Right Wing-nuts vs. Science

¡Hola! Everybody...
Stupid is as...

LOL!

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-=[ The Right Wing War Against Science ]=-

To be ignorant of one's ignorance is the malady of the ignorant.

-- Amos Bronson Alcott (1799–1888)

The e-mail archives stolen last month from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (UEA), UK, have been greeted by the climate-change-denialist-Tin-Foil-Hat-Brigade as a propaganda windfall. To these quacks, the scientists’ scathing remarks about certain controversial palaeoclimate reconstructions qualify as the proverbial “smoking gun”: proof that mainstream climate researchers have systematically conspired to suppress evidence contradicting their doctrine that humans are warming the globe.

I am blessed with a talented and intelligent son, my only child (as far as I can tell). He is now 25 years-old. I treasure many memories from his childhood. Early on, I sold him on the notion of training to become a “scholar/ warrior.” Basically, I wanted to give him the best education possible. That education included learning in many different disciplines, from art and music, martial arts, poetry, philosophy, the healing arts, and so on. Luckily, for me, he bought my sales pitch, completely.

Today, he is a talented as a musician, as well as having received a degree. He was also born with a natural aptitude for drawing and painting, something we tried to support as soon as we discovered his childhood doodles were actually accurate portraits.

When he was around 8-9 years-old, we all joined a martial arts (Wing Chun) school. There he learned the trick that gave him some expertise in the art of self-defense. Please note that I am deliberately choosing the word trick. Our sufi (instructor) used it often in our martial arts training when guiding him in the trick of mentally registering attacks before they became dangers, aiming his focus ahead, learning to anticipate. I also showed him the trick of avoiding unnecessary confrontation. He once told me that he was especially proud of learning that trick. It helped embolden him and gave him confidence.

I recently posted a link exposing of how quack Climate Crash deniers (Beck, Rush, Drudge, Faux news, etc.) have had some fun with stolen emails. Essentially, the piece showed how these Climate change deniers have taken lines from these emails out of context in an effort to refute decades of scientific research. If you go there, you will find one individual who calls himself “weinerfest” posting outright fabrications.

He stated, for example, that one scientist admitted purposely excluding data from previous warming periods. I then posted the full email showing the scientist never said anything of the sort. There were several more attempts to pass off disinformation and each time, I used either the emails themselves or citations from scientific bodies to show he was posting, at best, falsehoods. I would say he was intentionally lying, but that’s just conjecture (LOL)!) His stance, like the rest of the clowns on the right, is that these emails prove that decades of basic research in climate science has been one elaborate hoax. One such email, out of thousands hacked from a public research university in Norwich, England, has attracted a lot of attention. The line reads thus:

I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (i.e. from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.

Utilizing “neoconservative logic,” the word “trick” and the word “hide,” you see, prove that all this “research” and “data” about climate is phony and the GOP Clown Car headed by Beck & Co., know better than the scientists! Of course, the fact there is isn’t one scientifically recognized body in the world that disagrees with the scientific consensus that climate change is caused by human activity has no bearing in this “discussion.”

Almost every scientific organization from almost every scientific discipline has issued statements that agree with the scientific consensus. Not one internationally recognized scientific body has refuted the consensus. For those unfamiliar with the scientific method, this is indeed a rare occurrence.

There are some groups, consisting mostly of unpublished scientists, individuals, as well your local weatherman and bodega owner (and possibly Ms. Cleo), that have signed on to a public statement saying they disagree with the scientific consensus, but few have been able to submit a rigorously researched study that can pass academic muster.

In fact, empirical studies show that among scientists that have been published in peer-reviewed journals, the consensus is overwhelming.

Now, back to the word “trick.” Trick is used in the sense of “method” as in... “the trick to blocking a punch... ” “Hide” refers to a well-known (to scientists) anomaly in reconstructing climate after 1960. Tree ring density is reliable before then, but diverges later, due to human-caused environmental reasons unique to the last 50 years. Meaningful graphs omit or hide that part of tree ring based measurement in favor of more scientifically reliable and direct measurements.

Science is based on evidence and re-examination. That is why “cold fusion,” having initially created a excitement, fell so fast. Outright fraud is found very quickly. Ask DNA falsifier Hwang Woo-Suk, who caused a stir in cloning research and was quickly debunked. Scientists love to disprove flawed research. It makes them famous.

It comes from the Scientific Method.

Back to the Tin Foil Hat Brigade. To them, anthropogenic (human-caused) climate change is a hoax. Why? Because of a few emails, taken out of context, shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that there’s been a hoax!

Yeah right...

The impressive thing about this so-called “conspiracy” is that the scientists managed to convince the planet’s glaciers, sea ice, and hydrological cycles to play along.

Deniers from the right, like Weiner, who have waged war on science on many different fronts, should consider the methods of science sometime.

Love,

Eddie