by Guest

contribution by Tomas Rawlings

Yesterday was Fossil Fools day – when a small clique of climate change deniers gather at Parliament to decry logical and the scientific method.

Yet the ever thinning ranks of even vaguely credible people associated with climate denial has finally jumped the shark with an article that once and for all lays bare the real thinking behind climate denial; not science but pure naked ideology. Strip away the ideology and all that’s left is profit.



Our king-jester is Telegraph and Spectator columnist Christopher Booker.

In a Dan-Brown-esqe article dramatically entitled ‘Scientists in Hiding’ the sage Brooker tells us there exists a secret cabal of scientists who know that some of the most powerful theories is science are wrong (evolution, climate change) – and yet, tragedy of tragedy, they cannot expose it’s fallacy for fear of retribution.

In the bizzario world of Brooker, the rambling plot of his ‘The Darwin Code’ gives us common talking points that US evangelical creationists have been peddling for decades. He then draws connections form Creationism to Climate Change. Brooker’s tome of suppressed knowledge exposes Darwinian Evolution to the light of truth; “…why does every fossil we find so identifiably belong to a discrete species?

Where are all the ‘intermediate forms’ between one species and another?” In Brooker’s novel this is a revelatory moment when the huddled masses get to see the Hiram Key of Solomon. False scientists flee as the great columnist opens his Pandora’s Box…

There is a much more fun answer to Brooker simplistic question – I’d suggest a quick listen to a professor of Developmental Biology demolish a Creationist by listing off the transitional forms that preceded the modern whale; Pakicetus, Ambulocetus, Rhodcetus, Basilosaurus and so on. Forms the so-called Creationist expert had never even heard of.

Brooker’s argument is so full of holes you could use it to water the garden. Is Einstein famous for following the consensus? No, we know him for turning Newtonian Physics on it’s head. What about poor Darwin? Is he remembered for penning tomes in support of the status-quo? No.

In science you make your name via discoveries that challenge the conventional, buy ploughing new furrows. Eternal fame and a vast fortune await the scientist who could overturn Evolution or Climate Change. All you need is the evidence. Which is where it all falls down.

The scientific case against Evolution was lost about 100 years ago. The scientific case against Climate Change was lost decades ago. Those still opposing these ever growing theories do so motivated only by ideology.

This is not a battle of science but of politics. Booker and his ilk want us to trust magic for biology and a giant pollution casino for our future. Only the the polluters, looking to keep profit high, benefit from this intellectual vacuum.