Everyone who uses the words or phases “consensus” or “settled science” are politicians not scientists and should be removed from public debate, because their goal is to eliminate debate.
This seems to include the majority of scientists and 99.9% of media, especially science and climate writers.
Pat: There is not much "science" in the IPCC Report. I can reduce the science to a simple formula. If you take the IPCC estimate of global temperature rise from the 1800s to 2015 (1.15 C) and divide by the sum of all the CO2 emitted from the 1800s to 2015, you get the past temperature rise per unit Gt of CO2 emissions: 0.000893 degrees per Gt. All of the models and projections used by IPCC use that figure. For whatever Gt of CO2 emitted in the future, the IPCC assumes each Gt will add 0.000893 degrees to the global average temperature. That's it. That's the science. Done! The assumption is that whatever held from the 1800s to 2015 will hold in the future. I proved that and sent the graph to Roger. I'm not easily convinced but I think that probably puts them pretty close.
So, what is the IPCC Report really about if it is not science? The IPCC lays out several imagined possibilities for CO2 emissions in the future, and uses the above formula to chart out the increase in temperature from the above formula. It then relies upon a number of independent studies that claim all sorts of horrendous effects in proportion to the temperature rise resulting from any imagined scenario of future emissions. It treats all these studies as credible. There is where the consensus lies. Not in science per se, but rather in the alarming effects of increased temperatures that they subscribe to. Are these alarming impacts credible? Nobody really knows. But their attempts to show that it is already happening now has been thwarted by Roger.
The IPCC then prepares lists of actions the world could take to reduce future emissions, but does not clarify how the world would actually reduce emissions over the next decades. Because their metric is emissions per capita, they imply the onus is on the developed nations that have higher emissions per capita (due to higher energy intensity) but that is a losing proposition because China, India and Russia emit 40% of the world's emissions, and they would have to make major reductions in emissions if any scheme is going to work.
So, in summary, the IPCC is not about the science of warming from CO2. For that, they just assumed the future will be like the past. Each additional Gt adds 0.000893 degrees. It is about a consensus believing the alarmist publications on impacts of warming at any level, and showing steps that might be taken by nations to reduce future emissions.
The area of a sphere decreases sharply at high latitudes. Your 0.4 is really about 1.0. The climate where people live is affected by > 60 N when great melts or other impacts result from loss of snow/ice
4 times is the figure bandied about, so no there is no way the habitable parts at mid latitudes are 1c.
But it really doesn’t matter. “Climate change” to date has been small and entirely beneficial.
As Roger and others have pointed out, there is no emergency in extreme weather so that is the big lie perpetrated on us.
The people in the far north benefit from slightly warmer nights and winters, that’s it.
John Robson did a series of posts regarding average and max temps all across the canadian north for the past 100 years, average increased a bit, max temps flat.
You really ought to leave this substack and join your fellow deniers on the deniers blogs like Climate etc. or Watts up with that. You can find lots of people who made up their minds that rising CO2 is beneficial. But you are wasting our time on Pielke's substack with your obvious ignorance.
It's all about the Benjamins. Throughout the academic and scientific communities there is a constant drumbeat of more funding. I saw it firsthand in the Leeds School of Business where academic rigor was sacrificed for money (yes, I'm calling out Leeds' business minor program and constantly increasing class sizes). My hunch is that Nature saw more NSF/NIH/etc. funding coming from a Biden administration so hence, the endorsement.
"...partisan cheerleading can actually make things worse and compromise democratic practices."
Whooboy that's the crux of the issue in'it? I picked up on that gem in 6th grade.
I'd been elected class host then the same day impeached. Being from the 'wrong side of town' & not wearing a yellow shirt to go with the maroon sweater then in vogue was my 'crime'.
Partisan 'cheerleading' negates truly democratic practices from cradle to grave.
Hans: Thanks for providing this link. It is representative of the polarized cherry-picked misrepresentation of climate change on the Web. Like Realclimate (which is far more scientific) it pushes the alarmist view to the extreme. These are counterbalanced by various organizations that provide a collegial meeting place for deniers (Climate etc., Science and Environmental Policy Project, Watts up, etc.). I think Roger's studies stand by themselves. He need not waste his time refuting sites like world weather attribution.
Donald, tanks for your response. The ETH Zürich contributes to the site, the top Swiss science university, with whom I have controversies about climate policy ( Reto Knutti and others). These professors get involved in the debate about the official climate policy. I'm not a climate scientist, but a political economist. I needs expert advice about the credibility oft the respektive site. Best regards, Hans
Roger: Here is an alternative question you might consider. Rather than simply agree that the great majority of the science community leans left in politics, and in regard to climate change, leads very left, maybe you should inquire why that is so? And what does it mean to lean left in climate change? I suppose it means buying most of the IPCC position that the end of the world as we know it is on hand without immediate, draconian cuts in emissions. I suppose one possible reason is that science organizations believe the climate scientists have objectively studied the matter and come up with rational conclusions drawn from data and analysis. Another possible answer is that climate funding is a huge gravy train and they are the drummers to keep the beat going. Maybe they are better educated and smarter? But ultimately, it seems to me to reflect tribal culture. I suppose we could go on and on with more possibilities, and probably it is a combination of factors. It is also well known that while scientists tend to lean left, engineers tend to lean right. Maybe you ought to study this aspect?
Coming back to the matter of political advocacy by science organizations, the alarmist orthodoxy is very much parallel to a religious orthodoxy. Because it is fundamentally a belief system, and the overwhelming majority of people are unable to understand it technically, it requires fear as the driving force (like religion) and the thing to fear must already be affecting our lives (thus the exaggerations of current impacts you have exposed). It is not surprising that those who feared Covid the most overlap a great deal with those who fear climate change. It seems in some ways that educated people think they are better able to fear catastrophe than less educated people?
Note also, that the world economics of emissions, the effect of emissions on climate, and the impacts of climate change on human affairs are so complex that no single person or small group of persons could possibly understand it. So, the IPCC has pulled together hundreds of specialists to unravel this complex system problem, and it is a matter of faith as to whether they came up with a credible answer. I suppose that it is comparable to believing in the Holy Trinity or the parting of the Red Sea. You either buy it or you don't.
"But Thorp wasn’t really fired up until he heard President Trump tell pharmaceutical executives that they should speed up work on a vaccine. That led to the hugely popular editorial “Do Us a Favor.” Addressing the president, Thorp wrote: “If you want something, start treating science and its principles with respect.”
"Not only is it dangerous to skip important steps in the drug development process, but Trump “implies that science wouldn’t want to go fast, that we’ve been holding back for some reason,” he says to C&EN. “To say, ‘Do me a favor, speed up’ with no idea as to why things have to be done the way they have to be done is just so disrespectful.”"
In fact President Trump was correct in anticipating how quickly the vaccines could be made, and Thorp was wrong, but making his political points.
Trump was right, but he was sold a bill of goods by Fauci and the Pharmaceutical companies and he bought it. Turns out the vaccines have totally underperformed and they became a major divisive issue.
This is a left wing Progressive problem. Making believe that both "sides" are equally at fault by citing Naomi Oreskes is nonsense. Groups like the Heartland Institute and GWPF (founded by Nigel Lawson, RIP) were formed in order to try to bring a modicum of balance to the discussion.
Entrenched bureaucracies like the UN, NOAA, NASA, NSF etc. are manned and managed by activists fully committed to the catastrophic narrative and willing to do anything they have to in order to push it. The professional societies like AGU, The National Academies, The Physics Association etc. all toe the alarmist line. Universities are lost and the media loves it because fear sells. Corporations are totally intimidated and go along to get along. Roger publishes, he posts here, he write articles in Forbes and occasional Opeds and he is ignored.
Science has been coopted and corrupted and nobody seems to give a shit.
Being more inclined to follow the herd and be unwilling to challenge consensus (“if it’s consensus it’s not science”) is not a sign of intelligence, it’s is a sign of fear, bullying, censorship and control of funding.
That’s why your worth the money. I want to be educated by unbiased scientists that want to inform not scare. Your political bias is not between every line. Thanks for speaking out. We have the same problem with the media.
I'm not optimistic that science organizations and researchers will ever regain the public's trust. There is just too much money tied to "being a proper progressive", and too little money available for actual skeptical science. And now there is a big stick (called the RESTRICT act) to go along with the carrot.
I'm just thankful that I've had a good life into my 70's, and don't have any children or grandchildren who will have to grow up in America 1984
I would go so far as to say that you cannot be a climate alarmist and a scientist at the same time. If you are a scientist, you will recognize that most (if not all) climate alarmism is not falsifiable, and therefore isn't science. If you believe that non-falsifiable positions are 'settled science', then you aren't a scientist.
Watching the world disintegrate around me, decided decades ago (that) bringing children into the world I'd become convinced would be coming wasn't a morally responsible thing to work for.
Totally agree. I often say that being old has its advantages when I look at where we are as a society and where we seem to be heading.
However I do have 2 children in their 50's and 6 grandkids ranging from 15-26. Fortunately they're all solid citizens working hard to do the right things and be successful. Unfortunately they are too busy to think much about this stuff and they think that I am kind of weird when I try to get them interested.
Thank you, Roger and Matt. Especially for the Univ of Chicago Kalven reference. We wish more knew about it.
Our next piece, coming in a few days, is on what is possibly the best opportunity to get this right and restore trust in science in 30 years, since the “existential climate crisis created by RCP8.5”.
Including with spillover effects (we hope) in public health science in the wake of Covid-19(84).
Or, it will be the next example of the very phenomenon you and Matt wrote about so eloquently at Heterodox.
Apr 5, 2023·edited Apr 5, 2023Liked by Roger Pielke Jr.
While I agree with the thrust of the article, I strongly disagree with the connotation that scientists should be partisan and political advocates. First and foremost, we should be as objective as possible. That is the debt we owe to science, other scientists, and those who made it possible for us to become scientists. Nothing wrong with being partisan, or advocating for a particular policy, per se – it's a part of the human condition. However, if we do that in our role as scientists it is virtually impossible (and decidedly UN-human) to maintain our objectivity – bounded rationality (like entropy) almost always wins.
Partisan cheerleading is just one more example of corruption. Holden Thorpe knows very well who butters his bread. When you allow a group of people to create and control the entire Western World's money supply they can buy most people in any leadership position. As we saw very well with Covid, political leaders, union leaders, journal publishers, medical authorities, virtually all major media, university leadership all fell into lockstep with the bogus Covid narrative. And anyone in a leadership position who dissented was dealt with viciously. Welcome to the coming Post Truth, techno-feudal, Totalitarian World Dictatorship.
It may help to nudge the academic mindset to remind them of the practice of the 1930s government in Germany to de-platform communists and Jews. That was a disturbingly similar situation where institutions and government were aligned in their beliefs. Sadly, my personal experience of academia leaves me sceptical and confirms that history repeats and much of academia is not so smart as it likes to think.
Just look at what happened to the once informative Scientific American. I was a subscriber decades ago, but recently because everything is edited through a woke microscope I can’t trust anything they publish and studiously avoid it.
Much more than that. They once had excellent articles on Nuclear power, covered honestly and accurately, then abruptly shifted to anti-nuclear, all in on the wind & solar scam, following the Malthusian Agenda of our Overlords to the letter. Corporate capture. Just another propaganda rag. Wokeness came later, when the Overlords created the Woke Agenda.
"We experts, especially those of us whose work is supported by the public, should always remember that we work for those who provide us the resources and social license to do our work. That includes both people who may be our political soul mates and fellow travelers, as well as those whose politics we may find appalling or even worse." This is an interesting idea, especially from the perspective of who pays the piper and the tunes called. Which research is funded, which not. Which policy is implemented, which not. We can assume that the payers don't always have the common good in mind, what with the profit motive and everything. Too, the profit motive has produced much common good and as such is the epitome of the "win-win". Frankly, at this point I'm not sure which side is winning.
"Frankly, at this point I'm not sure which side is winning."
Should be obvious by now, inescapable.
Day before yesterday, THREE TIMES the previous record $$$$ amount of campaign spending in ANY state's previous judicial election bought a win to a liberal supreme court nominee, tipping the balance to the left in favor of future policy decisions in the state where I live.
How much money changed hands before 2020 that 'influenced' the counting of 80+ million votes, evicting a US President who'd endured four years of now-evident lies and political corruption in multiple attempts to unseat him?
Everyone who uses the words or phases “consensus” or “settled science” are politicians not scientists and should be removed from public debate, because their goal is to eliminate debate.
This seems to include the majority of scientists and 99.9% of media, especially science and climate writers.
Pat: There is not much "science" in the IPCC Report. I can reduce the science to a simple formula. If you take the IPCC estimate of global temperature rise from the 1800s to 2015 (1.15 C) and divide by the sum of all the CO2 emitted from the 1800s to 2015, you get the past temperature rise per unit Gt of CO2 emissions: 0.000893 degrees per Gt. All of the models and projections used by IPCC use that figure. For whatever Gt of CO2 emitted in the future, the IPCC assumes each Gt will add 0.000893 degrees to the global average temperature. That's it. That's the science. Done! The assumption is that whatever held from the 1800s to 2015 will hold in the future. I proved that and sent the graph to Roger. I'm not easily convinced but I think that probably puts them pretty close.
So, what is the IPCC Report really about if it is not science? The IPCC lays out several imagined possibilities for CO2 emissions in the future, and uses the above formula to chart out the increase in temperature from the above formula. It then relies upon a number of independent studies that claim all sorts of horrendous effects in proportion to the temperature rise resulting from any imagined scenario of future emissions. It treats all these studies as credible. There is where the consensus lies. Not in science per se, but rather in the alarming effects of increased temperatures that they subscribe to. Are these alarming impacts credible? Nobody really knows. But their attempts to show that it is already happening now has been thwarted by Roger.
The IPCC then prepares lists of actions the world could take to reduce future emissions, but does not clarify how the world would actually reduce emissions over the next decades. Because their metric is emissions per capita, they imply the onus is on the developed nations that have higher emissions per capita (due to higher energy intensity) but that is a losing proposition because China, India and Russia emit 40% of the world's emissions, and they would have to make major reductions in emissions if any scheme is going to work.
So, in summary, the IPCC is not about the science of warming from CO2. For that, they just assumed the future will be like the past. Each additional Gt adds 0.000893 degrees. It is about a consensus believing the alarmist publications on impacts of warming at any level, and showing steps that might be taken by nations to reduce future emissions.
Personally I think even that over estimates the effect of co2.
Take as given that the earth has warmed 1.2C since the Lia, fine but even that is a guess.
But then they say the land warms twice as fast as the air over the sea
Then they say the areas above 60n have warmed 4x as fast as the rest
All of that is contained within the 1.2C
Which means that the warming where most people live, between the 45s has to be a small fraction of the 1.2, maybe 0.4c?
Anyone who says 0.4c over 250 years is noticeable is a laughable fool
The area of a sphere decreases sharply at high latitudes. Your 0.4 is really about 1.0. The climate where people live is affected by > 60 N when great melts or other impacts result from loss of snow/ice
4 times is the figure bandied about, so no there is no way the habitable parts at mid latitudes are 1c.
But it really doesn’t matter. “Climate change” to date has been small and entirely beneficial.
As Roger and others have pointed out, there is no emergency in extreme weather so that is the big lie perpetrated on us.
The people in the far north benefit from slightly warmer nights and winters, that’s it.
John Robson did a series of posts regarding average and max temps all across the canadian north for the past 100 years, average increased a bit, max temps flat.
No emergency
You really ought to leave this substack and join your fellow deniers on the deniers blogs like Climate etc. or Watts up with that. You can find lots of people who made up their minds that rising CO2 is beneficial. But you are wasting our time on Pielke's substack with your obvious ignorance.
“Deniers”.
Well that explains you.
Why don’t we ask Roger what he thinks of people like you instead.
As to co2, I believe it has a real but small effect. A valid opinion. Shared by thousands of real scientists.
Real science is never, ever settled. There's always more to learn, tease out, questions needing answers.
It's all about the Benjamins. Throughout the academic and scientific communities there is a constant drumbeat of more funding. I saw it firsthand in the Leeds School of Business where academic rigor was sacrificed for money (yes, I'm calling out Leeds' business minor program and constantly increasing class sizes). My hunch is that Nature saw more NSF/NIH/etc. funding coming from a Biden administration so hence, the endorsement.
"...partisan cheerleading can actually make things worse and compromise democratic practices."
Whooboy that's the crux of the issue in'it? I picked up on that gem in 6th grade.
I'd been elected class host then the same day impeached. Being from the 'wrong side of town' & not wearing a yellow shirt to go with the maroon sweater then in vogue was my 'crime'.
Partisan 'cheerleading' negates truly democratic practices from cradle to grave.
I assume you know this site: https://www.worldweatherattribution.org/
What 's your opinion, in particular about the "analyses"?
Regards, Hans Rentsch
As “attribution science” is akin to Lysenkoism, that’s all you really need to know.
An example is the 2022 Atlantic hurricane season.
The models predicted 65% chance of above average season, 10% below average.
As we know, it was well below average so the model had a 1 in 10 chance of being right, far less than just flipping a coin.
But did the alarmists apologize? Of course not.
The ONE hurricane that hit the USA in Florida, afterward the attribution Scientologists said the model showed it had 10% more rain than it would have.
Absolutely shameless.
Here is a post on exactly this question: https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/how-to-be-a-smart-consumer-of-climate
I would condense it down to one rule;
If it comes from; CoveringClimateNow.org
then it’s very likely alarmist claptrap that thinking people can and should dismiss.
They are the star chamber distribution center for attribution science twaddle.
Hans: Thanks for providing this link. It is representative of the polarized cherry-picked misrepresentation of climate change on the Web. Like Realclimate (which is far more scientific) it pushes the alarmist view to the extreme. These are counterbalanced by various organizations that provide a collegial meeting place for deniers (Climate etc., Science and Environmental Policy Project, Watts up, etc.). I think Roger's studies stand by themselves. He need not waste his time refuting sites like world weather attribution.
Donald, tanks for your response. The ETH Zürich contributes to the site, the top Swiss science university, with whom I have controversies about climate policy ( Reto Knutti and others). These professors get involved in the debate about the official climate policy. I'm not a climate scientist, but a political economist. I needs expert advice about the credibility oft the respektive site. Best regards, Hans
Roger: Here is an alternative question you might consider. Rather than simply agree that the great majority of the science community leans left in politics, and in regard to climate change, leads very left, maybe you should inquire why that is so? And what does it mean to lean left in climate change? I suppose it means buying most of the IPCC position that the end of the world as we know it is on hand without immediate, draconian cuts in emissions. I suppose one possible reason is that science organizations believe the climate scientists have objectively studied the matter and come up with rational conclusions drawn from data and analysis. Another possible answer is that climate funding is a huge gravy train and they are the drummers to keep the beat going. Maybe they are better educated and smarter? But ultimately, it seems to me to reflect tribal culture. I suppose we could go on and on with more possibilities, and probably it is a combination of factors. It is also well known that while scientists tend to lean left, engineers tend to lean right. Maybe you ought to study this aspect?
Coming back to the matter of political advocacy by science organizations, the alarmist orthodoxy is very much parallel to a religious orthodoxy. Because it is fundamentally a belief system, and the overwhelming majority of people are unable to understand it technically, it requires fear as the driving force (like religion) and the thing to fear must already be affecting our lives (thus the exaggerations of current impacts you have exposed). It is not surprising that those who feared Covid the most overlap a great deal with those who fear climate change. It seems in some ways that educated people think they are better able to fear catastrophe than less educated people?
Note also, that the world economics of emissions, the effect of emissions on climate, and the impacts of climate change on human affairs are so complex that no single person or small group of persons could possibly understand it. So, the IPCC has pulled together hundreds of specialists to unravel this complex system problem, and it is a matter of faith as to whether they came up with a credible answer. I suppose that it is comparable to believing in the Holy Trinity or the parting of the Red Sea. You either buy it or you don't.
I don't!
Science Editor Holden Thorp was very abusive of President Trump in an interview in Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN) in April 2020.
https://cen.acs.org/people/profiles/Science-editor-chief-Holden-Thorp/98/i16
Just one excerpt:
"But Thorp wasn’t really fired up until he heard President Trump tell pharmaceutical executives that they should speed up work on a vaccine. That led to the hugely popular editorial “Do Us a Favor.” Addressing the president, Thorp wrote: “If you want something, start treating science and its principles with respect.”
"Not only is it dangerous to skip important steps in the drug development process, but Trump “implies that science wouldn’t want to go fast, that we’ve been holding back for some reason,” he says to C&EN. “To say, ‘Do me a favor, speed up’ with no idea as to why things have to be done the way they have to be done is just so disrespectful.”"
In fact President Trump was correct in anticipating how quickly the vaccines could be made, and Thorp was wrong, but making his political points.
(more in the full article).
Trump was right, but he was sold a bill of goods by Fauci and the Pharmaceutical companies and he bought it. Turns out the vaccines have totally underperformed and they became a major divisive issue.
This is a left wing Progressive problem. Making believe that both "sides" are equally at fault by citing Naomi Oreskes is nonsense. Groups like the Heartland Institute and GWPF (founded by Nigel Lawson, RIP) were formed in order to try to bring a modicum of balance to the discussion.
Entrenched bureaucracies like the UN, NOAA, NASA, NSF etc. are manned and managed by activists fully committed to the catastrophic narrative and willing to do anything they have to in order to push it. The professional societies like AGU, The National Academies, The Physics Association etc. all toe the alarmist line. Universities are lost and the media loves it because fear sells. Corporations are totally intimidated and go along to get along. Roger publishes, he posts here, he write articles in Forbes and occasional Opeds and he is ignored.
Science has been coopted and corrupted and nobody seems to give a shit.
Maybe educated scientists lean left because they are smarter?
Being more inclined to follow the herd and be unwilling to challenge consensus (“if it’s consensus it’s not science”) is not a sign of intelligence, it’s is a sign of fear, bullying, censorship and control of funding.
See
Covid
Alzheimer’s
Gender
Etc
Etc
I'm sure they think they are.
That’s why your worth the money. I want to be educated by unbiased scientists that want to inform not scare. Your political bias is not between every line. Thanks for speaking out. We have the same problem with the media.
Roger,
I'm not optimistic that science organizations and researchers will ever regain the public's trust. There is just too much money tied to "being a proper progressive", and too little money available for actual skeptical science. And now there is a big stick (called the RESTRICT act) to go along with the carrot.
I'm just thankful that I've had a good life into my 70's, and don't have any children or grandchildren who will have to grow up in America 1984
Frank
Agree with everything except the term “skeptical science”.
There is only science.
Questioning.
Most climate alarmists are not scientists.
I would go so far as to say that you cannot be a climate alarmist and a scientist at the same time. If you are a scientist, you will recognize that most (if not all) climate alarmism is not falsifiable, and therefore isn't science. If you believe that non-falsifiable positions are 'settled science', then you aren't a scientist.
Same. Turning 74 today in fact.
Watching the world disintegrate around me, decided decades ago (that) bringing children into the world I'd become convinced would be coming wasn't a morally responsible thing to work for.
Totally agree. I often say that being old has its advantages when I look at where we are as a society and where we seem to be heading.
However I do have 2 children in their 50's and 6 grandkids ranging from 15-26. Fortunately they're all solid citizens working hard to do the right things and be successful. Unfortunately they are too busy to think much about this stuff and they think that I am kind of weird when I try to get them interested.
Thank you, Roger and Matt. Especially for the Univ of Chicago Kalven reference. We wish more knew about it.
Our next piece, coming in a few days, is on what is possibly the best opportunity to get this right and restore trust in science in 30 years, since the “existential climate crisis created by RCP8.5”.
Including with spillover effects (we hope) in public health science in the wake of Covid-19(84).
Or, it will be the next example of the very phenomenon you and Matt wrote about so eloquently at Heterodox.
Keep plugging. Kudos. Both of you.
While I agree with the thrust of the article, I strongly disagree with the connotation that scientists should be partisan and political advocates. First and foremost, we should be as objective as possible. That is the debt we owe to science, other scientists, and those who made it possible for us to become scientists. Nothing wrong with being partisan, or advocating for a particular policy, per se – it's a part of the human condition. However, if we do that in our role as scientists it is virtually impossible (and decidedly UN-human) to maintain our objectivity – bounded rationality (like entropy) almost always wins.
Partisan cheerleading is just one more example of corruption. Holden Thorpe knows very well who butters his bread. When you allow a group of people to create and control the entire Western World's money supply they can buy most people in any leadership position. As we saw very well with Covid, political leaders, union leaders, journal publishers, medical authorities, virtually all major media, university leadership all fell into lockstep with the bogus Covid narrative. And anyone in a leadership position who dissented was dealt with viciously. Welcome to the coming Post Truth, techno-feudal, Totalitarian World Dictatorship.
It may help to nudge the academic mindset to remind them of the practice of the 1930s government in Germany to de-platform communists and Jews. That was a disturbingly similar situation where institutions and government were aligned in their beliefs. Sadly, my personal experience of academia leaves me sceptical and confirms that history repeats and much of academia is not so smart as it likes to think.
Just look at what happened to the once informative Scientific American. I was a subscriber decades ago, but recently because everything is edited through a woke microscope I can’t trust anything they publish and studiously avoid it.
Much more than that. They once had excellent articles on Nuclear power, covered honestly and accurately, then abruptly shifted to anti-nuclear, all in on the wind & solar scam, following the Malthusian Agenda of our Overlords to the letter. Corporate capture. Just another propaganda rag. Wokeness came later, when the Overlords created the Woke Agenda.
Same reason I cancelled my 30 year subscription to the Economist.
They are supposed to be about economics but they are all in on the economic illiteracy of renewables.
Sad to see what has happened.
"We experts, especially those of us whose work is supported by the public, should always remember that we work for those who provide us the resources and social license to do our work. That includes both people who may be our political soul mates and fellow travelers, as well as those whose politics we may find appalling or even worse." This is an interesting idea, especially from the perspective of who pays the piper and the tunes called. Which research is funded, which not. Which policy is implemented, which not. We can assume that the payers don't always have the common good in mind, what with the profit motive and everything. Too, the profit motive has produced much common good and as such is the epitome of the "win-win". Frankly, at this point I'm not sure which side is winning.
"Frankly, at this point I'm not sure which side is winning."
Should be obvious by now, inescapable.
Day before yesterday, THREE TIMES the previous record $$$$ amount of campaign spending in ANY state's previous judicial election bought a win to a liberal supreme court nominee, tipping the balance to the left in favor of future policy decisions in the state where I live.
How much money changed hands before 2020 that 'influenced' the counting of 80+ million votes, evicting a US President who'd endured four years of now-evident lies and political corruption in multiple attempts to unseat him?
The Twitter files show beyond a shadow of a doubt that the election was stolen.
No ballot stuffing was required, you just have to control the information people get.
This, after all, is the "Information Age."
So where do we go from here, eh?
That's the $64,000,000,000,000 question innit?