McCarthyism Alive and Well in 2019: the Climate Blacklist. By Steven Hayward.
“Nature Communications,” a former science publication, disgraced itself this week with an article that goes to absurd lengths to indict the media for giving equal time to “climate change contrarians” (though the “denier” epithet turns up for duty soon enough) over “expert climate change scientists,” among whom they include, for example, the deranged Michael Mann.
You can take in the whole article here: “Juxtaposition of Climate Change Contrarians and Scientists in the Media Using Media Cloud Data.” The title alone gives you a big hint at what a nonsense bit of statistical flim-flammery this is. The article yielded two lists of “contarians” and “believers” — 386 of each, all “highly cited.” …
Senator Joe McCarthy, standing, 1954
It’s a blacklist:
It is pretty clear this is meant as a blacklist. This is explicit in the press release from UC Merced, where one of the lead authors is based:
Data shows that about half the mainstream media visibility goes to climate-change deniers, many of whom are not climate scientists. This proportion increases significantly when blogs and other “new media” outlets are included — pointing to the rising role of customized media in spreading disinformation.
“It’s time to stop giving these people visibility, which can be easily spun into false authority,” Professor Alex Petersen said. …
Translation: Don’t quote or publish people on the list of 386 “contrarians.”
This is yet another sign of the desperation of the climatistas, whose failure to persuade is prompting their authoritarian streak to become more obvious and frantic.
Well well, who would have thought. Imagine being told 15 years ago that McCarthyism — with its strictures not to hire certain people and to blacklist them from the media — would make a return in 2019. And that both my wife and I are on that blacklist!
What heinous crime did we commit? We followed the evidence in a science debate and spoke up about it. Uh oh, got in the way of some powerful people.
The blacklist has 386 people on it, globally, ranked by media coverage. Joanne’s number 99 and I’m 57. I see David Archibald is there too, at 137.
The other Australians on the list are Andrew Bolt at 55, Garth Paltridge at 107, Bill Kininmonth at 72, Jennifer Marohasy at 104, Malcolm Roberts at 45, Bob Carter at 17, Ian Plimer at 51, Stewart Franks at 149, Ray Evans at 186, and Cliff Ollier at 185.
Let’s poke fun at the believers:
