AMERICAN LIBERTY with BILL LOCKWOOD

Embracing the Black Widow

by Bill Lockwood

Physicist John Droz warns against blindly accepting pronouncements by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He likens this to being “duped into embracing [a] Black Widow.” Referring to the fact that “science” is being distorted to support socialistic-style goals of government control worldwide, Droz addressed lawmakers in 2013 that the American populace is being “brainwashed to accept a new secular religion with its own value system.”

John Droz completed undergraduate degrees in Physics and Mathematics from Boston College and a graduate degree in Physics from Syracuse University. As a senior fellow at American Tradition Institute, Droz has earned the thanks of conservatives for his broadcasts of skepticism pertaining to Climate Change. At the same time, anyone who glances over his online detailed power-point presentation Science under Assault will readily understand how he has drawn the ire of many in the scientific community who have been co-opted by policy makers into becoming “advocates” of liberal positions.

A more recent publication by The Heartland Institute called Why Scientists Disagree About Global Warming: The NIPCC Report on Scientific Consensus demonstrates the accuracy of Droz’s skepticism. This Non-Governmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), edited by Craig D. Idso, Robert M. Carter, and S. Fred Singer, thoroughly documents the flawed methodology utilized by Climate Change scientists. It also puts the lie to President Obama’s “Ninety-seven percent of scientists agree: climate change is real, man-made and dangerous.”

The purpose of this Oval Office non-sense is to drive America into world socialism managed by the United Nations. Jeffrey D. Sachs, director of the Earth Institute, a senior advisor to the United Nations, and a world-renowned advocate for Sustainable Development, says as much in his recent book The Age of Sustainable Development. Preaching the transfer of wealth from America to poorer nations including health coverage for all “world citizens” by American taxpayers, Sachs wants western nations to “curb human activities” that cause greenhouse gas and he is ready to empower a world government to ensure this is done.

The strongest factor in coming to the Sustainable Development position is not the scientific method, but political ideology.  This can be easily seen in what Droz calls “Using consensus to Imply Correctness.”

Consensus Science

Among Droz’s common-sense critiques of the “post-modern” scientific advocates is that “consensus” among scientists does not equal scientific fact. “It is a trick to get around real science.” Randy Guliuzza agrees. In an article entitled Consensus Science: The Rise of Scientific Elite Guliuzza warns, “Rarely are appeals to scientific consensus used in areas where experimental evidence is strong, but they are often favored on subjects where science is weak to non-existent (such as the reality of extra-terrestrials or parallel universes), and, especially, on divisive social issues that need scientific input.”

Why Scientists Disagree pointedly criticizes Obama’s 97% claim. “A 97% consensus claim is merely a ‘social proof’—a powerful psychological motivator intended to make the public comply with the herd; to not be the ‘odd man out’” (p. 19).

The late Michael Crichton, physician, producer and writer, also had much to say regarding “Consensus Science.” In a 2003 speech at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, CA he observed that scientific reviewers often use the phraseology of having a “consensus” in the field as justification for shutting down ideas not associated with their beliefs.

“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 a void 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, for 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 are relevant are 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.”

The late Dr. James D. Bales, writing of the Creation-Evolution controversy, made the same point. If  to be accepted by scientists “is all that is meant to establish something scientifically, then the only scientific method would be to count heads. If more scientists accept a position than reject it, the minority has been outvoted and the scientific truth is whatever the majority says that it is.”

But this in turn means that “all the talk about framing a hypothesis, the testing of the hypothesis by the scientific method, the retesting of the hypothesis by another, and the significance of prediction is just so much ritualistic talk and is unrelated to science. If enough scientists can be persuaded, regardless of what means of persuasion, that a certain position is true, the position has been confirmed scientifically.”

That last line of Bales strikes home in the Climate Change debate. Government funding from 2010 to 2013 is a whopping $64 Billion dollars paid for “scientific research” to prove Climate Change and man’s culpability. Little wonder liberals press that the “science is settled!”

Reaction to Droz

Following Droz’s presentation in which he warned of corruptions of the scientific method by Climate Change alarmists, Derb Carter of the Southern Environmental Law Center retorted, “Mr. Droz’s perspectives are not only outside the mainstream but on the very fringe.” So much for science in her remarks. We are back to counting heads.

Scientist Sam Pearsall, recently retired from the Environmental Defense Fund with a doctorate in “ecology,” observed of Droz that “he made absolutely no case that climate change is not happening, nor that it is not urgent, nor than it is not cause by human combustion of fossil fuels. There was no science in his talk.”

Perfect illustrations are these of those who have already been bitten by the Black Widow. Shifting the burden of proof to Droz to “make a case” that climate change is “not happening” is not only illogical, but is precisely one of the errors about which Droz warned. His presentation, Science Under Assault, was a critique and a common-sense caution about distorting the scientific method to fit political agendas. What “scientific method” is needed for that?

Those who advocate human-caused Climate Change have the burden of proof to establish scientifically that it is so. Yet, when Droz shows clearly that they have not done so but are instead “counting noses,” Pearsall wants him to “make a case that Climate Change is not happening” and Derb Carter quips that Droz is “outside the mainstream!” Apparently, Droz is right on target.

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