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The Forum > Article Comments > Beware of the climate change mind police > Comments

Beware of the climate change mind police : Comments

By Chris James, published 18/3/2010

The genuine scientists who worked on the IPCC report have been lost in the mire of the climate sceptics’ PR propaganda.

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The author says, “Such a fast turn around [in public acceptance of climate change] could only come from organised propaganda.” This is wrong. It’s come about because of own goals by the IPCC, University of East Anglia and others who have forgotten the importance of the boundary between science and advocacy.

The author assumes that her own worldview is so self-evident that anyone who professes a different view must be stupid, malevolent or self-serving. She cannot countenance that business executives might be happy to sleep at night because they might genuinely believe that anthropomorphic climate change is not happening, or its extent is exaggerated, or that the cost of reducing emissions is greater than the cost of adapting to climate change.

And, they're victims of “false consciousness” – Marxist-speak for “you’re too stupid to understand why you believe what you believe, but I’m not”.

She says, “The result is clear: an absolute campaign of mind control is occurring”. This is absurd.

Articles like this do not advance the cause of good climate change policy. They retard it by confirming all the worse suspicions of climate change sceptics about true believers – their zealotry, intolerance, conspiracy theories and selective or non-existent use of evidence.

And no, I am not a sceptic, but someone who wants to see these issues thrashed out based on reason and evidence.
Posted by Rhian, Thursday, 18 March 2010 3:31:53 PM
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Mind Control- Well, around Christmas time I noticed that Google suddenly eliminated an alarming number of anti-AGW sites. Others found this too. Now who is trying to control the minds of the people?

http://dailyreferendum.blogspot.com/2009/12/google-climategate-sensorship.html

Al Gore is an advisor...say no more.
Posted by Atman, Thursday, 18 March 2010 7:34:07 PM
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The amount of money spent worldwide on AGW research and 'prevention' is estimated at $US79 billion. The amount spent by fossil fuel companies is estimated at about $5 million. If anyone has figures which are widely divergent from that I would be delighted to see them.

Any practicing scientist will be happy to explain that the decision on what research gets done is the result of a back-and-forth process between the researcher and the party paying the bills. The researcher wants to study butterflies; the funding body wants research on global warming; what we end up with is research into the effects of global warming on butterflies. The researcher gets to play with butterflies and the funding body gets to publish statistics about the terrible effects of global warming. If the scientist fails to find any terrible effects, that's OK; there are lots of other scientists doing projects, and by the law of averages SOMEONE is bound to find out something terrible; all they have to do is publicise this and conveniently forget about all the rest. In the long term, of course, science usually comes up with the goods, but in the short term scientists have families to feed and mortgages to pay like everyone else, and global warming research is a comfortable sinecure....
Posted by Jon J, Thursday, 18 March 2010 8:18:20 PM
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...So I am totally unsurprised that after spending $79 billion dollars looking for evidence of AGW they have found some; I'd be bloody well astounded if they hadn't. What IS surprising, though, is how little there is, and how much of it collapses when exposed to relatively simple scrutiny by unpaid volunteers who aren't funded by anybody. This is happening often enough to cast serious doubts on the probity of the leading figures of the IPCC and their close associates in the scientific community.

That doesn't mean that AGW isn't happening, but it does mean that anyone who asserts that 'the debate is over' or 'the science is settled' exposes themselves as a fool, a knave, or an associate of fools and knaves. AGW enthusiasts, please direct your righteous anger towards the people who really deserve it; the conniving, self-serving and incompetent researchers and politicians who are bringing your cause further into disrepute every day.
Posted by Jon J, Thursday, 18 March 2010 8:19:04 PM
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Jon J. "Little evidence?" Actually mate, it is pretty overwhelming now!
Air temperatures, sea temperatures, CO2 and Methane emissions, Sea acidity, Ice loss and finally biological markers: migrations, flowering times, range shifts, etc.
Remember the "overwhelming" evidence of WMD's in Iraq?
Remember the "all is OK" just before the financial crash?
All examples of the "mind control" the author is writing about.
Our media is all but controlled by the same freaks who are now pushing the Global Warming denial movement.
If you believe hundreds of scientists from competing countries world wide can get together for a swindle whilst still publishing data, while the business as usual crowd is *not* trying to undermine it then you are simply naive. There is no credible "alternate view" from a scientific point of view, however the politics is murky indeed.
Posted by Ozandy, Friday, 19 March 2010 8:32:10 AM
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Ozandy,
Puh-leeeze!

Air temperatures? You mean the corruption of surface temperature data by the gang from UEA/Met/NASA/PennState? That's a matter of record.

Sea temperatures? Trending down, though the record is short.

Sea acidity? Nothing but speculation.

Ice loss? Ice mass is increasing. From memory every northern winter for the past decade has seen massive snow and ice cover.

Migrations, flowering times, range shifts? How do you attribute that to the miniscule change in atmospheric CO2 emitted by human activity? It's just recovery from the Little Ice Age.

Overwhelming evidence for WMD? You mean the evidence accepted and promoted by the UN? The same mob who are now pushing AGW?

Mind control via the media? Like the ABC, The Age, the Sydney Morning Herald and other left wing creeps who won't tolerate the slightest dissent from their pathetic, predictable agenda?
Posted by KenH, Friday, 19 March 2010 10:26:40 AM
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