Handelaren in twijfel

Onder de titel, 'Oreskes, the Queen of Climate Smear, ignores the big money, has no evidence, throws names', schrijft de Australische klimaatblogger Jo Nova over Naomi Oreskes, die thans in Australië op bezoek is voor voordrachten. Oreskes is coauteur van 'The Merchants of Doubt', waarin zij allerlei nare dingen schrijft over klimaatsceptici.

In Nederland volgt Jan Paul van Soest dezelfde lijn als Naomi Oreskes, door klimaatscepsis te associëren met 'bewuste en onbewuste sabotage van de transitie naar een duurzame energiehuishouding'. Zijn essay, 'Klompen in de machinerie', is geschreven in opdracht van de Raad Leefomgeving en Infrastructuur (een orgaan waarvan weinigen waarschijnlijk ooit zullen hebben gehoord). Hierin schetst hij – zoals hij dan noemt – de contouren van deze zeer succesvolle lobbystrategie.

Klimaatsceptici zouden dat als een compliment en een bevestiging van hun succes kunnen beschouwen, ware het niet dat het klimaatbeleid gewoon doorgaat. Het jaarlijkse prijskaartje daarvan wordt door Pieter Lukkes op 20 – 30 miljard euro geschat, zonder dat daar enig meetbaar effect op het klimaat tegenover staat. 

Maar ware broeikasgelovigen hebben natuurlijk geen behoefte aan kostenplaatjes, want bij getuigenispolitiek speelt geld nu eenmaal een ondergeschikte rol.

Jo Nova:

Naomi Oreskes is famous (of sorts) for the book: Merchants of Doubt — it seeds doubts about skeptics by saying that skeptic’s “seed doubts” about climate change.
 
The skeptics seed doubts by questioning the evidence and pointing to contrary results (isn’t this known as “discussion”?). Oreskes seeds doubts by digging through biographies, analyzing indirect payments of minor amounts, hunting through unrelated topics and tenuous associations from 20 year old contracts.
 
The hypocrisy of saying that skeptics attack the messenger is lost on Oreskes who specializes in   attacking the messengers.
 
Oreskes’ work is based on a logical fallacy, inept research, and incompetent reasoning.
 
What is remarkable is that so many “intellectuals” or journalists can’t or won’t see through her thin rhetoric.

1. Oreskes can name virtually no significant funding for skeptics. Skeptics are almost all unpaid volunteers, working out of professional and patriotic duty, appalled by the illogical, anti-science sentiments of people like Oreskes.

2. The enormous “vested interests” are well over a thousand to one in favor of alarmism as measured by funding, yet Oreskes has not even considered them. The largest proactive skeptical organization (Heartland) has a budget that is one hundredth of Greenpeace and WWF’s combined.

3. She resorts to twenty year old documents about tobacco funding to smear by association because she has so little real evidence of actual funding or misbehavior of skeptics. .

4. Skeptics far outrank believers in both numbers and in scientific kudos. They have won real Nobel Prizes in physics, the climate scientists Orsekes quotes have won “Peace Prizes”. Skeptics can name 31,500 scientists including 9,000 PhD’s and hundreds of professors. The IPCC can name 62 people who reviewed the critical chapter nine of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, some of them reviewing their own work ....

5. Oreskes claims “deniers” attack the messenger, which on it’s face is true, except that she is the one who denies the evidence and attacks the messenger.  She is the Queen of Smear and The Merchant of Doubt herself. ..

6. Oreskes keeps stating that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and increases the temperature of the planet, but almost all the leading skeptics agree with it. Why does she keep stating it, as if it is a point of contention? She wants the audience to believe that this is what the debate is about, while the skeptics agree that CO2 is a greenhouse gas that causes warming — but dispute the feedbacks asserted by models (which account for two thirds of the forecast increase in temperatures), but which is completely absent in the observations. Is Oreskes ignorant and incompetent in assessing the real scientific debate or is she deliberately deceiving her audience? Only she knows.
 
When she says those in denial reject “the scientific evidence”, she mistakenly believes that “evidence” about climate change is an internet poll of government funded researchers. It’s an anti-science position akin to witchcraft. .

Conclusie:

The first and only thing you need to know about Oreskes is that she does not understand what science is. Although she’s called a science historian, whenever she refers to “The Science” or “The Evidence” she is not referring to science as understood by Faraday, Einstein, Bohr or Fleming. Where they hold empirical evidence and the data to be the ultimate decider, Oreskes thinks science is done by voting, and only an anointed subclass of scientists is allowed to cast their opinion.

Lees verder hier.

Volgens Naomi Oreskes mogen wij niet twijfelen. Wij moeten geloven!

 

Voor mijn eerdere DDS-bijdragen, zie