ESSAY: The shoddy science of sceptic-bashing LOG12 paper by Lewandowsky attempts to turn rational criticism into a psychological illness.
“As the influence of environmental thinking has increased its hold over the political establishment, the failure to win the public support that might create the basis for decisive action to save the planet has also increasingly been blamed on climate sceptics operating on the internet.
On this view, bloggers have thwarted international and domestic action to prevent climate change. Accordingly, the nature of the blogosphere and the workings of the minds of climate sceptics have become the focus of academic research, just as the mechanics of the climate system have been the subject of climate scientists. But this attempt to form a pathological view of a complex debate says much more about the researchers than the objects of their study.”
http://www.spiked-online.com/site/article/13716/
h/t to Ken G
For reference:
Political abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union
In the twentieth century, systematic political abuse of psychiatry took place in the Soviet Union.[1] Psychiatry was used as a tool during the reign of Leonid Brezhnev to eliminate political opponents (“dissidents”) who openly expressed views that contradicted official dogma.[2] The term “philosophical intoxication” was widely used to diagnose mental disorders in cases where people disagreed with leaders and criticized them using the writings of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Vladimir Lenin.
more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_abuse_of_psychiatry_in_the_Soviet_Union
Down here, “to float a log” has a certain meaning.
It pertains very well to Lewindopey’s papers.
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The inventor of the internet hoist on his own petard!
Even if I “thwarted”, my mind should best not “become the focus of academic research”, cus I don’t like to be an “objects”.
Or, did just miss the whole point ?
And I should feel outraged, again.
If Lewandowsky is searching for psychological illness in the climate debate, he need look no further than the closest mirror.
Pathological Altruism is form of mental illness. Judge for yourself, the description of the pathology fits Gleick, Hansen and Mann like a glove.
http://books.google.com/books?id=FPtwdmXtjmoC&printsec=frontcover&dq=pathological+altruism&hl=en&sa=X&ei=oHTCUceLIYmCqQHJiID4DQ&ved=0CC8Q6AEwAA
This IMO verges on an incitement to violence.
If climate extremists actually come to believe that the future of the world hinges on silencing a handful of prominent skeptical bloggers, some lunatic might decide to take matters into their own hands.
After spending a significant amount of time studying the climate debate and coming to the conclusion that there is insufficient scientific evidence for a CO2 forcing multiplier. I have to wonder who is doing science and who is doing politics. It seems more and more evident as I look at various websites that the kooks are mostly made up of extremists on both ends but where the skeptical kooks are mostly harmless, the AGW crowd is down right dangerous in terms of blind followership and willingness to fudge science (climategate et all) for the cause.
Much of the general public is waking up without assistance. There are billions of people on the planet, they don’t all visit skeptics’ blogs.
What Lew and Co hate about skeptics on the Internet is that they present excellent essays by scientists, science and data, and welcome debate.
Lew and Co throw names around and float the concept of illnesses simply because that’s what they are paid to do. I think they thought the general public would back them and start the move to insist silencing the skeptics. Alas, that is not what they got.
People are more aware than the CAGW crowd want them to be. When the anger comes, it won’t be directed at skeptics. If I was a climate scientist pushing for extremes, I’d be packing my bags now.
Lewdowsky is talking about “saving the planet.”
What arrogant predictable hogwash.
The best case for the Chicken Littles is that if there were any significant agw it would be a bit of warming, which would do some good, and in other cases require some adaptation. Nothing major, no saving the world needed. But the “best case” for the warmists is not the case that is reality. What would be good is if someone would put together a paid-media campaign (ads) that cuts through the leftist MSM fog and changes public opinion, and thus saves the world from the scourge of the agw fiction. Oh, and this campaign would probably be self-supporting, because an effective would garner a huge amount donations $ from conservatives. Just an idea for a project for a very motivated type.
Yes, agw fiction. What could I say now to support that it’s a fiction? I’ll take my earlier hotair comment regarding sea level, and replay it. It just shows that the never ending predictions of doom over decades from the fear mongers have all failed miserably, and so the whole theory and “religion” is bogus, and take my word for it based on stories of so many people that have seen a particular shore line decades ago and see it now… the sea level is the just the same, despite any “adjusted” data. My short hotair comment:
“Unless we announce disasters no one will listen.” -Sir John Houghton, first chairman of IPCC
“Entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000…” -Noel Brown, ex UNEP Director, 1988
“[in 2008] the West Side Highway [and so much of Manhattan, NY] will be under water…” -James Hansen, 1988, NASA
>
Now where’s the sea??
Just exactly where it was in 1988. No change! Don’t believe any of the same fear mongering bs about sea level that the doomsayers continue to regurgitate year after year. The sea will remain the same!
Instead of telling us ad nauseam how irrational we are to reject “the evidence”, why not just, oh, you know, GIVE US THE EVIDENCE!!!!
Musings of the drones……
Correct me if I am wrong, But I think we covered this some time ago:
“We show how the prevailing majority opinion in a population can be rapidly reversed by a small fraction p of randomly distributed committed agents who consistently proselytize the opposing opinion and are immune to influence. Specifically, we show that when the committed fraction grows beyond a critical value pc ≈ 10%, there is a dramatic decrease in the time Tc taken for the entire population to adopt the committed opinion.
“Human behavior is profoundly affected by the influenceability of individuals and the social networks that link them together.
“Commonly used models for this process include the thresholdmodel [8] and the Bass model [9]. A key feature in both thesemodels is that once an individual adopts the newstate, his state remains unchanged at all subsequent times.”
PHYSICAL REVIEW E 84, 011130 (2011)
Social consensus through the influence of committed minorities
J. Xie, S. Sreenivasan, G. Korniss, W. Zhang, C. Lim, and B. K. Szymanski
I just realized that I can no longer search WUWT! Or I would have provided the link to where this was discussed.
Alternatively, the paper is at:
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1102.3931.pdf
Probably on of the most unscientific, non-representative,ideological pieces of misinformed rubbish I have ever read. How can Lewandowsky seriously believe that this is scientific?
Apologies, of course I should have realised that science has no place in anything associated with AGW!
WHAT LYSENKO SPAWNED
The use of vague terminology on the unsuspecting public indicates a pathological condition.
Carbon Footprint? Do they really mean Carbon Dioxide Footprint?
Climate Change? Do they really mean Man-Made Climate Changes?
These psychological nuances in terminology are used by psychopaths.
When the science is clearly bad, the models are obviously highly flawed, it is a government funded gravy train and the proponents are not responsible for their actions and are motivated by financial self-interest, then most intelligent individuals are going to say that something is wrong here.
Lewandowsky, it is as simple as that. Moreover climate change is natural – the reasoning for the refusal by alarmists to acknowledge the effect of natural climate cycles is what you should be ‘researching’.
It won’t take many more winters and springs like we have been having and the the debate will be objectively lost by the warmistas. At this point, though, they have lost the political will to do much damage, just look at Germany building coal fired power plants again.
Ever notice how “Lysenko” is hiding in “Lewandowsky”?
Lewser is in full possession of his own marbles. The green pixies told him so.
Donald Stokes’s Quadrant plots scientists on a 2-dimensional graph with axes pertaining to what degree they seek fundamental understanding and to what extent they planned to use their research.
In the top left (high understanding, low use) we find Newton and Bohr, top right (high and high) there is Pasteur. Bottom right (low fundamental understanding, high intent to use the research (Edison).
Lewandowsky belongs in the bottom left corner (no fundamental insights and no means of using what he has ‘discovered’ beyond feathering his own nest and feeding his ego) a.k.a totally worthless.
In the twentieth century, systematic political abuse of psychiatry took place in the Soviet Union.[1] Psychiatry was used as a tool during the reign of Leonid Brezhnev to eliminate political opponents (“dissidents”) who openly expressed views that contradicted official dogma.[2] The term “philosophical intoxication” was widely used to diagnose mental disorders in cases where people disagreed with leaders and criticized them using the writings of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Vladimir Lenin.
First two sentences in this Wikipedia paragraph are true. The last one shows, again, how people who grew up in the West totally misunderstand what was going on in the USSR.
It had almost nothing to do with “the writings of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Vladimir Lenin,” to which even “leaders” themselves gave no more than a lip service. Political abuse of psychiatry was just a tool of oppression, used by the gangsters-in-power against anybody who said or did anything undesirable; practical things, not ideological or philosophical, were given the most attention.
Protesting the corruption, refusing to serve in the Soviet Army, refusing to sign a letter supporting Nelson Mandela, refusing to pay your 1 ruble into the legal fund of Angela Davis, going against some crazy government’s project (like turning great Siberian rivers to Central Asian deserts by using nuclear explosions), telling political jokes in public, not attending a street rally on May 1st, expressing doubts in the sanity of senile Kremlin rulers, refusing to join Young Communists Union (Komsomol), or even simply expressing an outrage at not being able to find anything edible in the food store — would get you threatened with a seclusion in a mental hospital. If you persisted in being different, and did not shut up, they would diagnose you as mentally ill and “treat” you with special “medications” until you really became mentally ill.
One of my childhood friends ended up this way, and I barely escaped the same fate. In the society of slaves, if you are different (not a happy slave), you are not normal, therefore mentally ill. It is that simple. Marx, Engels, and Lenin are just names that have nothing to do with the substance of the problem. These names could easily be Keynes, Hansen, and Obama, as far as we are now concerned, the U.S. being almost indistinguishable from Venezuela these days.
The title of this posting “The pathologising of denialism” (or climate sceptisism if you like) reminds me of an article by Phillipa Martyr who sums up Gramscian Marxism in Quadrant: I liked it so I kept it
“How is the Green movement ‘watermelonish’? Because it uses tactics of social engineering that were pioneered by socialism over a hundred years ago and refined throughout a century of totalitarianism. You take an innocuous term like ‘sustainability’ and make sure that what you mean by ‘sustainable’ is completely different from everyone else’s idea, and you thus happily recruit people who would in fact be diametrically opposed to you if they had the faintest idea what you were really talking about. You infiltrate and eventually control what Delingpole calls the ‘heavy weaponry’ of the cultural wars: the schools, the universities, the media, the publishing companies. Eventually, as one of his questioners put it, you oversee the pathologising of ‘denialism’, so that those who disagree with the prevailing wisdom are marginalised and branded as mentally unstable.”
http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2012/04/philippa-martyr
Thon Brocket @ 11:22
“Ever notice how “Lysenko” is hiding in “Lewandowsky”?”
Yes, if you take “Lysenko” away you are left with “WADW”. Could stand for something like “What” “A” “D…..” “W……”. (make up your own last two words)
Anagram of “Stephan Lewandowsky” = “What Lysenko Spawned”
Definition of DISSIDENT
: disagreeing especially with an established religious or political system, organization, or belief
(Webster)
Maybe that would be a better term to use than sceptic. The msm would love it.
This fits in with my interpretation that alarmist warmism fits nicely into Pareto’s concept of “the circulation of the elites.” I.e., it is a grab for power by institutionalized science (see the endorsements of warmism by the world’s scientific academies) in particular and by the academy in general and (still more generally) by those who identify with it and give great weight to its consensus.
But wait–this is a conspiracy theory!
(Not really; as a WUWTer said, no conspiracy is needed when a carrot will suffice. The carrot in this case being identification with “my team.”)
All true scientists are skeptics. A scientist who says he is not a skeptic is not a true scientist
[I] bloggers have thwarted international and domestic action to prevent climate change[/I]
The whole idea that they, or anyone, can prevent the climate from changing, is as arrogant as it is ludicrous. It sustains my skepticism.
I read the paper off a link on Judith Curry’s site. Very well done analysis of Lewandowsky’s abuse of the term science (since he uses none) to justify his persecution of those he does not agree with.
Where are of course, after at least 30 years of intense left-wing activism focused on climate, the detailed studies of the political make up of what for lack of a better word the “consensus”?? Their voting record, political contributions etc.?
We know more about the operatives in the media than the key operatives in science. Many skeptics seem to get upset when this point is pressed.
“Yes, if you take “Lysenko” away you are left with “WADW”. ”
Or WWAD… What Would Adolf Do?
Lewandowsky sounds like the Catholic Church during the Galileo trials.
The phrase used in the Second Amendment community is PSYCHOLOGIZING DISSENT. A naive search on that phrase will lead one deep into conspiracy theory.
I have always treasured Václav Havel on dissent in ‘The Power of The Powerless in his 1986 Living in Truth.
Scientist is indeed an epithet.
There are mathematician, statisticians, philosophers, but the self-assigned-epithet scientist may be an oxymoron. Eschew authoritarianism and credentialism. Believe nothing one reads or hears without verifying it oneself unless it Weltanschauung congruent.
John Greenfraud says:
June 19, 2013 at 8:31 pm
“Pathological altruism” = “Do-gooders” explained.
All here should visit the site offered by John Greenfraud.
Excellent information, Thanks for the link..
I knew it, I knew It had to be so. There had to be a definition for the “I know what’s best for you” malady.
[blush].. well, my fellow bloggers and I would like to take credit, however the public at large are failing to swallow the ever-shriller bleatings of AGW soothsayers, druids and fearmongers – apologies to other soothsayers and druids etc – because they’re not STUPID!
For some hundreds of years – if not thousands – the 97% consensus was witches were to blame for the weather. Sadly, nothing has changed – not even the weather.
cwon14 says:
June 20, 2013 at 4:18 am
“We know more about the operatives in the media than the key operatives in science. Many skeptics seem to get upset when this point is pressed.”
Indeed Chief (?) the main stream mass media is the crux of the CAGW hoax. They drive it.
Popular opinion will be difficult to sway against this current of propaganda.
Until and unless the MSM starts behaving as journalists instead of activists, the hoax will continue.
Alexander Feht says:
June 20, 2013 at 12:03 am
Alexander: Thank you for reminding people.
Ok, let’s get a government grant to map out the future behavior of “Climate Dissidents” ravaged by the dreaded condition: “Philosophical Intoxication”.
As the old USSR’s gulags warm up, The “Pathological Altruists” can de-tox them (us) all there.
Barry Woods says:
June 20, 2013 at 2:18 am
Anagram of “Stephan Lewandowsky” = “What Lysenko Spawned”
Very clever, Sir.
Dyslexia pays
I have sex daily too.
I mean, I have dyslexia too.
It had to happen sooner or later. Leftist academics have for years been saying conservatism is a psychological (mental) disease. When the facts run counter their worldview, leftists jump on their moral soapbox and argue the mental stability of their opponent, especially when the petulent child defense stops working (right Michael Mann?).
It beggars belief that these fanatical activists can call themselves scientists. The very basis of science is scepticism, allied to adherence to the facts. They employ neither
They have a desparate need to shut down debate, or indeed anything running counter to the Climatist dogma. But, their ideology is in serious trouble now, and they know it, so the fangs and claws come out, as evidenced by Loonydowski’s obvious attack on the Skeptic/Climate Realist side.
Whether we got it right or just a lucky guess, we skeptics have been sayin it and sayin it, that cooling is coming. Then sure enough here it is. Since climate alarmists are convinced that humans can control the weather, I would think the honor of preventing the Earth from frying should be bestowed on skeptics!
Thanks for the pointer to this article. I think the key paragraphs are:
Farmers found this was true when the WTO came up with the Agreement on Agriculture in 1995. Instead of quarantine and testing to assure food safety ‘Traceability’ would be substituted. The USDA decreased testing on imported food from 8% to less than 0.6% while the amount of imported food doubled.
In addition in 1996 the USDA substituted an international paperwork system called HACCP and food inspectors moved to inspecting paperwork instead of inspecting and testing food. USDA testing labs were then shutdown. For example in 1995 before WTO AoA California tested 10,576 for bovine bovine tuberculosis by 1999 testing was reduced to 1,425. Dr. Logan. pointed out that…”the disease is extremely rare in U.S. herds. However, more TB-lesioned cattle are being detected at slaughter, and ear tags indicate that many of these animals are of Mexican origin.” A USDA pdf from 2001 stated “Cattle crossing facilities on the U.S. side of the border are operated primarily by private firms…. However, at Santa Teresa, NM, Chihuahuan cattle producers operate both sides of the cattle port-of-entry” (Sorry links are stale)
Thanks to the internet people were informed about these new policies that compromised food safety and with ‘Traceability’ would allow large corporations to shift the blame to farmers. (CDC stats showed the food borne illness doubled after implementing HACCP and WTO AoA.)
The Federal Register where the new traceability standard was posted (under Bush) received over 5000 comments (a huge amount) most if not all saying HE!! NO!!! (I read most of them) Even Change.org had Traceability as a top concern of people back in 2008.
So back to the drawing board.
The USDA decided to have ‘Listening Sessions’ about Traceability. However these were not actually about listening but about a dog-n-pony show for the public.
The farmers were so angry about the repeated hammering on the traceability issue the USDA actually had armed guards in the room during the last go round in 2011!
Unfortunately despite a valiant fight AND the change from Bush to Obama we lost. (Money and Power win over the peons as usual no matter who we vote in.)
Will we ‘win’ the Carbon Tax battle? Given how unpopular Traceability and the Bank Bailouts were and how they were passed anyway, I rather doubt it. The peons voice really doesn’t count and I doubt if it ever has. All Global Governance à la the EU does is make it so the bureaucrats don’t have to waste the time and effort using propaganda to convince the peons they are acting in their best interest. They just use UN sanctioned NGOs to serve as the ‘Peons Voice’ and tell us they ‘heard’ what we wanted.
Marginalizing climate change sceptics using bogus papers like Lewandowsky’s and Cook’s is just part of the Dog-n-Pony show for public consumption.
There’s probably an explanation for all this Lewd behavior by the warmists in the work of Michel Foucault (1926-1984), a French philosopher, social theorist, historian of ideas, and literary critic. His philosophical theories addressed the nature of power and the manner in which it functions, the means by which it controls knowledge and vice versa, and how it is used as a form of social control
“The theme that underlies all Foucault’s work is the relationship between power and knowledge, and how the former is used to control and define the latter. What authorities claim as ‘scientific knowledge’ are really just means of social control. Foucault shows how, for instance, in the eighteenth century ‘madness’ was used to categorize and stigmatise not just the mentally ill but the poor, the sick, the homeless and, indeed, anyone whose expressions of individuality were unwelcome.”
Philip Stokes, Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers, 2004.[199]
For those who get angry before clicking, the linked article is well worth a read and an excellent summary of the whole Lewendowski debacle. It is also a great analysis of the wider failure of AGW proponents to understand their opponents and their arguments before lapsing into incoherent political manipulation.
This is a trend I have been noticing in recent years amongst liberals. The idea what they believe is so evidently true that anyone who disagrees is either doing so for evil motives, or they are deluded.
I agree. I wish it could be posted here in full.
With the Labor Govt disintegrating in the polls, facing a train wreck at the September election and the Conservative Opposition running on abolishing the Labor/Green coalition carbon tax, the usual suspects are showing their true colours in backing the Greens to try thwart such a move in the Senate-http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/university_staff_vote_greens_pity_the_poor_students/
Our universities too are filled with leftist political hacks like Lewandowsky now and as you can see they make no pretence anymore about commitment to science and learning.
The idea that we have to “save the planet.”
I can’t help but think of Gollum in Lord of the Rings trying to hold the One Ring above the lava.
His desire and his actions to “save the ring” cost him and others their lives.
Of course the fictional ring was evil and our planet is not fictional or evil. But the desire to “save the planet” at the expense of those living on it is.
RobRoy says:
June 20, 2013 at 5:25 am
I just point out that this site alone for skeptics who focus on spaghetti charts to argue with the consensus rather than point out the logical political associations that essentially manufactured the consensus to begin with.
I doubt most of the consensus would divulge at this point their political leanings, it could be mined but it would expensive and many countries don’t have disclosure rules on political contributions. None of this explains the typical skeptical position of not focusing on the political bias of AGW advocacy so obvious to many who follow the issue over the decades.
@Thon Brocket
‘Ever notice how “Lysenko” is hiding in “Lewandowsky”?’
No, but well spotted and how appropriate!
By the way, did you ever notice that Anthropogenic IPCC is hiding in GraphicConception?
William McClenney , perhaps this is the comment you were trying to link to HERE at a 2011 WUWT post An ironic juxtaposition of our elders and CO2
Posted too soon …
What Lysenko Spawned!
Thanks jorgekafkazar and Barry Woods.
Global Warming is brilliant! First it teaches you big words like anthropogenic and albedo then it improves your Latin e.g.”argumentum ad hominem, vericundiam etc” then it improves your anagram skills. I love it!
Bloke down the pub says:
June 20, 2013 at 2:22 am
Definition of DISSIDENT….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Good Idea. Then the rank and file Left, who support Dissidents would be utterly confused. /snicker
The article says:
I too made an innocuopus procedural objection that Ludicrous Lew would have made the same category error over,
More on Barbara Oakley, Ph.D., P.E.: http://www.psychologytoday.com/experts/barbara-oakley-phd-pe
Recent Posts includes stuff like:
New York Times caught in unfortunate hoax? Say it isn’t so!
Beware the mob that advocates fairness
Each year, I get invited to Washington DC to serve as a pimp.
(I gotta read that last one)
graphicconception says:
June 20, 2013 at 8:51 am
“Posted too soon …
What Lysenko Spawned!
Thanks jorgekafkazar and Barry Woods.
Global Warming is brilliant! First it teaches you big words like anthropogenic and albedo then it improves your Latin e.g.”argumentum ad hominem, vericundiam etc” then it improves your anagram skills. I love it!”
It also made me understand the Hegelian dialectic, the true nature of NGO’s, the purpose of public media, and I learned about Plato, Kant, Edward Bernays, Cecil Rhodes and Carol Quigley.
All that the liberals learned from it was that screaming ever louder doesn’t achieve much.
Each year, I get invited to Washington DC to serve as a pimp. is definitely worth the read.
cwon14 says:
June 20, 2013 at 8:14 am
“I doubt most of the consensus would divulge at this point their political leanings, it could be mined but it would expensive and many countries don’t have disclosure rules on political contributions. None of this explains the typical skeptical position of not focusing on the political bias of AGW advocacy so obvious to many who follow the issue over the decades.”
How do you know what the typical skeptical position is. Mine is that the warmist movement is a tool and that the puppetmasters use science to push through their agenda because so many people still hold scientists in undeserved high regard.
Not that most scientists are not honest; but 95% of papers simply don’t stand the test of time for very long; yet again and again the media apparatus uses study XY to proclaim that Z should be done. No, not by a long shot; much more than one study is needed. And very often the flaws in the numbers bandied about become apparent within minutes after publication.
A typical example (not climate):
http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2011/03/badgering-the-witless.html
With regard to climate science my own interest is to find the BIGGEST flaw in the models. That they are just complicated exercises in curve fitting is clear, but what is their BIGGEST single flaw? My current guess is that they assume the atmosphere to be hydrostatic.
cwon14 says:
June 20, 2013 at 8:14 am
….. None of this explains the typical skeptical position of not focusing on the political bias of AGW advocacy so obvious to many who follow the issue over the decades.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Actually the focus over the years has gradually shifted at WUWT to look at the political at times.
Please remember that commenters on WUWT runs the political gamut from left to right. By focusing mainly on the science with a few political comments tossed in (often by me) WUWT appeals to everyone with a sense of outrage over the trashing of the scientific method.
Political labels are, at least to me, a psychological weapon used against people.
Is there really that much difference between the Altruism as taught by the Christian Church of the Religious Right and the Altruism of the Socialist Left? Can that Altruism be used for good, to help your neighbor or send food and help to third world countries? Can it not instead become Pathological Altruism and used for gaining power over others?
I think Dr Evans nailed it in Climate Coup – The Politics The actual divide is the political class, including the academics and the rest of us who support them. The political labels are nothing but a means of control, an illusion to make the Sheeple think they have some control.
DirkH says: @ June 20, 2013 at 9:26 am
….With regard to climate science my own interest is to find the BIGGEST flaw in the models. That they are just complicated exercises in curve fitting is clear, but what is their BIGGEST single flaw? My current guess is that they assume the atmosphere to be hydrostatic.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Mine is they make CO2 the ‘Control Knob’ and have water as a feedback instead of a forcing. In other words Donkey-backwards. See: http://how-it-looks.blogspot.com/2010/03/infrared-spectra-of-molecules-of.html
Why, . . . that’s . . . paranoid!
I bet Lewandowsky might well smugly have included a another crazy/conspiratorial question:
If i was a student at Bristol University , given I would be paying thousands to be there, I would asked some serious questions about their recent employment of a person with such poor ethics and worse scientific practices. If I was of his student , i would have no hesitation to making it clear that I would expected to be marked on the ‘quality ‘ of my work to his ‘standards ‘ which mean could write any old rubbish and still pass .
To add to Alexander Feht at 12:03,
the website of someone who wrote his PhD thesis about abuse of psychiatry in the SU is
http://www.robertvanvoren.com/
For a good read: http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2012/05/25/the-real-bastards/
@DirkH
I once had a Hegelian dialectic, but the wheels fell off.
The batteries were expensive, too.
Those three words, “prevent climate change“, are really all you need to hear to understand this idiot. Leftists (yes, this is bigger than “Science” or “climate” ) have an apparent genetic disposition for Megalomania. It reeks from their very pores and manifests itself in all manner of crazy schemes and social engineering, and Lysenko was but one fleeting example.
In this case, Climatology, these people actually believe we must lock down the “current” climate ( whatever that is ) with its vanishingly smallish temperature increase above the Little Ice Age and preserve the Earth as if it is a museum. There is just so much wrong with this insanity that it is impossible to argue with them. We’re literally playing out “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest”. Or maybe “Idiocracy”.
AGW cult members and climatologists alike think we have God-like terraforming skills that just require a up or down vote in Congress ( actually they would much prefer to submit to a UN instead ) or a Presidential executive order. All this talk about psychiatric therapy for skeptics is beyond ridiculous, and they should be volunteering themselves instead!
Indeed. Many of us spoiled Americans need periodic reminders from Communist survivors of the very recent past ( and the present in some places ). Thanks!
Rather generous; I’d say more like attemptedskeptic-bashing, and clumsyattempts to pathologise criticism by an nth-rate academic and intellectual poseur. Poor Lew. He so much wants to be a climate player. Does anyone outside of his little echo chamber take him seriously? Now that would be worrisome.
Gail,
The Evans piece is spot on in regard to Warming motivations but it doesn’t explain a mainstream skeptical ambivalence in acknowledging the very motivations that Evans outlines. Privately it’s accepted but a standard of political correctness is maintained in the public arena by largely one side, skeptics.
DirkH says:
June 20, 2013 at 9:26 am
My thesis is that skeptics are too politically diverse to maintain a logical correlation of the political forces at the core of AGW ambitions. So much so it’s a problem.
Gail Combs says:
June 20, 2013 at 9:40 am
Gail, the Evans piece is very good technically but very indirect in assigning blame of AGW motivations on classical leftist Greenshirt themes. It proves my point again.
Warmists who matter don’t have this tact. It’s why they have dominated the debate.