After I published this story:
NCDC’s Dr. Thomas Peterson: “It’s a knife fight”
I wrote to Dr. Peterson to advise him that he had WUWT available to him for rebuttal should he wish. Here is his response verbatim. – Anthony
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In response to your kind offer, I have typed up the three relevant pages
of the notes I spoke from at that meeting, which I would appreciate you
adding to your forum. I had three lessons that I personally took from
Climategate. Here are my notes verbatim for lessons 2 and 3, which are
the relevant ones to this discussion. You can agree or disagree with the
points I made, but let’s at least start with exactly what I said.
Regards,
Tom Peterson
Lesson 2: If the fight isn’t fair, then don’t fight – and maybe don’t
fight even if it is fair
Only a small percentage of Phil Jones’ emails on that server were released
-The subset that was released was not random
–So it didn’t give a fair representation
-Releasing additional selected emails would make the fight fairer
–But not civil
There is a lot of incivility and ad hominem attacks out there
-We can’t control that
But we can control how we respond . . . or not respond
-Perhaps don’t even fight if the fight is fair
-Fights are never fun
–Even if you win them
The unfortunate downside is that some pseudoscientific nonsense can go
unchallenged.
Lesson 3: Collaborate with communicators
An aside from a Congressman after a hearing:
-You’re in a knife fight and need to fight back.
A science communicator:
-All scientists need to have their own blogs.
A good summary of similar issue though on a different topic by Michael
D. Gershon, M.D. (1999)
-“The experiments I conducted to this point gave me a feeling of
confidence that my work could withstand anyone’s scrutiny, which I
assumed (foolishly, it turned out) would be both logical and reasonable.”
Collaborate with communicators, 2
A scientist’s response to both knives and illogic tends to be more science
-Sound, rigorous, peer-reviewed science
-What we do best
-And in the end it will win the day
–Just ask Galileo
But unlike heliocentrism, we cannot afford to wait a century for views
on climate change to catch up to climate science
So partnering with communicators can help bridge the gap
-From nerdy scientists like myself to regular people.
Frosty says:
January 17, 2011 at 12:46 pm
“Is he’s saying “only talk through a communicator” because only spin doctors communicators can the spin communicate their science correctly?”
Apparently, the steps of PostModern Scientific Method are:
1. Select a funding agency.
2. Select a project loved by the funding agency.
3. Write a grant.
4. Hire a Spin Meister to handle all the rest.
Next time I will have steps for the Spin Meister.
DirkH says:
January 17, 2011 at 12:48 pm
Wait. the warmists are totally ruling the research apparatus of the western world and compare themselves with Gershon, a guy who says about his work “Besides, in those days the National Institutes of Health was tolerant of ideas that opposed received wisdom.” (Thanks for the link, Steve)
#####
Imagine my surprise when I saw Peterson quoting Gershon! Man he walked into that one. Don’t bring a noodle to a duel.
rapier wit is required.
It might have been more realistic for him to say:
We cannot afford to wait a century for climate science to catch up to (our) views on climate change.
I wonder if Dr. Peterson and his ilk sleep well at night or do they lay there worrying and wondering whether or not real world observations will eventually show their computer modelling to be wrong in due time ?
I only have one thing to say to Dr. Peterson regarding this so-called “knife fight” with so-called pseudoscientific nonsense…
Your science had damn well better be spot on 100% accurate in its bleatings of catastrophic predictions as well as your CO2 trumping all other climate processes (ie: the hydrological cycle, the sun’s energy forcings), because if you’re not, you and your associates will go down as being the active participants in the most horrific faux pas, nay, scientific screw up in human history.
Do you stand 100% behind your computer models ? Are you absolutely 100% sure that you want to force world societies into irreversable public policy and economic damage caused from taking “immediate action” ?
With all due respect, I strongly suggest you think long and hard about that, sir.
“But unlike heliocentrism, we cannot afford to wait a century for views
on climate change to catch up to climate science”
A bit of a double edged sword this one. Climate Science will continue to evolve and presumably as a little more light is shed on the darkness, so will peoples views.
I suspect that in the near term, what we see as the battle lines today will seem irrelevant and archaic tomorrow. The chance of either side being entirely vindicated is very small given how little we actually know about climate
Maybe, just maybe, the likes of Petersen here and Crowley at CA have begun to realise that the game is up, however grudging their comments are?
“Only a small percentage of Phil Jones’ emails on that server were released
-The subset that was released was not random”
Of course the emails weren’t random. Climategate wasn’t a bloody sociological survey but a carefully prepared, wonderful release of precisely the emails that showed what Jones and his cronies were up to, compelling prima facie evidence of serious wrongdoing and deceit. Frankly, I couldn’t give a toss about whether Jones took his kids/grandkids to McDonalds or had had a great weekend in Lllandudno or didn’t know how to order more biros for his clerical staff.
I hope there are more emails to come which shine yet more light on the climate scam. Dr. Peterson is just a marketing man now, for a lost cause, lost because it sold its scientific integrity for fame, fortune and illusory power.
Frosty says:
January 17, 2011 at 12:46 pm
‘Is he’s saying “only talk through a communicator” because only spin doctors communicators can the spin communicate their science correctly? ‘
Maybe he thinks he’s on Star Trek?
I think that the only thing that matters is whether or not the AGW idea is correct or not.It is a rightful thing to try to find weakness and inconsistency in the ideas put forward by those who support the AGW position, it is not a fight.Claiming that time is short to save the planet from AGW as you propose only serves to hide the weakness of your case and comparing yourselves to famous scientists does not prove to us that what you are proposing is true.I am not impressed by your computer models predicting vast changes in climate in the coming years,it would be reasonable to want to see unequivocal evidence that we are facing climate disaster before taking any action in my opinion.
A good summary of similar issue though on a different topic by Michael
D. Gershon, M.D. (1999)
-“The experiments I conducted to this point gave me a feeling of
confidence that my work could withstand anyone’s scrutiny, which I
assumed (foolishly, it turned out) would be both logical and reasonable.”
Fee fi fo fum, do I smell a great Trenberthian leap, from the fact that there are always people who are illogical and unreasonable, to the implication that all scrutiny of Climate Science’s work is illogical and unreasonable, essentially by a kind of “null” definition, Tom’s? Or else perhaps to an inherently futile justification of Climate Science’s failure to expose its work to the sceptical scrutiny of the scientific method, when the latter is instead the only way any work alleging to be science can come to “withstand scrutiny”?
Isn’t it really just more of the same old strange, needing to be clarified, Climate Science talk and thinking?
Dr Peterson.
My my don’t you sound like the wronged kid who threw something from the back of the class and the teacher just catches it out of the corner of his eye
and the kid retorts, “it wasn’t me sir” knowing full well it was and WE SAW you.. don’t play the wronged kid
WUWT commenter’s must be getting really sick of this ploy from these guys.i know i am.
That fighting a consensus requires both bowel and gut?
Hi Dr. Peterson, your decision to post here is much appreciated.
Usually when someone from the “other” side posts here they take some flack, but there are always some “skeptics” who go out of their way to find points of agreement, out of politeness or in order to advance the dialogue. This doesn’t appear to be happening in your case.
Not even a passing troll to the rescue? And these trolls post here regularly and stridently and unhindered.
Well, you made the effort, and you could conclude you’ve done your bit and that “they’re all out of step except my Tom”.
Then again, maybe the response may prompt you to think it out again.
Why, you even have Steve Mosher talking out of one side of his mouth for a change!
Strange times.
tim
Only a small percentage of Phil Jones’ emails on that server were released
-The subset that was released was not random
–So it didn’t give a fair representation
-Releasing additional selected emails would make the fight fairer
–But not civil”
The night of the Climategate release I remember well. I downloaded and isolated two separate copies of the zip file but waited to scan them for virus & malware until I heard from others that the files were genuine. Instead, I spent countless hours transfixed to the postings and observations of others here and at CA, Bishop Hill, the Air Vent and elsewhere.
It utterly astounds me that after this release there was not an immediate demand and search for the proverbial missing 18½ minutes.
If instead of climate the November FOIA file release was relating to a nuclear accident, the BP Deep Horizon blowout, or even Viagra, I cannot help believe the MSM & our politicians would not have risen to the occasion and demanded actual investigations instead of the multiple whitewashes and massive campaigns of denial we have all witnessed.
Albedo is all over the Climategate affair. It is high time to cast the clouds aside and let sunlight disinfect this truly sad episode in science!
Warmists make extraordinary claims. Skeptics demand extraordinary proof. Ne’er the twain shall meet.
There is a second issue related to the Climategate emails that has not gotten enough play. In those emails Phil Jones, Mann, Biffra, and the rest were asked to comment on mitigation strategies for climate change. Ok, if we take the premise, which they do, that you must be trained in the field of your expertise in order to be able to make authorative statements, then none of these gentlemen have the least expertise in systems engineering, nuclear power, or any of the other engineering disciplines that are required in order to be able to develop authorative positions on measures to mitigate CO2 production.
Why is it that all of their solutions more or less align with the position of books such as “Limits to Growth” and Al Gore’s “Earth in the Balance”. I would have much more respect for their position if they came out and said (Like James Lovelock has), that we must embrace nuclear power.
If the U.S. embarked on a program to develop 500-1000 Uranium and Thorium reactors, and used the electricity to displace oil, coal, and natural gas, and to implement a transportation technology based on fuel cells, then I could get behind their solution even if I doubted their science.
If CO2 is your problem, then in 25 years the above outline of power and transportation technology would remove the United States from the Hydrocarbon economy, and thus reduce global emissions of CO2 by 25%.
However, foolish schemes such as Cap and Trade, originally developed by none other than Enron, the elimination of the personal automobile, and the de-industrialization of the west, is nothing more than what the hippies and environmental whackos proposed during the last environmental scare period of the 1960’s and 70’s.
I am such a person as to be able to make an authorative statement regarding the engineering of this with my degrees (engineering physics), plus decades of work on power systems, transportation systems, and systems engineering for developing industrial infrastructure on the Moon and Mars.
Stay in your field of expertise of climate science and let the engineers fix the problem, if the problem indeed exists.
“…we cannot afford to wait a century for views on climate change to catch up to climate science…”
We don’t need a century Dr Peterson. We already have enough evidence to dismiss AGW on not one count but many.
I used to believe what you believe, and was involved in “doing my bit to help”, only “my bit to help” always involves checking the truth of claims right back to source. When I did that, your statement convinced me for a while, but when a crack appeared the whole hypothesis exploded and every single claim of AGW was found wanting. Every single claim, Dr Peterson. The world is NOT warming unnaturally, its trends are well within natural limits. When UHI and other data issues are properly factored in, the correlation with solar cycles reappears. Carbon dioxide is NOT a pollutant at current levels, its concentration has to increase a hundredfold for that to happen; it is fundamental plant food, and if its level were to fall, the whole of agriculture would suffer. Sequestration is both economic and political suicide. And there is plenty of good evidence that even the CO2 rise is natural – isotopes notwithstanding.
Children in schools are being taught lies and are being frightened by a nonexistent bogeyman, when there are enough real problems in Life to worry about. This is a shameful legacy to leave our children.
You can tell me I’m not a trained scientist with peer-reviewed papers behind me. That is irrelevant where the basics of scientific method are missing from the whole peer-review process. Truth matters, Dr Peterson, and even if you believe you have a noble cause to support, you cannot support it with poor science, misrepresentations, and avoidance and suppression of debate. And another thing. Courtesy is an incredible tool for advancing Science, discourtesy is not. Courtesy includes the power to listen and to be willing to say “I was wrong”. You would not be thought of less for doing this.
when so many people with Phd’s are suggesting that a theory based on incomplete computer models with limited predictive ability, using unreleased data and code is such good evidence that science has to be turned on its head and it is the job of the sceptics to disprove the conclusions of the unreleased code and data then it is hard to view them as scientists.
The “what if your wrong, think of your grandchildren” argument might have some impact if the solutions weren’t so ridiculous. Green initiatives rolled out time and time again with some immense cost of carbon, and government reports suggesting we are going to fix it with massively cheaper cost of carbon in the future. I know of no other situation where people would say “buy lots of it today because it will be cheaper tomorrow” – a difficult enough argument but to then infer a competitive advantage from un-patented investments today will be somehow uncopiable and unassailable in the future beggars belief. We are apparently to be scared of missing out on the flushing the money down the toilet party.
This appears to be the position of the warmists – believing not only that their phds should guarantee the success of the scientific argument – but should naturally give them the final say on the solution in entirely unrelated fields.
Ken Lydell says: “Warmists make extraordinary claims. Skeptics demand extraordinary proof. Ne’er the twain shall meet.”
Oh, no Ken!
Us skeptics aren’t asking for any extraordinary just normal proof or if that isn’t available, how about an open and honest discussion laying before us the data and working, if they did that … fine no problem, we’d all agree.
But, when you have secret data, secret workings, PR scamsters trying to sell snake oil and calling it “science” as if just labelling it science means everyone should swallow their BS.
… I’ll never meet someone half way if it’s half way to a lie!
1) To a scientifically skeptical person this is a fight for the truth…
2) To the AGW supporting scientists this is a knife fight…
Everyone chooses who to follow.
But people, if one day it becomes apparent that you are clearly scientifically wrong, please swallow your pride and admit it, for the moment, that goes for both sides, but even that conclusion could revert futher into the future, science is always moving.
Someof these scientists need to just grow up.
Tim says: Hi Dr. Peterson, your decision to post here is much appreciated.
Usually when someone from the “other” side posts here they take some flack, but there are always some “skeptics” who go out of their way to find points of agreement, out of politeness or in order to advance the dialogue. This doesn’t appear to be happening in your case.
Tim, I support what you are saying and yes Dr Peterson is to be commended for engagement in the discussion. I think most people here are genuinely interested in the climate, and truly want to know what has been/is/will happen(ing) to the climate. Listening to well thought our views and hearing the details of the evidence for/against can only help us better understand – particularly as we have a very robust “peer review” process. So, I would love to encourage Dr Peterson to contribute more.
But, to be frank, I don’t see how you can count what Dr Peterson wrote as “well thought our views” and “details of the evidence” … it’s a few scribbled notes, largely unintelligible and quite honest well below the normal standard of articles that we get.
Perhaps Peterson’s reference to heliocentrism and Galileo has it exactly backwards. The cAGWers are the gospel preaching Pope and McIntyre is Galileo.
Nick
Yes, this is how science works. Any piece of peer-reviewed science can and should be criticized if there are flaws in the methodology, data or conclusions of the original paper, and then that peer-reviewed criticism can itself be criticized if it contains errors. It is in this way that science approaches the truth, but it is essential that this process remains scientific, that we have a peer-review system to weed out the non-science and the nonsense, or else the whole thing becomes muddied and confused.
ScientistForTruth
If the science turns out to be wrong and yet we’re already some way down the road of transitioning our economies to a post-fossil fuels world, building nuclear power stations, investing in and developing renewables, well, this is something we’d have had to have done sooner or later as these fossil fuels are running out, plus our dependance on them binds us to some pretty unsavoury regimes. But if the science turns out to be right but we have not taken action to reduce our emissions, then the consequences could be grave.
I think Dr. Peterson is right. There has not been enough effective communication about global warming.
Only 6.5 billion of the 7.0 billion of the people on the planet have heard about it. There should be a concerted effort to turn the tide and communicate to the final 0.5 billion.
20 years is not enough time to get the point across in a convincing way. People need to hear about the problems of global warming 3 times a day instead of just twice per day over the next 10 years.
And the raw records need to be adjusted for a 10th time so that the point will be even more clear. Perhaps an 11th time in a year or so. Then maybe a 12th. The actual recorda need to keep up with what is known to be happening.