While the Anti Defamation League turns a blind eye to their own home grown hypocrisy and ugliness, Lawrence Torcello comes up with even more.
Via Delingpole at Breitbart:
Scientists who don’t believe in catastrophic man-made global warming should be put in prison, a US philosophy professor argues on a website funded by the UK government.
Lawrence Torcello – assistant professor of philosophy at Rochester Institute of Technology, NY, writes in an essay at The Conversation that climate scientists who fail to communicate the correct message about “global warming” should face trial for “criminal negligence”. (H/T Bishop Hill)
What are we to make of those behind the well documented corporate funding of global warming denial? Those who purposefully strive to make sure “inexact, incomplete and contradictory information” is given to the public? I believe we understand them correctly when we know them to be not only corrupt and deceitful, but criminally negligent in their willful disregard for human life. It is time for modern societies to interpret and update their legal systems accordingly.
More here: http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/03/13/US-Philosophy-Professor-Jail-Denialist-Climate-Scientists-For-Criminal-Negligence
What next, numbers tattoed on our arms because we hold an opinion different from Torcello?
From their Vision and Mission page:
Integrity and Ethics: Does what it takes to deliver on commitments made to the department, college, or division and to constituency groups. Builds personal trust and relationships inside and outside the university by doing what one says he or she will do when it is promised.
Respect, Diversity and Pluralism: Provides a high level of service to fellow members of the RIT community. Treats every person with dignity. Demonstrates inclusion by incorporating diverse perspectives to plan, conduct, and/or evaluate the work of the organization, department, college, or division.
Apparently “treating people with dignity” only applies if you are part of the RIT community.
If you want to complain to the Rochester Institute of Technology about Mr. Torcello, here’s the places to do it:
http://www.rit.edu/fa/humanresources/aboutus
http://www.rit.edu/cla/philosophy/Torcello.html
If you choose to lodge a complaint, be sure to be courteous and factual, we don’t need to surrender the moral high ground to anger.
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This is absolutely despicable.
This is just further evidence that science has been co-opted by leftist religious zealots who have abandoned the precepts of the Scientific Method and replaced it with political dogma.
The comparisons between the religious inquisitions of the 12th~15th centuries is astounding; recant your scientific heresy or face excommunication/imprisonment….
What are they going to do? Force them to sign their names to the IPCC AR5 “Bible” or throw them in jail???
Make little Anthony Watt effigies and ask scientists to stomp on it to prove they’re true beliiiiiiiiievers in “The Cause”?
It all makes me want to puke my guts out…
With all due respect to real professors, this one is just a piano player in a house of ill-repute. While he professes all night long is anyone actually listening or do they have better things to do?
Dear Sir/Madam
It has been highlighted that an Assistant Professor employed at your Institute has suggested,
“What are we to make of those behind the well documented corporate funding of global warming denial? Those who purposefully strive to make sure “inexact, incomplete and contradictory information” is given to the public? I believe we understand them correctly when we know them to be not only corrupt and deceitful, but criminally negligent in their willful disregard for human life. It is time for modern societies to interpret and update their legal systems accordingly.”
Are we to understand that your Institute is suggesting that we return to the days of the Inquisition that when a person or group of people who disagree with a supposed majority should be imprisoned. Here I am thinking that we live in an age of enlightenment when people can disagree and truth can be given time to shine forth. If I disagreed with gravity for example, should I be imprisoned? Most people would just give me a funny look and say something like,” Poor fellow has had too much sun”.
If us skeptics show that it is the scientists promoting Catastrophic Global Warming who are giving “inexact, incomplete and contradictory information”, could we put them in prison also? Your Assistant Professor of Philosophy is nothing but a totalitarian monster who thinks only his opinion fits and your Institute endorses this type of behavior if you keep him employed.
I would suggest you rein him in and insist he apologizes to the climate community or terminate his employment.
This was my Email to HR department to the said Institute.
Come on, Torcello, if the funding is so well documented you must have something better than a discredited Grauniad article to show us,
Mugshot!!!
http://oi59.tinypic.com/357rfj7.jpg
It is only fair. 😛
/satire
Based on a hypothesis?
So I am supposed to be fossil fuel funded (which I am not) so that I can ‘disregard’ my own human life and that of my offspring and descendants. Does this make sense?
A degree in Philosophy will certainly leave you the skills to successfully challenge your new boss, with regards to the amount of flair you’re to display on your uniform.
Think on this: This gentleman wants to put scientists in jail because they do not agree with him about the weather in the distant future. Additionally, he claims that the source of funding controls their work, even as he relies on similar sources of funding for himself and others who agree with him.
I would ask him why he has no shame or conscience or perspective, yet claims to teach philosophy of anything, much less ethics?
Why bother getting a university education when you can be a moron for a lot less time and effort with no financial outlay?. Discuss.
I am not too surprised. In my own university (non-ethics) subject, the member of staff found most guilty of – well, let’s call it stretching the truth -was the one teaching the ethics associated with the subject.
The insanity taking hold of various branches of academia is growing at unprecedented levels. What next, concentration camps? That can’t be far away. These guys are fighting for the spotlight and it does not matter how many people they hurt as long as they get their 15 minutes. The only thing they have to do is to say something even more outrageous than the last guy. Philosophy professor? Come on. This is really serious stuff. When one starts to walk that road of dehumanization, the result is that people will be hurt or even killed.
I suppose nothing these zealots do or say should surprise us any more
What part of ‘academic freedom of speech’ does he not understand?
What is deeply shocking to me, even more than the evident malice and stupidity, is that this bear of little brain has been put in a position to teach young people ‘ethics’
What an utter meaningless biography he proudly presents. He missed out ‘Professor of Lunatics’
Very well. To imprison a skeptic, one must arrest him. I propose that Dr. Torcello be given the honor of being the point man on the arrest team.
Anyone thinking of responding to Lawrence Torcello may wish to contact the Rochester Institute of Technology itself and quote its own philosophy back to them. Here are some relevant quotes from their own website: http://www.rit.edu/
“RIT is committed to mutually enriching relationships with alumni, government, business, and the world community. Teaching, learning, scholarship, research, innovation, and leadership development for promoting student success are our central enterprises.
Values
“Integrity and Ethics: Does what it takes to deliver on commitments made to the department, college, or division and to constituency groups. Builds personal trust and relationships inside and outside the university by doing what one says he or she will do when it is promised.
“Respect, Diversity and Pluralism: Provides a high level of service to fellow members of the RIT community. Treats every person with dignity. Demonstrates inclusion by incorporating diverse perspectives to plan, conduct, and/or evaluate the work of the organization, department, college, or division.
“Innovation and Flexibility: Provides and/or encourages new ideas that could make the department, college, or division an even better organization. Open to, and adapts well to change.
“Human diversity is essential to organizational growth and synergy. These differences create points of tension that spark alternative viewpoints and ideas and ignite the kindling forces behind creativity and innovation. To that end, the mission of the Division for Diversity & Inclusion is to foster living, learning, and working environments that support and incorporate principles of equity, diversity, inclusion, and community.
“Accepting the Inclusive Excellence model reflects the understanding that diversity and inclusion are catalysts for institutional and educational excellence, are to be invited and integrated into the very core of the educational enterprise and are not isolated initiatives.The Inclusive Excellence framework provides specific definitions for the terms diversity and inclusion. Throughout this document, we use these terms to mean the following:
“Diversity – The term diversity is used to describe individual differences (e.g., personality, learning styles, and life experiences) and group/social differences (e.g., race/ethnicity, class, gender, sexual orientation, country of origin, and ability as well as cultural, political, religious, or other affiliations) that can be engaged in the service of learning and working together.
“Inclusion – The term inclusion is used to describe the active, intentional, and ongoing engagement with diversity – in people, in the curriculum, in the co-curriculum, and in communities (intellectual, social, cultural, geographical) with which individuals might connect – in ways that increase one’s awareness, content knowledge, cognitive sophistication, and emphatic understanding of the complex ways individuals interact within systems and institutions.” (http://www.aacu.org/inclusive_excellence/index.cfm)
NOTE:
Lawrence Torcello does not appear on the Environmental Science faculty and appears to hold no scientific qualifications whatsoever.
You can contact R.I.T. for feedback here
(General Information, Feedback or Questions) http://www.rit.edu/diversity/contact
Londo- Good points. RIT is actually a pretty good school and it’s a shame the loudmouths and ignorant hog the spotlight and give a black eye to honest one’s and the school. The Torcello’s somehow think their brand of lockstep totalitarianism is new and improved over other hideous versions of the sick, self-loathing scourge. Perhaps in his high-minded arrogance and delusion he fashions himself to be a pied piper for useful idiots.
46 variations of deniers on this single AUSTRALIAN ACADEMIC page (incl comments). article is also linked from ANU’s own website:
13 March: The Conversation: Rod Lamberts: Facts won’t beat the climate deniers – using their tactics will
(Rod Lamberts, Deputy Director, Australian National Centre for Public Awareness of Science at Australian National University
Disclosure Statement: Rod Lamberts has received funding from the ARC linkage program)
Time for Action
The fact is that the time for fact-based arguments is over…
What’s worse: being convinced bad things are happening and resorting to “unscientific” means that inspire real action, or watching things go to hell while taking comfort in the knowledge you were a worthy, well-behaved scientist who didn’t stoop to getting political?
Ultimately, we can only say “that’s not cricket” for so long. Eventually we have to stop tutting and accept that others aren’t even trying to play cricket – they’re boxing. We can decry climate deniers for their unfair, lowbrow tactics, but their tactics are getting them exactly what they want. Ours are not…
So, what now?
There’s no profit in trying to change the position of deniers. Their values and motivations are fundamentally different to those of us who listen to what the weight of scientific evidence tell us. So forget them.
Forget the Moncktonites, disregard the Boltists, and snub the Abbottsians. Ignore them, step around them, or walk over them. Drown them not just with sensible conversations, but with useful actions. Flood the airwaves and apply tactics advertisers have successfully used for years.
What we need now is to become comfortable with the idea that the ends will justify the means. We actually need more opinions, appearing more often and expressed more noisily than ever before…
https://theconversation.com/facts-wont-beat-the-climate-deniers-using-their-tactics-will-24074
About Rod, from The Conversation:
Dr Rod Lamberts is deputy director of the Australian National Centre for Public Awareness of Science (CPAS) at the ANU, a founding partner of the Ångstrom Group, and a former national president of the Australian Science Communicators. He has been providing science communication consultation and evaluation advice for than 15 years to organisations including UNESCO, the CSIRO, and to ANU science and research bodies. He also has a background in psychology and corporate communication consultancy and facilitation.
Rod’s professional and research interests include: science in society; science and public policy; perceptions of expertise in science; and risk and crisis perception/ communication.
He has been developing and delivering science communication courses since 1998, and supervises a large range of postgraduate research projects.
Contact Rod for:
Multidisciplinary Research Collaboration
Contract Research
Speaking Engagements
Expertise Requests
Talking With Students
Consulting Offers
Career Opportunities
Media Interviews
Why don’t these guys with this “well-documented evidence” of oil money supporting the “deniers” ever include an accounts-payable address? I’ve got some invoices to submit.
The guy is typical of probably most academics these days in that he couldn’t get a proper job doing anything of real value.
Steady on now. As Steve McIntyre has pointed out, there really is a lot to be said for looking at climate-science ethics in terms of securities law, with its mandatory disclosures and legal penalties for incomplete disclosure. So we should welcome this conversation. Of course, if you take the analogy seriously then the first in line to be placed under the new disclosure rules would be IPCC editors and contributors of papers to the IPCC. Bring it on!
Be careful with your outrage. In particular how you express it.
I’m waiting for a rebuttal in the form of “It was an obvious polemic to stir debate. Dean Swift didn’t really mean that we should eat the poor’s children in A Modest Proposal…but now we see the evil denialists in their true colours’
The non-alarmist view is winning the argument with the facts. Let’s not start looking bad by namecalling and anger.
It is not like we have heard this type of rhetoric before. Stalin Russia, Mao China, and of course Nazi Germany. They are playing their roles very well. Maybe instead of philosophy, he should take some history.
Just a thought…Can we get the whole of the met office banged up for forecasting a drier than average winter in the UK?
This resembles the Kari Norgaard and Richard Parncutt brouhahas that came before – all from the humanities and probably without any actual insight into the scientific side of things.
While their lack of respect for freedom of speech and opinion may characterize them as individuals, these cases do illustrate how extraordinarily successful the AGW brainwashing has been among this group.
Since it would appear that the set of well funded skeptics consists of zero people, perhaps locking them all up doesn’t matter too much 😉