What’s the worst thing you could call a scientist? Apparently, a “climate change denier” and “a fraud”.
Even scientists who are hunting Yetis are not suspected of being as evil, unscrupulous and deranged as skeptics-of-the-extent-of the-UN-committee’s-projections-of-man-made-global-warming, aka, “climate-change-deniers”. I mean, who would dare question the UN, eh? It is a collective God, it can’t be wrong — like, say, the Pope in 1633. If they say it’s 3 degrees / 2 degrees /3.3 degrees, whatever, they must be right (even if they do keep changing their mind).
Scientists who are hunting Yetis have no credentials, poor sods and are ripe for a whack.
Who are these “international scientists” who are going to find his Yeti for him? We have been given no names, nor credentials, nor institutions they belong to. I suspect, like so many of the so-called climate-change deniers, they are frauds.
But here’s the thing, I know the author, Darren Curnoe (though it’s been a while), and he’s a really nice guy. We shared a group house once, when I was on the way from science to TV, and he was on the way from TV to science. We had avid conversations about the evolution of the human condition, with zeal, and I remember him fondly, and would be more than happy to have yet another red wine.
So it is with more respect than usual that I mention that perhaps Darren ought read other sites than The Conversation to figure out what makes a skeptic tick. He might find that he’s been falsely sold the line by psychologists like Lewandowsky (don’t you miss the Soviet Union, where if you disagreed you must be mad?) that skeptics have no credentials. Instead skeptics can name 1000 eminent scientists, 9,000 PhD’s, and 900 peer reviewed papers just for starters. “Deniers” include guys like the revered Freeman Dyson, who sat on the board of Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, (a group which Darren was impressed by on another thread). Freeman, with 21 honorary degrees, and countless prizes, was very much a skeptic. (See the link under 1000 eminent scientists to find scores more “denier” professors who must be hiding their cheques from Exxon).
In the end it wouldn’t matter if we were sheep herders, what matters is the evidence. Who makes predictions that observations can verify? Skeptics have (forgive me for repeating it) 28 million weather balloons, 6000 boreholes, 3000 argo buoys, and 500 million years of paleohistory* showing how the alarmists theory exaggerates the threat. Alarmists have models, bank-loads of money, hot PR teams, and no scruples about hiding their data or rigging the graphs.
Who breaks laws of reason, hailing Gods of science? Not skeptics.
So Darren, good to hear you are back from your travels, fabulous to know that you did find rich rewards in evolutionary studies, and seriously, before you toss a defamatory cliche about independent scientists who are skeptical, perhaps you might try reading some of our sites, or even, dare I say it, talk to a skeptic?
It’s a topsy turvey world out there. Unlike the mainstream memo points: the money and power is on the side of those who spread alarm, but the observations and the logic is with the skeptics. Skeptics want a debate, but alarmists find every reason not too. Skeptics discuss peer reviewed papers, and the fully funded experts respond by calling them “deniers”.
My page for new readers is here.
Dear Darren, please take this in the right spirit. Just like you, I thought CO2 mattered. I haven’t changed. I’m just as passionate as ever, but now I have better data.
Yes, I may be crazy, I do all this, and I still haven’t heard from Exxon.
* Yes, I had an extensive debate with a paleoclimatologist and you can hunt through the pages, but what is impossible to find is any definitive past correlation where CO2 drove temperatures.
PS: Climate stuff aside, I did enjoy reading about your work, and am, as always fascinated by hominid evolution.
H/t Mike W
Image: The Hymalyan Yeti, JNL