Mad or bad?

Byron 

Steve McIntyre has been shredding a paper by psychologist Lewandowskyet al called

“NASA faked the moon landing, Therefore (Climate) Science is a Hoax: An Anatomy of the Motivated Rejection of Science”

The paper, which seems to be as McIntyre says, a scam aimed at manipulating opinion rather than a scientific paper, purports to show pretty much what the title suggests. McIntyre’s demolition of the scam can be found here, here and here.

Now I know I’m guilty of mildly abusing climate scientists in general and the BBC in particular, but I cannot imagine writing a scientific paper claiming that my abusive comments are scientifically true, however much I wished to mould the debate to my own views. I just wouldn’t do it.

Okay it’s no worse than calling sceptics deniers with the aim of linking them in the public mind with holocaust deniers, but I do tend to wonder if those who promote mainstream climate alarm are mad or bad.

I mean mad in the sense of incompetent, not insane, and this has tended to be my view for some time I generally see climate alarm as propaganda based on incompetent science. There is a political element, but I tend to view that as a separate issue. Now though I begin to wonder. I wonder if I should see the scientists as bad rather than mad - or some of them at least.

Because this paper is evil by any debating standard. The predictions of climate science are supposedly subject to the normal rules of scientific debate, but it isn’t so is it? The normal rules are being broken all over the place, quite deliberately. 

So – mad or bad?