Today’s Fox News website had this little story, entitled Climate Scientists Plan to Hit Back at Skeptics. In the article, Stanford University climate researcher Paul R. Ehrlich had this to say about global warming skeptics:
“Most of our colleagues don’t seem to grasp that we’re not in a gentlepersons’ debate, we’re in a street fight against well-funded, merciless enemies who play by entirely different rules,” Paul R. Ehrlich, a Stanford University researcher, said in one of the e-mails.
Its worth noting Ehrlich’s use of the phrase “merciless enemies”. In other words, challenge the preferred dogma, and you’re not just ignorant – you’re an enemy, and thus, by extension, deserving of any and all ad hominem attacks hurled your way. One can almost hear “let me assure you, we haf vays to make you accept the dogma!”
In a related story, ID proponent Jay Richards, co-author of the book Privileged Planet, notes
Now when I read anything on the environment in the New York Times, I try to keep a couple of deconstructionist qualifiers running in the back of my head: “This is what the New York Times wants me to believe about the issue” and “What are they trying to accomplish with this piece?” I know it’s cynical, but when it comes to environmental stories, I just don’t trust New York Times reporters to keep it straight.
Some things they want to accomplish with this piece:
(1) Divide and conquer skeptics of global warming orthodoxy and Darwinism, by painting the latter as ignorant religious zealots, in hopes of starting a fight among conservatives. No doubt they’re hoping that, say, Richard Lindzen will have to explain why he agrees with those nefarious creationists on the global warming issue, and that he’ll have to spend his time issuing statements of agreement with evolution.
(2) Make it harder for official bodies to encourage critical thinking on global warming, since attempts to do the same with regard to evolution have, in recent years, met with fierce resistance and only modest success.
Those of us who challenge some of the tenets of Darwinism on scientific grounds, and who propose ID as a reasonable scientific alternative, have been told ad nauseum by the Darwinists that its all about the science and ID isn’t science and etc, etc, etc, yadda yadda. But if the tactics we’re beginning to see from global warming proponents and Darwinists mentioned in these articles continue, then its legitimate to ask: where’s the science? It just never seems to occur to these people that critics and skeptics of some their claims are basing their skepticism and critiques on the science. That’s not to say that some aren’t grinding political axes, but it doesn’t follow from that there is no legitimate scientific basis for the skepticism and criticism. The response to that ought to be to provide the science. Instead, it seems, the tactic of choice is to bully everyone into acceptance of the preferred dogma. If this trend continues, there will be no reason for the public to trust the pronouncements of science on just about anything! What a sad state of affairs that will be.