The Roots of Climate Change...Reporting
Jack Kemp
As long as a discussion of what the University of East Anglia's lies on climate change are in order, let's bring in a British author, an Oxford graduate, who is familiar with a pompous interview given to a major left wing Brit newspaper, an interview among "friends of global warming" where the deluded can further delude themselves that no conservatives and other classical scientific truth seekers are reading their words because all conservatives only read Rupert Murdoch papers with pictures of young women clad in skimpy swim suits.
From Melanie Phillip's book "The World Turned Upside Down," from Chapter 13, "How Enlightenment Unraveled,"
pages 277-278.
The idea that objectivity is dishonest and malicious found its way into British journalism during the 1980s. Suddenly, what cub reporters had learned on day one in journalism school - that journalists should always strive for objectivity and fairness and should tell the truth as they saw it as honestly as they could - was redefined as an attempt to dupe the public. Real integrity was said to lie in practicing a "journalism of attachment," slanting reports in accordance with a prior point of view. If there was no such thing as truth or objectivity, then it was more "authentic" to be openly biased. Fabrications were put forward as representing a "greater truth" than mere factual accounts of what had actually happened.
SECTION OMITTED
The substitution of lies for objective information in the service of the "greater truth" of prior conclusions has taken deep root in the areas of the academy where ideology rules. This is the case even in scientific fields such as climate change, where a whole new branch of porstmodernism has been invented, called "port-normal science." Normal science discovers facts and then constructs a theory those facts. Post-normal science starts with a theory that is politically sensitive, and then makes up the facts to influence opinion in its favor. This practice was revealed in a display of commendable frankness by Mike Hulme, a professor in the school of environmental sciences at the University of East Anglia, founding director of the Tyndall Centre (sic) for Climate Change Research, and a guru of man-made global warming theory. In 2007, Hulme confided to the Guardian:
(NOTE: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2007/mar/14/scienceofclimatechange.climatechange )
Philosophers and practitioners of science have identified this particular mode of scientific activity as one that occurs where the stakes are high, uncertainties large and decisions urgent, and where values are embedded in the way science is done and spoken. It has been labelled "post-normal" science.
SECTION OF GUARDIAN QUOTE OMITTED
Self-evidently dangerous climate change will not emerge from a normal scientific process of truth seeking, although science will gain some insights int the question if it reognises the socially contingent dimensions of a post-normal science. But to proffer such insights, scientists - and politicians - must trade (normal) truth for influence. If scientists want to remain listened to, to bear influence on policy, they must recognise the limits of their truth seeking and reveal fully the values and beliefs they bring to their scientific activity...
END OF GUARDIAN QUOTE
So global warming theory did not seek to establish the truth through evidence. Instead, truth had to be traded for influence. In areas of uncertainty, scientists had to present their beliefs as a basis for policy.
It was a brazen admission that scientific reason had been junked altogether in the name of science, but for the sake of promoting ideological conviction. In other words, science had short-circuited. Where science failed to support an ideology, the overriding imperative of the ideology meant that science had to suspend its very essence as a truth-seeking activity and instead perpetuate fictions.
END OF BOOK QUOTE
As long as a discussion of what the University of East Anglia's lies on climate change are in order, let's bring in a British author, an Oxford graduate, who is familiar with a pompous interview given to a major left wing Brit newspaper, an interview among "friends of global warming" where the deluded can further delude themselves that no conservatives and other classical scientific truth seekers are reading their words because all conservatives only read Rupert Murdoch papers with pictures of young women clad in skimpy swim suits.
From Melanie Phillip's book "The World Turned Upside Down," from Chapter 13, "How Enlightenment Unraveled,"
pages 277-278.
The idea that objectivity is dishonest and malicious found its way into British journalism during the 1980s. Suddenly, what cub reporters had learned on day one in journalism school - that journalists should always strive for objectivity and fairness and should tell the truth as they saw it as honestly as they could - was redefined as an attempt to dupe the public. Real integrity was said to lie in practicing a "journalism of attachment," slanting reports in accordance with a prior point of view. If there was no such thing as truth or objectivity, then it was more "authentic" to be openly biased. Fabrications were put forward as representing a "greater truth" than mere factual accounts of what had actually happened.
SECTION OMITTED
The substitution of lies for objective information in the service of the "greater truth" of prior conclusions has taken deep root in the areas of the academy where ideology rules. This is the case even in scientific fields such as climate change, where a whole new branch of porstmodernism has been invented, called "port-normal science." Normal science discovers facts and then constructs a theory those facts. Post-normal science starts with a theory that is politically sensitive, and then makes up the facts to influence opinion in its favor. This practice was revealed in a display of commendable frankness by Mike Hulme, a professor in the school of environmental sciences at the University of East Anglia, founding director of the Tyndall Centre (sic) for Climate Change Research, and a guru of man-made global warming theory. In 2007, Hulme confided to the Guardian:
(NOTE: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2007/mar/14/scienceofclimatechange.climatechange )
Philosophers and practitioners of science have identified this particular mode of scientific activity as one that occurs where the stakes are high, uncertainties large and decisions urgent, and where values are embedded in the way science is done and spoken. It has been labelled "post-normal" science.
SECTION OF GUARDIAN QUOTE OMITTED
Self-evidently dangerous climate change will not emerge from a normal scientific process of truth seeking, although science will gain some insights int the question if it reognises the socially contingent dimensions of a post-normal science. But to proffer such insights, scientists - and politicians - must trade (normal) truth for influence. If scientists want to remain listened to, to bear influence on policy, they must recognise the limits of their truth seeking and reveal fully the values and beliefs they bring to their scientific activity...
END OF GUARDIAN QUOTE
So global warming theory did not seek to establish the truth through evidence. Instead, truth had to be traded for influence. In areas of uncertainty, scientists had to present their beliefs as a basis for policy.
It was a brazen admission that scientific reason had been junked altogether in the name of science, but for the sake of promoting ideological conviction. In other words, science had short-circuited. Where science failed to support an ideology, the overriding imperative of the ideology meant that science had to suspend its very essence as a truth-seeking activity and instead perpetuate fictions.
END OF BOOK QUOTE
posted by Timothy Birdnow | 6:07 AM
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