It’s a question worth asking today, with the sad news of Stephen Hawking’s death. The celebrated cosmologist was only 76, which suggests his life was cut short by complications of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis [ALS].

By all accounts, Hawking was a climate alarmist—which is hardly a crime, let alone if you’re too busy doing real science to investigate eco-nonscience—but I doubt even he would have approved of John Cook’s Arctic Antics.

To quote Wikipedia [emphasis as in original],

The Ice Bucket Challenge, sometimes called the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, is an activity involving the dumping of a bucket of ice and water over a person’s head, either by another person or self-administered, to promote awareness of the disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, also known as motor neurone disease and in the US as Lou Gehrig‘s disease) and encourage donations to research.

And here’s John Cook signalling his virtue on YouTube by suffering (or making Lewandowsky suffer) for the ALS cause:

Arctic Challenge » Cook » cropped » GIFs » 9@2x new
Fake experts raising money for a fake charity,
unless this footage is fake.

Wait, no, silly me. Lewandowsky describes the video thus:

Cabot Institute Director Prof Rich Pancost has been nominated by fellow colleague Prof Steve Lewandowsky to do the Arctic Sea Ice Bucket challenge to raise awareness of the impacts of climate change on Arctic sea ice and to help raise funds for climate research.

Or at least he used to. Sometime after I grabbed the above text, Lewandowsky appears to have deleted it—perhaps in a belated attempt to avoid feedback like this:

Mikeishere1st 3 years ago
This is an outrage! Ice bucket challenge was supposed to be for ALS awareness / donations.  ALS and Parkinson’s are REAL diseases.  Man made global warming has never been proven to be significant or any problem at all.

But Cook was too lazy to delete the damning boilerplate from his video:

I (belatedly) answer Jason Box’s Arctic Sea Ice Bucket Challenge, in order to raise awareness of the impacts of climate change on Arctic sea ice and to help raise funds for climate research.

Like perverted [in]versions of Robin Hood, our adversaries think nothing of hijacking a meme intended to help poor people like Stephen Hawking (only poorer, in most cases) and giving the proceeds to their rich friends in the Alternative and Imaginary Sciences.

Fake charities were funny twenty years ago, when George Costanza did them. But John Cook is no Jason Alexander, and climate research is no Human Fund.

And yes, the title of my post is hyperbolic. I’m sure the money diverted from ALS research by these twisted fucks wouldn’t have literally made the difference between a cure and not-a-cure. Not in time to save Stephen Hawking, at least.

Still—it’s the principle.

Memo to John, Stephan, the aptly-named Rich et hoc genus omne:

If you have to be schooled in human decency by a YouTube commenter, maybe it’s time to consider a career as a different species, hmm? And by different I mean lower. (I hear the rock spiders are hiring at this time of year, though some genera may insist on a Child Safety Check so you’ll probably need to shop around.)

Finally, check out the walking spittoons who just couldn’t resist trying to Krush “Mikeishere1st’s” objection:

Rob Honeycutt

Rob Honeycutt 3 years ago

Only… every single scientific organization on the planet believes it’s real and a significant problem for humanity. And nearly every published research paper on the subject agrees it’s real. And nearly every researcher working in this field believes this is real. So, yeah. Other than that we’re just fine.

Greg Laden

 Greg Laden 3 years ago

Sorry, global warming caused by the release of fossil Carbon mainly as the greenhouse gas CO2 is for real.

Ouch! Well done, Rob ‘N’ Greg And His Merry Krew: it only took you five logical fallacies or garden-variety falsehoods to, like, totally put Mikeishere1st in his place—several rungs above you on the evolutionary ladder.

 

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22 Comments

  3. Beth

    Tenured towers can hovels be,
    With book clad walls for warmth, or effect,
    But besieged by student oiks,
    Who from your mind would tear
    Your very soul
    Or complain most bitterly
    When their drivel you do judge.
    Indeed the real world of unjust demand
    Is known too well.

    Liked by 1 person

  4. Alan, know something of yr history, presenting students with more
    than the single POV.

    Re the walled academy that Universities have becometh,
    where coteries create enthralled spaces, no good cometh
    of it.

    This guy received the Inquisition letter of warning from his university
    but has chosen to defy it.

    Liked by 2 people

  7. Beth twas not upon myself did I but comment. Twas about the changing stature of student-academic relations in the UK, much of which has transpired since I left academia. But I experienced the first stages. Paying hefty tuition fees, students have become customers, gradually demanding a better product for their pound. They now demand value (determined by them) and protest when it does not come. Academics are the sole judge of value and this does not sit well with those paying the tune. Many academics are there for research and teaching undergraduates is a chore. This is recognized and resented by many students. Some universities now are not happy places. The path to tenure is now strewn with ever more hazards. But I look on increasingly from afar, my experience increasingly distant, but still sympathetic.

    Change topic Brad? Better perhaps than changing reality.

    Liked by 2 people

  8. The Post That Refuses To Give Up The Ghost…

    Living on the littoral is Nay-chur’s way.
    No one’s sacrosanct, like Feynman says.
    ‘If it don’t match observations, well then,
    it’s wrong.’ That’s the icy water tipped on head.
    Trouble is, in the social-sci departments
    of universities, values’ education rules,
    safe places for profs and students who
    conform to it, less safe for those who don’t.
    China’s Cultural Revolution’s a case study
    model for Gramsci- Alinskyites’ long march
    through institutions. Free enquiry R – I – P.

    Liked by 2 people

  9. LOL… Climate Nuremberg has nailed you folks to a t[r]ee:

    Thanks hunter. If only brilliance were enough to get the denialist denizens of that den of iniquity to stop congregating there. As we speak, they seem to be mocking this very article from the safety of their ‘sphere, knowing that reputable people like us can’t engage them there.

    Cowards!

    Why don’t they come and make their case here, where it can be considered and—assuming it holds up to scrutiny—deleted?

    Are they so afraid of a fettered, censored, some-holds-barred contest of ideas?

    Intellectual [derogatory ethnonym] !

    Liked by 1 person

  11. Alan Kendall 16 Mar 18:08:32

    The path to tenure is now strewn with ever more hazards. But I look on increasingly from afar, my experience increasingly distant, but still sympathetic.

    I also have read of your efforts to introduce hapless students to ‘learning’ rather than ‘degree’.
    To rephrase: (The path to tenure is now strewn with ever more bastards.) How can you be sympathetic?

    Like

  12. Please consider this lonely Earth planet!! as GOD’s construct to totally isolate critters so insane that they believe they have ‘some’ of GOD’s knowledge. Just what would such a construct be like? Welcome to Earth as so constructed! You cannot leave to spread such insanity to God’s Universe! 😦

    Like

  15. Will. Sympathy remains (even grows) for students, having to accept poor standards, for many academic staff (especially those still trying to teach learning rather than content) and for the very concept of universities – places of learning not vocational rote fact acquisition. The country also suffers as values shift. Plenty of need for sympathy.

    Liked by 1 person

  16. I’ve often thought it the height of irony that Lou Gehrig would die of Lou Gehrig’s disease. I mean, what are the odds? Gotta be…3 to 1, at least.

    Liked by 2 people

  17. I know too little about baseball to comment on specific cases, but LGD (or ALS) is progressive and incurable, so it’s either a life sentence or a death sentence, depending on the age of onset and the tempo of the symptoms.

    You know what else is incurable? The optimism of the human spirit. We blackhology geeks never gave up hoping that Stephen would somehow defy MND long enough to die of Hawking Radiation sickness.

    Liked by 2 people

  18. Opening video clip of ever emptying and filling bucket is reminiscent of “The Sorcerers Apprentice”. Is Lew a sorcerer, and Cook an out of control Mickey Mouse?

    Liked by 2 people

  19. Don’t miss Jordan Peterson’s takedown of Justin Trudeau’s exploitation of genderism:

    “Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s “gender equity” budget is as shallow and ideologically-driven as he is, professor Jordan B. Peterson says.

    “To me, when I look at Trudeau, there’s a couple of things that I see. I see someone who hasn’t grown up, so he’s Peter Pan,” the clinical psychologist said in a wide-ranging exclusive interview with the Toronto Sun.”

    http://torontosun.com/news/national/professor-peterson-gives-peter-pan-trudeau-budget-a-failing-grade?google_editors_picks=true

    Liked by 1 person

  20. Alan Kendall says:17 Mar 18:8:36

    Will. Sympathy remains (even grows) for students, having to accept poor standards, for many academic staff (especially those still trying to teach learning rather than content) and for the very concept of universities – places of learning not vocational rote fact acquisition. The country also suffers as values shift. Plenty of need for sympathy.

    OK Alan, I will admit that there are still some academics actually attempting to get students to ‘learn’ rather than ‘memorize’; text, formula, with no understanding! My university training ended in 1964. Is this ever true within your field of meteorology, climatology, atmospheric physics? It seems to me to be but gewißenhaft betrügen; (cheat conscientiously) rather than ‘never to be spoken aloud’, Wißenschaft (Craftsmanship)

    Like

  21. Hi Will, can you elaborate on your ‘I was deleted’ comment? I haven’t (knowingly) deleted anything recently so I’m hoping you mean somewhere/someone else

    Liked by 1 person

  22. Brad Keyes says: 19 Mar 18:12:38 am
    “Hi Will, can you elaborate on your ‘I was deleted’ comment? I haven’t (knowingly) deleted anything recently so I’m hoping you mean somewhere/someone else”
    Perhaps some delay in posting my previous nonsense posting. Are we having fun yet? Sometimes black kitten “Shadow” gets me all in ‘dither’ with her “WARS my FOOD?”! 🙂

    Like

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