By ANDREW C. REVKIN January 4, 2013, 11:40 am 94 Comments
In case you missed the coverage and commentary yesterday (the Twitter flow is here), you can now watch Mark Lynas, the British writer and environmentalist who once helped drive Europe’s movement against genetically engineered crops, apologize for those actions and embrace this technology as a vital tool for ending hunger and conserving the environment. He spoke yesterday at the Oxford Farming Conference at Oxford University. (Many other fascinating presentations are now online.)
An excerpt from Lynas’s prepared remarks is below. Here’s his remarkable preamble:
For the record, here and upfront, I apologize for having spent several years ripping up GM crops. I am also sorry that I helped to start the anti-GM movement back in the mid 1990s, and that I thereby assisted in demonizing an important technological option which can be used to benefit the environment.
As an environmentalist, and someone who believes that everyone in this world has a right to a healthy and nutritious diet of their choosing, I could not have chosen a more counter-productive path. I now regret it completely.
The arc of Lynas’s fascinating career is in some ways neatly encapsulated by two acts at Oxford — throwing a cream pie in the face of Bjorn Lomborg, the skeptic of eco-calamity, at a book signing there in 2001, yelling “pies for lies” (see photo below), and now echoing more than a few of Lomborg’s assertions in his lecture at the Oxford Farming Conference on Thursday.
My Take - Lynas goes on to say in the full text of his presentation (it is important that you follow the link to get a full appreciation of what is being said) that virtually all the claims by the greenies against GM foods are based on nothing other than speculation and emotion. He admits that there is absolutely no science behind their position and as a result he abandoned this battle against science, decency, hunger and starvation. In short; the views and arguments presented against GM foods are nothing short of greenie mythology.
However, in spite of this presentation…..,which is really good stuff by the way….., one has to recognize that any person who would throw pies in the face of someone they disagree with intellectually; who would destroy private property over differences of opinion, and march against modern technology as a way of life…. is insane.
I am happy for him that he is progressing in his fight for good mental health and is now capable of some rational thought…at least on this one point....which means that he had to revise his views on a great many greenie orthodoxy's regarding synthetic chemicals of all sorts....but he is still a greenie and still clings on the "science is consensus" nonsense regarding global warming.
His claim that he knows more about this subject than many climatologists is a logical fallacy. The reality is I even probably know more that most climatologists, because most of what they believe is a lie; lies many of them have promoted themselves.
The original foundation for the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's global warming initiatives, The Hockey Stick Graph, has been shown to be fraudulent. Initially the originators of that graph refused to turn over their research in total to outside peer review because – paraphrasing their comments- ‘they have been working on this for years and didn’t want anyone to tear it apart’. That isn't science. If there is no outside peer review it isn't science, and that has always been the understanding within the science community. So the IPCC based its actions on a graph that was not science. Finally Congress pointed out that they paid for a lot of it and they would turn it over or else.
After that was done the world could see why they didn’t want outsiders to see the foundational information for their conclusions. It didn’t matter what numbers you punched in you would get a hockey stick presentation….The Hockey Stick Graph was fraudulent.
Let’s get this right once and for all. Computer models are not science. It may be a component of scientific research, but in itself is not science. Computer models are not much more than Game Boys and will do whatever it is programmed to do. Computer models are merely tools and are incapable of analyzing or thinking for themselves. Game Boy science is incapable of intuitive thought. That is the job of the scientists. The Hockey Stick Graph was junk science and they had to know it. Is it possible that this man who -“knows more than climatologists” – is unaware of all of this?
Then we have all the e-mails showing they were deliberately manipulating the data to generate preconceived conclusions. In fact all of their claims have not only been shown to be based on fraud, everything they have predicted has failed to materialize. That’s why they had to start claiming that these extremely cold winters around the world were being caused by global warming. It has been shown that the polar ice caps are not melting; it has been shown that sea level rises are minute and have been going on for a very long time, and nothing to do with CO2 in the atmosphere. It has been shown that the CO2 levels are rising sharply yet the global temperature hasn’t been rising for 16 years. There is more than enough evidence to show that it is water vapor and changing solar conditions that are behind global temperatures, not anything man is doing.
If he is as knowledgeable as he claims he should be in the forefront condemning them since they still defend the Hockey Stick, they still quote the discredited IPCC, they still claim the polar caps are shrinking, they still claim polar bears are becoming extinct, they still claim warming is continuing in spite of the fact that warming stopped for at least 16 years. Yet he still embraces the ‘consensus’ argument as proof of climate change. Any person who embraces real scientific thought recognizes that consensus is a political concept, not a scientific concept. As Dr. Richard Lindzen said; “It seems to me that if science doesn’t have integrity, it isn’t of much use to people.”
I am happy that he has made important steps in acquiring good mental health, and I hope he continues down the road to improving his mental health; and I hope that eventually he attains sanity and becomes a climate change ‘denier’. When that happens, and he condemns the greenies on climate change……he will be cured.
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