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.
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She was removed from http://www.whitman.edu/content/sociology/faculty/norgaard too
Cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:oGv-OdQZKgkJ:www.whitman.edu/content/sociology/faculty/norgaard+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk
Her CV is fully removed from there which is a shame, as her “The Moon, the Menstrual Cycle and Mother Earth” was my favourite of all of her papers.
@ur momisugly Carbonbased:
“Nothing can be tested and nothing disproved. How is it so attractive to so many seemingly intelligent people?”
You answered your own question. It’s attractive precisely because nothing can be tested nor disproved. It’s human nature. People don’t like other people calling their baby ugly.
Unsurprisingly, there is no mention of science in that fawning interview. Which, of course, only reinforces the point of John Brignell’s excellent 2007 essay (cited above), “Global Warming as Religion and not Science” (http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/religion.htm). One has to wonder how this academic acolyte, Kari Marie Norgaard, would deal one-on-one with a real scientist, like Richard Lindzen. Would she recoil in horror, and recommend him for ‘treatment’?
Since she claims to be an expert in the sociology of ‘deniers’, do you suppose she reads WUWT?
“Hey, Miz Norgaard! How about responding here? Perhaps you’d like to take a crack at the scientific critiques of the hypothesis of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming? No fair appealing to authority, or ‘consensus’, or making up claims of funding by oil companies, or using the word ‘denier’ now. Just show us what observations actually support the CAGW hypothesis (assuming it is one, and not just speculation), and explain how it might actually be falsified. And be prepared to discuss your evidence with some of the real scientists who regularly post here.”
I won’t hold my breath.
/Mr Lynn
Good start – don’t stop there.
Tenuk, thanks for posting that letter to Obama. Barmy isn’t the word…. She starts off:
“Dear President Obama: First of all, I’d like to say thank you for taking our environment seriously. At this point, our most profound moral, economic and social obligation is to bring climate change under control.”
How to address the delusions of anyone who thinks you can control the climate? She proceeds to advise Obama to listen in particular to James Hansen. The Gaia help us all …
Kari Norgaard, the Nurse Ratchet of Climate Science.
Dr. Norgaard has been discovered by Rush Limbaugh. I’d not be surprised that her links would be pulled. but for some valid reasons having nothing to do with her being over the top in her climate enthusiasm. It is very hard on web servers to be linked or referenced by widely followed pop culture celebs.
Dr. Norgaard’s writings are an embarrassment of riches for the U of O. She appears to be her own worst enemy.
Speculation on the last thing Professor Norgaard heard at work:
Your services are no longer needed Professor Norgaard. Your contribution to the cause has been great, I’m sure you will agree that you now must step down for the collective good. Take some time off, let this thing die down, and we will find you a place behind the scenes befitting your sacrifice. Thank you very much for your service, it’s not easy to sacrifice your integrity and reputation for such a noble cause, you should be proud.
Must mean something.
They’ve been at it for forty years.
Been indoctrinating kids from their Sesame Street days.
Complete control of the media.
and most of the world’s money.
Still not enough?
I know, let’s boil the deniers in oil. That should do it.
Initial Server Error? Does that mean Kari’s staff served portabello shrooms instead of the magic ones at the Planet Under Pressure Conference? That would explain any hateful emails. This is starting to make sense…..
I originally posted this in another thread, but I think it was snipped for being OT (fair enough), it’s apposite here though. Have you all seen this interview with James Lovelock from 2010?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2010/mar/29/james-lovelock
“We need a more authoritative world. We’ve become a sort of cheeky, egalitarian world where everyone can have their say. It’s all very well, but there are certain circumstances – a war is a typical example – where you can’t do that. You’ve got to have a few people with authority who you trust who are running it. And they should be very accountable too, of course.
But it can’t happen in a modern democracy. This is one of the problems. What’s the alternative to democracy? There isn’t one. But even the best democracies agree that when a major war approaches, democracy must be put on hold for the time being. I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while.”
I use to think ‘Ecofascism’ was a little silly and hysterical, but it doesn’t seem so any more
Len says:
April 2, 2012 at 11:18 pm
When I started university in the 1960′s social sciences were mostly a joke already.
I was in business school in the early 70’s getting a Master’s and the business prof and econ prof put together a joint class with about half business majors and half econ majors. The idea was to propose a problem and then come up with joint econ/business solutions, hoping each discipline would learn from the other.
One of the problems regarded the high price of oil at the time due to the first oil embargo. Things got pretty confusing until finally the business professor asked the following question: “If plenty of oil was discovered and prices were able to fall despite the embargo, who here would think letting the price fall would be a good thing to do, and who would like to see the price remain high to reduce usage?”
Virtually all of the business students wanted to let the price fall back to “normal” and nearly all of the economics majors wanted to see prices remain high anyway. That was my first exposure to the efficacy of mass indoctrination. This war on oil has been going on for a long time in the social sciences.
David Ball says:
April 3, 2012 at 7:02 am
Judging by the posts on this thread, I would say ” resistance is fertile”.
There’s a plan for that. Something to do with “precious bodily fluids”.
I would add to my comment earlier that the business professor was clearly stunned at the response of the econ majors.
the common logical fallacy that weaves together all the others is called ‘argument from intimidation’
the use of the word ‘denialist’ is a prime example.
perhaps the most ridiculous example i’ve heard came from the mouth of an msnbc employee named taure, whose definitive argument was ‘you know, everybody at msnbc was in the hall laughing at you’
of course, willis can claim priority over taure – he has used ‘pointing their fingers at you and laughing’ as part of his fatuous trollery.
as soon as i recognize mendacity, the argument is dismissed but the value it has for defining the character of the individual is there.
wfrumkin says:
April 2, 2012 at 9:41 pm
I would appreciate suggestions for which top 100 universities is safe to send a child to.
**********
I highly recommend considering Hillsdale College.
proskeptic says:
I originally posted this in another thread, but I think it was snipped for being OT (fair enough), it’s apposite here though..
Indeed!
Just check the comment from Norgaard herself:
“Wired.com: So we don’t want to believe climate change is happening, feel guilty that it is, and don’t know what to do about it? So we pretend it’s not a problem?
Norgaard: Yes, but I don’t want to make it seem crass. Sometimes people who are very empathetic are less likely to help in certain situations, because they’re so disturbed by it. The human capacity of empathy is really profound, and that’s part of our weakness. If we were more callous, then we’d approach it in a more straightforward way. It may be a weakness of our capacity as sentient beings to cope with this problem.”
Those like Norgaard are the people by whom, and for whom, the 10:10 “No Pressure” video was produced. Plays to their fantasy for a more callous and straightforward approach toward those who disagree. The unfortunate truth is, if you try to give people an excuse to disregard their empathy, sometimes enough of them will that very ugly crimes against humanity are committed.
“Sociology” doesn’t seem to have much capacity for self evaluation.
FTR – Prof. Norgaard’s bio was still up on the Oregon University yesterday (April 2) afternoon, at 3:17 PM, PT.
Frankly, this entire matter is an indictment of education in America, and Oregon in particular. Norgaard has an undergraduate degree in Biology and a Masters in sociology. She has morphed those relatively minor credentials into a a series of courses critical of Western civilization, environmental justice, minority environmental justice, gender environmental justice, and similar endeavors of absolutely no value and no foundation. I suspect this is what ‘sociology’ in now in its entirety. A useless amalgamation of politically correct opinions and not an academic endeavor at all.
They remind me of fruit fly weight boxers, showing up to fight the mighty WUWT truth fighters. They keep getting hammered but keep showing up for the next bout!
“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?”
Because at yahoo, it’s immune from FOIA. They might move ALL of her email to there…..
I can’t help reading this article and these comments and being more than just a little upset. Since when is being good to the earth a bad thing? And we have not been good to the earth – I don’t think that point is very arguable. I do not appreciate the many personal attacks that Prof. Norgaard is receiving. Because feedback has been so hostile and hateful, the pages hosting her article and staff information have been removed. There is no conspiracy. Just someone trying to express what she believes in and instead becoming the subject of an unprecedented tirade.
When did respect and understanding lose it’s place in the value of freedom of speech? Not impressed.
1) Does the word ‘treated’ in the Oregon statement refer to psychological treatment?
2) Did Norgaard write the Oregon statement? If not, what did Norgaard write?
The climate is changing, and it will always change! We have solar fluctuations, changes in polar orientation and the angle of the planet as it rotates around the sun, geological activity, and the human input. It’s not that you have to get people to accept people as the cause, but that you have to get people to accept that they do not live in a steady-state environment.
It’s sad and pathetic to suggest that people need treatment, when what they need is to move away from science as opinion and towards science as a discussion and exposition of the reality of the situation. The only thing I want to be treated to is Lunch!
hannahmdejong says:
April 3, 2012 at 9:46 am
When did respect and understanding lose it’s place in the value of freedom of speech? Not impressed.
First of all, show us where Ms. Dr. Norgaard is fostering respect for her fellow humans. You’re right, being good to the planet is not a bad thing. And you’re right again, Norgaard is free to express her opinion. But for her to pretend that her “scholarship” may become basis for policy, is to cast aside any pretence of free speech. The anti-conceptual glurge she calls scholarship is very dangerous indeed.
“Because feedback has been so hostile and hateful, the pages hosting her article and staff information have been removed” puts the cart before the horse. This thread is ABOUT the removal, not its cause. FAIL.