Image source here
From Andrew Bolt’s blog at the Herald Sun:
Professor John Quiggin complains of smears by sceptics:
In recent years, science and scientific institutions have come under increasingly vociferous attack, with accusations of fraud, incompetence and even aspirations to world domination becoming commonplace… Scientists have been constrained in fighting back by the fact that they are ethically constrained to be honest, whereas their opponents lie without any compunction.
Ethically unconstrained, Professor John Quiggin smears a sceptic:
In writing my previous post on the “Climategate” break-in to the University of East Anglia computer system, I remained unclear about who was actually responsible for the break-in theft of the emails, which were then selectively quoted to promote a bogus allegation of scientific fraud. Looking over the evidence that is now available, I think there is enough to point to Steven McIntyre as the person, along with the actual hacker or leaker, who bears primary moral responsibility for the crime…
So, to sum up, McIntyre organised the campaign which led to the creation of the file, obtained information from the CRU file system by means he declined to reveal, received the stolen emails shortly after the theft and made dishonest and defamatory use of the stolen information. Whether or not he was directly involved in the theft, or merely created the opportunity and benefited from the proceeds is impossible to determine, and essentially irrelevant.
OK professor, let’s see your evidence beyond this missive.
Somebody needs to educate Quiggin on the CRU ftp security blunder that was “the mole”. He doesn’t get it, and then proceeds to use that as “evidence” against McIntyre. It’s comical.
Here’s Professor Quiggin’s page at the University of Queensland:
http://www.uq.edu.au/economics/johnquiggin/
http://www.uq.edu.au/economics/index.html?page=15898
Doh! You aren’t supposed to give the Quiggin attention. Don’t feed the Quiggin!
I am not a big fan of the litigation route but this slandering ‘scientist’ must be sued out of principle and to put an end to this assault.
It would make a spectacular example to the rest of the IPCC gang and, even better, the examination of the ‘facts’ here would be very revealing.
In the meantime, this desperate and pathetic outburst is very revealing in itself.
R Gates,
Your statements border on the ludicrous, to state that feb temps are the “6th warmest ever” is misleading. How many times have we heard the ‘warmest ever’ quote while the actual timeline is missing.
How many years does the record go back and what source are you using and what is the actual anomoly?
You also state that the southern hemisphere temperature for jan/feb is the fifth highest on record, but again how long does the record go back and what source are you quoting from? Does it not occur to you temperatures are actually falling when you make statements like “fifth highest on record”?
Your silliest quote however regarding arctic temperatures being “generally running well above average” and yet again you provide no actual temperatures to back up this frankly wierd assertion(I wonder why?) more important is your apparent inability to comprehend that small rises in arctic air temperatures while still below the freezing point of water cannot melt sea ice. This statement leads you to speculate that this will lead to “one heck of a melt season” although quite how you can make such a wild assumption escapes me completely unless you are from the ‘wishing it makes it so’ school of thought.
I can understand your reluctance to provide substantial evidence to back up your cherry picked claims but here is a challenge for you.
Please provide the actual average temperatures of the arctic you claim are running well above normal so we can compare the actual difference.
The final statement that arctic ice levels “have been below average for six years” is specious because the records you quote are only 31yrs/21yrs long, quite how you can extrapolate such certain conclusions with such a tiny timeline is beyond me.
So here is another challenge to you, please provide the supposed artic sea ice maximum average and the actual 2010 ice maximum so we can see exactly how far short 2010 is from the 30yr mean and the 1979-2000 mean.
Your use of cherry picked data does you no credit, I for one would be more amenable if you provided actual details of timelines,temps and differentials.
You saved the best quote till last regarding the solar minimum, the AGW consensus does not recognize the influence of solar cycles on polar ice cover levels.
Does it take someone like me to point out that the solar maximum/minimum cycle theory states that the cycles take several years to have any effect on actual global temperatures and sea ice levels so in fact if the theory is correct which many in the AGW camp deny there would be a delay of several years before any solar minimum had any discernable effect.
Dear Mr McIntyre
My view is Quiggin’s comments may be libellous. I’m happy to discuss the terms upon which we might sue him and the University. It’s time to take apart “scientists” like this.
Keep up the excellent work.
Kind regards
Kevin Oram
Sometimes you just know there’s still ample room for the pharmaceutical industry to make so much more profit.
McIntyre need do nothing except let these attackers have enough rope to hang themselves.
Quiggins has a lot of egg on his tie right now and there isn’t a queue to thank him for his intervention from either side.
Presumably to prof has as much evidence for this particular claim as he does for agw……
The current “state of the art” at a glance then.
I can’t believe you’ve wasted a whole thread on John Quiggin. He’s a nobody.
Ignore him. He is self-evidently a complete jerk. There are far bigger and better battles to fight than wasting time and energy on such an irrelevant mental pygmy..
Speaking -er, writing – as a retired lawyer (and with an extremely sparse acquaintanceship with the law of defamation) I think Quiggin has been somewhat clever – whether by design or by accident I cannot say. He does NOT accuse McIntyre of actually being the hacker/leaker or of being a co-leaker/hacker or of planning the action or of explicitly inciting it. Instead of making accusations of legal/criminal wrongdoing, he has written a nasty smear using innuendo, omitting salient facts and misstating others.
The little nugget in the midden is his confident statement that the e-mails/documents were internally assembled in order to respond to the FOI requests. While many have speculated on that, he states it as a known fact. Does he have sources that have provided that info???
Reason for further FOI requests to track down the source??? ( I am assuming that Australia has such legislation.)
But what the poor kings and queens in their ivory towers don’t understand, is often they actually are incompetent.
It is now fully morphed into the EMOTIONAL realm and completely out of the SCIENCE and REASON realm!
“Quiggin down under” is a scientist (?) who promotes personal opinion over factual data in the “global warming” discussion.
He’s listened to, why?
I mean, I know why he’s listened to by GW alarmists – he fits the mold.
But the rest of us?
Dunno
Grant (11:28:51) :
–Wren (10:46:50) :
“…the fact that they are ethically constrained to be honest,..”
Oh Wren, you do know how to feed a good laugh..
Sceptics were astonished at the existence and content of the UEA/CRU emails; a much better feeling than..mortified.
====
Call me skeptical of people who call themselves skeptics. A true skeptic is evenhanded.
http://nobelprize.org/nomination/nomination_facts.html
Janice Baker (13:29:52) :
Speaking -er, writing – as a retired lawyer (and with an extremely sparse acquaintanceship with the law of defamation) I think Quiggin has been somewhat clever – whether by design or by accident I cannot say. He does NOT accuse McIntyre of actually being the hacker/leaker or of being a co-leaker/hacker or of planning the action or of explicitly inciting it. Instead of making accusations of legal/criminal wrongdoing, he has written a nasty smear using innuendo, omitting salient facts and misstating others.
=====
No he doesn’t, but the headline says he does.
” McIntyre accused by University of Queensland Prof of CRU break in”
Libel ?
“Sou (06:09:15) :
Good looking chap.”
Come on at least try to be believable.
Quiggen is actually a well respected economist and with an impressive list of publications (I count 5 in the highly prestigious AER alone). Having said that, there is no excuse for his blog posting. Its lack of accuracy is matched only by its lack of honesty and ethics. Anyone with a shred of integrity would correct and apologize. Let’s see if Quiggen does the right thing.
WHY not check out the CRU data for yourself? I made it available on my website, I know from my stats that lots of you go there, but I also know you dont actually look. What does this tell me?
http://www.knowyourplanet.com/climate-data/
Quiggin has been altering his post in what looks like an attempt to make it less defamatory. Quiggin already shut down comments after it was pointed out in his thread that his post was likely defamatory.
Google’s cached version of the page from March 13th is here (I have this saved in case google updates their cache):
http://tinyurl.com/ygvn9bo
Quiggin’s current version of the post is here:
http://tinyurl.com/ydad7hm
Some differences. The latest version adds the following sentence to the first paragraph:
“It seems unlikely at this point that the hacker/leaker wll be identified, so as far as criminal liability is concerned, we will probably never know.”
In the original version Quiggin stated:
“there is enough to point to Steven McIntyre as the person, along with the actual hacker or leaker, who bears primary moral responsibility for the crime.”
Which he subsequently changed to:
“there is enough to point to Steven McIntyre as the person (along with the
actual hacker or leaker of course) who bears primary moral responsibility for the crime.”
(“of course” is new).
In the original version Quiggin stated:
“Whether or not he [McIntyre] was directly involved in the theft, or merely created the opportunity and benefited from the proceeds is impossible to determine, and essentially irrelevant.”
Which has been changed to:
“Whether or not he [McIntyre] was directly involved in the theft, or merely created the opportunity and benefited from the proceeds is impossible to determine, and essentially irrelevant in moral terms.”
(“in moral terms” is new).
In the current post he states
“Note: I’ve updated this to correct some errors.”
I don’t think these changes constitute error-correction.
Kitefreak (12:16:38) :
And the WHO and their forecasts of rampant pandemic swine flu spring to mind also. Level 6 my arse.
So, yes, they’re all ‘at it’.
Until I started spending a good amount of time here, I never really took note of the concept of “post normal” science. IMO, this is not science at all – it’s all FUD. Guys like Quiggin have more in common with Witch Doctors than they do Einstein.
Come up with a sensational frightening scenario, use statistics and models as a replacement for the scientific method and generate “projections” that are not reproducible or falsifiable, call it consensus, and then latch on to scary trends and (no matter how short term they might really be) extrapolate EXTRAPOLATE EXTRAPOLATE for dramatic effect.
I’ve been trying to come up with a historical corollary for such behavior. There are definite tones of paranoia (Jim Jones?), scapegoating (name an oppressive dictatorship in the 20th Century that didn’t do this), orthodoxy vs. heresy (pick a religion), and personal esteem/gain at the cost of integrity (politics anyone).
Whatever it is, it is most assuredly not science… not anything more than the vestigial trappings of it at least.
“Quiggen is actually a well respected economist and with an impressive list of publications ”
He is also known for his appearance on Geico commercials.
“Quiggen is actually a well respected economist and with an impressive list of publications (I count 5 in the highly prestigious AER alone).”
Hmmmm. I suspect he is highly invested in carbon trading and green stocks. A smart economist would know the elite want this to be the next bubble. Perhaps this desperate smearing is a sign of the think tanks reconsidering going ahead with carbon legislation.
The kind of mindless blather Quiggen spouted is exactly the sort of thing one observes in people that learn some cherished religious viewpoint is wrong (e.g. a cult victim charitably “deprogrammed” via family intervention), but cannot, yet, accept the true facts (vs. the “facts” imposed via cult programming). It’s an early stage of grieving.
Unfortunately, the natural response is to devote more mental energy to holding onto the cherished belief…which, if it succeeds, leads to an even more rabid & irrational fanatic….
Thanks to Steve McIntyre, we aleready knew quite a lot of the content of the e-mails. “Hide the decline”, yup, already observed that. “Mike’s tricks”, yeah, already knew about them.
It’s all bad news for the “robustness” of some studies and some milieus relied upon by the IPCC, and the emails only confirmed what was known (well OK, there was more of course).
Now they can’t wish away the bad news, so they go for the messenger.
But no legal action is needed. Only popcorn. After all it’s great fun to watch how the alleged elite can make a complete fool of themselves.