There seems to be a disconnect with many persons that peace does not mean the Islamic guided infitada with rockets, suicide vests, and the like. But as you go further-and-further left on the scale you get more-and-more disconnected with reality and more connected with power and violence. Mussolini agrees:
“Everything I have said and done in these last years is relativism by intuition…. If relativism signifies contempt for fixed categories and men who claim to be bearers of an objective, immortal truth… then there is nothing more relativistic than fascistic attitudes and activity…. From the fact that all ideologies are of equal value, that all ideologies are mere fictions, the modern relativist infers that everybody has the right to create for himself his own ideology and to attempt to enforce it with all the energy of which he is capable.”
Mussolini, Diuturna pp. 374-77, quoted in A Refutation of Moral Relativism: Interviews with an Absolutist (Ignatius Press; 1999), by Peter Kreeft, p. 18.
On March 3, 2013, a group of “pro-peace” leftists and Pro-Palestinian activists organized by the radical CODEPINK organization held a rally outside of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s annual Policy Conference (AIPAC) in Washington DC. They called for killing Jews.
In his first address as Secretary of State, John Kerry said we must safeguard “the most sacred trust” we owe to our children and grandchildren: “an environment not ravaged by rising seas, deadly superstorms, devastating droughts, and the other hallmarks of a dramatically changing climate.”
Even the IPCC and British Meteorological Office now recognize that average global temperatures haven’t budged in almost 17 years. Little evidence suggests that sea level rise, storms, droughts, polar ice and temperatures or other weather and climate events and trends display any statistically significant difference from what Earth and mankind have experienced over the last 100-plus years…
[….]
1) Influence peddling.
Over the past three years, the Tides Foundation and Tides Center alone poured $335 million into environmentalist climate campaigns, and $1 billion into green lobbies at large, notes Undue Influence author Ron Arnold. Major US donors gave $199 million to Canadian environmental groups just for anti-oil sands and Keystone pipeline battles during the last twelve years, analysts Vivian Krause and Brian Seasholes estimate; the Tides Foundation poured $10 million into these battles during 2009-2012.
All told, US foundations alone have “invested” over $797 million in environmentalist climate campaigns since 2000! And over $19.3 billion in “environmental” efforts since 1995, Arnold calculates! Add to that the tens of billions that environmental activist groups, universities and other organizations have received from individual donors, corporations and government agencies to promote “manmade climate disaster” theories – and pretty soon you’re talking real money.
Moreover, that’s just US cash. It doesn’t include EU, UN and other climate cataclysm contributions. Nor does it include US or global spending on wind, solar, biofuel and other “renewable” energy schemes. That this money has caused widespread pernicious and corrupting effects should surprise no one.
2) Politicized science, markets and ethics.
The corrupting cash has feathered careers, supported entire departments, companies and industries, and sullied our political, economic and ethical systems. It has taken countless billions out of productive sectors of our economy, and given it to politically connected, politically correct institutions that promote climate alarmism and renewable energy (and which use some of this crony capitalist taxpayer and consumer cash to help reelect their political sponsors).
Toe the line – pocket the cash, bask in the limelight. Question the dogma – get vilified, harassed and even dismissed from university or state climatologist positions for threatening the grants pipeline.
The system has replaced honest, robust, evidence-based, peer-reviewed science with pseudo-science based on activism, computer models, doctored data, “pal reviews,” press releases and other chicanery that resulted in Climategate, IPCC exposés, and growing outrage. Practitioners of these dark sciences almost never debate climate disaster deniers or skeptics; climate millionaire Al Gore won’t even take questions that he has not preapproved; and colleges have become centers for “socially responsible investing” campaigns based on climate chaos, “sustainable development” and anti-hydrocarbon ideologies…
[….]
3) Climate eco-imperialism impoverishes and kills.
Climate alarmism and pseudo science have justified all manner of regulations, carbon trading, carbon taxes, renewable energy programs and other initiatives that increase the cost of everything we make, grow, ship, eat, heat, cool, wear and do – and thus impair job creation, economic growth, living standards, health, welfare and ecological values.
Excessive EPA rules have closed numerous coal-fired power plants, and the agency plans to regulate most of the US hydrocarbon-based economy by restricting carbon dioxide emissions from vehicles, generating plants, cement kilns, factories, malls, hospitals and other “significant” sources. Were it not for the hydraulic fracturing revolution that has made natural gas and gas-fired generation abundant and cheap, US electricity prices would be skyrocketing – just as they have in Britain and Germany.
EU papers carry almost daily articles about fuel poverty, potential blackouts, outsourcing, job losses, economic malaise and despair, and deforestation for fire wood in those and other European countries, due to their focus on climate alarmism and “green” energy. California electricity prices are already highest in USA, thanks to its EU-style programs. The alarms are misplaced, the programs do nothing to reduce Chinese, Indian or global emissions, and renewable energy is hardly eco-friendly or sustainable.
Wind energy requires perpetual subsidies and “backup” fossil fuel power plants that actually produce 80% of the electricity attributed to wind, and blankets wildlife habitats with turbines and transmission lines that kill millions of birds and bats every year. In fact, industrial wind facilities remain viable only because they are exempted from many environmental review, wildlife and bird protection laws that are enforced with heavy penalties for all other industries. Solar smothers habitats with glossy panels, and biofuels divert crops and cropland to replace fuels that we have in abundance but refuse to develop.
Now climate activists and EPA want to regulate fracking for gas that was once their preferred option.
[….]
Symbols Lost
BP goes ‘beyond petroleum’
Then in 2000 BP, now a group of companies that included Amoco, ARCO and Castrol, unveiled a new global brand with a new mark, a sunburst of green, yellow and white symbolizing dynamic energy in all its forms. It was called the Helios after the sun god of ancient Greece. In a press release announcing the change, the group said it had decided to retain the BP name because of its recognition around the world and because it stood for the new company’s aspirations: ‘better people, better products, big picture, beyond petroleum.’
In related news, BP is quitting its 40-years of investment in solar power:
It seems to be a trend now, last October it was Siemens who gave up on solar, now it is British Petroleum, who has been in the solar business nearly 40 years, and has made the last closure announcements, finalizing what they announced in 2011.
In the news today:
(Reuters) – British oil major BP shut down the remnants of its solar unit on Wednesday, drawing a line under the business on which most of its Beyond Petroleum tagline of the early 2000s was premised.
[….]
The company confirmed on Wednesday that it plans to exit its large-scale projects at Long Haven in the U.S. and Moree in Australia.
BP announced plans in July to abandon its household and industrial rooftop solar activities to concentrate on the larger projects but said on December15 that even those were no longer viable.
Ben, Heidi, and Brian talk about the death of Chavez and the confused reaction by the left and the press. (Posted by: Religio-Political Talk) A very small portion of Celsius 41.11’s opener (http://tinyurl.com/cwhd22p) is inserted after the audio of the NYT’s reporter.
Chavez died today…. When I heard the news, these past fourteen years passed by me in an instant. My adolescence, my youth, all that fear, all that disappointment, all those street demonstrations, all those stories, all those lives that were lost in the way not by cancer but by the sound of a trigger. I wrote to my friends, to all those people who accompanied me during all those years when everything was about Chavez. All those people with frustrated dreams and hopes. Everyone who saw in this fourteen years a definite ruin of what we once called home. Pain, that is Hugo Chavez legacy.
…Dr. Edmundo Chirinos, a psychiatrist who got to know Mr. Chávez as a patient, described him in a profile in The New Yorker in 2001 as “a hyperkinetic and imprudent man, unpunctual, someone who overreacts to criticism, harbors grudges, is politically astute and manipulative, and possesses tremendous stamina, never sleeping more than two or three hours a night.”
Mr. Chávez would delight in angering his critics in rich countries. He heaped praise, for instance, on Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, the Venezuelan terrorist better known as Carlos the Jackal, with whom he corresponded.
“I defend him,” Mr. Chávez said of his friend, who was jailed in France on charges of murdering two French police agents and a Lebanese informer in Paris in 1975. “I don’t care what they say tomorrow in Europe.”
No mentor was more supportive than Mr. Castro, who well understood how important Venezuela’s subsidized oil shipments were to Cuba’s fragile economy. An ally from the start of Mr. Chávez’s presidency in 1999, he offered help in one of Mr. Chávez’s most difficult moments, a coup d’état that removed him from office for 48 hours in April 2002. Mr. Castro telephoned Venezuela’s top military officials, pressing them to assist in returning Mr. Chávez to office.
The collapse of the coup, which received tacit support from the Bush administration, and Mr. Chávez’s swift return to power signaled a shift in his presidency. Seemingly chastened, Mr. Chávez promised compromise and harmony in the future. But instead of reconciliation, his response was retaliation.
He began describing his critics as “golpistas,” or putschists, while recasting his own failed 1992 coup as a patriotic uprising. He purged opponents from the national oil company, expropriated the land of others and imprisoned retired military officials who had dared to stand against him. The country’s political debate became increasingly poisonous, and it took its toll on the country.
Private investors, unhinged over Mr. Chávez’s nationalizations and expropriation threats, halted projects. Hundreds of thousands of scientists, doctors, entrepreneurs and others in the middle class left Venezuela, even as large numbers of immigrants from Haiti, China and Lebanon put down stakes here.
The homicide rate soared under his rule, turning Caracas into one of the world’s most dangerous cities. Armed gangs lorded over prisons, as they did in previous governments, challenging the state’s authority. Simple tasks, like transferring the title of a car, remained nightmarish odysseys eased only by paying bribes to churlish bureaucrats.
Other branches of government often bent to his will. He fired about 19,000 employees of Petróleos de Venezuela, the national oil company, in response to a strike in 2002 and 2003. In 2004, he stripped the Supreme Court of its autonomy. In legislative elections in 2010, his supporters preserved a majority in the National Assembly by gerrymandering.
He also basked in the comforts allowed him as head of state in a nation with some of the largest oil reserves outside the Middle East. He traveled in a luxurious Airbus A-319. In one jaunt around Venezuela in 2007 with the actor Sean Penn, he roamed the plane regaling foreign journalists with tales from his days as a soldier…
I celebrate with others their happiness of Hugo’s loss.
In the above audio of Prager he is talking about this article, “The Scary Hidden Stressor,” by Thomas Friedman. The following article is also mentioned in the above audio:
Last week, Bjørn Lomborg, the widely published Danish professor and director of one of the world’s leading environmental think tanks, the Copenhagen Consensus Center, published an article about the Philippines’ decision, after twelve years, to allow genetically modified (GM) rice — “golden rice” — to be grown and consumed in that country.
The reason for the delay was environmentalist opposition to GM rice; and the reason for the change in Philippine policy was that 4.4 million Filipino children suffer from Vitamin-A deficiency, and golden rice contains Vitamin A.
Vitamin-A deficiency, Lomborg writes, “according to the World Health Organization, causes 250,000 to 500,000 children to go blind each year. Of these, half die within a year.” During the twelve-year delay, Lomborg continues, “about 8 million children worldwide died from Vitamin-A deficiency.”
Using golden rice is by far the most effective and cheapest way to get Vitamin A into Third World children.
So who would oppose something that could save millions of children’s lives and millions of other children from blindness?
The answer is people who are more devoted to nature than to human life.
And who might such people be?
They are called environmentalists.
These are the people who coerced nations worldwide into banning DDT. It is generally estimated that this ban has led to the deaths of about 50 million human beings, overwhelmingly African children, from malaria. DDT kills the mosquito that spreads malaria to human beings.
U.S. News writer Carrie Lukas reported in 2010, “Fortunately, in September 2006, the World Health Organization announced a change in policy: It now recommends DDT for indoor use to fight malaria. The organization’s Dr. Anarfi Asamoa-Baah explained, ‘The scientific and programmatic evidence clearly supports this reassessment. Indoor residual spraying (IRS) is useful to quickly reduce the number of infections caused by malaria-carrying mosquitoes. IRS has proven to be just as cost effective as other malaria prevention measures and DDT presents no health risk when used properly.’”
Though Lukas blames environmentalists for tens of millions of deaths, she nevertheless describes environmentalists as “undoubtedly well-intentioned.”
As we end the above Leftist lunacy, we should remember well CS Lewis’ words about well-intentioned persons:
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. Their very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be ‘cured’ against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”
As coverage of last week’s flare-up between Bob Woodward and the White House devolved into the granular parsing of words and implications and extrapolations and possible intent, the larger point was roundly missed: the increasing pressure that White House correspondents feel when dealing with the Obama administration — to follow their narrative, to be properly deferential (!), to react to push-back by politely sitting down and shutting up.
“The whole Woodward thing doesn’t surprise me at all,” says David Brody, chief political correspondent for CBN News. “I can tell you categorically that there’s always been, right from the get-go of this administration, an overzealous sensitivity to any push-back from any media outlet.”
A brief recap: After the Washington Post ran a Woodward op-ed in which he claimed that the administration was “moving the goalposts” on the eve of the potential sequester, the veteran journalist went on to assert that economic adviser Gene Sperling said, in an e-mail, “I think you will regret staking out this claim.”
While Woodward spent a lot of the week on cable news going back and forth on whether that was a threat, few reporters, if any, asked why a high-level administration official spent so much time — Sperling admittedly shouted at Woodward during a 30-minute phone call, followed by that e-mail — attempting to control an opinion expressed in a newspaper.
The answer, say former and current White House correspondents, is simple: This administration is more skilled and disciplined than any other in controlling the narrative, using social media to circumnavigate the press. On the flip side, our YouTube culture means even the slightest gaffe can be devastating, and so you have an army of aides and staffers helicoptering over reporters.
Finally, this week, reporters are pushing back. Even Jonathan Alter — who frequently appears on the Obama-friendly MSNBC — came forward to say he, too, had been treated horribly by the administration for writing something they didn’t like.
“There is a kind of threatening tone that, from time to time — not all the time — comes out of these guys,” Alter said this week. During the 2008 campaign swing through Berlin, Alter said that future White House press secretary Robert Gibbs disinvited him from a dinner between Obama and the press corps over it.
“I was told ‘Don’t come,’ in a fairly abusive e-mail,” he said. “[It] made what Gene Sperling wrote [to Woodward] look like patty-cake.”
“I had a young reporter asking tough, important questions of an Obama Cabinet secretary,” says one DC veteran. “She was doing her job, and they were trying to bully her. In an e-mail, they called her the vilest names — bitch, c–t, a–hole.” He complained and was told the matter would be investigated: “They were hemming and hawing, saying, ‘We’ll look into it.’ Nothing happened.”
I know that this does not need repeating, but if this were a Republican administration, the media would be burning the Commander-in-Chief at the stake. Instead, these tools continue to polish his knob in an advanced case of Stockholm Syndrome. They sacrifice their integrity, their objectivity, and their principles for an enemy administration whose collectivist goals they share.
Any decent American journalist would have run the emails referred to in this article on the front page. But instead, they cover for the Stalinist tactics of the thug in the White House.
Ron Suskind lifted the curtain back a bit in 2011 with his bookConfidence Men, which ABC reported on then:
President Obama, who rose to power on a message of inclusion and equality, came under fire this week when an author quoted female members of his administration as saying the White House was a sexist and “hostile” work environment.
Since excerpts leaked from the book “Confidence Men,” journalist Ron Suskind’s take on how the Obama administration handled the financial crisis, Anita Dunn, former White House communications director, and Christina Romer, former head of the Council of Economic Advisers, have denied the substance of their remarks and said they were misquoted.
“I felt like a piece of meat,” Romer was quoted in the book as saying of one meeting with Larry Summers, former chairman of the National Economic Council, complaining she was “boxed out” of the discussion.
According to the Washington Post, Dunn says in the book: “This place would be in court for a hostile workplace because it actually fit all of the classic legal requirements for a genuinely hostile workplace to women.”
The two women seemed to briefly open a window on the White House, giving a rare glimpse inside a tightly messaged administration, only to quickly close it. Accusations, however, that Obama favors male staffers have dogged him since his election when reporters noticed he spent critical face time on the basketball court and the golf course exclusively with men.
Here is a partial transcript of Marc’s statements that have links to info (via NewsBusters), Marc ISClimate Depot:
MARC MORANO, CLIMATE DEPOT: We followed the evidence. There are quite literally hundreds of factors that influence global temperature, everything from tilt of the earth’s axis to ocean cycles to water vapor, methane, solar system, the sun, cloud feedback, volcanic dust. The idea that CO2 is the tail that wags the dog is not supportable.
And if you go down and look at the scientific literature, we are finding reams of data. And new peer-reviewed study showing the Medieval and Roman warming periods as warm or warmer than today without our CO2 emissions. So what’s happened here is the whole movement, because now we’ve gone 16 years without global warming, according to the U.N. data [from UK Met Office], and they’ve now morphed into extreme weather.
And we have the absurd spectacle of people claiming that acts of Congress and United Nations can control the weather and make hurricanes less nasty and make tornadoes less frequent, which by the way none of them are showing any trends at all that are unusual.
MORGAN: Well, so Marc Morano, if there is a massively increased acceleration in CO2 in the atmosphere at the same time that there’s been a bigger than double the sizing of the population of the planet, why would that not be inexorably linked? Explain to me.
MORANO: CO2 is rising. No one is disputing that. What Bill and I just did was waste everyone’s time explaining that CO2 is rising. The question is what impact does CO2 have on the weather, what impact the CO2 have on climate change. And that, as we you look at the geologic records, we’ve had warmer periods where it’s been — with higher — with lower CO2 and we’ve had colder periods with higher CO2. And you have to go way back for some of that but the bottom line is hundreds of factors are dictating our climate.
The Medieval Warm Period was both southern and northern hemisphere. On my Web site there’s literally [scores of studies] — it demolishes the idea of a hockey stick, new peer-reviewed study, so the idea that Bill Nye is just going around saying CO2 is up, therefore global warming is dangerous, we should be concerned, it’s not. It’s not dangerous. The bottom line is all these factors —
[….]
MORANO: No. You go to the peer-reviewed literature. You’re looking at anecdotal evidence. This is now the level of your daily horoscope. Basically global warmists like Bill Nye say global warming will cause many bad weather events and guess what? Bad weather events happen all the time so people look and they say look, there’s more proof, there’s a bad weather event.
Bottom line, big tornadoes, F-3 and larger since 1950s have dropped dramatically. Bottom line, we’ve gone the longest period without a major U.S. category 3 or larger hurricane hitting the U.S. since 1900, maybe the civil war.
Bottom line, new study in the “Journal Nature,” peer-reviewed, no change in U.S. drought in the last 60 years. Bottom line, a new study out shows that drought has not changed in 85 to —
[….]
MORANO: Why it’s the wrong argument? Because every proposal ever done including the United Nations Kyoto Protocol would not even detectibly impact the temperatures assuming you buy into their science. What we’re talking about —
NYE: We’re not talking about the temperature. MORANO: We’re talking about a climate bill in the United States. President Obama was going around telling people it will keep the planet four or five degrees cooler for our grandchildren. His own EPA said it wouldn’t affect global CO2 levels let alone temperature. And if you actually do —
NYE: CO2 —
(CROSSTALK)
MORANO: Right now the developing world is getting 1,000 plus coal plants, there are 1.3 billion people don’t have running water and electricity. If we actually go the route of trying to stop carbon- based energy which has been their lifeline, which would lower infant mortality and long life expectancy, it would be the most immoral position you can take. So the bottom line is even if the skeptics are wrong the solutions that the global warming alarmists have proposed would have no detectible impact on climate.
[….]
MORANO: … that violate 81 one out of 87 of the basic principles of forecasting.
NYE: So —
MORGAN: Marc Morano, do you accept that the ocean levels are rising, that the planet is getting hotter, that CO2 emissions have dramatically increased in the last 50 years, and —
NYE: And ice sheets are shrinking.
MORGAN: Ice sheets are shrinking and the planet population is doubling and accelerating at a terrifying rate, and that the combination of all these things is likely to be a major problem for the next two or three generations, and therefore, doing nothing shouldn’t really be a sensible responsible option. MORANO: Doing nothing — first of all the United States did nothing, our CO2 emissions are dropping as we move to fracking away from coal through technology so the idea of nothing — there’s nothing to do. The idea of — there’s no way you can solve a nonproblem. Sea level has been rising since the end of the last ice age. There’s no acceleration. The Dutch Meteorological Institute said there’s no acceleration. You can look at the data, the land base data.
NYE: We just don’t agree on the facts. So we’re not going to get anywhere.
MORANO: Where it goes — the scary and where the horror story is in all these predictions. And they come out and say it’s worse than we thought. Why —
The Left (in this case Bill Nye and Piers Morgan) are referencing a religious eschatology that use to reside only with the religious… now the professional, secular Left has their own ideology of Armageddon. I would rather depend on more sound — and less eschatological — decisions made on these matters:
▼ “We’re not scientifically there yet. Despite what you may have heard in the media, there is nothing like a consensus of scientific opinion that this is a problem. Because there is natural variability in the weather, you cannot statistically know for another 150 years.” — UN IPCC’s Tom Tripp, a member of the UN IPCC since 2004 and listed as one of the lead authors and serves as the Director of Technical Services & Development for U.S. Magnesium.
▼ “Any reasonable scientific analysis must conclude the basic theory wrong!!” — NASA Scientist Dr. Leonard Weinstein who worked 35 years at the NASA Langley Research Center and finished his career there as a Senior Research Scientist. Weinstein is presently a Senior Research Fellow at the National Institute of Aerospace.
▼ “Please remain calm: The Earth will heal itself — Climate is beyond our power to control…Earth doesn’t care about governments or their legislation. You can’t find much actual global warming in present-day weather observations. Climate change is a matter of geologic time, something that the earth routinely does on its own without asking anyone’s permission or explaining itself.” — Nobel Prize-Winning Stanford University Physicist Dr. Robert B. Laughlin, who won the Nobel Prize for physics in 1998, and was formerly a research scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
Remember, we have had most of the Co2 produced in world history since 1998, and we have had no warming for 16-years. So the connection Bill Nye tries to make is fictitious so far.
✦ The figures reveal that from the beginning of 1997 until August 2012 there was no discernible rise in aggregate global temperatures
✦ This means that the ‘pause’ in global warming has now lasted for about the same time as the previous period when temperatures rose, 1980 to 1996
The world stopped getting warmer almost 16 years ago, according to new data released last week.
The figures, which have triggered debate among climate scientists, reveal that from the beginning of 1997 until August 2012, there was no discernible rise in aggregate global temperatures.
This means that the ‘plateau’ or ‘pause’ in global warming has now lasted for about the same time as the previous period when temperatures rose, 1980 to 1996. Before that, temperatures had been stable or declining for about 40 years.
The actions of Skeptical Science as of late have gotten it and its affiliates into a bit of trouble, even having a paper pulled from a reputable journals site! Why? This quote from Climate Resistance (via Australian Climate Madness)
We might reasonably be allowed to speculate what the reasons for the paper not making it to print were. One reason may be that it was, as has been widely observed, utter BS. Even Lewandowsky’s own colleagues pointed out its many flaws in methodology, and its naked attempt to diminish Lewandowsky’s opposites in the climate debate — climate bloggers.
[….]
But what is remarkable, however, is that seemingly academic research should have fallen to this level. Lewandowsky reduces academia to a silly blog comment war. He drags journals, and research organisations into this war, undermining the value of research in general and trust in it. The thrust of Lewandowsky’s paper is ‘I picked a fight on the Internet, and this is what people said about me’, which, of course, omits any criticism of his work that may enable him to develop a better argument.
And that’s the point. Lewandowsky’s research is intended to reduce the phenomenon of ‘scepticism’ and ‘denial’ without taking any notice of what sceptics say, except when it confirms to the stereotype Lewandowsky wants to demonstrate the existence of. No doubt that’s a ‘conspiracy theory’ on his view, but the truth is much simpler: either his mediocre talents aren’t sufficient for the critical self-reflection necessary to produce robust research, or an inflated ego precludes critical self-reflection.
The Conspiracy Crew of Skeptical Science
…[John Cook] and his psych sidekick Dr. Stephan Levandowsky are big on conspiracy theory studies as a tool to smear skeptics, quite certain that climate skeptics are mentally aberrant, even though they never gave the readers of this blog a chance to vote in their horridly self serving and skewed survey. Given that, I think a case could easily be made for psychological projection in Cook’s thinking. That flawed sampling of actual skeptic websites could be why Lewandowsky’s paper was recently pulled from publication by the scientific journal…. But, this behavior is pretty much par for the course given the juvenile antics we’ve seen from the cartoonist turned conspiracy theory publisher and the whole crew at SkS… (WUWT)
Skeptical Science is a climate alarmist website created by a self-employed cartoonist, John Cook. It is moderated by zealots who ruthlessly censor any and all form of dissent from their alarmist position. This way they can pretend to win arguments, when in reality they have all been refuted. The abuse and censorship does not pertain to simply any dissenting commentator there but to highly credentialed and respected climate scientists as well; Dr. Pielke Sr. has unsuccessfully attempted to engage in discussions there only to be childishly taunted and censored while Dr. Michaels has been dishonestly quoted and smeared. The irony of the site’s oxymoronic name “Skeptical Science” is that the site is not skeptical of even the most extreme alarmist positions.
John Cook is now desperately trying to cover up his background that he was employed as a cartoonist for over a decade with no prior employment history in academia or climate science.
Thanks to the Wayback Machine we can reveal what his website originally said,
On the same expose of Skeptical “Science” we find two bios of skeptics:
Patrick J. Michaels, A.B. Biological Sciences, University of Chicago (1971); S.M. Biology, University of Chicago (1975); Ph.D. Ecological Climatology, University of Wisconsin-Madison (1979); Research and Project Assistant, Center for Climatic Research, University of Wisconsin (1976-1979); Assistant Professor of Environmental Sciences, University of Virginia (1980-1986); Virginia State Climatologist (1980-2007); President, Central Virginia Chapter, American Meteorological Society (1986-1987); Executive Board, American Association of State Climatologists (1986-1989); Associate Professor of Environmental Sciences, University of Virginia (1986-1995); President, American Association of State Climatologists (1987-1988); Chair, Committee on Applied Climatology, American Meteorological Society (1988-1999); Senior Fellow in Environmental Studies, Cato Institute (1992-Present); Visiting Scientist, Marshall Institute (1996-Present); Member, American Association for the Advancement of Science; Member, Association of American Geographers; Member, Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society; Professor of Environmental Sciences, University of Virginia (1996-Present); Contributor and Expert Reviewer, IPCC (1990, 1992, 1995, 2001, 2007)
Roger A. Pielke Sr., B.A. Mathematics, Towson State College (1968); M.S. Meteorology, Pennsylvania State University (1969); Ph.D. Meteorology, Pennsylvania State University (1973); Research Assistant, Pennsylvania State University (1968); National Science Foundation Trainee, Pennsylvania State University (1968-1971); Research Meteorologist, Experimental Meteorology Laboratory, NOAA (1971-1974); Assistant Professor, Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Virginia (1974-1977); Distinguished Authorship Award, NOAA (1974); Leroy Meisinger Award, American Meteorological Society (1977); Associate Professor, Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Virginia (1978-1981); Chief Editor, Monthly Weather Review (1981-1985); Fellow, American Meteorological Society (1982); Associate Professor of Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University (1982-1985); Abell New Faculty Research and Graduate Program Award (1984); Deputy Director, Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere (1985-1988); Professor of Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University (1985-2000), Abell Research Faculty Award (1987/1988); Researcher of the Year, Colorado State University Research Foundation (1993), Pennsylvania State Centennial Fellow (1996); Alumni of the Year, Pennsylvania State College of Earth and Mineral Sciences (1999); Colorado State Climatologist (1999-2006); Engineering Dean’s Council Award, Colorado State University (2000); Adjunct Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Duke University (2003-2006); Fellow, American Geophysical Union (2004); Visiting Professor, Department of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Arizona (2004); Senior Research Scientist, Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado-Boulder (2005-Present); Senior Research Associate, Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, University of Colorado-Boulder (2005-Present); Professor Emeritus of Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University (2007-Present)
What is done then is summed up well by a forum post after quoting a doctorate holding climatologist who is skeptical of the claims that man is driving the climate change we see (or don’t see):
So, what John Cook has done with his various statements is to draw a cartoon version of what skeptics like Professor Lindzen have said and then debunks it. The end result is about as accurate as a bugs bunny cartoon explaining quantum physics. But then, what would anyone expect of a website ran by a self employed cartoonist?
And as Popular Technology Blog points out those who are more serious about climate have concluded through critique or obfuscation the cartoon’ish character of Skeptical Science:
NBC-LA this morning had a debate on one of the ballot measures to appear March 5th for voting in Los Angeles, “Measure A.” This is a concise soliloquies of the larger debate (here) where Mr. Kaye underlines the main problem in Los Angeles’ fiscal practice for the past 30-years. He points out that “Measure A” will not fix the core issue while also touching on the scare tactics of the city council and Mayor. This micro L.A. level issue is an example of what is ailing California as well as the country. (Posted by: Religio-Political Talk)
