by Anthony Cox
Lewandowsky is a self-appointed expert of climate change
denial and the psychology of denial. He is a psychologist that half-way house
between medical reality and pathological fantasy. His history of publications
is a template for AGW science in general; which is to say, whatever it takes.
Some of his recent efforts include an attempt to compare denialists
with those who thought the Moon landing was faked. Lewandowsky’s ‘survey’
used to reach this conclusion was excoriated by various people including Jo
Nova, Lucia,
and .Watts.
This peer reviewed paper was followed by an equally appalling paper called Recursive
Fury, which was withdrawn, had citations
changed and was generally regarded as deplorable.
Perhaps the greatest irony with Lewandowski’s early work
about deniers believing the Moon landing was faked is that many of the
astronauts who had been on the Moon regarded AGW as a scam and false idea.
On that basis Lewandowsky’s theory is as loony as the man in the Moon.
But Lewandowsky, like any person on the public teat without
fear of consequences, like getting fired, is indefatigable. He has since
combined with that other character of AGW, Michael Mann in writing another
paper complaining about the terrible characteristics of deniers and critics of
his ‘work’. This paper too is irreparably flawed and has been
eviscerated.
What shines through in all of Lewandowsky’s ‘work’ is an
arrogance and disdain so large that any correlation with his work to the normal
standards of science exists only in Lewandowsky’s mind. In fact Lewandowsky has
no concern with the truth as his latest
article shows.
In this diatribe any pretence of fact and reality is lost in
a sneering ugly bray at the concerns of people affected by those blights and
symbols of the lies of AGW and Renewable energy, wind-towers.
Lewandowsky clumsily reverses Hugh Morgan’s apt comparison
of the hysterics of AGW with “Chicken Littles” and belittles the victims of the
wind-towers which infest the country-side like useless Wickermen. Lewandowsky
says:
wind turbine syndrome has no presence in the medical literature.
Lewandowsky’s link is to an article by Simon Chapman at The
Drum. Chapman is a sociologist which is like saying you have a PhD in having an
opinion. Chapman has no medical qualifications or knowledge and his conclusions
and Lewandowsky’s use of Chapman’s conclusions are both so vested in believing
AGW that they are useless and lies. There is considerable
medical
evidence to support the health complaints about wind-towers.
Lewandowsky also links to an article at the most ironically
named The Conversation and an
article by some other academic who is an expert in sustainability science,
whatever that is, most likely another word or phrase to allow condescending academics
to berate the public into conforming to the constraints necessary to ‘solve’
AGW. This sustainability expert in turn refers to a CSIRO scientist who has
proved the Club of Rome predictions about depletion of resources and the
Erhlich population induced crisis were correct.
This is the stuff of pessimism and smallness of mind and disregard
for humanity. The Club of Rome’s predictions have not come true and Barnett and
Morse’s optimistic view has been vindicated in both specific
follow-up studies and by parallel studies by such people as Lomborg in his
seminal work The Skeptical
Environmentalist and economic geologist Professor
Cathles from Cornell University.
The Club of Rome rubbish so embraced by people like
Lewandowsky is best summed up by this dreary fool writing at The Drum. The writer
Horton is described as a writer and polymath! Such pretension!
I grew up in the 1950’s on a diet of S-F written by such people as
Heinlein [before he took a left turn to navel gazing], Asimov, Clarke, Blish,
Anderson and Vance and later Niven and Robinson with his remarkable
terra-forming of Mars series. Despite some dystopias and the still operating
reflex of the cold war paranoia, the prevailing mood was a can do one; the
Universe was huge and opportunity was boundless for both individuals and
species which had the ingenuity and drive to take those opportunities.
60 years later, the supposed length of AGW, and we have pusillanimous
tripe like this junk by Horton and pretty much everything by Lewandowsky. It’s
as though there is no Universe, life is doomed everywhere unless it subscribes
to the principle of sustainability and dares not exceed the prescribed natural
limits which are ideologically rather than physically defined. The implication
in these stultifying examples of mediocrity is that there can be no more
technological advancement and humanity has peaked; it is like those
pontificating fools who in the last century or so declared that all science was
known, the science is settled and the bureaucrats are now in charge.
The psychology behind this limiting definition of reality, I think,
comes from the high opinion that people like Lewandowsky and Horton have about
themselves; and given this high opinion their reality is what they can understand
and perceive; this is like a perversion of Kant’s transcendental idealist
philosophy that time and space are not materially real but merely the ideal a
priori condition of our internal intuition; in short Horton and Lewandowsky do
not understand or care or accept as real anything outside his perception.
What a dismal prospect the future will be if it is controlled by the
likes of Horton and Lewandowsky!
= = = == = = = = = = = = = = === = = == =
Anthony is responding to an opinion piece by Lewandowsky -
