Quote:
Originally Posted by scottw
"Today’s climate science, as Ian Plimer points out in his chapter in The Facts, is based on a “pre-ordained conclusion, huge bodies of evidence are ignored and analytical procedures are treated as evidence”. Funds are not available to investigate alternative theories. Those who express even the mildest doubts about dangerous climate change are ostracised, accused of being in the pay of fossil-fuel interests or starved of funds; those who take money from green pressure groups and make wildly exaggerated statements are showered with rewards and treated by the media as neutral."
"Politicians love this polarising because it means they can attack a straw man. It’s what they are good at. “Doubt has been eliminated,” said Gro Harlem Brundtland, former Prime Minister of Norway and UN Special Representative on Climate Change, in a speech in 2007: “It is irresponsible, reckless and deeply immoral to question the seriousness of the situation. The time for diagnosis is over. Now it is time to act.” John Kerry says we have no time for a meeting of the flat-earth society. Barack Obama says that 97 per cent of scientists agree that climate change is “real, man-made and dangerous”. That’s just a lie (or a very ignorant remark): as I point out above, there is no consensus that it’s dangerous."
http://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2015...-done-science/ |
Interesting read on the climate debate, and even more so in light of the subtext in your thread title: "...
so reflective of American Political Climate". Chicanery among "scientists" is not so different than among politicians--the rush to judgment, the use of straw men, ignoring contrary evidence, ridicule of opponents, outright lies . . . all age old tactics used to persuade ignorant masses. It's not unusual for such means to be used, but it is disturbing that our "Press," which is supposedly jealous of guarding its constitutional "right" of free speech, would support, or not more seriously call attention to, the intentional distortions and obfuscations--on all "sides," not just that which the particular media oppose. We are to believe that our Press and our society have "progressed," by dint of history, beyond primitivism. that we are the super-enlightened who no longer need quaint "Constitutions," nor political rules of engagement. That we are a nation of "experts" who know how best to do all things, including government, and need not be hampered by over-cautious restrictions against despotic regulation.
And yet, despite progress, despite history, we seem to be stuck in our old ways of "getting things done." Is that evidence that what we once referred to as human nature has not changed? That we still need the now despised, restrictive, "little books" which provide basic guides for behavior?
The article is loaded with things which apply to our politics as well as the climate change "debate"--oh, that's right, the debate is over, or, apparently not.
The author says that he once thought that "The great thing about science is that it's self correcting . . . The good drives out the bad, because experiments get replicated and hypotheses put to the test. So a really bad idea cannot survive long in science." But, thanks to climate science, he has changed his mind--"Bad ideas can persist in science for decades, and . . . they can turn into intolerant dogmas." Brings to mind so many of the progressive policies which have lasted for decades even though they don't "fix," or they even expand, the problems they were to address. All due, among other things, because of, as he says about climate science, "political support enabled bad ideas to monopolize debate."
He mentions "confirmation bias--seeking evidence that supports our hypothesis and dismissing that which contradicts it." A bias that is oh so prevalent in our politics and media.
He quotes T. T. Huxley's dictum "The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, skepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin." A sin we daily give over to in our blind faith in the superiority of progressivism over constitutional checks against authoritative government. In conjunction with this he quotes Richard Feynman "Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts." Which is so applicable to our narrow-sighted experts regulation of a diverse population with often contradictory beliefs or opinions. Of course, the intention may be to eliminate the differences. Which may be the ultimate ignorance of experts.
The harm to science the author demonstrates in the article is similar to the damage done to our constitutional form of government. It destroys its foundation and the public confidence in government. It promotes and metastasizes despotic and destructive policies.
As in the harm to science, the similarity of tactics in politics transforms diversity of opinion into a false agenda for the benefit of adherents and the detriment and subjugation of everyone else.