State Of Mankind - How Much Do You Know?

Excerpts from "How the Specter of Communism Is Ruling Our World"

(110)Establishing Dogma in the Scientific Community

The establishment and consolidation of the alleged consensus on climate change is a main step in the use of environmentalism to manipulate the public, amplify the sense of disaster, and distort human values. If carried to its conclusion, the natural trajectory is the establishment of a global super-government — that is, communism. While this has mainly played out in the scientific community, it has been helped along with the joint strength of the media, government, and academic institutions.

No matter the academic reputation of a scientist, once he publicly expresses doubts about the consensus dogma, he immediately faces tremendous pressure from his peers and academic institutions, forcing him to submit. People who have lived in a communist totalitarian society have had similar experiences, the only difference being that they have questioned communist party dogma.

David Bellamy is a well-known British environmental activist and chairman of the The Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts. But when he publicly stated that he did not believe in the consensus dogma of global warming theory, the agency issued a statement expressing dissatisfaction. He then ceased to serve as the chairman, and environmentalists who previously respected him began to suspect he’d lost his senses or was taking money from Big Oil.

Henk Tennekes, former director of the Royal Dutch Meteorological Society, was dismissed because he did not support the consensus dogma on climate change. Similarly, World Meteorological Organization official Aksel Winn-Nielsen was slandered by IPCC officials as “an industry tool.” After Italian researchers Alfonso Sutera and Antonios questioned the theory of anthropogenic climate warming, they were no longer able to obtain research funding.

In his book Climate of Extremes: Global Warming Science They Don’t Want You to Know, Patrick J. Michaels, past president of the American Association of State Climatologists and a climatologist at the University of Virginia, listed numerous examples of environmentalists suppressing scientific dissidents in order to reach their alleged consensus. Because he insisted that the climate would not lead to disaster, this optimistic stance was inconsistent with the consensus dogma, and one day he was told by the governor that he could not speak on global warming as a state climatologist. He ultimately chose to resign.

Another state climatologist, George Taylor of Oregon State University, encountered the same trouble, and Taylor was eventually forced to resign. Dr. David Legates, former director of the Center for Climate Studies at the University of Delaware, is a state climatologist in Delaware. He was also told by the governor that he could not speak as a state climatologist on the issue of global warming. Washington State climatologist assistant Mark Albright was fired because he emailed an inquiring journalist and citizens of the state about the entire snowfall record for the Cascade Mountains, instead of selecting partial records (which appear to show warming), despite having been warned by his boss.

The focus of debate here is on the climatologists’ area of expertise — climate science issues rather than state-policy issues. In communist countries, crude political interference in science is common. In Western countries, environmentalist politics are being used to interfere with academic freedom.

Academic research that casts doubt about the consensus dogma is rarely seen in academic journals, a phenomenon that began in the 1990s. Michaels said in the Channel 4 (U.K.) 1990 documentary The Greenhouse Conspiracy that if a person’s point of view is politically unacceptable, then there will be trouble. His paper was rejected by more than one academic journal. When he asked a journal editor why, the answer was that his paper must pass a higher evaluation standard than others.

According to the 1990 IPCC report, the understanding at the time was that the extent of global warming was equivalent to natural changes in climate. Therefore, although Michaels’s point of view was different from that of many others, it could not be regarded as particularly heretical. However, the goal of establishing a false consensus had already been set, and everyone had to get on board.

The tilt of government funding has greatly contributed to the formation and consolidation of the alleged consensus. The hypothesis that humans caused global warming and brought disasters has pushed climate-change research to the position of advising on policymaking. Therefore, research supporting this hypothesis will naturally receive a large amount of research funding, and a large number of academic articles will be published. Conversely, enforced consensus hinders scientists from exploring and researching in other possible directions.

Dr. William Gray, a renowned professor, was a pioneer of American hurricane research. Because he criticized the consensus dogma in climate theory, he suddenly found that his applications for research funding were repeatedly rejected. The reason was that his proposed research was not the focus.

In March 2008, many scientists who doubted the consensus dogma on climate issues held a private academic event in New York. These scientists said that they encountered various obstacles when trying to publish their research results in academic journals. Meteorologist Joseph D’Aleo, former chairman of the American Meteorological Society’s Committee on Weather Analysis and Forecasting, said that some of his colleagues did not dare to attend the meeting because of fear of being fired. He believed that there was “very likely a silent majority” of scientists in climatology, meteorology, and related sciences who did not support the “consensus” position.

Professor Judith Curry, former dean of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, stated in a Senate testimony in 2015 that a scientist employed by NASA said to her: “I was at a small meeting of NASA-affiliated scientists and was told by our top manager that he was told by his NASA boss that we should not try to publish papers contrary to the current global warming claims, because he (the NASA boss) would then have a headache countering the ‘undesirable’ publicity.”

Curry further said in her testimony: A climate scientist making a statement about uncertainty or degree of doubt in the climate debate is categorized as a denier or a ‘merchant of doubt,’ whose motives are assumed to be ideological or motivated by funding from the fossil fuel industry. My own experience in publicly discussing concerns about how uncertainty is characterized by the IPCC has resulted in my being labeled as a ‘climate heretic’ that has turned against my colleagues. … There is enormous pressure for climate scientists to conform to the so-called consensus. This pressure comes not only from politicians, but from federal funding agencies, universities and professional societies, and scientists themselves who are green activists and advocates. Reinforcing this consensus are strong monetary, reputational, and authority interests.

Dr. Curry is a member of the American Meteorological Society and a member of the National Research Council’s Climate Research Committee. Despite her academic success, she chose to retire early because she was unwilling to continue to live under such pressure. Because she has challenged the IPCC’s “consensus” in recent years, she has been stigmatized as “anti-science,” a “denier,” and so on, both by media, other scientists, and a senator. A member of Congress even sent a letter to the Dean of the Georgia Institute of Technology to question Curry’s motives. She said that another reason for early retirement was that she felt that she could not tell students and postdoctoral researchers how to “navigate the CRAZINESS in the field of climate science.”

Roger Pielke Jr., a professor at the University of Colorado, has worked with Curry on climate-change issues. He was originally at the university’s Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES). Although he agreed with most of the IPCC “consensus” conclusions, he was subjected to similar pressures because he pointed out that data does not support the idea that extreme weather events such as hurricanes, tornadoes, and droughts are influenced by climate change. He eventually moved to the University of Colorado’s Sports Governance Center.

Dr. Pielke pointed out that Curry’s experience shows that “having a tenured position isn’t a guarantee of academic freedom.” It is no wonder that Joanne Simpson, an academician of the American Academy of Engineering and an outstanding former NASA atmospheric scientist, declared her skepticism of the “consensus” after retirement: “Since I am no longer affiliated with any organization nor receive any funding, I can speak quite frankly.” She said, “As a scientist, I remain skeptical.”

From Chapter 16: The Communism Behind Environmentalism