Strengthening Constitutional Self-Government

No Left Turns

The Goreacle Gored in the NY Times

Today’s New York Times includes an article by one of their veteran science writers, William Broad, about the many scientists who are uncomfortable with the exaggerations and extremism of Gore’s gerbil worming horror flick, An Inconvenient Truth. Broad quotes scientist Kevin Vranes, who, I noted in my Weekly Standard article last month, had this to say about the pressure for scientific conformity on this subject: “What I am starting to hear is internal backlash. . . None of this is to say that the risk of climate change is being questioned or downplayed by our community; it’s not. It is to say that I think some people feel that we’ve created a monster by limiting the ability of people in our community to question results that say ‘climate change is right here!’” Vranes saids this after attending the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union, at which Gore made his standard pitch.

An even more bracing comment came late last year from Mike Hulme, who is the director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, and one of Britain’s leading climate science figures:

“I have found myself increasingly chastised by climate change campaigners when my public statements and lectures on climate change have not satisfied their thirst for environmental drama and exaggerated rhetoric,” Hulme told the BBC in November. “It seems that it is we, the professional climate scientists, who are now the [catastrophe] skeptics. How the wheel turns. Why is it not just campaigners, but politicians and scientists too, who are openly confusing the language of fear, terror and disaster with the observable physical reality of climate change, actively ignoring the careful hedging which surrounds science’s predictions? To state that climate change will be ‘catastrophic’ hides a cascade of value-laden assumptions which do not emerge from empirical or theoretical science.”

The backlash may be just beginning.

Discussions - 8 Comments

Steve, have you seen the cover story in the latest Atlantic? I may blog on it later today.

Yes; I know Gregg a bit, and his take is always unconventional. I haven’t had a chance to get through this article yet, but it is on my must-read pile (along with about 500 other articles).

Politicized science is always bad news. The problem is that social science (and some forms of physical science, like climatology) constitute the millennial hopes of the Left. Having no God or higher power to lean on, they bundle their hopes and fears into "science." It tends to strip that noble enterprise of its humility and circumspection...essential elements in what tends to be a contention business anyway. It makes "finding the truth" an even longer process, and in the meantime crushes the life out of the careers of many a good scholar.

Steve,

Could you get a site to provide the video of all your Earth Day presentations?

Dan:

Good news! I have my own climate change video coming out next month. It will be widely available for free or next to nothing. It will be on YouTube, etc. Don’t worry; I shall post links here at NLT on Day One.

...(the Goreacle’s)gerbil worming horror flick, An Inconvenient Truth

How could I possibly have believed scientists instead of you? What they write is polictially motivated nonsense!

Steve, you’re the man, you’re the man.

How long have you been doing your Earth Day updates?

You were clearly ahead of the curve. Because it’s clear that the left and the Goracle are SERIOUSLY looking to advance their socialist agenda through the rubrics of Environmental "concerns."

You can change the name, Danny, but you can’t change the brain. Not all scientists concur with this global warming hysteria, and the countermovement is growing, even among scientists. Check out the Great Global Warming Swindle...you might still catch it on the Web, although the whole Google/Viacom fight might have already deprived us of that luxury.

Leave a Comment

* denotes a required field
 

No TrackBacks
TrackBack URL: https://nlt.ashbrook.org/movabletype/mt-tb.cgi/10035


Warning: include(/srv/users/prod-php-nltashbrook/apps/prod-php-nltashbrook/public/sd/nlt-blog/_includes/promo-main.php): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /srv/users/prod-php-nltashbrook/apps/prod-php-nltashbrook/public/2007/03/the-goreacle-gored-in-the-ny-times.php on line 603

Warning: include(): Failed opening '/srv/users/prod-php-nltashbrook/apps/prod-php-nltashbrook/public/sd/nlt-blog/_includes/promo-main.php' for inclusion (include_path='.:/opt/sp/php7.2/lib/php') in /srv/users/prod-php-nltashbrook/apps/prod-php-nltashbrook/public/2007/03/the-goreacle-gored-in-the-ny-times.php on line 603