Mathew 7:16

The Drum at the ABC thoughtfully posted a part of the adjournment speech by Dr Peter Phelps, Member of the New South Wales Legislative Council. I admit having to recheck the post date of the article after having read it… but no, it wasn’t April.

Ignoring the leper's bell on climate change

2 June 2011

From the adjournment debate, New South Wales Legislative Council 1 June 2011:

I comment in this place on the latest adventures in the great global warming swindle that is gripping our nation and most of the formerly civilised world. I will assume that most people know that I am an historian by trade and I come from a time when, at universities, the humanities displayed a healthy scepticism for the self-assured absolutism of the sciences. However, nowadays it seems that the sciences have been corrupted by enough government money and political correctness to have them operating in parallel with their socialist brothers in the humanities. Government money is given to agitate for specific ends. Why are we surprised when the ocean acidification project suddenly finds that - guess what? - oceans are acidifying.

But we should not be so surprised that the contemporary science debate has become so debased. At the heart of many scientists - but not all scientists - lies the heart of a totalitarian planner.

I think we can see where this is going…

One can see them now, beavering away, alone, unknown, in their laboratories. And now, through the great global warming swindle they can influence policy, they can set agendas, they can reach into everyone's lives; they can, like Lenin, proclaim "what must be done".

And it is not a new phenomenon. We should not forget that some of the strongest supporters of totalitarian regimes in the last century have been scientists and, in return, the State lavishes praise, money and respectability on them.

Indeed, how different are today's global warming urgers from those in pre-war Britain, who looked forward to a Britain that would "be centralised and totalitarian"? Those who ignore the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them. The present idolatry for pseudoscience, the claims of settled science and of a scientific consensus - these are the leper's bell announcing the approach of the would-be totalitarian. The bell was not heeded in the 1930s. It should be heeded now.

I’m not sure what he is implying above where he says “most of the formerly civilised world”. Is this some new shibboleth?

Previously the good Dr got into some trouble for this comment,

"You don't get news stories by trying to change perceptions, you get them by reinforcing stereotypes".

Should you wish to have your intelligence insulted again, you can contact him here.

Crikey has some background from 2007.