Some skeptics wonder why I bother pursing and documenting the problems with Lewandowsky et al 2012 and with the blog ShapingTomorrowsWorld. They figure that all skeptics now know the papers dismal failings, and it’s clear that Lewandowsky is unlikely to be grateful for the help.
But Lewandowsky exposes people higher up to awkward questions. Why do they fund work so unscientific? Why do they allow such hypocrisy and bias on a government funded publication? Are standards at the University of Western Australia (UWA) so low that they can’t find a Professor who understands the scientific method, and can reason without name-calling? Aren’t other statisticians at UWA concerned at what Lewandowsky is doing to the reputation of “UWA Statistics”? Finally, aren’t the scientists who missed out on ARC funding angry that our taxpayer funds are given instead to someone who apparently uses the funds to promote his personal political views, instead of in the pursuit of knowledge? (See: Lewandowsky gets $1.7m of taxpayer funds to denigrate people who disagree with him)
The abject incompetence is a gift to us. Rarely is a study so outrageously bad that people with no scientific background can understand why it has no value and was never likely to produce anything useful. Behind the scenes, people are writing to the staff at the University of Western Australia at several levels.
Michael Kile (see below) has gone a step further and has raised the issue at the last UWA Convocation meeting on Sept 21 to put it on the official document trail. The Vice Chancellor was in attendance. The Chairman, who is Warden of Convocation, also happens to be on the board of the blog: ShapingTomorrowsWorld, where Lewandowsky writes. Hmm.
It may be purely coincidental, but since this meeting Lewandowsky has not posted anything on his blog. Steve McIntyre has posted two further articles (here and here). Has someone had a quiet word to Lewandowsky? Plus, we note, Psychological Science must be due to release its October journal, but there is no mention of the paper … yet.
I particularly like Kile’s point that the blog policy declares that No ad hominem attacks are allowed (Note 4). So commenters are warned against using the words conspiracy or denier, and yet Lewandowsky himself can write a peer reviewed paper which does exactly that. His research apparently amounts to rank namecalling, discussing “deniers” who believe in any conspiracy — as such, the paper is just peer reviewed defamation by any other name.
If no further progress is made there is an option to call an Extraordinary Meeting of Convocation at UWA to resolve this issue, which would attract attention. Oh yes, this would be quite unusual step. When I searched for ‘“Extraordinary meeting of convocation” UWA’ it turns up only one hit globally (which, as it happens, is for a different university).
If you happen to be a member of Convocation at UWA please get in touch with me, “joanne AT joannenova.com.au”. We would like to hear from you.
— Jo
Guest Post by Michael Kile
STATEMENT TO THE SECOND ORDINARY MEETING OF CONVOCATION FOR 2012
________________________________________________________________
I attended the second Convocation Meeting, the University of Western Australia Graduates Association, on Friday 21 September.
The Chair of the meeting was Associate Professor David Hodgkinson, Warden of Convocation.
Professor Paul Johnson, the University’s new Vice Chancellor, was guest speaker. Before his insightful speech on “The Changing Role of Universities in the Twenty-First Century”, I made the following statement during the Meeting’s consideration of Other Business.
Mr Chairman, Vice Chancellor and Members,
All of us here are committed to enhancing the University’s reputation and to ensuring good governance prevails on campus.
In this context, I want to mention the University-funded website: Shaping Tomorrow’s World. A number of alumni are concerned about the tone and quality of recent activity here [during September, 2102]. We wonder whether its operation is consistent with Convocation’s aims and the University’s mission to “achieve international excellence”.
Mr Chairman, [in your capacity as a member of STW’s Editorial Board], could you clarify at some stage if there is any governance provision that would require an STW Board member or Principal to, for example,
(i) stand aside if under investigation by the University for alleged breaches of the Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research (2007), or for any other complaints regarding research misconduct; and
(ii) cease involvement in the site’s management during the duration of any investigation, with reinstatement depending on the outcome?”
The Warden replied that he would discuss my request with the STW Editorial Board and prepare a formal response for the next Convocation meeting in early 2013.
The Warden also was asked later to include STW’s moderator policy in the governance review.
Michael Kile
Note 1: UWA defines research misconduct as: “fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, or other practices that seriously deviate from those that are commonly accepted within the research community for proposing, conducting or reporting research….. It does not include honest errors or honest differences in interpretation or judgements of data.”
Note 2: The STW site “was made possible by a grant from the Vice Chancellor of the University of Western Australia and by the support of the Institute of Sustainability and Technology Policy at Murdoch University.”
Note 3: STW’s comments policy includes these rules:
- No accusations of deception: Any accusations of deception, fraud, dishonesty or corruption will be deleted. This applies to both sides. Stick to the science. You may criticise a person’s methods but not their motives.
- No ad hominem attacks: Attacking other users or anyone holding a different opinion to you is common in debates but gets us no closer to understanding the science. For example, comments containing the words ‘religion’ and ‘conspiracy’ tend to get deleted. Comments using labels like ‘alarmist’ and ‘denier’ are usually skating on thin ice.
Note 4: There appear to have been recent instances where legitimate comments were deleted; while many others – especially those containing words such as “conspiracy”, “denier” and “denialist” – somehow escaped moderator scrutiny, despite STW’s comments policy.
The two posts below, for example, were deleted by STW’s moderator allegedly because they contained “extensive quote”, despite clearly being very relevant to the discussion thread.
GrantB at 00:55 AM on 20 September, 2012
From Mr McIntyre’s post that you refuse to link to, a psychologist writes:
The authors are certainly well aware that the “significance” of this correlation is beside the point. With very large degrees of freedom virtually any correlation is likely to be “significant”. The relevant question is whether the size of the correlation is at all interesting. Even accepting the doubtful premiss that this is a sensible way of computing the correlation in question, this one suggests that about 1.5 percent of the variance between the two variables is shared. Most sensible people would see this as not very much. Add to this the fact that it is a computation over a data set comprising strings of ordinal values with a very truncated range and you start to worry. Add to this the acknowledged extreme vulnerability of the data set to the effects of rogue data points (and there are many) and you start to worry more. Add to this the fact (I think “fact” is justified) that the data were collected in a sloppy way, and worry segues into despair. I am a professional psychologist. Psychology has contributed a great deal to the practical application of statistics and is justifiably proud of this fact. It is extremely unfortunate (I am tempering my words) to see my discipline made into a laughing stock by “green” activists. The more so, because the authors of this paper with their professional hats on are very well aware of all these points and chose to ignore them because of their somewhat warped perception of the greater good.
My experience of academic life in Australia was that fellow psychologists had a commendably low threshold for detecting nonsense and a robust way of showing it. Where are they now?
GrantB at 01:01 AM on 20 September, 2012
From Mr McIntyres most recent post that you obviously weren’t aware of before you started this thread, the very same psychologist writes –
I think you are far too kind to these authors. The department of psychology to which they are affiliated will certainly offer a statistics course. Now that R has pretty well displaced SPSS, texts like Crawley’s “Statistics”, or something like it, will routinely be used as an introduction. So students will know when linear regression is seriously ill-advised – it’s usually in Chapter 1 and is often asked about in examinations. They will have been taught how to do Q-Q plots to identify and deal with outliers. They will know about Cook’s distance. Students will know about the difficulties inherent in analysing count and categorical data. They will have been taught some measurement theory (Australian psychologists made important contributions to this topic). I don’t know whether they are routinely taught about robust regression, but they will have been taught about related concepts in the context of analysis of variance. And so on … and so on. These issues are all in the standard texts. I simply cannot believe the authors don’t know about them. Indeed, I can’t believe they don’t know a lot more than their students. So they have a much more serious charge to answer.
Quite an indictment, Joanne. I wonder if UWA will actually deal honestly with it. I don’t see much reason to expect more than a whitewash job.
I hope I’m proved wrong.
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Well done for continuing this investigation.
The paper is a disgrace. It would be completely unacceptable for UWA, the profession and colleagues of these authors to turn a blind eye and hope the whole episode disappears.
It is about time the UWA and others made their position on this clear.
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“Will the University of Western Australia, continue to lend its good name to what I can only class as propagandist activities? Certainly, if I were an alumnus of that august centre of learning, I’d be having a quiet word, if only to protect the value of my degree. A few more escapades like that, and the place will soon have the academic reputation of the University of Easy Access.”
http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2012/09/28/intentions-profiles-and-predictability/
Pointman
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For those of us who may not have heard of UWA previously, yes much of the world probably hasn’t, it is indeed a rather inauspicious introduction via the attention the Psychology Department’s behaviour is attracting. Indeed if one had no other knowledge of the institution and its more accomplished alumni , then the example being set by these present academics is pretty damning.
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Joe
What’s important is what happens next. If the UWA wants to promote itself as a centre of genuine learning (and not some mouthpiece for the trendy left), then they will live up to their own standards. RIght now, UWA is at a cross-roads.
Does Lewandowsky represent the future of learning at UWA? I hope not.
Cheers,
Speedy
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I notice this was described as the ‘Second Ordinary Meeting’ – whether of 2012, or second ever, not clear.
If the latter, then the ‘formal response’ will be precedent-setting for the reputation of UWA and all concerned.
I don’t see how they can afford to fudge/whitewash this; surely no aspiring learned institution wants to look like UEA?
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They have two ordinary convocation meetings each year. But the 100th anniversay of UWA is next Feb. I would guess they would not be pleased about an extraordinary meeting that took the shine of that. I’ll fix that. Thanks. Jo
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Crystal ball gazing? 🙂
In second sentence Michael Kile’s statement
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Does anyone imagine that any university will find fault with a staff member who brings in huge grant $$$$. I don’t because I Penn State’s Professor of ethics Don Brown turned a blind eye to the scandal at Penn. My own university employed the criminal William Ayers at which point I ended my alumnus relationship. There is clearly a need for university staff to attend ongoing ethics training and to self-police and weed out those like Lewandowsky to preserve academic integrity. I’m not holding my breath.
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Wendy,
The age old question is, “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” Who will watch the watchers? **
We already see that self policing is a failure. And no matter who you put in to police things, they in turn will need policing.
And is this really a matter of ethics or something more fundamental in my view, called morality?
Ethical codes are, like any other rule to follow, bent and broken all the time. Morality (or amorality) becomes a part of you and shapes everything you do and every decision you make. We have lost (read intentionally discarded) a lot in this post modernist world.
** The question is credited to the Roman poet, Juvenal, dating from the second century AD. The translation literally is, “Who will guard the guards themselves?”
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Jo – just some observations:
You’ve posted another story about Lewandowsky and the UWA.
You’ve been offline for a couple of hours, presumably because of another attack.
These attacks seem coincidentally to always follow stories about Lewandowsky and the UWA.
These “coincidental” attacks started in earnest when “Adam Smith” was exposed as “Team Smith” and got himself (their self) banned.
“Team Smith” went from being just annoying to outright obnoxious and carpet-bombing the site right about the time you started writing about Lewandowsky.
One of the give-aways that Smith was a group and not just an individual, was the obvious different writing styles and varying levels of knowledge of the posters.
One of those styles seems very similar to how Lewandowsky writes on his website “Shaping Tomorrow’s World”, particularly in his replies to criticism by Watts and McIntyre.
.
Just sayin’.
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MV,
I hope that you are not implying that Lewandowsky has enough skill at anything to be able to actually successfully commit a denial of service attack on a website?
Just sayin’ …
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.
No.
And I doubt that Obama has the skill to fly Air Force One either.
Nonetheless he gets around in it all the time.
Universities are chock full of young, impressionable people with all sorts of skill-sets.
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Whenever a university IT department encounters a new undergrad that exhibits familiarity with computer security vulnerabilities and their attendant attack scripts, one of the best tactics to deal with such people is to hire them into the IT department. (Because it takes one to know one.)
Just sayin’.
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And crime pays…
10
Of course he can memoryvault. He can do anything; leap tall buildings with a single bound; faster than a speeding bullet; more powerful than a locomotive; save the world; all that stuff.
You haven’t listened to him talk, have you?
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I was online at the time and the site suddenly stopped responding in mid stream. But it could have been just the hosting service taking advantage of early morning hours to do some maintenance. There are a number of obvious problems to attend to, like the thumbs not working right.
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Outage this morning was caused by misbehaving backup processes; likely triggered by East Coast change to daylight savings last night.
Other systems I look after also misbehaved after the time switch. So been a busy morning for me.
New measures are in place and site is hopefully back to normal.
Hardening the site against the various things that can go wrong (99.9% being things that are not of a malicious nature) is an ongoing work in progress. Still a week or two away from getting to the point where I would feel comfortable with leaving the server running unattended. A bit beyond my domain expertise, so not entirely smooth sailing.
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You and other helpers are doing a stirling job. MUCH appreciated !! 🙂
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I second that emotion.
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Yes.
Thank you
KK 🙂
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Mazel !
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Andrew,
After 45 years in the software engineering game I don’t envy you the job. And thank you for your efforts above and beyond the call of duty. Your taking the time to communicate directly with users of a site you host is a first as far as I know. 🙂
Roy
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Don’t get your bits and bytes mixed up.
Or if your like me accidentally install Apache on your file server.
Three thumbs up for the hard work.
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Interesting .
Maybe some of this stuff could be run through Turnitin.
Not sure what it does it was introduced a year or so after I left.
KK
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It is good to finally see consequences for the outrageous behaviour of Climate Confused Academics.
It may seem to some as being Unfair that one person is being picked on but the damage he has done to the
academic standing of those genuine scholars in the UWA Psychology Department seems to be something he couldn’t care less about.
A good out come.
KK
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.
Judging by their deafening silence on this subject it doesn’t seem that the “genuine scholars” in the UWA Psychology Department (or any other department for that matter) care very much about their academic standing either.
If I was studying psychology, physics, chemistry, geology, maths or statistics at UWA I’d be looking for a refund of my fees right about now. By their silence the academics in ALL these field have given their tacit approval to Lewandowsky’s quackery.
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UWA are very much into a concerted TV ad campaign trumpeting that it is the place to go – presumably to continue one’s education. I agree with you memoryvault that if my old tertiary castle was not doing something about such a scam I’d also want my money back. Degree and Post Grad was hard enough to get without some clown devaluing it.
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This term “tertiary castle” is new to me. I like this term.
Did it originate amongst academics who were willing to concede they were isolated from the real world but indignantly refused to accept they were in an “ivory tower”?
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A day is coming when we’ll get to stop hiding behind diatribe comments from keyboards – a untested coward’s castle to say and imply anything.
The rhetoric will give way to actual forced dialogue with each other as the latest trends in Global Warming begin to seriously bite above and beyond cause for doubting over the coming year.
First it was Pickering, now Alan Jones caught out going too far. (Own Petard) – likened to a slow fused bomb that blows up in their own face.
Be Careful when in character assassination modes – it’s a serious artform in some circles and has consequences.
After all “These types of corrupted Jihads come in various incarnations” (As in specific reference an in eye for a eye and a tooth for a tooth context).
_______
Ross J.
448
And which “latest trends” would that be, Ross?
No global warming for over 14 years now?
Global cooling the last few years?
Ocean temperatures dropping?
Sea level rise slowing?
Snow refusing to become a “thing of the past”?
Supposed “unending drought” here in OZ as “the new normal” while our dams fill up?
Record sea ice and record low temperatures in the Antarctic?
Diminishing extreme weather events like hurricanes, cyclones and tornadoes??
No tropospheric hotspot?
A 20% + increase in grain crops due to the combination of CO2 and warmth?
Pacific islands that refuse to sink?
A distinct lack of 50 million climate refugees?
.
C’mon Ross, we truly WANT to believe, so give us something.
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Hi MV
You left out the Antartic.
Its’ ice mass is increasing noticeably.
kk
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Don’t worry, MV, it’ll all be on a peer-reviewed model somewhere…
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Both Pickering and Jones were commenting on the integrity – or otherwise – of our PM.
I’m a bit lost as to the connection with climate change.
Unless . . .
Oh noes – lying PM’s causes global warming.
.
And it’s worse than we first thought.
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RJ says…
Apparently CAGW will be obvious to all by the end of 2013….
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“Be Careful when in character assassination modes – it’s a serious artform in some circles”
roflmao.. you seriously don’t think about what you are saying, do you !!!
Nice to see you ADMITTING that Labor and the Greens try to use it as an artform. They are the ones on the character assassination warpath.. ITS ALL THEY HAVE, ITS ALL THEY KNOW !
But they really are still only putting forward lots of finger paintings, done in mud….
its so darn obvious.. there is not the slightest bit of art involved.
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Ross, you say here
Too right Ross.
Perhaps the day will come when we actually see the side you so ardently support actually DO SOMETHING, rather than just talking about it.
Get ’em to close down those largest of emitters, Ross, those large scale coal fired power plants.
Don’t just spruik, Ross, show us you really mean it. Get your people to close those plants, Ross.
Do something.
Pee, or get off the pot!
Tony.
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He should disconnect himself from ANY service that requires electricity from fossil fuel or relies on fossil fuel. No phone line, no wi-fi or mobile connection
No car, only wind and solar power, only tank water, no gas to cook with.. and he is not allowed to burn wood, because it puts out way more CO2 and other pollution per unit energy than efficient coal powered stations do and takes away from natural decay processes that fertilie the ground.
Come on Ross.. Walk the walk !!!! yeah, like that’s going to happen..
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If your mates applied their principles to themselves there’d be no ABC or Fauxfax journoes, Laurie Oakes would be in a homeless shelter, and the feral government would be largely behind bars. So much for your hypocrisy.
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Ross, I’d imagine in a non-scientific way that both Larry Pickering and Alan Jones have by now been read by many, many more people than have read your views. Those 2 make me laugh. You don’t.
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Ross, what would you know about anything.
Jones made a tasteless remark which, when compared to the bile which comes daily from the Gillard pack, is tame and worth no more than 5 minutes; that it has been on the airways continually for a week at a time when AGW has been disproved, the economy has gone down the gurgler and Abama revealed that he is a hollow man, just reveals that the MSM ill serves the public in reporting what is really important.
And how did Pickering go too far; given the utter sham of Gillard answering the questions of her Slater and Gordon and Wilson escapades I would think he did not go far enough.
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Are you making threats now Ross?
This may be overdoing the Latin thing a bit but I suspect those same second century Romans I mentioned above, being wiser than you are, would dismiss your threats with a simple, bullius shittius.
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Roy,
maybe Woss has a fwend in Wome.
Tony.
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I like this bit
“
So AGW is now on the terrorist watch list?
By the way Tony have you seen this
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/9590135/Millions-of-British-households-face-blackout-warns-Ofgem.html
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[…] Lewandowsky part VIII: Formal moves for a Governance Review of the STW blog. […]
51
Am I missing something here?
10
These appear regularly. It’s automatically generated but I don’t know how or why either.
Perhaps Jo will fill us in on the details!?
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These are called pingbacks or trackbacks, they are auto-generated advisories that some blog has linked to this page. Sometimes they are interesting to follow back (there is a link in the top of the comment). Yes, they are strangely unhelpful in their lay-out. Usually I don’t let them through unless they lead to a site where there is more commentary, comments, or something additional, but sometimes simple “repeats” of this site on another blog will generate a pingback that will get through.
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True but how many of us are that brave.
Look at the political power in that department let alone the University as a whole.
Carmen was connected, maybe she still is.
Remember that woman, Penny, people do get stressed?
KK
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It won’t make any difference.
The modern university is full of inter-departmental wars, factions, people out to get each other and score points. You assume this will get attention. It will – enough attention to bury it.
If it works like most convocations I know of, the reply (if there even is one) won’t happen for about a year, and then there will be a 2 paragraph answer that everyone hopes will make it all go away.
Internally, a few quiet words might be had.
What should actually happen is a realisation that universities should not funding activist web sites. If the academic staff want to be activists, they can do so, on their own time and their own dime. Doing it during working hours should be seen and judged as inappropriate. Just like if a programmer for Microsoft, or an airframe designer for Boeing wanted to be an activist: fine, on your own time. What should uni staff be different?
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I know a person who is angry about missing out on ARC funding (research associated with health which will benefit millions). University ranking has been based on the amount of published articles but at least one of the ranking organizations has started to consider the quality of publications. The ranking of Australian universities (eg ANU) will fall dramatically when climate related articles are treated as junk.
I would expect UWA to take some note when dozens of Asian universities will be overtaking them in the ranking.
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am sure connecting the dots on other members of the STW editorial board could be equally fruitful, but here’s my contribution for now. lewandowsky, like so many others, is merely a facecard:
ShapingTomorrowsWorld Editorial Board Member:
David Hodgkinson, Associate Professor, School of Law, University of Western Australia
As executive director of EcoCarbon, a non-profit organisation, he manages an industry partnership which is building capacity in mechanisms designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. http://www.shapingtomorrowsworld.org/bio.php?u=27
EcoCarbon
Economic growth with emissions trading
The Chair of EcoCarbon is Bret Mattes.
The Executive Director is David Hodgkinson. http://www.ecocarbon.org.au/
on the following page,Mattes is the only person without a bio:
EcoCarbon: People
Bret Mattes, Chair of EcoCarbon
http://www.ecocarbon.org.au/people.html
State Library of Western Australia Foundation: Our Team
Patron: Sam Walsh AO – Executive Director and Chief Executive Rio Tinto Iron Ore
Board of Directors
Bret Mattes
Bret Mattes is the Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of the Star Energy Group of Companies, Chairman of ChemCentre Ltd, Chairman of EcoCarbon Inc., Chairman of WA Ballet and a Director of MATMA Pty Ltd, the Western Australian Technology and Industry Advisory Council, The National Research Centre for Asbestos Related Diseases, The International Skills and Training Institute in Health, The Berndt Museum, the WA Fulbright Fellowship, and The Australian Major Performing Arts Group. He is also a Director of many public and private companies (most of them registered and operating outside Australia and most of them engaged in the energy business). Prior to Star Energy, Bret had a distinguished career with BHP Billiton, holding the position of Vice President, Australia Asia Gas and Power at the time he left the company…
He was a member of the WA Premier’s Taskforce on Greenhouse Gas Offsets…
http://www.statelibraryfoundation.org/our-team
can’t copy & paste the following thesis.
367 pages: on page 268 “about EcoCarbon” executive officer is ACRE’s policy analyst, Carrie Sonneborn. EcoCarbon has substantial interest in emissions trading and renewable energy; new members include BP, BHP:
2005: Murdoch Uni: Thesis for degree of Doctor of Philosophy of Murdoch University by Carrie Sonneborn
http://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/320/2/02Whole.pdf
(page 281-285 lists organisations represented at each round table meeting 2001-2002 in australia & US, including chicago november 2002 with Chicago Climate Exchange in attendance)
Colorado School of Mines: Writing Program Faculty
Carrie Sonneborn has traveled extensively and lived overseas (in Australia) for nearly 2 decades. She is a member of the Rocky Mountain Publishing Professionals Guild and has a PhD in Physics and Energy Studies. Carrie has written, taught and published in a wide variety of genres from poetry to academic dissertations, trade magazines to business plans. She has degrees from the College of New Jersey (BSc), University of Wollongong (BA, MMgmt) and Murdoch University (PhD).
http://writing.mines.edu/Writing-Program-Faculty
list colorado school of mines etc but prior to that:
Linkedin: Carrie Sonneborn
Experience:
Market Development
Chicago Climate Exchange
January 2004 – July 2004 (7 months)
Calculate CO2 emissions baselines on behalf of new and prospective members
Policy Analyst Australian Cooperative Research Centre for Renewable Energy (ACRE)
January 2000 – May 2001 (1 year 5 months) Perth, Western Australia
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/carrie-sonneborn/b/44b/661
170
My apologies to Michael and the community in general for doing my damndest to avoid that meeting of the Convocation. I was almost at the door-step. Those who know me personally may not believe it but I figured that I would be too passionate to be of value at such a meeting.
So I spent some time with friends to be distracted; so as not to stew on the issue.
90
O/T,
Nikolai continues to make a song and dance about Tony abbott. Apparently he doesn’t appear to like her, therefore somehow he has a problem with women in power.
Here’s a thought Nikolai – maybe he doesn’t like you because you keep making gender a political weapon and that you insult him and all the women around him?
Do you think, nikolai that maybe, just maybe that’s why he struggles to give you the time of day? you know, just like the aussie voters will struggle to give you their votes at the next election?
Keep up the smear campaign nikolai – it worked so well in Queensland, after all.
160
Had a look at your ref.
It’s hard to believe that Nik can’t see it has all gone wrong and that they are digging their own graves with this stupidity.
kk
90
Why would anyone take an instant dislike to Roxon?
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Because it save 30 seconds !!!
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If you go to the STW site, be prepared to counter the automatic gag reflex; once you have regained your
composure go to the Debunking – Handbook pdf and download a copy of this mind bending piece of work.
It is amazing!
Well done Professors, Cook and Lewandowsky, you are upholding the growing reputation of UWA and no doubt will
receive some acknowledgement for your efforts in the near future.
The best bit, for me, was the little brain diagrams showing how to take out a malfunctioning memory module
from a disbelievers brain and replace it with the politically “correct” brain fart.
Truly amazing – like something out of the 1930s.
KK
130
.
There was a time in the USA when a woman with “recurrent sexual desires” was considered mentally sick.
The cure was a full frontal lobotomy performed by hammering the medical equivalent of an ice pick up through the roof of both eye sockets.
.
Didn’t Lewandowsky study in America?
70
Suchan op would only hit empty space on that particular piece of work.
50
I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.
20
New German study shows that the IPCC predictions on temp at all levels in the atmosphere are wrong . This just adds to Christy’s latest work with a similar graph of Hansen’s 3 scenarios.
http://notrickszone.com/2012/10/05/german-meteorologist-on-temperature-models-so-far-they-are-wrong-for-all-atmospheric-layers/
What an unbelievable con and fraud, if this was a just another ponzi scheme the corruption would have been discovered by a whistleblower and the MSM would have swooped.
Let’s face it the mitigation of AGW is easily disproved by simple maths and yet OZ continues to waste billions $ on this idiocy for a zero return.
Plus provable zero change to the climate and temp.
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Quote:
Neville
October 7, 2012 at 12:37 pm
I’ve posted this link before but, such is the quality of environmental criminal politicians in Australia at the moment that it can’t be posted enough.
Prof. Will Steffen, Climate Commissionar:
“Both sides of politics have gotten together and agreed on an approach so if the government changes, the policy and approach to climate change doesn’t change.”
It is beyond being partisan.
It is we, the people v the self imagined ‘eco-elite’.
[SNIP “get some justice”]
200
Handjive I’ve read that statement from Steffen before, what a joke.
But my point is that the corruption from this fraud and con goes beyond any opinion or debate.
Simple maths shows that the mitigation of AGW is a complete imnpossibility and simple maths proves this since 1990.
But it’s even more bizzare when we understand that the Gillard govt is trying to boost coal exports and gas and iron ore while trying to steer us towards solar and wind at home.
These labor fraudsters couldn’t care less about the increased co2 emissions from these exports, yet they are happy for us to lose jobs and industries overseas.
130
.
And so it starts . . .
http://www.canberratimes.com.au/opinion/liberals-should-turn-to-turnbull-20121006-2760e.html
40
I doubt many Labor voter would change to voting Liberal if Turnbull was Lib leader,
and many Liberal voters would change to voting informal.
Choosing between far left, even lefter, and maniac left is no choice.
Poor lefties, they are SOOO lacking in leaders they want a Liberal reject.. like when they needed a speaker.
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Sorry Andy, but you are confusing what the voters want with what the politicians want.
The Wets now have the numbers in the Parliamentary Liberal Party, and they want Turnbull.
So Turnbull is what you’re going to get.
Not that I disagree with anything you wrote.
But that’s not going to stop the Libs from trying to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
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I’ll just rip up my voting paper if they do.
50
Andy, we’ve got to do more than that… write to your local lib. Let them know.
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Jo, I regularly write to Liberals stating my point of view. I have several of them on my address list.
I even get a non form mail response from some of them occasionally 🙂
All you ever get from the Lab/Greens is form mail spin ..they are a JOKE !!!)
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We need a petition or something.. PLEASE NOT TURNBULL !!!!!!
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OK. Fair point. – Jo
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Jo, I’ll take that advice. Could be the perfect time for me to do so, a long time Labor voter, although not a lot in recent years. Upto this time I have never put the coalition first in any poll, and any intention I have for voting for them in the near future will vanish if Turnbull becomes leader again.
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To me you need a Please Keep Abbott campaign. Turnbull is a popular local member and former leader of the party, so you need a show of unity not a division. A Please No Turnbull campaign just highlights a well managed difference of opinion. MV’s wets will keep abbott if it gets them a win, but if he thinks he can impose nutter-style policy against the will of the majority of members then he will find himself in a rudd-like position.
40
No way would I vote for Labor ever again, and no way I will vote Liberal if Turnbull is leader.
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In Newcastle I have effectively voted informal by voting independent first with a pref for libs always;
except for the last State El when I voted liberal for the first time, Tim O seemed a worthwhile candidate.
The voters have Turnbull sussed out and have seen him off twice before with the Republic Ref and as leader of Liberals via carbon Tax.
kk
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It’s all one could expect from a left – centric news paper. It is just Labor lackies trying to weakon the coalition.
The thing that has puzzled me, is why after Turnbull forwarded his intention not to run in 2010 after loosing the leadership, did the Libs ever let him change his mind. He’s never been anything other than a weathervane, he just swings to whatever topic he can exploit for his own personal gain or to profit his banker mates.
60
As a matter of interest – I found this line on the front page of his CV from April, 2012:
“Awards and Honors:
Discovery Outstanding Researcher Award, Australian Research
Council, 2012-2014.”
Am I right in assuming that the Award-Awarding-body decided even before April 2012 that up to the end of 2014, there will be no-one more worthy of this award then Prof. Lewandowsky?
Just curious, that’s all.
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I believe there are dozens of those “awards” each year. It’s not so much a prize, as just a way of labeling a grant recipient.
60
On my CV I have won the Maggie Markham* award for good looks.
*My mum.
20
O/T but can’t believe the MSM won’t give up on this. malone “suspects” the people were there for Turnbull. perhaps they were just members of the bowling club! a local newspaper described them as –
“mainly residents from Ocean Grove” http://www.surfcoasttimes.com.au/news/community/2012/10/03/turnbull-in-the-ring-at-grove –
carbon tax is “dying” as an issue?
7 Oct: Canberra Times: Paul Malone: Liberals should turn to Turnbull
THE BOWLING club at Ocean Grove south of Geelong is hardly a hive of political activity but a fortnight ago its meeting room was packed to capacity to hear a talk on the National Broadband Network.
I suspect it wasn’t the subject matter, or the offer of a free afternoon tea, that packed the hall on a Wednesday afternoon, but the speaker, Malcolm Turnbull, the Federal Member for Wentworth and Shadow Minister for Communications and Broadband.
With a year to go before the federal election, Turnbull was invited to speak in the most marginal federal electorate in the country, by the Liberal candidate, Sarah Henderson
***The carbon tax is now dying as an issue and Abbott’s conservatism on other issues leaves him vulnerable on a number of fronts…
There is no doubt that the vast majority of Liberal voters would be comfortable with Turnbull’s leadership of their party…
Global warming, and the government’s program to combat it, would be one major difficulty for Turnbull as leader of the Coalition before the next election.
He would have to rewrite the Coalition’s current policy and, to be consistent with his previous stand, announce that his government would transition into an emissions trading scheme, just as Labor plans to do.
Turnbull’s recognition of the global warming threat would be welcomed by the scientific community, but would win him no sympathy from the anti-science shock jocks, including the rabid Alan Jones…
Abbott has proved to be a most effective Leader of the Opposition and it might be asked why the Liberal Party would want to replace him. The answer is that his era has passed. This will become more apparent as time goes on.
The polls show that, were an election to be held today, Abbott would win a comfortable majority.
But the election is some time in the future and it is future-thinking policies that Abbott lacks. His 1950s thinking just won’t do in the second decade of the 21st century.
If Liberal Party members come to recognise this and turn to Turnbull, their election victory will be assured
http://www.canberratimes.com.au/opinion/liberals-should-turn-to-turnbull-20121006-2760e.html
was wondering how a public service reporter for canberra times even knew of this event:
PaulMalone.info: Paul Malone is a freelance journalist and weekly columnist for the Sunday Canberra Times, writing mainly on political and economic issues.
He is currently researching a book on the Penan jungle nomads of Sarawak and working on a film script based on the life of Swiss environmentalist and adventurer Bruno Manser.
He lives in Ocean Grove Victoria.
http://paulmalone.info/
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Wishful thinking – he knows a return to Turnbull would damage the Libs’ election chances. Turnbull was closely associated with Labor identities, e.g. Wran, for many years – I assume most people would know that. Conservative voters need a real alternative, not a case of tweedledee or tweedledum.
40
And everyone knows the Canberra times is a far left piece of carp.
It is ONLY Labor voters who want Turnbull as Liberal leader.
Turnbull’s policies that would be very anti-progressive for Australia.
We have all seen the effect of these far left types of policy.. economic destruction.
50
ps.. the sooner we STOP applying the word “progressive” to left wing policies, the sooner common sense and real progress can prevail.
There policies are NEVER to do with progress.
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Substitute “regressives” to describe the left. Their policies are designed to make us all poor and dependent on the government. It is regression to a form of feudalism which unfortunately most of the medieval peasants out there are quite happy with as long as they can bitch about their circumstances but heaven forbid they actually do anything about them.
40
SMH also carried the Malone/Turnbull story, yet they already had this just days before, which obviously came from ABC. if they love Turnbull so much, make him leader of the Labor Party:
4 Oct: SMH: Jessica Wright: Abbott has ’50-50′ chance of leading Coalition to election: Tony Windsor
In an attack characteristic of the independent’s personal views of Mr Abbott, Mr Windsor said former opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull was ”head and shoulders” above Mr Abbott as an electable leader…
The NSW independent, who faces a stiff challenge by Nationals candidate Richard Torbay for the seat of New England in the next election, said Mr Abbott’s tactic of deliberately ”creating chaos”, in order to expose the fragility of the hung parliament, was beginning to unravel.
”I think there was a view six months ago that he would be there irrespective of the tactics that he was using,” Mr Windsor told ABC radio…
Meanwhile, Mr Windsor has backed the Speaker, Peter Slipper, returning to official duties if he is cleared of allegations of sexual harassment and misuse of commonwealth CabCharges.
”I wouldn’t see an issue with him being able to return to the chair if in fact all those things happened,” he said.
If there was a vote to determine if Mr Slipper should return to the chair, Mr Windsor said he ”couldn’t see how I would object to it”.
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/abbott-has-5050-chance-of-leading-coalition-to-election-windsor-20121004-270ml.html
20
If anyone wants advice on how to get noticed, just ask Lewandowsky.
Check out his STW blog.
From 15/3/2011 to 16/7/2012, 40 posts attracting 55 comments. (13 posts had no comments – So not too much interest so far.)
Write a really stupid paper and advertise it on your blog and guess what –
From 3/9/2012 to 19/9/2012, 10 posts attracting 2268 comments!
I don’t know if this is the kind of notice one would want, but the technique seems to work.
See hockey sticks do exist outside of ice hockey rinks.
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This blog has a global following. And most gentle readers would no doubt value freedom of speech. If not for this freedom, the truth about carbon dioxide, global temperature datasets and political interference from other countries would not be known.
Freedom of speech is under attack in Australia. Mercedes-Benz – a global corporate giant – has seen fit to withdraw its sponsorship from the Alan Jones broadcast in cooperation with the Labor government to try to silence Alan Jones and rob many 2GB listeners of their right to hear Mr Jones.
“We want the car back, the deal is cancelled, it is over,” Mercedes-Benz’s corporate communications manager, David McCarthy, said. Yes, his name is McCarthy!
If you value freedom of speech, please take a few moments to let them know what you think of leading the charge to persecute one man, one radio station and its many listeners.
Please be polite and respectful. Let them know you value freedom of speech and that it is irresponsible for a big corporation with huge resources to team up with a government with unlimited power to try to shut down speech they don’t like.
McCarthy is living up to his namesake alright. McCarthyism is a term used to describe the targeting of political opponents for persecution.
Mercedes-Benz Australia Pacific knows what a bunch of angry twitter users think. Let them know what real people think about freedom of speech. That people have given their lives for it, and that it is an act of treason to throw it away so carelessly.
Thank you.
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Jones isn’t a pauper, and owns some of 2GB. While it may hurt their bottom line for a while, I doubt it will put him off the air..
in fact, because there will be no ads, that basically doubles his air time !!!
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Maybe Mercedes could be reminded who was using their products during the late 1930’s and early 1940’s.Didn’t seem so worried about their brand being trashed back then.
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We have it here too. I regard it as a form of terrorism — make your target afraid to not do as you want.
Fight this with every breath you take.
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PS:
Senator McCarthy was right about there being Communists in high government positions. But his method of going after the problem did more harm than good. No one should make that kind of mistake in the name of a just cause.
10
Volkswagen Australia was similarly twitted. My response to their FB comment on the matter:
Followed up with:
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Those comments are outstanding Bernd.
Kk 🙂
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The left know Turnbull is more Labor than Liberal hence their desire for him to destroy the Libs. Anything to undermine Abbott. Abbotts critics fail to notice his determination in all things eg peddaling for cancer research, life saving etc. Gruelling physical endeavours demand strength of mind and character, two attributes his detractors lack
40
my suspicion about Malcolm is that he is mainly interested in acting as the facilitator for his “previous”
associates; Goldman Sachs. They love Carbon trading and would love a piece of any action he could “facilitate”.
I’m not sure Mal has a great desire to manage our country and lead us the way I think Tony Abbott might.
KK
30
I don’t know off-hand what Professor Lewandowsky’s BA or PhD entailed but the UWA School of Psychology courses, it appears, have few if any ‘hard’ science or maths prerequisites.
Psychology does not use clearly defined terms, does not have highly controlled measurable experimental conditions, the experiments are not reproducible predictive or testable.
Psychology is not a science as we knew it, say fifty years ago; psychologists don’t use the scientific method, they don’t need it.
At UWA Psychology is listed amongst the “Life and Physical Sciences” — I wonder what those doing Biochemistry or Physics courses feel about that.
I used to think that a basic course in the history and philosophy of (natural) science would need to be part of the grounding in the scientific method for all budding scientists, but apparently that branch of knowledge post-Kuhn has been corrupted into something called the “sociology of science” (ref. Sokal affair).
There is even a field of study (wiki tells me) called the ‘Psychology of Science’,where psychologists presume to put real scientists ‘under the microscope’.
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Going through college I was forced to take a two semester course in psychology (a requirement for some odd reason). It scared me to death. You can literally find someone out there in the world who, with a wall full of credentials, including government licenses to practice, will tell you anything you want to hear.
My late first wife worked for a few years at the local mental health facility run by the Public Social Services Agency. She had dealings every day with the resident psychologists and they were real prima donnas with obvious problems of their own. First hand contact with the field of psychology is hard to take when you have your head screwed on straight. They need help more than their patients.
I have other stories I could relate. Suffice it to say, I have a real distrust for the whole idea.
Is Lewandowsky really that much of a surprise?
50
You do not have to turn over too many rocks to find government funded closet control freaks using pseudoscience to push a new Green Reich.
Is the darling of the australian broadcasting communists, Dr Kruszelnicki, beyond reproach?
Dr Karl shows how a lie can often be convincingly hidden between two truths.
Actually lots of lies can be hidden rather poorly between two truths.
Paraphrasing the good doctor…
1.) ‘Cows burp methane, and there’s a lot of them now (due to human agriculture).’
==> True enough.
2.) ‘Methane is subject to a positive feedback. If I take my microphone and walk closer to its loudspeaker while talking, the sound travels through the microphone, through the amplifier, out the loudspeaker, and back around the feedback loop again, until it becomes a whistle. That continues even though I’m not speaking any more – I’m not putting any more energy into the system and yet it gets louder by itself. And the analogy with methane is that we have methane bubbling out of the melting permafrost in Russia.’
==> The analogy is flawed because when he stops speaking he is still putting energy into the system electrically via the amplifier. To believe the Earth’s climate operates this way requires believing that catastrophic warming happened in the medieval warm period. Well warming certainly occurred, and for longer than 60 years, but to call this catastrophic would be news to the Nordic settlers (“vikings”) of Greenland.
On top of that, the areas of permafrost attracting the most headlines for methane release are shallow coastal bays where the permafrost in question is under the seabed (hence it literally bubbles to the surface). This permafrost has been bubbling out methane since… 10000 years ago when those coastal areas got submerged due to global sea level rise at the end of the last ice age. Nothing new there, folks.
But I know you want more. Just to show how comprehensively wrong Dr K is about global warming, why don’t we take a trip to Russia and hear what the scientists of the Russian State Hydrology department have to say about what is happening in their own back yard?
Now I’m no mathematician, but I believe: Catastrophe! x 0.012 = Meh!
Note to the communists of the world, couldn’t you at least get your story straight?
3.) ‘The IPCC predicts 1m of sea level rise by 2100 without positive temperature feedbacks.’
==> Sure they said that, but the long term records analysed by Phil Watson show a slight deceleration over the last 50 years. If positive feedbacks existed, and they were significant enough to be worrisome, there could not have been a deceleration in recent sea level rise due to oceanic thermal expansion. A sea level rise of 0.15m by 2100 is much more likely based on present trends.
Don’t tell that to Geoscience Australia, where it’s all IPCC all the time. Heaven forbid that they should use their own local data to reach their own conclusions about Australia!
4.) ‘We can stop the methane problem partly by genetically engineering cows and their gut fauna to produce less methane. (One and a half seconds of awkward silence from the interviewer.) We can do it, but we haven’t even started.’
==> Not false but not quite true either. To say we can do something successfully that has never been done before is a slightly misleading use of the word “can”. That’s aside from being bewildered by the infeasibility and creepiness of this strategy. There’s nothing wrong in principle with genetic engineering, but the amount of experience and success in this area is so small that these days they have to call it “genetic modification” so as not to attract the ire of… you know… real engineers!
5.) ‘Men fart slightly more often per day than women do.’
==> You’d certainly know, Dr K.
I remember David Karoly adopted similar tactics in the global warming TV debates of 2008/2007. If one smiles a lot, talks fast, and wears flashy clothes then one can get away with the most audacious half-truths and bluster. Plus as long as all the lies are generated for you by the IPCC, you can always say later on that you were misled. If everyone’s responsible, nobody is responsible.
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Gah, didn’t see a need to proofread a one-liner.
That last point is point 5 and it meant to say “…slightly more often…”
—————————————
[Fixed – Mod]
20
Gah, just noticed another gaff. When I translated “global net-emission (20 mln.t/y)” into more familiar units I called them Gt instead of Mt. It’s million tonnes, not billion.
Download that Russian PDF, it’s a keeper.
——————————————
[Fixed – Mod]
20
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Andrew,
Additional point:
6). Carbon Pawprint is that a large pet dog is equivalent to that of a four-wheel drive Land Rover Currently under dicussion at The Non-Converstaion.
I am currently compiling a LARGE DOG Carbon Footprint Equivalent Calculator basing the assumption that you have to reduce your overall footprint by 20% by 2020. Since you can’t afford a new Battery car, the the pet has to be downsized. The calculator assumes you can achieve 15% reduction by 2020. The the dog has to go (and the cat) – you are now down to an AMOEBA – but only one a day (no reproduction or division allowed) – if you aren’t happy with this then reduce your overall energy consumption (no cooking etc) to 14% then you can have one ANT for the whole year.
See PET CO2 footprint equivalent calculator – grants will enable me to study at least ten dogs over the next few years. Email Joannenova etc for my details and send pets please:
Dave (@VI
PF pet foods)40
If that line about dog carbon footprints gets through your bullshit filter anything will. Try turning the numbers into money, which is usually a fairly good proxy for energy consumption.
There wouldn’t be many dogs in the suburbs if they cost as much as a car to buy and run.
41
There was a paper published in Marine and Petroleum Geology in 2005 attempting to estimate the extent of natural seeps of oil and methane. They are very large.
http://walrus.wr.usgs.gov/reports/reprints/Kvenvolden_MPG22.pdf
Gaia’s breath—global methane exhalations
Keith A. Kvenvolden, Bruce W. Rogers
Marine and Petroleum Geology 22 (2005) 579–590
US Geological Survey, 345 Middlefield Road, MS 999, Menlo Park, CA 94025, USA
On Section 4.1 (Natural macro-seeps) we read:
“Therefore, estimates of the global CH4 flux, based on gas/oil ratios, literature surveys, and theoretical considerations, average ~25 Tg CH4/yr to the atmosphere and ~35 Tg CH4/yr to the seafloor. [note: 1 Tg = 1 million tons]
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Methane is combustible. Could we maybe just set the atmosphere on fire and get rid of it all at once?
Since methane is so much more “deadly” than CO2 I don’t think anyone would mind the extra CO2 that would result.
Problem solved! 😉
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There are two comments that Lewandowsky made on STW that are both pertinent and relevant to my own blog postings.
Firstly, Lewandowsky wants an apology for my suspecting that he may not have contacted sceptical blogs to place the survey online. My reply was that there are plenty of grounds for suspecting that he lied, including a declaration that it is alright to make false statements in the cause of climate change. This lead me to what I believe is an important conclusion.
Secondly, Lewandowsky (along with co-author Klaus Oberauer) made derogatory comments about using Excel pivot tables, as opposed to high level, scientific statistics. My recent reply is that the low-level statistics have a role to play in relating results to the general public, for asking raising pertinent questions (both for peer reviewers, other scientists in the field) and for policy-makers weighing up the science. The significance of pivot table analysis is borne out by my use of them bringing out original points that are not in Lewandowsky at al 2012, and indicate that the central conclusions are contradicted by the data.
In conclusion, I believe that Lewandowsky has used the blog to undermine the trust in “science” and statistics, through attacking enquiring questions and superior, but contrary, opinions to his own. This goes entirely against the principles which Universities in the Western World stand for – centres of excellence for learning, enquiry and original research.
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First Klaus, then close.
Just why, I don’t knose.
=============
10
It is simple really “Sack him”
30
After following this Lewandowsky saga for some time I have come to the conclusion that he really did not know what he was getting into. I would surmise that he would be in shock on the power of the internet/connections and the number and education level of the realists.
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I disagree Jonathan. If we can have the head of the Climate Change Commission make outlandish unscientific claims with impunity; that is without being properly called to account by scientists and the main stream media, why would Lewandowsky expect to be?
If Flannery can say it is possible we could expect sea rises eight storeys high, then purchase a waterfront property; or that Perth, Brisbane, Adelaide etc are going to run out of water and even if it rains the dams will never fill again; or that drought is the permanent climate; or that the drought was caused by human climate change; or the cyclones and floods were caused by human climate change; and continue in his Government paid role as head of the Climate Change Commission, why would Lewandowsky expect that his dodgy research claiming climate skeptics are conspiracy theorists would be questioned by the establishment? There is certainly no precedent for dodgy claims about climate change by alarmists costing them their Government funded positions.
Flannery can tell the Federal Government in 2007 that ”The technology to extract that energy and turn it into electricity is relatively straightforward.” then shortly after the geo-thermal company which he has shares in gets a $90 million dollar federal grant. The money has been spent, the company’s projects have gone from one failure to another, the shares have tanked from $1.60 to a few cents, yet Flannery is still considered a wise climate science guru. So why would Lewandowsky expect his work ridiculing climate sceptics to cause him any grief?
Lewandowsky knew exactly what he was doing. He fully expected to reap rich rewards for doing so just as Michael Mann, Phil Jones or Tim Flannery and many dodgy alarmists before him have.
100
Jonathan,
Whilst Lewandowsky may not have known what he was getting into, the aim of the paper was to find further reasons to dogmatically dismiss any views that question the established orthodoxy. It is from a view of science that sees conformity and belief in that orthodoxy as the mark of a scientist. From this conformity is the importance of opinion polls and declarations of belief by scientific bodies to this view. Promoting evidence or hypotheses that contradicts orthodoxy risks being branded a heretic or denier.
The alternative, “Popperian” view of science is that progress is often made by over-turning existing hypotheses, or subsuming them within more profound theories. Getting results that contradict hypotheses is a cause for celebration. It then raises a whole series of questions. In this view of science, belief in a specific hypothesis is dangerous. People do not like having their beliefs contradicted, and it would be hugely damaging psychologically to constantly attempt to undermine one’s core beliefs. Belief instead is in finding new understanding of the world by the most rigorous method.
The questionnaire, despite all its biases, clearly showed that the vast majority of respondents, whether skeptic or alarmist rejected cranky conspiracy theories. Lewandowsky’s theory about climate “deniers” having a conspiracist orientation was clearly contradicted by the evidence. A team of people then spent 18 months producing the paper. There is srong circumstantial evidence that the time was spent manipulating the data, choosing the best statistical methods to corroborate their story, and carefully phrasing what they wrote to claim the opposite of what the data revealed.
The “orthodox” view of science was clearly Lewandowsky’s enemy when the evidence contradicted his hypothesis. He could not publish the full results for risk of his status as a scientist and for future funding of his work. The “Popperian” view would have still allowed publication, as it falsifies a hypothesis that Lewandowsky and others believe in.
Kevin Marshall.
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MBC,
The irony of all that is that Lewandowsky actually formally proved the skeptic points about confirmation bias and subjective methodology manipulation with his very own study, which was meant to affirm the contrary with science as valid when consensus based. He merely illustrated first hand that the “denier” view is the correct one, in that researchers such as himself easily fall victim to their own ideological belief system and, if given enough rope, hang themselves on the yardarm of attempting to use studies merely to give desired results, rather than objectively analyzing those results and drawing conclusions from there.
QED, Lewie, you really are as dumb as you seem, but an absolute master of sophistry and self-deception.
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1. Why do they fund work so unscientific? Well, they do so in relation to the catastrophic man-made global warming mantra. So this is no different.
2. Why do they allow such hypocrisy and bias on a government funded publication? Simple. The Gillard government.
3. Are standards at the University of Western Australia (UWA) so low that they can’t find a Professor who understands the scientific method, and can reason without name-calling? Yes, they are that low.
4. Aren’t other statisticians at UWA concerned at what Lewandowsky is doing to the reputation of “UWA Statistics”? No they aren’t, but if they were, they’d be too scared, in any case, to say anything for fear of retribution.
5. Finally, aren’t the scientists who missed out on ARC funding angry that our taxpayer funds are given instead to someone who apparently uses the funds to promote his personal political views, instead of in the pursuit of knowledge? You bet.
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The major portion of university funding comes from the STATE government.
WA has had a LIBERAL State government for over four years now.
Colin Barnett is the LIBERAL Premier of WA.
Colin Barnett is an alumni of the UWA, has been made aware of the Lewandowsky scandal, and has chosen to ignore it.
.
Can we PLEASE all stop pretending that any of this has anything to do with any particular political party, and that things will just magically get better by voting for the other mob. It won’t. We’ve been there, done that. Over and over.
ALL Australian political groups, including the political parties AND the environmentalists AND the unions, were bought up by the corporations and banks in the late sixties.
Today, a vote for a political party, support for an environmental group, or membership of a union, is simply moral and/or financial assistance to the corporations and banks in their unquenchable thirst for more money, power and control.
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No no! We DOOOO have a choice! We MUST have a choice. If we BELIEVE we have a choice then therefore we DOOOO have a choice! It is the power of positive thinking. A REAL case of mind over matter.
Or something like that.
In a very “Yes Prime Minister” kind of way, perhaps it is a case of “mind over matter”.
They don’t MIND as long as you don’t MATTER.
Let us now turn to fashion. The in-thing to wear this election season is a thin cotton printed tee-shirt with a picture of Malcolm “GS” Turnbull holding a fist full of your dollars, subtitled with the caption:
That’ll really show those protectionist unionists a thing or two!! 🙁
50
I have no idea where you got the idea Universities are largely State Government funded? Perhaps you are confusing public primary and secondary education funding? There is absolutely no doubt that the Federal Government is the greatest source of funds for Australian Universities.
The most recent figures show that approximately 40.5% of funding was sourced directly from the Australian Federal Government through direct grants and over 11.3% from HELP (HECS)loans. Other fees help from the Federal Government (Indigenous and other disadvantaged students and scholarships) accounted for another 2.1%. So a total of 53.9% from the Federal Government. Direct grants are predominantly provided through the Commonwealth Grants Scheme and the Australian Research Council (ARC) and National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC). Up-front student contributions were just 2.6% of funding, while full-fee-paying international students accounted for 15% of university funding. Just 4% came from State and local Government grants, and ‘other revenue’ – which includes, investment portfolios, property developments, non-government grants and donations – accounted for 24.5%.
Therefore, there is no question that the Federal Government calls the tune regarding University funding. Though it is true that Universities have been a growing nursery of left wing ideologists for years as has the public service and it is no coincidence that it is bureaucrats who largely decide what funding proposals get up before the Minister regardless of which flavour of Government is in power.
I haven’t seen any support for your assertion that all political and environmental groups were bought by corporations and banks in the late sixties. I wasn’t an active shareholder in the banks back then (a little too young), but I have been acquainted with some of the better known bank board chairmen of those times, (I worked for one of them in my early career), I highly doubt he would have used shareholders funds for such purposes. And I can’t see it escaping the auditors attention!
70
Orwellian word games:
‘Tyranny’ becomes ‘freedom.”Collectivist’ morphs to ‘Liberal.’ ‘Progressive’means’back to the golden age regressive.’
20
We are by no means bored with your pursuit of Lewandowsky’s sloppy, politicised and publicly funded effort to smear those who are unconvinced that humans are causing dangerous climate change. It is incredibly important that you continue to pursue this matter Jo because too many people have been allowed to get away with outrageously non-scientific comments claiming to have science on their side. It is through the profile you have given Lewandowsky’s scandalous work that others around the world have become aware of it and the laughing stock he is making of himself and the University of Western Australia.
Your readers might be interested in reading what one statistics professor said about Lewandowsky’s paper when predicting that a book may well be written “on everything that has gone wrong with this paper” as an example to students of statistical research and analysis of what not to do!
William M Briggs, PhD, Cornell University Professor & Statistical Consultant. His CV is here: So he is no bunny with regards to statistical analysis. Here’s what he says about Lewandowsky’s latest work:
“One day a terrific psychological study is going to be written on the madness and mass lunacy which arose after climate change swam into the public’s ken [knowledge, cognizance – ed]. I don’t mean the actions and thoughts of the man-in-the-street, which were and are no different in this area than they were and are in any political matters. No: the real curiosity is what happened to academia, inside departments which haven’t anything to do with climatology.
There, surrounded by people eager to agree with each other and fuelled by infinite estimates of their own intelligence, great hoards of degreed non-experts, people who couldn’t derive the Omega equation if you threatened to remove their tenure and who think Vorticity is a town in Spain, lectured all of mankind on why The End Was Near, Unless…
Unless they, the non-experts, were hearkened to, esteemed, feted, moneyed, and just plain listened to, dammit.
The cornerstone of this future pathological report may well be the peer-reviewed Psychological Science paper “NASA faked the moon landing—Therefore (Climate) Science is a Hoax: An Anatomy of the Motivated Rejection of Science” by Stephan Lewandowsky, Klaus Oberauer, and Gilles Gignac, perhaps the completest, most representative work of its odd era.
Everything that could have been done wrong, was done wrong. Every bias that could have been manifested, was manifested. Every fallacy pertinent to the matter at hand was made. The conclusions, regurgitated from unnecessarily complicated statistical procedures, did not follow from the evidence gathered, which itself was suspect. In its way, then, the paper is a jewel, a gift to the future, a fundamental text to how easy it is to fool oneself.
Consider that its errors are not far to seek. Take the opening sentence: “Although nearly all domain experts agree that human CO2 emissions are altering the world’s climate, segments of the public remain unconvinced by the scientific evidence.” Isn’t that gorgeous? I count at least seven mistakes, and we are only at the very beginning!
Mistake 1: Lewandowsky is not a domain expert, and by his argument is not qualified to speak on matters climatic, yet speak he does.
Mistake 2: His opinion about how to consider the science of climate change is therefore no more valuable than any other non-domain expert’s (about the physics), but he considers by this act of publishing that it is.
Mistake 3: He conflates voting with truth. His fallacy is to suppose that because the majority of domain experts say X, X is therefore true.
Mistake 4: He conflates numbers with weight of evidence. His fallacy is to suppose the minority of domain experts who do not agree with the majority are not to be listened to because they are only a minority.
Mistake 5: He confuses physics with economics, a vulgar but common error. It may be true that, say, temperatures will rise by 0.5o C in the next five decades, but it does not follow that any theory of what will happen because of this temperature rise is true, nor is it true that anybody’s suggestion to combat the adverse consequences of what will happen is therefore worthy of consideration.
Mistake 6: Since Lewandowsky committed this howler, and is obviously unaware of it, he cannot see it in the people he interviews, who often make a similar error. That is, when a civilian is asked, “Do you believe in climate change?” he often answers “No,” but the mistake is to assume he is answering the question as stated, when in reality he has answered the modified question, “Do you believe in climate change and should the government regulate, rule, tax, control, mandate, penalize, etc., etc. to combat this change?” Such an elementary mistake by a psychologist shows us just how far the madness has progressed.
Mistake 7: Lewandowsky, because he is not a domain expert, misunderstood the basic physics. There are no domain experts who do not agree that mankind changes the climate. The only matters in question are: how much? where? when? with what certainty can we know? Notice the absence of “What can be done?” Because this requires expertise in human behaviour, and that expertise is what is suspiciously missing in this paper.
My dears, I emphasize that this was merely the opening sentence, and that much worse was to come. But before that, there was one more error, more grievous than any other, embedded in his starting sentence. This is Lewandowsky’s befuddlement that any non-domain expert could deign to question “the scientific evidence” (when much of what is “science” is instead politics). He assumes that any who do so, even in the admitted presence of disagreement over what “the” science is, suffers from a psychological flaw. Science has spoken, thinks he, and therefore nothing remains to be said. An actual instance of doublethink, and really quite marvellous when you consider the economy of words used to express it.
Now, the rest of Lewdandowsky’s work is more mundane. He commits the freshman mistake of only seeking evidence for his beliefs, and for none that would contradict him (and of which there is plenty); he says things like “Another common attribute of the contemporary rejection of science is its reliance on the internet” and then uses the internet himself in his “science”; he questions the influence of Steven McIntyre of Climateaudit forgetting that McIntyre is a domain expert and he, Lewandowsky is not.
He admits confirmation bias by calling dividing his sample into “pro-science” and “skeptic”, when the point in question is what the science says. He builds “latent variable” models to “prove” what he already believed, and biased himself to confirm; latent variable analysis being a lovely technique to give desirable results. He amusingly assures his audience of his “theoretical results”: not theories of climate, but psychological (academics do love a theory). He can’t help himself but use the ugly term denial, an appalling word one would have thought a psychologist would have understood was inappropriate.
As I said, a book could be written, and probably will be written on everything that has gone wrong with this paper.
We haven’t time here to list and review each error: we leave that to genuine psychologists.
Source: http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=6164
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Jaymez,
An absolute gem of a find. I’ve bookmarked his page on Lewandowsky.
Thanks
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in Mistake 6 ““Do you believe in climate change and should the government regulate, rule, tax……………etc”
NO! the first thing is to define what is meant by “believe in climate change”. !
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Hilarious!
Some science builds upon others work, some new papers refute earlier work and some “skeptics” blog about it.
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It’s Nice to see you’ve had someone check your spelling and grammar for this post.
Sometimes you just have to trust someone better educated than yourself.
Well done Nice.
KK 🙂
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Great stuff Jo!
10
I hope you sent this as an offical complaint to UWA!
Pretty darn sure you did, and it’s beautiful.
00
You see, Lewandowski must be doing something right, because he stirs your interest. UWA should be pleased that it has people willing to fight the stupidity produced by “skeptics”.
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In that case why didn’t he just ask all the main sceptic blogs to post the survey? BTW JB do you believe that the climate changed naturally before the ind revolution?
What about the incredible warming after the younger dryas of 10C in just 10 years? Also many other extreme warming and cooling events during glacials and interglacials?
Why is a slight warming of 0.7C over the last century and after the end of a minor ice age so hard for you to understand?
Also why did we introduce a co2 tax when simple maths dictates that OZ can’t make a scrap of difference to climate or temp?
If the Gillard govt really believes in reducing co2 emissions (of course they don’t)why are they increasing exports of coal, gas and iron ore?
Remember this is supposed to be the “greatest moral challenge of time.” A beautiful quote for useful,gullible idiots.
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Neville, no, before the industrial revolution the climate was completely static and unchanging, and had been for the whole of the 6000 years since the world was created. Everyone was happy and lived in neat little villages, and talked like Yorkshiremen.
As for the spectacular warming after the younger dryas, forgive me if I doubt that there was a global temperature increase of 10C in ten years. Do we really have such good temporal resolution in global temperature records that far back? If we do, why then do we make such a fuss when people do reconstructions over the last thousand years or so?
Maybe, Neville, it is you who are just a teensy bit gullible.
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I don’t read much of your stuff Joohn.
But that last piece deserves a Medal.
It’s as if you are showing a side of yourself that agrees with us thru sarcasm.
Surely you can’t believe all of the crap you write.
It sounds like a school kid who has spent three months reading SkS, but you seem smarter than that?
What the hell is going on?
KK
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I try Keith, I try.
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Well here is the link from NOAA showing a 10C rise in 10 years in Greenland and Venezuela 11,500 years ago.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/abrupt/data4.html
Just for your info the human population at that time was very low, perhaps as low as one million.
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This one has a bit better resolution.
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k247/dhm1353/DO.png
That one million human population were heavily into coal fired power, huh.
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To quote from your source, Neville:
“In Greenland, temperatures rose 10° C (18° F) in a decade”
Note, that is Greenland, not the world. One only has to go a few sentences further to, “In the Cariaco Basin north of Venezuela, for example, temperatures decreased about 3°C “.
So some places got warmer, and some got cooler. I’m going to agree with you that it was a very rapid change, but it seems to have been more of a redistribution of heat, rather than a global increase or decrease. As in, “contrary to the Northern Hemisphere records, (antarctic) temperatures were relatively low prior to the Younger Dryas (a period called the Antarctic Cold Reversal) and rose during the Younger Dryas”.
None the less, climactically it would have been a very interesting time to be around. We should maybe hope for a world not quite that “interesting”.
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Hadn’t seen that one before Mark
Interesting.
kk
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Maybe they were all into heavy breathing?
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It must really hurt to be the Stupid Bastard that you are.
10
Considering the IPCC ‘consensus’ has been proven to be at the least an obvious failure by me and others, possibly outright fraud, I hardly think scepticism can be criticised as stupid.
Instead, the scientific method remains an essential part of the controls against political demagogues and academic toadies like Lewandowsky and, apparently, you.
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Yeah, but I’ve proven it to be an obvious success, a brilliantly honest piece of work.
Fair crack of the whip, turnedoutnice, I doubt you proved anything at all.
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John Brookes continues to perform down to his usual low standard.
And continues. And continues. And continues…
And has no sense of shame at all.
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Hi Bite
“I try Keith, I try.”
Could you figure out that comment?
I’m starting to get really worried about him.
He seems to be wandering aimlessly, just like Gee used to do, making unconnected comments?
Weird sh$t.
KK 🙂
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Yeah, I know you guys don’t get it. Don’t worry.
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KK,
It seems like a flip response to your statement,
But it’s exact meaning is as hard to figure as John himself.
If you want my opinion, John amuses himself by spending time here where almost anything he says is tolerated by a very generous comment policy. He no doubt spends time on pro global warming sites and they usually tolerate anything pro-cause. But this is the only place I think, where he can sound off against the skeptics without having to put a bit of effort into it. And he certainly puts no visible effort into it. He has no apparent interest in being taken seriously. And as I said, no sense of shame.
It’s just a game.
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That’s it Bite
They do have uses but they also tend to “space” out real discussion and disrupt the blog.
Maybe moderators could can them for a month after they accumulate 100 thumbs down?
Space their contributions?
kk
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I take exception to that. I still wander.
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More “science” to blog about.
Climate Change Beliefs: Political Views Trump Facts for Some
It would be an interesting comparison to look at the percentage of “political” based posts here vs skeptical science.
09
Totally invalid comparison, for several reasons.
The most obvious difference is that Australia’s carbon tax is explicitly in scope for Jo’s blog, whereas on SkS it is not.
Going one further, any perceived threat to the maintenance of a good civilisation could conceivably be in scope for this blog, hence Jo’s previous flagging of the instabilities and shenanigans inherent in Keynesian central banking economics.
Politics is implied in these topics.
I’m sure other commentators can think of more reasons as to why such a simple comparison could not usefully serve the purpose you intended for it.
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Hi Nice,
Are you JB’s cousins?
Your writing styles and expression of content are so similar!
KK 🙂
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Nice One,
So you want to argue sociology now? Try an argument based on the science. From where I sit sociology is just out to make as much hay for itself as it can. When someone swallows the argument that the majority opinion of some carefully selected group of scientists makes something true, they’ve screwed up. Argument from authority is a well known trap that I don’t intend to fall into. Apparently — and sadly — you do fall for it.
Climate change is thoroughly shot down on the science.
The “facts” are not a matter of how many people agree or disagree with them. What matters is why they disagree with your facts. You fail to show a convincing problem. You fail to show any evidence that CO2 is causing what you say is a problem.
You fail!
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Well, you’re one for the political side … what else ?
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Here is another social psychologist. The Dutch media are reporting that Diederik Stapel, the Tilburg University social psychologist who fabricated data in dozens of studies, is facing a criminal probe for his misuse of some 2.2 million euros (roughly $2.8 million U.S.) in government grant funding.
From Retraction Watch
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Now for Lewandowski!
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another editorial board member for michael kile to consider:
STW: Editorial Board Member: Glenn Albrecht
http://www.shapingtomorrowsworld.org/bio.php?u=66
28 Jan 2010: NYT: Daniel B. Smith: Is There an Ecological Unconscious?
(Daniel B. Smith holds the Critchlow Chair in English at the College of New Rochelle)
About eight years ago, Glenn Albrecht began receiving frantic calls from residents of the Upper Hunter Valley, a 6,000-square-mile region in southeastern Australia. For generations the Upper Hunter was known as the “Tuscany of the South” — an oasis of alfalfa fields, dairy farms and lush English-style shires on a notoriously hot, parched continent. “The calls were like desperate pleas,” Albrecht, a philosopher and professor of sustainability at Murdoch University in Perth, recalled in June. “They said: ‘Can you help us? We’ve tried everyone else. Is there anything you can do about this?’ ”
Residents were distraught over the spread of coal mining in the Upper Hunter…
Albrecht, a dark, ebullient man with a crooked aquiline nose, was known locally for his activism. He participated in blockades of ships entering Newcastle (near the Upper Hunter), the largest coal-exporting port in the world, and published opinion articles excoriating the Australian fossil-fuel industries…
“There’s a scholar who talks about ‘heart’s ease,’ ” Albrecht told me as we sat in his car on a cliff above the Newcastle shore, overlooking the Pacific. In the distance, just before the earth curved out of sight, 40 coal tankers were lined up single file. “People have heart’s ease when they’re on their own country. If you force them off that country, if you take them away from their land, they feel the loss of heart’s ease as a kind of vertigo, a disintegration of their whole life.” …
Albrecht’s philosophical attempt to trace a direct line between the health of the natural world and the health of the mind has a growing partner in a subfield of psychology. Last August, the American Psychological Association released a 230-page report titled “Interface Between Psychology and Global Climate Change.” News-media coverage of the report concentrated on the habits of human behavior and the habits of thought that contribute to global warming. This emphasis reflected the intellectual dispositions of the task-force members who wrote the document — seven out of eight were scientists who specialize in decision research and environmental-risk management — as well as the document’s stated purpose. “We must look at the reasons people are not acting,” Janet Swim, a Penn State psychologist and the chairwoman of the task force, said, “in order to understand how to get people to act.”…
Recently, a number of psychiatrically inflected coinages have sprung up to represent people’s growing unease over the state of the planet — “nature-deficit disorder,” “ecoanxiety,” “ecoparalysis.” The terms have multiplied so quickly that Albrecht has proposed instituting an entire class of “psychoterratic syndromes”: mental-health issues attributable to the degraded state of one’s physical surroundings…
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/31/magazine/31ecopsych-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
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Figures, doesn’t it?
00
… someone who apparently uses the funds to promote his personal political views, instead of in the pursuit of knowledge …
Jo, In order to go into any science, you have to be confident that you can, not only see what others have not, but in looking at what others already have, you will see it more clearly. Because if this there really is no clear separation between “knowledge” and “personal opinion.” Good scientists try to reinforce their view/understanding/opinion/knowledge with empirical support – facts that can be treated as legitimate data. Bad scientists work the opposite. They manufacture data that supports their position, or careful select only data from other sources that appears to.
It is worth noting that recently it was concluded that at least two thirds of withdrawn papers are the product not merely of scientific mistakes but of outright fraud. Biochemical and medical research is particularly rife with this, but physics and other disciplines have similar problems. If you think that climate science is problematic, consider the real, personal hazards of being treated based upon fraudulent medical work! The worrisome aspect is that it is easily imaginable that an M.D. could readily submitted to treatment based upon a finding that same M.D. published based upon data that was faked to support the conclusion. Many of these “frauds” do not understand that what they have done is in anyway mistaken let alone wrong. Personally, I consider that the real problem of “post-normal” science.
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Another from UWA: Brad Farrant
Adjunct Research Fellow in Early Childhood Development at University of Western Australia writes:
Climate change has been widely recognised by leading public health organisations and prestigious peer reviewed journals as the the biggest global health threat of the 21st century. From The Conversation
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That’s good news. Now we’re home free as the saying goes and can fire a whole bunch of public health people bleeding the tax payers because there’s no more need for them.
Who would ever think that no threat at all would be the most serious thing we face? But it’s right from their own mouth as it were. Wonderful news indeed!
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Hi PJB
Frightening – and so the collective nightmare continues.
Very few people can say that they were on the outside looking in at a world wide Grand Mal like this, but we can.
In the past everyone has been caught up in it.
Whole counties “believed” that the only solution was war and in WW1 and WW2.
In hindsight a better solution may have been to shoot the leaders, but it is more complicated than that.
The human capacity to Reason has brought us to this juncture of Climate Madness which infests every level of
our lives.
From outside we can see that reasoning is useless WITHOUT SCIENCE.
kk
00
Another Social Psychologist:
Earlier today, we reported on what we thought was the first retraction to appear for Dirk Smeesters, who we noted was “the former Erasmus University social psychology professor investigated for serious irregularities in his work.” It turns out, however, as a Retraction Watch tipster told us, that another retraction had already been published. From Retraction Watch
00
Hi Jo,
The member for Tangelly, Dennis Jensen, is a good friend and in a previous life, a scientist. Perhaps, if he is still there, he can help.
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That’d be Tangney. 🙂
00
The research idea, the bumbling distribution of the quiz, the incompetence evinced
in setting the quiz, the analysis and the defensive a-h arguments are all reminiscent
of DIC. Does the researcher concerned need some help?
00
at least I now know why my former brother in law, ensconced with the wwf, and runs around accrediting countries with wwf symbols has got his position.
uwa….hotbed of art they call science.
00