Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
What's going on here, in other words, has nothing whatsoever to do with 'the science.'
This is propaganda, pure and simple. Various, apparently trustworthy authority figures
have been invoked—the senior diplomat! The politician! The geneticist! The guy from the
spiffy-sounding environmental think tank!—to give the impression that when it comes to
climate change, all the really serious people in the world are in full agreement. Only a
handful of maverick dissenters, the message goes, now dispute the 'consensus.' And only
then because they are mad or stupid or in the pay of Big Oil.
Before you dismiss this as a paranoid conspiracy theory, let me give you another
example of this climate totalitarianism in action. This one involves Roger Pielke Jr.,
Professor of Environmental Studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Pielke—a
self-described 'luke-warmer', that is, a believer in man-made global warming—sits fairly
close to the middle of the climate change debate. Yet neither reasonableness nor restraint
nor factual accuracy were enough to save his skin when in March 2014 he wrote a piece
for the US website
FiveThirtyEight
entitled 'Disasters Cost More Than Ever—But Not
Because Of Climate Change'.
The points Pielke made were unexceptionable. A big reinsurance company called
Munich Re had published a report claiming the cost of dealing with climate disasters
was increasing year on year. Pielke replied, 'When you read that the cost of disasters
is increasing, it's tempting to think that it must be because more storms are happening.
They're not. All the apocalyptic “climate porn” in your Facebook feed is solely a function
of perception. In reality, the numbers reflect more damage from catastrophes because the
worldisgettingwealthier.We'reseeingever-largerlossessimplybecausewehavemoreto
lose—when an earthquake or flood occurs, more stuff gets damaged.' And to back up this
claim, Pielke cited clear evidence from the most recent IPCC Assessment Report.
For the climate alarmists, however, the truth is no defence. A series of attacks on
Pielke's credibility followed: in
The Guardian
; in
Columbia Journalism Review
; in
The
Week
;atGeorgeSoros'sThinkProgress;andalso,inthecommentssectionbelowthepost,
such as this one by 'Top Commenter' Rob Honeycutt, which began: 'Note to Nate Silver
... I'm rather taken aback by this article by Roger Pielke. It's just fundamentally wrong.'
Overwhelmed by the volume of criticism Nate Silver—
FiveThirtyEight's
editor-in-chief—decided to apologise for what Pielke had written and to commission a
rebuttal. You do wonder, though, whether he would have caved quite so easily, had he
been aware of this comment on a climate alarmist website called
Skeptical Science
, written
in February 2011. 'I think this is a highly effective method of dealing with various blogs
and online articles where these discussions pop up. Flag them, discuss them and then send
in the troops to hammer down what are usually just a couple of very vocal people. It
seemslikelotsofusaredoingsimilarwork,cruisingcommentssectionsonlinelookingfor
disinformation to crush. I spend hours every day doing exactly this. If we can coordinate
