Tag Archives: Persecution

Climate skeptic instructor fired from Oregon State University

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“Climate skeptic instructor fired from Oregon State University“ (2012-06-10). Much like The White Queen, Anthony Watts can swallow any contradiction without a hiccup. Here he does his bit to fan the flames outrage over the persecution “firing” of climate skeptic Nickolas Drapela, an exalted Senior Instructor in chemistry at Oregon State University. It’s dang witch hunt!

First of all, setting aside any question of Nick’s scientific “persecution” (it’s farcical, but we’ll get there), those of us with functioning brains will recall Anthony’s resentful fantasies about how James Hansen and Gavin Schmidt at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies should be fired for their views on climate change (i.e. they describe how it’s happening). He’s even run dumbass polls on the topic, and ‘fire ’em/throw them in jail’ is a steady somnambulistic undercurrent in the comments.

But that’s… different.

OK, let’s turn to the persecution. If we are to believe Nick’s champion Gordon Fulks, OSU is a place where:

“Transgressors who dare to be different are eventually weeded out so that the campus maintains its ideological purity.”

Stalin, Lysenko, politically correct, “Anthropogenic Global Warming, the official religion of the State of Oregon”, hot button, hot button. The on-going reductions in OSU’s funding has nothing to do with it. Nor does the fact that Nick’s basically wandered from university to university for the last fifteen years. It’s definitely malicious persecution.

Next checkmark: Is Nick a fiercely insightful scientist whose careful analysis has disproven AGW and who must be silenced at any cost? Just look at his publication record! Case closed. Well honestly the case never opened because his entire published scientific output is third author on this metabolic chemistry paper from 2000. Gee, I wonder if that contributed to his termination?

Still, there are plenty of laughs in “Global Warming Cracked Open”, a paranoid cut-and-paste “sociopolitical” slide show rant about AGW. Slide 78 of 80 introduces the only science, a pathetic cherry-picked and debunked chart of solar activity from that bastion of scientific integrity, the deceptive “documentary” The Great Global Warming Swindle. He also assures us that “they regularly read all my email communications.”

Now I get it! Anthony Watts and other denialists look at this delusional no-hope nutter and see… themselves. Is this really the donkey you want to hitch your persecution wagon to, Anthony?

Thanks to Tamino’s post The Light of Day for doing the heavy lifting on this one,

Yes, Virginia, you do have to produce those ‘Global Warming’ documents

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“Yes, Virginia, you do have to produce those ‘Global Warming’ documents“. Anthony Watts the citizen-scientist provides a sneering headline to his reprint of a partisan Washington Examiner op-ed.

Right-wing “think tank” the American Tradition Institute says that Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s legal campaign against climate scientist Dr. Michael Mann, who worked at the University of Virginia from 1999 t0 2005, is somehow principled and that the University of Virginia is somehow wasting taxpayer’s money by resisting Cuccinelli’s groundless legal actions.

Cuccinelli have been widely condemned over this in the press and by academic and legal bodies. We covered the fall-out from “Kook’s” first kick at this cat back in October. In a nutshell, Kook is not engaged in an effort to prove that Mann defrauded Virginia taxpayers, and has not demonstrated any reason to believe that the University has information relevant to such an accustion. He just wants to root around and see if he can find anything that can be twisted into an accusation after the fact. It is the near definition of a witch-hunt.

Funny how libertarians rail against government oppression unless they manage to grasp the levers of power. Anthony’s readers salivate over the persecution righteous smiting of Dr. Mann by Tea Party supporter “Kook” Cuccinelli, but they’ll return to howling about their own persecution soon enough.

There’s a useful timeline at the Union of Concerned Scientists, and the Washington Post has a recent report on this.