Guest essay by Jim Steele,
Director emeritus Sierra Nevada Field Campus, San Francisco State University and author of Landscapes & Cycles: An Environmentalist’s Journey to Climate Skepticism
While alarmists try to enshrine climate scientists as pure and unbiased, those familiar with real life science understand a scientist’s opinion should always be challenged- challenged because personal bias taints their interpretations and challenged because a small minority will fudge the data in order to gain peer acceptance, status and funding.
Read the NY Times piece Crack Down on Scientific Fraudsters
Scientific fraud is found in the field of medical science because results can be quickly checked. In climate science, dooms day predictions are cast far into the future and alarming predictions go untested. As seen in the diagram below negative ecological disruptions are highlighted as the deadly consequence of climate change while ignoring thriving populations just a few meters away.
Unfortunately the few climate alarmists that constitute the “consensus” have circled the wagons to protect obviously flawed publications as documented in How the American Meteorological Society Justified Publishing Half-Truths
http://landscapesandcycles.net/American_Meterological_Society_half-truth.html and seen in the Climate gate emails.
They should be concerned.
The crack down is coming.
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Lets hope so 🙂
Looks like the climate ’emperors’ have no clothes.
Those so invested in human caused climate catastrophe have waged a media campaign to enshrine climate scientists as if climate scientists do not suffer the same problems that are being exposed. It reminds me of the Frank Zappa song “It Cant Happen Here”
[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svdrAHn_LGo [/video]
It is indeed Jim.. there are bright minds paying attention to all this.
@jim Steele: Whoooooo … could imagine …
It’s good to see a professional trying to help his field to self-correct. But it’s really hard to get people to back away from positions they’ve invested a good deal of effort in — and been well-rewarded for it
It.
There’s really no easy solution to this problem — as you say, these are half-truths. Probably a tipping-point will be reached, as it becomes more evident that the CAGW hypothesis’s drastic predictions of woe aren’t happening, and the climate isn’t even warming much.
Until then, I guess it’s up to us old guys who don’t have much to lose, to keep pointing out that stuff that’s been predicted ain’t happening. And a “science” that can’t make valid predictions is pretty much useless. Eh, grant-granters?
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.”
— Upton Sinclair
Long game. I like it. Finally.
“Because a small minority will fudge the data in order to gain peer acceptance, status and funding.”
And that in a nutshell is the role of most climate scientists in today’s.world of real science.
dynam01 says:
July 11, 2014 at 2:35 pm
@jim Steele: Whoooooo … could imagine …
__________________
Would that cause a freakout in Kansas?
Read this from Bill Moyer about poor downtrodden Mickey Mann. You’ll find Mickey is just a pure honest scientist who is the true sceptic, fighting the good fight.
http://billmoyers.com/2014/06/12/six-things-michael-mann-wants-you-to-know-about-the-science-of-global-warming/
They’ll never retract the paper. It has too many cards above it in the house of cards.
Its important to note that the NYT article was written by the founders of Retraction Watch, not NYT staff or elites. It is to NYT’s credit, and probably more for a ratings nudge than any ideological bent, that they published it.
Where is Elmer Fudd when you need him? (Kill the Wabbit! KILL THE WABBIT!)
Jim, do you realize that the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of Texas still claims a Nobel Peace Prize for Camille Parmesan.
Faculty
37 faculty
3 members of the National Academy of Sciences
7 fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
4 National Science Foundation Early CAREER Awards
2 MacArthur Fellows
1 Kavli Frontiers of Science fellow
1 International Prize for Biology
1 Howard Hughes Medical Institute Award – Early Career Scientist
1 2007 Nobel Peace Prize jointly awarded with Al Gore and others
@David L.
Moyer is definitely an anthropogenic climate change disciple. His website recently authored an article about climate myths arguing the 17 year pause was the fabrication of Lord Monckton, stating the number 1 myth was “Earth Hasn’t Stopped Warming Since 1998 (or 1996 or 1997)”
This claim was popularized by “Lord” Christopher Monckton, a prominent British climate “skeptic” with no scientific background who presented himself as a member of the House of Lords until the Parliament published a cease and desist order demanding that he stop. His so-called “research” relies on people’s confusion about the difference between weather, which fluctuates all the time, and climate, which speaks to long-term trends. With some careful cherrypicking of data, you get the argument that there’s been “no global warming for 17 years, 3 months.”
Moyer was oblivious to the fact that hundreds of peer-reviewed papers have been trying to explain this so-caled “imaginary pause”.
So that Moyer writers would enshrine Michael Mann comes as no surprise. In that interview they quote Mann “Part of the reason for the attacks against me and other scientists who have participated prominently in the public discussion is to send a warning signal to other scientists who might think about speaking out. But if we don’t speak out, then we leave a vacuum in the discussion.”
But they neglect to balance their discussion with the wide spread attempt to shut down all skeptical thought from “deniers.” The printed form of Trenberth’s address after climategate added a cartoon that said ” Global Warming is not the greatest threat to the World” ” Global WArming Skeptics are!” Clearly if you wanted to be funded and published, Trenberth was warning ” do not be a skeptic!” So to steal the words from Mann ” But if we [skeptics] don’t speak out, then we leave a vacuum in the discussion” created by threats from Trenberth and Mann.
because a small minority will fudge the data in order to gain peer acceptance, status and funding.
=====
Jim, this is absolutely not true…….
Fudged data…once accepted..becomes even more fudged data
As more is accepted…even more science is built on the fudged data that was built on the fudged data..and on and on
Faster than you can blink….it becomes a huge majority…just look at what happened to climate science
Bob says “Jim, do you realize that the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of Texas still claims a Nobel Peace Prize for Camille Parmesan.
Faculty”
Yes I am sadly aware. It reminds me of the quote from Godfather 3 where Michael says to Connie, “All my life I kept trying to go up in society. Where everything higher up was legal. But the higher I go, the crookeder it becomes. Where the hell does it end?”
Maybe they’ll allow Mickey to have a picture of his self-awarded Nobel Prize on his cell wall.
I have noticed some basic math issues.
1) Sea Level Rise
We keep hearing that the heat is hiding in the oceans. Ok, I buy that. How much will SLR be impacted by it? I hears that the land ice is melting and it too is impacting SLR. Ok, I buy that too. I hear that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is melting due to geo thermal heating. I buy that as well.
Given the current SLR and the three major factors above, do the numbers add up?
2) Missing Heat
There are a number of reasons for the missing heat. OHC being the big one, but natural forcings are another and the Cowtan and Way paper that merged data and concluded it was in the arctic was another. It seems to me that there is a lot of heat accounted for.
This, while not fraud, seems more than a little odd to me. Perhaps there are very obvious reasons but other than evaporation rate impacting SLR I can’t see anything.
Anybody wish to comment?
It is possible that science fraud will become MSMs new sensational headlines, especially when there is nothing more newsworthy/sensationalist or attention grabbing. Then we could see a cascade of domino collapse as the scientists involved start to go down. Political power and conspiracy has floated there boat, it can easily be sunk when the MSM ‘climate’ is right. It will be Titanic.
@Latitude
I agree that once that small minority publishes, a falsehood it goes viral as I have documented here http://landscapesandcycles.net/hijacking-conservation-success-in-the-uk.html
Nonetheless, the majority of scientists who echo the bad science are not deliberately spreading false lies. They are merely parroting ideas they have come to trust. As I said in the “Blinded by Beliefs” essay about Emperor Penguins http://landscapesandcycles.net/resilient-emperor-penguin.html, Mark Twains nails the universal problem that is as true for science as it is for religion, “In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from others.”
their boat
They are merely parroting ideas they have come to trust…
====
Jim, they are also parroting data, charts, graphs, science, formulas……building on science that wasn’t true….
Just look at all the science built on science that was built…all the way back to some questionable paper that got through
jim Steele and Latitude
The problem we have is ongoing citation. Falsehood upon falsehood becomes an issue, as does good science based on a citation later proved to be “false”. I hesitate to use the word “false”, but I know no other that fits.
whoever wrote it, at least NYT did publish it.
12 July: Spectator: In apologising for having Nigel Lawson on to discuss climate change, the BBC has breached its charter
Rational debate is poisonous to climatic correctness
It is only a matter of time before Nigel Lawson — if he is allowed on the BBC at all — has to have his words spoken by an actor in the manner of Gerry Adams at the height of the IRA’s bombing campaign during the 1980s. In the case of Mr Adams, whose voice was banned from the airwaves by the government, the BBC stood up for free speech. But it is quite a different story with Lord Lawson. The BBC has effectively banned the former chancellor (and former editor of this magazine) from appearing on its programmes to debate climate change, unless he is introduced with a statement discrediting his views…
When people try to close down debate rather than engage with it, there is a pretty clear conclusion to be drawn: they lack confidence in their own case. The suppression of debate was shown again this week when Vladimir Semonov, a climate scientist at the Geomar Institute in Kiel, Germany, revealed that a paper he wrote in 2009 questioning the accuracy of climate models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was effectively censored by the scientist to whom it was sent for review. Their reasons for demanding passages be removed seems rather less than scientifically rigorous: one wrote that the offending material would ‘lead to unnecessary confusion in the climate science community’ and another said that ‘this entire discussion has to disappear’….
http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-week/leading-article/9259911/climatic-correctness/
remembering Natalie Bennett – who “was editor of The Guardian Weekly from December 2007 until March 2012, and previously its deputy editor” (Wikipedia) – the Australian-born leader of the Green Party in England & Wales:
17 Feb: Breitbart: Raheem Kassan: Green Party Wants Ouster Of Govt Climate Change Sceptics
Britain’s Green Party has called for the ouster of climate change sceptics within the British government, in what critics have called a ‘quasi-fascist’ move to force the issue.
Green Party leader Natalie Bennett, whose party has one Member of Parliament in former leader Caroline Lucas, specifically targeted Conservative government ministers Owen Paterson and Eric Pickles, demanding that those who refuse to accept “the scientific consensus on climate change” should be removed from the positions.
Australian-born Bennett told the BBC that “…those are situations that cannot be allowed to continue in government. People need to accept the reality and need to act to take the choices we need to deal with climate change”…
When asked if her comments were being interpreted correctly, and if she really meant that every senior government adviser, even those not linked to environmental issues, should be removed for their climate change scepticism, Bennett responded, “Yes… we would ask the government to remove them.”…
(BBC VIDEO: approx 2 mins INTERVIEW WITH NATALIE BENNETT)
http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/02/17/Greens-want-ouster-of-cabinet-climatesceptics