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The Cult of Climate ‘Science’

Posted on | January 8, 2020 | 1 Comment

 

Ugly facts can never disprove their beautiful theory:

The signs at Glacier National Park warning that its signature glaciers would be gone by 2020 are being changed.
The signs in the Montana park were added more than a decade ago to reflect climate change forecasts at the time by the US Geological Survey, park spokeswoman Gina Kurzmen told CNN.
In 2017, the park was told by the agency that the complete melting off of the glaciers was no longer expected to take place so quickly due to changes in the forecast model, Kurzmen said. But tight maintenance budgets made it impossible for the park to immediately change the signs.
The most prominent placards, at St. Mary’s Visitor Center, were changed last year. Kurzmen says that park is still waiting for budget authorization to update signs at two other locations.
But the glacier warning isn’t being removed entirely, she told CNN. Instead, the new signs will say: “When they will completely disappear depends on how and when we act. One thing is consistent: the glaciers in the park are shrinking.”

Notice the slight hedge — “computer models indicate” — in the wording of the now-replaced sign. This kind of language is a deliberately deceptive propaganda tactic. To say “X indicates Y” is different than saying “X predicts Y” or “X proves Y,” but the average person is not likely to notice the difference, especially when he is incessantly bombarded with similar messages from every direction (repetition is a basic propaganda technique). Notice also how the source of this assertion is described: “Computer models indicate,” as if some impersonal machine had produced this prediction. These “models” must be objective, because machines can’t be biased, right? And yet these models were actually developed by human beings like Michael “Hockey Stick” Mann, who has made a habit of suing his critics in an effort to silence them.

“Computer models indicate” is one of those phrases like “according to scientists” which can be made to function as a form of argument from authority (argumentum ab auctoritate), a fallacy that anyone who has taken an introductory course in logic should recognize. Climate-change cultists are attempting to impress people with the authority of scientific “experts” and their supposedly infallible computer models.

Effective propaganda can completely overwhelm common-sense skepticism, causing people to believe the most wildly implausible claims. One obvious example is the “ancient astronauts” myth, most famously promoted by Eric von Däniken in his 1969 bestseller Chariots of the Gods. Supposedly, various ancient archaeological sites — the Egyptian pyramids, etc. — are so sophisticated in design that they could not possibly have been constructed by mere human beings using pre-modern technology; ergo, visitors from outer space must have been responsible. The History Channel series Ancient Aliens has become a running joke by using deceptive language, e.g., “Some scientists believe . . .”

The idea of space creatures arriving via UFOs to build Pyramids near the Nile is so ludicrous that every intelligent viewer laughs at the suggestion and yet there is an audience for Ancient Aliens. This suggests that our education system has failed so disastrously that many people can’t see through the methods by which the most absurd assertions are made to seem possible, as the narrator soberly intones: “We cannot be certain that Leonardo da Vinci was visited aliens, but . . .”

The flat assertion that the Montana glaciers would melt by 2020 was offered with scientific certainty, thus to make it seem “smart” to agree with the claims of the climate-change movement. We see a similar tactic used by transgender activists, who use pseudo-scientific jargon phrases and other propaganda tactics to advance their agenda. To agree with them is the sophisticated, enlightened and progressive thing to do, their rhetoric suggests, and next thing you know, people are allowing convicted sex offenders to perform for children at public libraries.

Cult mentalities can only flourish, of course, by excluding dissent. A major reason Jim Jones took his Peoples Temple to the Guyana jungle was to isolate them from opposing viewpoints; similarly David Koresh isolated his followers in the Branch Davidian compound in Waco. The success of the climate-change cult can be attributed largely to our government-funded education system, which is controlled by left-wing Democrats to such an extent that middle-school students are subjected to propaganda videos like Al Gore’s Earth in the Balance. Parents who object to this indoctrination will find themselves accused of being “anti-science,” in the same way they’re accused of “hate” for objecting to transgender propaganda in schools. Such accusations are a way of protecting the Left’s cult belief system (whether about “climate change” or “gender” or anything else) from dissent.

It was apparently a 2009 National Geographic article that first promoted the claim that the Montana glaciers would disappear by 2020:

Daniel Fagre, a U.S. Geological Survey ecologist, warns that glaciers may be melting at an even faster rate than originally predicted, according to National Geographic. Fagre has been conducting research in the national park since the early 1980s.
In 2003, USGS garnered headlines by projecting a disappearance date of 2030 for the Montana glaciers. That was based on studies using 1992 temperature predictions from the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Fagre’s current research reveals that temperatures in Glacier National Park have risen higher than was predicted in 1992. The Montana glaciers are now expected to be gone by 2020. And that will dramatically impact the park’s rare and sensitive plants and animals.

Do you see how phrases like “according to National Geographic” and “Fagre’s current research” function as arguments from authority here? The prestige of an important magazine and the “expert” qualifications of Fagre — “a U.S. Geological Survey ecologist . . . conducting research . . . since the early 1980s” — were invoked to suggest that no intelligent person could possibly disagree with this alarming prediction. 

You’re anti-science if you don’t accept the word of climate-change “experts,” and of course, we know that aliens built those Pyramids.



 

Category: Global Warming, Montana, Science

Comments

One Response to “The Cult of Climate ‘Science’”

  1. Don’t Clutter the Issue With Facts! | 357 Magnum
    January 9th, 2020 @ 5:59 pm

    […] Because they are believing something. The Cult of Climate ‘Science’. […]