[E. Pluribus Unum]

I realize this article is a couple of years old, but it expresses what I have been thinking about climate-change scientists better than I can.

What qualifies climate scientists to make global economic and environmental policy, other than the authority of their positions as scientists.

They are the New Inquisitors.

[Matchett-PI]

bttt

[Rudder]

If it has an agenda, it's not science. Those who proselytize their data, beyond explaining it, are acting not as scientists but as politicians seeking power. This is not the fault of science per se, but of people and society.

My old, distinguished professor was known for his position that it is the job of science to elucidate facts while it is the job of society to figure out what to do with them.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.

-- Dwight D. Eisenhower (Farewell Address, January 17, 1961)

[rbg81]

Unfortunately, it appears we are slowly moving back to “Authority as Truth”, led by three distinct, but similar, forces: Socialism, Evironmentalism, and Islam.

[bruinbirdman]

"For Marxism, there were two nightmares: the first that Marx's theory was, despite its claim to scientific legitimacy, just another utopian project; the second that, despite his theoretical analysis, it would turn out that the bourgeoisie were right all along, and that private property was, indeed, the basis of civilization."

Private property!!

The federal government owns vast percentages of land west of the Rocky Mountains.

Notice how much of that federal land has tightened private use. Conservation areas, endangered species areas, no vehicle areas.

And, then when the feds decide some land is necessary for civilization (private ownership), the buyers must procure other private land abuting federal land and swap it for or give it to the feds.

In the meantime, environmental communists are buying up private land and taking it off the market or turning it over to public management/administration.

yitbos

[Old Professer]

I had a discussion with my cousin about 18 years ago; I simply commented then that the scientists had become the new priests.

[kidd]

An excellent article.

Not only have some climate scientists granted themselves authority outside their area of expertise, politicians with a socialist agenda have backed this self-authority by claiming “concensus”.

A “consensus” has nothing to do with the scientific method (but it has everything to do with politics). A scientist who accepts concensus as support for a theory, or agrees that “the science is settled” has ceased to be a scientist.

[Tenniel2]

C.E.-cum-corporate-EHS-wonk-cum-academic: no wonder Prof. Allenby's a little, um, conflicted, begging the question on "loss of biodiversity" and "climate change."

Still, there may be hope for him, if he realizes that "the authority in this new model" is derived from sacred texts -- namely, the documents generated by the illegitimate practice of flagrantly un-scientific method. IPCC report, anyone?

[tbw2]

An expert on physics is not automatically an expert on metaphysics. (Think Einstein.)
Experts in psychology shouldn’t be mandating actual legal standards of sanity (APA with transgenderism and homosexuality).

[Savage Beast]

"...Marxism would not be the path to an enlightened future, but to despotism -- as, in fact, it was in practice."

Yes, indeed it was--and is.

It requires a brutal dictatorship or oligarchy for its implementation and maintanence.

It inevitably destroys the economy.

And it has killed more people than any other ideology ever devised, including Naziism.

Any honest person with an IQ above 70 can easily understand and predict this.

However, millions of people are convinced that it will work--if just tried enough times.

The U.S. Democrat Party is Marxist. It's committed to Marxism. At its most reasonable, it is socialist. Obama and the rest of the Radical Left are stalinist!

[LiteKeeper]

INTREP