The WUWT rebuttal piece “Judith I love ya but you’re way wrong” written by Willis Eschenbach has made it all the way to the NYT. There’s also an interesting quote from Gavin Schmidt.
“Climate scientists are paid to do climate science,” said Gavin A. Schmidt, a senior climatologist with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies. “Their job is not persuading the public.”
From the RealClimate About page, first sentence:
“RealClimate is a commentary site on climate science by working climate scientists for the interested public and journalists.”
Note to Gavin: We’ll all be missing your daily work on RealClimate now. What’s the end date? 😉
=========================================
Excerpts of: Scientists Taking Steps to Defend Work on Climate
By JOHN M. BRODER
WASHINGTON — For months, climate scientists have taken a vicious beating in the media and on the Internet, accused of hiding data, covering up errors and suppressing alternate views. Their response until now has been largely to assert the legitimacy of the vast body of climate science and to mock their critics as cranks and know-nothings.
But the volume of criticism and the depth of doubt have only grown, and many scientists now realize they are facing a crisis of public confidence and have to fight back. Tentatively and grudgingly, they are beginning to engage their critics, admit mistakes, open up their data and reshape the way they conduct their work.
The unauthorized release last fall of hundreds of e-mail messages from a major climate research center in England, and more recent revelations of a handful of errors in a supposedly authoritative United Nations report on climate change, have created what a number of top scientists say is a major breach of faith in their research. They say the uproar threatens to undermine decades of work and has badly damaged public trust in the scientific enterprise.
The e-mail episode, called “climategate” by critics, revealed arrogance and what one top climate researcher called “tribalism” among some scientists. The correspondence appears to show efforts to limit publication of contrary opinion and to evade Freedom of Information Act requests. The content of the messages opened some well-known scientists to charges of concealing temperature data from rival researchers and manipulating results to conform to precooked conclusions.
“I have obviously written some very awful e-mails,” Phil Jones, the British climate scientist at the center of the controversy, confessed to a special committee of Parliament on Monday.
…
Climate scientists have been shaken by the criticism and are beginning to look for ways to recover their reputation. They are learning a little humility and trying to make sure they avoid crossing a line into policy advocacy.
“It’s clear that the climate science community was just not prepared for the scale and ferocity of the attacks and they simply have not responded swiftly and appropriately,” said Peter C. Frumhoff, an ecologist and chief scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “We need to acknowledge the errors and help turn attention from what’s happening in the blogosphere to what’s happening in the atmosphere.”
A number of institutions are beginning efforts to improve the quality of their science and to make their work more transparent. The official British climate agency is undertaking a complete review of its temperature data and will make its records and analysis fully public for the first time, allowing outside scrutiny of methods and conclusions. The United Nations panel on climate change will accept external oversight of its research practices, also for the first time.
Two universities are investigating the work of top climate scientists to determine whether they have violated academic standards and undermined faith in science. The National Academy of Sciences is preparing to publish a nontechnical paper outlining what is known — and not known — about changes to the global climate. And a vigorous debate is under way among climate scientists on how to make their work more transparent and regain public confidence.
Some critics think these are merely cosmetic efforts that do not address the real problem, however.
“I’ll let you in on a very dark, ugly secret — I don’t want trust in climate science to be restored,” Willis Eschenbach, an engineer and climate contrarian who posts frequently on climate skeptic blogs, wrote in response to one climate scientist’s proposal to share more research. “I don’t want you learning better ways to propagandize for shoddy science. I don’t want you to figure out how to inspire trust by camouflaging your unethical practices in new and innovative ways.”
“The solution,” he concluded, “is for you to stop trying to pass off garbage as science.”
…….
read the rest at Scientists Taking Steps to Defend Work on Climate in the New York Times
Bob Tisdale (08:10:45) :
Sorry, Anthony, but RealClimateAlarmism, the commentary site on climate alarmism by working climate alarmists, is not going to disappear soon.
Given that there are thousands upon thousands of peer-reviewed scientific papers that support AGW (five thousand in IPCC FAR WGI alone), the word “alarmism” does a superior job of accurately reporting the scientific facts than anything the “deniers” have come up with.
I have been asking for more than two years for a scientific rebuttal from the “deniers” to the 900 pages of the IPCC FAR Working Group One report. No one has produced one.
Last week when I asked Anthony for a list of the “tough questions” (his words, not mine) on climate change, he directed me to a website where I learned that the tough scientific questions include informing me that Al Gore bought a condo in San Francisco.
Remember what the NYT wrote: scientists feel compelled to support their findings with careful observation and replicable analysis, while their critics are free to make sweeping statements condemning their work as fraudulent.
The phrase “alarmism” is just another one of those sweeping statements of condemnation, and is backed up by nothing.
SO, NOW WE ARE CALLED “NUTTERS”!
Can we really trust chief scientific officers?
The predictions for swine flu (and bird flu, Sars, vCJD) were embarrassingly inaccurate
snip
There was a time when, if you read a scientific scare story, you tended to put it down to the over-active imagination of a redtop journalist. No longer: nowadays it is outwardly sober government scientists who spin the biggest scares. They know they can get away with it because laymen have an irrational respect for words uttered by scientists.
That much was proved by the 1963 Milgram experiment in which the Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram persuaded volunteers to administer a — simulated — potentially fatal electric shock to another human being when instructed to do so by a man in a white lab coat.
It will be a good 50 years before anyone can make a definitive judgment on the biggest scientific scare of our times: climate change. But I can’t read the latest prediction for man-made flood and tempest without thinking of all those millions who have failed to die from swine flu and the other grim fates predicted by government scientists.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article6982943.ece
Dusty (08:16:05) : “’For months, climate scientists have taken a vicious beating in the media’ LOL. It’s good to see people like Broder coming to the conclusion that most US news organizations, and the NYT, in particular, is not to be considered part of the media.”
Well noted, Mr. Dusty. The NYT chose to give up journalism and become an obsolete, irrelevant, one-sided propaganda organ far more suitable for lining the bottom of birdcages than for providing accurate information.
I’ve been reading this blog for a couple of months now. As a result I have become much better equipped to debate the CAGW myth because of the vast knowledge base available here. I do not understand much of the science, however, that does not preclude me from using the scientific findings. Now I don’t deny that climates have changed, we are not in an ice age. I don’t deny that man has polluted the environment. What I deny is that this 150 years of “pollution” is going to have catastrophic effects. The real struggle is not about the science. It’s all about power and money. Unfortunately for those of us in the USA the wrong people are in charge of the power at the current time. The far left political wing has gained control and is concerned with one thing, stripping as much away from individuals and placing it in control of the state. Why is there no acknowledgement in the US MSM? simply because the current administration wants it that way and continues to foster the alarmist attitude. It’s pretty obvious that the President is aware of all the controversy surrounding the settled science, it’s also pretty obvious that he just doesn’t care. Until that changes not much will change for the good in the U.S.
Andrew (09:18:35) : “Although Our Gav is clearly nothing but a political agitator, the possibility that he is being coerced exists.”
The “Big Cut-off?”
Moving the AGW social movmement is like turning a huge ship:
It is going to respond very slowly.
That the NYT is even acknowledging there is a problem to report is an incremental change, but more are on the way.
The idea that AGW promoters have not been effective selling their pov is ludicrous on its face.
The only cure is for the AGW promoters to actually perform science.
But their attempts to prove that there is a climate crisis occurring or even likely to occur will fail.
” Chip Knappenberger (08:24:41) :
As a climate scientist, I couldn’t disagree with any statement more so than I do with Willis Eschenbach’s “I’ll let you in on a very dark, ugly secret — I don’t want trust in climate science to be restored…”
Of course I want it restored, otherwise I am out a job. Public trust needs to be won back through good scientific practices.
This is why I couldn’t receive any statement more openly than I do Gavin Schmidt’s that ended the Broder piece: ““Good science,” he said, “is the best revenge.”
To Gavin, I say, let the revenge begin.
Just my two-cents’ worth.”
I’d say go into meteorology, but you’re not qualified.
John in L du B (08:19:15) : “…As for Ralph Cicerone, his job is to insure the integr(i)ty of the science not.” [full stop provided by jk]
Amen.
AW: “On that note let me say that we could all (and that includes me) benefit from the dialing back of the use of labels, and we should focus on the issues before us. There’s really nothing positive or factual to be gained from such labeling.
I call on readers of WUWT to reciprocate this gesture by The Guardian by refraining from labeling others they may disagree with here and at other web forums.
Let’s all dial back and treat others with the same respect in conversation as you might treat dinner guests having a discussion at home.”
I guess the NYT didn’t read about what has happened at the Guardian, or if it has it could care less about what the Guardian and more especially, this “nutter” blog think. I assume that the NYT piece you linked reflects their opinion on the whole thing. As we know, they are the “Paper of record”. Just a couple of the NYT attempts to “dial back and treat others with the same respect in conversation as you might treat dinner guests having a discussion at home”:
-” unauthorized release last fall of hundreds of e-mail messages”
-“revelations of a handful of errors”…in the IPCC report
-“The correspondence appears(!!!) to show efforts to limit publication of contrary opinion and to evade Freedom of Information Act requests.” (my emphasis)
-“Some of the most serious allegations against Dr. Jones…and other researchers have been debunked” (Really??? Can we see the evidence? Or do we need a handful of FOIA requests for that info?)
-“The battle is asymmetric, in the sense that scientists feel compelled to support their findings with careful observation and replicable analysis, while their critics are free to make sweeping statements condemning their work as fraudulent.” The critics being…us? The sceptics? The deniers? The nutters?
-“Critics, citing several relatively minor errors in its most recent report” Move on, there’s nothing to see here.
The hubris of these people knows no bounds. My top choice, and there were many to choose from, for the most arrogant quote showing an utter sense of entitlement to rule over those who know no better, is their inclusion of this by “White House Science Advisor” John P. Holdren- “But we also need to remind people that the occasions where a large consensus is overturned by a scientific heretic are very, very rare”. Let’s see, the “scientific heretic” he refers to would be…
While not specifically calling the “heretics” names, the “paper of record” goes about it’s business of smearing thousands of dedicated scientists who are not promoting a political agenda, but simply attempting to get the supporting information out in the public domain where, if it is correct, it can be recreated or supported.
I do admire you, Mr. Watts, ’cause you do an admirable job of keeping your conversations “dialed back”, in the face of amazing hubris and even duplicity. But I cannot do that. These people at the top of the “Science is settled” crowd are pushing a statist view of the world, i.e. scientists and their sympathetic political and business advocates should be determining public policy and where the money for R&D goes. In their ideal world, work like that done by Svensmark, Singer, Lindzen, Spencer, Eschenbach and many others would become not just the objects of scorn and derision in the mainstream media, but eventually crimes. There have been calls by some of these annointed types to make “climate deniers” criminals.
From F.A. Hayek: The Road to Serfdom, quoting M. Benda from a 1928 book, The Treason of the Intellectuals (The Betrayal of the Intellectuals in a 1955 re-print): “…It is to be noted that the dogma that history is obedient to scientific laws is preached especially by partisans of arbitrary authority. This is quite natural, since it eliminates the two realities they most hate, i.e., human liberty and the historical action of the individual.”
Make no mistake, this blog, Climate Audit, and many others, as well as the scientists who support the views expressed on them are the targets of these folks. Thank God we have the ability to keep questioning the “accepted” wisdom. God forbid that we continue on that road, espoused by the NYT and their acolytes, that led to human tragedies like the totalitarian regimes that have plagued this planet in the 20th century. You take a few politically oriented scientists with a morally superior attitude, mix in a few ambitious statist politicians like Algore, add a large dose of media compliance and it is not hard to imagine a scenario like that of Germany and it’s evolution from 1840 to 1940.
These people are not going away. They have just retreated into their corners for now to lick their wounds. When things die down a little, they will reappear with a re-packaged message, all dressed yup in pretty paper and ribbons, but from the same old playbook: statist control over every aspect of human life, including which blogs should be allowed to “debate” climate science (or anything else). The NYT op-ed is just proof that they do not believe our side has any validity whatsoever.
It’s style, not substance, but your headline, “Willis makes the NYT, Gavin to stop ‘persuading the public'” is ungrammatical. It could be ‘asks’, but it cannot be “make. . .to”. I know you’re rushed, but this kind of thing (like the still-uncorrected ‘has’ [for ‘have’] in the tornado post) makes WUWT look silly (not “makes WUWT to look silly,” unless perhaps you’re a non-native speaker).
/Mr Lynn
I sent the following to the NYTimes author.
===============================
Dear Mr. Broder,
The most serious allegation that has been made against Phil Jones is that he committed fraud in his work on the IPCC 2007 Assessment Report. I am the person who made that allegation. My allegation was positively reported in a front-page story in The Guardian, on February 2nd. I previously published my allegation in a peer-reviewed paper. To date, there has been no defense.
On February 9th, The Guardian did something very unusual: they put a copy of their main article on the web and allowed select scientists to annotate it. The copy is at http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/09/weather-stations-china . Click on the highlighted portions of the text to see the annotations.
As shown there, several annotations were made by Gavin Schmidt. For each of Schmidt’s annotations, I posted a reply annotation. I believe that my replies fully rebutted each of Schmidt’s points and, moreover, showed that Schmidt’s response were not always honest–but you may judge that for yourself (no background in climatology is needed).
Schmidt did not attempt rejoinders to my annotations. Instead, Schmidt posted on the blog RealClimate, which he co-founded for the benefit of “the interested public and journalists. See http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/02/the-guardian-disappoints/ .
Schmidt’s post (see Part 5) does not link to The Guardian article that is devoted to my allegation, but rather to the cover article, about Climategate generally. His post says that my allegation was “completely unsubstantiated” and then goes on to quote Jones saying “I’d be far happier if they would write some papers and act in the normal way. I’d know how to respond to that”. Schmidt had used the same quote in one of his earlier annotations. My reply annotation pointed out that I had written a peer-reviewed paper about my allegation–and of course that paper contained substantiation. So Schmidt knows that what he is saying in false. Moreover, nowhere in his blog post is my paper mentioned. The post also grossly misrepresents the e-mails from Tom Wigley–e-mails that are not actually quoted by Schmidt, but are quoted by The Guardian.
Etc. To get a true appreciation of Schmidt’s lack of integrity, I suggest reading The Guardian article and its annotations and then reading the RealClimate post.
Consider too your article’s claim that “scientists feel compelled to support their findings with … replicable analysis”. If the analysis is supposed to be replicable, why do most scientists fight extremely hard to avoid releasing the data?
The Guardian reported with integrity and competence on the problems, even though they are strong advocates for global warming. The NYTimes should do the same.
Sincerely,
Douglas J. Keenan
http://www.informath.org
Scientists, you are fallible. Get off the pedestal and join the common herd
Simon Jenkins
Climatologists above all need to rediscover the virtue of self-criticism – or others will continue to question their evidence
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/feb/04/scientists-fallibilty-self-criticism-question
I love that phrase “unauthorized release”. Will the NYT use it the next time security documents are published by them?
What continues to annoy me no end is the patronizing tone of the scientists
trying to explain the superior correctness and importance of their work
to the pitchfork packing mobs screaming nothing more subtle than Liar!
[snip – just a bit OTT]
And, yep, I expect the Climategate disease may spread to other sciences…
Read the Atlantic Monthly on flu vaccines, Tamiflu, etc. …sigh. …Lady in Red
Many will remember how the word of these “scientists” was revered like the word of God. To criticise was to invite a barrage of abuse from an army of righteous activists and fawning politicians.
That could never have been healthy for science, if indeed we can call it science. How corrupting to be able to summon up a legion of obedient journalists at the snap of once fingers to write the obituary of your enemies. Now, at last, reality has begun to intrude.
Reed Coray (09:26:48) :
(…)
After all, climate scientists have their infallible “peer review”. And now Gavin has the gall to say “Their [climate scientists] job is not persuading the public.”
———–
Reply:
Good point, Reed. But think about what that statement really says. I believe it says that after all these years, Gavin admits his job at RC has failed. If they had decent “science” it would have been a cake-walk. It must really hurt considering all the time and effort he’s spent on that propaganda site.
But here’s what I’d like to see: If these “climate scientists” really want to re-establish their mojo, they can start by showing us the “homogenization” algorithm(s) that convert raw to adjusted temp data. I dare them to do it. I double dare them to do it.
I won’t hold my breath waiting.
I think Gavin is brilliant. Which also makes me immediately understand that he is very dishonest since I believe he knows everything that is going on in the AGW world, scientifically and politically, and still publicly holds to the AGW positions that he does.
Further to my prior comment, I’ve received the following reply.
===============================
Thanks for your note. I’m not much versed in blogging but my colleague Andy Revkin has tried this open-source/annotation method and it’s quite instructive. Maybe it should become the norm . . .
John B.
JJ (9:22:06):
My point was that Willis Eschenbach’s point was overly harsh. He seems, I hope, to want to restore public trust in climate science through good science, but it the quote selection (perhaps a fault of Broder) doesn’t smoothly lead to that point—instead, there is a lot of bashing involved.
Allen (9:49:33):
I am defining “arm chair climatologists” as folks who aren’t really deeply involved in climate research. Nevertheless, some of these types of folks aren’t bashful about throwing out completely wacky theories on why the climate has been behaving the way it has, using arguments that are a combination of some facts mixed in with some misapplication of other facts, and also some misinterpretations or mischaracterizations of other factual-sounding things. A knowledgeable reader realizes that the argument is impossible to follow, but the un knowledgeable reader (or reader who is want to agree with the conclusions), is quick to hold it up as a paradigm killer (in Kuhnian terms).
PJJL (10:18:57);
You are correct, I consider myself only an armchair meteorologist—not nearly qualified to be true meteorologist. So I prefer to stick with climatology.
-Chip
RockyRoad (10:45:00) :
I agree with you. In essence, Gavin has said RC hasn’t accomplished what it set out to do. I wish this translated into the demise of RC, but like you, I won’t hold my breath.
What galled me in the first place was Gavin’s implication that he and his ilk haven’t for years tried to sway the general public.
“The battle is asymmetric, in the sense that scientists feel compelled to support their findings with careful observation and replicable analysis,”
If they had been doing so from the start, there’d be no “battle”!
@ur momisugly Mr Lynn (10:22:17) :
“It’s style, not substance, but your headline, “Willis makes the NYT, Gavin to stop ‘persuading the public’” is ungrammatical. It could be ‘asks’, but it cannot be “make. . .to”. I know you’re rushed, but this kind of thing (like the still-uncorrected ‘has’ [for ‘have’] in the tornado post) makes WUWT look silly (not “makes WUWT to look silly,” unless perhaps you’re a non-native speaker).”
Sorry Mr. Lynn, but even a non-native speaker like myself can figure out that the headline refers to two – quite unrelated – events (an impression that is reinforced y reading the full article, something I always recommend before posting in reply):
1) Willis makes the NYT (colloquial for “he/his work is written about in the paper”)
2) Gavin [intends] to stop persuading the public (that is, if he chooses to practice what he preaches)
The fact that each of these statements has its own subject makes it somewhat difficult to assume “make … to” is a phrasal verb here.
“Is your point that a scientist should not do both scientific research and run a commentary website? Do you consider that a conflict of interest of some sort? ”
I don’t speak for the author of this post, but I think the problem is that folks like Gavin like to pretend they are not advocates when they really are.
RE: Chip Knappenberger (08:24:41) :
**As a climate scientist, I couldn’t disagree with any statement more so than I do with Willis Eschenbach’s “I’ll let you in on a very dark, ugly secret — I don’t want trust in climate science to be restored…” **
Chip obviously misses the point made by Willis. Willis does not want confidence restored to the present state of climate science. First do some real science then promote it. It needed a ne sided smiley.