Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Neil deGrasse Tyson has claimed that the refusal of the Trump administration to bow to every scientific demand presented to politicians is a threat to democracy.
Neil deGrasse Tyson says science deniers in White House are a profound threat to democracy
The scientist spoke out as thousands around the world prepare to march
One of America’s most influential and popular scientists has issued a stark warning over what he termed the Trump administration’s rejection of science – saying it is a threat to the country’s “informed democracy”.
Neil deGrasse Tyson, host of the StarTalk podcast and TV show and director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History, said when he grew up, the US had relied on science to drive its innovation. But no longer.
“People have lost the ability to judge what is true and what is not, what is reliable, what is not reliable,” he says in a video posted on Facebook. “That’s not the country I remember growing up in. I don’t remember any other time where people were standing in denial of what science was.”
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In my opinion, the problem with people like Tyson is they think they have a monopoly on being right. And there are a lot of reasons for thinking Tyson is not right about everything.
Climate Science in particular has an atrocious track record of failed predictions, dating all the way back to James Hansen’s exaggerated Scenario A.
Nothing bad is happening to the global climate, despite efforts by climate scientists to hype up every twitch of the thermometer.
The only tangible effect of anthropogenic CO2 to date is that CO2 is greening the Earth, stimulating faster plant growth, and more drought resilience across a broad range of species.
Claims by climate scientists that the science is “settled” are unconvincing.
To suggest it is unreasonable to have doubts about alarmist climate projections in the face of such a shambolic track record of failure and exaggeration in my opinion is pure arrogance – personal hubris dressed up as scientific opinion.
Video of Tyson explaining why it is wrong to disagree with him
Update (EW): Replaced the video above with a longer version of Tyson’s presentation
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Just another EcoStalinist ‘snake in deGrasse’. If he was right why do so many real experts disagree with him??
Perhaps snakeoil business needs a boost.
See my comment of yesterday. Neil Tete de Grasse Tyson. New Scientist calls it nominative determinism.
Skipping the content of this article, but looking closely at the Head photograph, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a stronger image of mutual virtue signalling….anywhere.
I just wonder how democracy is served by a few activist bully boys who think they know best what is right for everyone else?
I find that head photograph utterly and nauseatingly repellant because I don’t trust any of them.
To most leftists that I have known, it’s only democracy when they agree with the results.
It’s not about science, it’s not about democracy its about money! They want money. Nobody keeps them from doing science. Nobody keeps them from electing whoom ever they want to elect. But why should everybody pay for that “science”?
“People have lost the ability to judge what is true and what is not, what is reliable, what is not reliable …” .
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It’s an old theme which goes back to Plato and has surfaced from time to time coming from the CC cultists but is usually implied as in Dr Tyson’s statement: that the voters are just dumb and don’t know what’s good for them.
Dr Tyson is using doublespeak, what he really means is something like this: “… to halt or even slow the disastrous process of climate change we must choose between liberal democracy and a form of authoritarian government by experts, the authors offer up a radical reform of democracy that would entail the painful choice of curtailing our worldwide reliance on growth economies, along with various legal and fiscal reforms. Unpalatable as this choice may be, they argue for the adoption of this fundamental reform of democracy over the journey to authoritarianism …” (The Climate Change Challenge and the Failure of Democracy 2007) .
“People have lost the ability to judge what is true and what is not, what is reliable, what is not reliable …” .
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It’s an old theme which goes back to Plato and has surfaced from time to time coming from the CC cultists but usually implied: that the voters are just dumb and don’t know what’s good for them.
Dr Tyson is using doublespeak, what he really means is something like this: “… to halt or even slow the disastrous process of climate change we must choose between liberal democracy and a form of authoritarian government by experts, the authors offer up a radical reform of democracy that would entail the painful choice of curtailing our worldwide reliance on growth economies, along with various legal and fiscal reforms. Unpalatable as this choice may be, they argue for the adoption of this fundamental reform of democracy over the journey to authoritarianism …” (The Climate Change Challenge and the Failure of Democracy 2007) .
Tyson’s claim to fame?
Carl Sagan.
Nuff said.
Well said!
Science and technology in the USA is still doing wonderfully well: just look at the results of the fraccing revolution with the abundance of (cheaper) oil and gas it has brought onto the market. Restoration of better living standards for the battlers. Donald Trump is trying to create a better business climate for the agricultural, coal, and oil and gas industries, so Good on Him!
Loved his show – but in my personal opinion he unnecessarily flogged the dead horse of ‘climate change’ on it several times. Claiming something when it isn’t necessarily so and you ignore the inconvenient evidence isn’t science. Its more like ideology. One day I’d love to watch a show like this that doesn’t come with an agenda.
Science is a tool – it is apolitical and amoral – so like a screwdriver you can only use it, you can’t deny it.
Like all tools, a screwdriver can be misused. Good people ought to be armed as they will, with wits and guns (tools) and The Truth.
Likewise, Dr Tyson is a tool. And if all you have is a hammer, all problems look like nails. Dr Tyson is a tool of Fabian socialists.
This is just part of an obviously coordinated political assault and has nothing much to do with real science.
The democrat party, of which there is no doubt Nye and Tyson are dedicated constituents, is at it’s lowest point in real political power since the 1920’s and things aren’t looking like they’re going to turn around for some time to come.
AGW/Climate Change was a perfect vehicle for them to justify almost any social/political changes they desired and the whole corrupt foundation that supports it and thus the years of work to establish it as an accepted fact, is threatened by the current administration. They have to resist and try to mitigate the effects of what is happening and have little ability to do so in the halls of the elected national government or in the vast majority of state governments. They also perceive that the balance of power in the SCOTUS is liable to change against them dramatically in the next few years and so can’t rely on the courts to help them much.
So democrats having little influence on actions and events through elected offices and foreseeing diminishing ability to mitigate actions in the courts must resort to other means to salvage what they can.
PR stunts like this and the marches, their highly partisan press, their supporters in academia, and of course passive or active resistance by those in the bureaucracy are what they left to resist with.
And resist they will with all their fiber and being because it is not only who they are, it is what they are that they perceive to be under attack.
I fear that Mr Tyson is being cut a lot of slack because he is black.
I recall myself suppressing the urge to criticise the policies of President Obama because on some level I feared that I would be accused of being racist towards him.
Mr Tyson is not very bright…there…I said it.
“I recall myself suppressing the urge to criticise the policies of President Obama because on some level I feared that I would be accused of being racist towards him.”
That’s what the Republicans in Congress have been doing for the last eight years.
When this debate descends to the level of telling people democracy is at risk because of climate change, you know someone’s clinging to a flimsy life raft.
As one long experienced in the art of digital manipulation, I would love to have the original hi-res image of that trio. Just at a casual glance, it seems to have been manipulated. Patterns in the wallpaper, placement of picture frames, shadows of people on each other – these seen a little unrealistic.
For some bona fides, here is a manip that I did many years ago when you had many coffee breaks a day while the PC computed:
http://www.geoffstuff.com/flatout_ironin.jpg
Geoff
Nice picture!
I think the problem is that the wall behind the people isn’t straight. There is more than one oval room in the White House. Based on the door trim, I think the one in the picture might be the Yellow Oval Room.
I think that they are taking a picture of themselves says it all.
I’m Stealing it for next month’s calender, hard to find things both amusing and Work Place Safe.
And China is the most democratic state ever existed. More recently, water flows up the mountain. And the iron in the spinach had to be corrected down several commas. And Alfred Wegener was adversely affected for the theory of plate tectonics for decades. Albert Einstein once said that a scientist who is right is enough and 99 others with different opinion are meaningless. Albert Einstein also developed the theory of relativity, explored gravitation, and posited the following thesis: “There are only two infinite things: the universe and human stupidity, but I am not so sure of the universe.” If I see Bill Nye, Barrack Obama, and Mr. Tyson (who is not the one who has been beaten by Ali but has a similar look) with their stupid faces, I know what Albert Einstein is talking about.
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And Alfred Wegener was adversely affected for the theory of plate tectonics for decades.
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The basic critique about his “theory” (should be hypothesis) was that Wegener was a meteorologist and not a geologist. (Where have I heard similar complaints like that before?) Wegener did not call it plate tectonics–it was called continental drift. And his idea that the continents “plowed” through ocean sea floors wasn’t considered valid.
Jim
The irony. A march for science. Gobsmacked here 🙁
The moment I saw the introduction: Oh no! – more American-style snake oil salesmanship. It is a circus after all
It`s an Algore circus with Soros money. What comes next in this circus: The elephant in the bath room?
The way I see it, CAGW was the Obama administration’s established state religion. It was Obama that was the threat to freedom, not Trump. When you have AGs going after skeptics and big names (Nye, Suzuki, Loretta Lynch, and then Al Gore and his group of 19) wanting to lock people up or prosecuting people for disagreeing. And they think Trump is the threat to democracy? *SMH* https://www.google.com/search?q=lock+people+up+who+disagree+on+climate+change&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=ubuntu&channel=fs
The Left always want to “level” everyone economically. They know absolutely nothing about creating wealth, so the only thing left is to destroy the wealth of those who have it. It actually works politically, up to a point. Make people poor and they support the party that advocates redistribution! Look at Chavez in Venezuela. He completely wrecked his country’s economy to the point where people are going hungry in a country that should be rich. People are killing each other in the streets! Yet he is the hero of the disadvantaged. His gloss is fading away now as his legacy of competency and caring is exposed as disastrous.
One young leftist that I debated years ago declared that for any given position there was no “best qualified” for that position.
Everyone was either qualified or not qualified, therefore everyone in a given position should be paid exactly the same as everyone else doing the same job.
Needless to say this person was still in college. He also favored pass/fail grading.
The Fortune 1000 companies virtually all believe that AGW is real. It amazes me how climate skeptics always trot out far leftists – and only far leftists – as AGW believers, when in fact the corporate world believes AGW is real and requires action.
It never ceases to amaze me how the idiot left assumes that anyone with money must be a right winger.
As to the Fortune 1000, they do what they need to do to stay on the good side of politicians.
A stupid conceited man. Global warming is just one small section of the many thousands of subjects covered by the term ‘science’, and it is global warming and that subject alone in which sceptics question the beliefs of other scientists, but do not question ‘science’ in a generic sense. To attack other very professional scientists – and there are many – simply because they are sceptical to your own views on your own scientific hypothesis is to suggest that you do not have 100 per cent confidence in your own argument. To suggest that to argue the merits of the global warming hypothesis openly from a sceptics point of view is undemocratic is arrogant in the extreme.
“People have lost the ability to judge what is true and what is not, what is reliable, what is not reliable,” he says in a video posted on Facebook. “
What a gross insult to scientists, academics and sensible people around the world who don’t agree with his point of view.
“That’s not the country I remember growing up in. I don’t remember any other time where people were standing in denial of what science was.”
I don’t know what period he was brought up in, but he implies that it was then the perfect world. Does he recall such scientific disasters as thalidomide, DDT, breast implants, hip replacements and many more such scientific disasters that resulted in many deaths or lifelong injury. His statements insult us all.
Whatever else Mr Tyson may be, he is not stupid. He is a capable self-publicist, a faithful and courageous iterator of the Establishment line on science and someone who undoubtedly assigns to himself the moral high ground for his principled adherence to convention.
He may also be cynically and competently venal. When the the CAGW scam can no longer be sustained, the lead pseudo-scientific con-artists are unlikely to suffer much. Mr Tyson, like many others, is steering a very sensible course and has pragmatically recognised that ethics don’t pay the bills.
Being wrong when everyone else is right is customarily forgiveable. Being wrong when everyone else is wrong is tolerable, if not actually merit-worthy. Being right when everyone else is wrong is practically a capital offence.
If he practised what he preached he would get some respect but he provided not one shred of evidence of global warming. His condescending arrogance implying that I have poor judgment and need to think about things more is what really riled me. 40 years as an engineer has taught me a couple of things, one of which is don’t believe everything you hear especially if it comes from someone who doesn’t have the humility not to judge you. Bad fail Tyson. Lots of unconvinced middle of the roaders will not enjoy your pronouncement. Forget the politics and tell me why the sea level rise is not accelerating as predicted and why temperatures are not rising as predicted or why the warming prior to an El Nino peak is anthropogenic and alarming whereas the subsequent cooling is just natural variation. The absolute refusal to even discuss these inconvenient facts, let alone explain them, shows commentators like Tyson are nothing but politically motivated shysters. A genuine truth seeking scientist would make an effort to respond to sceptical enquiries.
That image alone is the exclamation mark – bang! – on Tyson’s impeachment. All three are in the dustbin of history.
The photo of Tyson, Nye, and Obama together in one scene is truly sickening. Tyson, Nye and Obama, like almost all leftsts/Socialists/Comunists/Greenists/Climate Alarmists are always wrong about anything. As Reagan said, ‘It’s not that they don’t know anything, it’s just that they know a lot of stuff that is wrong.”
Climate Science has a track record of failed predictions long enough to rival the failures of Communism. It springs from the same feeble-minded source.
The guy is just an administrator and front-man. He stopped actually doing science a long time ago.
While there are plenty who defend the failings of climate science, he just represents those who are too lazy to actually find out what is wrong with it.
For a while after the election some of the Democrat party spoke as if the realized what the problem was; they had betrayed the American people. Sadly, that hasn’t produced any substantial change. They’re back to being their good old arrogant selves.
The Democrat party has only themselves to blame for President Trump’s victory. If anyone has subverted and damaged democracy, it is them.
Science isn’t what people think it is. Scientific results are mostly bogus, especially if there’s money involved. Most research can’t be replicated. About half the results can’t even be replicated by the original researchers. It’s called the replication crisis.
Democracy will be improved when the Democrat party quits listening to its beloved experts, who are usually wrong, and start listening to the people.
One flaw in that potential outcome, Bob. The Democrats, like all Socialists, listen to those who confirm their biases. They have no intention of analyzing the facts impartially to inform their policy. When I first heard about this Global Warming thing, I assumed that science was on top of the problem and correct in their “consensus” findings.I thought I should look into it to see how urgent the problem is as I have always been politically active and consider it my responsibility as a citizen to inform myself of public issues. Thus began a journey from simple knowledge seeking to confusion, to disbelief and finally anger as I realized that a massive conspiracy of Socialists and Eco-warriors and Academia and U.N. bureaucrats ( another tribe of Socialists) was taking place before our very eyes.
Wealth destruction,greed, academic misconduct, political opportunism and anti-democratic propaganda from top to bottom! And most people completely unaware, thanks to establishment shills like Tyson. I fear for the future of science if it can be so easily and completely twisted and corrupted by politics.
I fully agree. I think he is a useful idiot who would be mortified if he ever came to understand the reality of the situation.
I like that Tyson fellow, he’s obviously not very good at politics and he’s definitely no Carl Sagan, that’s for sure. But I like the guy.
He’s likeable-he’s just no longer respectable!
He’s likable, but only so long as you agree with him and help stroke his ego.
To all other’s, he’s anything but likable.
Congress Should Investigate the Claim of Scientific Consensus
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2017/04/24/congress-should-investigate-the-claim-of-scientific-consensus/
New York Times is Correct; Bigness is Bad, Time to Break Up the Climate Industrial Complex Monopoly
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2017/04/23/new-york-times-is-correct-bigness-is-bad-lets-apply-that-to-the-government/