January 13, 2025 | David F. Coppedge

Climate Change Causes Space Aliens

It’s past time to reconsider the
presumptive authority of
scientific consensus

 

Our headline is a takeoff on Michael Crichton‘s hard-hitting speech to Caltech scientists in 2003, “Aliens cause global warming.” One memorable line from that speech we have quoted before: “If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period.” In context, he said:

I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had.

Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.

There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period.

Big Science didn’t get the message, because they still resort to the first refuge of scoundrels. A recent example appeared in an editorial published by the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO):

Soul Men and Women—what must science do to regain public trust? (EMBO Reports, 24 Nov 2024). In this essay, Arthur Caplan illustrates our frequent observation that the scientific community expects people to trust them simply by virtue that they are scientists, and the public is not. The communication of truth claims must only flow one direction: from scientific expert to the huddled masses. Why? Scientists have a scientific method, and peons do not. They have peer review, and peasants do not.

Those with doubting looks on their faces don’t realize that Darwinism and modern cosmology are good for them. Why? Because the scientific consensus agrees on those things, whether or not they make people feel good. If you don’t trust the scientific consensus, you must be a pusher of misinformation and conspiracy theories. And that wouldn’t be good for planet earth, would it?

What is required is more than just efforts to correct misinformation or to bring warranted evidence to bear on contentious issues. That work is hugely important, but it requires a parallel effort to reclaim science’s voice as a trusted source to succeed. No amount of facts will suffice to influence any controversy if the audience does not trust the messenger (Badur et al, 2020).

The Blind Clonemaker teaching Consensus 101.

Science may find no purpose or meaning in what cosmology or evolutionary theory have to say about eternity and our place in it, the story of evolution may lack a special place for humans, but that hardly means that science is done by people who are soulless or amoral. In fact, as scientists all too rarely explain to anyone outside their communities, they are drawn to science by very moral desires and drives: to cure diseases that have ravaged their friends or families, fight starvation, to find more humane and less back-breaking ways to work, to protect the environment and preserve endangered species, to create the means to explore other planets and the deepest oceans, and so on. It is the results of successful science that produce meaning—and that ought to be widely communicated as exceedingly meaningful for practitioners of science. When a child with a life-threatening tumor comes home after therapy saved his life, or a woman who lost her arms uses a sophisticated prosthetic to hug her sister, these are moments full of emotion, spirit and, yes, soulfulness for the scientists who developed the therapy or the prosthetics.

Surprise: Darwin’s got soul! Don’t you realize that the same people who brought you scientific nihilism are also kind and gentle souls who want to hug your sister? Just because they follow the Stuff Happens Law doesn’t mean they are soulless or amoral. They can always plagiarize Christian ethics to put on a smiling face. “The better to see you with,” my child, says the wolf with big eyes.

Caplan argues that “To rebuild trust, science must bare its soul.” It needs to put on an air of humility and portray scientists as “absolutely relatable.” It needs to show, in effect, that the same ones who want to censor their critics, indoctrinate students into only one side of “contentious issues” (like evolution and cosmology) and pressure politicians to adopt their policies are actually sweet, endearing souls who only want to he’p you. How souls might have evolved by natural selection of genetic mutations in a mindless, cold universe is left unexplained.

But does the scientific community actually deserve this kind of trust? Sometimes, but not always.

Failure to replicate (Science, 9 Jan 2025). Elizabeth Lunbeck reviews a new book by Ruth Leys titled, Anatomy of a Train Wreck. Lunbeck is brutally honest in her agreement that the scientific community screwed up royally by failing to replicate or question the psychological theory of “priming” in the 1990s. This theory proposed that exposure to certain words and concepts “primes” readers to imitate the mindsets and behaviors behind those concepts. Yale University social psychologist John Bargh and his colleagues even gave this a jargon word “automaticity” to explain it. It should have been laughed out of court, but the scientific consensus at the time swallowed it whole.

Bargh marshaled this striking finding to support his claim that “automaticity,” not free will or intentionality, powerfully governs behavior. Other psychologists staged clever experiments that repeatedly demonstrated how powerfully priming, whether with words or images, shaped individuals’ actions, and best-selling books spread the message to broader audiences.

Automatic responses—quick, efficient, intuitive—were just as powerful in shaping behavior as were more cognitively complex and considered ones, the theory went. Such responses acted as so many “memory butlers,” unobtrusively and efficiently prompting behaviors in line with individuals’ preferences while easing the burdens of thinking.

It was all baloney—suffused with fraud, cherry-picking data and selective reporting—until 2011 when the “replication crisis” hit. But watch how Lunbeck points out that the groupthink was not limited to the social sciences:

As Ruth Leys shows in Anatomy of a Train Wreck—her engrossing, deeply researched, and meticulously argued account of priming’s fate—the empire of priming came crashing down in the course of psychology’s replication crisis, a crisis that has since swept through the sciences more generally.

Yes, scientists have souls—fallen souls in need of a Savior. They need to learn wisdom and understanding from Solomon in the Good Book just like everyone else does. Being a scientist does not insulate one from being deceived by their own wishful thinking and the reactions of peers. One might joke that being a scientist “primes” one to go along to get along, to swallow trendy ideas promulgated by “scientific” colleagues.

Climate Change Causes Space Aliens

Here are some reasons to question the consensus about climate change.

John Stossel interviews climate insider turned outsider (X @JohnStossel, 12 Jan 2025). A veteran libertarian baloney detector who usually debunks stupid government policies, John Stossel interviewed Judith Curry, a climate expert. Curry, a former department head at a major university, was well treated by the scientific community when she published her research indicating that climate change was causing more frequent strong hurricanes. After she was led to question her work, however, and changed her position, the consensus turned on her and started calling her a “climate denier.” She could no longer work in academia. She tells how her respect for truth and scientific integrity could no longer support a “climate change industry” that enforced compliance and would only fund pro-climate-change conclusions.

California Wildfires: Climate Change Symptom, or Consequence of Bad Policy? (FRC Washington Stand, 11 Jan 2024). In this commentary, Joshua Arnold shows how Hollywood elites, reporters and government officials, driven to accept uncritically the scientific consensus on climate, were quick to blame the catastrophic Los Angeles fires on climate change. Arnold points out that many factors are implicated in the region’s susceptibility to wildfires. Their acceptance of a single cause is an example of card stacking and bandwagon fallacies.

Update: “Just Stop Oil” radicals defaced Charles Darwin’s grave (Breitbart News, 13 Jan 2025). Oh, the irony.

Alien civilizations are probably killing themselves from climate change, bleak study suggests (Live Science, 2 Oct 2024). You thought our headline was a joke, right? Here’s reporter Sierra Bouchér acting like a space alien due to climate change “science.” If space aliens go extinct due to climate change, then it must be a law of nature, right? Should humans on earth try to fight a law of nature?

Update: Do aliens exist? We studied what scientists really think (The Conversation, 14 Jan 2025). The authors say, “We know that the probability of life getting started is non-zero.” By chance? Gong. Read the book. But if it started, it would go extinct anyway. Why? Climate change.

Homework: Here is a long list of climate change articles from 2024 that we didn’t have time to examine. Look them up and ask some questions. Where did the funding come from? Do the findings support or weaken the climate consensus belief? Are any of the claims beyond empirical verification? Have fun.

Note: since this image is a screen capture, you will have to type the title into a search bar to find it online.

 

 

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