Friday
Jun192015
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Oreskes faces the issues
Jun 19, 2015 Greens I'm in Massachusetts. Just moved here from California; ski a lot in Utah. Summited Grand Teton in 2012.
Naomi Oreskes describes her lifestyle, 10 June 2014
Much 2 like in #Encyclical esp: “2 blame population growth instead of extreme ...consumerism ..is 1 way of refusing 2 face the issues."
Naomi Oreskes on the encyclical, 18 June 2015
The distance from Harvard to Salt Lake City is 2362 miles. From her former stamping ground in Berkeley, the distance is only 750 miles. So it's interesting to see that the extra 3000 mile round trip hasn't put her off. Extreme consumerism eh?
Reader Comments (35)
Furthermore, she has now flown over to the UK to give a talk to the Merchants of Political Activism at the Cabot Institute in Bristol. As well as plug her book and film. What a hypocrite.
Dr Oreskes view of models could easily be a skeptical manifesto:
"A model, like a novel, may resonate with nature, but it is not a "real" thing. Like a novel, a model may be convincing it may "ring true" if it is consistent with our experience of the natural world. But just as we may wonder how much the characters in a novel are drawn from real life and how much is artifice, we might ask the same of a model: How much is based on observation and measurement of accessible phenomena, how much is based on informed judgment, and how much is convenience? Fundamentally, the reason for modeling is a lack of full access, either in time or space, to the phenomena of interest. In areas where public policy and public safety are at stake, the burden is on the modeler to demonstrate the degree of correspondence between the model and the material world it seeks to represent and to delineate the limits of that correspondence.
Verification, Validation, and Confirmation of Numerical Models in the Earth Sciences Naomi Oreskes; Kristin Shrader-Frechette; Kenneth Belitz Science, New Series, Vol. 263, No. 5147. ( 1994)
Unfortunately she seems to have lost the insights she once gained from the rejection of continental drift, the precursor of plate tectonics. The lack of toleration of dissent means that scientific institutions enforce consensus at the expense of new knowledge about which she wrote,
"And we are placing responsibility for making new knowledge in the hands of those who have the most old knowledge to unmake. The recognition of scientific expertise -- the very stuff that enables scientists to build on prior results -- at the same time makes scientific judgments inescapably personal and historical, undermining our deepest wishes for knowledge that might somehow be transcendent."
Naomi Oreskes, The Rejection of Continental Drift, Oxford U Press,1999, p.318.
I (like the rest of us, I expect) have long ago ceased to be surprised by the hypocrisy of those who call for the "little people" to rein in on their reckless consumerism.
However, it is always good to be reminded....just in case I ever have scintilla of doubt about the ethics and motives of people like Ms. Oreskes.
She's not the only one.
http://www.nola.com/religion/index.ssf/2015/01/pope_2015_travel_schedule.html
As usual, if you believe the planet is going to cinder there is nothing too immoral for you. Sacrifices are for everybody else
Wow! - has she had a serious/life changing head injury in the intervening time?
It's remarkable that NASA's CO2 / climate modelers have access to the observations and yet - they very obviously choose the fluff in their own belly buttons. Ms. Oreskes and other prominent and handsomely remunerated "establishment" pundits repeatedly refuse to call them out over it - in fact they do the opposite = defend the indefensible and attack, attack, attack....
Hypocrisy that yet again straps on stilts with elevator heels...
She could have just skied in New Hampshire!
It must be noted that Oreskes is not a mere mortal. Few of us have had their wedding celebrated in the Style pages of the Newspaper of Record. Very few.
Naomi Oreskes Is Wed To Dr. Kenneth Belitz
Published: September 29, 1986
The New York Times
Anybody knows about the Western Mining Corporation's Olympic Dam Project in South Australia?
Oreskes has "extreme" written all over her face. By her logic, is it correct to blame her for absolutely everything?
That one is a truly nasty piece of work.
She very much reminds me of the not-yet-late, never-great ( Bl )Abby Joseph Cohen of Goldman Sachs & Co.: loud, frequently wrong— but never in doubt.
Always good to burst the bubbles of the sanctimonious by pointing out that "consumerism" is just a loaded word for "people buying stuff they want".
What do these grumps want instead - people to buy only approved stuff? Only approved people to buy stuff? Only approved people to buy approved stuff?
Diogenes
c'mon - be grateful Dr Helen Caldicott isn't on our case - she could be - as the very same folk attend her lectures as populate my local Sandalista eco twit collective.
There's even a web site - albeit presently missing nuclear and AGW sections.
Give her a break - I'm sure she walked all the way from California to Massachusetts. And I don't think that she will personally contribute to global population growth.
There was an interesting article about her at the Scientific American website based on an interview about four years ago.. Some quotes from it are copied below.
Historian Hunts for Motives Behind Climate Change Doubt-Mongering: A Q&A with Naomi Oreskes
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/naomi-oreskes-hunts-motives-behind-climate-change-doubt-mongering/
Q: What attracted you to the climate change deniers?
A: I fell into this. I was working on the history of oceanography, and came across the work of Roger Revelle, Dave Keeling and others who’d been working on climate change since the 1950s. I came to understand that the scientific basis for understanding anthropogenic climate change was much firmer than most people knew. That led to my 2004 work, which led to me being attacked. So we started digging and found direct links to the tobacco industry.
Q: How do most mainstream scientists view this contrary viewpoint from their colleagues?
A: They are thoroughly appalled. Because it isn’t a “contrary viewpoint,” in the sense that the scientific evidence is contradictory or incomplete, or that our theories are inadequate to explain the observations. This is not the case, this is not a scientific debate.
Does Naomi Oreskes really think that current popular theories about climate change are adequate to explain "the Hiatus"?
She has a doppelganger at the Guardian.
Suzanne Goldenberg is the US environment correspondent of the Guardian and is based in Washington DC.
http://www.theguardian.com/profile/suzannegoldenberg
Enviro-glitteratum, father of five (9441 peer-reviewed tons of carbon pollution each) and owner of an $8.2M Kits beach Vancouver oceanfront custom home Dr. David Suzuki had this to say about the behavior of people like himself or Haavaad Prof. Naomi Oreskes-
"Watch what people do, don’t listen to what they say, just watch what they do.”
David Suzuki, in Rescue the Earth! By Farley Mowat, 1990
I don't understand, I thought all the snow would have melted by now.
John Gibson
But at least she is trying to save the planet!!
It is those awful (smelly, unsophisticated) peasants in the third world trying to enrich themselves who are the problem.
They wantto earn enough to buy themselves luxuries and yet they wouldn't know a Bordeaux from a Claret! Waste of time.
Like feeding strawberries to pigs. Ugh!!
Rotfl. Do as I say, I do what I do.
P.S. I guess she won't know cross-country skiing.
The charmed live of the opportunistic merchants of doom.
yes Omnologos, I worked at Olympic Dam in the eighties. it was more commonly known to Western Mining employees as Roxby Downs and was a copper and uranium mine. the uranium was probably more important than the copper. like most WMC operations it was a well run show. I might have been a little after 1986, anyway I don't remember any egos named Naomi.
For egos please read geos an abbreviation of geologist. Egos was interposed by Apples all knowing spell check. I must say the spell checker has a point though.
Naiomi FFS. The clueless invoking the authority of the surprisingly godless ...
The Pope on his bicycle
Pointman
She is profiled in current NY TImes as http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/16/science/naomi-oreskes-a-lightning-rod-in-a-changing-climate.html?ref=earth highlighting her attacks on "deniers" (whatever that means).
Dr. Oreskes found a link to tobacco- that is not there- so her belief in an apocalypse that is not happening is justified. And her self-indulgent high carbon footprint lifestyle is justified because she discovered a tobacco link that does not exist and believes in an apocalypse that is not occurring.
Got it.
Geoff
"For egos please read geos an abbreviation of geologist. Egos was interposed by Apples all knowing spell check. I must say the spell checker has a point though."
For once apple got it right
rms - thanks for the link
the pose in her pic tells it all, laid back & superior (at least to the wierd spotted dog in the pic)
the rest is worth a read, to much to quote, but -
"Her core discovery, made with a co-author, Erik M. Conway, was twofold. They reported that dubious tactics had been used over decades to cast doubt on scientific findings relating to subjects like acid rain, the ozone shield, tobacco smoke and climate change. And most surprisingly, in each case, the tactics were employed by the same group of people."
made me laugh :-)
extreme consumerism?
Does the EU have guidelines for that?
How many houses can Leonardo DiCaprio own before extreme?
can he buy carbon credits to offset?
I have one house
it has heat and AC
is that too much?
I'm just trying to learn ... I want Naomi to like me
Olympic Dam is still operating, very much so, owned by BHP Billiton.
It is claimed to contain the largest single uranium deposit in the world as well as copper, silver and gold: “ Olympic Dam is now the world’s largest mineral deposit, with an in-ground value of $US863 billion. Subsequent increases in commodity prices lift the estimated value to $US1,286 billion by year end [2010]”:
http://theolympicdamstory.com/Olympic-Dam-History.php
I just listened to this TED talk by Oreskes on why she thinks people should just believe ..
.. and it's just an appalling display of ignorance about how science works and what it is.
That a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1986/09/29/style/naomi-oreskes-is-wed-to-dr-kenneth-belitz.html">wedding report has interesting info
#1 Some one as dumb as Oreskes, and mathematically illiterate..was once a uranium mine geologist !
#2 Her husband had a Ph.D. degree in earth sciences from Stanford
So could it be that she got into being a green activist through her husband ..and then her own guilt trip for in the uranium mining business ?
- Her wild conspiracies might be coming from projection; thinking that "the other side must be as evil as us". As clearly it is her side that have used devious tobacco industry type tactics , all along.
""Watch what people do, don’t listen to what they say, just watch what they do.”
David Suzuki, in Rescue the Earth! By Farley Mowat, 1990
One would not expect that old fraud Suzuki to have an original thought but at least he shouldn't have to steal verbatim from his betters:
"Don't listen to what I say, watch what I do" - P E Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada, 1971. Since used by sundry politicians.
O/T
On BBC 2 at the moment grey haired Johnathon Dimbleby documentary about the BBC at War.
Much as defeating Nazi Tyranny is obviously just and honorable and because as much as i hate to say this but it was BBC propagandizing after all.
The wartime BBC never mentioned the the thousands of refugees who fled British cities during the Luftwaffe onslaught,the appalling high rates of Allied Casualties in the Battle of the Atlantic ,Battle of Britains,Targetting of German Civillans Atrocities against unarmed Civillans by the Russian and some of our other Allies in defeated Germany or perhaps the Pro Nazis Anti Semetic Sympathies in the British Establishment before 1939.
And as we have discovered with the debate about Climate Change and the Political patronage of Jimmy Savile in the end the BBC our national broadcaster with its own independent carter is sadly just the mouth piece of the British Establishment
Dr. Oreskes does the geological sciences a huge disservice with her stance on "climate science" Most of my geologist friends and mining friends think the global warming scare is a total load of hooey.
Possibly, stewgreen, but she seems more like a totalitarian using classical tactics.
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