Ray Evans' 'Nine facts about climate change' debunked. Pt. 5.

How Ray even thinks this one could be a fact is beyond me. He certainly is the mental gymnast.

The general gist is that climate scientists are part of some grand conspiracy to commit fraud on a global scale. They probably cut their teeth convicting and administering hemlock to Socrates, before moving on to assassinating JFK and faking the moon landing.

Yet again, it’s filled with the usual fluff.

The progress of science since the Middle Ages has not been made through consensus and censorship but through individuals who have challenged existing orthodoxies and shown them to be either wrong or inadequate. Galileo and his challenge to the Jesuits is a well known example. It is a revealing commentary on the global warming debate that the anthropogenists place so much weight on their claimed monopoly of scientific opinion.

For every Galileo there are 10 000 cranks who fervently believe they’ve overturned the scientific orthodoxy, when they’re simply misinformed, wrong, and in many cases, idiots. Disagreeing with scientific orthodoxy in itself should never be seen as a way to advance science. Disagreeing with scientific orthodoxy because you have a new testable theory that better explains observations than a previously existing theory most certainly is. Climate change denialism doesn’t fit into this category because denialists are manifestly unable to explain recent observed warming without anthropogenic factors. They have to invent way-out theories that are implausible when rigorously examined. As each theory fails, it’s on to the next one, with never a hint that the scientific consensus they are trying to overturn may in fact be correct. In this way climate change denialism is like Intelligent Design, Creationism and numerous other ideology-driven rather than evidence-based theories.

When political leaders identify themselves with a scientific theory, they can often exert great pressures to ensure that critics are squeezed out of research grants and career opportunities.

Considering the current long-serving conservative Australian and US governments are only recent converts to AGW due to poll-based evidence, this theory is as silly as, well, all of Ray’s other theories. Most members of these governments were either disinterested or actively denialist until recently, so if political patronage meant so much, denialists should be rolling in cash.

These tactics do not compare with Stalin’s treatment of critics of Lysenko and his theories of the inheritability of acquired characteristics and other bizarre notions. The consequences for many Russian geneticists who opposed Lysenko were fatal.

If these tactics don’t compare to Stalin’s treatment of critics of Lysenko, why mention Stalin’s treatment of critics of Lysenko? Ray’s point is………no idea. On second thoughts it could be to show how fair a man Ray is, how he weighs things up and gives an honest disinterested appraisal; ‘Those scientists are really, really evil, but not quite as evil as Stalin’. Or it could just be a typo and Ray thinks they’re worse. Who knows?

Ray then craps on and on about how the CSIRO was infiltrated blah blah blah conspiracy blah blah. More guff along the lines of; ‘when a contrarian misses out on a grant it’s because of their denialism, and for no other reason. Just because there isn’t a shred of evidence to support this doesn’t mean it isn’t true!!!”

One of the idiocies which has followed from the capture of the science establishment by the anthropogenists is that research into the causes of the periodicity of the longlasting ice ages and the brief interglacials is being carried out mostly by people who are cut off from the official science establishment, without recourse to research funds or access to the so-called peer-reviewed literature.

Wrong. There are many, many peer-reviewed papers on climate change and its drivers during past glacial and interglacial periods. Ray mustn’t know how to use the interweb tube thingies if he can’t find ‘em. However, I do admit, some scientists and pretend scientists quite rightly don’t get funded or published because their research is infantile garbage, not because ‘we can’t handle the truth’.

The anthropogenists, contrariwise, control huge budgets which are devoted to proving the anthropogenic carbon dioxide theory of climate control. The complete intellectual failure of this enterprise has led to demands by establishment scientists and their supporters in the media for censorship of the sceptics, and even the imprisonment of people who are called ‘climate change deniers’.

Nah…we shouldn’t imprison them. The world needs more laughter, and they certainly provide a bit of comedy. Highly educational for young scientists too; “This, son, is exactley how not to advance human knowledge - learn from this, and don't do it”.