Many readers have commented about their experiences at Real Climate with posts being deleted and being run over roughshod by hostile comments there. I was sent this YouTube link by a WUWT web affiliate, and as I was watching it, it occurred to me that the phrase “tightly controlled” really describes the Real Climate methodology.
Watch Helen Thomas at the end. For those of you who don’t know Helen Thomas, may I suggest reading up on her. She’s a fixture with the White House Press Corp and her statements to Robert Gibbs are simply stunning. Helen mentioned “openness and transparency”, from my view she could have just as easily been talking about Michael Mann and his famous “censored” FTP folder discovered by McIntyre.
Now if we can just get Andy Revkin to ask questions like Chip Reid and Helen Thomas, we might get somewhere.
Now every time I think of Chip Reid, I’ll think of Real Climate’s “tightly controlled” environment.
I should add that I’ve experienced the same thing at RC, valid questions I have posed have been wholesale deleted personally by Gavin Schmidt. I’ve kept a record and screencaps of such things, I would suggest that you all do the same.
Deleting rude comments or comments that are badly OT or inflaming is one thing, but when you start deleting valid scientific questions posed by people in your circle of interest, it doesn’t take long for all of those individually affected to start comparing notes.
RC seems to have a small following of the same people that make up a core group, but when you examine the web statistics, it seems obvious that such a strategy is failing their primary mission of reaching out to people:
My blue stats start in October of last year because that is when I started the full domain name. Prior to that they are in the olive green color plot. In both reach and traffic, WUWT grows and RC declines.
Here is the URL to see for yourself:
http://alexa.com/siteinfo/wattsupwiththat.com+realclimate.org+%20wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com
Of course, these are unadjusted numbers so any conclusion drawn from them may be premature. Best to wait for the adjusted data set.
UPDATE: Since there is some confusion in comments, I’m adding this. That first graph is a “top sites” graph, with sites like Google and iTunes and Amazon being at the very top. It shows where WUWT and RC exist in the “top sites” pecking order. WUWT is now somewhere around the top 30,000 web sites while RC has fallen below the top 100,000 mark. – Anthony
It is fascinating to watch how Gibbs tried to reply to the question that was not asked rather than the one that was. Create a straw man and argue against that. Klein and Thomas were questioning the closed nature of the process of arranging attendance at the town hall meeting…. Gibbs wanted to change that to an argument over whether tough questions were going to be asked. Gee, what do you suppose a town hall meeting in a Potemkin Village would be like?
He tried to aw shucks his way through it, and was nailed by a reporter who apprenticed during the MWP. Good for Helen, good for Chip and good for Major. Where are the rest of ’em?
Helen Thomas is 89 yrs old.She’s like an old Navy Chief’s saying:”I’ve seen’em come and I’ve seen’em go-but I’m still here.” Twerps like Gibbs will be long gone if her health holds…
Glibbs [sic] is funny sometimes.
It’s funny. Even Helen “Of course I’m a Liberal, what else would I be?” Thomas is most displeased with the, er, bubkes the administration is, er, feeding the media…
Um. There’s something wonky with that first graph. The numbers get bigger toward the bottom.
REPLY: That first graph is a “top sites” graph, with sites like Google and iTunes and Amazon being at the very top. It shows where WUWT and RC exist in the “top sites” pecking order. WUWT is now somewhere around the top 30,000 web sites while RC has fallen below the top 100,000 mark. – Anthony
RC stuck their necks out again. Here’s my own reply.
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/07/02/hubris/
This could be a discussion with an AGW true believer at the podium.
Just want to point out, Helen Thomas is a truly remarkable individual. She should be commended in every way. She is a great American and incredible lady! And amazing to me that she is still there at the age of 89. wow!
Stefan has a smoothing algorithm that puts the endpoint of RC well above WUWT. I hope it bodes well for the polar bears.
Gibbs’ behavior makes me doubly skeptical — not much different than some pro-AGW sites.
If the “powers that be” had the genuine answers for AGW (or any other topic), I think they would clearly state them, reasonable scholars would understand and agree, and the debate would end. I must conclude they do not have the answers. Or, they do not want us to know the genuine answers.
Frankly, for Helen Thomas to say this is the worst of it she has ever seen in from an administration in regards to control of information – is saying a LOT.
If someone gets the raw data, I’ll do a climatology grade trend significance plot and pound it into a hockey stick.
Anthony,
Your blog has reached a level in climate science where it doesn’t have any competition. It’s been through continual service to the science, avoidance of direct political ideology, huge amounts of work and quality presentations to both laymen and scientists that it has grown. I was honestly amazed by your ability to communicate some time before attempting blogging myself but IMO it’s more than that. In my opinion, the primary reason WUWT has grown beyond the limits of most blogs is the honesty in posting the counterpoints to consensus.
I sound like everyone else here, please keep up the work. As a fellow business owner there are many things which could be done to return more money than blogging. I’m sure there are a dozen more entertaining things to do with your time as well. It’s a voluntarily self-giving service for all of us.
THX!!!
“Robert Gibbs gets owned…”
Absolutely correct.
It is a testament to Gibbs’ self control that he didn’t pull out a handkerchief and start patting his forehead. His performance should be the new standard for “winging it.”
I almost felt sorry for him.
Something seems to be wrong with the numbers on the daily traffic trend chart, or is it just me?
The adjusted numbers are 4.2, although they may be off by an order of magnitude.
Paul Revere (19:18:34) :
>Something seems to be wrong with the numbers on the daily traffic trend chart, or is it just me?
You’d better go to Dan Evens (18:54:50).
I left this comment at Mr Id’s place, following the link he provided at (18:59:51):
As a non-scientist I consider it my task to ask the sorts of questions an average simpleton like me considers relevant. So here’s today’s:
Whether a computer model predicts, woops, “projects” more or less of something than the amount that actually occurs, is it not the case that the model must be flawed?
I think I understand that any projection has an inherent margin of accuracy, it might be a bit low or a bit high without being wrong, and those who press its buttons will say what that margin is.
Yet the projection is their case. It contains an implicit statement: “if we have got it right, the actual result will be within the margin we have stated”. It no more supports their case for the reality to be “worse” than their projection than for it to be “better”. In either such event their model is wrong.
One cannot logically conclude that a model predicting something nasty contains correct methodology when the reality is even nastier. Maybe the methodology is correct but some other factor is in error, or the methodology is incorrect. Either way it is back to the drawing board.
Or am I missing something?
Helen Thomas is a national treasure !!!
Anthony and others,
I am a simple chemist by any means. I grew up in a good household in a southern Chicago suburb. By all accounts of my education and proficiencies, I should have been a writer or a lawyer. Of course, being one who wanted a career, I initially attended the University of Illinois with the intention of becoming a lawyer. School was pretty boring and I, like many others in their late teens wanted to do something meaningful. So I turned my eye to becoming a writer. This seemed to be something especially perfect for me as I missed only 1 question on the English portion of my ACT and scored a 10/10 on the entrance exams for the university in the writing portion. By all accounts, I had no business becoming a scientist.
So I read a book where it was comparing the number of people going into law and going into science. It was clear to me that we needed more scientists and less people who were willing to sell their soul to get a buck, so I chose to make a major decision in my life: I was going to be a scientist.
I graduated college and was off to find a good life of honesty, integrity, and simplicity in truth. You can’t argue with science, right? Well, I struggled with a 2 year search to find a permanent job. The local pharmaceutical company that I planned on working at was ravaged by the FDA. To be honest, the company had its problems, but the attack by a federal authority on them to such an extent as to basically ruin a whole city comprised of over 100k people was not warranted. The FDA, in this instance, decided the fate of the people there and aimed to make an example of them.
I finally got a job at a small company that made coolants. I was a qc chemist and worked on formulations for our products. I was hired through a temp company specializing in scientific personnel, so I spent 6 months working for 10 dollars an hour with the rationale that I could prove myself to them and be worthy of a reasonable salary. Well, I worked hard for my 6 months “trial period” and got my offer. While my friends who were finance majors had to work much less than myself had gotten offers and not had to struggle as I had were getting offers of 45k and up, I got my 27.5k per year offer. The irony of this is that, as a chemist, I think anyone would be hard pressed to say that the technical difficulty of such a major was less than that of a finance. Further, majors such as finance were most often on a 1 hour in class is 1 credit hour. Meanwhile, any chemistry major will tell you of countless lab hours plus outside work (lab time technically equalling 6 hours per week) as being worth 2 credit hours. Things just didn’t seem right to me.
So I got my job offer and figured I HAD to do something, so this was it, considering my other prospects. I made the best of it and in the time I was there, we went from 4 batches of product per week coming in out of spec to 1 every month. This, I believe, was from my philosophy that educating employees and relating to them the importance of what their actions were. I wanted my compounders (the guys who put the stuff in the tank) to understand that there was a very good reason for them to be as meticulous as I was in the lab. I made a point to walk around the plant at least once a day and see if I could identify any problems and, more importantly, I would stop and ask them how things were going and befriended them.
Unbeknownst to me, the compounders in our powder division were up to atrocious standards. They were leaving out key components to our products. This was not some inert filler type of component.. this was something that was important to the quality of our product. However unfortunately, we didn’t have the capacity to test for this in our lab.
to be continued if there is interest… could be a long story which I find relevant to the current climate debate.
REPLY: I can see a teachable moment coming…please proceed. – Anthony
I’ve started rereading Agatha Christie with her #1, “The Mysterious Affair at Styles”. Hercule Poirot was created in this story. About a third of the way through, he tells Hastings: “If the facts do not fit the theory, discard the theory”. This was written in 1920. Still just as relevant today, if the numbskulls in ‘Climate Science’* would pay attention.
*An oxymoron if there ever was one.
Story continued…
So I did my due dilligence. I went into the powders office after work and found the “cheat sheet” which showed that the powders compounders were not actually adding the correct amount of chemicals to each batch. This confirmed my suspicions which were founded on a conversation which I had with the liquids compounder who had let it slip in front of me that he knew what was going on. So the powder guys were basically adding 1/3 to 2/3 of one of the main active components in our products.
I brought this evidence to my boss. He was an honest man with great technical expertise and integrity. I admired him greatly for his insistence of excellence. He then instructed me that I make standards and pull retains of our past products to compare to those standards for analysis by an outside lab. I did this as instructed and sent the solutions out. The results came back as expected. The powder compounders were, generally, adding only 1/3 the amount of product required per batch. The accepted excuse was that “it smelled bad”, being a mercaptin (the same stuff they use to make your natural gas smell like rotten eggs). As any reader can tell, that is no excuse at all for neglecting to do your job.
Consequently, our plant manager must have picked up this discrepancy when we did our plant audits on raw material inventories, right? Well, we did, however that again was falsified. In a private conversation with a person from our plant, I found that our plant manager was falsifying our inventory reports. “Hey that’s Sodium Nitrite up there in that barrel, right? (wink wink while the independent auditor stood by) ” “Yeah, one drum of sodium nitrite!” would be the responsive answer from the person. You get the picture.
Soon after the lab results were in, I was called into the office of the owner. I was expecting a congratulation for finding flaws in his company and maintaining the integrity of our lab and our products. I thought “I’ve done great work above and beyond my duties. I’m surely going to be given accolades for this.” Not true at all. His words, and I will never forget them, were this “You have an uncanny ability to find things out.” He then further accused me of hacking into computer information concerning salaries and such. The information, while I admittedly DID see it, was left on a public drive under such a file name as “labexpense.doc” which I found while searching for the appropriate paperwork to file an expense report. This was explained to him and others.
A few days later I was told that I was going to be on suspension with pay for a week. The meeting that preceded that was filled with attacks by the plant manager who, most assuredly, falsified his inventory reports insinuatiing that I was a liar and MUST be dealth with.
My week went by and I was called in to hear my fate…
to be continued…
Politics? Oh no, don’t get me started down that road, not after reading how health care reform includes a proposal to fine people for not having some type of health insurance ($1,000 ?). No, how about Waxman-Markey – not the Enron II Act. Let’s try something that won’t send me off into a tirade. Gibbs? Isn’t it his job to deflect criticism of the Great Pretender? Say nothing of substance and it’ll all go away. Wonder how long it’ll be before his smile fades as the press starts acting up.
Speaking of saying nothing of substance, isn’t RC really about providing talking points to the media and keep the movement (and the faithful) on track? I doubt they’re really all that concerned about the low rankings. After all, science is about a quest, a search for answers. Looking to understand something is sometimes a messy affair; mistakes are made, theories made, tried out and tested. I checked out RC a few years ago – it struck me as a sterile environment, everything neat and orderly. Later I came upon WUWT – no wonders it made it as Best Science Blog for 2008 (and probably again this year). So the choice is – go to RC and get preached to or go to WUWT and get thrown into many discussions covering many facets of science and, if you’re lucky, learn something. It’s no wonder those Alexa rankings look as they do – people still like the process of discovery and learning; they’re not so hot about being preached to by a closed circle of sycophants.
Helen Thomas is, and has been for many decades, an iconoclast of stuffed shirts. Long may she live and prosper. Pity, though, that modern politicians can’t offer her any competition. The Prez won’t even speak to her.
Replay to chemist:
Stay in the Game!
My Wife of 12 years finally realize what I said about that statment.
Life is a game.
People Lose, People win!
Stay in the in game, and YOU will win BIG time one of these days!
Good Luck!
The achilles heal of the “scientific consensus” is that they have stopped doing science – what’s the point if the science is settled. This means that the only science that is going on is from the so called sceptical side. I actually don’t care for the term sceptical too much because it sounds like one who is against-for-against sake and it honours the “consensus” side too much. When something is so ascientific and political (I know it didn’t start out that way but there wasn’t enough real science going on to create a debate in this comparatively new field and without full debate they got full of themselves), why should it be accorded the status of being dealt with by sceptics? For example, I’m not sceptical of the geocentric theory (it came to the fore because there was no debate and then was destroyed when the debate got under way), I just rely on science to decide the real mechanics, quite unmotivated by such a theory. Clearly, things eventually fall in favour of the shooter and not the target. Maybe if they finally break up the consensus and a real debate breaks out, science will be the victor.
What AGWers did at least though, was to wake up the true scientist who had been left behind somewhat and now fresh and dusted off legitimate science is being pursued with vigour. Let’s be careful though and not get too full of ourselves.
Very true! I have followed RC for a few years now, and eventually got banned. I never made a rude or unpleasant remark. It seems my questions and comments were just too uncomfortable. I suppose I should be flattered.
There’s a clear pattern. When a ‘new’ sceptic appears on the blog, they first receive very patronising replies from one of a number of regulars. If they don’t ‘shut up’, they are then accused of asking ‘the same old denier’s questions’, of being ‘brainwahed by deniers’ blogs’, of ignoring the clear evidence, bombarded with requests for references, etc, etc. On the other hand, pro-AGW commentors can make the most extreme non-referenced claims, but receive no criticism.
A consolation is that RC seems to have moved away from any attempt at science. Most of their blogs are to counter and ‘ridicule opposing stories in the blogosphere (or ‘deniesphere’ as the regulars like to call it).
At least RC provides a lot of entertainment!
Helen Thomas is indeed a national treasure. More that that though, she’s a vanishing breed of journalist who seeks truth no matter what. Even if truth goes against her political viewpoint, she’ll acknowledge it and make sure it sees light of day. In that regard she’s very dangerous to lying politicians. His Obamaness is at least smart enough to figure that out (unfortunately) and that’s why he avoids her.
Looks like Real Climate is waiting for their decadal oscillation. Then it will heat up.
Actually paranoid people post about the stuff others post. Joe Romm gets about 7-10 comments and every 5th thread is about Pielke or this site.
Phe
I had the same problem with Brave New Climate. They used the patronising approach until I kept persisting with evidence refuting what they were putting forth. They then asked questions – like list the books I had read, who was I, etc and then became quite rude. My comments went to ‘moderation’ but I finally gave in.
If Gibbs wasn’t such an obvious jerk, one could almost begin to feel sorry for him. When the main duty in your job description is to provide a happy face to the press for a principal whose every statement comes with an expiration date, the period of which is asymptotically approaching zero, coming into work every day can’t be much of an upper. Every time I get sucked into watching one of these YouTubes of his performances, I expect to see Mike Rowe and his gang from “Dirty Jobs” following him around for a segment on their show. Trying to provide an explanation that’s plausible and palatable for the goings on at La Casa Blanca since Obama ascended to the throne would have virtually any human being screwing themselves down through the floorboards as they tried to apply adequate spin and will be even more challenging now that the press corps are finally beginning to realize that,despite their reams of adorational coverage, Obama’s disdain for them is as great as it is for the rest of us.
Here’s a link to essentially the same video without the “Jamie Fox…Click here!” bs over the top (with a more descriptive title, to boot)…
REPLY: THanks I changed to this YouTube link you provided. – Anthony
I do believe the press is beginning to figure out they’ve been had,
and their place in the new order.
Real Climate is a joke. I regularly read articles from a wide swath of diverse sources that offer a reasonably representative sample of the best thoughts and perspectives on the state and potential trajectory of Earth’s climate system. I particularly seek out articles that present contrary arguments and alternate points of view, in order to challenge my understandings and beliefs. However, I almost never read Real Climate, because there is minimal substance there and they have no respect for the facts. They primarily offer misinformation, alarmist propaganda and scorn on anyone who may respectfully disagree.
The greatest failure of the Global Warmingists was basing their entire narrative on the barely understood and highly unpredictable Earth climate system. If Earth warms, then the money and power might roll in, but if Earth continues to cool, then the fall of the Warmingists is inevitable and it will be spectacular…
I wonder how much traffic RC would get, were it not for links to RC from this site and Climate Audit.
I would bet at this point over 1/4 of RC’s web traffic gets sent there from links posted here. People posting these are saying stuff ‘and just see what they are saying over at RC’ .. Well folks when ya do that, you are basically keeping their hit count up and them in business. The true end of RC will be when no one goes to visit anymore. So if you have to quote from something you read over at RC then cut and paste so we dont give them hits .. Honestly given their current track record, Im not sure why anyone reads anything there.
No fan of Helen Thomas here.
She’s an antique lib from the hard school who tosses her own premises into her questions, then argues when she doesn’t get an answer that agrees with her premise.
She would normally be on-board with the current AGW administration, so the fact that she dissed Gibbs means that the
b.s.hypocrisymisinformation being shoveled out by the White House got too deep for even her to stomach.Gibbs is in way over his head in that job.
pkatt (23:21:10) :
The true end of RC will be when no one goes to visit anymore. So if you have to quote from something you read over at RC then cut and paste so we dont give them hits
There are copyright issues around fictional stories…
Only peripherally on topic, but I intend to put this post from the Guardian in the UK out onto the blogosphere in the hope that it eventually gets seen by politicians. It is from a blogger called James Cameron and amply demonstrates that there is no consensus and that the science is shaky. Anyway read and enjoy and pass on:
“How nice to hear from Andrew Simms. From his student days at LSE this bien pensant economist has done good works done for various organisations such as Christian Aid, Greenpeace, Making Poverty History, etc. He has long been employed as the purveyor of Western surplus graces to the Third World. Sadly the one thing Andrew is not and never has been is a scientist which explains the sort of tosh he has contributed this morning. As usual he is particularly upset with Physicists such as me who find his apocalyptic hysteria slightly wearing. I have to tell him that the blessed James Hansen he extols in his article was in St Andrews University recently to share with us his increasingly demented world view. Unfortunately in a fit of absence of mind the organizers of his lecture said he would accept questions. He was simply shredded by the assembled Physicists and Geophysicists and the “open” session had to be abandoned after 10 minutes. Al Gore never makes the same mistake and has NEVER debated the Global Warming Hysteria with a professional scientist for reasons which were sadly all too apparent in St Andrews.”
GerryM (00:01:48) :
Is there a lecture video link?
Dear Anthony and other readers,
I was trying to follow the RC comments thread around Tom Fuller.
There was something about his next genaration questions and some answers.
I was most astonished to see, while in answer to the question about the quality of the sufrace stations your name and the related NOAA study was mentioned, but Steve’s analysis at CA was not mentioned at all (neither is his name).
(http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=6370)
Unfortunately I lack some basics here . .
In his figure 4 he seems to see an artifical trend between NOAA and NASA:USA
which seems related to some smoothing and he can show that the smoothing actually worsens a good station in different tread.
Can you puzzle it all together (probably in a different post)
What is the state of art for the temperature trend in USA (or the other world) for NASA, NOAA, satelittes, your good stations, bad stations.
I see fragments, but lack the complete picture..
(The same with the other questions Tom posted, there was some “warmer” answers, but somehow the complete picture eludes me . .)
Thanks a lot and yes . . keep up the good work,
LoN
@GerryM: Where can I read more about how Hansen was shredded? Been searching but cannot find any Cameron blog that refers to Hansen. Tx
D. Kin, dunno, I’ll ask next time he posts, I expect the University, which by the way is one of the most presigious in the UK, will have kept one. Be good if we could get it into the blogosphere though.
Take Chip Reid, & Helen “Awesome” Thomas, & preserve them for eternity so that when the time comes, you in America will be able to say,”that’s what journalists used to be like, always asking open awkward questions at inconveninet times”! Two journos who are truly switched on, all cylinders firing, raring to go! I thought at one point HT was going to have to change Gibbs’ nappy (diper?) she was so scornfully looking at him. Noo Labour launched this approach back in ’97 & all credit to them, we bought it. But it soon turned to an openly manipulative system of spin & counter spin, where no one can believe anything that is officially said. BTW it always has been the politicians’ methodology of replying to a questioner, that the question they should be asking is this……………? Then proceed to answer their own question, making it seem that they have answered the original question in a better way, the inept journos just take it lying down.
We in the UK have suffered terribly from a spoon fed weak, feeble, disinterested msm, infiltrated by eco-activists with the likes of BBC’s Richard Black & Roger Harrabin (he of infamy beaten up verbally by another eco-nut). They just accept the derisory dribble fed to them without ever looking deeper into the oft recycled stories they write. This is what your new government spin machine will produce, slick one liner quips, sound bites, announcements made to the press before being discussed in parliament (senate etc), slowly leaving the real process of government behind, hoping that the public are too lazy to notice or do anything about! Contrast the recent Climate Conference in the UK at the Met Office, slick well produced taxpayer financed extremely well orchestrated up to & including some carefully stage managed dissent to the humiliation of the invited speaker (an eminent Russian scientist), with desparing tutting & sighs from senior “climate experts” from said Met Office, all adding to the legitimacy of the show, with the “Climate Catastrophe No” debate held in London at about the same time, minimal fuss, no razmataz, no glossy imagery, etc, just good science! Of course dissent should always be organised, like those “impromptu” & “spontaneous” anti-western demonstrations we see around the world that appear to show great public support for various regimes under citicism.
Don’t like the look of that data splice on the graph. See it goes from red to blue.
Is this a hockey stick for WUWT readership? Are we going to experience uncontrolled +ve readership feedback?
Lol – happy 4th.
Re RC
It might be interesting for someone, if they had the time, to do a shadow blog of RC, the next time a juicy topic comes up. The basic idea is to copy the posting and all the comments from RC, but allow skeptics to comment also without censorship. It would be fascinating to see if some of the RC acolytes came for a visit. They might even receive some perspective widening insights also.
Shane
Actually Anthony,
Why not do it directly in WUWT.
S
@GerryM. ‘Next time he posts’… please just give the link to that blog
My last 4 or 5 comments on RC have been blocked it seems increasingly that any post which challanges the science of Real Climate gets noted and all further posts from that email address gets canned. Not a good way to run a debate, but might be expected from a religious or political fanatic .
Time to rename RC as RCR real climate religion
More press waking up:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124657655235589119.html
FatBigot (19:29:32) :
I left this comment at Mr Id’s place, following the link he provided at (18:59:51):
As a non-scientist I consider it my task to ask the sorts of questions an average simpleton like me considers relevant. So here’s today’s:
Whether a computer model predicts, woops, “projects” more or less of something than the amount that actually occurs, is it not the case that the model must be flawed?
I think I understand that any projection has an inherent margin of accuracy, it might be a bit low or a bit high without being wrong, and those who press its buttons will say what that margin is.
Yet the projection is their case. It contains an implicit statement: “if we have got it right, the actual result will be within the margin we have stated”. It no more supports their case for the reality to be “worse” than their projection than for it to be “better”. In either such event their model is wrong.
One cannot logically conclude that a model predicting something nasty contains correct methodology when the reality is even nastier. Maybe the methodology is correct but some other factor is in error, or the methodology is incorrect. Either way it is back to the drawing board.
Or am I missing something?
Picking nits here, but the only other thing to consider is that the “error margins” are not necessarily symmetrical. Depends on the underlying Probability Distribution (as opposed to a frequency distribution ) that was used and how that was derived. The tendancy is to use the Normal (Gaussian), if the true distribution is unknown, but that in itself can be dangerous. In the case of climate, I doubt very much that the Normal distribution is an appropriate model.
Theo it was a post on an article in the Guardian entitled “89 months and counting”. If you go to guardian.co.uk comments and type the title you’ll get the article, it’s a post in the comments on that article.
@Theo Richel
It is a comment (by James Cameron) on the following post by Andrew Simms:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2009/jul/01/environment-economy-89-months
EcoChemist (20:52:45)
My week went by and I was called in to hear my fate…
Great story, I want to here whats next!
Some very interesting points have been made here, it is refreshing to see that your site gets quality visitors.
It’s remarkable to me that 1 in 20000 read WUWT on a good day… It’s a great achievement on the one hand, but also goes to show how few people have an interest in finding out what’s going on with climate. What do the other 19,999 know about the debate? Evidently enough to not worry about AGW since most polls put it at the bottom of the list (if it even shows up), but are these 19,999 willing to take action to stop cap & trade? I sure hope so…
I wonder if Chip Reid will bet reassigned for asking these questions?
Over the past three months, have had a running battle with the people at RC over using spectral analysis and signal conditioning methods for temperature analysis (1659-2008 series from England). Needless to say that that topic is now called
“off limits”. What they didn’t like was the analysis showed a decline at the end, following the global temp composite at climate4you. Considering the name calling, it must have struck a nerve. Their “statistics” expert said the analysis was “bungled”. “bungled” for following the procedures outlined by Blackman & Tukey in the “Measurement of Power Spectra” classic. Seems like they are in a “statistics rut”. The book “How to Lie with Statistics” is still being sold. I wonder why?
EcoChemist (20:52:45)
A chemist should know that the word is spelled “mercaptAn”; not “mercaptIn”.
Especially one who fancies himself a writer.
(Alarm bells went off when I read that)
And how is it that a QC lab doesn’t have the equipment to perform product assays?
(More bells)
Steve,
To be fair “mercaptin” is a fairly common misspelling but I share your notice that it would be odd for someone who claims such perfection in writing. And I have worked in places without proper QC abilities before. But often you will find it doesn’t have to do with QC abilities so much as it has to do with industrial corruption. Generally you would see a labor union involved. The workers are doing something to either reduce their workload or damage their employer (in order to give a competitor who gives a better union contract more business). So the line employees in the QC department are instructed to look away because it would be a shame if anything happened to their new car or new house or if they were to lose their job. Not sure how much that goes on these days but it was pretty common not so long ago.
Great example of a how-not-to-inform policy.
I remember Helen Thomas from her appearance in the video from Stephen Colberts White House Correspondents Dinner thing.
If you havent seen it, here is the link:
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=8E181BDAEE8B275B&search_query=colbert+correspondents+dinner
Steve Moore,
Typos aren’t impossible and they were long pieces, I’d give the spelling error a wave.
While sending out your active assays isn’t the best way of getting rapid test results, there are labs that cut equipment and supply costs by doing exactly that. Look up CRO or contract research organizations and you’ll find many labs offering to develop and conduct all your tests for you.
Mike
crosspatch,
There are enough things in the story so far to make me wonder.
A QC department is supposed to make sure that what goes out the door meets specification, after all, and since the writer mentions Sodium Nitrite, I’m left assuming that this is a facility under FDA purview — which would mean fairly strict reporting requirements.
And, Hell, it ain’t that difficult to do a simple chemical assay. We learned to do them in high school. Granted, in the mid-60’s Camas High School had an excellent chemistry department. We could even go in after school and do our own experiments (A lot of Nitrogen Tri-Iodide and Mercury Fulminate ended up being produced, but then, we were young and stupid. I still have all my fingers).
Oh, well, let’s see where Part Three takes us. Even with the glitches, it’s entertaining.
On-Topic:
THANK GOD FOR HELEN THOMAS!
Mike86 (09:27:29) :
“Typos aren’t impossible…”
True enough.
But there’s a lot of real estate between the “A” and the “I” on a keyboard. Maybe the writer is like me: sometimes my right and left hands go their own ways…
“While sending out your active assays isn’t the best way of getting rapid test results, there are labs that cut equipment and supply costs by doing exactly that. ”
Again, true enough.
But, why would you need a trained chemist then? Unless it’s just to satisfy a regulation — which might explain the wage scale…
As I said above, let’s see where the story goes.
It may turn out I’ve been hasty.
[snip rude ad hom against Helen Thomas]
Steve Moore:
Also, we don’t know in what period of time this happened. Things were much different in the 1950’s and 1960’s than they are today. If this happened several decades ago, the standards in place (or lack of them) might not be comparable to what we consider “standard” procedures today.
I did find that obscure a little while ago when I head Obama or the press secretary calling reporters names for their “question”. So, now I understand the process better with this video. As Helen Thomas put it, it is controlling the press.
From her reaction and that of others in the press gallery, I don’t think that little charade will go on for much longer.
“From her reaction and that of others in the press gallery” …
I think Gibbs got a taste of that the other day when the press openly laughed at his statements concerning tax reductions in the daily briefing. When pressed on Obama’s pledge that no family making less than $250K would pay a single dollar in increased taxes and asked if that pledge was still in effect, he wouldn’t answer the question and replied with “we will let the process work its way through”. The second time he repeated that non-answer, the press laughed at him.
I have a BS in Chemistry and worked in the chemical industry for 15 years. I held a variety of jobs, but that being said the pickin’s for a BS Chem. degree are not stellar in the US. If Eco worked for a small blending company, it is common to use physical properties, wet chemistry, or a minimum-necessary number of analytical machines. Those machines are expensive and a small company tries to find other ways to QC product. The pay isn’t great and it is very difficult to move between industrial specialties. If a plastics company is looking for a QC, tech service, or product development chemist, that company will want a chemist with experience in that particular field; not one with experience in pesticides for example. They do not want to train someone in the arcana of that specialty. If you do get hired without the experience they want, you get entry level salary. I get a good laugh when politicians say they want to start some program or another to get more science or engineering graduates. IT’S THE PAY, STUPID!! I was a QC lab manager when a training position opened up in IT. I took a small hit to salary and was making way more than the chemist job inside a a couple of years. Chemical jobs were being moved overseas where the cheap raw materials are in the 80s and 90s. (IT came later.)
“In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill. In their totality and in their interactions these phenomena do constitute a common threat which must be confronted by everyone together. But in designating these dangers as the enemy, we fall into the trap which we have already warned readers about, namely mistaking symptoms for causes. All these dangers are caused by human intervention in natural processes, and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviors that they can be overcome. The real enemy, then, is humanity itself.”
‘The First Global Revolution, a report by the council of the Club of Rome’
Page 86
http://www.scribd.com/doc/2297152/Alexander-King-Bertrand-Schneider-The-First-Global-Revolution-Club-of-Rome-1993-Edition
This epic battle with RC is reminding me…
I collected the emails that went back and forth between Martin Durkin (of the film Global Warming Swindle) and the horrible Bob Ward. Don’t assume I’m correct, have a look and check, but I consider that Ward’s abuse of power in his position is as bad as, or worse than, that of Connolley at Wikipedia.
Ok guys, sorry I haven’t finished my story.
First off, I should address Steve. Steve, I have ALWAYS been under the impression that mercaptin was spelled as such, however you are 100% correct that it’s spelled mercaptAn. Isn’t science great where you can say you are mistaken? It’s unfortunate that you MUST be an intruder and a farce for any faults which we all, being human, have. I never claimed to be a genius chemist in the first place. 🙂 retrospective edit following: Steve exemplifies one of the things that I find troubling in this climate debate. People are often so eager to prove their intellectual superiority and call someone out for a fault that they neglect to recognize that everyone is human and mistakes can and will be made. Not allowing our peers to have justifiably made a mistake puts them in such a defensive position when we are so aggressive makes them “stick to their guns” so solidly as to become counterproductive to the scientific process simply because of the normal desire to defend oneself over what I will term “intellectual violence”. Perhaps we can all become more compassionate to the errors of humans and when pointing out those errors allow the person to easily say “I didn’t realize that and I was wrong” without denigrating them.
Second of all, this was a small company where we did most analysis using colorimetry. Nitrite and molybdate were most common. We honestly didn’t have the capabilities there to measure everything. We did have a partner who we supplied who would do independent analysis for us when we needed. So I hope that clears things up. 🙂
So I was called in to come to a 4:00 meeting with my boss. Obviously being called in at 4 was not a good sign, but I showed up in appropriate attire. Of course when I got there, all of my things were packed up in a box and a person from the company HR department was there. I was then bullied by her to get me to sign an agreement never to discuss or disclose any information that I knew from working there. I was told how they were suing someone currently and that it was in my best interests to sign. I simply said I wasn’t going to sign anything and was going to have my lawyer (having a mother who worked at a law office for 15 years was nice, because who can afford a lawyer on such a bad salary) read it. My boss, the man who I felt had great integrity spoke up for me and said in front of the HR lady that it was probably a good decision and to let it go. There isn’t much more to say about the proceedings after this. I got my pay and my vacation pay for the year and went about getting home.
This was an extremely troubling event in my life. I had done all the right things. I exceeded expectations. Every single formula of mine worked out perfectly in both the lab setting and in production. I reduced the number of out of spec batches from 3-4 per week down to 1 every few months. I had never botched a production batch correction (my first solo correction was our most expensive batch ever made, but not because I had to correct it). I had saved us multiple times from sending bad product out and I had found corruption and document falsification. And I was rewarded with… getting fired.
Gentlemen and ladies, I am not a unique person. I’m not a genius. I’m good at my job and probably pretty smart by most standards, but I don’t know everything. Again, I’m not a unique person at all. The more I talked to folks, the less unique I found that I was. People, like myself, being put in this situation is not an uncommon thing in the world. As a scientist, you are asked to look the other way in spite of the honest data. You are asked to make the data/results match what the outcome is SUPPOSED to be. There is only scientific integrity at the personal level. This is a FACT that we must deal with in the world of science.
I even feel that Gavin Schmidt is a tragic figure in all of this. The man is married and has a child. He is trying to provide the best life he can for his family and hopefully build enough personal wealth to provide for future generations. I think this is something we can all agree that we would like to do in our lifetimes. He has been put in such an extreme position by very powerful people. Consider this: What are his choices? He can either come out and do an honest analysis of the global warming debate and refute most everything he has claimed before. This would result in the obvious assertion that he was being fraudulent for monetary gain and he would be humiliated and his life would be all but over. He would be subject to insult, due to his position in this great debate, by most everyone in the world and this surely wouldn’t escape those who he actually values in his life.
On the other hand, he can continue on the path he is now going down. If one were to play the odds, he is most likely kind to his wife and child and values their opinions of him much more than anyone else in the world. By the time he would die, he would be remembered by those he cared about for just about everything else other than his career. I know that I won’t remember my father for what a great man he was in terms of his job, but I will remember him for my personal relationship with him. He can go on being a “true believer” and even if he were wrong, who can say a bad thing about someone who honestly believed, even if it were a charade that was unproveable, that they were doing the right thing?
So I ask you all this: What venue are we giving Gavin Schmidt, Michael Mann, and even Al Gore to come clean? We are as much to blame because these people are like cornered rats. We, in the community, offer little to no option of admitting fault. We like to act like we are seekers of truth, but in the end we come off as arrogant intellectuals trying to “one up” each other quite often. I’m sure many will take issue with this statement by arguing that “pride has nothing to do with facts” or some such thing. However, at the end of the day we all care about how others look at us and don’t want to suffer humiliation.
How can we, instead of constantly attacking, offer those people who are surely smart enough to see the facts before them the appropriate outlet to rectify past mistakes without humiliation?
This may very well be more important to the whole realm of science than one single issue over man made climate change.
p.s. Anthony, this may have all been hard to follow being broken up over a few nights. Feel free to post together and editorialize if you wish.
EdoChemist:
“People, like myself, being put in this situation is not an uncommon thing in the world.”
We’re on the same page here. In my case it started when a certain program administrator sent around a memo instructing us to back date a document to make it appear we were in compliance with federal requirements. (She obviously did not realize the implications of this or she would never have put it in writing and sent it to several hundred teachers.) I wrote the State Dept of Education asking what my personal liability would be if I back-dated this document. Made one big mistake–left the district heading on the supporting document. SDE never gave me the courtesy of an answer, but they did send my name back to the district. The folks downtown were forced to circulate a new memo instructing us to ignore the first one. But things have been glacial down there ever since.
So I am principally concerned with Mr. Carlin. EPA leadership is determined to control the flow of information internally, as well as externally. It is clear that Carlin is already on the receiving end of retaliation. If ever there were a case for congressional oversight, this is it. Hey, where is Helen Thomas when we need her? : > )
Re: EcoChemist
“I can see a teachable moment coming…please proceed. – Anthony”
Indeed, this is a lesson to think about. We seem to take great pleasure in finding fault, not with the facts, but with the person whose arguments we think we’ve destroyed. We give the True Believers no wriggle room to escape the corner they’ve worked themselves into. Seeing no escape, even the most docile an individual will lash out.
I imagine there are many otherwise good researchers who are trapped, required to support a so-called scientific position with which the facts don’t jibe. How can we shift our rhetoric so that the data we find, and the conclusions we reach leave these people an opportunity to come over to the light without losing face?
Having said all that, it is my opinion that there are those beyond the pale, but let’s not paint with too broad a brush.
I, too, have been placed in compromising positions in industry. This may be why I’m the cynic I am. While I don’t expect all businesses to be poorly run with bad ethics, I’m not surprised when it happens. Likewise, I am not surprised when government-run, “science-based” agencies are not ethically run because of the political factor. But I expect more out of people who claim to be true scientists, doing pure research. I expect science, of all things human, to be about finding the truth and that requires integrity, honesty, and ethical behavior. It makes me mad when supposed scientists lie or misrepresent the fact in any way.
I even feel that Gavin Schmidt is a tragic figure in all of this. The man is married and has a child. He is trying to provide the best life he can for his family and hopefully build enough personal wealth to provide for future generations.
I’m not sure I’ll feel too sorry for him. He should have made a bucketload of money by now. Do you think he spares a thought for the UK miners who lost their jobs in the 1980’s when Thatcher, the architect of AGW, closed down the coal mines? Do the AGW elite worry about all the jobs that will be lost through cap and trade should that be passed?
No – I won’t feel sorry for GS and his cronies at all.
When I was placed in a very compromising position, I didn’t cooperate and I didn’t quit immediately. I had a family to support. I found another job as soon as possible. I can understand why many of the staff of government agencies might remain silent. After all, the unemployment rate is near 10%. I would be difficult for a PhD or MS specialist to change jobs at will. I can understand the desire to remain silent also so that one isn’t going against the wishes and well-being of the group, that’s the social aspect of this. I can understand the desire to keep money rolling into the group, that is both a personal and social consideration. While silence isn’t outright fraud, it is close. But that being said, I understand the pressures. That understanding is in fact an out for those who really would like to speak out. I, and we in general should, understand the human aspect of the AGW complicitness.
Certainly EcoChemist has revealed, and caused others to reveal, a very human trait. We expect to be treated fairly and our phyches are troubled when we are not. We expect to be allowed to be honest in our work. We expect to be appropriately rewarded for our efforts. Then we encounter politicians and other crooks and we frequently “go along to get along”. So did the people who built Auschwitz.
“Many readers have commented about their experiences at Real Climate with posts being deleted and being run over roughshod by hostile comments there.”
That’s how some folks are treated at WUWT. Remove the log from thine own eye.
REPLY: Well Gary, all you have to do is answer the question posed several times to you. You are welcome here, but we really don’t understand your stubbornness. The only explanation I can think of is that you won’t answer it because you just don’t want to admit that you had no cognizant firsthand experience with global cooling media or science during the 1970’s. I answered immediately when you turned around the question on me, and your refusal to reciprocate makes you look petty. But, we see such sort of petty behavior over at RC. I’ve asked Gavin some serious questions, far more important and on topic than what I’ve asked you, and my were questions wholesale deleted from the get-go. Got screencaps of that. One day I’ll do a post with mine and many others who had the same RC experience.
It seems pettiness is a trait with warmers. Here’s your chance to prove me wrong by answering the question posed of you. – Anthony
Your whole “Gary is petty because he won’t tell me if he read Newsweek in the mid-1970s and thus has firsthand knowledge of the claim that belief in global cooling was the scientific consensus at the time” just drips with pettiness. Another instance of a double standard on WUWT’s part.
BTW, you do realize that the whole “Taylor was banned from the PBSG because of his views on AGW” was a lie:
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/07/christopher_bookers_misinforma.php
REPLY: Ah more misdirection from Gary “can’t answer a simple question” Strand. Why not answer the question Gary? Shall we have another misdirection marathon? where I keep asking the question and you keep posting deflections and misdirections? Last weekend was fun!
Answer the question Gary. The question is not what you posed. It is simply. “How old are you”? You added all the rest. – Anthony
From CA…
Gary likes to ask questions but is not too keen on answering them…
“Gary Strand:
June 28th, 2009 at 7:41 am
How many of you know *why* Phil Jones hasn’t released the data to any and all? Leave aside the acrimony and unwarranted extrapolations and personal feelings. Have any of you considered other reasons?”
“Mike Bryant:
June 28th, 2009 at 12:40 pm
Gary Strand, as an intellectual exercise, could you please construct a satisfactory reason *why* Phil Jones would not release the data to any and all? Perhaps there are even two or three very good reasons why this data that may be used to reshape the earth’s political systems might be reasonably withheld from those who will be affected. I’m looking forward to your comment.
Mike Bryant”
Gary’s closest thing to an answer:
“Gary Strand:
June 30th, 2009 at 1:42 pm
I’m not going to guess why Jones won’t release his data and/or methods.”
According to Gary Strand there could be perfectly legitimate reasons for hiding methods and data… however he can’t imagine what they could be…
Mike Bryant
REPLY: Yes it appears Gary Strand shares the trait that other climate scientists have, they can lecture but they can’t answer. I’ve puzzled as to why Gary has his “Strand Cam” showing him sitting at his office desk at UCAR, seen here: http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/ccr/strandwg/gallerypage.html
Since there’s no obvious entertainment or educational value to seeing a series of poorly framed pictures of some angry guy sitting at a cubicle chair with some oriental writing in the background, the only reason I can think of is to prove to his superiors that he’s actually working. It sure beats having to answer questions about your activities I guess.
Either that or it is pure ego. I’d ask Gary but he won’t answer the first question I posed. Maybe I should elevate the question to a blog post. – Anthony
And here we go with the pettiness, hostility, *ad hominem*, and so on, that I’ve come to expect from WUWT.
I’ll give y’all a hint – clean up that nonsense, and perhaps, someday, you’ll have some credibility. Until that time, you’ll be (rightly) disregarded.
REPLY: Yes Gary, we’ve been (rightly) disregarded 15,855,870 times as of this writing. But here you are, still unable to answer a simple question. What do ya say I make it a full blog post? That might be fun. Why do you have that webcam anyway? – Anthony
Go right ahead, Anthony. Then tell me what “science” content there is in making a whole new thread about me. I’d expect better from the “best” science blog than its author and owner elevating a personal attack to the stature of a whole thread.
REPLY: Back so soon? Actually, while you’ve been dodging the question, I’ve been doing some literature research of my own into the 1970’s, and on Orkeske’s claim. Your refusal to answer a simple question would be just an interesting sidenote on the aberrations of ego when it comes to challenging questions.
For the record, Gary has not provided a single direct answer to any question posed to him on any subject here on WUWT or on CA.
We’ll forgive all the others, but now we have two questions pending for Gary
1) How old are you?
2) Why do you have an office webcam trained on you?
– Anthony
P.S. Of course if you answer the questions, I’d have no ability to claim that you don’t.
Where’s my thread, Anthony? Don’t I deserve a headline all my own, suitably titled “Watt’s Up With Gary Strand”? Heck, why not a whole new blog devoted to the “science” of my age and my webcam?
I seriously doubt
http://www.wattsupwithgarystrand.com
is a taken name.
PS – Now, don’t you feel a bit silly being so petty and juvenile? For a fellow older than me, that’s pretty bad.
REPLY:Why would I do that? Goodness, such emotion. No, actually its a story on WUWT that involves the 1970’s global cooling issue, popular literature, scientific literature, Oreske, Peterson, and of course , your refusal to answer the “how old are you” question as it relates to men/women of science being able to communicate with the general public…you know, people like here on WUWT, whose taxes pay your salary. It’s not a personal attack, but an observation based on your dialog here. It’s not in press yet. – Anthony
P.S I should add that I owe a debt of gratitude to Gary, because without his refusal to answer a simple question, I never would have been motivated to look into the 1970’s global cooling issue. – Anthony
The whole “issue” is a non-issue, but you’re intent on making it one. Why?
REPLY: It was a curiosity when the question was first asked. As a member of the media (which I am) I’ve learned that when a person such as yourself deflects the simplest of questions, there’s usually something worth learning about attached to that. In your case, had you simply answered the question “how old are you?” it probably would have resulted in nothing beyond that momentary curiosity, maybe a comment response. But that’s all.
Now it has started a whole new idea, and for that, I thank you. – Anthony
To be exhaustive, and avoid relying on perhaps flawed analyses, you could recruit some volunteers to go through all the relevant popular media and journals from the 1970s and come up with your own evidence for the various aspects of belief in global cooling at that time.
Perhaps each volunteer gets assigned a month, or a journal, or a newsweekly, and then they can judge (using transparent criteria) the presence or absence, and the “strength” of either the global warming or global cooling memes, and then report back here.
You might even be able to get some nifty charts for good ol’ Eyeball Mk 1 to enjoy.
REPLY: Way ahead of you Gary .
Oh, and restrict the volunteers to a suitable age range so they have *in situ* observations – wouldn’t want to have the contamination of *post hoc* analysis. After all, recollections based on firsthand experience (even after ~30 years) are preferable.
REPLY: Since you indicate these types of observations are preferable, you’ll then have no trouble telling us your age so that we can determine if you had any first hand experience with the subject? – Anthony
Where’s my thread?
REPLY: Gosh Gary, you’ve gone in a few minutes from saying WUWT should be “rightfully ignored” to demanding “Where’s my thread?”. Having trouble making up your mind? Love/hate relationship? It’s not “your” thread, but you’ll be mentioned. And, as I said, it is not in press yet. – Anthony
PS there’s still time to answer the questions
Gary – no need to answer now, I decided not to wait on you to answer, since it was apparent you wouldn’t. Took me about a minute. You are 44.
In 1975 you’d be 10 years old, in 1978 you’d be 13. Probably too busy then with baseball, comic books, Pong, friends, and discovering girls to worry about climate change issues. – Anthony
I think that it would be valuable for WUWT to explore and document several prior erroneous scientific consensuses. The results would be helpful in highlighting and dismantling the current one, as well as potentially preventing some of the future ones.
I never said “rightfully ignored”, as the quote marks imply.
I’m still trying to figure out why you’re so hot on my age, and have even “threatened” to make a whole thread about it. Is it worth the loss of credibility (which you can ill afford) to elevate a personal obsession to the level of a headline on the blogosphere’s “best” science blog? It has nothing to do with science, not even remotely.
As you note with your first sentence on this thread, some folks allege bad treatment over at RC – would making a thread about my age really help you and WUWT?
You’re playing the man, not the ball – in spades.
REPLY: My interest isn’t personal in you, but one of perception. Don’t worry I’m not going to trash you. I just wanted to see if a hunch was right.
For the record then you said “(rightly) disregarded.”. But my query is still valid, in one minute you say “(rightly) disregarded.” and a few minutes later you demand “where’s my thread”. The point being that you can’t seem to make up your mind about anything here. – Anthony
And my age is of relevance to what, again?
REPLY: You’ll have to wait for the article I’m writing to be finished to find out. – Anthony
A bit off topic, but the moral of EcoChemist’s story parallels the problem of politics in general on a larger scale, and since Obama aims to be the messiah of climate healing, maybe my point won’t even be off-topic at all.
Simply put: if we want opponents to change sides, we have to give them opportunities to do so. Lefties as a rule aren’t proselytizers, really. They’re singing to the choir. They’re blamers. Blame is the game. It feels good. It makes them feel superior. They get to be Sir Thomas More with none of the icky consequences.
That’s “them.” As for “everybody else,” whether conservative, moderate, libertarian or whatever, if we champion an idea, we need to provide chances for other people to embrace it — and let them do so for their own motives — whatever those motives are.
The AGW crowd pretends to own a higher moral ground. They’re saving the planet. And if we’re “deniers,” then obviously we just don’t care about the planet. That position could have plausibility except that as deniers, we don’t have any other planets we can occupy. So obviously deniers don’t believe that our contemporary economic way of life harms the planet.
Lots of things do harm corners of the planet. Most of us like breathing clean air, like drinking clean water. A great many of us feel that biodiversity gives the earth beauty, imparts mystery to life. So, if we want the AGW crowd to consider the merits of denial, we need to let them like us, and we need to let them save face.
Cause if you’ve been publically promoting something that turns out to be seriously big-time wrong, you’re gonna need to save face.
If the shoe were on the other foot. If Obama were right, and if he made the “oceans recede” and the earth began to “heal,” I for one would own up to all my lib friends (red girl in a blue state that I am). I’d buy them all a drink. And I’d shout the hoorays for their side. But that ain’t gonna happen since the odds are quite good that Obama will be Carter Deux.
EcoChemist’s moral, if I got it, is that we need to give opponents a chance to make a soft landing. Cause these AGWers are gonna need it.
To be a skeptic on RC is, as the Italians say, “essere ricevuto come un cane in chiesa” Translation: to be welcomed like a dog in church.
Since we’re telling our ages, I’ll help the cause — being a woman, it can be more appreciated what I’m surrendering in doing so — I’m 53.
And in the 70s, I never heard of global cooling theories. The media marketplace was very different, and I’ve never been particularly hip.
However, first I ever heard of global warming was circa 1985. A very hip-aspiring friend attended a college campus lecture where the speaker predicted that “in ten years” the contemporary North Carolina coastline would disappear. Well, of course it didn’t.
That might date the origins of my skepticism.
On the other hand, my generation listened to John Denver and Gordon Lightfoot. We wanted to be living in mellow harmony with nature. Musically, I’ve moved on. I listen to Bach now. However, my love for nature is deep seated. I have more respect for nature now than ever before. Hmm, but nature is a mystery.
The AGW philosophy is complex psychologically. It’s supposed to be “science.” Science is supposed to be science. (“Just the facts, ma’am.”) But in modern times, scientists have discovered how immense the universe is. It’s hard to fathom the idea that man can assail “nature” when “nature” is this much larger than ever imagined “something” “out there.” You can have Neil de Grasse Tyson saying that we’re “just” an insignificant little planet in an unprepossessing solar system on the edges of an ordinary galaxy, and for a bookend have Al Gore saying that we offend the universe by our hubristic excess. These are really flip sides of the same psychological coin.
The whole question gets tangled in other issues of ancient human pedigree — religion verses rationalism — left brain verses right brain — and though it’s perhaps not pertinent here — one cannot forget that every generation of Western societies has had its dooms-day scenerios. The end is near. Apocalypse is not so different from Global Warming. Same song, different verse.
If I were lexically imitative of my lefty friends, I might say “it’s human psychology, stupid.” But all that “stupid” stuff is so rude. And rudeness is never a substitute for knowledge, for learning, for curiosity.
Civility and “there but for the Grace of Whatever Higher Power You Believe In go I.” As I said previously, I’m on board with EcoChemist’s basic thesis: allow the other guy a soft landing. The next gaffe may be one’s own.
Gary what’s your secret? Looking at your webcam I’d swear you look under 40 YO.
Thanks Ann. That’s one of the messages I was trying to get across. You can’t back an animal into a corner and beat them and not expect them to fight back. If you offer them kindness, then perhaps you may find yourself a powerful ally.
🙂
Gary Strand (08:44:20) :
Once again… Gary, you are a programmer, not a climate scientist. I (was) a programmer/analyst NOT an accountant… or chemist, or compounder… if your program reflected the thinking and processess of your principles, you did well. Frankly, in a process-manufacturing environment like the one described by EcoChemist, I wrote programs that were honest in the details and dishonest in the “big picture”. I finally got disturbed enough to spend about a man-month on my own dime to write a program that would track materials through warehouse and production and concluded they were losing almost two million per year…. I was a consultant and not an employee like EchoChemist.. but the results were the same, They weren’t interested.
The issue is not whether Gary Strand somehow “$%^&*(” up the prgramming, but whether the principles “$%^&*(” the spec.
uh, Anthony. Gary is closer to 35. We were both 35 once. Once… long ago, in a galaxy far, far away…. Gary is here and has contributed and may not only be a curious soul but one of integrity as well.
Uh, Gary, all that being said, when some one comes along and says “Prof. So-and So’s article didn’t account for TSU by x% and said nothing about ENSO… I think you can confirm or deny that… and most of us, who don’t have your expertise, may agree. But the day I, or any of us, suspect you’ve mid-less us.
Ann’s New Friend (14:22:43)
EcoChemist’s moral, if I got it, is that we need to give opponents a chance to make a soft landing. Cause these AGWers are gonna need it.
That’s assuming we wouldn’t give them the chance.
And I don’t believe that those in the skeptic camp wouldn’t. As a ‘skeptic’ (I prefer the moniker ‘realist’), I know that when the whole AGW sham is acknowledged for what it is, that will be the end. There may be a few “I told ya so’s” passed around, but nothing on the scale that would be the case IF, and it is a multi-trillion $$ ‘if’, the AGW hypothesis was raised to the level of a true theory.
‘Realist’ personalities are the exact opposite of those in the AGW camp. We want to know the whole picture and that’s why we frequent WUWT. We want the cake, not just the glossy icing that makes the cake look so appealing.
We need to look at integrity. Here, we can and do have our ‘beliefs’ shaken and changed. It would be interesting to know how many RC devotees have changed their ‘religion’ after reading WUWT, Climate Audit, Climate Science, etc. For myself, I never even realized man could change the local climate through land use until I read Pielke Sr’s blog.
As compelling as EcoChemist’s post is, how can it be said that Gavin cares deeply about his family should he continue on his AGW quest knowing it is completely false? He would be fully aware of the dire consequenses of the taxes, regulations, job loss, the skyrocketing prices of everything for all human beings that his continued effort would produce. And let’s not forget how food is being diverted for their crusade. Those things would not be good for his family in generations to come. Unless, of course, he’s so heavily invested in all the things ‘Gore’ that he doesn’t care about what happens to other families.
Sorry, IMHO, no matter how I look at it, a man so selfish that he would risk the well-being of other families for the sake of his own… I would be very disappointed with a father who cared so little about my fellow man.
I’ve never presented myself as a climate scientist.
REPLY: to Gary 7:34 I can vouch for Gary on that – Anthony
I still want to nominate Gary Strand to debate Lord Monckton if Jim Hansen isn’t available.
P.S.: I’m 49 and I remember the global cooling scare from the 1970’s very well.
Gary Strand (19:34:33) :
I’ve never presented myself as a climate scientist.
wattsupwiththat (19:52:51) :
REPLY: to Gary 7:34 I can vouch for Gary on that – Anthony
Sorry, I never accused Gary of being a climate scientist (sheesh, can you picture it? “There’s a climate scientist among us! Get out the tar! Get the Feathers!”) I think Gary does what he does very well – and he can correct our misconceptions on the models when we go off the deep end. But I’m just not going to defend the conclusions of the warehouse manager when he claims that X kilos of lemon oil were “consumed” when my analysis showed that only X-y were consumed in production. Even when I wrote the program that the manager cites in his defense.
“You handed me the spec, bozo.”
My point here is, don’t blame Gary for the model; Gary, don’t feel obliged to defend the model. If any of our complaints and criticisms are good enough, maybe you can suggest to the guys who design the models that something should be changed or incorporated. Or, you can tell a critic, “this code segment was designed to handle just the exception you were complaining about…”
I can recall taking flack from a certain VP of Operations who wanted to know why a certain inventory report was giving misleading results. The answer, of course, was “you supplied the parameters, Dufus. I told you early on that the data was not collected that way.” Uh, I finally met the same fate as EcoChemist. When the results don’t match the projection, fire the programmer.
Jimmy Haigh (20:10:30) :
I still want to nominate Gary Strand to debate Lord Monckton if Jim Hansen isn’t available.
Hah! Keep the debate focussed on models and how they are implemented, my money is on Gary. Talk about the validity of forcings…. I like Monckton, but he sometimes goes off the deep end (Lucia had several threads on his analysis of IPCC parameters).
Re EcoChemist and Ann’s new friend,
Great story / moral / present reality check.
However the animal backed into a corner is about to destroy most all of what we have achieved so far.
Offering a soft landing may well be like trying to pacify a great white shark by hand feeding it with a mackeral held at arms length, whilst swimming in the same murky water as the shark..
I believe we HAVE to have more definate action before the unfolding disaster that Copenhagen WILL BE otherwise.
rephelan (22:06:45) :
My reason for nominating Gary Strand to debate Lord Monckton is from the following comment he made on another thread:
” – citing Monckton? Give me a break. He’s a joke.”
Anyway who would want to debate climate models? (I wonder what they’ll do with them once AGW is finally put to rest once and for all?) This is a scientific issue and the (hypothetical) debate would be about AGW. Monckton would wipe the floor with Strand. I reckon he’d wipe the floor with Hansen too.
But the debate won’t happen. The AGW side don’t do debates. They don’t need to. The ‘science’ is settled.
Why is there such an insistence on some kind of face-to-face debate between one side and the other? I don’t understand that.
Gary I think it has to do with Al Gore’s refusal to take interview questions at any of his 100,000 dollar lectures, (its in his speaking contract, section 9C) to allow members of the press there (its in his speaking contract, section 9A) or to address the science errors in his movie, such as the Mount Kilimanjaro melting which is really all about sublimation due to lack of evapotranspiration related to deforestation around the mountain. Gore needs a reality check, badly, but he knows he’ll lose any such challenge, and thus his lucrative gravy train of speaking engagements, so he hides from the challenge.
Gore’s bad example of one-sided soapboxing calls for a debate, and much of that gets transferred to other potential dustups I think. Add to that Alan Carlin’s treatment by the EPA and it gets amplified. Gore won’t debate, since he’d lose and he knows it, so Hansen is the next logical candidate, and it spreads from there.
You see Gary, there’s a lot of people that think computer modeling just isn’t a reliable way of divining the future, and much of the current global warming hysteria is from Hansen and “model zero” et al. plus Michael Mann and his ridiculous hockey stick. Mann’s obtuse math is falsified. He won’t debate anyone either, again he knows he’d lose once the work of McIntyre and McKittrick was raised in the debate. Mann won’t even bring himself to say McIntyre’s name in some instances. Mann fouled up lat/lot in data but can’t bring himself to correct it. My notes above are a tip of the iceberg on Mann’s mistakes, yet he has yet to correct a single one. This is not science. He also goes on record saying that Professor McKittrick and Steve McIntyre are “not scientists” even though they published a paper clearly mathematically refuting Mann’s math and statistical analysis. That’s how badly he fears the questions, he has to denigrate the people asking questions rather than address them. It is a common tactic we’ve seen. You yourself have employed it here.
Hansen offered to debate last month, but only on the subject of coal mining/ mountaintop removal. He has refused calls for debate about GISS, his modeling, or anything else.
Here’s why skeptics want debate. Science is supposed embrace challenges to hypothesis. That’s how it advances. Einstein said it only took one person to prove him wrong. These three won’t embrace debate, they won’t take questions, and they have a disdain for those who ask questions in spite of their isolation.
Jim Hansen referred to people like Steve McIntyre and myself as “court jesters” when we pointed out an error in GISTEMP. Einstein would have never done that, he would have said thank you and fixed it. Einstein was a man of integrity. James Hansen is not. Michael Mann is not, Gore most certainly is not.
All these men conduct their science in the public eye, but is goes beyond that, they seek out and embrace the public media to get their word out. Yet when the public wants to question them, they duck the questions, citing them as irrelevant, or in most case, don’t allow the questions to be publicly asked of them at all in their presence.
Science, especially popular public science that cannot be challenged, isn’t really science at all. People like myself and the thousands of WUWT regular readers see this, I hope that you are capable of seeing it also. Based on your own refusal to answer even the simplest of questions here, citing them as “irrelevant, my guess is that you won’t, but would prefer to enhance the fortifications of castle NCAR against the public horde.
Maybe you can call out over the castle walls and say “come to the gate and we’ll talk” rather than release buckets of hot lead. Bring Caspar Amman with you if you come to the gate. – Anthony Watts
Gary Strand,
You’ve got it backward. The question is: Why do the AGW purveyors absolutely run and hide from a debate?
If they honestly believed what they’re selling, they would be anxious to debate. Instead, they’re afraid. The fact that they hide out from any moderated debate in a neutral venue shows that they know they’re trying to sell a pig in a poke.
Gary Strand (08:22:10) :
Gordon Bennett!!!!! He’s back.
The debate is being done in the journals, guys. That may not be as emotionally satisfying, but that’s the way it’s done. So, submit your work for publication and let it be peer-reviewed. Science isn’t done on blogs, sorry.
PS – This isn’t high school debate class, you know.
REPLY: Exactly the response I expected from you. I gave you a chance to bridge the divide, and you chose to denigrate me by comparing it to high school debate class. You had to get that last dig in rather than leaving it alone. See here’s the problem with peer review, its an old boys club, which is why M&M ended up in E&E rather than BAMS or Journal of Climate. They sent it around. Nobody wanted to challenge Mann, because to do so challenges their own place in the system.
You aren’t any more capable of embracing debate or answering questions than the three men I named. From my view that makes you bereft of integrity. Build up those walls at NCAR Gary. Fortify your cubicle. But if you don’t want to take questions head on (so far you haven’t, you dance with deflection) maybe you should frequent another blog. Seriously. You do nothing but denigrate me and others here at every opportunity.
“science isn’t done on blogs” Yet, here you are. And that outdated notion will be disproven soon. Science is not done on the Gutenberg press and its derivatives, its is done by communication of ideas and challenges to ideas. The paper journal medium isn’t exclusive any longer. – Anthony
The questions to which you wanted answers, Anthony, were completely irrelevant. You might as well have asked what color my eyes are. That I didn’t answer speaks nothing of my integrity – and that you pin my integrity on something so silly speaks far more of your own.
Is the peer-reviewed system perfect? Of course not – but that’s not an excuse to attempt to short-circuit it and post a ridiculously short and cursory analysis and call it “science”. You can call it an “old boys network”, but that doesn’t mean it’s true. If you want to have some credibility, you gotta go where the real scientists do, and meet their standards. If your ideas are truly good and correct, then they will out. Whining about the procedure gets you absolutely nowhere, and won’t make anyone take you seriously.
And, what I do here isn’t science. Neither is what you do.
I’ve not seen much here that would meet even the most minimal standards of even the most forgiving genuine journal.
REPLY: Ah the old “irrelevant therefore I won’t answer defense” Find a new one, that’s worn out. It’s relevant because I’m writing on perceptions of people who haven’t experienced things first hand. First hand experience has weight. In a court of law first hand experience has more weight than researched opinion. Petersen et al and Oreskes take the issue of 1970’s global cooling into the courts of public opinion.
As you pointed out (and I backed you up on) you never claimed you were a climate scientist.
I never claimed WUWT to be a “genuine journal”, that’s your claim, and again made only so that you can use it as a tool to denigrate. Look at the mast head. In the near future, online journals with online peer review will likely exceed that of paper journals. Blogs, in their infancy now, may very well evolve to fill that gap. Right now peer review is being practiced online whether you embrace the idea or not.
The problem of climate debate is tribal in nature. Closed minds like yours that refuse to consider others questions or ideas “seriously” seem to be the norm in the climate community. It is an example of an “us against them” tribal protectionism.
As for people taking me and/or WUWT seriously, they have and do. For example, NCDC would not have invited me to speak and visit for two days last year if they thought I was irrelevant. Without this blog and the support of its readers that would never have happened. There are many more examples you don’t know about because I’ve chosen not to publicize them. You are making an assumption from an outsider view.
There has been some excellent science done here. For example Ryan O’s analysis of the flawed Steig et al paper, which is another Michael Mann statistical math mess. But feel free to ignore it, as you have everything else.
Unfortunately your dogma refuses to allow any admission or agreement with the criticism of Steig et al.
I worry not what your opinion is, since the success of this blog, its reach, and subsequent projects, don’t rely upon it. As for my suggestion that you find another blog, I think that’s a good idea. Your whole purpose here seems to be denigration. – Anthony
BTW regarding Gary, I would ad that I’m not “whining about procedure” I’m only pointing out that M&M went down the path, and the path was rigged to guide them to a scholarly dead end. Politics is a part of peer review.
– Anthony
The host should show a little more courtesy to his guests as well.
Mod, feel free to snip this comment. That will just prove my point.
Oh dear. Is that our Gary resorting to the ad hominems then? What a surprise.
Come on Gary – you can do better than that! Don’t deprive us of our weekend entertainment!
Why is there such an insistence on some kind of face-to-face debate between one side and the other? I don’t understand that.
Well . . .
–There isn’t a lot of balance on the news.
–There’s a lot of money at stake.
–“Our side” thinks it can win.
“Who is Caspar Amman?” I asked myself. So I Googled myself an answer. This is from his homepage – his Rersearch overview.
http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/ccr/ammann/ResearchOverview.html
“Methinks tis very like a hockey stick!”
How do they get away with it?
Anthony still wants to play the man, not the ball. Why?
What “Ryan O” needs to do is publish his work in Nature – because CA, and WUWT, and so on, aren’t credible. Anthony’s endless personal attacks on me are one reason why, plus the needless and silly “piling on” from anonymous posters that’s actively encouraged.
It’s unfortunate that any criticism of WUWT is viewed as “denigration” – because to do real science, you have to have a pretty thick skin, as one’s ideas have to meet the meatgrinder of the views of others. If I, not a scientist, can easily see the flaws in the blogs-as-science model that Anthony wants, then the idea will get no traction in the real science world.
BTW, WUWT will gain credibility when/if Anthony publishes the result of his “surfacestations” project in a reputable journal.
REPLY: Thick skin? Oh crimony Gary. Do a search on my name and any number of foul words. I had one person who thinks my surfacestations project was so bad that she wrote a letter to the editor of my local paper saying that “I should conduct an experiment on CO2 with my obviously large SUV (she doesn’t know what I drive) in my garage with the door closed” (not knowing CO/CO2 difference). She was a member of the local “Peace and Justice Center” who had to write a public apology.
Your denigrations are piddling compared to what’s been thrown at me. I’m just trying to get you to drop the ad homs and snark and deal with questions posed to you. You refuse. You say this blog is irrelevant, yet you persist here.
As for the paper, we’ll see if my theory of the “old boys” network rings true. – Anthony
Jimmy, you’re not doing WUWT any favors with your posts.
REPLY: nor does yours Gary – A
Assignment for Gary Strand.
Read this and write a book report for us:
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2008/8/11/caspar-and-the-jesus-paper.html
If you really are interested in how science is conducted at the peer review level, then this a must read. If you dismiss it with the wave of a hand as irrelevant, you’ll be proving my case. I expect you to be able to argue this issue if you don’t agree with it. – Anthony
Jimmy Haigh (10:56:19) :
This is a great exposé of Caspar Amman: click
Smokey (11:09:02) :
Thanks for this link to Amman’s ‘work’.
As I’ve said before, I’m a newcomer on WUWT so I have missed a lot of the machinations which have gone one before. I’ve had a quick look through the link you gave but will need to spend some time on it to really get to grips with it all.
It beggars belief. But, then again, seeing as it’s “climate science”, it doesn’t.
It certainly isn’t science, as I practice it.
Complaining about letters to the editor (!) while at the same time claiming that Hansen (and others, including myself) have no integrity (because, in my case, I wouldn’t tell you how old I was [!]) just indicates a double standard on your part, Anthony.
This blog is indeed irrelevant – in terms of the advancement of the science, unless and until the equivalent work is published in a peer-reviewed journal of suitable relevance and stature. You should know that tossing out a few graphs and a few ill-tempered comments about specific individuals doesn’t meet reputable journal standards, and for good reasons.
REPLY: Gary you are entertaining for sure. You said I needed a “thick skin”, I cite examples far worse than your denigrations to show that indeed I’ve endured much criticism, and you go off on an illogical tangent.
So here’s the deal. Read the posting I just cited as an assignment. No more comments from you until after you’ve read it.
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2008/8/11/caspar-and-the-jesus-paper.html
Feel free to cite this blog as being irrelevant, but don’t comment again until your assignment is finished and you write a report for us. – Anthony
Gary Strand (11:05:11) :
Jimmy, you’re not doing WUWT any favors with your posts.
Hi Gary!
I’ve got more important things to do than to waste precious CO2 arguing with you – I’m off to bed.
Why don’t you go to Ammann directly?
I realize that the “hockey stick” is the alpha and omega of skeptics.
REPLY: Because like you, Amman dismisses this “irrelevant” blog and the McIntyre’s CA blog with the wave of the hand. Elitism has its perks. – Anthony
The complaint that Ammann et.al. dismiss you because they’re “elitist” when you “assign homework” is rather silly.
You’re certainly free to run your blog however you want, but to have that sort of behavior and then claim that the “right people” don’t take it seriously, well, the problem isn’t them, it’s you and how you run your blog.
Gary Strand (11:04:47) :
“What “Ryan O” needs to do is publish his work in Nature – because CA, and WUWT, and so on, aren’t credible. Anthony’s endless personal attacks on me are one reason why, plus the needless and silly “piling on” from anonymous posters that’s actively encouraged.”
Guilt by association is not a good tactic, son, and easy to identify. You haven’t been at your game long enough. Fallacies such as you regularly practice require skill and practice to be effective. Someday you might get good enough at it to be an editor at Nature though.
REPLY: No more on Gary, we await his report on “Caspar and the Jesus paper”. We’ll pickup this thread after he posts a report on it. – Anthony
I’m not going to respond to “Bishop Hill”‘s blog post, so I guess I’m done here.
Oh, and “GlennB”, you’re part of the problem – an anonymous poster making unfounded accusations, and being hypocritical to boot.
I’ll let you figure out how.
REPLY: Well Gary, it is your loss. But I do give you one thing. Your willingness to put your name to your opinion is something I respect.
Unfortunately, by not looking at the “Caspar Amman and the Jesus Paper” you not only reveal your own biases, but do the taxpayers of the United States (you know, your employers) a disservice by not even bothering to determine if the failures of the federally funded organization you work in have any merit.
Another dismissal by wave of the hand from the NCAR castle. I suppose then we’ll have take another tack. – Anthony
I should say though Gary, you are welcome to comment again if you change your mind.
Refusal to read and report on an essay that is germane to the organization you represent here (NCAR) seems exceptionally closed minded. But then we’ve seen this already from Caspar Amman and others in climate science.
“Irrelevance” is a choice you make. I’ll be visiting NCAR soon, I’ll be sure to drop by with a copy for you. – Anthony
So I ask you all this: What venue are we giving Gavin Schmidt, Michael Mann, and even Al Gore to come clean? We are as much to blame because these people are like cornered rats. We, in the community, offer little to no option of admitting fault. We like to act like we are seekers of truth, but in the end we come off as arrogant intellectuals trying to “one up” each other quite often. I’m sure many will take issue with this statement by arguing that “pride has nothing to do with facts” or some such thing. However, at the end of the day we all care about how others look at us and don’t want to suffer humiliation.
I have seen Stephen Hawkins discuss in length his errors….and there are some pretty good stories about Einstein and his admission of being dead wrong about quantum physics “God does not play dice with universe” a statement he later admitted was wrong.
With climatologists the lack of humility is interfering with the scientific method.
Being able to admit error is a hallmark of a good scientist. The inability to admit error is the mark of a bad one.
I do *NOT* represent NCAR in any way, shape or form. If you’ve gotten that impression, then you’re wrong. I’m here on my own time, and the only relevance that my position at NCAR has is that I’ve got some expertise and understanding of the issue of anthropogenic climate change.
I am not speaking officially in any sense.
REPLY: Then you should NOT use your NCAR email address in postings, because by doing so it does in fact become an official NCAR document. In all cases on WUWT you did in fact use your official NCAR email address. Also during many (but not all) of your postings you posted from the IP address 128.117.65.29 which resolves to NCAR.
Thus anything that originates from NCAR’s domain does in fact become an official document, subject to all appropriate policy.
You say “I’m here on my own time”, but the WP log (which shows all traffic, not singling you out) says otherwise. For example on 6/28 there was a string of posts from 128.117.65.29 by you on:
Submitted on 2009/06/28 at 8:37am PST
to
Submitted on 2009/06/28 at 11:29am PST
and more on 6/27/08:
Submitted on 2009/06/27 at 10:57am
to
Submitted on 2009/06/27 at 5:37pm
…which if you subtract the hour for PST to MST (NCAR is in Boulder, CO) , it clearly shows NCAR office hours for messages originating from that IP address. There are more examples.
Granted some came from addresses outside of NCAR and outside of NCAR office hours but many clearly show you spending time here on the taxpayers nickel. Busted. Happy to provide documentation here if you wish to dispute it.
My friendly advice; if you don’t want your communications to be regarded as coming from NCAR, don’t use the taxpayer funded NCAR system as the basis for communications, particularly when you have a webcam that shows you sitting at your office desk working at your computer.
– Anthony
I’m not representing NCAR, the National Science Foundation, or any other agency, nor are my opinions representative of NCAR or any other agency or institution.
Check the timestamps on the webcam.
As of right now, I happen to be on NCAR’s network, but on my own machine, on my own time.
REPLY: Still using the taxpayer’s dime when you use the NCAR network. Get your own private DSL like the rest of us. We don’t get free government access and a majority of people if using their business network for such things would get fired for breaching the acceptable use policy. – Anthony
I am paying for my own access – I just happen to be running VPN, because of security restrictions as well as doing some work on the side as I’m online.
Besides, last I checked, June 27th and June 28th were weekend days.
The all-too-quick assessment of wrongdoing (on your part) is just silly.
In the old days of the Internet, no-one much bothered with who was posting what, when, and from where. These days, there are too many folks who are more interested in those trivialities than in the substance of what’s being said.
You know, Anthony, if you want to make a legalistic case of it, you’re welcome to – but from those of us who’ve been around the ‘Net for a while now know, that makes you out to be a harasser with thinly-veiled threats; not exactly a welcoming environment.
REPLY: Legalistic case? Gosh golly Gary talk about too-quick assessment. Well like I said in my first friendly advice, if you don’t want your name attached to NCAR don’t post from the NCAR network, talk about silly, your defense of saying I’m not using the NCAR network when it comes from that IP, while also using your NCAR email address is pretty laughable.
Look, we don’t get along, we don’t see eye to eye on much of anything, and you mostly just exist here to waste time for me and others. You won’t answer even the simplest of questions. You dialog is one-way. You think I’m irrelevant and the feeling is mutual. You haven’t the integrity to even read essays relevant to your workplace and the lack of peer review integrity of Caspar Amman. As part of the problem, I expect you’ll never perceive what the public does, so there really isn’t any point in continuing. zip
– Anthony
Gary Strand
I admire your persistence. Without wishing to mean any offense your comments remind me of the scene between the Black Knight and King Arthur in Monty Pythons Holy Grail.
Given the extraordinarily large and diverse readership of this site your comments (and perhaps there timing) will be read by interested people from all sides of the climate debate.
This blog gives new meaning to ‘freedom of speech’.
You can say anything without fear that what you message conveys won’t be ignored or censored.
Unlike Realclimate. That alone makes this site superior, all arguments aside.
Gary Strand:
Ri-i-i-i-i-ght.
Who are you trying to kid, Gary? You hide out from commenting on the Bishop Hill article [for the very good reason that it completely destroys Caspar Amman’s credibility]. And you use taxpayer funded resources… for your own personal propaganda!
What’s your boss’s name? Maybe we should get him involved, eh? What do you say to that, Gary?
You’re a software engineer Gary, not a scientist, and the use of engineer in your title is a slap in the face for those(two relatives)who’ve been schooled for years and years to achieve that title. I question your ability to even write a program.
AGW scientists/modelers have a belief that drives them like a religion. Modeling/GIS is infecting real science data and becoming the equivalent of a modern day soothsayer using a CPU as your crystal ball and input of statistics as throwing the bones, of course all corrected with programs, proxies or any manipulation in the right direction.
Even the crystal ball readers blame some outside factor if it doesn’t come true. You’re even worse with CPU GIGO(garbage in garbage out), a unscientific mind with no understanding of REAL science, just a knowledge of the software use. People are starting to see through modelers/GIS BS(bad science) and blogs are AGW believers (like you Gary) worst enemy.
Open dialogue brings forth truth or should I say shows ignorance of the subject. The public are wiser and more educated then you give them credit for Gary. In the modern Internet world we demand real figures and factual data. Bad data, blatant mistakes and lies are found out pretty darn quick.
WUWT is the number one blog science site because of it’s openness, inclusion of the average person without censorship or ad hom. A large community of thinkers and questioners exists here, your closed minded view and side step of questions, is a testament to your inability for constructive discussion.
IMO, you are not one who looks through scientific eyes for answers and understanding.
Just a data puncher looking down your nose at critical thinkers.
This site might look like just another deniers blog to you Gary, but this is just the beginning of how truth and information will be shared to the public in the future. We don’t get the truth on MSM or even government sites. So we search out resources and sites with unbiased information. The truth will always revel itself with more voices asking the right questions.
So expect more scrutiny on the trumpeting of models and predictions into the future on AGW and I would expect you’d agree that more transparency and explanations should be shown with data for public consumption?Right?
Ive worked on a few federal projects dealing with software problems. I’m like a nerdy detective deciphering user error from software settings, limitations and procedural use. I’ve learned dealing with computer scientists about glitches and errors in their programs. They DON’T like to admit that their software might be the problem. Just asking them questions on an error can come off as assigning blame to them and government computer scientists are always paranoid about that kind of stuff.
GIS/modelers like you don’t know any better, you think anything can be modeled, even sociological or chaotic patterns in nature. The excuse for a wrong predictions are blamed on the capacity of the computing for modeling or the proxies they have inputed are in need of a slight adjusting. Which is true, except for the fact that modeling doesn’t resemble anything that exists in the real world.
I couldn’t imagine how threatening it must be to a real scientist who has been indoctrinated into the BS of modeling CO2 as a truth, and then being questioned on their data/belief.
It’s like when the theory of a flat earth or the sun revolving around the earth, you’d be a heretic to have a differing opinion on these issues, only through outside science did the beliefs change.
Oh of course, not before destroying careers and lives along the way.
Gary you must understand, there is never a consensus in science, just more questions.
Gary Strand has become the poster boy for limited government.
Many years ago, surveys found gov ernment workers were the worst employees in America when it comes to making personal long distance phone calls using their office phone. I suspect online ordering of merchandise and blogging is also rampently abused. I knew a man that ran a business from his desk when he was paid by the government. He was writing and selling software while working in It for the employer. I think gary just went into lurking mode.
I just followed the link to alexa.com and set the graph to 6 months. And I think I see a hockey stick.
Any updates from our government representative gary Strand?
henrychance,
Gary Strand got such a painful spanking here that he skedaddled.
Gary Strand (08:22:10) :
Why is there such an insistence on some kind of face-to-face debate between one side and the other? I don’t understand that. ————————————————————————————-This has to be one of the most asinine statements I have ever read in my life. It is a great example of the delusion that is going on in “climate science”, and it is a tactic used by those whose argument is indefensible.