This QOTW is from an article in the Toronto Globe and Mail which focuses on the rise of skeptic blogs including CA and WUWT.
The article contained this nugget from Gavin Schmidt, who never fails to disappoint with his (what McIntyre calls backhanded ) prose:
“He could be a scientific superstar,” Mr. Schmidt says. “He’s a smart person. He could be adding to the sum total of human knowledge, but in effect he adds to the reduction of the sum total of human knowledge.”
You know, sometimes I think Dr. Schmidt’s ego must be so large that the NY Dept of Transportation would have to put out orange traffic cones ahead of him when he travels.
I found this portion of the Globe and Mail article also interesting:
In the wake of the scandal, blogs that question the reality of man-made global warming have surged in public attention, leading new readers to websites such as Wattsupwiththat.com (run by weatherman Anthony Watts) and climatedepot.com (run by conservative activist Marc Morano). The sites’ rising popularity, and the growing influence they appear to wield in shaping public debate, is deeply worrying to the scientific community.
What should be deeply worrying to the scientific community is that they’ve allowed climate science to become noble cause corrupted by monied interests. Some serious retrospection is needed.
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touché
Not sure if this has been covered here
“help write the full story of the hacked emails scandal”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/09/help-write-the-full-story-of-the-hacked-emails-scandal
Gavin Schmidt has been busy marking up the online version of the CRU emails on the Guardian. An online “peer review”, which at first glance seems like a valid approach from a formerly very one-sided UK newspaper.
If anyone want to add their point of view, apparently it is open to all comers.
For @KRuddWatch above,
Was this the URL for the Coleman videos you were after?
http://www.examiner.com/x-25061-Climate-Change-Examiner~y2010m2d19-New-special-from-founder-of-the-Weather-Channel-tackles-manmade-climate-change-theory
I think people should refer to him as the Paris Hilton of climate science.
Not especially good looking but a rousing example of a good name gone bad. But the business model is good. Lots of money to be made on taking a good name and dragging it in the mud. Especially if you are a holder of such a name. Like “scientist.”
This article is iconic for the very stage we are at in this debate.
We are now seeing an ‘establishment’ deeply rattled by a rebellion by folks that have been forced to the margins. They call themselves the ‘scientific community’ while the philistines are in the ‘wild west’ or otherwise armchair critics.
The unreflective and entirely unprepared state of the establishment was according to witnesses on full display at the announcement last week of the CRU climategate investigation team. . Roger Harrabin of the BBC was incredulous.
Its going to be a really tough fight from now on. Its hard to believe just how much in careers, money, reputation is at stake.
And what is this about a focus on the nitty-gritty of measurement? “small technicalities” that apparently “don’t matter” “an epic game of nitpicking” and this:
Once again the ‘masses of evidence’ patch to cover over the lack of evidence into a causal link between emissions and warming – a link that is not even in the IPCC assessment as Revkin has pointed out.Revkin has pointed out.
and then this is surely the best:
Wow, like who give Yamal all the weigh it did not deserver…and isnt nitty gritty data the foundation of empirical science?? But I dont have to say it here…
And then painting McIntyre with the greatest compliment of the rebel leader – if only he came over to our side “he could be be a superstar,”
All this confirms that there is no doubt that the blog has served well where the normal processes of scientific review have been massively corrupted. My question is:Is it here to stay?
With quotes like that, maybe Gavin should consider switching from climatology to astrology.
It would raise the IQ levels of both disciplines.
I’ve come to know more about Mr Schmidt in last few days, having late last night just finished a run through all the GISS/NASA FOI emails. That prompted me to spend, for the first time, some “quality” time at RC.
In the QOTW he seems to be consistent with everything I saw in FOI emails and on his blog. He appears to be projecting his own personality onto Anthony.
Has anyone seen him speak live in public? How does he come across live?
John
Climate science is full of $ceintific $uper $tars if grant money is the measure of a scientist.
Ahhhhh heck . . . that is Gavin is projecting himself onto Steve McIntyre . . . My sorry excuse is no coffee yet this morning in Taipei because Statbucks is still closed for the extended Lunar New Year holiday.
John
(…) zeroing in on minor technical issues while ignoring the massive and converging lines of evidence that are coming in from many disciplines. To read their online work is to enter a dank, claustrophobic universe where obsessive personalities talk endlessly about small building blocks – Yamal Peninsula trees, bristlecones, weather stations – the removal of which will somehow topple the entire edifice of climate science.
Jeet … Small building blocks? Like actually measuring recent temperatures. Well now we might try using something like (off the top of my head)weather stations for that job.
Or the small building blocks used to reconstruct temperatures before we had weather stations (you know, for historical context or something), Now how might we possibly do that? I know, perhaps we could try Yamal Peninsula trees and bristlecones – that sort of thing.
We could of course discuss “massive and converging lines of evidence that are coming in from many disciplines”, feel global warming through our asses while flying or even examine animal entrails. I’m sure they are all in here somewhere. My preferred measure of global warming is temperature though. Call me a climate-change-denial crazy if you want but I just think temperatures have it all when it comes to global warming.
[Slightly OT] The Good Bishop pointed out a blog entry by an English MP which, while I agreed with him as far as FOI is concerned, contained this little nugget ….
Some of the data, for example concerning the location of 42 rural Chinese weather stations or the width of annual growth rings of trees in frozen Siberian bogs, might be arcane and of minute relevance to fundamental climate change questions, but it should still have been made readily available.
Temperatures are obviously so yesterday.
QUOTE:
The sites’ rising popularity, and the growing influence they appear to wield in shaping public debate, is deeply worrying to the scientific community.
END QUOTE
So ar as I am aware, the sites referred to have an influence that is almost entirely indirect but it is about open-ness and qeustioning the science in a manner that bring clarification and understanding.
On the other hand “scientists” like this have never once made such a public statement about the eco-activist groups like FoE, Greenpeace, Oceana etc. who have a direct influence on policy through their recognition individually as NGOs in the policy making forums of the UN such as the IPCC and IMO and so on. Then too they have acces to significant funding and for that they do not bring clarity or understanding but propaganda to the debate. They maipulate figures, data and are of course, the source of many of the “campaign documents” that mascarade as science and are exploited by the IPCC.
That such statement are made is the measure to which, despite the cloak of scientific authority, the sophistry, the use of emotive language in scientific papers and journals, where impartial objective reporting is called for, in spite of scinetists having a political aganda as part and parcel of their role in the climate change debate that allows them to maniuplaue distort and misrepresent the truth, despite the millions of dollars that some individual scientists have had access to in the form of grants to prepra epresent and publicisse their mantra, they are failing to get their “message” across.
What irks is that they are nnot in fact chamioning science against the likes of the eco-activist propagandists but are on the wrong side of the fence. It is they who are aligned with the the cranks and the activists and it is they who are having to defend their corruption of science and that it is all unrevelling due to the minisculy funded work of a few dedicated people who have a better grasp of what science is and should be about that is what is galling.
The more such comments that arre made the better we will know how rattled they are and how rapidly the air is leaking from their balloon.
“He [Steve McIntyre] could be a scientific superstar,” Mr. Schmidt says. “He’s a smart person. He could be adding to the sum total of human knowledge, but in effect he adds to the reduction of the sum total of human knowledge.”
Congratulations Steve McIntyre for contributing to the sum total of vetted human knowledge! Someone has to take the trash out and you’ve been doing an excellent job cleaning up the huge mess of so many alleged scientists who let their political agenda overrule the scientific method. So once again I congratulate you for your excellent work slicing and dicing through the mythological claims of the alleged “ManN-made Global Warming” hypothesis to get to the truth. I congratulate you Steve McIntyre for having the guts to prune the tree of knowledge of it’s crud. It needs to be a bonsai tree not a sprawling mann-made mess with crud all over it that can’t support new growth rooted in facts.
Congratulations Steve McIntyre on contributing to the sum total of accurate human scientific knowledge and for putting the mythologists and soothsayers of doom and gloom into the side-lanes of history! Epic work Steve McIntyre! Epic!
Oops – rouge bold tag alert (bristlecones **– that kind) – sorry
“What should be deeply worrying to the scientific community is that they’ve allowed climate science to become noble cause corrupted by monied interests.”
You mean when connected to funds raised through Heartland, CEI, Cato…….. ?
REPLY: which are microscopic compared to the billions spent on AGW research and funding to organizations like WWF and Greenpeace. If you have a claim, step up and put your full name to it like I do. Otherwise keep your innuendo to yourself. -A
From the lead article ….
“Science journalist Chris Mooney, co-author of the 2009 book Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future, calls the Internet a “complete Wild, Wild West for scientific information.”
Mr. Mooney thinks the belief in the reality of man-made global warming, which is the overwhelming consensus in the scientific community, is losing ground in public opinion because of these blogs. ”
Is AGW such a sure, substantive certainty that those who are dubious of the claim are the equivalent of ‘Creation scientists’?
That sickens me.
Well at least the “Grope and Flail” (as some of we canucks call that rag) has acknowledged there are climate skeptics. Now if only our Canadian Broadcasting Corporation would do the same!!!!
Anthony, are you sure Gavin wasn’t talking about himself?
The Southeastern Legal Institute is filing legal cases against the EPA. See Case Documents
It is so RARE that I feel such total venom and contempt for other human beings, but the bs posted on Gavin’s taxpayer funded website make me hope he is hoisted on his own petard.
Gavin Schmidt is MY personal lightning rod for this deception, as a resident of Colorado.
Fie!
Many thanks to those kind souls who responded to my plea for a URL above.
Of course Anthony has now included the video clips on this blog.
I guess I should have predicted he would do this and then I would not have bothered people with my OT request.
Promise to do better in the future:-)
He could be a scientific superstar. Like Phil Jones. Like Phil Jones before everyone could look into his superstar kitchen. Well, better not to be such a “superstar”.
“The sites’ rising popularity, and the growing influence they appear to wield in shaping public debate, is deeply worrying to the scientific community.”
It’s not worrying to my part of the scientific community.
ot
Increased snowfall in East Antarctica linked to West Australian drought, The scientists involved, ever mindful of the gravy train, point to AGW as the only possible cause.
http://www.aad.gov.au/MediaLibrary/asset/MediaItems/ml_402173825925926_03_RainSnowComparisonGraph.pdf
This has to be rebutted and quick.
“The sites’ rising popularity, and the growing influence they appear to wield in shaping public debate, is deeply worrying to the scientific community.
What should be deeply worrying to the scientific community is that they’ve allowed climate science to become noble cause corrupted by monied interests. Some serious retrospection is needed.”
That is the wrong response, and the one that the warmers were hoping to elicit. You implictly accept their assertion that ‘the scientific community’ is worried about skeptic blogs. This furthers their propaganda that scepticism over alarmist propaganda is anti science.
Screw that.
I am a member of the scientific community. I am not worried about these blogs. Neither are the scientists who contribute to these blogs. We scientists are worried about the decidedly unscientific behavior of a clique of politicized ‘scientists’ who have entirely too much influence over the field of climatology.
No one who says ‘Why should I give you my data, when your purpose is to find something wrong with it’ is a member of the scientific community by definition.
Neither is anyone who attempts to conceal the divergence problem within the proxie data, deny its necessary implications, or draw attention away from its importance by waving hands about ‘multiple converging lines of evidence’ and other propaganda techniques.
They are agenda driven hacks, and a growing portion of the scientific community is very worried about them.
I have a question to Hr. Schmidt;
-What is the definition of “The Scientific Community” ?
-Where can I find the AGW Theory that you claim is true?
By comparing the definition of “The Scientific Community” to where I work, I can then establish whether Im included or excluded of this “Community”.
I do not use Unix anymore. Not since 1995.
I do not use Fortran anymory.Not since 1985.
I do not like MacIntosh’es. (The are not inclusive enough)
I am not a socialist.
My company is owned 51% by the government,
Included? Excluded?
I think this quote of Jones earns an honourable mention, if not its own honour as quote of the week, requoted from his Nature interview with commentary mentioned here:
http://www.collide-a-scape.com/2010/02/15/hunkering-down/
“‘I don’t think we should be taking much notice of what’s on blogs because they seem to be hijacking the peer-review process,’ says Jones.”
“That’s probably not a smart thing to say, given he’s the guy who wrote this (in one of those infamous emails) to Michael Mann: ‘I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin [Trenberth] and I will keep them out somehow — even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!'”