Posted on 12/20/2009 12:05:39 PM PST by Chi-townChief
“(…) the spread of secondary and latterly tertiary education has created a large population of people, often with well-developed literary and scholarly tastes, who have been educated far beyond their capacity to undertake analytical thought.” — P.B. Medawar
So what’s next? A series of essays by Sarah Palin about the Large Hadron Collider and the mysteries of dark matter? An MIT lecture series by Rush Limbaugh regarding the thermodynamics of black holes? A Festschrift of Sean Hannity’s scholarly articles on plate tectonics and volcano formation? Glenn Beck performing live heart-lung transplants on Fox News?
Everybody understands that these things couldn’t happen. That when it comes to serious scientific endeavor, years of study and professional apprenticeship are required. In a word, expertise. Ex-beauty contestants, drive-time DJs, TV sports announcers, hairstylists, newspaper columnists — basically anybody whose math skills topped out in the 10th grade — rarely have anything substantive to add to the sum of technical and scientific knowledge. That’s what they most resent about it.
It’s not impossible that such persons could educate themselves sufficiently to have an informed opinion, but it’s rare. Most of us, most of the time, are like historian and blogger Josh Marshall: “The fact that the vast majority of people with specialized knowledge in the field think there’s a problem is good enough for me,” he wrote. “I can’t be knowledgeable about everything. And I’m comfortable with the modern system in which the opinions of really knowledgeable people with expertise counts more in cases like this than people who know nothing at all.”
Unless and until, that is, scientific endeavor impinges upon either (a) religious belief, or (b) the ability of tycoons to keep making money in precisely the way they (or their ancestors) have always made their money. Then it’s every man (or woman) a climatologist, and every genuine expert an “elitist” enemy of God and the American Way — creationism with a thermometer.
Charles P. Pierce describes what he calls the “Three Great Premises” of talk radio populism in his acerbic book “Idiot America.” (”First Great Premise: Any theory is valid if it moves units…Second Great Premise: Anything can be true if someone says it loudly enough…Third Great Premise: Fact is that which enough people believe. Truth is measured by how fervently they believe it.”
So it was after thousands of private e-mails hacked from the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit in England emerged via the right-wing noise machine into the British and American press. Caught red-handed acting like, well, like professors — i.e., ambitious, idealistic, petty, egotistical, dogged and pedantic — climate researchers soon got caught up in a media storm rivaling that surrounding golfer Tiger Woods.
Within days, representatives of various Exxon- and Koch Industries-funded propaganda shops like the Heritage Foundation and Competitive Enterprise Institute started braying about “Climategate.” Fox News headlined “Global Warming’s Waterloo.” The aforementioned Hannity told viewers, “Now we find out that this institute is hiding from the people of Great Britain and the world that, in fact, climate change is a hoax, something I’ve been saying for a long time.”
Taking time off from her book tour, Sarah Palin wrote a Washington Post piece charging the “e-mails reveal that leading climate ‘experts’ deliberately destroyed records, manipulated data to ‘hide the decline’ in global temperatures, and tried to silence their critics by preventing them from publishing in peer-reviewed journals.”
Note the scare quotes around “experts.” Palin’s evidence for this conspiracy? Here’s the worst of it: A 10-year-old e-mail from professor Phil Jones to Penn State colleague Michael Mann. You’ve seen it 10 times on television. “I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years … to hide the decline.”
Read it twice. So Jones brags about hiding a decline in global temperatures by “adding in the real temps?” The allegation’s nonsensical on its face. If you read the entire message, Jones is talking about plotting a more accurate graph by throwing out inferential evidence from tree ring studies known since the 1960s to be less reliable. There’s an elaborate scientific debate about why.
Not one reputable scientist who’s looked into this matter has judged otherwise. What’s crucial to understand is that if Jones were proven to be faking data, his scientific career would end at once, along with that of anybody who helped him.
Scientists can be jerks too. However, the kind of worldwide conspiracy conjured by global climate change deniers like Palin, Hannity and the rest — that is, as an evidence-free, religio-political cult that’s the mirror image of their own movement — simply can’t exist in a scientific context.
Meanwhile, Arctic sea ice is vanishing, glaciers melting, sea levels rising, droughts and floods increasing, and the past decade — according to the World Meteorological Organization — was the warmest in recorded history.
But hey, look over there: some elitist e-mails!
OUTSTANDING — AND HIGHLY “INCONVENIENT” — 8 MINUTE PRESENTATION BY DR. JOHN COLEMAN (FOUNDER OF THE WEATHER CHANNEL) UTTERLY DEMOLISHING ALGORE’S GLOBULL WARMING SCAM.
As you’ve heard here before, this is NOT about saving the planet. It’s about POWER, MONEY and CONTROL. If you think Gore hiked his net worth from a few million to an estimated 100 million since leaving the VP slot with his brilliant public speaking style, I have some coastal property in Nevada I’d like to show you.
With the alleged fall of communism, the global elites needed another planetary boogeyman with which to keep the rest of us frightened and submissive. Globull warming and saving the planet got the nod.
(And communism didn’t fall, it simply moved — to America!)
If you’re STILL not sure what to think about the subject, the SCIENTIFIC FACTS presented here should clear it up.
PLEASE SHARE THIS WIDELY. If the Obama Democrats and the RINOs saddle what’s left of the American economy with their so-called CAP and TRADE, better avoid the rush and get that government job application ready to go because there won’t BE any private sector jobs, green, brown, red, blue or any other color. Gee, could that be a major part of the plan??
WE INHALE CO2 AND EXHALE THE O2 YOU NEED. PLEASE SAVE US. DON’T LET US SUFFOCATE.
Thank you.
THE PLANTS OF THE EARTH.
http://www.kusi.com/home/78477082.html?video=pop&t=a
Best title I've seen on this so far.
“Weathering the Storm of Stupidity”
That storm of stupidity is now ruling, will continue to rule, and will remain in power by way of a “brilliant” electorate that knows that Progressives are brilliant and the hope of mankind.
IMHO
This is called arguing against a straw man, and it is a confession of intellectual bankruptcy. The person who wrote this article thinks he is can make himself intellectually superior by ideological allegiances, but would get an F in a freshman philosophy seminar.
He cannot reason, so he throws mud at imaginary boogeymen.
What do you expect. These people still believe in Santa Claus.
So, where was he when Algore got his PhD? What about Ted Danson, who said in 1992 that the oceans only have ten years left? How about the expertise of Sheryl Crowe on the proper use of toilet paper for the masses? Don't forget Prince Charles, that decorated expert on climate. And those political kingmakers from New Jersey, Bruce Springsteen and Axel Rose. Lastly, Beck doesn't wow them in Copenhagen, but Lyons’ crowd sure got fired up for Hugo Chavez there!
For years we've had to put up with uninformed nincompoops from Hollywood and the music industry, who because they had a microphone and a sympathetic press, lectured us to no end and still do.
Gene Lyons. STFU! We're on to you and your crowd, and we're not backing down.
It seems that he doesn't have much of a problem eating everything else...
The person who wrote the foregoing article is so full of crap that his eyes are brown!
Mr. niteowl77
Just listen to the experts folks but of course only his cherry picked “experts”. It isn’t as if Palin, Rush, or the rest of us just make the data up. That is what is so appaling about these people. They really do believe that you should “submitt to your betters” except of course when they are involved. The ideas on which this country were founded, the ideas that a common man by firelight could learn to read or a poor man could educate himself and go on to great things are anomolies in their world. Those who live and believe the American dream are “freaks” and if you haven’t been rubberstamped and approved by the correct government offices then you don’t have a right to say anything because we know how infailable the opinions and actions of government officials are.
Ahhh ... so this Lyons is one of Ol’ Slick’s knob-polishers. It figures.
Meanwhile, Arctic sea ice is vanishing (Antartic ice is growing),
glaciers melting (at the edges, and forming at their source),
sea levels rising (and falling),
droughts and floods increasing (I guess the Midwest never used to be a dustbowl),
and the past decade — according to the World Meteorological Organization — was the warmest in “recorded” history (You know, the “records” the GW emails concern).
***Gene Lyons***
Lieing Gene Lyons, as he is known here in Arkansas, a contributer of lib articles to the Ark Dem-Gaz.
That’s a pretty good list but don’t forget about Ted Turner’s prediction of mass cannibalism. /sharpening my knives lol
Yes, and anything that didn't support a warming trend was automatically "unreliable".
This guy is too lazy and/or biased to look at the mess of data from the ground stations and see that the tree ring data is not reliable and the ground station data is even worse.
And then if he had any ability to comprehend science, he could see that all of this data should be thrown out, the biased scientists that corrupted peer review (remember that part of the e-mails?) and all of their models.
If he was still interested in science at this point, he could also look into the reliability of tightly coded programs in predicting complex systems and realize the amateur mess that they were using was a travesty and that there is no ability for these programs to predict anything.
Oh well, he's just a lazy name caller, nothing of any substance can be added by him except another trite rehash of talking points and a general insult towards anyone that doesn't agree with his religion.
-- Paul McCartney, "Hey Jude" (1968)
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