New Scientist plumbs new lows. The magazine has become its own self-parody. Do they see the irony of inviting a PR expert to accuse groups of committing the crime of, wait for it, … using a PR expert?
…he’s the advertiser being offered free editorial space within the one-sided propaganda that masquerades as journalism
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hold any elitist ideas that only people with science degrees can write for New Scientist (the magazine and its staff have pretty much proven how useless a science degree can be). My issue with them is that Richard Littlemore (a PR expert) has essentially written a smear-by-association piece, which should have no place in a real scientific magazine. It’s not like Littlemore is just an unhealthy part of a big healthy debate — instead he’s the advertiser being offered free editorial space within the one-sided propaganda that masquerades as journalism.
New Scientist may think climate science is a moral imperative, but they don’t have room for the climate scientists who have published peer reviewed criticisms of their favorite theory. Nor do they have space to tell the extraordinary story of the grassroots independent retiree scientists who’ve busted the biggest scientific scam since the Piltdown Man.
Instead of PR hacks, why doesn’t New Scientist let Patrick Michaels write a column, or Roy Spencer, or John Christie? Couldn’t they do a feature on Richard Lindzen, Steven McIntyre, Anthony Watts, or Henrik Svensmark? Evidently, smear-by-innuendo is more important to this rag than scientific evidence and logical constructs.
Hypocrisy-in-action
Littlemore claims people are trying to “cloud” scientific debates, and then does all the things he accuses others of. It’s psychological projection run riot. His contribution to scientific knowledge amounts to throwing stones in the air which could just as easily land on him. He talks of “Manufacturing Doubt” like it’s a sophisticated ploy used by marketing gurus instead of a cheap trick that even preschoolers use. Sure, creating confusion and discussing irrelevant points is a strategy that some corporations use to hide the truth. But it seems to work pretty well for popular science magazines too. Anyone want to hide the collapse of their favorite theory? (I’ll help you understand our climate by informing you of ancient tobacco company PR techniques, OK?)
They’ve produced a whole Special Report based on name-calling, backed up by old irrelevant information, and penned in part by a person with an undeclared conflict of interest.
As ad homs go, Littlemore is firing blanks in any case. He’s beavering away, trying to cast doubt on all climate skeptics by associating them with Big-Tobacco, and a corporation called ICE that no longer exists. He’s got no evidence that current skeptics are funded by big-oil (and this skeptic sure isn’t), only vague allusions and innuendo. On the “Manufacturing Doubt” scoreboard there’s a big tick for New Scientist: Seed the idea that anyone who speaks against the editor’s favorite hypothesis is funded by vested interests.
Littlemore can’t even expose modern conflicts of interest (because those all go against his Team). Instead he does a form of ad hom so old it’s archaeological, and even at the time it was hardly a crime. The defunct ICE committee’s dastardly purpose was (shock me) to “reposition climate change as a theory not a fact”. Since the idea of man-made global disaster is technically not even a theory, but a speculative hypothesis, you could argue that ICE was doing AGW a favor.
And Littlemore leers vaguely at these old vested interests without mentioning that he has proven and obvious vested interests of his own. He runs DeSmogBlog, supported by James Hoggan and Associates, whose clients include David Suzuki and renewable energy companies. The DeSmog smear-a-scientist blog’s supporters also include EnergyBoom – which makes money when people put their cash into renewable investments (i.e. the kind with not much energy, and definitely no boom). Not only is Littlemore scientifically illogical and illiterate, he’s a hypocrite, and so is New Scientist.
Curiously, to “balance” up the toxic ad homs, New Scientist throw in some pat truisms of science, which they hail in theory but toss out the window in practice. Things like, Living in Denial: The truth is our only weapon. Sure. Let’s talk about “truth” in a magazine that’s still defending the Hockey Stick fully five years after it crashed and burned and even after the IPCC has gone quiet on it. “Truth” is telling people that hundreds of studies show a medieval warm period, and that Michael Mann’s graph depends on a species of tree which grows faster as CO2 rises. “Truth” is printing photos of surface stations measuring temperatures next to vast tarmacs.
As the rest of the world shifts the goalposts and pretends to be concerned about something else, I predict New Scientist will be the last “mag” standing, still forlornly waving the AGW flag.
Living in Denial? This formerly great magazine sure is. They’ve produced a whole Special Report based on name-calling, backed up by old irrelevant information, and penned in part by a person with an undeclared conflict of interest. The Age of Ad homs continues, and the decline of science communication accelerates.
Dear Jo Nova,
You mention the deliberate hoax of Piltdown Man which was used in textbooks and museum displays for at least 50 years AFTER IT WAS PROVED TO BE A SCAM.
That is why this nonsense of AGW and hysterical CC is not going away any time soon. There are too many people, journalists, scientists, politicians, media personalities and presenters etc. invested in massive careers that rely on this generated non crisis and who just have to keep the faith in this nonsense. It is truly their god and religion that they constantly pay homage to as they ” save the planet “.
[snip… that’s too off topic]
30
Science isn’t an adherence to a truth. This would be substituting religion instead of science. Science is here to reveal amazement not to stick for any truth that isn’t amazing any more.
30
[snip sorry Eddy… you were right.. it was off topic and we took out the original you responded too ]
Now, back to the matter at hand.
It is a disgrace that New Scientists could lower the bar to such an abysmal level. However, when there is a threat to the taxpayer funded gravy train the proponents of AGW will stoop as low as they can go. Fortunately, as in limbo dancing, you can only go so low before you collapse. I believe that in the future bloggers will be using this Article from the New Scientist to illustrate just how far science sank during the great global warming scam just as CAGW skeptics now refer to the Newsweek article from the 1970s on the impending ice age which never occurred.
30
The problem with “belief” is that it blinds us to the obvious. Obvious as in observational reality. We color and adjust what we see and feel by our own perspective. A perspective that is anything but neutral as it should and must be for an unbiased and realistic viewpoint to be created.
The scientific method was devised to save and protect man from his leanings towards “belief” (either supernatural or his own particular prejudices). We see in the response of the alarmists that they have not only underestimated the strength of scepticism, but also their own propensity to be swayed by an agenda that purports to have altruism at its heart. They have been duped by what are likely well-meaning but nonetheless blinkered individuals. That we accept this as cautionary so that we do not follow that same path.
30
To Eddy Aruda 3:
“I have some bad news for you. The vast majority of christians believe in evolution. Most of those who believe in Creationism belong to the small minority of christians often referred to as fundamentalists. The scientific evidence that the the Universe is over 12 billion years old is pretty solid.”
Yes, the new God isn’t the manual worker with soiled hands from the creation. He is a programmer who made the word as a self-installing fully automatic program. 😀
30
Is this a sign of desperation? NS bringing in the PR spin merchants just like after the Hockey Stick exposure Fenton Communications were bought in to set up Real Climate.
Maybe its desperation on two fronts –the AGW guys and NS circulation issues ( the latter is pure speculation on my part ).
But I don’t think it will have any affect as the wider public is much more aware now and since Climategate one is not a social pariah if you question AGW
30
all CAGW advocacy now seems to revolve around insulting sceptics. The Guardian doesn’t say Casper is a leader of UKYCC and headed the UK Youth Delegation to Copenhagen:
25 May: Guardian: Young climate campaigners adopt an MP
Young climate campaigners adopt an MP
Posted by Casper ter Kuile
To coincide with the Queen’s speech later today, the UK Youth Climate Coalition (UKYCC) is launching a long-term campaign that will see all 650 members of parliament in the UK “adopted” by a young person in their constituency, in an attempt to keep climate change at the top of their agenda.
Young people will be given tips about how to create compelling and convincing arguments, how to meet MPs and stop hijackings by overly talkative MPs, and how to use social media to spread their message after the meeting…
Local groups will be formed in key constituencies like Eastleigh, which is represented by the Liberal Democrat secretary of state for energy and climate change, Chris Huhne. Huhne said it was great to see such an “imaginative” campaign…
It’s true that a small number of parliamentarians remain unconvinced of climate science, particularly amongst the older Conservative backbenchers. But this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, argues UKYCC co-director, Alex Farrow:
“There are still a lot of people out there who are confused or hesitant about building a clean-energy economy or what exactly causes climate change. It’s important that young people in this country are able to convince their friends and family for the need to act. So who better to practice on than someone firmly set in their ways? We’ll be explaining to our campaigners that they should see these MPs as old, argumentative uncles at Christmas lunch. They might be wrong, but you still need to get on with them.”..
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2010/may/25/youth-climate-adopt-an-mp
“youth climate coalition” is connected to Power Shift and, whilst there is little on the UK climate coalition online, u get a good idea of the YCC “connections” in the Australian Youth Climate Coalition 2009 Annual Report:
http://www.aycc.org.au/aycc/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/Annual-Report-09v3.pdf
30
I used to subscribe to New Scientist but after multiple, unpublished “Letters to the Editor” pointing out AGW flaws like; temperature can’t be mediated by CO2, or that radiative forcing breaks the Second Law of Thermodynamics, I began to wonder how much of their content was real science and how much was propaganda. It is disturbing to see how deeply the media brainwashing of the public has penetrated. I used to believe in AGW, now I realize it is a snake oil swindle; I wonder what else I consider sound science which will turn out to be false?
30
Ice core rings.
This IS on topic because it raises other valid reasons for doubting the AGW religion. Many things that creationists bring up are ignored because of the source but have another look at this one.
I would like to know if there has been any CO2 analysis done in this location and at that depth:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ue8rVSmrmZ0
Ignoring the source what do we think of this? Not the creation vs evolution part but the depth of date part.
10
The New Science article was indeed more religion than science in its content. The CAGW crowd has indeed morphed into a quasi-religion or cult. What I find most shocking is the abandonment of the most basic and elementary of scientific principals. One of my all time favorite quotes is “Skepticism is the highest of duties, and blind faith the one unpardonable sin.” ~ T. H. Huxley.
What also amazes me is the lack of deductive reasoning employed by the New Scientists. As Jo has pointed out in previous posts, the temp records are being continuously adjusted and almost always in a manner to show earlier temperatures as being cooler and recent temperatures as being warmer. This is being done in most cases to account for UHIE. What is obvious to me is that if you adjust the raw data then the recent temperatures SHOULD be adjusted downwards to remove the bias created by the UHIE effect. The stooges in the MSM never seem to figure that out. New Scientists still regurgitates the Mann hockey stick as if they were quoting holy writ! The Wegman report is unwavering in its demolition of MBH98. The Yamal outlier tree scandal is mind boggling for not only is it brazen but it is an insult to the intelligence of any human being with a triple digit IQ. Briffa, Mann and the rest of their little schyster cabal have squandered taxpayer dollars that could have been better spent elsewhere dealing with the real problems facing humanity Yet, here we are in this supposedly enlightened age dealing with those who would treat skeptics like medieval witches.
It was, is and always will be about the money. As the scandals continue to unfold and the magnitude of the waste becomes apparent to everyone things will continue to get worse for the CAGW crowd. They express 90% “confidence” in the IPCC report? I would expect better than that from a group of confidence men!
20
BTW, I don’t know who gave me the thumbs down for my post at # 3 but thank you. When I held my first management position somebody scrawled a derogatory epitaph about me on the bathroom wall. When I whined to my boss about it he said, “Are you kidding, you aren’t doing a good job around here until you see your name on it!”.
Well, gotta make a beer run. My brother is going to be here soon and he won’t be very happy when he sees that I drank the last beer!
Check with y’all later! 😉
20
there must be some way to force CAGW-believers to use “catastrophic” and “man-made” when arguing their case. to me it’s like false advertising claims and there are laws against that, aren’t there?
25 May: Washington Times Editorial: Tax dollars perpetuate global-warming fiction
$6 million study is used to lobby for cap-and-tax
Three years ago, Congress appropriated $5,856,600 for the National Academy of Sciences to complete a climate-change study. This bureaucratic attempt to cook the books, which was completed last week, may be too late to save this dying religion.
The academy now offers the taxpayer-funded research for download in three separate sections for $44 each. The first volume presents the case that human activities are warming the planet and that this “poses significant risks.” A second report urges that a cap-and-trade taxing system be implemented to reduce so-called greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The final section of the study explores strategies on adapting to the “reality” of climate change, meaning purported “extreme weather events like heavy precipitation and heat waves.”
None of the big-government recommendations are worth the 1,089 pages of presumably recycled paper on which they are to be printed if planetary warming is actually a phenomenon beyond human control, so the first volume is of primary interest. “Advancing the Science of Climate Change” asserts that the Earth’s temperature has risen over the past 100 years and that human activities have resulted in sharp increases in carbon dioxide. The coincidence of these facts on their own, of course, proves nothing. The Earth has been as warm or warmer in past periods, such as the medieval and Roman warm periods, long before the internal combustion engine and coal plants were around to take the heat for a particularly sweltering summer day…
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/may/25/tax-dollars-perpetuate-global-warming-fiction/
20
Science suffers from one major disadvantage in the competition against all the various forms of supernatural belief: it’s not very romantic. Think of God and the image that spring to mind will probably include a white-bearded patriarch of imposing aspect. He can be kind or cruel depending on who did or didn’t say their prayers the night before. Think of the occult and you usually get a creature that is a)immortal and b)averse to sunlight. Think of UFOs, well, they either want to make us a part of the Galactic Community of Planets or eat us.
Science by contrast is generally regarded as cold. Antiseptic labs and test tubes.
Clearly I’m employing caricatures here. But I don’t think it’s unfair to say that most non-scientific minds would contain them and use them. GW played to the emotions – and now that the rort is unraveling the danger is that science will be tarnished and dumped in with the other assorted mumbo-jumbos.
I sometimes read my horoscope in the morning paper and I think Earth Versus The Flying Saucers was a great piece of entertainment. I’d like to think that I eat enough garlic to ensure my breath repels vampires too. But I’m also aware that it was impartial testing of hypotheses that delivered the many comforts of modern life, and will in time carry us from planet Earth out to the stars.
A scientist who starts playing on the public’s fears isn’t a scientist at all. He’s a huckster.
30
This is comical. They get worse and worse as they get more desperate. To whom do they preach? It seems like their own side is their best audience.
What I worry about is what Pat discloses at post 12. Where money can influence legislation that’s where our trouble is.
20
I still subscribe, but I winced when that issue arrived (I’m currently reading it, haven’t got the courage up to read the Littlemore bit yet). I’d cancel if there was a decent alternative.
However the article which got up my nose most recently was from the previous week. NS reported the story about melting of floating icebergs also covered by WUWT, see link at bottom.
What NS did was report the alarming sea level rise. Overall melting of 746 cubic kilometres per year! (Oh no, the poley bears are all going to diieeee)
What NS didn’t do was mention that the amount of this rise (see headline) was a catastrophic 0.049mm.
Drives me nuts when selective reporting like this is done for fairly obvious political reasons in a science mag.
“Melting icebergs boost sea-level rise”
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627594.900-melting-icebergs-boost-sealevel-rise.html
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/04/30/climate-craziness-of-the-week-msm-jumps-on-alarming-headline/
20
Eddy,
Have a couple of thumbs up on me just to let whoever did the thumbs down know it doesn’t stand up well.
Roy
20
ROFLMAO!
After they snip out all the nasty words then produce,it might be a paragraph long!
He he…..
It begs the question:
If truth is the ONLY weapon,why use ad homonyms and name calling?
I detect irony here:
BWAHAHAHAHA!!!
But of course he does not provide any credible examples.
I am startled by it all.
I never heard of these two groups Richard is crying about:
What the hell!
Skepticism is a dirty word these days.
I have not accepted money,material or even a single contact with “big oil” or “big tobacco”.
I pay for my feeble blog and active forum costs out of my own pocket,not ever asked for donations either.
Meanwhile Richard pockets a lot support by Environmentalists and other “big greenie” groups.
His presentation is so skimpy that I wonder if that is why he does not try to explain about any broken laws or libelous actions in his silly complaints.That is because there are no violations and their influence was actually small over the years.Like I just stated,never heard of ICE and Tassc before and I go all over the net every day and have been for 13 years now.
The man is not rational and will eventually have his day when he will realize that he is not wearing his pants.
Remember this smackdown?
Raise the White Flag: Climate alarmist concedes total defeat to climate realist in rare debate
Richard,I will always remember that drubbing you got when you debated a skeptic.
20
New Scientist magazine asleep at the wheel?
http://co2realist.com/2010/01/17/new-scientist-magazine-asleep-at-the-wheel/
10
Dear Jennifer Parfenovic,
You got it backwards. The skeptics are sworn disciples of scientific empiricism and as such are a Biblical literalist’s worst nightmare. Don’t be fooled by their often “social conservative” pablum they serve up. These people are serious enemies of pre-Enlightenment value systems! On the other hand there is much for a God-fearing Christian fundamentalist to admire in the CAGW “theory”. In fact, its metacognitively unexamined foundation lies solidly upon the greatest themes of the Abrahamic tradition.
CAGW religion has a Garden of Eden. A pre-industrial paradise where mankind lived in Rousseauian communion with nature in perfect balance.
CAGW religion has a Fall from Grace caused by the temptation to eat from the tree of knowledge (the event of scientific progress caused by The Enlightenment) and subsequent expulsion from this pre-industrial Garden of Eden as humankind through the evil knowledge of industrial capitalism tamed nature. This Original Sin now taints us all unless we allow ourselves to be baptised at the altar of environmental remorse by ritualistically voting Green, changing our light bulbs and owning at least one high mileage SUV. Even then humankind is filthy with sin.
CAGW religion has great, thundering prophets who clearly envision the end result of the gluttonous sins of capitalist freedom. Naturally, there is a great apocalypse coming too. Of course, since the CAGW religion is secular the coming paradise will be here on Earth, a collectivist utopia where nature, as determined by priestly technocratic class, will rule over humanity enforced by Gaia’s groupthink police (ie the ABC, New Scientist, Nature, Greenpeace etc.)
Even the tautology of “Climate Change” is at its foundation a Creationist concept cloaked in appropriated scientific-sounding jargon. Climate Change is unnatural and should be stopped. There must be an optimum “climate stasis” humankind can enforce. It’s a variety of creationism where the creator instead of being God is man. Man has become the Godhead, or more precisely the “conscious awareness of Gaia.”
As a scientific empiricist who revels in the existential freedom afford by the apparent tabula rasa of the universe, I have a theory about the AGW faithful, indeed anyone of any faith at all:
I believe the CAGW faithful are repulsed by the chronic existential doubt that lies at the heart of the Scientific Method. That unbearable lightness of being, where every known thing hinges upon its temporal usefulness in explaining observed data. Where no hypothesis is greater than its weakest implication. Where the world has no transcendent meaning other than empirical literalism. The universe, simply, coldly just “is” regardless of “how it should be.” Imagine that there is no heaven, above us only sky and no hell below us. The faithful cannot.
Instead, in their vain search for meaning and authority they have subconsciously regressed to the great mythological themes of the Abrahamic tradition trussed up with the truthiness of scientific jargon to present the most spectacularly panoramic post-modern narrative of all time, which – if perfected – will have no testable implications. But moral order and outrage abound, soothing the savage soul.
Thus the CAGW mythology answers all the questions that good religion must. Who are we? Where do we come from? How did we get here? And with that “the mythopoeia is settled” answering the final and greatest question with force of pure high moral dungeon.
What should we do?
10
Pat @ 7
I don’t know why, but while reading your post, I got this flashback of an old movie newsreel.
There’s Adolf Hitlter. He’s looking old and tired and creepy. He’s giving medals to a thin line of Hitler Youth. He leans forward and caresses the cheek of an 11 year old “soldier”.
That’s the sort of people who get children to do their dirty work for them.
Cheers,
Speedy
20
Wes @ 19, Jennifer.
I look at it like this. Science tells us how. Religion tells us why. Both are questions that we feel a need to answer, but Religion cannot tell us “how” and Science cannot answer the deeper philosophical questions (the “why”).
Applying the wrong discipline to the wrong question is what gives us Creationism (using religion to explain how life began) and AGW (using science to put one’s existence into a cosmic perspective).
I have no internal conflict with being a scientist of faith. In fact, the more we understand the intricate beauty of the physical world, the more we glimpse into the mind of God…
Both science and religion are a means of seeking truth. Where the proponents of science (or religion) found their discipline on lies (e.g. New Scientist, IPPC etc) then they are not doing a service to humanity.
As St. John once said – “The truth will set us free” – what do you think New Scientist is doing to us?
Cheers,
Speedy
10
wow!
andrew bolt has this, with pic of the Vic Dept Sustainability & Environment inviting Vic public servants to a workshop dealing with climate change denialism!
with Paul Holper, CSIRO… !
Friday 18 June 2010
Public servants trained to fight scepticism
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/public_servants_trained_to_fight_scepticism/#commentsmore
there’s no separate link for the Invite image, so u need to go there. what next?
20
No, this is not a recent quotation.
It is a paraphrase of an opinion piece written by Randolph Bourne, around 1919, about America’s entry into the First World War. All I have done is remove references to war, and replaced them with the roughly equivalent phrase for climate change.
Surprisingly, it still works today.
Which is a good thing in some respects, because the marriage of Advertising to Public Relations (nee Propaganda) has not developed any faster than peoples intellectual ability to see through it, if they try.
To stretch the metaphor – let us hope that the marriage does not produce Brainwashing as an offspring.
10
Perhaps they should change their name to: “NeoScientist a reflection on the new political “science” method.
10
Damn good article Jo.
It’s a pity people like Littlemore don’t have the same logic or integrity.
10
pat:
May 27th, 2010 at 7:38 am
The sad thing Pat is that my grandchildren are having the AGW garbage indoctrinated into them in UK schools, despite the High Court judge’s ruling that A. Gore’s fantasy film should be shown to have many errors.
I have been successful in teaching my children to be sceptical and to search out the truth and they have made sure their children follow the same path. The problem is the teachers who do not follow the ruling and openly criticize/insult my children at parent/teacher meetings! Lets just say I have been banned by my youngsters from visiting the school in question.
What on earth has happened to teachers? I am sure this once honourable profession still has a few dedicated, honest people but on the whole it appears to have been taken over by the left and seems hell bent on turning out sheep! (Rant Off!)
As for N.S.! I would put it this way, if the magazine (!) puts out one article such as the one Jo points out, it would seem to me to be not worthy of having the word “Scientist” in its name and as such is not worth the money. I feel extremely sorry for the good scientists that produce for this rag!
20
SUBJECT: LEVY PLAN FOR NSW COASTAL RESIDENTS
Have a read of the following story from the Sydney Morning Herald which is based in the FRAUD OF GLOBAL WARMING & THE LIES ABOUT RISING SEA LEVELS!
If you goto the website for this “National Sea Change Taskforce”, which is http://www.seachangetaskforce.org.au/Home.html and read the “2010 Australian Coastal Councils Conference report” (http://www.seachangetaskforce.org.au/Publications/ReportAustralianCoastalCouncilsConference15April2010.pdf)
you will see in there that the “Coast and Climate Change Council” is chaired by no other than the GLOBAL WARMING ALARMIST AND LIER Tim Flannery!!!
Clearly this is yet another attempt local & state government to implement a tax on coastal residents under the disguise of the GLOBAL WARMING FRAUD!
THIS MUST BE STOPPED AT ALL COSTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!
THIS IS GOING TO BE A HUGE ELECTION ISSUE!!
All of PENNY WRONG’S/TIM FLANNERY’S SCARES ABOUT RISING SEA LEVELS HAVE BEEN DEBUNKED!
20
SUBJECT: LEVY PLAN FOR NSW COASTAL RESIDENTS more info
The link to the relevant Sydney Morning Herald article is :-
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/levy-planned-for-coastal-residents-20100520-vpdr.html
10
Public servants trained to fight scepticism
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/public_servants_trained_to_fight_scepticism/
10
Ronnell: 26 – I was watching Rick Stein cooking show the other day and he was in Sri-Lanka and visited this guy who lived on Taprobane Island – The house was built in the 1920s by Sir Thomas Lipton of Lipton Tea fame. The only access is to walk to the island through the tide.
http://www.taprobaneisland.com/taprobane.html
Surely if the seas were rising the island would have been cut off years ago.
10
Pat #21
They’ve hit the big time – See WUWT
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/05/26/australias-victorian-government-creates-seminar-to-deal-with-denialism/
10
pat @ 21:
WUWT got wind of the deal with a climate denier seminar as well:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/05/26/australias-victorian-government-creates-seminar-to-deal-with-denialism/
And there I thought the CSIRO forbade their employees speaking out about such issues. I guess it is OK if they speak out on the “right” side of the debate.
10
The Victorian Public Service Seminar to deal with FACTS(they call it denialism) has an email address of “[email protected]”.
Why not send them some emails abour the TRUE SCIENTIFIC FACTS relating to this GLOBAL WARMING FRAUD?
I have sent them quite a few so far……
20
I stopped purchasing New Scientist on 20th November last year for obvious reasons. Over the last few weeks, doing my daily ‘constitutional’, I started re-reading all last years issues and counted all the pro AGW articles, varying from 2 to 8 per issue. There were no contrary items. I looked to see who the editors around the world are, and no, there is no list of names. Today, I found a September 2007 issue, there were no articles mentioning AGW. Lo and behold, here there is a list with the names of lots of Editors and contributors and Science journalists. Why the change?
20
To T Harley 33:
Then what is the next step in the mag development? I guess I know it as I lived under a totalitarian communist rule. If the rulers decided a magazine that dealt science, technology, music etc. would become their trumpet then usually the sells of the magazine subjected to the ideology dropped. But they had a recipe for solving it. There were schools to deal it. The student who didn’t have a subscription of the recommended mag had a bad luck as he didn’t help his teacher’s quota for the subscription recruitment and the student had also problems with sources for his seminary works that were assigned on the ideological magazines articles.
The new carbon socialism that should succeed the obsolete Red and Brown ones surely gets down to the proven practices of its predecessors.
20
The irrational , frenzied zealotry and the vitriolic attacks of the “true believers of CAGW” on the “heretic deniers” is ,as far as human behavior goes ,nothing new ,as supported by this exasperated comment from another sceptic from another time:
“No longer do God or nature do aught, but witches everything”. Jesuit Friedrich Spee 1591-1635
Substitute CO2 for witches and You`ve got a fair idea of the frustration that this rational minded clergyman had for the deranged and dogmatic zealotry that drove the witch-hunts of that time . Apart from the archaic sentence structure of the interpretation it could easily be the complaint of any sceptic of Our time about the whole CAGW cult.
the only changes you need to make are:
Witches -> CO2
The Devil -> Oil or coal companies
Princes -> Polititians
Magistrates -> The Media
Commissioner -> Al Gore and the like
Accusers -> ( insert name of your most annoying “Enviro” group)
Heretics in
league with
the devil -> Any who think the accused is innocent
Add in the confessing/not confessing under torture is proof of guilt mindset and it`s all too easy to see the modern parallels with the old “Shrinking/Expanding of glaciers caused by global warming” headlines . Anyway , I think I`ve made My point but if You want to make further unnervingly similar comparisions go ahead below :-
excerpt of Spee’s Cautio criminalis
http://www.sacred-texts.com/pag/twp/twp10.htm
10
Of interest is this article on medical publications,the French reviews found that medical publications are on a par with climate science.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6406JW20100525?f
10
So much media bias is with anything AGW but very little is reported the other way.
Politically motivated? Yes, if they want to keep subsities flowing and being on the incrowd to access to government matters.
Pretty hard for government and religion to be separate when the church still has a great deal to loose.
Governments have spent a great deal in the last couple of years and NEED a new tax to help get out of the huge debts. The easiest way is to fool the public into a crisis for the sake of tax money to fight the crisis. By using inadequate and inefficient wind turbines on the excuse of helping the environment, they create a small base of
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So much media bias is with anything AGW but very little is reported the other way.
Politically motivated? Yes, if they want to keep subsities flowing and being on the incrowd to access to government matters.
Pretty hard for government and religion to be separate when the church still has a great deal to loose.
Governments have spent a great deal in the last couple of years and NEED a new tax to help get out of the huge debts. The easiest way is to fool the public into a crisis for the sake of tax money to fight the crisis. By using inadequate and inefficient wind turbines on the excuse of helping the environment, they create a small base of “look at what we are doing to save the planet” hype. The IPCC is a big part of this propaganda machine as an excuse. Does not matter about the science at all, just the ability to have the background to back new policies.
I had to find my own truth of science and had a great deal of garbage to sift to find the answers many of us having been looking for about how this planet was created, why we are here, and how these many systems interact together.
It just happened that climate also falls into this and 95% of it is incorrect.
10
I wonder will the “journal” in question survive. ?
Of course, but under a new name, reminisent of the old.
New Pseudo-Scientist
Obviously..
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Our biggest mistake in science is that we use snap shot in time science. Day to day, minute by minute snap shots of readings, history, events, science, etc. All individualized into categories with very little interaction overlap.
Many us and them mindsets have created much disputing and a great deal of mistrust. Our social structure will fail as greed and corruption for monetary gain or social status is a balancing act.
Our food supplies rely on dependable weather that we think we can forcast and when that fails, unrest and civil disobedience will fall apart.
We think we know how the climate works but it incorrect to what this planet has accomplished and achieved. Time travel, demonsional shifts, fiction are our cruches that have no place in science.
Science is a joke of pick and choose the outcome and not follow the pathes that actual science has taken.
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Jo, excellent article, as usual.
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Another Ian @30,
This comment from the wattsupwiththat page you linked seems to be about the way it’s going.
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Roy I think that those of us on the warming side of the fence can take great heart from the 1st ghandi quote.
The second applies well to the massive number of skeptical blogs and websites on the topic.
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Matt
You really have given yourself away. There isn’t a fence, there is only uncertain science. Consensus is not science, and nor is propaganda. Nor, as it happens, are the IPCC reports (packed with errors and propaganda) or Michael Mann’s dendropaleoclimatology. The earth is getting warmer, but we don’t know how much, as the records are inadequate, and we don’t know to what extent man-made CO2 emissions are the cause, as there is uncertainty about the relationship between man-made CO2 and the naturally occurring component. We don’t have accurate estimates of the warmings of the Roman or Medieval Warm Periods or the rate of emergence from the Little Ice Age, so we don’t know whether the current warming is unprecedented or needs to be explained by CO2.
That is why the brainwashing is so sinister.
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I recently called out the editor of the local newspaper who stooped to the typical name calling of those who disagree with him:
http://co2realist.com/2010/05/08/alex-miller-sickening-me-with-alarmist-propaganda/
He actually commented and defended the practice:
http://co2realist.com/2010/05/08/alex-miller-sickening-me-with-alarmist-propaganda/#comments
Guess he’s been to the Joe Romm school of PR.
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And you haven’t mentioned Debora MacKenzie’s “Living in Denial” article.
I love the following paragraph
Mentally disturbed eh? you are definitely an instigator so this one paragraph dismisses all your arguments and points of view – for all time.
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See Jo’s newest blog; http://joannenova.com.au/2010/05/throwing-the-hate-crime-grenade/comment-page-1/#comment-53476
Recall how popular lobotomy was as a treatment method for mental health problems. Perhaps that will be the treatment next suggested (by warmists) to end denialism?
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Breaking news – well it’s old news actually, but I’m not sure how “old”..
Excerpt,
” NASA no longer shows any greenhouse gas “backradiation”
in its relevant graphic representation of the energy budget of the Earth. ”
Read more at Suite101: Apollo Mission: A Giant Leap Contradicting Greenhouse Gas Theory
http://climatology.suite101.com/article.cfm/apollo-mission-a-giant-leap-to-discredit-greenhouse-gas-theory#ixzz0p9dPYSap
See,
http://eosweb.larc.nasa.gov/EDDOCS/images/Erb/components2.gif
Who is in denial…………
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Good find Derek!
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‘nor does truth become error because nobody sees it.’
Matt, I quite agree!
The truth about Natural Climate Change currently going on around us, will never become error.
…unless you and yours take away our rights and freedoms, and write the history books Your way.
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Thank you Mark D. It was Richard111 at GWS that found the article it was linked to in.
I am not sure IF the budget is genuine, so I am a bit cautious of it so far,
BUT if it is genuine then the implications are obvious and MASSIVE.
I will try one or two “contacts” who may know if it is genuine,
if anyone else knows, or can check, then please let us all know.
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Whilst checking in regards to post 47, here is a bit of humour.
They say all good jokes have a bit of the truth in them,
well this seems to fit the bill.
http://www.thespoof.com/news/magazine/spoofgate_climate_scientists_put_poor_spoof_writers_out_of_work_6468.htm
SpoofGate: Climate Scientists Put Poor Spoof Writers Out of Work
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Derek look here: (it seems authentic) http://eosweb.larc.nasa.gov/EDDOCS/radiation_facts.html Scroll down and you’ll see NASA and the responsible person listed along with “Last Updated: Fri Sep 28 2007”. Also this is the last sentence:
You might also consider that NASA has other similar discussions here: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/EnergyBalance/ by Rebecca Lindsey January 14, 2009 which does still show GHG back radiation.
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Sorry, I meant to add: “as far as the graph is concerned” to the above.
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I followed your second link Mark D – thanks “normal service” (and funding presumably) is resumed…
” The amount of heat radiated from the atmosphere to the surface (sometimes called “back radiation”)
is equivalent to 100 percent of the incoming solar energy. ”
I wonder how NASA measured that…….
I wonder if there is a story in the dates. ?
The first budget also has this,
“This absorbed energy is then emitted both to space and back towards the Earth’s surface.”
Yet the budget does not show it? I wonder if the above excerpt was a later addition. ?
Is there any way to trace / or ar there records of the edits, in what was taken out, / altered / added?
btw – I had a look at the budget on page 6 of the second link.
The surface apparently recieves, 23+23+48+7+100= 201% of solar radiation.
Yet,
radiated back out to space is, 29+71= 100% of solar radiation.
Which presumably gives a tau of 1.
tau as I understand it means number of times an emitted photon is reflected back to the earth’s surface before escaping to space.
Yet most times it is mentioned tau is between 1.87 or 2.33 or thereabouts.
Given the speed that photons move at, the speed of light, I suppose tau must be a whole number dependent upon retaining the heat long enough to explain the reduced rate of cooling due to the suposed greenhouse effect. But that would be a blooming enourmous number, wouldn’t it, even if the greenhouse effect only delayed heat escape by a few seconds.? 186,000 miles per second in an atmosphere a lot less than 50 miles deep.
AND,
A heat build up of 1% of solar incoming radiation, which is 3.4W/m2.
– ie, 3.4W/m2 is far too much, it “should” be 0.9W/m2 and “AGW” can not accout for where that is anyways.
Two NASA budgets, niether of which seem to add up to the present AGW paradigm?
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David S:
“The earth is getting warmer, but we don’t know how much
as the records are inadequate
we don’t know to what extent man-made CO2 emissions are the cause
there is uncertainty about the relationship between man-made CO2 and the naturally occurring component
We don’t have accurate estimates of the warmings of the Roman or Medieval Warm Periods
or the rate of emergence from the Little Ice Age
we don’t know whether the current warming is unprecedented or needs to be explained by CO2.
That is why the brainwashing is so sinister.”
Indeed lol.
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My post 54 from “The surface apparently recieves” to “where that is anyways” – Please ignore.
My mistake / confusion, regarding something else I was doing.
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MattB,
Interesting quote, that. I included it to see if it would get any comment. Who should pop up but MattB?
Be careful that you don’t confuse the objective to which true and false can be applied, with the subjective to which it cannot be applied.
True and false are unequivocal. True: your name is Matt. False: you are the Prime Minister of Australia. See what I mean?
The subjective is not amenable to the lack of equivocation implicit in the concepts of true and false. True: there is a God who created the universe. I may claim that, as many do, but I think you see the problem.
Global warming is in the subjective camp all the way. Yet the claim to have the truth is made continually.
Science does not know and cannot claim to know the truth. Science can only question. The global warming debate hangs on the weight of evidence, not truth.
I wonder a bit if Gandhi was making the same mistake when he made that statement!
Chew on that for a while and let me know what you think.
Roy
PS,
You misspelled Gandhi.
RH
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Nicely said Roy, I give you a thumbs up.
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I’d like to join papertiger in the You-Need-to-Live-in-the-USA-in-Order-to-Appreciate-This Department. There’s an expression that describes the nasty game that New Scientist is playing: New Age McCarthyism. In the updated version, evil scientific heretics replace the Commies of the old version from the 1950s.
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Mark,
The unstated implication of error on the part of skeptics in MattB’s response was all too obvious. So I had to give him a reminder about objective vs. subjective.
I wonder if he’ll respond.
Thanks for the vote of confidence.
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Great Post Jo!
I cancelled my subscription to New Scientist a couple of years ago. I pointed out that editorialising on the morality of the Gulf War, or on the financial state of Wall Street was not in my opinion anything that a quality Science Magazine should be doing. I also pointed out that New Scientist was missing out on the great science story of our time – the fascinating scientific debate on the Greenhouse Effect. Instead of reporting the debate, New Scientist was taking a position. I had found that the Economist had better science reporting than New Scientist, and that it was also better on the politics and economics.
Finally I ended with “Publish this if you dare. I won’t be reading it.”
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Jo, you say “Instead of PR hacks, why doesn’t New Scientist let Patrick Michaels write a column, or Roy Spencer, or John Christie? Couldn’t they do a feature on Richard Lindzen, Steven McIntyre, Anthony Watts, or Henrik Svensmark?”
I suggested something along those lines a couple of years ago and getting no response, I gave up my subscription. I am surprised they have any subscribers left.
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I’ve been reading the “Special Report/Denial” section (p36) in the New Scientist. It is really quite confused. Author Shermer does clearly point out that belief in cAGW vs not-cAGW is not like a vote that settles political differences of opinion. But he fails to note that that the attempt to shut down discussion of cAGW by appeal to consensus is exactly that: a claim that there’s been a “vote” and cAGW won (of course, there wasn’t even a vote, except possibly among supporters of the party that claims to have won).
No, Shermer wants things to be settled on the evidence. The trouble with deniers, he says, is that they employ “confirmation bias”. So this is how it works according to Shermer (he implies this, without explicitly saying it). As a denier, I believe that cAGW is false, which is the same as my believing that an alternative theory not-cAGW is true. So when I point to evidence that shows that cAGW must be false (temperature leveling off, no hotspot etc), instead of taking that as constituting a falsification of cAGW Shermer interprets that as an attempt by me to verify my theory not-cAGW. So every falsifying instance for cAGW is transformed into a cherry picked verifying instance for not-cAGW. And therefore the process is invalidated on the grounds of confirmation bias.
Are there guys trying to invent a New Science? Or do they just not understand the scientific method?
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