I like Chris Uhlmann, and he’s spoken out with reason before on the issue of skeptics. So I was a little surprised to see him say:
“…one of the reasons Malcolm Turnbull is staring into the abyss is because he is getting too far ahead of many in his party room.
He accepts the prevailing consensus on global warming and is personally committed to an emissions trading system. A significant part of his party does not or believes that this emissions trading scheme is a dog.”
source: Oh Malcolm, how did it come to this? (my italics)
Coming soon: one of those In-the-Matrix moments when reality shifts for our journalists.
Imagine that ambitious powerful people were exploiting science to create a scare to gain power and money. Who would know? How would you find out? Normally, you’d read about it in the press. A whistle-blower would make an announcement, and the press would be all ears, and bring the story to the public. But imagine the press decided not to print anything from whistleblowers, not because they didn’t speak in reasonable tones, and not because they couldn’t back up what they said, but just because they are whistle-blowers? What if the press said, “we only print the official version”, and “there’s a consensus”? By definition they are ruling out even the possibility that if there was a problem they would report it. Even if 31,000 scientists speak out, even if some of those who speak have the highest of professional qualifications in meteorology, atmospheric physics, maths, or statistics.
What if people were shifting in droves away from the theory as they realized how corrupt the scam was?
Chris still believes the theory must be right, so he presumes that Turnbull is correct, and his party are the dinosaurs.
But the reality is that the real news is spreading from the hard-nosed through to the soft-hearted ideologues. The trend, the fashion, and the new move is away from the theory. This is true for scientists, and the public, and oh so slowly for journalists. The Nationals lead the pack, half the Liberals are awake, and some of the Labor party. None of the Greens. The Murdoch press are catching on, the ABC is stuck like a dinosaur watching an asteroid, and the BBC still in denial.
So here we are in this strange twilight world where the public is dragging the press up to date with the news. (Look at the comments on the page below this ABC Unleashed story.) Is this what it was like in the Soviet Union, where the underground press was where you found out what was really going on?
And the “journalists” wonder why their salaries are falling?