Sick Side-Show: Justin Gillis And New York Times’ Attempt To Blow Up Distinguished Professor’s Reputation.

UPDATE: I got an angry e-mail from a reader who acted like he was offended by my likening the intolerance of warmists to that of the ISIS. The writer demanded that I get back to “a little bit of civility here”. Gee, I thought burning enemies was something Christians did hundreds of years ago, and so we ought not get so upset about it, at least that’s what President Obama told us. At any rate, I’ve decided to replace the IS image below with another that meets the warmists’ standards of civility. Happy now?
===================================

Unfortunately we live on the same planet as a couple of apocalyptic cults which find the existence of non-believers an affront to their particular belief system. One cult fantasises about executing non-believers, the other does it in imaginative ways. Both cults need to believe in hidden things. Both are best avoided.”

David Archibald

10 10 no pressure 2

IS propaganda image. What zealot warmists really fantasize of doing to dissenters. Source: cropped from here.

Distinguished scientist Willie Soon has become the target of a nasty smear job led by Justin Gillis of the hopelessly biased New York Times. It is not so much that the Smithsonian professor dared to question climate science orthodoxy (which is what science is all about to start with), but rather that his questions have yet to be answered. Thus Soon is viewed as a threat and so he has been condemned a heretic by the global warming cultists. And so ensues the orchestrated attempt by the New York Times, and the usual suspect web of alarmist scientists and activists, to cage-burn Soon’s reputation as a scientist.

Sideshow rather than scientific debate

Obviously the strain brought on by the embarrassment of the 18-year global warming pause and the unexpected record winter weather has been taking its toll on the global warming apostles and the desperate activist media outlets. The supposedly settled science apparently has more than its share of prickly thorns in its side.

Instead of arguing the science point by point, the New York Times led by Gillis prefer to create a diversionary side show: Soon’s reputation gets put in a cage that is to be set afire as the science goes ignored.

The activist past of Justin Gillis

Gillis’s brand of one-sided, highly activist and aid-and-abet journalism on behalf of end-of-world theorist scientists is hardly new. His true identity was exposed, for example, in his attempt to go after distinguished MIT professor Richard Lindzen. Christopher Horner writes of collusion at the Washington Examiner:

Gillis wrote a piece in May laboring to undermine one of the most highly credentialed and respected climate ‘skeptics,’ the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Dr. Richard Lindzen. This front-page article prompted my request for information reflecting how the A&M professor and activist whom Gillis quoted was using his taxpayer-funded position.

The specific correspondence began when Gillis wrote that interviewing Lindzen for a piece on his area of expertise was ‘unavoidable,’ and ‘[s]o I need a really good bibliography of all the published science’ countering Lindzen’s position on cloud feedback — ‘that is, anything that stands as evidence against Lindzen’s claim that the feedback has to be strongly negative.’

Remember, this was a reporter for the New York Times writing this. In the released emails, Gillis comes off as an activist posing as a journalist, sneering at Lindzen. Of another prominent skeptic, Gillis wrote, ‘I sense you’ve got him in a trap here … can’t wait to see it sprung.’ “

The Galileo treatment

The need to go after heretics who stand out is as old as humanity itself and is a seemingly incurable mental illness that has ailed human civilization from the start. Today, as David Archibald points out, it is starkly manifested by radical Islam. One illustrative scientific case from the past is the Trial of Galileo from some 400 years ago:

Galileo’s renunciation of Copernicanism ended with the words, “I affirm, therefore, on my conscience, that I do not now hold the condemned opinion and have not held it since the decision of authorities….I am here in your hands–do with me what you please.”

The parallels are stunning to say the least. Unfortunately Galileo was pretty much alone in his plight and did not have a blog.

Long list of warmists funded by Big Oil, industry

Of course Gillis writes as if questionable funding is only a problem one finds on the skeptic side, who in fact are massively underfunded compared to the global warming alarmists. Many skeptic blogs operate on volunteer basis. Recently NTZ exposed the massive funding the radical warmist elements get from Big Industry: Long List Of Warmist Organizations And Scientists Haul In Huge Money From Big Oil And Heavy Industry.

Earth to Gillis…Earth to Gillis..do you read?

Not only is the New York Times article just a sorrowful side-show, but it is one involving immature and juvenile elements. Prior to article appearing, taunting e-mails were anonymously sent to Professor Soon. It is not known who was behind the e-mails, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out it came from a circle close to the New York Times piece.

Pitiful attacks mean skeptics are winning

So what does Gillis’s sorrowful piece of journalism tell us? Most climate skeptics skeptics have become very familiarized with the words of Gandhi concerning being first ignored, then laughed at, and then attacked before finally emerging victorious. The attack on Willie Soon is just the latest sign of the warmists’ desperation. They know their science is just sinking refuse.

Finally read: Goon Squad Fails To Distract Public From Fact That Climate Models Stink.

Also see many links to reports at Climate Depot.

http://www.breitbart.com/witch-hunt/

 

39 responses to “Sick Side-Show: Justin Gillis And New York Times’ Attempt To Blow Up Distinguished Professor’s Reputation.”

  1. A C Osborn

    There is nothing too low for them to stoop to.
    Total Desperation.

  2. Otter (ClimateOtter on Twitter)

    ‘lil davey appell is running around defending the smear. One wonders if he will show up here….

  3. Stephen Richards

    Apple is deranged. He’ll be hear although he normally destroys Roy Spencer’s blog first.

    The NYT is no more a newspaper than the beano and the beano is more entertaining.

    They all now realise that mother nature is pulling a fast one on them and if they fail at Paris the game will be over.

    Desperate is trully what they need to be because china and india will not sign a punitive agreement and Obama can’t.

  4. Ralph

    Look what I found..

    Foreign Firm Funding U.S. Green Groups Tied to State-Owned Russian Oil Company

    A shadowy Bermudan company that has funneled tens of millions of dollars to anti-fracking environmentalist groups in the United States is run by executives with deep ties to Russian oil interests and offshore money laundering schemes involving members of President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle.

    One of those executives, Nicholas Hoskins, is a director at a hedge fund management firm that has invested heavily in Russian oil and gas. He is also senior counsel at the Bermudan law firm Wakefield Quin and the vice president of a London-based investment firm whose president until recently chaired the board of the state-owned Russian oil company Rosneft.

    In addition to those roles, Hoskins is a director at a company called Klein Ltd. No one knows where that firm’s money comes from. Its only publicly documented activities have been transfers of $23 million to U.S. environmentalist groups that push policies that would hamstring surging American oil and gas production, which has hurt Russia’s energy-reliant economy.

    http://freebeacon.com/issues/foreign-firm-funding-u-s-green-groups-tied-to-state-owned-russian-oil-company/

  5. Edward.

    Gillis,

    Is a cheapskate hack who pens badly written lightweight puffery, fictions all that the NYT reflects, in fact.

    Gillis, is also ever so slightly deranged and is typical of a crew of ocean going liars. Scribes wittering left wing banalities as do most ‘paid for’ shills who mumble doctrinal pap, leaning well to the left – and the political inertia of Socialism in all of its aberrant forms.

    They rant, alarmist – because they can see that, their cant and spiel – undermined by Lindzen et al, refuted and being revealed for what it is – just that; lies, lies and more lies.

    All the realists do; Lindzen points to the truth, Dr. Soon sleeps well at night, it begets content and conscience at ease – of those blessed with relating simple self evident facts and truths.

    Alarmists are the deniers of the truth, that’s why many of them are mad.

  6. yonason

    Dr. Soon’s colleague Dr. Sally Baliunas has some insight into the mindset of his critics.

  7. Eli Rabett

    Cooking, bunnies want cooking lessons? Brian Schmidt has a recipe for you

    1. Place Baliunas, Bolt, and Michaels in a large, water-filled pot equipped with a step ladder they can use to escape at any time. Set initial water temperature at average levels.

    BALIUNAS/BOLT/MICHAELS: We’re quite comfortable, thank you!!

    2. Increase temperature to an unambigous, new historic high.

    BLAIR/BOLT/MICHAELS: No big deal! Not going to last!

    MICHAELS: Want to bet it won’t be this warm again?

    3. Drop temperature back down, but still far above average.

    BALIUNAS/BOLT/MICHAELS: See!! Vindication!! There is no potboiler warming! Not a problem!

    4. Gradually increase temperature to near or above the historic high.

    BALIUNAS/BOLT/MICHAELS: We deny it’s above the historic high! Deny it!

    MICHAELS: And, uh, the bet offer is withdrawn.

    5. Keep temperature very high, but a tiny bit below Step 4.

    BALIUNAS/BOLT/MICHAELS: The science behind potboiler warming is bogus, and we’ll stay here for as long as it takes to prove it!

    BALIUNAS: I’m not feeling hot – crank it up, people!

    BOLT: Me neither!

    6. Repeat Steps 2 through 5 until done. Don’t worry, they won’t use the step ladder to get out. Process will be sped by the fact that their brains were already cooked.

    Please, please, please, may some climate science denialist point out to me that we haven’t yet repeated Step 2 – just be prepared to put your money where your mouth is about what will happen in the near future.

    1. yonason

      Do you even have a clue what she was talking about?

    2. DirkH

      It’s interesting that your phantasizing about boiling deniars, Josh. Have you run out of Xanax again?

    3. DirkH

      So, Josh, when you run out of arguments, you phantasize about boiling humans alive. Seems to me the ISIS photograph was perfectly appropriate.

  8. Stephen Richards

    Betting against the bookmaker who drugs the horses is a mugs game ELI, and you know it.

    But it’s interesting to see how many sceptics sites you follow.

  9. Mindert Eiting

    I have the impression that we are here on the terrain of social psychology. Not to say that this is the most advanced part of our sciences, witness Lew and Cook, but interesting any how. In the context of physics, we have here the Adhom Argument in full glory. Do the IPCC reports have a chapter about this? (still waiting for Mr. Appell, not Apple)

  10. derfel cadarn

    Calling the warmist sides argument science is a misnomer and insulting to scientists. Science requires .work and study it generates data. Warmists are far to lazy for work and study, instead they emote. When asked for data they cannot produce what they clearly do not possess.

  11. AleM

    Our warmist fraternity believes that it can recast the Laws of Physics to meet the need of their political aspiration. That change is to claim that any body at a temperature above absolute zero continuously emits photons at the sum energy rate defined by the single Stefan-Boltzmann Equation.

    This leads to the Perpetual Motion Machine of the 2nd Kind in the IPCC Climate Models, 40% increase in energy over reality. In reality, the net radiative energy transfer at any plane between the surfaces of two bodies in a vacuum is given by the vector sum of the Irradiances at that plane. If that net radiative energy transfer is zero, the mean photon transfer rate to or from that plane is zero.

    So, there is no energy gain in the atmosphere, no ‘positive feedback’. In our atmosphere, the water cycle ensures perfect negative feedback; no warming from all well-mixed GHGs. The warmists have tried to claim the high ground by changing peer review to pal review but Mother Nature is firmly slapping them down!

    1. Will Janoschka

      The irradiances may be expressed as radiances so the flux becomes independent of location.

  12. Pethefin

    Things seem to be getting really nasty in U.S. politics:

    https://www.barackobama.com/climate-change-deniers/

    there is a very unpleasant ring to such a hunt for dissidents. Is dissent/non-conformity with state supported scientific theories becoming a violation to be punished?

  13. Will Janoschka

    While scanning comments at WUWT
    —————————————
    Leo Smith February 23, 2015 at 1:59 am

    ” In one of Castenada’s novels there is a story about a young man who left his poor village in Mexico and went to the city to get an education.
    On his return to the village years later he found that the villagers were in thrall to a man who had a book, out of which he read long passages. This book it appeared contained all they needed to solve their problems. However the young man noticed that the man was holding the book upside down.
    “Your hero is a fraud: He cannot read” he declared “And I can prove it, he is holding the book upside down!”
    “What difference does it make, to a man who can read, which way up the book is? ” retorted the man, and the villagers cheered…
    The problem is, that when people reject all of science already, a scientific refutation of global warming is (politically) meaningless.
    I too have been appalled by the standards of debate over this, and other, issues. I have come to a terrifying conclusion.
    Perhaps less than 10% of the population understands science at all, and of that 10% probably less than 10% actually understand the mathematical principles involved in the AGW proposition. And most of those are not in climate science.
    This is ultimately both something that has always been the case with science and indeed rational thought, and something that is deeply worrying right now, because we are in a deep crisis as a society and need better understanding than that.
    Humanity en masse proceeds along more or less bigoted lines according to the fashionable prejudices of the age. The AGW protagonists understand this: their business is to move the fashionable bigotry along to suit their agenda.
    If we step back a minute and regard the implications of what I propose to be the case, they are these: The vast majority of humanity is incapable for one reason or another of understanding the science and technology that forms the backdrop to their lives. And in a democracy that means they are more or less unfit to vote on matters that affect it.
    A small minority of ‘movers and shakers’ – and these days they are (to borrow Jilly Coopers terminology) the ‘Tellystocracy’ , the media luvvies and those who use mass media to ‘inform’ public debate – are the ones who count. They are the new elite, the new lords and masters of the brave new world, and it is this group that has been so thoroughly targeted and infiltrated by all and any group with a political or commercial axe to grind. It doesn’t matter what some obscure group of scientists believe, or what the mass of people believe, what matters is what this group do in terms of forming (rather than informing) public opinion.
    This group then are by and large the group that actually carries out political change. They are in charge of the fashionable bigotry that comprises what we have come to know and love as political correctness. That vast and loosely affiliated propaganda machine that tells us what to think about, and what to think about it.
    What we need to do if we are to introduce truth into this tissue of lies and deceit, is to make the case to the media/political luvvies that in fact their particular brand of bigotry is deeply dangerous to themselves as a class.
    In the case of AGW we have two main avenues through which this is happening.
    First of all the man in the street is getting fed up with falling standards of living, and his winters seeming just as cold wet and miserable as the summers are, despite claims it was the warmest year on record.
    Secondly the more astute members of the tellystocracy are becoming aware that infrastructure is for everyone, and that includes them. Victorian sewers were to protect the elite of the day from disease, by eliminating it from the great unwashed. This is a potent line of attack – Wind turbines and solar panels become not source of individual profit, but a disaster for all including those that profit from them.
    Ultimately the game is this: Science in its broadest terms is nothing more and nothing less than a means of predicting the future. Science says if we do this or that, the other will happen. The complex mathematical laws we deduce, infer or discover (according to your metaphysical picture of what Laws are) have no justification beyond the fact that they work, and what they say will come to pass, comes to pass, mostly.
    Science that fails to predict anything is untestable, and if it fails to produce the result that reality provides, it’s junk science or no science at all. You can summarise this by saying that in the long term reality trumps bullshit.
    Ultimately AGW either produces correct predictions or its junk, It’s looking to be junk. However that doesn’t stop people believing in it because it’s fashionable bigotry. But here we invoke Darwin. Societies that fail to realise what reality is, and cling to fashionable bigotry, will suffer accordingly. There are signs that the whole West will in fact ultimately collapse in an orgy of self destructive mutual deception and liberal angst. Or perhaps it will wake up and smell the coffee.
    And in the end, that is the conundrum. It is true to say that people are reasonably easily led, and that even those that lead them, are themselves subject to fashionable bigotry. That is a fact of life that we have to deal with. In the end we have only one yardstick that works to dispel the fog of Belief In Bullshit and that is Reality herself, and Reality is a hard mistress. If She needs to destroy entire societies that are so infected with irrational bullshit that they can no longer support themselves at all, She will.
    I don’t like to get political here, but this is to me the great argument for not having the sort of monolithic world government that the cultural Marxists of the UN and the ‘liberal and social’ democracies seem to espouse. that and we all go down together. Whereas having political islands of national ideologies at least allows for some diversity of political thought, and if the West becomes so decadent not because of Capitalism, but because of Marxism and its descendants itself, that it is in danger of falling to a stronger culture, maybe one of those political islands will have the tools and the strength to resist and prove to have the next line of fashionable bigotry to deal with the new reality.
    From my perspective there are two completely different dimensions in play here, and it helps not to confuse them.
    There is the technical and scientific reality of the data: that the world ain’t warming any more, never warmed very much, and windmills and solar panels are a complete waste of time and money, and destructive to boot, and if we want to stay alive in the absence of fossil fuel the logical alternative is nuclear power.
    That these things are provably and demonstrably true is, however, irrelevant to the second dimension, which is what people think.
    Or can be induced to believe. And here there is in fact a world war in progress, World War III. Its not being fought with weapons (much) that kill, directly, but with weapons that corrupt thinking. It is a war of propaganda and competing ideologies, none of which have a particularly strong basis in Reality, because Reality is pretty damned complicated, and its easier to get people to believe in simple stuff. ‘Four legs good – two legs bad’ sort of stuff.
    I have to say that I have more or less given up on the science: The jury is in for people to understand the maths and the physics and how real science works. AGW is a crock of shit, and that’s that.
    The real game is the war for hearts and minds. And that is a game of psychology, propaganda, money, power, politics, greed, fear, uncertainty and doubt. If we can’t win it, it will in the end destroy Western civilisation, and so it should. If we have no answer for lies, we don’t deserve to make it.
    Once we had a system that worked. The brightest and best, and a few of the rich, got excellent educations and were indoctrinated with a culture of care for those less fortunate, and a sense of duty towards the masses. They did what they considered to be right, after duly listening to the problems.
    Today that is destroyed by egalitarianism, which ensures that no one at all gets a good education that everyone cannot afford. Except for a very very few – too few – people who espouse state education but manage to avoid it in the case of their children. Worse, they dont educate them into the actualities of science and technology even then, they educate them into the practical techniques of propaganda. We have in short a generation of peole who are highly skilled in the manipulation of public opinion, but no idea how a smart phone works. People ideally placed to control and dominate a society, and take from it all its riches, but without actually having even the most basic understanding of how those riches are created.
    Such a situation is dynamically unstable. We, the technologists, are not screaming out for recognition ‘because its unfair’ or ‘because its morally indefensible’. No, we have a much quieter but devastatingly powerful message. “If you don’t take at least some notice of Reality, you will in fact die of ignorance, and likely take us with you”.
    *shrug* If they don’t listen, it’s Goodnight Vienna. We wont be the first culture to commit racial suicide in pursuit of idiotic beliefs.”
    —————————————-

    dbstealey February 23, 2015 at 2:56 am

    Leo Smith, You’re one in a million! Thanks for posting that, I’m in complete agreement. The problem isn’t science; that is 100% on the side of skeptics of MMGW. The problem is human nature. Some people/groups have that figured out, and that’s bad news for the rest of us.

    A.D. Everard February 23,2015 at 4:30 am

    Leo, your comment should be a post in itself. It should be widely read. This is so much what needs to be understood. Thank you.

    George Tetley February 23,2015 at 12:49 am

    WOW !!!
    Leo Smith February 23, 2015 at 1:59 am

    In one of Castenada’s novels there is a story about a young man who left his poor village in Mexico and went to the city to get an education.

    On his return to the village years later he found that the villagers were in thrall to a man who had a book, out of which he read long passages. This book it appeared contained all they needed to solve their problems. However the young man noticed that the man was holding the book upside down.

    “Your hero is a fraud: He cannot read” he declared “And I can prove it, he is holding the book upside down!”

    “What difference does it make, to a man who can read, which way up the book is? ” retorted the man, and the villagers cheered…

    The problem is Terry, that when people reject all of science already, a scientific refutation of global warming is (politically) meaningless.

    I too have been appalled by the standards of debate over this, and other, issues. I have come to a terrifying conclusion.

    Perhaps less than 10% of the population understands science at all, and of that 10% probably less than 10% actually understand the mathematical principles involved in the AGW proposition. And most of those are not in climate science.

    This is ultimately both something that has always been the case with science and indeed rational thought, and something that is deeply worrying right now, because we are in a deep crisis as a society and need better understanding than that.

    Humanity en masse proceeds along more or less bigoted lines according to the fashionable prejudices of the age. The AGW protagonists understand this: their business is to move the fashionable bigotry along to suit their agenda.

    If we step back a minute and regard the implications of what I propose to be the case, they are these: The vast majority of humanity is incapable for one reason or another of understanding the science and technology that forms the backdrop to their lives. And in a democracy that means they are more or less unfit to vote on matters that affect it.

    A small minority of ‘movers and shakers’ – and these days they are (to borrow Jilly Coopers terminology) the ‘Tellystocracy’ , the media luvvies and those who use mass media to ‘inform’ public debate – are the ones who count. They are the new elite, the new lords and masters of the brave new world, and it is this group that has been so thoroughly targeted and infiltrated by all and any group with a political or commercial axe to grind. It doesn’t matter what some obscure group of scientists believe, or what the mass of people believe, what matters is what this group do in terms of forming (rather than informing) public opinion.

    This group then are by and large the group that actually carries out political change. They are in charge of the fashionable bigotry that comprises what we have come to know and love as political correctness. That vast and loosely affiliated propaganda machine that tells us what to think about, and what to think about it.

    What we need to do if we are to introduce truth into this tissue of lies and deceit, is to make the case to the media/political luvvies that in fact their particular brand of bigotry is deeply dangerous to themselves as a class.

    In the case of AGW we have two main avenues through which this is happening.

    First of all the man in the street is getting fed up with falling standards of living, and his winters seeming just as cold wet and miserable as the summers are, despite claims it was the warmest year on record.

    Secondly the more astute members of the tellystocracy are becoming aware that infrastructure is for everyone, and that includes them. Victorian sewers were to protect the elite of the day from disease, by eliminating it from the great unwashed. This is a potent line of attack – Wind turbines and solar panels become not source of individual profit, but a disaster for all including those that profit from them.

    Ultimately the game is this: Science in its broadest terms is nothing more and nothing less than a means of predicting the future. Science says if we do this or that, the other will happen. The complex mathematical laws we deduce, infer or discover (according to your metaphysical picture of what Laws are) have no justification beyond the fact that they work, and what they say will come to pass, comes to pass, mostly.
    Science that fails to predict anything is untestable, and if it fails to produce the result that reality provides, it’s junk science or no science at all. You can summarise this by saying that in the long term reality trumps bullshit.

    Ultimately AGW either produces correct predictions or its junk, It’s looking to be junk. However that doesn’t stop people believing in it because it’s fashionable bigotry. But here we invoke Darwin. Societies that fail to realise what reality is, and cling to fashionable bigotry, will suffer accordingly. There are signs that the whole West will in fact ultimately collapse in an orgy of self destructive mutual deception and liberal angst. Or perhaps it will wake up and smell the coffee.

    And in the end, that is the conundrum. It is true to say that people are reasonably easily led, and that even those that lead them, are themselves subject to fashionable bigotry. That is a fact of life that we have to deal with. In the end we have only one yardstick that works to dispel the fog of Belief In Bullshit and that is Reality herself, and Reality is a hard mistress. If She needs to destroy entire societies that are so infected with irrational bullshit that they can no longer support themselves at all, She will.

    I don’t like to get political here, but this is to me the great argument for not having the sort of monolithic world government that the cultural Marxists of the UN and the ‘liberal and social’ democracies seem to espouse. that and we all go down together. Whereas having political islands of national ideologies at least allows for some diversity of political thought, and if the West becomes so decadent not because of Capitalism, but because of Marxism and its descendants itself, that it is in danger of falling to a stronger culture, maybe one of those political islands will have the tools and the strength to resist and prove to have the next line of fashionable bigotry to deal with the new reality

    From my perspective there are tow completely different dimensions in play here, and it helps not to confuse them.

    There is the technical and scientific reality of the data: that the world ain’t warming any more, never warmed very much, and windmills and solar panels are a complete waste of time and money, and destructive to boot, and if we want to stay alive in the absence of fossil fuel the logical alternative is nuclear power.

    That these things are provably and demonstrably true is, however, irrelevant to the second dimension, which is what people think.

    Or can be induced to believe. And here there is in fact a world war in progress, World War III. Its not being fought with weapons (much) that kill, directly, but with weapons that corrupt thinking. It is a war of propaganda and competing ideologies, none of which have a particularly strong basis in Reality, because Reality is pretty damned complicated, and its easier to get people to believe in simple stuff. ‘Four legs good – two legs bad’ sort of stuff.

    I have to say that I have more or less given up on the science: The jury is in for people to understand the maths and the physics and how real science works. AGW is a crock of shit, and that’s that.

    The real game is the war for hearts and minds. And that is a game of psychology, propaganda, money, power, politics, greed, fear, uncertainty and doubt. If we can’t win it, it will in the end destroy Western civilisation, and so it should. If we have no answer for lies, we don’t deserve to make it.

    Once we had a system that worked. The brightest and best, and a few of the rich, got excellent educations and were indoctrinated with a culture of care for those less fortunate, and a sense of duty towards the masses. They did what they considered to be right, after duly listening to the problems.

    Today that is destroyed by egalitarianism, which ensures that no one at all gets a good education that everyone cannot afford. Except for a very very few – too few – people who espouse state education but manage to avoid it in the case of their children. Worse, they dont educate them into the actualities of science and technology even then, they educate them into the practical techniques of propaganda. We have in short a generation of peole who are highly skilled in the manipulation of public opinion, but no idea how a smart phone works. People ideally placed to control and dominate a society, and take from it all its riches, but without actually having even the most basic understanding of how those riches are created.

    Such a situation is dynamically unstable. We, the technologists, are not screaming out for recognition ‘because its unfair’ or ‘because its morally indefensible’. No, we have a much quieter but devastatingly powerful message. “If you don’t take at least some notice of Reality, you will in fact die of ignorance, and likely take us with you”.

    *shrug* If they don’t listen, it’s Goodnight Vienna. We wont be the first culture to commit racial suicide in pursuit of idiotic beliefs.

    dbstealey February 23, 2015 at 2:56 am

    Leo Smith, You’re one in a million! Thanks for posting that, I’m in complete agreement. The problem isn’t science; that is 100% on the side of skeptics of MMGW. The problem is human nature. Some people/groups have that figured out, and that’s bad news for the rest of us.

    A.D. Everard February 23, 2015 at 4:30 am

    Leo, your comment should be a post in itself. It should be widely read. This is so much what needs to be understood. Thank you.

    George Tetley February 23, 2015 at 12:49 am

    WOW !!!

  14. Hugh K

    Really looking forward to Justin’s follow-up hit piece on top NY Times shareholder Carlos Slim’s continued growing involvement in…gasp…’big oil’.

    http://www.oilandgasmexico.com/2013/05/10/carlos-slims-growing-involvement-in-the-oil-and-gas-industry/

    One doesn’t have to be a scientist to be an alarmist, just a hypocrite.

  15. Ron C.

    In attacking Dr. Soon, green journalists display a quite stunning world view. Behind their writings you can see their logic:

    Climate scientists are paid to publish results supporting Global Warming.
    Dr. Soon’s results don’t support Global Warming.
    QED Dr. Soon is paid by those against Global Warming.

    Seeing all the fame and fortune going to true believers, they can not imagine a scientist motivated by his own integrity. After all, in their view, all published results are bought and paid for.

    Green journalists attacking Dr. Soon reveal their operating assumption: Climate science is totally corrupt. . .well, 97% corrupt.

    1. sod

      “Climate scientists are paid to publish results supporting Global Warming.
      Dr. Soon’s results don’t support Global Warming.
      QED Dr. Soon is paid by those against Global Warming.”

      sorry, but this is a completely false description of the situation.

      Soon got money from the fossile fuel industry and failed to mention that. These are facts, that you can not deny.

      Scientist in totral are also definitely NOT paid to support global warming theories. The consensus exists in many countries and under all kind of political leadership.

      Please, accept the facts!

      1. Ron C.

        Pay attention sod.
        Those are green journalists’ logic.

        I won’t parse the billions of dollars spent annually funding consensus researchers, vs. peanuts for any other perspective.

      2. DirkH

        sod 24. February 2015 at 19:55 | Permalink | Reply
        “Scientist in totral are also definitely NOT paid to support global warming theories.”

        Well, NASA surely has uses for the 1.2 bn USD they get a year for climate research.

        Without the screams of impending apocalypse, nobody would shell out that kind of money for boring climate science. I mean what’s interesting in something that is defined as the 30 year average of weather.

        But this is all boring. You just haven’t paid attention over the last 10 years. Maybe you are 10. Your reasoning sounds like it. So, you’ll get over it. Just pay attention. Watch the climate grow colder as the grand solar minimum proceeds.

  16. dennisambler

    Steven Goddard has more on the White House dirty tricks campaign,

    https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2015/02/24/barack-obama-goes-full-stalin/

  17. sod

    there are three allegations:

    1) Soon took money from fossile fuel industry
    2) Soon wrote articles, which benefit the fossile fuel industry
    3) Soon fai8led to reveal the donors.

    Which part of it is false?

    1. DirkH

      What part of it justifies a media lynch mob?

      1. sod

        It is not a lynch mob. The media is reporting facts and the facts are not in favour of Mr. Soon.

        He will be investigated and punished.

        I found this interesting opinion about him:

        http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2015/02/24/388682684/my-depressing-day-with-a-famous-climate-skeptic

        1. Pethefin
        2. DirkH

          sod 24. February 2015 at 20:36 | Permalink | Reply
          “It is not a lynch mob. The media is reporting facts”

          The NYT? That’s a good one.

        3. yonason

          “It is not a lynch mob.”

          “”Rep. Grivalja has walked back his requests, according to Ben Geman at the National Journal: Climate Letters Went Too Far. Since Rep. Grivalja already has complete access to all my financial COI disclosures, I guess we now know that the letter was an unnecessary stunt designed to smear. Nice.

          Yes, it is.

    2. Ron C.

      sod

      The Smithsonian Institute signed contracts with many sponsors for Dr. Soon’s research projects on solar climate effects. One of them is an electric energy company with no say about the research findings. Dr. Soon derived no benefit from any company. OTH Exxon and Mobil helped fund the AGU annual meeting. Should all attendees declare that on all their papers?

    3. Ron C.

      The Smithsonian Institute signed contracts with many sponsors for Dr. Soon’s research projects on solar climate effects. One of them is an electric energy company with no say about the research findings. Dr. Soon derived no benefit from any company. OTH Exxon and Mobil helped fund the AGU annual meeting. Should all attendees declare that on all their papers?

    4. yonason

      Sod’s “logic”

      If Dr. Soon said the sky was blue, and he was paid by the “fossil fuel” lobby, then the sky wouldn’t be blue.

      Thanks for clearing that up for me.

      So, I guess since your guys get millions in petro and coal dollars, that proves they are wrong, too? (They are, but not for that reason.)

      Argue the merits of your case, without making personal attacks.

  18. Ron C.

    The Smithsonian Institute signed contracts with many sponsors for Dr. Soon’s research projects on solar climate effects. One of them is an electric energy company with no say about the research findings. Dr. Soon derived no benefit from any company. OTH Exxon and Mobil helped fund the AGU annual meeting. Should all attendees declare that on all their papers?

  19. Ron C.

    sod

    Smithsonian Institute signed contracts with many sponsors to fund Dr. Soon’s research on solar climate effects. One of them was an electric energy company with no stake in the findings and no say about them. Dr. Soon derived no benefits from any company. OTOH the recent AGU meeting was partly funded by Exxon and Mobil. Should all attendees be forced to declare that on all their papers?

  20. lucklucky

    1) Soon took money from fossile fuel industry
    2) Soon wrote articles, which benefit the fossile fuel industry

    What are the problems of this two?

    1. betapug
  21. betapug

    The ISIS parallel is much more creepily compelling if you compare the graphic Al-Qaeda hitlist of targets, now with Charlie Hebdo crossed out http://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/01/08/world/subattacks/subattacks-articleLarge.jpg

    with Obama’s very own hitlist of “Deniers” to be hunted down and denounced. https://www.barackobama.com/climate-change-deniers/#/

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