Older readers, at least, will know the rest. 

“..therefore (Climate) Science is a hoax.”

The paper so titled, by Stephan Lewandowsky et al. can be found here:

[No it can’t. After the abstract, I get a message: “View all access and purchase options for this article,” followed by a “Get Access” thing that is locked. I have the article. If someone can explain how to do a tiny URL I can provide it.]

It claims to demonstrate that climate sceptics tend to believe crazy stuff:- for example, that the moon landing never happened. 

Lewandowsky and his oeuvre have been discussed to death, you might think, particularly by me, both here and previously at

https://geoffchambers.wordpress.com/category/stephan-lewandowsky/

Not so. In the hundreds of articles that we critics of the paper wrote, not one of us, I think, drew attention to the main flaw in this flaw-filled paper. While claiming to prove that climate sceptics were more likely to believe in conspiracy theories than normal people, it actually proved the opposite. The on-line survey on which Lewadowsky’s paper was based clearly demonstrates that climate sceptics are much less likely to believe conspiracy theories than the population at large. 

For example, the Wikipedia article on moon landing conspiracy theories cites opinion surveys which found that between 6 and 20% of Americans doubted that the moon landing had taken place, compared with 1% of climate sceptics in Lewandowsky’s survey. We climate sceptics, according to Lewandowsky’s paper, are far less likely to believe conspiracy theories than the average citizen. 

Which is odd, because Lewandowsky is surely right, although his research proves him wrong. Of course climate sceptics are more likely to believe conspiracy theories. We’re sceptics. We doubt the official version. And if the official version is wrong, that means that there was a cover up, which is a conspiracy to hide the truth.

Speaking only for myself of course, it seems obvious that my scepticism about the official story on climate change is linked to my perverse tendency to doubt any official story about anything. This is a psychological trait, probably linked to my distrust of parental authority. Ever since I got an adult library card, I’ve been a keen devourer of books that challenge the official version about absolutely everything. I’m a fan of all theories that claim to prove the experts wrong, from Immanuel Velikovsky’s theories of cosmic catastrophe and his alternative chronology of the ancient world, to the circumnavigation of the globe by a Chinese eunuch before Magellan, to the faking of Tacitus’s history by a Renaissance prelate.

I was intrigued to discover years ago that Benny Peiser, the director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, is also a student of Velikovsky and an ancient chronology sceptic. I vowed to keep this secret to myself, since, in the wrong hands, it could be used to ridicule the climate sceptical movement. Now that discussion has moved on from the psychological foibles of sceptics to soaring electricity bills, the truth can be told.   

Does anyone else share my eccentric  preferences in reading matter?

Of course, the perversity of my opinions has no relevance to their truth or falsity. There are many areas of human endeavour where scientific certainty is unattainable, and unfounded speculation is useful and even necessary. Cosmology, the chronology of ancient civilisations, and the authentification of ancient texts are pseudo-sciences, where truth is necessarily decided by consensus rather than experiment. 

Climate science is another such pseudo-science, where experimental replication is impossible -with one important difference. Climate science makes predictions. And these predictions will necessarily turn out to be true, or not. 

We may never know whether the universe started with a big bang or always was; whether a Chinese eunuch discovered New Zealand; or whether Cheops lived in the 9th century BC and not the 30th; but we sure as Hades know that Gaia is not dying, Manhattan & the Maldives are not under water, Global Warming hysteria is on its way out, and Greta Thunberg has turned into a normal protesting adolescent. 

All reasons to feel greatly relieved, on the eve of World War Three. It means I can get back to studying the important question of whether the Ludovisi throne, discovered in 1887 and supposedly carved in the 5th century BC, is or isn’t a 19th century forgery. 97% of experts say I’m wrong, so I’m optimistic.