Another case of “The ends justify the means”
Submitted by Eric Worrall
Rod Lamberts, director of the Australian National Centre for Public Awareness of Science at the Australian National University, claims facts won’t win the climate debate.
Source: https://theconversation.com/facts-wont-beat-the-climate-deniers-using-their-tactics-will-24074
Rod Lamberts starts by criticising Tim Flannery, former chief of the now abolished Australian Climate Commission, for recently suggesting
“An opinion is useless, what we need are more facts.”.
(Link from Rod Lambert’s article)
https://www.facebook.com/climatecouncil/posts/10151956752276603?stream_ref=10
Rod Lamberts then works his way up to the following passage:
“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.”
Tim Flannery once famously gave an opinion, on air, that Australian dams and river systems would never fill again. In the wake of severe flooding on the Australian East Coast, Flannery claimed he had been misquoted – a claim which Andrew Bolt refutes.
If facts won’t work to promote their meme, try “opinions”. Next will be “Feelings”. Pathetic.
The following is an excerpt from “Philosophy of Science” (Okasha, 2002, OUP): “The theory-ladenness of data had two important consequences for Kuhn. Firstly, it meant that the issue between competing paradigms could not be resolved by simply appealing to ‘the data’ or ‘the facts’, for what a scientists counts as data, or facts, will depend on which paradigm she accepts. Perfectly objective choice between two paradigms is therefore impossible: there is no neutral vantage-point from which to assess the claims of each. Secondly, the very idea of objective truth is called into question. For to be objectively true, our theories or beliefs must correspond to the facts, but the idea of such a correspondence makes little sense if the facts themselves are infected by other theories. This is why Kuhn was led to the radical view that truth itself is relative to a paradigm”
The tripe offered by this academic brings disrepute on academia in general and his profession in particular.
The science is clear. We are headed for a disaster of biblical proportions. Old Testament real wrath-of-God type stuff. Fire and brimstone coming down from the sky, rivers and seas boiling, forty years of darkness, earthquakes, volcanoes. The dead rising from the grave. Human sacrifice. Dogs and cats, living together. Mass hysteria. Sound familiar? Paraphrased from the “Ghostbusters”.
juan slayton says:
March 15, 2014 at 10:00 pm
“climateace: I imagine that these outcomes would be well-regarded by most WUWT posters.
I wouldn’t jump to imaginary conclusions, friend.”
Why wouldn’t he? He has probably been doing so since puberty and believes his conclusions make total sense. After all, he doesn’t look at empirical evidence because it is “wrong.” i.e. doesn’t fit his view of the world!
The CAGW scare is built totally upon opinions; they’re sunk.
Don’t you wonder about the warming guys that always seem to give themselves pretentious titles or arrange awards between themselves to bolster their false claims or stupid pronouncements. I guess I too could claim to be “KenB, director of the Australian National Centre for Public Awareness of antiscience numpties at the Australian National (Numpty?) University”. Pleased to receive any awards, even remotely claimable Noble prize associations to boost my priceless media “Look-at me” work (even if the dog ate my data/homework)!!
@Robert of Ottawa –
I still think an important part of the fight against AGW is demonstrating the evils it is bringing about, because that will reach people who might otherwise dismiss the facts as over their head, or something they don’t want to try to understand, or as simply abstractions, when they are NOT abstractions – they are real harm done to real people. And after all, unless I miss my guess, we skeptics are fighting precisely because we know that AGW leads to destructive and even murderous consequences and because we want ultimately to put a stop to the harm being done, or to be done, by AGW. However, I agree that everything we say should be solidly grounded in fact: when we assert that carbon taxes are causing deaths, we explain how and provide the necessary news reports and other sources to back it up.
I guess you could say this take off from Dr. Spencer’s declamation of “climate Nazis.”
What is scary is the people who have used the excuse of the “ends justifying the means” in the past. I take it these alarmists are not students of history?
philjourdan, hi. They are projecting their future, and any skeptical views and facts are negated.
This falls into the political rather than the scientific truth. Deaths are inevitable, if people die of the cold, but warmth? Well there is heat stroke but that can happen when we sunbathe, not normally if we hydrate and keep out of the midday sun. In the middle east, say Israel and Cyprus, in their summers, they have a siesta, between 2 – 4 pm.
charles nelson says:
March 15, 2014 at 9:55 pm
Climateace….weep on, the noise you and your chums make is music to our ears.
As I said it at the time, the fatal alliance between Labor and Green has rendered both of them un electable for a generation.
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I would be so sure about that Charles, their funding sources are the real backbone of the agenda. I’m not so sanguine that the general public have woken up to much here. It’s encouraging to see people exhibiting some basic skepticism, finally – but is it real and firmly based? I doubt it (sorry, I’m being a bit skeptical here).
As long as financier $$$ are pumped into these absurd ‘community-organiser’ type looney parties the hollow farce of putting forward a series of ludicrous ‘policy solutions’ and pretending to care, and simply pushing forwards one laughable clown-weirdo ‘candidate’, after another, will continue. Given recent experience of several very disappointing elections over the past 10 years, the Australian public have demonstrated they are certainly dull enough to fall for that muck again, or at least some parts of it. Especially the young and indoctrinated in this type of socially and scholarly ‘informed’ derp-ism.
Their backers will be far from done, they will move the deck-chairs around some, change the Logo and the stationary, then comeback for another run of shameless mischief-making, damage-creation and fear-mongering blather.
climateace says:
March 15, 2014 at 11:01 pm
Neoliberalism is based, inter alia, on two assumptions: that the environment is an infinite source and that the environment is an infinite sump. Good luck with that, I say.
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And let’s add to that, that the fundamental NEEDS of life, in our natural system is both rapidly regenerating and rapidly self-cleansing.
And that’s the part the alarmist weirdo doesn’t ever want to face up to as it completely slays the whole basis of their ludicrous position.
You are making measured statements and that’s fine, but you’re also measuredly carefully omitting such basic other-side-of-the-coin relevant balancing truths from your commentary.
We can see that too. 😉
daddylonglegs says:
March 15, 2014 at 11:46 pm
Eco-political correctness is killing F1.
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MotoGP baby! That, and the Isle of Mann, are the only place real all-or nothing racing even happens anymore. What a lucky sod who won that F1 though! fairytale stuff.
Sceptical lefty says:
March 16, 2014 at 1:09 am
And for Unmentionable: people don’t want the truth. They want confirmation of their prejudices, which they will happily proclaim to be the truth.
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Yes, that is true, as is this: “I’M A SCEPTIC and there was BIG APPLAUSE”
Aphan, here’s Michael Mann’s dance number borrowed from “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas”
Fellow Climate Alarmists, I am proudly standing here to humbly say,
I assure you, and I mean it- Now, who says I don’t speak out as plain as day?
And, fellow Alarmists, I’m for progress and Gaia’s flag- long may it fly.
I’m a poor boy, come to greatness. So, it follows that I cannot tell a lie.
[chorus]
Ooh I love to dance a little sidestep,
now they see me now they don’t – I’ve come and gone
and, ooh I love to sweep around the wide step,
Cut a little swathe and lead the people on.
Now my good friends, it behooves me to be solemn and declare,
I’m for greenness and wind power, for living clean and saying a daily prayer.
And now, my good friends, you can sleep nights, I’ll continue to stand tall.
You can trust me, for I promise, I shall keep a watchful eye upon ya’ll…
[repeat chorus]
Now, Watts and Nova and Montford, I don’t know them, though I’ve heard the names, oh yes.
But, of course I’ve no close contact, so what they think I can only guess.
And now, they’re a menace, a blemish on the face of our blue living Earth.
I am taking certain steps here, someone somewhere’s gonna have foil their mirth.
[repeat chorus]
“the ends will justify the means” – straight out of Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals. A text for all radical leftists.
Disappearance of megafauna ?
Both in Australia and North America.
Big beasties were probably slow breeding.
People with pointed sticks suddenly turn up.
They target the smaller juveniles……easier prey than the adults.
Reproduction rate drops below replacement and quite soon you are extinct.
Reblogged this on The GOLDEN RULE and commented:
A strange scientific argument. Opinions are more meaningful than scientific facts.
Well, he doesn’t actually say that, but that opinions are needed, more of them and stronger ones, in order to brainwash the public into their way of thinking.
And “way of thinking” is exactly what it is!
The science, or at least genuine science, has been left way behind.
Now, unsubstantiated claims of climate extremes being the worst ever, blah, blah, blah, do con the public, but they will never wash with the scientific and technical trained opponents of the CO2 and carbon trading, political and financial, band-wagon agenda-driven alarmists.