Newsweek's Intellectual Bias

Intellectual Bigotry is something that sticks in my craw. I have always hated bigotry of any kind, and get upset when my good name is impugned by someone using bigotry to do so.

In the recent Newsweek Article "Global Warming is a Hoax: Or so claim well-funded naysayers who still reject the overwhelming evidence of climate change," the staff author Sharon Begley displayed a horrible intellectual bigotry in the August 13, 2007 issue of Newsweek.

In his blog, Okie, of Okie on the Lam, described the article as "an Orwellian tipping point in the Man-Caused Climate Change debate" in which he described, "lies becoming truth while the search for truth gets abandoned in the ensuing maelstrom."

Well said Okie.

The Newsweek article in my opinion resembled less an Orwellian Nightmare than an exercise in repression similar to that used in the Spanish Inquisition.

The most telling was the comparison to the tobacco industry. It is almost as bad as the comparison that was made about me to the racist jim crows during that one religion class.

“They patterned what they did after the tobacco industry,” says former senator Tim Wirth, who spearheaded environmental issues as an under secretary of State in the Clinton administration. “Both figured, sow enough doubt, call the science uncertain and in dispute. That’s had a huge impact on both the public and Congress.”

The Tobacco Industry, really? Is there any more tired comparisons they would like to trot out?

How about some link to the Nazi's? After all, some of the Warming Forum/Blog Trolls can't go more than a few words about those who disagree with them without making numerous references to Nazi's and the Waffen SS.

Well, the link was made, in a round-about way, but it was still made.

In what may be a key tactic of the denial machine - think tanks linking up the like-minded, contrarion researchers - the report was endorsed in a letter to President George H.W. Bush by MIT meteorologist Richard Lindzen. Lindzen, whose parents had fled Hitler's Germany, is described by old friends as the kind of man who, if you're the minority, opts to be with you. "I thought it was important to make it clear that the science was at an early and primitive stage and that there was little basis for concensus and much reason for scepticism," he told Scientific American magazine. "I did feel a moral obligation."

The emphasis was added by myself in the writing of this blog. Otherwise, it is word for word the story that was published in the magazine.

Then, there is this little gem of an argument that made me throw the magazine across the room in exasperation.

Groups that opposed greenhouse curbs ramped up. They "Settled on the 'Science isn't there' argument because they didn't believe they'd be able to convince th public to do nothing if climate change were real," says David Goldston, who served as Republican chief of staff for the House of Representatives science committee until 2006. Industry found a friend in Patrick Michaels, a climatologist at the University of Virginia who keeps a small farm where he raises prize-winning pumpkins and whose favorite weather, he once told a reporter, is "anything severe." Michaels had written several popular articles on Climate Change, including an op-ed in the Washington Post in 1989 warning of "apocalyptic environmentalism," which he called "the most popular new religion to come along since Marxism." The coal industry's Western Fuels Association paid Michaels to produce a newsletter called World Climate Report, which has regularly trashed mainstream climate science. (At a 1995 hearing in Minnesotta on coal-fired power plants, Michaels admitted that he received more than &165,000 from industry; he now declines to comment on his industry funding, asking, "What is this, a hatchet job?")

Wow, the amount of emphasis in that is eyecatching. The most telling is this Inquisitor's use of the funding argument. I would like to quote from Michael Chrichton's State of Fear here for a moment.

In this exchange, Peter Evans, a lawyer for Hasle & Black, is arguing with a group of Scientists over the data found in the Antarctic Post that I placed on here earlier today.

Evans picked up the sheet of paper again, and folded it carefully. He slipped it into his pocket. "These studies are probably financed by the coal industry."
Probably," Kenner said. "I'm sure that explains it. But them everybody's paid by somebody. Who pays your salary?"
"My Law firm."
"And who pays them?"
"The clients. We have several hundred clients."
"You do work for all of them?"
"Me, personally? No."
"In fact, you do most of your work for environment clients," Kenner said. "Isn't that true?"
"Mostly. Yes."
"Would it be fair to say that the environmental clients pay your salary?" Kenner said.
"You could make that argument."
"I'm just asking, Peter. Would it be fair to say environmentalists pay your salary?"
"Yes."
"Okay. Then would it be fair to say the opinions you hold are because you work for environmentalists?"
"Of course not-"
"You mean you're not a paid flunky for the environmental movement?"
"No. The fact is -"
"Your not an environmental stooge? A mouthpiece for a great fund raising and media machine - a multi-billion-dollar industry in its own right - with its own private agenda that's not necessarily in the Public Interest"
"God damn it -"
"Is this pissing you off?" Kenner said
"Your damn right it is!"
"Good," now you know how legitimate scientists feel when their integrity is impugned by slimy characterizations such as the one you just made. Sanjong and I gave you a careful, peer-reviewed interpretation of the data. Made by several groups of scientists from several different countries, and your first response was to ignore it, and then to make an ad hominem attack. You didn't answer the data. You didn't provide counter evidence. You just smeared with innuendo."

Though it is long, it is a very effective look at the mindset of the Goraclist Inquisitor who wrote the Newsweek article.

It continues:

Just before Kyoto, S. Fred Singer released the "Leipzig Declartion on Global Climate Change." Singer, who fled Nazi-occupied Austria as a boy, had run the U.S. weather-satellite program in the early 1960s. In the Leipzig petition, just over 100 scientists and others, including TV weathermen, said they “cannot subscribe to the politically inspired world view that envisages climate catastrophes.” Unfortunately, few of the Leipzig signers actually did climate research; they just kibitzed about other people’s.

Wow, so because some of the people where "TV Weathermen," a diminutive term for a Meteorologist, they do not count. So Weather Scientists do not count huh? Wow, that is the most elitist comment I have ever heard.

There will be more on this little piece of filth later. For now, I need to take a break. All this bigotry hurts my brain.