POSTNOTE (2011): In hindsight, this was probably a critical moment for Judith Curry, known henceforth as a Judith-Curry-moment). She has gone on to set up an excellent blog [Climate etc], where you can see many details of climate science debated openly with insight and honesty.
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Just in case anyone out there has missed it, there is one of those landmark posts on Watts Up this weekend. Judith Curry tried to explain how Climate Scientists need to rebuild trust, and made the mistake of using the “Denier” insult (even though she thinks of it as just a label, rather than a perjorative term). She is still trying to blame poor communication or poor strategies to explain why Climate Science is looking so shonky at the moment. Then Willis Eschenbach diplomatically fries that idea, and points out that the only way to regain trust is not to look like honest scientists but to be honest scientists: to disavow the bad practices and disown the people who have failed science so badly.
Judith Curry responds graciously
To her credit she is engaging skeptics, and she points out in the comments to Willis’ post that:
… by staking this middle position, i pretty much am getting tomatoes thrown at me from both sides, but I am hoping to provoke both sides to think about productive ways of moving forward in getting climate science back on track.
And I agree. She is in a “wedged” position, and importantly she also makes the point that she feels angry too…
“… since I may have been using unnecessarily inaccurate surface temperature data in my research. Ecologists, chemical engineers, etc. who have made career decisions in directing their research toward climate change impacts or mitigation have been trusting the system to work. Etc.”
The point is nigh when the single mass of “climate scientists” (that never really was one mass) fractures into opposing groups. Honest scientists who rode the gravy train will have to admit that it’s never OK to withhold data, dodge FOI’s, exaggerate scares, and make thousands of adjustments to data without explaining the details of what they did and why they did it. In short: it’s not just high time to throw the corrupt scientists under a bus, it’s about five years too late.
All in all, this interchange is a good step forward.
My thoughts
I would add two things to Willis’ prosaic comments (some copied below).
One: Judith has also been taken in that there ever was a “Denial Machine”. Big-Government outspent Big-Oil 3500 to 1. The paltry $2 million or so a year that was available to some skeptics was vastly outweighed in every sense by the monster funding from government, the UN, and the Greens devoted to smearing and crushing dissent.
Two: I would also add that “denier” is one of the worst insults that can be thrown at a scientist, and while this exchange is a step forward, there can be no real conversation until the “denier” label is dropped in all shapes and forms, which is why I insist it can not be used as a group label in comments on my blog. After all, who would listen to a denier?
Following is a shortened edited version from Willis’ brilliant response:
Judith, I love ya, but you’re way wrong …
25 02 2010
Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Can The Trust Be Rebuilt?
First, let me say that the problem is much bigger than Judith seems to think. Wiser men than I have weighed in on this question. Abraham Lincoln said:
If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem. You may fool all of the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all the time; but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.
So it will not be easy. The confidence is forfeit, that ship has sailed.
The biggest problem with Judith’s proposal is her claim that the issue is that climate scientists have not understood how to present their ideas to the public. Judith, I respect you greatly, but you have grabbed the wrong end of the stick. The problem is not how climate scientists have publicly presented their scientific results. It is not a communication problem.
The problem is that 71.3% of what passes as peer reviewed climate science is simply junk science, as false as the percentage cited in this sentence. The lack of trust is not a problem of perception or communication. It is a problem of lack of substance. Results are routinely exaggerated. “Scientific papers” are larded with “may” and “might” and “could possibly”. Advocacy is a common thread in climate science papers. Codes are routinely concealed, data is not archived. A concerted effort is made to marginalize and censor opposing views.
And most disturbing, for years you and the other climate scientists have not said a word about this disgraceful situation. When Michael Mann had to be hauled in front of a congressional committee to force him to follow the simplest of scientific requirements, transparency, you guys were all wailing about how this was a huge insult to him.
An insult to Mann? Get real. Mann is an insult and an embarrassment to climate science, and you, Judith, didn’t say one word in public about that. Not that I’m singling you out. No one else stood up for climate science either. It turned my stomach to see the craven cowering of mainstream climate scientists at that time, bloviating about how it was such a terrible thing to do to poor Mikey. Now Mann has been “exonerated” by one of the most bogus whitewashes in academic history, and where is your outrage, Judith? Where are the climate scientists trying to clean up your messes?
The solution to that is not, as you suggest, to give scientists a wider voice, or educate them in how to present their garbage to a wider audience.
The solution is for you to stop trying to pass off garbage as science.
I was disgusted with the response of mainstream climate scientists to Phil Jone’s reply to Warwick Hughes. When Warwick made a simple scientific request for data, Jones famously said:
Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?
Looking back, I was incredibly naive. I was so naive that I actually thought, “Well, Phil’s gonna get his hand slapped hard by real scientists for that kind of anti-scientific statements”. Foolish me, I thought you guys were honest scientists who would be outraged by that.
So I waited for some mainstream climate scientist to speak out against that kind of scientific malfeasance … and waited … and waited. In fact, I’m still waiting. I registered my protest against this bastardisation of science by filing an FOI. When is one of you mainstream climate scientist going to speak out against this kind of malfeasance? It’s not too late to condemn what Jones said, he’s still in the news and pretending to be a scientist, when is one of you good folks going to take a principled stand?
But nobody wants to do that. Instead, you want to complain and explain how trust has been broken, and you want to figure out more effective communication strategies to repair the trust.
…
You want trust? Do good science, and publicly insist that other climate scientists do good science as well.
Judith, again, my congratulations on being willing to post your ideas in public. You are a rara avis, and I respect you greatly for it.
w.
…
PS: You want trust? Disavow Schneider, and STOP WITH THE SCARY SCENARIOS. At this point, you have blamed everything from acne to world bankruptcy on eeevil global warming. And you have blamed everything from auditors to the claimed stupidity of the common man for your own failures. STOP IT! We don’t care about your pathetic justifications, all you are doing is becoming the butt of jokes around the planet. You seem to have forgotten the story of the Boy Who Cried Wolf. Read it. Think about it. Nobody cares about your hysteria any more. You are in a pit of your own making, and you are refusing to stop digging … take responsibility.
Because we don’t want scientists who are advocates. We’re not interested in scientists who don’t mention their doubts. We’re sick of your inane “simplified dramatic statements”. We laugh when you cry wolf with your scary scenarios. Call us crazy, but we want scientists who are honest, not scientists who balance honesty and effectiveness. You want trust? Get honest, kick out the scoundrels, and for goodness sakes, get a clue about humility.
The full post, Judith’s original post, and Judiths reply in comments are on Watts Up. I highlighted Willis’s second last para because I liked it so much.
…
Commentors note: Obviously people can discuss the term “denier” in the comments below, but there is still no license here for anyone to refer to skeptics as “deniers” and as usual, any commenters who do that will be asked to name and explain the evidence that we deny or apologize before they can post again.
Nice post Joanne.
I actually have a lot of respect for the way that Judith addressed what she sees as the problem.
We might not agree on what the problem is at this point in time, but at least she presented her view in a mostly balanced and reasonable way.
Try to imagine that from Gavin and his mates.
I think she understands the real problems as well as we do, but she has to take her colleagues with her one step at a time.
I am only saddened that the whole fiasco as gone on for so long. I have never known a scientist (especially a research scientist) who has willingly admitted they were wrong.
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Great article again Jo,
For scientists to bend science is for them to bend the truth at the expense of the credibility of all science.
Maybe there is justification for some qualifications to be stripped?
The publics perception of science in general must be tarnished by this. This is unfortunate, and the only way to regain the publics trust in science has got to be acceptance, taking responsibility and putting measures in place to prevent this sort of advocacy occurring again.
Unfortunately it appears to me that the peer review process makes a fatal assumption – that the people involved are gentlemen. Obviously with today complex areas of funding and bias, this is now a flawed assumption.
Now is the time for scientists of all stripes and colors to make it publicly known what their views are on the conduct of the university of east anglia. They also need to name and shame any other scientists in other fields they can prove have been engaging in the same sort of malfeasance.
Will it be messy? Yes, Will it be unpleasant and ugly? Yes. Does it need to happen? Absolutely. The public were only made aware of this because someone had the integrity to hack the Universities systems and to get the information out into the public domain.
You need to clear the crap away before you can rebuild, IMHO
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Further to my #1
Jo, It is interesting that you mentioned Dr Stephen Schneider. I have long thought that he is one of the key sources, if not the key source, of activist thought within the climate change politburo.
A very young Dr Schneider can be seen in a program about “The Coming Ice Age”, originally broadcast in 1977. He is very animated in presenting his arguments.
For example, at 6.04 he says:
And at 7.12, in the closing remarks for the programme, he says:
He is more restrained these days. But I suspect that his passion for “saving humanity” has not actually lessened over the years.
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Part of what has been going on what I called in a recent post the tragic dangers of a new science. Climate science as currently understood is only a few decades old: society in general and science more specifically has not really had enough time to learn to assess its performance and claims. The example of “laissez faire” economics during the Irish famine and eugenics indicates how this can be problematic (to put it mildly).
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Judith came across in her piece as a softhearted spinster aunt who thinks a cup of tea with scones can solve all the world’s problems. Points to Willis for the polite no-nonsense tone of his reply, because I’m sure that a lot of people in the blogosphere are tearing her to shreds.
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All labels need to be dropped. “Warmist” and “alarmist” and “believer” are used as often, and are just as insulting. When you demean someone that doesn’t agree with you then you are reducing the argument to a childish tantrum.
Everyone should, individually, avoid labels and name calling. Emotion should be left out. Debate the science. Debate the facts. Try to recognize and avoid baseless political or financial allegations. Try to see people who don’t agree with you as well meaning people that don’t agree with you, not stupid, evil monsters who are out to get you.
Paranoia is an enemy. Lack of civility is an enemy. Ignorance is an enemy.
Cut these out, and we’ll all get somewhere, no matter what you believe, or who turns out to be right.
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Gregoryno6,
Willis post was very, very, very far from “polite.” It was in fact one of the most abusive things I’ve read of late (and the Internet is an amazingly brutal place). The tone was both unnecessary and unprofessional. It may have seemed polite to you while you were cheering, but it was, in my opinion, unhelpful, unproductive, and uncivil.
If you want to tout it as true (in your opinion), that’s fine. “No nonsense,” absolutely.
But not polite.
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This puts a finger on the most tragic part of all the global warming nonsense. Trust has been broken not just locally at East Anglia or Penn State but all over the world of science. I once thought that science was a sufficiently serious matter that so many would never willfully engage in such fraud; and at the best, would not wink at it (and try to profit from it) as so many have apparently done. There were always the fraudsters and when they were exposed they fell into disrepute and disappeared from the scene. But not this bunch.
Perhaps I was naive or foolish. But it will take a long time to restore trust as far as I’m concerned. This was too widespread.
The other side of the coin is that the general public may well be only too willing to trust again without looking to see if the problem has really been solved.
Then there’s the political dimension — still acting like nothing has happened.
Judith Curry gets thumbs up for recognizing that she has a problem but not for her conclusions about the cause of it.
It’s indeed a long road and recovery isn’t certain by any means. I wish I could believe it was.
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I prefer the term ‘denialer’.
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Feynman’s summing up of the role of scientists from his cargo cult science speech…
“In summary, the idea is to give all of the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgement in one particular direction or another”.
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Lorenzo from Oz: #4
Very good article!
The concept of a catastrophe de jour – an external enemy that must be fought – seems to be a necessary driver in the human psyche.
In the nineteen fifties, in Europe, a whole lot of people ripped up their back gardens to build nuclear bunkers. Of course the bunkers would have been useless in a real nuclear war, but it satisfied the need to do something, and to be part of a group with similar ideas.
The current scare over climate variation is really no different.
The question is, how can we turn this current situation into something as useful as a (very deep) ornamental fish pond.
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Sphaerica@7 – On my personal scale of responses, ‘Cheering’ comes after ‘Tap dancing for joy in the street’, and WELL after ‘Kissing the neighbour’s dog’.
A few grunts of agreement, yes, I’ll cop to that. But cheering? No.
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The terms “alarmist” and “believer” are fitting. The AGW leaders in these government groups (IPCC, CRU, NASA, etc.) that come out and make press events after a hurricane, flood or earthquake and claim this is just the beginning. These are “alarmist”.
Then there are the “believer” though I go with AGWer. They don’t care about the science or science. There mostly followers that want to be with the “in” crowd.
The “denier” term is a well known label that has been well marketed to be equated with the holocaust deniers. Its a good move to drive people to the believer camp.
When I point out to an AGWer that when I buy a thermometer here in the US, it comes with a label that say “For most accurate results, don’t place in direct sunlight or near hot surfaces”, then point out that NOAA puts their thermometers at the end of take off strips to be blasted with heat and CO2, I’m just being skeptical of the quality of data the air port thermometer is capturing. I’m not denying anything.
We should use labels when fitting. Just avoid the name calling.
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Gegoryno6,
Okay. No cheering from you. Or dog slobber.
But “polite”?
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Sphaerica thinks:
“If you want to tout it as true (in your opinion), that’s fine. “No nonsense,” absolutely.
“But not polite.”
I suggest you consider the Curry/Eschenbach exchange in context of all that has gone before. IMHO Eschenbach was remarkably restrained. Considering the mountains of abuse that have been heaped on “deniers” from all quarters over the years, a tea-and-toast conversation between Curry and Eschenbach would not ring true at this stage. But give some time for the dust of this “full and frank” exchange to settle and hopefully a more civilized debate will ensue.
In the meantime Dr Curry is being put down by her own side — see, for example, Romm:
http://climateprogress.org/2010/02/24/my-response-to-dr-judith-currys-unconstructive-essay/#more-19878
“Dr. Judith Curry, … has a long, but ultimately unconstructive essay on her website, “On the Credibility of Climate Research, Part II: Towards Rebuilding Trust.”
“Aside from some factual misstatements and the false equivalence that suffuses piece, the essay makes no useful contribution to the climate debate …”
Eschenbach’s response may not be polite, but what of the other side’s attitudes? We have a very long way to go if this divide is ever to be fully bridged.
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Roy Hogue: #8
Roy,
I agree. I suspect that “group-think”; political pressure; and a sense of urgency, all combined to justify “bending the rules”.
Of course, once bent, rules cannot be re-straightened again. You cannot un-tell a lie, you can only tell more lies in an attempt to support the previous ones.
But in the public perception, the lies did not start with research into climate variation.
They started with an advertising idea that “Scientists agree that [product x] will kill 99% of all known germs”. Yea, right!
But such spin constantly and subliminally chips away at the credibility of science in the public consciousness. If science stands for truth, it is inevitably the antithesis of modern advertising.
What we mean by “science” is also not static. The distinction between research science, and applied science is often not clear (it was not in this case). Likewise, differentiation between applied science (using science to produce an outcome) and scientific consulting (telling a client which scientific evidence supports an argument), is not clear.
I think it comes down to the method of funding. “Tell me how I am measured and rewarded, and I will tell you how I will perform”. Climate science was funded by huge amounts of money from multiple sources, each of which was expecting to achieve a specific and preordained outcome.
The scientists involved may, or may not, be guilty of fraud in the legal sense. But the people who funded the research in the first place, the UN and others, are certainly guilty of fraud in the moral sense, for it is they that have conspired to bring science into disrepute by using it to try and justify something that is unjustifiable.
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Bryn: #15
“Dogs that are bred and trained to attack, do one thing and they do it very well.” (V. Putin)
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I think Willis was unnecessarily restrained, overly polite and long winded.
My comment at WUWT was that Dr Curry’s post was a mixture of CYA and BS.
After all that has gone by with the abuse we’ve suffered from the warmographers, the billions wasted and lives blighted they now want us to be polite!
F**k that!
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Any “chemical engineers, etc. who have made career decisions in directing their research toward climate change impacts or mitigation have been..” gullible chumps or calculating cynics. Hard cheese.
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To #1 Rereke Whaakaro
To quote the great Max Planck –
“Despite evidence to the contrary, scientist seldom part with their theories. Science only progresses ‘funeral by funeral'”
Why are we having a general election this year ?
Can’t PM Rudd just repeat his ‘Consencus’ powers and duly announce the winner ?
Interesting articles.
Keep up the good work!
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Bryn,
I’m not justifying or accepting of anyone’s bad behavior, anywhere, and it’s certainly out of control right now all over the blogosphere.
But trolls are a sad fact of the Internet. There are a lot of angry people out there who enjoy the power of anonymously flaming people they perceive as their enemies. That’s a social and cultural problem that our society needs to address, regardless of the issue under debate.
Here in the U.S., a girl committed suicide partly because of such attacks. My own daughter has been a victim of cyberbulling several times, and it was not pretty to see her suffering.
With that said, your perception that mountains of abuse have been heaped on opponents of the AGW theories is, I think, distorted, possibly from your point of view. I’ve seen a lot of scorn thrown both ways, equally.
That said, I myself don’t find Dr. Curry’s remarks to be either helpful or appropriate. I think her perspective is wrong, and that she is unnecessarily bowing to external pressure, and that she is selling out her profession.
The idea is correct, to stop the dueling and the smearing, but the submissive tone of her peace offering is wrong. And Willis response, while perhaps heartening to AGW theory opponents, is from my point of view despicable.
Just my opinion. It’s not right or wrong, it’s just my opinion.
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Not polite? I’ve been lied to for over 20 years. For their part it wasn’t a case of “oh I got it wrong, sorry”.
No they kept it up and are keeping it up to this day.
If I ever run into Tom Freidman, Gavin Schmidt, Or Ben Santer (who seems to fancy himself a bit of a tough) in public, what I do to them will not be polite.
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Sphaerica,
Science is not debated – it progresses from verification by compulsion of experimental fact. Politics is debated, but the present issue is the logical outcome when a science becomes dominated by the deductive method without anchoring itself on an initial verified scientific fact. AGW is simply a technically sophisticated belief system that human emissions will produce a catastrophic future.
An example – consider a geophysical survey that measured the earth’s gravity field over a small area, and which produced an anomalous response that could be interpreted, depending on various assumptions such as depth, presumed density of the gravitating mass that caused the measured anomaly, etc. There can be quite a bit of debate over how to interpret the anomaly, to be sure, but crunch time happens when the hypothesis is tested by experiment, in this case a drill hole.
If the debate concluded that the gravitating mass was a large body of hematite iron ore at a depth of 50 metres below surface, or that it was due to a larger heavier mass deeper down, say at 100 metres below surface, then the drilling a bore hole to test this is the next step. If the drill fails to intersect the hematite at the depth proposed, the hypothesis is falsified. This is the scientific method in its purest state. And if at 100 metres it does not intersect the alternative solution, then that hypothesis is also falsified. There is no debate over this.
As for AGW, the hypothesis is that doubling of atmospheric CO2 will cause a specific rise in atmosphere temperature. Various attempts have been made to quantify that parameter, and there is vigorous debate over which result is the correct one. That is not science, but pseudoscience in which the scientific method is used to make a debating point. Where is the experiment falsifying the climate sensitivity number? Why has no one performed it? Is it possible to test this? Yes, fill a hermetically sealed glass house with100% CO2 and observe the internal temperature. If it goes up to 475 degrees Celsius then you have demonstrated the runaway greenhouse effect believed to exist on Venus. If it doesn’t, the hypothesis has been falsified. That’s doing science. Debate over a particular determination of climate sensitivity is pseudoscience if the experimental verification is ignored.
As for Willis’ reply to Judith Curry, I think it appropriate considering the fact that the situation science has found itself in is due to it’s takeover by the post-modernists. One only has to read the views of Mike Hulme and others of that view to see what has happened to science. AGW is effectively Politically Correct science.
What I found frustrating with Currie’s explanation was the inability to realise that there might be a slight possibility that the assumptions underlying her science might be wrong. As Oliver Cromwell asked centuries ago, how about even thinking about the “possibility” one might be mistaken. Climate science seems reluctant to do that, and that is the principal polint Willis made.
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Sphaerica:
February 28th, 2010 at 10:02 am
And fair enuff said. I don’t agree with you but well said Sph
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I guess the fundamental sticking point is taxation. My tax dollars are going into funding research that I believe is using poor methodology. The same people taking that tax money now want more, in a largely open ended scheme and no consultation with the suckers losing their money.
Fundamentally both sides in this discussion can’t be happy because they want their funding and I feel they have had more than enough and someone else should take a turn. We can put this in polite language or harsh but either way someone is going home disappointed.
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Rereke @16,
I agree. I wasn’t thinking about the funding angle but certainly there’s great culpability there also. Then I ask myself which is worse, the one who offers the bribe — for that’s what it was — or the one who would be called scientist who prostituted himself and science by taking the bribe?
I honestly don’t know how to differentiate between them. It all leaves a very bad taste behind.
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And a very good thing too! No real scientist would ever say, “Scientists agree with XYZ” they would only ever say, “This particular observation stands in support of XYZ.”
Each and every time you hear, “Scientists agree blah” without any references to verifiable experiments and measurements, you are being lied to. Easy. The more the public recognize this, the better for all of us and Democracy makes a step forward.
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From a laymans point of view,
This is my opinion only, BTW.
The thing that confuses this is the scientific debate versus the political one. The scientific debate should be civil. The pliticial one would rearely be so, unfortunately.
Th real problem here is that we have scientific issues which were radically politicised. Dr Phil and company became the super heroes of the AGW cause with former Vice presidents praising them. Like mere puppets they were happy with this exposure and did their best to make sure their powerful allies stayed allied.
This was Hubris, IMHO and in itself has been the most damaging thing that could have happened.
Like many political debates, the cause was short lived, and it eventually ran it’s course. Now, with politics and “climate science” being irretreavably connected at birth, now the public and, presumably the rest of science is looking at a gangrenous branch of science with both concern and disgust.
I can see no possibility of civility re-entering the debate until the individuals -even the ones with the best of intentions – who have stretched the scientific method to breaking point are exposed and held publicly to account.
It is important that this doesn’t just happen around the people who have been exposed. It is unfair to target them only. It is now up to the scientific community to show a massive and public demonstration showing the scientists who were honest and stuck to the principles of scientific truth and to expose the scientists and politicians who should probably attend a course on ethics.
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Tel: #27
That was the point I was trying to make – but not very well it seems.
My observation is that a significant proportion of the general public has become desensitised by invalid science (and medical) stereotypes, and therefore uncritically accepts the AGW propositions put forward by Al Gore, Greenpeace, WWF, et al in the name of scientific consensus.
But it works both ways.
A friend of mine is a teacher, and is required to discuss Global Warming, CO2, dying polar bears, etceteras as part of the science curriculum. She explains that scientists use something they call computer models to predict what will happen, and then happily asks her students to indicate if they play computer games or not. She then explains that computer games and computer models are [essentially] the same thing.
Of course her students object, saying that, “Computer games aren’t real”! To which she replies, “Quite right”.
Truth will find a way.
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Tel, #27:
Yes! Emphatically, yes. Unfortunately, 99% of what people think they are hearing from scientists, they are instead hearing from sensationalist, ill-equipped (education-wise) journalists and pseudo-journalists (bloggers).
Unfortunately for everyone, very, very few scientists are guilty of the exaggerated claims that supposedly come from their lips. Most scientists (in all areas) are quiet researchers. Sometimes they are arrogant within their own field, but they are primarily focused on their work, oblivious to the outside world.
The level of public interest in climate, I’m sure, makes most scientists uncomfortable. They don’t want to be famous, and they don’t want to be quoted. They want to go to the next xyz convention and have their peers tell them how smart they are for publishing paper abc. They don’t want to be rock stars (outside of their small pen-protector and protractor crowd). They don’t care about you and me.
What has been happening for twenty years is that journalists want a big story, so they take what a scientist says, then twist it and milk it. The biggest difference now is that they’ve realized they went too far with the climate scare stories, so now they’re finding fresh meat in the evil scientist conspiracy stories.
Don’t ever, ever, ever believe anything you read. If you are a true, true skeptic (as I am, not in AGW, but in the true sense of the word) you will not believe anything anyone tells you. Go all the way to the source. Then go beyond that. Don’t ever stop when you find what you were expecting to find, because there’s more hiding under that.
But do not ever, ever trust journalists.
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Louis Hissink, #23:
I’m afraid I disagree. Science is most certainly debated, hotly and aggressively and for a long time, but by scientists, among scientists, not among bloggers and “the common folk.” What you see as debate in the blogs is not how science works, and the scientists could care less about it. Most of it they see, roll their eyes in exasperation at the extraordinary level of misunderstanding that most people have of the science, and they move on.
To see how science works, read the published papers (and not just the ones that appeal to you because they appear to refute AGW theory).
You may find Willis to be “the voice of the people,” saying what you’d like to say, and as such his words are heartening because he is saying what you want to say. But to me, he has no right. He’s not a scientist. He doesn’t have the education or the years of sacrifice (everyone in every profession starts as a novice). He has no place saying anything he’s saying, or right to do so, other than hubris and an Internet connection and an eager audience.
As far as Curry not admitting to “the slight possibility that the assumptions underlying her science might be wrong,” she isn’t because there isn’t. I know everyone here is dead certain that AGW is a fabricated lie, but just as firmly I and others believe it to be true, and the scientists who have dedicated twenty years to research in the field certainly believe it to be true. They are not going to suddenly start to doubt themselves because some bloggers say it’s a lie.
And that’s my problem with Curry. She gave AGW opponents and conspiracy theorists way too much rope. The science is nowhere close to a lie, and to my eye, 90% of the accusations against the science as a whole are utterly baseless. I’ve read huge volumes of the e-mail threads from start to finish. I read “Harry’s” comments and the actual computer code. As a computer programmer myself, I know exactly what I did and I understand his emotional frame of mind as he did it. I read the passages in question in the IPCC report, and then followed up and read the citations. On the Amazon attack, I even found the Nepstad papers and verified what he actually said as it related to dangers to the Amazon.
I find no evidence whatsoever, myself, that supports any of the accusations being leveled at these scientists.
Please stop and read that again. I’m not saying “I believe in them.” I’m not saying “I believe their explanations.” I read the e-mails. I looked at everything. I feel I understand it front to back and I find no flaw in their methods or their behavior, outside of the human frailty that lead them to have emotional reactions… something I’ve seen time and time again on blogs, as is evidenced by Willis’ extreme outburst. Except those scientists expressed that emotion in private, amongst themselves, while Willis broadcast it on the Internet for everyone to see.
Sorry. I know everyone here is going to slam me for my position, but I do not see the great tarnishing stain on science that you all see. I understand the science thoroughly and I find it frighteningly sound. I’m not going to try to convince anyone here of any of this because the only way you will arrive at these conclusions is to do what I’ve done and see for yourselves. No one can convince you of this, and I have no desire to try.
But this war on science, against scientists, is, I believe, serving to undermine all of science in every endeavor, and humanity can’t afford that. Science, whether people like it or not, is the core of modern society. Climate change or not, without science, we are a meaningless, dead end species.
And please don’t kid yourselves. This is not a war on these climate scientists alone, with implications limited to this issue and these players. This is an all out war on science, and it’s inevitable effect is that it will harm and hinder every scientific issue and endeavor that arises for the next thirty years.
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Completely off-topic, but readers here should check this out (if you haven’t already):
Institute of Physics (UK) has released a report to Parliament about UEA/Hadley CRU. It is pretty devastating. Links can be found at either icecap.us (no www before icecap) and WUWT.
I may be a colonial on the wrong side of the pond, but I contacted Parliament, and told them that Jones et al have damaged my scientific reputation vicariously, and need to do time for their crime(s).
And, on-topic, Curry needs to wake up and smell the (tea/coffee). The hoax is over. Long live Physics!!
Mark H.
Wyoming, USA
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Judith Curry is a scientist. Obviously highly educated and intelligent.
She has had her research cited on numerous occasions by the IPCC. WG1 chaps 3,9 and 11. WG2 chaps 1,6,9 and 16. So she must have a good understanding of how the IPCC works.
Quite some thought must have gone into her “blogospheric experiment”.
The above is a modified “2500 men in white coats running around measuring things” meme, not a statement with careful thought behind it. As a contributor to the IPCC report, she knows that two thirds of the report, that of WG2 and WG3 rely totally on the findings and conclusions of the first third, WG1. She must also know that going all the way back to 1996, when the infamous Santer et al paper in Nature which tauted “a discernable human influence on climate” controversy began to rage. This paper was shown to be fraudulent (cherry picked radio sonde data set from 1963-1987) by a follow up paper in Nature vol.384, 12 Dec 96, p522 which showed ALL THE AVAILABLE radio sonde data set from 1958-1996. Prof Patrick Michaels and Dr Paul Knappenberger put it succinctly,
This ofcourse was followed by the now infamous and extremely well documented hockey stick saga. The science of WG1 was put in doubt. Did neither of these cause Curry to raise an eyebrow?
But ofcourse even before the above examples, Curry must have known what type of an organization the IPCC was, she allowed them to cite her papers listed above.
“The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was
jointly established in 1988, by the World Meteorological Organization
(WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), with the mandate to assess scientific information related to climate change, to evaluate the environmental and socio-economic consequences of climate change, and to formulate realistic response strategies”.
The structure and mission statement of the IPCC should have raised Curries eyebrow regards to the former and the Santer and hockey stick saga in regards to the latter. But they didn’t.
Well no ma’am, duelling blogs is TOO LATE. The duelling needed to be done BEFORE THE FAR of 1991 and prior to each subsequent report. What is the point of duelling the science when the policymakers have already been handed the conclusions of “the science”?
This brings me to Curries worst offence.
Communication hasn’t been and isn’t the problem. The problem has always been BAD SCIENCE. Fudging, bodging, manipulating, torturing data, hiding, tricking, exclusion, collusion on and on.
I’m just a layman yet I’m offended, I can imagine skeptical scientists being incensed by this. As Willis Eschenbach said “Do good science, and publicly insist that other climate scientists do good science as well”. I’m surprised he was so controlled, much stronger words were due. So my hat tip to Mr Eschenbach for showing such restraint in the face of such an offensive essay.
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Sphaerica: #31
February 28th, 2010 at 12:54 pm
I’m a professional scientist, and use the scientific method in my day job.
The science being criticised here is Post Normal Science, not proper science, and it may well be that post-normal science is debated, but scientific truths are not settled by debate, but from compulsion of physical experiment.
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#33 Baa Humbug,
Here is a thoughtful analysis of why the science went down the wrong path – Post Normal Science.
http://buythetruth.wordpress.com/2009/10/31/climate-change-and-the-death-of-science/
Science is permeated by this PNS disease, it seems, and judging from Currie’s explanations, I get the impression she too is a PN scientist.
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Sphaerica, in that case what would you call the AR4 Summary for Policymakers? Is it science written by scientists or is it sensationalist journalism written for impact value?
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Guess we will just have to wait around until the lack of warming becomes convincing.
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Sphaerica:
February 28th, 2010 at 12:26 pm
With all due respect, I cannot disagree with this comment any stronger. I don’t mean to disparage but I can’t think of another way to put this…Are you stuck in a time warp? maybe back to pre 1950’s or pre Einstein even?
Todays scientists are no different to professionals in any other field. They don’t wear cardigans and eat lunch sandwiches made at home by their mothers. THEY WANT FAME, THEY CRAVE FAME. Fame brings not just grants but t.v. spots, Radio, magazines,Australian of the Year Awards, red carpet invitations and shoulder rubbing opportunities with investors and movers and shakers.
Yes I’m generalizing and I’m sure there still are the odd few who wear cardigans and drive clapped out old volvos.
So many have become household names, more famous than what was his name? Proff Julias Summner(sic) Miller.
So lets not kid ourselves, climate scientists in particular belong to this group. They are eating breathing chitting human beings with all the failings that that entails.
Please, don’t take this as me disparaging you. I respect your opinions and like the way you present them to us, but on this subject, I encourage you to reconsider.
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After reading both the Curry article and Eschenbach’s post I can only say Curry’s attempt to find middle ground may be heartfelt and honest on her part, however her lack of condemnation of those so obsessed in promoting the message and so aggrieved by the likes of Eschenbach, Mcintyre and Co in wanting to audit their results falls well short of anything worthwhile.
Eschenbach’s reply which some might find harsh, to me was well written and forceful enough that no one misses the point. Jo’s coverage and Willis article are two of the best postings I’ve seen on any site.
For me I find the following passage and the entire P.S. say it all: You want trust? Do good science, and publicly insist that other climate scientists do good science as well. It’s that simple. Do good science, and publicly call out the Manns and the Joneses and the Thompsons and the rest of the charlatans that you are currently protecting. Call out the journals that don’t follow their own policies on data archiving. Speak up for honest science. Archive your data. Insist on transparency. Publish your codes.
While checking some comments on wattsupwiththat I found a couple I think are worth sharing.
An exert from Paul Boyce (01:29:25) : Wattsupwiththat.
The trouble is the AGW community has always relied so heavily on spin. Which is fine, and quite understandable in the circumstances. Except if you do rely on spin and you lose your credibility then you are done for. It’s easy to lose your reputation, but difficult – if not impossible – to regain it. And massive loss of credibility is what the AGW movement is experiencing at the moment.
This I think is the same rock and hard place where the Rudd Government now finds itself.
I also found a link to these cartoons by Josh, well done Josh.
http://www.cartoonsbyjosh.com/
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Sphaerica: #31
I’m afraid I disagree. Science is most certainly debated, hotly and aggressively and for a long time, but by scientists, among scientists, not among bloggers and “the common folk.” What you see as debate in the blogs is not how science works, and the scientists could care less about it.
I one of the “common folk” agree scientist should be the ones debating science. The failure of Jones, Mann etc to offer their work for others to check kind of killed this notion don’t you think.
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Without getting into a debate about the relative insult power of being called a Denier (with all the connotations to the Holocaust) or Flat Earther versus the above three terms, I’m always amused that the only place one hears this lament by those who support the AGW hypothesis is on a skeptical blog. Why is it you never see this admonishment on Real Climate, Climate Progress, Open Mind, GreenFrye’s, and the AGW alarmist blogs? Yes, alarmist. There’s no way you could talk about them in any other way when you read the hysterical rants on those blogs.
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Sphaerica @ 6:
BUT they are evil monsters out to get me!
Remember (I do) your camp (note the kinder word) LIED TO ME, Came for my treasure, came to control my life. You should not expect polite from me unless by way of a polite jury putting your camp leaders in a nice cool cell.
“baseless political or financial allegations” What Baseless allegations? Yes I am paranoid. It is a simple human reaction to people that LIE TO ME, Come for my treasure, come to control my life.
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Then again, perhaps you should go back and read the posts Judith put up about 18 months ago when the AGW crowd was riding high. She was anything but civil. As the house of cards has crumbled, her tune has changed. She like many others is trying to salvage something.
I’ve argued with Judith at Climate Audit. In a one-on-one confrontation she’s civil, but in that environment the weakness of her statistical and physics knowledge probably forced greater caution.
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Louis Hissink:
February 28th, 2010 at 1:55 pm
Thanks for the link m8. I dunno about terms like post-normal etc. English isn’t my first lingo, it sounds so arty farty to me. I’d h8 to link science with art.
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Right now? Where have you been? If you’d been around since the founding of Real Climate, Climate Progress and Open Mind, you’d have seen vitriol spewed by so called climate scientists for years. You would have seen the vicious personal attacks by Gavin Schmidt, Michael Man, Grant Foster (aka Tamino), Joe Romm on anyone who disagrees with the AGW hypothesis.
Where were the Sphaerica’s demanding civility from them when they held the upper hand? They were nowhere. They were mostly on the sidelines cheering on the hyperbole believing in argument from authority. Spaerica, why don’t you go over to those sites and administer the same admonition? See what happens to you.
Yes, and they are most frequently seen visiting skeptic sites and ranting at skeptics while refusing to actually support the AGW hypothesis with real empirical evidence. They lecture a lot about the need to be civil too…at least initially, but they don’t hold the AGW side to the same standard.
(my emphasis added)
Anonymous. Sorta like you? Most of the regulars here who use handles have previously identified themselves. Others provide links to sites that properly identify them. Heck, Tamino made a showing here spewing vitriol under various anonymous handles too.
Then Sphaerica says:
Selling out her profession? Have you actually read the emails? Have you bothered to follow anything but the echo chamber of authority?
The selling out of the profession was done by Phil “I’ll delete the data rather than release it,” Jones. The selling out was done by James “Death Trains” Hansen. The selling out was done by Keith “Enchanted Larch of Yamal” Briffa, just to name a few.
The selling out was done by “scientists” who fell in love with a hypothesis and then worked to bend the results to meet the hypothesis.
Perhaps you should read the statement from the Royal Society of Chemistry to the Parliamentary Inquiry on CRU. Perhaps you should read the even stronger statement by the Institute of Physics. The complete list of input to the inquiry can be found here. It includes statements from both sides.
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Unfortunately for your side, it’s the most prominent ones who are guilty of exaggerated claims, James Hansen above all. They are the ones who eagerly advocate to journalists.
I found this paragraph to be somewhat schizophrenic. “Don’t ever, ever, ever believe anything you read.” Er, don’t believe the published papers either. Ok. Believe the scientists but don’t believe, except for AGW because the “science is settled.” This was probably the most illogical collection of sentences I’ve seen from you.
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This entire comment is nothing but argument from authority. What utter elitist nonsense. This is exactly why “climate scientists” are getting hammered. Just because someone is working in industry or other fields and not doing academic research in a tenured position doesn’t mean they are not qualified to address the science.
The “unwashed masses” have every right to comment. They are the ones footing the bill. They are the ones who will pay the price of misguided policy resting on pseudo-science. They are already paying the price.
That you make such an argument, demonstrates that you probably haven’t read the emails where Jones, Trenbreth and others are openly discussing blocking publication of opposing views in the premier science journals and in the IPCC report.
Ah yes, real science, where you refuse to release data, methodology and code to any but your cronies who share the same view. Again, read the emails. If data, methodology and code are not released, then refuting the “science” is a little problematic.
What a condescending comment and bold assumption on your part. It may surprise you but many who comment here and on blogs do have scientific, engineering and statistical backgrounds. Many of us do read the published papers and have commented on them. Again, read the Institute of Physics statement and their take on the alleged “science” taking place among the alleged “climate scientists.”
Yes, the old everyone has one. You have an opinion. You are again employing argument from authority. Climate science is not a profession. A key hallmark of a profession is a code of ethics and rigorous internal policing to ensure adherence to that code. The main players of the “Climategate” scandal have gone for years without censure by peers or other scientists except for the very few are safely tenured or who have safely retired and who can now comment openly without fear of reprisal.
Hubris? What a joke. You are totally blind to the hubris of Mann, Schmidt, Hansen and Pachauri. I just love it how people like you lecture the rest of us. You may not be name-calling…yet…but your smug condescension is very pronounced. Defending their indefensible behavior and your own admission to not being skeptical on AGW, shows that you, like they are part of the cancer that is creating the crisis in science.
Then your eyes are firmly closed and you haven’t read their own words. You clearly don’t understand the science and you are simply ignoring inconvenient evidence.
These are more hysterical pronouncements. What happened to ditching irrational emotion? In the first place there is a “crisis” because of the unethical, unscientific, unprofessional behavior of a cabal of alleged “climate scientists.” “Climate Science” is squarely in the cross-hairs and rightly so, but most of us also worry that what these “climate scientists” have done will tarnish the other “real” sciences.
Yes, there will be fallout for all science, but it’s because the scientists didn’t stand up sooner and condemn the unscientific behavior of a small coterie of environmental activists parading as scientists. As the statements by IoP and RSC show, they are now trying to control the damage and distance themselves from the pseudo-scientists.
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Baa Humbug #44
That’s the issue – the arty-farty crowd have control of the science, and AGW is what we get – their view is that there are no objective facts, hence no objective science. Which is sheer bunk, of course.
Proof? Grab an Eskimo, Indian and an African, put them on Bondi beach before sunrise and let them observe the sun rise. Next day repeat the exercise. Do it for a week. At the end of the week ask each in turn where the sun will rise. Each will point to the same spot on the horizon. This is an objective fact independent of the cultural background of the three individuals.
So what are the arty-farty on about when they reckon there are no objective facts? Displaying their innate stupidity, I suspect.
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Judith Curry has a PhD in Geography, one of the “soft” sciences.
The rest is mostly true. Yes, she’s educated, intelligent and a nice person, but her statistics and physics are questionable.
As I said earlier, I’ve argued with her over at Climate Audit. I happen to like her personally because of the exchanges I’ve had with her. Like I also said, some of her statements 18 months ago were pretty “ranty” and could also be called uprofessional.
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Hey JLKrueger,
Thanks for that reply to Sphaerica, probably his admiral Belgrano moment.
OT but my nephew was one of the five Aussie defence force team with General Franks some years back at Qatar. Appreciate what you folks are doing.
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I read Willis’s post shortly after he put it up. I agreed with most of it but felt he missed a few points. I would not regard Dr Judith Curry a competent scientist in the field of climate. She can be judged not competent from the moment she accepted the pseudoscience behind AGW. If someone does not fully understand the science and technology then they should not be lecturing in the subject or doing research in it. I use the word technology because heat transfer is not a science subject. I have been astounded by the shallow understanding of those who claim to point to physics in referring to heat transfer by radiation. From what I have read, a physics scientist would not know where to start in calculating the heat transfer in a boiler fired by various fuels. Fancy, someone referring to CO2 or cloud “forcing”. What units do they have? A molecule of CO2? A force has the units of Newtons (mass times acceleration).
For Judith Curry to use the term “deniers” and say qualified people who did not accept the pseudo-science of AGW were financed by “big oil” or in fact any group further highlights her lack of understanding about climate and puts a very poor light on her ethics.
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Also OT, but we have about a dozen Aussies at the Counter Insurgency Training Center here where I am.
Many of my American compadres back home often fail to recognize the contributions of our allies here and they don’t understand that a few hundred soldiers deployed across the world is a major and difficult commitment for some nations.
The Afghans tend to prefer going on combat operations with the “English speakers,” because we are not burdened with all the caveats that the rest of NATO is operating under.
In that regard it’s sad, because there is nothing wrong with the French, German, Italian and other soldiers here. They are hamstrung by their governments and that makes them look “cowardly” to the Afghans.
I had an Afghan brigade commander remark to me that he didn’t like having his men go out with their Spanish mentors because they ran back to base at the first wiff of gunpowder.
I’m sure the others would fight well if given a chance, but they aren’t given a chance.
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Concur with your comments. What some fail to realize that the entire topic of climate study involves hundreds of disciplines. It isn’t something as narrowly defined as chemistry, biology, or physics.
So when I get a snooty, “you’re not a climate scientist” argument, I want to barf!
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Speaking of deniers, Al Gore apparently has felt the heat from all the AGW skeptics. He is making an appearance in Saturday’s edition of the New York Times: We Can’t Wish Away Climate Change
The former vice president still has not learned that it’s not nice to call people names:
He is also still insisting that consensus rules:
And, of course, the thrust of his argument (beyond the name calling and appeal to authority) is that the record snowfalls we’ve seen in the northern hemisphere this winter are due to global warming. Naturally, our heated planet has its simmering oceans belching out record amounts of moisture into the atmosphere thereby resulting in enhanced precipitation when it hits all that cold air. (Cold air, GW? Non sequitur?)
Perhaps someone here can help me out with one little detail. Exactly how can Gore’s enhanced blizzard hypothesis fly when there appears to be no evidence that the oceans have in fact warmed up? Surely, I am missing something here.
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Sphaerica #31
Scientists do not have a monopoly on knowledge.
I am an ex-cold war warrior, and have worked with scientists as technical subject-matter experts, and non-scientists as country, economic, and political experts; all of whom worked as a team. Most of these people were experts in their own right, with published peer-reviewed papers in whatever technical journals were appropriate in their subject area. Many currently held, or previously held positions in academia.
But in the world of geopolitics; military posturing; diplomacy; and trade, the person on the ground, the person at the front line, the person who has worked as a forester all his working career, knows considerably more about why tree rings in a single tree on the Yamal peninsular might be the size they are, than some academic sitting in an ivory tower in the UK.
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JLKrueger:
February 28th, 2010 at 4:23 pm
Hi m8. I always enjoy reading your posts. I knew next to nothing about Curry until the WUWT post. Had a closer look at it when Jo posted. I tried to keep it as civil as possible because that’s the lead Jo gave in her article. I thought it best to follow but if you noticed I was getting a little hot under the collar towards the end. In fact it was the middle but I thought I’d cut it short(ish)
My senses tell me this wasn’t really an “olive branch” by Curry, rather more like an attempt at quitening the hordes down a little to buy some time. Maybe I’m wrong but that’s the sense I got.
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JLKrueger
I guess Eddy is taking the weekend off, so I will ask: “How are your ribs, man?”
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@ Sphaerica
You wrote at # 7, “Willis post was very, very, very far from “polite.” It was in fact one of the most abusive things I’ve read of late (and the Internet is an amazingly brutal place). The tone was both unnecessary and unprofessional.”
I just read the entire post, again. Considering all of the relevant facts concerning the debate about man’s contribution to the alleged global warming which has occurred since the end of the little ice age, I failed to find anything he said that was not true. Perhaps you can enlighten me as to anything that was false or a statement contrary to fact contained in his post?
@ # 6 you wrote, “Everyone should, individually, avoid labels and name calling. Emotion should be left out. Debate the science. Debate the facts.
I Couldn’t agree more with your statement!
However, @ 21 you wrote “Here in the U.S., a girl committed suicide partly because of such attacks. My own daughter has been a victim of cyberbulling several times, and it was not pretty to see her suffering.
With that said, your perception that mountains of abuse have been heaped on opponents of the AGW theories is, I think, distorted, possibly from your point of view.”
I am sorry to hear that your daughter has been a victim of abusive behavior. Your statement about your daughter which was made just prior to your claim about Bryn’s “perception” is a fallacy, an appeal to pity (Ad Misericordiam). Also, I read what Bryn said and he said nothing about mountains of abuse. You have employed a straw man which is another fallacy. You accused Dr. Curry of selling out her profession which is an ad hominem attack. You also wrote, “I’ve seen a lot of scorn thrown both ways, equally.” That is a matter of opinion. As you introduced no facts to substantiate your claim you have committed a fallacy of presumption. Specifically, a false dilemma.
@ 30 you wrote, Unfortunately, 99% of what people think they are hearing from scientists, they are instead hearing from sensationalist, ill-equipped (education-wise) journalists and pseudo-journalists (bloggers).”
Another ad hominem attack. Also, bloggers and journalists are capable of making a true statement. IF (I say if) you are implying that they cannot make a valid statement that would be an appeal to authority (argumentum ad verecundiam.) The rest of the post is unsolicited advise, but I will be courteous and take it under advisement and give it all the attention it deserves. Then, I will follow your advice and ” Debate the science. Debate the facts.”
@31 you wrote “I’m afraid I disagree. Science is most certainly debated, hotly and aggressively and for a long time, but by scientists, among scientists, not among bloggers and “the common folk.””
Another fallacious appeal to authority.
You also wrote @ 31 ” But to me, he has no right. He’s not a scientist. He doesn’t have the education or the years of sacrifice (everyone in every profession starts as a novice). He has no place saying anything he’s saying, or right to do so, other than hubris and an Internet connection and an eager audience.”
Another illogical, fallacious appeal to authority.
You wrote, ” I understand the science thoroughly and I find it frighteningly sound.”
Is this what you mean by “leave the emotion out.”?
You also wrote @ 31 ” I’m not going to try to convince anyone here of any of this because the only way you will arrive at these conclusions is to do what I’ve done and see for yourselves. No one can convince you of this, and I have no desire to try.”
I thought you wanted to, ” Debate the science. Debate the facts.” Have I misunderstood you?
Again @ 31 “This is not a war on these climate scientists alone, with implications limited to this issue and these players. This is an all out war on science, and it’s inevitable effect is that it will harm and hinder every scientific issue and endeavor that arises for the next thirty years.”
Please substantiate your “war” claims. As it stands, you have used another straw man and impugned the good name and character of everyone who disagrees with the AGW theory. Your statement is emotional, not logical.
Do you really wish to “Debate the science. Debate the facts.” or are you here to vent and experience an emotional release? Please try to hold yourself to the same standards that you want the rest of us to adhere to. To do otherwise would be hypocritical.
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Oh wow, things must be turning around at the ABC. Apparantley 5 guest posters will be given space on the drumline including our very own Jo to put the “skeptics” side.
mmmmm whats the bet the comment numbers will double that of Hamilton
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@ Rereke Whaakaro
Just when you thought it was safe to go near the water! (Start the theme song from Jaws!)
@ JRKrueger
Glad to see the ribs are healing! God took a rib and look what it cost Adam! On the sixth day God Created Man. On the seventh day God rested. On the eighth day God created Woman and Man hasn’t rested since! I like Spaerica, her name reminds me of a dislexic spelling of Spherical.She seems to appreciate going round and round. Unlike our resident AGW proponent, she attempts to make an intelligent argument. At least she is not a troll. She does seem to trust scientists and not bloggers or the rest of the great unwashed.
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Rereke Whaakaro:
February 28th, 2010 at 6:07 pm
Oh man that is so prescient, weird even. Mention Dirty Eddys name and up he pops.
Hi Eddy
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If I remember correctly this is the second time she has tried to play the bringer of peace and harmony and rational unemotive discussion whilst saying I’m a warmist and you are all deniers!
No thanks.
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@ Baa Humbug
G’day m8!
You wrote, “My senses tell me this wasn’t really an “olive branch” by Curry, rather more like an attempt at quitening the hordes down a little to buy some time. Maybe I’m wrong but that’s the sense I got.”
I believe it was a CYA move and an attempt to distance herself from the sinking S.S. Climate Scam. It wasn’t quite the mia culpa that Jones delivered in his recent interview. Then again, Curry isn’t sweating an indictment, either!
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JLKeuger and Cement a Friend,
JL – you hit the nail on the head – climate study isn’t a specific scientific discipline at all. I still recall the “difficulties” I had in studying “geography” as an undergrad – even then this ‘soft’ science lacked the discipline of empiricism. I don’t know whether either of you have read Alan Siddon’s argument on American Thinker, and I have to read it again as I only read it on a Palm Treo device (which got the sack yesterday to be replaced with a HDC HD2 Windows mobile Iphone variant).
It’s also useful to read Thomas Sowell’s “Intellectuals and Society” to gain an understanding of what is going on, because Judith Currie’s lexicon and argument can be neatly described as technically sophisticated verbal virtuosity.
Personally I think Willis is asking the impossible – these “scientists” can’t start doing good science because they weren’t doing science in the first place. It’s the old Platonist-Aristotelian intellectual division – the Platonists relying on dialectics and consensus (verbal virtuosity) versus the empiricists of the Aristotelian tradition basing their world view on the existence of objective facts.
Nobel Laureate Hannes Alfven commented some years back that the problem with modern science is that there are too many scientists. I would add that most are not scientists per-se but highly skilled technicians who have captured the joystick of the scientific jumbo-jet. This, as well as the capturing of science by the political activists for political purposes, is the problem we face.
Those of us whose careers and incomes are based on successfully using the scientific method to produce commercial results, in my case economic mineral deposits, (but more often uneconomic ones :-)) realise that many university science graduates are, when all is said and done, very well credentialed science technicians, very competent in what they do, but unsuited, intellectually, to be scientific.
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@ Janama 62
A wry and shrewd observation on your part, if I may be so bold to opine!
@ Baa Humbug
I tend to think of myself as a Klingon Bird of Prey; you never know when I am going to “decloak” and fire my disruptors!
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et al,
Ribs doing much better thanks. I can laugh, cough, and sneeze with just a tinge of discomfort…most of the time. Still not doing any “contact sports” and probably won’t for about three months. I’m sure ole Humbug will take credit for “healing” me with his jokes. 😉
See this for the “excitement” we had in Kabul on Friday. That’s contact sports round here. 😉
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@JLKrueger
I clicked on the link and saw the destruction. Why are you blaming terrorist hoodlum scum for what happened. Don’t you know it was caused by global warming?
Glad the ribs are getting better!
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This arvo I decided to play with excel and the BoM. I searched for rural towns with a continuous temp record going back to 1908 or so, very hard to find I might add.
Anyway, I downloaded all their max means and min means and created a mean chart with trend.
http://users.tpg.com.au/johnsay1/Stuff/Aussie_Temps.jpg
I really don’t know why we argue about 1/10ths of a degree C on global temperature.
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#68 Janama:
February 28th, 2010 at 6:43 pm
“I really don’t know why we argue about 1/10ths of a degree C on global temperature.”
Especially when you can’t measure it.
You have described the social sciences’ understanding of the physical sciences – virtual reality trumping the physical.
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I think a lot of the reason for Willis’ strongly worded comments, the comments of many on the skeptic side, and your uneasy feeling now is that when you examine her earlier statements, you see a totally different person. So many are viewing her “olive branch” with suspicion and rightly so. Proof will come with actions.
She was viciously savaged by Joe Romm. She’s getting attacked by the Warmistas for going off message and attacked by the skeptics for “not getting it.”
We can only hope she’ll come around and do an honest self-evaluation and inspection of what her side has been doing to hurt science.
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Eddy Aruda:
February 28th, 2010 at 6:31 pm
LMAO
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@ all non Australian viewers and posters
I just looked up the word “arvo’ at the following link http://www.koalanet.com.au/australian-slang.html.
I love enriching my vocabulary!
Janama wrote, “I really don’t know why we argue about 1/10ths of a degree C on global temperature.”
I think the answer is simple; after you subtract the fraudulent adjustments to the databases the climate criminals rely on to keep their taxpayer funded gravy train rolling along all that is left is a tenth or two (well within the margin of error) of warming!
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JLKrueger:
February 28th, 2010 at 6:35 pm
M8 at the link you provided I got down as far as the 4th photo then got distracted/detoured by the “Sex Scenes at Starbucks” link. 🙂
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Yes, m8! Betsy, aka “Sex Scenes at Starbucks” is a real cutie! She’s pretty athletic too and a damn good snow boarder.
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JLKrueger:
February 28th, 2010 at 6:35 pm
Lots of lines there but I can’t use any of them, this is a family blog.
But you and Eddy will be interested in this. From the WTF department. Are you aware there is now a new movement in the US to counter the “Tea Party” called the “Coffee Party”? Link here.
There is also a double WTF moment on their climate change blog HERE
I’m lost for words because I can’t use any that come to mind for fear of being banned from Jo’s
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For Baa Humbug @59
They may have been asked to contribute, but will they go to press unedited.
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please explain Louis – I really respect your wisdom on this.
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It’s a measure of their desperation. It’s actually pretty funny that the Lame Stream Media is throwing everything including the kitchen sink at Sarah Palin, that’s how terrified the US “Lefties” are of her. Their frist response to the Tea Party movement was derision.
The “Left” in the States tried to do “Liberal Talk Radio” too. Totally bombed. If you watch CNN, our ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, you don’t get and accurate view of the majority view in the US. They are total propoganda machines for the Dems and the AGW alarmists. And they wonder why they have lost market share. Fox News and the Internet are killing them. Our old time newspapers are dying too because they are so out of tune with the public.
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What a party this turned into. All I said was ‘Willis was polite’…
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Ok, if someone wants the take of a real scientist, who is currently working in the climate field, here’s a great comment by Dr. Roy Spencer:
OUCH!
You can read the whole thing at WUWT where Roy has a guest post today.
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I really think it’s time I should out myself – Janama was a skin name given to me by an old Aboriginal Sharman named Scotty Birrell in the Kimberly. I recently heard on Maccas Australia all over radio show he is still alive which would make him 89 which is amazing for an old guy like him. I classed it an honour to be given a name from the last of the great Sharmans so I used it as my web name in all the climate change discussions.
My real name is John Sayers. I design recording studios and have been a music producer for most of my 64 years.
http://johnlsayers.com
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Bob Malloy:
February 28th, 2010 at 8:02 pm
I think so Bob. The 5 named, including Jo have access to far too many people. If the ABC was to censor their essay, they would just post it up on their own blogs for all to see. The ABC would never get out from under the avalanche that would follow.
But even assuming the ABC is stoooopid, people like JO are not. She would have clarified any rules regulations conditions etc before accepting.
I can see lots of us will be riding shot gun next week. Looking forward to it, especially to learning new ad homs. What was that Dirty Eddy said about broadening his vocabulary?
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How come us old farts over 50 make up the biggest bunch of skeptics! 😉
Could it be that what we see now isn’t “unprecedented” to us?
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janama:
February 28th, 2010 at 8:14 pm
And I pictured you as a 22 year old still wet behind the ears lol
(kidding)
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he he we’ll get these kids into line sooner or later 🙂
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John “janama” Sayers henceforth nicknamed Leo (Sayer)
So how about you tune this up. Sing to “It’s a man’s man’s world by Cher.
This is an alarmist’s world,
This is an alarmist’s world,
But it would be nothing,
Nothing without a skeptic to care.
You see alarmists made the electric cars,
To take us slowly over the world.
Alarmist made the wind turbine.
To carry the not so heavy load.
Alarmist made the fluro lights,
To flicker us out of the dark.
Alarmists made the ad homs for the war,
Like noah made the ark.
This is an alarm alarm alarmists world,
But it would be nothing,
Nothing without a skeptic to care.
This is an alarmist’s world,
But it would be nothing, nothing,
Not one little thing,
Without a skeptic to care.
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Oh no please Humbug – not the Leo Sayer reference
how about this one relative to Al gore’s seduction of young Gullible greenies.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gujdbZ1csng
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janama:
February 28th, 2010 at 8:53 pm
Dang, there is a million lines there about my ex and I can’t use any of them lol’
Have you guys noticed how the alarmists blogs just don’t have any humour at all? Seems only skeptics are humourous. Must be a confidence thingy.
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here’s my history guys – you may relate to some of them.
http://www.johnlsayers.com/Pages/Track_Record.htm
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Baa Humbug: #75
They forgot to add dihydrogen monoxide to the list.
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Yep, I think it’s definitely a measure of their confidence in there “science” that they seem to be humor impaired.
Sorta like, if they were so confident in their science, they wouldn’t be afraid to release their raw data, code and methodology either. To me, that’s yet another indicator that they contrived this AGW fraud, else they would have put it out there and invited all comers to have whack at it.
Prior to Climategate I tried not to attribute motive when I wrote about it, even though in my gut I thought it. Now, with their thoughts fully exposed via the emails, I see motive and I’m willing to charge them with fraud.
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Baa Humbug: #88
Don’t they? Are you being serious? I thought they were doing a spoof on Monty Python!
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Lindzen said, “I’m not a sceptic; I’m a denier!” in a relatively recent presentation. Well, the audience thought it was funny ;).
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This corruption in science stretches right across many of fields of science, Marine Biology for instance. Whenever fisheries management use “science” to justify certain management regimes… The emphasis is on environmental advocacy not science, not management. There are no unbiased researchers. The underlying premise and assumption is that commercial species of fish are endangered by the practice of commercial fishing…
However there is no basis for that assumption. The fact is, no commercial species of fish has gone extinct because of “overfishing”… Greenpeace constantly tries to get Bluefin tuna, Sharks, Patagonian toothfish, etc, labeled as endangered, despite little evidence. They just propagandize and pay activist scientists to present the “science” to make it so. Those scientists are available and happy to do so.
This meme that humans are “evil” or “bad” for the Planet seems to be prevalent among the “educated”, which I find puzzling in the extreme. It is further compounded by the companion meme, that technology is the handmaiden of that evil.
Seeing that our “educated” are thusly handicapped by this false and ignorant world view, it is little wonder that we have a quasi religious environmentalist cadre that passes as a scientific establishment.
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Rereke Whaakaro:
February 28th, 2010 at 9:27 pm
I can see that. Their defence of Michael Mann…”he’s not the messiah, he’s just a naughty boy” and of course Penny ‘Calamity Jane’ Wong, the minister for silly ministries and Kevin Rudds response to skeptics “I fart in your general direction” lmfao
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Robinson:
February 28th, 2010 at 9:39 pm
I’ve moved beyond that. Seen as AGW is a religion, I must be a HERETIC.
So like janama, I’ll come out of the closet…”I’m a heretic and proud of it” lol
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Sphaerica:
February 28th, 2010 at 8:03 am
NO Sphaerica, YOU miss the point… the term “Warmist” is sarcasm aimed at their stance and descriptive to boot. “Alarmist” is likewise…. I half agree with you on “Believer” because it is a slur used by the secular on the religious. I myself would not call anyone a “Believer” because that context could be construed.
However when someone calls someone else a “Denier” there is the Holocaust denial slur, which is just wrong and vile. Then there is also the religious persecution slur similar to being accused of Heresy. Think Copernicus and Galileo…. Imagine what a scientist feels like when being described as a “denier”.
So, in effect you are comparing apples to oranges… I think you are trying to deflect the severity of the slur AGW proponents have cast upon the skeptical community.
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J Hansford – the link to holocaust is bulldust no one is calling anyone a holocaust denier. THe word denier quite happily exists associated with things other than the holocaust. My reading of Jo’s opinion is that a scientist should be offended being called a denier not because of the terms use re: holocaust… but because it it is essentially an accusation of not being a scientist… which if you are a scientist should be the biggest offence possible.
I don;t like the term denier. I prefer “scientists who are wrong” 🙂
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MattB:
February 28th, 2010 at 10:50 pm
Nah mate, you’re wrong. There’s plenty of people who have bandied that context around in a backhanded way, along with Nazi, etc.
Go an’ read some of Clive Hamilton’s ad hominem attacks and opinions over the years… and Huffington post etc… You’ll need a shower to get th’ stink off afterwards though.
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Are you really that clueless?
The word “Denier” has a prior specific linkage to the Holocaust, where it was first used as a label.
Anytime you take a word that already has a charged reference and start applying as a label in a new context, that word carries the earlier well-recognized connotation and reference. That’s why people choose certain words when slinging ad hominem.
You need to go back and read some Goebbels and learn how this is done. Your AGW allies have it down pretty good.
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Mattb is right that I assume the original derivation of the word “denier” is as insulting as it can get, for a scientist (to deny the evidence). But let’s not kid anyone, the holocaust references are specific and pointed, and “deniers” (according to people who edit New Scientist and run for high office in Australia) are worse than the nazi’s. “Climate deniers may kill far more people…”
I agree with Sphaerica (whatever his name is) that there is no science without civility, but this post is not about pure science, it about the human practice of it — the committees, careers, the name-calling, the rules, the people who break those rules, and the gregarious human necessity of “trust”.
The people who repeatedly try to alarm us with baseless cries are alarmist.
As I said in my reply to Hamilton this week, gregarious species need to deter free loading parasites somehow. Being “nice” after the parasites have sucked for blood is just asking to be exploited again.
Having said that, there is a lot to be said for “divide and conquer”. Show no mercy to those who orchestrated this, but there are a lot of other scientists out there who were not actively profiteering or deceiving.
The time is nigh for other science associations and scientists with reputations to speak up against the bullies, against the deceit, and for transparency in science. Judith Curry was one of the first to take a tentative step across no man’s land. Flaming her effort completely and mercilessly would not encourage others to speak up. Right now, the “mainstream” illusion of consensus among scientists is ripe to fracture.
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why are my angry posts disappearing into the never never?
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Absolutely! The real bad apples in this are about a dozen. They are the “worstest” and most “in your face”. They are the obvious ones from the emails, plus one or two others. They need to be hammered. I have absolutely no sympathy for the CRU email “dozen”.
At the same time the much larger group who, by their silence, enabled this behavior need to have a way to save face and “return to the light”.
The profiteers, like Gore, need to be crucified. We won’t get it literally, but I’ll accept figuratively. In spite of everything that’s come to light since November, he hasn’t changed his tune. He was at it again on Sunday in the New York Times Opinion page, making monstrous unsubstantiated claims. It would be funny if he weren’t profiting off the hyperbole.
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I’m gunna try one more time, if it doesn’t work I’ll blame my m8 Jack Daniels
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Yet another goal against the hockey schtick team.
Elk Island National Park, East-Central Alberta, Canada Reference
Campbell, I.D. and Campbell, C. 2000. Late Holocene vegetation and fire history at the southern boreal forest margin in Alberta, Canada. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 164: 279-296.
Description
The authors analyzed pollen and charcoal records obtained from sediment cores retrieved from three small ponds — South Pond (AD 1655-1993), Birch Island Pond (AD 1499-1993) and Pen 5 Pond (400 BC-AD 1993) — located in Canada’s Elk Island National Park, which covers close to 200 km2 of the Beaver Hills region of east-central Alberta (~25 km east of Edmonton). In doing so, they discovered that “declining groundwater levels during the Medieval Warm Period allowed the replacement of substantial areas of shrub birch with the less fire-prone aspen, causing a decline in fire frequency and/or severity, as indicated by their Pen 5 Pond data; and they concluded that this scenario “is likely playing out again today,” as all three of the sites they studied “show historic increases in Populus pollen and declines in charcoal.” Furthermore, since their Pen 5 Pond data indicate that sediment charcoal concentrations have not yet dropped to the level characteristic of the MWP — even with what they describe as the help of “active fire suppression in the park combined with what may be thought of as unintentional fire suppression due to agricultural activity around the park” — it would appear that their study sites and their surroundings have not yet attained the level of warmth and dryness they experienced during the MWP, which they describe as having occurred over the period AD 800-1200.
Via CO2science.org
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seems I can’t use the word ‘ditches” to describe a female dog
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LMAO! ROFL! 🙂
Don’t feel too bad. Imagine how Gavin Schmidt feels. Some blogs wind up tagging his name as “offensive”.
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He4y ribs, glad you’re still there.
is it true (in US politics) if the Reps win a majority then Inhofe will have subpenao (sic) powers as chairman of environment etc committee?
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MattB:
February 28th, 2010 at 10:50 pm
J Hansford – the link to holocaust is bulldust no one is calling anyone a holocaust denier. THe word denier quite happily exists associated with things other than the holocaust.
I hope both you and your son are getting more sleep. The term denier has been used specifically to mean that someone who denies the reality of global warming is the equivalent of someone who denies the holocaust. I am only citing one link but when I googled the term there was a plethora of relevant examples. BTW, nobody is accusing you, in particular, of doing so. You know how much I hate a straw man argument.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/02/09/no_change_in_political_climate/
I would like to say we’re at a point where global warming is impossible to deny. Let’s just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers, though one denies the past and the other denies the present and future.
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I see, by the ‘thumbs down’ my humorous little comment above has gotten and from other comments that many of the skeptics are very resentful of the term denier.
My opinion is that, by using such terms as ‘denier’, denialist among others – the alarmist AGW camp concretizes a disorganized mass of informed and educated individuals, who are then driven by outrage to learn about the AGW movement and question its claims. If the AGW camp were to indulge in reasoned debate (if they are able to do that, in the first place), the picture might have been completely different.
The AGW camp’s obsession with ‘the message’ and ‘effective communication’ forced their hand, at some point, to take the short-cut of smearing any legitimate opposition with such crude terms. The immediate fallout has been that a polarization of the debate ensued, leaving very little hiding room for lukewarmers and AGW apologists to lurk in the background and push their Fabianism inch by inch.
Which is the best thing that could have ever happened.
The more they act up in this fashion, the more Pachauri continues, the more RealClimate continues what it is doing… healthy skepticism and reasoning will win. These terms are the best that could have happened. It forces agnostic fence-sitters who have something working between their ears to think, rather than just trust and observe.
And moreover, going into a moral tizzy about ‘deniers’ smacks of boredom that is all
Regards
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@ nigguraths 110
I like your positive approach to the term denier. That being stated, the AGW theory has been falsified and the proponents are engaged in propaganda, not science. As long as there is money to be stolen from taxpayers this scam will continue. The politicians will eventually cut their losses and move on to some other scheme to milk the citizenry. Then, the scandal will be shoved aside in an attempt to minimize damage.
I believe there will be criminal prosecutions and soon. As with most attempts to bring international criminals to justice the main perpetrators will be punished and the lower echelon will escape unpunished. It happened in Nuremberg and Japan after World War II and it happened after the Balkans War. It would seem that political expediency trumps justice. When it comes to these climate criminals probably not being punished I am compelled to paraphrase Trenberth, “it is a travesty that we can’t.”
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Here we go Willis, I fixed it for you:
The problem is that 71.3% of what passes as denialist talking points is simply junk, as false as the percentage cited in this sentence. The reason we call them deniers is not a problem of perception or communication. It is a problem of their lack of substance. Minor problems and errors are routinely exaggerated in denialist blog posts. “Scientific papers” are misinterpreted, or spun so that caveats such as “may” and “might” and “could possibly” are omitted. Political advocacy is a common thread in denialist blog posts. Context is routinely concealed, the big picture is routinely ignored. A concerted effort is made to marginalize and discredit science.
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Well, I have a thick skin, but I think resorting to name calling or labels weakens your argument and creates unnecessary friction.
I adhere to the old GI admonition, “Call me anything you want except late to chow or late to pay.”
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Sphaerica,
After all that I’ve read this morning from people taking issue with you — people I highly respect and who’s arguments are correct — there’s a matter here that has little directly to do with science at all.
The President of the United States, acting I’ve no doubt, as a proxy for the United Nations is demanding the right to RUIN my life. That gives me the right to demand to know why he thinks that’s a good idea, right down to the last detail. It simply doesn’t matter what you or anyone else may think about it.
Now I’ve been following global warming for years. I started long before I discovered Joanne Nova. And for all of that time the AGW case has failed to withstand honest scrutiny. Now my suspicion of hanky-panky is confirmed. Like a certain King of Babylon so long ago who failed to read the handwriting on the wall, today’s alarmists (and I put you in that group) have failed to read the message. “You have been weighed in the balance and found wanting!”
Your cause has collapsed of its own dead weight. And while it’s important to restore confidence in science, the major battle now is a political one against the likes of Al Gore and — sad to have to say it — Barack Obama.
Civility is a nice buzzword as are a lot of others. I don’t care if you call me a denier or anything else. But or God’s sake, get off your high horse, open your eyes and take a good hard look at what’s been going on. These people you so casually support have come very close to not only eating your lunch but your breakfast and dinner as well. If they manage it I’ll offer an ironclad guarantee that you will not like it!
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@ Cthulhu 112
Your attempt at wit is a dismal failure. I am going to ask you to do what I ask every AGW ‘useful idiot” to do, cite the empirical evidence to convince me that the AGW theory holds water.
@ Roy Hogue
Politicians are beholden to those who help them to get elected. he got his start in politics with the help of the League of Conservation Voters and the Sierra Club. In Barack’s own words, from http://www.junkscience.com/ByTheJunkman/20081106.html
“Not only did they provide us financial support, not only was [LCV head] Deb Callahan’s gorgeous face on television saying I was a pretty good guy — and that sold some tickets right there — more importantly the League, along with the Sierra Club and other environmental organizations, signaled to those who are considered swing voters in the state of Illinois, Republicans and independents who may sometimes veer toward that side of the aisle.” Obama was the first non-incumbent member of Congress to be included on the LCV’s list of “environmental champions.”
Well, at least they put their money on a winning horse!
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J.Hansford: #94
Sorry, but I beg to differ.
The North Atlantic Cod, though not technically extinct, fish stocks have remained at such low population levels following the “Cod Wars”, that the subspecies may not survive.
This decline was in most part due to a, “grab it while you can” attitude on the part of British and Icelandic fishermen; brought on by Iceland’s unilateral extension of her fishing limits in the 1970’s, to the exclusion of the British.
It was messy. In the very best Victorian tradition, Britain sent a gunboat to teach the natives a lesson. It was a fiasco. The fishery was destroyed, and with it the livelihood of the Icelandic fishermen.
As in most wars, there were no winners.
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Eddy Aruda:
Convince me that you aren’t just a political ideologue hell bent on denying rising co2 is caused by man and that rising co2 causes warming.
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Sphaerica: #31
I know I’ve already commented on this but please indulge me.
You wrote;
I’m afraid I disagree. Science is most certainly debated, hotly and aggressively and for a long time, but by scientists, among scientists, not among bloggers and “the common folk.” What you see as debate in the blogs is not how science works, and the scientists could care less about it.
And I replied:
I one of the “common folk” agree scientist should be the ones debating science. The failure of Jones, Mann etc to offer their work for others to check kind of killed this notion don’t you think.
But on reflection I feel my previous comment was 100% wrong. To concede “science should only be debated by scientist” is like saying only the clergy should debate religion, only the police and the judiciary should debate law, only politicians should debate politics and only the medical professions should debate the health system and it’s multitude of shortcomings.
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I just read this this morning, just after reports in the NZ Herald http://www.nzherald.co.nz about people rushing off to the beach to watch the predicted Tsunami following the earthquake in Chile. (Must say I was wondering whether there would be some decent surf to check out)
It got me thinking about the Boy Who Cried Wolf too. Some people have become a bit jaded by the frequency of disaster forecasts. In New Zealand, adverse weather warnings are issued with such a frequency that the response by many is “I’ll believe it if I see it.”
After reading “Scared to Death” (North and Booker) I wonder if eventually everyone is going to have their GQ (Gullibility Quotient) lowered to a point where every scare that comes down the pipe is going to be shrugged off.
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Cthulhu: @ 112 & 116
In stead of accusing us of denial produce the evidence that the warming you believe is happening actually is. I think very few skeptics believe co2 has not contributed a minor degree of warming. However see Australiagate :
http://www.prisonplanet.com/australiagate-now-nasa-caught-in-trick-over-aussie-climate-data.html
and Darwin Zero:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/08/the-smoking-gun-at-darwin-zero/
as well as the work of D’Aleo and Watts:
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/originals/policy_driven_deception.html
and you may see that the true extent of warming is nothing to be alarmed about.
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EU regulations insist that up to 800,000 tonnes of dead fish are dumped back each year because among other things “the wrong boat caught the wrong fish” and they are not allowed to swap around the catch between boats.
There are still Cod to be caught but they are disappearing fast.
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Lock and load, its time to go troll hunting!
Cthulhu:
March 1st, 2010 at 6:17 am
Eddy Aruda:
Convince me that you aren’t just a political ideologue hell bent on denying rising co2 is caused by man and that rising co2 causes warming.
Calling me a political ideologue is an ad hominem attack which is to be expected from the proponents of AGW. pleas address my request for empirical evidence that mans insignificant contribution to a minor trace gas is affecting the worlds climate in any meaningful way.
Allow me to help you get your mind around the subject. I hope this is not too difficult for you as I cannot email you a book with lots of pretty pictures. Think of the atmosphere as a 100 story skyscraper. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is equivalent to the linoleum on the first floor. Man’s contribution would be tantamount to a barely discernible scratch on that linoleum floor on the first floor.
The proponents of AGW have the burden of proof as they are the ones claiming that rising CO2 levels will cause catastrophic global warming. For me to try and prove a negative is illogical. If you want to debate me may I suggest you take a few lessons in rhetoric and logic? Otherwise, this smackdown will continue!
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Eddy Aruda,
Human activity has caused co2 levels in the atmosphere to increase 30+%, meaning about a quarter of co2 in the atmosphere is due to human activity. That’s a far cry from the insignificance you try to paint with your scientifically invalid and misleading “picture”.
You might want to get the basic facts straight by googling around a bit before lazily demanding others do your own homework for you. And professing your own utter ignorance of the carbon cycle is considered a “smackdown”? Ha.
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Eddy,
I’m not sure of your point. Of course he’s beholden to those who helped elect him. Are you implying that he’s not acting as a proxy for the UN? If so I will politely differ with you. It seems pretty clear that he finds them to be quite suitable task masters. I don’t think he could miss the clear implication of what he tried to do at Copenhagen.
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Bob Malloy:
Darwin Zero, et al just demonstrate problems with individual stations. Given there are thousands of station temperature records and the processes to compile them and detect errors is fully automated, inevitably in individual cases there will be errors.
Here’s a station you won’t see D’Aleo or Watts mention:
http://climatewtf.blogspot.com/2010/02/smoky-fools.html
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Cthulhu:
March 1st, 2010 at 7:57 am
Eddy Aruda,
Human activity has caused co2 levels in the atmosphere to increase 30+%, meaning about a quarter of co2 in the atmosphere is due to human activity. That’s a far cry from the insignificance you try to paint with your scientifically invalid and misleading “picture”.
You might want to get the basic facts straight by googling around a bit before lazily demanding others do your own homework for you. And professing your own utter ignorance of the carbon cycle is considered a “smackdown”? Ha.
Please cite empirical evidence that man’s contribution to the CO2 content of the atmosphere is 30+%. From http://cdiac.ornl.gov/pns/faq.html The 369.5 ppmv of carbon in the atmosphere, in the form of CO2, translates into 787 PgC, of which 174 PgC has been added since 1850. From the second paragraph above, we see that 64% of that 174 PgC, or 111 PgC, can be attributed to fossil-fuel combustion. This represents about 14% (111/787) of the carbon in the atmosphere in the form of CO2.
30+%, eh?
Let us assume that the above cited reference is correct. If anthropogenic CO2 is a concern, as the AGW crowd contends, then we would have something to worry about.You have still to provide any empirical evidence that CO2 is detrimental to the climate. If you can establish that then we would need to worry about the CO2 content of the atmosphere. You may recall from your school days-assuming you went to school- the process of photosynthesis. Plants absorb CO2 and emit oxygen. If CO2 levels drop below 200 ppm we will be looking at the end of plant life and the extinction of virtually all fauna, including humans. More CO2 allows us to grow more crops on less land which benefits humans by providing more food produced in a more efficient manner and also reduces world hunger while providing food at a lower cost.
The remainder of your post is another ad hominem attack. Ad hominem is translated from latin as “against the man.” Please try and make a logical argument and avoid fallacious reasoning.
The smackdown continues! Yawn!
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@ Roy Hogue
Please allow me to clarify what I was posting. Although Barack has a white and a black parent he is green. He isn’t stupid and is a scholar on constitutional law. He is a progressive who owes the greens and has no choice politically but to push cap and trade and promote the AGW theory. Even if he insults the American public by saying the bitter winter we are suffering is in agreement with the theory global warming.
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Cthulhu:
March 1st, 2010 at 8:01 am
Bob Malloy:
Darwin Zero, et al just demonstrate problems with individual stations. Given there are thousands of station temperature records and the processes to compile them and detect errors is fully automated, inevitably in individual cases there will be errors.
You may want to read Jo’s informative blog post at http://joannenova.com.au/2010/02/giss-goulash-at-gladstone/ andhttp://joannenova.com.au/2010/01/horrifying-examples-of-deliberate-tampering/
I wish pumping CO2 into the atmosphere could raise temperatures. If the Holcene comes to an end and we were facing an imminent ice age we could use CO2 to mitigate the effects of global cooling!
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Roy Hogue @114
Exactly Roy. If this was merely a scientific argument few would care. But a few “scientist” fanatics like Jim Hansen got the ear of ambitious politicians like Al Gore and it has gone to hell in a handbasket from there. When I think about the billions wasted which could have done good elsewhere, like even in the taxpayers pockets it is enough to make me very angry. Let alone the honest scientists whose careers have been blighted and reputations besmirched by second and third raters who have achieved totally unwarranted prominence by their climbing on the AGW gravy train.
As Dr Roy Spencer just said: “It is increasingly apparent that we do not even know how much the world has warmed in recent decades, let alone the reason(s) why. It seems to me we are back to square one.”
This has been my contention so quite some time now. The surface temperature records are a complete mess and in any case were never intended for serious climate research. Hell, I even collected part of it back in the early 1970’s. The satellites have been around for 30 years. I’m none too sure about them either . The only climate data I’ll believe is archeological and historical because this properly integrates all the factors that make climate at any particular place.
As for Sphaerica, well mate, lots of commenters here have science training or use the scientific method in their work as Louis points out and if they did it the way the climate scientists did it they would fail. A lot of these people even post under their real names, as do I.
So don’t come here with your supercilious and condescending manner and lecture us ignorant slobs. I for one don’t like being talked down to by anonymous code monkeys.
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Typo Holcene should be Holocene.
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another typo. here is the link http://joannenova.com.au/2010/01/horrifying-examples-of-deliberate-tampering/
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Eddy,
True! I now understand your point.
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A quarter of co2 in the atmosphere is due to human activity which includes cement manufacture and land use changes, not just fossil fuel emissions.
“The 369.5 ppmv of carbon in the atmosphere, in the form of CO2, translates into 787 PgC”. Fast forward to 2009 and there is now 385ppmv of co2 in the atmosphere, translates as 820 PgC of which 207ppm has been added since 1850.
207 / 820 is 25%, or a quarter of co2 in the atmosphere , representing a 33% increase in co2 820 / (820-207) = ~33%
Whatever, you can win whatever “debate” this was by default, I just got bored. It happens.
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JLKrueger: # 107
And your point is …?
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Janama #77
I’ve always assumed that AGW seemed to be a manifestation of the social sciences doing science but could never grasp just what they were doing.
Now I’ve said before that pseudoscience happens when the deductive method is used derive outcomes from a pre-existing belief arrived from consensus, and a complex theory, like AGW, constructed on the sole fact that the starting assumption is assumed to be correct. It’s deemed correct because debate and discussion have made it so. The crucial issue is then of what if the initial assumption is wrong?
Science involves building on a previously verified fact, applying the scientific method, deducing tests, doing the experiment and if it passes and is confirmed by replication by other scientists, then gets elevated to a theory and becomes an engineering problem because it works! In science you can only use known scientific facts to explain things, and you cannot invent novelties for that purpose, especially processes which are not known to work.
There is another link to this which James Delingpole picked up in his recent article in the Spectator, that of post-normal science. Huh? Seems it’s actually post-modern science we are dealing with here and that creates a serious problem because the post modernists do not accept the existence of objective facts, the scientific method as I know it, becomes redundant. Things cannot be verified by independent experiment but rely on dialectics for their truth. And if I understand PM correctly, even an independent truth is not possible. Much of the “scientific” evidence for AGW is simply confirmation of the starting assumption. Notice how AGW is always proved to be correct?
Because of the disbelief in objective facts, Post-normal science then establishes its truth by debate from a consensus, hence the persistent urge here by the AGW people to “debate” the science.
Given the disbelief in objective facts, this science then focusses on the individual who dares contradict the group conclusion, hence the appellation of “denier” assigned to the doubters. Having a disbelief in objective facts means that any contradictory idea is thus a personal one and the debate does become personalised as we observe here. (Of course those who don’t believe in an objective physical reality should not sit on railway lines).
I had a glimpse of this transformation of science during the 1970’s at University when the students from the social sciences had to start doing one or two of the physical sciences as part of a comprehensive education. The problem was that in order to pass a physics or chemistry text or exam, one had to do the hard yards and get the correct answers to the set questions. But the social sciences don’t seem to test their students with these types of tests or exams and rather tended to focus on “in course assessments” etc for students to get pass marks in the social sciences. What seems to have happened is that this liberal testing regime was imposed on the physical sciences and one could then pass a subject without really being expert in it. Part of the multidisciplinary approach was the fact that the students from the social sciences concentrated on enrolling in the softer sciences like geography, and guess from what academic discipline climate studies evolved from.
30 years on and we are reaping what we sowed and it’s not good. What focussed my attention was the appearance of a guest post by Jerome Ravetz on Anthony Watt’s site, and while initially I ignored it, I now realise that doing so was a blunder, for Ravetz is basically a Marxist and applied Marxist thought to the scientific method to create Post Normal Science that is now well entrenched in the British Universities, Mike Hulme of the Tyndal Centre, being one of the exemplars of this Post Normal Science.
Objective science seems have been deconstructed into technically sophisticated social science, to use the jargon, and that’s what has happened to climate science. This is not to say that all of the physical sciences have been infected with Post Normal Science theory, just those that are difficult to do in situ experiments for. Then the science indeed becomes debatable and the peer review system then becomes a culling operation to weed out contradictory views.
An added irritation was reading a comment on one of Anthony Watt’s posts that basically reckoned the ideal test would be to have a test planet minus the polluting conservatives. There is a political dimension to the AGW debate that few seem to recognise – and that is where the battle has to be fought, not over quibbles about climate sensitivity etc.
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Cthulhu:
March 1st, 2010 at 8:38 am
A quarter of co2 in the atmosphere is due to human activity which includes cement manufacture and land use changes, not just fossil fuel emissions.
“The 369.5 ppmv of carbon in the atmosphere, in the form of CO2, translates into 787 PgC”. Fast forward to 2009 and there is now 385ppmv of co2 in the atmosphere, translates as 820 PgC of which 207ppm has been added since 1850.
207 / 820 is 25%, or a quarter of co2 in the atmosphere , representing a 33% increase in co2 820 / (820-207) = ~33%
Really? “207ppm has been added since 1850.’ 385 – 288 (1850 CO2 level) = 97 ppm. Also, as the oceans warm they outgas more CO2. See:http://www.skepticalscience.com/human-co2-smaller-than-natural-emissions.htm
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Roy Hogue: #144
Well put Roy.
Y’know, it sounds mystic, so most rational people ignore it, but to the trained “eye”, the truth appears like a tapestry – it shows a picture, made in a fabric that is sound and complete.
But lies do not “look” like that – they have broken or missing threads in the fabric. Oh, there is still a picture, but it has discontinuities and mismatched colours.
You don’t need to understand the subject matter in detail. You just need to understand how the truth has it’s own self-supporting structures; structures that are broken when falsehoods are introduced.
Good police investigators and good criminal lawyers can “see” (or some say “smell”) the difference, as can good auditors. They pick away at it until they find the loose threads; the lies or half-truths.
This is one reason why the proponents of AGW are united in their dislike and fear of the folks at Climate Audit.
JLKrueger:
My war was a propaganda war – nowhere near as exciting as yours – but I can smell a scam from five clicks away. AGW is all about the money, and it is all about raping the mercantile resources of future generations for the sake of what? World Government?
The west did not win the cold war. The communist block collapsed under its own inefficiency. The EU is going down the same pipeline, and the UN wants to be the next cab off the rank – deity preserve us.
/rant (and I have probably mixed enough metaphors to last for a whole month.)
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Louis @135,
I’m with you 100% about the political dimension. I’ve been saying for a long time that global warming is a political disease. At risk of being accused of repeating myself, as important as it is to get science restored to sanity and respect, our real battle is political — pure and simple!
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Rereke,
Thanks! I think you’re right.
It would appear that the proponents of AGW are afraid of anyone with some real knowledge and an ability to state their case.
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Roy @ 138
Seems this is now being picked up by various blogs feeding off James Delingpole’s initial identification of it. http://www.australianclimatemadness.com/ seems to be on track though few seem to to understand the Fabian connection. We are still in danger of having an ETS shoved down our throats if the ALP manage to do a deal with the Greens, and rely on one independent senator and one coalition to cross the floor.
Incidentally Willis has made another calculation of climate sensitivity, getting it to 0.05 degrees Celsius rise for a doubling of CO2.
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Louis,
I’m not at all sure we’re not going to get cap-and-trade shoved down our throat either. It looks dead but the EPA is still to be dealt with. Never count your chickens before they hatch. I hope we can avoid it both here and in Australia. It’s an evil brew right from the worst devil imaginable.
There are a couple of things I will never understand: How can anyone name Al Gore with a straight face anymore, much less rely on him? And how in the world does anyone expect that those with even a little bit of understanding of the meaning and significance of numbers will be bothered by 0.05 C?
The Earth in pretty much it’s present form has been around for a lot longer than humans and has proven itself to be rather robust about not letting anything go too far. It amazes me that this planet is in exactly the right spot and has exactly the right characteristics to be so hospitable to life that it has existed here for hundreds of millions of years, even withstanding catastrophic events, all the while keeping on going, but now suddenly to be done in by carbon dioxide. Do they not realize how outright stupid that assertion is? So life has its challenges — what of it? No one was born with a guarantee of a trouble free existence. People have it too easy these days. They haven’t any sufficiently thrilling real problems to solve so they invent them. The real ones are too mundane to spend their time on. That’s what I think is really going on.
We create an EPA to save us from ourselves and what happens? The real problems get lip service while they invent some really nasty ones to save us from. We invent a UN to save us from ourselves, but the real problems are not on anyone’s agenda to solve (can’t let them upset some dictator’s apple cart now can we?) so they invent really big nasty ones to save us from.
The human mind is both a great blessing and one hellofa curse. And the tragedy of it is that they don’t even recognize what they’re doing to themselves. It’s all about power recognition, prestige and money. The job they came to do doesn’t matter a bit.
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Eddy I got your back.
Cthulhu,
1. Who are you and why should anyone have to meet your demand?
2. Tell me with certainty that any rise in atmospheric Co2 (real or imagined) isn’t because some or all of the global carbon sinks are just in a “mood”.
3. Lets just say for the moment your posit is correct and Co2 is a remarkable .037% of the atmosphere. Where is your irrefutable proof that any ANY harm has come as a result of that fraction.
3.1 If you believe temperatures have risen as a result of the above percentage of Co2, what is your proof?
4. Explain how someone with your pleasant demeanor deserves any polite reply?
Sorry Eddy, I only had a partial clip but lets see what Mr. Troll come up with.
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Thanks Louis – I understand you point now. Yes – I started at university in 63 with physics, chemistry and biology – you had to do the hard yards to pass as answers were either right or wrong – there was no middle ground.
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Sphaerica #31
,,, to me, he has no right. He’s not a scientist. He doesn’t have the education or the years of sacrifice (everyone in every profession starts as a novice). He has no place saying anything he’s saying, or right to do so, other than hubris and an Internet connection and an eager audience.
Have you ever noticed that none of the “scientists” that made the discoveries that have made modern life possible were not “scientists” either. Think Newton, Hooke, Boyle, Watt, Copernicus, Galileo, Pasteur and even Einstein, plus innumerable others. They do not have a science degree between them. At the best they can be considered to be enthusiastic amateurs. Why, if all of these amateurs could find the basic facts of physics, can modern day amateurs not be as successful in the field of the non-science of “climate change”?
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In theory true, but the committee would vote. If there were any RINO’s (Republicans in name Only) on the committee, they might side with the Dems. It only takes a simple majority vote, so in theory it’s possible. There is a good chance the Dems lose the Senate in 2010. So next session’s (2011) legislative agenda could be very interesting.
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Ah yes, good point. 🙂
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@ Mark D. #142
Thanks foe watching my back, I was busy on the smoker preparing cornish game hen with an orange sauce.
in fairness to Cthulhu i di post an obsolete link. When I looked at the guys calculations they were okay except where he stated that the CO2 content had increased 207 ppm since 1850. Outside of that, he was a typical troll. I enjoy pointing out their fallacious reasoning and I never seem to get an answer to my favorite question, where is the empirical proof? At that point, they usually start foaming at the mouth!
@JRKrueger #146
I believe most politicians will say anything to get reelected. RINOs are like Zebras that are capable of changing their stripes. If they need to tout nonexistent conservative credentials to save their jobs, they will without hesitation.
Well, time for dinner!
Hope the ribs are better!
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John Sayers #143
Those were the good years – I recall doing one exam, allocating blocks of time for each question, and one which I did the hard yards for was palpably wrong! A nonsense result for which I had no time left to redo, but took the brave step of telling the examiner that the answer was wrong, that there was an arithmetical error in my work that I had not time to track down. If I had not written that explanatory note, I would have failed. As it was, I received a pass for that particular question because I demonstrated that my brain was working in a scientifically sound manner :-), as the lecturer told me afterwards.
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Roy Hogue # 141
Al Gore – the interesting aspect about him is that some years back I was in conversation with lefty friends, who mentioned Al Gore as part of a wider political agenda in play at the time. Always puzzled me why the ALP types here in Australia, were so up to speed on Gore and his policies. Now I think I know, and best categorised as the international socialist brotherhood. Whatever it was that Gore was acting on had a link to what was going on here politically, and it’s that supranational governance issue that Monckton of Brenchly identified last October. My lefty mates stress that the AGW isn’t about the science but forcing us to live in a more sustainable manner, apart from the wealth redistribution policies.
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Meat? (sorry fowl)? and smoke too? mind your footprint man!
Sounds pretty good though.
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Mark D.:
March 1st, 2010 at 2:57 pm
Meat? (sorry fowl)? and smoke too? mind your footprint man!
Sounds pretty good though.
it was excellent. It tasted like spotted owl but had the texture of a bald eagle.
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You just subtracted 207 ppm from 820 PgC and I’m curious what is the unit of the resulting quantity?
I presume you also got bored often during high school Physics, might be time to pay attention and check your work.
At any rate, the increase of CO2 from 280 ppmv in 1850 to let’s call it 380 ppmv present day says nothing about how much of that was added by humans. It seems logical that some of it was, but very difficult to measure exactly how much because we have no workable measure of the large inorganic carbon cycle.
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One very important aspect of the AGW debate that hasn’t been pursued is the identity and impact of the Government Representatives who had to give approval to each of the UNIPCC Reports before they were published. Dr.Vincent Gray, reviewer of all four major Reports noted that in three of them the IPCC admitted that “natural variability” involving influences that do not involve changes in greenhouse gases, are perfectly capable of explaining the behaviour of our climate.
From “Climate Change 1990”. “The size of the warming is broadly consistent with the predictions of climate models, but is also of the same magnitude as natural climate variability”.
The Second Report (1995) was subjected to special treatment. One of the Lead Authors (Ben Santer) was given the task of altering offending sentences in the Final Draft Report, to make it conform with the “consensus” imposed by the Government Representatives. Among the passages removed was the following:- “None of the studies cited above has shown clear evidence that we can attribute the observed changes to the specific cause of increases in greenhouse gases.”
This was replaced by the following:- “Implicit in these global mean results is a weak attribution statement – if the observed global mean changes over the last 20 to 50 years cannot be explained by natural climate variability, some (unknown) fraction of the changes must be due to human influences.”
The scandal that emerged from this last minute censorship led to the imposition of strict controls over what could be permitted throughout the Third(2001) and Fourth (2007) Reports. A set of “Guidelines” to ensure uniform techniques for “estimating” (guessing?) uncertainties was drawn up.
Despite this and other control measures the following statement was made in Chapter 1 of “Climate Change 2001”.
“The fact that global mean temperature has increased since the late 19th century and that other trends have been observed does not necessarily mean that an anthropogenic effect on the climate has been identified. Climate has always varied on all time-scales , so the observed change may be natural.” This whole chapter was omitted from the Third Report.
The Fourth Report no longer admitted that natural variability could explain everything in the climate, but they covered their backs to the extent of filling all of their pronouncement with reservations to be used to back out of their claims when the time comes.
Jo. With the resources available to you, would it be possible to find out more about these apparently otherwise faceless Government Reps as it appears they certainly had the power to over-rule any scientist who did not toe the AGW line? If any outright fraud can be sheeted home in future, Governments and/or their Reps should share in the culpability.
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Jo, it’s becoming clearer to me by the day (a layman catching up on “climate science” in the wake of Climategate) that a major villain in the piece is the Orwellian “Post Normal Science”. I take it you have read Jerome Ravetz’ barely-coherent ramble at WUWT. So far as it is possible to discern any meaning in his verbiage it seems a sort of apologia pro vitae suae mixed up with well-meaning-old-manness. Wring his hands though he now may at the corruption he sees, it seems to me it was wrought largely in his name. I think you could do worse than start a thread on Post Normal Science, with particular attention to outing – er, sorry, inviting the participation of its Australian apostles.
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Keith H:
March 1st, 2010 at 10:00 pm
Good post Keith. From some of the IPCC reviews I’ve read, the govt’s of USA and Saudi Arabia were often critical and govts of Australia and GBR were glowing in praise. If nothing, proof of politics of IPCC rather than science. Was never science was it? Science was just a tool. “Tools” like Jones et al got used pretty good didn’t they? Now they’ll be discarded like used up chip wrappers. deservedly so.
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Louis Hissink:
At #149 you say:
Well, I am a ‘lefty’ and I strongly dispute the green notion of sustainability. However, as you say, AGW and ‘sustainability’ are merely tools used by greens to force other to live in a primitive way. Both ideas are denied by available empirical evidence.
Nothing is sustainable for ever. Everything comes to an end. (The world will end when the sun becomes a Red Giant and fries it. The universe will end with Heat Death.)
The test of whether something is sustainable now is if it is increasing. Human population and industrial civilisation are both sustainable at present because they are both increasing.
And, for practical purposes, resources can be considered to be infinite. Humans did not exhaust supplies of flint, antler bone, bronze, etc.. A resource is cheap when it is plentiful, but its cost increases when it starts to become scarce. There is no point in seeking an alternative to a cheap and plentiful resource, but people look for alternatives when a resource becomes scarce and expensive. And discovered alternatives often provide advantages. Thus, civilisation advances.
And ‘low fruit are picked first’ so the cost of a resource increases as it is used although it may be plentiful (having picked the few ‘low fruit’ then a ‘ladder’ has to be purchased, maintained and used to obtain ‘high fruit’). Hence, increasing cost of obtaining a resource may encourage use of alternatives long, long before ‘sustainability’ becomes an issue.
The importance of these matters is illustrated by the example of oil supplies.
The available oil resource was equivalent to about 40 years of needed oil supply throughout the twentieth century, and it will remain at about 40 years throughout this century. This is because an oil producer needs about 40 years of planning, investment and infrastructure development for certainty of continued business. So, an oil producer with 40 years of oil resource has no reason to pay people to look for more oil, but will pay for more oil to be found when the known resource is less than 40 years of needed supply. However, the newer supplies may be expensive to obtain (e.g. by conversion of tar sands).
Greens say that resources are finite and, therefore, the uses of resources should be curtailed because their continued use is not sustainable.
There is at least 300 years (probably about 1000 years) of coal supplies available by use of existing technology. And oil can be made from coal.
About 300 years ago it would have been possible to prove that the transport systems of today are impossible because there is not sufficient land area to grow all the hay required to feed all the horses. But, of course, our transport systems are mostly fuelled by oil (not hay).
Using the green logic of ‘sustainability’, 300 years ago our ancestors should have restricted the use of horses as a method to sustain the land needed to grow hay. The restriction would have induced economic hardship that would have inhibited the inventions and adoptions of the steam engine, then the electric motor, then the diesel engine, etc..
Furthermore, greens compound their error by subsidising technologies of their choosing (e.g. wind, solar and wave). Their chosen technologies are innately inferior to existing technologies (e.g. wind, solar and wave powers were abandoned when the greater energy intensity in fossil fuels became available by use of the steam engine). And, very importantly, the subsidies prevent newly discovered alternatives displacing existing resources from use by normal economic activity.
The ideas of AGW and ‘sustainability’ are each based on falsehoods. Why should anybody trust the arguments and assertions of those who base their ideas on demonstrable falsehoods?
Richard
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Jo, a lot “bridge-builders” of the Curryite persuasion – lukewarmers and warmists trying to “restore faith in science” are pinning their faith in persuading scientists to be nicer people, as though none of this would have happened if scientists had not been jealous, vain, arrogant, etc. This is a companion to the other “bridge-building” theme, the need for “better communications skills”. Both are misleading. Willis E splenetically demolishes the latter, but the former, I suggest, needs debunking. In an email exchange with Dr Curry, which she warmly received, I wrote the following:
“Forget notions, if you entertain them, of science getting better by scientists being nicer to one another, or more objective, or any of the other things the emails say this lot aren’t. I’m sure you’re one of the few in whom scholarly and personal excellence are happily and abundantly combined, but plenty of good science has been produced by insufferable braggarts, Asperger’s sufferers (Turing was one), infrequent bathers and people with strange hair and offensive political views. Their very personal shortcomings in some cases allowed them to see problems unconventionally, and science benefited. But in the absence of proper peer review, with its power to see that good science drives out bad, chaos would have ensued, as it clearly has in climate science.”
It’s the peer review, Jo, not the objectivity, the niceness, the respect or the communications skills. Just the peer review.
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it was excellent.
LMAO i’m glad I don’t have broken ribs….
I hear snail darters smoked on a skewer make a great appetizer especially after a two hour soak in Worcestershire.
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Look out for Judith:
“They blame the alleged hacking incident on the “climate denial machine.” ”
“Skeptical research published by academics provided fodder for the think tanks and advocacy groups, which were fed by money provided by the oil industry. This was all amplified by talk radio and cable news.
Judith is a tramp. She is for sale to big oil.
“Hurricane forecasts for the petroleum industry CFAN responded to the need of a client in the petroleum industry for hurricane forecasts in the Gulf of Mexico that provided greater accuracy and longer lead times than those currently available in the market. CFAN’s extended hurricane forecasts are being used by the client to anticipate disruptions to energy supply and their impact on energy markets, and to anticipate disruptions to drilling, refining, and transport activities. A sophisticated web based decision support system for the client was developed that serves the needs of both the staff meteorologists and broader user group, which required translating the forecasts into meaningful outputs and language to meet a range of specific decision needs. CFAN’s hurricane forecasting method has consistently predicted the hurricane formation in the North Atlantic 3-7 days in advance, with tracks accurate (within 100 miles) out to 7 days. During the 2008 season, with Hurricanes Ike and Gustav having major impacts on the production region in the Gulf of Mexico, CFAN’s forecasts were also used for operations and emergency management.”
This is some propoganda from hwe brtochure husstling oil companies for money.
http://cfan.eas.gatech.edu/cfansolutions.html
So if she can get oil companies to fear hurricanes clobbering their drilling rigs, they will use her and she can pull in the big bucks.
SHe is associating people she despises with big oil and selling herself to big oil.
You all didn’t know she is in with big oil and none of us are.
Judith has ethics issues.
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Judith is as trashy as Pachauri. In her role as an IPCC reviewer, she is involved with reading papers published by the IPCC. WE know what they are willing to peddle.
Her ethics lapses include either not really reading the articles or not fact checking them. Why is she silent about the glacier and other articles? Is she fake?
Why has she not spoken against Pachauri? Her ethics are for sale. If she speaks up, she loses an insider position and favor. She is a science tramp. She doesn’t have the fortitude to speak against the porn writer pachauri.
So when we all see the IPCC is a joke, Judith is part of the reason.
Judith is another reason to can and dissolve the IPCC. They are a set of self serving attention seekers willing to “peer review” and stroke each other.
Her money from oil and her IPCC insider posture tells us this little attempt to reach out to the other side is bogus.
I am sure most of the above posters didn’t know about Judith, the IPCC and her hustling oil companies.
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Tom Forrester-Paton: It’s the peer review, Jo, not the objectivity, the niceness, the respect or the communications skills. Just the peer review.
If the peer review is not objective, you do not have it as corrective mechanism that will discover the truth about reality. All you will have is a subjective consensus by collective group think. If the reviewing peers cannot communicate, they can’t even form their subjective consensus.
Reality is real. It is what it is without regard to what you want, feel, demand, or need it to be. Objectivity is that quality of thought and action that enables you to know what reality actually is.
Without objectivity, you have nothing but random guessing, wishing based upon fantasy, foggy feelings, and arbitrary commands backed up by various degrees of brute force. As a consequence, being coherent with reality is by accident. Since there are so many more ways to be wrong than there is to be right the overwhelming likelihood is that you will be wrong. If you happen to be accidentally right, you have no way of knowing that you are.
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Louis @149,
Whatever others may find in Al Gore it’s instructive to do a little background on the man. I could be wrong but what I see is a little kid still trying desperately to prove to his long dead father that he can amount to something and become a “big powerful man” as his father was in the Senate. So if he can’t be president — and he went at it as though he had the right to be elected — then he’ll become a big powerful man some other way. His dysfunctional personality is palpable. He was a completely unremarkable senator. He had his father’s influence to get him an easy military job and, if I’m not mistaken, an early out. He latched onto global warming, something he hasn’t the slightest background to really understand and has made himself famous, self-important, far too influential and quite wealthy. But he couldn’t have done a bit of it without the help of dear old Dr. James Hansen. Actually I’m not sure if Gore went to Hansen or Hansen went to Gore. But surely Gore made a perfect patsy for Hansen.
If Gore was not so dangerous he would be pathetic. He’s headed for a very big fall and can’t stop himself. On the other hand, maybe not. He might turn into some sort of cult hero.
That’s a lot of speculation I know. But as I’ve said elsewhere, you’ve got to try to read the handwriting on the wall.
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Richard Courtney #156,
Richard, I am acutely aware whenever I describe others as lefties, that like the Admiral Belgrano’s captain during the Falkland’s war, aware that a torpodoe could always be heading my way, in my case from yourself :-).
However there is little option to calling them other than by a generic term since they are not really Greenies but solid and committed members of the ALP and politically active. They are tinged green I might add, but not hewn from solid green, but as you rightly point out, the science is but a tool for them.
I suppose philosophically if one had no lefties, then the right could not exist either, since one depends on the existence of the other.
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Roy Hogue #162
Your assessment of Gore is quite accurate – I also assumed that his embrace of global warming was to achieve what he set out to do, before Bush pipped him in the elections. The context my “friends” saw it was as part of a general movement to establish progressive governments in the west. They have now achieved that with Obama in the WhiteHouse until Monckton let the cat out the bag last October.
The Empire has yet to strike back and judging by the machinations in the political sphere, regrouping.
This battle has not finished by any stretch of the imagination.
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Louis:
At #164 you say;
OK, but why not choose a “generic term” that only includes all of them.
Why choose a “generic term” that includes them and also many, many others including me?
There are many appropriate terms for them; e,g. anti-industrialists, anti-development- brigade, neo-Mathusians, etc.. They have in common that they despise humanity so much that they are willing to lie and cheat in attempt to enforce methods that cull billions of the world’s poorest people.
Your use of the term “lefties” as a “generic term” for neo-Malthusians is ‘guilt by association’ (although that may not be your intention). And it alienates all climate-realists who are ‘lefties’.
Climate-realists share a common desire to promote good scientific practice and, therefore, they dispute the pseudoscience of AGW. They include people of all political views and none. But you use ‘lefties’ as a “generic term” for neo-Malthusians, and this inhibits ‘lefties’ from joining with you in opposition to neo-Malthusians.
Richard
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Richard – the only valid assumption is that Louis hates lefties. While he agrees with you on AGW, you are a lefty and therefore justifiable collateral damage in his anti-AGW quest.
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What is the resident warmista trying to cause a schism in the otherwise peaceful skeptical world?
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MattB:
March 2nd, 2010 at 3:13 pm
Richard – the only valid assumption is that Louis hates lefties.
If you Could show me where Louis says he hates lefties I would appreciate it. If you cannot do that then try to make a logical argument as to why he does hate lefties. If I have missed something due to an idiom or expression unique to the australian dialect please enlighten me. Otherwise, you have engaged in both an ad hominem and a straw man. I hope you have been getting your beauty rest!
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The Climategate debacle has lifted just one tiny corner of a much bigger scandal about how science (in many fields) is now funded and conducted. For an excellent analysis of the problems see Henry Bauer’s paper Science in the 21st Century: Knowledge Monopolies and Research Cartels at http://www.scientificexploration.org/journal/jse_18_4_bauer.pdf. Also Douglas Cohen’s The Big-Science Poker Game at http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=5221.
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Louis Hissink:
March 2nd, 2010 at 2:20 pm
Hey Louis. You’ve copped a pasting at deltoid. You may want to take a look.
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Baa Humbug #170
Thanks for the info – if I am getting that much flak I must have scored a direct somewhere.
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This is just too funny to pass up. Curry finds the data.
http://www.cartoonsbyjosh.com
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I quite disagree. There is a lot of value in looking for alternatives, because there is value in planning for the future when alternatives are needed. People have been investigating solar and wind power for at least the past 50 years and in both areas great progress has been made. There is a world of difference between setting up experimental test beds to develope a new technology and mandating adoption for everyone. I would regard present day solar and wind power systems as mostly experimental, although solar already has commercial value in places far from the grid (been used in space for a long time).
I have no problem with research dollars going into solar and wind, even when they might be taxpayer dollars (although in the case of taxpayer dollars, all discoveries should rightly be released to the public domain). Commercial applications should still be free to choose the technology that does the best job in the circumstance.
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Eddy Aruda:
Thankyou for your comment at #168.
Matt B addressed his nasty comment to me in an obvious attempt to induce me to fall out with Louis.
Your answer says everything I would have wanted to say in response, and it was much better coming from someone other than Louis and me.
Again, thankyou.
Richard
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Tel:
In your post at #173 you quote me (at #156) as saying:
And you respond to that by saying:
But we do not disagree about this.
I was talking about society as a whole. Individuals and/or corporations can do what they want.
“To build a better mousetrap” is the goal of every inventive entrepreneur. Few are successful but everybody benefits when they achieve success. Indeed, pharmaceutical companies spend much money attempting to find chemicals that will have advantages over existing drugs: few of their researches are successful but they make large profits from those that are.
In my post at #156 (that your are disputing) I wrote:
There is an immense difference between individuals and/or corporations “looking for” and society “subsidising”. (Communists attempt to impose collective will on such things with ruinous consequences for their societies; e.g. it induced the demise of the Soviet Union).
So, in context, there is no conflict between my statement that you quoted and your stated view.
Richard
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Louis @164,
After all that is said, Gore is still out there. He’s become marginalized to some degree but is that enough to make him relatively harmless? I think not yet. The self-righteous types are hard to nail to the wall permanently. To steal terminology from someone else without attribution isn’t PC but I don’t remember who first said this — anyway, Gore has become a “self-appointed guardian of his own opinion”. He’ll be preaching his Gorespel to anyone who’ll listen until Hell freezes over. Oops, I can’t believe I just used that metaphor. It might really happen.
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Eddy Aruda
March 1st, 2010 at 5:07 pm
Yeah, but I want to know how cornish game hen compares to California Condor.
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JLKrueger: February 28th, 2010 at 9:11 pm
and Baa Humbug: February 28th, 2010 at 8:58 pm #88
The reason alarmist seldom exhibit a sense of humour is that saving the world is serious business.
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Hoo Rah! save away!
Condor is a bit stringy.
I still have a sense of humor…….
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Reed Coray:
March 3rd, 2010 at 1:57 pm
“Save the world” and have a serious rock concert.
Save it from what? prey tell.
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What typically happens with fence-straddlers is that no one on either side of the fence wants to claim them as their own.
There’s no middle ground with this to me. This hokey “climate science” is bunk or it isn’t.
Noting that it has accounted for no historical observations accurately, has reproduced no historical data accurately, has provided no understanding of the true climactic cycles that govern decade climate variability, and has produced nothing of value for the use by fishery, forestry, agriculture, or Government, it needs but one label:
JUNK
And I will take that back immediately if anyone can point to something otherwise.
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First, Joanne, many thanks for posting the interchange between Judith and myself. I respect Judith as one of the few mainstream climate scientists willing to discuss this question on the internet. This is my first visit to your blog, it is very well done.
Next, Sphaerica, you say:
If that is one of the most abusive things you’ve read on the internet, you must not get out much. I’ve been called every name under the sun. So let’s review the bidding here for a moment:
James Hansen of NASA wanted trials for climate skeptics, accusing them of high crimes against humanity.
Robert Kennedy Jr. called climate skeptics traitors.
Yvo de Boer of the UN called climate skepticism criminally irresponsible.
David Suzuki called for politicians who ignore climate science to be jailed.
DeSmogBlog’s James Hoggan wants skeptics treated as war criminals.(video)
Grist called for Nuremberg trials for skeptics.
Joe Romm wanted skeptics strangled in their beds.
A blogger at TPM pondered when it would be acceptable to execute climate deniers.
Heidi Cullen of The Weather Channel called for skeptical forecasters to be decertified.
Bernie Sanders compared climate skeptics to Nazi appeasers.
Rajendra Pachauri hopes that skeptics rub their faces with asbestos.
And you think my comments were over the top? Really? The AGW supporters have been incredibly abusive, both in private and in public, to me and many others who did not toe the party line. I felt that my comments, while passionate, were directed at those who have substituted propaganda for science.
Meanwhile, the AGW supporters have not shown that there is actually anything at all to explain, whether with CO2 or anything else. Please see my post on this subject.
My best to all, keep up the good fight,
w.
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Saving the world — ah yes, nice goal. And such hard work too! Unfortunately the world seems to be real good at that all by itself. We humans are really abysmally ignorant of what really keeps planet Earth ticking away and yet we have the hubris, not to mention self-righteousness to think we can save it.
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