Politeia: Climategate: Despite 'Consensus", Far From Over

Normally news related to the Climategate issue - as far as I'm concerned an umbrella term for the entire global warming hypothesis - goes straight into the "Greenism" dossier. For technical reasons this item does not. The latest entry is positing evidence that the SoroS spiderweb of radical leftist organizations is for legal purposes an extension of the Obama administration. They're cooking the climate books in favor of "Big Wind" as they go along ("think numerous European companies, not merely a few utilities and GE").

In Britain, the Institute of Physics (IOP) has been testifying for the Parliamentary Select Committee for Science and Technology, and attacked the scientific process as it is conducted at the Climate Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia. The IOP accused these scientists of "apparent suppression, in graphics widely used by the IPCC, of proxy results for recent decades that do not agree with contemporary instrumental temperature measurements".

Today the lefty newspaper The Guardian, itself wholly aboard the 'climate change consensus', plays a game of 'gotcha' journalism on the worn out basis of "bias" and "working for dirty oil".

It has 'unmasked' one of the institute's witnesses as "an energy industry consultant who argues that global warming is a religion". In it's mind, this renders all evidence submitted to the committee suspicious, if not invalid. The article doesn't say so, but implies it in an air, heavy with innuendo. What transpires? The IOP invited

"views from Peter Gill, an IOP official who is head of a company in Surrey called Crestport Services. According to Gill, Crestport offers "consultancy and management support services … particularly within the energy and energy intensive industries worldwide", and says that it has worked with "oil and gas production companies including Shell, British Gas, and Petroleum Development Oman".

On top of that Gill is caught being biased as he made note of the culture that made the Crutape scandal possible in the first place: "If you don't 'believe' in anthropogenic climate change, you risk at best ridicule, but more likely vitriolic comments or even character assassination. Unfortunately, for many people the subject has become a religion, so facts and analysis have become largely irrelevant," wrote Gill. This is stating fact, but The Guardian implies it is bias.

The paper suggests more preconception as it 'reveals' that Gill commented in November when Climategate broke that: "Poor old CRU have been seriously hacked. The emails and other files are all over the internet and include how to hide atmospheric cooling."

That's it: Gill is a skeptic and works with Shell, British Gas, and Petroleum Development Oman. That renders the entire case invalid, unless that is you are a greeny and work with ConocoPhillips, BP, Caterpillar and manage to coopt an entire green industry to the cause at the expense of the tax payer (the Apollo Alliance and the Lisbon Council).

With barely concealed triumphalism the paper proudly announces: "The IOP has already been forced to issue a clarification that the evidence does not undermine the scientific basis for climate change. Indeed The Guardian writes in another article that the IOP issued a statement that it doesn't question the science itself, but rather the scientific process as conducted by the CRU.

This is how the postmodern mind works. Rejecting objective truth (where the scientific method is supposed to lead), it knows only partisan subjectivity. The idea that Gill might work in the field of 'dirty oil' and still produce truth, isn't on the horizon in any way, shape or form. Postmodernists have a habit of taking the slightest flaw as evidence that renders an opposing claim invalid, while an infinitesimally piece of evidence in their favor is paraded as proof positive of their cause.

The entire climate change hypothesis is based on that mechanism. Their premise that objective reality does not exist rests solely on the phenomenon of optic tricks and sensory anomalies.

While we're on the subject of truth, climate skeptic Antony Watts in a recent post declares to have had it with Phil Jones. "In the Last Straw" he says to have avoided accusations of outright fraud till now, and instead argued a case of noble cause corruption. But now it has become hard to defend him, since on March 1st Jones testified before the Select Committee, positing that it is "standard scientific practice to not share data". A fact that is objectively untrue.

It's a sad conclusion, but the last weeks it has become apparent that the postmodern mindset is not just innate in the humanities, but is now also deeply entrenched in the field of exact science itself. I repeat my hypothesis:

what Immanuel Kant was to philosophy, climate change theorists are to science.

Related:

- "Greenism"

1 comments:

Anonymous said...: "If you don't 'believe' in anthropogenic climate change, you risk at best ridicule, but more likely vitriolic comments or even character assassination. Unfortunately, for many people the subject has become a religion, so facts and analysis have become largely irrelevant,"

This I can believe. It might help explain how for three solid years scientists remained silent about the outlandish claims by the UN IPCC in the Ar4 report. They were fully aware that the claims were in the document but they remained silent until Copenhagen was over. Only then was it safe to speak up and criticize. No science I am aware of waits 3 years before criticizing a document, they don’t wait three months. But one with a religious belief might just do that. Why was it safe only after Copenhagen? How was it unsafe before?; March 5, 2010 at 6:07 PM