So anyways, here are a couple of examples of „science” according to climate change deniers. Enjoy!
The first example comes from George Monbiot. You can read his blog here. He writes:
„On April 16th, New Scientist published a letter from the famous botanist David Bellamy. Many of the world’s glaciers, he claimed, "are not shrinking but in fact are growing. ... 555 of all the 625 glaciers under observation have been growing since 1980."”
The World Glacier Monitoring Service responded to this, calling it complete bullshit, and said that „he had cited data which was simply false, failed to provide references, completely misunderstood the scientific context and neglected current scientific literature”.
However, Bellamy got his numbers from somewhere. After some more digging, Monbiot discovers the source: a magazine called „21st Century Science and Technology”, published by one Lyndon Larouche. So who is this Larouche character? A climatologist? A scientist of any kind? A real expert on the field? Of course not. In fact, he is a criminal who has served 15 years in prison for conspiracy, mail fraud and tax code violations. He is also a paranoid conspiracy theoriest. He has claimed that the British royal family is running an international drugs syndicate, that Henry Kissinger is a communist agent, that the British government is controlled by Jewish bankers, and that modern science is a conspiracy against human potential. The last bit is especially great, since it makes us realize that Bellamy, the great climate change denial scientist in fact quotes a magazine that claims: „We in LaRouche’s Youth Movement find ourselves in combat with an old enemy that destroys human beings... it is empiricism.”
Okay, so climate change deniers are forced to quote convicted criminals and self-purported „enemies of empiricism” for their „proofs”. But as we proceed, we’ll realize that deception, lies and hypocrisy pretty much a standard in the wonderful world of climate change denial. For example, in 1999, an organization called the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine started circulating a petition to plead the US government to reject the Kyoto Protocol. This petition was accompanied by a document with purported „scientific” evidence, claiming that „proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.” This document was presented in a format identical to that of the peer-reviewed journal “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences”. Yet the document was never published in this journal, nor in any other peer-reviewed scientific journal. It was merely designed to look like it has, to deceive people into accepting its message. And I suppose it is unsurprising that the author of the document, George C Marshall Institute, has received $515,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998. Again we see that deception is the key to climate change denial “science”.
But let us proceed! Looking into climate change denial “science”, one often comes across a book called “The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World”, by one Bjørn Lomborg, which was actually published by Cambridge University Press, in 2001. The deniers like to quote this book to prove that the world’s ecosystems are completely well-off and are in fact getting better! Great!
So who is this Lomborg fellow? Surely a climatologist, a scientist dedicated to put the crazy tree-hugging eco-fascists and new-ageists in their proper places, right? Obviously, not at all. Bjørn Lomborg is an associate professor of statistics in the Department of Political Science at the University of Aarhus. He has a Ph.D. from the Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen. Truly reassuring and worthy credentials for a person about to debunk all the world’s climatologists and environmental scientists!
Initially, his book received good reviews from rather reputable sources, such as the New York Times and The Economist, and for many libertarian cultists, it became a veritable bible for bashing all the “doomsayers”. Unsurprisingly, none of the positive reviews were written by actual specialists in fields this book covers. So what happened when the experts reviewed the book? Things got a completely different turn. The Scientific American wrote:
“The problem with Lomborg's conclusion is that the scientists themselves disavow it. Many spoke to us at Scientific American about their frustration at what they described as Lomborg's misrepresentation of their fields. His seemingly dispassionate outsider's view, they told us, is often marred by an incomplete use of the data or a misunderstanding of the underlying science. Even where his statistical analyses are valid, his interpretations are frequently off the mark--literally not seeing the state of the forests for the number of the trees, for example. And it is hard not to be struck by Lomborg's presumption that he has seen into the heart of the science more faithfully than have investigators who have devoted their lives to it; it is equally curious that he finds the same contrarian good news lurking in every diverse area of environmental science.”
In fact, the very authors whom Lomborg quotes as supporting his arguments denounce him.
But wait! It gets better! Because of several complaints, the book was brought to the attention of the Danish Committee on Scientific Dishonesty. I quote bits from their ruling, and I’ll even mark the best bits italic.
DCSD's position
On the basis of the material adduced by the complainants, and particularly the assessment in Scientific American, DCSD deems it to have been adequately substantiated that the defendant, who has himself insisted on presenting his publication in scientific form and not allowing the book to assume the appearance of a provocative debate-generating paper, based on customary scientific standards and in light of his systematic one-sidedness in the choice of data and line of argument, has clearly acted at variance with good scientific practice.
Subject to the proviso that the book is to be evaluated as science, there has been such perversion of the scientific message in the form of systematically biased representation that the objective criteria for upholding scientific dishonesty have been met. In consideration of the extraordinarily wide-ranging scientific topics dealt with by the defendant without having any special scientific expertise, however, DCSD has not found-or felt able to procure-sufficient grounds to deem that the defendant has misled his readers deliberately or with gross negligence.
In accordance herewith and subject to the proviso that the book under review is to be evaluated as science, DCSD has arrived at the following
Ruling:
Objectively speaking, the publication of the work under consideration is deemed to fall within the concept of scientific dishonesty.
In view of the subjective requirements made in terms of intent or gross negligence, however, Bjørn Lomborg's publication cannot fall within the bounds of this characterization. Conversely, the publication is deemed clearly contrary to the standards of good scientific practice.
Anyone notice a pattern here?
More to come….
