Alarmists at the New Scientist, sensing their reputations are in big trouble following all the recent mounting scandals (including Climategate), have decided to respond by creating "Denier-gate" out of thin air (as if they hadn't done that years ago). However, Jo Nova does a phenomenal job of parrying the ad hominem attacks against climate skepticism by turning the tables on the global warming cultists. She keeps bringing them back to the fundamental question: Is CO2 in its current quantity within our atmosphere warming the planet? Let's talk evidence, not "debate's over," not bluster, swearing, name-calling, etc.
The answer from alarmists is: "DENIER!! How can you question the CONSENSUS? The debate's over!" Get the picture? Where is the scientific debate?!? Without the name-calling?
And spot the appearance of the mythical “HUGE body of evidence”. Can anyone at New Scientist find that one mystery paper with empirical evidence showing that carbon causes major warming? Just ONE? That’s major warming, not minor. And that’s empirical, i.e., by observation, not by simulation.
This is the paragraph where New Scientist proves it has become Non Scientist:
“If we are going to judge the truth of claims on the behavior of those making them, it seems only fair to look at the behavior of a few of those questioning the scientific consensus. There are many similar examples we did not include. We leave readers to draw their own conclusions about who to trust.”
Alarm bells are ringing from Galileo’s grave. We’re trying to figure out if the world is warming due to man-made carbon right? New Scientist’s method is not to look at the evidence, but to look at the behavior of the sceptics. Did you see the black hole of ad hominem that this once esteemed journal just stepped into? Logic and reason were reduced in a flash to a naked singularity. Follow its reasoning through the black hole, and you don’t emerge on the other side.
Did you see the black hole of ad hominem that this once esteemed journal just stepped into?
Who to trust indeed? Let’s trust people who can reason, and scientists who don’t hide their data. It doesn’t matter how “sceptics behave”; it matters whether the data can be independently analyzed and interpreted; whether the conclusions are robust. But, since the data is g-o-n-e , no one can verify anything. So in a way, it does come down to “trust”: In the new quasi-religious form of science, you have to trust those who hold the global data. Isn’t postmodern “science” an awful lot like the old religions?
