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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Well, that did it. While there weren’t many left, I’ve lost the last few little shards of respect I once had for this man.
Eisenhower warned about 2 threats to democracy in his final speech as president. The “military industrial complex” is the better-known of those 2 threats.
But Eisenhower’s warning, in that same speech, about the scientific technological elite, seems to have been forgotten. Maybe it’s too “inconvenient” for the scientists…
Neil deGrasse Tyson’s video on science denial is a grossly overgeneralized claim based on an erroneous evaluation, in climate science, of the very scientific procedures that he champions. It is obvious that he is using his own ignorance outside his specialty to push trite imagery and false claims of climate alarmists.
When will real scientists in one specialty apply their own discipline OUTSIDE their specialties to fully examine the issues for proper evaluation?
Choose a famous scientist in one specialty, convince him/her that you know the “facts” in a different specialty, rely on the fact that he/she is probably too busy to confirm your … “facts”, pay him/her to do a video based on his/her ignorance of the real facts outside his/her specialty. Show THIS to young people, and call it “education”. How malignant can degrading young minds get?
Yes, I’m alluding to the standby plea, “Think of the children.” If THEY can do it, then I can do it.
I wonder if Obama evangelized these atheists at this meet-up?
Zero respect for the likes of Tyson. He knows little about climate science and it’s failure apparently.
“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.”
He grew up when scientists and engineers designed rockets and space capsules and went to the moon.
Some of those same scientists and engineers have studied the data and bounded the warming at 1.8C using methods that served the space program well. (http://www.therightclimatestuff.com/recent-analysis-jan-2017.html)
Maybe Mr. Tyson should look at how real world science is used to analyze real world problems.
Thanks for posting that link. I watched the video twice (Dr. Harold Doiron, retired NASA engineer) and understand what he is saying. Where is he wrong, – anybody?
Neil deGrasse Tyson Knows nothing about Science or Democracy.
He only knows Political Science, an oxymoron.
Dennis-san:
Tyson knows what’s Politically Correct, but doesn’t want to know what’s factually correct…
PC allows fame, fortune, dinners with the president at the White House, TV appearances, notoriety, prestige in Leftist media and politics, etc.
Being factually correct in this day and age, unfortunately, “only” provides the truth, virtue, honesty, and often ridicule….
There is a lot of irony in stating that democracy is in jeopardy unless you do what the authoritarians want.
Unelected socialist deep-staters are a existential threat to democracy, liberty, prosperity and safety.
Surely since climate fraternity tell us the science is beyond question we can assume they are charlatans who know nothing about science. Science is defined as being able to produce valid predictions and to be reproducible, so clearly climate science does not exist in reality so it can only be a threat in a virtual world.
The problem I have with Tyson’s position is he, intentionally or not, is contributing to shutting down the the scientific debate on AGW. I fully support more science research but unfortunately it has become so political partisan and no longer a scientific debate. It has become a religiosity either for against an apocalyptic future. Imagine if a scientists were to propose a study about global cooling. What do you believe would be the likelihood of funding such a study regardless of whether or not there was solid scientific hypothesis and credible research? And that is the problem and point. It is so ironic that history is trotted out showing the ignorant of the past for science yet today the same herding and emotional responses is handing right before our eyes.
Even more ironically for Tyson, his idle Carl Sagan is likely rolling over in his grave. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demon-Haunted_World
Elections and democracy have nothing in common, right?
Depends. When your candidate wins, that’s democracy in action. When the other candidate wins that’s a failure of democracy and demands a correction by any means necessary.
When I saw the picture, I was sure that he was talking about Obama and the other science denier he is with.
Fame and fortune fouled the physicists
Neil is no longer star gazing he is star struck. The problem is he fancies himself as a celebrity now. He has turned actor and we all know how they love their make believe.
Ah-ha, a trilogy of Buffoons! Where “success” comes from being as far behind the curve as possible, and preferably not even connected with reality. But they know that if Propaganda succeeds, it’s better than the Truth.
Celebrity scientists like Tyson are often interviewed and asked to expound on subjects which they actually know very little. As an astrophysicist, deGrasse Tyson knows that CO2 absorbs infrafred radiation, and that the amount of warming of air inside a sunlit container due to added CO2 can be calculated by a scientist. Ergo, “the science is settled”. But, in reality,only to the extremely cursory point that he has been taught as a byproduct of his astrophysics background. Another couple of years’ study of meteorology, atmospheric thermodynamics, and atmospheric physics, and and he might be a little more enlightening about what is “settled” and what is “speculative”. Unfortunately, those details would bore the TV audience that has become his livelihood and a “crisis” is going to result in a lot more paid speaking engagements….
If he doesn’t toe the line, he won’t get asked. He knows that and likes being a celebrity. Hey! It’s cool! The president pretends to be his friend! He goes on TV talk shows. He hangs with Hollywood royalty like Cluny and DeCaprio. It’s very tempting to go with the flow. It’s just not right and it isn’t science.
Has anyone seen this cluck’s doctoral thesis? I always thought he was a bit of a hack, but assumed you don’t acquire a doctorate in astrophysics from a CrackerJack box, so that he couldn’t be a complete mouthbreather. After listening to his version of the scientific method and reliability and truth in the video, I begin to wonder if the CrackerJack box is not to be ruled out as a source of his credentials.
BTW, Is anyone else as puzzled as I am by what appears to be a growing trend among the celebrity class to desire to be photographed by professional photographers, pretending to take selfies of themselves and their chums? The level of malignant narcissism is epic.
In the world of confidence schemes, Anthropogenic Global Warming is the ‘Long Con’ version of the game. In all confidence scams, the goal is to ‘liberate’ (steal) as much money from The Mark as possible. In the AGW scam, Joe and Jane Citizen are The Marks and the goal is to steal as much of their tax money and charitable contributions as possible. In the Long Con scam, a sizable Team may be required to sustain the con game over an extended period of time, when the payoff warrants the effort and investment. The greater the payoff, the more each member of The Team shares in their ill-found wealth. Hundreds of Billions of dollars have been conned by the AGW scam to date, and the Long Con Team has been enriched and grown proportionally. Let’s get to know some of the Long Con Team characters……
The public ‘face’ of the Long Con scam, a attractive and well spoken man or woman, is know as ‘The Face’. In the AGW scam, the 3 individuals shown in the lead photo of this article and similar public note worthies may act as The Face of the operation. They give the perception of authority and credibility to the confidence scheme.
The ‘Grifter’ is a practitioner of confidence tricks, also know as a con artist. He/she employs tricks and believable-but-false scenarios to secure the Mark’s confidence and prepare them to ‘loosen up their wallets’. The Grifters create scary scenarios and give doomsday “You must act now!” speeches to set The Mark up for the ultimate theft of his money. Many of the scary scenarios created by notable AGW Grifters have been discussed and debunked here on the pages of WUWT. Think of ‘nature tricks’, ‘hockey sticks’, and ‘carbon taxes’, Oh My! There are tooooooo many Grifters in this Long Con game to list.
The ‘Shill’ is an accomplice to the Grifter and appears to have no apparent connection to the con. Shills are put in place to encourage the Mark to act in the desired way, to relieve them of their money. They often use propaganda techniques like ‘band wagoning’ on the Mark; i.e. “I believe in this and so do 97% of real scientists (the ‘band wagon’). I’m invested in this and you should be also! Get on the band wagon Buddy – Everyone else is!” Note how a falsely conjured statistic (97%) is used to create the ‘band wagon’ perception so the Shill can help set the Mark up to ‘invest’. You can see examples of The Shill comments here, on these pages, every day.
Skepticism is a well known and very effective antidote to confidence games. That, more than any other reason, is why the term ‘Skeptic’ is so derisively abjured by The Team. The Long Con scam only works when the Mark confidently believes The Teams scary tricks and propaganda techniques, and then personally ‘invests’ in the confidence game. If a skeptical Mark seeks out independent information sources and viewpoints, the false assertions of the Long Con game becomes apparent and it falls apart.
Skepticism is a healthy perspective, for all who would not be conned.
Someone ought to remind Mr Tyson (and perhaps the entire scientific community) of a few principles regarding science:
If you don’t make mistakes, you’re doing it wrong
If you don’t correct those mistakes, you’re really doing it wrong.
If you can’t accept that you’re mistaken, you’re not doing it at all.
Carl Sagan said much worse things than that.
I will add, the astronomy production was an absolute disappointment and disaster — I did not see any real footage or images from outer space.
How is it that Americans for several generations have expended all of that time, talent and treasure to go to other regions of the solar system, and the astronomy presentation was entirely computer generated?
The history of science was equally plastic fantastic CGI fantasy. Queue up Roger Bacon “advancing science” in the middle ages by “reading forbidden books.”
It doesn’t work that way.
Perhaps that was the problem. To many monks reading forbidden books on how to convert lead into gold.
And that is not my own opinion. Sir Francis Bacon, the father of empirical science, took a survey of the state of knowledge in his day, and it was indeed poor. One of the main reasons for the poor state of the understanding of nature (among many) was that science did not have any aim or goal, but was made up of people looking for alchemical secrets to transforming base metals and otherwise doing magic to get precious metals.
He put forward a completely different idea about the goals of science.
When Bacon published Novum Organum in Latin in 1620, science had already advanced quite a bit, although the Church was fighting back. Copernicus and Vesalius had published their seminal works in 1543. Gilbert’s On That Great Magnet the Earth came out in 1600, Kepler’s Astronomia nova in 1609 and Galileo’s Sidereus Nuncias in 1610. Harvey’s demonstration of pulmonary circulation arrived in 1628, but he had predecessors, such as Servetus, whose books were burned by the Catholic Church in 1553, when he was executed as a heretic in Geneva by Calvin.
Not to take anything away from Bacon’s achievement, but the Scientific Revolution was already well under way by the time he sought to delineate its method.
Forgot to mention Bruno, burnt by the Church for, among other heresies, suggesting that there was an infinity of worlds. He probably saw stars not visible to the naked eye while in England, where there apparently existed a device similar to a telescope.
Thomas Digges, in his 1571 book on geometrical methods in surveying, Pantometria, described “perspective glasses”:
“By these kind of Glasses or rather frames of them, placed in due Angles, yee may not only set out the proportion of an whole region, yea represent before your eye the liuey image of euery Town, Villages &c. and that in as little or great space or places as yes will prescribe, but also augment and dilate any parcel thereof, so that whereas the first appearance an whole Towne shall present it selfe so small and compact together that yee shall not discerne anye difference of streates, yee may by application of Glasses in due proportion cause any peculaire house, or roume thereof dilate and shew it selfe in as ample forme as the whole town first appeared, so that ye shall discerne any trifle, or reade any letter lying there open, especially if the sunne beames may come vnto it, as plainly as if you were corporally present…”
Chimp says, ““By these kind of Glasses or rather frames of them, placed in due Angles, yee may not only set out the proportion of an whole region, yea represent before your eye the liuey image of euery Town, Villages &c.”
When the kids and I were studying Galileo, one of the pictures showed a half-dozen Renaissance men holding telescopes. It did not take long for the teenagers to point out that some of the men were looking down from the balcony and some were looking at the sky. (:
The coolest Hologram I ever saw was of a telescope pointed at a house, and you could look in the telescope, and see the pretty girl undressing in one of the windows o(PG13) of the house.
Must be something in the teenage mindset, I remember my friends and I pointing out the same thing. And we got our a$$es chewed out for being “disruptive”. Can’t remember which specific portrait it was, do remember it is in National Gallery. Or was. They keep “remodeling” and “improving” the Smithsonian and I really wish they would cut it the f*ck out.
And I really wish you stop using obfuscated cuss words…they reflect poorly on you.
Just trying to navigate the obtuse and ever changing requirements of wordpress. At times they are as bad as disqus. Hell, sometimes you can’t use words such as “racist”, other times you can. Almost like an Almond Joy commercial.
Hmmm. Another comment lost in cyberspace. Briefly recapping:
I failed to mention Bruno, burnt by the Church in 1600 for, among other heresies, stating that there was an infinity of worlds. He probably had seen stars not visible to the naked eye while in England, where Digges and others apparently had a “perspective glass” similar to a telescope. Digges mentions it in his 1571 book on surveying, and there are other references to the device.
Shakespeare probably encountered it through his acquaintance with John Dee, mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, alchemist, diviner, occult philosopher and adviser to Queen Elizabeth I. The Bard likely also knew the Digges family, father and son.
Chimp says,, “When Bacon published Novum Organum in Latin in 1620, science had already advanced quite a bit, although the Church was fighting back. Copernicus and Vesalius had published their seminal works in 1543.”
The Church, by which you mean the Roman Church, was defending its staunch belief in the teachings of Aristotle and Ptolemy, and other ancient Greeks. Galileo fell afoul of Aristotle in about 8 of his doctrines, not just in his geocentrism.
To answer briefly, Sir Francis Bacon was setting about to try to ween the royalty and courts, and any other readers, from their reliance on the Greeks for their educations and understandings of nature. He then classified the impediments to human understanding of nature, calling them “the idols of the mind.” Next, he laid down the foundation for systematic inquiry, observation, and physical testing as the only way to advance knowledge. It may seem easy, like sailing to the New World was after someone else had already done it, but he began the appeals to the powers that be to admit to an empirical approach to science. His appeal is addressed to a king, because kings held the means for the studies, posts, and schools he envisioned to change the course of science in his country.
He used the telescope and the microscope as a few examples of the tools that would be needed to assist and guide the mind in observing and interpreting nature. But it was a monumental task to convince people that they did not know everything already, and that knowledge would come not by studying books but by using measurement and experiment.
Finally, he clearly stated what the goal of science was: “Again there is another great and powerful cause why the sciences have made but little progress, which is this. It is not possible to run a course aright when the goal itself has not been rightly placed. Now the true and lawful goal of the sciences is none other than this: that human life be endowed with new discoveries and powers.” And so for Britain, and the Protestant northern countries, this would prove to stake out the goal of science in understanding axioms and improving life for every day people. Apologies for length.
Zeke,
As I showed both Catholic and Protestant churches were fighting back. Calvin and other Protestants executed scientific heretics, too.
They keep using the words “science” and “democracy” in ways suggesting they don’t know the definitions of either.
In this pic, Neil is an astronomer pontificating about climate with two actors. So that is 3 climate amateurs.
People like Tyson are smart enough to be able to tell the difference between speculation and evidence, so they have to know this CAGW speculation is all a big lie they are selling because there is no evidence and they have to know this.
The Hockey Stick isn’t evidence because of its blatant dishonesty. The “97 percent consensus” isn’t evidence, even if it were true. Celebrities pushing the narrative isn’t evidence. Arctic sea ice extent isn’t evidence. And on and on.
It’s all speculation to this very day. Very frustrating. When the subject of humans changing the Earth’s atmosphere first became established, I was willing to accept that this might be true. I had no reason to doubt the climate scientists. I figured they must know what they are talking about so I gave them the benefit of the doubt, and waited eagerly for their proof. I didn’t even question the concept at first.
But as time went along, I could never find a paper or article that offered definitive proof of what they were claiming. At first I was confused because I thought scientists were not supposed to make claims they couldn’t prove, but I found out differently. I went from confused, to being alarmed at the number of unfounded claims, and then got angry because I thought I was watching the destruction of the scienfitic method. I still think that is what I am seeing from the CAGW promoters.
But, the times they are a-changin’. Lots more attention being paid to the scientific method now. 🙂
” the US had relied on science to drive its innovation. But no longer.”
No longer because of YOU and your ilk, Neil. For whatever reason, otherwise brilliant people suddenly default to the lower brain stem regarding climate. Especially people such as Neil (or Barak) with no particular expertise in climate who inexplicably give in to tingling rather than reason.