Dr. Spencer’s essay below reminds me of this famous cartoon:
Over at Lucia’s she wrote a post saying I had banged the Godwin’s Law “gong” by comparing the PNAS skeptic list paper as “stasi-esque”. For people that don’t know, the Stasi were the secret police of East Germany, post WWII, and post Nazism. So Stasi-esque doesn’t qualify for Godwins Law. They were famous for making lists of people and their associations, to use later for what could only be described as nefarious purposes. Their list making (like the skeptic list used for the PNAS paper) is what is the parallel here.
As for yellow badges, here’s what I’d like to see all skeptics wear. Maybe somebody can come up with a theme variation specific to climate skeptics.
We don’t need the negativism that is being fostered elsewhere.
Dr. Spencer has some interesting comments in his post below. – Anthony
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The Global Warming Inquisition Has Begun
by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
A new “study” has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) which has examined the credentials and publication records of climate scientists who are global warming skeptics versus those who accept the “tenets of anthropogenic climate change”.
Not surprisingly, the study finds that the skeptical scientists have fewer publications or are less credentialed than the marching army of scientists who have been paid hundreds of millions of dollars over the last 20 years to find every potential connection between fossil fuel use and changes in nature.
After all, nature does not cause change by itself, you know.
The study lends a pseudo-scientific air of respectability to what amounts to a black list of the minority of scientists who do not accept the premise that global warming is mostly the result of you driving your SUV and using incandescent light bulbs.
There is no question that there are very many more scientific papers which accept the mainstream view of global warming being caused by humans. And that might account for something if those papers actually independently investigated alternative, natural mechanisms that might explain most global warming in the last 30 to 50 years, and found that those natural mechanisms could not.
As just one of many alternative explanations, most of the warming we have measured in the last 30 years could have been caused by a natural, 2% decrease in cloud cover. Unfortunately, our measurements of global cloud cover over that time are nowhere near accurate enough to document such a change.
But those scientific studies did not address all of the alternative explanations. They couldn’t, because we do not have the data to investigate them. The vast majority of them simply assumed global warming was manmade.
I’m sorry, but in science a presupposition is not “evidence”.
Instead, anthropogenic climate change has become a scientific faith. The fact that the very first sentence in the PNAS article uses the phrase “tenets of anthropogenic climate change” hints at this, since the term “tenet” is most often used when referring to religious doctrine, or beliefs which cannot be proved to be true.
So, since we have no other evidence to go on, let’s pin the rap on humanity. It just so happens that’s the position politicians want, which is why politics played such a key role in the formation of the IPCC two decades ago.
The growing backlash against us skeptics makes me think of the Roman Catholic Inquisition, which started in the 12th Century. Of course, no one (I hope no one) will be tried and executed for not believing in anthropogenic climate change. But the fact that one of the five keywords or phrases attached to the new PNAS study is “climate denier” means that such divisive rhetoric is now considered to be part of our mainstream scientific lexicon by our country’s premier scientific organization, the National Academy of Sciences.
Surely, equating a belief in natural climate change to the belief that the Holocaust slaughter of millions of Jews and others by the Nazis never occurred is a new low for science as a discipline.
The new paper also implicitly adds most of the public to the black list, since surveys have shown dwindling public belief in the consensus view of climate change.
At least I have lots of company.
The blogger co-author of the PNAS paper has apparently received an email from someone on the Stasi’s list. So I guess even folks on the Stasi’s list don’t like the idea of the blogger’s list.
http://birdbrainscan.blogspot.com/
I was enjoying the article until you slipped in a knock on the Catholic church. Please exercise your skepticism as diligently here as you do toward climate change. If you would prefer to stop believing what “everyone knows” and educate yourself about the Inquisition, I recommend this site (with which I have no affiliation):
http://insidecatholic.com/Joomla/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3481&Itemid=48
I’m sure you understand how frustrating it can be when political maneuvering has shut down the truth, and lies begin to be repeated without any questioning.
So let me get this straight… for decades government has thrown billions at climate scientists who seek to find links between human behviour and global warming, who inevitably publish their results. This paper miraculously announces that the weight of publication numbers favours those who support this hypothesis.
This is remarkable!
Should the predictions of doom be found to be wanting, it will give credibility to the “deniers”, and hence to the term, with the (undesirable) side effect that the phrase “holocaust denier” will lose a lot of its negative connotation.
I hope they understand this, and are happy to accept that consequence.
I completely agree with you Dr Spencer. Could I add that the term “convinced” is a very subjective term. As in “Are the scientists convinced that CO2 and only CO2 are the cause of the current warming” or that “Scientists are convinced that with current data, CO2 is probably the cause”. How convinced are they and of what exactly? Does this mean that their minds will never be changed even if evidence presents itself (Scientific heresy).
I am viewing this PNAS paper and the following discussions as an attempt to turn back the clock to when the team was winning the debate with the public. They need a do-over. LOL
I warned a while back that after a little time out dressing climategate up in tinsel manbearpig would soon be back to its old ways. It’s become second nature – they simply can’t help themselves.
I noticed that one “Kafbst” was indignant over a supposed slight against the Catholic Church. I was born and raised a Catholic until I could read and understand history. The Catholic Church is the farthest thing from Christianity save, maybe, Islam. The Church in no manner follows the teachings of Christ or the Bible. Since you’re so fond of recommending reading, I’d advise you to read William Manchester’s “A World Lit Only by Fire.” In my opinion he is kind to Catholic readers when detailing the pedophilia and and incestuous behavior of Catholic hierarchy at the end of the Dark Ages, which, and I speak from firsthand knowledge, still continues in many forms today.
REPLY: I’m allowing this post, as it replies to one already approved, but no more discussion of religious issues. All further posts of this nature will not be approved – A
How can one not think of the slippery slope to tyranny
On slippery slope to tyranny? Sowell answers…
http://babalublog.com/2010/06/on-slippery-slope-to-tyranny-sowell-answers/
So science must go as well.
Perhaps if the Stassi/Holocaust/religion connotations are on the nose, we would be better off comparing this with McCarthy? I had better check to see if there is a sceptic hiding under my bed*!
* In reality this would be tricky, given that it is a waterbed.
Bulldust —- Two thumbs up.
Pay more in taxes to the government, so scientists paid by government grants can pretend to control the weather. What could go wrong with that.
Hey I wonder why they don’t show where all those non-approved scientists are wrong? Sounds a lot like stacking the deck. And here I thought all we wanted was the truth.
Just like the Inquisition was a group of fascists that hijacked a good and tolerant religion during the plague- and famine-ridden devastation of the Dark Ages, so it is with climate science, where true science is being (I like to think attempting to be-) hijacked by the CAGW warm-earthers. The inquisitors were very anti-Christian people who persecuted normal believers in the name of the church.
I find it so fascinating that the high priest, Gore, has no degree in science, but in Divinity, and his minion, Pachauri, has a degree in coal steam engine trains.
I find it interesting, also, that the warm-earthers’ methods have and will cause worldwide famines, perhaps causing a second Dark Age, as the earth laughs, and cools.
Given Prall’s self described job description, I’m as every bit qualified to discuss climate science and the scientists involved as he is in that we essentially hold the same position at our places of employment. I don’t happen to use my employers website to further my personal agenda, but I’d probably be more appropriate if I did.
Anthony, the obvious insult to the intelligence of not only you, Dr. Spencer, and the rest of the list of almost 500, but to the general public also, warrants a response that probably won’t be associated with roses and sunshine. The reason there is a mechanism in the human response that evokes anger is because civility doesn’t get the point across. It is sad, but nonetheless, true.
I wrote PNAS about their standards, I got a “thanks for calling” response several hours later. Any person involved in IT would have (as Prall purports to be, I have no reason to doubt him.) taken the
extraeffort to ensure his/her data reflected reality. It is what we do. From data to tables to communications, it is what people like me do. I get asked for reports on a regular basis, it would be simple for me to change the outcome of the reports, but it isn’t what I do, nor should anyone else in my profession engage in. Mr. Prall’s efforts were so comprehensive that he actually included a dead person on his list. Perhaps that wasn’t the criteria, but then if that were to be true, how far back does he go?All that said, and I could go on, in deference to you, I’ll say, 🙂
Cheers.
Might is right? Or is right might?
I think we should get the data of what’s really happening on tv more. Maybe a showing of The Great Global Warming Swindle in the U.S. would help turn the tide even harder against the great global warming monstrosity.
Bulldust says:
June 22, 2010 at 6:23 pm
I had better check to see if there is a sceptic hiding under my bed*!
There isn’t because there isn’t any room left with that missing Kevin Trenberth heat and that eroded Arctic ice volume hiding there.
Re: Kafbst
I didn’t see a knock against the Catholic Church. Simply likening the current situation to the medieval inquisitions undertaken by the Catholic Church. I read the article you linked to and even it agrees that the Catholic church believed heretics to be lost sheep who had to confess and atone for their sins. The point is they felt the need to go out and try and convert anyone who disagreed with them to their way of thinking. It disappoints me that people still think that behaviour is excusable today.
Red herring, not Green.
Making lists of folks who sign lists does not free up our publicly funded data. It doesn’t matter whether 6,000, 60,000, 600,000 or 6,000,000 people sign up on his lists.
Never mind. I’ll just keep reading ChiefIO’s blog and WUWT and skip this guy.
kafbst – You might do a better job making your point if your reference weren’t affiliated with the Catholic Church itself. As it is, the article is entirely self-serving.
Lest we forget: (I hope I embed these videos right.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oppHeMlaLVM
“As just one of many alternative explanations, most of the warming we have measured in the last 30 years could have been caused by a natural, 2% decrease in cloud cover. Unfortunately, our measurements of global cloud cover over that time are nowhere near accurate enough to document such a change.”
Do you mean to say that the lack of cloud cover could warm the planet. That’s crazy talk. (SIC)
“Not surprisingly, the study finds that the skeptical scientists have fewer publications or are less credentialed than the marching army of scientists ”
Cause, or effect? We have direct evidence written by the hand of the Grand Wizard of the Brotherhood of Alarmists indicating there has been a concerted effort to lock out skeptics from being published.
And can anyone, as a skeptic, imagine successfully passing 4 years of higher education in the current environment, let alone graduating with honors?
Hopefully the next kristallnacht will just be a snow fall – in June.
Let’s hear it now: who is hiding behind “DeepClimate” in Canada?
Patrick Michaels from 20 years ago:
Or is right might?
“A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to Farce, or a Tragedy, or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance. and a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”—-James Madison.
I think what he was saying was that right is might. It certainly is instruction for the laymen of this world(that choose to govern themselves). I really don’t give a darn(tip to A) about what Mr. Prall, et. al. feels about it or not. 🙂
bubbagyro says:
Sorry to spoil your fun but Gore dropped out of two different Graduate Schools; Business and Divinity. So he doesn’t have a divinity degree. But he does have a PhD in hypocrisy.
Bulldust says:
June 22, 2010 at 6:23 pm
While his methodology may be suspect Senator McCarthy was proven correct after the fall of the Soviet Union. I doubt the AGW crowd will have the same satisfaction either near term or long term
Yep. I screwed up on the Stazi bit; my readers all got me on that one! But the yellow badges did bang the gong.