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Robin Williams is supposedly one of Australia’s top science communicators. He, and the ABC, continue to support ad hominems, name-calling, and are running scared of a real scientific debate. Williams will not allow skeptics to explain their views on his show, except in comments on stories, and then apparently, even that was too much, and a raging thread (for the Science Show) mysteriously disappeared for days when it got too hot. BobFJ has been dedicated in tracking it, and keeping the pressure on the anti-science pronouncements of Williams et al. Here we have all the fun of the so called “Science” Show meeting the author of Un-Skeptical-Science, with half-truths and irrelevancies broadcast across the continent thanks to the taxpayers of Australia. — JoNova
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Guest Post by Bob Fernley-Jones (aka Bob_FJ)
In addition to regular readers of Jo Nova, those familiar with John Cook’s misleadingly titled website “Skeptical Science” may be shocked by what follows. Some will also likely recall Jo’s article; Robyn Williams shreds the tenets of science. It largely covered the awful Robyn Williams interview of Bob Ward of 2/Oct/2010, and resulted in strong ridicule of the ABC going viral around the world. Well, lo […]
By Jo Nova
A new paper tries to clean up the chicken entrail decrees of Mark Lynas (and earlier of John Cook) and concludes that their methodology is so bad, a 99.85% consensus could just as easily have been 32%.
All the papers in between 32 and 99% were neutral on the cause of man-made climate catastrophes, but Lynas et al bundled them in with the believer pack and made hay in the global media. This was even though many of the “neutral” papers showed results that didn’t fit the consensus. But who cares about results eh? If an abstract was neutral, it was therefore a “sign” the authors believed — like reading their tea leaves, or laying out the entrails. (Either that or it was a sign scientists who question the dogma get sacked, lose funding, and get uninvited to laboratory barbeques, but, shh! We won’t mention that.) So Lynas assumes that as long as a scientist doesn’t specifically say they disagree, they de facto endorse the “consensus”.
Why do people who call themselves scientists even talk about a “consensus”?
Obviously if believers had evidence, they’d talk about that instead.
Dentelski et al do an admirable job of pointing […]
By Jo Nova
Can cows shrink deserts?
Allan Savoury is a farmer from Zimbabwe who used to believe that livestock were destroying the land. He still believes the CO2 scary narrative, but even despite all that, he’s an ecologist who now argues we need large herds moving nomadically to stop desertification.
Years ago he was one of the scientists advising the Zimbabwe government to get rid of lifestock to save the land. In a great moment of ecology they even shot 14,000 elephants for land restoration which didn’t work. That was the saddest blunder of my life, he says. And when he went to the US he found national parks were desertifying too even though they had not had livestock on them. “Clearly we didn’t understand what was driving desertification”. He now claims that the soil of grasslands ends up encrusted with algae, which leads to water runoff and evaporation “and that is the cancer that leads to desertification”.
I’m sure cows don’t change the climate either way, but this sure flies in the face of the idea that livestock create deserts and eating meat destroys the land.
h/t to Notalotofpeopleknowthat
Cows are the missing link?
He points out […]
Rafe Champion guest post
I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had. Michael Crichton
The 97% consensus on catastrophic human-induced climate warming is one of the great PR coups of all time, demonstrating the effectiveness of The Big Lie for propaganda purposes. Cook’s 2013 paper became a springboard, coming strategically before the Paris COP, for Barack Obama and John Kerry to achieve a face-saving but meaningless result at the event. It was the rejoinder to the leaked emails from East Anglia that sank the Copenhagan COP.
It became the “go to” rejoinder and the killer argument in every private discussion and public debate – “I am just following the science.” Commentators and public service advisors use it to intimidate politicians […]
Here’s the long-awaited followup to Part 1: The history of the Climate Debate from 1850 -2008, where history is tragedy reënacted as comedy, adapted for irony and syndicated as sarcasm. By Brad Keyes from Climate Nuremberg (whose motto is Deride And Conquer). — Jo
Guest Post by Brad Keyes 2009 Documents liberated in the so-called Climategate leaks don’t show any impropriety on The Scientists’™ part whatsoever, which is why 19 independent inquiries are held to make sure.* Glaciergate happens Using nothing but schoolboy logic and denier logic, voodoo scientists identify a false prediction in IPCC AR4. Citing something called the scientific method, fundamentalist Feynmanites point out that if the IPCC’s prediction was wrong, its hypothesis must be wrong. Jubilation worldwide as the Intergovernmental Panel decides to hold onto its apocalyptic hypothesis anyway. After a lifetime questioning the claims of pea-thimbling ghost-realtors, evolution-denying WMD-existers, telekinetic psychopaths and telepathic psychokines, James Randi suddenly turns his back on everything Skepticism stands for by questioning The Science™. Skeptic authorities take the 87-year-old legend aside for a quiet chat about CAGW and, 24 hours later, Randi has freely accepted how silly he was to doubt something so rock-solid that no other Skeptic with a capital […]
On the Eastern side of the country the new skeptical Senator, Malcolm Roberts is on Q & A.
Monday, 15 August 2016
Greg Hunt – Minister for Industry, Innovation & Science Linda Burney – Shadow Minister for Human Services Brian Cox – Particle Physicist and TV Presenter Lily Serna – Mathematician and TV Presenter Malcolm Roberts – One Nation Senator-elect for Qld
As usual it is 6 against 1 the skeptical views that 54% of Australians share. Glaciers will form in hell before the ratio on the ABC would run 1:6 the other way. For Groupthinkers it’s very important that the group discussing a “controversial” topic agrees with each other. This neutralizes any damaging effects of hearing a lone voice put forward counter arguments.
John Cook has sent in a Question about empirical evidence.
Cook points at “less heat escaping to space” – Jo says –this doesn’t mean anything. We assume he means less heat escapes at certain frequencies (which he should have said). Sections of the outgoing spectrum are missing (e.g. Harries et al), which shows that CO2 is stopping some outgoing radiation and is a greenhouse gas (and we knew that already), […]
UPDATE: A new ABC version of this story asks if it is a sackable offence for an energy company chairman to send an email praising The Skeptics Handbook years in the past before he was appointed? NSW Labor thinks so.
Click to download the PDF
The NSW Labor spokesman for Energy, Adam Searle, has described Mr Massy-Greene’s stance as “disturbing” and is calling for him to clarify his views or resign.
“If he is a climate change skeptic then his position as chair of publicly owned electricity businesses is untenable”, says Mr Searle.
“If Mr Massy-Green won’t resign, the Baird Government, which appointed him, needs to sack him.”
Amazing. Just to have ever sent an email praising the skeptics handbook years before he was appointed.
Are you now, or have you ever been a skeptic?
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Streisand Effect coming
Nearly 7 years ago Roger Massy-Greene sent an email around to around 200 VIP’s with a link to the Skeptics Handbook saying “the best piece I have seen on global warming, and helps to explain what has so far been a very confusing debate.” Mr Massy-Greene later became chairman of […]
History buff: Cook, who believes in learning from the great men of the past, dresses up as a beloved figure from the golden age of Consensus Science.
This timeline, like the climate debate, is best taken with whiskey. Strictly for climate-tragics, it’s layered deep, well aged, and may not make any sense at all. It’s art. It’s been a looong time coming (the second longest draft post ever under development on this blog). Thanks to Brad Keyes. Smile :- ). — Jo
Introduction by J. Cook
The great Hoofnagle Brothers define climate Menshevism as a trick to ‘create the illusion of debate.’
Opponents of the climate don’t even need to win the debate—though they usually do—they just need the audience to think we’re debating. (Which is why we must never, ever do so.)
Please enjoy as Brad Keyes, my boss at Climate Nuremberg, looks back on some of the most colorful, least edifying moments in a decades-long debate that never happened.
— J. Cook Twisted Tree Heartrot Hill 2016
_________________ c. 1850 AD Fossil fuel revolution begins Environmentalists hail the switch to alternative energies—coal, natural […]
This example below shows the dangers of cherry picked and buried data. It shows how great news and joy can be reported from rancid results, and the only protection against this is open access. When the taxpayer funds research that is not fully and transparently public, and immediately available, the people are funding PR rather than science. “Peer review” does little to stop this, little to clean up the mess after it happens, and the truth can take years to be set free.
Ten percent of teenagers taking an anti-depressant harmed themselves or attempted suicide. This was ten times the rate of the teens on the placebo. The results of this clinical trial were published in 2001, but those alarming statistics were not reported. The drug went on to be widely used. A new reanalysis of the data, reported in the BMJ, revealed the dark and hidden dangers. The company that funded the research, Glaxo Smith Kline, has already faced record fines of $4.2 billion. The Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry won’t retract the paper.
There are many ways to hide data. In this case, the results of the trial include 80,000 records which were […]
“What data?” David Suzuki on Q&A 2013
It’s a science debate, and Suzuki pops up again, as he does periodically, with innuendo, namecalling and feets of logic. (He’s reasoning with both feet.) He’s not even offering well researched ad hom attacks. They’re not only irrelevant and unscientific, they’re wrong too.
On June 18, Suzuki told us that irrational attacks diminished the debate. On Sept 1, Suzuki is firing fallacies, no data, no research, no reasoning.
David Suzuki, National Observer: Deniers are all over the map; climate realists all over the world
He laments that political leaders are not gullibly swept away (as he is) by baseless rumours, ad hominem attacks and articles in The Guardian. I can’t think why myself, but Suzuki explains, with his science guru hat on, that there is an”enormous” amount of fossil fuel funding, which is also secretive and unrevealed. I guess he’s putting his psychic powers to the test. Who needs evidence or sources anymore?
Suzuki really unleashes his full fantasy ad hom. Fossil fuels are funding practically every player in the US, UK and Canada: Heartland, GWPF, ICSC. Even the unfunded, volunteer run, Watts Up is an “industry funded website” – I bet […]
The book Merchants of Doubt, by Naomi Oreskes, was made into a box office bomb (it crashed). But, darkly, it has an ongoing life in our schools. Tony Thomas uncovers the push to put propaganda in front of children, dressed up as education. The director of the film tells the world that his aim is to stop skeptics from being broadcast on TV. (Because that’s what you do when you can’t win a fair debate eh?)
This film was never about science, but about doing exactly what it claims to “expose”. (It’s projection all the way down.) The real merchants of doubt are those that seed doubts about honest whistleblower scientists, using character assassination, namecalling, tenuous associations, innuendo and allusion instead of scientific arguments. They don’t find a scientific fault in anything skeptics say, but resort to twenty year old false tobacco smears.
What we need are resources for teachers to help students critically analyze propaganda like this. How do children spot what isn’t said? What clues do we see in this movie that reveal its anti-science, political nature? Is it that they don’t let their skeptic targets talk about climate science at all? Readers suggestions are welcome. How do […]
If psychologists want to be taken seriously, and want psychology to be called “a science”, they need to elect a director who knows what science is.
Executive Director: Professor Lyn Littlefield OAM FAPS
The Climate Study group in Australia published a half page advert in The Australian last week – Psychology and Climate Alarm: how fear and anxiety trump evidence. In reply, Prof Lyn Littlefield, Executive Director of the Australian Psychology Society wrote a letter to The Australian protesting — claiming that the Climate Study Group are the ones suffering from the confirmation bias they accuse climate scientists of.
“The advertisement, ‘Psychology and the New Climate Storm’ misuses psychology-based arguments to add credibility to myths and misinformation about climate change. In doing so, the authors illustrate aptly the very error bias (confirmation bias) they are erroneously attributing to the climate science community.”
It’s the “the pot calling the kettle black”, exclaims Littlefield. But since her arguments are entirely fallacies, this is the kettle calling the pot calling the kettle black. The Climate Study Group mentioned many scientific observations, and in reply Lyn Littlefield can’t find an error in any of them, she can only cite “the consensus”. […]
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I used to think there was a consensus among government-funded certified climate scientists, but a better study by Verheggen Strengers, Verheegen, and Vringer shows even that is not true.[1] The “97% consensus” is now 43%.
Finally there is a decent survey on the topic, and it shows that less than half of what we would call “climate scientists” who research the topic and for the most part, publish in the peer reviewed literature, would agree with the IPCC’s main conclusions. Only 43% of climate scientists agree with the IPCC “95%” certainty.
More than 1800 international scientists studying various aspects of climate change (including climate physics, climate impacts, and mitigation) responded to the questionnaire. Some 6550 people were invited to participate in this survey, which took place in March and April 2012. Respondents were picked because they had authored articles with the key words ‘global warming’ and/or ‘global climate change’, covering the 1991–2011 period, via the Web of Science, or were included the climate scientist database assembled by Jim Prall, or just by a survey of peer reviewed climate science articles. Prall’s database includes some 200 names that have criticized mainstream science and about half had only published in […]
Big Oil knows no bounds. Not only can it derail governments, and thwart the UN, World Bank, and IMF but now it may be sending out climate death squads to assassinate Arctic Ice Experts. These expert hit squads apparently push people down stairs, run them off the road, and strike them down with lightning. Lightning! (That is one mother of aTesla Coil.) James Bond could learn something. Q, where are you?
Prof Wadhams at Cambridge has been the go-to man for Arctic scare stories across the UK (h/t Delingpole). In 2012, Wadhams predicted Arctic Sea Ice was set to collapse in just four years. Last year, after years of a relentlessly surviving Arctic, even some alarmists threw Wadham under the bus, (so to speak) as being too “extremist”. But now he’s topped that.
You see, in January 2013 there were four leading Arctic experts in the UK, now there is one, and he is very very worried.
No, seriously, you can’t make this up. Let’s try to imagine how much more profitable Big Oil would be if every single Arctic climate expert in the World was dead. (Count the zeros…)
The utter futility of it all escapes Wadhams. After a […]
Matt Ridley has produced the shortest whole, killer summary of the sordid state of climate science, science journalism, and science associations for Quadrant magazine. This is the ideal single-chapter-length-work to bring in anyone who missed the last twenty years of clima-farce, scandal, hubris and hypocrisy.
Matt is not just summing up the way his career as a science writer has transformed, but also writing the best review of the IPA book “Climate Change: The Facts” that I have yet seen. He talks about the way science writers used to ignore the papers that didn’t impress them, and leave it up to the scientists to take them apart, but now the supposedly most esteemed scientists stay silent while abject failures not only get published in the scientific world, but get absurdly lauded in the media, and tweeted by “the President”. Formerly great scientific institutions have turned themselves inside out:
“The Royal Society once used to promise “never to give their opinion, as a body, upon any subject”. Its very motto is “nullius in verba”: take nobody’s word for it. Now it puts out catechisms of what you must believe in. “
Matt’s career, like mine, started with faith that […]
The Australian Medical Association is a powerful union here, and the AMA President, Brian Owler, is an outspoken advocate of the need for more action to change the climate, calling it “intergenerational theft” if we don’t do something. (Apparently we care for our kids by spending billions of their dollars now on schemes to fix the weather. If that’s not stealing, what is? )
Apparently the AMA are surveying their members to prepare for their big political climate statement. Christopher Monckton has the questions (and the correct answers) below. My message is that the climate models are wrong, and that thousands of scientists, including most engineers and geologists and even half of meteorologists are skeptical of the exaggerated forecasts. Carbon dioxide has a small effect which is magnified in models with guesses about humidity and clouds that we know are wrong. Australian doctors have a great reputation that will be tarnished if they are seen as using their trusted position to score unscientific and political points.
Though if the AMA did come out as “Doctors for the Planet” raging against carbon, I look forward to John Cook’s announcement that their opinion is irrelevant because they have no expertise in climate […]
Who’s desperate to find the missing hot-spot? Sherwood’s new paper claims to have found it, but after years of multi-layered adjustments, and now kriging the gaps, and iteratively homogenizing, the results of the new data partly “solve” one problem while creating others. There’s no documented, physical reason for the homogenizing and there’s no new insight gained. The raw data was used by airlines, the military, and meteorologists for years, yet the suggested new results are quite different to the raw data. It’s as if we can’t even measure air temperature properly. Somehow we’ve made multivariate complex models work but not simple temperature sensors? The main problem with the old results was that they didn’t fit the models. Now, after torturing the data, they still don’t.
Twenty-eight million weather balloons had shown by 1999 that the key assumption in the climate models was wrong. Without feedbacks, the models only produce 1.2°C of warming with a doubling of CO2. With feedbacks the simulations ramp that up to a dangerous 3 – 4 degrees C, and water vapor was the most important feedback. It’s just no fun for the Global Worriers without it.
No hotspot = no water vapor feedback […]
Guest Post By Tony Thomas*
A keen student, I have just completed Week One of John Cook’s MOOC at Queensland University: “Denial 101x – Making Sense of Climate Science Denial.”
A MOOC is a Massive Online Open Course, and Cook’s course has 13,000 students so far. He is a Climate Communication Fellow for the Global Change Institute at the University and author of the notorious 2013 study purporting to find a 97% climate consensus in the science literature.
One normally gets a buzz from study. But my brain needs a shower and scrub to feel clean again.
I was not intending to write about my studies so early, in case that got me prematurely expelled. But one week of it is enough.
For example, in case I forget elements of Cook’s denialist ideation, he provides an acronym FLICC. This covers Fake experts, Logical fallacies, Impossible expectations, Cherry picking and Conspiracy theories.
Worse is in store. Cook says, “Next week’s interviews are equally exciting, as we speak to Phil Jones from the University of East Anglia…” Jones is the author of “pretty awful emails” (his words) in Climategate. Other stars in the Cook course firmament will be Michael “Hockey-stick” Mann and […]
UPDATE: What an extraordinary moment. UWA has announced that due to the unexpected “passion” of the staff and students they have to cancel the Lomborg Consensus Centre (May 8th 2015). They give no rational reason — this is caving in to bullies. The government needs to fund this centre as an independent unit. Academia in Australia is beyond saving. “Lomborg commits the unforgivable sin of failing to feed friends of big-government.”
Bjorn Lomborg writes in The Australian reasonably often, so he is fairly well known amongst the thinking set in Australia.
The Consensus Centre is coming to UWA, my old alma mater, and former home of Steven Lewandowsky, and PhD candidate John Cook. Strange company indeed. It is promising that something rational will probably come forth from UWA for a change. It’s also promising that the Abbott government seems to recognise the need to break the monopoly in funding by a small amount. The choice of UWA might not be as outlandish as people think. It is as politically as pathetically correct as any university, but it doesn’t have a major climate gravy train. Their climate science courses page says it all — they only have a generic […]
(Click to start voting)
Voting closes on Sunday, and there are lots of great sites to vote for.
I know voting is a bit of an effort, but if you get a lot from a site, it’s a way to say thanks. Awards are useful for bloggers — and it means blogs you like can reach a wider audience.
It’s already a success to be listed and linked as a finalist. Thanks to those who nominated and voted in that round.
For 2015 I’ll be voting for The Pickering Post in Australia-NZ, Steyn Online in Most Humorous, and Breitbart in Politics (though American Thinker is also a great site). I’ll have to choose (darn) between Not a Lot of People Know That, and No Tricks Zone in Europe; Tallbloke’s Talkshop and Climate Audit in Lifetime Achievement and Watts Up and Real Science in Weblog of the Year.
To make your vote count you do need to supply an email, check it, and confirm. See below for instructions if you need them.
How topical is climate science? In the last year 600,000 people visited this site. When Tony Abbott faced a leadership crisis last month his main competitor was an […]
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JoNova A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).
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