or that the feedback-amplification equation (taken from electronic circuitry) is inapplicable to the climate, in which event equilibrium warming at CO2 doubling will be 1 Celsius degree, which is harmless and beneficial, and 21st-century warming from this cause will be little more than half the equilibrium warming.
Fourthly, the peer-reviewed economic journals are near-unanimous in finding that the cost of attempting to prevent global warming will greatly exceed the cost of doing nothing now and instead adapting in a focused way to any climate-related damage that may occur as a result of future global warming. My own calculations indicate that the cost of action now is likely to exceed the cost of focused adaptation later by one or two orders of magnitude.
I am uneasy that you should have recommended what the University of Oregon’s press notice is said to describe as “treatment” for those with whom you disagree. In Europe, within living memory, there were two totalitarian regimes that subjected legitimate scientific dissenters to “treatment”. You will forgive me for saying that humanity should surely not sink to those cruel and fatal depths of government-mandated unreason ever again.
I hope you will be able either to assure me either that the report I have read is inaccurate or that you are withdrawing or at least amending the paper”
Monckton has not of course received a reply. Featherbrain Norgaard probably did not even understand most of it
==========================================
(http://sociology.uoregon.edu/faculty/index.php)
tribal environmental health, race and environment, gender and environment,climate change denial, emotions and social movements
Oh my. Looking at the rest of the nest, she’s probably a moderate!
The noise you hear is the sound of your tax dollars heading down the toilet.
I have a good idea though. Why don’t we hand power over to a world government made up of endless committees staffed “scientists” like Kari? What could possibly go wrong?
Oh dear, bunny boiler season again…
“Dear President Obama:
…a primary recommendation of my report commissioned by the World Bank on climate denial is that policymakers should not wait for public opinion to take necessary action…”
http://www.whitman.edu/content/magazine/in-their-words/dearmrpresident/norgaard
So, it appears, she not only wants an end to democracy, but is also working for the World Bank, which is owned by the wealth elite.
There is also a better picture of Kari at the head of the article 😉
Hide the malign
Is she related to Henry Waxman?
Sociology and intelligence seem to be a contradiction in terms. In an essay called The Psychologisation of Dissent: The Global Warming Skepticism Mental Disorder, by Brendan O’Neill in 2009 is the following:
“And nothing better sums up the elitism and authoritarianism of the environmentalist lobby than its psychologisation of dissent. The labeling of any criticism of the politics of global warming, first as ‘denial’, and now as evidence of mass psychological instability, is an attempt to write off all critics and sceptics as deranged, and to lay the ground for inevitable authoritarian solutions to the problem of climate change.
“Historically, only the most illiberal and misanthropic regimes have treated disagreement and debate as signs of mental ill-health.”
“The labeling of those who question certain scientific ideas or green ways of life as ‘deniers’, ‘addicts’ and ‘reptiles’ with a ‘baffling’ inability to understand the science and act accordingly has a deeply censorious bent. If ‘climate change denial’ is a form of mass denial and self-deception, a fundamentally psychological disorder, then there is no need to engage in a meaningful public debate; instead people just need to be TREATED.”
“Psychologising dissent, and refusing to recognise, much less engage with, the substance of people’s disagreements – their political objections, their rational criticisms, their desire to do things differently – is the hallmark of authoritarian regimes.
“In the Soviet Union, outspoken critics of the ruling party were frequently tagged as mentally disordered and faced, as one Soviet dissident described it, ‘political exile to mental institutions’ (11). There they would be TREATED …”
Its about a gathering in 2009 at the University of West England’s Centre for Psycho-Social (B*****t) Studies. “It will be a gathering of those from the “top of society” – ‘psychotherapists, social researchers, climate change activists, eco-psychologists’ – who will analyse those at the bottom of society, as if we were so many flitting, irrational amoeba under an eco-microscope.”
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/179393-The-Psychologisation-of-Dissent-The-Global-Warming-Skepticism-Mental-Disorder
Mr.Bromley; Here’s the link for an explanation of environmental sociology, if you can stomach it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_sociology
It helps enormously to put on a black turtle neck shirt, a beret, a overly large pair of sunglasses and some nice bongo drum music in the background. /sarc
Her book is called Living in Denial eh? Sure, I can see that. “We deny that the word ‘treated’ ever appeared on the web site”.
@ur momisugly g2-e1dac56eda01bae75bf1f4ea5d7fa0d6
“Tall and tan and young and lovely, the girl from Ipanema goes walking
And when she passes, each one she passes goes – ah
When she walks, she’s like a samba that swings so cool and sways so gently
That when she passes, each one she passes goes – aah
Ooh But he watches so sadly, How can he tell her he loves her,
Yes he would give his heart gladly,
but instead when she walks to the sea,
she looks straight ahead not at him,
Tall, and tan, and young, and lovely, the girl from Ipanema goes walking
And when she passes, he smiles – but she doesn’t see>
Astrud Gilberto – – I was so much in love with her. I’ve still got the album 🙂
Her focus interest areas are:
She will soon need to “treated” herself for “climate change denial” as the climate is indeed changing but not in the direction she and many of her dishonest, rent seeking scholars had hoped for.
Kari, keep your eyes on the global thermometer and let us know in a few years your views about Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming as well as the IPCC scenarios V observations. I will not expect any denial from you.
I tell ya. Someone needs to be treated, and it is not me.
@george
You know that you can have some fun with people who head down the “Have you got a PhD? I have” route. It’s probably not fair and may be considered as cruelty to dumb animals, but it’s fun.
“Wow! You’ve got a PhD? That’s great! Which university?” “Oh. I haven’t heard of that college. Is that like a university? Is their PhD better than high school graduation?” “You’re obviously intelligent, why didn’t you go to Harvard or Stanford. I’ve heard that MIT is quite good, too”. It would be much easier to be recognised with one of their degrees.”
Drive them mad
There are other friends besides Google Cache. You can always make a request here on WUWT and maybe find someone who has mad a screet capture and stored it on their PC.
http://www.archive.org/web/web.php
Why do these people find it so hard to understand that scepticism is the very definition of a scientist’s approach? – or should be. But it’s not, of course, about the science.
On the Amazon page for her Kari’s book “living in Denial’: http://www.amazon.com/Living-Denial-Climate-Emotions-Everyday/dp/0262515857
There is one damning review, suggesting the book would serve as a decent fire brick, but it takes a while to scroll down there.
Meanwhile the reader is subjected to a raft of glowing reviews form the mainstream media and all the ususal suspects. Is it normal for Amazon to list so many glowing reviews for a book? I don’t remember seeing this before.
Reminds me of this 1966 classic…
http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q='they're+coming+to+take+me++away'+song&mid=5F520BC1D96E9BF3A05F5F520BC1D96E9BF3A05F&view=detail&FORM=VIRE8
“Something is going on behind the scenes that we aren’t privy to yet.”
Indeed– they have discovered that they hired a complete nutcase with symptoms of a “Manson Family” type psychotic permagrin. They are now in FULL CYA MODE.
The Ducks? The Mighty Ducks? Whatever, the U or Oregon is just a bunch of quackers. Saltine probably.