Ignore the
actual state of the science, the arrogance and lack of self-awareness on offer from the Grey Lady is
remarkable:
NYT asks Geologist and Moonwalker Dr. Harrison Schmitt about UN IPCC report:
The New York Times’
Nicholas St. Fleur: “…as one of the leading climate change deniers, when there was a huge report that just came out last week [talking about] the risk and what is going to happen … as soon as 2040. I’d love to know if you see any irony in your views on people who denied man walking on the moon vs. your views on climate change.”
Schmidt game a quite gentle and dignified reply, one that was much gentler than the NYT jerk deserved. You can read it at the link. I prefer the
commentary that has resulted (the link here goes to an actual climate scientist, one who is even more appalled by this than I am):
Now, Sinclair's is already a bad enough insult. Imagine that you're the most recent one among the 12 moonwalkers in the homo sapiens species – some microorganisms have walked the Moon with them. You have some good reasons to think that you're pretty important. You also have a special kind of certainty about the proposition that men have really walked on the Moon – because you were one of these 12 apostles. And now, an arrogant left-wing journalist demands you to admit that if you have walked on the Moon, every piece of arbitrarily fishy left-wing pseudoscience must also be true.
It's not science, it's some strange religious cult. It's actually hilarious that its congregants don't have any idea that it's a strange religious cult. I guess that's the arrogance and lack of self-awareness that I was talking about,
5 comments:
There are times that I think I'm too pessimistic when I think the postmodernist takeover of all academic institutions is going to plunge us into a second Dark Ages. Then I see things like this, and read the link at the reference frame where he writes about "a spoiled girl named Betsy Mason decided to speak to Harrison Schmitt and tell him to "consider not to speak for geologists" because "she is a geologist". " and I think I'm not being pessimistic enough.
When you read what postmodernism is really about, you wonder "how can anyone take this crap seriously?", but they do. It has effectively taken over all of academia outside of the hard sciences, but has now achieved a beach head in hard sciences and engineering, too. The day of accepting answers in hard science because people feel good about them is visible in the future. Math and science are racist, you know.
There's a saying that Dark Ages don't start because people forget how to run plumbing, power plants or agriculture; they start when people forget that those things were ever even possible.
Very classy response.
Also it's interesting to me that they use the term "climate change denier", as if skeptics are denying that the climate changes, period.
Nobody credibly disputes that climate changes*, that it is always changing. What skeptics are questioning is merely whether mankind's hypothetical role in artificially affecting the climate is as great as previously touted, which is a valid scientific question. Doubly so as the answer affects government policies that control trillions of dollars -- enough to make or break entire economies.
In my opinion, the term "climate change denier" is a smear, and it's intentional. Just as the terms "gun nut" and "ammosexual" allow the anti-freedom groups to collectively paint all 2A supporters as crazy, the "climate change denier" label allows AGW "true believers" to paint skeptics as anti-science. It helps to undermine their opponents' arguments without having to do the work of challenging the arguments themselves.
Every time I read one of these, I picture a bratty 12-year-old railing at his/her parents' reason for grounding: "Yeah, well, you're stupid!" As if that affirms the child's bad behavior and entirely negates the parents' reason or authority. News flash: it doesn't.
(* - Actually, now that I reread that, AGW "true believers" thinking that climate doesn't change unless mankind changes it -- always for the worse, of course, because MAN -- would explain a lot.)
"It's not science, it's some strange religious cult." More accurately, it's a Belief System. We are hardwired for them. If you toss a belief in a higher power, that vacuum has to be filled with something. AGW will fill that hole. Unfortunately, we seem to be capable of stuffing more than one Belief into that space.
The goal of Leftism is the destruction of Western civilization.
The means of Leftism are the denial of reality. There is no true history. There is no true culture. There is no true religion. There is no true man or woman. There is no true adult or child. There is no true science. There are no true facts.
MiniTru has spoken.
"It's not science, it's some strange religious cult. It's actually hilarious that its congregants don't have any idea that it's a strange religious cult. I guess that's the arrogance and lack of self-awareness that I was talking about."
This is an utterly brilliant observation, one that could be applied to pretty much any "progressive" philosophy extant. Well done!
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