José Duarte is a psychology PhD candidate. He is able to make sense of issues in the “Moon Landing Paper” by Stephan Lewandowsky, with some new angles in a way I haven’t seen before. He makes a convincing case for the paper to be retracted, about six times over. My initial analysis of this paper still stands: “This could be the worst paper I have seen — an ad hom argument taken to its absurd extreme, rebadged as “science”.
I recommend Duarte’s whole long analysis, though there is language there that for legal reasons I won’t repeat or endorse. What we see is sloppy science and grand “incompetence“.
Duarte focuses on the deception of a title based on only 10 responses, some of which were fakes, none of which was disclosed to the reader:
Lewandowsky, Oberauer, Gignac titled their paper “NASA faked the moon landing—therefore, (climate) science is a hoax: an anatomy of the motivated rejection of science.”
Why is their title based on the variable for which they have the least data, essentially no data?
Why in the abstract are they linking free market views to incredibly damaging positions that again, they have no data for?
Could this be an error? That seems very unlikely. The researchers have had two years to come clean, to admit that there was no significant data regarding belief in the moon hoax or rejection of the HIV-AIDS or smoking-lung cancer links. They’ve had two years to remove the very-likely-to-be-scam participants identitifed by people who have looked at the data, which will further reduce those trivial numbers at the bottom, and they’ve not done so. I’m not sure they even talk about it. Lewandowsky still won’t tell the public that fewer than 10 participants rejected the moon hoax or HIV and smoking claims – after all this time Lewandowsky is still evading those basic facts and distracting his readers with nonsense statistics. Pearson correlations on essentially dichotomous data skewed 1135 to 10? The paper should have been retracted by the authors long ago.
Duarte reminds us that the title contains a form of reasoning, a causal directional claim for which there is no data. As if readers start from deciding the Moon landing was faked then use that “therefore” to reject “climate science”. In the end there were four (count them, 4)* anonymous online respondents who said the Moon landing was faked AND that climate science was a hoax. Why won’t Psychological Science retract this paper?
The data was so bad, Duarte calls it “go home” data.
I don’t know what’s going on at Psych Science – the stats here were amateurish and deceptive. First, the data here was go home data. If you want to link moon hoax nonsense to your political foes, and in 1145 participants there are only 10 people who endorse that hoax (fewer after you delete the fakes), only 3 of whom endorse the climate hoax idea (fewer after you delete the fakes), you go home. It’s over. If you see similar trivial numbers for the HIV and smoking items, you bail. Go to a show, discover a new restaurant, think about the design of your next study. Those are go home numbers – you definitely don’t write it up.
Duarte asks “Do we hate our participants?”
This was an awful thing to do. It was damaging to innocent participants. It’s unethical to do this to your participants. It is wildly unethical to invite people to participate in a study, and then do this to them. They are helping us. They are volunteering to participate in scientific research. They’ve take time out of their lives to help us out. And in return, we slander them? We tell the world that they believe things that they do not believe? What Lewandowsky and colleagues did here was despicable.
Why would anyone participate in our research if our goal is to marginalize them in public life, to lie about them, to say that they think the moon landing was a hoax, to say they don’t think HIV causes AIDS, to say they don’t believe smoking causes lung cancer – when none of those things are true.
Simon Turnill also asked something similar — pointing out that the Australian National Statement of Ethical Conduct in Human Research (here) says “one of the duties of a researcher is to “ensure that respect for the participants is not compromised by the aims of the research”.
Duarte wonders why Lewandowsky et al chose to ignore associations which had more data (some data) to discuss, and why they didn’t even report some results at all (see the “lost” questions here), yet chose to headline invalid associations based on ” invalid associations based on 10 or 11 participants”.
When they wrote their title, they had a list of at least 13 conspiracy beliefs in their data, things that might be related to climate skepticism or free market views. They chose to talk about the conspiracy that had the lowest endorsement of everything in their dataset, so low that it’s not even there. And most of those not-even-there moon hoaxists, 7 out of the 10, did not endorse a climate hoax (if we even want to talk about such trivial numbers, which we’re surely going to decide we don’t.) And it’s such a damaging conspiracy to be associated with.
When you have no data, you tell no story. If you’re talking about things that are incredibly damaging, beliefs and positions which would marginalize people in public life, you definitely tell no story when you have no data.
Duarte explains that the four point scale Lewandowsky used was really a binary one, not a continuous scale. When treated as “continuous” spurious inane results get generated. Where a group that was more likely to say they “disagreed” with something, rather than “strongly disagreed” could be misconstrued as being more likely to “agree” with a conclusion that they actually said they disagreed with.
The disconnect with reality and real denial occurs with the social psychologists, not the participants:
If we wanted to identify the people disconnected from reality in this picture, it is the social psychologists, the reviewers, the journal editors who read passages like “Endorsement of free markets also predicted the rejection of other established scientific findings, such as the facts that HIV causes AIDS and that smoking causes lung cancer” and didn’t stop and wonder at the plausibility of such a thing, who evidently thought lots of people reject the HIV-AIDS link, or lots of people reject the smoking-cancer link, and that these beliefs go with endorsing free markets. They read this title: “NASA faked the moon landing—therefore, (climate) science is a hoax: an anatomy of the motivated rejection of science”, and presumably thought this was plausible, that a lot of people think the moon landing is a hoax, and that this was the springboard for climate skeptics (or hoaxists). If I wanted to talk about disconnect from reality, “denial” and the like, I wouldn’t focus on the participants.
He makes a convincing case that with tiny response rates, not only are some faked, but other are simply errors of people hitting the wrong button, misreading the question or mixing up terms.
Let’s even say someone is aware of the link between HIV and AIDS. I would bet that in a large sample, you’re going to find some people who think AIDS causes HIV. That’s very easy to imagine — they have the link, but somehow got the direction wrong. Some people might see “HIV causes AIDS” and think it’s a trick question with the wrong order, and thus submit their disagreement.
I found the analysis of new aspects of the paper interesting but would understand people who ask if there is any point is spending more time analyzing any survey, or treating any of its results as worthy of discussion, given that it started from the basis of trying to “discover” what skeptics think by asking people who hate skeptics. That was my first post on the topic: Lewandowsky – Shows “skeptics” are nutters by asking alarmists to fill out survey. The hostile aims of the survey were so transparent that even anti-skeptic commenters were calling it out:
“Yeah, those conspiracy theory questions were pretty funny, but does anyone think that hardcore deniers are going to be fooled by such a transparent attempt to paint them as paranoids?” pointer | August 30, 2010 at 11:42 am
Nonetheless, I’ve learned things about survey analysis from Duarte, which I enjoyed. He’s a lucid writer.
h/t to Bishop Hill.
Other posts:
- Lewandowsky, Cook claim 78,000 skeptics could see conspiracy survey at Cooks site where there is no link
- Journal admits Lewandowsky paper retracted because it failed. Twice!
- Lewandowsky gets $1.7m of taxpayer funds to denigrate people who disagree with him
- Ask Stephan Lewandowsky anything, except “please can I have that data”.
- Lewandowsky — A paper of questionable ethics, approved in a last minute switch
- Lewandowsky does “science” by taunts and attempted parody instead of answering questions
- Steve McIntyre finds Lewandowsky’s paper is a “landmark of junk science”
*Pointless technical question: were there 3 or 4 of 10 who said yes to the Moon landing conspiracy who also said yes to the climate change “hoax” one? The first pivot table here (and my spreadsheet) suggest 4, but others say 3. It’s not like it makes any difference. 🙂
I think I’ll go with the initial Nova analysis on this but Durate is a brave man to tackle anything lewandowsky writes, lest he risks his sanity.
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http://www.mdpi.com/2076-0787/3/3/299/pdf
The Plan
“And there are those who still believe in this project. They excoriate others who obstruct and obscure this pure guiding light of rationality—a position adopted, for example, by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway in their recent book Merchants of Doubt [9].”
It’s about attempting wrapping policy based claims in science?
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Q. Have I read any Lewandowsky?
A. No, but I trod in some once. took me a week to get rid of the smell…..
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Obviously the answer for Lew and crew is YES. Hate is their overriding principle for everything they do. They define themselves by what they hate. They hate everything that is not them.
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Yonniestone, I will go along with that, having had the benefit of being able to read most of the thread, before coming back to typing this comment.
Durate is obviously seen as being dangerous by, and a threat to, the AGW consensus. This is really very significant.
Why else would William Connolley have suddenly shown up here, and put so much effort into taking the conversation off-topic over a minor figure of speech? And why would he then try to turn all attempts, by the moderators, to steer the conversation back on topic, into endless arguments over semantics? And why would he suddenly feel the need to critique anything expressed in general colloquial terms, rather than in “the correct” scientific terms?
All diversionary tactics, to stop people discussing the real issue, which is the actual content in, and the implications of, the Durate paper.
Whoever pulls William Connolley’s strings, is obviously very worried about the implications of a wider discussion.
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The harm to the reputation of the university is incredible.
How in the hell did the uni’s management back a horse as dead as this one?
Universitys generally have many weak links, but you don’t display them in the shopfront window for everyone to see.
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I got a PhD from UWA and thought it to be a good Uni. That though was nearly 30 years ago and the refusal of UWA to acknowledge the many shortcomings in Dr Lewandowsky’s paper is damaging to their reputation. That said in reality the criticism of the paper are unlikely ever to be read by many.
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Is it possible for the Alumni of the UWA to raise a complaint with or about the university authorities.
Collective action is difficult to organise.
However I get regular requests for donations from my University. If I am not happy about something they get a letter in return instead of money.
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Don’t worry, Ian. I was at Trinity College, Cambridge. We have the full spectrum of traitors, thermageddonists, criminals, idiots and just plain wankers to worry about. Somehow we manage to rise above it.
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It is what Trinity is famous for, isn’t it? “Spies-R-Us”
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A few of those. But there were lots of good guys too. Most of the 30-something Nobel prize winners were scientists. Real ones.
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NOT the Nobel Piece Prize, however!
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I know Richard. I have actually worked with several Trinity alumni, and they were all first rate. They also knew some excellent pubs along the river. 😉
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It’s becoming more and more like the dead parrot sketch ?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4vuW6tQ0218
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An interesting question, for sure.
But is it really damaging to the university?
I don’t really have a feel for this and would have thought that backlash incidents happen from time to time and the standard reaction from UWA would be to support their author, which they did.
By contrast, Lewandowsky as a recognised serial offender in terms of dubious papers is often the subject of sceptics – no surprise there.
However, in the wider community, I wonder if there are many people interested in what he produces at all.
If that’s the case, then I could understand UWA turning a somewhat blind eye while acknowledging that the whole ‘publish or perish’ imperative sometimes draws a little flack and that their support is unavoidably part of that.
I’m not saying all this is OK or that UWA don’t have a case to answer; just that their perspective isn’t necessarily overly caught up in the nitty-gritty of it all.
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All it takes is one journalist digging for this kind of garbage to support a scam.
After that it really counts that nobody reads the original.
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“but you don’t display them in the shopfront window for everyone to see.”
And if possible, you ship them off to the far side of the world. 🙂
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Do universities really care anymore what is produced under their remit, as long as it reflects their general Leftist/Green/Socialist views on life, society, et al?
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.
Modern Universities really care for how much public and private largess they can gain by promoting anything that pays well.
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I don’t know how things work elsewhere, but, in the UK, the publicly funded universities (i.e. almost all of them) used to get a lot of their funding pretty much by the size of the published research, not from its quality. If it appeared in the “Beano”, it still counted. Nowadays, I suppose, it’s measured by the megabyte, but I expect any junk counts, when such a simplistic evaluation of research is applied; I think much funding is still attached to the sheer volume of published research and that the criteria remain quite incapable of discriminating between the valuable and the puerile. Even so, in many disciplines, a substandard publication will be quickly identified as such, because reviewers feel no ideological compulsion to give it a favourable reception.
That’s why “climate science”, at certain places of learning, has come to stand out, for all the wrong reasons. On the one hand, there remains the publication of clouds of worthless dross, where pumping just about any “study” out into the atmosphere, as it were, automatically attracts funding, attracts more funding for its ideological content and then permits dodgy statisticians to show that supporters of the idea of M-MGW have produced so many more cubic feet of “peer-reviewed” literature than “sceptics” have. On the other, these universities, or departments within them, are actively discouraging genuinely worthwhile research from their own student body and enthusiastically suppressing contradictory literature from other student bodies, even to the extent of getting editors dismissed and journals closed down.
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> If it appeared in the “Beano”, it still counted
Very dubious. Research is normally weighted by impact factor of journal. I think you’ve made the rest up.
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You obviously haven’t heard of the concept of hyperbole. Accepting an article for being approved by the “Beano” doesn’t, now I come to think of it, seem any dafter than allowing a bunch of parti pris judges to decide on the “impact factor” of a journal. In fact, I think you have proved my point.
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And the impact factor of the journal is judged by the standing of the contributers, which is measured by the number of papers they have had published.
It is the closest science has come, to discovering perpetual motion.
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Incidentally, Mr Connolley, considering what I implied about your co-religionists in the climate debate, isn’t it a bit odd that you focused on my whimsical reference to the “Beano”, while ignoring my more obvious slurs on your religion?
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It is a propaganda technique, Owen. I wouldn’t take it personally. It is really all Mr Connolley has to offer.
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Oh dear… let’s hope that billy does not pick up on that, otherwise we will get another drumming from him about how nobody in the warmist camp has never, ever used such a term……
It’s actually quite funny how truly embarrassed he is about the term “CAGW” and goes into total denial when I show him an article by one of his heroes which talks of exactly that.
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M-MGW !!
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Well there you go!!
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Absolute proof, at 99% certainty, that CO2 causes temperature adjustments.
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I am just old enough to have watched the low definition black and white live streaming of the first moon landing.
In my opinion, that and the development of the internet rate as the most significant technical achievements I have witnessed during of my lifetime to date. Others will have different nominations, of course.
I am not a denier of climate change, nor of human contributions to greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere. I remain a skeptic of hypothesised imminent human-caused climate catrostrophism.
Lewandowsky’s attempts at pseudo-scientific smearing of skeptics are contaminated by fuzzy logic and bile. I find his attempted moon-landing conspiracy linkage offensive.
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I was not amazed by the moon landing nearly as much as I was amazed that we could sit in our lounge rooms and watch them doing it while they were doing it.
But, then, if I was asked what are the five most amazing products of modern science, polyethylene would be in there.
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Yet another hole in the Lew. There’s leaks all over the place, and there’s a huge stink.
Sadly, it has become a big yawn until the UWA or some other authority actually does something constructive out of this information.
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Let’s hope that both UWA and more recently Bristol U (I think it is) get to hear about it and take corrective action. Surely, it is becoming embarrassing to be alumni of too many unis!!!!!!!
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I inform the relevant authorities at Bristol Uni (Lewy’s boss and the Vice Chancellor) whenever anything such as Duarte’s article pops up. Just so that they know.
No. They don’t respond. But I have a record of what I have informed them of, for when the Screwy Lewy comes tumbling down.
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Nice …
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I know there has been a few threads here concerning this [Snip]. It seems the Australian university system sucks.
A question for our international readers…can someone advise where I could send my daughter to receive a distinguished tertiary education? It is a worry.
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Question is not where to study, but what to study. Hopefully your daughter is interested in the real sciences or engineering.
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Check out Germany ,University is free for locals and there are several offers for overseas students. Vibrant economy, nice people and a chance to learn a new language.
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Put her in the military. It will make a man of her. 🙂
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Since the categorization of Psychology as Science, not medicine, psychologists have always struggled to be respected senior scientists but Lewandowsky is doing real damage to the profession as is any paper which publishes such nonsense. The traditional psychology nonsense generator is the use of dodgy statistics coupled with even dodgier surveys. In stark contrast Duarte seems to have the objectivity absolutely necessary to get to the truth of a subject and is to be applauded for his brave stand. I hope he succeeds with his PhD.
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I personally think lewandowski and oreskes are a perfect match, (0+O=0) or at least it did when I went to school,Lord knows what it is now (0+0=97% probably) <:o)
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“…there were four (count them, 4)* anonymous online respondents who said the Moon landing was faked AND that climate science was a hoax.”
I could get that result at my pub on a Saturday night (without taxpayer funding.)
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What would be the point of that?
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There’s random kooks in any ‘survey’.
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More likely a few just having a laff….
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I read a very good book by S J Gould entitled ‘The Mismeasure of Man’ which describes the ‘Eugenics science’ of the late 19th-early 20th century.
If you ever want to see how science can get things so badly wrong and turn so toxic, it’s an excellent read. Numerous examples are shown where the actual data doesn’t in any way support what researchers claimed it did. It was so infused with racial politics that things were just made up.
Science doesn’t always get things right. Eugenics is the best example I can think of where things go badly wrong in science research.
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Excellent comment thingadonta.
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When you have no data you are freed from narrative constraints so you can tell ANY story you want, but it should be regarded as imaginative fiction.
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D is a bit wacko with that post, but he’s spot-on with http://www.joseduarte.com/blog/but-climate-scientist-so-and-so-says-its-not-a-big-deal
[The subject of this thread is the paper by Lewandowsky, Oberauer, Gignac and the analysis of it by Duarte. Stop dragging comments off-topic.] ED
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Poor WC, he knows Lewandowsky is a FAR better scientist than WC will ever be.
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The Lew and the WC.. perfect playmates. !
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The 2 x 32c questions..
1. which is most ARROGANT ?
2. which is most IGNORANT ?
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That’s not true Bill; I think AGW is a bunch of BS and I used to practically live at tammy’s place until he banned me for saying the GPCS was real. Isn’t that ironic?
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Sorry, that’s a touch incomprehensible. Firstly, you’ve failed to address anything that D said in the post I reference.
Secondly, do you folk speak a private language? GPCS? http://www.acronymfinder.com/GPCS.html provides nothing plausible.
[The subject of this thread is the paper by Lewandowsky, Oberauer, Gignac and the analysis of it by Duarte. Stop dragging comments off-topic.] ED
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Not at all Bill any lack of comprehension is all yours ;you linked to a post on confirmation bias; I merely pointed out I used to frequent tammy’s place until he banned me confirming he, as an alarmist, obviously didn’t want his bias unconfirmed.
In fact I go anywhere to take on the hive mind of alarmism; but since you’re here I won’t bother going anywhere. So do your best alarmism confirmation.
[Released from mod bin. Don’t know why it was there either] ED
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> I used to frequent tammy’s place until he banned me
Don’t believe you: https://www.google.co.uk/?gfe_rd=cr&ei=tnjjU9uaC4vY8geC44C4Dw&gws_rd=ssl#q=site:tamino.wordpress.com+cohenite&safe=off
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You really aren’t the smartest tool in the shed Bill are you? Just because tammy talks about me doesn’t mean he lets me on his blog. But since you do frequent his neck of the woods why don’t you ask him about the GPCS?
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My first reply to you Bill about confirmation bias, which you linked to, is in moderation for some reason but GPCS refers to the Great Pacific Climate Shift discussed here.
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I hear that Lewy, Cook and the WC are planning a remake of The Three Stooges.
WC has been practising his slap-stick.
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William Connolley
“D is a bit wacko with that post, but he’s spot-on…”
But I don’t think you understand, José Duarte is a psychology PhD candidate, and as such he is supposed to be a bit wacko, it’s part of the job. That’s what society does with the wacky ones, puts them safely in an institution were they do the least harm. Maybe a paper or two every now and again but mostly we can ignore them.
Lewandowsky on the other hand [snip] has a strong desire to be. As in be a Celebrity.
[snip]
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You missed this bit:
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The sole comment is
The last bit is rather ironic.
I became sceptical because I smelt BS (the ad hominem attacks on sceptics of what could not be robust science). The GISS website was what I read first after I heard of McKitrick and McIntyres work. They lost me.
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Damm. Forgot to push reply. I was replying to WC above and referring to the comment to the article referenced.
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So, you agree with D’s observation, and you come under the behaviour that he criticises: you don’t read mainstream climate science.
[The subject of this thread is the paper by Lewandowsky, Oberauer, Gignac and the analysis of it by Duarte. Stop dragging comments off-topic.] ED
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The best of “mainstream” climate science is found on places like WUWT, JoNova, Hockey Schtick etc..
as FARCE !!!
The worst.. well.. you know all about that.
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WC, could you explain the science behind this result.
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Its not a result, its a graph. I know what you’re on about though – you’re pushing the really-way-out nutjob stuff that the Salbys of the world, and the Becks no-longer-of-the-world are / were pushing. You really shouldn’t bother, its silly: no-one with a clue will take you seriously, they’ll just take the piss. See http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2014/08/05/despair-of-the-dork-side/
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“take the piss.”
Which is what a WC is for.. by design.
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And again the self-link to a worthless, meaningless load of garbage.
Desperation.. !!
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WC, you outed yourself as lacking experience in science. You’re commenting here just to mouth off rather than inform. Graphs are a way of reporting results.
You don’t get that sort of detail from a smoothed derivative of actual data. If there was such a good correlation between the rate of change of CO2 in the atmosphere and the global temperature you couldn’t dismiss it. Its more likely to be a sign of fudging though. The problem is that this site is a SS go to site to download data. The problem is with either the homogenised HadCRUT4 data or the CO2 data. One of them depends on the result of the other and not the actual values in nature.
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> a sign of fudging
Oh, I guessed wrong. I thought you were pointing to the correlation as showing cause and effect: the usual “skeptic” t-causes-co2-increase stuff a-la Salby. Which is even true, on the short term; its only wacko in the long term. But you seem to have some even more exciting idea that the data is fudged, which is if possible even more wacky.
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If the WC doesn’t like Salby’s work…
That is a SURE sign it is over the target and almost certainly very near CORRECT.
What’s wrong.. can’t you edit it or something ??
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“that the data is fudged”
You mean like this ??
An R² of 0.99….. how is that even possible unless planned !
And the same group of people look after Giss and HadCrut and BOM records.
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You’re still missing the point, WC. That one site is correlated to the global mean temperature to the nearest 0.1 ppm (it was the derivative that was plotted*) and that the HadCRUT4 has better precision than ±0.1°C measure of the changes in global mean surface temperatures is whacky.
*I’m guessing that I’ll have to explain that as well. If the measure of CO2 for the month is just ±0.1ppm off of the global mean because of local effects, then the noise would be the same size as a 1ppm per year trend.
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I just noticed that it was a plot of HadCRUT4 for the southern hemisphere. Here is a comparison with GISSTemp Global mean anomalies. Offset and scaled slightly smaller. The correlation after 1990 is the best that you could expect for such data in the real world.
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and if anyone is still interested, how well it correlates with NH sea temperatures.
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> Stop dragging comments off-topic
Hello Mod. I was responding to the topic of a comment by Cohenite. Its rather revealing that you attack me, rather than him, no?
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?? You linked to another post on confirmation bias and I responded to you mate. Don’t verbal me. Try and say something sensible will you about Lew but if that challenge is too hard than AGW; how about the GPCS now you know what it is.
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Stop dragging comments off-topic
He is demonstrating his inability to learn.
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Climatology is not a science, as defined by philosophers of science. It has no falsifiable propositions, just vague statements based on hearsay, and computer models with endless ad hoc tweaks. If Stephan Lewandowsky has made a positive contribution, it is through his surveys (there were two) showing that true believers in climatology predominantly have socialist-environmentalist opinions. Given that climatology beliefs have no real world validation, I conclude climatology is simply a justification for authoritarian politics.
I could be wrong in my conclusions, so please check out for yourselves. I fully predict William Connolley will fail to come up with even a half-decent rebuttal.
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I heard of the work of M and M on the ABC website, along with the views of scientists like Lindzen. I was well and truly sceptical before I ever heard of Jo Nova, A. Watts or Steve Goddard because of what was written at GISS (not Griss). Do I need to elaborate more?
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> Do I need to elaborate more?
Not at all. You’ve made it perfectly plain that you suffer from the problem that D is criticising “skeptics” for: that they don’t read any mainstream climate science.
[The subject of this thread is the paper by Lewandowsky, Oberauer, Gignac and the analysis of it by Duarte. Stop dragging comments off-topic.] ED
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William,
I approached Climate Science from a completely different perspective than your prejudices would care to acknowledge or accept. I was first introduced to Catastrophic Global Warming alarmism via Skeptical Science, my curious nature drawing me to find out more about this apparently important subject.
I visited that site daily for 9 months (and had at that stage not visited a “sceptic site” like WUWT or Climate Audit or any other- at least to the best of my recollection not for the first 6 of those 9 months, anyway), and I dutifully read every article and followed every link. I particularly paid attention to the comments (since the collision of opposing ideas is a basic tenet of my approach to truth finding), and during that time a number of contrarians visited that site to challenge the accepted theory, and the “factual content” which was presented as a fait accompli by alarmists.
What struck me, and piqued my skepticism, was the circularity of much of the logic used by Cook, et al., the intolerance shown to anyone who dared to raise an awkward question or a dissenting comment regarding, for example the greenhouse effect and how it potentially operated in a planetary atmosphere, whether climate models were a true 3D representation of reality (rather than 2D), quantifying UHI effects on the temperature record, whether adjustments made to thermometer data were legitimate or even whether “global average temperature” was even a legitimate construct in light of the brevity and uneven distribution of the thermometer data and its discontinuity, etc, etc. Eventually the conclusion I drew was that the denizens that ran that site were interested in papering over the cracks in the theory, were fixated on crushing dissent at the expense of appropriate dialogue with opponents, and when cornered in an argument resorted to abuse and aggressive heckling which was often directly in proportion to the quality of the contrarian argument raised. This was further emphasised some time later when I revisited the site a few months later to refresh my memory about a couple of quite good skeptical arguments that I felt weren’t really addressed satisfactorily by Cook and his offsiders only to find that some of those comments had vanished into thin air. Now, I don’t know any other field of science that acts like that, and my psychological analysis of alarmists, and alarmism in general derives directly my observations of the behaviour of YOUR side of the debate in addressing legitimate questions which were too inconvenient to answer openly. It was clear to me that the were under strict orders never to accede a point, no matter how small, and whether the argument they were having was merely a minor sidelight, they used prevaricating and obfuscating approaches that marked them as propagandists in my eyes.
As CAGW has collapsed and died essentially as an argument (with AGW being in its death throes) in the face of global temperature observations, it becomes increasingly clear that there is nothing that could occur to the global climate that would deter these people from their alarmist position. They have sealed their fate, and it only awaits the passage of time before the final nail is driven into the coffin. The only question being whether we have to drive a stake through its cold dead heart to finally finish the climate zombie off.
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> I was first introduced to Catastrophic Global Warming alarmism via Skeptical Science
I don’t think so. https://www.google.co.uk/?gfe_rd=cr&ei=WGrjU4jxHIfY8ge8r4FY&gws_rd=ssl#q=site%3Askepticalscience.com+%22Catastrophic+Global+Warming%22&safe=off says that they don’t use the phrase themselves. All the refs I could found were from “skeptics”. Can you find them using it?
> by Cook, et al.
So you, too, have read none of the mainstream physical science, just like D complains.
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When you go into Google and type in:
Global warming arguments for and against
What site comes up first do you think?
William, you resort to semantic games, trying vainly to make some obscure and somewhat diversionary point. The story I related is just as I stated. I observed without commenting for a very long time, my skepticism was provoked by the behaviour of alarmists. my initial impressions and analysis was reinforced subsequently by Anthony Watts’ site, and from there at Joanne’s site, but these merely added weight to having been shocked and somewhat appalled at the intellectual dishonesty I observed at SKS.
Those that have read this site over the years know that I have revealed this particular path to skepticism before in previous comments here, and that I am merely rehashing it now for your edification and not some post hoc confabulation. Whether you choose to believe it or not, is irrelevant to me, but your response, or lack thereof I think speaks volumes.
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> type in: Global warming arguments for and against What site comes up first do you think?
No idea. I tried https://www.google.co.uk/?gfe_rd=cr&ei=OIPjU_rHHI_Y8gfXjYGIAg&gws_rd=ssl#q=%22Global+warming+arguments+for+and+against%22&safe=off which gets me https://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20120325140313AADbJAp I doubt that’s what you mean; but their “best answer” is http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php, which seems reasonable. And without the quotes, I get direct to that. W00t: well done SS. And your point is what?
> my skepticism was provoked by the behaviour of alarmists
So you too are confirmed that you don’t actually read the peer-reviewed mainstream science. You’re basing your opinions on behaviour, i.e. ad-hom, not ad-science.
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Does the phrase “clutching at straws” mean anything to you, William?
Reading comprehension is not your strong point.
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Winston, I suspect he is clutching…. at something.
11
There, fixed it for you. Just from one page on SkS:
Suck on it.
30
Billy Connolly.
How many times have you marched around here claiming that skeptics invented the term CAGW, denying (as in “denier”) that alarmists ever use such terms when talking about climate change. I have shown above a few quotes from just one article by one of your heroes, Dana Nutticelli (of “The Guardians Of Climate TruthTM”), which freely uses such terms.
I expect now that you will shut up about that one.
21
The WC’s ONLY stock in trade is LIE and MIS-INFORMATION.
That is what he does.
That is who he is.
11
> 3–4°C or more puts us at serious risk of catastrophic climate change
Excellent. So you too agree that they don’t use the phrase “Catastrophic Global Warming”.
But I’m curious: do you think that +3-4 oC would “puts us at serious risk of catastrophic climate change”? It seems an entirely reasonable assertion to me.
If you disagree with 3-4 oC (as a global average), how high would the T change have to be before you’d agree it “puts us at serious risk of catastrophic climate change”?
08
No, I do not agree at all. For you its all about semantics. For the rest of the World its about what people are actually saying. Are you now going to argue that Mr Nutticelli is not in fact talking about “Anthropogenic Global Warming”? Why don’t you just go and ask him yourself exactly that.
Right, so you do now admit that you in fact do believe in “Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming” (CAGW).
Thank you, you lose. Ciao!
20
Gees, that was pathetic, even for you, WC !!
11
> No, I do not agree at all.
Ah, so you think they *did* use “Catastrophic Global Warming” even though you can find no examples of same. You can find examples of different words. In which case, why not start from the correct words, rather than put words in other people’s mouths?
> you do now admit that you in fact do believe in
What you’re quoting is a question, not a statement. However I did say “+3-4 oC would “puts us at serious risk of catastrophic climate change”” seems an entirely reasonable assertion to me. Then I asked you for your opinion of that statement. You’re normally pretty free with opinions, but suddenly you’re running away.
Do you think that +3-4 oC puts at *serious risk* of “catastrophic climate change”? If not 3-4, then how large would it have to be? Or do you believe that catastrophic climate change is impossible, no matter how large the temperature change might be? What about a decrease of 6 oC, putting us back into the depths of the ice age?
06
I never saw on SS a reference to Balmy Anthropogenic Climate Change. What are you trying to get at, Willy?
20
I do need to sleep.. at times… Billy.
So, you maintain that Mr Nutticelli is not talking about “Anthropogenic Global Warming”… even though he talks about temperature rise due to CO2 emissions and reduction of the same. Interesting.
Have you ever thought about talking with a therapist?
20
Let me just show you the insignificance of your ignorance…. and perhaps help you a little with your comprehension skills.
From the article in question “A Glimpse at Our Possible Future Climate, Best to Worst Case Scenarios” by Dana Nutticelli on the SS website of his good friend John Cook:
Catastrophic
Anthropogenic (we use “human” rather than this big word that simple folk like you may have difficulty understanding)
Global
Warming
Now Billy, tell me again how the article does not speak of “Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming”.
40
Crickets. The sound of denial.
00
> the article does not speak of “Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming”
Indeed, it doesn’t use that phrase, nor does it use CAGW; both of which are used near-exclusively by the “skeptics” to put words in the mouths of people they disagree with, which is dishonest.
> Crickets. The sound of denial.
Indeed; BS has failed to answer the question posed in 14.1.2.1.8 and again in 14.1.2.1.11. I wasn’t going to bring it up again; and I thought our hostess rather disliked people accusing others of “denial”; try to be somewhat gentler on BS.
01
It does not matter that the exact phrase it not used, when it is perfectly clear that is exactly the topic.
Nonsense. It is a perfect and concise terminology to use for exactly what Mr Nutticelli’s article was all about. The words are entirely his own.
You Billy are seriously in denial, you really need professional help.
10
Not when the word is used correctly, as in your case.
00
Winston – you exactly describe how Billy behaves toward others on his own blog. I think he may be Cook’s long lost brother.
40
Science approved by the Politbureau and countersigned by Climate Party Central.
30
You are truly stupid WC.
I did not become a sceptic because all I read was sceptical sites. The alarmist literature made me a sceptic.
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I would like to advance a new phrase: ‘Off-Topic Disruption’, (OTD.)
Mattb used it to effect on the last post. Are these guys running shifts?
80
Yes Tim, they do.
10
Its..a..flipping..arts..degree..
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Lewanclownsky opted for notoriety over accuracy long ago
He’s best just ignored
150
Why don’t you set an example then?
022
Why don’t you go and play with yourself at your own blog?
30
He needs attention and no one cares about his blog. He has to come here to see any actual traffic.
00
Why don’t you set an example William? Try chastising Lewandowsky for such a crappy paper?
I wait anxiously for your response and support in the fight against propaganda.
20
I haven’t read L’s paper, so am in no position to criticise it.
Just like most people commenting here.
05
But aren’t you half pie defending it?
40
No.
What have I written that you’ve interpreted as a defence of it?
01
+1
40
It is always instructive in academia, when faced with a loud but demented personality, one that is hell-bent on forcing his opinion on others, to look at what else they have written on their chosen bugbear subject.
So a quick ‘google scholar’ scan of ‘S Lewandowsky and climate’ –
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22S+Lewandowsky%22+climate&btnG=&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5
Reveals a very narrow minded and a very non-scientific person. A very tightly closed mind.
But then again the ‘soft’ sciences (IMO nonsciences – psychology, sociology, social behavioral studies etc.,) are full of self appointed fools with no sense of their own stupidity.
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I only went as far as page 3. There does seem to be a pattern there.
20
You are using the link I gave?
If so your version of ‘Google Scholar’ (scholar.google.com/scholar) is much different from mine.
Are you in China or Russia?
30
Sorry Peter C,
My mistake. Wrong comment, I need more coffee
40
It has been a few years since I last listened to Robin William’s Science show on the ABC.
The very last time that I turned in he was interviewing Stephan Lewandowsky about his Moon Landing Conspiracy Paper. Lewandowsky, as was his wont, was lambasting all Climate Skeptics, calling them deluded fools, dangerous lunatics etc. Robin Williams of course was lapping it all up and prompting him for more.
There had already been a lot of criticism of Lewandowsky and his paper. But not once did Williams ask about his methodology, his conflation of supposed skeptical ideas (he called it ideation), his manipulation of the data nor his flouting of ethical rules or approvals. Nor did he ask about any of the other things, such as his association with Skeptical Science, John Cook etc.
If Lewandowsky finally pays the price for his sins, which is something I can only hope for at the moment, lets not forget all the other fawning acolytes who should go down with him.
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True, a dictator without useful idiots for support becomes just another raving lunatic.
Problem with warmists is picking the dictator out of the many idiots.
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Not in this case Yonniestone. Lewandowsky is definitely a major villain.
Yes, many other idiots.
30
We should also add dangerous idiots that can become major villains, as Martin Durkin writes of the history of the Nazi Greens http://www.martindurkin.com/home
This gives an insight into why Australian Greens Senator Lee Rhiannon feels it’s ok to publicly incite a protest crowd with anti semitic rantings in 2014, and I suppose the great philosopher Lewandowsky can easily explain this behavior as a perfectly normal reaction when confronted with such a threat to our very existence.
Only 75 years ago good people were forced to fight this diseased mindset and won, let’s
hopemake sure the real humanitarians win again.100
He is also a contributor to the ABC Drum program and website. An award winning statistics teacher as well. Could he be KR (FFS)?
10
Jo! You’re never that naive. That was the object of the exercise from the get-go. You’ve said what I said on Duerte’s site — this was one orchestrated ad hominem in spades!
It was never meant to be anything other than an attempt to undermine (in the eyes of those keen to have their views reinforced) any credibility that anyone who questions even one iota of the climate scam might possibly have.
This isn’t science; it isn’t even pseudo-science; it’s one big ego trip by a late-maturing adolescent showing off to his pals.
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Having already read more than enough of Lewandowsky to last a lifetime I think I’ll leave this alone except to say bravo to anyone who is willing to wade through this “moon landing’ thing one more time and tear it apart.
I don’t know how much of a risk this may be to the future academic and career chances for Duarte but I have to suspect there may be some.
IN ANY CASE, BRAVO!
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Duarte hasn’t considered the Lewandowsky-Lawrence correlation for inscrutable significance from vanishing numbers. 😉
30
Jo finishes with the comment:-
It is rather pointless. 0.26% or 0.35% of respondents supported both conspiracies.
Rather than my first pivot table, there is a clearer one here. It is only 3.
30
It is rare that a fellow academic is prepared to make such a strong critique of a peer’s work. But such is the outrage of Jose Duarte that he felt compelled to do so. In his Bio, Duarte says he has strong interests in methodology, especially validity, bias, and philosophy of science. Clearly he was offended by the poor quality of Lewandowsk’s paper and incredulous about how it was published and hasn’t been retracted.
Jo has been careful in her reporting of Duarte’s assessment but I don’t see any sense in tip-toeing around the words used by someone who knew exactly what he was doing when he wrote them. Perhaps his recent battle with Thyroid Cancer has given him the clarity to write what others have shied away from?
You can see an image of the fearless Jose (Joe) here: https://psychology.clas.asu.edu/Cohen/gradstudents
Joe didn’t pull any punches in his analysis of the Lewandowsky paper in question. It is high time the University of Western Australia (UWA) carry out a proper investigation of ethics approvals under which Lewandosky claimed to be operating under to carry out this research, and how they reflect what was actually done. It is also time the UWA considered how at least one of their Winthrop Professors allowed his personal bias to cloud his academic objectivity.
How can you continue to ignore devastating assessments of Lewandowsky’s work by many well qualified people, including this latest scathing assessment by Duarte? You just can’t ignore comments like those below without doing a sound, thorough and public enquiry and still claim to be concerned about standards at the University.
Claims and statements made by Duarte which shouldn’t be ignored by UWA about Lewandowsky et al’s papers:
– This is all false, and the paper should be retracted. It should’ve been retracted by the authors already.
– There were 10 participants, in their sample of 1145, who thought the moon landing was a hoax, and most of them did not think climate science was a hoax. The title describes a reasoning process, where a person starts by reminding themselves that the moon landing was a hoax, and “therefore” concludes that climate science is a hoax. It’s a directional, even causal claim about the relation between the one belief and the other. There is no evidence of such a phenonemon in their data, even a bare association. This is fraud.
– When you have no data, you tell no story. If you’re talking about things that are incredibly damaging, beliefs and positions which would marginalize people in public life, you definitely tell no story when you have no data. This is not only fraud, it’s slander. It’s especially given that these authors did not tell us about their data They did not tell us they only had 10 moon hoaxists out of 1145 people, or 11 smoking-cancer doubters, or 16 HIV-AIDS doubters. They wrote the entire without telling us. And they reported no diagnostics.
– They wrote a paper that was about the critics of the first paper, the one we’ve just debunked. It wasn’t enough to lie about people and smear them as believing things they definitely do not believe. He needed to take another swipe. The journal, Frontiers in Psychology, wisely ended up retracting that paper, which is exactly what should happen to this fraud here.
– A lot of overpolitical social psychologists have rationalized discrimination against conservatives by claiming that they’re loons who oppose science. Many of these lazy views are based on “research” like we have evaluated here – scam studies, in some cases fraud like this, in other cases rigged in more subtle ways. People need to re-evaluate their beliefs about conservatives, to be sure they don’t go around saying things that are false, and should regulate their discriminatory impulses.
– The authors should be investigated, obviously the paper retracted – it’s a scam paper. It’s not real. The title is false. The abstract is false. Many of the claims in the paper are false. The reality of the data is heavily concealed by overly compex statistics and SEM models. The authors made claims they had no right to make, and slandered their participants and the political camps to which they belong. Some of the participants might even have gotten Happy Meals in exchange for their participation. We have no idea what happened in this study. We just know there’s no data pertaining to the headline or the key smears in the abstract.
– This was an awful thing to do. It was damaging to innocent participants. It’s unethical to do this to your participants. It is wildly unethical to invite people to participate in a study, and then do this to them. They are helping us. They are volunteering to participate in scientific research. They’ve take time out of their lives to help us out. And in return, we slander them? We tell the world that they believe things that they do not believe? What Lewandowsky and colleagues did here was despicable.
– The authors of this study conducted incorrect analyses for all their effects. I don’t know what’s going on at Psych Science – the stats here were amateurish and deceptive.
– Their effects were artifacts of improper statistical inferences, driven by variance between “agree” and “strongly agree” answers to those science items – the opposite of “rejection”.
– Why is their title based on the variable for which they have the least data, essentially no data?
– Why in the abstract are they linking free market views to incredibly damaging positions that again, they have no data for?
– Could this be an error? That seems very unlikely. The researchers have had two years to come clean, to admit that there was no significant data regarding belief in the moon hoax or rejection of the HIV-AIDS or smoking-lung cancer links. They’ve had two years to remove the very-likely-to-be-scam participants identitifed by people who have looked at the data, which will further reduce those trivial numbers at the bottom, and they’ve not done so. I’m not sure they even talk about it. Lewandowsky still won’t tell the public that fewer than 10 participants rejected the moon hoax or HIV and smoking claims – after all this time Lewandowsky is still evading those basic facts and distracting his readers with nonsense statistics. Pearson correlations on essentially dichotomous data skewed 1135 to 10? The paper should have been retracted by the authors long ago.
– You cannot declare a link to anything based on such numbers. To do so is a scam, made worse by the fact that they didn’t tell us, and reported none of the diagnostics that you would need in this case. It’s amazing that they didn’t tell us. It’s incredible that they claimed an effect.
– Moreover, their analytical methods are wrong for this data – they shouldn’t be treating these variables as continuous, or using linear regression based methods. If they had screened out the scam participants and run a logistic regression, the effects would disappear (I’ve done it.) This would matter more if they had data.
– Even worse, the data was collected on partisan, even heated, political websites. For some reason, we’ve been given no information about the participants, not even basic demographics like age, sex, education, income, ethnicity. We don’t even know what country they’re from. This was an online study that people from all the over the world completed at work, or on their couch, on the subway, etc.
– One participant answered 1 to every item, including conspiracy endorsement and the HIV and smoking facts (which are in the opposite direction of the conspiracy items), then 0 for every question asking for an estimate of the consensus on each of HIV, smoking and CO2. Another participant answered 1 (strongly disagree) to all three science claims, and then gave extremely high consensus estimates for each of them (95%, 95%, and 98%). Perhaps he or she was showing remarkable, dispassionate integrity, acknowledging every consensus as a matter of descriptive reality, but strongly disagreeing with every single one. Perhaps he or she is a neo-Kuhnian, but I have my doubts. In any case, when you’re making impossible inferences from 7, 9, 11, or 16 observations in a sample of 1145 online participants, planted individual cases among those 7 or 11 should matter a great deal to you (in this alternate fantasy universe where we would even do anything with such trivial numbers), and it’s not good that the authors apparently did no checking. How can you publish data that is so obviously contaminated?
– (Note that they also say they allowed minors to participate. “An additional 161 responses were eliminated because the respondent’s age was implausible ( 95 years old)…”? Are there 10 and 12 and 16 year olds in this study? They imply it. Misprint? Note also that if 161 participants claimed to be less than 10 or older than 95, this probably tells us a lot about the sketchiness of this study. How many of you have ever had more than 10% of your sample give an out-of-range age? Actually, the fact that 161 people gave 95 ages suggests some number would’ve given ages of 10 – 17, and are still in the data. Maybe the 10 was supposed to be 18, but this paper has lots of weird things like that that suggest it wasn’t read carefully. Why do political hit pieces get waved through like this?)
– The data was virtually nonexistent on the rejection side of these truths, or the endorsement side of the crazy conspiracies. There are too many questions about the data collection, going to partisan sites that would have lots of people who wanted to make climate skeptics and conservatives look bad.
I see no point in beating around the bush. Lewandowsky should answer these criticisms, UWA should have demanded he do so from the start, they should certainly do so now!
60
Cook and Lewandowsky began “the DEBUNKING Handbook“:-
Lewandowsky knows the consequences of what he is doing. He is an expert in the area.
30
He should have qualified ‘information’ but didn’t. Now what does that tell us about him I wonder?. I may be being picky but his choice of phrase is entirely subjective. In other words one persons ‘information’ is another’s junk mail.
20
It is not that Lewandowsky should have qualified his research. It should never have been published at all. Lewandowsky could see the consequence of only publishing his survey on alarmist blogs – too few responses from the people who he was studying – yet has never admitted that fact.
Lewandowsky knew how few people supported the conspiracy theories, yet ignored those facts.
Lewandowsky knew the harm such misinformation would cause yet dogmatically goes on propagating these distortions.
As a Professor of Psychology, Lewandowsky should be able to empathize with others. I have failed to find a single instance where he either concedes skeptics may have something useful to say, or shows disagreement with fellow believers.
As a teacher of statistics Lewandowsky fails to show that there are multiple ways of looking at data.
As someone who does research through questionnaires there is a total lack of appreciation of bias in the questions, or in the sample group, or in sample sizes.
As Lewandowsky knows from his follow-up study of the US population, the conspiracist ideation hypothesis – that belief in conspiracy theories predicts rejection of (climate) science is falsified by the evidence. The US study has far greater belief in conspiracy theories. I found that
30
Some may be aware that Lewandowsky re-surfaced last month as a co-author of a climate science paper Risbey et al 2014. It is likely that he was responsible for smoothing the actual data, to show that instead of declining average temperatures since 2005, the rate of warming has hardly eased since the 1990s. I have managed to replicate the results by building a simple model.
40
Are you implying that he’s the poor mans Mann?
30
Duarte didn’t even touch on the worst aspects of the data collection. The collection was not a random sample, only a self-selected one, and THEN he didn’t even make sure skeptical blogs had participated in the survey. He queried only alarmist blogs whose readers are activists, some of whom undoubtedly spiked their answers deliberately to make “deniers” look stupid. In the end, Lewandowsky will have contributed nothing of value to the scientific fields of psychology or sociology. That’s the takeaway from this. Nothing spewed by true believers, who already “knew” what Lewandowsky “proved” can ever remove the stink off of this steaming pile.
40
Trust Charles Dickens to get it right :-
AUTHOR: Charles Dickens (1812–70)
QUOTATION: “If the lew supposes that,” said Mr. Bumble,… “the lew is a ass—a idiot. If that’s the eye of the lew, the lew is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the lew is that his eye may be opened by experience—by experience.”
10
> [The subject of this thread is the paper by Lewandowsky, Oberauer, Gignac and the analysis of it by Duarte. Stop dragging comments off-topic.] ED
Mod, you’re a broken record. Either have the guts to censor my comments – in which case you’ll look really silly, because sooo many people here regularly post off-topic – or leave it out. You could also try to be somewhat less biased – how about giving, say, QuixoteNexus some stick? His post adds absolutely nothing to anything; its just an insult. In theory, you’re supposed to be moderating insults. Remember? Or how about the post by Kevin Marshall – that’s about a totally different paper. But somehow that’s fine-and-dandy perfectly-on-topic for you.
[William, you’d just love to re-post examples of “censorship” at Joannenova wouldn’t you? Don’t tell me what to do. It’s your job to conform to expectations here not my job to comply with your whinging demands] ED
06
It’s a debate William, not a football match. I wouldn’t have expected you of all people to start whining. I would be loathe to see anyone censored and if you were completely honest you would admit that posters here get far better tolerance than many blogs on your side of the debate. Chill.
50
I absolutely agree: this is about the only “skeptic” site that doesn’t censor the likes of me. WUWT and BishopHill etc etc fail in this regard, so I offer credit to our hostess. But that’s why I am complaining: its a shame to spoil that good record with biased moderation. At WUWT the moderation is shamelessly biased but no-one bothers complain; its just what you expect from them.
[William, moderators do hold those who post more often to a higher standard than the occasional poster who goes a little off topic. It also makes a difference if the OT comment has the effect of dragging the whole conversation off topic. There is discretion used, so don’t take it personally. – Mod]
05
The problem with WUWT is the way its structured which doesn’t allow for conversation the way this site does. If you have been unfairly censored there then thats wrong. On the other hand there are those that have said you have been guilty of some hefty censoring of your own, is this true?
40
> is this true
Its false. People are prone to say otherwise, but never provide examples.
06
Anthony advised you were banned from the site, and why.
It is true.
30
> It’s your job to conform to expectations here
Now [snip ad-hom] ED I have no “job” here at all. I have a task, [http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/job
] ED
, perhaps. But its certainly not to conform to your expectations. Had you said “obey site rules” then I’d have no problem with what you’d said – but I’d point out to you that I *am* obeying site rules (http://joannenova.com.au/rules-legal/) [No. Site policy includes keeping threads on-topic wherever and whenever WE feel it is necessary] ED.
> not my job to comply with your whinging demands
Pfft, there’s no defn of the moderators role. If you view your role as to be biased, [ Pfft, biased? pot-kettle] ED then you’re doing fine [thank you] ED. Calling any complain “whinging” is just more bias [Pfft, Bias because I point out your whinging WC/? whinging is what it is WC] ED. I notice that you have no answer at all to the other off-topic posts I’ve pointed out. Are they still all just fine by you? Because they’re all written by people whose views you approve of?
> Anthony advised you were banned from the site, and why.
Well, its a bit more complex than that. It starts with http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2012/05/02/so-long-and-thanks-for-all-the-1/ but then goes vague until AW reveals his hand, recorded in http://stoat-spam.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/wuwt-why-climate-change-doesnt-scare-me.html. But you’re fooling yourself if you think he has a “good” reason.
> It is true.
Another bald assertion, with zero evidence.
08
Don’t worry Billy – my expectations of you are so low, even you cannot fail to meet them.
40
Still the stupidity in thinking anyone is ever bother clicking on your worthless links to that child-mind site of yours.
SOOOO much ego,… and soooo very little to back it up. !!
40
Even if the question was not adressed to me, I answer because it is related to Lewandowsky.
The answers are :
1) No.
2) Stupid question which implies that CO2 may lead to ANY temperature. As this is wrong there can therefore be no answer.
3) Related to 2) but self evidently absurd. Obviously when the Sun is going to its red giant phase, the Earth will be obliterated. ANd it is a certainty that this will happen. What has this kind of “catastrophic climate change” to do with anything ?
4) – 6°C would lead to significant or insignificant impacts depending on time and space. For short times (e.g centuries or less) and/or limited areas the impacts would be low, for dozens of thousand years they would be high.
However if some variable changes significantly for long times on most areas, the biosphere adapts so that this change becomes the new normality. Lower the temperature by 6°C for millions of years and mammoths will thrive, increase it back and it will be catastrophic for all life that adapted to low temperatures. Etc.
More specifically.
In the case that interests us here, the CAGW proponents are talking about spatially heterogeneous (more on poles where nobody cares and less on equator) 3-4°C for a few centuries.
This last figure is actually little elaborated on because the CAGW proponents have no clue about climate evolution on a thousand year time scale.
Yet this time scale is of course paramount because after a maximum (CAGW supposes it around 2100) the CO2 will again start to decrease.
So even if one accepts the AGW theory, it is clearly important to know what will happen in 3100 when the CO2 will be lower than in 2100.
Personnaly I am even interested about what will happen in 12100 and whether the onset of the ice age will be near or far at that time.
Considering that in 2100 all parameters are inside the zone where little significant changes happen, it puts the CAGW proponents (short for those who panic with 4°C on some places for short times) in the crackpot category.
And Lewandowsky is squarely in the middle of the crackpot territory with an aggravating circumstance that he is scientifically illiterate and ethically … er … challenged.
40
Hate is a strong uncompromising word, used here by some to define Lewandowsky. Probably a bit strong to pin on him, he may just be deluded. I have come to the inescapable conclusion however that I should never trust, vote for, believe in or be taken in by anyone who has the vaguest hint of hate in their core message. Rules out a massive chunk of the worlds loonies innit?. Including the rabid AGW travelling circus and all.
30
Your policy about hate in the core message is interesting. I’m going to think about it because I think there is a lesson in it that I need to learn.
It reminds me of a quote that is attributed to lots of people. Something like: “If you vote for the lesser of two evils, you can be sure you voted for evil.”
30
> [snip ad-hom]
But also, unsnipped:
> The Lew and the WC.. perfect playmates. !
> You really aren’t the smartest tool in the shed Bill are you?
> You are truly stupid WC.
..etc etc…
So
> wherever and whenever WE feel it is necessary
seems to be all too true. Ad homs and insults towards me? Entirely acceptable. Calling a mod “silly”? Entirely unacceptable. Site policy is clearly for biased moderation; fine; I won’t bother complain again.
07
Joe Cocker sang a song called
“Cry me a river” !!
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I glad you think that linking you to Lew was an insult.
I’m sure he would feel the same.
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Waaaaaaaaaa! 😥
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I have often asked myself if this William Connolly is for real………….
The only thing that comes across from his posts is that arrogance and ignorance are regular bed-fellows.
He seems to have learnt nothing from the censure applied to him as a result of his past actions – these historical actions are now well known across the spectrum and yet here he is – yet again – wheedling and whinging and desperately trying to take the discussion off topic. Which is the classic tactic of the charlatan.
Classic WC activity. He is well known for this.
Well done Jo and the mods
Please do not ban WC – he does far more damage to himself and his already deeply damaged “reputation” by his trying to take part in a sensible discussion and he seems to be hell bent on making himself look rather desperate.
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“The only thing that comes across from his posts is that arrogance and ignorance are regular bed-fellows.”
I hereby dub this combination “agnorance.”
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