What Are We to Make of "Nature's" New Climate Journal?

Future generations will certainly think people of today have gone cold stark raving loony. "Nature" used to be a highly respected scientific journal. Their recent behaviour in the "climate change" arena has trashed their reputation, possibly for good.

Wattsupwiththat brings us the news that Nature is about to put out a special journal to be called "Nature Climate Change". About the list of climate blogs Nature acknowledges, Anthony Watts writes:

I note RealClimate, Climate Progress, Stoat (William Connolley of Wiki fame), and even the paid Hoggan public relations firm “DeSmog Blog” are listed.

I reckon that skeptical sites like WUWT don’t rate with Nature, even though we have more traffic and reach than those blogs. I suppose that speaks to the tone of this new journal before it is even published.

What caught my notice, though, was this little gem in "Nature's" instructions to authors:

Understanding the Earth’s changing climate, and its consequences, is a scientific challenge of enormous importance to society. Nature Climate Change is a monthly journal dedicated to publishing the most significant and cutting-edge research on the impacts of global climate change and its implications for the economy, policy and the world at large.

I have put these two sentences in different colours because they have nothing to do with each other. Did you spot that? Very, very 'nicely' done - if you are more interested in propaganda than truth, that is.

Sentence 1 tells us the importance of understanding the Earth's climate. "A scientific challenge of enormous importance" they say. Sentence 2 tells us that this journal has nothing at all to do with understanding the Earths climate!

The journal is all about the impacts and implications of "climate change", and is not concerned with understanding the Earth's climate in any way, shape or form.

Did I read that wrongly? Am I being too paranoid about a minor slip of the keyboard? Apparently not, for they tell us this explicitly later on, no doubt hoping that by then you will have forgotten about the enormous importance of understanding the Earth's climate:

Nature Climate Change will publish cutting-edge research on the science of contemporary climate change, its impacts, and the wider implications for the economy, society and policy. Thus, while we certainly appreciate the importance of palaeoclimate research in its own right, we can only consider for publication palaeoclimate studies that shed significant new light on the nature, underlying causes or impacts of current climate change.

Thus the journal will focus on social, economic, and policy issues (which is not 'hard' science in any way, certainly not in any alignment with the meaning of the word "nature" after which they name their journal). At the very most, papers about actual science will only be considered if they limit themselves to the current climatic blip on the Earth's climate timeline, which is minor compared even with temperatures 1,000 and 2,000 years ago, and utterly insignificant compared with the vast range of climates the planet has undergone, ranging from oceans warmer than body heat to a planet frozen solid.

What meaningful understanding of Earth's climate can possibly be published if it limits itself to that mandate?

Would we be unreasonable if we assumed that this 'journal' is just another propaganda piece designed to showcase hairy scary climate alarms about disasters that 'possibly' 'could' happen, and that 'are consistent with' global warming?

Let me put my question a little bit plainer: "Nature", just how downright drop-dead flat out stupid do you think we are?

What is happening, both in this specific case and more widely, is that the world is gradually constructing a huge infrastructure of laws, policies, beliefs, institutions, publications, and more, aligned to the religious belief in the demon evil of the life-giving molecule, carbon dioxide. Each brick in this edifice protects itself from any confrontation with truth (in the case of "Nature Climate Change", by insulating itself from any juxtaposition of their fantasy contents with real science about the Earth and its climatic history).

Other ways of avoiding meeting the truth we have seen: Al Gore's refusal to allow journalists in his speeches, and his refusal to debate Lord Monckton; the pretence that "the science is settled" (meaning they simply ignore truth when it tries to batter its way into their minds); the deletion of emails at CRU; the refusal to obey freedom of information requests; and most recently, the BBC's disgraceful scurrilous program against skeptics. (Funny that, once upon a time, kids, I remember when scientists were supposed to be skeptics.)

We live in dangerous times. I believe in the importance of religion and I believe in God, but I also know that no religion should control the state or control our lives. The new environmentalist religion is gaining traction, mainly, because people haven't understood that it is a religion, and it is not science. We face a repeat of the dark ages, of heresy and witch trials, of a world unable to drag itself out of obscurantism; and all will be dressed up as science, while the real scientists are persecuted and driven underground. Ours may be the final generation that still has the power to stop a 500-year new dark age in its tracks. Will we rise to the challenge?