Robyn Williams is Australia’s science communication guru in the sense that he’s one of the few in our country who’s been making a living at it with a regular radio program (or two) for decades. He’s been doing this so long, he was proclaimed a National Living Treasure, and that was twenty-three years ago.
He’s posted his thoughts on the climate debate at ABC unleashed, Climate Change Science: The Evidence is Clear.
He’s been passionately defending science for years, sharing curious points, and explaining how things work. And yet in the upside down world in which we live in 2010–after all these years, he (and nearly everyone else in our profession) has lost sight of the most important things in science, and somehow ended up defending science-the-bureaucracy, instead of science-the-philosophy.
It sounds like I’m splitting hairs, but instead, I’m exposing a grievous flaw.
It sounds like I’m splitting hairs, but instead, I’m exposing a grievous flaw. For science-the-bureaucracy is not science at all; it’s just another cluster of committees, each run by six or ten people who discuss articles published in niche magazines owned by mega-conglomerate financial houses and ultimately controlled by a few editors who print articles reviewed by a couple of anonymous busy and unpaid people. Occasionally, a really big committee forms to issue a really long report, but in the end, the few pages that everything else hinges on are only assessed by four dozen names, most of whom are reviewing their own work, and most of whom are collecting grants that would be smaller if they…discovered less of a crisis.
science-the-bureaucracy is not science at all, it’s just another cluster of committees
Meanwhile giant banking corporations have already factored in billion dollar profits from the “science”, and thousands upon thousands of concerned citizens have been coached into thinking that if they insult the scientists who disagree, they are somehow helping the planet.
Who better to expose all this than the few people who understand the science, who know how the process of science ought to work, and who don’t have a major vested interest in the outcome? This is exactly what science communicators ought to be doing. There is no more appropriate specialty to interview scientists on both sides of the story, to see who makes sense, to ask hard questions of both teams, and point out the flaws in the reports. Instead, science communicators take the side of the mediocre committees, the scientists with the well-paid and high-status positions, the power-hungry bureaucracies, and the calculating world of high finance. Then these same science communicators throw insults at the unpaid whistleblower scientists. Ouch.
he’s so used to assessing systems where only millions of dollars ride on the outcome, not trillions, that this is something completely and utterly beyond the scale of anything he’s seen before.
Most scientists are not in it for the money, but perhaps that’s the problem. Robyn Williams is so used to interviewing scientists who are good people, he’s so used to relying on the peer review system, and he’s so used to assessing systems where only millions of dollars ride on the outcome, not trillions, that this is something completely and utterly beyond the scale of anything he’s seen before. The very scaffolding of science has been exploited and strained. (The galvanised iron has been swapped for galvanised rigatoni). There’s an ugly convergence of the most powerful of coincident interests. Big Politics meets Big Money, and nice science gets crushed.
Williams doesn’t seem to even notice that despite his assertion that the evidence is clear, he doesn’t provide any evidence. He doesn’t even allude to the kind of evidence that shows the catastrophe might be upon us. He probably assumes he covered it 20 years ago, and doesn’t realize the results didn’t turn out as predicted. Or maybe he assumes that the international committees are in good working order? It’s time he started asking some hard questions about empirical evidence.
Instead, he almost certainly doesn’t realize he is contributing to the PR campaign for bankers and bureaucrats by propounding the myth that there is a “campaign” working against them…
There has been an unrelenting campaign to destroy trust in the IPCC and mainstream climate science. Find a fault – and there is always something a nitpicker or Jesuitical actuary can find – and use it to demolish the entire edifice of scientific research going back decades.
We are not attacking decades of research. We’re attacking specific assumptions about positive feedback in climate models.
Accept no counter arguments. Reject authority…
Which is exactly what Galileo, Aristotle, and the Wright brothers did. Is that so bad? (Show me the evidence).
Professors are suspect, willing to utter any catechism for a grant. And if massive evidence is offered dismissing your arguments about the Earth cooling – then ignore it, and just retort with the same old denial, only more loudly.
What “massive evidence” do we deny?
Robyn doesn’t even nod in passing to one bit of evidence that carbon is primarily responsible for recent global warming, presumably because he can’t. The headline is “evidence”, but the body is just assertion, a continuation of the bluff fed to us by self-serving committees. I’ve talked about evidence before (and here). That mystery paper showing that carbon causes major warming is oft referred too, but no one can name it. It hides in AR4, but appears to have been written by someone called Overwhelming et al (198o-1995). The myth lives on.
Professors do themselves no favors when they can’t name evidence either. And they do even less favors for science when then try to hide data, destroy evidence, and work towards predetermineds outcome with unprofessional attitudes, and possible criminal intent (fraud, intent to mislead for financial gain?).
And it’s working. Public acceptance of climate science and legislation to control gases has plummeted in the last few months. As the Economist magazine wrote in December, “It is all about politics. Climate change is the hardest political problem the world has ever had to deal with. It is a prisoner’s dilemma, a free-rider problem and the tragedy of the commons all rolled into one.”
No. The polls have crashed since ClimateGate exposed just how unscientific and political the process of “science” has become. The problem is that the public does understand what “Hide the decline” means.
Instead, we have a shambles. Science itself is under attack. It is being relegated to a relativistic sideline, where any opinion must have equal merit, where you can bury Darwin, trash the value of vaccination, take herbal unguents instead of science-based medications and avoid GM everything in case it makes you grow horns or give birth to an alien.
If science is being relegated to a pagan festival it because scientists are behaving tribally, worshiping a hypothesis, and sacrificing standards on the altar called “good intentions”
Conflating the issues is hardly going to “make things simpler”. This is supposed to be about the radiative forcing effect of carbon dioxide, and the net result once feedbacks are taken into account. Since when did vaccines have anything to do with cloud albedo, long wave radiation, or water vapor? Williams feels that there is misinformation out there. There is. If science is being relegated to a pagan festival, it because scientists are behaving tribally, worshiping a hypothesis, and sacrificing standards on the altar called good intentions. Science communicators are cheering the ritual and defending the desecration of the most basic precepts of science. If we are supposed to believe the word of “trusted wizards” without seeing them do their experiments in the full light of day, what is the difference between modern climate science and magic?
Williams offers three reasons why the climate catastrophe theory is losing popularity:
1. Scientists are naive “and too polite”.
So they should be ruder? Calling people “deniers” is not enough? The real problem here is that scientists have lost their manners. As Garth Paltridge points out in The Climate Caper, politeness in science used to be seen as a good thing.
2. “And after Climategate – too much mea culpa. It’s time for them to get their skates on. To be aggressive in the cause of truth.”
OK. So no more even weak admissions of the obvious truth that they exaggerated, used poor citations, and hid data. Just stick with outright, err, denial that these are important. (Who are the deniers now?) I don’t know what kind of “truth” Williams thinks he is referring to. Isn’t it the one where experiments can be repeated to get the same results? Whatever happened to credibility, or is Williams saying, “Oh, what the heck, we’ve lost our credibility anyway so let’s just frighten them into submission!”?
Speaking of the search for truth, does a mere assertion from a journal editor really undo the damage in the Climategate e-mails? Surely, this statement from Nature reflects more on the journal than on East Anglia. Has Williams even read the e-mails? Apparently, Nature finally “tackled the smear that science was faking its data”:
“This paranoid interpretation would be laughable … Nothing in the emails undermines the scientific case that global warming is real – or that human activities are almost certainly the cause.”
3. Nameless “lobby groups” resort to baseless speculation and innuendo.
In years to come, lecturers of science communication will use pieces like this one to teach how not to use logic and reason. All science graduates should understand that the politics, businesses, and career structures of science are not science, but only the flawed human face of it.
Robyn Williams is a good man who would be horrified to know that he is not defending the planet, but standing up for corrupt scientists, plundering bureaucrats, and profit-taking bankers. I make no suggestions that he is profiting from spreading such poor reasoning, or that he is corrupt. He is simply working from devastatingly mistaken assumptions: He assumes the modelers are right; he assumes the peer review system is working; he assumes that science will work properly if only one side of a theory is fully funded, and he assumes that UN bureaucrats will publish recommendations that don’t support an increase in their own power and status.
In short, he assumes people will be honest despite massive temptations of all kinds to do otherwise.
I assume people will be people.
Look at the evidence, Robyn. Please.
Robyn Williams and his ilk preach to a diminishing flock. My son at 18 and his peers are AGW sceptics. Gen Y are taught Philosophy and Reason and they will use them to counter alarmism and agenda based science. Let’s face it Jo the AGW emperor has no clothes and people are listening. I even got a reply from Jimmy Cheek, Chancellor of UTK in response to sending him this and a letter of protest. Write to Jimmy [email protected] if you don’t think Gore should be honoured again.
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Excellent thank you.
Here (UK) we have the Welsh Assembly agreeing that ALL cattle should now be kept in sheds to ‘collect the Methane etc) and also destroy the countryside that attracts the tourists that keep their economy going. Of course, they would lose all organic status at once and, rightly, incur the wrath of Compassion in World Farming and many others.
The lunatics have definitely taken over the asylum!
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I met him once – he struck me as being a very arrogant man. He only follows the AGW aspect of science, he never ever proposes the other side of the story.
When Plimer released his book Williams had a series of people review it and all were pro AGW and panned the book.
When Monbiot and Jones attacked Plimer on Lateline they questioned his statement in the book that volcanoes produce more CO2 than humans. They quoted the always quoted paper from 1990 that states that humans produce 140 times CO2 than natural sources and Plimer held up his book as evidence to the contrary. Of course they hadn’t read it so they didn’t understand the reference but Plimer was pointing out his references that there are thousands of undersea volcanoes, in fact we don’t even know how many.
Yet a few weeks ago Robyn 100m Williams interviewed a scientist who was researching sea mounts:
Did Williams mention Plimer or Plimer’s book – NO!
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philhippos @2
Well if they keep the cattle in the sheds, the Welsh Assembly would lose the excuse to cull all those horrible little badgers that allegedly spread Bovine TB. 😉
Now, with your post I did wonder if April Fools day had come early 🙂 , so I googled “Welsh Assembly Cows Methane” and came up with the following
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/mid/8551901.stm
But what will they do with the methane they capture? Oh wait the article goes on to say that the technology has not yet been developed to capture the Methane – a bit like carbon capture from power stations then……
The world has indeed gone mad, and we fund these people with our taxes.
In the meantime, I’ve yet to hear one politician from the mainstream parties in the impending UK General Election build up talk sense about our looming power crisis (due to over emphasis on renewables) or talk sense about Climate Change.
Cheers
Derek
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Judge:
Please submit your evidence!
Prosecution: Here you are:
(Presents Judge with a piece of paper marked “exhibit A” which says, “we have a preponderance of evidence on our side, and a consensus of other prosecutors agree!”
Judge:
Uhmmm…. case dismissed….
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I admired Robyn Williams for years, for his ability to present science to the public in an understandable way. However he went down a few hundred points in my estimation when I witnessed his reaction to being challenged. HE is the guru, how dare YOU question him! His defensive attitude is that of a recent convert to some weird sect lashing out at anyone who disapproves.
I don’t think there is any point appealing to his reason or scientific open-mindedness, they are just a front for an arrogant self-important journalist who knows it all.
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Jo,
I have always had tremendous respect for Robyn Williams, both as an actor and as a commentator.
So, I am very saddened that you have felt compelled to write this piece. Not that I am saying you should not have done so. It was necessary, and I have to say you have handled it very delicately.
I think what we are observing, with Science Commentators, is a phenomenon that first became apparent in the first Gulf war, when War Correspondents were “embedded” into American fighting units.
As you might remember, as the war progressed, the journalistic sense of where objective reporting should lie on the spectrum of opinion, shifted towards a the military interpretation of events, and the necessity for certain military actions. It was a PR win for the US military.
I see the same thing happening to MSM Science commentators. They are embedded with the scientists, and their frame of reference is therefore biased towards accepting the scientists interpretation of events, and their actions, as being the most reasonable.
In both cases, it is the unarmed and vulnerable “civilian” population that ends up suffering the consequences.
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PeterB in Indianapolis: #5
…
Defence: Objection:
Judge: Hmm … Well go on …
Defence: My client has not been acting in accordance with any of the evidence presented by the prosecution.
Judge: What evidence can you present to prove that you have not acted in accordance with the prosecution’s evidence?
Defence: Well, none, because you cannot prove a negative.
Judge: Precisely, Case Dismissed
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I get anxious when I post about religion. I know it enrages people. But this AGW is a viable religious alternative to Christianity, Buddhism, etc. It allows the believer to truly believe that he/she is doing something good.
The belief that we can be/are “good” is very important to us. Even Christians, who during Lent should recall that it is not about us being good, get lost in this idea most of the time.
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Bravo. This is a wonderful piece. It captures the sadness I, too feel, regarding science commentators and those who regard themselves as card-carrying “skeptics” in every other milieu. Their determination not to acknowledge the damage being done to science by the behaviour of climate scientists – and the failure of the scientific establishment to defend and uphold the scientific method – really is disheartening.
Sometimes those who love something the most end up harming it terribly due to a lack of imagination, an inability to consider other points of view. Sad.
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On the ABC? Enough said. Were we really expecting anything different?
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ClimateGate was a manufactured scandal.
The “sceptics” have to resort to hacked emails and fake scandals as they have no science of their own to back them up.
The tactic is then to claim that the peer review process has been corrupted.
That is also false as a full transcipt of the CRU emails shows in this instance
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Joe, you have just spoilt my love of rigatoni!
You are right to take Williams to task, he has lost all sense of objectivity. But you raise a major question: to what extent can a reporter question the science?
Few journalists given the task of reporting science would be experts in the field. A generalist reporter would find the task impossible. You, Jo make an excellent job of reporting and commenting on matters climatic, because you have concentrated on and read deeply on the topic, but how would you cope with, say, matters medicinal?
Williams has done an excellent job of explaining scientific topics to a general audience, but is not an investigative journalist in the sense of seeking out conspiracies, malfeasance, incompetence, etc. Climate science is now shown to have all those ingredients. Williams needs to catch up; you are way ahead of him.
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I liked him best in ‘Hook.’ 😛
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Peter Pan,
You wouldn’t be relying on Blogs for your information – I’m sure your mate clive hamilton would not be impressed.
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Peter Pan,
ClimateGate was not a manufactured scandal,it was a scandal waiting to happen. The old saying “The truth will out” applies. Sceptics are merely pointing out the widening gap between the theory and the observations, – also between the raw data and the cooked data. Climategate revealed the systematic obstruction of legitimate requests for this data.
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You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all the people all the time. These guys seem to have a lot of trouble getting their head around that.
As far as research funding goes: I’ve remembered something that happened almost 20 years ago. I have a cattle station 1000 Km inland from Brisbane, on the edge of the central Australian desert.
Local have known that koalas live along the water courses, for wherever. But no one on the coast wants to believe that.
So when I saw an article posted in the local paper, about someone interested in researching koalas in the arid zone. I immediately contact the person and invited him to my property.
In due course and enthusiastic young postgraduate student , equipped with a hire 4X4 and every type of camping equipment known to man, turned up and started looking for koalas.
His enthusiasm when he found lots of evidence of koalas was endearing and infectious. After about a month of traipsing around the station constantly enthusing about the size of the koala population, and how no one had previously known that they exist this far out.
He headed back to Brisbane to write his report, certain that his place in scientific history had been secured.
18 months later he called me back and asked me if he could return and do a little follow-up work checking tree species and suchlike. I readily agreed and about a week later he turned up at his girlfriend’s second-hand Holden Barina.
Asking if I minded if he camped in the shearer’s quarters for a week. I readily agreed but enquired what happened to his four-wheel-drive and state-of-the-art camping gear that he had last time.
He then ruefully explained that he had made a mistake in his report. He had written a glowing report, on the state of the local environment and the number and health of koalas in the area.
The immediate result was that he had his funding withdrawn:
NO PROLBEM= NO FUNDING
As he said, what he should have done was write a report saying things looked okay at the moment. Then thought of some vague, but potentially devastating, threat to the local koala population. Which no doubt would have resulted in a lifetime’s worth of extra funding.
The only thing research scientists, without funding; research- is the job ads.
[Binny, thank you for this well described example. It’s useful to hear real stories with such illuminating detail. The career path of a true scientist who gets the right data but the “wrong” answer.]
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janama #3
‘..Jason Hall-Spencer: We’ve only looked at 1%. We’ve seen 100 of these out of 50,000. We’ve got samples from 100 and that’s all. So we’re just beginning to understand what’s on these sea mounts…’
1%….100…50,000?
Seems like he is yet to reach the stage of ‘beginning to understand’ simple mathematics.
10
You don’t have to be ‘left of centre’ to be an actor or involved in television. But it can be a very lonely place,if you are not. In fact the same thing could be said for the academic environment in general.
The correlation between being, politically left, or politically right, and believing, or not believing, in AGW is incredibly high.
The whole thing is about 10% science 40% religion and 50% politics. And the debate reflects that.
10
Just a little typo there Jo, should read..
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Jo, I’m just wanted to clarify your statement and claims here. Is it your contention that there is no link between increased levels of CO2 and warming? In particular, you questions assumptions about feedback? I’d had to misquote you or misinterpret your statement.
Given that it is a legitimate question, I thought I’d point you and your readers to the following papers which discuss CO2 levels and their relationship to temperature.
You also asked that I provide links to “quality papers”, which I assume you mean peer reviewed research.
I accept that you guys are going to seriosly question modelling future temperature rises, therefore the studies I’ve cited also look the paleoclimate: that is to say they do not rely on models, but on empirical evidence gathered across the globe that demonstrate a clear link between C02 concentrations in the atmosphere and tempertature.
The great thing is they are freely available to you and your readers to examine. I refer to the following papers on the paleoclimate (see link above to view papers):
Atmospheric CO2 concentration and millennial-scale climate change during the last glacial period – Stauffer et al. (1998)
Covariation of carbon dioxide and temperature from the Vostok ice core after deuterium-excess correction – Cuffey & Vimeux (2001)
The phase relations among atmospheric CO2 content, temperature and global ice volume over the past 420 ka – Mudelsee (2001)
This paper dating back to 1990 clearly states the relationship:
ABSTRACT: The hypothesis that the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide is related to observable changes in the climate is tested using modern methods of time-series analysis. The results confirm that average global temperature is increasing, and that temperature and atmospheric carbon dioxide are significantly correlated over the past thirty years. Changes in carbon dioxide content lag those in temperature by five months
Again, the following pieces of research addresses your question abot C02/temperture relationships:
Dependence of global temperatures on atmospheric CO2 and solar irradiance – Thomson (1997)
Abstract:Changes in global average temperatures and of the seasonal cycle are strongly coupled to the concentration of atmospheric CO2. I estimate transfer functions from changes in atmospheric CO2 and from changes in solar irradiance to hemispheric temperatures that have been corrected for the effects of precession. They show that changes from CO2 over the last century are about three times larger than those from changes in solar irradiance.”
Again I cite the following:
A Bayesian Statistical Analysis of the Enhanced Greenhouse Effect – Tol & De Vos (1998)
Abstract: “This paper demonstrates that there is a robust statistical relationship between the records of the global mean surface air temperature and the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide over the period 1870–1991. As such, the enhanced greenhouse effect is a plausible explanation for the observed global warming. Long term natural variability is another prime candidate for explaining the temperature rise of the last century. Analysis of natural variability from paleo-reconstructions, however, shows that human activity is so much more likely an explanation that the earlier conclusion is not refuted.”
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Peter Pan:
March 10th, 2010 at 7:49 am
From your first link..
Do you think sceptics have the power and authority to be able to propell stories to major MSM front pages? Why do you think we’ve been struggling at “mum n dad” blogs like this one for years whilst major MSM with their prominent enviro reporters have been banging the alarmist drums?
Didn’t that alone raise your eyebrow? No? Then either your gullible or can’t see past your own preconceived opinions.
From your 2nd link..
You are gullible aren’t you Pan. Go back and research the timeline. Santer did not just happen to have substantial new work. He and his “peers” cobbled together a response to Douglass. They openly discussed why a “new paper” with many co-authors would carry more weight than just a reply. here is a little sample for you. This from Santer…
P Pan you need to do your own research instead of aping alarmist blogs. SEE WITH YOUR OWN EYES, THINK WITH YOUR OWN BRAIN.
20
Don’t overlook the simple possibility that Wiliams, like the BBC pension fund, is up to his ears in carbon credit derivatives and greentech stocks, and is now facing a bleak future unless the AGW fraternity he cheers for, can turn things around.
10
Peter Pan: #12
And your proof is … where? You have no science of your own to back up that statement?
That is your hypothesis. The supporting evidence is … where?
An alternative hypothesis is that the data was released by a whistle-blower who was concerned that the FOI process was being subverted. My evidence is that 1. All of the released data was in a single archive file (i.e. not separate files as they would have been if hacked); 2. Covered the precise period between the refusal of the first FOI request, until a few days prior to the release; 3. Only contained emails related to the working relationships between the people concerned (i.e. it excluded personal or social emails that would also have been captured by a general sweep). Please feel free to present demonstrable evidence that refutes mine.
I have offered an alternative hypothesis and invited you to refute it. That is the scientific method. I need do no more to show that your hypothesis is but one of many potential alternatives.
The emails, that Prof. Phil Jones has publicly admitted are genuine, themselves refer to methods by which the peer review processes was being corrupted.
I am sorry, but I could not find a full transcript of the CRU emails at the site you referenced. Perhaps you meant to point it to this site.
10
there’s no doubt williams/hamilton/lambert and the like have all read the climategate emails.
no doubt they’ve also read the following:
UK House of Commons: THE DISCLOSURE OF CLIMATE DATA FROM THE CLIMATIC RESEARCH UNIT AT THE UNIVERSITY OF EAST ANGLIA
Q119 Dr Harris: You cannot speak for other fields of science I guess but do you have any idea whether, in other fields of science, the data is sent out on request? In clinical trials I have not seen photocopies of anonymised patient data being sent out on request. If peer reviewers ask to see the raw data, is there a different situation there or do they never ask for that?
Professor Jones: We would probably send them that then, but they have never asked for it.
Q120 Dr Harris: You would not object to sending peer reviewers or editors that data?
Professor Jones: No, but they have never asked.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmsctech/uc387-i/uc38702.htm
what don’t they get?
10
People seem to think that lots of sackings at the top of the public sector would be damaging. Nothing could be further from the truth. Plentiful sackings of public sector bigshots would be vivifying for any department so blessed. It would force these bludgers to take what they do seriously. Deflate their ego some, give them new purpose, and give them the realistic hope for promotion.
I advocate mass-sackings of public servants as the cure for this social problem, and as well at least PART OF the cure for most other social problems we face.
A science show host who doesn’t understand epistemology is about as useful as a Cheetah with a broken spine. Time for the cry of “Gangland” to ring out, and for Robyn to look for other work.
10
Graeme: RE: Mass sackings of public servants,
If every year you get rid of the weakest 2-5% of the workforce, over time you end up with a much more capable and efficient operation. Of course this only works with large organsiations as it’s pretty hard sacking 20% of someone.
Do want to run for Govt here in Aussie and get these Ideological morons out of office over here for us?
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Enjoyed your article Jo. Regarding the officially sanctioned one sided presentation of AGW “science” I found this over at James Delingpoles’ site
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100029145/how-the-british-establishment-is-conspiring-to-prop-up-the-agw-myth/
Seems it’s OK for Prince Charles to sing from the AGW songsheet but inappropriate for an alternative view to be presented due to political sensitivities. Just how far will these people go to preserve a lie?
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Baa Humbug
When they have Rupert Murdoch and other vested interests on their side prepared to propagate them then yes.
Cherry-picking – he was talking about a future paper at the time – the other one shows what the paper contained once written but was yet to be published. Understand the difference?
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Off topic, but i couldn’t resist..
MadJak wrote:
“If every year you get rid of the weakest 2-5% of the workforce, over time you end up with a much more capable and efficient operation.”
Reminds me of the story about improving the mind:
Consider a herd of Wildebeeste. As it moves through the Serengeti, Lions take the slowest and weakest Wildebeesties, and so the strength and speed of the herd increases. As with Wildebeeste and Lions, so with brains and alchohol. Every time you have a drink, the alchohol knocks off a few brain cells, and which ones does it get? Why, the slowest and stupidest ones. So if you want to be smarter…Cheers!
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Another very good post, Joanne! It is sad to see someone deciding to go this route! Maybe this will help because there’s “another” Gate in the works. Yep! No.12 on my list at GWH.com It’s called “GreenJobs-Gate”. Thanks to Christopher Horner for staying on top of this at,
http://www.globalwarminghoax.com/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?2089.0
I expect to see more coming onto the list! And I’ll bring’em to ya! 🙂
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Seems that Climate Science is entering the realms of bizzaro world now… Karl Lagerfeld has seen fit to go Climate Change Chic:
http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/lifestyle/a/-/lifestyle/6913972/icebergs-melt-as-chanel-makes-a-point/
And I thought Pachauri writing smutty romance novels was out there… Meanwhile you really have to scratch your head at the latest UN Framework on Climate Change appointment:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/09/former-apartheid-spy-appointed-to-head-un-climate-change-effort/
This guy has a colourful past (hmm interesting choice of words) to say the least. I guess Mugabe or Gadafi weren’t available…
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Mke #21
Those papers were published in 1998, 12 years ago, and at the time plausible. Since 1998 then temperatures have gone down, while CO2 continued to increase.
The papers are now irrelevant and wrong, and that is how science operates – new data creates inconvenient facts.
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Denny @ 31
This latest green snafu just reminds me of the wonderful promises we always get from the greens – their promises of a “green economy”, “green jobs” with “sustainability”. in reality it’s castles in the sky and some other mug has to pay for it when the bills arrive.
But at least it sounds good on a sound bite.
Green economics, like green science, don’t seem to be bound by the conventional rules of mathematics.
Cheers,
Speedy
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Mike:
At #21 you quote a paper from 1990 but you do not cite it. The missing reference is:
Kuo, C., Lindberg, C., and Thomson, D. J.: 1990, ‘Coherence Established between Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide and Global Temperature’, Nature.
Please note its title is
‘Coherence Established between Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide and Global Temperature’.
It finds correlation but, importantly, it was the first paper to determine coherence in the modern data sets for atmospheric carbon dioxide and global temperature. As you say, its Abstract says:
This is important because – while correlation cannot prove causality – coherence can disprove causality. Simply, if it is postulated that A causes B then A must occur before B: so, if B happens first the A cannot be causing it.
As you have quoted, Kuo et al. determined that atmospheric carbon dioxide and global temperature cohere such that changes to carbon dioxide concentration follow changes to global temperature by 5 months. Several subsequent studies have confirmed this finding but have shown that the lag varies from 5 to 8 months depending on latitude.
You presented this Abstract (without a reference) as evidence that carbon dioxide concentration affects temperature. But the paper provides evidence of the opposite of what you claim: it proves that temperature affects carbon dioxide.
I wonder where you get your information; RealClimate, perhaps?
Richard
[Thanks Richard, I wasn’t aware there was a 5 month delay on a shorter timescale. How interesting. /And how odd that such a relevant point has been kept silent for 18 years…. / sarc. – JN]
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Grame Bird,
Mass sackings becomes problematical with the existing anti-dismissal laws.
10
Good post JN. Truth to power is not easy especially when one respects the speaker. I read the post twice and couldn’t see it as more than a scolding of upstarts that dare to question the authority of well authority… I wonder how that patent office clerk in Bern would have fared today under these circumstances.
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Donna Laframboise:
March 10th, 2010 at 7:43 am
Hi Donna. Great work you are doing exposing the “peer review” sham of the IPCC. Much appreciated.
You are concerned for science? Don’t be. Science will actually benefit from this current climate science scam.
Scandals like this are actuallly good in the long run, akin to pruning a tree. When the AGW scam has finally blown over, science will come out stronger at the other end. Future research, be it private or public, will be scrutinized more closely. Mere claims of “likely” or “probably” will not be taken as gospel. More rigourous findings and stronger proof will be demanded. All bodes well for science.
Yes, funds will dry up to a great extent, but that’s a good thing too. Near limitless funds didn’t do climate science any good did it?
Science is a necessity, and research into needs of mankind will always attract funds.
Recent news stated less and less youngsters are taking up science. That’s also a good thing. The flood of funds into climate science over the last 20 years has probably attracted youngsters into fields they probably shouldn’t have entered. I think, in the future, the kids who are passionate about science, the ones who carry lizards and critters in their pockets, the ones who beg mum and dad for a telescope will still choose science as a carreer. Those who’ve entered the field because of the flood of funds won’t. The pruning affect again. A good thing.
Science will live on, (we can’t live without it) only it will be stronger.
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Speedy: Post 34,
Hey Speedy! What’s up??? I don’t think “Greenies” would know the difference whether by logic, because they don’t have much, and to see Science in it’s “true” form…just look at my article! Hence, the resoning to my statement!
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That was his post, Mr. Williams.
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Thanks to Mike at #21 for presenting ‘the evidence’ and Richard at #35 as to why it is (apparently) not valid. Without reading all of these articles myself, until i have time, i presume that no reply from Mike will mean that Richard’s statements are correct. Please Mike, reply. To date I have not seen a single piece of definitive AGW evidence.
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What evidence? Here’s some real evidence from the just last six months or so, but probably not the sort Mr. Williams wants to hear.
From http://www.miningaustralia.com.au/Article/Palmer-secures-QLD-future-with-massive-export-deal/510804.aspx dated 8/2/2010
Clive Palmer has secured what he is hailing as the largest export contract in Australia’s history.
The Queensland mining magnate announced over the weekend that his company, Resourcehouse, had signed a US$60 billion coal export deal for its proposed China First mine in Central Queensland.
The 20-year sales agreement is with China Power International Development, one of China’s largest power companies and the flagship business of China Power Investment Corporation (CPI).
“This deal with CPI is Australia’s biggest ever export contract,” Palmer said.
The deal will see the Chinese company buy 30 million tonnes of coal per year at a cost of around US$3 billion a year and, according to Palmer, likely restore Queensland’s AAA credit rating.
From http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/12/06/2763131.htm dated 6/12/2009
Western Australian Premier Colin Barnett has welcomed a long-term gas deal which is being billed the largest sales contract for any Australian export industry.
The agreement will see 4.1 million tonnes of LNG exported each year and will underpin a development off the Pilbara coast.
Mr Barnett says the 20-year agreement between Chevron and the Tokyo Electric Power Company will secure the future of the Wheatstone LNG project.
He says it is a significant deal and will secure WA’s position as the world’s second largest LNG producer by 2020.
“The sales contract amounts to some $90 billion. In my judgement that would be the largest sales contract for any Australian export industry – this is an historic agreement,” he said.
From http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,25949288-3122,00.html dated 18/8/2009
AUSTRALIA has cemented its biggest-ever trade deal, a 20-year, $50 billion contract to supply liquefied natural gas to China.
The Minister for Resources and Energy, Martin Ferguson, last night welcomed the deal, under which resources giant ExxonMobil will supply gas from the Gorgon field in Western Australia, which cost $50b to develop.
“This unprecedented export deal confirms Australia’s place as a global energy superpower supplying vital clean energy resources and technologies to China and our other Asia-Pacific trading partners,” Mr Ferguson said.
The pact comes just a week after ExxonMobil, whose Gorgon partners include Chevron and Shell, signed a $25 billion LNG export deal with India.
ExxonMobil signed the 20-year deal with PetroChina in Beijing last night.
It will help ensure that the development becomes Australia’s most lucrative resources project, with a forecast $300 billion in LNP sales over the next 20 years.
The latest Sino-Australian mega deal tops Woodside’s record-breaking $45 billion agreement to supply LNG to PetroChina from its massive Browse Basin project, also in WA, signed two years ago.
It also follows a $25 billion Chinese deal with Woodside signed in 2002.
And so on, and so on, and so on …
.
If the State and Federal governments are so unconcerned about the CO2 these contracts will release into the atmosphere over the next 20 years, why should we be?
Could it all be a bit of a scam?
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Denny @ 39
Quite correct – good mathematics can’t make up for poor logic, as a quick review of the climate models will demonstrate.
One take-away from the Monckton lecture I got to was the need for an educational system that comprises the “classics” (logic etc), scientific and moral aspects of the individual. Unfortunately, the current educational system is sadly lacking and is incapable of making up for deficiencies if we don’t have good parenting as well.
Poor old Robyn seems to have missed out.
Cheers,
Speedy
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Robyn Williams.
Please correct me if I (and a few others on this thread) seem to think his alter ego is “Mrs Doubtfire”?
Will the real Robyn Williams please stand up?
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@ Baa Humbug
I got here too late to deal with Peter Pan, good work! Since Jo posted at the ABC we have gotten some new people, the good, the bad and the ugly!
Do you know why Peter Pan flies? You would fly, too, if someone hit you in the peter with a pan!
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Peter Pan:
March 10th, 2010 at 7:49 am
ClimateGate was a manufactured scandal.
The “sceptics” have to resort to hacked emails and fake scandals as they have no science of their own to back them up.
The tactic is then to claim that the peer review process has been corrupted.
You are correct in that climategate was a manufactured scandal. It was manufactured by the so called scientists at the CRU.
Since you won’t post evidence (blogs are not evidence or empirical proof) I will help you out.
http://www.climate-gate.org/search.php?topEmails=1
They contain evidence to show that the scientists at the CRU conspired to illegally foil legitimate FOI requests, deleted emails that would incriminate them, gamed the peer review process and destroy the careers of other scientists, editors and journals that didn’t acquiesce in their conspiracy. I would have posted them all but the room on this site is limited.
Those are just the most popular ones. There is a plethora of others, as well.
So, where is the empirical evidence to show that the hypothesis of AGW is valid?
I love watching Peter Pan fly! 🙂
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Peter Pan
You posted on this thread, claiming climategate was manufactured, and by way of the links you provided, insinuated that the emails were taken out of context. Below is a little sample for you. Tell me how it may be taken out of context.
Mike Mann forwards this response to a number of his colleagues:
Tom Wigley writes:
Having read the above, if I thought the “cabal” was more interested in whether an author was a sceptic or a true believer rather than the contents of the authors paper, would I be taking it out of context? I f I thought it was despicable behaviour for so called honourable scientists to try and oust journal employees because they are perceived to be welcoming of sceptical papers, would I be taking it out of context?
Finally, if I thought, (having read many of your posts in various blogs) you were easily lead, blindly believed anything alarmists stated and obviously couldn’t think for yourself, would I be taking it out of context?
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Eddy Aruda:
March 10th, 2010 at 1:56 pm
Hi Eddy
I think it’s good bloggers like Peter Pan post here. I just wish they would post some evidence instead of claims and links to realclimate etc
It’s been a long time since alarmists cited the IPCC AR4 for evidence. Maybe even they realise the AR4 is everything BUT evidence.
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Rereke Whaakaro:
March 10th, 2010 at 9:42 am
The supporting evidence is that the emails have been edited and truncated. A “whistleblower” wouldn’t do that – they would just leave the emails as is for others to find. Also a whistleblower would also leave behind some trace in the system even if they used someone elses terminal/logonID.
The emails were hacked pure & simple.
Eddy Aruda:
March 10th, 2010 at 1:56 pm
Nothing legitimate about a barrage of FOI requests for data protected by a legally binding non-disclosure agreement when it could have been procured from the original owners. That’s just harrassment pure and simple.
Oh – you’re all so incredibly clever for making fun of my username – never ever seen that before 🙂
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A day after Robyn William’s political spin, the ABC put on Big Ideas…”Delivering the first of the Sydney Ideas lectures for 2010, world renowned climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer outlines the evidence for global warming and explains how it was gathered.” I have made a formal complaint to the ABC (re bias) and suggest others do the same.
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I think it would be to this blogs benefit not to mention screen names.
For the life of me, I can’t understand why an alarmist would wish to get into a debate about the East Anglia emails.
I mean, it’s not just an “own goal”, it’s an own goal by a self-mutilating masochistic just before committing hari kiri
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Louis the idea is to change the laws so they do not apply to public servants. Or get rid of the laws altogether. Or change them to only apply in large corporations. But surely one could sack radio presenters? How does anyone ever get a new gig? I suppose they don’t. I suppose all these old guys are still locking up the system. Phillip Adams doesn’t look like he’s about to step aside.
Its pretty important that we do this. The public sector just seems to keep growing. When was the last time Canberra had a recession? The response of Canberra to the threat of recession is to increase the predation on the rest of us. It would be better if the Canberrans were moping about, unemployed, looking depressed. A single 50 buck note in town, and everyone cannot wait until it comes there way. The rest of us could just throw a big party.
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The web version of Robyn Williams address suggests that those who disagree with climate alarmists are getting “under his skin,” a major irritation. Robyn just appeals to the authority of Arrhenius’ experiments of 1896, which has been later shown to exaggerate the effect on temperature of increasing CO2 in the atmosphere, that is, ‘climate sensitivity.’ Robyn appears not to have read any published papers with contrary interpretations of data, especially recently.
As to the Climategate files, they could not have been ‘manufactured,’ The dates line up with associated events. They very much confirm what many suspected for a long time, especially with the manipulation of the peer review process of several journals.
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@ peter Pan
Scientists do not have a problem with legitimate FOI requests. Um, maybe we should try the second or third star to the right and straight on ’til morning?! Perhaps you can provide a link to the non disclosure agreements you speak of or are they protected by nondisclosure agreements, too?
Why did Phil Jones claim he had a nondisclosure agreement with Sweden when Sweden’s data is available in the public domain? Why would a scientists not disclose his work to see if it could be falsified? I know, we will check the raw data! Oh, thats right it was “lost” and coincidentally the emails showed that they would rather destroy the data rather than disclose it. It was probably those mean old skeptics just trying to use the scientific method that caused those poor benign climate scientists to have to “lose” the raw data.
I am still waiting on that empirical evidence, Peter! Are you too busy flying to respond? 🙂
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Yes, it is a shame to see Williams reduced to this kind of spiteful rant. Obviously he’s not spent much time contemplating both sides of the argument, though I admit it does take considerable time and stamina, plus determination, to get some sort of grip on the subject.
More distressing (for me, anyway) is to see Phillip Adams of radio’s Late Night Live sliding down the same slippery slope. He’s had Paul Ehrlich and James Hansen on within the space of a few weeks. I’ve been thoroughly enjoying Adams’ programs for about 20 years, but his uncritical fawning over these two characters was sickening.
Incidentally, Hansen came across as very reasonable and trustworthy in an elderly-uncle way, even seeming to be uncomfortable with the term “deniers”, which Adams insisted on using throughout the interview. Very very sad indeed.
For those interested, the program can be heard here:
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/latenightlive/
Mal in Melbourne.
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@ Baa humbug
Isn’t it ironic that someone would call a skeptic a denier when they themselves are living in Denial?
Peter Pan mentions truncated! Speaking of truncated, see http://climateaudit.org/2009/07/31/the-cru-data-purge-continues/ The scientists at the CRU were deleting files faster than Bernie Madoff could shred documents! Yeah, another vast skeptic conspiracy!
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I think Joanne is being optimistic, if not too charitable, in believing in Robyn Williams’ sincerity. I used to listen to him regularly in the late seventies and through the eighties. The Science Show and his other broadcasts were always entertaining, but not always convincing. Along with the rest of the ABC science unit he has a particular ‘take’ on most topics, a line acceptable to the left-liberal establishment. Thus he fawned on David Suzuki, cautiously endorsed James Lovelock and Richard Dawkins, and even had a good word for the sociobiologists until their theories were adopted by the political right. His passionate support of anthropogenic global warming is consistent with his whole career.
Williams is a fine radio actor who uses his expertly modulated voice to editorialise, to colour his words and tell his listeners almost subliminally what they should feel about the subject under discussion. Not necessarily what to think, but what to feel. His touch is light, worldly, with just a hint of cynicism. He flatters his listeners that we are knowledgable and worldly too, as long as we approve of what he approves, and scoff at anything he gently derides.
And he’s not naive. He fully understands what he’s doing when he barracks for the global warmers.
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Peter Pan: #49
I can see that you consider yourself to be an ICT Operations expert.
But, they did indeed leave the emails as is, for others to find.
The email addresses of the people involved were removed later by the people who recovered the archive file from the Russian FTP server This was done prior to the files being put up on publicly accessible websites to protect their privacy. As Andrew Watts explained, “I’ve redacted email addresses and direct phone numbers for the moment. The emails all have US public universities in the email addresses, …”.
Well, perhaps you are not an ICT expert after all.
A whistleblower would have access to the internal computer systems. They could build an archive file on a server, over time, and because they are authorised the system would not notice. The file was placed on an open FTP file exchange server in Russia – the sort of place where people illegally share movies, etceteras. If you look at the site (and can read Russian) that becomes clear. The file would be transferred through an internet browser, and would therefore leave no trace at the firewall.
A hacker, on the other hand, would leave some trace of entry at the firewall. Remote log in attempts are routinely logged, especially after hours. Files sent off-site via FTP would also probably be logged. Not only that, the firewall would raise all sorts of alarms about somebody attempting to guess a userid and password to gain access. As far as I am aware, the police found no record of a hacking attempt.
If you want us to accept your point of view, you are going to have to be a little more cogent than you have been.
Oh, and what about my other points? I don’t see your acceptance that my points are reasonable, and may have some merit …?
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Peter Pan,
For the record, whoever was responsible for the release of the CRU models, attachments and emails, is an absolute hero. It was obviously done by someone who is an upstanding member of the community with the moral courage to make a stand against corruption and arrogance. They have done a great service to the scientific community.
They should be awarded the Nobel Peace prize, but that is pretty meaningless now.
You also seem to have bought the whole “Barrage of FOI requests” argument. There would have been no barrage had the original FOIs been responded to in a professional and ethical manner. As it stands, ~60 FOIs in one month doesn’t actually constitute that much.
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@ Peter Pan # 49
You wrote, “The supporting evidence is that the emails have been edited and truncated.”
Prove it!
Phil Jones admitted that the emails were real by calling them ‘pretty awful emails” when he testified recently before a committee of Parliament. Maybe Peter can provide us with a link where Jones denies that the emails are real?
ILMAO when I read Jone’s statement that “secrecy is a critical part of the scientific method.” Wow! Karl Popper must be rolling over in his grave!
When it comes to the way that the AGW crowd blindly believes and fearlessly follows I am reminded of the following quote, “Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve” – Karl Popper
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Louis Hissink @33
‘new data creates inconvenient facts’.
Perhaps you meant ‘new data creates inconvenient truths’
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Here’s a copy of my comment to Andrew Bolt’s blog yesterday
Well I read Mr Williams’ rather hysterical piece and what struck me is how he referred to denialists as ‘the voices of the extreme’ when I would say the opposite is the case; the ‘voices of the extreme’ are the warmists and they are the ones who still have the privilege of having the main stream on side; just look at the ABC tv science interviews; the one I recall the most was Kerry O’Brien’s interview of Prof Oppenheimer in the 7.30 report of 4 February 2010. Kerry O’Brien asked how does the IPCC undo the damage to its credibility from the recent embarrassing revelations on issues like the Himalaya glaciers and the Amazon rainforests. Prof Oppenheimer agreed the Himalaya issue was the one that carries with it some embarrassment. A mistake was clearly made. But the fact that other (mistakes) haven’t turned up, should lend a strong note of faith. There was a bit said in the interview about the very strong review process in the IPCC’s reports. He said ‘But it’s good, because in all – again, all the hundreds of thousands of facts, we only see one, maybe there’s two, errors that anybody’s been able to turn up with in the last assessment.’
Now at this time there had been numerous scandals involving the IPCC’s processes and reports including Climategate: Leaked Emails Inspired Data Analyses Show Claimed Warming Greatly Exaggerated, the Admission by IPCC that the glaciergate figures were known to be wrong at the time, but that the report was included to persuade Asian governments to sign up to the IPCC’s agenda on climate change action; the IPCC concocted false evidence on the increased likelihood of bad weather events as the planet has warmed, Evidence that the IPCC ignored critical comments from reviewers, and that the review process is not open and transparent; numerous non scientific citations in lieu of scientific studies including WWF; Greenpeace; Hitch hikers Guide; Newspaper reports and unpublished theses from Students. Then there was the error concerning the Netherlands. The IPCC also claimed rising sea levels endanger the 55 percent of the Netherlands it says is below sea level. The portion of the Netherlands below sea level actually is 20 percent. Then there was the refusal to comply with freedom of information requests; manipulation of weather data and tree ring data from Russia; AlaskaGate – Geologists for Space Studies in Geophysics and Oceanography and their U.S. and Canadian colleagues say previous studies largely overestimated by 40 percent Alaskan glacier loss for 40 years. This flawed data are fed into those computers to predict future warming. Plus ChinaGate – An investigation by the U.K.’s left-leaning Guardian newspaper found evidence that Chinese weather station measurements not only were seriously flawed, but couldn’t be located. I might have missed a few but they’re the ones that come immediately to mind and there are far more mistakes than ‘maybe two.’ Kerry O’Brien failed to ask any follow up questions about that assertion.
All those scandals show errors erring on the side of alarmism. The ‘rising seas’ claim itself was seriously alarmist. And this was a claim which was disputed in 2007 by the sea level specialist Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner – here’s the link http://www.climatechangefacts.info/ClimateChangeDocuments/NilsAxelMornerinterview.pdf. And he has a bit to say about the IPCC process as well. An endless amount of money has been given to the side which agrees with the IPCC. And which side looks extremist to me is not the denialists but the warmists; the warmists have the use of powerful use of lobby groups including the IPCC.
So when Mr Williams says extremists (he means denialists) seem to now dominate has been the powerful use of lobby groups I say where has the money been spent on this apocalyptic scare campaign; it certainly hasn’t been on the denialists. Check out Jo Nova at http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2835581.htm. When Mr Williams says We go by published research results, in top journals and commentators with a reputation for probity … well when the IPCC latest report became the focus I say look at the errors. Peer Review in the IPCC means review by colleagues. So where’s the truth Mr Williams; from where I’m standing it doesn’t look to be on your side.
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Oh brother. The whining gets louder by the day. And they all sing from the same hymn book. Conspiracy? Who said conspiracy?
The below from Stephen Schneider, you know the bloke, he’s the one who alarmed us back in the 70’s about the imminent ice age. When nature did an about face and started to warm, he started alarming us about the imminent catastrophic warming.
Most respected? Read the rest here
Also this from the ABC
Read the rest here
Both articles have the same theme…
*Scientists are under attack by deniers and sceptics.
*This is a concerted effort by big oil to derail emissions reduction schemes
*Us poor scientists can’t defend ourselves, we need help.
Poor poor diddums. Maybe they should have thought of the consequences of fudging data, interfering with journal editors, losing data, homogenising, pasteurising and torturing data, claiming likelys as near certainties and probablies as absolute certainties, claiming the peer review system as their own plaything and going to bed with advocacy groups.
You know the old saying, if you lay down with a hippie, you’ll get up with fleas.
So NOW they want OPEN DEBATE. Where were you despicable sharlatans when the like of your boss at the CSIRO, and Wong and Rudd insulted us skeptics and kept shouting us down with “the science is settled”? Ha? Where were you? You don’t give a chit about the science or open debate, you’re just worried about losing your jobs when the chit hits the fan.
Here is some free advice, don’t worry about your jobs, worry about what you will tell your kids when they ask why there is so much chit on your clothes.
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Baa Humbug@63,
RE:
I think whoever they pay to manage their propoganda should probably be giving them our money back.
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The gravy train keeps getting bigger and keeps rolling on.
Here is a study of the EU funding NGO’s who in turn lobby the EU for yet more funding.
The study focuses on the group called the “Green 10”. Their public funding by the EU has increased from €2,337,924 (1998) to €8,749,940 (2009) – an average increase of 13% every year.
Their influence on policy indeed.
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Jo
Which is exactly what Galileo, Aristotle and the Wright brothers did. Is that so bad? (Show me the evidence).
The evidence is self-contained in your own sentence. You obviously know nothing of the history of science.
The Wright Brothers were not scientists but engineers who overthrew no science, and established no new science of their own.
Aristotle did no experiments and sought to obtain the truth from pure reason. The antithesis of the scientific method.
Galileo opposed the “wisdom” of the church, not a previously established body of science. There is a difference you know.
That you can even write such an ignorant sentence demonstrates that you are barely a science journalist of any description let alone one in a position to criticize Williams.
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a philosophical viewpoint – you’ll need to concentrate
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/03/the_philosophic_roots_of_ecoth.html
The Philosophic Roots of Eco-Theology
By Daniel H. Fernald
Man-made global warming (AGW) is and always has been a complete and utter fraud, but the battle is far from over. There remains, however, the question of origins. Or, as David Byrne might put it, “Where?! How…did…I…get…here?!”
The philosophic roots of Eco-Theology are both deep and strong — so much so, in fact, that only an axe aimed directly and confidently at the roots will keep this eidetic weed from re-asserting itself like intellectual kudzu.
The main root is relativism (specifically, “epistemological relativism”), from which extend, first, the modernist elevation of autonomous reason to supreme status, and second, the postmodern abandonment of reason altogether.
Relativism has been with us since at least the 5th century B.C., when the Greek sophist Protagoras claimed: “Man is the measure of all things: of things which are, that they are, and of things which are not, that they are not.” That is, the truth is what we make it. Such a man-centered philosophy cannot help but mire itself in self-referential relativism due to the absence of any transcendent standard.
The growing impatience of late medieval and early Renaissance thinkers with the Scholastic method favored by the Roman Catholic Church and its many schools led at last to an intellectual revolt best exemplified by Rene Descartes’ Discourse on the Method (1637) and his Meditations on First Philosophy (1641).
In a return to ancient Greek sophistry, Descartes made the human mind the measure of all things and reduced God to a mere guarantor, an epistemological “co-signer” of sorts, whose sole substantive role was to assure the truth of whatever Descartes perceived “clearly and distinctly.”
Think of it this way: God becomes the Federal Reserve, with Descartes as Ben Bernanke.
The following century, along came the celebrated Prussian Immanuel Kant. Kant agreed on the primacy of pure reason but amended Descartes by adding a kind of semi-empirical approach that vaguely resembles what we would call “science.”
Unfortunately, Kant — who was no relativist himself — ended up giving great impetus to relativism by making knowledge of certain objects impossible, in principle and in fact. He divided objects into “phenomena” (things we can perceive) and “noumena” (things we can’t). In his view, there are things that can’t be known — ever — and we can’t even distinguish the “known unknowns” from “unknown unknowns” (with apologies to Donald Rumsfeld). Thus, this good-hearted, well-meaning professor unwittingly caused further erosion to the foundations of knowledge.
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LMAO the best couple of articles I’ve read in a while.
Seems George “Moonbat” Monbiot has had a moment of reflection.
Read here
But this repost by Gerald Warner of the Telegraph is a gem.
Here is a sample..
Moonbat: “No level of evidence can shake the growing belief that climate science is a giant conspiracy codded up by boffins and governments to tax and control us.”
Warner: By George, he’s got it! Reality has dawned. The penny has dropped. The world knows AGW is a crock and nothing is going to change that reality.
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JM:
March 10th, 2010 at 6:11 pm
easy on the tone there JM.
Did you miss the quote Jo was referring to? You know, the one about “REJECTING AUTHORITY”?
Gallileo rejected the authority of the church.
Aristotle rejected the authority of Alexander (towards the end of his life) and of Athens.
Wright Bros rejected the authority of Lord Kelvin, president of the Royal Society.
I don’t claim to be an expert so am open to be corrected.
Just a reminder. Posting on this blog makes you a guest of the blog owner. A little civility and courtesy when addressing posts to her will go a long way.
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Jo, some of the non-aussie commenters here seem to have the mistaken belief that the Science Show’s Robyn Williams is the American comedian actor of the same name.
I noticed the ABC stopped the comments on this “drum” article fairly early in the evening having only put it up that afternoon, perhaps they were copping too much flak? The comment I posted there didn’t make it, they may have thought I was too strident given I was quite annoyed. There also doesn’t seem to be any comment section on his Science Show website, at least GOD (Philip Adams) has a publicly viewable comments section now. Like Adams, Williams is a bright man and runs an interesting radio show, but similarly is full of prejudices. He did say an intriguing thing that Campbell (editor of Nature Magazine) and Tim Flannery were strangely not rallying to the cause by not attacking Plimer and Monckton as apparently they considered “the climate debate had moved on”. Is this really true?!!
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Baa Humbug, rejecting authority is one thing.
But anyone can do it, including a teenager on a skateboard. Iconoclasm is not an automatic badge of respect.
Establishing the scientific method with respect for evidence is completely another. Aristotle did not despite being the authority par excellence for around 1500 years, while the Wright Brothers challenged no authority at all.
Only Galileo did that. And while he did overthrow a body of knowledge (including the authority of Aristotle) he was in the unique position of being the last person who ever could – firstly because he established the scientific method which ensured that all subsequent discoveries would build on his in the same way that he had built his own – with respect for evidence. Secondly because what he overthrew was dogma not knowledge.
Anybody who doesn’t know this history and can’t tell the difference between the Wright Brothers, Aristotle, Galileo and a kid on a skateboard has no right to call themselves a science journalist.
Donning the cloak of Galileo is a prime indicator of the charlatan.
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Don’t things happen in a timely fashion? karma maybe?
More emails. Not leaked, not stolen, not hacked. Obtained via FOI filing.
The emails show that the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) coordinated their response to a damning Spanish report on “green jobs” with wind industry lobbyists and the Center for American Progress (the progressive think tank founded by John Podesta and funded by George Soros).
The report from Spain’s Universidad Rey Juan Carlos — which was the subject of a George Will column in the Washington Post on June 25, 2009 — showed each “green job” that had been added by Spain’s aggressive wind energy program cost Spain nearly $800,000 and resulted in the loss of 2.2 jobs elsewhere in the economy.
Eight times, Obama had publicly referred to Spain’s program as being a model for a U.S. wind energy program.
What the emails show runs contrary to statements made to Congress by the Assistant Secretary of Energy Cathy Zoi — the Obama administration response to the Spanish report was in fact instigated at the request of the AWEA.(American Wind Energy Association) It was then written with the close cooperation of the AWEA, the Center for American Progress, and the Union of Concerned Scientists.
pajamasmedis.com
mmmm I wonder how I can extract some “out of context” scandals out of these? Any suggestions Peter Pan #29?
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JM:
March 10th, 2010 at 8:00 pm
Like I said, I’m no expert so am open to be corrected on this matter.
You have taken the time and effort to respond to the “rejecting authority” subject, but failed to respond to my last paragraph re: civility. That’s disapointing and leaves your arguments, however strong, at a disadvantage in the eyes of many. In other words, you’re not doing yourself a favour. It’s difficult to elicit a response from someone when you’re insulting them.
Unfortunately, this (in my experience at least) seems to be a common theme amongst the pro AGW bloggers and blog owners.
Why not rephrase your post #66? maybe you’ll get a response.
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Baa Humbug @ 63
Not to be picky Baa, as I concur with the thrust of all your statements above, but in the following sentence:
interfering with journal editors, losing data, homogenising, pasteurising and torturing data,
I agree with homogenising & torturing, as both of these would either through blending “homogenising” or through pain “torturing” leave doubt on the results achieved.
However pasteurising, results in a pure product free of impurities, it also leaves the cream separate from the milk or when it comes to climate science the fact separate from the fiction. Something we don’t get in main stream climate science or from most MSM.
10
Jo:
In a comment attached to my post at #35 you say:
I have repeatedly said it and in many places since Kuo and her colleagues published their seminal work in 1990. I now write to explain its significance that very few people seem to notice.
A recent example of me saying it (and nobody commenting on it) is on another thread of this blog where I listed facts that together completely refute the AGW hypothesis. I wrote:
Point 2 in the list says “Change to atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration follows change to global temperature at all time scales.”
Nobody questioned this use of the word “all”.
Investigation of correlation and coherence combine to provide much useful scientific information (as I explain below).
Correlation is a mathematical relationship between two parameters.
Two parameters correlate when an amount of change to one of them causes a mathematically related amount of change to the other. Therefore, absence of correlation proves that variation to one parameter is not causing the observed variation of the other. But correlation does not prove that variation to one parameter is causing the change to the other (e.g. they could each be varying in response to something else).
Coherence is relationship in time between variations of two parameters.
Simply, when parameter A changes then parameter B also changes. This is important because it can disprove a postulated causality. If it is postulated that A causes B then A must occur before B: so, if B happens first then A cannot be causing B.
So, it is important that at most time scales there are no correlations observed between anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide, the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration, and global temperature. The absence of these correlations is clear evidence that any one of them is not causal of one or more of the others (although they may affect each other).
And it is important that change to atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration follows change to global temperature at all time scales. This coherence is clear evidence that change to atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration is not causal of change to global temperature (although they may affect each other).
Many things cohere but do not correlate. And coherence in the absence of correlation strongly suggests the two parameters are each induced to change by some other (possibly unknown) parameter.
For example, leaves fall from trees soon after children return to school after their summer break.
This is a very clear coherence: it happens every year.
But there is no correlation: the number of children returning to school does not indicate (by a mathematical relationship) the number of leaves that will fall.
The leaves fall after the children return so the falling leaves cannot be inducing the children to return (coherence), but the children returning may be the cause of the leaves falling.
However, there is no correlation between the number of children returning to school and the number of leaves that fall so there is no direct causality between children returning and leaves falling.
Coherence but lack of correlation strongly suggests that two parameters are acting in response to a third (possibly unknown) parameter. (Time of year is the third parameter in the example of the children and the leaves).
In summation, the observed coherence and lack of correlation between atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration and change to global temperature provides the following scientific evidence.
Coherence indicates that
change to atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration is not causal of change to global temperature
but
change to global temperature may be causal of change atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration.
Lack of correlation indicates that there is no direct causality between change to global temperature and change to atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration.
The observed coherence with lack of correlation between atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration and change to global temperature strongly suggests that these parameters respond to some other (as yet not identified) variable.
Although these observations indicate that there is not a causal relationship between atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration and change to global temperature, they do not rule out the possibility that these two parameters may affect each other.
Richard
10
From the submission of Dr Timothy Osborn
All I had to show was one occurrence.
For someone who demands proof you should look at the supposed proof of some of the allegations against the CRU and climate scientists in general.
One example from this very blog from Baa Humbug
Also from Osborn’s submission:
So maybe it’s those pushing unsubstantiated allegations who need to provide “proof” from more than some hacked emails that we now see were not released in their entirety and so out of context.
His (or her – sorry BH don’t know) assertions of “losing data” doesn’t stack up as it was not the CRU’s responsibility to archive or provide it in the first place and the data could have been (& still can I guess) be procured by contacting the various meteorological organisations.
Sorry – pretty busy this week and can’t reply to all points – I’ll be back to annoy you all again soon.
10
Peter Pan:
Concerning the emails leaked by an unknown whistleblower at the CRU, at #49 you assert:
That assertion is false.
The emails (including that from me) were released in their entirety. This is not disputed by the CRU who has agreed the emails are genuine.
The CRU has put a version of the leaked emails on the web and it does truncate some of them (if you want to know why then ask the CRU but – as their history shows – you will need an FOI request if you want to get an answer and that may not work).
The complete emails can be read at
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/index.php
but with email addresses obscured.
The emails provide a complete demonstration that the self-titled Team
(i)
usurped the peer review process by conspiring to review (and approve) the papers of each other
(ii)
usurped the peer review process by concerted effort to use the peer review process to prevent publication of papers which did not support their agenda,
(iii)
attacked journals that published papers which did not support their agenda,
(iv)
attempted to remove a journal Editor who would not reject all papers that did not support their view (soon after he did leave the job),
(v)
wrote to the University that employed another journal’s Editor in an attempt to discredit her because she refused to reject for publication a paper which did not support their view
(vi)
attempted to redefine peer review as a method to excuse refusal to mention a paper in the most recent IPCC Report (it was not mentioned in the Report but several not-reviewed papers were).
.
All these matters are spelled-out in their own words in their leaked emails.
If you care to check then you can read it for yourself. And if you care to dispute any of my points (i) to (vi) then I can cite the relevant leaked emails for you to read.
Richard
10
Peter Pan @ 76
You give Dr Timothy Osborn as a reference to support your argument, a Quick check on Dr Osborn takes us to his homepage:
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/~timo/ –
Enough said. He’s not likely to play for the opposition is he.
10
peterpan: It is common for members of the hockey team to put up sceptical strawmen and then knock them down. As far as I’m aware nobody has accused Jones of destroying the raw data, but could be forgiven for doing so. Let’s look at the series of events and take a “reasonable person’s” view of the evidence:
1. McIntyre asked Jones for his raw data and was told he couldn’t have it because he (McIntyre) wasn’t an academic;
2. Warwick Hughes asked Jones for his raw data and was refused with an email that will surely get pride of place in the Scientific Hall of Infamy to the effect he couldn’t have it because he was trying to find something wrong with it;
3. McKitrick, an academic, asked for the raw data and was told he couldn’t have it because contractual arrangements with the people who provided the data precluded the CRU from sharing the data with others;
4. Jones provided the raw data to Peter Webster at Georgia Tech;
5. JOnes in one of those emails you claim are out of of context said that he’d rather destroy the data then give it to them;
6. Pushed with FOI requests for the contracts which precluded the CRU sharing the data the CRU said that it had been lost ages ago during office moves.
Do you see anything inconsistant in this course of events?
Osborne, dyed in the wool hockey team member and potential candidate for the Hall of Infamy says that Jones is under no obligation to archive his data, a position unique in all of science. It is a requirement of every journal that data and methods are archived, if Jones had used any of this metadata to derive data which he subsequently used in a paper in a learned journal, and has now lost it, his conclusions cannot be verified and all papers using that data, or its derivations, removed from the scientific literature.
10
“There has been an unrelenting campaign to destroy trust in the IPCC and mainstream climate science. Find a fault – and there is always something a nitpicker or Jesuitical actuary can find – and use it to demolish the entire edifice of scientific research going back decades.”
I think realclimate provides the backcloth for this sort of thinking, the excuses about the IPCC’s one tiny mistake are all identical. Let’s look at their “tiny mistake”. They said, with the authority of thousands of the world’s climate scientists that the Himalayan glaciers would have disappeared 25 years from now. If the countries around the Himalayas had taken this seriously and begun a process of mitigation it would have cost $trillions and caused untold human misery as people were displaced from the regions around. That’s not a trivial mistake outside of climate science that’s a massive mistake.
Also “and use it to demolish the entire edifice of scientific research going back decades.” has a slight irony hidden into it, if we go back too many decades, like four, we’ll find the same climate scientists who were predicting an upcoming ice-age.
I don’t know Mr. Williams’ work, but another point he makes in his diatribe is that sceptics are resistant to GM crops, some may be, but the overwhelming organised opposition to GM crops is from the environmental groups. How come he doesn’t know that?
10
mike at 9.15pm:
You haven’t read the papers your referred to have you? None of them have empirical evidence of CO2 causing temperature increase. It’s too difficult to provide empirical data, which usually means it’s the wrong theory. We have plenty of ice core data showing no relationship between temperature and CO2 except for the CO2 rising in response to a temperature rise.
10
Mike #21, I can’t look at all your articles but this one caught my eye:
A Bayesian Statistical Analysis of the Enhanced Greenhouse Effect – Tol & De Vos (1998)
In particular they provide a regression equation (2) and a graph Figure 1 that goes up to 1990 and would be interesting to apply the same equation to the years from 1990 to 2009 and see how badly it diverges.
Unfortunately, they don’t actually specify the coefficients of the FIR filter that they use for CO2 values (see Appendix B), I could take a reasonable guess at that one. They also attribute the Dust Veil Index to Lamb (from the CRU at East Anglia) and the Lamb data file is here:
ftp://cdiac.esd.ornl.gov/pub/ndp013/ndp013.dat
This is not in a suitable format (not yearly samples) and many values are missing, does not even go up to 1990. Mike Mann provides his version of the DVI here:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/ei/ei_data/volcanic.dat
Which does go past 1990, but not as far as 2009. Maybe this was the file the Bayesian analysis actually used? Note that the Mann file contains values for earlier years that Lamb had no values for. Also I stumbled onto this:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2008/04/mann-et-al-weighted-dust-veil-index.html
So other people have already noted the strangeness of DVI values.
This is a typical problem with trying to reproduce even basic equations and plots in these papers — chasing up the many bits of data that are not tightly referenced and difficult to get hold of. Their conclusions were very strong probabilities of several degrees of temperature sensitivity, however their main cooling factors were DVI and ENSO and in recent 15 years I doubt that would account for the actual observed global “mean” temp, ENSO has not been spectacular in any direction and not a whole lot of volcanic dust in the air either (but there has been some).
Also, their regression between 1870 and 1990 has bigger problems if you look at the Greenland ice cores that show a brief warm period approx once every 1000 years (e.g. Roman warm period, Medieval warm period). How good is a regression that takes a little sample of time in a longer and far more complex time series? The regression can only use what it has, it can’t know there is a peak every 1000 years.
My gut feeling is that this article is flawed, but with up to date data series I could solidly prove it was flawed by observing whether their regression equation predicted the recent cooling. Maybe you can help find the data and we can nail this one good.
10
Thanks for your replies. It has provided terrific examples to dissect, explore and analyse. The denial movement is a fascinating cultural phenomena worth studying.
[It is, we still gasp at the delusional effrontery of those who deny the radiosonde results, the medieval warm period, the corruption evident in emails, and the sheer lack of any empirical evidence to back up their faith. The true deniers are fascinating. Since you appear to deny that you are a real denier, you are hereby moderated until such time as you provide empirical evidence we deny or apologize for calling us names you can’t back up. We will of course, welcome honest conversations, but not baseless name-calling. –JN]
11
You guys are a bit slow http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/03/10/2842322.htm So much for a biased ABC… have any other heads of news orgs said anything like this???
ABC Chair Criticises Climate Coverage
ABC chairman Maurice Newman has attacked the media for being too willing to accept the conventional wisdom on climate change.
In a speech to senior ABC staff this morning, Mr Newman said climate change was an example of “group think”.
He says contrary views on climate change have not been tolerated and those who express them have been labelled and mocked.
“It’s really been the question of what is wisdom and consensus rather than listening perhaps to other points of view that may be sceptical,” he said.
But he believes the ABC has been more balanced than other media organisations when it comes to reporting on climate change.
“I think that we’ve listened to the words of sceptics as well as those who are scientists in the field,” he said.
“Climate change is at the moment an emotional issue.
“But it really is the fundamental issue about the need to bring voices that have authority and are relevant to the particular issue to the attention of our audiences, so that they themselves can make decisions.”
Mr Newman has doubts about climate change himself and says he is waiting for proof either way.
“My view on any of these topics is to keep an open mind, and I still have an open mind on climate change,” he said.
“Many of the people who have a different point of view on the climate science are respectable and credentialed scientists themselves.
“So as I said, I’m not a scientist and I’m like anybody else in the public, I have to listen to all points of view and then make judgments when we’re asked to vote on particular policies.”
10
Wow I didn’t realise he was the former head of the ASX…. so that blows another myth out of the water… ABC head and major stock market man.. isn;t he meant to be on the team? I note he is a Howard placement so I guess he has been waiting for his moment to shine.
10
Wow AND he is a chancellor of Monash Uni! Another illusion shattered.
10
MattB, you beat me to it…but “only just”…sorry Phil…
Heard what actually sounded like an interview on the ABC radio earlier this evening, in the car, just got home recently.
True story, here`s some of the transcripted statements he made – either a brave man or about to step down anyway? (appointed as ABC Chairman late 2006)
http://abcnewswatch.blogspot.com/
10
Peter Pan: #76
March 10th, 2010 at 8:53 pm
Now Peter. First I hope you come back soon and check this thread.
Second. You quote me with my assertion of “losing data” all the while supplying quotes from Osborne about DESTROYING data.
I made no such claim, I did not use the word DESTROY, you did.
Lets see if Phil Jones can help us settle this matter shall we?
From the NATURE NEWS interview of Jones..
“It’s not acceptable, it’s not best practice.”
Do you think Jones has been reading my posts maybe? I couldn’t have put it better myself.
10
Baa Humbug to “JM”:
I don’t believe JM deserve polite advice. Baa if you don’t mind, I’ll paraphrase:
JM quit being an Ass!
10
Mark D.:
March 11th, 2010 at 12:09 am
Though I agree with you Mark, my intention is to keep these alarmists blogging here for a bit longer. They seem to come and go so quick, and we get left with the resident alarmist (nay, pro AGWist) MattB. No fun lol
10
[…] quickly, the forum was alive with comments. Indeed, many posters felt they could dismiss the research in an relatively quick and easy manner: […]
link watchingthedeniers DOT wordpress.com/2010/03/10/the-dunning-kruger-effect-deniers-may-take-down-what-they-dont-understand-but-at-heart-they-are-curious/
10
Talking of science 🙂
Anthony Watts’ blog touches on the nature of the measurements which brings to mind HARRY’s README file.
Not only is the collection and management of climate data a total diving competition in a cesspit; you’re not likly to find anything useful at all because of instrument bias, uncorrected (or inadequately-corrected) errors; on top of siting/station bias in just about all the remaining 1500 or so surface stations.
And the CRU loses their lab notes containing the original data from which they and wrote up their gridded-nonsense. The 5-degree grid is useless for scientific purposes.
10
Richard S Courtney:
March 10th, 2010 at 8:36 pm
Thankyou for that explanation. I hope you won’t mind me quoting from it regularly in the future.
p.s. I clearly remember your earlier post on this, especially the “all” timescales comment, (since alarmists keep saying there is a correlation with CO2 and T in the last 30-40yrs or so).
What comments and from whom did you expect comments from? I certainly didn’t have any criticism of your post nor did I have any questions, your post was crystal clear.
(maybe you were expecting comments from alarmists?)
10
The Dunning-Kruger effect: deniers may take down” what they don’t understand but at heart they are curious « Watching the Deniers: #91
Well that was fascinating. Now tell me, did you do the same experiment at an alarmist blog? If so, what was your conclusion? What were the differences between the two camps? If not, why not?
I suspect, if you were to do the experiment at an alarmist site, you would necessarily reach the same conclusion (unless the alarmist blogs only host “qualified” bloggers)
If the above is correct, what are we to believe? That we should all cease and desist from blogging about a subject that not only affects us fundamentally, but one we find interesting, enjoyable etc.
Does the same apply to any other subject in our lives? say politics? afterall, most of us aren’t politicians. What about crime in society? We’re not cops nor are we in the judicial system.
So what exactly are you saying? what have you achieved with your little experiment from which you “ignored several key variables”?
Here is a thought for you. I’ll assume you are not an airline pilot. Can you tell when an airplane is being flown badly? I can. I’m not a pilot either. Nor am I a scientist, but I don’t need to take a 4 year degree to understand the difference between good/correct scientific procedure and bad/incorrect scientific procedure.
On your blog about this experiment you state “The science itself is well established”. Well there you go you see, you’re just another lemming. THE SCIENCE IS NOT SETTLED, THAT’S WHY IT’S BEEN RAGING FOR OVER 22 YEARS.
Did you not bother to read Richard S Courtneys post #75 before you posted your tripe at your blog? He IS a scientist. He HAS contributed to the IPCC. He IS qualified to comment about climate science and he, along with many others just like him SAY THE SCIENCE IS NOT WELL ESTABLISHED.
Now, what does Dunning-Kruger have to say about lemmings?
10
Isn’t karma an amazing thing whoever you are #75?
just after I post my reply to you #94, I see this at Climate Depot
and these
Claim: Global warming causing women to become hookers in Africa!
According to Al Gore.
Natural Resources Defense Council:
Democratic Senator Debbie Stabenow of Michigan. Climate Touchy-Feely:
Do I need a post graduate degree to know the above claims are bullchit?
Use your friends and family as lab rats next time you offensive twit.
10
Oooops my post #95 should say “whoever you are #91” not 75.
10
@ Peter Pan # 76
Thank you for your reply. I am in California so I apologize for not responding sooner.
From the Merriam-Webster Dictionary
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/truncated : cut short : curtailed . Could you please show me where the emails were truncated. If you are saying the whistleblower didn’t release or did not have all the emails that would be different than saying the emails were truncated. I know, lets get the scientists to release ALL the emails!
The “proof” you asked for is in the link to the emails I provided to you. I am still waiting for you, as a proponent of the AGW theory, to provide empirical data to prove your hypothesis. The burden of proof is on you and if AGW is true then that shouldn’t be a problem, should it?
10
Mike @ #91, from your link;
“…what I`ve done is basically meaningless”
Yup.
“…quasi-scientific excuse to act as a forum troll”
Yup.
You will have to forgive my rather brief responses to your statements above, however that is patently because I am (by your inference) in the lowest quartile insofar as humour, grammar and logical reasoning ability are concerned. Now please excuse moi, monsieur needs a bucket…
10
Richard S. Courtney:
I saw the smile in Jo’s words when she commented about the relationship between CO2 and temperature not being known or reported.
10
First Mike insults us “deniers”. Then tries to test us by providing some “real evidence” as he calls it. People here politely point out the flaws in some of the papers he posts and indeed, even provide the references he was missing and with extra information (Thanks Richard Courtney in #35, and #75 and Tel in #82).
But it’s all to no avail, we’re diagnosed, “over-confident” and mistaken in our abilities.
The catch is, it wouldn’t matter what answer we gave, because the only right one (according to the man who doesn’t know much climate science) is for us to pay homage to qualifications: “Golly – you’re right! I kneel before the professors of catastrophe….There are papers which use the word evidence and discuss climate, and they are published by authorities who say those papers prove something, so they must…”
Why is there no other answer we could give that he would recognize as being reasonable? Because as Mike himself acknowledges:
I think Mike grasped the irony of his post “In doing this have I also exhibited the Dunning-Kruger effect? Well. there’s a good question!”
Mike, How would you know if our confident polite replies were a/ wrong and over confident, or b / right and dead-accurate, if you (self acknowledged) can’t tell whether our answers were right and there were holes in the original papers you suggested, or holes in the reasoning used to draw conclusions about the future climate from those papers?
It could be like a four year old testing his parents…. Dad, you are too confident. You are not qualified. You fail the Dunning Kruegar test.
Mike’s Dunning-Krugar effect blog was the most entertaining piece of self-satire I’ve read in a while. Thank you Mike. (I mean that genuinely, I really did enjoy it). It’s like we’re a species of beetles that keen junior budding philosopher and sociologist wants to study. I appreciate his politeness and curiosity. I only wish he didn’t keep calling us “denier”-beetles — incorrectly thinking it is a subspecies label when really it’s the wrong species, genera and kingdom.
If he could just acknowledge that he can’t provide evidence that we deny (and apologize) he could post again freely… (and Mike, it doesn’t count if someone just throws dozens of papers at us that they don’t understand, obviously we don’t have time to go through all 50,000 papers published since 1978 one by one. Not humanly possible…so if you can try to post just one or two papers that show carbon causes major warming… Unfortunately it’s a bit rich to insult us, then expect us to act as a free tutorial service at your beck and call to explain in detail why the papers don’t demonstrate what you claim. )
60
Jo,
In my experience, it is typical for the “academic” types to insist on something called “scholarship”. That is a level of discourse in which you review countless centuries of recorded history, giving reference to every false, mistaken, baseless, notion that ever was exposed in writing in whatever language and analyze them in detail before you can say anything new and different. This “scholarly” nonsense is worth about as much as a debate on how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
The notion that something can be demonstrated to be true or false based upon currently available correct and clean evidence or a carefully done single experiment is not to be permitted. The requirement of “scholarship” assures that the “academic’s” favored position will never be attacked and proven faulty. Largely because the volume of such nonsense increases exponentially with time and cannot possibly be addressed in your lifetime. By the time you get your discussion current as of last week, the amount of material to be reviewed has doubled. On the other hand, if all you want to do is repeat and agree with them, then you can do as you please.
The above is why I became an engineer rather than an “academic”. I can make things that work and demonstrate they work without having to demonstrate that everything else that was ever invented works or doesn’t work. The demonstration becomes a self evident fact that cuts out every middle man on earth.
10
Mike,
The only denial movement is the one you have bought into.
You deny that the question is yet unresolved.
You deny that skeptics have any valid points.
You deny that skeptics are even skeptics.
You deny that AGW theory- the theory that CO2 is causing a climate apocalypse- has significant flaws.
You deny that the models are imperfect.
You deny the opportunity to dialogue.
You deny that AGW is non-falsifiable.
Historians will write many words to describe how the ghg CO2 became a tool of satan for an apocalyptic popular cult called AGW.
20
By the way, I think the Dunning-Kruger website is very much worth reading. It is one of the finest self-parodies yet seen by the AGW true believer community.
It is smug, condescending, and totally self-projecting. It is eaily one of the finest examples of argument by authority made, yet remains, unlike RC and Romm, etc. civil in its narrative
10
People,… but wait… there’s more! I’ve just posted a new post, AND right at the bottom I have a link to a new ABC unleashed piece. It’s a major dummy spit. Bluster, bluff and insults, serial killers, conflation and ad hominem. And there are no comments yet…
20
Peter Pan #76
Your response to Eddy Aruda is not evidence of truncation. The subject of Dr Timothy Osborn’s submission was only briefly touched on in the released emails. Nobody has claimed that the emails were a complete record of events at the CRU. If an email was not sent from or to somebody at the CRU, it would not appear on the file.
Now, Dr Osborn’s assertion that the CRU has not destroyed raw data is nice.(1) The operative word is “raw”, meaning unprocessed, so in the context of science or technology he is referring to “the data as first recorded”. This is useful because, by definition, the accuracy of “raw” measurements cannot be improved.
However most applied scientists, engineers, and lay persons (including politicians) would assume that “raw data” is synonymous with the “raw input” to a set of calculations, because in a practical sense they are the same. But not so in Climate Science.
To overcome the problematic quality of the raw data (which was recorded for an entirely different purpose), the CRU team have been manipulating it by a process of linear adjustment, homogenisation, averaging, and other techniques. This has produced a set of data sets that are then made available to other scientists for use as “raw input” data to their research.
So we have two different sets of “raw” data – as first recorded, and as input to further processing.
So your quote is quite correct – in regard to the data of first record. CRUTEM3 – the “raw input” data to further processing is also available.
But the quote from Dr Osborn, and his use of the word “raw” actually erects a strawman, which he then refutes. What he neglects to mention is that the two versions of the “raw” data are in no way compatible. Without details of the manipulation process used, you cannot replicate the construction of CRUTEM3 from the recorded data.
And remember, you cannot improve the accuracy of “raw” measurements, so the process of “adding value” (Phil Jones’ term) to the data is of intense interest to those of us with inquiring minds.
———-
(1) The word “nice”, in this context means “having excessive precision for the intended purpose”
10
Jo,
I couldn’t make it past the first paragraph. I think that that article would be worth logging a formal complaint to the ABC.
10
Science Not Consensus @ 50
…I have made a formal complaint to the ABC (re bias)
and then
…ABC chairman Maurice Newman has attacked the media for being too willing to accept the conventional wisdom on climate change.
OMG, I love this country. LOL
10
Mike:
This suggests that you are not actually putting any effort into analysing the articles that you cited. Have you read them yourself?
10
Re “Dunning Kruger”:
Let us consider the not quite hypothetical case where two people each believe the other is incompetent and they themselves are skilled. Each individual can go through the above list and make every single claim about the other individual and for suitable definitions of “if they can be trained” then point number 4. can equally be applied to both people at the same time.
So how does this Dunning Kruger business bring us any closer to being able to solve any real-world problems?
I’m not bothered by you talking about me behind my back, but you can actually ask questions directly — it is more polite and generally more productive:
OK, I’ll go through it in small steps since you obviously have not been reading the papers that you post up here. This paper presents a regression analysis and gives a graph of global “mean” temperature vs their regression estimate of the same value. You may call that highly technical if you like, but what it does is take a bunch of time series value from around the place, plug them together with some coefficients and use them as an estimate for a different time series.
In their graph they seem to get a good fit for the data, so this regression gives an outward appearance of being attractive. The way to test these things is now that time has moved forwards we see if the regression continues to make a good fit. The important thing about the recent decade is that many AGW researchers predicted a bunch of warming that they think should have happened but apparently has not happened. That’s why I want DVI data between 1995 and 2009 so I can complete their time series.
This stuff is not that hard, you can do it.
The problem I was demonstrating (and that nearly everyone runs into) is a lack of data availability and a lack of clear data provenance. This turns what is mathematically a relatively easy exercise into a massive research effort (possibly involving FOI requests). This is the sort of thing that pisses me off come voting time because I’m expected to swallow the tripe but never ask where it came from.
By the way, regardless of time series and data provenance… on your blog you admit that the science is mostly beyond you, so why exactly do you believe that you have the skill level to judge anyone else’s skill level? If you posted those articles without reading them, what in particular prompted you to post that set of articles rather than any other? If I made up a bunch of random counter-articles, would you have the slightest clue you were being had (not that I would stoop so low, but think about it, someone might).
10
Here’s a passage from philosopher of science Karl Popper concerning the fine work of Overwhelming et al.
…the discovery of instances which confirm a theory means very little if we have not tried, and failed, to discover refutations. For if we are uncritical we shall always find what we want: we shall look for, and find, confirmations, and we shall look away from, and not see, whatever might be dangerous to our pet theories. In this way it is all to easy to discover what seems to be overwhelming evidence in favour of a theory which, if approached critically, would have been refuted. In order to make the method of selection by elimination work, and to ensure that only the fittest theories survive, their struggle for life must be made severe for them.
[The Poverty of Historicism, 1957, Pt 4 Ch 29] Emphasis in paragraph added by me.
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Binny’s comments re. koala research on her western Qld cattle station are spot on.
It’s a similar story with cane toads. As any northern Queensland cattle station resident can tell you; when toads first arrive in an area they are plentiful and large. Goannas, snakes etc disappear. However over a number of years, the toad population reduces dramatically in physical size and number, to the point where they are sparse. Goannas, snakes and native frog species reappear and eventually thrive again. Walk around trees near a turkey nest (raised dam) and you will find the upturned, dessicated remains of many cane toads whose insides have been eaten by birds who have carefully left the head (and poison) alone.
Yet we are again deafened by the clamour of recent media reports with statements such as ‘a female canetoad carrying up to 30,000 eggs has been found in Kununurra’ and ‘cane toads potentially decimate Kimberley wildlife’ etc.
Meanwhile, weeds such as prickly acacia, parkinsonia and Madagascan rubber vine continue to thrive and spread across northern Australia, choking fertile plains and decimating treed watercourses – thus causing erosion and significantly affecting the habitat of native wildlife. With little hope of a reversal in sight. Anyone hear any reports about the continuing spread of indian miner birds and sparrows, or the fact that noxious weeds are spreading over the north at a rate of knots? I thought not. No, ‘ugly, warty’ cane toads are far easier to get grants for. If all those Kimberley toad busters spent their time on hoeing out a bit of prickly acacia, parkinsonia, noogoora burr or rubbervine, instead of chasing cane toads, their time and energy would be so much more profitably spent.
It’s a very depressing topic. Millions are spent in relation to cane toad studies and fruitless spread-prevention programmes, while other far more vital environmental problems are virtually ignored.
Iconic Landscapes is a classic example of well-intentioned but misguided Sydney-based research; purporting to present ‘two sides of the argument’ regarding locking up remote cattle stations in order to preserve the existing native wildlife and landscape. This natural landscape has supposedly been decimated by previous owners, however the website waxes lyrical regarding how many native species are found on the properties. If arid land was used for extensively grazing cattle for more than a century and there are so many native plant and animal species on the property, then has it been as decimated as researchers prefer to imply? Such an admission would unfortunately not justify their funding or their existence, so of course, an admission like this will never happen.
Many rural residents have picked up on a lack of respect for their care for the land, by visiting scientists. Stories in the north abound over the antics of researches. From the blasting of tonnes of Riversleigh Station rock (a station that was removed from cattle station business ownership, ‘to preserve it’), loaded onto roadtrains and taken to a southern university to search for fossils (well, what remained of them after the blasting), to the suffocation of bilbies wearing radio collars and creation of tracks by research vehicles (another large chunk of land taken out of pastoral ownership to preserve native habitat…ignoring the logic that the very fact that there was a thriving bilby population in residence, was testament to the fact that extensively grazed cattle and bilbies existed in harmony for more than a century).
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Baa Humbug:
At #93 you ask me:
Of course I would not mind. I would not have written it if I did not want anybody to read it.
And you ask me:
I answer that my point 2 said, “Change to atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration follows change to global temperature at all time scales.” I anticipated that somebody would query my use of the phrase “all time scales”, but nobody did. However, many do not know that this coherence applies at short time scales (e.g. Jo Nova anotated my post to say that she was not aware of this).
Richard
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JM: “The Wright Brothers were not scientists but engineers who overthrew no science, and established no new science of their own.”
Obviously you haven’t done any research on the Wright Brothers.
They certainly were engineers but also scientists. They did measurements in their own wind tunnel(they made it themselves) establishing values for the lift of different airfoils which were very close to correct but substantially different from what previous researchers had established. Not only that, as a result of experimentation, they invented the aerodynamic control theory that we still use. The practical aspect of this was later improved by Glenn Curtiss (ailerons which replaced the Wrights wing warping). Oh yes BTW, they succeeded where the government sponsored Langley failed even though Langley’s engine was excellent and far better than what the Wrights had.
I suggest you read some of the excellent books on the subject. They were heroes.
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Suppose you support sovereignty and liberty and are not in favour of, for slim reason, imposing costs on your mates.
Its a bit of a dilemma if it turns out that CO2-release is a NET COOLER!
Because after all CO2 has ample and righteous benefits, no matter what its effect on temperature. But if it also warms, then this is manna from heaven, added to the gifts of energy, commerce, food, and enhanced biosphere and so forth.
But there is a bit of a dilemma if the CO2 is a net cooler. Given that we are in a brutal and pulverising ice age. If extra-CO2 is a net cooler, as opposed to a net warmer, then we would have to consider that a hateful Pigouvian solution, might win in honest arguments, amongst reasonable people.
Has anyone else dwelt on this paradox before?
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Graeme Bird:
March 11th, 2010 at 10:31 am
Oh Bird please don’t go there. I can just see it in 10 years time.
Hansen: We always knew CO2 drove climate. It turns out that when it’s naturally warming, CO2 accelerates it. When it’s naturally cooling, CO2 accelerates that too. Unless we cut our emissions and transfer trillions to 3rd world countries, Global Cooling will increase storms, droughts floods yada yada yada
DON’T GO THERE lol
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Richard Courtney’s excellent analyses should be a reminder to all those who, like me, don’t have a profound grasp of the science, NOT to trade counter-theory with warmists. It’s not our job, and it just provides warmists with a fresh diversion from the task we should all be holding them to – presenting their theory in falsifiable form.
I can understand Richard’s reasoning, but I don’t have the knowledge or means to test it. Yet I trust it, (subject to the dictates of true scepticism!) because I can see that it takes the form of falsifiable argument and observed data. Furthermore, his analyses have been published, and therefore available to falsification, for some time, and I have seen no attempt, successful or otherwise, to do so.
With people of Richard’s lucidity (even if he’s wrong – see, I really am a sceptic!) the task of countertheorising is in good hands. As layfolk, this sort of “proxy” reasoning not only can guide our judgement of science, but is probably the best we are ever going to get. So let’s leave the countertheory to those few (although greatly over-represented at this site) who really have the wherewithal to kill the warmist red herrings when they are spawned.
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A bit off thread, but the Wright Bros argument is a good illustration of the redundancy of the idea of “scholarship” in the AGW debate. As Mike Borgelt points out, they did indeed perform critical original research, which as engineers they then validated (if not proved, pace Popper) their research by embodying it in a machine intended to fly – and it did. That’s pretty good science. Ironically, their contribution as scientists to powered flight was arguably stronger than as engineers. Their canard arrangement was inherently and lethally unstable, and they clung to it, partly perhaps for IP reasons, long after others had demontrated the superiority of the now-conventional aeroplane arrangement.
As late as 1910 they were maintaining to the US Army that an aeroplane would never – nor should it – carry more than 2 people, or fly faster than 100mph. Igor Sikorsky, who flew a 4-engined, fully-enclosed airliner, (with a lav, and everything!) in 1913, in St Petersburg, far from the budding aviation communities of France and Europe, is my much-admired counterexample. But he used Wright Bros science to do it.
There’s really no telling where good science, or good engineering for that matter, can come from.
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In relation to Richard S Courtneys excellent post #75 re: correlation and cohesian, I came across this interesting piece.
“The modern literature on hate crimes began with a remarkable 1933 book by Arthur Raper titled The Tragedy of Lynching. Raper assembled data on the number of lynchings each year in the South and on the price of an acre’s yield of cotton. He calculated the correlation coefficient between the two series at –0.532. In other words, when the economy was doing well, the number of lynchings was lower…. In 2001, Donald Green, Laurence McFalls, and Jennifer Smith published a paper that demolished the alleged connection between economic conditions and lynchings in Raper’s data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his analysis in 1929. After the Great Depression hit, the price of cotton plummeted and economic conditions deteriorated, yet lynchings continued to fall. The correlation disappeared altogether when more years of data were added.” So we must be sure to base our conclusions on ALL the data.
Then there is the most popular article of this blog, Shock: Global temperatures driven by US postal charges.
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Tom Forrestr-Paton @ 117: Their [the Write Brother’s] canard arrangement was inherently and lethally unstable
Yes, when the feedback/control mechanism is a human flying by the seat of his pants. The canard arrangement can easily go out of control and get all aboard killed. The alternate tail pitch and yaw control mechanism is much more inherently stable. In fact, its so stable that it can almost fly by itself – see model airplanes as case in point.
But, and this is a big but, stability in a fighter aircraft can get you killed as well. Especially if the opposing fighter aircraft is more agile. A stable aircraft is difficult to maneuver in tight turns. It wants to go straight and level as long as there is power driving it forward.
In the early 90’s, I was responsible for real time graphics display software for a number of very agile experimental fighter aircraft. In one interesting experiment, the X31 was pitted against the Navy’s best: the F18. The F18 was and still is a *hot* fighter. However, a computer based avionics system combined with canard control surfaces and a thrust vectoring system provided the X31 with vastly superior agility. Its pilot could keep the F18 in its sights a very high fraction of the time. In one recorded case, it was accomplished through an entire F18 J escape maneuver. The F18 could not escape.
So, in a sense, the Wright Brothers were right. It just took the rest of the field of aircraft engineering 90 years to catch up.
Timing and context makes a huge difference in outcome.
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I provide a bunch of evidence here … it’s evidence that there is nothing unusual going on with the climate. Comments welcome.
w.
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Willis Eschenbach:
March 11th, 2010 at 3:23 pm
Thanks for that Willis, I had missed some of the updates.
Just wondering. Do you ever get any critique from alarmists like Real Climate people? (Schneider Santer) if so, what do they say?
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Lionell – yes, but the canard-configured fighter aircraft you refer to are, in the big picture of aviation, the exception that proves the rule. And the Wrights, in their protracted endeavour to sell an aircraft to the Army, explicitly disavowed any combat potential it may have had, deeming it an observation and communications device (for which purposes inherent stability is a cardinal virtue) tout court.
Igor’s still my man, as an engineer/visionary. And just to drag this tenuously back to thread, I think (you may correct me) he also has some claim to scientific achievement, in that until he built his “le Grande”, “settled” aeronautical science held that aircraft larger than about a ton would not fly. This was based on a misconceived mathematical formula, yielding a constant whose name, irritatingly, escapes me. Admittedly, Sikorsky doesn’t seem to have been the one to spot the flaw, but he nonetheless revealed it – by observation, if you call building a huge aeroplane and flying it, on one occasion decked with festive lights, around the midsummer night sky of St Petersburg, observation. What a man.
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122 Baa Humbug:
No, I think that the sunshine must be bad for their complexions or something. I’m basically banned from UnRealClimate for asking too many scientific questions. I wrote a peer-reviewed paper on the subject that shows how they censor scientific questions. I don’t think they like me, although it may just be that the light bothers them …
Go figure …
w.
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Willis Eschenbach:
March 11th, 2010 at 7:44 pm
Oh beauty, I was looking for something to read in bed tonight.
Thanks W 🙂
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Willis:
At #124 you say:
Ah yes, I remember it well.
Thankyou for reminding of it and providing the link so others can read it for themselves.
I have always thought your analysis of the ‘Svalbard Affair’ was the first published demonstration of the self-titled Team’s duplicity that has become common knowledge as a result of Climategate.
I write to encourage people to use your link and to read your paper. It is interesting and informative. When published it seemed shocking but it now seems mundane.
Richard
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PS I am banned from UnrealClimate, too.
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and
Then I count myself if excellent company. I got banned a little over two years ago. I suppose I could’ve snuck back on while I’ve been in Afghanistan the last two years, but why bother. The fact that theirs is only an echo chamber without dissenting voices speaks more loudly than anything we might say there.
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JLKrueger:
March 11th, 2010 at 10:54 pm
hey you, you’re still alive and kicking. Where the ell you bin? Dirty Eddy and I missed you.
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Willis #121
Just did a quick eyeball on your evidence at Wattsup etc – you are taking the right tack in this, and in addition I’m wading into slightly deeper waters with my latest Hissink File article on Henry Thornton (Fossil Fools), though I suspect my ordnance might be scooting overhead of most.
I’m tackling the legacy Charles Lyell bequeathed science since it’s clear he, and his Whig companions, used geology then what his successors are using climate science today – hijacking science to serve politics. Science seems shackled to that legacy to this day, except for us engineering types who have to make the science work in practical terms.
I’m avoiding the Plasma Model for the moment as I think science isn’t ready for it – maybe in 10 years time, if I’m around. (Just a gut feeling, nothing else). So the present approach is to critically analyse Lyell’s deliberations in terms of our present understanding of post-modernism, and how he then, managed to convince most that historical facts were actually literary devices. Like Quaternary geology, that area of science approaches anarchy, at times.
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Nonreal Climate.
You people commented on that site and assumed an impartial reaction? Already??? (Assume good Bronx Yiddish).
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Baa Humbug:
March 11th, 2010 at 11:06 pm #129
Yep m8! Haven’t been shot or blown up yet, but between very flaky Internet and “stuff” happenin’ it’s been busy. I’m on my final countdown for this deployment. Heading home on Monday (assuming the above bad events continue to pass me by). 😉
We had a real denier in town yesterday…the original? Ahmadenijad was here and it was Royal PAIN trying to move around town.
While I can get past almost any security checkpoint, those checkpoints become chokepoints during VIP visits and prime targets. So to avoid the chokepoints, I had to take wide detours on lots of side streets…along with all the locals who were trying to avoid the same thing. A thirty minute trip on a normal day took three hours yesterday!
My driver and I made a picnic of it at one point and bought some kebobs, naan and oranges. We watched some kids playing volleyball while stuck in one place for almost an hour.
Times like that all you can say is, “Insha’Allah!” (As God wills it…as the locals say.)
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Nah, don’t think I ever expected an impartial hearing. Rather doubt Richard or Willis did either, or any number of folks who got shut down there.
With Michael Mann’s comments in the leaked emails about censoring opposition on “Virtual Climate” there’s no longer any doubt as to the closed mindset there.
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JLKruger #133
Well, you take care – have a nephew on one of the ships there right now – (engine department) – so close to the action in a personal sense. Nephew who was on Frank’s centops now an XO.
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Jo. As you would know, I’m not into name-calling but thought this description which came from a blog on Chiefio’s site was quite apt in the circumstances. It suggested that some so-called climate scientists are really just Weather Cycle Deniers. Moderate if you feel it’s inappropriate.
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[…] The evidence – what evidence?, […]
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JLKrueger:
It is good to hear that you are soon to be home in the relative safety of the USA, and that your ribs are sufficiently healed for you to spend hours dodgeing the troubles in town.
Please do all possible to avoid getting hurt in the few days before returning home.
I value reading your comments here and feel that others do too. So, I hope that you will continue your contributions to our debates after you get home.
Richard
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[…] Handbook, and producer of cartoons and graphic designs. Jo Nova has a very interesting blog on the lack of objective scientific debate and public denigration of anyone who dares to disagree […]
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Tom Forrester-Paton: AFAIK when Igor Sikorsky was building his giant aircraft he first designed wings of the same area (hence lift) as he ended up with finally but they had less span and more chord. This bugged him for some reason and one night he decided to increase the span and reduce the chord before the aircraft was complete. It then successfully flew. They didn’t know much about induced drag in those days. The aircraft would not have flown on the installed power with the other wing design.
BTW canards can be made completely stable. It is a matter of the ratio of the canard area to the main wing area and center of gravity location. Canards are out of favour because it is difficult to add flaps to the main wing to reduce landing and takeoff speeds.
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Mike Borgelt – I hadn’t heard of IS’s battle with aspect ratio, and it surprises me slightly, since by the time of the “le Grande” he had already built several smaller, training designs with aspect ratios we would consider “conventional”. In any case he resolved it in a manner which has since stood the test of time. And yes, canards can be and are (Rutan et al) made stable, but it’s a bit of a dark art, and as you say it still leaves the problem of low-speed handling devices and where to put them. Same goes for deltas, I think. The point I was trying to make was not that the Wright Bros’ designs were “wrong” (the things flew, after all), merely that in many respects they pointed down an alley which, if not blind, was certainly ill-lit, and destined to be spurned by practical, everyday aviation as we have come to know it. Arguing that canards, deltas (which I take to have very low aspect ratio wings) CAN be made to work merely provides exceptions that prove the rule that the best, and to this day easiest way to make a practical aeroplane is to put the engine/s at the front, the wings behind it, across the CG, and the yaw/pitch control at the rear. You could argue that fletchers had been doing the latter for millennia – but that only makes the Wright Bros arrangement more, not less, perverse. They were first-class researchers and scientists, but not so good as visionaries/engineers. Sikorsky, by contrast, dreamed of mass aerial transport right from the start, and achieved it. His second 4-engined airliner set an altitude/load of 8,000ft/16pax/1 dog in 1914, is to this day the only bomber to record a positive ar-to-air kill ratio, and remained in Soviet Union airline service until 1922. He got the big picture, and the Wrights, ironically, didn’t. To pile on the irony, Sikorsky is today barely recognised for his contribution to fixed wing aviation, but renowned for perfecting the helicopter, a device which, from a mechanical and dynamic point of view, seems perpetually at war with itself.
And, to once again drag this back to thread, much of the Wrights’ failure of vision, IMO, is owed to their “refusal to share their data”, that is, they were so anxious, and devoted so much energy, to asserting and defending their claims to priority of invention that they failed to notice that much of what they were protecting was fast being superseded. Of course unlike the Tree-Ring Circus, they were self-funded researchers without public obligations whose work had legitimate commercial potential (however dimly they peceived it), and they had every right to play dog-in-the-manger with their inventions if they chose, but in retrospect it probably served them poorly.
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I haven’t been banned from RealClimate – am I unique? Should I be offended? Paranioa is a terible thing, and can strike at any time. Perhaps it’s because every time I go there I’m so overwhelmed by the pabulous falsehood I find that I can’t think of anything suitably objectionable to post.
On the other hand, I think I may have been banned from George Monbiot’s blog – they used to publish my posts, and no longer seem to. Perhaps I shall one day be banned from the Guardian as a whole – one can but aspire!
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MattB: Various
So say we have a climate, and evidence that CO2 is a “greenhouse gas” that in lab conditions is shown to act as such, and the knowledge that we are putting a lot of CO2 in the atmosphere to an extent that CO2 concentrations are changing significantly, and an unexplained temperature rise. In very basic terms I think you’d say that is where the science is at, and everything else is models and projections and “well it must be Co2 as there is nothing else”… but no actual empirical measurements that demonstrate an actual link between CO2 and temperature rises.
Then what would you do to move from pseudo-science to science. Science is about explaining what happens out there in the world. Surely AGW is at minimum a distinct possibility… so what empirical evidence should be looked at? How can you show that it is carbon doing the warming in a direct way? How can you show that the feedbacks will happen, and that glaciers/ice caps will/will-not melt.
I don’t even think you should accept Jo’s Hotspot… after its presence is only modelled… a prediction… so I’m not sure that a clear as day hotspot would count as empirical evidence would it? All it would do is show a hotspot that agreed with a model (and wouldn’t that be convenient I bet CRU made it up!).
So as a scientist, what would you do to move the science from pseudo science to science. After all learning about the atmosphere is certainly a science, not a pseudo science.
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Tom Forrester-Paton: Your last paragraph on the Wrights was spot on. They were very secretive and should have just got on with building and selling airplanes. Their achievements were widely doubted in Europe until they demonstrated their aircraft in France in 1908.
There is a good lesson here in hiding data and methods. Many in the pro AGW camp seem to be unaware of what is happening right now, that their beliefs are being shown to be false.
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Jo, I see that you have decided to attack Robyn Williams, simply for presenting his opinion of the available evidence.
I suppose that is consistent with the general invective you spout at this site, but is he not simply doing what you claim to do – presenting his views?
Of course, attacking a prize-winning and highly popular science journalist is easier than actually doing a science degree and learning enough to be able to competently read the scientific literature about climate change. Not that you have any belief in the value of scientific publication itself.
Sad, but scarcely suprising. Sites like this one will eventually be shut down in future updates to hate crime legislation, as they are well on the way to inciting violence and hatred towards scientists and science communicators.
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I apologise, I see you did actually complete a science degree. Not sure at what point you abandoned the pursuit of scientific reason for politics, but it must have come after you graduated with your various prizes.
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Ben Eltham:
Please elucidate.
What “hate crime”?
What “invective”?
What makes the views of Robyn Williams such religious truth that they cannot be disputed?
As for “inciting violence and hatred towards scientists”, why were you not complaining when I was getting computers destroyed, and Michaels, Tenekes and etc. had their careers trashed, and Tim Ball was getting death threats, and etc.?
Why did you not complain when Hansen proclaimed that those of us who adhere rigidly to science instead of political advocacy should be subject to “Nuremburg Trials”?
What evidence is there for AGW in any scientific literature? After studying the subject for three decades, and having published some of the scientific literature on the subject, I have yet to find – or to be informed of – any such evidence. You claim to know of some evidence for AGW in the scientific literature, and I really would like to know what it is?
Richard
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DaveB: #70
Re ABC Science Show feedback:
The Science Show does allow e-mail feedback via its “Contact us” button along the top of page. The “Have your say” button tell one to use the e-mail page.
In fact at the end of to-day’s Science Show, Robyn Williams invited listeners to do so. He probably prefers comment on a particular program, but many past programs are accessible. So, do have your say!
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Wow,
You really know Mr WIlliams has gone way off the left end of the spectrum when Ben Eltham tries to defend him.
Ben: You are so left of centre, I would suggest you move to North Korea – they’ve been decarbonising for a long time.
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Ben Eltham at 144:
WHAT!!!!
Show me any example on the JoNova site of what you just made up.
Loony Trolls where do they come from!?
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Mark D: The delusional element. Ben needs to back up his claim of “incitement to violence” with a direct quote, or he can apologize for that too.
Hatred of science communicators eh? (And my job title is…)
Ben, we have higher standards of reasoning here.
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Ben Eltham,
I guess all those times I called out Al Gore and James Hansen for their foolishness and worse leaves me inciting to violence. So be it. Now prosecute me!
I’ve just called your bluff. So what are you going to do about it?
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Does anyone know who Ben Eltham is and in what way might he be connected to Professor Quiggin and to Clive Hamilton? Right at this moment he appears to be a lunatic. But if past practice goes to form, we will soon be desensitized to this cultural virus. March 2010, will be the specific date in history when the left lays down and hammers in this historical myth. The historical myth of, in essence a “denialist campaign of harassment and incitement.” We ought to know now that Clive has hatched this plot with at least one other fellow in the ABC.
It began, with not one, but and unprecedented five posts in a row by Clive Hamilton, laying down an entire body of completely ridiculous and delusional lies, which forms a backdrop to what Ben Eltham is saying. I tell you that Ben Eltham grates at the moment. More in shock and surprise then in anger. Ben Eltham come across as an entirely odd fish. But the tenor of these accusations will soon be part of the national ambience.
Bear in mind that Professor Quiggin and Clive Hamilton, once were co-organisers to a petition, that went to pretty much everyone in the economics profession, in either academia or the finance industry. 47 self-selected failed analysts signed the petition organised by Professor Quiggin and Clive Hamilton.
Now Clive is a fool. But I do so wish Professor Quiggin wasn’t a hard leftist. As Louis pointed out he doesn’t understand the scientific method, but once in awhile he makes some decent observations.
Anyhow it is established that the two of them have a familiar line of communication. Now if you think Ben Eltham sounds like some utter lunatic, and he does, check out the often sensible, and once in awhile insightful, Professor Quiggin, over at his own blog.
“Looking over the evidence that is now available, I think there is enough to point to Steven McIntyre as the person, along with the actual hacker or leaker, who bears primary moral responsibility for the crime.”
Always leftist campaigns of this sort roll out in pairs. Forces come in equal and opposite pairs. Likewise these leftist campaigns roll out in such a way as to be doing exactly what they are accusing the right of doing. We see the gist of the new mantra already. It appears that the gist of it is “co-ordianted harassment and incitement”. Which you all may recognize at once with great astonishment, is of course the history of the global warming fraud.
But from now on …. From March 2010 that history will be changed, and small children will be taught that the climate deniers ran a co-ordinated campaign of hate incitement, leading to many deaths and ruined careers.
In the case of McCarthy the witch-hunt against McCarthy and his supporters was rolled out in parallel with a new dispensation which said that matters ran the other way. Instead of McCarthy being the subject of a leftist witch-hunt, the history was laid down that he was co-ordinating a witch-hunt against innocent “liberals” who were doing nothing more than minding their own business, listening to the radio.
Another example of allegedly informed history being laid down at a single moment in time was when Al Gore spoke at “Moveon.org.” Up until then both the Afghanistan and Iraqi invasions had been bitterly opposed on the left. Which would have been alright in my book, had they been opposed for sensible and honest reasons.
But Al Gore laid down the new dispensation to a shocked Moveon.org audience. He determined that the administration ought to be congratulated for their intervention in Afghanistan, but that Iraq, was not merely a bad strategic move. But wrong, illegal, criminal, criminally carried out. And so forth. A different case then that the left made, could be made for at least some of these propositions, one supposes. My point is only to note that the left gets its new strategic marching orders in definite moments in time.
Another example is the campaign kicked off as a result of the collusion between Amy Goodman and Joseph Wilson. What happened is Wilson started a typical leftist campaign, wherein he waged what amounted to psychological warfare to deceive his nation and hurt the war effort. I’m certainly not against an honest pacifism-bias, or campaigns to bring the troop out of harms way, or ideas to do with making ones wars; big and short.
But the subject is leftist campaigns, and the way they usually take on this same structure. So Joseph Wilson and the left wage a campaign of misinformation and lies, in order to deceive the public, for the purpose of hurting the war effort. And what is the mantra and context of that campaign? Its that the Bush administration was waging a war of misinformation and lies, for the purpose of deceiving the public, and that this deception would wind up hurting the national interest.
But Wilson was posing as a patriot. So he deflected his criticism onto Karl Rove and Dick Chaney. Because he was affecting to be MR REPUBLICAN and pretending that he had this notion of the President as HIS PERSONAL commander in chief.
Anyway him and Amy Goodman colluded in this matter. What happened is Joe Wilson went around to all these radical meetings to get the momentum up, gut staying under the radar of the mainstream media. And Goodman would feature Wilson on her radio/video show. Often an excellent show by the way. But she never once had him on as a guest. Although he was a feature of her show leading up to the launching of the new mantra. See he was always ON THE SHOW, but there was no fully provable evidence let to slip through, that Amy Goodman and Joseph Wilson, had met and discussed things. PLAUSIBLE DENIABILITY.
Joseph went around stirring up the radical types about this alleged friend of his, who had found out that the administration had lied about 14 words in the State Of the Union Address. This all under the radar. Then later with faux-drama he announced “it was me.” Anyway he lied about everything. He was the first person, to lie on TV, massively more extensively then Bill Clinton.
On Amy’s show, every-time she went to a break she repeated this mantra about the 14 words being a lie. Actually the 14 words were truthful in every way. Literally truthful. True in spirit. The honest truth of it. That was enough to get marxists, on methodone or otherwise, strategically laying down this mantra on blogs, many times every day.
This is a lengthy explanation but my point is this. Clive claimed a co-ordinated campaign of harassment …. We therefore must assume a co-ordinated campaign of harassment, since this is how these things work. If Clive isn’t planning harassment, what he is doing instead, is trying to white-wash the last ten years of harassment against global warming empiricists, by laying down an alternative history.
When Clive first claimed there was a co-ordinated campaign, it struck you all at first as lunacy. You will soon be desensitized to it, as the leftist projectionist campaign is rolled out.
To my knowledge, I’m the only one who has sent nasty emails to people like Clive, Monbiot and Karoly. There is no co-ordination on this side, and the way things work, the accusation of co-ordination is a white-wash for the co-ordination on the left side.
The other thing to note is that repetition by a well-known leftist icon on the left is the code to what the new mantra/campaign will be about. This particular conspiracy required Clive to be given and unprecedented access to 5 posts in a row on an ABC blog. So if matters are true to form it took one or more radical leftists in the ABC, to allow the ABC to be a forum, for Clives new mirroring campaign of lies.
It would certainly be nice to know who lobbied for the decision to give Clive access to 5 posts in more or less 5 days. If you have ever heard leftists accusing various people of coded words and wolf-whistles wonder no more. Its their standard operating procedure of leftist projection. The campaign goes out clothed in mirroring. This is how they work time and again.
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Graeme,
I found the timing to be far too coincidental as well – right from when Clives first post was made. The Trolls at the ABC unleashed have an air of being paid or at least of having a vested interest. I did post a request the other day asking if any of them worked for the ABC – and if so, why my taxes were paying for them to do this, but my post never made it up. It was not an abusive post or anything either.
I think the turning point was with penny wongs diatribe late last month, and I fear the Govt is involved. They have a lot riding on this, and unfortunately the public have not been put in a position to get the facts yet, so the opposition party is not in a position to stand up without getting pilloried.
In general, I think they’re just hanging out waiting for something to come out from the reviews that they can then broadcast on “Their” ABC.
I have definitely noticed the Tap being turned on over the past 6 weeks which leads me to conclude the response is contrived and organised (and probably funded). I think in the new year they decided that hiding the news from the public wasn’t going to be enough, so their smear campaign has been put into gear.
We saw a similar smear thing happen with peter spencer late last year also.
I just hope my tax dollars aren’t paying for it – oh wait, it is, it funds THEIR ABC. Sorry, silly me.
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Now we see this business coalescing we may be pleasantly surprised if nothing comes out of it and they back off now and stop trying to victimise Stephen McIntyre or anyone else.
I’m so sick of it. Its not funny anymore. If I ever had a sense of humour about it, then it stopped when Jennifer mysteriously didn’t get her contract renewed and me thinking I might be to blame.
A VERY STERN WARNING OUGHT TO GET OUT THERE.
I say the word ought to go out for these people to back off this one time. Which is not to say that the ABC particularly ought not be investigated over Clives 5 posts. I’ve seen these co-ordinated campaigns of intimidation and mirroring so many times before, and I’m not the least bit interested in seeing another example of it.
Bear in mind that when Clive started this attempt to lay down a disgustingly slanderous version of history, he cannot have expected the spirited defense and counterattack that people around here managed to come back with. He’s not the Prince Of Darkness. He’s just a very stupid and naughty person with all sorts of Quixotic scams on the fly. And he may be persuaded to lay low, and not try and spread these poisonous lies, if he feels that this attempt to harrass people, incite people, and change history, is a losing cause.
So my answer would be to ask everyone to man ABC unleashed at all times. With a view to stop this campaign that Ben Eltham seems to be a part of, before it fully gets started. Its better for all parties, that the culprits give it away, before wading waste-deep in this lying muck. And I for one reserve the right to not forgive them for trying it on. But then again life is short. And there is a tendency to simply forget and look the other way, when some past abuse and maliciousness is no longer a live issue.
If any of you are up for it, it would not be a bad idea to warn any of the known culprits outright.
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Ms Nova,
this reads kinda like I am delusional. I hope that is unintended?
I might be messed up but delusional? 🙁
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Mark D.: Post 155,
Mark, maybe Jo meant “illusional”…Oops! Well maybe not! No Mark, Joanne was refering to Ben’s statement, not you…your safe but stay on the Raft! You don’t know when “The Shark” might appear! 😉 By the way, where is he?? Must be playing “Lawyer” today!
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Sorry Mark – No I was replying to you about your comment on trolls “Loony Trolls where do they come from!?”. I could have framed that better.
I suspect there is a delusional element. The lack of reasoning appears to be pathological.
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“Jo, I see that you have decided to attack Robyn Williams, simply for presenting his opinion of the available evidence.”
Is that not indictment enough Eltham? You really are a failed analyst you know. Eltham has just expressed admiration for Clive Hamilton on my blog. I was intrigued by the human potential for this level of stupid. So I googled Ben’s work. But I’m finding he just basically reviews other peoples books and articles. And so far seldom, if ever, writes a thread or an article straight.
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“Sad, but scarcely suprising. Sites like this one will eventually be shut down in future updates to hate crime legislation, as they are well on the way to inciting violence and hatred towards scientists and science communicators.”
This lunatic meme of incitement so far is being pushed by Clive Hamilton, Quiggin and Eltham. Hopefully it doesn’t get off the ground. But we who cannot see behind closed doors or tap phones, have to assume collusion. Since the meme is just insane. So the likelihood of three people coming up with it in the same month is pretty low.
Quiggin and Eltham are both members of the same think-tank. There’s a link there. The centre for policy development. And of course Quiggin and Clive James were the two who organised that crazy petition. The one 47 real dummies signed up to. We must not assume that the enemies of liberty do not use stealth. This is another of those memes they’ve pummeled into the public consciousness.
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Ben Eltham:
March 13th, 2010 at 12:31 pm
Well, let’s review the bidding regarding “violence and hatred” …
So you can take your false accusations against Joanne and compress them until they exceed the Schwarzschild Limit and are sucked into your black hole. Your heros are the ones counselling violence and hatred. After you deal with that, you can preach to us. Until then, it’s just simple garden variety hypocrisy.
w.
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Willis,
The information at your fingertips is so apt, so well referenced, so brief, and so devastating.
The bullies accuse us of bullying.
Those on the team who earn billions, accuse us of taking money.
Those who repeat illogical error after error, tell us we can’t think.
Those who don’t know what evidence is, think we don’t have any.
Those who deny the obvious, call us deniers.
Thanks Willis. You are doing a great job 🙂
Jo
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Willis Eschenbach: Post 160,
Mr. Eschenbach, I commend your words of insightfulness and wisdom…I enjoy your articles and you a great asset towards the “truth” in Science and it’s community. I must say…cudo’s for those “well spoken words”. “Thank You” and may “God Bless You All” for the work that’s being and getting acknowledged!
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One thing I’ve observed with the likes of Ben Eltham and his fellow travellers is their inability to actually think cogently and independently – Ludwig Von Mises, Padraic McGuinness and Keith Windschuttle, to name three, were statists during their youth but blessed with intelligence soon rejected those philosophies for which they have been subsequently demonised by the travellers they left behind in thier surreal world of post modernism and moral relativism. The likes of Quiggin, Williams, Hamilton etc seem not to have learnt how to think but surely do know what to think, and they seem to do so with a mean spiritedness that is frightening – especially the recent comments made by Richard Dawkins, Robyn Williams reported a few days go on Andrew Bolt’s blog.
This is but the beginning folks, and it’s going to get worse before it gets better.
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Louis Hissink @163
Louis, you are correct in the first half but I’m afraid the second half may be too optimistic……..
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“The likes of Quiggin, Williams, Hamilton etc seem not to have learnt how to think but surely do know what to think, and they seem to do so with a mean spiritedness that is frightening …”
Its a real shame in the case of Quiggin. Its just as you told him Louis. He simply doesn’t understand the scientific method. So that once he’s bigoted against something there is no swimming his way out of it. Apart from Quiggin the rest of them appear to be congenital dropkicks. They must have found to their surprise that being a loopy leftist was all they needed to get the promotion.
It makes one wonder how successful one might have been if one were born a psychopath. You know you could subtly make dumb-leftist intellectuals feel good about themselves and their stupid ideas, and all these doors would open for you. Every bugger around the world would be calling you a genius. Yet no University in the US would give Hayek and the even more brilliant Mises a salaried job. They let them hang around and use a room here and there. This to me shows us that while egalitarianism is acceptable and especially in transition, we cannot put up with government funding of education. Its just too big a crime to have left Mises out in the cold like that. Government funded education had its chance, and blew it, and it ought never get it back.
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[…] slipperiness of Robyn Williams with his unrepentant record of bias on the global warming industry. Jo Nova has a similar plea about Williams’ abdication of responsibility as a science journalis… Robyn Williams is a good man who would be horrified to know that he is not defending the planet, […]
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Who remembers when it was the media that was sceptical and the public that was gullible? Seems the other way round nowadays?
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Only read this article now. I find Robyn Williams infuriating, especially after his appearance on The Swindle Debate hosted by Tony Jones. I must say your measured and respectful appraisal of Williams’ contribution is a model of restraint, and is rather inspiring. Much more effective than a more caustic dismantling of the man’s failures.
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