June 2, 2017 (four months from today) will be the 25 year anniversary of the Heidelberg Appeal. This historical document signed by more than 4,000 distinguished scientists, including 70 Nobel Laureates, was released in the beginning of the infamous “Earth Summit” (Rio de Janeiro, 1992) to oppose environmental obscurantism, including climate alarmism. Among other things, the Heidelberg Appeal said:
We want to make our full contribution to the preservation of our common heritage, the Earth.
We are, however, worried at the dawn of the twenty-first century, at the emergence of an irrational ideology which is opposed to scientific and industrial progress and impedes economic and social development.
We contend that a Natural State, sometimes idealized by movements with a tendency to look toward the past, does not exist and has probably never existed …
We intend to assert science’s responsibility and duties toward society as a whole.
We do, however, forewarn the authorities in charge of our planet’s destiny against decisions which are supported by pseudoscientific arguments of false and nonrelevant date.
The greatest evils which stalk our Earth are ignorance and oppression, and not Science, Technology, and Industry …
These wise words by the most distinguished scientists in the world were dismissed by climate alarmism mouthpieces using their standard smear template. Sourcewatch (a website of The Center for Media and Democracy) absurdly alleged that the Heidelberg Appeal had been “released by a group of climate-change deniers,” “extended by the tobacco industry,” and was “a scam perpetrated by the asbestos and tobacco industries.”
The same mouthpieces and their followers dismissed the Oregon Petition on the grounds that there were few prank signatures among some five thousand signatures collected over the internet. Most of the 32,000+ signatories of the Oregon Petition personally signed a hard copy of the document.
These and other appeals, petitions, and declarations by distinguished scientists against climate alarmism have been largely ignored by the formerly mainstream media and buried in slander by alarmist front groups and hard Left mouthpieces.
The Heidelberg Appeal is a statement on the true functions of science and the scientific method. It does not depend on the scale of scientific problems or the technology of scientific research:
” We fully subscribe to the objectives of a scientific ecology for a universe whose resources must be taken stock of, monitored and preserved. But we herewith demand that this stock-taking, monitoring and preservation be founded on scientific criteria and not on irrational preconceptions.”
“The greatest evils which stalk our Earth are ignorance and oppression, and not Science, Technology, and Industry whose instruments, when adequately managed, are indispensable tools of a future shape by Humanity, by itself and for itself, overcoming major problems like overpopulation, starvation and worldwide diseases.”
The many of the problems of ignorance and oppression arise outside science in the areas of human thought and belief(faith), right and wrong, and the nature of Humanity. Science and the Scientific Method cannot deal directly with them, but it can direct how we apply these kinds of ideas to the physical world as we know it.
“We intend to assert science’s responsibility and duties toward society as a whole.
We do, however, forewarn the authorities in charge of our planet’s destiny against decisions which are supported by pseudoscientific arguments of false and nonrelevant date.”
Humanity cannot face an uncaring universe in ignorance of how that universe operates or with false ideas about it.
25 years is a long time ago with subsequent advances in technology that capture and analyze orders of magnitude more data. An interesting historical footnote, but little more
Also, the Heidelberg Appeal was not aimed at climate alarmism alone. But it has recognized the 1992 Earth Summit agenda as anti-intellectual venture, based on pseudo-science. The advanced technologies and new data just confirmed that and eliminated the benefit of doubt, that alarmist scenarios enjoyed at that time