Dr. Roger Pielke writes in with an update:
[UPDATE 5/7: Joe Romm offers 3,300 wacky words in response to this short post. Crazy. Anyway, the simple response is, did Gore remove the slide I called him out on for using? Answer: Yes. Game, set, match. For those many readers here for the first time (thanks Joe, this is now the second most viewed post in the history of this blog!) here is a link to my recent book on climate change.]
This is strong language from Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. who wrote to me and suggested I share this with my readers. After getting slimed by Joe Romm for the nth time, he finally had enough. He writes:
It is long overdue for the environmental community to start pushing back on Romm as he continues to stain their entire enterprise. His lies and smear tactics, which are broadly embraced and condoned, are making enemies out of friends and opponents out of fellow travelers. Vigorous debate is welcome and healthy. Lies and character assassination not so much.
I recommend reading the entire article here
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That means sources you love like ICECAP, Monckton’s policy institute, and anything associated with ClimateDepot and Senator Inhofe.
And, unlike Romm, these sources are peddling stuff that the scientific community general finds to be complete nonsense.
==========================
Arrrrwww getting desperate are ya, Joel?
You just can’t stand the fact that guys like Morano and D’Aleo…are on to the game of the “scientific community” that you so blindly defend like some automaton.
Please cite your evidence of the “nonsense” that they are peddling.
Cite your evidence.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Smokey, “That is pure psychological projection on your part. Thieves believe everyone else is a thief, and you call honest folks liars. ”
I never called anyone a liar. Seems you may be playing fast and loose with facts. Imagine that, someone on this blog playing fast and loose with the facts.
sceptical says:
May 7, 2011 at 5:12 a
One need only read through the comments on this thread to see character assassination. The vitriol against Mr. Romm is rather telling.
==============
One need only read through the comments from you to see cognitive dissonance in action.
And what? The truth?? [I am sure that is an alien concept to you, but still.]
How is the truth…character assassination??
What is “telling” about telling the truth?
It just tells what it is.
Looks like your side has a little more to answer for where this is concerned.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
skeptical posted the following May 7, 5:08am:
“Mr. Sowell, “As to your specific charge, the truth regarding the state of the ocean’s surface, and whether it is rising, remaining constant, or falling, is not at all certain.”
Exactly my point. This is what you claim to believe but you then make definitive statements that ocean levels are falling. If you wanted your statement on ocean levels falling to be taken in some kind of context then you should have qualified it with that context.”
—————————————————————————————————–
The above skeptical post was in reply to Roger Sowell’s post of May 6, 11:55pm. The 6th paragraph of Sowell’s post is as follows:
—————————————————————————————————–
“As to your specific charge, the truth regarding the state of the ocean’s surface, and whether it is rising, remaining constant, or falling, is not at all certain. We have some data. We also have different data. We have data from some places at some times, but not all places at all times. We suspect that the ground is not static, but is rising in some areas and sinking in others. We have islands that should be underwater if certain claims about sea level rise are true, yet the islands remain above water. There are also ancient docks and ports that are now underwater. We also can see undersea canyons just offshore from some river mouths, which some people maintain is proof-positive that the sea level was one hundred feet or more lower in the recent past. How recent is debatable.”
——————————————————————————————————–
To put Roger’s 6th paragraph in a context there were 8 other paragraphs. The first five summarized (in a masterful manner) some exceedingly complex but essential issues at the core of human affairs. Paragraph 7 cited a reference, and number 8 invited Skeptical to examine it regarding sea level data. Sowell’s final paragraph provides a claim that the evidence is increasing against the catastrophic results of manmade CO2. (Any readers joining this thread recently would be well advised to go back to Roger Sowell’s brief essay of May 6th.)
Now I have a question for you Mr (Ms?) skeptical. Where exactly in this May 6th post of Mr Sowell does he, as you say, “…make definitive statements that ocean levels are falling”? Obviously, the answer is that he didn’t. So how could you screw this up so badly?
There are at least two possibilities to explain your mistake; (a) your reading skills are in need of remedial attention, or (b) you are referring to something said by Mr. Sowell in a different time and place —a time and place outside the flow of comments on this thread. If (b) is true, then you, Skeptical, are in breach of ordinary acceptable manners appropriate in this discussion, i.e. you should have referenced the time and location of Mr. Sowell’s statement so that we (casual readers) would be able to see the accuracy of your reports of what he wrote, as well as the context of his remarks. To drive home this point, let me alter the last sentence in your post of May 7, 5:08am using, for the most part, your own words. “If you wanted your [criticism of Roger Sowell] to be taken in some kind of context then you should have qualified it with that context”.
Please note, I do not want to further engage you on this. After a few hours of running around this website (frustrating even if at times quite enlightening) I managed to find what appears to be the basis of your claim. Mr Sowell doesn’t need any help from me to handle you there, but your sloppy out of context reply to Sowell annoyed me enough to spend a few more minutes to let you know about it. Just one small step in the ongoing loss of sympathy for your cause tonight.
Ron
Thanks for the response Ron. I’m not sure why you think you are arbitrator of what is proper or not. The moderators allowed my post to be posted and so it was obviously within ordinary acceptable manners. Mr. Sowell did make the claim that “ocean levels are falling” without supporting evidence, but this doesn’t seem to matter to you. Nope. The important thing is to make sure people post the way you think is proper on this site instead of people correcting bad information.
[Mod comment : Please give links or references to support claims, it helps everyone. eg. when you say “Mr. Sowell did make the claim that “ocean levels are falling””, provide the link. Unfortunately, Mr Sowell did not provide the link when he referred to “my comment on my guest post”, or we could all have easily seen his words “ocean levels are falling” and avoided a tedious argument. (http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/05/04/desperate-measures-indeed/) – mj]
Joel Shore says:
“As the post that you referenced notes, what Watt apparently actually said…”
The name is Watts, not Watt – Watt is voltage times current, as any physicist worth his degree should know.
And of course, climate progress is an NGO/ QUANGO propaganda blog. WUWT provides a forum for honest discussion; CP spoon feeds propaganda, which is why Joel Shore posts here – plus the fact that CP doesn’t have that much traffic despite being financially supported by a far-Left NGO.
And despite what Shore claims, I rarely link to Climate Depot, or to Inhofe, or to the others he names. Sometimes, but not very often – not that they are wrong. It’s just that other links are preferable. [One rime Joel Shore was complaining about a couple of charts I’d posted. So I posted fifty similar charts, from numerous different sources, showing the same conclusion. Joel Shore objected to all 50, every one of them. The veneer of science in his comments covers up a mind that is made up and closed tight.]
Joel Shore is once again attacking the messenger, rather than the messsage: which is that CAGW is a bogus, falsified conjecture; it is debunked pseudo-science, and anyone still pushing the CAGW narrative is promoting anti-science and has no use for the scientific method.
Joe Romm is only able to survive on-line because he heavily censors opposing views, and because he’s a very well-paid NGO propagandist. Apologists like Joel Shore don’t give a damn about the scientific method; Shore supports Romm’s misinformation agenda and his anti-science beliefs. That is all that matters to Joel Shore and Joe Romm in this debate, and to hell with the scientific method, which only gets in the way of their CAGW narrative.
Smokey says:
The name is Watts, not Watt – Watt is voltage times current, as any physicist worth his degree should know.
No…The name of the person who I was talking about is James Watt.
As I noted, you hardly ever link to anything that is not from a strongly ideological source. You have provided no evidence to dispute this.
How many of the sources were peer-reviewed or were they all from the right-wing echo chamber?
This is an interesting position give that you are the one who is attacking scientists and defending positions completely at odds with those of the respected scientific societies around the world, who one thinks might know a thing or two more than you about the scientific method. And, I am the one who has dedicated my career to science.
And, by the way, I did not really express support for Romm because, unlike you, I don’t blindly support people just because they agree with my point-of-view on certain things. What I said was that I don’t really follow Romm enough to have an opinion, but I have followed Pielke Jr. enough to know that he seems to have a serious problem distinguishing truth from falsehoods of his own invention.
It took more than 3 thousand words because Joe Romm lacks the ability to discern the difference between opinion and science and due to that disability he cannot accept that Gore’s original slide was misleading people as to where the science is at.
Romm admits Gore removed the slide Pielke criticized and he admits the source Gore had relied upon had adjusted their science presentation as well.
He tries to excuse that removal as being from outside pressure. . . .indeed it was. . . .because there never was any scientific support for it. . . .and that was the point Peilke was making that it was misleading no matter what beliefs people may continue to hold.
Peilke is also right that the take no prisoners attitude of people like Romm is damaging to science as wide positive public opinion is necessary to keep it funded. Romm plays to a very different agenda and people should indeed push back against it.
Joel: “And, unlike Romm, these sources are peddling stuff that the scientific community general finds to be complete nonsense.”
Actually I found the topic of this thread to be Romm trying to obfuscate the distinction between science and opinion. Arguing that many others do also, including many in the science community, does not justify such obfuscation. Do you actually have an argument that what Pielke is saying is not true in support of Romm? Or are you just going to rely on an argument that others do it so why not?
Hmmm … this behavior by Joel Shore brings to mind a subject, a topic, seen throughout history, notably, apologetics, as an ‘activity’.
Google searching: apologists through history results in quite an impressive number of hits.
Associated, although the flip side of the coin (from Apologetics as classically defined) is heretic.
Heretic –
1. a professed believer who maintains religious opinions contrary to those accepted by his or her church or rejects doctrines prescribed by that church.
2. anyone who does not conform to an established attitude, doctrine, or principle.
Heretics through history
But, I think the activity he engages in is more along the lines of dissembling.
Dissembling –
1. Conceal one’s true motives, feelings, or beliefs.
2. Disguise or conceal (a feeling or intention).
Notably wiki’s discussion of the above link on dissembling was categorically included in the Lie web page entry.
Of note also was this title, found during a web search: Truth isn’t reached by a dissembling path at, of all places, pharyngula … never mind the post which followed …
.
savethesharks says:
Is this a serious question? Can you honestly not tell the difference between science and what Morano and D’Aleo of peddling? Surely you have been around in one of the many threads in which Smokey has linked to one of the graphs from Icecap showing temperature and CO2 levels and I have patiently explained that:
(1) The graph shows a short time period where the fluctuations in temperature due to ENSO and other things are clearly larger than any underlying trend in temperature, usually with a cherrypicked start period to boot. (And, sometimes cherrypicking which temperature series is shown, for good measure.)
(2) The graph plots temperature and CO2 with the axes scaled so that the temperature curve over the longer term would only be expected to have a similar slope to the CO2 curve only if the transient climate response (TCR) were about 4 or 5 times larger than the central estimate from the IPCC report. Even if you naively use equilibrium climate sensitivity in place of the more appropriate TCR, the scaling of the graph would still be off by a factor of three.
(3) If you scaled the axes more honestly, it would be clear that the temperature fluctuations over such a short period of time basically make a meaningful comparison to the rise in CO2 impossible. And, of course, climate models forced with steadily increasing greenhouse gases show similarly noisy temperature fluctuations over such short time periods.
As for Climate Depot, here is a link to Marano’s glowing recommendation to check out the “Slayers” book of such pseudo-scientific nonsense that Spencer, Lindzen, and even Monckton seem to want nothing to do with it: http://www.climatedepot.com/a/8921/New-Book-By-Team-of-International-Scientists-Slaying-the-Sky-Dragon–Death-of-the-Greenhouse-Gas-Theory Here’s some info on Marano: http://sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Marc_Morano Pretty impressive if your criterion for trusting someone’s view of the science is that they have impeccable far-right credentials…not so impressive if your criterion is that they have any sort of serious scientific background.
If I were you and wanted to be taken seriously by anybody outside of small community who base their scientific opinions on their agreement with a preferred ideological viewpoint, I would be running as fast as I can to dissociate myself from such people.
Please see the following site with all the data, the graphs, and discussion of the Pacific Ocean Basin sea level data from sealevel.colorado.edu. My hope is to remove any ambiguity in exactly what data was used, what adjustments were made, and any confusion that may have resulted related to my statement that ocean levels are falling.
see http://sowellslawblog.blogspot.com/2011/05/are-sea-levels-rising-or-falling.html
I very much appreciate the positive comments regarding my above statement on “truth.”
And Mr. Moderator, my apologies for not including earlier a link to my guest post.
See these lies:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v463/n7280/full/nature08769.html
http://c3headlines.typepad.com/.a/6a010536b58035970c01348857f69c970c-pi
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8511670.stm
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2001/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2001/trend
You could have fooled me.
Sceptical, are you in fact Joe Romm? ;O)
Sceptical, see these lies:
It’s going to lead to disaster. We will all be drowned as sea levels have been rising since the end of the Little Ice Age – waaaaay before you were born.
Joel Shore says:
Is this a serious question? Can you honestly not tell the difference between science and what Morano and D’Aleo of peddling? Surely you have been around in one of the many threads in which Smokey has linked to one of the graphs from Icecap showing temperature and CO2 levels and I have patiently explained that:
============================
Huh? Is this a serious answer?
I will address your individual points in successive posts
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Joel Shore says:
Can you honestly not tell the difference between science and what Morano and D’Aleo of peddling?
===============
OK….Morano aside….(not in the same league as D’Aleo but he still has some valid points)….
Can you honestly not tell the difference between your own blinded CAGW dogma, and the attempt by D’Aleo, Monckton, and others, birddog in to the truth (wow….that is called the scientific method….such as it was at least) as opposed to spin?
I thought not.
For a very intelligent physicist, you appear to be just as susceptible to cognitive dissonance and groupthink phenomenon, as anyone else….if not more so because you think you are right.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Joel Shore says:
May 8, 2011 at 10:20 am
(1) The graph shows a short time period where the fluctuations in temperature due to ENSO and other things are clearly larger than any underlying trend in temperature, usually with a cherrypicked start period to boot. (And, sometimes cherrypicking which temperature series is shown, for good measure.)
================
What graph?
And demonstrate the alleged “cherrypicking”.
Your side is all too familiar with that technique so I trust your expertise on the subject so lets see the analysis…and the evidence.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Simon Barnett says:
May 6, 2011 at 5:32 pm
@sceptical
Does it frighten you that there might be more than one opinion on a subject? That the science isn’t as settled as you have been spoon fed to believe?
Try reading both articles and evaluate the arguments on their merits (not with ad-homs, appeals to authority or counting PhDs). Use the differing viewpoints to form _your_own_ opinion, rather than expecting the uniformity of narrative portrayed by the alarmist camp – for that unifom narrative is the hallmark of doctrine, not science.
Pitting thesis against antithesis is how _science_ is done. Doctrine on the other hand requires only one point of view.
Real science requires that people stand on their own two feet. Doctrine – on the other hand – is so much easier – it only requires that people kneel…
(2) The graph plots temperature and CO2 with the axes scaled so that the temperature curve over the longer term would only be expected to have a similar slope to the CO2 curve only if the transient climate response (TCR) were about 4 or 5 times larger than the central estimate from the IPCC report. Even if you naively use equilibrium climate sensitivity in place of the more appropriate TCR, the scaling of the graph would still be off by a factor of three.
============================
Your side is all too familiar with moving baselines and goalposts and scaling to make the axes fit the predetermined political agenda….so you should be familiar with such technique.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Joel Shore says:
May 8, 2011 at 10:20 am
(3) If you scaled the axes more honestly, it would be clear that the temperature fluctuations over such a short period of time basically make a meaningful comparison to the rise in CO2 impossible. And, of course, climate models forced with steadily increasing greenhouse gases show similarly noisy temperature fluctuations over such short time periods.
==========================
Oh really?? Then show what you propose to be the more “honest” scaling of the axes…so you can make a “meaningful” comparison to your liking.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Joel Shore says:
May 8, 2011 at 10:20 am
Pretty impressive if your criterion for trusting someone’s view of the science is that they have impeccable far-right credentials…not so impressive if your criterion is that they have any sort of serious scientific background.
========================
Regardless of the foregoing….pretty UNimpressive if my criterion is listening to a tired argument from authority fallacy.
Regardless of its source….including you, Joel.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Joel Shore says:
If I were you and wanted to be taken seriously by anybody outside of small community who base their scientific opinions on their agreement with a preferred ideological viewpoint, I would be running as fast as I can to dissociate myself from such people.
========================
What about a LARGE community who base their scientific opinions on their agreement with a preferred ideological viewpoint, Joel?
You should know bro….you should know.
Pot calling kettle blackimus maximus.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Jimbo, so you too agree that sea levels are rising and Mr. Sowell was incorrect when he claimed otherwise.