my point has nothing to do with whether you believe climate change to be a hoax or not, or whether it is a hoax or not.
The point is that someone exposed a bunch of internal documents in an attempt to whistleblow what they considered to be a conspiracy.
The reason there's no parallel with the Birther thing is that no-one in the Obama camp attempted to whistleblow.
The reason there is a comparison with Snowden-NSA is because Snowden was a whistleblower.
The paper in the article holds up the climate change conspiracy theory as "it can't be a conspiracy because no-one attempted to whistleblow it" while completely ignoring that someone DID try to whistleblow it.
Again, whether or not there was actually any conspiracy doesn't matter. Someone "on the inside" thought there was and attempted to whistleblow. It needs to be included in the list of failed conspiracies regardless of whether it actually was a conspiracy or not.
At no point have I criticised anything about climate change, or even suggested that it might not be the most urgent pressing thing that human society faces.
But the automatic downvoting/criticising happens to any post that dares to mention anything like Climategate. I had to think twice before mentioning it because I knew I'd lose some of my precious internet points.
If this happens here, where there are no consequences, what happens in academia, where the penalties of being sceptical are so much more serious, even career-threatening?
> If this happens here, where there are no consequences, what happens in academia, where the penalties of being sceptical are so much more serious, even career-threatening?
Looks like some of your points were restored, but I'll note I downvoted you for the above. It's ridiculous to assert some relationship between this message board and academia, or that downvotes are responding specifically to a single cherrypicked idea from that post.
It ends up being complaining about downvotes with a not so subtle insinuation that the subject wasn't given a fair shot (when it was actually widely and very publicly investigated) and you're begging the question by asserting that any dismissal of the question is evidence of dismissal of the question for a specific reason, when it could just be that some questions have already been addressed and so are no longer worth more time than it takes to give a downvote.
The point is that someone exposed a bunch of internal documents in an attempt to whistleblow what they considered to be a conspiracy.
The reason there's no parallel with the Birther thing is that no-one in the Obama camp attempted to whistleblow.
The reason there is a comparison with Snowden-NSA is because Snowden was a whistleblower.
The paper in the article holds up the climate change conspiracy theory as "it can't be a conspiracy because no-one attempted to whistleblow it" while completely ignoring that someone DID try to whistleblow it.
Again, whether or not there was actually any conspiracy doesn't matter. Someone "on the inside" thought there was and attempted to whistleblow. It needs to be included in the list of failed conspiracies regardless of whether it actually was a conspiracy or not.