Post-normal Science, its Culture and how it Retards Learning in our Universities
A post mortem examination of the collapse of the man-made global warming scare points to the cancer of post-normal science that infected two generations of academia and led to the criminal waste of $100 billion in public grants for junk science.
Climatology has held an iron grip on science funding since the late 1980’s. But this infant field of research suffered two hammer blows to its credibility last week.
First, a new paper in Science proves that the planet won’t suffer catastrophic ill health from a global warming ‘fever’ due to human carbon dioxide emissions. [1.]
Secondly, Climategate 2.0 hit the fan: an avalanche of 5,000 freshly leaked emails to prove once again that government grants will sway government scientists to manipulate statistics to say whatever they want.
The Science story shows that when a bandwagon climate scientist like Andreas Schmittneris telling you that the dangers from rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide are expected to be less than predicted you can be sure the game is up for global warming alarmism.
But hot on Schmittner’s heels came new revelations about disgraced British climate scientist, Professor Phil Jones (you know, he who escaped jail time on a technicality for letting his dog eat all his data). Jones has been caught admitting privately that he and his climate cronies have no idea from where the official 2° Celsius safe ceiling on global temperature increase trumpeted by President Obama and G8 leaders came. Phil confesses, “I know you don’t know the answer, but I don’t either! I think it is plucked out of thin air.” [2.]
Indeed, right now we see a grotesque illustration of the utter disconnect between what climatologists know to be true, what (dishonest) politicians are saying and what the media is (ineptly) reporting. To coincide with the Durban Climate Conference the International Energy Agency and a compliant mainstream media are this week still screaming pandemonium about this farcical ‘official 2° C safe temperature ceiling’ that Jones (privately) mocks. Yet not a word from the press about those devasting 5,000 new Climategate emails [3.]
Post-normal Science: Your Ticket to Higher Taxes, Bigger Government
The above perfectly illustrates what ‘post-normal’ science is all about; governments colluding with tax-payer funded universities to cynically invent catastrophic narratives to scare voters into believing new taxes will avert doomsday. It’s the only genuinely ‘man-made’ thing about it – concocting a strong message – all perpetuated with media connivance. The ultimate goal, admitted the President of France: “global governance.”
These post-normal government-funded universities obligingly provide their paymasters with a gamut of scenarios to scare the populace into permitting tax dollars to be channeled towards (government) solutions to (government-created) problems. Thereby the virtuous circle generates new taxes to fund more scientists to address more ‘problems’ that governments will ‘fix’ with inexorably higher taxes.
But in addition, the muted media response to Climategate 2.0 further exposes the utter capitulation of mainstream investigative journalism and why a new generation of bloggers must fill that void.
Pointedly, President Dwight D. Eisenhower first warned us of the coming dystopia of post-normal, or bureaucratic science (BS) way back in the 1960’s:
“Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields… ,” Eisenhower warned. “Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity.” –President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Farewell Address (1961)
Traditional scientists (i.e. untainted by government agenda) have no truck with post-normal science. Ethical researchers test their hypothesis, share data and discuss their findings with colleagues; they openly weigh the pros and cons of their ideas. It’s the old-fashioned skeptical way of doing things.
Leaked Emails Discredit Science of Greenhouse Gas Theory
Radio host Rush Limbaugh (Nov 28, 2011) informed his 20 million listeners about Schmittner’s paper, concluding that man-made global warming is a hoax based on a bogus greenhouse gas theory. Limbaugh was essentially echoing the work of Dr. Martin Hertzberg, a card-carrying Democrat, member of the ‘Slayers’ think tank and a stickler on scientific standards.
There’s a whole lot of backtracking now going on. The Climategate 2.0 emails show (by omission) that Greenhouse Effect (GHE) ‘science’ was never subjected to verification, i.e. there is no discussion or debate anywhere among the ‘hockey stick team’ or any indication that these ‘scientists’ should experimentally substantiate what they claim the GHE can do.
Indeed, old-fashioned scientist Dr. Pierre Latour, formerly of NASA’s Apollo mission, had this to say about the new paper in Science, “It has 9/15 pages of verbiage,103 references, three figures of data, and not much new physics.”
Yet nowhere could Latour discern how the paper’s authors derived their numbers and probabilities. All of it is science behind closed doors. Slowly though, the public is waking up to the shocking reality that government scientists are as credible as Wall Street banksters.
I put my concerns to astrophysicist, Joe Postma, author of damning recent papers (“Copernicus Meets the GHE”, & “The Model GHE Atmosphere”) that dismantle the junk science of so-called heat trapping ‘greenhouse gases.’ This is what he had to say:
“Exactly. This would be standard operating procedure in ANY other science. These people are either purposefully being obtuse, or they are obtuse. I think it quite likely that they really just are: they have no idea that their theories might be wrong because they subconsciously believe that a theory comes first, and the evidence comes second…exactly opposite to real science.”
Postma is still in the early years of his science career yet he shares the concerns of older, wiser heads like Latour and Hertzberg. En masse a grassroots band of independent scientists are lamenting the death of critical thinking in academia.
The megalith that is multi-national government science, under the sway of policymakers at the UN, has ignored Eisenhower’s ‘health warning’ and today, in the deepest global recession since the 1930’s, we are all paying a high price for that oversight.
As a consequence, in this post-normal world, our children are taught that Einstein came up with a theory and then we found evidence to support it; that Darwin came up with a theory and then we found evidence to support that. That Hawking came up with a theory and, because he’s “smarter than you”, it doesn’t even matter anymore whether we have evidence to support it, Hawking is right, skeptics are wrong. ‘Consensus’ is right; skeptics are wrong.
Post-normal Universities Spawn ‘Evidence-free’ Science
So now these kids get grants from the government, which makes them feel special and smart, and then their “science” proceeds the way they’ve been taught: come up with a theory and find evidence to support it, and deny the importance of any and all evidence which is contrary to your pet theory. But that’s not how science is actually supposed to work. Einstein, Darwin, etc., all created theories based on evidence, not on what their government grants specified they were to find.
Now let’s examine the case of one such fresh-faced graduate clutching his shiny new PhD that was somehow “rushed through.” Michael Mann was snatched from academic obscurity and styled as a UN ‘expert’ on tree-ring proxies, having never studied a tree ring in his life. Not only was this newcomer instantly installed as the UN’s Lead Author on paleoclimate temperature proxies, Mann’s so-called ‘hockey stick’ graph became the icon for a one-world climate science crusade to introduce a planet-wide climate tax system.
Almost overnight, this new international “expert,” Michael Mann cast out the prominent hump of the Medieval Warm Period that featured in the earlier U.N. proxy temperature reconstruction graph (IPPC Report, 1995), shown here:
to create the iconic flattened shaft and blade of the ‘hockey stick’ graph for the next IPCC Report (2001) below:
Not a word of explanation anywhere from the UN’s IPCC as to why the historic global temperature record was ‘revised’ so drastically, so quickly. Moreover, no one outside of the clique of BS researchers was privy to Mann’s secret calculations that spawned this extreme revisionist creation; though leaked email 0810 shows how keenly Mann was dedicated to the “cause.” Peter Thorne of NOAA (National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration), warned Phil Jones in a 2005 message, “the science is being manipulated to put a political spin on it which for all our sakes might not be too clever in the long run.” But a lawsuit in Canada may yet be the skeptics’ best chance of exposing Mann’s criminal zealotry. I urge you, please support it. [4.]
History Re-written and then the Fakery of Post-normal Physics
To add to the mix, environmentalist Dr. Matthias Kleespies, who in his “A Short History Of Radiation Theories – What Do They Reveal About “Anthropogenic Global Warming”?” (Principia Scientific International, Nov. 2011), has found more compelling evidence that not only was the history re-written to serve the post-normal agenda but so was the physics. Kleespies uncovered proof that, “This [GHE] theory is so extraordinary because there is NO OTHER field in science where any such mechanism like “back” or “downwelling” radiation is permitted.”
In leaked email 2445 we see that the driving force to re-write such facts were political leaders wanting a “strong message,” according to the UK Government’s Kathryn Humphrey (DEFRA).
Yet all the while Hertzberg, Latour, Postma, Kleespies and other non-partisan scientists are telling us is that there is no such thing as a Greenhouse Effect. If you study their writings you will see how they openly address the complexities within the physics and thermodynamics to show that our planet’s surface temperature can be explained without the chicanery concocted behind closed doors. We can see that there is no need to postulate an additional radiative GHE, and that the entire concept is based on a misinterpretation and an incorrect comparison of physical metrics.
These skeptics demonstrate in their step-by-step number crunching what the likes of Mann, Jones and Schmittner never do: open and honest demonstration of how their science ‘works’ and where post-normal science fails.
By repeatedly and unlawfully denying freedom of information requests filed by concerned independent researchers, fraudsters like Phil Jones and Michael Mann prompted at least one conscientious insider to turn whistleblower. Climategate 2.0 is showing the world that “man-made global warming” was the product of a vast criminal conspiracy facilitated by the post-normal corruption of government science that began in earnest half a century ago. Now we must all open our eyes, stand together and fight it.
[1.] Schmittner, A., et al.,’Climate Sensitivity Estimated from Temperature Reconstructions of the Last Glacial Maximu,’ (November 24, 2011), Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1203513
[2.] Dr. P. Jones to C. Kremer, Deputy Secretary General, European People’s Party by email (Thursday, September 06, 2007 6:40 PM), Subject: Re: EPP Document on Climate Change.
[3.] DiLorenzo, S.,’ IEA: Time running out to limit earth’s warming,’ (Nov 9, 2011: accessed online: Nov 30, 2011), Associated Press.
[4.] Dr. Michael Mann-v-Dr. Tim Ball, British Columbia Supreme Court (BCSC, Action No: 111913), April 2011, case ongoing.
Trackback from your site.