Submitted by Pater Tenebrarum via Acting-Man.com,
Scientists Turn into Stalinists
Last week, we happened
across a press reportabout a group of climate
scientists so eager to shut up their critics that they want to
employ the State’s police, courts and jailers for the purpose.
Specifically, a group of academic (and presumably tenured) climate
alarmists supporting the “CAWG” theory (CAWG=”
catastrophic anthropogenic global warming”) have written a
letter to president Obama, attorney-general Lynch and OSTP director
Holdren, demanding that so-called “climate deniers” (or the
organizations allegedly supporting them) be prosecuted under the
RICO act (you can see
the document here(pdf) – already its first
paragraph is “alarming”, as
they
interalia
brag about things they have incorrectly predicted to happen for
more than 35 years, such as an increase in “extreme
weather”).
This is not the first time that climate alarmists are letting
their inner Stalin hang out and are trying to impose a spot of
Lysenkoismfor the “good of humanity”. For those not
au faitwith Lysenko: the man was an influential Soviet
biologist who came up with an erroneous theory “based on dialectic
materialism” about how to improve crop yields. It never worked, but
over the 44 years during which his influence lasted (!), more than
3,000 biologists were either fired, jailed and even
executedfor opposing his views (a number of modern-day
radical climate alarmists are also on recordfor demanding the
harshest imaginable punishments for “deniers”).
The Debate over the Poorly Conceived AGW Theory is
notOver
Here are a few excerpts from the letter we want to briefly
comment on:
“The risks posed by climate change, including increasing
extreme weather events, rising sea levels, and increasing ocean
acidity
– and potential strategies for addressing them – are
detailed in the Third National Climate Assessment (2014), Climate
Change Impacts in the United States.
The stability of the Earth’s climate over the past ten thousand
years contributed to the growth of agriculture and therefore, a
thriving human civilization. We are now at high risk of seriously
destabilizing the Earth’s climate and irreparably harming people
around the world, especially the world’s poorest people.
(emphasis added)
Apart from the absurd insinuation that only “government-funded
science is good science”, as if none of the people involved had any
self-interests, science is not the result of some imaginary
“consensus” or attains the status of holy writ once its conclusions
appear in a government-sponsored paper. As an example, it took the
“consensus”
40 yearsto accept Alfred Wegener’s theory on continental
drift, by which time he was dead.
In principle there is nothing wrong with employing a conceptual
approach in the natural sciences, but eventually, empirical data
must bear hypotheses out. It is moreover not true that we can
“afford” to bring industrial civilization to a standstill on the
off-chance that the alarmists
mightbe right one day, especially considering how wrong
they have been so far.
Let us just briefly address the handful of things listed above.
“Extreme weather events” like hurricanes and tropical cyclones have
actually done the precise opposite of what has been and continues
to be widely claimed – their frequency has declined to multi-decade
lows (e.g. in Australia, the “
lowest level of cyclone activity in modern
history” was reported last year. US readers will have noticed
that since Katrina a decade ago and the intrusion of Sandy,
hurricane activity has actually been
de minimis –statistics confirm it loud and clear).
Global tropical cyclone frequency
hits a multi-decade low – click to enlarge.
Rising sea levels: it appears the rise is so slow that the
catastrophes that have been predicted since at least 1980 not only
have not happened, but that the opposite has occurred in these
cases as well. No Micronesian islands have sunk beneath the waves –
au contraire, they are growing. Of the 50
million “climate refugees” that were certain to swamp us by 2010,
only
one has shown up to date, and this seems to be a case of
someone trying to get a residence and work permit in a developed
country by means of an innovative method. The exact opposite of the
alarmist predictions happened in this case as well: the very
regions that were supposed to be the main source of “climate
refugees” and should have been almost depopulated by now have seen
the
strongest population growthon the planet.
We haven’t followed the debate on the “acidification of the
oceans” very closely, but we note that
there definitely is a debate, as this notion
appears to be based on questionable data (a.k.a. “sparse and
contradictory evidence”). Lastly, even the alarmists are
acknowledging that there has been a near 19 year “pause” in global
warming (although
NOAA is scandalously altering past surface
temperature recordsfrom their actually measured to “assumed”
values, in order to create a warming trend literally from thin
air). They have hitherto seen fit to provide
66 different excusesfor why the forecasts of
their models have been so completely wrong. It is very mean of
Mother Nature that she refuses to cooperate with the alarmist
agenda. Of course, that the central premise of the AGW theory might
actually be wrong isn’t even considered by these worthies (luckily
they haven’t yet found ways to retroactively fiddle with the
satellite data).
The Pause – satellite measurements
have detected no warming for nearly 19 years
The sentence that “the poor will be endangered” unless we
regulate industrialized civilization out of existence is
preposterous in the extreme. Again, if you assume the exact
opposite to be true, you will be correct. In the past, human
civilization has flourished whenever temperatures were a
lotwarmer than they are today (e.g. during the medieval
warm period, vineyards thrived in the Scandinavian countries and
global population growth and progress both accelerated
greatly).
One of the biggest problems with the economically damaging
regulations demanded by the alarmists is
preciselythat they cynically deprive the world’s poor of
the possibilities for development the rich countries had at their
disposal (see
this report for details). In fact, much of the
proposed legislation is ultimately nothing but a socialist wealth
distribution scheme (that will not only redistribute, but
ultimately destroy wealth) – as its major political proponents are
occasionally
admittingin unguarded moments. As has been
noted elsewhere, this is simply “ideology
masquerading as science”.
Suppression of Dissent to Preserve the Gravy Train
It seems to us, all of the above should be seen as grounds for
vigorous debate, both on the scientific and the political level,
before any more harm is doneby
costly (and ultimately useless) legal activism. However,
this definitely isn’t how the letter writers are seeing it:
“We appreciate that you are making aggressive and imaginative
use of the limited tools available to you in the face of a
recalcitrant Congress.
One additional tool – recently proposed by Senator Sheldon
Whitehouse – is a RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt
Organizations Act) investigation of corporations and other
organizations that have knowingly deceived the American people
about the risks of climate change, as a means to forestall
America’s response to climate change.”
In other words, those who disagree with the alarmists (which is
ever easier to do as one after another of their predictions fails
to come true) should be treated like the mafia or similar criminal
organizations. Needless to say, this would not exactly be conducive
to scientific or policy debate. We have yet to see the opponents of
string theory demand the jailing of its proponents (or vice versa),
in spite of their fierce disagreements.
Our first thought was therefore that one should probably “follow
the money” – that the alarmists are probably increasingly worried
that their gravy train might be derailed; that their lavish grants
and privileges, including their role as “philosopher kings”
advising the politically powerful, could come under threat as
empirical evidence against their theories keeps piling up. This has
interalia
also led to a recent rash of ever more hysterical apocalyptic
predictions (see e.g. the laughable
“sea level rise” panic outburstfrom
Über-alarmist Dr. James Hansen, which is even denounced by his
fellow AGW alarmists – i.e., it is too absurd even for them).
Before we found the time to write this missive, reality has
struck in the form of a rather sizable PR problem for the leader of
the group of letter writers – and it has indeed to do with “lavish
grants”. As Climate Depot reports,
“
Scientist leading effort to prosecute climate
skeptics under RICO ‘paid himself & his wife $1.5 million from
govt climate grants for part-time work’
”.You couldn’t make this up.
George Mason University Professor Jagadish Shukla
a Lead Author with the UN IPCC, reportedly made lavish profits
off the global warming industry while accusing climate skeptics of
deceiving the public.
Shukla is leader of 20 scientists who are
demanding RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt
Organizations Act) charges be used against skeptics for
disagreeing with their view on climate change.
Shukla reportedly moved his government grants through a
‘non-profit’. The group “pays Shukla and wife Anne $500,000
per year for part-time work,”
Prof. Roger Pielke Jr. revealed. “The $350,000-$400,000
per year paid leader of the RICO 20 from his ‘non-profit’ was
presumably on top of his
$250,000 per year academic salary,”
Pielke wrote.
“That totals to $750,000 per year to the leader of the RICO 20
from public money for climate work and going after skeptics. Good
work if you can get it,”
Pielke Jr. added
.
(emphasis added)
AGW has indeed become an “industry”, albeit an entirely taxpayer
funded one. It looks more and more like a giant racket. If it were
onlya racket, there would be no problem – but it also
pursues an agenda, under the pretense that we need to “save the
planet” from what increasingly looks like natural variations we
have little or no influence over. The agenda however has a clear
leftist-authoritarian bent, as all the demands and already
implemented policies involve more regulation and government control
over the economy, are harmful to economic development and progress,
are bound to condemn the poor to remaining poor, and aim at
redistributing wealth in a manner that will simply end up
destroying it to the benefit of a handful of cronies.
That people obviously benefiting greatly from this racket have
the gall to demand that the State treat their critics as major
criminals in Stalinesque fashion is really jaw-dropping
chutzpa.
Conclusion
The caste of climate alarmists reminds us strongly of
assorted doomsayers throughout history.They have
almost become a kind of priestly caste, accusing us of committing
the alleged “sin” of capitalism, even while they reserve for
themselves the right to partake of its fruits to an extent few
others are able to (as Greenpeace founder Patrick Moore notes, “
environmentalism has become a religion”). Mind,
we don’t believe genuine environmental concerns should be ignored,
but AGW looks more and more like a contrived non-issue.
The hysteria that has been on display of late is probably
an indication though that its proponents are
actually losing the debate.