Paul Burtwistle writes:
Last night I watched an item on Channel 9’s 60 minutes here in Australia which covered Dr Stefan Harrison of Exeter University in the UK and his work studying the Exploradores glacier in Patagonia, Argentina.
The story contained an alarmist view regarding the sudden increase in the rate at which the glacier is receding over the last 10-20 years. The documentary does explain that the glacier has retreated a lot over the last 20,000 years but that the rate of decrease is up to 50 times greater in the last 10-20 years that it was 500 years ago and this is all due to AGW (at 5 mins 26 seconds in to “Wild Patagonia part 2″).
At 5 minutes 40 seconds in to the item Dr Harrison asked about climate skeptics and he goes on to say that they are not worth debating their viewpoint as it’s “like mud wrestling with pigs. Firstly you get covered in mud and secondly, the pig loves it” he then goes on to say he won’t debate skeptics because geographers don’t debate with people who think the world is flat and biologists don’t debate with people who think evolution isn’t happening or that the world is only 6000 years old.
You can view the whole article here (2 x 8 minute items) – http://sixtyminutes.ninemsn.com.au/stories/8834229/wild-patagonia-the-glaciers-that-hold-a-dire-warning-for-earths-future .
The two articles are Wild Patagonia 1 & 2. I think some attention should be drawn to this appalling piece and I’ve already written to Channel 9 to voice my disapproval.
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Huh, I don’t know of ANY climate skeptic who thinks the world is flat or that the Earth is only 6000 years old. I wonder where he gets his information…The Daily Kos perhaps?
Dr Stephan Harrison does not debate with sceptics because he is a coward. Better to throw insults at people from afar than to engage in dialogue like an adult..
Any debate would allow the public to see how incompetent Stephan Harrison was.
Bang goes the grant money!
Its a pathetic attempt to delegitimise criticism. They hope if they pretend the problems with their theories don’t exist, that nobody will notice them.
Pigs and sceptics have one thing in common, yes.
In both cases any fight would end with him being eaten alive.
you said “Huh, I don’t know of ANY climate skeptic who thinks the world is flat or that the Earth is only 6000 years old. I wonder where he gets his information…The Daily Kos perhaps?”
Err
He means that geographers don’t debate with people who believe the world is flat, so why should climate scientists debate with people who deny … (whatever he thinks sceptics are denying)
When your worldview collapses under the weight of its own mendacity, you can either acknowledge your mistake and start anew or head for a bunker of denial and toss stones.
Dr Stephan Harrison has apparently opted for stone throwing…and credibility extinction.
He was equating sceptics with flat-earthers, not necessarily saying that one is the same as the other. Still, the man holds an incredibly ignorant and anti-scientific position if that’s how he thinks. I wonder if he now accepts the theory of continental drift (the theory that was ridiculed for decades before its acceptance)? He probably does, but only because there is now a consensus, nothing to do with evidence. That’s how these cretins think.
Debating with Warmists is like arguing with a post!
He even looks dishonest.
Oh really, Dr. Harrison? It might help if you had sensible answers to any observation that does not conform to your preconceived conclusions.
Meanwhile, poleward South from Patagonia. Antarctic sea ice anomaly is >1.4 Million Km2 above 30 yr. avg.
I have also expressed my disgust to Chanel 9 at this appalling grant seeker.
I might have seen the onerous Dr Harrison.
In Johns Street.
Drinking in the Fat Pig.
[Harrison] then goes on to say he won’t debate skeptics because geographers don’t debate with people who think the world is flat and biologists don’t debate with people who think evolution isn’t happening or that the world is only 6000 years old.
Seems reasonable.
Stephan.Harrison@exeter.ac.uk
Go easy on him, he’s a bit, uh…odd:
“Dr Harrison also has research interests in the philosophy of physical geography. He has written on the ontology of quantum theory as an argument against realist philosophy in geography, and argued for the identification of emergent properties in landscapes as an alternative to the reductionist model-building paradigm.”
Typical level of intellectual arrogance I’d expect from a leftie.
If he had science and facts on his side then debating CAGW would be no different than responding to questions from a Child. A geographer would have no trouble responding to the questions of a Child of why the Earth is round and not flat. The problem for Mr. Harrison is that the science and facts do not back up his beliefs that’s why he is afraid to debate CAGW.
To back up Alan Robertson:
… and don’t let the alarmists argue that the increase in sea ice is due to more ice sheet melt water. All ice sheets melt, in Antarctica it melts from below (geothermal heat), not from above, and also loses ice via ice streams (streams of ice, not streams of melt water in ice). Snowfall replaces the lost ice.
Warmists have been having a free lunch with polar ice for too long.
I would very much like to meet a person who thinks the world is under 10000 years old. I have been looking for about 10 years.
If you have to fabricate a ridiculous position supposedly held by skeptics you are admitting defeat.
And why do so many climate scientists always seem to bubble with anger? How would anyone trust this person to do good science, rather than yet more confirmation bias.
Mud wrestle with pigs–he must have been looking in the mirror.
If you read his research page you’ll see most pertains to climate change. I guess his livelihood depends on climate change – another trougher!
Stefan (self opinionated, dickless klutz) Harrison, doesn’t want to debate his religious beliefs eh?
I sent an email to a friend today. Here is part of the text.
“The first link gives a list of dates covering human prehistory from 150,000 thousand years ago to 5.500 years ago or 3,600 BC to 3,500 BC.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_human_prehistory
All such dates are approximate and based on research in the fields of anthropology, archaeology, genetics, geology, and linguistics. They are all subject to revision based on new discoveries or analyses, unlike so-called climate science, about which, warmists will tell you, the science is settled. If ongoing research into human history is any guide, no science is ever settled, is it?”
Harrison is a liar of the worst kind; he lies to himself & his connections. That’s self abuse, but hey, it couldn’t happen to a more deserving toerag.
Harrison is the one with the snout. And it is well and truly in the trough…
Let’s not descend to his level with irrelevant name-calling. Apart from being juvenile it will only make the uncommitted think that we are just as bad as the more vicious warmist zealots and distract from useful arguments.
Did anyone (else apart from me) follow or do the online climate Change course that Exeter held recently?
I always thought Exeter was part of the UK or even on Planet Earth, the uni isn’t.
Several examples..
In discussing really ancient climate (and snowball Earth esp), apparently the original snowball Earth was caused by “growing continents” and the resultant weathering of all this new rock sucked all the CO2 out of the atmosphere, albedo kicked in, caused the cooling and froze the whole planet. That is where all the present limestone we see around us came from.
Excuse me professor, which continent did all the growing and where is it now?
Then we were informed, Earth was released from its snowball state by massive volcanoes that pumped a load of CO2 back into the air and warmed it all up again.
Q. Where were all these volcanoes?
Then up jumped some lady biologist who liked putting critters she’d found in rock-pools into hubbly bubbly plastic bottles, poking said critters with a pencil and declared that they’d dissolve with all this CO2 we’re emitting. No mention that very similar critters using similar chemistry existed under 8000+ ppmv of CO2 and made all the limestone the previous guy was on about. The words ‘buffer solution’ were simply not in her vocabulary.
Chief climate professor then reappears to inform us the Arctic is melting because of decreased albedo, said decrease being caused by the melting. IOW, the Arctic is melting because it is melting. When, on the message board I mentioned the antics of Christmas Turkey down in the Antarctic just very recently, i didn’t get a reply but the end-of-week video informed us the all the Antarctic ice was caused by the wind blowing it around. Obviously no mention of where the ice actually came from nor that wind may have had any impact on Arctic ice.
In another section, covering mitigation/adaptation, the good professor informed us that there are sufficient people on board Planet Earth and that a good few of them should start wearing condoms a bit more often. In the very next section on that course, the very next thing you click on following that lecture, said professor delivered his talk while leaning on a push-bike. Not any old push-bike, a push-bike with a child’s seat attached behind the rider’s seat.
There are not the words………
I’m assuming that the good doctor would be delighted to take a pay cut of 60% by not accepting money from UK pigs.
So I emailed the doctor to ask whether as a taxpayer I had the honour of funding nonsense like this
“Dr Harrison also has research interests in the philosophy of physical geography. He has written on the ontology of quantum theory as an argument against realist philosophy in geography, and argued for the identification of emergent properties in landscapes as an alternative to the reductionist model-building paradigm.”
to be told that Dr. Harrison is on research leave. No doubt paid for by me and other UK taxpayers.
Beyond a joke. I fund him. He abuses me. How does that work?
” I don’t know of ANY climate skeptic who thinks the world is flat or that the Earth is only 6000 years old. I wonder where he gets his information”
That is not what he said. But you know that I guess.
Pity to harrison, – what chance would he have of continuing his lifelong junket if he said “nothing’s changed in Patagonia?”
If I may oynk . . .
Interesting that he’s talking about a retreat from glaciation maximum in Patagonia circa 1800, and elsewhere that the Cairgorms had gliacers in the Little Ice Age. I thought a fellow warmist had argued against the existece of a LIA . . . , or does Harrison regard him as a pig?
The ontology of quantum theory . . . oh dear, a geographer that’s read a book on Heisenburg
Love the way they are standing inside a large ice cave having a conversation about it’s impending collapse…. with absolutely no regard for personal safety. 🙂
6 minutes in…
She says … “Massive ice caves like this one [she’s standing in] can disappear before your eyes. ” … “Um, How long before you think this ceiling will collapse”
Stef says… “Might be a couple of days, uh, might be today I guess, as they are melting pretty quickly”.
It makes me think that he’s either dumb, dishonest or a combination of both.
Pete in Cumbria says:
April 28, 2014 at 5:56 am
Did anyone (else apart from me) follow or do the online climate Change course that Exeter held recently?
Yes Pete I signed for that as well, I lasted until about week 5, couldn’t take any more. The old hockey-stick trundled out, little or no mention of counter-evidence to climate catastrophe, amazing ignorance in basic geographical, geological and climate history judging from posted comments from what seemed to be an overwhelming majority of environmental ignoramuses and acceptance of the use of the term denier in comments posted. A generally depressing experience.
They are taking their cues from the evolution wars and trying to take what they hope will be perceived as the superior high ground. This is a different take on ad hominem attacks – it is a way of signaling that your opponent is so far off base they are not worth your time as a serious scientists. You have other, better things to do with your time – like save the planet.
It is a very effective method and it keeps them from having to actually enter into debates.
In the case of the evolution wars it was a justifiable tactic because one can not debate science against the bible, other than to say that the two are not equivalent models of understanding the world and unsuitable as a debate topic.
In the case of climate science, it is not acceptable because there is a lot of science which contradicts them and we want to debate science vs science, not science vs religion
Be that as it may, don’t take this lightly, It was a VERY effective tactic to the biological science community in shutting down a lot of press by the anti-evolution crusaders.
Evolution is happening now? What animals have we added to the zoo in my lifetime?
Well, I don’t know any flat-earthers, but I do know some people who believe the earth is a few thousand years old. Many of us are virtually acquainted with others through this website who don’t believe CO2 is a greenhouse gas or don’t believe the greenhouse effect exists.
What Dr. Harrison is trying to do is to take these extreme outliers and claim they represent the mainstream of the climate skeptic movement. I’m sure there is a known logical fallacy for this and it’s a tactic straight of the Rules for Radicals playbook.
Actually, biologists do debate against creationists and intelligent design proponents. Sorry if that upsets Dr. Harrison.
I think you might have gotten Dr. Harrison’s photo mixed up with the Unabomber’s photo.
Harrison commented at Climate Audit between 2005 and 2011 in a cordial way both in his own name and under the pseudonym san quintin. Some of his comments were not merely cordial, but complimentary:
Here are some of the threads on which he commented:
http://climateaudit.org/2005/06/28/full-true-and-plain-disclsoure-and-falsification/
http://climateaudit.org/2005/08/20/a-new-preprint-by-wunsch-on-abrupt-climate-change/
http://climateaudit.org/2009/02/08/gavin-on-mckitrick-and-michaels/
http://climateaudit.org/2009/01/07/unthreaded-2/
http://climateaudit.org/2009/09/03/kaufmann-and-upside-down-mann/
http://climateaudit.org/2009/06/11/cloud-super-parameterization-and-low-climate-sensitivity/
I thought that Harrison’s comments at Climate Audit were constructive.
In terms of the larger picture, I drew Harrison’s attention to (what I believed to be) the lack of an “engineering quality” exposition of the derivation of climate sensitivity in then IPCC documents. Harrison argued that such sensitivity was best shown in the paleoclimate record. I did not argue the opposite, but pointed out to him that the then current IPCC assessment (AR4) itself had not relied on or reported on this line of argument. Nor had they cited the two articles adduced by Harrison as support. I suggested to Harrison that he wrote a post on the topic for the CA audience (not that such a post would be an “engineering quality” exposition but it would be of interest.) He entertained the idea, but was busy and nothing happened.
His comments at CA diminished after Climategate, attenuating to none as resentfulness grew among the activist community in the Empire Strikes Back denouement to Climategate.
Here’s the real reason he won’t debate skeptics–because alarmist lose the debates.
Typical pro-warming academic. Spends their entire life telling gullible kids what to think without fear of being questioned or contradicted, who cannot stand it when they enter the real world on the internet where they find people who not only know more than him but aren’t afraid to say so.
Left is right and right is left!
.
There are many insults on both sides, alarmists and skeptics, the firsts call other rightists and conservatives and the seconds instead.
.
Analyzing strictly within the definition of left and right emerged in the French revolution, the right was conservative (monarchist) and did not want change, now left fighting for new (republic).
.
Returning to the case of global warming, who’s left of the movement are the skeptics, who want to question the so-called “established science” and not think of the Earth as a garden of Eden immutable and should be kept well “ad infinitum”.
.
From what is written above it is seen that the skeptics are left of scientific thinking, always looking for new answers to new problems, on the other hand alarmists and their associates, are conservative right-wing forces that do not want change.
.
Soon the left is right and right is left in climate studies.
That comment is rich coming from Dr. Harrison who is the very image of Pig-Pen. Hint: Dude! Don’t make comments about pigs while having pictures of yourself looking like crap! Brush your hair, ake a shower, Shave! That would be a start. http://www.weirdspace.dk/CharlesSchulz/Graphics/Pig-Pen.gif
d18O records from ice cores into the Patagonian glaciers do not reach past the LIA because of the very rapid movement of these glaciers. There is high (.5+ meters) accumulation and the glaciers are relatively thin.
In the first segment noticed the following misdirection. In an ice cave, Harrison said that ice core records can provide information for three-quarters of a million years and expressed his frustration that a “wonderful archive” was “disappearing”, as water dripped in the ice cave. However, the three-quarters of a million year archives are from Antarctica and are not presently “disappearing”.
Further, if Harrison is worried about disappearing archives, then I urge him and other scientists (even Ellen Mosley-Thompson) to archive their own data, lest it become misplaced. Neither the NOAA archive (ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/) nor Pangaea (www.pangaea.de) contain a single ice core dataset from Patagonia.
Only a pig would suggest that skeptics of anthropogentic climate change are all Young Earth Creationists who believe the earth is flat.
To better understand Mr Harrison and others like him regarding debating skeptics we need to understand what he said and what he is really saying.
He said, “I won’t debate skeptics”
What he really said is “I won’t debate people who threaten my livelihood feeding at the public trough of AGW grant funding”.
So, just replace “skeptic” with “people who threaten my feeding at the public trough” and you’ll have an better understanding of what Climate “threateners” are really saying.
IMO he won’t debate with skeptics because he is already covered with mud, whereas the skeptics aren’t. And this will become obvious for everyone to see as a result of any debate.
It’s tough if’n you ain’t smarter than the pig, Prof.
Why is it that climate scientists take public funds, go out into the field and collect climate data, and then publish papers using the data, but DO NOT ARCHIVE the data?
It is almost as though they are afraid to let anyone else check their results. Instead, the public having paid for the data, get nothing in return but unverified papers that cannot be relied upon because they cannot be checked.
remember when you were in schools and were told SHOW YOUR WORK. Apparently climate science never got the memo.
Two climate sceptics that come to mind are Harrison Schmidt and Burt Rutan. One was the only scientist to walk on the moon and the other built the first aircraft to fly non-stop around the world. I seriously doubt if either of them believes the world to be flat.
Chris
This said, his point is absolutely correct, i.e. debating with skeptics will get him covered with mud (he already is, only people don’t notice), and the skeptics will definitely enjoy it.
To Do list 4-28-2014 Stephan Harrison
-Take a bath
-Thoroughly wash hair
-Shave properly
-Take a double dose of laxative to remove grimace from face
-Visit Psycologist again
-Apply for research grant from Lewandowski et al
I started the Exeter climate change course. Pure propaganda: the only way to score high on the quiz was to repeat the mantra of Global Warming back at them. A sickening experience, funded by the taxpayer.
“like mud wrestling with pigs. Firstly you get covered in mud and secondly, the pig loves it”
But he sees no harm in remaining at a safe distance and slinging mug. That way you don’t risk loosing and being made to look like a fool by the pig.
Cowardice and hypocrisy more like.
“The ontology of quantum theory . . . oh dear, a geographer that’s read a book on Heisenburg”
Apparently he hasn’t read that the consensus is that quantum mechanics has no significant impact on the macro-scale world of which geology is one of the macro-est.
When people who run away from a fight it’s usually because they are scared of losing, not because they are afraid their opponent will enjoy being beaten up.
Really, does he imagine that no one in the adult world can see through his pathetic excuses?
The trouble with a lot of these academics is that they are so used to being surrounded by impressionable teenagers, who look up at them in awe, that they start to imagine the whole worlds population is that ill-informed and naive.
Us ‘pigs’ seem to be intellectually thriving due to the failure of CAGW theory whereas the alarmed ‘lemmings’ created by that theory are about to intellectually jump off the old proverbial cliff.
Us ‘pigs’ are a benevolent species though, we will protect a pair of the intellectuals who gave birth to the CAGW scare story. We will provide the two an opulent safe house somewhere in Hollywood, the home of modern fiction. Us ‘pigs’ would do this lest their intellectually alarmist species goes intellectually extinct. I suggest the protected pair of intellectuals who helped cause the CAGW alarmed ‘lemmings’ be either Mann and Lewandowsky or Pachauri and Oreskes.
If the later pair is chosen they might collaborate to write a smutty book about us redoubtable ‘pigs’ greased up by old fossilized merchants.
‘pigs’ is ‘pigs’
John
“Apparently he hasn’t read that the consensus is that quantum mechanics has no significant impact on the macro-scale world ”
You are mistaken. Heisenburg principal does apply to climatology:
The greater your uncertainty of the energy of the climate system, the more certain you can be of your position.
This was clearly stated to be the case in AR5 SPM.
Lewandowsky and SkS.
There aren’t thousands of peer reviewed papers published on the science of a flat earth. There aren’t thousands of peer reviewed papers published on creationist biology,
BUT
there are thousands of papers challenging the orthodoxy of CAGW and AAGW.
That’s nonsense.
Biologists like nothing better than to debate with creationists because they can, and do, take each piece of “evidence” from the creationists and show why it is either false or wrongly interpreted.
Now, if the biologist thought his theory so weak that he could never destroy the creationist argument then he might well avoid debate. Hmmm.
Magma says:
April 28, 2014 at 5:35 am
Seems reasonable.
See, Magma, it’s like this: any old excuse will do. If this one didn’t work, Harrison would just fall back on another excuse. Bottom line: he’s afraid to debate.
Read the first post in this thread, by ConfusedPhoton. Excellent analysis.
Harrison is a coward. He is afraid to debate. It’s a defining trait of alarmist scientists. Name one who will man up and engage in a fair public debate. They’re all cowards.
‘Cats look down on us, dogs look up to us but pigs treat us as equals’ quote WS Churchill
Exeter is a first rate University. They are however somewhat influenced by the nearby Met Office who fund a climate chage chair there. Dr Harrison is located at the somewhat out of the way Cornwall campus of the University.
He seems to have an activists view of things which obviously colours his opinions;. THis from his cv
* An invited member of the Carbon Counting Group, an international group of economists, scientists, architects, politicians and environmental activists working in the field of mitigation and adaption for climate change.
* An invited member of the Climate Justice Programme
*An expert witness for the Environmental Law Alliance Worldwide looking at the impact of mining on mountain glaciers in the Chilean Andes, and specifically the Pascua Lama mine.
So he is not a run of the mill Geography academic.
tonyb
They got clobbered in these two classic Intelligence Squared debates:
http://intelligencesquaredus.org/debates/past-debates/item/559-global-warming-is-not-a-crisis
http://intelligencesquaredus.org/debates/past-debates/item/607-major-reductions-in-carbon-emissions-are-not-worth-the-money
[Note: the most recent debate was 2009. ~mod]
why is it that all these nut cases resemble ted kascyzinski?
In an example of Glacial National Park in the U.S., the rate of glacial retreat near the end of the 20th century doesn’t stand out compared to
other times since the end of the Little Ice Age, such as during the early 20th century: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:USGSglacierssince1850.jpg
“The documentary does explain that the glacier has retreated a lot over the last 20,000 years but that the rate of decrease is up to 50 times greater in the last 10-20 years that it was 500 years ago and this is all due to AGW”
While not specifically that Argentine site, 500 years ago, around 1514 A.D., was a time of only a moderate retreat rate for South American Andes glaciers (and many others), but there have been far faster times of glacial retreat (naturally) as seen in the bottom of Figure 2 on page 3 of Kirkby’s http://arxiv.org/pdf/0804.1938v1.pdf . (The 50 times faster is still a fishy claim, though, unless there is some unusual local factor which would have jack to do with present global climate change, which is more global cooling than warming since the 1998 El Nino, i.e. http://woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1998/plot/rss/from:1998/trend ).
There is an old saying that “arguing with an auditor is like wrestling a pig in mud…..sooner or later you are going to realize that the pig enjoys it”. Auditors on occasion do useful things such as offering an opinion on whether financial statements can be relied upon.
Steve McIntyre says:
Harrison commented at Climate Audit between 2005 and 2011…
He didn’t learn much, did he?
That he considers that scepticism is a ‘bad thing’ shows he is no scientist at all, for without it you’re not doing science, but preaching a religion or political message of perfect and unquestionable ‘truth’ that is above challenge.
I wonder if he knows a friend of mine who works in Exeter Uni in Exeter itself. She is really sensible but technically & scientifically ignorant. She was telling me how she worked with a AGW scientist colleague who believed in the 97% consensus, so it had to be right!
Dr Harrison reminds me of a conversation I sat in on 16 years ago between an architect, who had studied in the School of Architecture in Plymouth Uni, & a structural engineer I was working for. The architect, was explaining that lecturing & technical staff in the SoA, were employed on the basis that they only had friends & associated with those in the architectural profession, lest their minds be contaminated by association with mere mortals who were not architects!!!! Sounds ideal for an all round education to face the rigors of life outside academia!
Ontology of Quantum physics? As I understand the basis of quantum physics, there is NO ontological explanation. It all goes back to the quantum froth.
Sometimes a simile can be more telling of the speaker than his subject…
Vince – “That’s nonsense.” Some biologists Do debate creationists. The party line however is to avoid the debate because it is unwinnable as you will never convince your opponent AND it only draws attention to THEM, which is what they want.
‘Debating skeptics is like mud wrestling with pigs’
ok but what do you mean exactly?
you mean it is very hard? dirty? i don’t see the point…
did he ever wrestle with pigs in mud already..if not…
and you know what debating with anthonny watts is like debating with hitler, both are human being and both have drak hair and both have moustache…..
The horribly worn out “pigs” cliche is a measure of the luddishness of the brain. We had an old soc-ialist politician (Party Leader) come back out of retirement to run in a shoo-in riding. He showed the state of his sclerotic brain by shouting the one about the golden rule, he who makes the rules gets the gold. That pretty well showed everyone his antediluvian mind had few neurons left to pass messages along.
Having played the part of that pig on many occasions, I can say it was both enjoyable and rewarding. Credit to the man for having spotted that much.
Even better is the reaction of my wrestling partners when they realise they are covered in the mud of their own bad arguments. Some blame me for the mud. Others pretend it is chocolate.
Actually, Dr Stefan Harrison is on the side of the REAL flat earthers:
http://www.salon.com/2013/06/25/flat_earth_society_believes_in_climate_change/
Re: dbstealey says: April 28, 2014 at 8:58 am
I don’t know if this counts as “mud wrestling with pigs” but here at WUWT seems to be no place to “engage in a fair public debate”. By way of example see:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/04/09/study-wuwt-near-the-center-of-the-climate-blogosphere/#comment-1611483
et seq.
He is just afraid of losing the debate. I understand him. I never won a mud-wrestling against a pig. Not once, I promise.
Dr Stefan Harrison is correct. There is something really wrong with the climate. It used to be much warmer.
http://www.icenews.is/2014/04/28/green-landscape-discovered-beneath-greenland-ice-sheet/
The perfesser had desecrated the Hockey Stick noticing that glaciers existed in Scotland ca. the 18th century on the Beeb. Maybe he is conflicted.
In Tennessee we wrestle pigs until they submit then cook them and eat them.
The problem with discussing/debating the science of ‘climate’ change is that observations and analysis unequivocally supports the assertion that roughly 75% of the warming in the last 70 years was due to a natural cycle (solar magnetic cycle changes) as opposed to the increase in atmospheric CO2. The warmists scientists that have skin in the game need to start looking for a way out. Due to incorrect/manipulated science we have wasted trillions of dollars on green scams, that do not work. It appears the planet was started to cool. Do you think there will be a backlash?
P.S. Nice try to switch topics with an appeal to flat earth, young earth, belief in aliens, Holocaust belief, and so on as opposed to a scientific argument. Name calling in a ‘scientific’ debate is pathetic.
In support of Alan Robertson’s comment:
Alan Robertson says:
April 28, 2014 at 5:25 am
Meanwhile, poleward South from Patagonia. Antarctic sea ice anomaly is >1.4 Million Km2 above 30 yr. avg.
William:
Antarctic sea ice is now above the one or two sigma 30 year average for every month of the year. It appears based on what has happened before and my understanding of the mechanisms a significant cooling climate change event is underway. I am curious what will be the response from the different warmist factions/scientific community, the media, and the public to significant unequivocal planetary cooling.
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/S_stddev_timeseries.png
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.antarctic.png
There are 342 warming events in the paleo climatic record (Antarctic peninsula ice core data, the Antarctic peninsula is outside of the Antarctic polar vortex and hence correlates with Southern Sea temperature rather than Antarctic ice sheet temperature, during the warming events the Southern sea warms and the Antarctic ice sheet cools which is exactly the same as was observed in the last 70 years) in the last 250,000 years with a mean time between warming events of 1400 years and 400 years (the period between events in the Southern hemisphere is the same as the period between warming events in the Northern hemisphere which provides support for the assertion that the cause of the cycle is solar magnetic cycle changes as that mechanism can affect both hemispheres simultaneously as opposed to internal climate mechanisms that are chaotic rather than periodic and that do not affect both hemispheres simultaneously.)
In every case, the warming periods were followed by cooling periods, some of them abrupt cooling periods.
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/davis-and-taylor-wuwt-submission.pdf
Davis and Taylor: “Does the current global warming signal reflect a natural cycle”
…We found 342 natural warming events (NWEs) corresponding to this definition, distributed over the past 250,000 years …. …. The 342 NWEs contained in the Vostok ice core record are divided into low-rate warming events (LRWEs; < 0.74oC/century) and high rate warming events (HRWEs; ≥ 0.74oC /century) (Figure). … …. "Recent Antarctic Peninsula warming relative to Holocene climate and ice – shelf history" and authored by Robert Mulvaney and colleagues of the British Antarctic Survey ( Nature , 2012, doi:10.1038/nature11391),reports two recent natural warming cycles, one around 1500 AD and another around 400 AD, measured from isotope (deuterium) concentrations in ice cores bored adjacent to recent breaks in the ice shelf in northeast Antarctica. ….
Greenland ice temperature, last 11,000 years determined from ice core analysis, Richard Alley’s paper shows that have been 9 warming and cooling periods in the last 11,000 years.
http://www.climate4you.com/images/GISP2%20TemperatureSince10700%20BP%20with%20CO2%20from%20EPICA%20DomeC.gif
@ Truth Deciple
“Mud wrestle with pigs–he must have been looking in the mirror.”
I’ve heard that thing men do called many things – preening the pope, pumping the python, manipulating the mango – now we have “mud-wrestling the pig.” Mirror is optional.
seems ‘crying wolf’ comes into everything some people say?
The good professor is making a nice little bundle helping insurance actuaries sell justifications for over priced reinsurance premiums for non-existant storm claims.
Stop with the scary photos already. I’ll take an alarmist graph over this any day.
“……..and argued for the identification of emergent properties in landscapes as an alternative to the reductionist model-building paradigm.”
Seems he is eager to demolish the “model-building paradigm” as a reductionist approach – I wonder if that includes in the climate change field where of course reductionist models reign supreme still.
Despite the 17 year surface temperature standstill, despite climate sensitivity being dialed down recently by the IPCC. If ever there was a time for debate it is now.
Flat Earthers can be shown a photo of the globe from space.
Creationists can be shown fossils which are millions of years old.
What can you show a sceptic? A graph of rising co2 and temperature? I could show you a graph showing rising temperature and an ice age.
Here is the profile page of the good Dr. Harrison. Check out the insurance links and activism. No wonder he doesn’t want to debate.
============
Dr Stephan Harrison
Associate Professor of Quaternary Science
Profile
• An invited member of the Environmental Research Group and the Climate Research Group of the Institute of Actuaries.
• An invited member of the Carbon Counting Group, an international group of economists, scientists, architects, politicians and environmental activists working in the field of mitigation and adaption for climate change.
• An invited member of the Climate Justice Programme
• An expert witness for the Environmental Law Alliance Worldwide looking at the impact of mining on mountain glaciers in the Chilean Andes, and specifically the Pascua Lama mine.
• An invited member of the Science Media Centre
• An invited member of the Environmental Research Group of the Emergency Planning Society.
Since 2005 he has given 19 invited papers and 4 keynote speeches at international and national conferences and workshops.
• He has given invited keynote talks at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington DC; the 2005 Lloyd’s Risk Lecture and invited talks at the universities of Trondheim and Vienna.
• He has reviewed manuscripts for 26 journals and grant applications for NERC and NSF.
“……….Since 2001 Dr Harrison has helped businesses and governmental organisations understand and respond to climate change and he has worked with Lloyd’s Insurance Market…..”
https://geography.exeter.ac.uk/staff/index.php?web_id=Stephan_Harrison
He has a verbally expressed hockey stick for the contribution of Patagonian glacier melt to sea level rise with a blade of about 30 years, and yet the simple average of world tide gauges (Church & White 2011) shows no upturn from a 150 year long linear trend whatsoever. After all, if Patagonia is suddenly melting faster then this is the case for most all other glaciers and it should show *up* in sea level rise, but the rise is evidently slowing a bit instead. Perhaps Antarctica really is growing much more than the IPCC admits, since I saw one article with about fifty authors that claimed it was actually shrinking despite it being so terribly below zero in a more humid world to feed it more snow.
“We’ve established that the rates of volume loss have increased dramatically in the last the 30 years.”
Write-up with a link to the article and its supplementary info: http://simpleclimate.wordpress.com/2011/04/09/patagonian-survey-reveals-tenfold-glacier-melt-speed-up/
I wonder how it holds up to auditing?
Here he is appearing on Australia’s edition of 60 Minutes:
http://youtu.be/QejBiuorCGA
http://youtu.be/-0VQWeA3QRo
Famous globetrotting guy now, unlike most scientists, eh?
I don’t know where these guys come from.
Everybody knows that climate changes…doh!
But, I don’t know anybody who even talks about a flat earth….
Well, except maybe the president.
cn
I have to assume Dr. Harrison knows what it’s like to mud wrestle pigs or he wouldn’t make the comparison. I can’t help but wonder what his record was, did he usually win or did the pig win?
The Little Ice Age (1450-1850 AD) was in its infancy 500 years ago, and glaciers worldwide went into an advancing mode after retreating during the Medieval Warm Period (850-1450 AD). Of course the glaciers had previously advanced during the Dark Ages cooling (400-850AD), which followed the Roman Warm Period, although glacier advance during Dark Ages cooling was not nearly as great as during the much colder Little Ice Age. By comparing a glacier now to its state during the Little Ice Age, Harrison found what he should have expected finding” it’s retreating now.
Unlike Harrison, i enjoy debating creationists, GMO opponents, anti-fraclking activists, vaccination phobics, food irradiation adversaries, and natural climate change deniers. It’s easy to challenge their beliefs with facts, although not a one has yet yielded to the voluminous evidence of science that disproves their positions. I should feel bad about beating up on unarmed opponents, but I don’t. It’s a character flaw I can live with.
To be clear Harrison is not a ‘professor’ within the UK meaning of the term. He is an ‘associate professor’ which in the overwhelming number of first class UK universities is the equivalent of the Lecturer/Senior Lecturer grade. A small number of UK universities have picked up on the US style and titles of assistant and associate professorships to represent the lower academic ranks. To carry the title of ‘professor’ in the UK you must currently hold a full chair at a university institution or having retired been granted an emeritus chair. Unless you have that, you remain plain ‘Mr’ or ‘Dr’ in the UK. The more important point is that the title ‘professor’ brings with it a responsibility to lead your subject and promote it beyond the boundaries of your chosen academic echo chamber. Exeter is a very good university and I am sure Harrison’s attitude would get short shrift from the many excellent academics who work there and who grace the public debate in so many fields. To refuse to engage with those whom you disagree is quite reprehensible and quite contrary to the open dialogue which good academics should be prepared to engage in with both students and the public at large.
But who is going to win? Chicken little or the pig of happiness? There is only one way to find out.
Another Lewandowsky ‘study’ perhaps 🙂
Exeter University Prof: ‘Debating skeptics is like mud wrestling with pigs’
Is that a prerequisite for Professors at Exeter – that they be experts on mud wrestling with pigs?
Or, is he saying that debating with someone armed with actual factual information would make him look like he was in the mud with pigs?
@climatereason says: April 28, 2014 at 9:04 am
* An invited member of the Climate Justice Programme
===================================================
When I hear the phrase “Climate Justice”, I reach for my gun.
Ralph Kramden says:
April 28, 2014 at 1:09 pm
I have to assume Dr. Harrison knows what it’s like to mud wrestle pigs or he wouldn’t make the comparison. I can’t help but wonder what his record was, did he usually win or did the pig win?
====================================================================
From the look of the feller, the pig won. He’s a mess.
What exactly is wrong with the analogy? Of course, pigs would have great advantage in mud wrestling. We would expect them to win. And of course, climate science is quite muddy, rotten, and slimy. In that environment, we nevertheless have a great advantage in the facts, and similarly, we will win.
A related analogy: They love to bundle their AGW sow’s ear with silk purses (e.g. round Earth, heliocentrism, and evolution), hoping to make everyone buy their (bonus reference) pig in a poke.
Here it is. The best of the nonsense comes near the end of part2:
http://video.au.msn.com/watch/video/wild-patagonia-part-1/xqxzlms?src=FLPl%253aposterframe%253atitleBar%255elink%253auuids&from=en-AU
Hey! pigs are clean animals, and certainly look cleaner than Harrison.
I suppose they may lay in mud to cool themselves, since they have little hair.
And they root in the dirt to dig up roots to eat.
Plus tIIRC hey defacate in one corner of their pen, genetically potty trained. 🙂
jeremyp99 says:
From the look of the feller, the pig won. He’s a mess.
That reminds me of what a student who took one of Lewandowski’s classes wrote:
“Have a bath, you grub.” LOL!
============================================================
In addition they could upload it to TheWayBackMachine (http://archive.org/web/web.php).
jaffa says:
April 28, 2014 at 5:23 am
He even looks dishonest.
He looks like Ted
http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2002407_2002427_2002426,00.html
“…and this is all due to AGW…”
Not even a minority view among glaciologists–more like a flat earth view. See Motyka, et al:
http://www.researchgate.net/…Glacier_Bay…/9c960527a8a69b54bd.pd
–AGF
Damn it. Google: Motyka Glacier Bay. –AGF
TheLastDemocrat says:
April 28, 2014 at 6:29 am
Evolution is happening now? What animals have we added to the zoo in my lifetime?
Evolution is a rate of change thing. The rates of change are fastest in critters that reproduce the most frequently. Which is why you don’t see them in a zoo that often. You might want to grab a microscope.
And of course we come to the age old question – how different from a dog is a wolf? What is a species?
When I hear that a BILLION a day is being spent on “climate research”, I cannot help but wonder how on earth this inconceivable amount of money is being used. The answer is Harrison’s lifestyle… and it is easy to tell he is not wasting it in haircuts or showers, that’s for sure.
M Simon,
I was going to warn TheLastDemocrat that questioning evolution will get him his turn in the barrel. I had only asked for some examples, since the one big example given was the moth, and there were questions about the methodology. But…
…Big misteak.
Greg says:
April 28, 2014 at 8:27 am
“Apparently he hasn’t read that the consensus is that quantum mechanics has no significant impact on the macro-scale world ”
You are mistaken. Heisenburg principal does apply to climatology:
The greater your uncertainty of the energy of the climate system, the more certain you can be of your position.
This was clearly stated to be the case in AR5 SPM.
LULZ and ROTFLMAO
what a nasty unpleasant little man, name calling from his sheltered workshop
If the Harrison has the science on his side (as warmies so often claim), then why is it so difficult for him to debate sceptics? It should be easy to articulate an accurately quantified response with appropriate references.
An acceleration in glacial retreat is not surprising given the temperature record over then last 300 years. Harrison then only needs to articulate and quantify clearly the scientific basis for correlating such warming with anthropogenic activity. He might then notice that even the IPCC does not acknowledge that warming in the last 50 years, let alone since the LIA, is “all due to AGW”, nor do they pretend to know exactly how much it will warm in the future.
By making unsupported, unquantified and alarmist claims, Harrison covers himself with mud. If he wants to be treated with respect as a scientist, he should present like a scientist and leave the muck-raking to others.
NikFromNYC alerted us to:
Stephan.Harrison@exeter.ac.uk
“Dr Harrison also has research interests in the philosophy of physical geography. He has written on the ontology of quantum theory as an argument against realist philosophy in geography, and argued for the identification of emergent properties in landscapes as an alternative to the reductionist model-building paradigm.”
If it were for a cooking show, you would call it ‘word salad’.
According to his University biography ….
Dr Stephan Harrison is …..
Associate Professor of Quaternary Science
An invited member of the Environmental Research Group and the Climate Research Group of the Institute of Actuaries.
An invited member of the Carbon Counting Group, an international group of economists, scientists, architects, politicians and environmental activists working in the field of mitigation and adaption for climate change.
An invited member of the Climate Justice Programme
An expert witness for the Environmental Law Alliance Worldwide looking at the impact of mining on mountain glaciers in the Chilean Andes, and specifically the Pascua Lama mine.
An invited member of the Science Media Centre
An invited member of the Environmental Research Group of the Emergency Planning Society.
Since 2005 he has given 19 invited papers and 4 keynote speeches at international and national conferences and workshops.
He has given invited keynote talks at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington DC; the 2005 Lloyd’s Risk Lecture and invited talks at the universities of Trondheim and Vienna.
He has reviewed manuscripts for 26 journals and grant applications for NERC and NSF.
More here:
https://geography.exeter.ac.uk/staff/index.php?web_id=Stephan_Harrison
Amazingly he states this at his bio-pages (in the middle of a paragraph about publications) “However, it is unclear whether recent rates of glacier recession in Patagonia are unusual relative to the past few centuries.”….. so this is his “get out”, and he can honestly say that he clearly stated that publically for all to see. The rest of his statements ergo are mere hypotheses.
I have raised pigs, and do not advise anyone to wrestle with them once they weigh more than you do. However at times I have had to get a pig weighing over three hundred pounds into the back of my pick-up truck, to move it to the slaughter house. On one occasion I had three young and very strong men to help me, and in the most casual manner the pig shrugged all four of us aside. Then I remembered an old trick. I put a bucket over the pig’s head, and the pig tried to back away from the bucket. By manipulating the bucket I backed the pig into the truck.
I advise the same approach be used on Alarmists who refuse to debate. The simple fact they refuse to debate is proof they are backing up. Keep them backing up.
@Caleb – You are in luck! Alarmists already have buckets (blinders) on their heads! 😉
I’ve noticed that. Likely it explains the echoing.
Having been involved with setting up a forum/debate for Lord Monckton and some so called AGW experts, I would say that debating with a warmist is very much like shouting to them from a speeding car as they high tail out of town in order to avoid any knowledgable questions from a person who disagrees with them.
Cheers
Roger
http://www.rogerfromnewzealand.wordpress.com
A badly mannered pseudo-academic quite desperate to make it to the headlines that way. His [deficit of] science and professional skill never would have brought him there.
Attn. Exeter University: fire and forget!
Well Dr. Stephan Harrison is evidently an experimentalist if he is studying a specific glacier; heck I would like a grant to go to Patagonia, to find out if the trout can survive in the increasingly acidic rivers; so I presume that Harrison has actually wrestled a pig in mud.
When one does that, it is easy to lose track of which one is the pig.
I used to wrestle pigs; well just their aft legs. After they were pickled in brine for a few days, they had to be wrestled into a large wooden vat of hot water, and scrubbed clean, and then wrestled overhead to hang by the ankle on a hook, and off to the frig to await being sold. Helped pay for me to come to America.
Closest I have ever been to a real live pig, is perhaps 300 meters.
Why debate with anyone who disagrees with you? It’s so much easier to debate only people who agree with you so you can take turns praising each other’s expert opinion and intelligence. It’s also easier to claim a consensus when opposing viewpoints are shut out.
I was correct,
The guy is just scamming the system; even admits it’s just a lot of fun, being on a glacier in Patagonia.
I didn’t see him actually making any measurements of anything.
Wow.
So another educated-at-public-expense (presumably), employed at public expense (presumably) petulant man-child says he will not debate his academic peers (or worse – actual physicists – gasp!).
Guess this is what happens when you search for relevance among hot rocks and petulant (presumably) adolescents attending your classes.
If this is how he behaves after obtaining the sophistication and maturity of an advanced “education”, he must have been a real piece of work before…just saying
‘ Further, if Harrison is worried about disappearing archives, then I urge him and other scientists (even Ellen Mosley-Thompson) to archive their own data, lest it become misplaced. Neither the NOAA archive (ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/) nor Pangaea (www.pangaea.de) contain a single ice core dataset from Patagonia.’
Steve, what makes you think he has any steenking data?
I am a aussie and he did not fool us he might have had more believing in his BS if it was shown on our left wing ABC warming channel
I suppose having a hairy face along with Phd makes you the smartest sob on the planet .
When i attain my Phd ,grow ,a beard and apply for grants it will be for the study of gambling and girls of ill repute in Macau . Hell with clamoring around a mountain glacier.
He must have run out of Visine before that picture was taken! Step away from the bong.
Just wait. Their next step will be to list ice as an endangered species. What is weird about that is many people here are nodding their head as if that listing is a real possibility!
ConfusedPhoton (1st comment) says “Dr Stephan Harrison does not debate with sceptics because he is a coward.“.
Dr Stephan Harrison says “geographers don’t debate with people who think the world is flat“.
So, Dr Stephan Harrison, is the definitely non-cowardly physicist in this debate ..
http://static.astronomija.co.rs/razno/multimedia/tvastronmija/Flat_Earth/Falt_Earth.htm
.. wrong to stand up for science?
Actually, astronomers are more than happy to debate flat-earth critics. Likewise, evolutionists and Astrophysicists are more than happy to debate Intelligent Design or Young Earth creationists. They have in the past, with decisively conclusive results. Remember the Scopes Trial and the national debate that followed? Or more recent versions of the same thing. Going back to Galileo, scientists have been thrilled to engage in public debates about the great issues of the day, so long as there’ no threat of violence or imprisonment.
I mean, honestly, why wouldn’t you want to debate people you were guaranteed to win against, because the evidence on your side was so overwhelming and undeniable? Unless, just maybe, it isn’t.
Dr. Stephan, you are right. We love to wrestle and you do not. Furthermore, if we are going to cast insults, from your picture it appears you had yet another late night last night…
Par for the course here in the Australian MSM. All channels vary from mildly pro-AGW, channel 7, 9 and 10 to strongly pro-AGW, taxpayer funded ABC and SBS.
“M Simon says:
April 28, 2014 at 2:49 pm”
Given that there is only a little as ~6% difference in DNA benween humans and orangutangs, I’d say very little.
Part II @7:50 Harrison: “So, you could argue that the glaciers won’t grow back while humans are on the planet, and won’t start regrowing or readvancing until we leave.” Why is almost every global warming alarmist also a misanthrope?
The argument in the last sentence is spurious: the dodgy Prof. means that biologists wouldn’t argue with people who flatly deny a Theory which has stood the test of two centuries and geographers won’t waste time arguing a theory which has been universally accepted for the best part of 400 years.
He hasn’t said that Climate Skeptics believe in those two fallacious denialist positions, but he is claiming that the views they hold on ‘global warming’ are analagous.
It is that latter claim which is utterly ridiculous………
REPLY: Not really, that thinking is exactly what the prof is insinuating
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/08/03/pachauri-skeptics-are-flat-earthers/
https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070804074519AAS9g1U
– Anthony
April 28, 2014 at 6:49 am | Steve McIntyre says:
———-
His comments at CA diminished after Climategate, attenuating to none as resentfulness grew among the activist community as they recognised the potential damage to their financial pig trough.
April 28, 2014 at 5:19 pm | george e. smith says:
Apparently. She was terribly unattractive but he still had a go at the academic gentlemen’s club.
He ducks like a quack.
“Debating skeptics is like mud wrestling with pigs”
I guess someone who likes wrestling theoretical chimeras (CAGW) might not like getting their hands dirty with a real animal.
Correction:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/04/28/exeter-university-prof-debating-skeptics-is-like-mud-wrestling-with-pigs/#comment-1623869
—–
“What can you show a sceptic? A graph of rising co2 and temperature? I could show you a graph showing rising temperature and an ice age.”
—–
What can you show a sceptic? A graph of rising co2 and temperature? I could show you a graph showing rising Co2 and an ice age.
—–
Dr Stefan Harrison of Exeter University
Write to his university and complain everybody. He should not be allowed an easy ride on this.
Make it clear that we will slag off Exeter at every opportunity to everyone we know unless he publicly apologises.
Wonder if he knows Lew?. They could compare notes on cognitive dissonance and how to suppress it whilst standing in line at the public teat dispensary.
He calls skeptics pigs? Looks like he just came off a three day crack bender….
Re: dbstealey says: April 28, 2014 at 10:47 am
“Your comment is so cryptic it is worthy of Mosher.”
Should I take that as a compliment?
“Whatever your comment/link means, I don’t understand it.”
Let me elucidate. On the thread I linked to I was called all manner of unpleasant names and my ultimate response was “snipped” in its entirety. Meanwhile @mod claims “WUWT is one of the most open site anywhere.”
Then I politely ask Anthony if he can provide a link to some data he graphed. My humble enquiry is ignored.
Q.E.D?
A Different Simile:
Debating the Warmists is like debating those religious who believe they are divinely inspired. But at least the religious base their argument upon faith, not bad data. Much better to believe that God told me than that models, which have been disproven, told me. Right or wrong, the true believer is just that, not a charlatan such as Dr Harrison.
At the root this statement is much funnier than you’d expect: Debating skeptics and mud wrestling pigs both occur in an environment in which the competition is in its home territory.
Pigs know mud.
Skeptics know science.
So why would a global warmist lose to a scientist? Oh, right!
I’m sure there are a lot of very nice geographers but this anachronistic discipline ran out of work when the earth was basically mapped (Geo- earth, grapher- drawer) and today we map it several times a day. It was in its heyday when Alchemy was in its. I remember as a schoolboy a long time ago that, having refused to die, it desperately took up things like coffee grows in Brazil and corned beef comes from Argentina. Now they are drawing the atmosphere! If one is looking for an example of evolution, this cling-on may be our best example. Geology developed because of discovery of the history of the earth recorded in rocks, minerals, fossils, sedimentary, igneous and metamorphic rocks and a host of other features (e.g. its usefulness in locating resources). Geography encroaches on geology as the star, but the star has a number of inconvenient aspects – the need to know chemistry, physics and mathematics, so they stay apart to a large degree.
A sign that CAGW is not a science is its flexibility in incorporating everyone as experts, including psychologists, sociologists, philosophers, geographers, and even chemists who apparently like to dabble in Alchemy. A geologist on the same mission to Patagonia would gather data, totally unknown to a geographer (seismicity, 10Be distribution, micro-gravity data, stream flow, previous ice and water levels, dating of morrains…)
Patrick says:
“Given that there is only a little as ~6% difference in DNA benween humans and orangutangs, I’d say very little.”
Even more interesting, cats about 10% and fruit flies about 40% different from people.
Steve McIntyre says:
April 28, 2014 at 6:49 am
Harrison commented at Climate Audit between 2005 and 2011
Thanks for this clarification, this changes the picture I had about Mr Harrison.
He is no confused theoretician, who in his ivory tower did not heard the skeptic arguments, but rather a person who tried to argue and failed, as we know the scientific argument is not on the CAGW side.
So rather to recognize this, he hides willingly behind insults, justifying in this way why he is not debating the skeptics.
He pretty knows his arguments are bust, but enjoys the CAGW ride.
The CAGW theory has its good parts, it is an opportunity to see what people really are.
Both of his assertions, regarding geographers and biologists, are patently untrue. Such “debating” is called teaching, and many skilled geographers and biologists do it with relish. After all, few other than Harrison are born with a contemporary knowledge of geography and biology.
Looks like he could do with a good wash. Maybe he really has been mudwrestling a pig!
“Looks like he could do with a good wash. Maybe he really has been mudwrestling a pig!”
Poor pig.
Well, Paul, take comfort that you’re not alone in Oz. We have the same breed of eejits over in the States. I don’t know where the virus started, but we need to begin researching for a vaccine for it, methinks.
Nor are they alone in the UK. 😉
I think he means he has experience mud wrestling pigs who, just when you think you’ve got them pinned down, always manage to wriggle from his grasp: the ‘pigs’ always seem to win!
I don’t normally judge people from photos, but I wouldn’t let Dr. Stephan Harrison mow my lawn. He looks like a Timothy Leary follower…
“I don’t normally judge people from photos, but I wouldn’t let Dr. Stephan Harrison mow my lawn. He looks like a Timothy Leary follower…”
Reality is often much worse than pic(g)s, have a look at Angela Merkel….
I think it’s more likely that “debating skeptics is too much like having to work for a living.”
Wouldn’t it be nice if we all went through life facing no hard questions?
Well, for about five minutes until everything we did failed, yes.
He doesn’t debate with skeptics because you people are morons just like the flat-earthers and creationists.
I think the good professor is speaking outside his area of expertise. I can find no evidence of him wrestling pigs in mud nor debating skeptics. It leads one to wonder how many of his other pronouncements are beyond his ken?
You have to get your hands dirty, to join the gang – that’s what “Dr” Harrison is doing.