By Andy May
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) published a review of Steven Koonin’s new book Unsettled on April 25, a little over a week before it went on sale. A blog called “Climate Feedback” published a “Fact Check” of the book review on May 3rd, the day before the book came out. This so-called fact check was used by Facebook to attempt to discredit the WSJ review and the book itself whenever a post linked to the book review.
The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board objected to this practice with a strongly worded editorial. They pointed out the so-called “fact check” was not checking anything, but simply arguing against Koonin’s analysis. Arguing with Koonin is fine, arguing is an important part of science, but don’t call it a fact check. The “fact check” blog post doesn’t contradict or challenge anything in Koonin’s book. Koonin provides a rebuttal in today’s WSJ here.
Koonin’s more detailed point-by-point rebuttal of the fact check is here.
I noticed on Saturday, when I searched for Koonin’s book on Amazon.com using search text, like “Steven Koonin Unsettled,” that I was led to books critical of Koonin’s book, but not to his book. Amazon appeared to have “canceled” a best seller. Later the same day, searches on Amazon began to work properly again, hopefully it was a simple programming error and not attempted suppression by a rogue employee.
You can get to his book on Amazon.com at this link, if searches fail again. The book can also be found, on BarnesandNoble.com. Both purchases will have be eBooks, the print edition is sold out, probably until June. Koonin’s book is now on two of WSJ’s best seller lists!
We have dealt with fraudulent fact checks and fake news before, they are plentiful. See here and here. We have also seen blatant lying about climate science debate on the internet by otherwise respectable organizations, like Intelligence Squared (IQ2US), see here. In this case the record shows that the climate skeptics, Michael Crichton, Richard Lindzen, and Phillip Stott won a public climate change debate in New York decisively. Their opponents were Brenda Ekwurzel, Gavin Schmidt, and Richard Somerville. The correct results remained on the website for ten years after the 2007 debate, yet someone in IQ2US changed the clear and well documented results sometime after 2017, according to the Wayback Machine. Now the IQ2US website says the opposite, they say the climate alarmists won. Shameful, but true. We notified them of their erroneous reporting in December, but the wildly incorrect results were still on their website, months later, on May 15, 2021. It is probably still there.
The news media and our institutions can no longer be trusted. Their fact checks cite a statement, say it is false, then subtly change it to a truly false statement and refute that. Then they claim to have refuted the original. For example, Koonin and the review say: “Greenland’s ice sheet isn’t shrinking any more rapidly today than it was eighty years ago.” This is true, Greenland was melting at a very rapid pace in 1940, much faster than today. Yet, Twila Moon’s “refutation” claims that Greenland lost more mass from 2003 to 2010 than it did from 1900 to 2003, which may be true, but it is not what Koonin wrote. Further, much of the period from 1900 to 2003, Greenland was gaining, not losing ice. Further cherry-picking a seven-year period is not relevant climatologically.
Frederikse, et al., clearly show that melting glaciers in Greenland were a major contributor to sea level rise from the late 1930s to the mid 1940s, but were a minor influence in the last few decades. Overall, the rate of sea level rise recently, is quite comparable to the rate seen in the late 1930s to the mid 1940s. This deceptive sort of “refutation” is used throughout the “fact check” and Koonin picks them all apart in his detailed post. This is the modus operandi of today’s fact checkers, beware of them.
When the narrative fails to produce the desired debate results change the narrative and claim debate victory…
Classic CC/AGW/CW/ debate Bait and switch tactics from Master Debaters
My own website carries zero credibility score, because I have no external links to authorative sources. I have tried, believe me, I have tried. In every case, before I actually manage to publish, the original source was either altered, closed down or the link points at nothing/ nonsense. Anything that peeks behind Their curtain, goes missing, while they allow the most preposterous nonsense to flourish, as long as it does not credibly question The Narrative. As a specie exercise, I invite the reader to search for the demolition company that made a TV series with Discovery, where they showed us how to demolish buildings by cutting them apart with shaped thermite charges. They could drop an entire stadium into its own basement, so too for towers and blocks. After 911 they never existed… Even links referring to them have disappeared. So the only discussion left for me, is the insurance fraud, who cares about insurance fraud? So far, less than eight thousand people in five years?
I absolutely detest inoperative links, more than typos or even logic mistakes. The only web-thing I hate more, is when a previously good link suddenly points at propaganda! Being unmonetised and unfunded, I just cannot afford an employee to sit and maintain other people’s website data, and that for a site that is mostly just the ruminations of a paranoid goy. Maybe I should just shut up and start speculating on
whoWHO first released covidiocy, that seems to be keeping the presses very busy.…and now someone has started altering data on Waybackmachine, too! I found a guy that traces such shenanigans all over the ‘Net, his best example is how they are changing that Yankee line about “four score and blah blah” to cencor “our forefathers” to “our forebears” or something like that. On old photographs…
No, I lost the link…
and now someone has started altering data on Waybackmachine
I was wondering when that would start. Winston is working hard.
The news media and our institutions can no longer be trusted.
Wow! What a discovery…
“We have also seen blatant lying about climate science debate on the internet by otherwise respectable organizations…”
Finally, some straight talk from the climate skeptics. The radical greens have been blatantly lying for decades about alleged catastrophic human-made global warming – it was a deliberate fraud from the start, circa 1970.
Now, natural solar-driven global cooling has started. We correctly predicted this cooling to start circa 2020, way back in 2002. We nailed it.
CLIMATE CHANGE, COVID-19, AND THE GREAT RESET
A Climate, Energy and Covid Primer for Politicians and Media
By Allan M.R. MacRae, Published May 8, 2021 UPDATE 1e
Download the WORD file
https://thsresearch.files.wordpress.com/2021/05/climate-change-covid-19-and-the-great-reset-update-1e-readonly.docx
[excerpts]
This treatise was originally sent to Canadian and American politicians and the media in March 2021. Most of them won’t understand it, because they have no scientific competence and have been utterly duped – programmed for decades by false climate scares and green energy frauds.
This update was written in May 2021 to report even more global cooling as measured by satellites and new harsh cold events, particularly in Europe and North America that have severely harmed early crops. Harsh cold events have struck all countries in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.
THE GREENS’ PREDICTIVE CLIMATE AND ENERGY RECORD IS THE WORST
The ability to predict is the best objective measure of scientific and technical competence.
Climate doomsters have a perfect NEGATIVE predictive track record – every very-scary climate prediction, of the ~80 they have made since 1970, has FAILED TO HAPPEN.
“Rode and Fischbeck, professor of Social & Decision Sciences and Engineering & Public Policy, collected 79 predictions of climate-caused apocalypse going back to the first Earth Day in 1970. With the passage of time, many of these forecasts have since expired; the dates have come and gone uneventfully. In fact, 48 (61%) of the predictions have already expired as of the end of 2020.”
To end 2020, the climate doomsters were proved wrong in their scary climate predictions 48 times – at 50:50 odds for each prediction, that’s like flipping a coin 48 times and losing every time! The probability of that being mere random stupidity is 1 in 281 trillion! It’s not just global warming scientists being stupid.
These climate doomsters were not telling the truth – they displayed a dishonest bias in their analyses that caused these extremely improbable falsehoods, these frauds.
There is a powerful logic that says no rational person or group could be this wrong for this long – they followed a corrupt agenda – in fact, they knew they were lying.
The global warming alarmists have a NO predictive track record – they have been 100% wrong about every scary climate prediction – nobody should believe them.
The radical greens have NO credibility, make that NEGATIVE credibility – their core competence is propaganda, the fabrication of false alarm.
_______________________________________
The Covid Industrial complex
PANDA (Pandemics – data and analysis) has been outspoken with regards to the policy-makers’ reaction to Covid-19, lockdowns and other approaches to the virus. Nick Hudson, co-founder of PANDA, spoke at the inaugural BizNews Investment Conference in March 2021. His keynote address as well as the Q&A afterwards with BizNews founder Alec Hogg can be viewed here:
https://www.youtube.com/redirect?event=video_description&redir_token=QUFFLUhqbndNMzliYm0yZWRDQkxDX3plQVNlWTRjckZ1Z3xBQ3Jtc0tuVXpiTm5VVzVRX3ZlRjJqeE9rUklvcnFmRVVkMHBUZzlNN3pVcHJWUnYzX0hMdlRuLWRKTjhDNl9maEdJWDhVSFdZZUVqOGJ5VldXdTZ6SDZweUlmdndxUEVXeGlraXh4MmFwd3ZCSW1IM0VvbUlRcw&q=https%3A%2F%2
532180407
https://www.youtube.com/redirect?event=video_description&redir_token=QUFFLUhqbVdiTzZhaU52czRpcGlIbG1iRlgwdEVkWW9pUXxBQ3Jtc0trbUprcVNTVVFPOWZ0RkRrMWxKZEZnVG9KRXZLRTZZNE9QcWhKV1kzeUh0SzhicWhhRm5yUVhkS2d0MEh4QTBVb2x4VDEtUkttTG5jbmI0SWZhQmJHd1JkcjNNaF9sWmUybmpnYzRMMlVnUHVqS1FRTQ&q=https%3A%2F%2
532172876
Thank you Walter – a worthwhile video – on how good people can become Nazis. Please read my latest paper below.
The original Covid-19 lockdown was a fraud, and it worked. More facts:
CLIMATE CHANGE, COVID-19, AND THE GREAT RESET
A Climate, Energy and Covid Primer for Politicians and Media
By Allan M.R. MacRae, Published May 8, 2021 UPDATE 1e
Download the WORD file
https://thsresearch.files.wordpress.com/2021/05/climate-change-covid-19-and-the-great-reset-update-1e-readonly.docx
“Sorry, this video does not exist”…
YouTube found the truth offensive and scrubbed it out
Well facts are offensive to the Goog and they own YT, so no surprise there.
OK, let’s look at the first item. SK said
“Greenland’s ice sheet isn’t shrinking any more rapidly today than it was eighty years ago.”
Fact check said
“This statement is untrue. In fact, the Greenland Ice Sheet lost more mass during 2003–2010 than during all of 1900–2003 combined. “
That certainly seems to contradict. But SK then said
“The “fact check” does not refute the statement quoted, which is about the rate of sea level rise 80 years ago. Quoting the rate over the seven-year period 2003–2010 is not climatologically relevant.”
The recent period certainly seems relevant to the statement made. Presumably he’s claiming some decade 80 years ago was faster, but gives no backup. His only reference is “The 2019 paper by Frederikse et al”.
But that paper says, explicitly, in the abstract:
“The acceleration in sea-level rise since the 1970s is caused by the combination of thermal expansion of the ocean and increased ice-mass loss from Greenland. “
The fact check was right there.
Nick, today means 2021. 2010 is not today. “That paper” you quote is an abstract. The reference by Koonin was to another statement in the abstract “Mass loss from glaciers and the Greenland Ice Sheet explains the high rates of global sea-level rise during the 1940s” which Koonin quoted. Nothing to do with the paper’s point that you misquoted, or with the point that you misattribute to Koonin.
You are understandably upset with your own inability to comprehend written English. While this hurts your credibility, I am beginning to find it useful. Please keep sharing, your posts will let me proceed with surety that whatever you are opposing must be correct.
“Nick, today means 2021. 2010 is not today.”
So what are the claimed numbers? The effect of the statement is that Greenland ice loss is not increasing. Fact checkers put forward statements saying that it is. The counter is that there was a period of increased melting 80 years ago. But how much and for how long? What are the actual numbers that are claimed to establish
“Greenland’s ice sheet isn’t shrinking any more rapidly today than it was eighty years ago.“?
The fact of the statement, which you reproduce at the end, is that Greenland ice is not melting more in 2021 than it was 80 years ago. You and fake fact checkers have never contradicted the statement. The others attributed a different statement to Koonin, and may have disproved their own false statement. You’ve repeated this pretty standard spin manipulation. You are wise to challenge the original statement there at the end. To do that, find out from Koonin’s own writing, (not a fake summary, critique or review) what he meant, in context. Criticise or disprove that. Please.
In the meantime, I’m happy with Dr. Curry’s and the WUWT reviews. I anticipate from reviews that I will have problems with some of Koonin’s assumptions and conclusions, when I read the book. Eventually I’ll get to the book itself.
Nick, I’ve noticed that you are becoming more strident and blatant in you hustling for the CAGW movement.
I’m just looking at the CF analysis, and what Steve Koonin actually said about it. I expect to be pretty much the only one to do that.
And putting your own twisted perception on it.
Nick
I have several climate books on the go at present. Is the Koonin book worth reading? Does it add anything new to the dozens taking up space on my bookshelf?
tonyb
Tony,
I haven’t bought it myself. I haven’t seen anything in the discussion and reviews to make me think I should.
In the unforgettable words popularly appropriated by Adam Savage, “There’s your problem!” Read the book, critique the book. Analyzing an analysis is just a little anal retentive.
“Analyzing an analysis…”
That is exactly the topic of this post, titled
“Fact checking Steven Koonin’s Fact Checkers”
You mean you haven’t read the book thoroughly? And you are opining on the correctness of factual statements made in it? That there tells me a lot.
Nicks refusal to read yet still critiques it is a ringing endorsement that you should read Koonin’s book tonyb.
It’s just like Schmidt and others refusing to face skeptics in a debate.
I bought the Amazon version. It is extremely well written and contains many factual statements and studies and analyses revealing the true state of CliSciFi. Its well worth its nominal cost. [Because my house was filling up with books, I’ve moved to digital media, including public library access. As long as we have an internet, I have a fully-stocked, global library!]
Forget the analyses, Nick, read the book. I intend to. Analyses are useless without the source.
If you read it 100 times, you can average out your misunderstandings and get a very precise misunderstanding. You’re arguing here just like you did arguing for more significant digits when making multiple readings with different thermometers in different locations. I used to think you were proficient at what you did but I don’t trust either your understanding or your logic any more.
Mr. Nice: Yes, here he takes the position that 2003-10 is 2021. His vote is in favor of a fact-checker on a fact he has not read. But it’s still fun to pop his bubbles.
The correct thing to do is to homogenise your understanding with the misunderstanding of people near to you, or even people far away from you, as long as they misunderstood what you want to misunderstand. That way, you can achieve maximum misunderstanding.
“The correct thing to do is to homogenise your understanding with the misunderstanding of people near to you, or even people far away from you…”
Then do this over a 30 year period with a running average of, say, 30 days, and subtract it from the same running average from today forward to form an “anomaly”, and you’ll have…something from which any meaningful information has been completely removed!
“… The recent period certainly seems relevant to the statement made …”
I’m not sure what the point is, figure 4 on Prof Koonin’s rebuttal page shows a number of rates of sea level rise that indicates similar rates from mid’30s to mid’50s as from ~1990.
Prof Koonin sums up a common alarmist ploy:
“… The comparison of recent decadal-scale changes with centennial scale averages is a common artifice to obscure prior decadal-scale variability, whose presence makes recent decades seem less unusual …”.
We used to have a resident idiot (on Bishop Hill, if I remember right) who insisted on comparing the 1980-2010 warming trend with the 1910-2010 trend and doing a ‘Chicken Little’ about how this proved unprecedented warming. No matter how many times he was shown a graph of the whole 20th century with relevant trend lines, nothing could convince him that comparing a subset of a graph with the whole graph of which it is a part as at best incorrect and at worst dishonest.
I seem to remember he was a SkepticalScience fan as well, which might explain it!
I think it was Monkton that demonstrated, you can do the same thing with a pure sine wave, by taking only the last upswing (from the most recent low point to the subsequent most recent high point) and comparing that to the slope taken from the next previous low point to the same high-point, and etc., and get the same effect. And when you have pure sine wave it should be apparent that the overall “trend” is 0, neither rising nor falling.
Bingo! From my file of factoids quotes & smart remarks:
Observing something for the first time, doesn’t mean it has never happened before.
Reminds me of when I was a teenager 50 years ago, and was reminded by some of the “old fogeys” that “every generation thinks that it invented sex, drugs, and rebelliousness”.
Nick,
The main point Steve is making is that between 1900 and 2003, Greenland ice mass both rose and fell. From 2003 to 2010 it only fell. Comparing a seven-year period of falling ice mass to a longer period when it did both is disingenuous. A better comparison would be to compare 2003 to 2010 to 1923 to 1930. See attached plot from Frederikse, et al., 2019. The brown line is the estimated Greenland contribution to changes in sea level, in mm/yr.
Thank you Andy May, you have cleared up my confusion. I thought Nick was making a fair point but I also understood I was probably missing some key points. Your reply to Nick was appreciated not only for being articulate but fair.
Andy
You said, “Comparing a seven-year period of falling ice mass to a longer period when it did both is disingenuous.”
It is also poor science! Classic ‘cherry picking.’ One would expect better of Stokes if he were really trying to be objective.
Thanks Nick. Accuracy before all else; esp the effects of the prejudices that so often rule the roost and steer our perceptions/conceptualisation in the minds of homo sapiens all across the ideological spectrum. In Koonin’s reply he clearly shifts his ground. He might be right about sea level rise, but the exact claim was about the shrinking of GL’s ice sheet. Every specific statement needs to be accurate, and responses have to be focussed precisely on the claim made. Koonin is only human of course. But we all are, or should be at war, with our own biases, left or right, pro or anti AGW. And being wrong is something we’re all pretty good at. But admitting it. not so much.
Stokes
I see that you are right up there in griff territory with 47 down votes. Your reputation precedes you! You consistently argue to win for your side of the debate. In the years that I have been reading and commenting, I don’t remember you ever agreeing with the skeptic view, or ever admitting being wrong. You argue like a sophist who is willing to say anything to win, even if it means dragging out some obscure theory about acids that is not used in mainstream chemistry. (As confirmed to me by a PhD chemist friend.)
As an example, you cite a source that clearly says, “… but the contributing factors are still poorly understood.” You claim that is a “fact check.” While your cited article does contain your quote above about “acceleration,” it also mentions “changes in terrestrial water storage,” which you ignore! Any recent changes could be attributed to the modern dam-building episode concluding with the dams being filled. More to the point is that the claims of acceleration have been contested and clearly there have been periods in the past when sea level rose more rapidly than at any time recently, but were then followed by a downturn in sea level. You are essentially looking at weather and calling it climate. From a more appropriate long-term view, it appears that the rate of sea level rise has been remarkably consistent for about the last 7,000 years, with a hint of a recent decline.
“I see that you are right up there in griff territory with 47 down votes. “
Not a popularity contest.
Yes, you are right. Stokes is not popular because he seems to be agenda driven rather than being concerned about truth.
I agree. Downvotes are pretty meaningless. All they do is tell you who’s on which side of an argument, has nothing to do with the veracity.
No, but it’s an appreciation of the quality of the argument. Many readers here appreciate the quality of the argument even if they disagree with it. Mr. Stokes has presented in the past good quality arguments, but this one isn’t it.
“I see that you are right up there in griff territory with 47 down votes.”
When you last mused on my progress there, I noted
“I’m trying to get ahead of Steven Mosher. My fear is that I’ll be on -999 when WUWT pulls the plug on the scheme.”
And that is pretty much what happened. This time around, I’m way ahead.
|
This is Nick in a nutshell.
It’s unfortunate, at least for him. He sometimes has valuable and reasonable points which I agree with. The behaviour you describe loses him all credibility, so those valid points are disregarded.
Nick is also famous for trying to change the subject whenever he finds himself losing on the facts.
No problem finding it on Amazon France, showing a 4.8 / 5 * rating from 159 evaluations. The page also offers other climate realist books too, such as False Alarm and Apocalypse Never.
Both excellent books which I reviewed here back around Christmas. Highly recommended and well referenced
Can I add David Bennett Laing’s In Praise of Carbon to the reading list. An excellent primer for those of us whose scientific education didn’t survive High School!
No sign of it on Amazon UK. Perhaps they’ve sold out of Kindle versions!
I’ve just tried on Amazon UK got three summaries and one analysis but not the book ??
Notanacademic,
That was I saw on Amazon US yesterday. Sounds like the fix has not reached the UK yet. I’ll tell Steve.
I just tried again exactly the same result. Wonder what they don’t want people to know…sarc
Third attempt still no luck.
The “fix” was redirecting people away from the book. Removing that would allow people to look at the books they want. You’re being way too generous, Andy.
It does seem be on Amazon UK at B01N7ZXTID
In UK, Blackwell’s has it, sending paper copy by parcel carrier.
I have bought it from Foyles in London and will collect it next week
I can now find it in Amazon U. S., although it does indicate “out of stock”. As Andy mentioned, I would have to buy an e-book if I want it now.
On Amazon Canada, the various summaries and rebuffs are FREE Kindle editions. Somebody pays for writing that shlte.
It’s a BESTSELLER everywhere ! Buy it ! Reading it makes the average person smarter. Buy a couple more for friends. It will spawn a whole genre of eco pragmatic book authorship that will STOP governments from wasting money on foundationless eco fears. Nothing can fight the eco manipulators better than an educated public….to use one of their own mantras against them.
“Amazon began to work properly again, hopefully it was a simple programming error and not attempted suppression”
I was amused to find that while Koonin’s book did come up first in my search, within the next 10 results were five with the same or similar title “Summary Unsettled” by different authors, and one titled “Unsettled notebook” using the same cover art as Koonin’s. Possibly Amazon’s search algorithm (increasingly customized for each user) had a little trouble prioritizing the flood of spinoffs. A couple paper spinoffs are priced higher than Koonins. Seems to happen a lot on Amazon with best sellers and their self-publishing. I expect several to be removed from Amazon after Koonin’s publisher copyright department wakes up Monday.
Good piece. Thanks.
dk-, are you suspecting the “rogue employee” was actually the main employee, and founder, Jeff Bezos? There seems to be a tendency for the several Masters of the Universe to do whatever they think is good for them.
So you think Jeff Bezos has time or desire to screw with book title searches on Amazon?
SMH
He had the desire to program Alexa to shut off if you ask “Is Jeff Bezos a criminal?”
Highly unusual response, specifically crafted programming.
I don’t think you truly undertand these “elites” want you dead, your wife and children raped, and they laugh about it at the cocktail parties.
Frazzledrip is very, very real. Epstein didn’t kill himself.
Do think has enough money to employ a legion to do his bidding?
Whether Bezos gets his hands dirty or not, if he has minions doing his bidding, then he is culpable.
Bezo’s teams screw with searches every second of every minute of every hour of every day.
Used to be, I could enter in a specific model-manufacture and the item would show up at the top of the list.
Now, if entered into Amazon, the first few pages are “Amazon sponsored” similar or imitations.
To find a specific model-manufacturer in amazon, search using an internet search engine, e.g. DuckDuckGo, for that model and include a search parameter for Amazon.
Brings it right up, if Amazon is selling the product.
Good search results are, at least in theory, quite simple. I get the sponsored links – but after a couple of those, show your matches. What’s simple is this: EXACT MATCHES FIRST. THEN you go off on your algorithms, but if there is an EXACT match, that comes first.
Ron, that was a quote from the author of the piece. I am willing to bet, today, that the effect on Amazon search was probably just the standard behavior of its title web search algorithm, possibly in combination with our Andy May’s Amazon prime search settings. I can be convinced otherwise. I had a long distracting weird kind of day yesterday, so sorry if I wasn’t clear. No disrespect intended to Ron Long or Andy May.
Jeff’s busy:
I think I would be too.
I remember having a smile like that plastered across my face. When I was young, and could manage it 3 times in a row….
“Arguing with Koonin is fine, arguing is an important part of science, but don’t call it a fact check.”
OK, fact check here. Climate Feedback did not call it a fact check. They said it was an analysis.
Never tried to add an image before but had to point out the very header of the website you are referring to.
It says;
Which means you are being a little pedantic.
“Which means you are being a little pedantic.”
I generally take that as a good sign, pedantry is highly correlated with vexation. 😉
Which news to trust? Science isn’t about trust – it’s about relentless, never ending hard work and never ending skepticism. The “news” is more about politics. Trust is about religion. As a Catholic child I heard from the nuns to not listen to Satan whispering in my ear. Trust the Holy Mother Church.
Trusting in imaginary beings isn’t good.
The advice is good. But, nuns aren’t imaginary.
I have more evidence than God exists, then I have that you exist.
Nick is pedantic, and water is wet.
Nit pickers will pick nits!
Well there you go. That makes all the difference.
Thanks, Nick.
Good to see that you are not attempting to Straw Man, but instead making a fallacious argument.
Like they say in the classics, “It doesn’t matter why they are dressed as a tiger. Have they got my leg?”
“It was bitten sort of… off.”
“Climate Feedback did not call it a fact check. They said it was an analysis.”
What a load of hairsplitting BS, especially when you look at the notice at teh bottom of the article:
Huh. ‘The Science’ – religious mumbo-jumbo again. If the data is sound and the process of acquiring it is scientifically rigorous then there is no need to “fact check” – you may disagree with the methodology or the conclusions drawn from the data, but that is completely different.
Excellent! Apparently these so-called “fact checkers” have set themselves up as the “Council of Truth and Correct Thoughts.” Shades of Stalin. It is the elitist idea that the great unwashed cannot think for themselves that troubles me the most about the news media, government employees, and politicians today.
Lenin followed aspects of the French Revolution very closely. Stalin and Lenin improved on the process. If you’ve not heard of Walter Duranty. one of my “three villains named Walt,” his bio is worth a wiki search. The other two are Walter Lippmann and Walter Winchell. A real history of journalism (one not written by journalists) has to include these guys.
It is precisely this thought that gives me the biggest willies over “Hate Crimes Legislation”! That should be absurd on its face, I could commit the exact same crime, but as long as my thoughts were “pure” while I did it, I would serve less time, or even avoid the death penalty, than if I had “impure” thoughts while I committed the crime. How can any investigator know what a criminal is thinking when he commits a crime? And this is much worse speculation than the normal speculation over motive!
We are rapidly reaching the point where it is no longer necessary to actually commit a crime.
Just having what liberals consider to be “bad thoughts”, is enough to get you punished.
Typical ‘Stokism.’
Nick, Facebook called it a fact check.
Mr. Stokes: Better look at your shoe.
Why would you defend this effort to censor Koonin?
“Why would you defend this effort to censor Koonin?”
So we’re discussing a rebuttal by SK which appeared prominently in the WSJ, after an even more prominent review there. And he is being “censored” because Climate Feedback said he was wrong?
“Greenland’s ice sheet isn’t shrinking any more rapidly today than it was eighty years ago.”
Even if true, so what? The climate is complex and it is usually possible to find an area or a time that bucks the global trend. Many regard the Arctic sea ice as the canary in the coal mine, and yet as GWC points out, Koonin barely mentions the Arctic Ice. When people are so specific about location and timescale, always check for cherry-picking. Why not 100 years, or 60? Why not the West Antarctic ice sheet?
And how does he know? Data is sparse from that time period. Again GWC has examined the evidence that Koonin provides to support his assertion and found it thin, at best.
https://greatwhitecon.info/2021/05/steve-koonins-unsettled-arctic-science/
https://greatwhitecon.info/2021/05/steven-koonins-unsettled-greenland-ice-sheet-science/
in the UK mu search of Amazon on Steve Koonin unsettled gives a free kndle summar yand analysis and a £ 2.15 Analysis by a certain Sam Scott. The original title has been disappeared
Thanks I’ve notified Steve that Amazon UK still has the problem. He will get his publisher on it.
The book is not showing on Amazon UK!! Both the ebook and print copies do not return a result if search for with either the asin or ISBN.
Steve
I live in the UK and was sceptical of your claim so just did a search. You are right!
Here is the link page showing all the criticism of the book but not the book itself
Amazon.co.uk: koonin unsettled: Books
tonyb
On the other hand Amazon.fr will sell me a Kindle version in English. I have answered Amazon.uk’s request to tell them about my “experience” on their site today. I’m expecting to be ‘disbarred’ at any moment!
Thanks, Steve is notified.
See my post above, Blackwell’s has it in UK.
It is not available on amazon.co.uk today
Interesting. I live in the UK. By coincidence, or perhaps not, I received an email last Thursday telling me that my March purchase of this book has been delayed.
The email provided a link to the book, which worked and showed both the Kindle edition and that Amazon US had the book for sale. However a straight search of the UK site only showed knock off critiques.
Conspiracy or cock-up? We deserve to know!
I checked his author’s page on Amazon.co.uk. Unsettled is not there either. All that you get in the main search are summaries of the book by other people.
Andy,
On the Intelligence Squared debate on 14 March 2007, I have been down the same track that you have.
In one of the very early posts by Gavin Schmidt at realclimate.org he announced on 12 March 2007 the forthcoming Debate at Intelligence Squared in New York on 14 March 2007 on the subject “That Global Warming is not a Crisis”.
The item is headed “Global Warming Debate”.( It is still there- I’d better screen shot this too!)
Thereafter silence by Gavin.
The issue drifted away from my attention.
Years later to my surprise,I saw James Taylor’s article “The Global Warming Dispute produces an Indisputable Winner”, Forbes,September 28,2011.
Yes it is still there more than 9 years later.
I invite all readers here to read the Article which clearly states that the Affirmative side, Richard Lindzen, the late Michael Crichton and Philip Stott defeated the negative ream, Gavin Schmidt, Brenda Ekwurzel and Richard Somerville.
Your link to your summary of the result says it all.
I have a screen shot of the James Taylor article before it goes down the memory hole.
The sheer brazenness of all this is astonishing.
I will go to the Intelligence Squared website to see the recount!
Andy,
Being cautious,I went to intelligencesquaredUS.org site and there it was.
The result is now given as Winner- Against 89%! For 11%! Undecided-0%.
And there was “Pre-debate:Against the motion 43% ; Undecided 17%; For the Motion 39%.
And also: Winner 89%; Breakdown-Change in voter behaviour -39% remained for the against side;35% swung from the For side;15% swung from the Undecided.
Unbelievable!
The funny thing is that the transcript still shows the actual results as given by Andy. Scroll down to the end and you will see:
01:38:16
Finally, please be sure to pick up a copy of the Times Literary Supplement—are those actually available, there was some question about that. Is that a—yes, yes, they are available, uh, as you leave the auditorium, and in a minute you can all go home and watch the “American Idol” results show. [LAUGHTER] And now the results of our debate. After our debaters did their best to sway you…you went from, 30% for the motion that global warming is not a crisis, from 30% to 46%. [APPLAUSE]
01:38:58
Against the motion, went from 57% to 42%… [SCATTERED APPLAUSE, MOANS] And “undecided” went from 13% to 12%. The hardcore ambivalent are still among us. [LAUGHTER] So, in terms of opinion change, those in favor of the motion, have carried the day, congratulations to the team for the motion. [APPLAUSE]
You can also download a pdf of the transcript.
Maybe the website should be renamed sqrt(Intelligence)
And it was a fair election too!
Herbert, I keep checking also. I’m surprised they haven’t fixed it after all these months, the lie is so obvious. I will keep mentioning it periodically here and, on my blog, until they do fix it. Brian Lehrer is the authority, he was there, his numbers are correct, not to mention NPR. I encourage everyone to comment on the site, like I did, that the posted results are wrong according to the transcript.
Andy
You remarked, “… until they do fix it.” I think that you are being an optimist. In this day, one needs leverage to get any kind of advocate to behave decently. Guilt doesn’t seem to work.
Andy,
Maybe we are writing to the wrong party as Intelligence2US.org will keep ignoring us.
How about writing to Gavin at realclimate.org?
Does he really want to claim that they won the debate after more than 14 years when it was announced at the event that he lost?
It may be a long shot but he may be prepared to come clean and agree the outcome went against the affirmative side.
In any event even a non reply will give you some ammunition.
Andy,
…“against the negative side” not against “the affirmative side”.
Too many double negatives!
Unfortunately, fixing it will probably involve doctoring the transcript to match what the they want it to show.
Sort of like writing the IPCC chapter summaries, and then editing the chapters to match.
Andy,
I have commented on the site and asked them to correct the egregious error of awarding the debate to the negative side.
The automatic response I got was that I would be given a reply to my comment.
We shall see.
Everyone who recognizes the power, corruption and exploitation by Amazon should do their best to buy books like this from either a decent local bookshop – not part of a huge group – or from the publisher. Do your homework to try and not further enrich companies like Amazon.
Absolutely, Michael.
Also check that other sellers are not using Amazon without saying so. Recently I bought something from what seemed to be an independant trader but when the article arrived it did so in an Amazon packet.
Amazon has bought a lot of the online booksellers too. Abebooks, for one. There’s another I used a lot but can’t remember what it was.
I thought Book Depository was a competitor of Amazon. I found out Amazon acquired them in 2011. However, the actual publishers sometimes publish books that are not looked on with favor by Amazon. Then you can be certain buying directly will help them far more than Amazon. Also get to know your local bookshop manager and tell him you would prefer to support him than further enrich Amazon.
Yep. I got caught by the Book Depository one.
You got Oswalded.
Unfortunately there aren’t a lot of local bookshops left anymore, at least around me. USED bookstores, plenty, but not any that carry new books.
B&N and BooksAMillion are my only options other than something Amazon owns. If anyone knows of online alternatives, please share!
Check out http://www.abebooks.com. Great source IMO.
If your goal is to get away from Amazon, Abe Books is pointless.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AbeBooks “AbeBooks has been a subsidiary of Amazon since 2008.”
Amazon now banning negative reviews of products is sells.
I submitted this review of a product I bought from Amazon. It was refused. Considering the number of fake and obviously Chinglish reviews on the site, Amazon can now be considered a fully paid-up member of the CCP.
I reviewed a fiction book a couple weeks ago. I’ve done a few reviews of technical and of fiction books in the past, positive and negative, but mostly I delete the requests from my e-mail. Amazon took several days to review and post it, then notify me that it was accepted. I was very dissapointed, and therefore quite negative about it, but I tried not to use enciting language so there’d not be a reason that they might refuse it. Positive reviews of the book still show up first, with most recent at the top. Mine is neither top or bottom or worst rated in the negatives. Some of the negatives seem harsher, than mine, but I’m not a good judge of my own writing.
Hope that they haven’t banned you, HotScot. I’ve been considering whether to keep Prime. If they start doing this kind of thing for sure, I’ll have to drop them.
“focus on specific features of the product and your experience with it”
diffusion, battery, crack – apparently that’s not features and experience now?
Does anyone else remember AmaXon’s unilateral deletion of the KINDLE e-book <i>Nineteen Eighty-Four</i> in a copyright squabble? (It may even have occurred in 1984.)
<b>Do not trust AmaXon</b>. The e-book burning will be at the press of a button. When one finds a valuable book then get a print copy and protect it with your intellect and life.
Doug,
You may be right. I hope not.
Bad example, when there are better ones. The Nineteen Eighty-Four incident was a legitimate removal – a vendor MUST remove a copyright violating book from their storefront, or be held equally liable as the original violator.
Legal precedent for similar cases would also most likely hold them liable if they had not done everything in their REASONABLE power to remove it from circulation. So taking it off of people’s Kindles was also legitimate. Reasonable power, of course, does not extend to reaching into people’s non-Kindle files – which is why every purchased ebook also goes onto my desktop hard drive, where it is in the nightly backup queue. (Kindle Unlimited rentals, of course, do not.)
You want Fake News and where it comes from…..
This is 80 minutes of your time, I’m putting it up after only listening to 40
It Has Got The Lot
Seemingly concentrates on George Floyd and ‘police’ but instead of ‘Black people’, imagine him saying:
Then it goes to explain the Double Edge that is Modern MSM
Strokes my ego and Pet Theory about what drives that:
The Quest For Dopamine and self gratification, normally found by eating sugar but once Homeostasis sets in, other sources are needed.
Beating up other people, in actuality or by using computers/phones/Sputniks fits the bill perfectly. Those devices enable mental violence, intimidation, torture and threats to be delivered remotely and anonymously.
Propaganda? ###
Applies to everything.
https://cms.megaphone.fm/channel/commune?selected=SHM3517805625
No. Things Have Never Been Worse
…..and are going downhill fast – big hugs and kisses to both Joe Biden and Princess Nuts Nuts, not very least
The Warmists do really actual realise that – it’s why they want unreliable energy.
To switch off that, currently relentless, Shit Machine.
as always, careful what you wish for
### UK Government has set up a special department to do Exactly That
Barnes & Noble receives a respectable political neutrality rating:
https://www.2ndvote.com/business-entity/barnes-noble/
Amazon, obviously, does not:
https://www.2ndvote.com/business-entity/amazon/
Pay a little more to support businesses that do not despise your very existence.
Controlling the message colors perceptions of reality with the nefarious ends of fooling some of the people all of the time.
The rabble whipped into a senseless mob by an anonymous internet persona known as “Q” is a prime example of the dangers of pointed propaganda campaigns.
You can’t fool all of the people, and those of us with an ounce of gray-matter are gobsmacked at the convenient dismissal of the Wuhan Institute of Virology as a potential source of the Wuhan virus.
Of course, this is a state-sanctioned canard. Frequently, the information oligarchs are willing accomplices in state-controlled messaging. Manipulation of meta tags is the primary (but not only) means of subterfuge. If we Google Climate Depot (for example) shouldn’t we expect the first link to be to Climate Depot?
Did the capital riots help or hurt the Right? Who is, of was “Q” my friends…..certainly not a fan of DJT.
Nice rant.
You know all this is true — how exactly?
The bad actors in the Climate Crusades are very organized and even pre-emptive. Their major flaws are over reach and low quality arguments. Media bias is what tips the scale heavily with down is up story manipulation. I suppose those odds explain the protracted nature of these dark ages–ask the Iranian people how that works.
The sad fact is that the Alarmists have a myriad of ways of confabulating the truth, which then miraculously become “facts”. By a funny coincidence, the Election Deniers do the same thing. It’s about Belief on their part, not reality.
How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?
Winston loved Big Brother!
Reading thru Koonin’s responses to the fact/hack job, just one example:
”tornado frequency and severity are also not trending up; nor are the number and severity of droughts.”
Kerry Emanuel, Professor of Atmospheric Science, MIT:
Koonin sets up a strawman in claiming that tornado frequency and severity are not trending up. The scientific consensus on this is that we simply do not have the data to determine trends in tornadoes, and what little theoretical work has been done on this suggests that severity might go up and frequency might go down, but again there is no real consensus.
Well, isn’t that what we have all been saying, that there is no concensus?
Isn’t everything we are discussing all about the current hair on fire media act that tornados and fires are out of control, along with everything?
Isn’t that what Willis focused on with his post on the non-existent climate crisis?
These clowns cannot sit quietly as the media drives kids to suicide, then state we did not say any of this.
Sins of omission are still sins.
Its like the recent discussions on the uselessness of renewable energy, i took some flack on Linkedin from an electrical engineer who said i was being over the top as no one is claiming we can function on 100% renewables.
When in fact i can find stories and statements every week from politicians and activists in canada that we can do just that, and not a peep from renewable engineers who supposedly know better.
I bought Kerry Emanuel’s book “What We Know About Climate Change” after reading one of Dr. Judith Curry’s posts at her website. It is simply a compendium of CliSciFi happy talk. Emanuel even uses the old UN IPCC trick of showing tuned model outputs vs those with anthro-forcings removed and comparing those with observations. This is just one example of the scientific fraud and outright propaganda in his book.
Well, I did buy Koonin’s book when it was first available, and am glad I did so. It is sitting on my freezer in the living room, with other stuff of a similar nature. Frankly, since I find electronic books to be not my cup of tea, the print version is always my preference. I don’t have to worry about a battery recharge or the power going out. I can read by the light of a kerosene lamp if I have to… and some day, if the Greenbeaners have their way, I may have to do just that.
“I don’t have to worry about a battery recharge or the power going out.” – or an “update” that changes the content.
Nope, kerosene is an evil product of petroleum. Candles, made from the beeswax taken from your own hives. (Or on your back porch, with the book completely screened from anyone with a telephoto lens…)
I cherish an Aladdin brand Welsbach mantel lamp, diesel powered (like my BMW and tractor), puts out 60 Watts or 100 Watts light and abundant heat.
You have a freezer in your living room?
Unsettled is also available at Apple iBooks, which is where I bought my copy.
I regard Apple in the same light as Amazon.
“I noticed on Saturday, when I searched for Koonin’s book on Amazon.com using search text, like “Steven Koonin Unsettled,” that I was led to books critical of Koonin’s book, but not to his book. Amazon appeared to have “canceled” a best seller.”
Something very similar happened to Mark Levin’s new book recently as well. Funny how these errors seem to only affect certain people.
The thing I’ve noticed about ‘errors’ are that they are never normally distributed as they would be if they were actually errors. For example, whenever a Chinese takeout item is not in the bag that was handed to you, its always the shrimp that are missing, but never the rice.
The same can be said about shadow banning which all social media sites do. They used to deny it and say ‘algorithm error’ but now they don’t even bother.
I got my revenge on social media sites by banning THEM.
(And I observe that I’ve lost absolutely NOTHING)
Agenda Checking is sorely lacking in today’s main stream media. As I recall from journalism 101, you gather all the facts, present them and let the readers decide.
Apparently, those with an agenda don’t do that. Instead, they claim they want to “educate” you.
Yes.
I recall my editors when I was a cadet reporter back in the twice-daily print newspaper days telling me to identify all the aspects of a story I thought I should also know, but didn’t at the time of filing, and to ensure that I made these points clear in my reportage.
Then readers couldn’t accuse us of “slanting” a story, and it also left the opportunity open for an “update” piece in forthcoming editions.
The Murdoch dad and his boys knew the news caper way back then.
Unsettled is also available thru the Apple book store.
Professor Koonin joins the long list of former liberals who have been mugged.
You should not refer to propagandists “fact checkers”. They would not know a fact if it bit them.
It is clear that most people have never received adequate training to understand the difference between a fact and an argument or opinion. These kind of people then become the “fact checkers”. Unfortunately, many people just accept what these so-called “fact checkers” write.
It is a political trick to sidestep inconvenient facts and answer them with irrelevant points.
The book is presently “Temporarily out of Stock” on both the Amazon and the Barns & Noble sites. I can get the “Kindle” version but you how that is, one can’t “share” the book with friends and relatives, and there’s no such thing as a personal library where one can easily deposit books into and share. 🙁
Koonin most likely touched on the contribution of elevated CO2 to bumper harvests and and a ~20% increase in global forests, including expansion into the Sahel on the southern fringe of the Sahara and in the other arid areas of the planet (NASA reported 15% in 2014 but has been reluctant to revisit this inconvenient topic).
The delicious irony here is that the only palpable evidence of climate change at all is the splendiferous Great Greening of the planet, thanks to the fossil fuel industry, and the Climate Synod is sworn to silence on the subject. They try to take subdued pot shots at it peripherally as something bad now and again because it would be indecent to ignore such a huge, in-your-face phenomenon entirely. But, in their hearts they now know that anthropo CO2 is overwhelmingly beneficial with, thus far, no sign of anything to be concerned about.
Liberals tend to believe that screaming “you’re wrong”, counts as a rebuttal.
MarkW,
May I suggest replacing your L-word with “Leftist”? Don’t give in to NewSpeak.
Okay, as with all things context matters. In reading what the ‘fact checkers’ do in order to ‘refute’ statements is pretty meaningless. However this does not mean that there are no issues with what Mr. Koonin’s book says. While I agree the amount of temperature rise is overly attributed to CO2 rise, there is, unfortunately a strong correlation.
Now do I feel that it has become overly ‘simplified’ science. Yes. Do I feel it has become a money grab. Yes. Do I think all the science around it is wrong? No.
So I wish we could get along with one another and come to real solutions to the issue.
To people like Nick Stokes – do you HONESTLY believe that Solar and Wind power is a real solution? Based on all evidence I have seen to date I would suggest that this has numerous additional unintended environmental impacts that BECAUSE we see the specter of ‘CO2’ being the driving fear of all things climate related are not being thought through.
Already we see cities altering rain/precipitation and temperature patterns ( not linking to articles here so this is a GENERAL statement if you really want me to get into it I can ) adding wind turbines and large solar panels can have negative ( and climate altering repercussions as well ) which may well not be understood for decades to come, and may in fact be as damaging if not more so than CO2 emissions
I am always curious as to what people are thinking about when they attempt to treat a symptom without dealing with the actual disease.
Anyway, have not read the book but the criticism seems to be out of context of the explanation.
“I noticed on Saturday, when I searched for Koonin’s book on Amazon.com using search text, like “Steven Koonin Unsettled,” that I was led to books critical of Koonin’s book….”
I searched “Koonin” and his book came up first. But it was accompanied by five or six ‘Summaries’ purportedly by different authors, although all in the same cover format which received one or two stars. It seems like a concerted propaganda war. In fact, the propagandists are shooting themselves in the foot by giving so much attention to Koonin. The alarmists must be alarmed.
Climate Science is a religion for the Left, with its own dogma, its own commandments, its own savior. And it has nothing to do with science.