Was it Pope Francis who pushed deniers over the edge? Is it the climate negotiations taking place this year? Matt Ridley, a science denier from the UK who claims to be a "lukewarmer," has written a Gish gallop worthy of Tim Ball. It's as if he collected up all the worst WUWT conspiracy theories and rolled them into Quadrant.
Quadrant is a right wing outlet for the extremists. It publishes dumb articles from deniers fairly often. Today Matt Ridley, a denier turned defamer has written an article (archived here). Anthony Watts has published bits of it on his blog, too (archived here).
Quadrant is a right wing outlet for the extremists. It publishes dumb articles from deniers fairly often. Today Matt Ridley, a denier turned defamer has written an article (archived here). Anthony Watts has published bits of it on his blog, too (archived here).
Matt Ridley's Lysenkoism conspiracy theory
Matt lurched from one conspiracy theory to another. To illustrate how far he's gone he starts out with the Lysenko conspiracy theory that deniers call upon when they run out of ideas. The conspiracy goes something like this. Trofim Denisovich Lysenko was an agricultural official who rose to prominence under Joseph Stalin. He denied genetic inheritance in plants (as described by Gregor Mendel in his famous experiments with peas in the 1800s). He even managed to outlaw research in genetics. It set plant breeding back a lot in the Soviet Union. Well, the climate conspiracy theorists claim that Lysenkoism is alive and well throughout the entire world, and has been for the past couple of hundred years. I've never seen anyone name a person who is supposedly filling the role of Lysenko and banning climate science research of any kind. Nor have I ever seen anyone say just what aspect of climate science is forbidden.
I wonder if Matt will be calling upon Hitler and Osama bin Laden next (like Tim Ball has done)?
Matt Ridley's conspiracy theories come from AboveTopSecret!
Matt also claims (wrongly) that dietary saturated fats have no impact on heart disease. He's wrong. They do. Did he get his notion from science? Nope. Despite claiming to be a "science writer" Matt says he got his notion from some diet fad book (see here and here and here), not from any science. It's one of those conspiracy theories (aka guvmint suppressed research) that you'll see on conspiracy theory websites like abovetopsecret.com, along with anti-vaxxers still claiming that vaccinations cause autism. I've had a denier here pushing the same line.
Matt claims that politicians want global warming
The idea that any politician would want to deal with the bigger than big problem of global warming is completely nuts. Matt, like many of his fellow conspiracy theorists, is deluded when he makes that suggestion. No politician that I'm aware of, of any flavour, wants to have to deal with climate change. They are very reluctantly being forced to do so by climate change itself.
If that isn't enough to make you question what has pushed a politician like Matt Ridley over the edge, read on.
Matt tries to disprove what he's already claimed
As you know, conspiracy theorists have the ability to harbour contradictory notions at the same time, without blinking. Matt is a good example of that. He acknowledges that most published climate science points to global warming being caused by us (his default position, since he claims that there's no money to research "alternative theories"). Yet in the same article, he rejects research showing that this is indeed the case. He claims that the disgraced Richard Tol "demolished" Cook13, one of several papers (and by far the most comprehensive) demonstrating 97% of published science on the subject shows this. If you want to see how wrong Richard Tol's weird outbursts on the subject are, go no further than HotWhopper - see here and here and here and here and here.
Conspiracy theorising Matt Ridley tells fibs about conspiracy studies
Ironically, despite his own rampant conspiracy theorising, Matt wrongly claims that studies led by Professor Lewandowsky, linking climate science denial and conspiracy ideation are wrong. Matt got that wrong, too. He may not know quite how wrong he got it (and will probably not admit it. He'd claim it was a conspiracy). Matt isn't a sceptic. He uses the old denier trick. Find a denier who makes a false claim. They are all over the internet and sometimes even make it into published literature. It's enough for Matt to find some denier who'll make some claim that he can wave about as "proof." I won't be surprised when he joins the flat earth society, citing the flat earthers as evidence that the earth is really flat.
Matt's fake "experts"
One thing you'll learn in denier 101 is to call on fake experts. The previous paragraph is a good example. Matt cited a denier duo who are not cognitive scientists as "experts," proving the science wrong. They didn't.
He does it again claiming, quite ludicrously, that Jim Steele is a "distinguished ecologist." Yes, that Jim Steele who couldn't lie straight in bed. The same Jim Steele who as far as I know has never published a peer-reviewed paper in his life. The same Jim Steele who didn't even get the data for the study he supposedly trashed, a paper by Camille Parmesan. Even Matt admits Jim didn't get any data. So how he can claim Jim refuted a published paper I don't know. It goes along with the odd facility that deniers have of holding two contradictory thoughts in their head at the same time. (For the background on this read this HotWhopper article, in which Camille Parmesan's husband provides some insight into the unsavoury behaviour of Jim Steele. Or read this article where Jim Steele comes to HotWhopper and denies saying what he said - in black and white.)
Matt litters his article with other fake experts such as Ian "iron sun" Plimer, Donna "dustbin" Laframboise, Jennifer Marohasy with her Rutherglen blunder, and probably more. It's as if he's spent the last few weeks scouring denier blogs to come up with a list of the wrongest nonsense deniers have claimed and tossed them into his Gish gallop.
Matt Ridley slurs world's leading scientists
Another tactic often used by science deniers is to attack the credibility of scientists. The ridiculous thing about how Matt Ridley goes about this is that he claims that because scientists are successful and reach the pinnacle of their profession, that "something must be wrong." ("Something must be wrong" is one of the hallmarks of conspiracy ideation, described in Recursive Fury.) Matt lists what he reckons is the amount of research funding and scientific awards that Dr James Hansen and Dr Michael Oppenheimer attracted over the years, and instead of concluding, as any reasonable person would, that they must be very good scientists, he implies that their work must be suspect.
Matt Ridley's logical fallacy - the strawman
He goes even further than that. He claims that because scientific evidence shows that we must mitigate global warming, that an organisation that studies or advocates for mitigation "must be wrong." His argument is that they wouldn't be likely to change their tune if evidence showed otherwise. That's completely nuts! He provides no evidence that the science is wrong, his whole argument is a smokescreen. A strawman.
It's not fair
At one point Matt complains about how Roger Pielke Jr was sacked from Nate Silver's blog for writing a ludicrously wrong article. He didn't like it that Rob Honeycutt pointed to evidence from Munich Re, which showed that Roger's article was wrong. Matt prefers wrong to right. I think he's probably just miffed that the 30 plus protests from WUWT about Marcott13 and the umpteen plus protests at the new NOAA paper haven't resulted in any withdrawal. He was quite happy that empty threats of litigation from conspiracy theorists led to the withdrawal of a sound and solid piece of research on the evolution of conspiracy theories though. Just another example of the double standards of deniers.
Matt Ridley's warped double standards
Matt Ridley is quite okay with a denier lobby group, the IPA, paying deniers (or promising payment) to write a denier manifesto. He wrote a chapter himself in the IPA's change the facts book. However he draws the line at a scientist like the renowned Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg preparing an environmental report with a grant from the World Wildlife Fund.
Matt claims to be a "science writer," yet he spends his time writing about his conspiracy theories and denial of science. He bases his article on diet fad books and other fiction, and dubious claims here and there in the deniosphere, not on science. What sort of science writer is that?
From the WUWT comments
Anthony Watts posted bits and pieces of Matt's conspiracy nuttery at WUWT. A fitting place for it. Here are some of the "thoughts" that followed, mostly from fake sceptics who took what Matt fed them without question, and gobbled it up as if they were starved for science denial:
John W. Garrett is delighted to have so many conspiratorial denier memes, plus lots of slurs on scientists, all in the one article:
June 19, 2015, at 5:53 am
Fantastic.
This should be required reading for anybody eligible to vote (be it in the U.S., the EU or anywhere else).
Duster elaborates his conspiracy theory that scientists somehow manage to produce unpalatable results that he weirdly thinks government wants. He can't conceive that Francis Bacon was right (if it was Francis Bacon - I didn't check):
June 19, 2015, at 9:38 am
If you have read Francis Bacon’s New Organon then you realize that the linkage between modern scientific research and governmental support was one of the ideals that Bacon thought would “free” science from these very same problems. At the time he wrote, the 600-lb gorillas in the ring were the Church(es): COE, Catholic, various protestant flavors, depending upon where a scientist was conducting work. The threats were very real with some important names in science being executed for “heretical” opinions they refused to relinquish at the instruction of the Powers-That-Be. Bacon had hoped that an enlightened government would support a search for the “truth.”
He failed to imagine that politicians would set policy based upon opinion rather than informed opinion and worse, that scientists could be so venal as to offer opinion based on monetary reward rather than a desire to reveal truth. In short, he never imagined that science, politicians and government agencies could easily be as bad or worse than the scholasticism he detested.
Joe's comment could have been plucked from Robert Altemeyer's The Authoritarians:
June 19, 2015, at 6:04 am
“The big difference is that these scientists who insist that we take their word for it, and who get cross if we don’t, are also asking us to make huge, expensive and risky changes to the world economy and to people’s livelihoods. They want us to spend a fortune getting emissions down as soon as possible.”
No, they are the bought tools of a corrupt and evil political class that wants to reserve the benefits of technology solely to themselves – and the rest can just die.
cnxtim enjoys a good yarn, the more it distorts reality the better it fits with that of cnxtim's:
June 19, 2015, at 6:10 am
This excellent and well researched document places the blame for the pseudo science of AGW exactly where it belongs in the realm of fantasy. With keyword highlighting, it provides a source document to refute the warmists at every twist and turn of their balderdash. Thanks so much.
In a display of the double standards of deniers, John Catley thinks it not fair that Matt Ridley should be castigated for making vicious personal attacks on scientists:
June 19, 2015, at 6:30 am
What exactly do you think can be done to increase exposure of the failings in climate science?
If you read the whole article, Matt makes it clear how much the truth is suppressed by vocal bloggers and complacent media.
Matt regularly writes in high profile publications and is rewarded with vicious personal attacks as a result.
I see little more he, or anyone else here, can do other than what we are doing.
If you have any ideas, this is the place to discuss them.
TonyG provides some anecdotal evidence that deniers are wrong when they claim that "skeptics" are winning some imaginary debate:
June 19, 2015, at 9:38 am
At work, I hear people talk. A lot of people. Nobody even QUESTIONS AGW.
So you have me, among about 100 people. From the propaganda standpoint, the warmists are most certainly winning.
Charlie is despondent that not only do politicians accept science, even the Pope accepts science. What is his world coming to?
June 19, 2015, at 6:32 am
Science hijacked by politics has become “the lie agreed upon” That used to be for history only. Now with the Hollywood pope getting involved it has become something else. I have heard people say that this is not about science anymore that, “this is now spiritual.” I don’t know how this happened. So much progress just thrown away so quickly.
wallensworth still has just the tip of his toe in the real world (last sentence) and writes:
June 19, 2015, at 6:53 am
It was as if I was writing this piece as I was reading it.
Agree 100%, and well said.
Should be required reading, but the eco-facist faithful will not take it to heart.
They would flip it into the dustbin and mutter the word “denier.”
References and further reading
- Is Matt Ridley a Crackpot? - November 2013
- Matt Ridley in Australia tells more of his fibs, but gives Andrew Bolt little joy... - November 2013
- Matt Ridley goes to Serengeti and tells big fat lies about the work of Michael Mann and Keith Briffa - January 2014
- Matt Ridley can't make up his mind about the future he wants - April 2014
- BUSTED: How Ridiculous Richard Tol makes myriad bloopers and a big fool of himself and proves the 97% consensus - June 2014
- Ridiculous Richard Tol sez 12,000 is a strange number... - June 2014
- Deconstructing the 97% self-destructed Richard Tol - March 2015
- The Evolution of a 97% Conspiracy Theory - The Case of the Abstract IDs - March 2015
- The fall and fall of Gish galloping Richard Tol's smear campaign - March 2015
- Living Dangerously: Jim Steele denies Texas warming - April 2014, in which Jim comes to HotWhopper to tell fibs
- Jim Steele at WUWT pushes for pseudo-science, not science, in schools - November 2014, with a comment from Camille Parmesan's husband
- Jim Steele, climate change and the sixth major extinction event - August 2013, with a description of Camille Parmesan's paper
- Remember the weather at Rutherglen? BoM was right all along, of course! - September 2014
- Confessions of deniers at Judith Curry's blog - February 2015
The robust relationship between conspiracist cognition and rejection of (climate) science - Stephan Lewandowsky on Shaping Tomorrow's World
The conspiracy website AboveTopSecret - on the dietary fat and vaccination conspiracies
The dietary fat conspiracy theory
Reviews of Matt Ridley's diet fad book, claiming all sorts of wrong stuff about dietary fat, from the Science of Nutrition blog:
Dietary fat and heart disease study is seriously misleading - Article by Harvard scientists on the dietary fat conspiracy theory
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