Essay by Eric Worrall
The scientists wear white lab coats, so observers can distinguish the scientists from the frothing green radicals.
Scientists Risk Arrest to Demand Climate Action
A growing international movement called Scientist Rebellion calls on world leaders to end the burning of fossil fuels
By Chelsea Harvey, E&E News on April 11, 2022
Rose Abramoff drove from her home in Knoxville, Tenn., to the nation’s capital last week to chain herself to the White House fence.
The climate scientist was among seven demonstrators arrested on April 6 (and later released). Their motivation: the dire warning that time is swiftly running out to meet the world’s climate goals, as detailed in a major report last week from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Two days later, Abramoff was back — this time marching with a group of climate activists down I-395 at rush hour. The group was arrested again, but not before they’d stalled traffic on one of Washington’s busiest highways.
In both cases, their demands were clear: faster, stronger climate action from world governments and an end to the burning of fossil fuels.
“It was my first experience with civil disobedience for any reason,” said Abramoff, a climate scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, who emphasized that her activism is conducted on her own behalf and does not reflect the positions of her institution. She also spoke with E&E News only on her own behalf.
…
Scientist Rebellion estimates that a total of around 1,000 scientists in 25 countries participated in last week’s demonstrations, often wearing lab coats to identify themselves.
…
Read more: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-risk-arrest-to-demand-climate-action/
An old legal proverb states, “If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts. If you have the law on your side, pound the law. If you have neither on your side, pound the table.”.
Scientists chaining themselves to lamp posts and blocking roads in my opinion is pounding the table.
If you are an activist, you cannot be a scientist. An activist has a commitment to a pre-defined set of ideals and values for which they will shape their own reality to fit. This makes them virtually incapable of being a scientist. There are, however, currently many activists occupying positions that should be held by scientists. But just because you have a job that should be held by a scientist doesn’t make you one. Nor does the absence of a scientific degree or position exclude you from being a scientist. A scientist is merely someone who uses the scientific method to try and make sense of the world around them. These activists, are blinded by their zealous devotion to their cause and cannot conduct actual science.
We live in a strange time, where the activist is some sort of celebrated figure. This, to me, seems to cause much more harm than good. Well meaning fools (I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt as to their motivations) who think they understand how the world works, and are so utterly narcissistic as to think that they know how to fix it, badger people endlessly that if they only lived the way they said to (but rarely actually practice), then all of the worlds troubles would be solved. The world, unfortunately (or fortunately), is a complex system of complex systems. So, when someone says they know how it works, or even worse how to fix it, you can be guaranteed that person is utterly foolish. At best, these fools waste vast amounts of resources, life times of work being sunk into mad schemes to fix some or other problem. At worst, they facilitate, or become, authoritarian tyrants leaving piles of bodies in their wake. Yet, the activist still prances around, gladly telling all that will listen and some that would rather not of their virtues.
“We live in a strange time, where the activist is some sort of celebrated figure.”
How is that different to the Stockholm syndrome, as they are promoting a scam?
“If you are an activist, you cannot be a scientist. An activist has a commitment to a pre-defined set of ideals and values for which they will shape their own reality to fit. This makes them virtually incapable of being a scientist.”
Sounds like some dishonest global temperature data mannipulators, I know. They shape the temperature profile to fit their human-caused climate change narrative. This lie has been extremely effective at fooling the gullible, and in causing nations to take extremely foolish actions in a vain, unnecessary effort to control CO2.
Is it just my imagination, or do females seem more susceptible to these lies than others? In any case, supporting that cause should be good reason for lifetime unemployment for any so-called “scientist”!
Not necessarily, it’s just that most women are more photogenic than their male counterparts – the journo’s prefer to have pictures with slightly more attractive people as clickbait. Case in point – there was a news article 1-2 weeks ago with the (male) leader of this group who had chained himself to the Exxon headquarters building, I think – 1 small picture mostly of the building and I’ll bet nobody really noticed it or commented on it.
From the headline image alone, everything relies on oil for its existence
And then we get to the chosen transport
Lead from the front, Miss Rose
Educated useful idiots…
Yes, I believe that’s a good description.
Groupthink is a very powerful force in human society. It causes all sorts of problems sometimes. Humans have a innate desire to conform to the majority view, even if that majority view is wrong.
When humans lived in small tribes, the majority view was usually correct, through past experience, and contributed to the survival of the tribe. So humans have an inclination to listen to the majority view and take it as the voice of authority. Problems occur when that voice of authority is describing a false reality such as calling CO2 a dangerous gas.
Agree, accept for the educated part. They may have gotten a degree at an institution of higher learning, but their actions and behaviors fail to align with having ever learned anything useful.
Excellent work as usual, Eric, but… (and it’s a big but, so I hope you like that kind of thing)…
The ubiquitously-misquoted ‘proverb’ was in actuality a piece of dead-serious advice, from an address by Oliver Wendell Holmes to Harvard Law graduates. Addressing an imaginary young, hungry prosecutor who aspires to a seat on the activist judiciary one day, Saint Oliver says:
‘If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts. If you have the law on your side, pound the law. If you have neither, pound the man. Pound him on the table, pound [inaudible] with your fists. Then pound his business associates, past girlfriends, his pastor, and do your diligence here, gentlemen, and turn them over and pound from every angle—your only mitigating principle, in this moment, being the little voice that says: if it still looks like this guy is going to walk, I haven’t pounded enough.’
Love it 🙂
That sounds like it came right out of the Democrat playbook.
Ollie is a saint for progressives.
Wonder if Russia is funding them to get us to import more Russian oil as we cut ours off.
http://www.debunkingclimate.com/russia-articles.html
Does the Chinese Embassy in Washington have a fence? Better still, these scientists should travel to Beijing and chain themselves to some fence next to a prominent building in the city. A thousand went out and ????? came home again.
Not only are these climate change hypocrits not going to China to chain themselves to a wall in protest of China burning coal, they are not even going to mention China in their complaints. It’s a sham.
Impeached! Instantly impeached for arrogating the epithet. There are no ‘scientists’, some few do science, vastly most do not.
Falsifiability is the demarcation boundary of science from nonsense.
“Scientist rebellion”… Are they actual, real, scientists?
They aren’t scientists.
There is a definite male-female divide on climate change, isn’t there.
From her Linkin page she is also a dancer. Perhaps she will communicate the need for immediate action on the climate through interpretive dance…
“Rose Abramoff is broadly interested in the effect of global change on biogeochemical cycling in soils. As part of her doctorate research at Boston University, Dr. Abramoff studied root growth and turnover in a temperate northeastern forest and the effect of root exudates on the extracellular enzyme activity of soil microbes, using a combination of field, lab, and modeling studies.”
So essentially she is yet another “climate scientist ” who is not actually studying the climate but is convinced urgent action is needed or else.
I would imagine her tree roots will behave much the same regardless of the cause of temperature variation.
The trees are probably doing better with more plant food in the air.
Absolutely
If these people had to get a real job and put food on the table and not study/research something obscure or esoteric with state support they would have no time for protesting.
My general experience of scientists when working at a well known Guvment laboratory in Oxfordshire was that they lived in their own little world, with little understanding about life outside that little world, & I suspect that with today’s puter-model driven world, that “inner-world” is even more isolated from reality!!! Just guessing!!!
Rose Abramoff is, according to Google Scolar involved in soil biology (carbon capture in soils) etc… Whether “carbon” is really a problem: I fear she has no idea whatsoever, although she must know that CO2 is an essential component of photosynthesis, and thus of life itself, and that the earth right now is getting greener… Scientists can also get so involved in a specific research area that they lose sight of the bigger picture.
What sort of scientists are these? Physicists, geologists, Climatologists? What is their expertise formation to comment.
They specialise in junk science!
So Rose Abramoff calls herself a climate scientist. Has she ever used the scientific method, or does she run computer models all day to find the “truth”?
Amazon sells white lab coats for about $20. I guess that’s about what these “scientists” credibility is worth.
Demand it from the battlefield known as Ukraine.
A real scientist would be clamoring for some evidence that CO2 is anything other than a benign gas.
This preoccupation with lab coats is cringeworthy. Why not wear their academic regalia — three stripes and you are a Ph.D. … or a sergeant?
It the typical leftist mindset of being fixated on authority figures and elites knowing what’s best for everyone else. It’s why the left is so prone to authoritarianism and fascism.
“Dr. Abramoff studied root growth and turnover in a temperate northeastern forest and the effect of root exudates on the extracellular enzyme activity of soil microbes, using a combination of field, lab, and modeling studies.”
She isnt a climate scientists, she is a microbiologist, specialising in soil. She is also a fool. CO2 is good for the planet.
I’m familiar with that old saying, but I always assumed that you could hit the table with your fist. These folks seemed to take it literally when someone said, “use your head.”
“Scientist Rebellion” piqued me up briefly. But, no science. And what kind of rebellion is a protest for vastly expanded, fascistic government?