The Thermageddon Cult strikes again

My kind friend professor Niklas Mörner of Stockholm has published approaching 600 papers in the reviewed and general scientific literature over half a century. One of the world's most prolific scientists, he is an internationally renowned expert on sea level and is one of the most gifted instructors of students I have ever had the pleasure to work with.

This charming and lively man, with a soul and a wit that are eternal youth personified, is the latest victim of the vicious hate campaign sedulously waged by the canting profiteers of doom against anyone who dares to speak out against the now-discredited notion that the West should be shut down at once so as to Save The Planet from global-warming Thermageddon.

Bowing to extreme pressure from a handful of mad scientists (mad, that is, at the loss of income and prestige that the inexorable collapse of the Great Lie entails), the managing director of Copernicus scientific publishers, a formless lump of lard by the name of Rasmussen, has killed a promising new journal, Pattern Recognition in Physics.

The appalling Rasmussen's monstrous reason for this 21st-century equivalent of Nazi-era book-burning? In a single glancing reference, the 19 authors who had contributed to a gripping special issue about planetary tidal influences on solar activity, edited by professor Mörner, had dared to dance in church.

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The 19 eminent scientist who had co-written the dozen learned papers in the special issue had suggested – tell it not in Gath and Ashkelon – that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a racketeer-influenced criminal organization headquartered in Switzerland (which conveniently has no RICO statute and has indulged the outfit's outright scientific fraud for decades), might not be right in suggesting that there will be continuing and accelerating man-made global warming.

Unlike Galileo, who also got into trouble over the theological implications of the interaction between the Sun and the planets, professor Mörner did not even get a trial in front of the Holy Inquisition. For the Thermageddon Cult is, to its very roots, instinctually Communist. Fair trial, Tovarishch? No way, Josevich.

The Borg, the New Religion's college of cardinals, had long suspected professor Mörner of heresy. But They could not assimilate him because, like me and a handful of others, he is not part of the grim academic borearchy that is utterly dependent for its daily bread and jam on lavish, taxpayer-funded "research" grants from the Collective. He has retired.

So The Borg assimilated the Copernicus scientific publishing house instead. They made it clear to the rabbit in charge that unless he kowtowed, conformed, submitted, obeyed and toed the line he would have his reputation destroyed just as They always try to destroy the reputations of any who have been curious enough to ask questions about the New Dogma.

Rabbit Rasmussen stood not upon the order of his caving in. He scurried down his hole and caved in at once, squealing.

He waited until the entire special issue, the work of many months, had been completed. Professor Mörner had signed off the final proofs for the printer that very morning. The Rabbit struck. He did not even have the courage to lift the telephone and speak to the professor directly.

Instead, he sent him a curt email shutting down not merely the professor's special issue but the entire journal, making it plain that his sole reason was that the professor and his co-authors had done what real scientists do: They had asked questions. Questions about the holiest of holy doctrines: Man's influence on the weather.

The true scientist, like the man of true religion, is what al-Haytham, the founder of the scientific method, called "the seeker after truth." But, unlike the man of religion, he does not say, "I believe!" He says, "I wonder?" He asks questions.

A few hours after the first email, a second email came, repeating the nonsense about skepticism and, with belated haste, adding a new pretext for closing the journal. The Rabbit said the professor had allowed authors of some papers in the special issue to review other papers in the same issue.

Suppose that had been the Rabbit's real reason. All he had to do was to tell the professor – who had of course obtained reviews from outside the diverse group of 19 authors as well – to get some more outside reviews.

The question whether the process of peer review has been independent is always an important one, and the Rabbit would have been within his rights to protect his firm's reputation by ensuring that the review process was not merely independent (as it already was) but seen to be independent.

However, The Borg do not allow publishing houses to act as publishing houses. When I recently co-authored a paper with professor Fred Singer on the consequences of chaos theory for the predictability of global warming, the editor of Energy & Environment, one of the few journals to allow skeptical science an airing, ordered my name to be taken off the paper on the ground that it would annoy The Borg. Besides, she said, she did not like my politics (of which there was nothing whatsoever in the paper).

These are the points the Rabbit made in rejecting professor Mörner's special issue and shutting down the journal:

1. "Copernicus Publications started publishing the journal Pattern Recognition in Physics (PRP) in March 2013. The journal idea was brought to Copernicus' attention and was taken rather critically in the beginning, since the designated Editors-in-Chief were mentioned in the context of the debates of climate skeptics." And why should taking part in scientific debate debar an editor?
2. "Before the journal was launched, we had a long discussion regarding its topics. The aim of the journal was to publish articles about patterns recognized in the full spectrum of physical disciplines. PRP was never meant to be a platform for climate skeptics." It should be a platform for science, wherever the evidence leads.
3. "Recently, a special issue was compiled entitled 'Pattern in solar variability, their planetary origin and terrestrial impacts.' Besides papers dealing with the observed patterns in the heliosphere, the special issue editors ultimately submitted their conclusions in which they 'doubt the continued, even accelerated, warming as claimed by the IPCC project' (Pattern Recogn. Phys., 1, 205–206, 2013)." The Rabbit stated no reason for daring to dispute their scientific conclusion?
4. "While processing the press release for the special issue, 'Patterns in solar variability, their planetary origin and terrestrial impacts,' we read through the general conclusions paper published on 16 December 2013. We were alarmed by the authors' second implication stating 'This sheds serious doubts on the issue of a continued, even accelerated, warming as claimed by the IPCC project.'" And why was the Rabbit "alarmed"? Because he was told to be.

There is only one reasonable conclusion to be drawn from the above passages. The Age of Reason and Enlightenment is over. The Dark Ages are back.

But I am not taking this one lying down. I have written to the Rabbit telling him I shall take over the journal. Here is a mock-up of the front cover:

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