The “Consensus” of Power

I just read that 97% of climate scientists agree that human activity (production, travel, egregious waste, etc.) is causing the earth’s climate to warm. Within the union shop that constitutes “climate scientists” (all employed either by the government or its mouthpiece, academia), apparently only 3% dare to allow that they harbor even the slightest doubts on that proposition, these including the redoubtable Judith Curry, lately of the faculty of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta.

I believe this. Young professionals clawing at the nether tails of respected, rewarding (government-subsidized) careers are understandably loath to spurn such shreds as they might fasten their underpaid, under-regarded paws onto (how could you justify doing so to your clinging spouse and your helpless, mewling spawn?). Older ones, perhaps retiring at the moment, such as Dr. Curry, are at the end of the game and, like retired generals and security chiefs, reveal their true feelings in their last minutes in the spotlight. I fear I might have done the same in their places, but such never befell me, my failings having eliminated me from the running long before any such moment might have occurred (one must have a modicum of credibility, or at least endurance, to reach such a point).

Being, as I am, not only a Climate Change Skeptic (of course it’s changing) but also a Holocaust Revisionist (of course there “was” a “Holocaust,” with a capital H, even), I couldn’t resist seeing a parallel between the professions of “climate scientist” and of “historian,” the great majority of whom are employed by academia (remember “mouthpiece” academia?). There exist in the Historian category a few enterprising agents, such as David Irving (innocent entirely of academic experience above secondary school) who are called historians by some, but rejected by those in possession of a union card (a Ph.D. from some government-funded institution or other). From this ensues a great deal of argumentum ad vericundum, argument from authority, be it that of the government or of … powers of all manner and description except that all such powers command both money and its handmaiden, power.

It came to my perfervid imagination to wonder, what if the entire “community” (it’s no community of any sort, viewed in full) of historians were subjected to the question, “Did the Nazis erect and use gas chambers to kill many thousands of people during World War II?” with their answers to be published with their names? Would three percent say “no”? Ten percent? Zero percent? This would be interesting. Would abstentions be allowed? And so on.

Consensus is a social phenomenon. It should not be mistaken for anything that might point toward truth, or even the true feelings (if any) of the persons responding to the call that leads to the “consensus.” It points, rather, to Power.

Watch out. Conformity with a real or even perceived consensus is no guide to the truth, or facts, or even the true feelings of those conforming. A “landslide” (or consensus) does not a truth make. Rather the contrary, as a rule. Perhaps it promises security to those conforming. Or power.