Via GMU press release:
We are delighted to announce that John Cook, PhD will be joining our team as a Research Assistant Professor, beginning January 2017.
Initially trained as a physicist, John recently completed his PhD in psychology at the University of Western Australia. His doctoral research focused on the negative influences of misinformation on climate literacy, and how to neutralize those influences.
Despite his newly minted PhD, John has been a towering figure in the field of climate communication for the past decade. In 2007, he created Skeptical Science – a website/app devoted to explaining climate science and rebutting global warming misinformation. Skeptical Science is widely seen by climate scientists and other climate educators as an invaluable educational resource. For his efforts, John has received numerous prestigious awards including a 2012 Eureka Prize for Advancement of Climate Change Knowledge (Australian Museum), a 2013 Peter Rawlinson Conservation Award (Australian Conservation Foundation) and a 2016 Friend of the Planet Award (National Center for Science Education).
John has also published five books on climate change and/or science misinformation – including The Debunking Handbook (with Stephen Lewandowsky) that has been downloaded over ½ million times from Skeptical Science – and dozens of scientific articles. His research paper titled Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming (Environmental Research Letters, 2013) – that definitively demonstrated that 97% of climate scientists are convinced that human-caused climate is happening – is the most-ever-downloaded paper from that journal, or any journal published by the Institute of Physics. Not bad for a social scientist!
In 2015, John developed and taught a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) through The University of Queensland titled Denial 101x: Making Sense of Climate Science Denial. This course – which uses an innovative pedagogical technique called misconception-based learning – has attracted over 25,000 students from 167 nations. John is currently teaching the course for a 2nd time to 1,873 students from 114 nations.
Given the innovation and rigor of John’s climate communication research – and his total commitment to helping stabilize the earth’s climate – we are fortunate indeed to be welcoming him to America, and to have him join the 4C team.
Oh boy, looks like Cook will be Cooking up some new crazy campaigns to try to minimize those people who have an opinion different than he does.
Some background on GMU and the RICO20:
George Mason professors call for RICO probe of ‘climate change deniers’
Jagdish Shukla’s #RICO20 blunder may have opened the ‘largest science scandal in US history’
More on the George Mason Centre for Climate Change Communication and its founder Ed Maibach, here:
Propaganda from The Public Purse
http://sppiblog.org/news/propaganda-from-the-public-purse
Beats me how a university with such a strong economics department is also home to this bunch of fanatics…
Beats me completely how any university department could take this grinning galoot seriously at all. That he has written a book with Lewandowsky is hardly a recommendation and that he went over to La Lewny’s old department at UWA to do his PhD does not say much at all.
Not sure about those numbers though…sounds like
in 2015 there were 25000 students from 167 countries, roughly 150 students per country
in 2016 thare are now 1873 students from 114 countries or 16 students per country
Sounds like there won’t be sufficient interest for a 2017 course
Porjections would indicate 1.6 students per counter from around 80 countries for a total student populace of 125 or so next year
Easy. That’s how they make their money.
If being a skeptic was the profitable, easy way to go, that’s what they would be doing instead. Follow the money. Scientists are a venal as anyone and maybe more so if grant money is involved.
Susan Crockford? Paid by Heartland.. Willie Soon? same…
James Delingpole makes a living out of it – is Monckton not paid for his lectures?
Griff it is not who pays for the research that’s important it is whether the science is correct.
Are you this David LeBlanc?
https://www.google.com/#q=Leblanc+Thorium
If so you can count on my support.
Is this an actual real person that this Press Release is describing.
I think that maybe the Pope has just screwed up in making Mother Theresa a Saint.
Clearly this chap is far more deserving of Sainthood than Mother Theresa.
Well I see he has a PhD in Psychology.
I know a Psychologist; two of them in fact; my life long best friend and his wife. They are likely the world’s leading authority (both of them) on the learning processes of retarded children; and how to apply effective remedial teaching processes, to return a good fraction of them to perfectly normal status, to completely avoid K-12 Special Ed needs.
Well they study ” behavior ” That is what Psychologists do.
They do NOT study what people think. As a trained Physicist Dr John Cook should be well aware that there is no known Physical process for downloading and deciphering the content of another person’s brain. Or even a dolphin or a crow’s brain.
People who claim they can do that are called ” Psychiatrists “.
Well Ricky Ricardo called them ” Pee-sick-ee-uh-trists ” with the accent on the “sick”, which is about what they are.
So what the hell is “Dr” John Cook doing outside his field of expertise trying to figure out climate skeptics.
It’s very simple John; the “consensus 97%” claims of what climatists call a physical model of the earth’s climate simply do not either explain or predict or postdict what the experimental observations of earth climate history shows has happened.
So we have another Wizard of Aus who thinks we can just ignore what he is doing behind the curtain.
G
Obviouslt a “Stand-Up Psychologist”
Look at his Ph.D. description… Ph.D. in misinformation..
Yes, he got a Ph.D. in Climate Propaganda…
What he failed to point out was the 97% of climate skeptics are ALSO convinced that human-caused climate is happening. The whole debate is about how much.
Quite why a Physics journal decided it was the right place to carry a paper about psychology is another question entirely.
“His doctoral research focused on the negative influences of misinformation on climate literacy,”
Well, he’s certainly an expert on that, he’s been doing to for over a decade.
May be he should stop dying his hair, it’s making him look pasty.
No
Pis-e-a-see–a-crist.
“So what the hell is “Dr” John Cook doing outside his field of expertise trying to figure out climate skeptics.”
Well you know how he is at fizzicks?
This is the same John Cook of the notorious “97%” paper?
Indeed.
100% the same. Its the only thing about the guy you could take to the bank. The rest is basically a cartoon.
Shouldn’t that be 97% correct. 😉
Excepting that he is not in his photoshopped Reichsführer ss Heinrich Himmler uniform.The man should be Kook- not Cook.He headed up crash course in climate denial ism at UQ.
No in this case its 100% and as GlenM points out that’s 100% kook. On reflection though perhaps he lives in a kookoon which wopuld explain a lot.
If you want someone who knows all about providing scientific misinformation, you would be hard pressed to find a more knowledgeable person for the job.
Heh. They’re doubling down on the CAGW meme. I guess they haven’t figured out that they should stop digging. Should be interesting.
Exactly right. After the Shukla mess, you’d think they’d be a bit less aggressive in recruiting these polarizing figures.
Towering opinion wins in some circles.
To keep the AGW issue alive, particularly in the US, the people of influence need to be moved out of semi-obscure places and into positions where titles give them even greater believably. Consider how Chris Mooney, of Desmogblog minor fame ( http://www.desmogblog.com/chris_mooney) is now “Chris Mooney, Washington Post reporter” ( https://www.washingtonpost.com/people/chris-mooney ). If legendary Watergate-era WashPo editor Ben Bradlee were alive today to see that designation, one could wager that Mooney would be looking for work tomorrow, and other heads would roll at WashPo for hiring Mooney in the first place.
“If legendary Watergate-era WashPo editor Ben Bradlee were alive today to see that designation, one could wager that Mooney would be looking for work tomorrow, ”
Would have never been hired in the first place and I doubt the current crew would be there at all.
If legendary Watergate-ero WashPo editor Ben Bradlee were to apply at the WashPo today, he would never get hired either.
Is this really the George Mason post for him? Including this lovely line –
” In 2007, he created Skeptical Science – a website/app devoted to explaining climate science and rebutting global warming misinformation. ”
I wasn’t aware that Skeptical Science rebutted global warming misinformation, I thought it generated it.
spot on, friend.
The Skeptical Science site is the Westboro Baptist Church of the climate alarmist world.
didn’t the RICO thing just backfire big time?
anyway i’m glad we know who the actors are and where they are so that when their game is up and the economic harm they have caused has been counted, we will know where to find them so that we can file all those lawsuits.
They should have used his dressed up photo – http://www.populartechnology.net/2012/03/truth-about-skeptical-science.html
That photo, along with the PhD in Propaganda Dissemination, says it all.
There’s some good info from PopTech there – namely the admission from Cook on the SkS site that says ” I’m not a climatologist or a scientist but a self employed cartoonist and web programmer by trade.”
Wow. It’s a pity there isn’t a Nobel prize for comedy – the writer of the above blurb would be a shoo-in.
Blurbs like that are usually written by the person being hired – much like your CV.
But I did like this line:
because the following words were missing: but failed to qualify…
Right on Harry .
Anybody watch any of the “Denial 101x: Making Sense of Climate Science Denial”? It is a fascinating look at how they view us climate skeptics. It seems to me that the psychology runs like this: the CAGW faithful do not reduce their own C02 emissions because in their minds the final 3% of the people are not on board and therefore they cannot start walking the walk with only a measly 97% so they have to lash out at the 3% until the 3% get religion. It is hilarious how they fume at us skeptics as if we are stopping them from turning off the lights, stop flying, stop driving, stop heating their homes, etc.
Anybody watch any of the Denial 101x: … ”
A few brave souls actually signed up for it :-O
Do a search at Jo Nova’s site or copy/paste (maybe just click on)
http://joannenova.com.au/?s=Denial+101
At [b]one time[/b] not so long ago, 97% (maybe closer to 100%) of all [i]certified, licensed doctors[/i] believed that [b]ulcers[/b] were caused by stress, reactions to complex or spicy food, drinking, aspirin and allergies. That was until 1980 or so. Then it was found that [b]well over 95%[/b] of all stomach and duodenum ulcers are festering sores colonized by especially tough helipbactor pylorii.
Thus, with some balking and shouting, the treatment revolutionized.
This may sound as a [i]“skeptic’s argument”[/i], but it is not. It is fact.
97% of scientists CAN be wrong.
Dead wrong.
At [b]another time[/b] not so long ago, 97% (or higher) of the geology professors, PhDs, practitioners believed that the Earth’s continents were static. That they ‘are what they are’. Oh, many (thousands!) had noted the curious hand-in-glove matching of West Africa to East South America, as if they once were glued together. And so on. No real theory dominated, with there being various (vacuous) ideas of an ‘expanding earth’ and so on. Then it was found that the [u]rocks themselves[/u] on the matching coasts were actually duplicates. As were the occasional fossils. And it was found that subduction was real around the ‘ring of fire’. And that sonograms of the mid-oceans showed a big long stripe down the middle of the Atlantic. And so on… 97% now believe in tectonics. Or higher.
My how times change.
Yet [b]another time[/b] in the late 19th century (1800s for the calendar nomenclature challenged), the speed of light was known, but light itself was reckoned [b]by 97+% of scientists[/b] to require an [i]“aether”[/i], an invisible, non-viscous ‘fluid’ or ‘matter’ in which light might flow and propagate. Michelson and his rotating mirrors, reflectors on hills and pretty-good geometers (surveyors) of the distances showed that … no, there was no aether. None.
The [b]Hip Einie[/b] (Einstein) pondered thus, and realized that there was a strong relationship between time and the invariant speed of light. Thus [i]Special Relativity[/i] was born.
Aether died.
Relativity was born.
The Hip Einie was right.
97%?
Let’s see… then there was [i]phlogostin[/i] – the supposed heat-of-reaction ‘stuff’ contained in some materials.
And the theory that ‘purple glass’ (after a hundred years of outdoor exposure) was caused by picking up contaminants.
And the proposition that materials of [u]different density[/u] ought to fall at different rates.
Leaning tower of Pisa… and all that.
There have been [b]many spectacularly long periods[/b] where 97% of The Establishment have been convinced, and have mandated pogroms to sniff out the Infidels, to uphold some idea or another that was just plumb wrong. People have died from harboring such ‘wrong-headed’ [b]dis-[/b]beliefs in doctrine.
Thus I propose…
That for anything as [u]unpredictable[/u], as [u]chaotic[/u] and [u]capricious[/u] as [i]“the weather”[/i] (and axiomatically, [i]“the climate”[/i]), that any time some bunch of scientists … say 97% of ’em … claim they can predict the deep future, stand clear and let the fleas fester amongst themselves. Maybe [b]our[/b] ‘infidel’s’ arguments of dissatisfaction with claiming climate-change is a human-mediated event isn’t quite right. But their unshakeable belief is suspect too.
Now, back to regular programming.
[b]Goat[/b]Guy
…Oops !!!! There. I said it for you….your welcome…LOL
Helicobacter pylori
Try to find your keys instead of [ and ] when it comes to html.
”
‘less than’ and ‘greater than’ (sheesh)
While I’d agree that the percent of educated people who once believed in stress as the cause of ulcers, static continents, etc. was high, I suspect it wasn’t as high as it’s purported for human-caused climate change because 1) the climate change propaganda machine has been furiously shouting down any opposition for many years now. As a movement, climate change advocates enjoy a protected status where any dissenters find themselves regularly scorned in many outlets, and even place their careers in jeopardy. 2) I doubt that 97% number is at all accurate. I’ve seen other surveys of academics put out different (and lower) numbers. Cook’s 97% figure was used, not because that’s what an objective review of literature revealed, but because it conveniently reinforced the same number Gore pulled out of his ass years earlier.
Goat Guy,
Instead of this bracket [ use this one
<
] = >
I guess you wish you hadn´t rounded it all off with:
“Now, back to regular programming.”
🙂 🙂 🙂
Please see the WUWT “Test” page, link on the top nav bar, before you try to post more HTML in a comment. https://wattsupwiththat.com/test/
Funny how “climate change” has to be “communicated”.
RIGHT ON BRUCE! It is all marketing, the little people need to be TOLD that it is happening, so they can start “feeling” it, or rather believing it. It is fun to listen to the believers preach what was long ago debunked.
NASA to Collaborate with Artist to Document Climate Change
http://artforum.com/news/id=63518
http://artforum.com/uploads/upload.001/id30750/article0.jpg
You are feeling warmmmmmm
Interestingly that link states that a chunk of ice the size of Calif was gloing to break off Greenland
Greenalnd is 836,109 Sq Mi
California is 163,696 sq mi
Greenland is about to Calve a berg that is almost 1/5th its size????
Yeah RIIIIGHT
Cream rises to the top, while curds languish in a stew of rancid pretension.
More Climate Imperialism cancer spreading….and of course in a very lucrative fashion for the profits of doom….
This appointment certainly speaks to the poor quality and self dealing of GMU shown previously. The 97% paper was an unmitigated disaster exposed by Richard Tol and others.
Quite right ristvan: As Cook’s puff piece says:
The solution to Cook’s problem is simple. Just keep the public from finding out any facts. Once the argument becomes one about facts, the alarmist side is sunk.
Politically, these goofballs are as incompatible with George Mason’s principles (the REAL George Mason)
as one can get. Any half competent analysis of Cook’s most infamous study (the opinion of “scientists” about global warming) would brand this psych major (no math required, no brains required) as an
incompetent experimenter/statistician/scientist of the first magnitude.
So, just another nut for the collection.
One needn’t be a scientist to realize the utter stupidity of Cook’s study of the “opinion of scientists” about global warming theory. He sent a handful of sophomores to read studies of climate over the past decades and asked them to determine , on the basis of their readings, to estimate what the opinion of the authors of those studies might be , as regards to global warming. Aside from the fact that the estimated opinions were
old and obsolete (or died with their owner), anyone with half a brain would have sent questionaires to the
current crop of climate scientists and solicitated their current opinions, undistorted by the estimates of a bunch of college sophomores. John Cook, Fool would-be scientist.
” … sent a handful of sophomores to read studies … ”
I think it was just abstracts of studies. Or was it low-grade word-search of abstracts? Then there were issues like did the “readers” collaborate with each other, the numerous study authors who tried to advise that the classifications were incorrect, etc. Then the huge a$$ covering exercise that followed. You have to have a strong stomach or be a masochist to follow it.
They actually refer to the “rigour” of this guy’s research! This is the man who faked a survey and then lied about it. Absolutely laughable.
“I’m not a climatologist or a scientist but a self employed cartoonist” – John Cook, Skeptical Science
Need anyone say anything more?
Thanks, I needed that.
Well we have no quarrel with a man who sells his stuff for less.
He; of all people should know exactly what it is worth !
G
“Need anyone say anything more?”
Well he did have more to say on the subject-
‘But beneath the politics is a more elemental instinct – an aversion to alarmism. We’ve been burnt before. The media predicted an ice age in the 70’s which never eventuated. Y2K was going to destroy society – it was barely a hiccup. And I won’t deny there are alarmists in the global warming camp. Urgent cries that the ice sheets are on the verge of sliding into the sea. Hysteric predictions that Manhattan will soon be underwater. Or emotional pleas to save those cute little polar bears. Sadly, alarmists seem to be the loudest voices in the global warming debate. But that doesn’t change the science underneath’
Nope. If their dire predictions based on their computer models are a load of alarmist hooey, then naturally you need to concentrate on any skeptical types psychologically.
“his total commitment to helping stabilize the earth’s climate”
Seriously?? I mean, seriously ????
…Well, personally,….. I do believe he should be “committed” … at least until his mind is a little more “stabilized”….we would all sleep better at night !
So far his “commitment” is limited to whining that other people aren’t doing enough, and not paying him enough while not doing it.
Guys like this make what Moses (Red Sea) and Jesus (Sea of Galilee) did look like chump change. But then again, maybe he’s just an ordinary guy who wants to Make Climate Great Again™.
“Guys like this make what Moses (Red Sea) and Jesus (Sea of Galilee) did look like chump change.”
Which they probably never really did anyway.
I’m not sure whether he is the “blowhard” section or the “s*ckh*le” section.
“His doctoral research focused on the negative influences of misinformation on climate literacy, and how to neutralize those influences.”
We should therefore expect JCs body of work to consume itself?
A self referencing Treatise.
Microsoft Excel will kick that out as a programming error.
g
He should be on the terrorist watch list.
“…definitively demonstrated that 97% of climate scientists are convinced that human-caused climate is happening”
That paper was “definitive”? Really? That’s like taking one poll in the middle of 2016 and saying you definitively know who is going to win the U.S. presidential election. People change their minds as new data come in. And in this case they lumped in everyone who even hinted that climate change was happening regardless of whether they said it was “human-caused” or not. Then they threw out the majority of responses that they didn’t like. If they used the same method to judge the effectiveness of a new drug, they would go broke from all the lawsuits. Their method didn’t even resemble the scientific method. No wonder George Mason University wants this trained propagandist to join their team. They appear to be all in when it comes to spreading propaganda.
Went from being a physicist to joining one of the darkest fields in science, psychology…
“His doctoral research focused on the negative influences of misinformation on climate literacy, and how to neutralize those influences.”
So basically he’ll be employing the same tactics used by some of the most evil people in history (which helped shaped modern advertising) to combat ‘skeptics’?
Clearly these people know no shame:
“Shame was an emotion he had abandoned years earlier. Addicts know no shame. You disgrace yourself so many times you become immune to it.”
-John Grisham
http://www.azquotes.com/author/5945-John_Grisham
You’re Dog gone right on.
Here is a guy whom basically wrote a paper that has been proven to be fraudulent yet has basically beaten the system with his paper which is still quoted regularly in many circles including thrown regularly in our face here at WUWT. Now why would a university that is enmeshed in a fraudulent controversy involving climate change want with a expert at physiologically beating the fraudulent tag.?
Maybe the university knew more about Shukla’s double dipping than they claim? Red flags and sirens are going off, I’m skeptical.
Research Assistant Professor, does that mean that John gets to troll the internet all day?
Maybe he’ll grace us with his presence!
At some point, universities have to be recognized by the consumers as over-priced opinion platforms. It’s getting worse over time.
You have got to be kidding me.
I thought George Mason had standards. Clearly, I was wrong.
Yeah, well. Things change.
As a GMU Alumnus, I am quite disappointed in this action.
You should write and let them know. Joe. Be sure to mention that any donations from you will dry up until GMU re-institutes the standard of dispassionate unprejudiced scholarship.
Well handsome dude, Walter E. Williams, will forgive you for having to confess.
G
@Patrick Guinness Frank- Oh, I do let them know. Every time they ask me for money, I give them my opinion.
Not that it matters- they soaked me enough already, time for another mark- I mean -student.
Cook is evidently exactly of the right standard for the department he is joining.
Look on the bright side — at least this will make Australian skeptics happy …
It’s not about the money though.
Maybe, maybe not. Note the date his new job starts, Jan 2017, after the elections.
If Hillary does not win something will come up, he will have a change of heart etc.
At GMU he is under our roof, subject to our laws. Mr Cook meet Mr Smith and Mr Subpoena…
michael
I can think of few who are more qualified and experienced to write a paper on misinformation in climate literacy than John Cook.
It’s illustrative to recognize how the climate crusade is championed by mostly dishonest nitwits.
Every fringe cause has their iconic morons.
But the climate crusaders Cook, Romm, McKibben, Oreskes etc are really quite a collection of lying lunatic lefties.
Hmmmm…..If much of what the US’s “Founding Fathers” said and tried to do is dismissed in “Higher Education” because they were humans who didn’t always live up to the ideals they expressed in their personal lives (such as in the Declaration of Independence and “All Men are created equal…” because Thomas Jefferson was a slave owner), how can a PC University give a job to someone who proudly put up a picture of himself dressed as a Nazi SS Officer?
Gunga Din September 19, 2016 at 12:21 pm
Ah, maybe its not as widely known as we would expect. Hmm, once its splashed across the college websites it will be fun to see the little darlings run off to their safe spaces with their hands over their ears.
michael
You haven’t been to Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello lately. They don’t refer to “slaves”, they were all “enslaved workers”. Get it? That puts the onus on Thomas Jefferson as the “enslaver”.
You can take the tour of the slave housing and are supposed to feel terrible, I guess. What I saw was quarters that seemed nicer than where Abraham Lincoln was born in Kentucky, and Davey Crockett was born in Tennessee. Looks to me like Jefferson’s “enslaved workers” were better off than dirt poor freemen. There is a very PC 21st Century condescension toward Jefferson because he was too busy helping create a completely new country, and apparently was not Superman, as he neglected to end slavery in his spare time.
Beautiful Mansion, lovely grounds, but stay away if you don’t want to wretch at the PC crapola. Go to Mt. Vernon instead, where George Washington is still a hero Founding Father. Better hurry though.
Washington mostly gets a pass on that front, since he arranged for his slaves to be freed after both him and his wife had died. He had also intended for the Mount Vernon plantation to be divided up into plots to provide those former slaves a livelihood, but his wishes in that regard went largely unhonored.
Why is it these control-freak fascist types are always short little twerps? Is Little-man syndrome behind it all?
Ad Hominem much?
It’s important to understand the psychological root causes of compulsive Climate Liars like Cook.
That’s not understanding a psychological root cause, that’s just making fun of how a person looks. Perhaps the root cause is because people made fun of how he looks, especially from the veil of anonymity.
I suspect that my recent comment is in moderation because I used the “N@z@” and the $$ words.
I’m sure it will be cleared.
But in case it went directly to the “bit bin” or wherever auto deletions go, I’m calling it to your attention.
I forgot to add ” Mods “.
MODS, Thanks.
[Ask not for whom the mods toil, lest they troll for you … (Hangingway, 1936. As Modified.) .mod]
John Cook……………………………………………………………………mmmmmmmm.
Another Educated Idiot come to enlighten us.
He got his PHD in propaganda.
These people are really getting desperate .
I guess, we are too stupid to grasp the pearls they cast at our feet.
I’m wondering what rock these “Climate Stabilization Committee” members plan on hiding under when the expected slight but inevitable global cooling begins over the next couple of years. For a good diversion and some refreshing insight, I recommend the futuristic sci-fi short story series Time Protectors.
“His doctoral research focused on the negative influences of misinformation on climate literacy, and how to neutralize those influences.”
Well, if anyone in the entire world is most qualified to speak on misinformation and how it influences people, it is he. He is the Grand Poobah of misinformation.
When I woke up this morning the air in Virginia felt horrible, kind of greasy with a distinct slimy sewer suffocating touch.
Now, I understand!
George Mason’s department of idiocy has decided to try for a CAGW implosion by adding vacuous dead weights to their team.
Only, the political and prosecutorial scene in Virginia is different than Australia.
Logging in under false identities, (hacking) is frowned on here.
Skepticalscience apparently lacks understanding of the proper relation of TSI (a forcing akin to power) to temperature (an indication of energy) as shown in the graph at https://www.skepticalscience.com/solar-activity-sunspots-global-warming.htm where they are plotted together. TSI is a forcing so its time-integral is the only meaningful comparison to temperature.
The SS graph is as nonsensical as plotting your speedometer reading on the same graph as your odometer reading. The time-integral of TSI should be compared to temperature the same as the time-integral of the speedometer reading is the odometer reading.
To use a baseball metaphor: not much bench strength on the warmist side is there?
Another place to cook the books!
This scam is so bizarre it would be laughable, except for what it’s costing taxpayers, and it’s anti-science dogma which threatens (at least) western civilization. ISIS should love these folks.
No joy in Warmville.
“His doctoral research focused on the negative influences of misinformation on climate literacy” that definitely is an area he would be expert in. You cant make this stuff up.
To somebody from outside the inner sanctum like me the world of academia seems increasingly slimy and self serving.
We are living in an alternate universe, where up has been defined as down and down is up. The king of climate science misinformation reigns from a position purporting to bust myths and explain authentic climate science.
At his site, he has something like 193 myths that us deniers use that he is supposedly busting with his version of science. I could probably type non stop for the next 24 hours exposing his delusional versions of science.
I’ll pick out one of my favorites, since I forecast global crop yields(production estimates) for a living, mainly using the effects of weather(as an operational meteorologist for 34 years) but dialing in all inputs that contribute……..including CO2 levels.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-plant-food.htm
Almost the entire explanation is clearly garbage. Much of it theoretical garbage.
This is actually how plants responded to elevated CO2 in hundreds of studies:
http://www.co2science.org/data/plant_growth/dry/dry_subject.php
This is how crops have been responding in the real world. The past 2 years…….that have featured the hottest global temperatures ever……….also featured the biggest crops ever for corn and soybeans in the worlds most fertile crop producing region:
http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/usda/current/CropProd/CropProd-09-12-2016.txt
Is this despite the global warming/climate change?
No, it’s been, in part BECAUSE OF IT and the increase in CO2. Our weather and climate during the past 4 decades has been the best for life and crop growing since the Medieval Warm Period, ~1,000 years ago………that was warmer than this in most places(despite what Cook claims).
He also makes this delusional statement:
“earth will see an increase in deserts and other arid lands, reducing the area available for crops”
If anything, global warming will allow agriculture to expand to higher latitudes, like it did during the Medieval Warm Period. One only has to look at the planet greening up, including deserts to show how silly his statement is:
http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fertilization-greening-earth
To go along with his broken, theoretical climate and plant science, Cook has a picture of a soybean plant being eaten up by Japanese Beetles………..as if farmers in the future will no longer be able to spray for pests, which will devour their crops.
None of this is happening, in fact, it’s been almost the complete opposite of everything he has stated.
Fortunately for John Cook, his junk plant science/agronomy, fairy tale weather explanations and exaggerated climate projections don’t have to be applied in the real world, where one must have accountability.
Instead, he gets promoted. It’s the alternate universe………where up is down and down is up.
Eric Blair, who wrote as George Orwell, had that sort of mindset down pat in “1984” . War is peace…..
And what’s wrong with that list of myths?
https://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php?f=percentage
There are a lot on there which are plainly myths to anyone with any science background and quoting them in discussion on climate is a sure way to get your argument dismissed…
this:
https://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-increase-is-natural-not-human-caused.htm
or this:
https://www.skepticalscience.com/volcanoes-and-global-warming.htm
for example.
If you can’t present a skeptic, evidence based point of view which contradicts what’s in that list, then you can’t expect to be taken seriously when you use the argument…
Griff
September 20, 2016 at 2:22 am
If you can’t present a skeptic, evidence based point of view which contradicts what’s in that list, then you can’t expect to be taken seriously when you use the argument…
The biggest Myth propagated by the CO2-Climate Change Propaganda Op. is that its *CO2-Critical* Hypotheses involved are *not* Scientifically/Empirically Falsified by their Record of [100%] Prediction Failure in the Real World, aka, “evidence based”.
Griff,
Climate models for far into the future projections ,(2100,3100) are perfect examples of pseudoscience and not worth the paper it is written on. They are not testable,thus junk.
Try reading up on the Scientific Method,which destroys your claims easily since the method says you MUST be able to test the hypothesis in real time:
” I. The scientific method has four steps
1. Observation and description of a phenomenon or group of phenomena.
2. Formulation of an hypothesis to explain the phenomena. In physics, the hypothesis often takes the form of a causal mechanism or a mathematical relation.
3. Use of the hypothesis to predict the existence of other phenomena, or to predict quantitatively the results of new observations.
4. Performance of experimental tests of the predictions by several independent experimenters and properly performed experiments.
If the experiments bear out the hypothesis it may come to be regarded as a theory or law of nature (more on the concepts of hypothesis, model, theory and law below). If the experiments do not bear out the hypothesis, it must be rejected or modified. What is key in the description of the scientific method just given is the predictive power (the ability to get more out of the theory than you put in; see Barrow, 1991) of the hypothesis or theory, as tested by experiment. It is often said in science that theories can never be proved, only disproved. There is always the possibility that a new observation or a new experiment will conflict with a long-standing theory.”
http://teacher.nsrl.rochester.edu/phy_labs/appendixe/appendixe.html
Utterly fails the third and fourth steps.
Griff,
Your linked list of “mythis” says that it’s a myth that CO2 was higher in the past.
That’s not a myth, Griff.
Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus.
Well…..congrats on getting yourselves a bad “RAP”
hope the rest of your sheets are better… 😉
“John [Lewandowsky’s sidekick] recently completed his PhD in psychology at the University of Western Australia …”.
=======================================
Climate change™ ‘science’ and psychology are natural bedfellows:
“Psychology isn’t science. Why can we definitively say that? Because psychology often does not meet the five basic requirements for a field to be considered scientifically rigorous: clearly defined terminology, quantifiability, highly controlled experimental conditions, reproducibility and, finally, predictability and testability …”:
http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jul/13/news/la-ol-blowback-pscyhology-science-20120713
In an odd way, this is cheering news!
Not content with calling for our prosecution under RICO this cell brings in an international climate jackass. They are doubling down and challenging us to do something about it. Challenge accepted.
Btw the string of meaningless awards is an affront to any decent enlightened academy.
WOW. Hey! I just opened my new box of corn flakes, and there was a PHD!!! In climate science. Where’s my grant?
“enlightened academy.” You should not mix your oxymorons (emphasize on morons)
From the GMU press release: “For his efforts, John has received numerous prestigious awards including a 2012 Eureka Prize for Advancement of Climate Change Knowledge (Australian Museum), a 2013 Peter Rawlinson Conservation Award (Australian Conservation Foundation) and a 2016 Friend of the Planet Award (National Center for Science Education).”
Huh?
ROTFLMAO!
I am literally quaking in my boots.
I wonder if he’s still going to do cartoons
Or play dress up in his SS outfits
Granted it’s a weird look, but it isn’t an SS uniform.
Yes, but I didn’t wan’t the reply to get flagged using the “N” word.
” His doctoral research focused on the negative influences of misinformation on climate literacy, and how to neutralize those influences.”
Blimey! Must have a read sometime:)
Cheers
Roger
http://www.rogerfromnewzealand.wordpress.com
The clownishly duplicitous John Cook coming to the US?
Egad!
Krikey!
Two words:
Extreme.
Vetting.
Menicholas September 19, 2016 at 5:09 pm
three
Gitmo
michael
Who said global warming alarmism does not pay?
Looks like this University is a kernel of green neo totalitarian political activism.
Watch out.
Yay! 🙂
Lewandowsky – gone!
Cook – gone!
Does any country need a marsupial paleontologist for one of their university faculties?
Whenever i see a picture of Cook i think of the Rat Faced Boy.
Eugene WR Gallun
You mean this chap has a pouch ??
I guess you could keep your grass in one if you had one.
g
Ever notice there are never any photos showing John Cook’s tongue? The consensus “study” was about the most unscientific piece of %^&^$ ever published. It was so blatantly unscientific as to be laughable. ANY institution that would give such accolades and positions deserves no credibility and should attract NO students, unless they want to pay to be fed lies and propaganda.
The ONLY good thing is that it gets this %$^&^% out of Australia . Perhaps he is escaping before Senator Roberts has his backside hung out and dried. Parliament in Australia is starting to become a spectator sport-we are so looking forward to the likes of Flannery & co being humiliated.
Malcolm Roberts knows more than the lot of them put together on climate(since Turncoat had Denis Jensen disendorsed.) Luckily for Greg Hunt, they are in different chambers of Parliament, so Greg does not need to change all his underwear to brown. Also, look forward to the UN getting an unrelenting caning. Some new talent in the Senate is going to put a cat among the pidgeons.
So, grab a carbonated beverage and watch the senate debates. Watch One Nation demolish the Greens in particular.
Yes. Physics is a hard subject. Psychology, well … if one doesn’t mind being the “wife for a night (actually about 60 minutes and in many cases less)” then the D for Degree is granted.
Though very community minded John Cook to join the RICO20 now 21 to “carry the load” and “lesson the burden” when the trial and sentencing conclude.
John can walk with his head held high to Federal prison, though a minimum security one not like Chelsea Manning enjoys, and proclaim to the NYT “I helped to carry the load [whimper whimper]”.
Ha ha
The use of psychology to enforce certain political beliefs shows its value to mankind and how readily it is abused. They are now bringing in teams to research why their views are being ignored. They are alarmed as the public has moved on and as such, the climate movement is becoming irrelevant.
I have been painfully working on my John Cook-the-Books poem. In fact, after many months, I have only four “tentative” lines. The difficulty in writing a poem about John Cook-the-Books is the same as writing a poem about “slime” – the name says it all. What more can you add that is of interest? But i would like to share the four tentative lines that I do have. I think they help to explain John Cook-the-Books underlying intellectual philosophy.
JOHN COOK-THE-BOOKS
and the Art of Science
They’re Tweedledee and Tweedledum
Art and Science — the same in sum
Each for the other substitutes
Each the other reconstitutes
Hopefully more coming.
Eugene WR Gallun
under lewandosky’s desk
cookie doesn’t polish shoes.
no- it’s something quite grotesque-
he’s conducting Peer reviews
that’s how he got his phd
playing doctor with philosophy
for now the university
happily awards degrees
to leatherboys, who on their knees
present a thesis orally.
gnomish — there is a certain intriguing crudeness there.– Eugene WR Gallun
Wow. And a ream of effluent is unleashed.
Seems as is perhaps “sceptics” got confused and mislabeled themselves.
The correct word is “sociopaths”.
WUWT is just a vile place.
[???? .mod]
..Dear MOD, I think he meant ” Deplorables”…Liberal Trolls get easily confused nowadays….( It’s the Trump Effect) …..LOL
The 97% is and always was a psychological trick on the general public. It had nothing to do with Climate science.
Mann’s cartoon fiasco is pseudo-psychological nonsense to explain away the fallacies in his work.
Now Nuccitelli and the Grauniad are saying that the claim CO2 is good for plants is a “favorite Myth”. Yes, 3 decades of science on it, irrelevant apparently
Judge via reading the paper, not reflexively because you don’t like what Nuccitelli does/stands for ??
Surely not …. that would be science after all.
http://www.pnas.org/content/113/38/10589.full.pdf
Abstract:
“Global changes in climate, atmospheric composition, and pollutants
are altering ecosystems and the goods and services they provide.
Among approaches for predicting ecosystem responses, long-term
observations and manipulative experiments can be powerful
approaches for resolving single-factor and interactive effects of
global changes on key metrics such as net primary production
(NPP). Here we combine both approaches, developing multidimensional
response surfaces for NPP based on the longest-running,
best-replicated, most-multifactor global-change experiment at the
ecosystem scale—a 17-y study of California grassland exposed to
full-factorial warming, added precipitation, elevated CO2, and nitrogen
deposition. Single-factor and interactive effects were not
time-dependent, enabling us to analyze each year as a separate
realization of the experiment and extract NPP as a continuous
function of global-change factors. We found a ridge-shaped response
surface in which NPP is humped (unimodal) in response
to temperature and precipitation when CO2 and nitrogen are ambient,
with peak NPP rising under elevated CO2 or nitrogen but
also shifting to lower temperatures. Our results suggest that future
climate change will push this ecosystem away from conditions
that maximize NPP, but with large year-to-year variabilitity.”
Anthony,
I think you forgot the inverted commas around the work skeptic in the title of your post. Presumably you meant Climate “skeptic” basher…. You do need to be careful, or else people will think that you mean actual skeptics, rather than fake ones. I presume that you’d hate to be regarded as someone who spreads misinformation…..oh, hold on?
ha ha — take a physic
How can there be such a person as a “fake skeptic”? Someone who pretends to be skeptical of a hypothesis, but actually believes it is certainly true? No-one who understands the first thing about science could be capable of doing this. You need to read Karl Popper.
No, it’s the opposite:
It’s someone who pretends to be sceptical of the science but who actually has no intention of ever considering it credible.
Who was the idiot (I think involved with the Best study) who claimed to have been a skeptic all his career but the facts that he now had uncovered had convinced him global warming was real?
Then the other shoe dropped and he was revealed to have been a warmist all his career and had lied about previously being a skeptic for propaganda purposes.
Eugene WR Gallun
That was Richard Muller.
Ask Steven Mosher – he was on the study team that found the same thing that all other teams had when they reshearched Global temperatures – the connection with CO2 and the fact that the UHI effect played no part.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/the-best-is-yet-to-come-richard-muller-on-the-berkeley-earth-surface-temperature-project-whether-hes-a-skeptic-and-bests-climate-policy-ambitions
“The team collected all of the temperature data it could from around the world because, he says, other studies had “only used a fraction” of what was available.
Next, the team set about addressing concerns raised by skeptics and others about existing Earth surface temperature datasets and their findings. Muller elaborates “First, there were issues around [weather] station quality – [skeptic meteorologist and blogger Anthony] Watts showed that some of the stations had poor quality. We studied that in great detail. Fortunately, we discovered that station quality does not affect the results. Even poor stations reflect temperature changes accurately.”
“There were issues of data changes. Some of the prior groups had adjusted the data and lost all record of how they had adjusted it. So we went back to the raw data and used only that.”
“Then, there’s the urban heat island effect [the criticism that weather stations sited in urban areas give artificially high temperature readings]. That was something I think we studied in a clever and original way,” Muller says. This involved examining only the data from rural stations to see if the temperature rise was still there – and it was. “We got the same answer,” he says.”
Well, this is how they slime skeptics in general. Take Richard Lindzen in particular. He’ll give his presentation to anyone who will pay him a small honoria, flight and hotel. If an oil-linked organization (you can imagine how wide THAT net is) does it, he’s “in the pay of Big Oil”. However, the WWE-Greenpeace-Etc. doesn’t want to even hear any dissent, so don’t want him to present a few slides, in case they catch skeptic cooties or something. Same presentation. He doesn’t change a thing.
But they’ll go on bad mouthing him by insinuating that he knows the science, he’s just faking it for money.
@Toneb,
First, thanks for that example Muller’s double-talk. In that (2012) interview Muller says:
with peak NPP (ag production) rising under elevated CO2 …
So Muller admits that higher CO2 levels raise agricultural productivity? We already knew that here. That’s what NASA says, too. But good news doesn’t get the grants, so Muller adds:
Our results suggest that future climate change will push this ecosystem away from conditions that maximize NPP…
So more CO2 is bad, then? But that’s only according to Muller’s “results”, which are nothing more than another failed climate model guesstimate, and another example of Muller’s trademarked doubletalk.
If toneb can cherry-pick passages from his (very partisan and unscientific) link, so can we. Muller says:
“90 per cent of what’s said about climate change is nonsense… So there’s plenty of room for skepticism.” Tell that to John (97%) Cook.
The real problem is that the climate alarmist crowd never admits they were wrong, whether it’s claiming that the “pause” never happened, or that data was fabricated, or that or that the Climategate email dump exposed the perps as venal, money-grubbing backscratchers who unethically used public money to blacklist scientiswts who are skeptics of the “dangerous man-made global warming” scare.
Wake me when Muller, Mann, or any of their ilk admits that current observations of global temperature are well within past parameters. That’s a fact, and it debunks the “climate change” scare.
Miller adds:
There were issues of data changes. Some of the prior groups had adjusted the data and lost all record of how they had adjusted it. So we went back to the raw data and used only that.
The problem is that in a large fraction of cases, there is no raw data! As a newbie, toneb probably missed the Harry_Read_me file that emerged along with the Climategate emails. In that download programmer ‘Harry’ wrote:
“Who added those two series together? When? Why? Untraceable, except anecdotally.
But I am beginning to wish I could just blindly merge based on WMO code… the trouble is that then I’m continuing the approach that created these broken databases.
“Here, the expected 1990-2003 period is MISSING – so the correlations aren’t so hot! Yet the WMO codes and station names /locations are identical (or close). What the hell is supposed to happen here? Oh yeah – there is no ‘supposed’, I can make it up. So I have 🙂”
And:
“So with a somewhat cynical shrug, I added the nuclear option – to match every WMO possible, and turn the rest into new stations (er, CLIMAT excepted). In other words, what CRU usually do. It will allow bad databases to pass unnoticed, and good databases to become bad, but I really don’t think people care enough to fix ’em, and it’s the main reason the project is nearly a year late.”
They didn’t fabricate just a few months of bogus temperatures. They invented many years of fake numbers.
So when Muller and B.E.S.T. used a similar kind of ‘data’, what did they find? This:
This week BEST released the latest in a series of papers, confirming the project’s announcement last year that the Earth has warmed at the rate that previous studies suggested. This time BEST went further, also concluding that warming is most likely due to manmade greenhouse gas emissions. [My bold emphasis in italics]
When B.E.S.T. first announced its findings, their ‘data’ was published — but they withheld more recent data:
(Note that the B.E.S.T. data produces a graph (lower graph) showing that global T fluctuated by ≈2ºC in 2011! Why didn’t anyone else notice that huge downward spike?)
And: Muller dismisses the suggestion that Watts released his work to counter the new BEST study. “[Watts] didn’t even know about our work,” he says. Nonsense on both counts. Muller has been referenced here at least since 2009.
Muller adds that “transparency” raises the possibility of a conflict between scientific objectivity and advocacy. Wrong. It’s the lack of transparency that causes conflict. The interview ends with this unsolicited editorial comment:
But whether you like that or not, it appears BEST is here to stay.
With that I agree, but with a caveat: take away the public grant money. If that happened Muller and his daughter would find out right quick how soon B.E.S.T. goes by the wayside.
The ‘carbon’ scare is paid propaganda, no more and no less. With Muller they’ve found the perfect tap-dancer; the ideal chameleon. The really sad thing is, he’s the least bad of a bad lot.
Brandon Shollenberger’s book “The Climate Wars: how the consensus is enforced” gives a good account of the trickery by which John Cook and his team created the “97%” myth. They blurred the distinction between “CO2 causes warming” and “CO2 has caused most of the warming in the last 100 or so years”.
Didn’t think GMU could embarrass it self any further.
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
― Upton Sinclair,
That may be so, depending on the individual and the job.
However, we are talking of science – were kudos is to be gained by standing out from the crowd and finding something revelatory.
Nobel prizes?
And you also talk of the vast majority of Earth scientists, so it requiresthat honest men/women stay quiet and not get their Nobels.
Speaking of Nobel prizes, where are the Nobel prizes in Physics, Chemistry, Economic Science, even Psychology or Medicine? The Peace Prize given to Al Gore et al is pure utter BS worth no more than the one given to President Obama for getting elected. Period.
usurbrain,
Like many other formerly honest institutions, the Nobel Prize award has been corrupted by politics:
http://maggiesfarm.anotherdotcom.com/uploads/freenobel2.jpg
Now the Nobel “Peace” prize doesn’t mean a damn thing.
I’m interested they are making a ‘thing’ of having a guy with a psych degree joining them.
Clearly they have read the recent evidence that the more you educate someone in Science the more sceptical they become – so they will be chasing the propganda and programming side of things rather than Science.
Maniac smile
The whole Nobel process is now a complete joke.
You are all providing such rich and qualitative data for a follow-up study on the mindset of climate change derailers. None of you have anything of real substance, or consequence to share; it is really astounding. Get outside, breathe some!
The award of Nobel prizes to Yassir Arafat, Al Gore and Barrack Obama has totally destroyed the credibility of the Nobel Committee. Not to mention their support of the Global Warming scam.
As far as dubious Nobels, you forgot Jimmy Carter.
I did forget that loser
The show “Monsters inside me” reminds me of the World Progressive Movement. They are behind all the bad things in the world today including the global warming scam, civil rights disruption in America, disruption of the Democratic Institutions in America and elsewhere. Advancing Islamic Fascism in the World. People have to realize that progressivism is a front for fascism. They don’t care about the so called poor in the world, too progressives they are as Lenin said usefull idiots. Don’t be a usefull idiot.