My friend in Australia, Joanne Nova, has come up with an interesting essay on why it is so hard for many professional scientists to come out against climate consensus. In fact you might say in this case study it is un-bearable.
For the Full Report in PDF Form, please click here
The way some people get treated for expressing a different viewpoint rather reminds me of what Sethi says to Moses upon announcement of exile in the movie The Ten Commandments:
Let the name of Moses be stricken from every book and tablet. Stricken from every pylon and obelisk of Egypt. Let the name of Moses be unheard and unspoken, erased from the memory of man, for all time.
Nova writes: The price for speaking out against global warming is exile from your peers, even if you are at the top of your field. What follows is an example of a scientific group that not only stopped a leading researcher from attending a meeting, but then-without discussing the evidence-applauds the IPCC and recommends urgent policies to reduce greenhouse gases.
What has science been reduced to if bear biologists feel they can effectively issue ad hoc recommendations on worldwide energy use? How low have standards sunk if informed opinion is censored, while uninformed opinion is elevated to official policy?
If a leading researcher can’t speak his mind without punishment by exile, what chance would any up-and-coming researcher have? As Mitchell Taylor points out “It’s a good way to maintain consensus”.
“For the patent clerks, or students, or PhD’s, who happen to come upon this material: If you do nothing else in your short little life, at least have the guts to stand on your own hind legs; success is not measured in dollars, yen, euros, rubbles, or the praise of idiots who kiss the hands and backsides of politicians, publishers, contemporaries.” Pascvaks
Amen, amen, amen!
Besides, you probably will still eat and have a roof over your head. Any scientist who needs much more is not worth the brain God gave him, IMO.
Ah, but you need your precious and expensive equipment? Then fight big government! Then there will be enough PRIVATE resources to fund you!
NOAA is asking people what they should be planning for the future. This might be a chance to speak up for evidence-based science, not politicized or consensus-based science. http://www.ppi.noaa.gov/ngsp.html
Hans Erren (16:20:16) :
@Michael T (15:48:55)
Peter Hearden wrote: what’s so special of a retiring polar bear expert?
The facts that he did not retire but was forbidden to speak.
Apparently he did retire from his post with the Nunavut government and therefore was no longer one of the Canadian government’s appointees to the PBSG (he was replaced by Dr Lily Peacock polar bear biologist for the Nunavut government).
It is often quite difficult to follow the detailed forensic statistics needed to debunk so many of the global warming alarmist papers. I am very happy that so many take the time to do so but the statistical analysis will put the public to sleep.
It is stories like this that show the AGW alarmists are [snip]. This story clear cut and easy to understand. Politics is controlling what presented by the government sponsored agencies and science is not needed. This story needs to be presented whenever and wherever the AGW alarmists try to influence public opinion. The public can understand this story.
Here is from an excellent paper published by a promising young Canadian scientist…
“This research was supported by grants from the
Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric
Sciences (CFCAS), the Natural Sciences and
Engineering Research Council (NSERC) and
Environment Canada.”
Indeed the CFCAS message is clear:
http://www.cfcas.org/Videos/PolesInPeril.html
So is the CMOS bias astoundingly likely based on Mann’s discredited hockey Stick 1,000years…:
http://www.cmos.ca/climatechangepos_e.pdf
Indeed, only political correctness rules from the mouth of CMOS president worthy of the worst Stalinian “public confessions” and self flagellation:
“1) Carbon offset funding
While flying into Halifax for our 2009 Congress in late May, I reflected on the CO2 emissions I was sending into the atmosphere. I have tried over the past year to cut my greenhouse gas imprint, but my increasing air travel undid this effort. For example, my travel to Halifax sent another ton or two of CO2 into the atmosphere…”
This kind of self depreciating hypocrisy would be laughable if the risk of seeing scientific research highjacked into advocacy of government funded scientism was not real: in such frame who would dare to present opposite results to the AGW dogma, knowing perfectly well theirs and their supervisor careers would be in jeopardy and their funding likely witheld?
Why would we see otherwise many research papers include the obligatory reference to anthropogenic global warming even if the results identify perfectly natural variations or natural events?
So it is little surprise the PhD candidate who posts on Globe and Mail forums under the handle Streamwise Vorticity is defending HIS funding, courtesy of taxpayers, by all means of political and union activism, draping himself in the shroud of science, authority and well understood anonymity -which I do respect btw.
Many of you already know my father, Dr. Tim Ball. Many of you also know the (snip) he has endured for over 30 years. I can tell you that what people hear and read about regarding scientists who disagree and are muzzled are only hearing a fraction of the truth of the matter. This debate was made political decades ago, and not by those who disagree with AGW. Dr. Ball realized long ago that this battle would not be won on a scientific battlefield, but on a political one. His retirement from teaching allowed this battle to occur. As a man of conscience and wisdom, he taught his students (and myself ) how to make up our own minds. Do the research and ask the hard questions. It always makes me laugh when the people who question his academic credentials are always listed as “climate experts”. It would be funny if it wasn’t so ridiculous.
“Stephen Wilde (13:56:31) :
That is what leaves the field wide open for experienced, enthusiastic and intelligent amateurs like me (I hope) and many other contributors to this site.”
Stephen, I agree with you completely.
This mania for mediocre, unquestioning, popular consensus goes right across the board in human affairs, from science, to politics, to religion, to finance, and presents an incredible opportunity to those few ‘eccentrics’ who want to work everything out for themselves and will only trust their own rational conclusions.
One of the more interesting places to observe the phenomenon is the investment industry, where you will frequently find the entire herd pursuing the utterly mediocre, and completely ignoring the real jewels.
Clever company promoters, who know how to initiate and lead such trends, exploit the phenomenon to the maximum. Like the irritatingly popular kid in class, who initiates or is the first to pick up on the latest craze.
But there are also phenomenal opportunities for the few with independent judgement, knowledge and analytical skills, who can quietly identify the genuine fundamental investments that are being overlooked and derided in the rush to follow the latest trend.
In the late 1990s, coming out of a long career in the mining industry, surrounded by engineers, accountants and other rational beings, into a second career as a stockbroker, I was amazed by this phenomenon. Outstanding investments that seemed like a no-brainer to any rational individual, were being scorned in favour of the latest fashionable nonsense.
For example, on two occasions I arranged presentations to a large broking firm by a friend of mine. This man was a former senior executive of a global mining company, who had secured a mineral deposit that contained a reasonable well-defined two million ounces of gold and a million tonnes of copper. He had this in a very small listed company that had a market capitalisation of just three million dollars, and needed interim funds to continue developing it. Each time I was told: “Forget it. We couldn’t risk our reputation. It’s not dotcom!” The investment was a no-brainer, but nobody would throw sixpence at it, not even in the mining land of Western Australia.
Four years later, his company had a market capitalisation of four billion dollars and was a phenomenal success, whilst the entire dotcom mania had subsided again into nothing. But at the time nobody was thinking for themselves. And I don’t think many of them ever do.
And if AGW were a company, run by a man called Al Gore, I wouldn’t put a cent into it. I’d be looking around for something small, real and genuine, run by somebody that I actually trusted, doing something that actually made sense.
Lots of good quotes in this paper…and I particularly liked this one:
“Science will surely lose its hard-won credibility with the public as many ‘Scientific Associations’ get caught with their pants down: supporting an international [the IPCC, of course] unelected, unaudited committee, without any evidence.”
So true…and so sadly pathetic about the IPCC. Well said.
Are we as a species, showing evidence, with this bizarre quasi-religious blind “consensus” that so many degreed scientists around the world seem to be lapsing into, are we showing evidence, with this behavior, of mass psychological delusion??
It won’t be the first time it has happened in human history, by far.
But it IS quite peculiar..that those in the world who are supposed to devote their lives to sound research, rational thought and inductive reasoning..are allowing this one to propagate.
They should, but are afraid to speak out against the REAL wizards of all of this ridiculous worldwide mess: the politicians and ideologues. And with good reason…as the politicians and ideologues control the funding.
Then the press then fans it on to the populous.
Voila! Mass delusion.
But many of us are not fooled…thankfully.
And soon it will be time to storm the gates.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
David,
Good for you Dad to speak the truth. I have been privately warning people abut AGW nonsense for over 6 years. I honestly never took it seriously before that – perhaps because I already knew too much about atmospheric science to take any of the nonsense seriously.
It is indeed unfortunately quite risky to speak out publicly (which I avoid) even if you have taken a degree in Physics with graduate level courses in atmospheric physics (which I do). Knowing a thing or two about the science at hand is pretty much irrelevant as the “science is settled”. I have personal experience of people who have been extremely successful in promoting their careers by grandstanding on AGW science and the threat it poses – powerpoint presentations from PHD’s proclaiming the upcoming doom are a sure ticket to be invited to present at an important conference and obviously successful in demand “distinguished” speakers who make grand proclamations (where everyone nods there heads in agreement) often secure promotions.
The fact is, in my personal experience, nobody wants to hear the truth or if you speak the truth then you are a denier! It usually kills conversation and teh person looks at you as if you are a bit of weirdo (“the “science is settled” in their minds).
I would add that PHD’s that present dire proclamations, in my experience, often do NOT have degrees in atmospheric physics – nor are they often aware of all the research and history of Geophysics (study of physics of the earth sciences). Nevertheless, a chemist or astrophysicist or engineer or even biologist will all gladly hop on the podium and rant and rave over “the end of the world provided we don’t drop everything and solve this huge problem of AGW before it is too late” because it has been demonstarted that people don’t laugh you off the stage and this preacher’s type sermon gets them on the gravy train of “recognition” within the workplace…
Here’s the original story of the banned polar bear expert: http://tinyurl.com/lruy8a. Yes, he had retired but was not invited to the meeting because of his thoughts. The thought police did not like him. Fascist scientists — that is a comforting thought, no?
“”G20 leaders call for restructured economic WORLD GOVERNANCE”” !!!!
France24 TV about 30 seconds ago. THAT is where the problem is.
It also explains why a lot of academics and government researchers wait till they retire before “rocking the boat”; they no longer have to chant the mantra of AGW (or silently let others do so) for fear of maintaining the income they need to maintain a home and family. The concept of extortion comes immediately to mind.
This is very true in my experience. It is true in academia at all levels from kindergarten (I have kids) to University (I have a kid there too) as well as in scientific or engineering type businesses everywhere (where I work). My experience is that the whole thing is far worse in Europe (where AGW, the environment as a whole and showing that you feel guilty about it all has become the ONLY accepted normal behaviour) than in North America. Disagreement is acceptable but only as long as it is NOT open and does not challenge the wisdom of authority.
“[Girlfriend,] I look forward to having someone else chair the PBSG.” — Andy Derocher.
“Andy” is an unusual name for the head of the Popular Girls Club. Perhaps the right spelling is “Andie”?
I’d been under the impression that we engineers were the deficient ones in professional social skills, but I see that the scientists have a thing or two to teach us there.
Did Mr Derocher crack raw eggs in Mr Taylor’s mailbox too? Unroll toilet paper on his house? Set off a stink-bomb in his locker? Come to think of it, did Mr Derocher actually graduate from secondary school?
If this kind of immaturity is what attracts grant money these days, I think I’d better switch to something honorable, like investment banking.
>>>This kind of censorship is not unique to the climate change
>>>topic. Rather, examples of it can be found in virtually every
>>>discipline and area of life.
In aviation it is known as ‘tombstone engineering’.
Nothing ever changes until a few people die.
.
Hello David Ball!
What a small world indeed! Your father and mine were old Air Force friends. Imagine my surprise to see you posting here.
Your father is a brilliant man as well as a courageous one. He has certainly done his fair
share, and then some, in exposing this political bogeyman.
From one of the Schmidt clan… thank you Dr. Ball!
All this is fascinating!
I recall being taught the orthodoxy that Henry VIIII was a ‘Bad King’ for ordering the dissolution of the Monasteries.
In retrospect, it was a doctrine of the ‘left-liberal’ (aka socialist) teaching profession, who were trying to instil the idea that state ownership or nationalisation was self-evidently a good thing and ought to be an article of faith.
Those Monasteries, Abbeys, etc, were in effect tax-funded institutions that were self-regulating, self-selecting, and whose ideology was beyond any rational argument. As such they became corrupt and merciless, and eventually offended against the human spirit … as do all such institutions and organisations in the end.
Nationally funded organisation, and particulary those that employ scientists and so should be temples of rationality, are not immune from this natural process of growth asn decay. They are meta-organisms after all.
And so, AGW-think is a sign of a deeper rot, like a brightly coloured fungus sprouting from the trunk of an ostensibly healthy tree.
And in time, are we to see a new ‘dissolution of the ministries’? We live in hope that it will be done as peacefully and painlessly as Henry VII’s great dissolution, where the material and human resources were recycled to great effect.
In summary, the power that binds the AGWers is now being directed to misanthropic ends. […. even simpler; the AGW movement has now been infiltrated by the devil and is doing evil] Supporters should now shun involvement, and find other collective enterprises that promise more philanthropic outcomes.
Fortunately the polar ice does not list to the consensus. I’m not sure what the record is for ice in Antartica, but the current position can’t be far from it?
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/daily.html
Once the Arctic freeze up gathers pace, the total sea ice record will probably fall.
I wonder if that will be noted at Copenhagen? I think not.
After reading the letter from Derocher above, I am reminded I am always fascinated by these accounts of people acknowledging that they are not specialists in a specific climate field but tell us that they are acting on the word of a good authority, and that things are very dire indeed.
Whenever you take the time to check the “good authority” and go to the source of the claims, you often find that the authority in question cannot in honesty support the level of catastrophism claimed, or sometimes even confirm if said claim is more than a weakly supported hypothesis. When faced with this, the authorities will then often mutter about how their caveats have been ignored or misinterpreted, but do nothing to correct the situation.
It strikes me that this behaviour acts as a perverse kind of “division of labour”, designed, not for any real productivity as Adam Smith would have had it, but for enabling a kind of deniability of responsibility, allowing the heightening effect of propaganda and easing the kind of political manoeuvring we see here.
The pressure to conform to Group Think is becoming more extreme in every walk of life… It is taught in our State education system for a very early age… It is regurgitated and re-enforced by the Main Stream Media at every opportunity… It has become a pre-requisite for employment and funding… It is increasing policed and enforced by the State with an iron fist.
The challenge for so many is to retain a grip on reality and their sanity in this bizarre world of Group Think. The pressure to conform is enormous especially if you have the responsibility for maintaining a family and home.
But their comes a time later in life when you are free to seek and speak the truth… That time has arrived for me… I only hope I have the courage and insight to face this challenge.
This seems to be one part of a growing trend where you are pronounced as an expert and receive prizes despite having a track record of being abjectly wrong all the time.
Those economists who predicted a crash have been excluded from any recovery discussions and those who were flat wrong are expected to fix the mess they helped to perpetuate. Nobel prizes were won for the wrong-headed equations that were used in those Panglossian growth models.
Those who were proven right about the consequences of an attack on Iraq are still excluded from debate and those who were totally wrong are consulted about what to do now in Afghanistan.
Despite numerous (almost consensus) erroneous claims that oil would be 200 or 300 dollars a barrel from the peak oilers and traders, those very same people are still being asked for their opinions. Meanwhile oil discoveries are rising again counter to those numerous predictions from the “experts”. Peak oil is always 30 years away.
Erlich, Holdren and the other population and resource limit pessimists have won the most prestigious Science prizes simply because the prizegivers thought pessimistic fiction more intellectually appealing than reality.
Schneider didn’t lose face for being totally wrong about the coming ice age and neither did the Woods Hole oceanographers for being wrong about a new gulf-stream shift ice age. Both came from not actually seeming to know the basics of their own field. Neither have Emanuel or Hansen lost any kudos despite their predictions and the science based on them being out of step even with consensus opinion. Au contraire; both have won top prizes.
Clearly you can be a maverick as long you predict catastrophes. It just doesn’t matter if you are wrong. There’s a farmers saying that you should listen to the experts and then do exactly the opposite of what they recommend. Being skeptical of so-called experts is still the most sensible position in a growing number of fields where simplistic linear thinking is continually trumped by non-linear reality and where too many people pretend to know things with certainty based not in facts but beliefs.
And it’s not just science that is dumbed down. The most depressingly boring book will always win the top prize. Photographic competitions will continue to judge black and white entries more favorably. Art experts will continue to wax lyrically over paintings and sculptures that might have been produced by 3-year olds. Fashion designers will continue to be praised for hideous clothes. etc, etc. It’s not about reality any more; we are directed by pretensions. It’s about being in with the in crowd.
I completely agree, this issue is key.
I’m not a sociologist, but I thought the same. When they said “the science is settled”, that to me meant that the truth of the matter can no longer be known. I once asked someone, what if the IPCC came out one day and declared that AGW was wrong? Their reply was, “then I’ll know the oil companies got hold of them”.
Proponents keep talking about “the science” (you know, like “the truth”, “the reality”, “the one true way”, “the one true god”, etc.) And yet, for over 50 years now, famous thinkers have explored how culture shapes our perceptions and is actually the structure in which we construct our maps (of the real world out there). Try to point out to any AGW science proponent that “the science” also has a cultural component, “the culture of AGW scientists”, and it falls on completely deaf ears.
The point about being embedded in a culture is that you don’t know you’re in it until you step outside it, like a fish doesn’t know it is in water. Like, and I said this earlier, I used to live for a while in South Africa when Apartheid was still in force. And it is the most remarkable thing–everybody around you is wrong, but nobody, including all the science teachers, stops to question the system. They would simply answer that the rest of the world “doesn’t understand” South Africa. That is what they would say. The rest of the world “doesn’t understand”. And you know what? After 5 years there, even I started muttering it!
The culture of scientists should be a culture that upholds the scientific methods of objectivity, falsifiability, open mindedness, respect, and so on.
People on this site keep asking the AGWs, what about falsifiability? What about the scientific method? The answer we get back is, “you guys are naive, you’re expecting a ‘smoking gun’, science doesn’t work that way, science is a gradual accumulation of a weight of evidence”. In short, when we say, “what about equal human rights?”, they say, “you guys don’t understand, you’re naive about how South Africa works, you expect it all to be ideal, that’s not how it works in real life”. Meanwhile the rest of the world, you know, the countries that ‘didn’t understand’, had full sanctions in force against South Africa. And RSA still didn’t get the point.
Point to mistakes by individual scientists, and they answer the culture keeps things in check. Point to bias in the culture, and they answer the scientists are expert individuals. This constant, don’t look here, look over there, no don’t look there, look over here, sleight of hand, is habitual in AGW proponent’s views.
As I say, when you are inside a culture, and by inside I mean, all your acquaintances right up to the people who pay your salary and who educate you, all unquestioningly support a particular belief, like, Apartheid is the best possible workable system in the land, and may even be part of the natural order of things in the eyes of God, when everyone around you unquestioningly upholds this view, you cannot fight it without great cost to yourself. Not only is it at great cost, but those inside the culture will ridicule you. They’ll just laugh. What a silly chap, he doesn’t understand how things work. It is unlikely that you would question it anyway, it will simply seem so obviously right that it is never mentioned.
We’ve had 50 years of research into the power structures in cultures, and despite that, the IPCC wants to act like they are immune to cultural bias. The Chairman of the IPCC regularly likens skeptics to “flat earthers”. He does this publicly, on video even!
The moment the culture of the IPCC and AGW scientists demonstrated that they had become closed minded, wedded to their conjectures, was the moment I became a skeptic. The moment the community of AGWs announced a consensus view, at that moment they all became embedded in a culture. They don’t know they are imbedded in a culture, they just look at their job titles, where it says “scientist”, and think that’s what they do, independently, freely, but ask them about weak evidence, and they refer you to the culture’s consensus map view. They call it “the science”, but the consensus view is “the culture”, a culture, a group, a dynamic of professional affiliations, respect, salaries, institutional agendas, and so on.
One of the origins of Apartheid was that the while miners were losing jobs to the black miners. It was in part a matter of politics and economics. It was also part of a difference of existing cultures, of differing moral outlooks, belief in God, or not, and so on. Imagine the cost of trying to dismantle all that. That is the cost that “the rest of the world doesn’t understand”.
AGW proponents like to say that it is the culture of ordinary people, the culture of consumerism, the culture of Western imperialism, the culture of the corporations, that won’t allow them to accept AGW. It is too “inconvenient”. But we have no evidence that AGW proponents, and the IPCC, are themselves immune to cultural bias. Remember, anyone who disagrees “doesn’t understand”, and is a “flat eather”. They are shadow boxing.
Larry Kirk 20:41:28
You sound like the sort of man to advise a chap what to do with his pathetically small savings. Er…. you don’t happen to give out tips, do you?
While I don’t mind typos on websites as much, this pdf looks like it should be more professional. Can anyone contact Joanne, and let her know that her third paragraph has the incorrect PSBG acronym? — John M Reynolds
Opps. I posted a similar comment on her website. — John M Reynolds