Science is not about “consensus” but facts. Not only were some physicists not initially convinced by Einstein’s theory of relativity, Einstein himself said that it should not be accepted until empirical evidence could test it.
That test came during an eclipse, when light behaved as Einstein said it would, rather than the way it should have behaved if the existing “consensus” was correct.
That is how scientific questions should be settled, not by political intimidation. There is already plenty of political weight on the scales, on the side of those pushing the “global warming” scenario.
—Thomas Sowell, The New Inquisition
I’m quite agnostic about us having an impact on global warming. But I do try to limit my carbon footprint, etc. In any case, cycling is better (and cheaper) for me than driving
So many problems with this.
Science is absolutely about consensus (note that I’m leaving out the scare quotes). That consensus must be based upon empirical evidence (or “facts” as Sowell says). For example, the “consensus” (OK, I am using the scare quotes after all) that perpetual motion machines don’t exist is not based on any fact but rather on the laws of thermodynamics which, if you care to think about it that way, is a systematic set of consensuses for interpreting a given set of facts.
Sowell is also shifting his use of the word “consensus” in the two quoted paragraphs, or maybe just misusing it in the second paragraph. In the first instance, it is clear (from earlier in the column) that he means “the politically imposed requirement to believe this way.” Whereas in the second paragraph quoted here, “consensus” can mean nothing more than “paradigm” aka “the best scientific theory that we have so far, until it is replaced by a better one.” There are no political implications to the word in its use here.
The greatest problem with the column (not quoted in this blog post) is that the only “political intimidation” that Sowell can find is in requests (“demands”) to know where the financial support for climate research is coming from. Sowell mocks the idea that scientists could ever possibly be influenced by their funding sources, dismissing the idea out of hand. Anyone with a robust understanding of Total Depravity should be concerned by the naivety he displays. A clear disclosure of funding sources is not the novel idea that Sowell seems to think it is; it is a straightforward, standard practice that is one way of interpreting the objectivity of the research.
Pretty sure Sowell isn’t mocking the idea that scientists could be influenced by funding.
Sowell: “The idea that you can tell whether a scientist — or anybody else — is “objective” by who is financing that scientist’s research is nonsense. …
“The public’s “right to know” has often been invoked in attempts to intimidate potential supporters of ideas that the inquisitors want to silence. But have you heard of any groundswell of public demand to know who is financing what research?”
The answer to this question is, at least within the scientific community, an unqualified yes. Many scientific journals require authors to declare any “competing financial interests.”
Or let me put it this way: Would you be comfortable taking a prescription drug if every single bit of research relating to the safety and efficacy of that drug were paid for by the pharmaceutical company that markets it?
In back of the global/cooling/warming/change agenda is a super wealthy “green pagan” global elite determined to force a world-wide occult theocracy (revitalized Babylonian nature worship merged with Eastern mysticism) upon the world.
In an impeccably researched essay, “Ascendancy of a Financial Criminal Elite,” Prof. James Petras details the rise of the power elite which he describes as the super wealthy of America and Europe:
“Never in the history of the United States have we witnessed crimes committed on the scale and scope of the present day by both private and state elites…..the super-wealthy and their families have as much as $32 trillion (USD) of hidden assets in offshore tax havens, representing up to $280 billion in lost income tax revenue! This study excluded such non-financial assets as real estate, precious metals, jewels, yachts, race horses, luxury vehicles and so on. Of the $32 trillion in hidden assets, $23 trillion is held by the super-rich of North America and Europe .”
The super wealthy mainly consist of an elite consortium of “green” global technocratic corporatists and bankers:
“England’s leading banks, including Barclay’s and a host of others, have been identified as having rigged the LIBOR, or inter-bank lending rate, for years in order to maximize profits. The Bank of New York, JP Morgan, HSBC, Wachovia and Citibank are among scores of banks, which have been charged with laundering drug money and other illicit funds according to investigations from the US Senate Banking Committees. Multi-national corporations receive federal bailout funds and tax exemptions and then, in violation of publicized agreements with the government, relocate plants and jobs in Asia and Mexico .” (Ascendancy of A Criminal Financial Elite, Global Research)
In affirmation, Karen Hudes, a former insider at the World Bank reports that a treacherous global financial system dominated by a small group of corrupt, power-hungry figures centered around the privately owned U.S. Federal Reserve dominate the pillars of America’s government and control the media to cover up its crimes:
“What is really going on is that the world’s resources are being dominated by this group,” she explained, adding that the “corrupt power grabbers” have managed to dominate the media as well. “They’re being allowed to do it.” (World Bank Insider Blows Whistle on Corruption, Federal Reserve, Alex Newman, New American, 22 May 2013)
Hudes, an attorney who spent some two decades working in the World Bank’s legal department, has observed the machinations of the criminal network up close:
“I realized we were now dealing with something known as state capture, which is where the institutions of government are co-opted by the group that’s corrupt… The pillars of the U.S. government – some of them – are dysfunctional because of state capture; this is a big story, this is a big cover up.” (ibid)
This modern power elite are the spiritual heirs of occult Illuminist philosophies stretching back to the time of Babylon— the Mysteries, Cabala, Egyptian Hermeticism, pre-Christian and Christian era Gnosticism, Luciferian Theosophy, esoteric Free Masonry and others.
The world is being actively transformed by the power elite and their minions according to a very narrow, green-pagan (monist) economical/political/scientific/spiritual/social philosophy called Technocracy. Technocracy is a scientific dictatorship calling for the radical transformation of traditional Western economics, government, law, energy, supernatural Christianity, and humanity, which is why it maliciously fosters the heresy, homosexuality, atheism, propaganda, amorality, chaos, blood-letting and revolution necessary for the undermining and overthrow of already existing governments. (Technocracy Rising: The Trojan Horse of Global Transformation, Patrick M. Wood)
Technocracy is impacting every segment of society in every corner of the world:
“….Technocracy is being sponsored and orchestrated by a global elite led by David Rockefeller’s and Zbigniew Brzezinski’s Trilateral Commission….Originally started in the early 1930s, Technocracy is antithetical to every American institution that made us into the greatest nation on earth. It eschews property rights, obsoletes capitalism, hates politicians and traditional political structures, and promises a lofty utopian dream made possible only if engineers, scientists, and technicians are allowed to run society. When Aldous Huxley penned Brave New World in 1932, he accurately foresaw this wrenching transformation of society and predicted that the end of it would be a scientific dictatorship unlike anything the world has ever seen.” (ibid, Preface, Technocracy Rising)
Huxley concluded that Technocracy produces scientific dictatorship designed to scientifically engineer, manipulate, dominate and control the worlds’ wealth and resources and micro-manage every human being in every detail of his life. The scientific and evolutionary system itself would become a god that would be worshipped and questioning any aspect of it, such as the validity of evolution and global cooling/warming/change, or any decision or outcome would be tantamount to blasphemy.
According to Huxley, Technocracy will be imposed most successfully on people incapable of, or uninterested in understanding it. Such people will fall prey most readily to psychological manipulation and conditioning that makes them accept the most flagrant violations of themselves, their children and reality because they do not grasp the enormity of what is being demanded of them and in any case are not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what is happening.
Green Economics
According to Patrick Wood, our existing price-based economic system is being reinvented with new and untested ‘green’ economics theories such as carbon footprints. Carbon footprints supposedly equal the amount of carbon dioxide allegedly produced by driving your car, running your refrigerator and small appliances, and cutting your grass, for example. If you use too much, and your carbon footprint is too big, green Technocrats either want the government to punish you or ration the amount of energy you are allowed to receive. The ultimate goal is that the personal energy consumption of every human being should be closely monitored and controlled.
Steve Milloy, author of the book Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life opens with a brief summary of what the “Green Movement” is really all about:
“Green ideologues are bursting with an impatient zeal to begin dictating, through force of law, your mobility, diet, home energy use, the size of your house, how far you can travel, and even … how many children you can have … this is how the greens themselves describe their intentions … Living green is really about some else micro-regulating you – downsizing your dreams and plugging each one of us into a brand new social order for which we never bargained. It’s about you living under the green thumb and having the boundaries of your life drawn by others.” (Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them, Steve Milloy p. 3)