The correct answer, which he misses, is that they hanker for a world in which women stayed on pedestals instead of sneaking off to bang strange males. Women are very susceptible to authority and social pressure, and will be good if a strong hand keeps them good. If we read western history as written by people who lived it, a thousand years or so ago, it is clear that in one sense women were sacred and had extremely high status – higher wereguild for women, unthinkable for a nobleman to harm a noblewoman, and the politics of the time makes no sense unless the historian and his contemporaries assumed that wives and mothers had a lot of say in who their husbands and sons supported in battle. But in another sense extremely low status: Marriages were decided by the patriarch of the family, women had little say in who they married, they had no legal rights, being largely the property of their fathers, then their husbands. Theoretically a woman had to formally consent to a marriage, but we often read of marriage arrangements being made with no apparent concern for the opinion of the woman. A woman could not represent herself in court, being legally just a part of her father’s household, then her husbands household, and if she survived her husband, then her sons household.

I interpret this as putting women on pedestals, and chaining them to the pedestal – a system dear to the hearts of conservatives, and which seems to have worked very well – to claim that women are superior within the proper sphere of women, implies that women and men are very different, in some ways better, in other ways worse, in some ways superior, in others inferior.

Predictably the boot came down on them hard.

Academia is indeed like a communist country.  They don’t shoot dissidents in Academia, but communist thought control seldom found it necessary to shoot  people.  It worked by quietly blighting the lives of troublesome people.  The greengrocer that failed to put up the sign “Workers of the World Unite”  was not sent to Siberia.  Rather, his job was redefined to be of lower status, and he was denied permission to holiday in Bulgaria.  For most purposes, this sufficed in the Soviet Union, and its equivalent suffices in Academia.  Climate “Science” is the norm.  It is the way Academia has worked since the seventies.

Does that sounds paranoid?   Here is some evidence for paranoia:

Every authority before 1970 that mentions Lamarck’s position on common descent says Lamarck proposed common descent, often quoting from Lamarck at length.  Every authority after 1970 that mentions his position on common descent says that Lamarck rejected common descent, without, however quoting anything substantial from Lamarck, or mentioning that past authorities disagreed.

To check this google for Lamarck and common descent before 1970, and after 1970.  You will find a couple of seeming counterexamples from after 1970, but if you look them up, you will see Google got the dates wrong.

After 1970, as part of the rewrite of Darwinism, they deprecated survival of the fittest as excessively racist, making it necessary to credit Darwin with something else – that something else being common descent.  Since Darwin was now credited with common descent, it was necessary to deny that Lamarck proposed common descent.

Similarly, when the Soviet Encyclopedia removed Beria from history, it was necessary to adjust the history accordingly Bergholz accordingly, and when Winston Smith removed an unperson from Big Brother’s speech, it was necessary to replace him with something else.  Since Darwin was now credited with common descent, it was necessary to deny that Lamarck proposed common descent. That the history of science is abruptly revised, and all academics everywhere docilely uniformly, and abruptly fall into line without a word of dissent, or the slightest interest in what the original documents said, is apparent in the abrupt Winston Smith style 1970 rewrite of the history of thought on evolution.

The Institute is concerned that, unless the disclosed e-mails are proved to be forgeries or adaptations, worrying implications arise for the integrity of scientific research in this field and for the credibility of the scientific method as practised in this context.

In plainer words, climate science lacks credibility.  That climate scientists tell us we are doomed unless we repent of our sins against Gaea is not good reason to think we are doomed.

The CRU e-mails as published on the internet provide prima facie evidence of determined and co-ordinated refusals to comply with honourable scientific traditions … This extends well beyond the CRU itself – most of the e-mails were exchanged with researchers in a number of other international institutions who are also involved in the formulation of the IPCC’s conclusions on climate change.

Yes, they are condemning the entire field, not just Phil Jones, not just Hadley CRU

… proxy reconstructions are the basis for the conclusion that 20th century warming is unprecedented. Published reconstructions may represent only a part of the raw data available and may be sensitive to the choices made and the statistical techniques used. Different choices, omissions or statistical processes may lead to different conclusions. This possibility was evidently the reason behind some of the (rejected) requests for further information.

In plainer words, evidently the reason that Climate scientists refused to make their data available because if other people looked at the data, they would have concluded the climate scientists were full of $#@%. This is a reference to the alternate climate reconstructions in Steve McIntyre’s report on the CRU emails.

The e-mails reveal doubts as to the reliability of some of the reconstructions and raise questions as to the way in which they have been represented; for example, the apparent suppression, in graphics widely used by the IPCC, of proxy results for recent decades that do not agree with contemporary instrumental temperature measurements.

This is a reference to “Mike’s Nature trick … to hide the decline”

There is also reason for concern at the intolerance to challenge displayed in the e-mails. This impedes the process of scientific ’self correction’, which is vital to the integrity of the scientific process as a whole, and not just to the research itself. In that context, those CRU e-mails relating to the peer-review process suggest a need for a review of its adequacy and objectivity as practised in this field and its potential vulnerability to bias or manipulation.

Peer review was in practice priestly review for theological correctness.

Fundamentally, we consider it should be inappropriate for the verification of the integrity of the scientific process to depend on appeals to Freedom of Information legislation. Nevertheless, the right to such appeals has been shown to be necessary. The e-mails illustrate the possibility of networks of like-minded researchers effectively excluding newcomers. Requiring data to be electronically accessible to all, at the time of publication, would remove this possibility.

Climate researchers should make their data available as a matter of course.

The scope of the UEA review is, not inappropriately, restricted to the allegations of scientific malpractice and evasion of the Freedom of Information Act at the CRU. However, most of the e-mails were exchanged with researchers in a number of other leading institutions involved in the formulation of the IPCC’s conclusions on climate change. In so far as those scientists were complicit in the alleged scientific malpractices, there is need for a wider inquiry into the integrity of the scientific process in this field.

As they said before, it is not just CRU, it is the entire field of climate research

How independent are the other two international data sets?

13. Published data sets are compiled from a range of sources and are subject to processing and adjustments of various kinds. Differences in judgements and methodologies used in such processing may result in different final data sets even if they are based on the same raw data. Apart from any communality of sources, account must be taken of differences in processing between the published data sets and any data sets on which they draw.

All one big conspiracy.

… unless the disclosed e-mails are proved to be forgeries or adaptations, worrying implications arise for the integrity of scientific research in this field and for the credibility of the scientific method as practised in this context.

The CRU e-mails as published on the internet provide prima facie evidence of determined and co-ordinated refusals to comply with honourable scientific traditions … This extends well beyond the CRU itself – most of the e-mails were exchanged with researchers in a number of other international institutions who are also involved in the formulation of the IPCC’s conclusions on climate change.

Compare and contrast with the official press response, which was that there was nothing to see in the Climategate files.

Climate science cannot credibly claim to be science.

Patients were left unwashed in their own filth for up to a month as nurses ignored their requests to use the toilet or change their sheets;

…

Wards were left filthy with blood, discarded needles and used dressings …

…

…  Food and drink were left out of reach, forcing patients to drink water from flower vases. …

The problem is that those would provide socialist medicine for the indigent, want to provide it for the middle class.  Singapore has truly socialist medicine for the poor, truly private medicine for the rich.  America has semi private medicine for all, which is a dreadful system, though probably not as bad as England’s system.

Microsoft reports to law enforcement to what extent they spy on users, the report was leaked, and the interesting fact is that they log less than anyone else.  They only log the last ten logins, and when you delete emails from a hotmail account, they really are deleted from Microsoft’s servers – unlike Google mail on Google servers.

Whatever the mechanism, Unwin’s observation is validated yet again.

Peer review keeps out cranks, but it also keeps out the impious. It makes it safe for a science to become a religion, and for scientists to become priests of a state sponsored theocracy. Cranks have never been a threat to science, state sponsored theocracy has always been a threat to science, thus peer review has always been a failure. It is caused by science becoming theology, and causes science to become theology.

Back in the days when physics made dramatic progress, there was little peer review, perhaps none. For example, “Electrodynamics of Moving bodies” was not peer reviewed, and my guess is that today it would never have passed peer review – because it was written by a patent clerk, and was in large part a novel way of looking at results that were a hundred years old. Outsiders, and novel ways of looking at things are pretty much guaranteed to fail peer review.

Bubbles can go on for a long time, and they always last longer than those calling the bubble expect.  Conversely, however, they always burst earlier than most people expect, and people do not realize the bubble is bursting until a considerable time after the bubble has in fact burst.  The bubble bursts when the smart money rushes to the exits, and the smart money rushes to the exits long before the vast majority realize that the smart money has upped and left.  You want to exit a bubble when the majority of the smart money, not the majority of the public, is exiting, which for the recent housing and triple A CDO  bubble was not 2008, but late 2005.

The cleanest and least destructive way out of this crisis will be to default on treasury bonds, but I fear the government may instead proceed with hyperinflation.