More comic BS from McIlheran

Patrick McIlheran, the only fully credentialed dendroclimatologist on the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's editorial board, his "climategate" "journalism" since revealed as an embarrassing bust, retreats to more comfortable, familiar territory today, comparing science to a totalitarian regime and portraying scientists as totalitarian actors.

Well, in the sense that physical laws and observations impel the science, science is a totalitarian regime. Where totalitarianism is defined as "subordination of the individual to the state," so is science "subordination of the theory to the fact."

It must be noted here that in that latter sense, Patrick McIlheran's own failures are frequently spectacular. (And, wouldn't you just know it, yet another follows presently.)

But of course that is not the impression McIlheran, who doesn't know the difference between an instrument and a proxy temperature measurement, is hoping to convey. Rather, it's McIlheran's literary equivalent of daubing a portrait of Obama with a Hitler moustache.

Indeed, the WSJ op-ed that is the object of McIlheran's ardor is decorated with a photo of V.I. Lenin and invokes "Stalinism."

And, typically, McIlheran's most compelling sources of "journalism" contain laughable errors of fact. This one jumps out:

Never mind that none of these scenarios has any basis in some kind of observable reality (sea levels around the Maldives have been stable for decades) ...

The latter claim originates with the peculiar ravings of one Nils Axel-Morner, a retired Swedish seismologist better known for advertising the effectiveness of — get ready for this — dowsing.

And if you go here, then you can read all about Nils Axel-Morner's fraud and incompetence along with the debunking of the WSJ author's clueless pronouncement, upon which his "argument" is premised.

As is clearly demonstrated, it's not for no good reasons that serious people dismiss crackpots for what they are: crackpots.

Wouldn't a "journalist" want to know that? Yes, I think so.

Remarkably, this is the garbage an actual member of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's editorial board is feeding its readers. Why?