By Harold Ambler
A new editorial in Nature is startling for what it reveals, especially the fact Paul Ehrlich is a go-to figure about how hard scientists have it when it comes to media access.
Ehrlich is an individual who became an international celebrity by spinning one frightening story after another (about the death of the oceans, for one thing) who maintains, with a straight face, that he and his fellow scientists have an unfair disadvantage in communicating their side of the climate debate.
He is quoted by Nature as saying, regarding the aftermath of Climategate and the fact that skeptic scientists are finally getting a hearing,:
“Everyone is scared shitless, but they don’t know what to do.”
People often forget: Goliath, right before the end, sensed that something was amiss.
For, ironically, among the most pervasive myths attending global warming is the one pitching David against Goliath, in which those touting the risks of damaging climate change are cast as David and Big Oil is Goliath.
The story requires observers to ignore the facts: Media, most scientists, and governments the world over have spent and received so much money on their version of events that they have collectively become Goliath. Observers must ignore, too, the reality that skeptic scientists maintain their intellectual freedom at significant risk. Funding routinely dries up; tenure is denied them; ad hominem attacks of the most vicious variety are launched against them from the Ivory Tower of academia, from the studios of multi-billion dollar news organizations, and from the bully pulpit of government.
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Harold Ambler,
I really enjoyed your post.
The simple image of David & Goliath is a useful vehicle for expressing the moral/emotional state of the intellectual contests on the scientific study of our atmosphere.
For future posts consider also a powerful useful image of a more secular nature, for example the father in Terrance Rattigan’s play ‘The Winslow Boy’. It is a fine piece on integrity.
Also, of a more secular nature consider the individual unsupported hero in the movie “High Noon”. I loved Gary Cooper in that.
You might want to do another post that alludes to a more secular image than David and Goliath.
I would stay away from the image of Galileo vs the Roman Catholic Church, too much baggage in that one.
Again thanks for you post and thank you Anthony for having it here on WUWT.
John
Herman L (09:25:13) :
“…“intellectual freedom?” Risk? Please — you guys are free to write and publish whatever you want.”
Today we are more civilized, we no longer torture and kill those who do not pay lip service to the “politically correct” point of view (it is called being a team player) now you are only fired and blackballed. I am stating this after being fired from three different jobs for refusing to falsify laboratory results. I am a chemist.
There’s no moral point to the story, Kim. Even as a then-believing Roman Catholic child I knew this was B.S.
David was better armed.
He had a missile weapon, which he was exceedingly well practiced in as were many slingers of his era, and later: The “Spanish” Balearic Island slingers were famous and deadly auxiliary additions to Roman legions. The Biblical account shows David was at least as accomplished a slinger as these, pre his engagement with Goliath.
It’s a retarded story for that reason.
Similar, better, and likely related stories are found in — for example — Homer’s Illiad (the “Phillistines’ described armour too is suspiciously close to the Greeks’).
Which at least had the “moral” virtue of placing roughly equally armed combatants, experienced and inexperienced, against each other.
Re: Ken Stewart (09:20:04) :
What caught my attention in this graph showing the “Roman Warm Period” and the “Medieval Period” is how well those phenomena track with, first, the Qin and Han dynasties in China, and secondly, with the Tang and Sung dynasties—arguably the two greatest periods of social and cultural growth in Chinese history
Not only that, but the Little Ice Age tracks amazingly well with the decline of the Ming dynasty — unquestionably the most miserable dynasty in Chinese history. History records how the Mings had ever increasing taxes, even as agricultural production declined and famine became more widespread. At the end, the taxes were so exhorbitant that farmers were no longer able to pay the taxes and feed themselves, and so abandoned the farms to join the bandits. At the end, it was the bandits, not the Manchus, who first overthrew the Ming dynasty.
Nature’s commentary quickly reveals what side its on:
Use of the term “deniers” to characterize opponents of AGW stopped me right in my tracks.
I thought Nature was a prestigious scientific journal, a type of even-handed referee, if you will, but clearly such is not the case.
You see, it’s one thing to have scientists caught up in their own work — it’s another thing to have a supposed impartial referee reveal their bias & prejudice in such a transparent manner.
Kinda makes you wonder about the rest of the operation’s ability to be fair and impartial.
Weaver Bird Sings. Skiers exult.
…-
“Warm winters here to stay
By BILL KAUFMANN, Calgary Sun”
“University of Victoria climatologist Dr. Andrew Weaver said even without El Nino, the general warming trend is clear, with records likely to be set only in one direction.
“We expect as we move forward, the likelihood of breaking this record increases, while the likelihood of breaking cold records decreases,” said Weaver, an author of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
He said the melting effect of the mild wwinter(sic) on Arctic ice — already being rapidly depleted by man-made global warming — will in turn impact our weather.”
http://www.calgarysun.com/news/alberta/2010/03/11/13199301.html
…-
“Late blast of winter lashes Metro Vancouver
METRO VANCOUVER — A late blast of winter hit Metro Vancouver Thursday blanketing parts of the region in snow and bolstering the snow pack on local ski hills just in time for the 2010 Paralympics.
Residents living at higher elevations such as Coquitlam and Burnaby awoke to several centimetres of snow on the ground and shuttle buses replaced the articulated bus service at Simon Fraser University because of snow covered roads on Burnaby mountain.
Meanwhile, the region was also battered by strong winds as Environment Canada issued a wind warning for areas around the Strait of Georgia and the North Coast Thursday. Winds of 70 km/h were recorded on the South Coast while up towards North Vancouver Island and Haida Gwaii winds reached 100 km/h. ”
” … residents of the West Coast were ready to brag about an early spring with cherry blossoms in full bloom.
However, since Sunday temperatures in Vancouver have dropped below seasonal norms. The city dropped to -1 Celsius on Tuesday for the first time in two months.”
http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/Late+blast+winter+lashes+Metro+Vancouver/2670900/story.html
That editorial in Nature is pathetic. When did those clowns ever give a minute’s thought to the economic consequences of their “policies”? It’s very dangerous to have debates on public policy hijacked by people who don’t know jack about private industry and how businesses operate. They’ve been tax-supported parasites for so long they don’t even understand that if they consume their host organism they will die.
The only reason ANY scientist should be afraid is if they too have mistakes they would like kept hidden.
If the science they are researching is 100% rock solid then there is no reason to have any fear as the results and data would speak for themselves.
Question?
What happens when a scientist (peer reviewed) finds their research is not the results they expected and are incorrect?
Has any scientist retracted their claim? Without being pressured?
I have my own science that is 100% rock solid as I input and ripped it apart in every dirction to make sure their is absolutely no avenue that anyone can say “hey, I found something wrong here.”
If they do, I have every answer to show how this is correct.
Richard S Courtney (15:35:06) :
The story of David and Goliath is a fabrication or – to be precise – the Bible says it’s a fabrication. The Bible says there was a family of giant Philistine warriors from Gath and one, called Goliath, was so big “his spear was the size of a weaver’s beam”.
——————————-
Prior to the introduction into the west of the Chinese horizontal loom in the 12th century, the weaving tools of Europeans and people of the Middle East were light-weight affairs. See for example the following images of the vertical looms of ancient Greece and Egypt.
http://www.laurelcorona.com/images/women-weaving.jpg
http://img.mywire.com/Pubs/display/2009/03/19/8787194.jpg
The spear that was as big as a weaver’s beam would be heavier and a little longer than normal, but hardly the building-beam-sized affair that you probably have in mind. It follows, then, that it is possible that figures such as Goliath were indeed historical – the word ‘giant’ was applied to unusually tall and sometimes also heavily built men, and it is very likely that a genetic aberration ran in families, creating clans which experienced giantism.
Richard S Courtney (15:35:06) :
Interesting conspiracy theory. However, it has little support, much like Ehrlich’s many assertions…
—————
2 Samuel 21:19 (New International Version)
19 In another battle with the Philistines at Gob, Elhanan son of Jaare-Oregim [a] the Bethlehemite killed Goliath [b] the Gittite, who had a spear with a shaft like a weaver’s rod.
Footnotes:
1. 2 Samuel 21:19 Or son of Jair the weaver
2. 2 Samuel 21:19 Hebrew and Septuagint; 1 Chron. 20:5 son of Jair killed Lahmi the brother of Goliath
——————
1 Chronicles 20:5 (New International Version)
5 In another battle with the Philistines, Elhanan son of Jair killed Lahmi the brother of Goliath the Gittite, who had a spear with a shaft like a weaver’s rod.
As a French translation (La Bible du Semeur) points out, it may have been a copyists error on which your theory is based…
MIT’s Richard Lindzen and U. of Vancouver’s Hadi Dowlatabadi had a great full-length (52 minute) discussion this week on the Canadian TVO Channel program _The Agenda with Steve Paiken_. Both scientists downplayed the fearmongering that Ehrlich is so anxious to play up. It’s a solid, sophisticated discussion–not quite a debate, but lively nonethless. It’s all here on Youtube, in high resolution. Enjoy.
I’d be scared s***less too if I realise there was a probability that I was going to end up in jail
And Marthinus van Schalkwyk, South Africa’s tourism minister. And Milipede.
They’d better not invite Gore along, lest they get trapped in the Donner Pass.
(Burp!)
This quote from the Nature editorial:
“The core science supporting anthropogenic global warming has not changed. This needs to be stated again and again, in as many contexts as possible.”
Uh huh…..and the more you state it, “again and again”, in whatever context you choose, the more hollow it rings.
Keep saying that, unsupported, and unsubstantiated by empirical proof, and you will seal the fate of CAGW faster than the CO2 ppm can rise to 390!
OT….check out what just happened in palm-tree-graced Barcelona and surrounding areas….
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1256974/Shock-British-holidaymakers-Majorca-island-hit-freak-snowstorm.html
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
vigilantfish (18:33:45) :
Richard S Courtney (15:35:06) :
The story of David and Goliath is a fabrication or – to be precise – the Bible says it’s a fabrication. The Bible says there was a family of giant Philistine warriors from Gath and one, called Goliath, was so big “his spear was the size of a weaver’s beam”.
>>
Yes, well, it depends how old a copy you have and what language it is in. Goliath grows over time from 4 cubits and a span to 6, and his spear transforms from a rod to a beam. 4 cubits would have been a giant to an average person back then who was less than 5 feet, now they would just be tall.
Prior to the broadway play “Joseph and his Technicolor Dream Coat” there was the biblical “Joseph and his Coat of Many Colors” which in the oldest manuscripts was “Joseph and his Coat with Short Sleeves”. Dying of cloth hadnt been invented yet, but short sleeves was special because before that coats had either no sleeves or long sleeves.
Jesus was raised by a “carpenter” though carpentry was not invented then. The oldest manuscripts refer to him as a “builder of houses” which at that time would be a stone mason.
These aren’t fabrications. These are stories that have evolved so that they make sense to the current audience.
And where is their army of lobbyists? According to Gore, there are five times as many anti-cap lobbyists as congressmen.
Misleading advice in Nature Editorial:
” … be it media training for scientists …” (LOL)
No gentlemen, normal scientists don’t need it.
But some had already too much of it. They better get a training in “back to the roots”, means real science, not post-normal.
There is no science in AGW. They are only scared of losing their income. The fraud issue is difficult as I don’t believe in putting people in jail for being lazy and stupid and just taking the money freely offered to them. There are times that may be the best thing to do considering your personal circumstances and then suddenly the lights come on and you remember there was this decision you made 15 years ago to ignore or skip over certain disturbing bits of information … putting the investment built on the foundation of drilling mud in jeopardy. If you have half a brain, you say ‘oh well’ and move on like some of the high profile modellers of late if you look at their latest work. Paul Erhlich? Never heard of him.
The actual article in ‘Nature’ is a bad joke. No wonder I don’t read that rag.
Davidmhopper:
“Jesus was raised by a “carpenter” though carpentry was not invented then.”
Excuse me? That would certainly come as a surprise to the makers of the many, many wooden artifacts we have from Ancient Egypt, millennia BC. Come to think of it, how did the Romans make, errr, crosses without basic carpentry skills? Not to mention their massive wooden siege engines, the original Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, much of the palace comlex of Knossos, Solomon’s Temple and its cedar from Lebanon, heck, the carefully detailed construction of the Ark of the Covenant, the huge fleets of warships of the ancient world….
Carpentry hadn’t been invented by the reign of Augustus? Are you frickin’ kidding?
Christian science monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Global-Warming/2010/0311/Independent-review-of-IPCC-and-its-global-warming-reports-an-answer-to-critics
The constant tugging over climate science and the behaviors revealed in the hacked e-mails are traceable to politicians demanding of science something it was never designed to deliver, according to Daniel Sarewitz, co-director of Arizona State University’s Consortium for Science, Policy, and Outcomes.
http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2010/0311/Scientists-urge-Senate-action-on-global-warming
Two thousand US economists and climate scientists, including eight Nobel laureates, are sending a letter Thursday to the Senate urging lawmakers to require immediate nationwide cuts in greenhouse-gas emissions tied to global warming.
We’ve heard that somewhere before, haven’t we? No, of course it’s not a coordinated defence….
Two issues here. firstly, the ‘scientists’ hid the error for months, and secondly, what is it about sceptics that makes them mutually exclusive to scientists? Are we being prejudiced, perhaps?
They definitely do!
That still remains to be seen, and is a swiftly vanishing argument IMO.
Yup, Yup, and Yup.
Yup. Still shaky.
Yup. That’s what we are doing.
And sceptics (who are apparently not allowed to be ‘scientists’) have never been so naive.
I wonder why that could be….?
That is just funny. If anyone seems to be wavering, they MUST toe the line. It’s their DUTY! And scientists, however wrong, MUST be protected from anyone who seeks to prove them wrong, or even question their assertions!
Nope, and nope. They are here to stay.
Yeah, we’ve been wondering the same thing there. Odd that….
Perhaps because of climategate?
Paraphrased:
“Why don’t people believe in the science, and these scientists? Why are they listening to these awful, nasty, lying, oil-funded sceptics?”
Answer:
“Because you lied.
Anu (15:34:47) :
Sorry to have ruffled your feathers, asking you to back up an assertion based solely on your understanding of the world.
I do notice which question you did not answer.
As much as I’m not a believer in the Jesus = God hypothesis, and am not thoroughly convinced in the Jesus existed hypothesis either (although there may have been some actual person upon whom the legends are based), are you seriously trying to advocate that:
1) Woodworking, to wit, carpentry was a non-existent skill 2 millenia ago? That somehow, humankind had figured out stone tools, moved beyond them to bronze and iron, invented aqueducts, and (wooden) field artillery, but just hadn’t figured out how this, “build with wood” thing works yet?
2) If so, WHY prey tell would they have changed Jesus into a carpenter instead of just left him a stone-worker?
We still have workers with stone to this day. I’ve done it a bit. My dad has for many years. It isn’t like you’d have to change Jesus from a stonemason to a carpenter for modern people to “get” it.
I agree with you about Goliath’s height, assuming Goliath was based on some historical event (from whichever century and involving whatever ethnicity). He was more likely than not shorter than modern translations make him out to be.
That said, I doubt ancient humans were building such robust towers that God was really freaked out and threatened that we’d reach heaven all on his own, thus spread us out across the Earth and gave us separate languages.
We were quite capable of doing BOTH of those things all on our own! (But not the towers to heaven.)
Bohemond (20:09:02) :
Excuse me? That would certainly come as a surprise to the makers of the many, many wooden artifacts we have from Ancient Egypt, millennia BC. Come to think of it, how did the Romans make, errr, crosses without basic carpentry skills? >>
Calm down bud. Working with wood dates back thousands of years BC. The word “carpenter” is derived from the latin carpentarius which was the skilled art of building chariots. The skill set broadened to a variety of formal wood working techniques which collectively became known as carpentry skills. the first guilds were formed to provide certification around 1200 AD. Since carpenters travelled from town to town, a fully licensed carpenter who could travel on his own without supervision was a “journeyman”.
The translation refers not to a “builder of chariots” but to a “builder of houses”.