-- During my career in psychological research I repeatedly came across very low intellectual standards among my colleagues so Lewandowsky is no surprise. Psychologists are very good at believing what they want to believe -- JR
Comment below by Anthony Cox
In a recent article Stephan Lewandowsky has attempted to justify the fraudulent procurement of confidential material from the Heartland Institute by Peter Gleick. Gleick is described as:
"a hydroclimatologist by training, with a B.S. from Yale University and an M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley from the Energy and Resources Group. His research and writing address the critical connections between water and human health, the hydrological impacts of climate change, sustainable water use, privatization and globalization, and international conflicts over water resources.
Dr. Gleick is an internationally recognized water expert and was named a MacArthur Fellow in October 2003 for his work. In 2001, Gleick was dubbed a “visionary on the environment” by the British Broadcasting Corporation. In 2006 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, Washington, D.C."
That’s as good as it gets in respect of climate credentials. Gleick is at the top of the global warming [AGW] pile. Yet what Gleick did is lie, deceive, procure and publically disseminate private information; along with a fake document which he either produced or willingly used.
Lewandowsky, a psychologist and avid disciple of the AGW ‘church’, would have us believe that Gleick’s actions put him in the same class as strategy to defeat the Nazis or Ellsberg’s release of the Pentagon papers. This is a weird comparison. How can a strategy to put an enemy like the Nazi’s off-guard or the release of documents which contain important, relevant information for citizens in a democratic society be compared with fraudulently obtaining irrelevant information about a private entity in a democracy?
Lewandowsky claims that since Heartland is at the forefront of denialism [sic] and opposing measures to ‘save’ the planet from AGW that infringement of its rights is in order.
We should not be surprised about this line of ‘reasoning’ from Lewandowsky. The pro-AGW side has repeatedly indicated it is prepared to exaggerate, lie [see comment 246], break the law, oppose the democratic structure itself to ‘save the planet’ and be misanthropic. Lewandowsky and other pro-AGW advocates have indicated a willingness to censor and suppress ‘denier’ viewpoints; they have been prepared to hide their doubt about the ‘science’ supporting AGW in private while promoting the false idea that this ‘science’ is settled. The Climate-gate emails clearly show this.
So, we should not be surprised at any tactic used or capacity of the pro-AGW supporters.
But is their cause a noble one? Lewandowsky is in no doubt: “Revealing to the public the active, vicious, and well-funded campaign of denial that seeks to delay action against climate change likely constitutes a classic public good.”
Some facts about this noble cause of “action against climate change”:
* AGW ‘science’ and predictions unquestionably contributed to and acerbated the consequences of the 2 worse natural disasters in Australia in recent times. They were the 2010 QLD floods and the 2009 Victorian bushfires.
* The funds directed to ‘solving’ AGW in Australia runs into 10’s of $billions. Between now and 2015 the Gillard government will ‘give’ $13 billion to sustainable energy schemes. That is money down the drain since the primary recipients of this money, wind and solar, do not work in any meaningful way and never will.
But it is worse than just $13 billion. All the ‘real’ energy producers will be obligated to source 20% of their power from renewables by 2020. The $13 billion will allow start-up schemes to be created on paper with the ‘potential’ power able to be on-sold to the hapless ‘real’ power producers. That will at least double the initial $13 billion and will be passed straight on to the consumer, assuming the ‘real’ power producers don’t close, who will pay for nothing in return.
* There is no doubt the $23 per tonne carbon tax will send many companies to the wall; there is no doubt it will bankrupt Australia and in all likelihood cause power shortages. People will suffer and possibly die to lack of heating or air-conditioning.
* There is not a scintilla of evidence to support AGW; if the effect of AGW does exist it is entirely dominated by natural processes and variation. All the predictions of AGW have either not eventuated or are false correlations and a product of natural variation.
So, we have a theory, AGW, with no evidence, which has already greatly harmed people and will economically decimate the nation being used by people like Lewandowsky as an excuse for illegal and otherwise unethical behaviour.
There is no noble cause. So this is not noble cause corruption. It is just corruption.
SOURCE
The "Theory of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Change" was derived from the "Theory of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming".
ReplyDeleteThe latter theory has been discredited since its more alarming predictions failed to materialise. The former theory is effectively impossible to falsify.
However, governments have the resources to conduct proper evaluation of evidence, deliberately suppressed by proponents of the theory, but remain, officially at least, that there are no scientifically qualified sceptics.
Political leaders are prepared to implement measures likely to cause substantial damage to their own economies, without validating the theoritical predictions against observed reality, or considering other potential explanations for any observed effects.
This suggests that the possible failings or falsity of the "Theory of Cataqastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Change" are of scientific interest only.
The failings are unimportant politically because the theory is only a component of an advertising campaign to promote a political agenda.
The proposed mechanism for inhibiting catastrophic anthropogenic climate change is a tax to be placed upon the use of fossil fuels and a global transfer of wealth from the western democracies to the third world.
The tax to be placed upon the use of fossil fuels and the transfer of wealth to the leaders of third world countries is the raison d'etre of the "Theory of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Change", which why it has been modified to become more difficult to flsify than the original global warming theory.
The implementation of an additional tax upon the western democracies is not a response to a physical problem. The alleged physical problem is a plausible excuse invented to justify the politically desired additional tax.
It is usually futile to argue about the scientific evidence contradicting these theories with their proponents, because it is the consequential remedial measures which they support and would still support, even if the theories were proven to be false.