I watched a discussion between John Robson of Climate Discussion Nexus and Steven Koonin, author of Unsettled, What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters. You can access the discussion here, but I won’t replay it as it is quite long. Over time I’ve become adverse to sending people off to watch or read things just because I did. You’re on your own.
It’s a good discussion highlighting the shortcomings of the Climate Alarmism movement, including lack of rigor in science, failure to make predictions of any kind at any time that actually come true. That is a bit of what I might call a cornerstone of science, to make accurate predictions validating theories, but the movement exists without that benefit. Al Gore was asked recently in some highlighted interview about the predications made in his movie An Inconvenient Truth, and he claimed to be lecturing the sky, as all of the movie’s claims have come to fruition but nobody cares. That is a Burger King-grade lie, a whopper, as just the opposite is true. The movie has disintegrated into a pile of high production values carrying with it not a shred of truth. It is classic propaganda.
Late in the interview Robson and Koonin reflect on the climate skeptics, and offer to viewers what they regard as shortcomings of their own fellow travelers. They cited two defects: use of the words “hoax” and “conspiracy”. They claim that people in the alarmist movement really believe in what they are doing and saying, and should be taken at face.
This is an old shibboleth that might be restated as “I disagree with everything you say, but defend your right to say it.” There’s also another interpretation, that is, that our thought control system of public discourse does not allow the terms “hoax” and “conspiracy” to be used against people actually engaged in those activities. Use of such words carries with it penalties, including cancellation and public ridicule, and certainly removal from public forums.
A hoax is defined as an act intended to deceive or trick, or something that has been established or accepted by fraudulent means. Generally speaking, in my mind anyway, it applies to public hoaxes pulled off with full complicity of major media. Little hoaxes, like use car sales or pretending there are goblins and ghouls at Halloween, don’t count. We can all see through those.
Larger ones, say the JFK Assassination or 911, are meant to stick. Government brings out all of its power and weapons to reinforce these.
- Take, for instance, JFK: Its beating heart is called the “Magic Bullet Theory”, a variation on the naked emperor, something a child could see to be false and impossible, but sold with professional intensity and straight faces. It is a layered approach, however, as even if we can see through that ruse, we still end up arguing about the sources of the shots fired that day. The essential question never asked is this: What shots? What bullets? That, man, is one fine and excellent goddamned hoax.
- 911 is another hoax, and we can easily see though it if we but understand a bit of physics, as in Newton’s Third Law, that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. That law is not something made up and put out for debate, but rather a description of reality, as a basketball bouncing off the floor when dropped. And yet we saw on our TVs aluminum aircraft passing through steel and concrete buildings like a knife through butter. Maybe in the 19th century the hoax would not have been such an easy sale, as I have it in my mind that people were better educated then. But in our times such matters don’t stimulate skepticism. The crucial difference, then and now, is electronic mass media.
Koonin and Robson are smart guys, smarter than I am and better at dissembling the Climate Alarmist movement than me. But in my writings here on this blog, going back to 2006, I learned not to fear opinion and ridicule. So in a sense, while these two gentleman are indeed intellectually better at this game than I am, they fail on the level of personal courage. They surely know, as they have examined the details in depth and with scholarship, that Climate Change is indeed a hoax. Maybe they honestly cannot see conspiracy, as that is harder to grasp. It requires a who and a why.
So, is Climate Alarmism both a hoax and a conspiracy? Yes!
These two men want us to genuflect, in a sense, before people who have gone through rigorous indoctrination on their educational paths to arrive at the false impression that climate change is a real existential threat. Are they stupid, then?
Perhaps. Just in everyday life, stupidity is all around us. Einstein is said to have said “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.” Fact checkers will dispute this quote, but I tend to agree with the sentiment, even if not expressed by him, that human stupidity is in abundant quantity all about us. We can easily see it in any corner bar on any evening, but those are just the mutterings of common people who work mindless chore-like jobs. They cannot be expected to be curious and questioning about the lies of our times, especially those told on TV.
What about the educated classes? Are they stupid too? Well, speaking as a college graduate, I can say that I came out of college as stupid as anyone walking upright, and that it has taken decades to unlearn what I was taught. I did learn a profession, and it has helped my in my life immensely. I did take one sophomore-level course in logic (no others were offered). In no other class was any time devoted to simply learning how to think properly.
You can say, and be correct, that I graduated from a land grant college and did not have the best teachers. If, say, I had been accepted at Harvard, I might be like Conan O’Brien, a class valedictorian in high school who graduated magnum cum laude with a degree in history. He, like Koonin and Robson, is smarter and better educated than me, and yet in my years of enjoying his excellent comedic mind, I’ve never had the sense that he ever developed a skeptical and questioning sense of history. Rather, he just read and memorized and regurgitated, and to this day, reinforces what he learned with the new works of professional historians.
Extend that thought to the vast majority of our college graduates who study English, history, social studies, medicine, journalism, and on and on … they come out more brainwashed than cognizant of a complex world where truth is hard commodity to find.
So too with climate science. It is not taught now as a theory, but as reality, and at all levels of education from first grade through university cum laude. It is in total contradicted by hard evidence, but set that aside. It’s predictions do not have to come true, and the climate models they generate costing billions of dollars all “run hot”, that is, do not come close to reflecting reality. But the models are accepted as evidence over the real thing, hard data. That is the power of money backing ideas, i.e., conspiracy.
How can one science go so wrong as to be promoting a hoax as it does? Two reasons, among many:
- Groupthink. Never underestimate the power of groups to subdue individuals. It is peer pressure, it is the power of authority, the need to get good grades, and it forces people to collude in forming and believing false conclusions. If a merely weak theory is taught as scientific fact, the majority of students, no matter their SATs, will buy in. There’s no comfort, and certainly no reward, for being skeptical or thinking critically.
- Money. Robson’s group, Climate Discussion Nexus, is now in the YouTube video game hoping to reach a larger audience. There are many CDN videos, and this is just one. In each that I have seen, he devotes a segment to examining the balance sheet of some climate advocacy group. I’ve not heard of any of them, and yet each boasts annual budgets of $40-60 million. Where does the money come from? He doesn’t say, and one would have to examine the 990 (an IRS form for not-for-profit groups) to find the source of funding for each, usually hidden in layers. Robson does not do that. He should, but the point is that the Climate Alarmist Movement is living in luxury, money coming out all of its orifices. On the other side, the Alarmists claim that skeptics are richly financed by the fossil fuel industry, but that’s not true, not even close. If there is one thing I have noticed in this whole charade, it is that the fossil fuels companies are the curious case of the dogs that do not bark.
I regret that Koonin and Robson, as much as I like them and for as long as I have read their published works and watched Robson’s videos, fall prey to the biggest psychological ploy going, the inability to criticize something so obviously a hoax and conspiracy as the Climate Alarmist movement. But censorship abounds, so that the true nature of this movement is part of that 60-80% of life I see that is submerged in our public subconscious.
What would I do if I were them? Let’s get down to basics here: I cannot be them. I cannot speak without saying what I think to be true. I do not hold this against them or claim moral superiority. I understand their frail position. I realize that if Robson starts to harp about hoax and conspiracy, his YouTube days will come to an end.
That is the harsh reality, and so I commend them on excellent work, and accept their failings as ugly necessity.
Perhaps they have internalized the lies, perhaps they really believe they are dealing with essentially honest people.
That happens too.
Piece of Mindful 