I’ll assume that the local grassroots followers of the Heartland Institute, John Birch Society, and related groups disinformation network have rejected my challenge to participate in a serious discussion about climate science. I had started my challenge at the beginning college-level because that was the level of the evidence used in the articles I referenced and because they complain about the dumbing down of our education system.  And after no response to that, I offered to have a discussion at the fifth-grade level.  The one response I got was about rockets and weather, but my focus is on climate.

Next, I’m wondering why they reject the knowledge that content experts have developed through intensive study of the real world, but accept imaginary stuff made up by salesmen.  Can we have a community discussion on what science is and why we should trust science?  Why do they not believe the 97% consensus quote?

Most Birch Society and Heartland Institute climate science authors and scientists don’t have a physical science background, the few that do are either connected to the fossil fuel industry or are old.  Marc Morano’s degree was in political science.  Alex Newman’s was in journalism.

 

One of the keynote speakers for The Heartland Institute’s February 2022 physics conference has no formal education beyond a GED.  But it’s okay because their science conferences and scientific articles aren’t about science.  Well, kind of not about science.  A few of their speakers do have a science background, for example, Howard Hayden will dazzle the audience with the Stefan-Boltzmann radiation law, Anthony Watts usually talks about the urban heat island effect, Willie Soon usually blames global warming on the sun getting hotter, etc.  And after a weekend at a Disney World luxury hotel, the attendees will be official climate science experts.  Why spend many years studying calculus, physics, chemistry and all that stuff at school when you can obtain the same enlightenment in two days of warm sun, great food, and inspiring speakers.

I’ll excuse those over the age of 60 because I had a chance during the summer of 2018 to meet privately with an older person who was listed as a climate expert by the Heartland Institute and had been a keynote speaker at a Heartland Institute climate conference.  While I still disagree with him, I believe he is a good and sincere person.  His presentation was the only one at that Washington, D.C., science conference which disagreed with the 97% scientific consensus on global warming.

In the April 22, 2019, New American (Birch Society), Ed Hiserodt and Rebecca Terrell wrote, “You have probably heard talking heads on the news mentioning a ‘97-percent consensus’ among scientists that human activity causes global warming. Plenty of movie stars and politicians agree. Anyone who doesn’t believe is basically a Neanderthal who shops at Walmart. ‘The science is settled,’ they say.  But did you ever wonder where they get the number 97? The answer may surprise you.”

Before continuing, please note the biased language of those Birchers.  “Movie stars and politicians” is to frame their opposition as rich elite over-educated big city liberals.  Next, the claim that their opponents are calling them ignorant common people is to energize their base into a defensive mode.  The typical Gish Gallop of logical fallacies by Birchers can’t be an accident, especially since they do it over and over again.  These people are geniuses with language skills to frame their messages.  This should be a serious hint that they aren’t content experts but are marketing experts.

Hiserodt graduated in 1962 with an undergraduate engineering degree and has been the president of a small (about 3 people) engineering company since 1983.  Rebecca Terrell is a nurse with an MBA in marketing.  I doubt if either one has attended a real science conference and visited with real climate scientists or has made any attempt to learn climate science.  But I’ve done both.  For example, in January of 1989 I attended a scientific conference with about 30 people presenting evidence of anthropogenic global warming and only one person (Fred Singer) on a panel to represent the other side.  Although 30/31=97% exactly fits that number, many others have observed similar results.  You can find the program for that meeting at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.241.4874.1831.

On November 10, 2022, the Heartland Institute wrote, “The Heartland Institute recently commissioned a survey by Fairleigh Dickinson University to get scientists’ thoughts on climate change. The survey results dispel the notion that 97 percent of relevant scientists believe humans are causing catastrophic climate change.”  Their Youtube video about the survey said that the 97% claim is a lie, then continued with blaming public education, “The politicization of America’s public education system could very well be the source of this massive discrepancy, but this response highlights more than the fallacy that there’s a scientific consensus. It obfuscates political reliance on science that clearly requires further discussion.”  Then it blamed greedy scientists and media censorship, “The real debate comes down to weighing these effects against the benefits we’re experiencing.  So, no there is not a consensus we don’t need to censor people who want to debate policies aimed at curbing CO2 emissions.  Differing viewpoints being put under scrutiny is the basis of scientific research and allowing scientific discourse is the only way that society can be confident the course of action we take is based on sound reasoning, not political will.”

Before continuing, note that in Valley City it is the followers of the Heartland Institute and Birch Society who refuse to have a serious debate that can be fact checked.  They are probably the same group that wants to ban books and eliminate libraries.

However, not only does the Heartland survey support the 97% consensus, but so does the earlier survey they mentioned in their publication sent to high school teachers and politicians.  Following their traditional methods, the Heartland Institute began by trying to have a biased sample and then continued with a vast array of logical fallacies to distort the essential message of the survey and bury the actual results.  The Heartland Institute and Birch Society leaders don’t just use a few disinformation techniques, they try to use as many as possible to confuse their followers.   I know I won’t have any effect on those who are completely immune from facts and logic, but hopefully I’ll get a few others to think about these problems.

I first met Ohio State professor Gordon Aubrecht during an April 24 to 27 of 1986 conference at the Fermilab, which at that time, its Tevatron was the world’s largest particle accelerator.  It looked something like CERN’s LHC collider which produced the antimatter in Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons movie, and yes, those things are amazing.  Image a microscope that is several miles long and can look inside of a proton.  Gordon wrote a textbook on energy in 1995 which included a couple of chapters on climate change and sold well enough to have three editions.  The last time I saw him was at his poster session in Sacramento, California during July of 2016.  He looked frail and a few weeks later he was diagnosed with terminal cancer.  He died shortly afterwards.  During the last decade of his life his major concern had been fighting climate science misinformation.  He told me at that meeting that he was doing it for his grandchildren.

I also had a chance to hear Carl Sagan discuss climate science denial a few years before Sagan died.  Sagan was an expert on planetary climates, with the CO2 greenhouse effect on Venus being part of his Ph.D. dissertation.  In his The Demon-Haunted World, which was published a year before he died, he wondered why our society is so entranced by superstition and pseudoscience when our society depends so heavily on factual science.  Why do so many people make such an effort searching for magical false solutions instead of following science, which is a search for truth based on evidence. At the end Sagan said, “I’m haunted by a sentence in the Book of Proverbs: ‘They set an ambush for their own lives.’  We cannot continue mindless growth in technology, with widespread negligence about the consequences of that technology…. Out of the environmental crises of our time should come, unless we are much more foolish than I think we are, a binding up of the nations and the generations, and the end of our long childhood.”

According to Bible Ref, that verse means, “Solomon reinforces the concept that those who plan to do evil will undoubtedly harm themselves. These people are out for selfish gain, and they will meet a selfish end. The trap that they set for others, in the end, will tangle them up. This is a major theme of biblical morality: nobody ‘gets away with it.’ Trying to get ahead by defying God will only lead to disaster (Mark 8:36). All sin will be punished, and only the gospel gives us a means to avoid the fate we deserve.”  In other words, those who reject climate science will also suffer.

During Sagan’s last public interview, he commented that humans have always had false beliefs, “but we live in an age based on science and technology, with formidable technological powers.”  If the public doesn’t understand science and doesn’t care to understand science, then who is making the decisions about the future?  Most of our elected leaders don’t understand science any better than the public.  “This combustible mixture of ignorance and power sooner or later is going to blow up in our faces.”  My analogy would be giving a six-year-old a live grenade without telling him what it is.

He said that another problem “is that science is more than a body of knowledge.  It’s a way of thinking, a way of skeptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding of human fallibility.  If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority; then we’re up for grabs for the next charlatan political or religious who comes ambling along.  It’s a thing that Jefferson lay great stress on. It wasn’t enough, he said, to enshrine some rights in a constitution or a Bill of Rights.  The people had to be educated and they had to practice their skepticism and their education, otherwise we don’t run the government, the government runs us.”