Friday, June 15, 2012

Are you now, or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party Global Warming Denier?

We've heard for a while how Global Warming "Deniers" should be jailed (or blown up).  We've been told that "the science is settled".  Now we see that there's a linkage between these two: any scientist that doesn't toe the ZOMG Thermageddon!!!11!!!eleventy!! line gets summarily fired:
Five years ago, Oregon State Climatologist George Taylor went around quietly saying that he was not a believer. Then Governor Ted Kulongoski and many faculty at OSU including Dr. Jane Lubchenco made life impossible for Taylor, and he retired. (Lubchenco is now head of NOAA in the Obama administration.) Under those currently in charge, OSU climate research has grown to be a huge business, reportedly $90 million per year with no real deliverables beyond solid academic support for climate hysteria. A small army of researchers ponder the effects of Global Warming on all sorts of things from tube worms living along the Oregon Coast to butterflies inland. When the climate refuses to warm (as it has for the last twenty years), they just study ‘warming in reverse!’ Most of us call that “cooling,” but they are very careful not to upset their Obama administration contract monitors with politically incorrect terminology.

...

The fact of the matter is that it is now two weeks since I was fired and no one has had the cajones or the common courtesy to even tell me why. I have spoken with the Dept. Chair (Rich Carter) who fired me, and he refused to tell me why. I spoke to the Dean of Science (Vince Remcho) and he couldn’t tell me why. I spoke to HR who set up a meeting with me, then cancelled it an hour before. Then I went to the Vice President of Academic Affairs (Becky Warner) and she sent me back to Rich Carter, the chemistry chair.

It’s just a sad, sad state of affairs that an institution like OSU would fire a good employee for (ostensibly) no reason and then run around and hide from the person they fired. I had stellar teaching evaluations, I won College of Science awards for teaching, and published textbooks. My class sections were always full and I was well-liked by students (see ratemyprofessors.com). I was doing my job very well. But I guess I didn’t march in step with their philosophies.

There were quite a few student protests over this at OSU (Barometer, Facebook, etc.) but to no avail.

I was given no severance and had no warning this was about to happen. In fact, I was lured into the chair’s office under the guise of a fallacious story before being fired.

As you know, I was probably the most visibly-outspoken critic of the Global Warming doctrine at OSU. I gave several public talks on the topic and did research in the area which I regularly posted on the web. I was also on a few talk radio shows in the area. I think they finally just said, we can’t have this.
The Left likes to pat itself on the back for how they're the Defenders of Science, protecting Enlightenment principles of skeptical and unflinching analysis of nature from the ebil ReTHUGlican War on Science™.  They like to pat themselves on the back about how they stand up for the rights of the Little Guy, and think it's appalling that the private sector might fire someone without cause, notice, or severance.  They spent all of 2009 and 2010 talking about how horrible it was that someone might lose their job, and their small child no longer might have health insurance for a serious disease.

And no way that would ever ever ever ever ever be done by people in their tribe.  No way that filthy lucre might cause Good Progressives to go full frontal Simon LaGree.  Nope.  It's Moral High Ground everywhere you look, as they march shoulder to shoulder towards the New Progressive Jerusalem®.

Excuse me while I barf.  Progressives, this is your moment.  You keep saying that with the Right Sort Of People running things, that Government will be a force for good.  You keep saying that intelligently directed government power is a force for good in society.  You keep telling us that we should give you more power and money, because we can trust you.  You keep telling us that scientific funding for Progressive causes would never corrupt the scientific establishment like private funding for private causes (e.g. the health effects of tobacco) would.

OK, here's your opportunity to excel.  Prove it.  Progressives in Oregon in particular, we're looking at you to right this wrong.  Obama supporters in particular, we're looking at you to right this wrong. 

Because I think it's all a bunch of drivel that you spout, to pump up your pathetic intellectual egos by wrapping yourselves in white lab coats, to signal belonging to the right Tribe other Progressives.  I think that it's a pathetically weak sort of drivel, and dream that one day you'll give us a higher caliber of drivel.  I think that you're a bunch of clueless idiots who shouldn't be given money and power any more than, in P.J. O'Rourke's famous saying, booze and car keys should get handed to teenagers.

I'd be willing to see your actions prove me wrong.  This is your moment.  Go ahead, dazzle me.


Yeah, I didn't think so.  Let us not assassinate this lad further. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?

Everyone else, please help spread the word.

UPDATE 15 June 2012 08:18: Think that this is a one off, a "black swan?   UCLA fires a whistleblower exposing politically motivated junk science.

1 comment:

Lissa said...

Jeezum. Where are all the Usual Suspects screeching about McCarthy and blacklists? Shouldn't they be carrying pickets by now?