Dr. Spencer’s essay below reminds me of this famous cartoon:
Over at Lucia’s she wrote a post saying I had banged the Godwin’s Law “gong” by comparing the PNAS skeptic list paper as “stasi-esque”. For people that don’t know, the Stasi were the secret police of East Germany, post WWII, and post Nazism. So Stasi-esque doesn’t qualify for Godwins Law. They were famous for making lists of people and their associations, to use later for what could only be described as nefarious purposes. Their list making (like the skeptic list used for the PNAS paper) is what is the parallel here.
As for yellow badges, here’s what I’d like to see all skeptics wear. Maybe somebody can come up with a theme variation specific to climate skeptics.
We don’t need the negativism that is being fostered elsewhere.
Dr. Spencer has some interesting comments in his post below. – Anthony
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The Global Warming Inquisition Has Begun
by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
A new “study” has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) which has examined the credentials and publication records of climate scientists who are global warming skeptics versus those who accept the “tenets of anthropogenic climate change”.
Not surprisingly, the study finds that the skeptical scientists have fewer publications or are less credentialed than the marching army of scientists who have been paid hundreds of millions of dollars over the last 20 years to find every potential connection between fossil fuel use and changes in nature.
After all, nature does not cause change by itself, you know.
The study lends a pseudo-scientific air of respectability to what amounts to a black list of the minority of scientists who do not accept the premise that global warming is mostly the result of you driving your SUV and using incandescent light bulbs.
There is no question that there are very many more scientific papers which accept the mainstream view of global warming being caused by humans. And that might account for something if those papers actually independently investigated alternative, natural mechanisms that might explain most global warming in the last 30 to 50 years, and found that those natural mechanisms could not.
As just one of many alternative explanations, most of the warming we have measured in the last 30 years could have been caused by a natural, 2% decrease in cloud cover. Unfortunately, our measurements of global cloud cover over that time are nowhere near accurate enough to document such a change.
But those scientific studies did not address all of the alternative explanations. They couldn’t, because we do not have the data to investigate them. The vast majority of them simply assumed global warming was manmade.
I’m sorry, but in science a presupposition is not “evidence”.
Instead, anthropogenic climate change has become a scientific faith. The fact that the very first sentence in the PNAS article uses the phrase “tenets of anthropogenic climate change” hints at this, since the term “tenet” is most often used when referring to religious doctrine, or beliefs which cannot be proved to be true.
So, since we have no other evidence to go on, let’s pin the rap on humanity. It just so happens that’s the position politicians want, which is why politics played such a key role in the formation of the IPCC two decades ago.
The growing backlash against us skeptics makes me think of the Roman Catholic Inquisition, which started in the 12th Century. Of course, no one (I hope no one) will be tried and executed for not believing in anthropogenic climate change. But the fact that one of the five keywords or phrases attached to the new PNAS study is “climate denier” means that such divisive rhetoric is now considered to be part of our mainstream scientific lexicon by our country’s premier scientific organization, the National Academy of Sciences.
Surely, equating a belief in natural climate change to the belief that the Holocaust slaughter of millions of Jews and others by the Nazis never occurred is a new low for science as a discipline.
The new paper also implicitly adds most of the public to the black list, since surveys have shown dwindling public belief in the consensus view of climate change.
At least I have lots of company.
As for yellow badges, here’s what I’d like to see all skeptics wear. Maybe somebody can come up with a theme variation specific to climate skeptics.
That is the problem with You on the West. You do not see the apparent that wearing whatever you come up with will NOT change anything – You still will be wearing a sort of STIGMA.
Is Climatology so exceptionally prone to stupidity or it is a “signum temporis” of nowadays Science as a whole?
The AGW proponents use extensively communist propaganda tricks to which you are like children to lollipops. Use Code of Hammurabi instead!
Regards
@ur momisugly villabolox says: June 22, 2010 at 11:16 pm
Mine as well. It happens. Happened to me as well, just now.
Get over it.
And I’m not even a troll like you are.
[REPLY – Yeah, you’re in spam, too. Not sure why. We’ll check it out in due course. If a post “vanishes” immediately without any “review time”, it nearly always means you got stuck in the spam filter. ~ Evan]
@Jonas Whale: You’re right we are over reacting. Maybe we should ask for a list of scientists who’ve produced papers proving that CO2 is, at least partially, the cause of the current warming, you know with opinion and guess work replaced by empirical evidence.
The blacklist would dwarf the CO2 list then and we would have proved that we are right.
Ger the picture?
I looked at the list and, damn!, I’m not on it.
Must work at that.
Jonas, just to clarify, I need your name for my listless list. You see, once I get a significant and robust number of listless people on my list, 4 or 5, I plan to write a paper for publication in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences about listless people, their characteristics, and why they never appear on lists. Lists of people is a popular topic these days in science journals and I am sure to get it published, once the paper is peer reviewed by other listless people, who are the only ones qualified to be peers for this kind of paper. Of course, once the paper is published, everybody listed will no longer be listless, which is ironic, but then irony is an important component of the post-normal scientific method.
PNAS…seriously? Is this a real organization? Did they stop to think about how the acronym sounds when they try to sound it out?
Jonas Whale: “You’re right we are over reacting. Maybe we should ask for a list of scientists who’ve produced papers proving that CO2 is, at least partially, the cause of the current warming, you know with opinion and guess work replaced by empirical evidence.”
You’re right Jonas Whale – here’s some compelling evidence for starters:
http://www.stthomas.edu/engineering/jpabraham/
And here’s Roy Spencer’s contribution in upholding the ethical standards of the science community to which he belongs:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2009/12/ecofreako-the-al-gore-tribute-band/
Well at least they’ve taken the step of acknowledging the sceptics.
Now of course they are saying the sceptics aren’t really qualified.
That too over time will be shown as false.
Keep the focus on climategate and their bad science. That’s what they are trying to shake loose.
Kafbst says at 6:03 that the Inquisition shouldn’t be used to indict the Church, and he may be right. But to suggest that the Inquisition was benevolent and not religious based as his linked article does is ludicrous. From that link:
“Like all courts in Europe, the Spanish Inquisition used torture. But it did so much less often than other courts. Modern researchers have discovered that the Spanish Inquisition applied torture in only 2 percent of its cases. Each instance of torture was limited to a maximum of 15 minutes. In only 1 percent of the cases was torture applied twice and never for a third time. ”
The link also refers to the Roman Inquisition as restraining the rampant persecutions in Italy, but this is unconvincing. Wasn’t Galileo silenced by these thugs?
Jonas Whale says:
June 22, 2010 at 10:24 pm
“You may think you’re whining to a sympathetic echo chamber here, but some of the rest of us are watching”
OOh, scary.
But seriously, we are watching the AGWers too, and that’s why we’re here, we agnostics and sceptics. We’re watching how they elevate a difference of opinion into “denialism” with its undertones of nazism. We’re watching how it is they who started with the hyperbolic accusations and metaphors – the death trains and death spirals…
If you can’t see how movements that start out with mere invective can end up being actively oppressive and even, ultimately, violent, then you haven’t learnt your history.
Methinks you are projecting with statements about sympathetic echo chambers (funny that you have been allowed to do other than echo, by the way), lack of scientific judgement and dignity. Look in the mirror, my friend. Remove the beam in thine own eye.
“…..97–98% of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field support the tenets of ACC outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and (ii) the relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of the researchers unconvinced of ACC are substantially below that of the convinced researchers….”.
That result doesn’t surprise me any more than a survey of, say, psychiatrists practicing electroconvulsive therapy, (a controversial treatment, I understand), would show that most of them are convinced of the efficacy of the treatment and publish papers confirming it.
This study was a purely cynical exercise to prop up ‘The Science’ or is a pathetic illustration of the circular logic which seems to plague ‘The Science’ practitioners.
A list of the raw ‘data deniers’ over the years might be more useful Dr Spencer. As for a list of the raw ‘data doubters’ over that time you’d expect it’s almost axiomatic to doubt something that consistently fails to appear, which seriously begs the question as to why so few on the latter list?
I note that that birdbrain guy says he used to read Scientific American “cover to cover”. Lol.
The best analogy to make with this global warming religion is with the Council of Nicea when they decided what form of Jesus they wanted to be the formal and only religion of the Roman Empire. All traditional forms, gospels or counter opinions were discarded, oppressed and even destroyed.
villabolo says:
June 22, 2010 at 10:58 pm
‘Beat your chests in self righteous indignation all you want but it is the real climatologist who are getting death threats and walking around with body guards.’
With 10 Trillion Dollars per year on the line (ccx), who are the climatologist afraid of? People like Anthony or Al Gore and Co. and the far left?
The scam has been exposed. There is money on the line and a lot of “behind of locked doors” manipulation will come to light. If I was a climatologist who has sold my soul for a piece of gold, I would be asking myself, “Am I expendable because of what I know?”.
old construction worker says:
June 22, 2010 at 6:51 pm
“As just one of many alternative explanations, most of the warming we have measured in the last 30 years could have been caused by a natural, 2% decrease in cloud cover. Unfortunately, our measurements of global cloud cover over that time are nowhere near accurate enough to document such a change.”
Do you mean to say that the lack of cloud cover could warm the planet. That’s crazy talk. (SIC)
I don’t understand that “SIC.” Do you mean, somehow, that you’re kidding? The IPCC made a statement very similar to Dr. Spencer’s in either the AR3 or the AR4 or maybe both. The author used some word like “disconcerting,” saying that it was disconcerting that a very small change in cloud cover could explain the 20th century warming.
In case anyone goes looking for this, and doesn’t find it, let me say, it’s possible that it was only in the AR4 draft which the Bush administration put online many months before the official release.
By the way, they gave a user id and password to anyone who affirmed online that he was a U.S. citizen or legal resident alien, and would not quote, divulge, what have you, the draft. As I understand the matter, the IPCC presumes or requires that the national governments will only make the draft available to experts. So the administration adhered to the letter of the rule, but not the spirit of it. (If the IPCC “requires,” then, I suppose, the administration took the position that it couldn’t know of all experts.) I was surprised that this never received attention from the media, and very little attention from blogs. Me, I burned the whole thing to CD.
Anthony,
How’s this?
http://www.glebedigital.co.uk/skepticbadge.jpg
regards,
Stu
“The new paper also implicitly adds most of the public to the black list, since surveys have shown dwindling public belief in the consensus view of climate change.”
lol… I can just see that now on the list. Public, John Q.
Anyway, so… What do the inquistors plan to do about this, especially since more and more people aren’t buying it? They may just want to keep their damn mouths closed, seeing as how they’re out numbered by the broader public.
This appear to be the same old logical fallacies that the CAGW alarmists has always relied on to delude the masses. Scientific truth established by a show of hands or “we have published more papers” type argument. It was and will always be, irrelevant.
Why does not everyone realise that most enquiries involve a very broad brush and a huge tub of whitewash.
Next winter looks to be colder than last in the Northern Hemisphere lets wait until next spring 2011 to see how the climate is changing, The climate has always changed.
I bristle at the term “denier”.
I much prefer the moniker “infidel”.
Decades ago, this Jewish fellow won the lottery. His friend said “How are you going to spend it?” “One third to me, one third to the Synagogue and one third to the Nazi Party”. “Why the Nazi Party?” “Well, they were the ones who tattooed the winning number on my arm, weren’t they?”
So why not change the smiley design competition to a permanent tatt on the arm? That demonstrates strength of conviction, as well as conviction for lack of strength in following the Party line.
http://i260.photobucket.com/albums/ii14/sherro_2008/2010/Nasty.jpg?t=1277295310
Smoking Frog says:
I don’t understand that “SIC.” Do you mean, somehow, that you’re kidding?
Yes
warm-smiley
http://img248.imageshack.us/img248/1640/smileyfacebutton2.jpg
Don´t worry about the Inquisition, torture by law had to be restricted to only 15 minutes and no blood shedding (gore) was allowed. Here a representation of the hall of tortures:
http://www.congreso.gob.pe/museo.htm