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The slow road to… getting things right

I watched part of the UK Parliamentary Committee Panel investigations with Phil Jones, and my main thought was ferrgoodnesssake! The nation of the Magna Carta, Newton, and the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution: Can’t the UK empire just fly Steven McIntyre in, and sit these two men down in the same room at the same time? You know, ask questions of one then the other, drilling down with no tea-and-cakes breaks, till they sort out each item on a prearranged list?

Billions of lives depend on figuring out whether CO2 matters, and trillions of dollars rest on the scientific output of East Anglia CRU. If it’s so important, why don’t the UK Government get serious? Or for that matter, why doesn’t the IPCC volunteer to arrange this, all televised and restore its credibility; show they are take “unscientific behaviour” seriously?) Note that I’m not suggesting that the panel members aren’t serious, only that they have a long learning curve in this incredibly detailed saga, and McIntyre could save everyone some time.

Steven McIntyre has written an excellent submission (worth reading). That will have to do…

I did like that the dialogue was so civilized (that’s such a rare thing), but […]

March 4th, 2010 | Tags: , | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post Print This Post | |

Lambert, victim of his own spin?

Lambert has replied to the post I did that pointed out that his use of the fake “Pinker Tape” in the debate with Monckton was a cheap-shot ambush with no real significance.

As usual, his reply includes major claims like “a dishonest post” and “there’s no wiggle room here”, and, as usual, he can’t back them up.

Dishonest? I quote Pinker as saying:

[I]f we give Christopher Monckton the benefit of doubt and assume that he meant “the impact of clouds on the surface shortwave radiation” than it can pass.”

And Lambert thinks that somehow this really means that Pinker said Monckton’s terminology can pass, but his analysis is wrong? This exactly-backward interpretation is delusional (or dishonest, eh?). To read it from Pinker’s statement, you need to throw out the English grammar rulebook, and read from right to left. So now, it’s dishonest to quote someone directly? This is another example of the convoluted way faithful AGW people have to think in order to dig themselves out of the hole they find themselves in.

Let’s recall after all the too-ing and fro-ing, that even if Pinker thinks Monckton is wrong, even if Lambert gets a quote from Pinker saying […]

March 2nd, 2010 | Tags: , , | Category: AGW socio-political, Global Warming, Logic & Reason | Print This Post Print This Post | |

Science associations give science a bad name

In this story from The Australian, we have the ludicrous double-irony of subscribers paying to read a story that disguises how their own taxpayer dollars are used against them to fund the propaganda that’s used to justify milking them for more taxpayer dollars….

Sometimes, you’d think media releases from science associations and universities were Commandments from God.

If football associations put out media releases that tried to whitewash the news of clubs rampantly breaking rules, or of officials letting them get away with it, or of umpires placing bets on the outcome of games they rule over, the sports journos would bake the officials, grill the umpires, and lampoon the clubs. But, when the topic is “science”, and the spokespeople have polysyllabic titles, they are untouchable.

Admittedly, there is that other effect: advertising. The Higher Education Supplement is designed to sell advertising space to universities, and asking the top dogs biting-hard questions is probably not the way to win big contracts (the journalists might be cynical, but Australian universities are a $12 billion dollar industry). And look in the last budget: There’s a neat pink icing on the cake in the graph below, thanks to the man-made theory of global […]

March 1st, 2010 | Tags: , , , | Category: AGW socio-political, Global Warming | Print This Post Print This Post | |
 
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