This interview below by Tom Minchin took place in a hospital staff room just a few minutes before my presentation in Hamilton City, Victoria at the hospital auditorium. Tom did a much better job than most reporters because not only did he ask useful questions, he recorded it and wrote from that, rather than just taking notebook scribbles that invariably end up in misquotes and misinterpretations. It originally appeared in TIADaily, but has now also been posted to Quadrant Online, with a wider venue. I’ve completed the tour, and I’m headed back to the USA shortly. I’ll be offline for awhile, but I do have a couple of posts scheduled for auto-publish that will appear in my absence. Getting reliable Internet here in AU while on the road has been a challenge, as I’ll explain later.
The project Minchin refers to was “Arbor Day Weather Week”, done in 1990 and 1991 under the auspices of the National Arbor Day Foundation. It was a nationwide project with TV weathercasters to extol the virtues of CO2 sequestration through tree planting to the public that I dreamed up in my shower one day. My inspiration? Dr. James Hansen’s 1988 speech before the U.S. Congress, which I later found out was stagecrafted. I still think tree planting is a good idea, because of all the other benefits they produce, but I don’t worry about Dr. Hansen’s model scenarios like I used to. Though, the Arbor Day Foundation does, starting from the cue I gave so long ago. – Anthony
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Doomed Planet
“Today’s debate about global warming is essentially a debate about freedom. The environmentalists would like to mastermind each and every possible (and impossible) aspect of our lives.”
Vaclav Klaus
Blue Planet in Green Shackles
Anthony Watts interviewed
by Tom Minchin
June 30, 2010
“Noble Cause Corruption”
Climate science depends utterly on the integrity of its measurements. In order to extrapolate and make forecasts, there can be no errors in the data. How reliable are the measurements climate scientists use? What happens if their measuring apparatus is altered by something as simple as a coat of paint that lifts the average recordings? Will anyone spot it? And if someone does, what happens if such a desired result matters more than getting the facts straight?
An expert on these questions, Anthony Watts, founder of the most widely visited climate site in the world, the US-based Watts Up With That, (47.3 million hits since the fall of 2007, compared with the leading alarmist site RealClimate’s 11.7 million since December 2004), is wrapping up his national tour at the moment and I spoke to him in Melbourne.
At the start of the interview, Watts, a former TV weatherman, confirmed that he did not begin as a skeptic. As he put it himself with typical bluntness, “I started out actually just being a climate alarmist. I got involved with saving the planet by helping other weather forecasters do the same thing through planting trees. Then when I met the State climatologist in California, his data changed my mind and now I’m a skeptic.”
Watts was not content to let his view rest on someone else’s data. He researched the matter in a wholly original way. Talking to him it became clear just how plain honesty and an inquiring mind are fatal to the alarmist cause. His alertness to measurement problems began well before his skepticism.
read the whole interview at Quadrant Online
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Anthony, outstanding comments in a well-done interview.
Since long time ago climate ended being a political issue. But, on a closer look, it has turned into a issue of future personal and collective freedom.
Good interviewer, good interviewee, calm, logical and intelligent. If only it could reach a much wider audience.
This is classic journalism. He tells a story as Anthony spoke it.
Great article! Well stated Anthony, as always, and hope you get some much needed rest.
If climate hysterics have produced one single, independently verified data-set since Hansen’s AGW circus in 1988, we have yet to see it. As Pachauri’s scofulous IPCC suffers major contretemps at the rate of one a week, embedded in a deceitful and manipulative Warmist scrum, disinterested observers find it literally impossible to credit anything these peculating propagandists say.
As Oxburgh grumps and fusses, absolving Briffa, Jones, and their blatantly collusive UEA from all accountability, while Penn State in the U.S. performs proctocranial contortions to keep Mann’s grants a-comin’, GISS/NASA, Nature, and a depleted Royal Society continue to expound contentious drivel unworthy of a high-school science fair.
Whatever it takes to restore a modicum of integrity to “climate studies”, today’s hyper-ventilating doomsters have blasted their parlous ruminations at the root. Meantime, nothing the Green Gang chooses to disseminate is worth a flatlined Carbon Credit, even to poodled-up Al Gore.
Finally a fair and balanced piece of reporting.
Excellent interview and responses. Noble Cause Corruption may, indeed, be at work in some situations, however, in my experience the roots of corruption are usually sunk deeply in the bed of money and power ( same thing, I know). The funding of alarmism research “science” is an excellent example of following the money to the source of the problem. And, of course, the resultant purchasing of votes by the politicians that is caused as an end result. The “greening” propaganda, foisted upon our children in our public school system here in the United States in the name of science should also not be overlooked, as it is a very major part of the problem, making them unknowing pawns in the overall war between science and politics involved in this issue.
The tide is definitely turning. A friendly interview with a journalist? Who would have ever thought?
“Today’s debate about global warming is essentially a debate about freedom. The environmentalists would like to mastermind each and every possible (and impossible) aspect of our lives.”
Where have we heard ‘Progressive’ alarmist b.s. like this before??? Oh, yeah, it was eugenics and eventually a NAZI monster with a lot of power!
http://hnn.us/articles/1796.html
Go to archives and type in eugenics. See for yourself what progressives are capable of.
This is one of the best introductory pieces on climate science that I’ve seen. Thank you Anthony Watts and Tom Minchin. Thank you both for your integrity. It nails the science issue so simply and directly from Watts’ personal experience and questions during and after his professional science training – how asking and investigating one reasonable question can open up the whole can of worms; his own U-turn from alarmist to skeptic; the nature of true science; the roots of the current problem in people’s oh-so-understandable support for the “Noble Cause”.
This statistic was very informative and definitely not the kind of thing that you would find in a biased article on climate science: “Anthony Watts, founder of the most widely visited climate site in the world, the US-based Watts Up With That, (47.3 million hits since the fall of 2007, compared with the leading alarmist site RealClimate’s 11.7 million since December 2004)”
Ah, Lucy; missed you.
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I like the tree planting. Love to watch my trees grow from seedlings.
Well said Anthony. Good points all.
One day an interview as clear and as lucid as this is going to be noted in the history books to show that not all of humanity was drawn into the insanity of “Global Warming” aka “Climate Change”.
Anthony, both you and Tom Minchin are to be congratulated on producing such a level-headed and elucidating interview. Well done, both of you; one from the science side and the other from the journalistic side.
A fantastic dialogue – just what a real interview should be – and beautifully calm and level-headed. I hope this reaches a wider audience and does not end up just preaching to the converted, as this is a great introduction to the skeptical position and it does a great deal to explain the “conspiracy” in climate science i.e. “noble cause corruption”. I’ve just added the term to my vocabulary. Thank-you, Tom Minchin and Anthony.
Very important article, that.
John Blake says:
July 2, 2010 at 12:46 pm
“If climate hysterics have produced one single, independently verified data-set since Hansen’s AGW circus in 1988, we have yet to see it. As Pachauri’s scofulous IPCC suffers major contretemps at the rate of one a week, embedded in a deceitful and manipulative Warmist scrum …”
The letter “r” seems to have been removed from the third word of the second sentence and deposited, erroneously, in the final word I quoted.
I think the term ‘Noble Cause Corruption’ is perhaps the best term I have heard describing the disease that appears to be afflicting modern climate science. It is very hard to fault someone committed to such a cause even if they are desperately scraping and scraping the bottom of the barrel find evidence to prove their case.
“An expert on these questions, Anthony Watts, founder of the most widely visited climate site in the world, the US-based Watts Up With That, (47.3 million hits since the fall of 2007, compared with the leading alarmist site RealClimate’s 11.7 million”
Hahahahaaaaa.. Awesome!
..”since December 2004)”
Aaahahaahahahaaa.. [thump].. Ow!
That’s so cool Anthony. I couldn’t help laughing harder when I did the math. Keep up the brilliant work and, thanks for visiting my country!
Olly – Australia
I’m afraid I have to lay claim to the expression ‘noble cause corruption’ in relation to climate science (and environmental science more broadly). It was the central theme of my book published in late 2007 (Science and Public Policy: The Virtuous Corruption of Virtual Environmental Science). See:
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/noble_cause_corruption_exposed
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=7368
I am not aware that Steve McIntyre has ever used the expression, and certainly a search of his blog reveals no such hits. Steve is usually quite reluctant to ascribe motives, so this is not surprising. Steve Mosher used the expression in relation to Climategate on Pyjamasmedia earlier this year.
Note that I preferred the expression ‘virtuous corruption’, partly for the alliteration, and the ‘virtual’ science related to both the reliance on computer models AND the role played by e-mail communication in undermining peer review, by allowing networks to operate over vast spaces, so that in any one area of science, most of those with expertise were likely to be in close contact. This meant that networks could defend their orthodoxies, and swarm like white corpuscles to the sites of infectious ideas. The formation of the IPCC has exacerbated this by bringing the members of these networks together physically. This has undermined quality assurance mechanisms like peer review.
I wrote this about three years before, and published the book two years before Climategate broke. My only mistake was that I underestimated the behaviour of climate scientists.
Noble cause corruption doesn’t preclude more the operation for more banal reasons, incidentally, but it is more insidious, because while soem journals (eg medical) require declarations of interests by authors, they do not require statements of conflicting or supporting values that might be held.
[not that I disagree with that paper, but it doesn’t really belong on this blog ~ ctm]
“Noble Cause Corruption” deserves its own article. It is a concise term, with a definition that explains why martyrs are willing, even eager to die to be right. Logic and the scientific method are superfluous; actually, they are an impediment to the beliefs of the global warming cultists.
It’s very hard to convince true believers by using logic, because they are so absolutely certain that their cause is a noble one. Emotion trumps logic. And that makes it easy for scam artists like Mann, the UN’s IPCC and others to make ‘saving the planet’ a rallying cry for their own self-serving interests.
Who could possibly argue with saving the planet? That emotional tactic is very effective, and similar to what Jim & Tammy Faye Baker used to make millions. Today’s climate scamsters are like Elmer Gantry — without Elmer’s redeeming conscience.
Pointing out these tactics is the best antidote.
One reason “noble cause corruption” is so insidious is that in our species from the noble to the dubious is but a step.