- JoNova - https://joannenova.com.au -

Friday night reading: the eloquent take-downs

Today, while I work on something else, I thought I’d just share a few of the more entertaining pieces of writing I’ve come across lately.

How many mistakes can you pack in one phrase?

Remember how all defenders of the Man-Made-Catastrophe were trained to say that skeptics are funded by big oil, and Big Oil had that insidious agreement… that internal memo that said they were aiming to “reposition global warming as theory rather than fact” (which has all the meaning of “repositioning McDonalds as a fast food chain”, it being tritely obvious and all). Well, Russell Cook points out that this popular bumper-sticker line that’s quoted ad lib across the ether, is full of mistakes, misattributions and misinformation. It seems it’s not only not a smoking gun, but it’s not a weapon, and wasn’t fired by the prize winner shooter they attributed it too, and the guy that didn’t fire the dud shot, didn’t win a prize either.

With fanfare according to Gore it was “discovered by the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Ross Gelbspan”, but the Pulitzer site doesn’t know about Gelbspans “prize”, and you can read all the sordid details at the Climate Gate Country Club, or a different version  at American Thinker.

Science in an Echo Chamber

Front Page magazine has a very fluent take-down of the recent NAS blacklist of skeptical scientists (And I mocked The National Academy of Sorcery here).

Every time you think that the global warming crowd couldn’t be any more ridiculous or brazen, somebody manages to turn the shameless meter up another notch. This month’s offering from the alarmists is a “scientific” study that basically demonstrates that alarmists are right about climate change because alarmists who believe they are right about climate change publish a lot of papers that demonstrate how right they are about climate change. That isn’t circular logic. Circular logic would be embarrassed to be seen in the same room as this study. This sort of tortured reasoning is so twisted that M.C. Escher and Salvador Dali would have trouble coming to grips with it.

The story appeared in Science Daily on Monday, June 27, entitled: “Scientific Expertise Lacking Among ‘Doubters’ of Climate Change, Says New Analysis.” That story covered a paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in which the authors basically concluded that global warming alarmists are experienced, brilliant experts in their field while skeptics are hacks who probably have trouble tying their shoes. OK, I’m exaggerating a bit, but only a little. The “study” was another, predictable attempt to marginalize independent, accomplished scientists like Roy Spencer, Richard Lindzen, Jay Lehr and Roger Pielke who dare to question climate change orthodoxy.

A cynical fellow might wonder if a study that trumpets the brilliance of alarmist scientists and heaps scorn on skeptics is a self-serving attempt by global-warming zealots to buttress their cause. It takes very little research to confirm that hypothesis…

In a way, the publication of a blacklist and of such a ludicrous, transparently biased study should warm a skeptic’s heart. Ever since climategate broke, the zealots have suffered humiliation and embarrassment time and again. The mood of the nation has changed and the alarmists know it. Publishing a research paper that purports to validate the hypothesis “we’re right because we say we are” seems to be an act of desperation. Whatever this study was, it sure wasn’t science.

h/t to Darren N.

“Not Journalists, State Propagandists” – Rupert Wyndham on the BBC

Which reminds me of a letter from Rupert Wyndham that I saw a couple of weeks ago. It was sent to Richard Tait, Chairman to the Editorial standards committee (ESC) of the BBC. He’s blistering with scorn as he discusses the adjudication of the committee, the whitewashes, and the general form of the BBC. It’s an animated articulate read:

“And then, as I say, events move on, apropos which where does one start?  Well, of course, notwithstanding the trio of whitewashes that have succeeded it, the findings of which are believed sincerely by no-one, any list has to begin with Climategate and, let me call it, “IPCCgate”. These two drawn out scandals, despite increasingly shrill and desperate attempts to rebottle the imp, have totally blown asunder the intellectual case for anthropogenic global warming – accepting, which I don’t, that there ever was one in the first place. Let’s not mince words. These people are charlatans, liars and crooks. The BBC has been their sycophantic handmaiden and dishonourable proselytizer. For the Corporation, moreover, Climategate has particular and specific resonance, does it not? Why? To be sure, because it had possession of these materials pertaining, in its own words, to a matter of major public importance at least a month before they were exposed to the internet. And yet, as a balanced and impartial news organization, it decided deliberately to suppress word of their existence. You people are not journalists. You are no more than state propagandists.”

h/t to David.

10 out of 10 based on 3 ratings