Politeia: Of Human Hubris, Coverups and the Debilitation of the Mind

Two results of a number of enquiries into the University of East Anglia's Climate Unit (CRU) are in. Complete whitewashes, as was to be expected. Here are the results. But after I've reported on a typical anti-human, Rousseauian narrative on radio last night, an interview with diver-photographer Dos Winkel (do visit the site; like Riefsenstahl's, the artwork is simply stunning).

The problem is, these self-appointed researcher-activists-Cousteau-wannabees are talking through their hats! Winkel is wildly peeling the alarm bells as entire species are disappearing and seas are being drawnetted dry. He knows, because as a diver he has witnessed the devastation with his own two eyes. Who wouldn't take him seriously?

But when you come think of it, there's something highly subjective and selective about such reports. Climber-activists have been doing the same in the Himalayas and the Alps as we know to our detriment. Some of these amateur-researcher reports have 101 found their way into the UN's IPCC 2007 Update without further ado, where they were used to influence politicians and other decision makers at the expense of the tax payer.

- Caption: photo by Dos Winkel -

There's nothing scientific about these sightings (or lack thereof). How misguided are these people? Very. A Dutch commuter newspaper is suggesting there may be no summer this year "due to Iceland's volcanic eruption". A volcano is now standing accused of "polluting the climate". How dare it, they exclaim, as they're shacking their fists at the angry ghost in the mountain.

Robert Moon is reporting today in the Examiner that the climate lobby in the media are making the case, not of a direct cause and effect as they did with climate warming and hurricane Katrina and the Minnesota bridge collapse in 2007, but are now concocting a narrative as if there were a relationship between volcano eruptions and a decline in the weight of gletchers (whatever).

Human hubris can at times be quite staggering. This goes for the entire man-made global waming hypothesis. In the face of the mighty forces of nature, it's the question if man is capable of such a feat in the first place. The notion is the result of the erroneous postmodern habit of confusing the metaphysical and the man-made. Their minds have reached the level of the medieval bumpkin who's blaming the plague on demons (see reports on man-made climate warming being responsible for massive earth quakes).

Besides anti individualim, anti reason and anti capitalism postmodernists share this confusion with the Islamists: an Iranian cleric has just discovered that earthquakes are caused by extramarital sex. It beggars belief what divides these two members of the Unholy Alliance!

A debilization of the mind has taken place as a result of a world view that is a fallacy. Like the foundation of a house is out of whack, causing eventually the entire edifice to crumble, this warped world view produces nothing but inside out, upside down bolderdash - crap in, crap out.

I recently retrieved some of my earliest work on the critique of postmodern thought, laid out in - for want of a better word - the PMF (postmodern fallacies). It needs updating with the latest discoveries on present confusion (which is rife!), and the analysis of what constitutes pomo lingo (read also "The O Team: Mental Babies With Razors").

Here's a digest of the Climategate cover-up, but I encourage you to read the entire original article - it's quite concise.

National Post: "Climategate whitewash", by Peter Foster

'Climategate scientists cleared of wrongdoing” read the headline in yesterday’s Post. Who expected anything else? The two self-inquiries launched by the University of East Anglia into its Climatic Research Unit (CRU) were always destined to produce whitewashes, as did a recent UK parliamentary inquiry, and as will an “independent” review by the UN.

The first of the UEA reports, from a committee headed by ardent warmist and anti-carbon profiteer Lord Oxburgh, appeared this week. As Lawrence Solomon points out elsewhere on this page, the choice of Lord Oxburgh indicated that the fix was always in for an inquiry which fails to address, let alone probe, most of the major issues. And yet there is a mountain of condemnation-by-faint-exoneration between the lines of the report’s ridiculously slim five pages.

Its attempt to present CRU head Phil Jones, and his beleaguered band, as unworldly boffins who were blindsided by all this attention is ridiculous. (...) The CRU’s data has appeared in two forms: raw and cooked. Much of the raw variety, unfortunately, has been “lost.” This is treated by the review as infinitely excusable due to the pressures of the academic life. You know, tedious admin meetings, the pressure to publish, the need to get in those applications for multi-million dollar grants attached to proving man-made global warming. But how can ditching the fundamental data on which your science depends be dubbed mere carelessness with “non-essential record keeping?”

As for the cooked data, the CRU has been accused of “manipulation” not in the legitimate statistical sense, so that different data sets may be comparable, but in support of the results required by government-funded, highly politicized science. Without data suggesting rising temperatures due to anthropogenic emissions, there would be no justification for massive global programs such as cap-and-trade, redistributionist “clean development,” or the hefty subsidization of alternative energy. The CRU is also gently fingered for its lack of statistical sophistication. (...) >>>