Category Archives: Science And Society

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

Judith Curry

7 Comments

…tells her colleagues to stop circling the climate wagons around Michael Mann.

If she does want to counter sue, I suspect she’d have no problem raising funds.

[Update a few minutes later]

This seems to be the nut graf:

For the past decade, scientists have come to the defense of Michael Mann, somehow thinking that defending Michael Mann is fighting against the ‘war on science’ and is standing up for academic freedom. Its time to let Michael Mann sink or swim on his own. Michael Mann is having all these problems because he chooses to try to muzzle people that are critical of Mann’s science, critical of Mann’s professional and personal behavior, and critical of Mann’s behavior as revealed in the climategate emails. All this has nothing to do with defending climate science or academic freedom.

Yup.

[Update early afternoon]

Ken White at Popehat says that Mark has a fool for a client.

I have no comment, obviously.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Social Commentary

Climate Parasites

1 Comment

That’s actually a much better rejoinder to “climate deniers” than global-warming Nazis:

The name “climate parasites” performs two jobs with exactly two words. It derails completely the enemy’s position that our side consists of people who are totally ignorant of climate science, or choose to ignore it. We acknowledge without hesitation that climate change is a proven fact of nature. The name also, however, marginalizes the other side by putting its members into the same category as indulgence sellers and rainmakers: opportunistic frauds who preyed on superstition and natural disasters respectively to separate honest people from their money.

Which is exactly what’s been happening, with Al Gore as king of the con artists.

[Via Judith Curry, who has additional interesting links on the collapse of the “consensus,” which was never anything but the fallacious band-wagon psychology.]

Business, Culinary, Health, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

Death By Food Pyramid

4 Comments

A favorable review by Michael Eades of what looks to be an interesting new book on the history of nutrition pseudoscience.

I hadn’t realized the degree to which George McGovern was responsible, and how much he was influenced by Pritikin. They and their junk science are responsible for millions of premature deaths, from the seventies on, likely including my father’s almost thirty-five years ago.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

The Global-Warming Nazis

45 Comments

Roy Spencer seems to have had enough:

I’m not talking about those who think we should be working toward new forms of energy to eventually displace our dependence of fossil fuels. Even I believe in that; after all, fossil fuels are a finite resource.

I’m instead talking about the extremists. They are the ones who are sure they are right, and who are bent on forcing their views upon everyone else. Unfortunately, the extremists are usually the only ones you hear from in the media, because they scream the loudest and make the most outrageous claims.

They invoke “consensus”, which results from only like-minded scientists who band together to support a common cause.

This authoritarianism tends to happen with an over-educated elite class…I have read that Nazi Germany had more PhDs per capita than any other country. I’m not against education, but it seems like some of the stupidest people are also the most educated.

So, as long as they continue to call people like me “deniers”, I will call them “global warming Nazis”.

I didn’t start this fight…they did. Yeah, somebody pushed my button.

Mine, too.

History, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Social Commentary

John Kerry And Climate Change

2 Comments

Why he’s flat wrong:

While none of these inconsistencies refutes the fundamental concern about greenhouse-gas-enhanced climate change, it is disturbing that “consensus science” will not acknowledge that such discrepancies are major problems. From the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s beginning, that largely self-selected panel of scientists has embraced the notion that consensus on climate change is the necessary path to taking action and reducing man-made carbon emissions around the world. The consensus community uses this to push the view that “the science is settled” and hold up skeptics to ridicule, as John Kerry did on Sunday.

We are reminded of the dangers of consensus science in the past. For example, in the 18th century, more British sailors died of scurvy than died in battle. In this disease, brought on by a lack of vitamin C, the body loses its ability to manufacture collagen, and gums and other tissues bleed and disintegrate. These deaths were especially tragic because many sea captains and some ships’ doctors knew, based on observations early in the century, that fresh vegetables and citrus cured scurvy.

Nonetheless, the British Admiralty’s onshore Sick and Health Board of scientists and physicians (somewhat akin to the current Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) dismissed this evidence for more than 50 years because it did not fit their consensus theory that putrefaction (or internal decay) caused scurvy, which they felt could be cured by fresh air, exercise and laxatives.

“Consensus” science that ignores reality can have tragic consequences if cures are ignored or promising research is abandoned. The climate-change consensus is not endangering lives, but the way it imperils economic growth and warps government policy making has made the future considerably bleaker. The recent Obama administration announcement that it would not provide aid for fossil-fuel energy in developing countries, thereby consigning millions of people to energy poverty, is all too reminiscent of the Sick and Health Board denying fresh fruit to dying British sailors.

Idiots. Murderous idiots in the name of an ideology.