Following on from my article about ‘Mostly Peaceful’ Climate Alarmism (which incidentally received some positive reader responses), Reaction has just published a follow-up piece that will hopefully develop into a series on the subject:
… this climate Lysenkoism is given blanket coverage. The message is ubiquitous (albeit sometimes subliminal) and in starker terms can be summarised as: “hot weather is caused by climate change, and mankind has caused climate change by producing CO2. There is an existential emergency!”.
This ‘consensus’ is so consensual that it seemingly needs to be rammed home at every opportunity – almost as if this message (rather than the planet) is fragile, a complex construct that needs to protection from awkward questions or detailed analysis.
The Reaction article was hitting word limits, so I was unable to expand the second paragraph above:
The ‘consensus’ is so consensual such that - for the ‘greater good’ - the authorities deem it appropriate to do away with / bypass the principles of obaining informed consent.
What could possibly go wrong?! What’s a bit of informed consent or bodily autonomy (or lack thereof) between nudge unit and citizen?
And while this is touched on in the article, it is of course the exact playbook we saw from the ‘pandemic preparedness’ crowd as they sought to promote their pharmaceutical interventions. What is extraordinary - but perhaps, on reflection, somewhat unsurprising - is the extent to which the same characters pop up as the main agitators.
Obtaining informed consent before a medical operation is a golden rule of medicine, and instilling fear is unethical:
In 2010, the authors of the MINDSPACE document — one of whom is Dr David Halpern, a member of SAGE and the SPI-B — recognised the significant ethical dilemmas arising from the use of influencing strategies that impact subconsciously on the country’s citizens and emphasised the importance of consent. Indeed, they could not be clearer: “policymakers wishing to use these tools … need the approval of the public to do so”. They go on to suggest some practical ways of acquiring this consent, including the facilitation of “deliberative forums” where a representative sample of several hundred people are brought together for a day or more to explore an issue and reach a collective decision. I am unaware of any public consultation of this type being conducted to gain the public’s permission to use covert psychological strategies.
Yet the British Psychological Society’s ethics committee managed to come up with the somewhat depraved reasoning to justify terrorising citizens of this country ‘for the greater good’. Yes, you may invoke visions of the Neighbourhood Watch crowd/coven in Hot Fuzz:
Yet they deny responsibility. But by contributing to the panic (playing into the hands of those that sought to present the novel injections as a ‘saviour’), these nudgers - using covert, manipulative psychological strategies - added momentum to the Covidean juggernaut, leading to excessive and wanton cost, and unspeakably evil damage to those who were coerced or mandated to undergo unnecessarily risky medical interventions. This is now being recognised by those who had previously accepted the nudgers’ nudgings as gospel:
The entire population was vaccinated or offered the vaccine, which now looks like a terrible idea when there were deaths among young people who really had no need to be vaccinated. They were not at risk from Covid. The mantra was it limited transmission. We hear less about that now. Parliament was shut down. Government colluded with social media giants to suppress legitimate questions about the origin of the virus and all manner of other policy debates.
Especially given how wrong they got things and the damage they caused, it is somewhat worrying to find the nudgers now attempting to reinforce the climate narrative. On top of the main examples listed in the my recent Reaction article, consider this bold as brass statement from Sky:
Using behavioural science techniques, Sky and BIT [the Behavioural Insights Team] set out ten new behavioural science principles to guide broadcasters on helping their viewers to take action. The study develops a clear role for content creators and broadcasters to inspire green behaviours from their viewers, as well as revealing data on consumer attitudes to climate change…
It comes at a critical time as experts now widely accept that we must shift the behaviour of millions of people to deliver on our collective net zero goals.
The report, “The power of TV: nudging viewers to decarbonise their lifestyles”, is launched at the United Nations’ 26th Climate Conference in Glasgow by Dana Strong, Sky Group CEO, Professor David Halpern, BIT, and Mark Strong, actor and Executive Producer of Sky's Temple.
Oh look. Psychologist Professor Halpern again: a government adviser who worked on some of the Covid messaging. He has stated that:
“although in general fear-based messaging is not effective, and its use can be defended in extreme circumstances”.
He goes on to say:
“There are times when you do need to cut through… particularly if you think people are wrongly calibrated”.
“Wrongly calibrated”?!
Perhaps I’ll just leave that there. This is totalitarian Lysenkoism.
As clearly outlined previously, the message - and the means of delivery - were (and are) unethical. That aside, it brings to the fore the question of credentialism, and the (ridiculous) idea that a well-argued position is undermined because they are not deemed expert in the field. It is inappropriate for him to pass himself off as such, or qualified to represent any consensus on that matter.
In my Reaction article I quote two geographers who demand “swift and decisive action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions immediately”. But:
Consider Dr John Clauser, the recipient of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics, who recently criticised the climate emergency narrative, calling it “a dangerous corruption of science that threatens the world’s economy and the well-being of billions of people” and that “there is no climate crisis and that increasing CO2 concentrations will benefit the world”. People with such credentials should have their hypotheses examined — not shouted down.
Is it not obvious whose concerns should be weighted more heavily?
As I wrote only a few months ago:
And to those in whom these short paragraphs have triggered a zealot’s rage, consider this: nothing screams ‘partisan belief system’ more than resorting to ad hominem smear tactics and an inability to debate actual facts when confronted with genuine inconvenient truths.
It’s time to banish 21st century Lysenkoism.
The idea that they would ask the public if they agreed with being nudged into a suitable opinion!!!! Everybody thinks they are a free independent thinker who makes their own decisions on everything so nobody would acknowledge having been nudged into a position. Ergo, nobody would agree to the idea of being nudged in the first place!!!! The authorities know this so they presumably never intending asking for permission before launching into all their nasty propaganda. Interestingly, people might think the weather is changing, they may even think it's probably humanity's fault, but they don't seem willing to change their lifestyle because of it and consequently many of them can see the one-sided propaganda being thrust in their faces. Makes me think that, actually, many people were quite happy with being terrorised about a cold - the propaganda gave them permission to behave in ways they would never have dreamt of behaving in before.