Thus spake the climate change lobby…
Christopher Brooker has some fun at the expense of the George Monbiots of this world:
It was generally another bad week for the warmists. The Met Office, which has been one of the chief pushers of the global warming scare for 20 years, had to admit that this has been “Britain’s coldest winter for 13 years”, despite its prediction last September that the winter would be “milder than average”. This didn’t of course stop it predicting that 2009 will be one of “the top-five warmest years on record”.
I do tend to find all this highly amusing. Much as I found the doom and gloom predictions of a new ice age amusing thirty years ago. Although, this winter might give those doomsayers some hope yet, you never know.
Anyway, back to the point, in true Stalinist fashion, those who disagree are branded mentally ill:
Meanwhile at the University of the West of England in Bristol this weekend, a conference of “eco-psychologists”, led by a professor, are solemnly exploring the notion that “climate change denial” should be classified as a form of “mental disorder”.
Not that those of us who are underwhelmed by the “evidence” thus produced merely disagree; not that the “evidence” is bunkum or anything so mundane or easily explained (anyone who thinks that a computer model is evidence is deluding themselves, and peer reviewing is merely one’s mates giving the bunkum you pulled out of your computer the thumbs up. It is not “evidence” and there is nothing scientific about it). No, we do not agree with their pseudo-science so we must be unhinged; it’s the only plausible explanation – after all, they can’t be wrong, so it must be us that’s mentally ill. Logic is so wonderful, isn’t it? The apparatchiks of the Soviet Union would be proud of their offspring. How well they’ve done and aren’t they all grown up now?
So, we are to be sectioned and sent to the gulags, then?
Fascinating piece.
Which is the most damning insult? Denier? Mentally disordered? Or could it just be “Creationist”?
I think that the latter is certainly the most interesting. There is a ‘religious’ passion among the true believers in climate change which is horrified by the heresy of the sceptics, just as there is a religious passion among the neo-darwinists which is horrified by the heresy of creationism.
Could they by any chance be related?
😉
Quite possibly. probably, even.
I noticed in the comments to the Brooker piece some dimwit likening sceptics to conspiracy theorists. Given that this is the exact opposite of a sceptical position; i.e. we want to see hard evidence for the theories being posited, whereas conspiracy theorists will believe the utmost bunkum on the flimsiest of “evidence”…
Oh…
Oh, dear…
Ach this is old news. The pseudo-scientists have had a huge chip on their (collective, it’s always about the collective) shoulders since the first loon thought it would a dandy idea to write a thesis on the sociology of science.
Consider:
if you think gender studies is shite – you’re an MCP.
if you think all the race agitation is – errmmm… – agitation and making race relations (did you spot the collective there?) worse – you’re a racist.
if you think the EU is anything other than profoundly unpleasant (what the phuque is “political science” anyway) – you’re a Xenophobic little Englander.
etc.
“eco-psychologists” – as useless an excuse for make work as I have ever heard. Cut the funding now.