Will 2019 Bring A New Birth Of Freedom And A New Dedication To The Truth?

With each new year we are ever hopeful that we will see a re-dedication to the principles that made America so successful. FAT CHANCE this year! The forces of darkness are out in full force to try to separate President Donald Trump from the Presidency and science from the truth. The two are interrelated because the President magnificently stands up to the darkness and strongly supports the truth even if, in the case of science, he does not always understand it.

So there is a chance that we will be better off twelve months from now, but it all rests on the shoulders of one man. And half the nation wants him to fail, regardless of the consequences for America. That is very dangerous for everyone. Our totalitarian enemies, from China to Russia to ISIS, have to be rejoicing at our disarray. They need do nothing except watch us self-destruct.

The American experiment with democracy is only about 250 years old, with each year making us stronger – until recently. Personal liberty to speak our minds and make our own economic decisions have been deciding factors in our success versus the rest of the world.

The entire modern world was built with science as its foundation. But science, like America, is only a few centuries old and inherently fragile. When science degenerates into science fiction, anything is possible and nothing is possible. We could easily return to a “Dark Ages” where politics and religion dominated and most people lived in abject poverty. A few very wealthy Kings and Queens ruled peasants at their personal whim.

That gave way in the 20th century to murderous tyrants who ruled by force of arms and propaganda. But America was always there to confront the tyrants and their propaganda. And even the worst of them were smart enough to leave science largely alone, in order to acquire the technology that kept them militarily competitive. Both Stalin and Hitler were sufficiently cunning to avoid interfering with their top physicists. Both wanted and one got nuclear weapons.

My professor, Peter Meyer, who was half Jewish, survived the Second World War in Germany, because he was an accomplished physicist. Nobel Laureate in physics Max Planck was condemned as a “White Jew” for continuing to teach Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. But he was not prevented from doing so.

The 21st century has witnessed a profound misuse of science for political and economic purposes that completely undermines its credibility as an objective disciple and threatens to bankrupt Western democracies. Calls to fight a mythical enemy (Global Warming) at any cost are but one of the scientific scams. These are intended to transfer America’s wealth from the productive to the politically-connected but unproductive elites who keep up hysteria to retain control. In one giant leap, we are moving from a society based on freedom and merit to one that is increasingly in the hands of a few ideological tyrants. Welcome to the future Dark Ages.

A concrete example of this trend comes from the experiences of one Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Washington, Cliff Mass. Cliff is a friend, not because we agree on Global Warming (we do not) but because we are both dedicated to objective science. Scientists can and do disagree. That is how we make progress in understanding the world around us. We challenge each other to get everything right. There is nothing too settled to be challenged. We squabble constructively all the time.

Cliff Mass has done excellent work demolishing the ‘Ocean Acidification’ scam and the many attempts to link increasing atmospheric CO2 to extreme weather events. He recognizes, as do all other scientists with half a brain, that we have not experienced an increase in extreme weather events, despite the relentless propaganda.

Until the recent batch of major hurricanes in the Caribbean, we had a decade long ‘once in 500 year’ hiatus that argued for less extreme weather with increasing CO2. And even the major hurricanes in 2018 were nothing unusual. Hurricane Michael left a large path of destruction and 20 dead. But the ‘Great Hurricane of 1780’ that took a similar path caused more destruction and left 20,000 dead, at a time when there were far fewer people in the region.

We are also closing out 2018 without a single “violent” tornado in the United States. Violent tornadoes are rated as F4+ on the Fujita scale. Tetsuya Fujita was one of many remarkable meteorologists at the University of Chicago when I was a student there. I worked for him more than 50 years ago.

You might well suppose that Cliff Mass would get along with the Far Left at the University of Washington, because he supports their basic premise that carbon dioxide is a problem. Extremists, from the president of the university on down, are usually willing to take such expressions of faith as full support for their politics and quietly ignore the many details that scientists discuss. Furthermore, tenured full professors are supposed to enjoy complete academic freedom to say what they want without retribution.

But Cliff actively campaigned against their plan to seize control of Washington State with a far reaching Carbon Tax (I-1631), designed to fund their favorite projects under the guise of fighting Climate Change. And when he posted a picture of pigs feeding at a trough on his blog, they went berserk, throwing all sorts of insults his way that they usually reserve for us. Never mind that ‘pigs at a trough’ is an old analogy, going back at least two centuries to Russian author Alexander Pushkin: “If there is a trough, there will be pigs!” You might expect those who fancy themselves as intellectuals would know this.

In mid-December Cliff wrote to me: “Thank you for your support Gordon….the attacks have become increasingly strident and vicious over the past few months…although they have been going on for a while…cliff.”

Students accused Mass of “deception, being on the payroll of oil companies, purposely obfuscating with multiple twitter accounts, racism, misogyny, tokenism, Trumpism.” The Assistant Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion claimed that Cliff’s blog had “imagery and text that was racially insensitive and caused offense to a significant number of members in the departmental community.”

There followed a faculty meeting where the Professor and Chair of Atmospheric Sciences, Dale Durran, “hectored Mass throughout the meeting,” according to Judith Curry who wrote about this new inquisition. “The activist students were true to form, hurling all kinds of insulting, personal and inappropriate remarks,” as Mass sat through the proceedings. (Curry is herself a well-known Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech.)

In a rational world headed in the right direction, such extraordinarily bad behavior toward a distinguished professor would be punished, because a university should be a center of learning and tolerance, not a hotbed of immature student behavior supported by a feckless faculty.

Although President Trump has no direct say over such atrocious behavior, he does have considerable say over the vast Federal funding that they receive. If he would fill their trough with less swill, it would break the dominance that these well-fed and arrogant individuals have enjoyed. It is time they went on a strict diet of greatly reduced funding and greatly increased expectations.

Good behavior for scientists includes complete respect for the Scientific Method and the utter honesty that is a large part of it. We should remember that our spectacular advances in science developed from revolutionary Christian and Jewish beliefs that the Almighty looked most favorably upon those who sought the objective truth, not merely a religious or political truth. The many misguided today need to learn what brought about the rise of Western Civilization and America, before their overwhelming arrogance, greed, and stupidity drag us back into another Dark Ages.

Gordon J. Fulks lives in Corbett and can be reached at gordonfulks@hotmail.com. He holds a doctorate in physics from the University of Chicago’s Laboratory for Astrophysics and Space Research and has no conflicts of interest on this subject.

(Unless otherwise noted, the opinions expressed are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Northwest Connection.)