In years to come when people wonder how so much money came to be wasted in a frivolous attempt to stop the storms, people will marvel at the failure of parts of the free press. The Guardian will rise above that pack, standing out as the one that dressed itself in the color of gullible.
There are more than 31,000 whistleblowers inside science, 9,000 with PhD’s, 2 with Nobel Physics prizes, and 3 men who walked on the moon. There are meteorologists who won prizes in Meteorology, and physicists who studied with the greats — and they’re warning that the science is not settled, but the journalists at The Guardian know better.
Instead of asking hard questions of both skeptics and believers, the writers saw the passion and energy of namecalling activists and were swept off their feet to join the march. Now they dish out their infinite wisdom on science, on national policy and finance. If only the rest of us could be as genius and kind as Alan Rusbridger, eh?
But what are the Guardian guarding these days? They want to silence skeptics, and push a committee consensus. It isn’t free speech, and it isn’t science. If there are problems with our monopolistic scientific funding, the Guardian won’t be seeking them out and reporting them. If peer review science has become weaker, lax, and biased by one-sided funding, and poor eduction, The Guardian will defend the corruption. If the creative genius of scientists is being dimmed through petty gatekeeping, self-serving jealousy and greed, we all know who won’t be alerting the world. Poor Alan Rusbridger, Editor of The Guardian; he read English, and when the scientists who used tricks-to-hide-declines told him “it’s just physics”, he believed them. They didn’t mention that the feedbacks were 2 -3 times more important, or that predicting clouds and humidity is vastly more uncertain. But then he probably didn’t ask.
The Guardian have launched the “Keep it in the Ground” Campaign. They have jumped feet first in with Greenpeace. They hate “fossil fuels” — oil, gas, and coal — and want people to move their money out of investments in any of them (as if they are all equivalent). Do they still take advertising from BP and Shell I wonder? And will they be sending the Guardian out in solar-trucks? Time to start running the presses on wind-power and coconut oil no doubt. Subscribers might not be excited about paying 10 pound a paper.
Note from Alan Rusbridger, editor-in-chief
The argument for a campaign to divest from the world’s most polluting companies is becoming an overwhelming one, on both moral and financial grounds. As Archbishop Desmond Tutu puts it: “People of conscience need to break their ties with corporations financing the injustice of climate change”.
Divestment serves to delegitimise the business models of companies that are using investors’ money to search for yet more coal, oil and gas that can’t safely be burned. It is a small but crucial step in the economic transition away from a global economy run on fossil fuels.
The usual rule of newspaper campaigns is that you don’t start one unless you know you’re going to win it. This one will almost certainly be won in time: the physics is unarguable. But we are launching our campaign today in the firm belief that it will force the issue now into the boardrooms and inboxes of people who have billions of dollars at their disposal.
Golly, but isn’t Alan important? He also knows things people with billions haven’t figured out yet (don’t they read his paper?). Alan-guru-Rusbridger can see financial arguments so obvious they are “overwhelming”. One day the people with silly billions will too.
Vote for your favourite blogs in the 2015 Bloggies.
More info here.Closes Sunday.