From Forbes: The Disgraceful Episode Of Lysenkoism Brings Us Global Warming Theory
Trofim Lysenko became the Director of the Soviet Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences in the 1930s under Josef Stalin. He was an advocate of the theory that characteristics acquired by plants during their lives could be inherited by later generations stemming from the changed plants, which sharply contradicted Mendelian genetics. As a result, Lysenko became a fierce critic of theories of the then rising modern genetics.
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This same practice of Lysenkoism has long been under way in western science in regard to the politically correct theory of man caused, catastrophic, global warming. That theory serves the political fashions of the day in promoting vastly increased government powers and control over the private economy. Advocates of the theory are lionized in the dominant Democrat party controlled media in the U.S., and in leftist controlled media in other countries. Critics of the theory are denounced as “deniers,” and even still bourgeois fascists, with their motives impugned.
Those who promote the theory are favored with billions from government grants and neo-Marxist environmentalist largesse, and official recognition and award. Faked and tampered data and evidence has arisen in favor of the politically correct theory. Is not man-caused, catastrophic global warming now the only theory allowed to be taught in schools in the West?
Those in positions of scientific authority in the West who have collaborated with this new Lysenkoism because they felt they must be politically correct, and/or because of the money, publicity, and recognition to be gained, have disgraced themselves and the integrity of their institutions, organizations and publications.
Read the entire essay here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterferrara/2013/04/28/the-disgraceful-episode-of-lysenkoism-brings-us-global-warming-theory/
h/t to Dennis Ray Wingo
Your post was not factual in that neither BCBill nor I were making excuses for Lysenko. Things are complicated and history really is in the eyes of the beholder. The best people of good will can do is look at the issue from all sides to try and figure out what really happened. Trying to examine and discover reasons is not the same as making excuses.
commieBob:
Your post at April 29, 2013 at 4:43 am is silly.
I provided a completely factual and emotionally neutral post. It is at
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/28/lysenkoism-and-global-warming-theory/#comment-1290895
You responded by claiming that my post was “Snorting and fuming” and was “sanctimonious”.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/28/lysenkoism-and-global-warming-theory/#comment-1290959
That is untrue and was pure flaming.
You now try to excuse that by claiming to me
Bollocks!
You and BCBill were – and are – trolling by attempting to distract the thread onto discussion of whether Lysenko was misunderstood. To that end, you and he were making excuses for his actions.
TO GET THE THREAD BACK ON TOPIC
I can do no better than to quote all of my post to BCBill which you flamed.
It said
BCBill:
re your excuses for Trofim Lysenko in your post at April 29, 2013 at 12:13 am.
There was a tiny kernel of truth in Lysenko’s ideas.
The little truth was exaggerated to become lies.
The lies were used as excuses for political policies.
The political policies killed millions.
Lysenko supported the political policies.
There is a tiny kernel of truth in the AGW-hypothesis.
That little truth has been exaggerated to become lies.
The lies are being used as excuses for political policies.
The political policies would kill billions if fully enacted.
AGW-supporters promote the political policies.
For decades some, including me, have been proclaiming that AGW is Lysenkoist.
Richard
Mmmmm. Let’s try and bring that up to the modern era.
$millions to Mann, Nobel Prizes, exotic jaunts, speaking circuits, new super doopa computers, media interviews, delete emails………………………
I can answer the question about CAGW being taught in the universities. I teach at a primarily U-grad university. There are many professors who have very strong opinions and work the CAGW meme into their courses. These are mostly English, History, and especially Sociology professors who know almost no science. There are also always a few biologists, primarily ecologists, who are always afraid that man, technology, and fossil fuels will destroy the planet and some of these will have a special course or a good chunk of a course on CAGW taught as straight propaganda. The physicists and chemists and even molecular biologists are more skeptical. About half of these may be willing to accept the idea of a “consensus” (or at least until recently did) but they understand there are uncertainties and they do not go out of there way to be alarmists or spout off about things they have not looked into. The other half of chemists and physicists have looked into it and are rational skeptics who believe that CAGW is a huge exaggeration that is sucking money out of science funding that could be saving lives. Given that the sociologists and ecologists still think that Paul Ehrlich is a great mind, despite 50 years of being wrong I have no real hope that this group will ever be convinced by actual data. For them it is emotional and political – i.e. a moral issue. One could critique some on the other side for similar reasons of course, but eventually one side will be proven correct. The interesting thing is when the truth does not seem to matter. Bewildering.
f you’re defining Lysenkoism simply as big brother interfering in science then I guess you could really claim that almost any scientific theory is Lysenkoism. Cell theory? Supported by gub’mint. Evolution? Definitely supported by gub’mint. Using this broad net of “money-grubbing scientists” we can choose to disbelieve in nearly anything. It’s a weak and awful argument, and it weakens the position of this website to post it as anything other than an example of what not to do.
Another tip-off was the narrative from the warmistas ; Only evil and suffering can come from a warmer Earth.
What? No benefit from warmth?
My BS alarm triggered.
.00038% trace gas drives the climate above all other factors.
BS alarm triggered again.
This obvious falsehood and the scary narrative made a skeptic of me
richardscourtney says:
April 29, 2013 at 5:07 am
“There was a tiny kernel of truth in Lysenko’s ideas.
The little truth was exaggerated to become lies.
The lies were used as excuses for political policies.
The political policies killed millions.
Lysenko supported the political policies.
There is a tiny kernel of truth in the AGW-hypothesis.
That little truth has been exaggerated to become lies.
The lies are being used as excuses for political policies.
The political policies would kill billions if fully enacted.
AGW-supporters promote the political policies.”
Ryan says:
April 29, 2013 at 6:20 am
Governments can encourage science or governments can hijack science to their own ends.
Read what Richardscourney has posted. Do you still not see a dangerous parrallel between Lysenkoism and todays AGW theory.
Open your eyes man.
380 ppm =.00038 = .038%
“parallel” is spelled parallel
Self corrections for aboves.
Where goes the spell-check?
Lysenkoism and AGW catastrophism both originated more in politics than science, but actually, the inheritance of acquired characteristics in plants was demonstrated by Barbara Mcclintock, and she received the Nobel prize in 1983 after she had to endure the usual bad treatment from the orthodoxy.
There is also increasing evidence that it applies in animals, too. Check out Prof. Denis Noble’s site http://musicoflife.co.uk/ for a video lecture and a nice PDF covering the topic.
Ryan; your argument is the one that is weak and invalid; Science is what it is without respect to who supports it.
What government does is fund that which they find to their advantage. To wit; they really do not support evolution, though they do support genetics research. They do support cosmology and particle physics, but in that case; only true results will work to their advantage. If it wall all based on b.s.; GPS wouldn’t work and a whole lot of other failed technology would demonstrate the fraud.
In the case of climate science; it simply does not say anything alarming. It does say that the earth has warmed. To some degree, more or less. Since the LIA. It appears there is correlation to CO2 increase, at least some of which is definitely anthropogenic. There is basic physics which demonstrates that increased CO2 concentration tends to lead to higher ambient temperature.
There is no science beyond that, as relates to the CAGW theory. No science that says it will be catastrophic in any way, no science that says the glaciers will all melt by 2035, or the at the polar ice caps will melt by 2100, or that polar bears will be exterminated as a result of CO2. There is no science that says New York City or London, or any other town, will be submerged by sea level rise produced from CO2. The maldives problem has to do with their fishing methodology and ‘fresh water lensing’, rather than sea level rise.
Finally; Anyone who suggests that it is in fact ‘climate disruption’, ‘global weirding’ or any other such thing is actually just scare mongering, wholesale. Hurricanes do not relate to global warming in any meaningful way, and Sandy and Katrina are demonstrably the result of demographics rather than any tropical cyclone heat energy trend.
And the “scientists” who engage in this scaremongering are no longer scientists. Science requires disinterest. They have planted their flag and are no longer qualified to collect the data, preserve the data or interpret the data.
Once they claimed they knew the answer and the science was settled to a political solution, they should have been relieved of their research status.
It is that simple.
In short; big brother may support science, but if their interest is policy based, rather than directly related to technology, then what they are supporting is propaganda, not science.
But it was a great scam while it lasted.
Progressive;”Forward”.
The hydra will pop up new heads, fresh water, flu pandemics and patriotism are all being developed.
Agenda 21 is openly admitted by the UN, so what of those who claimed we were conspiracy fools?
What gets rewarded will continue and grow.
Our bureaucracies and politicians will continue to lie, steal and destroy, until we stop them.
Incompetence, arrogance and idiocy are the norm within the bureaus of our nations.
Promote the clueless and dangerously useless is common practice of government.
When was a thief, corrupt practitioner or liar punished?
In Canada, a corrupt political party stole over $40 million, yet no one is in gaol.
And this is clump change, from the politicians POV, a mere crumb of what our governments waste, destroy and disappear.
commieBob says: April 28, 2013 at 5:01 pm
Lysenko wasn’t completely wrong. The trouble is that things are complicated.
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Lysenko was wrong and his name has become a by-word for polically driven science.
Things are quite simple if you understand that such is the problem with AGW theory and its advocates..
What a hoot–nonsense from the heartland institute is published in Forbes Magazine. No wonder that Forbes is going downhill. Lysenko is clearly anti-science. Heartland is the US version of Lysenko.
REPLY: Bill does your state funded university (ipfw.edu) teach you this rubbish, or did you come up with this revelation on your own? – Anthony
BillD,
Thanx for your content-free post, which is nothing but a stupid assertion that lowers the IQ of the entire thread.
And as a 40-year Forbes subscriber, I can assure you they’re doing just fine — unlike the NY Times, which is swirling down the porcelain bowl.
The comment threads in this and the previous WUWT article have been … interesting. And somewhat distressing. Since the change in the WUWT comments process, it seems that the discussions are becoming more rapid and more personal. They appear to me to be taking on more aspects of the flamewars that make so many other internet forums unreadable.
I suspect (but can not yet prove) that this change in tone is the result of the instant posting of comments. The old moderation was slow and while that delay had some disadvantages, it seemed to me to add time for reflection. Misunderstandings and even harsh words were still exchanged but the debates did not seem quite so quick to decay into personal attacks and recriminations.
Am I viewing the old process through my own rose-colored glasses or are others seeing the same change in tone?
The Pompous Git says:
April 28, 2013 at 11:01 pm
Thank you for your response. I will add southern Tasmania to my list of safe places.
RE: Mike Rossander says:
April 29, 2013 at 1:03 pm
Sorry the “flame wars” trouble you. I think the subject of Lysenko is bound to bring the blood of many to a boil. (More so than a discussion of the effects of equatorial currents on the production of biological dms emissions, at any rate.)
Personally, I don’t mind when people speak to me with passion, (even if they insult me,) provided they supply some points I hadn’t considered, and give me links where I can go and see things from a new angle.
If everything is too silky and smooth, you have no traction. Grit might not be pleasant, but it does supply traction.
I appreciate your dignity and manners, which are very important to civil procedure. However, when it comes to hearing grouches like myself, I hope you can learn to grin and bear it.
The Lysenko angle has been covered before. Eg. Bob Carter in 2010.
http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2010/03/hansenist-climate-alarmism
The AGW-Lysenko connection has been noticed by more than a few biologists
Good evening, Caleb. Yeah, I wondered after submitting that comment how much of the tone was the result of the rapid comments and how much (if any) was psychological priming based on the topic. And for the record, I am okay with a “robust” discussion as long as I can learn from it. That generally stops when the thread devolves into personal attacks. I found no complaints with your comments but some of the others were … less illuminating, shall we say.
Theo Goodwin said @ur momisugly April 29, 2013 at 1:09 pm
You’re welcome. It is a very special place and I’m truly grateful that I found it in 1970. If you are ever in this part of the world, do look me up. If you think you could stand a conversation with a long-haired, back-to-the-land hippy with a passion for gourmet food and wine 🙂
CO2 Is, without question, capable of absorbing infra red radiation that would otherwise leave the earth. CO2 is also the source of 100% of the food we eat. There are credible studies, that were done prior to the politicization of this issue that predicted a near-doubling of agricultural productivity with a doubling of CO2 concentration.
Any discussion that attempts to quantify the societal loss resulting from the burning of carbon does not take both the positive and the negative impact into account is simply not science. It is propaganda. The last century provides some vivid lessons as to the results of policies based upon propaganda. How many people did Lysenko kill? If Lysenko were alive today, where would he be working?
The irony here is that Lysenko was not entirely wrong. Plants and animals CAN and DO pass on and inherit characteristics from environmental input via methylation epigenetics.
It’s just not the main form of genetic inheritance.
RS:
Actually, the irony is that your post demonstrates you have not read the thread.
Richard
Chris Riley says: @ur momisugly April 30, 2013 at 6:29 pm
…The last century provides some vivid lessons as to the results of policies based upon propaganda. How many people did Lysenko kill? …
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You might be interested in Dr Rummel’s DEATH BY GOVERNMENT or Democide, the murder of citizens by their own government.
No one should forget that governments KILL and it is just a short step to a totalitarian state when a government has amassed enough power.