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University witchdoctors speak out, and the frightened are fleeing!

What are they so afraid of?

It’s all become a media frenzy. Who would have thought that holding an opinion about climate sensitivity due to a trace gas could become a reason to mark someone as an untouchable heretic? Venues are being canceled (and new venues arranged), the media are hunting in packs, and the university witchdoctors are coming out to show how neolithic (but politically correct) their reasoning is.

And they think they are so civilized.

They are stone age tribes with smartphones.

University Witchdoctors — collapse under the hypocrisy of their own reasoning

Academics want climate sceptic’s Lecture cancelled! is the headline on the front page of The West Australian.

Ladies and Gentlemen, it’s serious. We can no longer stand by and watch as once great institutions embarrass themselves with childlike efforts to silence dissent.

Natalie Latter, a PhD Student at UWA, wrote a letter, endorsed by a few other academic types (who ought to have saved her and themselves from such an embarrassing mistake):

“Lord Monckton propounds widely discredited fictions about climate change and misrepresents the research of countless scientists,” says the letter. “With zero peer-reviewed publications, he has declared that the scientific enterprise is invalid and that climate science is fraudulent …

Monckton replied:

“Only last week one of your leading newspapers, leading columnists, wrote a column saying that people like us should be gassed,” he said.

“No apology and none of you have gone round to her house and thrust microphones in her face and said don’t you think you’re being a bit unfair.

“So there is very plainly a nasty double standard here.”

Latter’s current research is a PhD thesis on the intergenerational and global ethical dimensions of climate change.  It’s not like she has any conflict of interest then is it? And nor is it likely that she has published any papers in radiative physics, or analysis of climate feedbacks. Yet such is the poor standard of academic quality at the formerly great University of Western Australia that she doesn’t realize that when someone without any publications demands that someone else without publications be silenced because they don’t have any publications, she’s wallowing in abject hypocrisy.

Over the last month there has been a great deal of coverage in the Australian media of the death threats and abusive emails that have targeted Australian scientists working on climate change. These threats are fuelled by misinformation spread by figures like Lord Monckton and the distorted coverage that they receive in the Australian media.

Yes, let’s look at the death threats. These are the same ones that are two rehashed 1 – 5 years old “threats”, and mostly not death threats, and not worth reporting to the Australian Federal Police. Those who make wild exaggerations claimed they were given new swipe cards for security, yet the whole Chemistry Department got new swipe cards (thanks Brice Bosnich for letting us know). These people are serial exaggerators of the pathological kind. They are the team who send up hate-mail through the media all the time. Deniers ought be jailed, tattooed, gassed, and it’s “funny” ha ha if we blow up their children, right? Memo to Natalie, research means reading both sides of the issue.

As academics, we expect our universities to support us against this kind of abuse. We expect our universities to foster academic standards of conduct and argument.

Yes, indeed. So do we. It’s time to write to your faculty and department. We expect university graduates to reason:

The letter continues: “We all support academic freedom and the freedom to express our ideas and beliefs … [However] Notre Dame’s invitation to Lord Monckton makes a mockery of academic standards and the pursuit of evidence-based knowledge.”

Thus Natalie Latter makes a mockery of academic standards. What is freedom of speech if someone is only “free” to express government approved beliefs? (Natalie: Who made you God?  This is high school lesson time. Hand back your B.A. and start again with basic reading and comprehension. What do you suppose “Freedom” means?)

As  for “evidence based knowledge” would any of the named academics be able to name one peer reviewed paper showing CO2 will cause more than 1 degree of long term warming? Anyone…?

Christopher Monckton has never asked for others who disagree to be silenced. Shutting down discussion is exactly what those who don’t have an answer have to do. Latter and co. are telegraphing to the world how empty their case is. They are terrified that one man might speak against their religion, and expose it for what it is.

If Monckton speaks “misinformation” then Latter is free to explain  that, and most likely could get a government grant and a ABC media unit to help her.

But Latter displays belief in her extraordinary powers of insight. She thinks she’s discovered the holy grail of knowledge (like Lewandowsky before her) — the gift of the anointed , the ability to know who is right. Her Godlike superiority is the anti-thesis of science, learning, and university research.

We expect graduates to know what argument from authority is, and to avoid circular reasoning. They ought be able to command the English language so their own words did not prove themselves wrong, and their use fits with generally recognized definitions.

It’s time we form groups, write letters and demand higher standards in order to rescue our universities from this abyss of sanctimonious delusion, this obsequious servility to the authorities, and from the dark ages of circular reasoning. The place to write and express your dismay at the dismal standards of education is:

Please be polite!

Political Science and International Relations M259
The University of Western Australia
Crawley WA 6009
Australia

The Faculty of Arts(Staff)
Krishna Sen, Winthrop Professor/Dean of The Faculty of Arts
Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
The University of Western Australia (M200)
35 Stirling Highway
CRAWLEY WA 6009
Australia

There is alas, collective academic failure:

“Professor of Sustainability at Curtin University Peter Newmann says universities should not be bought over by big business”.

So let’s write to Peter Newmann and point out that universities should not be bought by government grants either? Is he suggesting that only government employees have the right to speak on campus? Does he complain about speakers from large renewable energy companies? What about self-employed people? Are they “permitted” to speak at Curtain?

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Three Venues, running from free speech?

The Canberra Press Club — running scared from a scientific theory

They had agreed to allow Monckton to speak on the 12th of July.
They canceled just before the payment arrived with them today (their excuse was “not enough time to clean between our meeting and the evening show”.)

Bronco’s Leagues Club are chickens! Bk bk bk….

It’s too hot for the fragile Broncos football club. The Bronco’s club board are cancelling the agreement to host LM’s Wednesday talk.

It would seem, like TSS (see below), that the Broncos bend before the political winds.

The Southport School (TSS)

Earlier this month TSS — a wealthy private school —  canceled a speech by Christopher Monckton too. The uninvited meme strikes again. Too scared of being called “deniers” eh? After all, “denier” likens you to a holocaust denier and thus a Nazi sympathizer, and we can’t have that now can we?

I wonder if one of their sponsors put the squeeze on the college ?


Fergoodnesssake, the response is surreal.

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