- JoNova - https://www.joannenova.com.au -

The word Skeptic is back!

Here’s a devout follower telling off his own kind for showing their “faith”.


“Beyond Belief” (Climate Spectator)

The “believers” have suddenly realized how uncool it is to talk about “beliefs” when it’s supposed to be about science. So the rush is on to post articles warning believers to hide their “faith” and to throw in token comments about evidence instead. Indeed the Real Deniers are scrambling to claim the “name” skeptic that they used to despise.

It’s a measure of how far this debate has come. Such was the success of the PR campaign, some skeptics gave up on the term and opted to use “realist”. But the skeptics have been proved right time after time, and the unskeptical scientists have been embarrassed by their own conniving words, mistakes, tricks and lies. The resurgence of the word “skeptic” is rising like a rocket.

As I’ve said many times, the opposite of skeptical is gullible. And an unskeptical scientist is an oxymoron.

So here’s Paul Gilding in the publication that panders to the climate industry: Climate Spectator, offering the fake guise of a skeptical soul:

It’s time for true confessions. I don’t believe in climate science.

That’s because I’m a rational person.

How do we know he’s not rational? Because he doesn’t rely on evidence, he relies on authority:

In all these areas, though, from bridges to medicine, we accept the dominant scientific conventions. When a body of qualified scientists reviews the evidence and issues their judgements we act accordingly.

What kind of skeptic accepts the dominant paradigm? A fake one.

Argument from Authority is the mark of an irrational follower.

Gilders decides which theory to follow because he has faith in the international committees, and the so-called consensus that is really an inflated marketing cover for a small coterie of 60 odd scientists. It’s a question of trust. He trusts that people with vested interests will be scrupulously honest and impartial, and will search hard for (and publicize) evidence that shows their past claims to be baseless, inaccurate and that they are now an expert in a dead end.

Gilder is really writing for the believers; he’s telling them to disguise their religious faith because it’s embarrassing:

Belief is actually a dangerous idea in relation to climate science and we should stop using the word in that context. “Belief”, because it’s based by definition on “irrational” thought, tends to lead us to resist counter arguments. In relation to interpreting science this leads to sloppy intellectual behaviour where we discount data that challenges our views and exaggerate the importance of data that supports them.

The believers are acknowledging we are right: Science is about the evidence. He wants to steal our banner, stretch it over his own team, but no banana Paul, sorry. We applaud your token nod to evidence, but deplore your attempt to confuse the issue.

There are deniers on both sides of the fence, there are probably a few on the skeptical side who would continue to disagree no matter what (assuming that some real evidence actually turned up). The difference with the pro catastrophe team is that, almost to a man, it’s hard to find anyone that will admit the bleeding obvious. Name me one person on the pro AGW team who now acknowledges that the Hockey Stick is baseless (wrong proxy, wrong stats, wrong conclusion) and disagrees with hundreds of empirical studies. Anyone who admits that would also have to admit that the climate models (which don’t “predict” a Medieval Warm Period) are inadequate, don’t understand all the forcings, and are therefore woefully inadequate for attribution studies (the ones that “tell” us what caused the latest warming).

Gilders is making a weak attempt to neutralize skeptics. He hits imaginary “deniers” he can’t name and pretends that real skeptics would agree with him, even as he exposes that he is religiously irrational.

He forgot to finish his article though, leaving off the last line, which I’ve helpfully filled in for him:

So when someone asks if you’re a climate believer, tell them no, your far too (ir)rational for that.

Instead tell them you are a committee believer, and slavishly give your brain and money over to faceless self-interested bureaucrats who feed you baseless scares and demand your tithe.

7.8 out of 10 based on 4 ratings