The sanctioned punishment of climate skeptics becomes more than just a few aberrant ideas, and is following some historical parallels
First, I loathe having to write essays like this, but I think it is necessary given the hostile social climate now seen to be emerging.
Yesterday, WUWT highlighted the NYT cartoon depicting killing “deniers” for having a different opinion, today I want to highlight Naomi Orekses and Suzanne Goldenberg, who seem seem to like the idea of having climate “deniers” arrested under RICO act for thought collusion, all under the approving eye of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard.
Watch the video:
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Tallbloke's Talkshop 
“publicly identifying groups for exclusion, inciting hatred or cultivating indifference, and justifying their pariah status to the populace.”
Indeed. We should recognise the value of and protect free and open debate between people who are interested in science, despite minor quibbles and differences of opinion, or even strong scientific disagreement on fundamental grounds.
When people are declared to be pariahs because of their scientific approach to the data, something has gone badly wrong with the civilised principles of tolerance and respect for free speech and free thought.
These are desperate attempts to distract attention from the chronic lack of scientific evidence in support of agenda-driven warmist assertions. It’s going pear-shaped for the AGW crowd and they need scapegoats.
I think some (many?) of the shrillest voices now recognise that they cannot, and never could, achieve their foolish carbon-lite aspirations. At least, not before this planet is running mostly on nuclear power.
Ultimately, it does not matter what sceptics say or do, or what names they are called. China, India, Russia, Brazil…..they are going to do what they are going to do, and the anti-carbonites are going to have to suck it up.
So yes, OB, they may be looking for scapegoats.
Unless they’re hypocrites, presumably when they realise CAGW isn’t happening, they’ll all commit Seppuku.
“… When people are declared to be pariahs because of their scientific approach to the data, something has gone badly wrong with the civilised principles of tolerance and respect for free speech and free thought.”
Yes, I could not agree more. And that goes for the CAGW alarmists as well as those on the skeptical side also. It is just as bad to trash people looking at cycles as those who don’t believe in a magic co2 molecule capable of destroying the planet.
With a multi-trillion pound industry, an entire ideological framework which reaches very deeply into modern society and the reputations of very many powerful people on the line, it would be foolish indeed to think that the opposition, in desperation, will not attempt to forcefully silence critics using the ‘rule of law’. I believe they will to a degree. How successful they will be in that endeavour I do not know. The harsh reality of Nature and the even harsher reality of economics will ultimately determine whether they think such an audacious move is viable. It’s not that they’re in two minds about whether it’s justified. They are mad enough to believe it is. It’s whether they think they can pull it off on a global scale.
tallbloke:
sorry about the post on climate etc…it was not directed at you, but rather at a troll on the board; you have always seemed to me to be quite reasonable and affable… and no, that isnt me in that google scholar search…nice blog btw.
I’ve been watching these conversations for years, and the level of vitriol is starting to disturb me. The ‘joke’ about killing people doesn’t strike is as particularly funny.
Somehow we’ve gotten stuck in a pattern of conversation that seems to be edging towards a violent confrontation.
I’d rather change the conversation entirely before people start getting hurt.
Suppose we take the entire subject of climate and science out of the realm of politics, and restore it to its proper place as scientific inquiry.
For example, we’ve been working on a solution for cheap energy. Such solutions take open minds, a willingness to ask hard questions, and courage to face those hard questions from others. Projects like ours could help move us to science, and away from politics.
For our information. we’ve put together a short paper covering the physics, which is at: http://www.thermawatts.com/the-atec-concept.html.
Detailed test results on prototype units are here:
http://www.thermawatts.com/atec-test-results.html.
The test results document runs about 70 pages (including pretty pictures), and should include everything needed to replicate it. The raw test data is all shared on the same page.
QD: Great that you’re ready to go public with your preliminary results. Very best of luck with developing your prototypes further.
David, thanks for the clarification, and welcome to the talkshop. I did wonder if Johanna had mistaken your comment as being directed at me, so kept my response carefully neutral. Apologies if my misidentification put you beyond your years. 😉
Thanks, tallbloke.
I really wish the prototypes were cheap enough to make that I could say “Try this at home”, which would be perfect for the Talkshop. Alas, growing them takes Molecular Beam Epitaxy (or a similar process), which is a bit expensive.
The best I can do is share all my data.
QD: I’d like to do a separate post on your work and the fundamental scientific implications, but I wouldn’t know where to start trying to summarise what you’ve done. If you find the time to write an article everybody can follow, I’ll post it here.
Thanks. It would be my pleasure.
They are dangerous unprincipled losers.
QD, just one question, if ATEC generates voltage without a ‘cold side’ ie like a single ended thermocouple style device, what would stop someone from placing an infinite number of ATEC devices in a heat source, generating infinite power, without removing heat from the heat source?
Would this not be a never ending power source?
Thing is that magic which is promoted where the magic itself if used would make them stinking rich always raises my eyebrow.
Do it.
Get money. Get kudos. Retire.
It is possible they are so clueless they don’t know what to do. Now read what they write about themselves.
steverichards1984,
Good question. I don’t clearly address it (yet).
The short answer is conservation of energy.
When a charge carrier moves against a voltage, it loses energy. I’ve set up a series of layers where carriers are more likely to move against the voltage than with it. It is their thermal energy (heat) that drives the movement, so it’s their thermal energy which is consumed.
@Q Daniels; I read some of your ATEC pdf. As well as test work. I don’t see anything that makes me jump up. A test of gravity batteries gave me better yields. Not much that much better though. Milli volts and micro amps are not all that exciting. The problem with many of these phenomena, is that the effect is very small over short distances and less over larger distances, so only huge volume gives usable outputs. Layered epitaxial deposition of semiconductors is not easy to control for multi layers of the number you propose. Maybe not even possible with today’s technology. Heat is not good for doped silicon as the different dopents give different coefficients of expansion. Junctions can be fragile when they are directly linked one on the other. One junction not too bad, two some difficulty, three very difficult, more?????????? good luck. pg
QD: Thanks for coming back to me.
I can understand electron movement due to external energy impinging on a surface/junction etc.
As I understand it, your proposed technology ‘uses’ heat energy to generate electricity without a ‘cold side’.
Therefore, one could suggest that a gutted refrigerator cabinet, into which is placed a million of your ATEC junctions, would generate electricity by ‘consuming’ the heat energy currently existing within the cabinet.
This would cause the temperature within the cabinet to decrease in exchange for the electricity output.
Do you suggest this is potentially possible?
I have my doubts.
stevenrichards1984, you’re welcome. Yes, that is one of our target applications. That’s one of the notions that some people have a problem with. The model I pointed p.g.sharrow to (below) is for -23C, or colder than my freezer, and that model would take a couple cc of material for the freezer. It is only a model, and not empirical results, so salt it to taste.
p.g.sharrow,
Thanks for looking. No, the numbers as they stand aren’t terribly exciting. Maybe that’s part of why we’ve been having trouble getting traction. We’ve been focusing on making sure we’ve got it right, on the theory that it can scaled up with narrower band-gap materials. Section 3.4 shows HgCdTe, which is a much better material.
The prototypes we’ve built, I chose for ease of manufacture. One-off semiconductors aren’t cheap, and often don’t work right the first time. We’ve had 3 prototypes made, and all three worked. They’ve got 19 or 20 junctions (depending on which version).
The power should scale as a function of exp(-Eg/kbT) where Eg is the band-gap and kbT is 0.025 eV at ambient. For the prototypes I have, the controlling Eg was 1.97 eV, giving a power proportional to exp(-39). Better materials should be under 0.25 eV, or about exp(-10). That’s exponentially better.
The short form of that babble is that I think we can achieve at least 10^12 times the power density.
The facade is perhaps cracking. Adaptation gets multiple chapters in the latest IPCC report, mitigation none.
http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/9176121/armageddon-averted/
In other words, even if you pile pessimism upon pessimism, assuming relatively little decarbonisation, much global enrichment and higher climate ‘sensitivity’ than now looks plausible — leading to more rapid climate change — you still, on the worst estimate, hurt the world economy in a century by only about as much as it grows every year or two. Rather than inflict an awful economic toll, global warming would make our very rich descendants — who are likely to be maybe eight or nine times as rich as we are today, on global average — a bit less rich.