CALLING BULLSH!T ON U OF ALBERTA CLAIMS

   Rex Murphy, NP:  Therefore, to read the awarding of an honorary degree to an extremely prominent Galahad of global warming is “controversial” is to put the word on its head, hammer it into the ground, and dance on its lexical grave. Which is how the University of Alberta is constructing its defence of attaching Mr. Suzuki’s name to its long scroll of honorees. And further that the university’s reputation for “standing up bravely for freedom of inquiry, academic integrity, and independence — depends on it (awarding him the degree).”
   But on the point of a university being a setting for controversy, I’d like to suggest three or four other names for a U of A honorary citation. How about Canadians Steven McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, for exploding the fraudulent “hockey stick” graph? These two have been indomitable in trying to force just a little debate and high-value analysis into the web of consensus. How about the master physicist Freeman Dyson, a Nobel Prize winner himself and a friend of the great scientists of the past 60 years, who declaims against the consensus and the debasement of science that has flourished under the iron strictures of climate-warming debate? How about Dr. Judith Curry, a woman of preeminent credentials, exquisite manners, and a specialist in this very field – whose argued reservations about the “science,” scrupulous attention to quality research, and humility in the face of the overwhelming rigours of the scientific method, makes her a singular voice in our contentious time.
    These degrees would be genuinely controversial, not a matter of place, but of the discipline itself. They would alarm the alarmists. They would signal the science is not settled. (Real science never is.) A degree to any or all of them would set a blaze of fury within the house of accepted opinion and politically correct attitudinizing. And restore some credibility to the University of Alberta’s feeble claim that it is the site of contradiction and controversy it ludicrously claims — by awarding the consensus-conformist Suzuki a degree — to be.