top of page

Answering the Climate Inquisition - by H. Sterling Burnett - for the Heartland Institute - 09.02.23

Writer's picture: Michael JulienMichael Julien

Editor’s Note: Heartland Senior Fellow Anthony Watts contributed to this essay.


Climate realists or skeptics like me are constantly beset by a variety of logical fallacies and malicious labels cast about by researchers, politicians, and members of the mainstream media who long ago abandoned loyalty to the scientific method in discussions of climate change. I will hereafter refer to such people as the Climate Inquisition (CI).


Instead of thinking critically, the CI repeats already disproven critiques of our position on climate change, questions our motives (rather than addressing our arguments), and calls us names, acting more like ignorant schoolchildren than educated adults with a modicum of civility. Having closed their minds to evidence and even the mere possibility that humans might not be causing a climate catastrophe, the CI not only refuses to debate or engage climate realists, they try to deny us the ability to speak on the topic.


Among the most-offensive labels the CI calls climate realists is the term “climate denier.” Examples of the CI’s malfeasance and name-calling arrived in the form of articles recently published by Agence France-Presse (AFP) and Grist, both of which were widely republished.


In the AFP story, “Politics, cash, fame: what motivates climate change deniers,” Roland Lloyd Parry jumped proudly onto the ad hominem bandwagon, claiming climate skeptics are motivated purely by greed and fame.


Parry and the people he interviewed falsely asserted climate change realists are in the pocket of Big Oil and other corporations in quest of fame and fortune. These claims lack any basis in truth and in fact have been refuted repeatedly, which is why evidence of such a connection is rarely, if ever, provided.


Climate realists, such as The Heartland Institute and the other organization dedicated to the promotion of sound policy founded in solid science, receive a negligible amount of funding compared to the great mountain of money invested in doomsaying climate research and climate-related political causes. Most accusers are unable to look at themselves in a mirror and see that if anyone is being bought and paid for in the climate debate, it is they.


The major CI people Parry quoted in his article—John Cook and Stephan Lewandosky—have a long history of pulling slimy, unscrupulous shenanigans to smear climate realists.

Cook, a former cartoonist and now a postdoctoral research fellow with the Climate Change Communication Research Hub at Monash University, tried to sneak into a 2019 Washington, D.C. climate conference hosted by The Heartland Institute.


Cook falsely claimed to be representing The Weather Channel. His ruse failed. When he was ejected, his film crew recorded the faux outrage he expressed at being rightly denied entrance to a venue he was not cleared or qualified to attend as a properly registered journalist.


The behavior of Lewandowsky, a professor of psychology at University of Bristol, in the enforcement of climate orthodoxy has been arguably been even more nefarious than Cook’s. Lewandowsky has abused his credentials as a professional psychologist by remotely “diagnosing” the motives of climate skeptics, asserting realists suffer from a variety of mental disorders without ever actually interviewing them or disclosing his own biases. That is a clear violation of the canons of the ethics of psychological practice.


Lewandowsky’s misbehavior was so egregious that science journals twice retracted papers he wrote on the psychology of climate realists. In one paper, Lewandowsky compared climate sceptics’ ideas to the false beliefs held by moon landing deniers. Other scientists responded with scathing reviews of Lewandowsky and his methods.


After Lewandowsky publicly suggested “threats” were the reason one journal withdrew his paper, rather than shoddy science, the journal took Lewandowsky to task for spreading misinformation.


Parry violated journalistic ethics by failing to interview any climate skeptics to get their thoughts on claims that money and fame drive their efforts. Parry’s story is nothing more than a litany of logical fallacies piled one on top of the other. Facts need not apply.


The Grist story, “Climate denial campaign goes retro with new textbook,” is only slightly less slipshod. It was written in response to The Heartland Institute’s mailing of 8,000 copies of our Climate at a Glance for Students and Teachers (CAAG) booklet to high school science teachers across the country.


The book covers 30 climate topics often discussed in science classes, to be used as supplemental material to the standard curricula, providing data and peer-reviewed evidence demonstrating the Earth is not experiencing a climate crisis.


Grist maligned Heartland right out of the chute by labelling the mailing as part of a “climate denial campaign,” yet nowhere in the story does it identify any facts the book supposedly denies.


Grist did get one thing right: Heartland went retro. We stubbornly cling to the “retro” idea that testing, observation, debate, and intellectual exchange are hallmarks of scientific, and thus societal, progress. We embrace quaint, old-school ideas such as that facts matter and when data and theory conflict it is the theory that must be reconsidered, not the data.


Sadly, the CI rejects these traditional hallmarks of scientific practice, replacing them with the postmodern perversion of science which places power, politics (in this case, enforced consensus), and climate model simulations in pride of place above data and evidence. For the CI, if enough of one’s colleagues disagree with certain findings, the research is ipso facto wrong.


The CAAG book readily acknowledges climate change is happening—nothing new there, as its authors always have done so. The authors also acknowledge humans are probably playing some role in the current iteration of climate change—again, no denial there.


The article ends with these words:


Rather than address the evidence and arguments climate realists present, participants in the CI deploy the tactics of dogmatists and authoritarians. When not just hurling names or using ad hominem attacks to discredit climate realists for daring to dispute “their truth” about climate change, they call for censorship, threaten careers, and even propose imprisonment for skeptics.


A quote from the great physicist Richard Feynman describes the CI’s limited grasp of the scientific method in general and climate science in particular, “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.” It’s sad the climate inquisitors have so deluded themselves, and it’s unconscionable that they continue to try to fool other people.


In truth, if there are any climate deniers, it is the Climate Inquisition.



For the full article in pdf, please click here:

H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D. is the director of The Heartland Institute's Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy and the managing editor of Environment & Climate News.



38 views0 comments

Comments


bottom of page